It was a gathering together of many classical and post-classical agricultural works, from Pliny in ancient Rome to the 7th-century Cassianus Bassus and the 4th-century Vindonius Anatolius. Many of these no longer survive, making the Geoponika the more valuable. It is a source both for ancient Roman agricultural practice in the West, and for understanding Near Eastern agriculture and what went on in Byzantine Anatolia. It was once translated into English, in the early 19th century, but has usually only been accessible to scholars of Greek. The history of the manuscript is extremely complicated.