152 PLUTT'S NATURAL HISTOET. [Book XIX. 



tined to find certain productions that are denied to the com- 

 munity at large, and the very cabbages pampered to such an 

 enormous extent that the poor man's table is not large enough 

 to hold them. Asparagus, by Nature, was intended to grow 

 wild, 81 so that each might gather it where he pleased but, 

 lo and behold ! we find it in the highest state of cultivation, 

 and Eavenna produces heads that weigh as much as three 

 pounds 32 even ! Alas for the monstrous excess of gluttony ! 

 It would be surprising indeed, for the beasts of the field to \>e 

 forbidden the thistle for food, and yet it is a thing forbidden 33 

 to the lower classes of the community ! These refined dis- 

 tinctions, too, are extended to the very water even, and, thanks 

 to the mighty influence of money, there are lines of demar- 

 cation drawn in the very elements themselves. Some persons 

 are for drinking ice, others for quaffing snow, and thus is the 

 curse of the mountain steep turned into an appetizing sti- 

 mulus for the palate ! 34 Cold is carefully treasured up for the 

 summer heats, and man's invention is racked how best to keep 

 snow freezing in months that are not its own. Some again 

 there are who first boil the water, 35 and then bring it to the 

 temperature of winter indeed, there is nothing that pleases 

 man in the fashion in which Nature originally made it. 



And is it the fact, then, that any herb of the garden is 

 reared only for the rich man's table ? It is so but still let 

 no one of the angered populace think of a fresh secession to 

 Mount 'Sacer or Mount A ven tine ; for to a certainty, in the long 

 run, all-powerful money will bring them back to just the 

 same position as they were in when it wrought the severance. 

 For, by Hercules ! 36 there was not an impost levied at Borne 



31 As " corruda," or " wild asparagus." The Brassica capitata alba of C. 

 BauMn,or white cabbage, sometimes attains a weight often or twelve pounds. 



' 2 This is an exaggeration, probably. 



83 He alludes to the artichoke, or Cinara cardunculus of the botanists, 

 which bears some resemblance to the common thistle. 



34 Martial and Aulus Gellius speak of ice and snow drinks. The latter 

 must have been very injurious to the stomach. 



35 See B. xxxi. c. 23. 



36 In this corrupt and otherwise unintelligible pasaage, we have adopted 

 the proposed emendations of Sillig, who is of opinion that it bears 

 reference to the abolition of the market-dues, or "portorium," by Augus- 

 tus Caesar, and the substitution of a property tax of one twentieth of the 

 land, a method of taxation which inflicted greater hardships than the 

 former one, as it was assessed according to the superficies, not the produce 



