122 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



were achieved : by cultivation they made ^ and kept 

 their lands most productive, while they themselves 

 enjoyed a lustier health, and might dispense with 

 the town gymnasia of the Greeks. Whereas nowa- 

 days men are hardly satisfied with one gymnasium 

 apiece, and do not consider that they possess a 

 country house unless it is dignified by a lot of 

 Greek names,* which they give to its several parts, 

 such 2iS procoeton (antechamber), /<2/^^^/r« (room for 

 exercise), apodyterium (undressing-room), /^r/^/y/o^ 

 (colonnade), ornithon (poultry - yard), peristeron 

 (dove-cote), oporothece (store-house for fruit). 

 3 And now that nearly all heads of families have 

 deserted scythe and plough, and sneaked within 

 the city walls, preferring to keep their hands astir 

 in theatre and circus rather than amidst corn-crops 

 and vineyards, we contract ^ with people to bring us 



1 Ut haherent . . . ac ne. Perhaps both better translated 

 as ** final " conjunctions — though Cicero writes (De Finibus, 

 bk. ii) : Ex quo efficitur non ut voluptas ne sit voluptas sed ut 

 voluptas non sit summum bonum. 



^ Retineant. I can find no parallel to the use of retinere here. 

 Auc, Ad Herennium, iii, 3, has retinere fortitudinem in the sense 

 of consetvare, to keep up. Gesner conjectures ingeniously re- 

 tinniat. If this be adopted the passage means : "do not think 

 they have a country-house unless it * tinkles ' with a lot of 

 Greek names, etc." 



^ Frumentum locamus. Columella in the preface to his work 

 on farming paraphrases most of this introduction — and this 

 passage thus : "And so in this Latium, in this land of the good 

 god Saturn, where the gods taught agriculture to their off- 

 spring, we have now, lest we starve, to contract for corn to be 



