Ill] ON VARIOUS KINDS OF VILLAS 245 



this treatise to embellish it with the produce of the 

 farm. I now therefore send it to you remembering 

 the conversations we once had on the subject of 

 the perfect country house, and I will here make a 

 beginning by relating them. 



CHAPTER II 



ON VARIOUS KINDS OF VILLAS 



It was at an election of aediles and the sun was 

 hot, when I and Q. Axius the senator, who be- 

 longed to my tribe, having recorded our votes, were 



of any literary work bearing his name. But, if the text be 

 sound, these words must refer to works written by Pinnius. 

 Gesner conjectures tui, and considers the meaning of the pass- 

 age to be "unless your walls were also adorned with literary 

 works," i.e.^ unless there were a library in the villa. But the 

 position of the enclitic quoque would still emphasize the word 

 tui. One suspects the genuineness of tuis. 



Perhaps ni nitidis quoque litteris was written by Varro, " un- 

 less its walls were adorned with beautifully bound literature 

 also." Nitidus would be no bad epithet for the novi libri of a 

 Suffenus. 



Norvi umbiliciy lora tvbra, tnetnbrana 

 Directa plumho ct pumice omnia acquata. 



The syllable ni in nitidis might have dropped out of the text 

 owing to the ni immediately before it. The general sense of 

 the passage is clear: Just as the inside of a villa is improved 

 by a library, so is the outside by cocks and hens, doves, pea- 

 cocks, etc., which are the subject of this third book dedicated 

 to Pinnius. 



