Ill] ON VARIOUS KINDS OF VILLAS 253 



Corsican ^ kind, and unless the acorns he buys make 

 the boars fat on his estate, while on mine those which 

 I get for nothing make them thin? But, replied 

 Appius, Merula does not say that you couldn't 

 fatten the same animals as Seius, only, as I have 



3 seen with my own eyes, you don't. Now there 

 are two' kinds of feeding; the one is conducted 

 out in the fields, under which head comes cattle- 

 raising; the other within the home buildings, 

 where are reared hens, doves, bees, and the other 

 animals which are usually fed there. On the latter 

 we possess special treatises by Mago of Carthage 

 and Cassius Dionysius, as well as scattered obser- 

 vations to be found in their longer works; and 

 these Seius has apparently read to such good 

 purpose that he makes more profit out of a single 

 villa by this method of feeding than other people 



4 do out of a whole farm devoted to agriculture. It is 

 true, said Merula, for I have seen there great flocks 

 of geese, hens, doves, cranes,^ and peacocks, as 



' Corsicum. The Corsican honey was bitter because the 

 bees fed on wormwood (Dioscorides, ii, 102). Isidore (xx, 3) 

 makes the same statement about the Sardinian: Sardum 

 amarum est ahsinthii causa: cuius copia eius regionis apes 

 nutriuntur. 



'■ Cum sint. These anacolutha are common in Varro. Cf. 

 i, I, 2; ii, I, 3; iii, 16, 2, 8. 



^ Gruum. Both cranes and storks were fattened for table. 



At one time storks were preferred, though in Pliny's time no 



ne would touch one (Pliny, x, 23). Peacocks, of course, at the 



inc when Varro wrote this book almost always appeared at a 



dinner of ceremony. In one of Cicero's letters to Attlcus he 



