Ill] ON VARIOUS KINDS OF VILLAS 255 



said Axius, sixty, stxfyl you are joking. Stxfyj I 

 16 repeated. Well, but to make this haul,' said he, 

 you'll want a banquet,' or somebody's triumph such 

 as that of Metellus Scipio in former days, or club ^ 

 dinners, which now in endless number inflate the 

 market price of provisions. Every year, said I, you 

 may look for such a return, and, I hope, your aviary 

 will pay * Its way ; in these days of luxury it happens 



* Bolum. /36Xof=(i) a cast of a net (pure Latin iactus), 

 (2) the thing caught. Cf. Euripid. (Electra, 582): 



riv iKairdffiofiai y' ov fieHpxofiai ^oXov. 



Plautus (Rudens, 360) uses the word in the first sense : 



JVimts Upide iecisti bolum y periurum perdidisti. 



Terence (Heauton., 673) in the second : 



Crucidr bolum mihi tdntum ereptum tdm desubito efaiicilmSj 



though the older commentators consider this to be a different 

 word — the Latin form of the Greek fiw\og, "a lump." 



* Epulum. Columella (viii, 10, 6) understood this in the 

 limited sense of a banquet in celebration of a triumph. 

 M. Terentius temis saepe denariis singulos emptitatos esse sig- 



\ nificat avorum temporibus, quibus qui triumphabant populo 

 dabant epulum. 



' Collegiorum. The reference is probably not to the four 

 great collegia of the priests in particular, but to the collegia 

 artificuMy sodalicia, etc., as well. 



* Non decoquet. Decoquere is used by Cicero to denote 

 ruinous extravagance. Cf. Phil., ii, 18: ienesne memoria te 

 praetextatum decoxisse, \.q. , patrimonium tuum. Pliny (xxi, 6) 

 has : Serere in Italia minime expedite adscrupula usque singula 

 areis decoquentibus — "eatingiup il2 of the gain," so Grono- 

 vius interprets. Here I conceive the meaning to be: "Your 

 aviary will not eat up the profit (or hanc summam) by the ex- 

 pense of its up-keep." 



