Ill] OF FIELDFARES 271 



banks of the stream is an uncovered walk ten feet ^ 

 broad ; off this walk and in the direction of the open 

 ground is the place where the aviary stands shut in 

 on tsvo sideS) right and left, by high walls. Between 

 these walls is the site of the aviary, fashioned in 

 the likeness of a boy's writing-tablet with its ring^ 

 at the top. It measures in the rectangular part 

 forty-eight by seventy-two feet; where it is circular, 

 at the upper end of the enclosure, twenty-seven 

 feet. In addition, figuring, as it were, the lower 

 margin of the writing tablet, there is a "walk," 

 and connected with the aviary a plumula ^ (little 



Marco Varrone " not far from the right bank of the Rapido 

 facing a little island situated at the junction of the two streams. 

 So I learnt from the village priest (il padre Benedetto del Greco) 

 who showed me over the site of Varro's villa. 



^ Denos surely must be decern. The numeral x would stand 

 for either. 



* Cum capitulo. Cf. Horace's frequently-quoted line (Sat. I, 



6,74): 



Laevo suspensi loculos tahulamque Jacerto 



on which the Scholiast: tabulam, huxuin in quo meditantur 

 scribere. The quaad which follows, written by Keil as one 

 word, should surely be two, qua ad capitulum^ etc. 



' Plumula. In this word some of the older commentators 

 saw the pteron (wTtpov) of Pliny (xxxvi, 5), or the TTTeptofiara 

 (wings) of Vitruvius (iii, 2) ; others thought that the word was 

 corrupt and concealed a number, thus: P Iviii, that is fifty- 

 eight feet. Neither view appears promising. Perhaps the word 

 represents some adjective agreeing with amhulatio, such as 

 proxuma or plurima (of considerable extent); or stands for 

 plurimae agreeing with caviae, the translation then being "a 

 walk adjoining the aviary in the middle of which, at the place 



