Ill] OF FIELDFARES 273 



is the case with Catulus's ^ hall if you put pillars 

 instead of walls. Beyond these pillars is a wood of 

 great trees planted by hand, which admits light 

 only at the lower part, and the whole is shut in by 



'3 high walls. Between the outside pillars of the 

 domed building, which are of stone, and the slender 

 inside ones, the same in number, which are of fir, is 

 a space five feet in width. The outside columns are 

 joined together by a net made of gut, which serves 

 as a wall, so that it is possible to look out into the 

 wood and see what is there, without a bird being 

 able to get through. The inner pillars are connected 

 by a fowling-net thrown over them, instead of a 

 wall. Between the inner and outer pillars there has 

 been constructed, as it were, a little bird-theatre, 

 with seats rising tier by tier, since on all the pillars 

 many brackets have been placed as " seats " for the 



[4 birds. Within the net are birds of all kinds, mostly 

 songsters, such as nightingales and blackbirds, 

 which are served with water by means of a small 

 gutter, while food is thrown to them under the net. 

 Under the stylobate of the pillars is stone-work one 

 foot nine inches high above a platform,^ which is 



' In aede Catuli. The porticus Catuli built de manubiis Cini- 

 bricis is well known (cf. Cicero, Pro Dom. Sua, 38) ; but I can 

 find no reference save here to an aedes Catuli. The word aedes^ 

 of course, quite frequently — especially in Plautus and Livy — 

 means '* hall " as well as ** temple." 



' Falere. This word is not to be met with except in this 

 chapter. It is connected by the difierent commentators with 

 (i) ^oAopoc or ^oAepoc, white; (2) Falerii^ a city built on a high 



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