278 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



you said anything disrespectful ' of them in his 

 presence he would probably have had a bone^ to 

 pick with you for the honour of his clan. To him 

 Merula answered : As to peacocks, why I remember 

 the time when people first began to keep flocks of 

 them and sell them at a big price. M. Aufidius 

 Lurco ^ is said to make more than 60,000 sesterces 

 (;^48o) a year out of these birds. 



If profit be your object there should be consider- 

 ably fewer cocks than hens, if pleasure, it is the 

 other way about, for the cock is the handsomer of 

 the two. 



They should be fed on the farm in flocks. It is 

 said that beyond the sea they are reared on islands, 

 as, for instance, at Samos in the grove of Juno, and 

 on Planasia,' an island which belongs to M. Piso. 



them inscribed in the same hand-writing, appealed against 

 the fraud, and the tribunes set aside the election." 



It looks very much as though the fraud mentioned by 

 Plutarch were the same as that alluded to in Varro's text. 



^ Secus here = male, a not uncommon use, especially in Sallust. 



^ Serram, There seems to be no reason to suspect the text, 

 as Scaliger and others have done. Quarrelsome altercation 

 is well expressed by the metaphor of the two-handed saw. 

 Tertullian (De Corona, 2) has : Et quamdiu per hanc lineam 

 serram reciprocabimus? 



^ M. AufiditLs Lurco. Cf. Pliny (x, 20): "The first to kill 

 a peacock for the table was the orator Hortensius on the 

 occasion of an inaugural dinner of the Pontifices ; to fatten 

 peacocks, M. Aufidius Lurco about the close of the war against 

 the Pirates (67 B.C.). From this source he made an income 

 of 60,000 sesterces." 



^ Planasia. Now Pianosa, a small island about twenty 



