328 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



to say which will perhaps please you, Axius. It is 

 supported not only by Seius, who lets his bee-hives at 

 a yearly rent of 5,000 pounds' weight of honey, but 

 also by our friend Varro here, whom I have heard 

 tell the following story. There were two brothers 

 named Veianius, who served under him in Spain/ 

 They came from near Falerii, and were then well- 

 to-do, though their father had left them only a small 

 farmstead and a bit of land — certainly not more than 

 an acre. They set up bee-hives all round the build- 

 ing, kept a garden, and sowed all the rest (of their 

 land) with thyme and cytisus and apiastrum — a 

 plant called by some meliphyllon (honey-leaf), 

 by others melissophyllon (bee-leaf), and by some 

 I again melittaena,'^ Well, these brothers used never 

 to make less out of the honey — taking a very reason- 

 able estimate — than 10,000 sesterces ' (;£^8o) a year, 



^ In Hispania. It would seem from this passage and from 

 iii, 12, 7, that Varro had held some command in Spain before 

 54 B.C., the date of these conversations, and consequently before 

 his inglorious campaign in the great civil war. 



■^ Melittaenam. An emendation of Keil's for the reading of 

 the Archetype mellineni^ in spite of the support which the 

 latter gets from Philargyrius (ad Georg. , iv, 63) : MelisphyUa 

 herba est quam ut ait Varro, alii apiastrum alii melinem appel- 

 lant. Columella (ix, 9, 8) has melissophylli vel apiastri. 



^ Sestertia. Ursinus suggests sestertium, and certainly this 

 must be the meaning here and iii, 6, 6, and iii, 17, 3. I can 

 find no parallel in any other author of sestertia used thus, and 

 suspect the text in each case, as the corruption is easily ex- 

 plicable. In ii, I, 14, we find asinus venierit sestertiis milibus 

 sexaginta, i. e. , ior sesterces — 60, ooo. Sestertium, the neuter noun, 

 means, of course, 1,000 sesterces, but could have no place here. 



