Ill] OF BEES AND APIARIES 329 



but, as they said, they were always willing to wait, 

 so as to interview the buyer at a favourable moment, 

 and were in no hurry to sell if the time were bad. 

 Well then, said Axius, tell me where and how to 

 make a bee-house, that I may reap large profits. 

 12 Merula answered. You must set up your bee-hives 

 in this way — others call them melittotrophia 

 (places for feeding bees), while the same things are 

 called by some people mellaria. — In the first place 

 they should be if possible close to the farm-building, 

 in a place where there are no echoes,^ for this noise, 

 it is thought, puts them to flight.^ The air should 

 be temperate, not blazing hot in summer, nor un- 

 sunned in winter; the hives should preferably face 

 the place where the sun rises in winter, and should 

 have in their neighbourhood plenty of food and pure 



' Imagines. Cf. Columella, ix, 5, 6: Nee minus vitentur 

 cavae rupis aut vallis argutiae quas Graeci r)xovq vacant, and 

 Pliny, xi, 19 : Inimica est et echo resultanti sono qui pavidas 

 altemos pulsat sono. For imago \x\ this sense cf. Horace, Odes, 

 i, 12,4: 



Quern deum cuius recinit iocosa 

 Nomen imago. 



* Fugae procerum. This is, of course, unintelligible. Scallger 

 gives as **a certain emendation " protelum, and quotes Varro 

 (De liberis educandis) : Remotissimum cut discetidum formidoy 

 nimius terror et omnis perturbatio animi: contra delectatio pro- 

 telum ad discendum. Here protelum means "incitement." 

 Ursinus and one MS. (Caesenas) have instead oi procerum, 

 praeterea, while Triller suggests Porro caelum. None of these 

 is satisfactory, but of the three emendations Scaliger'§ seems 

 the best — if the passage which he quotes from Varro is genuine. 

 Up to now I have been unable to trace it. 



