350 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



him a great sum to build, and I know, for I often 

 used to stay with him at his country-house, that he 

 used always to send to Puteoli to buy the fish for 



6 dinner. And it was not enough that his fish-ponds 

 didn't feed him, but he must needs, if you please, 

 with his own ^ hands feed them, being more anxious 

 lest his mullets should feel the pangs of starvation 

 than I do lest my asses ' at Rosea should go hungry. 

 He spent, too, a good deal more on the former than 

 I do on the latter in the matter of both food and 

 drink. For all I need for the feeding of my costly 

 asses is one little slave, a trifle of barley, and water 

 found on the estate, while Hortensius in the first 

 place kept an army of fishermen to feed the fish, 

 who used constantly to bring him masses of tiny 

 fishes which were destined to serve as food for the big 



7 ones. He would buy, besides, salt-fish, and throw 



^ Ipse, "with his own hands." Macrobius (ii, 9) tells this 

 story about Hortensius: "He used to water his plane trees 

 with wine, and in a certain case in which he and Cicero had 

 both to speak, he asked Cicero as a favour to change with him, 

 as he was obliged to go home to water with his own hands a 

 plane tree which he had planted on his Tusculum estate " — 

 ahire in villain necessario se velle ut vinum platano quam in 

 Tusculano posuerat ipse suffunderet. Macrobius says also that 

 Hortensius prosecuted his colleague for assault and battery, 

 because the latter, meeting him on a narrow footpath, had 

 jostled him and disordered the folds of his toga — which he 

 used to arrange before a looking-glass ! 



^ Asinos. Cf. iii, 2, 9. In the mulli above, Schneider sees a 

 pun, from the similarity of sound in mulli and muli. It is very 

 likely that he is right, for the pun would give point to the 

 antithesis between mullet (mules) and asses. 



