328 
Ariculf xrr in tJir Drn/x nf Ancipnt Rome. 
is not a very inclusive document but one learns that if a 
public feast or a triumph is to take place you may reckon 
on selling five thousand fattened Fieldfares for 60,000 ses- 
terces (about £480) and he adds "You may then lend them 
out at good interest"; with these words he di'^poses of the 
purely uiercenary aviary and deals with the aviary built for 
pleasure. Apparently a gentleman named Mr. Laenius Strabo 
was the inventor of the aviary for ornamental birds, and in 
those days of Caesar we find aviculturists vieing with one 
another as to who should have the largest aviaries and the 
best birds. 
Varro, too, seems to have been bent on impressing 
upon Axius the splendour of his establishment, for he says 
■■ You must know that near the town of Casinum I have a 
river flowing through my grounds. It is clear and deep (no 
sewage-contaminated mud-pools for Varro!) with stone kerbs. 
Its bi'eadth is fifty seven feet so that bridges are necessary 
to cross from one part of the villa to the other: its length 
is 950 feet . . . ." and so on in the style so familiar with 
the egregious braggart of 1914. It was on the banks of the 
stream, separated l)y an uncovered path 10 feet wide that 
Varro's aviary stood. The aviary was shut in on botli side.s^ 
right and left, by high walls. Between these walls is the 
aviary " fashioned like a boy's Avriting tablet with its ring 
at the top." The rectangular portion measured 48 feet by 
72; the upper end where it is circular 27 feet. At the 
and oj)posit(' tlu; circular i)art there is a walk whicli runs 
entii'c the width of the aviary. On entering the aviary 
proper, and immediately to one's right and left were two 
recesseo known as " plumulae," corresponding to our " bird- 
rooms," in which no doubt were kept new arrivals, i)ugnacious 
birds, ailing birds, and so forth." As we step into the aviary 
we are not confronted l)y birds flying hither and tliitlier, for 
the centi-al i^ortion is simply a walk or auditorium flanked 
on either side by colonnades, the front columns of which were 
stone^ whereas the back of the colonnade is formed by the 
high walls, already referred to, which form the boundaries of 
the aviary. Between the wall and the stone columns were 
planted dwarf trees. The two aviaries on either side of the 
walk were completed by throwing a hempen net over the 
