Part 17 (1/2)

”Well,” I continued, ”in that villa there is an aviary from which I know that there were taken in one season five thousand thrushes, which, at three deniers apiece, means that that department of the establishment brought in a revenue of sixty thousand sesterces that year, or twice the yield of the entire two hundred jugera of your farm at Reate.”[163]

”What, sixty thousand,” exclaimed Axius, ”sixty thousand: you are making game of me!”

”Sixty thousand,” I affirmed, ”but in order that you might realize such a lucky throw you will require either a public banquet or a triumph on the scale of that of Scipio Metellus, or club dinners, which indeed have now become so frequent as to raise the price of provisions of the market.”

”You will perchance expect this return every year,” said Merula, ”so I trust that your aviary may not lead you into a loss. But surely in such good times as these it could not happen that you would fail, except rarely, for what year is there that does not see such a feast or a triumph, or club dinners, such as now-a-days consume victuals without number. Nay,” he added, ”it seems that in our habit of luxury such a public banquet is a daily occurrence within the gates of Rome.”[164]

To supplement the examples of such profits: L. Albutius, a learned man and, as you know, the author of certain satires in the manner of Lucilius, has said that the returns from feeding live stock on his Alban farm are always less than his income from his villa, for the farm yields less than ten thousand sesterces and the villa more than twenty. He even maintains that if he should establish a villa near the sea in such a place as he might choose he could derive from it an income of more than a hundred thousand sesterces. Did not M. Cato recently sell forty thousand sesterces worth of fishes from the fish ponds of Lucullus after he had accepted the administration of his estate?”

”My dear Merula,” exclaimed Axius, ”take me, I beg of you, as your pupil in the art of the husbandry of the steading.”

”I will begin,” replied Merula, ”as soon as you promise me a minerval in the form of a dinner.”[165]

”You shall have it,” said Axius, ”both today, and hereafter as well, off those delicacies you will teach me to rear.”

”I fear,” replied Merula, ”that what you may offer me at the beginning of your experience with villa feeding will be dead geese or deceased pea-c.o.c.ks.”

”And what difference will it make to you,” retorted Axius, ”if I do serve you fish or fowl which has come to an untimely end: for in no event could you eat them unless they were dead: but I beg you,” he added, ”matriculate me in the school of villa husbandry and expound to me the theory and the practice of it.”

Merula accepted the invitation cheerfully.

_Of the Roman development of the industries of the steading_

III. ”In the first place,” he said, ”you should know what kind of creatures you may raise or feed in or about a villa, either for your profit or for your pleasure. There are three divisions for this study: poultry houses, warrens and fish ponds.

”I include under the head of poultry houses the feeding of all kinds of fowls which are usually kept within the walls of a steading: under the head of warrens not merely what our great grandfathers meant--places where rabbits were usually kept--but any enclosure adjoining a villa in which game animals are enclosed to be fed. In like manner I include under the head of fish ponds all those places in which fish are kept at a villa either in fresh or salt water.

”Each of these divisions may be separated into at least two parts: thus the first, that with respect to poultry houses, should be treated with reference to a cla.s.sification of fowls as between those which are content on land alone, such as pea-c.o.c.ks, turtle doves, thrushes; and those which require access to water as well as land, such as geese, widgeons and ducks. So the second division, that relating to game, has two different cla.s.sifications: one which includes the wild boar, the roe buck and hares; the other bees, snails and dormice.

”The third, or aquatic division, likewise has two cla.s.sifications, one including fresh water fish, the other salt water fish.

”In order to secure and maintain a supply of these six cla.s.ses of stock it is necessary to provide a force of three kinds of artificers, namely: fowlers, hunters and fishermen, or else you may buy breeding stock from such men, and trust to the diligence of your servants to rear and fatten their offspring until they are ready for market.

Certain of them, such as dormice, snails and chickens, may, however, be obtained without the aid of a hunter's net, and doubtless the business of keeping them began with the stock native to every farm: for the breeding even of chickens has not been a monopoly of the Roman augurs, to make provision for their auspices, but has been practised by all farmers from the beginning of time.[166] From such a start in the kind of husbandry we are now discussing, the next step was to provide masonry enclosures near the steading to confine game, and these served as well for shelter for the bee-stand, for originally the bees were wont to make their hives under the eaves of the farm house itself.

”The third division, that of keeping fish, had its origin in simple fresh water ponds in which fish taken in the streams were kept.

”There have been two steps in the development of each of these three conveniences; the earlier distinguished by the ancient simplicity, the later by our modern luxury. The earlier stage was that of our ancestors, who had but two places for keeping poultry: one the court yard of the steading in which chickens were fed and their profit derived from eggs and pullets, the other above ground, for their pigeons were kept in the dormers or on the roof of the farm house.

”Now-a-days, on the contrary, what our ancestors called hen-houses are known as _ornithones_, and serve to house thrushes and pea-c.o.c.ks to cater to the delicate appet.i.te of the master: and indeed such structures now have larger roofs than formerly sufficed to cover an entire farm house.

”Such has been the progress in respect of warrens also: your father, Axius, never saw any game but rabbits, nor did there exist in his time any such extensive enclosures as now are made, many jugera in extent, to hold wild boars and roe bucks. You can witness,” he said, turning to me, ”that you found many wild boars in the warren of your farm at Tusculum, when you bought it from M. Piso.”

In respect of the third cla.s.s, who was there who used to have any kind of a fish pond, except of fresh water, stocked merely with cat fish and mullets, while today our elegants declare that they would as soon have a pond stocked with frogs as with those fish I have named. You will recall the story of Philippus when he was entertained at Casinum by Ummidius: a pickerel caught in your river, Varro, was put before him, he tasted it and forthwith spat it out, exclaiming ”May I perish, but I thought it was fis.h.!.+”[167]

As the luxury of this age has enlarged our warrens, so has it carried our fish ponds even to the sea itself and has herded shoals of sea fish into them. Have not Sergius Orata (goldfish) and Licinius Murena (lamprey) taken their cognomens from fishes for this reason? And who does not know the fame of the fish ponds of Philippus, of Hortensius, and of the brothers Lucullus?

”Where, then, Axius, do you wish me to begin?”