be called villas in which large
profits are derived from husbandry: for what difference does it make
whether you derive your profit from sheep or from birds? Is the income
any sweeter which comes from cattle in which bees are generated, than
from the bees themselves, such as work in their hives at the villa of
Seius? Do you sell to the butcher the hogs which you raise at your
farm for more than Seius sells his wild boars to the meat market?"

"Am I any less able," replied Axius, "to have these things at my farm
at Reate: is Sicilian honey made at Seius' place and only Corsican
honey at Reate,[161] and does the mast which he buys for his wild boars
make them fat while that which I get for nothing from my woods makes
mine lean?"

"But," said Appius, "Merula does not deny that you _can_ carry on at
your villa the kind of husbandry which Seius does at his, yet I myself
have seen that you don't.

"For there are two kinds of husbandry of live stock: one in the fields,
as of cattle; and the other at the steading, as of chickens and
pigeons and bees and other such things which are usually kept at a
villa.

"About the latter, Mago the Carthaginian, and Cassius Dionysius and
others have treated specially in different parts of their books, and
it would seem that Seius has read their precepts and so has learned
how to make more profit from his villa alone by such husbandry than
others make out of an entire farm."

"Certainly," agreed Merula, "for I have seen there great flocks of
geese, chickens, pigeons, cranes and pea-cocks: also dormice, fish,
wild boars and other such game.[162] The freedman who keeps his books
which Varro has seen, assured me when he was doing the honours in the
absence of his master, that Seius derives an income of more than fifty
thousand sesterces ($2,500) per annum from his villa."

As Axius seemed astonished, I asked him: "Surely you know the estate
of my aunt in the Sabine country which is at the twenty-fourth mile
stone from Rome on the via Salaria."

"Of course, I do," Axius replied, "for it is there that I am wont to
divide the day in summer on my way from Reate to town and to spend the
night when I come thence in winter."

"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
yea