advisable," sagely counsels Mr. Baedeker)
and on his way up the long winding road to the Abbey there will be
pointed out to him the river Rapido, on the banks of which Varro's
aviary stood, and nearby what is reputed to be the site of the
old polymath's villa which Antony polluted with the orgies Cicero
described in the second Philippic. Antony's destruction of his library
was a great blow to Varro, but one likes to think that his ghost can
take satisfaction in the maintenance, so near the haunts of his flesh,
of such a noble collection of books as is the continuing pride of the
Abbey on the mountain above.]

[Footnote 170: Varro's Museum, or study where he wooed the Muses, on his
estate at Casinum was not unlike that of Cicero at his native Arpinum,
which he described (de Leg. II, 3) agreeably as on an island in the
cold and clear Fibrenus just above its confluence with the more
important river Liris, where, like a plebeian marrying into a
patrician family, it lost its name but contributed its freshness. The
younger Pliny built a study in the garden of his Laurentine villa near
Ostia, which he describes (II, 17) with enthusiasm: "horti diaeta est,
amores mei, re vera amores": and here he found refuge from the tumult
of his household during the festivities of the Saturnalia, which
corresponded with our Christmas. In the ante bellum days every
Virginia gentleman had such an "office" in his house yard where he
pretended to transact his farm business, but where actually he
was wont to escape from the obligations of family and continuous
hospitality.]

[Footnote 171: The commentators on this interesting but obscure
description of Varro's aviary have at this point usually endeavoured
to explain the arrangements of the chamber under the lantern of
the _tholus_ with respect to its use as a dining room which Varro
frequented himself, and hence have been amused into all kinds of
difficulties of interpretation. The references to the _convivae_ are
what lead them astray, and it remained for Keil to suggest that this
was a playful allusion to the birds themselves, a conclusion which is
strengthened by Varro's previous statement of the failure of Lucullus'
attempt to maintain a dining room in his aviary.]

[Footnote 172: Cf. Vitruvius, I, 6: "Andronicus Cyrrhestes built at
Athens an octagonal marble tower, on the sides of which were carved
images of the eight winds, each on the side opposite that from which
it blew. On the pyra