ventus flamine sudo
Suavem ad patriam perducit-.

27. The sketches of Varro have so uncommon historical
and even poetical significance, and are yet, in consequence of
the fragmentary shape in which information regarding them has reached
us, known to so few and so irksome to study, that we may be allowed
to give in this place a resume of some of them with the few
restorations indispensable for making them readable.

The satire Manius (Early Up!) describes the management of a rural
household. "Manius summons his people to rise with the sun, and in
person conducts them to the scene of their work. The youths make
their own bed, which labour renders soft to them, and supply
themselves with water-jar and lamp. Their drink is the clear fresh
spring, their fare bread, and onions as relish. Everything
prospers in house and field. The house is no work of art; but
an architect might learn symmetry from it. Care is taken of
the field, that it shall not be left disorderly and waste, or go to
ruin through slovenliness and neglect; in return the grateful Ceres
wards off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may
gladden the heart of the husbandman. Here hospitality still holds
good; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome.
the bread-pantry and wine-vat and the store of sausages on the rafters,
lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food
are set before him; contented sits the sated guest, looking neither
before nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen.
the warmest double-wool sheepskin is spread as a couch for him.

"Here people still as good burgesses obey the righteous law, which
neither out of envy injures the innocent, nor out of favour pardons
the guilty. Here they speak no evil against their neighbours.
Here they trespass not with their feet on the sacred hearth, but
honour the gods with devotion and with sacrifices, throw for
the house-spirit his little bit of flesh into his appointed little
dish, and when the master of the household dies, accompany the bier
with the same prayer with which those of his father and of his
grandfather were borne forth."

In another satire there appears a "Teacher of the Old"
(--Gerontodidaskalos--), of whom the degenerate age seems to stand
more urgently in need than of the teacher of youth, and he explains
how "once everything in Rome was chaste and pious," and now all
things are so entirely changed. "Do my eyes deceive