"Doubtless," said I, "Hortensius would prefer to have you take the carriage mules out of his stable than one of his barbel mules from the fish pond."
"Yes, indeed," agreed Axius, "and he would rather have a sick slave drink cold water than that his beloved fish should be risked in that which is fresh. On the other hand, M. Lucullus was reputed to be so careless and neglectful of his fish ponds that he did not provide any suitable quarters for his fishes in hot weather, but permitted them to remain in ponds which were unhealthy with stagnant water: a practice very different from that of his brother L. Lucullus, who yielded nothing to Neptune himself in his care of his fishes, for he pierced a mountain at Naples, and so contrived that the sea water in his fish ponds should be renewed by the action of the tides. Furthermore, he has arranged that his beloved fishes may be driven into a cool place during the heat of the day, just as the Apulian shepherds do when they drive their flocks along the drift ways to the Sabine mountains: for so great was his ardour for the welfare of his fishes that he gave a commission to his architect to drive at his sole cost a tunnel from his fish ponds at Raise to the sea, and by throwing out a mole contrived that the tide should flow in and out of his fish ponds twice a day, from moon to moon, and so cool them off."
At this moment, while we were talking, there was a sound of foot steps on the right and our candidate came into the villa publica arrayed in the broad purple of his new rank as an aedile. We went to meet him and, after congratulations, escorted him to the Capitol, whence he departed for his home and we to ours.
So there, my dear Pinnius, is the brief record of our discourse on the husbandry of the steading.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "The manner in which the ancients managed their fallow is certainly most worthy of our attention: their care in ploughing, according to the situation of the land, and nature of the climate, and their manner of adapting the kind of ploughing to answer the purposes intended by the operation, are also most worthy of our imitation. Their exactness in these things exceeds any thing of the kind found amongst the moderns, and is even beyond what any practical writer on agriculture has proposed. This is an evidence that tillage is not even in this age brought to that perfection of which it is capable: and that, notwithstanding all the improvements lately introduced, we may yet receive some instruction from a proper attention to the precepts and practices of the ancients. I am desirous to add that this attention may be useful by preventing improvers from running into every specious scheme of agriculture produced by a lively imagination and engaging them to study the great variety of soils and even climates in this island, and to be careful in adapting to these their several operations." Dickson Husbandry of the Ancients, XXIII.
The Rev. Andrew Dickson, who died in 1776, was minister of Aberlady in the county of East Lothian, the son of a progressive and successful Scots farmer, and had experience in practical agriculture, as well as in scholarship, as his book shows.]
[Footnote 2: The compilation of rural lore, known as the Geoponica, which exists in Greek, was made at Byzantium for the Emperor Constantine VII about the middle of the tenth century A.D. It is very largely a paraphrase of the Roman authors, and is useful principally in elucidating their textual difficulties.]
[Footnote 3: Donald G. Mitchell made an interesting collation, in his Wet Days at Edgewood, of the large number of books on agriculture which have been written in old age and by men of affairs, in many lands and many languages.]
[Footnote 4: It is interesting to record, however, that Varro received the Navalis Corona for personal gallantry in the war against the pirates. This distinction was even more rare than our modern Medal of Honor or Victoria Cross, and was awarded only to a commander who leapt under arms on the deck of an enemies' ship and then succeeded in capturing her.]