Delphi Complete Works of Varro

by Marcus Terentius Varro

  [11] “One who wishes to keep flocks of ducks and build a duck-farm should choose, first, if he has the opportunity, a place which is swampy, for they like this best of all; if this is not available, a place preferably where there is a natural pond or pool or an artificial pond, to which they can go down by steps. [2] There should be an enclosure in which they can move about, some fifteen feet high, as you saw at Seius’s place, closed by one entrance. Around the entire wall on the inside should run a wide ledge, along which, next to the wall, are the covered resting places, and in front of them their vestibule levelled with plastered brickwork. In this is a continuous trough, in which food is placed for them and water is admitted; for in this way they take their food. [3] All the walls are smoothed with plaster, so that no weasel or other beast can get in to harm them; and the entire enclosure is covered with a wide-meshed net, so that an eagle cannot fly in or the ducks fly out. For food they are often given wheat, barley, grape-skins, and sometimes water-crabs and certain aquatic food of that sort. Any ponds in the enclosure should have a large inflow of water, so that it may always be fresh.

  [4] “There are also other species not unlike them, such as the teal, coot, and partridge, which, as Archelaus writes, conceive when they hear the voice of the male. These are not stuffed as are those above mentioned, either to increase their fecundity or to improve their flavour, but they become fat by merely feeding them as described. I have finished telling what seems to belong to the first act of the husbandry of the steading.”

  [12.1] Meanwhile Appius returns, and we are asked by him and he by us what has been said and done. Appius continues: “There follows the second act, which is usually an appendage to the villa and retains its old name of hare-warren because of one part of it — for not only are hares enclosed in it in woods, as used to be the case on an acre or two of land, but also stags and roes on many acres. It is reported that Quintus Fulvius Lippinus has a preserve in the vicinity of Tarquinii of forty iugera, in which are enclosed, not only the animals I have named, but also wild sheep; and an even larger one near Statonia, and some in other places; [2] while in Transalpine Gaul, Titus Pompeius has a hunting preserve so large that he keeps a tract of about four square miles enclosed. In addition to this, in the same enclosure are usually kept places for snails and bee-hives, and also casks in which dormice are kept confined. But the care, increase, and feeding of all these, except the bees, is evident. [3] For everybody knows that walled enclosures in warrens ought to be covered with plaster and ought to be high — in the one case to make it impossible for a weasel or a badger or other animal to enter, and in the other to keep a wolf from leaping over; and they should have coverts in which the hares may hide in the day-time under the brush and grass, and trees with spreading branches to hinder the swooping of an eagle. [4] Who also does not know that if he points in a few hares, male and female, in a short time the place will be filled? Such is the fecundity of this animal. For place only four in a warren and it is usually filled in a short time; for often, while they have a young litter they are found to have others in the womb. And so Archelaus writes of them that one who wishes to know how old they are should examine the natural openings, for undoubtedly one has more than another. [5] There is a recent practice of fattening these, too, by taking them from the warren and shutting them up in hutches and fattening them in an enclosed space. There are, then, some three species of these: one, this Italian species of ours, with short fore-legs and long hind legs, the upper part of the body dark, belly white, and ears long. This hare is said to conceive even while it is pregnant. In Transalpine Gaul and Macedonia they grow very large; in Spain and in Italy they are medium-sized. [6] Belonging to the second species is the hare which is born in Gaul near the Alps, which usually differs in the fact that it is entirely white; these are not often brought to Rome. To the third species belongs the one which is native to Spain — like our hare in some respects, but with short legs — which is called cony. Lucius Aelius thought that the hare received its name lepus because of its swiftness, being levipes, nimble-foot. My own opinion is that it comes from an old Greek word, as the Aeolians called it λέπορις. The conies are so named from the fact that they have a way of making in the fields tunnels (cuniculos) in which to hide. [7] You should have all these three species in your warren if you can. You surely have two species anyway, I suppose, as you were in Spain for so many years that I imagine the conies followed you all the way from there.

  [13.1] “You know, Axius,” Appius continued, “that boars can be kept in the warren with no great trouble; and that both those that have been caught and the tame ones which are born there commonly grow fat in them. For on the place that our friend Varro here bought from Marcus Pupius Piso near Tusculum, you saw wild boars and roes gather for food at the blowing of a horn at a regular time, when mast was thrown from a platform above to the boars, and vetch or the like to the roes.” [2] “Why,” said he, “I saw it carried out more in the Thracian fashion at Quintus Hortensius’s place near Laurentum when I was there. For there was a forest which covered, he said, more than fifty iugera; it was enclosed with a wall and he called it, not a warren, but a game-preserve. In it was a high spot where was spread the table at which we were dining, to which he bade Orpheus be called. [3] When he appeared with his robe and harp, and was bidden to sing, he blew a horn; whereupon there poured around us such a crowd of stags, boars, and other animals that it seemed to me to be no less attractive a sight than when the hunts of the aediles take place in the Circus Maximus without the African beasts.”

  [14.1] “Appius has lightened your task, my dear Merula,” said Axius. “So far as game is concerned, the second act has been completed briefly; and I do not ask for the rest of it — snails and dormice — as that cannot be a matter of great effort.” “The thing is not so simple as you think, my dear Axius,” replied Appius. “You must take a place fitted for snails, in the open, and enclose it entirely with water; for if you do not, when you put them to breed it will not be their young which you have to search for, but the old snails. [2] They have to be shut in, I repeat, with water, so that you need not get a runaway-catcher. The best place is one which the sun does not parch, and where the dew falls. If there is no such natural place — and there usually is not in sunny ground — and you have no place where you can build one in the shade, as at the foot of a cliff or a mountain with a pool or stream at the bottom, you should make an artificially dewy one. This can be done if you will run a pipe and attach to it small teats to squirt out the water in such a way that it will strike a stone and be scattered widely in a mist. [3] They need little food, and require no one to feed them; they get their food, not only in the open while crawling around, but even discover any upright walls, if the stream does not prevent. In fact, even at the dealer’s they keep alive for a long time by chewing the cud, a few laurel leaves being thrown them for the purpose, sprinkled with a little bran. Hence the cook usually doesn’t know whether they are alive or dead when he is cooking them. [4] There are several varieties of snails, such as the small whites, which come from Reate, the large-sized, which are brought from Illyricum, and the medium-sized, which come from Africa. Not that they do not vary in these regions in distribution and size; thus, very large ones do come from Africa — the so-called solitannae — so large that 80 quadrantes can be put into their shells; and so in other countries the same species are relatively larger or smaller. [5] They produce innumerable young; these are very small and with a soft shell, but it hardens with time. If you build large islands in the yards, they will bring in a large haul of money. Snails, too, are often fattened as follows: a jar for them to feed in, containing holes, is lined with must and spelt — it should contain holes in order to allow the air to enter, for the snail is naturally hardy.

  [15.1] “The place for dormice is built on a different plan, as the ground is surrounded not by water but by a wall, which is covered on the inside with smooth stone or plaster over the whole surface, so that they cannot creep out of it.
In this place there should be small nut-bearing trees; when they are not bearing, acorns and chestnuts should be thrown inside the walls for them to glut themselves with. [2] They should have rather roomy caves built for them in which they Campagna bring forth their young; and the supply of water should be small, as they do not use much of it, but prefer a dry place. They are fattened in jars, which many people keep even inside the villa. The potters make these jars in a very different form from other jars, as they run channels along the sides and make a hollow for holding the food. In such a jar acorns, walnuts, or chestnuts are placed; and when a cover is placed over the jars they grow fat in the dark.”

  [16.1] “Well,” remarked Appius, “the third act of the husbandry of the steading is left — fishponds.” “Why third?” inquired Axius. “Or, just because you were accustomed in your youth not to drink honey-wine at home for the sake of thrift, are we to overlook honey?” “It is the truth he is telling,” Appius said to us. [2] “For I was left in straitened circumstances, together with two brothers and two sisters, and gave one of them to Lucullus without a dowry; it was only after he relinquished a legacy in my favour that I, for the very first time, began to drink honey-wine at home myself, though meantime mead was none the less commonly served at banquets almost daily to all guests. [3] And furthermore, it was my right and not yours to know these winged creatures, to whether nature has given so much talent and art. And so, that you may realize that I know bees better than you do, hear of the incredible art that nature has given them. Our well-versed Merula, as he has done in other cases, will tell you of the practice followed by bee-keepers.

  [4] “In the first place, bees are produced partly from bees, and partly from the rotted carcass of a bullock. And so Archelaus, in an epigram, says that they are ‘the roaming children of a dead cow’; and the same writer says: ‘While wasps spring from horses, bees come from calves.’ Bees are not of a solitary nature, as eagles are, but are like human beings. Even if jackdaws in this respect are the same, still it is not the same case; for in one there is a fellowship in toil and in building which does not obtain in the other; in the one case there is reason and skill — it is from these that men learn to toil, to build, to store up food. [5] They have three tasks: food, dwelling, toil; and the food is not the same as the wax, nor the honey, nor the dwelling. Does not the chamber in the comb have six angles, the same number as the bee has feet? The geometricians prove that this hexagon inscribed in a circular figure encloses the greatest amount of space. They forage abroad, and within the hive they produce a substance which, because it is the sweetest of all, is acceptable to gods and men alike; for the comb comes to the altar and the honey is served at the beginning of the feast and for the second table. [6] Their commonwealth is like the states of men, for here are king, government, and fellowship. They seek only the pure; and hence no bee alights on a place which is befouled or one which has an evil odour, or even one which smells of sweet perfume. So one who approaches them smelling of perfume they sting, and do not, as flies do, lick him; and one never sees bees, as he does flies, on flesh or blood or fat — so truly do they alight only on objects which have a sweet savour. [7] The bee is not in the least harmful, as it injures no man’s work by pulling it apart; yet it is not so cowardly as not to fight anyone who attempts to break up its own work; but still it is well aware of its own weakness. They are with good reason called ‘the winged attendants of the Muses,’ because if at any time they are scattered they are quickly brought into one place by the beating of cymbals or the clapping of hands; and as man has assigned to those divinities Helicon and Olympus, so nature has assigned to the bees the flowering untilled mountains. [8] They follow their own king where he goes, assist him when weary, and if he is unable to fly they bear him upon their backs, in their eagerness to serve him. They are themselves not idle, and detest the lazy; and so they attack and drive out from them the drones, as these give no help and eat the honey, and even a few bees chase larger numbers of drones in spite of their cries. On the outside of the entrance to the hive they seal up the apertures through which the air comes between the combs with a substance which the Greeks call erithace. They all live as if in an army, sleeping and working regularly in turn, and send out as it were colonies, and their leaders give certain orders with the voice, as it were in imitation of the trumpet, as happens when they have signals of peace and war with one another. But, my dear Merula, that our friend Axius may not waste away while hearing this essay on natural history, in which I have made no mention of gain, I hand over to you the torch in the race.”

  [10] Whereupon Merula: “As to the gain I have this to say, which will perchance be enough for you, Axius, and I have as my authorities not only Seius, who has his apiaries let out for an annual rental of 5,000 pounds of honey, but also our friend Varro here. I have heard the latter tell the story that he had two soldiers under him in Spain, brothers named Veianius, from the district near Falerii. They were well-off, because, though their father had left only a small villa and a bit of land certainly not larger than one iugerum, they had built an apiary entirely around the villa, and kept a garden; and all the rest of the land had been planted in thyme, snail-clover, and balm — a plant which some call honey-leaf, others bee-leaf, and some call bee-herb. [11] These men never received less than 10,000 sesterces from their honey, on a conservative estimate, as they said they preferred to wait until they could bring in the buyer at the time they wanted rather than to rush into market at an unfavourable time.” “Tell me, then,” said he, “where I ought to build an apiary and of what sort, so as to get a large profit.” [12] “The following,” said Merula, “is the proper method for building apiaries, which are variously called melitrophia and mellaria: first, they should be situated preferably near the villa, but where echoes do not resound (for this sound is thought to be a signal for flight in their case); where the air is temperate, not too hot in summer, and not without sun in winter; that it preferably face the winter sunrise, and have near by a place which has a good supply of food and clear water. [13] If there is no natural food, the owner should sow crops which are most attractive to bees. Such crops are: the rose, wild thyme, balm, poppy, bean, lentil, pea, clover, rush, alfalfa, and especially snail-clover, which is extremely wholesome for them when they are ailing. It begins flowering at the vernal equinox and continues until the second equinox. [14] But while this is most beneficial to the health of bees, thyme is best suited to honey-making; and the reason that Sicilian honey bears off the palm is that good thyme is common there. For this reason some bruise thyme in a mortar and soak it in lukewarm water, and with this sprinkle all the plots planted for the bees. [15] So far as the situation is concerned, one should preferably be chosen close to the villa — and some people place the apiary actually in the portico of the villa, so that it may be better protected. Some build round hives of withes for the bees to stay in, others of wood and bark, others of a hollow tree, others build of earthenware, and still others fashion them of fennel stalks, building them square, about three feet long and one foot deep, but making them narrower when there are not enough bees to fill them, so that they will not lose heart in a large empty space. All such hives are called alvi, ‘bellies,’ because of the nourishment (alimonium), honey, which they contain; and it seems that the reason they are made with a very narrow middle is that they may imitate the shape of the bees. [16] Those that are made of withes are smeared, inside and out, with cow-dung, so that the bees may not be driven off by any roughness; and these hives are so placed on brackets attached to the walls that they will not be shaken nor touch one another when they are arranged in a row. In this method, a second and a third row are placed below it at an interval, and it is said that it is better to reduce the number than to add a fourth. At the middle of the hive small openings are made on the right and left, by which the bees may enter; [17] and on the back, covers are placed through which the keepers can remove the comb. The best hives are those made of bark, and the worst those made of earthenware, becau
se the latter are most severely affected by cold in winter and by heat in summer. During the spring and summer the bee-keeper should examine them about thrice a month, smoking them lightly, and clear the hive of filth and sweep out vermin. [18] He should further see to it that several chiefs do not arise, for they become nuisances because of their dissensions. Some authorities state also that, as there are three kinds of leaders among bees — the black, the red, and the striped — or as Menecrates states, two — the black and the striped — the latter is so much better that it is good practice for the keeper, when both occur in the same hive, to kill the black; for when he is with the other king he is mutinous and ruins the hive, because he either drives him out or is driven out and takes the swarm with him. [19] Of ordinary bees, the best is the small round striped one. The one called by some the thief, and by others the drone, is black, with a broad belly. The wasp, though it has the appearance of a bee, is not a partner in its work, and frequently injures it by its sting, and so the bees keep it away. Bees differ from one another in being wild or tame; by wild, I mean those which feed in wooded places, and by tame those which feed in cultivated ground. The former are smaller in size, and hairy, but are better workers.