Delphi Complete Works of Varro

by Marcus Terentius Varro

  Bishop Latimer in one of his sermons quotes the phrase used in his youth, at the time of the discovery of America, in calling hogs: ‘Come to thy minglemangle, come pur, come pur.’ It would be impossible to transcribe the traditional call used in Virginia. One some times thinks that it was the original of the celebrated ‘rebel yell’ of General Lee’s army.

  94 The use of the Greek salutation was esteemed by the more austere Romans of the age of Scipio an evidence of preciosity, to be laughed at: and so Lucienus’ jesting apology for the use of it here doubtless was in reference to Lucilius’ epigram which Cicero has preserved, de Finibus, I, 3.

  “Graece ergo praetor Athenis

  Id quod maluisti te, quum ad me accedi, saluto

  [Greek: Chaire inquam, Tite: lictores turma omni cohorsque

  [Greek: Chaire] Tite! Hinc hostis mi Albucius, hinc inimicus.”

  It was the word which the Romans taught their parrots. Cf. Persius, Prolog. 8.]

  95 The working ox was respected by the ancient Romans as a fellow labourer. Valerius Maximus (VIII, 8 ad fin.) cites a case of a Roman citizen who was put to death, because, to satisfy the craving of one of his children for beef to eat, he slew an ox from the plough. Ovid puts this sentiment in the mouth of Pythagoras, when he agrees that pigs and goats are fit subjects for sacrifice, but protests against such use of sheep and oxen. (Metamor. XV, 139.)

  “Quid meruere boves, animal sine fraude dolisque

  Innocuum, simplex, natum tolerare labores?

  Immemor est demum, nee frugum manere dignus

  Qui potuit curvi demto modo pondere arati

  Ruricolam mactare suum: qui trita labore

  Ilia quibus toties durum renovaverat arvum

  Tot dederse messes, percussit colla securi.”

  96 The learned commentators have been able to discover nothing about either this Plautius or this Hirrius, but it appears that Archelaus wrote a book under the title Bugonia, of which nothing survives. It may be conjectured, however, on the analogy of Samson’s riddle to the Philistines, “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness,” (Judges, XIV, 14), that Plautius meant to imply that some good might be the consequence of the evil Hirrius had done: and that Vaccius cited the allusion to suggest to Varro that, while he might know nothing much about cattle, his attempt to deal with the subject might provoke some useful discussion.

  97 Darwin, Animals and Plants, II, 20, cites this passage and says that “at the present day the natives of Java some times drive their cattle into the forests to cross with the wild Banteng.” The crossing of wild blood on domestic animals is not, however, always successful. A recent visitor to the German agricultural experiment station at Halle describes “a curious hairy beast with great horns, a wild look in his eye, a white streak down his back and a bumpy forehead, which had in it blood from cattle which had lived on the plains of Thibet, which had grazed on the lowland pastures of Holland, which had roamed the forests of northeast India and of the Malay Peninsular, and had wandered through the forests of Germany. We Americans had sympathy for this beast. He was some thing like ourselves, with the blood of many different races flowing through his veins.”

  98 Pliny (VIII, 66) cites the fact that the Scythians always preferred mares to stallions for war, and gives an ingenious reason for the preference. Aristotle (H.A. VI, 22) says that the Scythians rode their pregnant mares until the very last, saying that the exercise rendered parturition more easy. Every breeder of heavy draft horses has seen a mare taken from the plough and have her foal in the field, with no detriment to either: and the story of the mare Keheilet Ajuz, who founded the best of the Arab families, is well known, but bears repetition. I quote from Spencer Borden, The Arab Horse, p. 44: “It is related that a certain Sheik was flying from an enemy, mounted on his favourite mare. Arab warriors trust themselves only to mares, they will not ride a stallion in war. The said mare was at the time far along toward parturition: indeed she became a mother when the flying horseman stopped for rest at noonday, the new comer being a filly. Being hard pressed the Sheik was compelled to remount his mare and again seek safety in flight, abandoning the newborn filly to her fate. Finally reaching safety among his own people, great was the surprise of all when, shortly after the arrival of the Sheik on his faithful mare, the little filly less than a day old came into camp also, having followed her mother across miles of desert. She was immediately given into the care of an old woman of the tribe (Ajuz = an old woman), hence her name Keheilet Ajuz, ‘the mare of the old woman,’ and grew to be the most famous of all the animals in the history of the breed.”

  99 Varro does not describe the livery of the horses of his day, as he does of cattle, but Virgil (Georg. III, 81) supplies the deficiency, asserting that the best horses were bay (spadices) and roan (glauci) while the least esteemed were white (albi) and dun (gilvi), which is very interesting testimony in support of the most recent theory of the origin of the thoroughbred horse. Professor Ridgeway who, opposing Darwin’s conclusion, contends for a multiple origin of the historic and recent races of horses, has collected a mass of information about the marking of famous horses of all ages in his Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse. He maintains that a bay livery, with a white star and stockings, the development of protective coloration from an originally striped coat, such as has gone on more recently in the case of the quaggas, is absolute evidence of the North African origin of a horse, and he shows that all the swiftest horses mentioned in history are of that race, while the heavier and less mettlesome horses of Northern origin have been, when pure bred, dun coloured or white.

  Of the Italian breeds mentioned by Varro, Professor Ridgeway conjectures that the Etruscan (or Rosean) was probably an improved Northern horse, while the Apulian, from the South of Italy, represented an admixture of Libyan blood.

  100 Aristotle (H.A. VI, 22) preceded Varro with this good advice, saying that a mare “produces better foals at the end of four or five years. It is quite necessary that she should wait one year and should pass through a fallow, as it were — [Greek: poiein osper neion.”]

  101 Mules were employed in antiquity from the earliest times. In Homer they were used for drawing wagons: thus Nausicaa drove a mule team to haul out the family wash, and Priam made his visit to Achilles in a mule litter. Homer professes to prefer mules to oxen for ploughing. There were mule races at the Greek games. Aristotle (Rhetoric, III, 2) tells an amusing story of Simonides, who, when the victor in the mule race offered him only a poor fee, refused to compose an ode, pretending to be shocked at the idea of writing about “semi-asses,” but, on receipt of a proper fee, he wrote the ode beginning: “Hail, daughters of storm-footed mares,” although they were equally daughters of the asses.

  102 The breed of Maremma sheep dogs, still preferred in

  Italy, is white. He is doubtless the descendant of the large woolly

  “Spitz” or Pomeranian wolf dog which is figured on Etruscan coins.

  103 In his essay,Notre ami le chien, Maeterlinck maintains eloquently that the dog alone among the domestic animals has given his confidence and friendship to man. “We are alone, absolutely alone, on this chance planet: and amid all the forms of life that surround us not one excepting the dog has made alliance with us. A few creatures fear us, most are unaware of us, and not one loves us. In the world of plants, we have dumb and motionless slaves: but they serve us in spite of themselves…. The rose and the corn, had they wings, would fly at our approach, like birds. Among the animals, we number a few servants who have submitted only through indifference, cowardice or stupidity: the uncertain and craven horse, who responds only to pain and is attached to nothing … the cow and the ox happy so long as they are eating and docile because for centuries they have not had a thought of their own…. I do not speak of the cat, to whom we are nothing more than a too large and uneatable prey: the ferocious cat whose side long contempt tolerates us only as encumbering parasites in our own homes. She at least curses us in her
mysterious heart: but all the others live beside us as they might live beside a rock or a tree.”

  The effective use of this thesis in the scene of the revolt of the domestic animals in the Blue Bird will be remembered.

  104 This method of securing the faithful affection of a dog is solemnly recommended, without acknowledgment to Saserna, in the seventeenth century editions of the Maison Rustique (I, 27).

  105 Keil happily points out that in his book on the Latin language (VII, 31), Varro quotes the “ancient proverb” to which he here refers, viz.: “canis caninam non est” dog doesn’t eat dog.

  106 Aristotle (H.A. VI, 20) says that puppies are blind from twelve to seventeen days, depending upon the season of the year at which they are born. Pliny (H N. VIII, 62) says from seven to twenty days, depending upon the supply of the mother’s milk.

  107 It was among these hardy shepherd slaves that Spartacus recruited his army in 72-71 B.C., as did Caelius and Milo in 48 B.C., while their descendants were the brigands who infested Southern Italy even in the nineteenth century.

  108 Gaius, I, 119, II, 24, 41, describes in detail the processes here referred to by which a slave was acquired under the Roman law.

  109 Dennis, in his Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria, draws a picture of modern Italy which may serve to illustrate Varro’s sketch of the mountain life of the shepherds of his day:

  “Occasionally in my wanderings on this site (Veii) I have entered, either from curiosity or for shelter, one of the capanne scattered over the downs. These are tall conical thatched huts which the shepherds make their winter abode. For in Italy, the lowlands being generally unhealthy in summer, the flocks are driven to the mountains about May, and as soon as the great heats are past are brought back to the rich pastures of the plains. It is a curious sight, the interior of a capanna, and affords an agreeable diversity to the antiquity hunter. A little boldness is requisite to pass through the pack of dogs, white as new dropt lambs, but large and fierce as wolves, which, were the shepherd not at hand, would tear in pieces whoever might venture to approach the hut: but with one of the pecoraj for a Teucer, nothing is to be feared. The capanne are of various sizes. One I entered not far from Veii was thirty or forty feet in diameter and fully as high, propped in the centre by two rough masts, between which a hole was left in the roof for the escape of smoke. Within the door lay a large pile of lambs, there might be a hundred, killed that morning and already flayed, and a number of shepherds were busied in operating on the carcases of others: all of which were to be dispatched forthwith to the Roman market. Though a fierce May sun blazed without, a huge fire roared in the middle of the hut: but this was for the sake of the ricotta, which was being made in another part of the capanna. Here stood a huge cauldron, full of boiling ewes’ milk. In a warm state this curd is a delicious jelly and has often tempted me to enter a capanna in quest of it, to the amazement of the pecoraj, to whom it is vilior alga. Lord of the cauldron, stood a man dispensing ladlefuls of the rich simmering mess to his fellows, as they brought their bowls for their morning allowance: and he varied his occupation by pouring the same into certain small baskets, the serous part running off through the wicker and the residue caking as it cooled. On the same board stood the cheeses, previously made from the cream. In this hut lived twenty-five men, their nether limbs clad in goat skins, with the hair outwards, realizing the satyrs of ancient fable: but they had no nymphs to tease, nor shepherdesses to woo, and never

  ‘sat all day Playing on pipes of corn, and versing love To amorous Phillida.’

  They were a band of celibates without the vows. In such huts they dwell all the year round, flaying lambs or shearing sheep, living on bread, ricotta and water, very rarely tasting meat or wine and sleeping on shelves ranged round the hut, like berths in a ship’s cabin. Thus are the dreams of Arcadia dispelled by realities.”

  110 In modern Italy the shepherds do not take their women with them to the saltus, but, as Dennis says, lead there the life of “celibates, without the vows.”

  111 In the Venitian provinces of Italy today the women are still seen at work in the harvest and rice fields with their babes in their bosoms: but the most amazing modern spectacle of this kind is that of women coaling ships in the East, carrying their unhappy youngsters up and down the coal ladders throughout the work.

  112 The author of Maison Rustique did not agree with Varro in this opinion. I quote from Surflet’s translation of 1606 (I, 7):

  “And for writing and reading it skilleth not whether he be able to doe it or no, or that he should have any other charge to looke unto besides that of yours, or else that he should use another to set downe in writing such expences as he hath laid out: for paper will admit any thing.”

  113 This temple and fig tree stood in Rome at the foot of the Palatine hill, in the neighbourhood of the Lupercal. It was under this fig tree that Romulus and Remus were supposed to have been suckled by the wolf.

  114 ‘That is the beste grease that is to a shepe, to grease hym in the mouthe with good meate,’ says Sir Anthony Fitzherbert.

  115 Pliny (VII, 59) says that most nations learn the use of barbers next after that of letters, but that the Romans were late in this respect. Varro himself wore a beard, as appears on the coin he struck during the war with the Pirates. It is reproduced in Smiths Dict. Gr. and Rom. Biog., III, p. 1227.

  116 Cowper’s verse in The Task seems to be all that is happy in the way of translation of Varro’s text, “divina natura dedit agros, ars humana aedificavit urbes”: but Cowley’s “God the first garden made, and the first city Cain” was probably Cowper’s source. Cowley was a reader of Varro, as his pleasant and sane essay Of Agriculture shows.

  117 Following the precedent of the first and second books in the matter of local colour, the scene of this third book, relating to villas and the “small deer,” which were there reared, is laid in the villa publica at Rome, and the characters of the dialogue are selected for the suggestion which their names may make of the denizens of the aviary, the barn yard and the bee-stand.

  118 This Appius Claudius Pulcher served in Asia under his brother-in-law Lucullus, was Augur in B.C. 59, Consul in 54 and Censor in 50. He wrote a book on augural law and the habits of birds at which Cicero poked some rather mean fun. He fixes the date of the dialogue.

  119 In Varro’s time, as today, the river Velinus drained the fresh pastures of the Umbrian prairie of Rosea, “the nurse of Italy,” which lay below the town of Reate (the modern Rieti), and was originally the bed of a lake. Its waters are so strongly impregnated with carbonate of lime that by their deposit of travertine they tend to block their own channel. The drainage of Rosea has, therefore, always been a matter of concern to the live stock industry of Reate, and in B.C. 272 M. Curius Dentatus opened the first of several successful artificial canals (the last dating from the sixteenth century, A.D.), which still serve to lead the Velinus into the Nar at the renowned Cascate delle Marmore. For two hundred years the people of Interamna (the modern Terni) had complained that their situation below the falls was endangered by Curius’ canal, and finally in B.C. 54 the Roman Senate appointed the commission to which Appius Claudius refers in the text, to hear the controversy. Cicero was retained as counsel for the people of Reate, and during the hearing stopped, as Appius Claudius did, with our friend Axius at his Reatine villa, and wrote about the visit to the same Atticus whom we met in Varro’s second book, as follows (ad Atticum, IV, 15): “After this was over the people of Reate summoned me to their Tempe to plead their cause against the people of Interamna, before the Consul and ten commissioners, the question being concerning the Veline lake, which, drained by M. Curius by means of a channel cut through the mountain, now flows into the Nar: by this means the famous Rosea has been reclaimed from the swamp, though still fairly moist. I stopped with Axius, who took me also to visit the Seven Waters.” What was once deemed a danger is a double source of profit to the modern folk of Interamna. Tourists today crowd to see the same waterfall which Cicero visi
ted, taking a tram from the busy little industrial town of Terni: and the waters which flow from Velinus now serve to generate power with which armour plates are manufactured for the Italian navy on the site of the ancient Interamna.

  120 Sicilian honey was famous for its flavour because of the bee pasture of thyme which there abounded, especially at Hybla. Theophrastus (H.P. III, 15, 5) explains that the honey of Corsica had an acrid taste, because the bees pastured there largely on box trees.

  121 These denizens of the Roman villa are all enumerated by Martial in his delightful verses (III, 38) upon Faustinus’ villa at Baiae. The picture of the barn yard is very true to life in all ages, especially the touch of the hungry pigs sniffing after the pail of the farmer’s wife:

  “Vagatur omnis turba sordidae cortis

  Argutus anser, gemmeique pavones

  Nomenque debet quae rubentibus pennis,

  Et picta perdix, Numidicaeque guttatae

  Et impiorum phasiana Colchorum.

  Rhodias superbi feminas prement galli

  Sonantque turres plausibus columbarum,

  Gemit hinc palumbus, inde cereus turtur

  Avidi sequuntur villicae sinum porci:

  Matremque plenam mollis agnus exspectat.”

  122 The sestertius was one quarter of a denarius, or, say, the equivalent of five cents. It was also called nummus, as we say “nickel.” The ordinary unit used by the Romans in reckoning considerable sums of money was 1,000 sesterces, which may accordingly be translated as the equivalent of (say) $50. Axius’ jackass thus cost $2,000, while Seius’ income from his villa was $2,500 per annum, that of Varro’s aunt from her aviary was $3,000, and that of Axius from his farm $1,500. Cicero records that Axius was a money lender, which explains the fun here made of his avarice.