hot chamber to the other corner
of the dressing-room, because it was so placed that its steampipe was
immediately under the bedrooms. A fair-sized bedroom and a lofty winter
one I admired very much, for they were both spacious and
well-situated--on the side of the promenade nearest to the bath.
Diphilus had placed the columns out of the perpendicular, and not
opposite each other. These, of course, he shall take down; he will learn
some day to use the plumb-line and measure. On the whole, I hope
Diphilus's work will be completed in a few months: for Caesius, who was
with me at the time, keeps a very sharp look-out upon him.

Thence I started straight along the _via Vitularia_ to your Fufidianum,
the estate which we bought for you a few weeks ago at Arpinum for
100,000 sesterces (about L800). I never saw a shadier spot in
summer--water springs in many parts of it, and abundant into the
bargain. In short, Caesius thought that you would easily irrigate fifty
_iugera_ of the meadow land. For my part, I can assure you of this,
which is more in my line, that you will have a villa marvellously
pleasant, with the addition of a fish-pond, spouting fountains, a
_palaestra_, and a shrubbery. I am told that you wish to keep this
Bovillae estate. You will determine as you think good. Calvus said that,
even if the control of the water were taken from you, and the right of
drawing it off were established by the vendor, and thus an easement were
imposed on that property, we could yet maintain the price in case we
wished to sell. He said that he had agreed with you to do the work at
three sesterces a foot, and that he had stepped it, and made it three
miles. It seemed to me more. But I will guarantee that the money could
nowhere be better laid out. I had sent for Cillo from Venafrum, but on
that very day four of his fellow servants and apprentices had been
crushed by the falling in of a tunnel at Venafrum. On the 13th of
September I was at Laterium. I examined the road, which appeared to me
to be so good as to seem almost like a high road, except a hundred and
fifty paces--for I measured it myself from the little bridge at the
temple of Furina, in the direction of Satricum. There they had put down
dust, not gravel (this shall be changed), and that part of the road is a
very steep incline. But I understood that it could not be taken in any
other direction, particularly as you did not wish it to go through the
property of Locusta or Varro