r, or twice the yield of the entire two hundred jugera of your farm
at Reate."[163]

"What, sixty thousand," exclaimed Axius, "sixty thousand: you are
making game of me!"

"Sixty thousand," I affirmed, "but in order that you might realize
such a lucky throw you will require either a public banquet or a
triumph on the scale of that of Scipio Metellus, or club dinners,
which indeed have now become so frequent as to raise the price of
provisions of the market."

"You will perchance expect this return every year," said Merula, "so I
trust that your aviary may not lead you into a loss. But surely in such
good times as these it could not happen that you would fail, except
rarely, for what year is there that does not see such a feast or a
triumph, or club dinners, such as now-a-days consume victuals without
number. Nay," he added, "it seems that in our habit of luxury such a
public banquet is a daily occurrence within the gates of Rome."[164]

To supplement the examples of such profits: L. Albutius, a learned
man and, as you know, the author of certain satires in the manner of
Lucilius, has said that the returns from feeding live stock on his
Alban farm are always less than his income from his villa, for the
farm yields less than ten thousand sesterces and the villa more than
twenty. He even maintains that if he should establish a villa near
the sea in such a place as he might choose he could derive from it
an income of more than a hundred thousand sesterces. Did not M. Cato
recently sell forty thousand sesterces worth of fishes from the fish
ponds of Lucullus after he had accepted the administration of his
estate?"

"My dear Merula," exclaimed Axius, "take me, I beg of you, as your
pupil in the art of the husbandry of the steading."

"I will begin," replied Merula, "as soon as you promise me a minerval
in the form of a dinner."[165]

"You shall have it," said Axius, "both today, and hereafter as well,
off those delicacies you will teach me to rear."

"I fear," replied Merula, "that what you may offer me at the beginning
of your experience with villa feeding will be dead geese or deceased
pea-cocks."

"And what difference will it make to you," retorted Axius, "if I do
serve you fish or fowl which has come to an untimely end: for in no
event could you eat them unless they were dead: but I beg you," he
added, "matriculate me in the school of villa husbandry and expound to
me the theory and the practice of it."

Mer