built large enough for the number
of pea fowl to be kept and should be equipped with separate roosting
places smoothly stuccoed, so that snakes and such vermin may not be
able to get into it: and, furthermore, it should have attached to it
a run in which the pea fowl may feed on sunny days, and both these
places should be kept clean, as this kind of fowl demands. The keeper
should make the rounds often with a shovel to collect and preserve
their manure, which is not only fit for use in agriculture but serves
also as bedding for your pea chicks.

"It is said that Q. Hortensius was the first to serve pea-cocks at
dinner, on the occasion of his inauguration as an augur, an evidence
of prodigality which was more approved by the luxurious than by good
men of simple manners: but many others quickly followed his example,
so that the price of pea fowl was raised until an egg sold for five
deniers ($1) and a pea fowl itself readily for fifty ($10), thus a
flock of an hundred of them easily yields an income of forty thousand
sesterces, ($2,000), or even sixty ($3,000), if, as Abuccius advises,
one obtains three chickens from every pea hen."

_Of pigeons_

VII. In the meanwhile an apparitor came to Appius from the Consul and
said that the augurs were summoned. As Appius went out from the _villa
publica_, a flock of pigeons flew in, whereupon Merula said to Axius:
"If you had established a [Greek: peristerogropheion] you would think
that these were your pigeons, although they are wild, for it is the
custom to keep both kinds in a [Greek: peristerotropheion]. One is the
wild dove (or, as some call them the rock dove, or _saxatilis_), such
as live in the towers and dormers (_columines_) of a farm house,
whence they get the name _columbae_, because, on account of their
natural timidity, they seek the highest places on the roof. On this
account wild doves usually frequent towers, to which they may fly
from the fields of their own accord, and return.[177] The other kind of
pigeons is tamer and are wont to seek their food at the very threshold
of a house. This kind is usually white in colour, the wild variety
being mottled but without any white. From these two stocks a third or
mixed variety has been developed for commercial profit and these are
collected in the place which some call a _peristereon_ (pigeon house),
and others a _peristerotropheion_ (place for raising pigeons), where
there are often confined as many as five thousand