e in practical agriculture, as well as
in scholarship, as his book shows.]

[Footnote 2: The compilation of rural lore, known as the _Geoponica_,
which exists in Greek, was made at Byzantium for the Emperor
Constantine VII about the middle of the tenth century A.D. It is very
largely a paraphrase of the Roman authors, and is useful principally
in elucidating their textual difficulties.]

[Footnote 3: Donald G. Mitchell made an interesting collation, in his
_Wet Days at Edgewood_, of the large number of books on agriculture
which have been written in old age and by men of affairs, in many
lands and many languages.]

[Footnote 4: It is interesting to record, however, that Varro received
the _Navalis Corona_ for personal gallantry in the war against the
pirates. This distinction was even more rare than our modern Medal of
Honor or Victoria Cross, and was awarded only to a commander who leapt
under arms on the deck of an enemies' ship and then succeeded in
capturing her.]

[Footnote 5: Caesar did not live to accomplish this, but some years
after his death a public library was established at Rome by Asinius
Pollio, which Pliny says (H.N. VII, 31) was the first ever built,
those at Alexandria and Pergamus having been private institutions of
the kings.

In a land where public libraries have been every where founded out
of the accumulations of Big Business, it is interesting to note that
Pollio derived the funds with which this the first of their kind was
endowed, from the plunder of the Illyrians!]

[Footnote 6: Cf. Sellar, _Roman Poets of the Augustan Age_. Virgil Ch.
V. Boissier, _Etudes sur M.T. Varron_, Ch. IX. Servius _Comm. in Verg.
Georg_. I, 43.

It does not appear that many of the commentators on Virgil have
taken the trouble to study Varro thoroughly. They are usually better
scholars than farmers.]

[Footnote 7: It is not remarkable that Virgil failed to make
acknowledgment to Varro in the _Georgics_ when he failed to make
acknowledgment to Homer in the _Aeneid_. See Petrarch's _Epistle to
Homer_ for a loyal but vain attempt to justify this neglect.]

[Footnote 8: _Cf_. W.H. Myers' _Classical Essays_, p. 110: "For in the
face of some German criticism it is necessary to repeat that in order
to judge poetry it is, before all things, necessary to enjoy it. We
may all desire that historical and philological science should push
her dominion into every recess of human action and human speech, but
we must utter