27.  The sketches of Varro have so uncommon historical and even poetical significance, and are yet, in consequence of the fragmentary shape in which information regarding them has reached us, known to so few and so irksome to study, that we may be allowed to give in this place a resume of some of them with the few restorations indispensable for making them readable.

The satire Manius (Early Up!) describes the management of a rural household.  “Manius summons his people to rise with the sun, and in person conducts them to the scene of their work.  The youths make their own bed, which labour renders soft to them, and supply themselves with water-jar and lamp.  Their drink is the clear fresh spring, their fare bread, and onions as relish.  Everything prospers in house and field.  The house is no work of art; but an architect might learn symmetry from it.  Care is taken of the field, that it shall not be left disorderly and waste, or go to ruin through slovenliness and neglect; in return the grateful Ceres wards off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may gladden the heart of the husbandman.  Here hospitality still holds good; every one who has but imbibed mother’s milk is welcome. the bread-pantry and wine-vat and the store of sausages on the rafters, lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food are set before him; contented sits the sated guest, looking neither before nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen. the warmest double-wool sheepskin is spread as a couch for him.

“Here people still as good burgesses obey the righteous law, which neither out of envy injures the innocent, nor out of favour pardons the guilty.  Here they speak no evil against their neighbours.  Here they trespass not with their feet on the sacred hearth, but honour the gods with devotion and with sacrifices, throw for the house-spirit his little bit of flesh into his appointed little dish, and when the master of the household dies, accompany the bier with the same prayer with which those of his father and of his grandfather were borne forth.”

In another satire there appears a “Teacher of the Old” (—­Gerontodidaskalos—­), of whom the degenerate age seems to stand more urgently in need than of the teacher of youth, and he explains how “once everything in Rome was chaste and pious,” and now all things are so entirely changed.  “Do my eyes deceive me, or do I see slaves in arms against their masters?—­Formerly every one who did not present himself for the levy, was sold on the part of the state into slavery abroad; now the censor who allows cowardice and everything to pass is called [by the aristocracy, iii.  XI.  Separation Of the Orders in the Theatre; iv.  X. Shelving of the Censorship, V. III.  Renewal of the Censorship; V. VIII.  Humiliations of the Republicans] a great citizen, and earns praise because he does not seek to make himself a name by annoying his fellow-citizens.—­ Formerly