[Footnote 163:  The sestertius was one quarter of a denarius, or, say, the equivalent of five cents.  It was also called nummus, as we say “nickel.”  The ordinary unit used by the Romans in reckoning considerable sums of money was 1,000 sesterces, which may accordingly be translated as the equivalent of (say) $50.  Axius’ jackass thus cost $2,000, while Seius’ income from his villa was $2,500 per annum, that of Varro’s aunt from her aviary was $3,000, and that of Axius from his farm $1,500.  Cicero records that Axius was a money lender, which explains the fun here made of his avarice.]

[Footnote 164:  Columella, writing about one hundred years after Varro, refers to this passage and says that luxury had so developed since Varro’s time that it no longer required an extraordinary occasion, like a triumph, to bring the price of thrushes to three denarii a piece, but that that had become a current quotation.]

[Footnote 165:  A minerval was the fee (of Minerva) paid to a school teacher.]

[Footnote 166:  The inventor of the auspices ex tripudiis or the feeding of chickens was evidently an ingenious poultry fancier who succeeded in securing the care of his favourites at the public charge.]

[Footnote 167:  This was L. Marcius Philippus, the orator mentioned by Horace (Epist.  I, 7, 46), who was Consul in B.C. 91, and was celebrated for his luxurious habits, which his wealth enabled him to gratify.  His son married the widow of C. Octavius and so became the step-father of the Emperor Augustus.]

[Footnote 168:  This was turdus pilaris, the variety of thrush which is called field fare.]

[Footnote 169:  The traveller by railway from Rome to Naples passes near Varro’s estate of Casinum, and if he stops at the mediaeval town of San Germano to visit the neighbouring Badia di Monte Cassino, where the “angelic doctor” Thomas Aquinas was educated, he will find Varro’s memory kept green:  for he will be entertained at the Albergo Varrone ("very fair but bargaining advisable,” sagely counsels Mr. Baedeker) and on his way up the long winding road to the Abbey there will be pointed out to him the river Rapido, on the banks of which Varro’s aviary stood, and nearby what is reputed to be the site of the old polymath’s villa which Antony polluted with the orgies Cicero described in the second Philippic.  Antony’s destruction of his library was a great blow to Varro, but one likes to think that his ghost can take satisfaction in the maintenance, so near the haunts of his flesh, of such a noble collection of books as is the continuing pride of the Abbey on the mountain above.]