[Footnote 170:  Varro’s Museum, or study where he wooed the Muses, on his estate at Casinum was not unlike that of Cicero at his native Arpinum, which he described (de Leg.  II, 3) agreeably as on an island in the cold and clear Fibrenus just above its confluence with the more important river Liris, where, like a plebeian marrying into a patrician family, it lost its name but contributed its freshness.  The younger Pliny built a study in the garden of his Laurentine villa near Ostia, which he describes (II, 17) with enthusiasm:  “horti diaeta est, amores mei, re vera amores”:  and here he found refuge from the tumult of his household during the festivities of the Saturnalia, which corresponded with our Christmas.  In the ante bellum days every Virginia gentleman had such an “office” in his house yard where he pretended to transact his farm business, but where actually he was wont to escape from the obligations of family and continuous hospitality.]

[Footnote 171:  The commentators on this interesting but obscure description of Varro’s aviary have at this point usually endeavoured to explain the arrangements of the chamber under the lantern of the tholus with respect to its use as a dining room which Varro frequented himself, and hence have been amused into all kinds of difficulties of interpretation.  The references to the convivae are what lead them astray, and it remained for Keil to suggest that this was a playful allusion to the birds themselves, a conclusion which is strengthened by Varro’s previous statement of the failure of Lucullus’ attempt to maintain a dining room in his aviary.]

[Footnote 172:  Cf.  Vitruvius, I, 6:  “Andronicus Cyrrhestes built at Athens an octagonal marble tower, on the sides of which were carved images of the eight winds, each on the side opposite that from which it blew.  On the pyramidal roof of this tower he placed a bronze Triton holding a rod in his right hand, and so contrived that the Triton, revolving with the wind, always stood opposed to that which prevailed, and thus pointed with his rod to the image on the tower of the wind that was blowing at the moment.”  The ruins of this Tower of the Winds may still be seen in Athens.  There is a picture of it in Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Antiquities in the article Andronicus.]

[Footnote 173:  One ventures to translate athletoe comitiorum by Mr. Gladstone’s famous phrase.]

[Footnote 174:  Reading “tesserulas coicientem in loculum.”]

[Footnote 175:  A French translator might better convey the intention of the pun, contained in the ducere serram of the text, by the locution, une prise de bec.]