Meanwhile Appius’s bailiff comes with a message from the consul that the augurs are summoned, and he leaves the villa. But pigeons fly into the villa, and Merula, pointing to them, remarks to Axius: “If you had ever built a dove-cote you might think these were your doves, wild though they are. For in a dove-cote there are usually two species of these: one the wild, or as some call them, the rock-pigeon, which lives in turrets and gable-ends (columina) of the farmhouse—whence the name columbae—and these, because of their natural shyness, hunt for the highest peak of the roof; hence the wild pigeons chiefly hunt for the turrets, flying into them from the fields and back again, as the fancy takes them. The other species of pigeon is gentler, and being content with the food from the house usually feeds around the doorstep. This species is generally white, while the other, the wild, has no white, but is variously coloured.”

[…]

Meantime Pavo returns to us and says: “If you wish to weigh anchor, the ballots have been cast and the casting of lots for the tribes is going on; and the herald has begun to announce who has been elected aedile by each tribe.” Appius arose hurriedly, so as to congratulate his candidate at once and then go on to his home. And Merula remarked: “I’ll give you the third act of the husbandry of the steading later, Axius.”

[…]

Then a noise on the right, and our candidate, as aedile-elect, came into the villa wearing the broad stripe. We approach and congratulate him and escort him to the Capitoline.

SPARTACUS

Civil Wars

Appian

Translated by John Davies, 1679

Appian (c. AD 95–c. 165) was born in Alexandria in Egypt and became a lawyer as well as an historian in Rome. His bracing history of Rome is sadly now incomplete. Nonetheless, his seventeenth-century translator John Davies commended his readers to admire ‘the excellent method and contrivance of Appian, his composure being such, that though so many of his Books are lost, yet the want of them renders not those left imperfect (as Livy, or other Historians are by so much as is left of them) but by taking the whole Affairs of every Country from the first dealings the Romans had with them, till such time as they were reduced to a Roman Province, he makes every Book independant, [sic] and become a perfect History…’ Davies’s rendering of Appian’s account of the slave revolt led by Spartacus in 73 BC is especially masterly.