[225]. Iliad, viii. 306-308.
Crimson poppies now bloom freely along the Mendereh valley; they were symbolical, in classical Greece, of fruitfulness, love, and death, and were associated with the cult of Demeter.[[226]] Their fabled origin from the tears of Aphrodite for the death of Adonis, was shared with anemones.
[226]. Buchholz, Realien, Bd. i. Abth. ii. p. 250.
Mount Gargarus, the loftiest peak of Ida, blossomed, according to the Iliad, with hyacinths, crocuses, and lotus. This last term designates, however, not the lily of the Nile, but a kind of clover, much relished by the steeds, not only of heroic, but of immortal owners. The fragrant yellow flowers borne by it are not expressly adverted to; the function of the Homeric lotus-grass was rather to supply herbage than to evoke delight.
The identification of the hyacinth of Mount Ida has employed much learning and ingenuity, and the result of learned discussions is not always unanimity of opinion. The case in point is indeed very nearly one of quot homines, tot sententiæ. The gladiolus, larkspur, iris, the Martagon lily, the common hyacinth, have all had advocates, each of whom considers his case to be of convincing, not to say, of irresistible strength. The last-mentioned and most obvious solution of the problem is that favoured by Buchholz,[[227]]
[227]. Loc. cit. p. 219.
and he supports it with the reasonable surmise that the epithet ‘hyacinthine,’ applied to the locks of Odysseus, referred, not to colour, but to form, their closely-set curls recalling forcibly enough the ringleted effect of the congregated flowerets. The dry soil of Greece is particularly suitable to the hyacinth, sundry kinds of which—one of them so deeply blue as to be nearly black—are found all over the Peloponnesus, in the Ionian islands, and high up on the outlying bulwarks of Olympus.[[228]] The ‘flower of Ajax,’ legibly inscribed with an interjection of woe, sprang up for the first time in Salamis, it was said, just after the hero it commemorated had met his tragic fate.[[229]] Another story connected it similarly with the death of Hyacinthus; and it was probably identical with the scarlet gladiolus (Gladiolus byzantinus), almost certainly with the suave rubens hyacinthus of the Third Eclogue, but not with the Homeric hyacinth, which is undistinguished in folk-lore.
[228]. Kruse, Hellas, Th. i. p. 359.
[229]. Pausanias, i. 35.
The ‘violet-crowned’ Athenians of old, could they recross the Styx to wander by the Ilissus, would be struck with at least one unwelcome change. For violets no longer grow in Attica. They are nevertheless found, although sparingly, in most other parts of Greece, and up to an elevation of two thousand feet on the slopes of Parnassus. Homer often mentions them allusively, but introduces them directly only once, and then, as Fraas has remarked, in the incongruous company of the marsh-loving wild parsley (Apium palustre).[[230]] Unjustifiable from a botanical point of view, the conjunction may have had an æsthetic motive. In the festal garlands of classic Greece, violets and parsley were commonly associated, and their association was perhaps dictated by a survival of the taste displayed in the embellishment of Calypso’s well-watered meadow.