[1238]. On the origin of the honeydew, see the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, No. XLIV. p. 499, sqq.
[1239]. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 7. 6. Cf. Hes. Opp. et Dies, 232. seq. Cf. Lord Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum. 496.
[1240]. Schneid. Comm. ad Theoph. Frag. t. iv. p. 822.
CHAPTER II.
GARDEN AND ORCHARD.
Lord Bacon, who loved to be surrounded by plants and trees and flowers, delivers it as his opinion, that the scientific culture of gardens affords a surer mark of the advance of civilisation than any improvement in the science of architecture, since men, he observes, enjoyed the luxury of magnificent palaces before that of picturesque and well-ordered garden-grounds. This, likewise, was the conviction of the ancient Greeks,[[1241]] in whose literature we everywhere discover vestiges of a passion for that voluptuous solitude which men taste in artificial and secluded plantations, amid flower-beds and arbours and hanging vines and fountains and smooth shady walks. No full description, however, of an Hellenic garden has survived; even the poets have contented themselves with affording us glimpses of their “studious walks and shades.” We must, therefore, endeavour, by the aid of scattered hints, chance expressions, fragments, and a careful study of the natural and invariable productions of the country, to work out for ourselves a picture of what the gardens of Peisistratos, or Cimon, or Pericles, or Epicurus, whom Pliny[[1242]] denominates the magister hortorum, or any other Grecian gentleman, must in the best ages have been.
That portion of the ground[[1243]] which was devoted to the culture of sweet-smelling shrubs and flowers, usually approached and projected inwards between the back wings of the house, so that from the windows the eye might alight upon the rich and variegated tints of the parterres[[1244]] intermingled with verdure, while the evening and morning breeze wafted clouds of fragrance into the apartments.[[1245]] The lawns, shrubberies, bosquets, thickets, arcades, and avenues, were, in most cases, laid out in a picturesque though artificial manner, the principal object appearing to have been to combine use with magnificence, and to enjoy all the blended hues and odours which the plants and trees acclimated in Hellas could afford. Protection, in summer, from the sun’s rays, is, in those southern latitudes, an almost necessary ingredient of pleasure, and, therefore, numerous trees, as the cedar,[[1246]] the cypress, the black and white poplar,[[1247]] the ash, the linden, the elm, and the platane, rose here and there in the grounds, in some places singly, elsewhere in clumps, uniting their branches above, and affording a cool and dense shade. Beneath these umbrageous arches the air was further refrigerated by splashing fountains,[[1248]] whose waters, through numerous fair channels, straight or winding, as the use demanded of them required,[[1249]] spread themselves over the whole garden, refreshing the eye and keeping up a perpetual verdure. Copses of myrtles, of roses, of agnus-castus,[[1250]] and other odoriferous shrubs intermingled, clustering round a pomegranate-tree, were usually placed on elevated spots,[[1251]] that, being thus exposed to the winds, they might the more freely diffuse their sweetness. The spaces between trees were sometimes planted with roses,[[1252]] and lilies, and violets, and golden crocuses;[[1253]] and sometimes presented a breadth of smooth, close, green sward, sprinkled with wild-flowers, as the violet and the blue veronica,[[1254]] the pink, and the pale primrose, the golden motherwort, the cowslip, the daisy, the pimpernel, and the periwinkle. In many gardens the custom was, to plant each kind of tree in separate groups, and each species of flower-bed also had, as now in Holland,[[1255]] a distinct space assigned to it; so that there were beds of white violets,[[1256]] of irises, of the golden cynosure,[[1257]] of hyacinths, of ranunculuses, of the blue campanula, or Canterbury bells, of white gilliflowers, carnations, and the branchy asphodel.
One of the principal causes which induced the Greeks to attend to the culture of ornamental shrubs and flowers, was the perpetual use made of them in crowns and garlands.[[1258]] Nearly all their ceremonies, whether civil or religious, were performed by individuals wearing certain wreaths about their brow. Thus the Spartans, during the Promachian festival,[[1259]] shaded their foreheads with plaited tufts of reeds—priests and priestesses, soothsayers,[[1260]] prophets, and enchanters, appeared in their several capacities before the gods in temples or sacred groves with symbolical crowns encircling their heads, as the priests of Hera, at Samos, with laurel,[[1261]] and those of Aphrodite with myrtle,[[1262]] while the statues of the divinities themselves were often crowned with circlets of these “earthly stars.” In the festival of Europa, at Corinth, a crown of myrtle, thirty feet in circumference, was borne in procession through the city.[[1263]] The actors, dancers, and spectators of the theatre usually appeared crowned with flowers,[[1264]] as did every guest at an entertainment, while lovers suspended a profusion of garlands on the doors of their mistresses, as did the devout on the temples and altars of the gods.[[1265]]
Most of the flowers cultivated, moreover, suggested poetical or mythological associations; for the religion of Greece combined itself with nearly every object in nature, more particularly with the beautiful, so that the Greek, as he strolled through his garden, had perpetually before his fancy a succession of fables connected with nymphs and goddesses and the old hereditary traditions of his county. Thus the laurel recalled the tale and transformation of Daphnè,[[1266]] the object of Apollo’s love—the cypresses or graces of the vegetable kingdom,[[1267]] were the everlasting representatives of Eteocles’ daughters, visited by death because they dared to rival the goddesses in dancing—the myrtle[[1268]] was a most beautiful maiden of Attica, fairer than all her countrywomen, swifter and more patient of toil than the youth, who therefore slew her through envy—the pine[[1269]] was the tall and graceful mistress of Pan and Boreas—the mint that of Pluto—while the rose-campion sprung from the bath of Aphrodite, and the humble cabbage from the tears of Lycurgus, the enemy of Dionysos.[[1270]]
It has sometimes been supposed,[[1271]] that the flower which constitutes the greatest ornament of gardens was wholly unknown in the early ages of Greece. But this theory, imagined for the purpose of destroying the claims of the Anacreontic fragments to be considered genuine,[[1272]] is entirely overthrown by the testimony of several ancient writers, more particularly Herodotus,[[1273]] who speaks of the rose of sixty leaves, as found in the gardens of Midas in Thrace, at the foot of the snowy Bermios. Elswhere, too, he compares the flower of the red Niliac lotus[[1274]] to the rose; and Stesichoros,[[1275]] an older poet than Anacreon, distinctly mentions chaplets composed of this flower.