The fainty root can take no steady hold;
But when the golden spring reveals the year,
And the white bird returns whom serpents fear,
That season deem the best to plant thy vines;
Next that, is when autumnal warmth declines,
Ere heat is quite decayed, or cold begun,
Or Capricorn admits the winter sun.
But the above were not the only rules observed; for, besides the general march of the seasons, they took note of the phases of the moon,[[1536]] whose influence over vegetation all antiquity believed to be very powerful. Some planted during the four days immediately succeeding the birth of the new moon, while others extended their labours through the first two quarters. The act of pruning[[1537]] was performed when that planet was in its wane.
There were in Greece[[1538]] three remarkable varieties of the vine, created by difference in the mode of cultivation.[[1539]] The first consisted of plants always kept short, and supported on props, as in France; the second of tree-climbers, thence called Anadendrades; the third sort enjoyed neither of these advantages,[[1540]] but being grown chiefly in steep and stony places, spread their branches over the earth, as is still the fashion in Syra[[1541]] and other islands of the Archipelago.
Vine-props[[1542]] appear to have commonly consisted of short reeds, which, accordingly, were extensively cultivated both in Hellas and its colonies of Northern Africa, where the musical cicada, whose excessive multiplication betokened a sickly year, bored through the rind, and laid its eggs in the hollow within.[[1543]] From an inconvenience attending the use of this kind of support came the rustic proverb, “The prop has defrauded the vine;”[[1544]] for these reeds sometimes took root, outgrew their clients, and monopolized the moisture of the soil.