By one of the laws of Solon all the products of the earth were forbidden to be exported from Athens; under this law the exportation of figs was prohibited, and it is from this circumstance we have the word sycophant from the Greek; those who violated this law were subject to a heavy penalty, and the informer against the delinquents was called a sycophant from the original word literally meaning an “exhibiter of figs,” as thereby substantiating his charge. The name was afterward more extensively applied, and is now associated with the ideas of meanness, servility, and calumny.
A taste for figs marked the progress of refinement in the Roman Empire. In Cato’s time but six sorts of figs were known; in Pliny’s twenty-nine. The sexual system of plants seems first to have been observed in the fig tree. Pliny in his Natural History alludes to this under the term caprification.
In modern times the esteem for figs has been more widely diffused; when Charles the 5th visited Holland in 1540, a Dutch merchant sent him, as the greatest delicacy which Zuricksee could offer, a plate of figs. The gracious Emperor dispelled for a moment the fogs of the climate by declaring, that he had never eaten figs in Spain with more pleasure. Carter praises the figs of Malaga; Tournefort those of Marseilles; Ray those of Italy; Brydone those of Sicily; Dumont those of Malta; Browne those of Thessaly; Pocock those of Mycone; De la Mourtraye those of Tenedos and Mitylene; Chandler those of Smyrna; Maillet those of Cairo; and Lady Mary Wortley Montague those of Tunis. What less can be inferred from this conspiring testimony than that wherever there is a fig there is a feast?
It remains for Jamaica, and the contiguous Islands, to acquire that celebrity for the growth of figs, which yet attaches to the Eastern Archipelago; to learn to dry them as in the Levant, and to supply the desserts of the English tables.
FRUITS,
CULTIVATED AT ROME IN THE TIME OF PLINY, THAT ARE NOW GROWN IN OUR ENGLISH GARDENS.
Apples.—The Romans had twenty-two sorts of Apples. Sweet Apples (melimala) for eating, and others for cookery. They had one sort without kernels.
[Eugene Aram, in his collections for a dictionary of the Celtic language, says that the name of the Apple Tree is a corruption of “Apollo’s Tree.”—“And that this is its original, will be easily deducible from a little reflection on the proofs in support of it. The prizes in the sacred games were the Olive Crown, Apples, Parsleys and the Pine. Lucian, in his Book of Games, affirms that Apples were the reward in the Sacred Games of Apollo; and Curtius asserts the same thing. It appears also that the Apple Tree was consecrated to Apollo before the Laurel; for both Pindar and Callimachus observe that Apollo did not put on the Laurel until after his conquest of the Python, and that he appropriated it to himself on account of his passion for Daphne, to whom the laurel was sacred. The Victor’s wreath at first was a bough with its apples hanging upon it, sometimes with a branch of laurel; and antiquity united these together as the reward of the Victor in the Pythian games.”]
Apricots.—Pliny says of the Apricot (Armeniaca) quæ sola et odore commendantur. He arranges them among his plums.—Martial valued them but little, as appears by his epigram, xiii. 46.
[The Apricot, we are told came originally from Armenia, whence its name Armeniaca. Wolfe, gardener to King Henry the 8th, first introduced Apricots into England. Tusser mentions the Apricot in his list of fruits cultivated here in 1573.]
Almonds—were abundant, both bitter and sweet. [The Almond was introduced into England in 1570; it is not, however, in Tusser’s list of fruits cultivated here in 1573.]