Although the number of varieties known to the Romans was very limited, they had discovered a method of making the blooming season continue many months. According to Pliny, the roses of Carthage, in Spain, came forward early and bloomed in winter; those of Campania bloomed next in order; then those of Malta; and lastly those of Pæstum, which flowered in the spring and autumn. It was probably the blooming of this last species which the gardeners of Rome discovered (in Seneca’s time) the secret of retarding by a certain process, or of hastening by means of their warm green-houses.
In the last part of this work, we have cited many passages from ancient authors, which show to what an enormous extent the use of roses was carried by the Romans on certain occasions. It is difficult to credit, at this day, the relation of Nero’s extravagance (which is, however, attested by Suetonius), when it is told that in one fête alone he expended in roses only, more than four millions of sesterces, or one hundred thousand dollars. It would be no easy matter, even at the present period of abundant cultivation of Roses, to obtain from all the nurseries of England, France, and America together, roses sufficient to amount to so large a sum.
The Romans derived the use of this flower from the Greeks. In Greece, and throughout the East, roses were cultivated, not only for the various purposes we have mentioned, but also for the extraction of their perfumes. Among the many plans which they adopted for preserving the flower was that of cutting off the top of a reed, splitting it down a short distance, and enclosing in it a number of rose-buds, which, being bound around with papyrus, prevented their fragrance from escaping. The Greeks also deemed it a great addition to the fragrance of the Rose to plant garlic near its roots. The island of Rhodes, which has successively borne many names, was particularly indebted to the culture of roses for that which it bears at this day. It was the Isle of Roses, the Greek for Rose being Ροδον,—Rodon.
Medals of Rhodes, whose reverse impressions present a rose in bloom on one side, and the sunflower on the other, are to be found even now in cabinets of curiosities.
Extravagance in roses, among the Romans, kept pace with the increase of their power, until they at length desired them at all seasons. At first they procured their winter’s supply from Egypt, but subsequently attained themselves such skill in their culture as to produce them in abundance, even at the coldest season of the year; and, according to Seneca, by means of green-houses, heated by pipes filled with hot water. During the reign of Domitian, the forcing of roses was carried to such perfection, and flowers produced in winter in so great abundance, that those brought from Egypt, as before mentioned, excited only the contempt of the citizens of the world’s metropolis.
This fact, as also handed down to us by the epigram of Martial, is of great assistance in estimating the importance of rose-culture at that period, and in showing how the art of cultivating this plant had spread, and how it was already far advanced among the ancient Romans and their contemporaries.
If the Egyptians cultivated roses for transportation to Rome during the winter, they must have had very extensive plantations for the purpose. The exportation could not have been of loose flowers, for they would have been withered long before the termination of the voyage; neither could it have been of rooted plants in a dormant state, as nurserymen now send them to every part of the world, because the Romans had at that time no means of causing them to vegetate and bloom in the winter. On the contrary, the cultivators at Alexandria and Memphis must, of necessity, have sent them away in the vases and boxes in which they had planted them with that object, and when they were just beginning to break from the bud, in order that they might arrive at Rome at the moment they commenced expanding.
At that remote period, when navigation was far behind its present state of perfection, the voyage from the mouth of the Nile to the coast of Italy occupied more than twenty days. When this long voyage is considered, and also the quantity of roses required by the Romans to enwreath their crowns and garlands, to cover their tables and couches, and the pavements of their festive halls, and to surround the urns which contained the ashes of their dead, it is evident that the Egyptians, who traded in roses, in order to satisfy the prodigality of the Romans, would be compelled to keep in readiness a certain number of vessels to be laden with boxes or vases of rose-plants, so prepared as not to bloom before their delivery at Rome. The cost of roses thus delivered in Rome must have been immense, but we do not find a single passage in any of the ancient authors which can give any light on this point; they only tell us that nothing for the gratification of luxury was considered too costly by the wealthy Roman citizens. Nor do they afford more positive information as to the species of Rose cultivated on the borders of the Nile, to gratify this taste of the Romans. According to Delile, there were found in Egypt, at the time of the French expedition into that country, only the White Rose and the Centifolia, or hundred-leaved—two species not very susceptible of either a forcing or retarding culture. The only Rose known at that time, which bloomed in the winter, was the Rose of Pæstum, referred to by Virgil, as “biferique rosaria Pæsti,” and which was probably the same as our monthly Damask Rose, and which produced in Egypt and Rome flowers at all seasons, as the Damask does now with us, under a proper mode of culture.
The extent to which the culture and commerce of roses was carried among the Romans is shown by the fact that, although they had confounded the tree and its flowers under one name—that of Rosa,—they nevertheless gave particular appellations to the gardens or ground planted with rose-bushes. They were termed a Rosarium, or a Rosetum. Ovid says, “Quot amœna Rosaria flores.” The dealer in roses was also designated by the distinctive appellation of Rosarius.