23 
‘It derived its name, ‘“‘ Our Lady’s Flower,” from the story 
which connected it with Pericles and one of his architects on the 
building of the Parthenon. The man was seriously injured 
by a fall from the building, and was saved by the intervention 
of Athena with her healing herb. There is still in situ the base 
of a statue, with Parthenium growing about it, which is pro- 
bably the base of the famous statue dedicated by Pericles on the 
occasion. 
Dr. Sandys in his ‘‘ Easter Vacation in Greece ’’ says that 
‘perhaps the Asp/odel is the most disenchanting plant in the 
classic Flora.” 
Certainly one has an affection for the very name of Asphodel, 
if only from its associations with the Odyssey story. 
“So I spake, and the shade of the swift-footed son of Aeacus 
moved away, striding mightily through the Asphodel meadow, 
rejoicing for that I had told him of his son’s great renown.” 
And so the Asphodel carpeted the fields of Elysium, and the 
Asphodelus Ramosus still carpets the field of Marathon, and 
the meadows of Paestwm and Girgentt. 
Virgil in his 3rd Eclogue makes one shepherd propose a 
riddle to another :— 
«Tell me where flowers grow inscribed with the name ot 
princes.” 
The riddle is not answered, but he is following the old 
tradition of the ‘“‘ Lettered Hyacinth.” 
The Greeks themselves preserved two traditions of this flower 
—one, connecting it with the Spartan youth Hyacinthus, 
killed inadvertently by Apollo, from whose blood sprung up 
the blossom, bearing inscribed upon it the letters A I, that is, 
AIAT alas! and another, which still read the letters AI 
into the marks upon the flower, but-interpreted them as the 
first two letters of the name AI AS, the suicide. Probably our 
Hyacinths are derived from the pale Oriental Hyacinth, which 
bears no trace of any marks which could be so interpreted. — 
The Greeks must have meant some definite flower by 
Hyacinthus, but not our Hyacinth. One may guess that it 
was some species of Orchid, many of which bear marks upon 
leaf and flower, which may be interpreted in as many ways as 
there are interpreters. 
But tradition has preserved it for us as the Hyacinth— 
and so it must remain—‘‘ that sanguine flower inscribed with’ 
woe,”’ with all the associations of the Hyacinthine legend, 
not easily to be supplanted by the Gladiolus, or Martagon 
Lily of the commentators, or even the more suggestive 
Delphinium Ajacts 
,’ 
