ETYMOLOGY OF THE WORDS CROCUS AND SAFFRON. xv 



But in the hymn to Ceres, line 177, golden hair is likened to the crocus dower :— 



ufKpl Cit ■^curui 

 uifiois maaowro KpoKrji'w ,'h'Oei opo'iiu 



This, like the similar passages given below, admits of three interpretations :— 

 First, that the poet does not mean what he says, "like the flower," but 

 "like the stigmata of the flower." for they are the only golden part of the Saffron 

 Crocus. This is the explanation of such expressions adopted by Martin on Virgil 

 Georg. iv, 1S2 ; but surely any poet in any language, let alone Greek, can say 

 "golden-eyed," when that is his meaning. 



Secondly, that by the words "like The flower," we must understand, "like the 

 dye made from the flower." This would indeed be not unlike Virgil's manner • 

 and for other reasons may be the right interpretation of the Latin passages, but it 

 seems too elaborate for the line just quoted. 



Thirdly, that the words do mean what they seem to mean. 'Golden hair' 

 really is like the golden flower of the golden Crocuses, which grow wild on the 

 hills of Attica, Bceotia, Peloponnesus, Thrace, near Sestos, near Smyrna, in Bithynia, in 

 Phrygia, in the Troad, and some of which we now know so well in English gardens.* 

 Meleager, Epig. ii, 7, has xpvcrap0^ k P 6ko,, ' the golden flowered crocus,' and 

 Sophocles O.C. 685, in the famous chorus which sings the beauties of Attica' after 

 describing the green woody glades, the ivy, the many berried bushes, the narcissus, 

 goes on to mention 3 re xpvo-avyr,, k P 6ko,, "the gold gleaming Crocus." This 

 expression is usually explained as referring to the golden stigmata of a lilac or whitish 

 Crocus, but surely the poet may have had a golden-flowered Crocus in his mind 

 for though now no golden Crocus grows actually at Colonus or in the surrounding 

 plain,! Crocus Ohvieri, Gay, is plentiful on the higher hills of Attica, and in days 

 when the land was better wooded may have descended to a lower level. Professor 

 Lewis Campbell compares Tennyson's CEnonc, " And at their feet the Crocus brake 

 like fire," where the English poet is doubtless thinking of the golden Crocuses so 

 common in our gardens. We may add Euripides, Ion, 887 ;— 



i'/\0:v pot y_pvaib yahav 

 /lappru'pwv, evT es koXttov? 

 xpoxea 7T6Ta\« (paptaiv thpeTrov 



and Moschus, i, 68 



111 c a.VT£ gtu>0o?o KpoKov Qvotaaav l'0apuv 

 S/31 -lor ipiS/xalvovaai. 



* I should have greater hesitation in suggesting what I believe to be a new explanation were it not clear 

 that none of he commentators have been aware that golden Crocuses are indigenous to the shores of the Jgean 



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