HISTORICAL EPILOGUE ' 321 



even the stoic Seneca indulged in garden magnificence strangely 

 out of keeping with the ascetic philosophy he professed. 



Other famous Roman gardens were those of Scipio ; Lucullus's, 

 on the promontory of Misenum (perhaps on the site of his so- 

 called existing villa near Baiae, in the Bay of Naples), where 

 Martial declares his preference for the wild country over the pre- 

 vailing fashion of roses and clipped box-trees amongst myrtles 

 and planes : — 



Baiana nostri villa, Basse, Faustini 

 Non otiosis ordinata myrtetis 

 Viduaque platano, tonsilique buxeto, 

 Ingrata lati spatia detinet campi 

 Sed rure vero, barbaroque l^tatur. 



On the Quirinal Hill lay the gardens of Sallust, afterwards 

 merged into the Negroni, Ludovisi and Barberini gardens ; ^ 

 Cicero's villa at Arpinum is constantly referred to : but best 

 known of all, from the owner's descriptions, are the villas of 

 Varro and of Pliny the Consul. The latter's Laurentine villa 

 on the Tiber, near Paterno, now called ' San Lorenzo ' and his 

 Tusculan villa, now Frascati, situate in the natural amphitheatre 

 of the Apennines, are so fully detailed in his letters that learned 

 archaeologists, Scamozzi, Felibien (1699), Schinkel and Castell 

 (1728) have essayed to reconstruct the plan of them.^ But even 

 more interesting than the gardens of Pliny are the excavations 

 at Pompeii showing the plan and design of the inner city gardens, 

 and the wall paintings at Herculaneum. In one of the latter the 

 trellises, pergolas, statuary and fountains might have emanated 

 from MoUet or Boyceau in the sixteenth or seventeenth century ; 

 and so striking is the likeness, that Horace Walpole expressed 

 his opinion that ' nothing is wanting but a parterre to make a 

 garden in the reign of Trajan serve for the description of one 

 in the reign of King William HL'; and in the Inner Garden 



1 See De Brosse's ' Life of Sallust ' ; also ante p. i6o. 



-In Loudon's ' History of^ Gardening' may be seen reproductions on a 

 small scale of the plans of Pliny's two villas from R. Castell's ' Villas of the 

 Ancients.' See also ante p. \^ et scq. 



