34. AGRICULTURE IN THE ANCIENT WOELD. 



to see how apt those Yankees of the Orient were to snatch 

 every improvement, every new culture from the nations they 

 conquered, as we read Homer s description of the gardens of 

 Alcinous, where flourished 



High and broad fruit-trees that pomegranates bore; 



Sweet figs, pears, olives and a number more 



Most useful plants did there produce their store, 



Whose fruits their hardest winters could not kill; 



Nor hottest summer wither; there was still 



Fruit in his proper season ; all the year 



Sweet zephyr breathed upon them, blasts that were 



Of varied tempers, these he made to bear 



Ripe fruits, these blossoms, pear succeeded pear, 



Apple grew after apple, grape the grape, 



Fig after fig; time made never rape 



Of any dainty there. 



In Greece, also, we have the first example of public gardens 

 created by the magistrates for the use of the citizens; and his 

 tory takes account of the botanic garden founded by Theophras- 

 tus, at Athens. Another was created by Mithridates, King of 

 Pontus, 135 years before Christ. 



It is very pertinent to our subject to inquire how all this 

 came to be changed to find a reason for the Greece of to 

 day.* Mr. Felton ascribes it to the lack of a common central 

 government; to the seeds of division planted by the predomi 

 nance of the city over the country; to extensive migrations, 

 and the formation of rival confederacies. All these were, 

 doubtless, modifying causes, but we must look upon the Greek 

 experiment at civilization in a broader light as one of many 

 great experiments necessary to precede a conception of society 

 in which the quality of the units should be of the first im 

 portance. 



Plat6 looked with distrust upon popular governments. He 

 considered the people little better than a mob, and would have 

 subjected the individual entirely to the State. Not so Aristotle, 

 the father of a rational polity. He maintains that the legitimate 

 object of government is not to increase the wealth of the few, 

 nor to favor the poor at the expense of the rich, nor to encour 

 age mere equality, nor to promote trade and commerce only, 

 but to make gopd and virtuous citizens, and to promote hap- 



*&quot;0f Athens there remains only a small castle, a hamlet, undefended from foxes and wild 

 beasts. Its people, once free, are no\v under the yoke of slavery to the crudest brutes,&quot; 

 Nicholas Goibel, a writer of the 16th century. 



