102 PROSERPINA. 



And thus you will begin to understand how the pop- 

 py became in the heathen mind the type at once of 

 power, or pride, and of its loss ; and therefore, both why 

 Virgil represents the white nymph Nais, " pallentes vio- 

 las, et summa papavera carpens," gathering the pale 

 Hags, and the highest poppies, and the reason for the 

 choice of this rather than any other flower, in the story 

 of Tarquin's message to his son. 



14. But you are next to remember the word Rhoeas in 

 another sense. Whether originally intended or after- 

 wards caught at, the resemblance of the word to ' Rhoea, 5 

 a pomegranate, mentally connects itself with the resem- 

 blance of the poppy head to the pomegranate fruit. 



And if I allow this flower to be the first we take up for 

 careful study in Proserpina, on account of its simplicity 

 of form and splendour of colour, I wish you also to re- 

 member, in connection with it, the cause of Proserpine's 

 eternal captivity her having tasted a pomegranate 

 seed, the pomegranate being in Greek mythology what 

 the apple is in the Mosaic legend ; and, in the whole 



head of a poppy, even when filled with water. As for * aratro,' coming 

 as it does after the hiss of 'succisus,' it is altogether abominable. Had 

 Homer written the lines, he would have ended with some hieroglyph, 

 which would hare continued the hiss or described the fall of a flower. 

 To the hiss of ' succisus 7 Diderot is warmly attached. Not by mistake, 

 but in order to justify the sound, he ventures to translate ' aratrum * 

 into * scythe,' boldly and rightly declaring in a marginal note that this 

 is not the meaning of the weed. " 



