26 THE GARDENS OF EPICURUS 



There may be another reason for the small advance 

 of gardening in those excellent and more temperate 

 climates, where the air and soil were so apt of them- 

 selves to produce the best sorts of fruits, without the 

 necessity of cultivating them by labour and care ; 

 whereas the hotter climates, as well as the cold, are 

 forced upon industry and skill, to produce or improve 

 many fruits that grow of themselves in the more 

 temperate regions. However it were, we have very 

 little mention of gardens in old Greece, or in old 

 Rome, for pleasure or with elegance, nor of much 

 curiousness or care, to introduce the fruits of foreign 

 climates, contenting themselves with those which were 

 native of their own ; and these were the vine, the 

 olive, the fig, the pear, and the apple : Cato, as I 

 remember, mentions no more ; and their gardens were 

 then but the necessary part of their farms, intended 

 particularly for the cheap and easy food of their hinds 

 or slaves, employed in their agriculture, and so were 

 turned chiefly to all the common sorts of plants, 

 herbs, or legumes (as the French call them) proper 

 for common nourishment ; and the name of hortus is 

 taken to be from ortus, because it perpetually furnishes 

 some rise or production of something new in the world. 



Lucullus, after the Mithridatic war, first brought 



