THE GARDENS OF EPICURUS 27 



cherries from Pontus into Italy, which so generally 

 pleased, and were so easily propagated in all climates, 

 that within the space of about an hundred years, having 

 travelled westward with the Roman conquests, they 

 grew common as far as the Rhine, and passed over 

 into Britain. After the conquest of Africa, Greece, 

 the Lesser Asia, and Syria, were brought into Italy 

 all the sorts of their Mala, which we interpret 

 apples, and might signify no more at first, but were 

 afterwards applied to many other foreign fruits : the 

 apricots coming from Epire, were called Mala Epi- 

 rotica ; peaches from Persia, Mala Persica ; citrons 

 of Media, Med'ica ; pomegranates from Carthage, 

 Punka ; quinces Catkonea, from a small island in the 

 Grecian seas ; their best pears were brought from 

 Alexandria, Numidia, Greece, and Numantia ; as 

 appears by their several appellations : their plums, from 

 Armenia, Syria, but chiefly from Damascus. The 

 kinds of these are reckoned in Nero's time, to have 

 been near thirty, as well as of figs ; and many of them 

 were entertained at Rome with so great applause, and 

 so general vogue, that the great captains, and even 

 consular men, who first brought them over, took pride 

 in giving them their own names (by which they run a 

 great while in Rome) as in memory of some great 



