28 THE GARDENS OF EPICURUS 



service or pleasure they had done their country ; so 

 that not only laws and battles, but several sorts of 

 apples or Mala, and of pears, were called Manlian and 

 Claudian, Pompeyan and Tiberian ; and by several 

 other such noble names. 



Thus the fruits of Rome, in about an hundred years, 

 came from countries as far as their conquests had 

 reached ; and like learning, architecture, painting, and 

 statuary, made their great advances in Italy, about the 

 Augustan age. What was of most request in their 

 common gardens in Virgil's time, or at least in his 

 youth, may be conjectured by the description of his 

 old Corician's gardens in the fourth of the Georgics ; 

 which begins, 



Namque sub Oebalias memini me turribus alti, 1 

 Among flowers, the roses had the first place, 

 especially a kind which bore twice a year ; and none 

 other sorts are here mentioned besides the narcissus, 

 though the violet and the lily were very common, and 

 the next in esteem ; especially the Breve Lilium, which 

 was the tuberose. The plants he mentions, are the 

 Apium, which though commonly interpreted parsley, yet 

 comprehends all sorts of smallage, whereof celery is 

 one ; Cucumis, which takes in all sorts of melons, as 



1 Temple misquotes : ' alti ' should be arcis.' 





