74 PROSERPINA. 



Wild Olive,' p. 95) : "And bore lightly the burden of gold 

 and of possessions." And thus you will begin to understand 

 how the poppy 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 violas, et 

 summa papavera carpens," gathering the pale flags, 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 afterwards 

 caught at, the resemblance of the word to 'Rhoea,' a pome- 

 granate, mentally connects itself with the resemblance of the 

 poppy head to the pomegranate fruit. 



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

 ful study in ' Proserpina,' on account of its simplicity of form 

 and splendour of colour, I wish you also to remember, in con- 

 nection with it, the cause of Proserpine's eternal captivity 

 her having tasted a pomegranate seed, the pomegranate be- 

 ing in Greek mythology what the apple is in the Mosaic le- 

 gend ; and, in the whole worship of Demeter, associated with 

 the poppy by a multitude of ideas which are not definitely 

 expressed, but can only be gathered out of Greek art and 

 literature, as we learn their symbolism. The chief character 

 on which these thoughts are founded is the fulness of seed in 

 the poppy and pomegranate, as an image of life : then the 

 forms of both became adopted for beads or bosses in orna- 

 mental art ; the pomegranate remains more distinctly a Jew- 

 ish and Christian type, from its use in the border of Aaron's 

 robe, down to the fruit in the hand of Angelico's and Botti- 

 celli's Infant Christs ; while the poppy is gradually confused 

 by the Byzantine Greeks with grapes ; and both of these with 



he would have ended with some hieroglyph, which would have contin- 

 ued the hiss or described the fall of a flower. To the hiss of ' succisus ' 

 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 

 word. " 



