GARDENS OF VARIOUS NATIONS. 571 



one another, while many sweet odours attended on Lysander and Cyrus 

 as they walked about admiring all this, he said, ' I look with astonish- 

 ment on all these trees on account of their beauty, but am still more 

 astonished at the art of him who measured out the ground, and arranged 

 them all for you.' Cyrus on hearing this was delighted, and said, ' It 

 was I, let me say, Lysander, that measured the ground and arranged all 

 the trees myself ; and these are some of them,' he added, ' that I planted 

 with my own hand.' " 



These parks must sometimes have been very extensive, for the 

 same author mentions another through which flowed the river Maeander, 

 adjoining a palace of the same Cyrus at Celaenae a city of Phrygia 

 as being full of wild beasts which that monarch was accustomed to 

 hunt on horseback. Here also Cyrus once held a review of the Greeks, 

 the number of whom amounted to 11,000 heavy-armed troops, and 

 about 2,000 peltasts. 



Not only were large trees grown in these Asiatic paradises, but 

 also flowers. For in another part of Xenophon's " ^Economicus," 

 Socrates is represented to be instructing Clitobulus the son of Crito, 

 a very rich man on the management of a farm and household. " The 

 king of Persia," says he, " in whatever provinces he resides, and where- 

 soever he travels, takes care that there may be gardens, such as are 

 called paradeisoi, stocked with everything good and valuable that 

 the soil will produce ; and in these gardens he himself spends the 

 greatest part of his time, whenever the season of the year does not 

 prevent him." From Pliny we learn that the trees were planted in 

 straight lines and regular figures, and that the borders of the walks 

 were filled with flowers and flowering shrubs. To Persia we owe 

 most of our beautiful flowers ; in that country they come up, as it 

 were, spontaneously. It is, too, the home of roses. No wonder, then, 

 the literature of that country abounds in panegyrics to flowers, and 

 is replete even to satiety. The four paradises more especially 

 mentioned by the Persian poets were situated at Samarkand, in the 

 valley of Soghd, at the Ghutah or plain of Damascus, the Shaabi- 

 Bowan near Kaleh Sofid in Tars, and in the glade of Mashan 



