6 OLanfcscape Hrcbitecture 



Farge, than whom no one had a keener instinct for good 

 art, noted this during his visit to the Fiji Islands. 



All through the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman times, 

 however, an iron-bound, rigid theory of design seems 

 to have dominated landscape gardening. Nero and 

 Pliny could and did locate their villas in romantic 

 spots, but the villas themselves were designed with 

 grounds about them artificial and stiff, though there 

 were in some instances trees and shrubs and lawns at 

 a little distance so arranged as to be not entirely devoid 

 of the charm of free nature. 



"Moreover Nero turned the ruins of his country to 

 his private advantage and built a house the orna- 

 ments of which were not miracles of gems and gold, 

 now used in vulgar luxuries, but lawns and lakes, 

 and after the manner of a desert, here groves and 

 there open spaces and prospects; the masters and 

 centurions being Severus and Celer, whose genius 

 and boldness could attempt by Art what Nature had 

 denied and deceive with princely force. . . . 



"His Golden House, in a park stretching from the 

 Palatine to the heights of the Esquiline, was on 

 a scale of more than oriental magnificence. At 

 last the master of the world was properly lodged. 

 With colonnades three miles long, with its lakes 

 and pastures and sylvan glades, it needed only a 

 second Nero in Otho to dream of adding to its 

 splendour." x 



1 Tacitus, Ann., C. 31. 



