BOOK I. GARDENS OF THE ROMANS. IS 



of natural scenery, and the most enthusiastic strains of admiration of all that is grand, 

 pleasing, or romantic in landscape ; and some of them, as Cicero and Juvenal, have 

 deprecated the efforts of art in attempting to improve nature. " Whoever," says 

 G. Mason, " would properly estimate the attachment to rural picturesque among the 

 heathen nations of old, should not confine their researches to the domains of men, but 

 extend them to the temples and altars, the caves and fountains dedicated to their deities. 

 These, with their concomitant groves, were generally favorite objects of visual pleasure, 

 as well as of veneration. " (Essay on Design, p. 24.) 



SECT. II. Roman Gardening considered as to the Culture of Flowers and Plants of 



Ornament. 



46. Flowers were rare in Roman gardens under the kings, and during the first ages of 

 the republic. But as luxury began to be introduced, and finally prevailed to a great de- 

 gree, the passion for flowers became so great that it was found necessary to suppress it by 

 sumptuary laws. The use of crowns of flowers was forbid to such as had not received 

 the right to use them, either by the eminence of their situation, or by the particular per- 

 mission of the magistrates. Some acts of rigor towards offenders did not hinder their 

 laws from being first eluded, and at last forgotten, till that which was originally a distinc- 

 tion became at last a general ornament. Men the most elevated in dignity did not hesitate 

 to set up that elegance of dress and of ornament which is repugnant to the idea of a war- 

 like people ; and Cicero, in his third harangue against Verres, reproaches this proconsul 

 with having made the tour of Sicily in a litter, seated on roses, having a crown of flowers 

 on his head, and a garland at his back. 



47. The Floralia, or flower -feasts, were observed on the last four days of April; they 

 were attended with great indecency, but they show that the common people also carried 

 a taste for flowers to excess. (Pliny, xiii. 29. ; Tertullian. Opera.) 



48. The luxury of flowers under Augustus was carried to the extreme of folly. Helio- 

 gabalus caused his beds, his apartments, and the porticoes of his palace to be strewed with 

 flowers. Among these, roses were the sort chiefly employed, the taste for that flower 

 being supposed to be introduced from Egypt, where, as Athenaeus informs us, Cleopatra 

 paid a talent for the roses expended at one supper ; the floor of the apartment in which 

 the entertainment was given, being strewed with them to the depth of a cubit. This, how- 

 ever, is nothing to what Suetonius relates of Nero, who spent upwards of four millions of 

 sesterces, or above thirty thousand pounds, at one supper, on these flowers. From Horace 

 it appears that roses were cultivated in beds ; and from Martial, who mentions roses out 

 of season as one of the greatest luxuries of his time, it would appear that it was then the 

 caprice, as at present, to procure them prematurely, or by retardation. Columella enume- 

 rates the rose, the lily, the hyacinth, and the gilly-flower, as flowers which may embellish 

 the kitchen-garden ; and he mentions, in particular, a place set apart for the production 

 of late roses. Pliny says, the method by which roses were produced prematurely was, 

 by watering them with warm water when the bud began to appear. From Seneca and 

 Martial it appears probable they were also forwarded by means of sjyecularia, like certain 

 culinary productions to be afterwards mentioned. 



49- Scientific assemblages of plants, or botanic gardens, appear to have been unknown to 

 the Romans, who had formed no regular system of nomenclature for the vegetable king- 

 dom. Pliny informs us that Anthony Castor, one of the first physicians at Rome, had 

 assembled a number of medical plants in his garden, but they were, in all probability, for 

 the purposes of his profession. Between 200 and 300 plants are mentioned in Pliny's 

 History, as used in agriculture, gardens, medicine, for garlands, or other purposes, and 

 these appear to be all that were known or had names in general use. (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 

 lib. xii. xxvi. inclusive.) 



SECT. III. Roman Gardening in respect to its Products for the Kitchen and the Dessert. 



50. The term Hortus in the laws of the Decemviri, which are supposed to be as old as 

 the establishment of the Romans as a people, is used to signify both a garden and a 

 country-house, but afterwards the kitchen-garden was distinguished by the appellation 

 Hortus Pinguis. Pliny informs us, that a husbandman called a kitchen-garden a second 

 dessert, or a flitch of bacon, which was always ready to be cut ; or a sallad, easy to be 

 cooked and light of digestion, and judged there must be a bad housewife (the garden 

 being her charge) in that house where the garden was in bad order. 



51. The principal fruits introduced to Italy by the Romans, according to Hirschfield 

 (Theorie des Jardins, vol. i. p. 27.) and Sickler (Geschichte, 1 Sand."), are the fig 

 from Syria, the citron from Media, the peach from Persia, the pomegranate from Africa, 

 the apricot from Epirus, apples, pears, and plums from Armenia, and cherries from 

 Pontus. The rarity and beauty of these trees, he observes (Theorie des Jardins, 

 vol.i. p. 27.), joined to the delicious taste of their fruits, must have enchanted 

 the Romans, especially on their first introduction, and rendered ravishing to the sight, 



