130 CULTURE OF THE ROSE. 



Egypt, but subsequently attained themselves such skill in their 

 culture as to produce them in abundance, even at the coldest 

 season of the year ; and, according to Seneca, by means of green- 

 houses, heated by pipes filled with hot water. During the reign 

 of Domitian, the forcing of roses was carried to such perfection, 

 and flowers produced in winter in so great abundance, that those 

 brought from Egypt, as before mentioned, excited only the con- 

 tempt of the citizens of the world's metropolis. 



This fact, as also handed down to us by the epigram of Mar- 

 tial, is of great assistance in estimating the importance of rose- 

 culture at that period, and in showing how the art of cultivating 

 this plant had spread, and how it was already far advanced 

 among the ancient Romans and their contemporaries. 



If the Egyptians cultivated roses for transportation to Rome 

 during the winter, they must have had very extensive planta- 

 tions for the purpose. The exportation could not have been of 

 loose flowers, for they would have been withered long before the 

 termination of the voyage ; neither could it have been of rooted 

 plants in a dormant state, as nurserymen now send them to 

 every part of the world, because the Romans had at that time 

 no means of causing them to vegetate and bloom in the winter. 

 On the contrary, the cultivators at Alexandria and Memphis 

 must, of necessity, have sent them away in the vases and boxes 

 in which they had planted them with that object, and when they 

 were just beginning to break from the bud, in order that they 

 might arrive at Rome at the moment they commenced expand- 

 ing. 



At that remote period, when navigation was far behind its 

 present state of perfection, the voyage from the mouth of the Nile 

 to the coast of Italy occupied more than twenty days. When 

 this long voyage is considered, and also the quantity of roses re- 

 quired by the Romans to enwreath their crowns and garlands, 

 to cover their tables and couches, and the pavements of their fes- 

 tive halls, and to surround the urns which contained the ashes 

 of their dead, it is evident that the Egyptians, who traded in 

 roses, in order to satisfy the prodigality of the Romans, would be 



