BOOK XXI 



I. Cato'^ bade us include among our garden cfiapiets,ihe 

 plants chaplet flowers, especially because of the ^^"^ 

 indescribable delicacy of their blossoms, for nobody 

 can find it easier to tell of them than Nature does to 

 give them colours, as here she is in her most sportive 

 niood, playful in her great joy at her varied fertility. 

 To all other things in fact she gave birth because of 

 their usefulness, and to serve as food, and so has 

 assigncd them their ages and years ; but blossoms 

 and their perfumes she brings forth only for a day 

 — an obvious warning to men that the bloom that 

 pleases the eye most is the soonest to fade. Not 

 even the painter's art, however, sufRces to copy 

 their colours and the variety of their combinations, 

 wliether two kinds are woven together alternately, 

 and also more than two, or whether with separate 

 festoons of the different kinds chaplets are run 

 tln-ough chaplets to form a circle, or crosswise, or 

 sometimes forming a coil.* 



in orbem., or coiled, iike a watch-spring, in amhitum, or bent 

 at an angle in ohlicnm. The last however may refer to 

 pairs of separate lings, the smaller passing through the 

 larger at right-angles. 



Warmington's explanation is : — 



In orbem : forming (filled in) disks; 

 In ohlicum : forming spirals, or coils; 

 In amhitum : forming rings (hollow disks not filled in 

 nor spiral). Ambitua suggests a ciosed periphery, not 

 filled in. 

 PHny has not been careful to give details to his readers, 



[Note continued on p. 162. 



i6i 



