Book I. GARDENS OF THE ROMANS. 



15 



59. Willows were cultivated for binding the vines to the trees that supported them ; 

 for hedges ; and for making baskets ( Virg. G. ii. 4. 36.) : moist ground was preferred for 

 growing them, Udum salictum. 



60. Hedges were of various sorts, but we are not informed what were the plants 

 grown in those used for defence. They surrounded chiefly vineyards and gardens ; for 

 agriculture was then, as now, carried on in the common or open field manner. 



Sect. V. Roman Gardening as a Science, and as to the Authors it produced. 



61. The gardening of the Romans was entirely emjnrical, and carried on with all 

 the superstitious observations dictated by a religion founded on polytheism. Almost 

 every operation had its god, who was to be invoked or propitiated on all occasions. " I 

 will write for your instruction," says Varro to Fundasius, " three books on husbandry, 

 first invoking the twelve dii consentes." After enumerating the gods which preside over 

 household matters, and the common field operations, he adds, " adoring Venus as the 

 patroness of the garden, and offering my entreaties to Lympha, because culture is 

 drought and misery without water." The elements of agriculture, he says, are the same 

 as those of the world water, earth, air, and the sun. Agriculture is a necessary and 

 great art, and it is a science which teaches what is to be planted and done in every 

 ground, and what lands yield the greatest profit. It should aim at utility and pleasure, 

 by producing things profitable and agreeable, &c. 



62. Lunar days were observed, and also lucky and unlucky days, as described by 

 Hesiod. Some things, Varro observes, are to be done in the fields while the moon is 

 increasing ; others on the contrary when she is decreasing, as the cutting of corn and 

 underwood. At the change of the moon pull your beans before daylight ; to prevent 

 rats and mice from preying on a vineyard, prune the vines in the night-time : sow vetches 

 before the twenty-fifth day of the moon, &c. " I observe these things," says Agrasius, 

 (one of fifty authors who Varro says had written on husbandry, but whose writings are 

 now lost,) " not only in shearing my sheep, but in cutting my hair, for I might become 

 bald if I did not do this in the wane of the moon." 



63. Religion and magic were also called in to the aid of the cultivator. Columella says 

 that husbandmen who are more religious than ordinary, when they sow turnips, pray 

 that they may grow both for themselves and for their neighbours. If caterpillars attack 

 them, Democritus affirms that a woman going with her hair loose, and bare-footed, 

 three times round each bed will kill them. Women must be rarely admitted where 

 cucumbers or gourds are planted, for commonly green things languish and are checked 

 in their growth by their handling of them. 



64. Of vegetable physiology they seem to have been very ignorant. It was a doctrine 

 held by Virgil, Columella, and Pliny, that any scion may be grafted on any stock ; and 

 that the scion partaking of the nature of the stock, had its fruit changed in flavor accord- 

 ingly. Pliny mentions the effect of grafting the vine on the elm, and of drawing a vine 

 shoot through the trunk of a chestnut ; but modern experience proves that no faith is to be 

 given to such doctrines, even though some of these authors affirm to have seen what 

 they describe. 



65. Equivocal generation was believed in. Some barren trees and shrubs, as the 

 poplar, willow, osier, and broom, were thought to grow spontaneously ; others by 

 fortuitous seeds, as the chestnut and oak ; some from the roots of other sorts of trees, as 

 the cherry, elm, bay, &c. Notwithstanding the ignorance and inaccuracy which their 

 statements betray, the Romans were aware of all our common, and some of our uncom- 

 mon practices : they propagated plants as we do ; pruned and thinned, watered, forced, 

 and retarded fruits and blossoms, and even made incisions and ringed trees to induce 

 fruitful ness. 



66. There is no Roman author exclusively on gardening, but the subject is treated, more 

 or less, by Cato, Varro, Virgil, Pliny, and Columella. 



Cato and Varro lived, the former B. C. 150, and the latter B. C. 28 : both wrote treatises on rural affairs, 

 Be Re Rustica ; but, excepting what relates to the vine and the fig, have little on the subject of gardens. 



Virgil's Georgics appeared in the century preceding the commencement of our aera. Virgil was born in 

 Mantua about B. C. 70 ; but hved much at Rome and Naples. He appears to have taken most of his 

 ideas from Cato and Varro. 



Plinv's Natural History was written in the first century of our ffira. Pliny was born at or near Rome, 

 and lived much at court. The.twelfth to the twenty-sixth book inclusive are chiefly on husbandry, gardens, 

 trees, and medical plants. 



The Rural (Economy of Columella is in twelve books, of which the eleventh, on Gardening, is in verse. 

 He was born at Gades, now Cadix, in Spain, but passed most of his time in Italy. 



