320 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



bushes and shrubs. Water courses along in channels or is 

 conducted into tanks. Sometimes these gardens rise in terraces 

 to a pavilion at the summit, whose reflection in the pool below 

 is regarded as a triumph of landscape gardening. There are 

 no neat walks, or shaped flower-beds, or stretches of sward. 

 All is tangled and untrimmed. Such beauty as arises from shade 

 and the purling of water is all that the Persian requires.' l 



Of the ancient Greek gardens the sum of opinion from the 

 scant authority at hand is that they were little more than olive 

 groves or orchards. Pliny ascribes to Epicurus, the ' Philosopher 

 of the Garden,' the introduction of the Pleasure Garden within 

 the walls of Athens, between the Cephissus and the Ilissus ; and 

 if it was not Formal, it was certainly Classic and Academic. It is 

 a little difficult to reconcile this account with Plutarch's statement 

 that a century earlier the General Cimon first reformed the 

 Academy from savagery by conveying streams of water to it, and 

 planting it with groves of the olive plane and elm trees ; unless we 

 suppose Epicurus to have possessed the first private garden in 

 Athens. 



These trees were cut down in the siege of Athens by Sulla, as 

 the trees of the Bois de Boulogne were sacrificed at the siege of 

 the modern Athens. From Aristophanes we have this picture of 

 an Athenian bourgeois's ideal of ' cabbage planting ' : 



' If my lot be join'd with thine 

 To plant in lengthen'd ranks the vine, 

 To graft the fig tree's tender shoots, 

 To pluck the vineyard's purpling fruits ; 

 And olive-trees in many a row 

 Around our farm shall circling grow.' 2 



Passing to Roman gardens, Livy (as early as B.C. 534) mentions 

 the garden of Tarquinius Superbus. Forgetful of the stern 

 simplicity of old Cato the Censor and his injunction to each 

 Roman citizen to cultivate flowers in his enclosure as a source 

 of elegance and moral culture, we find in Imperial days that 



1 ' Persia,' by Hon. G. N. Curzon. 



2 ' The Acharnians ' (Mitchell's Translation). 



