126 AsTER Hisrory; VERGIL 
**In fields there grows a flower of pastoral fame 
Amellus, so the shepherds call its name,— 
Sprung from one root its stalks profusely spread, 
A golden circle glitters on its head, 
But many a leaf with purple violet crowned 
Throws a soft shade the yellow disk around. 
Though rough to taste, yet wreathed round many a shrine, 
In rich festoons the golden blossoms shine. 
gD li a a ih, 
High pile before their gates the alluring food.” 
Voss rendered lines 274 and 275 in his German translation, 
Gold ist die Scheibe der Blum, allein auf den haufigen Blattern : 
Ringsum glanz der dunklen Viol’ anmuthiger Purpur. 
Old John Gerarde * gives a quaint. English version of lines 
271-275, saying it is in English thus, : 
With little search in medowes green a flowre is to be found, 
The countrie swains do clepe the same Starwoort. Out of the ground 
One root doth sprout, which spredes broade with branches thicke and wide, . 
Of colour like the finest golde in fire that hath beene tride. 
The leaves which bud on every side in a round and thicke rank ‘ 
Have such a purple colour as darke Violets on banke.”’ 
These lines of Gerarde have the swing and the gusto of Chap- 
man. But within forty years taste had so changed that in John- 
son's remodelled edition of Gerarde’s Herball (1633), the editor, 
Thomas Johnson, thinking mechanical metre better than vigor, 
substitutes the following rendering : 
** In Meades there is a floure Amello named, 
By him that seekes it easie to be found, 
For that it seemes by many branches framed 
Into a little Wood ; like gold the ground 
Thereof appeares, but leaves that it beset 
Shine in the colour of the Violet.” 
That the dark violet color of Viola odorata was what Vergil 
actually meant here in attributing the same color to his Aster is 
shown by his references to « Viola nigra” + in his Eclogues,t 
which is also identified by Fée as Viola odorata. 
ecliptic , 
* Gerarde’s Herball, 394. London, 1597, : 
t From Theoreritus’ joy Héxav to the modern pansy known as ‘King of the 
Blacks,”’ the darker violet colors have passed for black. T hey do so yet in Greece. 
fEcl. x, 39; v. 38. 
