162 Aster History; PAUSANIAS 
5. It seems probable that the plant-name Asterion antedated 
that of the river or at least was independent of it in origin. Plant- 
names derived from individual rivers are yet to be proven to 
occur in popular nomenclature, however common they may be 
in that of science. Probably the plant-name was really dorépeov 
(= Aster Atticus), and became assimilated to that of the river, 
dateptwy, 
6. The locality Pausanias describes for it, the rough river 
valley among the hills, agrees with the kind of locality natural for 
Aster Atticus. 
7. The not distant neighborhood of the locality to Megara 
agrees with the information given me by a Greek formerly resi- 
dent in Attica, who recalls seeing Aster Atticus growing wild 
toward Megara perhaps ten years ago. a 
In brief, I would say that Pausanias’ Asterion may probably 
be the sanie with that of Dioscorides, though we cannot say that 
it must be, without further evidence. I do not find that any one 
_ has given much account of the actual flowers of that river valley 
since Pausanias’ time. Subsequent travellers who visited Mycenae 
previous to Schliemann were Clarke and Gell, who give no evi 
dence on this subject, and Dodwell,* whose visit to Mycenae was o 
Dec. 8th, and whose remarks on flowers are made chiefly while in 
other parts of Greece, as on the asphodel, the agnus castus, scilla, 
acanthus, the laurel-rose or rhododaphne of the banks of the Ilis- 
sus, and the ‘‘many-colored anemones in 20 different tints” — 
the Thriasian plain. Mahaffy + visited the vale of Argos “in spring, 
in the time of the growing corn, of scarlet anemone and purple 
cistus ”’; and was again at. Mycenae in summer, when stubble 
already covered the fields, and ‘‘ down at the river-bed great ole- 
anders [#. ¢., the rhododaphne] were spreading their sheets of 
bloomt” ; but seems to have been too early for the Aster Atticus, 
if indeed it was there. 
es 
cements StS ny ST ee MANE A 
* Dodwell’s Tour through Greece, 1819, 
t Mahaffy’s Rambles and Studies in Greece, Ton., 1878. 
t Mahaffy’s Rambles, etc., p. 404. Cf. p. 378, where he is journeying from My- 
cenae to Argos, and writes that along the river Inachus. ... We could see net - 
great wild fields of rose-red oleander, blooming along the river banks, very like tH 
rhododendron of our demesnes.”? _ | 
