58o 



Garden and Forest. 



[December 4, iJ 



summer residences.* Some stood in extensive domains — the 

 ruins of the various buildings belonging to one cover nearly a 

 square mile of ground ; others were of smaller size, but all 

 were planned with a regard for comfort and surrounded with 

 a care for systematic beauty that are nowhere paralleled on 

 a similar scale to-day. The most common practice was to use 

 the suburban villa in spring, spending the midwinter in Rome, 

 and escaping to sea-side or mountains during the greatest heat 

 of summer. The Roman citizen did not abandon the service 

 of the commonwealth or the management of his private affairs 

 until the decadent days of the empire ; thus, when the 

 short winter was over, he could not immediately desert the 

 city, but spent vast simis instead on a suburban residence. 

 Six or seven miles from the metropolis meant nothing to 

 him, mounted on a Niunidian pony or whirled along in a 

 hooded carriage to the gates, where he was obliged, by the 

 crowded state of the narrow streets, to transfer himself to a 

 litter. "The number of these villas is really incredible. . . . 

 In the golden age of the empire, before the transformation of 

 Rome into an intrenched camp, accomplished by Aurelian, it 

 was impossible to define, even approximately, its extent. . . . 

 To the houses adjoining one another succeeded a second ring 

 of houses separated by small gardens, a third ring of houses 

 separated by larger estates, and lastly, a fourth ring of great 

 villas and huge latifundia, each one constituting a populous 

 and flourishing village. These groups of rustic dwellings were 

 laid out in the town fashion, with the shrines of the compital 

 or domestic gods at the street corners, and with local festivi- 

 ties and solemnities. . . . Great care was bestowed on the 

 drainage of the house, which was always carried to a great 

 distance and forced through its charmel by a permanent jet 

 of water. Remarkable, also, were the arrangements for the 

 supply of water, which, when not actually needed, . . . was 

 stored in huge reservoirs or cisterns, ready for any extraordi- 

 nary emergency. At the crossing of the roads . . . there were 

 fountains for the accommodation of travelersand their horses," 

 and seats were set under the trees for the comfort of weary 

 pedestrians. The great arcaded aqueducts, the temples, 

 shrines and altars, with their marble sides and roofs of bronze, 

 the "endless marble cemeteries, shaded by the Ilexes of the 

 villa and by the Olive-trees of the farm," followed one another 

 in orderly succession. The villa f itself was, as a rule, "di- 

 vided into two distinct and independent portions. The first 

 comprised the lord's manor, with more or less spacious gardens 

 surrounding it ; the second comprised the farmer's house, the 

 various stables and barns, the dwellings of the slaves, orchards, 

 Olive-yards, vineyards, corn-fields, woodlands and so forth." 

 On the hill-sides the villa rose "in steps and terraces from 

 the foot of the hill, each terrace supported by huge foundation 

 walls ornamented with niches and jiymphaa. The lower ter- 

 races never contained buildings ; they were simply laid out in 

 gardens, and less frequently in an orchard ; the mansion of 

 the landlord was perched on the very top of the hill and within 

 the area of the highest terrace." The type was an excellent 

 one, affording the best possible outlook and permitting that 

 lavish use of ornamental water which the Romans loved 

 above all else. " But it is incredible how ingenious and clever 

 ancient architects proved themselves to be in adapting the 

 general type of villa to the natural conditions of the special 

 tract of land which had been selected," and in placing the 

 house so that it would best serve the owner's desire to use it 

 as a winter or a summer residence. "The characteristic of 

 an ornamental Roman garden was the entire absence of natu- 

 ral beauty. Its style can be compared, to a certain extent, to 

 the French and Italian villas of the sixteenth century." Topi- 

 ary work was practiced (as we saw when Pliny's far-off coun- 

 try-seat in Tuscany was described) to an extent so great that 

 Lanciani ventures to say " no tree or shrub dared to grow in 

 its own natural fashion." . . . The a//^^.f were shut in by walls 

 of green Box or Laurel with windows, doors and niches imi- 

 tating the architecture of palaces. Here and there appeared 

 threatening forms of wild beasts, bears and lions, serpents 

 winding themselves around trees, "all cut by the skillful hand 

 of the topiarius out of the green Cypress, Box, Yew-tree, 

 Myrtle and Laurel. . . . Grounds laid out in this style, in 

 which . . . every vestige of Nature's free dominion is anni- 

 hilated, are not only described by ancient writers . . . but actu- 

 ally painted, I might almost say photographed, in the frescoes 



♦Lanciani: "Ancient Rome in Ihe Light of Modern Discoveries." From this 

 recently published and very valuable worlt most of the facts in this chapter have 

 been gathered. 



t Villa urbana, villa pseudo-urbana ov prcetorium was the suburban residence of 

 a more elegant, villa rustica of a more simply utilitarian sort. It is the former, of 

 course, which concerns us here, and it got its name because the disposition of the 

 town house was closely followed, though often on a more splendid scale and al- 

 ways with a greater regard for external effect. 



of Pompeian dining-rooms, in those of the green-house in the 

 gardens of Maecenas on the Esquiline, and in those found in 

 the villa of Livia. . . . An excuse for such absurdities can be 

 found in the fact that the means afforded by Nature in those 

 days were but small in comparison with the abundant re- 

 sources of our time. Foreign countries had not as yet unfolded 

 their rich treasures of rare and splendid vegetation, nor their 

 thousand shrubs and flowers ; restricted to a barren flora, but 

 little improved by culture, the Romans sought to create by ar- 

 tificial means a striking contrast to the free forms of nature. 

 This is, at all events, the excuse given by Becker."* But it hardly 

 seems a sutficient excuse. The comparatively few plants na- 

 tive to central Italy would have sufficed for combination into 

 lovely " naturalistic" effects, had the taste of the time run in 

 that direction. It is not tlie born lover of natural landscape 

 beauty who asks, first of all, for endless variety in the items 

 which the prospect supplies — it is, rather, the sophisticated 

 horticulturist, or the scientific student, or the man in whom 

 curiosity is stronger than the aesthetic feeling, or a delight in 

 single objects is stronger than admiration for a general effect. 

 The Romans loved formal gardens because their taste in all 

 things was architectonic. In art, as in all other forms of activ- 

 ity, they proved themselves great organizers, practical con- 

 structors, lovers of system, regularity and usefulness, not men 

 of poetic imagination or of purely aesthetic impulse. They 

 were far more remarkable as architects than as poets, sculptors 

 or painters, and their gardens were naturally those which an 

 architect, rather than a poet or landscape-painter, would ad- 

 mire. But I have said that there were exceptions to the gen- 

 eral rule of formality in the suburban gardens of provincial 

 towns and in the imperial pleasure-grounds of Rome ; and 

 Becker believes that such was likewise the case among the 

 villa-gardens of the Campagna. The hero of his " Gallus " owns 

 a villa urbana, where, in addition to the symmetrical clipped 

 garden, there is another of natural loveliness. 



We are not surprised to find that these luxurious yet prac- 

 tical Romans were the inventors of the green-house. It is not 

 mentioned before the first century of our era, but was then 

 extremely common, and, as in modern times, was roofed with 

 glass and heated by pipes. Here such exotic plants as could 

 be obtained were carefully tended, and fruits, vegetables and 

 flowers were assisted to early development or even forced to 

 perfection during the winter months. Great aviaries and viri- 

 daria or preserves for animals were likewise common — indis- 

 pensable, indeed, in places of any pretensions; and the former 

 were often large enough to contain trees of considerable size. 

 Huge fish-ponds, as useful as they were ornamental, were 

 walled around with marble and kept pure by constant streams 

 of water from the exhaustless aqueducts. 



Although the poorer classes of Roman citizens were buried 

 pell-mell in great heaps on the hill-sides near the city, much 

 pains and money were lavished on the tombs of wealthier 

 citizens, whether their bodies were interred or creinated. In 

 either case the relics were enshrined in sumptuous binldings, 

 placed along the suburban highways, greafly to the increase 

 of their magnificence of effect. No traveler need be reminded 

 of the remains of such monuments which are still visible on 

 the Appian Way. The so-called Castle of St. Angelo, at Rome, 

 is the central building of the mausoleum of Hadrian, once 

 surrounded by a wide garden, and covered, up its terraced 

 sides, with rich plantations ; and across the river stood a sim- 

 ilar construction which was the resting-place of Augustus. 



In the Roman cemetery still preserved at Aries were long 

 lines of small monuments overshadowed by the inevitable 

 Cypress-tree, f 



New York. M. L. Vail Rensselaer. 



New or Little Known Plants. 



Chrysanthemum Mrs. Fottler. 



'X'HE Chrysanthemum illustrated on page 581 is the variety 

 -*- Mrs. Fottler, sent from Japan two years ago in the famous 

 Neesima collection, which included such notable kinds as 

 Mrs. Hardy, .Lilian Bird, W. H. Lincoln and Kioto. The flow- 

 ers of Mrs. Fottler are borne on long, stiff stems, and they are 

 of large size, very full, and of a distinct tint of pink. The 

 petals are long, feathery, and very persistent, so that the flower 

 will remain perfect for a long time. The plant not only gives 

 fine blooms for exhibition, but it has proved very satisfactory 



* See Becker's "Gallus." This book and the same author's "Charikles" are 

 romances, but were written by a learned German student of antiquity for the pur- 

 pose of portraying, as accurately as possible, the life of a young aristocrat, in 

 the one case in imperial Rome, in the other case in Athens. Their explanatory 

 notes are much more voluminous than the text itself, and even Lanciani quote's 

 from Becker with a lavish hand. Both works have been translated into English. 



t McGibbon : "Architecture of Provence." 



