LANDMARKS OF BOTANICAL HISTORY — GREENE 149 



who read Aristotle." ^ By such tokens is Varro more a botanist 

 than Cato. True, he has derived every one of these ideas from the 

 Greeks, not one of the observations being original with himself; 

 but it was something to have been first to call the attention of 

 Romans to them. 



Patrick Browne (1756) sought to establish a genus Varronia. 

 It seems that the name is untenable; the same genus having been 

 named Cordia more than a half century earlier. 



PuBLius ViRGiLius Maro (b. c. 71-19). — Virgil, who has often 

 been designated the prince of Latin poets, was born at Andes, a 

 small village near Mantua, some seventy years before the beginning 

 of the Christian era. His early years were passed at Cremona, 

 where his father had valuable landed possessions. These were 

 among the lands which, after the battle of Philippi, Augustus 

 Caesar confiscated, distributing them to his veteran soldiery. 

 On this occasion the future poet was near losing his life through 

 attempting to dispute with the soldiers, the possession of his 

 fields. He escaped by swimming across a river, and then 

 Virgil with his father repaired to Rome. It was the beginning 

 of his greatness. His presence, manners, and accomplishments 

 recommended the young man to the great Mascenas, the power 

 behind the throne of Augustus, and the latter soon restored 

 to Virgil his lands; and the emperor's reward for this kindness 

 was the ten pastoral poems {Bucolica) composed in the course of 

 the next three years, and dedicated to the imperial benefactor. 

 After these followed the Georgica, accounted the most perfect 

 and finished of all Latin compositions. 



The simple narrative of the poet's career at Rome, and elsewhere 

 until his rather early death, is one of the most fascinating and 

 beautiful chapters in all history, but for several reasons must not 

 here be presented anew. 



The Georgics, by which Virgil is even more favorably if less 

 universally known than by his unfinished epic, the Mneid, treat 

 of agriculture and gardening; but also again one must refrain 

 from anything like a botanical analysis of the poems. It may 

 suffice to indicate how prolific a field for botanical research the 

 poems of Virgil long have been. The following list of works on the 

 Virgilian botany is doubtless incomplete. 



(i) Virgilii Georgicorum Libri IV. The Georgics of Virgil. 

 With an English translation and notes by J. Martyn. London, 

 1741, 4to. 



' Varro, De Re Rustica, Book ii, ch. 5. 



