Malus 



The association of the quince with love was not 

 destroyed by Christianity. It may be that the 

 quinces, for which the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet 

 said they were calling in the pantry, were appro- 

 priate to the impending marriage, though throwing 

 them was out of fashion, and indeed Romeo had no 

 need of missile hints. 



The quince came westward by way of Crete, and 

 its name is derived from KvSavtov, the apple of 

 Cydonis, the Cretan city. 



There are other passages in Virgil of whibh we 

 must say that he may have meant either apples or 

 quinces or both. Such are the jilted lover's wish for 

 an inverted world, ' mala ferant quercus ' {Ec. viii. 54), 

 and the reference to ' malifera Abella' {Ae. vii. 740), 

 The town, now Avella Vecchia, is in Campania, and 

 had a renown for nuts as well as for soft fruit. The 

 fruit of the Hesperides (Ec. vi. 61) were probably 

 thought of as quinces, and Ovid calls them ' aurea 

 poma.' He also describes the leaves as ' fulva,' a 

 poetic exaggeration, which shows that his fruit had 

 in it a touch of the mythical. 



The phrase 'roscida mala' has been variously 

 interpreted. Conington and other editors, following 

 Servius, see a reference to the morning dew, while 

 others take the epithet to be specific of a distinct 

 fruit. The former interpretation is supported by 

 the phrase of Theocritus, Tcb poSa to, Spoa-oevTa, and 

 more decisively by the Roman belief, mentioned by 

 Pliny, that some fruits were best gathered with the 

 morning dew on them. Moreover, when Propertius 



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