Boot I. 



GARDENS OF THE ROMANS. 



9 



S2. It is said that the broicsing of a goat gave the first idea of pruning the vine, as chance^ 

 ^^hich had set fire to a rose-tree, according to Acosta [Histoire Kat. des Indcs), gave 

 the first idea of pruning the rose. Theophrastus informs us that fire was applied to the 

 rose-trees in Greece to enrich them, and that without that precaution they would bear no 

 flowers. 



33. The o)-igin of the art of grafting has been very unsatisfactorily accounted for by 

 Pliny and Lucretius, Tlie crossing, rubbing, and subsequent growing together of 

 two branches of a crowded tree or thicket, are more likely to have originated the 

 idea ; but Avhen this was first noticed, and how grafting came to be used for the 

 amelioration of fruits, will probably ever remain a secret. 3Iacrobius, a Roman author 

 of the fifth century, according to the taste of Iiis time, says, Saturn taught the art to the 

 inhabitants of Latium. It does not appear to have been known to the Persians, or the 

 Greeks, in the time of Homer, or Hesiod ; nor, according to Chardin, is it known to the 

 Persians at this day. Grafting M as not known in China till very lately ; it was shown 

 to a few gardeners by the INIissionarics, as it was to the natives of Peru and South 

 America, by the Spaniards. Some, however, infer from a passage in Manlius, that 

 it may have been mentioned in some of Hesiod's writings, which are lost. 



34. The culture of fruits and culinary plants must have been preceded by a considerable 

 degree of civilisation. ]Moses gave some useful directions to his people on the culture of the 

 vine and olive. For the first three years, they are not to be allowed to ripen any fruit ; the 

 produce of the fourth year is for the Lord or his priests ; and it is not till the fifth year 

 that it may be eaten by the planter. This must have contributed materially to their 

 strength and establishment in the soil. The fruit-trees in the gai-dens of Alcinous were 

 planted in quincunx ; there were hedges for shelter and security, and the pot-herbs and 

 flowers were planted in beds ; the whole so contrived as to be irrigated. Melons in Persia 

 ■were manured with pigeon's dung, as they are to this day in that country. After being 

 sown, the melon tribe produce a bulk of food sooner than any other plant; hence 

 the value of this plant in seasons of scarcity, and the high price of doves' dung during 

 the famine in Samaria (2 Alngs, vi. 25.), when a cab, not quite thi-ee pints of corn mea- 

 sure, cost five pieces of silver. 



Chap. II. 



Chronological History of Gardoiing, from the time f the Boman J^ngs, in the sixth century 

 B. C, to the Decline and Full of the Empire in the fifth centwy of our cera. 



33. Gardening among the Romans we shall consider, 1. As an art of design or taste ; 

 2. In respect to the culture of flowers and plants of ornament : 3. As to its products 

 for the kitchen and the dessert : 4. As to the propagation of timber-trees and hedges : and 

 5. As a science, and as to the authors it has produced. In general it will be found 

 that the Romans copied their gardening from the Greeks, as the latter did from the 

 Persians, and that gardening like every other art extended with civilisation from east to 

 west. 



Sect. I. Boman Gardening as an Art of Design and Taste. 



36. The first mention of a garden in the Boman History is that of Tarquinius Super- 

 bus, B. C. 534, by Livy and Dionysius Halicarnassus. From what they state, it can 

 only be gathered tliat it was adjoining to the royal palace, and abounded M ith flowers, 

 chiefly roses and poppies. The next in the order of time are those of Lucullus, situated 

 near Baia?, in the bay of Naples. They were of a magnificence and expense rivalling 

 that of the eastern monarchs ; and prociu-ed to this general, the epithet of the Roman 

 Xerxes. They consisted of vast edifices projecting into the sea ; of immense artificial 

 elevations ; of plains formed where mountains fomierly stood ; and of vast pieces of 

 water, which it was the fashion of tliat time to dignify with the pompous titles of Kilus 

 and Euripus. Lucullus had made several expeditions to the eastern part of Asia, and 

 it is probable, he had there contracted a taste for tliis sort of magnificence. Varro 

 ridicules tliese works for their amazing sumptuosit^' ; and Cicero makes his friend Atticus 

 hold cheap those magnificent waters, in comparison with the natural stream of the river 

 Fibrenus, where a small island accidentally divided it. [De Legibus, lib. ii. Lucullus, 

 how ever, had the merit of introducing the cheriy, the peach, and the apricot from the 

 East, a benefit which still remains to mankind. {Plutarch in vita Luculli ; Sallust ; and 

 Varro de Re Rtistica.) 



37. Of the gardens of the Augustan age of Virgil and Horace, generally thought to be 

 that in which taste and elegance were eminently conspicuous, we know but little. In a 

 garden described by the former poet in his Georgics i^lib. iv. 121.), he places only 



