Book I. 



GARDENS OF ANTIQUITY. 



7 



24. The vale of Tejnpdy however, as described in the third book of iElian's vari- 

 ous history, and the public gardens of Athens according to Plutarch, prove that their phi- 

 losophers and great men were alive to the beauties of verdant scenery. The aeadeinus 

 or public garden of Athens, Plutarch informs us, was originally a rough uncultivated 

 spot, till planted by the general Cimon, who conveyed streams of water to it, and laid it 

 out in shady groves, v/itli gymnasia, or places of exercise, and philosophic v/alks. 

 Among the trees were the olive, plane, and elm ; and the two last sorts had attained to 

 such extraordinary size, that at the siege of Athens by Sylla, in the war with Mithridates, 

 they were selected to be cut down, to supply warlike engines. In the account of these 

 gardens by Pausanias we learn, that they were highly elegant, and decorated with temples, 

 altars, tombs, statues, monuments, and towers ; that ainong the tombs were those of 

 Pirithous, Theseus, CEdipus, and Adrastes; and at the entrance was the first altar 

 dedicated to love. 



25. The 2)assages of the Greek writers which relate to gardens have been amply illustrated 

 by the learned German antiquarian Bffiltinger {Racemazionen zur Gartenkunst der 

 Allen) ; on which it may be remarked, that the qualities chiefly enlarged on are, shade, 

 coolness, freshness, breezes, fragra,nce, and repose -— elFects of gardening which are felt 

 and relished at an earlier period of human civilisation than picturesque beauty, or other 

 poetical and comparatively artificial associations with external scenery ; for though 

 gardening as a merely useful art may claim prioi'ity to every other, yet as an art of 

 imagination, it is one of the last which has been brought to perfection. In fact, its 

 existence as such an art, depends on the previous existence of pastoral poetry and 

 mental cultivation ; for what is nature to an uncultivated mind ? 



-Sect. VII. Gardening in the ages of Antiquity, as to Fruits, Culinary Productions, and 



Flowers. 



26. The first vegetable productioyi which attracted maris attention as an article of food, 

 is supposed to have been the fruit of some tree ; and the idea of removing such a tree to a 

 spot, and enclosing and cultivating it near his habitation, is thought to be abundantly 

 natural to man, and to have first given rise to gardens. All the writers of antiquity agree 

 in putting the fig at the head of the fruit-trees that were first cultivated. The vine is the 

 next in order, the fruit of which serves not only for food, like that of the fig, but also for 

 drink. Noah the Jewish Bacchus, and Osiris the Bacchus of the Egyptians and Greeks, 

 are alike placed in the very first age of the postdiluvian world. The almond and pome- 

 granate were early cultivated in Canaan (Gen. xliii. 5. 11- and Numb. xx. 5.), and it 

 appears by the complaints of the Israelites in the wilderness, that the fig, grape, pomegra- 

 nate, and melon, were known in Egypt from time immemorial. 



27. The first herbage made use of by man, would be the most succulent leaves or stalks 

 which the surface around him aflPorded ; of these every country has some plants which are 

 succulent even in a wild state, as the chenopodeae. Sea cale, and asparagus, were known to 

 the ,Greeks from the earliest ages, and still alsound in Greece, the former on the sandy plains, 

 and the latter on the sea shores. One of the laws of Solon prohibits women from eating 

 crambe in child-bed. Of the green seeds of herbage plants, the bean and other legu- 

 minoseae wei-e evidently the first in use, and it is singular that Pythagoras should have 

 forbidden the use of beans to his pupils because they were so much of the nature of flesh ; 

 or, in the language of modern chemistry, because they contained so much vegeto-animal 

 matter. 



28. The first roots, or rootlike parts of plants made use of, must have been some of the 

 surface bulbs, as the onion, {Nunib. xi. 5. ) and the edible crocus [C. aureus,- Fl. Grcec) of 

 Syria. T 'nderground bulbs and tubers, as the orchis, potatoe, and earthnut, would be 

 next discovered : and ramose roots, as those of the lucerne in Persia, and arracacha (Ligus- 

 ticum sp. ?) in Mexico, would be eagerly gnawed wherever they could be got at. Bulbs of 

 culture, a^ the turnip, would be of much later discovery, and must at first have been found 

 only in temperate climates. 



29. The use of plants for preternatural, religious, funereal, medical, and scientific pur- 

 poses, like every other use, is of the remotest antiquity. Rachel demanded from her 

 sister the mandrakes {Mandragora officinalis, W.) (^o-. 1. from the Flora Grceca), whose 

 roots are thought to resemble the human form, which Reuben had brought from the fields ; 

 impressed, as she no doubt was, with the idea of the efficacy of that plant against sterility. 

 Bundles of flowers covered the tables of the Greeks, and were worn during repasts, be- 

 cause the plants, of which they consisted, were supposed to possess the virtue of preserving 

 the wearer from the fumes of wine, of refreshing the thinking faculty, preserving the 

 purity of ideas, and the gaiety of the spirits. Altars were strewed with flowers both 

 by Jews and Greeks ; they were placed on high places, and under trees, as old clothes 

 are still sacrificed on the trunks of the Platanus in Georgia and Persia. God appeared 

 to Moses in a bush. Jacob was embalmed, in all probability, with aromatic herbs. 



B 4 



