OUR QUEEN OF BEAUTY 



39 



of wealth and Romans of taste were as anxious as 

 Horace, 



* Neu desint epulis rosae ; ' ^ 



and when the Rose-trees of Paestum had finished 

 their autumnal bloom, they were succeeded by 

 flowers artificially produced by means of hot water. 

 Cleopatra, according to Athenseus, had the floor 

 covered with them a foot and a half in thickness; 

 and Nero is said to have expended at one feast 

 nearly ^30,000 in Roses — a nice little order for his 

 nurseryman. In their joys and in their sorrows the 

 Rose was their favourite flower, and the Corona con- 

 vivialiSy the Corona miptialis , and the Corona funebriSy 

 were wreathed alike from the Rose. They made wine 

 from Roses, conserves from Roses, perfumes,^ oil, and 

 medicine from Roses. The Rosa canina took its 

 name, it is said, like the Y^wo^olov of the Greeks, 

 from its supposed power to cure hydrophobia ; 

 and they used it, finally, in the embalming of 



^ Sir Walter Scott, in one of his notes to * Guy Mannering,' states 

 that the metaphysical and philosophical Scotch judge, Lord Monboddo, 

 in his enthusiasm for classical habits, used to give entertainments in St 

 John's Street, Canongate, at which there was a circulation of excellent 

 Bourdeaux in flasks, garlanded with roses, which were also strewed on 

 the table after the manner of Horace. 



2 The historians of perfumery tell us that the Rose was the first 

 flower from which perfume was made, and that Avicenna, an illustrious 

 Arabian doctor, w^ho discovered the art of extracting the perfume of 

 flowers by distillation, made his first experiment upon Rosa centifolia, 

 and so invented Rose-water 



