48 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Sprengel, includes medicinal products from India, Egypt, and Cyrenaica, 

 a knowledge of these plants probably dating from the Asiatic conquests of 

 Alexander the Great. The list of plants used in medicine was largely added 

 to by Dioscorides, a native of Cilicia in Asia Minor, who wrote a " Materia 

 Medica" which is the most valuable source of information on the botany 

 of the ancients. He wrote about a.d. 77-78 and was a contemporary of 

 Pliny, in whose work on "Natural History"* about 1,000 plants are 

 mentioned. But even Pliny does not speak of any part of a garden being 

 set aside for medicinal plants. Apparently many medicinal products were 

 imported from Asia and Africa, and others were collected, as required, from 

 wild plants in the localities where they grew. 



Some idea of the appearance of a Roman garden may be gathered 

 from the illustration here shown of the inner garden of the house of 



Fig. 12.— Inner Garden of the House of Aulus Vettius. 



Aulus Vettius found in the ruins of Pompeii and reconstructed from the 

 ruins. Yet by this time horticulture had evidently made great strides, 

 for Theophrastus tells us that at Athens violets were freely sold in 

 winter, and Cato states that in Rome the principal citizens took great 

 interest in their gardens, and that the success of some in cultivating 

 particular plants gave rise to family names such as Cicero, from the chick 

 pea (Cicer), Fabius from the bean (Faba), Piso from the pea (Pisum), 

 Lentulus from the lentil (Lens), &c. 



At the date of the Roman invasion of Britain, horticulture in Rome, 

 especially in relation to flowers and fruits, had reached a high degree of 

 progress* Thus there were twenty-two or more varieties of apples, one 

 variety being free from pips, and thirty- six varieties of pears, and many 



* Lib. xii.-xxvi. 



