172 
THE FLOWER GARDENS 
the beautiful. Their ideas of elegance were 
chaste and refined ; they never liked monstro- 
sity, and only sought, in the adornment of 
their gardens, to produce that combination of 
colours, that variety of species and contrast of 
foliage, which would result in an agreeable and 
harmonious whole, too variegated to be mono- 
tonous, and too artistically arranged to be 
glaringly unnatural. 
Among the numerous reasons which con- 
duced to render horticulture an art much 
favoured by the ancient Greeks, was the con- 
stant use of flowers in the ceremonies of 
domestic life and of religion. Crowns and 
garlands of flowers were in perpetual demand; 
for in the performance of nearly every rite, 
civil or religious, the officiating persons had 
their brows bound with certain wreaths. The 
Spartans at their festivals — the priests, 
priestesses, soothsayers, prophets, and en- 
chanters — appeared with symbolical crowns of 
leaves, seeds, or flowers on their heads. The 
actors, dancers, and spectators at the theatres 
wore them in profusion, while every guest at an 
entertainment was usually decorated more or 
less abundantly with them. The pious placed 
garlands at the doors of the temples, or near 
the altars of their gods. These practices 
called into demand an immense quantity of 
flowers fit to be employed for such purposes ; 
and, when the season no longer admitted of a 
sufficient supply, recourse was had to art, 
which, in part at least, supplied the deficiency. 
Holland thus translates a curious passage 
from Pliny on this subject. He is speaking 
of the use of crowns among the Romans. 
" Now when these garlands of flowers were 
taken up and received commonly in all places 
for a certain time, there came soon after into 
request those chaplets which are named 
Egyptian ; and after them, winter coronets, 
to wit, when the earth afforded them no 
flowers to make them, and these consisted of 
horn shavings dyed into sundry colours. And 
so, in process of time, by little and little, 
crept into Rome also the name of corolla, 
or, as one would say, petty garlands ; for that 
these winter chaplets at first were so petty 
and small ; and, not long after them, the 
costly coronets and others, corollaries, namely, 
when they are made of their leaves, and plates, 
and latten, either gilded or silvered over, or 
else set out with golden and silvered spangles, 
and so presented." 
Pollux has a list of the principal flowers 
used in crowns and garlands by the Greeks, 
which we may thus translate : — 
" They had these flowers in their chaplets : 
roses, violets, lilies, the water-mint, anemo- 
nies (or the wind-flowers), wild thyme, cro- 
cuses, hyacinths, the gold-coloured aurelia, 
the hemerocallis, (or flowers which bloom 
but for a day), the elenia (a certain herb pro- 
duced from the tears of Helena), the thernalia 
(a plant the leaves of which are lit for the 
wicks of lamps), the asphodel, the white daffodil, 
the sweet lotus, the camomile, the parthenis, 
and such other flowers as are delightful to the 
eye, and possess a sweet fragrance." 
The smilax and the cosmosandalon are 
also enumerated by Cratinus among garland 
flowers, among other uses of which was to 
crown persons returning from a voyage and 
soldiers going to battle, to adorn the triumphs 
of the conqueror, and to decorate the mar- 
riage festival. Other circumstances contri- 
buted to render flowers loved and sought 
after by the Greeks. The religious cere- 
monies they assisted to decorate ; the tradi- 
tions which gave rise to those ceremonies, 
were often in some measure connected with 
flowers, shrubs, and trees. The inhabitant 
of ancient Hellas could, whilst walking 
in his gardens, imagine himself surrounded 
with the nymphs and goddesses whose ex- 
istence formed part of his creed. The laurel 
recalled to his mind the transformation of 
Daphne ; the cypresses represented the daugh- 
ters of Eteocles, whom the gods punished 
with death because they dared to rival them 
in dancing ; the myrtle was a beautiful maiden 
of Attica, who excited, by her superior loveli- 
ness, her swiftness of foot, her endurance of 
toil, the jealousy of all the youth of the country, 
who therefore slew her to gratify their mali- 
cious envy ; the mint, simple plant as it is, 
was the mistress of Pluto; the rose-campion 
arose out of the blood of Aphrodite ; and the 
humble cabbage from the tears of Lycurgus. 
In like manner almost every flower, shrub, 
and tree which flourished in the gardens and 
pleasure-grounds of Greece, was connected 
in some manner or other with the traditions 
which were handed down from the earliest 
times, and were recollected long after man- 
kind had ceased to put faith in them. This, 
as we have said, tended to nourish and foster 
the attachment to flowers and flower gar- 
dens, which was observable all over the 
country, though the national taste also was 
addicted to this species of cultivation above all 
others. There was a taste for art in Greece, 
a taste for the elegant and beautiful, and, 
consequently, there existed a deep-rooted love 
for flowers. The climate lent its aid, and 
allowed whatever was cultivated to arrive at 
an early and rich maturity. 
From the flower garden we proceed into the 
orchard, not wholly devoted to fruit trees. The 
vegetables which we, in modern gardens, usually 
see in spots devoted exclusively to them, and 
called kitchen gardens, grew in broad beds and 
borders, while the trees were planted along the 
edges and at the corners. Instead of walls, hedges 
