1155. Plat. de Rep. t. vi. p. 158.
1156. Xenoph. de Re Equest. ii. 2. Cf. Œconom. iii. 11. xiii. 7.
1157. Geop. xvi. i. 11.
1158. Xen. de Re Equest. 10. 6. Poll. viii. 184.
1159. The swimming powers of the war-horse were probably augmented by exercise, since we find them passing by swimming from Rhegium to Sicily. Plut. Timol. § 19. This feat, however, was nothing to that of the stags which swam from Syria to Cyprus! Ælian. De Nat. Anim. v. 56.
1160. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 32. Cf. 25, 28.
1161. Aristoph. Eq. 601. Nub. 25. Spanh. in loc. Athen. xi. 30.
1162. In carting wood from Mount Ida in the Troad oxen are at present substituted for asses, and the bodies of the vehicles they draw, in form resembling ancient cars, are constructed of wickerwork. Chandler, i. 47.
1163. Lucian. Luc. siv. Asin. § 43. Cf. Artemid. Oneirocrit. ii. 12. p. 97.
1164. Geop. xvi. 21. Varro ii. 6. 3. To account for this care it may be observed, that rich men sometimes rode, as they still do in the East, on asses superbly caparisoned and adorned with bells. Lucian. Luc. sive Asin. § 48.
1165. Il. β. 852.
1166. Athen. ix. 17. Cf. Steph. De Urb. 184. e.
1167. Athen. ix. 18.
1168. Scheffer, De Re Vehic. p. 80; et vid. Dickenson, Delph. Phænicizant. c. 10. p. 116, seq. Heresbach. De Re Rust. p. 236, sqq.
1169. Geop. xvii. 9, with the note of Niclas. Aristoph. Hist. Anim. viii. 7. 23. Cato. De Re Rust. 72. Plin. xxviii. 81.
1170. African. ap. Geop. xvii. 11.
1171. Geop. xvii. 2. 8.
1172. Buttm. Lexil. p. 86.
1173. Hesych. v. πύσσαχος.
1174. Eustath. ad Odyss. ε. p. 219. Their milk-cups were sometimes of ivy. Eurip. Fragm. Androm. 27. Athen. xi. 53. Macrob. Sat. v. 21. Cf. on the milk-pans and cheese-vats, Poll. x. 130; Theocrit. Eidyll. v. 87. Milk-pails were sometimes called πέλλαι, ἀμολγοὶ, γαλακτοδόκα, and outout of these they sometimes drank. Schol. i. 25.
1175. Cf. Il. π. 642, et Schol. Venet. Etym. Mag. 659. 41. Athen. xi. 91.
1176. Even Philostratus, while mentioning these vessels, filled to the brim with milk, on which the cream lies rich and shining, omits to furnish any hint of their form:—ψυκτῆρες γάλακτος, οὐ λευκοῦ μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ στιλπνοῦ· καὶ γὰρ στίβειν ἔοικεν, ὑπὸ τῆς ἐπιπολαζούσης αὐτῷ πιμελῆς. Icon. i. 31. p. 809.
1177. Athen. xiii. 49.
1178. Geop. xviii. 19. 4.
1179. See Beckman. Hist. of Inv. i. 372, seq. Butter is made at present in Greece by filling a skin with cream and treading on it. Chandler, ii. 245.
1180. Foes, Œconom. Hippoc. v. πικέριον, p. 306.
1181. Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 394.
1182. Varro. De Re Rust. ii. 11. 4. Colum. vii. 8. Eustath ad Il. ε. p. 472. Hesych. v. ὀπὸς.—Mœris: ὀπὸς Ἀττικοὶ, πυτία Ἕλληνες. p. 205. Cf. Aristot. Hist. Anim. iv. 21.
1183. The cheese made in this manner was called ὀπίας. Eurip. Cyclop. 136. Athen. xiv. 76. Schol. Aristoph. Vesp. 353. Dioscor. i. 183. Plin. xxiii. 63. Plut. Sympos. vi. 10.
1184. Geop. xviii. 12. These cheeses were sometimes made in box-wood moulds. Colum. vii. 8.
1185. Philostratus describes one of these delicate little cheeses freshly made and quivering like a slice of blanc-manger:—καὶ τρυφαλὶς ἐφ᾽ ἑτέρου φύλλου νεοπαγὴς, καὶ σαλέυουσα. Icon. i. 31. p. 809.
1186. Geop. xviii. 19.
1187. Geop. xviii. 20.
1188. Geop. xvii. 12. Heresbach. p. 233. a.
1189. Herod. v. 16. Athen. vii. 72. Ælian. de Nat. Anim. v. 25. Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Pac. 891.
1190. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 14. 3.
1191. Athen. iii. 59. Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 107.
1192. Il. β. 87. μ. 67. Odyss. ν. 106.
1193. Theogon. 594, seq.—Pro σίμβλοισι, quod præbet R. S., cæteri Mss. σμήνεσσι. Schæferus tamen malebat σίμβλοισιν ἐπηρεφέεσι. Gœttling. But Goguet, who has considered this passage, does not think that “hives” are meant; because, if their use had been known in the times of Hesiod, he would not have failed to leave us some directions on the subject. Origine des Loix, t. iii. p. 399. Wolff, following in the footstepsfootsteps of Heyne, gets easily over the difficulty by pronouncing the whole passage, v. 590–612, spurious. Gœttling, p. 55. Cf. Schol. Aristoph. Nub. 937. Phile, de Animal. Proprietat. c. 28. p. 87, seq.
1194. The pasturage of Hymettos, however, was, by Pausanias, regarded as second to that of the Alazones on the river Halys, where the bees were tame, and worked in common in the fields. i. 32. 1.
1195. Plin. Hist. Nat. xi. 9.
1196. Poll. i. 254. Artemid. Oneirocrit. ii. 22. p. 109.
1197. Hist. Anim. v. 22. ix. 40. Etym. Mag. 458. 44.
1198. Τοῦ δὲ μέλιτος, ἀρίστου ὄντος τῶν πάντων τοῦ Ἀττικοῦ, πολὺ βέλτιστὸν φάσι τὸ ἐν τοῖς ἀργυρέοις, ὁ καὶ ἀκαπνίστον καλοῦσιν ἀπὸ τοῦ τρόποῦ τῆς σκευασίας. Strab. ix. 2. t. ii. p. 246.—Wheler describes the modern method observed by the Athenians in taking honey without destroying the bee, but in a style so lengthy and uncouth, that I must content myself with a reference to his travels. Book vi. p. 412, seq.
1199. On the management of bees in Circassia and other countries on the Black Sea, see Pallas, Travels in Southern Russia, ii. p. 204.
1200. On the coast of the Black Sea bees sucked honey from the grape. Geop. v. 2.
1201. Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. 26, 27.
1202. Geop. xv. 2. 6.
1203. Varro, De Re Rust. iii. 16.
1204. Sibthorpe in Walpole’s Memoirs, t. ii. p. 62. Geop. xv. 2. 5. Speaking of Hymettos, Chandler observes, that it produces a succession of aromatic plants, herbs, and flowers, calculated to supply the bee with nourishment both in winter and summer, ii. p. 143. “Les montagnes (des îles) sont couvertes de thym et de lavande. Les abeilles, qui y volent par nuées, en tirent un miel qui est aussi transparent que notre gelée.” Della Rocca, Traité sur les Abeilles, t. i. 6.
1205. This plant in Greece flowers about midsummer, and those who kept bees conjectured whether honey would be plentiful or not, according as it was more or less luxuriant. Theoph. Hist. Plant. vi. 2, 3. The wild thyme of Greece was a creeping plant which was sometimes trained on poles or hedges, or even in pits, the sides of which it speedily covered. Id. vi. 7. 5.
1206. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 15. 5. The honey of modern Crete is esteemed of a good quality. Pashley, Travels, vol. i. p. 56.
1207. Echo, in the mythology, is said to have been beloved of Pan, by which she seems tacitly to be connected with the generation of Panic Terrors Polyæn. Stratagem. i. 2. 1. Offensive smells are often reckoned among the aversions of bees, but I fear without good reason. At least they have sometimes been found to select strange places wherein to deposit their treasures of sweets. In the book of Judges, chap. xiv. ver. 8, seq., it is related that, when Samson, on his way to Timnath, turned aside to view the carcass of a young lion which he had a short time previously slain, “behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcass of the lion, and he took thereof in his hands and went on eating, and came to his father and mother, and he gave them and they did eat, but he told not them that he had taken the honey out of the carcass of the lion.” Upon this passage the following may serve as a note:—“Among this pretty collection of natural curiosities, (in the cemetery of Algesiras,) one in particular attracted our attention; this was the contents of a small uncovered coffin in which lay a child, the cavity of the chest exposed and tenanted by an industrious colony of bees. The comb was rapidly progressing, and I suppose, according to the adage of the poet, they were adding sweets to the sweet, if not perfume to the violet.” Napier, Excursions on the Shores of the Mediterranean, v. i. 127.
1208. Georg. iv. 50, with the commentaries of Servius and Philargyrius; and Varro, De Re Rust. iii. 16.
1209. Cf. Geop. xv. 2, 3, 4.
1210. Vir. Georg. iv. 34, seq. Varro, iii. 16. Colum. ix. 2–7. Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 295. Vesp. 241. Callim. Hymn. i. 50. Cf. Wheler, Travels into Greece. Book vi. p. 411.
1211. Geop. xv. 2. 7. Cf. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 10. 1.
1212. Geop. xv. 2. 8. Varro, iii. 16. Colum. ix. 14. Pallad. vii. 8. Cato. 81.
1213. Plin. xxi. 47.
1214. At present the hives, we are told, are set on the ground in rows enclosed within a low wall. Chandler, ii. 143.
1215. Phile gives a long list of the bees’ foes, which begins as follows:
Iamb. De Animal. Proprietat. c. 30, p. 104, seq.
1216. Arist. Hist. Anim. viii. 5. Plin. Nat. Hist. viii. 54.
1217. Besides this enemy the bees of America have another still more audacious, that is to say, the monkey, which either carries off their combs or crushes them for the purpose of dipping his tail in the honey, which he afterwards sucks at his leisure. Schneider, Observ. sur Ulloa, t. ii. p. 199.—See a very amusing chapter on the enemies of the bee in Della Rocca, iii. 219, sqq.
1218. Sibthorpe in Walp. Mem. i. 75. The practice, moreover, of stealing hives was not unknown to the ancients. Plat. De Legg. t. viii. p. 104.
1219. Colum. ix. 6. Della Rocca, however, considers this kind as equal to any other, except that it is more fragile. t. ii. p. 17.
1220. Geop. xv. 2. 15.
1221. De Re Rust. iii. 16, 18. Colum. ix. 9. 6. Hist. Anim. v. 19, 22. Xenoph. Œconom. vii. 32.
1222. Cf. Geop. xv. 2, 6.
1223. On the humble bee, see Sch. Aristoph. Acharn. 831.
1224. Varro, De Re Rust. iii. 16.
1225. Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. 27.
1226. Arist. Hist. Anim. v. 21. Cf. Xenoph. Œcon. xvii. 14, seq.
1227. Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 425. In the island of Cuba, where the tame bee was originally introduced by the English, it has been found to swarm and multiply with incredible rapidity, each hive sometimes sending forth two swarms per month, so that the mountains are absolutely filled with them. This rapid increase seems to have taken place chiefly in the neighbourhood of the sugar plantations, which they were long since supposed to deteriorate by extracting too much honey from the cane. Don Ulloa, Memoires Philosophiques, &c., t. i. p. 185. In North America where bees are known among the natives by the name of the “English Flies,” they betray an invariable tendency for migrating southward. Kalm. t. ii. 427. Schneider, Observ. sur Ulloa, ii. 198.
1228. Hist. Anim. v. 22. Orion rises on the 9th of July, Gœttling ad Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 598. Arcturus, 18th September. Id. 610.
1229. A similar opinion has been sometimes maintained also by the moderns:—“I have heard,” observes Lord Bacon, “from one that was industrious in husbandry, that the labour of the bee is about the wax, and that he hath known in the beginning of May, honey combs empty of honey, and within a fortnight when the sweet dews fall filled like a cellar.”—Sylva Sylvarum, 612.
1230. Arist. Hist. Anim. v. 22. In the Crimea wild bees are found in great abundance in the clefts and caverns of the mountains.—Pallas, Travels in Southern Russia, iii. 324. Among the numerous species of wild bees found in America there is one which pre-eminently deserves to be introduced into Europe and brought under the dominion of man. This bee does not, like the ordinary kind, deposit its honey in combs but in separate waxen cells about the size and shape of a pigeon’s egg. As the honey of this bee is of an excellent quality, many persons in South America have been at the pains to tame its maker, whose labours have proved extremely profitable.—Schneider, Observ. sur Ulloa, ii. 200.
1231. Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. 27. 24. In Attica, the honey was taken about the summer solstice; at Rome about the festival of Vulcan, in the month of August.—Winkelmann. Hist. de l’Art, i. 65. But commentators are not at all agreed respecting the meaning of Pliny, whom this writer relies upon. xi. 15. Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 797.
1232. Arist. Hist. Anim. ix. 27. 19. Sch. Aristoph. Eq. 752. Cf. Meurs. Græc. Ludib. p. 13.
1233. Varro, de Re Rust. iii. 16.
1234. A gentleman in Surrey desirous of knowing his own bees, when he should chance to meet them in the fields, touched their wings with vermilion as they were issuing from the hive. Being one fine day in summer on a visit at Hampstead, he found them thickly scattered among the wild flowers on the heath.
1235. De Re Rust. iii. 16.
1236. Preserved by Photius. Biblioth. cod. 278. p. 529. b.
1237. Herod. vii. 31. Cf. iv. 194.
1238. On the origin of the honeydew, see the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture, No. XLIV. p. 499, sqq.
1239. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 7. 6. Cf. Hes. Opp. et Dies, 232. seq. Cf. Lord Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum. 496.
1240. Schneid. Comm. ad Theoph. Frag. t. iv. p. 822.
CHAPTER II.
GARDEN AND ORCHARD.
Lord Bacon, who loved to be surrounded by plants and trees and flowers, delivers it as his opinion, that the scientific culture of gardens affords a surer mark of the advance of civilisation than any improvement in the science of architecture, since men, he observes, enjoyed the luxury of magnificent palaces before that of picturesque and well-ordered garden-grounds. This, likewise, was the conviction of the ancient Greeks,[1241] in whose literature we everywhere discover vestiges of a passion for that voluptuous solitude which men taste in artificial and secluded plantations, amid flower-beds and arbours and hanging vines and fountains and smooth shady walks. No full description, however, of an Hellenic garden has survived; even the poets have contented themselves with affording us glimpses of their “studious walks and shades.” We must, therefore, endeavour, by the aid of scattered hints, chance expressions, fragments, and a careful study of the natural and invariable productions of the country, to work out for ourselves a picture of what the gardens of Peisistratos, or Cimon, or Pericles, or Epicurus, whom Pliny[1242] denominates the magister hortorum, or any other Grecian gentleman, must in the best ages have been.
That portion of the ground[1243] which was devoted to the culture of sweet-smelling shrubs and flowers, usually approached and projected inwards between the back wings of the house, so that from the windows the eye might alight upon the rich and variegated tints of the parterres[1244] intermingled with verdure, while the evening and morning breeze wafted clouds of fragrance into the apartments.[1245] The lawns, shrubberies, bosquets, thickets, arcades, and avenues, were, in most cases, laid out in a picturesque though artificial manner, the principal object appearing to have been to combine use with magnificence, and to enjoy all the blended hues and odours which the plants and trees acclimated in Hellas could afford. Protection, in summer, from the sun’s rays, is, in those southern latitudes, an almost necessary ingredient of pleasure, and, therefore, numerous trees, as the cedar,[1246] the cypress, the black and white poplar,[1247] the ash, the linden, the elm, and the platane, rose here and there in the grounds, in some places singly, elsewhere in clumps, uniting their branches above, and affording a cool and dense shade. Beneath these umbrageous arches the air was further refrigerated by splashing fountains,[1248] whose waters, through numerous fair channels, straight or winding, as the use demanded of them required,[1249] spread themselves over the whole garden, refreshing the eye and keeping up a perpetual verdure. Copses of myrtles, of roses, of agnus-castus,[1250] and other odoriferous shrubs intermingled, clustering round a pomegranate-tree, were usually placed on elevated spots,[1251] that, being thus exposed to the winds, they might the more freely diffuse their sweetness. The spaces between trees were sometimes planted with roses,[1252] and lilies, and violets, and golden crocuses;[1253] and sometimes presented a breadth of smooth, close, green sward, sprinkled with wild-flowers, as the violet and the blue veronica,[1254] the pink, and the pale primrose, the golden motherwort, the cowslip, the daisy, the pimpernel, and the periwinkle. In many gardens the custom was, to plant each kind of tree in separate groups, and each species of flower-bed also had, as now in Holland,[1255] a distinct space assigned to it; so that there were beds of white violets,[1256] of irises, of the golden cynosure,[1257] of hyacinths, of ranunculuses, of the blue campanula, or Canterbury bells, of white gilliflowers, carnations, and the branchy asphodel.
One of the principal causes which induced the Greeks to attend to the culture of ornamental shrubs and flowers, was the perpetual use made of them in crowns and garlands.[1258] Nearly all their ceremonies, whether civil or religious, were performed by individuals wearing certain wreaths about their brow. Thus the Spartans, during the Promachian festival,[1259] shaded their foreheads with plaited tufts of reeds—priests and priestesses, soothsayers,[1260] prophets, and enchanters, appeared in their several capacities before the gods in temples or sacred groves with symbolical crowns encircling their heads, as the priests of Hera, at Samos, with laurel,[1261] and those of Aphrodite with myrtle,[1262] while the statues of the divinities themselves were often crowned with circlets of these “earthly stars.” In the festival of Europa, at Corinth, a crown of myrtle, thirty feet in circumference, was borne in procession through the city.[1263] The actors, dancers, and spectators of the theatre usually appeared crowned with flowers,[1264] as did every guest at an entertainment, while lovers suspended a profusion of garlands on the doors of their mistresses, as did the devout on the temples and altars of the gods.[1265]
Most of the flowers cultivated, moreover, suggested poetical or mythological associations; for the religion of Greece combined itself with nearly every object in nature, more particularly with the beautiful, so that the Greek, as he strolled through his garden, had perpetually before his fancy a succession of fables connected with nymphs and goddesses and the old hereditary traditions of his county. Thus the laurel recalled the tale and transformation of Daphnè,[1266] the object of Apollo’s love—the cypresses or graces of the vegetable kingdom,[1267] were the everlasting representatives of Eteocles’ daughters, visited by death because they dared to rival the goddesses in dancing—the myrtle[1268] was a most beautiful maiden of Attica, fairer than all her countrywomen, swifter and more patient of toil than the youth, who therefore slew her through envy—the pine[1269] was the tall and graceful mistress of Pan and Boreas—the mint that of Pluto—while the rose-campion sprung from the bath of Aphrodite, and the humble cabbage from the tears of Lycurgus, the enemy of Dionysos.[1270]
It has sometimes been supposed,[1271] that the flower which constitutes the greatest ornament of gardens was wholly unknown in the early ages of Greece. But this theory, imagined for the purpose of destroying the claims of the Anacreontic fragments to be considered genuine,[1272] is entirely overthrown by the testimony of several ancient writers, more particularly Herodotus,[1273] who speaks of the rose of sixty leaves, as found in the gardens of Midas in Thrace, at the foot of the snowy Bermios. Elswhere, too, he compares the flower of the red Niliac lotus[1274] to the rose; and Stesichoros,[1275] an older poet than Anacreon, distinctly mentions chaplets composed of this flower.
Homer,[1276] too, it is evident, was familiar with the rose, to whose fragrant petals he compares the fingers of the morning, and not, as has been imagined, to the blood-red flower of the wild pomegranate tree.[1277]
According, moreover, to a tradition preserved to later times, the seasons of the year, which in remote antiquity were but three, they symbolically represented by a rose, an ear of corn, and an apple.[1278] This division is thought to have been borrowed from the Egyptians, in whose country, however, the apple was never sufficiently naturalised to be taken as an emblem of one of the seasons of the year.
But, at whatever period the rose began to be cultivated, it evidently, as soon as known, shared with the violet the admiration of the Athenian people, whose extensive plantations of this most fragrant shrub recall to mind the rose gardens of the Fayoum, or Serinaghur. The secret, moreover, was early discovered of hastening or retarding their maturity, so as to obtain an abundant supply through every month in the year.[1279] Occasionally, too, numbers of rosebuds were laid among green barleystalks, plucked up by the roots, in unglazed amphoræ, to be brought forth and made to blow when wanted. Others deposited them between layers of the same material on the ground, or dipped them in the liquid dregs of olives. Another mode of preserving the rose was exceedingly curious,—cutting off the top of a large standing reed, and splitting it down a little way, they inserted a number of rosebuds in the hollow, and then bound it softly round and atop with papyrus in order to prevent their fragrance from exhaling.[1280] How many varieties of this flower[1281] were possessed by the ancients it is now, perhaps, impossible to determine; but they were acquainted with the common, the white, and the moss rose, the last, in Aristotle’s[1282] opinion, the sweetest, together with the rose of a hundred leaves,[1283] celebrated by the Persian poets. Even the wild rose was not wholly inodorous in Greece.[1284] Roses were artificially blanched by being exposed while unfolding to powerful and repeated fumigations with sulphur.[1285] The roses which grew on a dry soil were supposed to be the sweetest, while their fragrance was augmented by planting garlic near the root.[1286] To cause them to bloom in January, or in early spring (for even in the most southern parts of Greece the rose season only commences in April)[1287] various means were resorted to; sometimes, the bushes were watered twice a-day during the whole summer; on other occasions, a shallow trench was dug at a distance of about eighteen inches round the bush, into which warm water was poured morning and evening;[1288] while a third, and, perhaps, the surest, method was to plant them in pots, or baskets, which, during the winter months, were placed in sheltered sunny spots by day,[1289] and carried into the house at night; afterwards, when the season was sufficiently advanced, these portable gardens were buried in the earth.
Another favorite denizen of Hellenic gardens was the lily, which, probably, introduced from Suza or from Egypt, beheld the virginal snow of its bells compelled, by art, to put on various hues, as deep red and purple,[1290]—the former, by infusing, before planting, cinnabar into the bulb,—the latter, by steeping it in the lees of purple wine. This flower naturally begins to bloom[1291] just as the roses are fading; but, to produce a succession of lilies at different seasons, some were set near the surface, which grew up and blossomed immediately, while others were buried at different depths, according to the times at which they were required to flower.
Along with these, about the dank borders of streams or fountains, grew the favourite flower of the Athenian people, purple, double, white, and gold,[1292]