the pansy,[1294] “freaked with jet;” the purple cyperus, the iris, the water-mint,[1295] and hyacinth,[1296] and the narcissus,[1297] and the willow-herb, and the blue speedwell, and the marsh-marigold, or, brave bassinet, and the jacinth, and early daffodil,
A netting of wild thyme[1298] tufted with sweet mint, and marjoram,[1299] which, when crushed by the foot, yielded the most delicious fragrance, embraced the sunny hillocks, while here and there singly, or in beds, grew a profusion of other herbs and flowers, some prized for their medicinal virtues, others for their beauty, others for their delicate odour, as the geranium, the spike-lavender, the rosemary,[1300] with its purple and white flowers, the basil,[1301] the flower-gentle, the hyssop, the white privet, the cytisus, the sweet marjoram, the rose-campion, or columbine,[1302] the yellow amaryllis, and the celandine. Here, too,
with the balm-gentle, the red, the purple, and the coronal anemone,[1304] the convolvulus, yellow, white, pale pink, and blue, together with our Lady’s-gloves, the flower of the Trinity, southernwood,[1305] and summer-savory,[1306] œnanthe,[1307] gith, the silver sage,[1308] Saint Mary’s thistle, and the amaranth, while high above all rose the dark pyramidal masses of the rhododendron,[1309] with its gigantic clusters of purple flowers.
How many of the lovely evergreens[1310] that abound in Greece were usually cultivated in a single garden, we possess no means of ascertaining, though all appear occasionally to have been called in to diversify the picture. The myrtle,[1311] whose deep blue berries were esteemed a delicacy,[1312] in some places rose into a tree, while elsewhere it was planted thick, and bent and fashioned into bowers,[1313] which, when sprinkled with its snowy blossoms, combined, perhaps, with those of the jasmine, the eglantine, and the yellow tufts of the broad-leaved philyrea,[1314] constituted some of the most beautiful objects in a Greek paradise. Thickets of the tamarisk,[1315] the strawberry-tree,[1316] the juniper, the box, the bay, the styrax, the andrachne, and the white-flowered laurel, in whose dark leaves the morning dew collects and glistens in the sun like so many tiny mirrors of burnished silver, varied the surface of the lawn, connecting the bowers, and the copses, and the flower beds, and the grassy slopes with those loftier piles of verdure, consisting of the pine tree, the smilax, the cedar, the carob, the maple,[1317] the ash, the elm tree, the platane,[1318] and the evergreen oak which here and there towered in the grounds. In many places the vine shot up among the ranges of elms or platanes, and stretched its long twisted arm from trunk to trunk, like so many festoons of intermingled leaves and tendrils, and massive clusters of golden or purple grapes.[1319] Alternating, perhaps, with the lovely favourite of Dionysos, the blue and yellow clematis[1320] suspended their living garlands around the stems, or along the boughs of the trees, in union or contrast with the dodder, or the honeysuckle, or the delicate and slender briony. And, if perchance a silver fir, with its bright yellow flowers,[1321] formed part of the group, large pendant clusters of mistletoe, the food sometimes of the labouring ox,[1322] might frequently be seen swinging thick among its branches. In some grounds was probably cultivated the quercus suber,[1323] or cork tree, with bark four or five inches thick, triennially stripped off,[1324] after which it grows again with renewed vigour. Occasionally, where streams and rivulets[1325] found their way through the grounds, the black and white poplar, the willow, and the lentiscus, with a variety of tufted reeds, crowded about the margin, here and there shading and concealing the waters.
Proceeding now into the orchard we find, that, instead of walls, it was, sometimes at least, if it touched on the confines of another man’s grounds, surrounded by hedges[1326] of black and white thorn, brambles, and barberry bushes, as at present[1327] by impenetrable fences of the Indian cactus.[1328] On the banks of these hedges, both inside and out, were found, peculiar tribes of plants and wild flowers, in some places enamelling the smooth close turf, elsewhere flourishing thickly in dank masses of verdure, or climbing upwards and interlacing themselves with the lofty and projecting thorns, such as the enchanter’s nightshade, the euphorbia, the iris tuberosa, the red-flowered valerian, the ground-ivy,[1329] the physalis somnifera, with its coral red seeds in their inflated calyces,[1330] the globularia, the creeping heliotrope, the penny-cress,[1331] the bright yellow scorpion-flower, and the broad-leaved cyclamen or our Lady’s-seal, with pink flower, light green leaf, veined with white and yellow beneath. The ancient Parthians surrounded their gardens with hedges of a fragrant, creeping shrub denominated philadelphos or love-brother,[1332] whose long suckers they interwove into a kind of network forming a sufficient protection against man and beast. In mountainous districts, where rain-floods were to be guarded against, the enclosures frequently consisted of walls of loose stones,[1333] as is still the case in Savoy on the edge of mountain torrents.
It was moreover the custom, both in Greece and Italy, to plant, on the boundary line of estates, rows of olives or other trees,[1334] which not only served to mark the limits of a man’s territory, but shed an air of beauty over the whole country. A proof of this practice prevailing in Attica, has with much ingenuity[1335] been brought forward from the “Frogs,” where Bacchos, addressing the poet Æschylus in the shades, observes “It will be all right provided your anger does not transport you beyond the olives.” It may likewise be remarked that in olive-grounds,[1336] the trees, excepting the sacred ones called moriæ, were always planted in straight lines, from twenty-five to thirty feet[1337] apart, because, in order to ripen the fruit,[1338] it is necessary that the wind should be able freely to play upon it from all sides. And further because they delight in a warm dry air like that of Libya, Cilicia,[1339] and Attica, the best olive-grounds were generally supposed to be those which occupied the rapid slopes of hills where the soil is naturally stony and light. The oil of the plains was commonly coarse and thick.
Among these olive grounds in summer, the song of the tettix[1340] is commonly heard; for this musical insect loves the olive, which, like the sant of the Arabian desert, yields but a thin and warm shade.[1341] The tettix, in fact, though never found in an unwooded country, as in the plains about Cyrene, equally avoids the dense shade of the woods.[1342] Here likewise[1343] are found the blackbird, the roller, and three distinct species of butcher-bird—the small grey, the ash-coloured, and the redheaded.
In an Attic orchard were most of the trees reared in England, together with many which will not stand the rigour of our climate.—The apple,[1344] cultivated with peculiar care in the environs of Delphi and Corinth; the pear,[1345] the cherry from Cerasos on the southern shore of the Black Sea,[1346] which sometimes grew to the height of nearly forty feet,[1347] the damascene,[1348] and the common plum. Along with these were likewise to be found the quince,[1349] the apricot, the peach, the nectarine, the walnut, the chestnut, the filbert, introduced from Pontos,[1350] the hazel nut, the medlar, and the mulberry, which, according to Menander, is the earliest fruit of the year.[1351] With these were intermingled the fig, white, purple, and red, the pomegranate,[1352] from the northern shores of Africa, the orange,[1353] still planted under artificial shelter at Lemnos, the citron, the lemon,[1354] the date-palm,[1355] the pistachio, the almond, the service, and the cornel-tree.
As these gardens were arranged with a view no less to pleasure than to profit, the trees were planted in lines, which, when sufficiently close, formed a series of umbrageous avenues, opening here into the lawn and there into the vineyard, which generally formed part of a Greek gentleman’s grounds. And such an orchard decked in its summer pride with foliage of emerald and fruit, ruddy, purple, and gold, the notes of the thrush, the nightingale,[1356] the tettix, with the “amorous thrill of the green-finch,”[1357] floating through its boughs, and the perfume of the agnus-castus, the myrtle, the rose, and the violet, wafting richly on all sides, was a very paradise.
Not unfrequently, common foot-paths traversed these orchards and vineyards, in which case the passers-by were customarily, if not by law, permitted to pick and eat the fruit,[1358] which seems also from the account of our Saviour to have been the practice in Judæa. The contrary is the case in modern Europe. In Burgundy and Switzerland, where pathways traverse vineyards, it is not uncommon to see the grapes smeared with something resembling white lime which children are assured is a deadly poison. This, while in the country, I regarded as a mere stratagem, intended to protect the vineyards from depredation, though there seems after all to be too much reason to believe the nefarious practice to exist in several localities. At least two children were recently killed at Foix by eating poisoned grapes on the way-side.
The Greeks placed much of their happiness in spots like those we have been describing, as may be inferred from such of their fabulous traditions,[1359] as relate to the garden of the Hesperides,[1360] the gardens of Midas, with their magnificent roses, and those of Alcinoös,[1361] which still shed their fragrance over the pages of the Odyssey. From the East, no doubt, they obtained, along with their noblest fruit-trees, the art of cultivating them, and, perhaps, that sacred tradition of the Garden of Eden, preserved in the Scriptures, formed the basis of many a Hellenic legend.[1362] The Syrians acquired much celebrity among the ancients for their knowledge of gardening, in which, according to modern travellers, they still excel. Of the manner of cultivating fruit-trees in the earlier ages very little is known. No doubt they soon discovered that some will thrive better in certain soils and situations than in others, and profited by the discovery; but the art of properly training and grafting trees is comparatively modern.[1363]
No mention of it occurs in the Pentateuch, though Moses there gives directions how to manage an orchard. For the first three years the blossoms were not to be suffered to ripen into fruit, and even in the fourth all that came was sacred to the Lord. From the fifth year, onward, they might do with it what they pleased. Of these regulations the intention was to prevent the early exhaustion of the trees. Homer, also, is silent on the practice of grafting, nor does any mention of it occur in the extant works of Hesiod, though Manilius[1364] refers to his poems in proof of the antiquity of the practice. By degrees, however, it got into use;[1365] and, in the age of Aristotle,[1366] was already common, as at present almost everywhere, save in Greece,[1367] since no fruit was esteemed excellent unless the tree had been grafted. Some few of the rules they observed in this process may be briefly noticed.[1368] Trees with a thick rind were grafted in the ordinary way, and sometimes by inserting the graft between the bark and the wood, which was called infoliation.[1369] Inoculation, also, or introducing the bud of one tree into the rind of another, was common among Greek gardeners.[1370] They were extremely particular in their choice of stocks.[1371] Thus the fig was grafted only on the platane[1372] and the mulberry; the mulberry on the chestnut,[1373] the beech, the apple, the terebinth, the wild pear, the elm, and the white poplar, (whence white mulberries;) the pear on the pomegranate, the quince, the mulberry, (whence red pears,) the almond, and the terebinth; apples[1374] on all sorts of wild pears and quinces, (whence the finest apples called by the Athenians Melimela,)[1375] on damascenes, also, and vice versâ, and on the platane, (whence red apples.)[1376] Another method of communicating a blush to this fruit was to plant rose-bushes round the root of the tree.[1377] The walnut was grafted on the strawberry-tree only;[1378] the pomegranate on the myrtle[1379] and the willow; the laurel on the cherry[1380] and the ash; the white peach on the damascene and the almond; the damascene on the wild pear, the quince, and the apple; chestnuts on the walnut, the beech, and the oak;[1381] the cherry on the terebinth, and the peach; the quince on the oxyacanthus; the myrtle on the willow; and the apricot on the damascene, and the Thasian almond-tree. The vine, also, was grafted on a cherry and a myrtle-stock, which produced, in the first case, grapes in spring,[1382] in the second, a mixed fruit, between the myrtle-berry and the grape.[1383] When the gardener desired to obtain black citrons, he inserted a citron-graft into an apple-stock, and, if red, into a mulberry-stock.
Citrons were likewise occasionally grafted on the pomegranate-tree. In the present day, the almond, the chestnut, the fig, the orange, and the citron, with many other species of fruit-trees, are no longer thought to require grafting.[1384]
In illustration of the prolific virtue of the Hellenic soil it may be mentioned, that young branchless pear-trees, transplanted from Malta to the neighbourhood of Athens, in the autumn of 1830, were the next year covered thick with fruit, which hung even upon the trunk like hanks of onions.[1385]
Notwithstanding the early season of the year at which Gaia distributes her gifts in Greece, numerous arts were resorted to for anticipating the productions of summer,[1386] though of most of them the nature is unknown. It is certain, however, that they possessed the means of ripening fruits throughout the winter, either by hothouses or other contrivances equally efficacious.[1387] During the festival celebrated in honour of the lover of Aphrodite, the seeds of flowers were sown in those silver pots, or baskets, called the gardens of Adonis,[1388] and with artificial heat and constant irrigation compelled to bloom in eight days. Among the modern Hindus corn is still forced to spring up in a few days, by a similar process, during the festival of Gouri.[1389] To produce rathe figs,[1390] a manure, composed of dove’s dung and pepper and oil, was laid about the roots of the tree. Another method was that which is still employed under the name of caprification, alluded to by Sophocles.[1391] For this purpose care was taken to rear, close at hand, several wild fig-trees, from which might be obtained the flies made use of in this process,[1392] performed by cutting off bunches of wild figs and suspending them amid the branches of the cultivated species,[1393] when a fly issuing from the former pricked the slowly ripening fruit and accelerated its maturity.[1394] In growing the various kinds of fig they were careful to plant the Chelidonian, the Erinean, or wild fig, the Leukerinean, and the Phibaleian[1395] on plains. The autumn-royals would grow anywhere. Each sort has its peculiar excellence. The following were the best: the colouroi, or truncated, the forminion, the diforoi, the Megaric, and the Laconian, which would bear abundantly if well-watered.[1396] Rhodes was famous for its excellent figs, which were even thought worthy to be compared with those of Attica.[1397] Athenæus, however, pretends that the best figs in the world were found at Rome. There were figs with a ruddy bloom in the island of Paros, the same in kind as the Lydian fig.[1398] The Leukerinean produced the white fig.[1399]
The fancy of Hellenic gardeners amused itself with effecting numerous fantastic changes in the appearance and nature of fruit. Thus citrons, lemons, &c., were made, by the application of a clay mould, to assume the form of the human face, of birds and other animals.[1400] Occasionally, too, they were introduced, when small, into the neck of a bottle provided with breathing holes, the figure of which they assumed as they projected their growth into all its dimensions. We are assured, moreover, that, by a very simple process, they could produce peaches, almonds,[1401] &c., covered, as though by magic, with written characters. The mode of operation was this,—steeping the stone of the fruit in water for several days, they then carefully divided it, and taking out the kernel inscribed upon it with a brazen pen whatever words or letters they thought proper. This done, they again closed the stone over the kernel, bound it round with papyrus, and planted it; and the peaches or almonds which afterwards grew on that tree bore every one of them, mirabile dictu! the legend inscribed upon the kernel. By similar arts[1402] they created stoneless peaches, walnuts without husks, figs white one side, and black the other, and converted bitter almonds into sweet.[1403]
The rules observed in the planting of fruit-trees were numerous.[1404] Some, they were of opinion, were best propagated by seed, others by suckers wrenched from the root of the parent stock,[1405] others, again, by branches selected from among the new wood on the topmost boughs. A rude practice, too, common enough in our own rural districts, appears to have been in much favour among them,—bending some long pendant bough to the ground, they covered a part of it with heavy clods, allowing, however, the extremity to appear above the earth. When it had taken root it was severed from the tree and transplanted to some proper situation. At other times, the points of boughs were drawn down and fixed in the ground, which even thus took root, and sent the juices backwards, after which the bough was cut off and a new stock produced. Trees generated by this method, as well as those planted during the waning moon,[1406] were supposed to spread and grow branchy, while those set during the waxing moon attained, though weaker, to a much greater height. It ought, perhaps, to be further added, that all seeds and plants were put into the ground while the moon was below the horizon.[1407] Those trees which it was customary to renew by seed were the pistachio, the filbert, the almond, the chestnut, the white peach, the damascene, the pine-tree, and the edible pine, the palm, the cypress, the laurel, the ash, the maple, and the fig. The apple,[1408] the cherry, the rhamnus jujuba, the common nut, the dwarf laurel, the myrtle, and the medlar, were propagated by suckers; while the quicker and surer mode of raising trees from boughs was frequently adopted in the case of the almond, the pear, the mulberry, the citron,[1409] the apple, the olive, the quince,[1410] the black and white poplar, the ivy, the jujube-tree, the myrtle, the chestnut, the vine, the willow, the box, and the cytisus.
But the thrifty people of Hellas seldom devoted the orchard-ground entirely to fruit-trees. The custom seems to have been to lay out the whole in beds and borders for the cultivation of vegetables, and to plant trees, at intervals, along the edges and at the corners. These beds, moreover, were often, as with us, edged with parsley and rue; whence the proverb,—“You have not proceeded beyond the rue,” for “You know nothing of the matter.”[1411]
The rustics of antiquity, who put generally great faith in spells and talismans, possessed an extraordinary charm for ensuring unfailing fertility to their gardens; they buried an ass’s head deep in the middle of them, and sprinkled the ground with the juice of fenugreek and lotus.[1412] Somewhat greater efficacy, however, may be attributed to their laborious methods of manuring and irrigation.[1413]
The aspect of such a garden differed very little, except perhaps in luxuriance, from a similar plot of ground in Kent or Middlesex. Here you perceived beds of turnips, or cabbages, or onions; there, lettuces, or endive, or succory,[1414] in the process of blanching, or the delicate heads of asparagus, or broad-beans, or lentils, or peas, or kidney-beans, or artichokes. In the most sunny spots were ranges of boxes or baskets for forcing cucumbers.[1415] Near the brooks, where such existed, were patches of watermelons,[1416] the finest in the world; and here and there, clasping round the trunks of trees,[1417] and, suspending its huge leaves and spheres from among the branches, you might behold the gourd,[1418] as I have often seen it in the palm-groves of Nubia. It may be added, that the pumpkin, or common gourd, was eaten by the Greeks,[1419] as it is still in France and Asia Minor.[1420]
Lettuces[1421] were blanched by being tied a-top, or being buried up to a certain point in sand.[1422] They were, moreover, supposed to be rendered more rich and delicate by being watered with a mixture of wine and honey, as was the practice of the gourmand Aristoxenos, who having done so over-night, used next morning to cut them, and say they were so many green cakes sent him by mother Earth.[1423]
The Greek gardeners appear to have delighted exceedingly in the production of monstrous vegetables. Thus, in the case of the cucumber, their principal object appears to have been to produce it without seed, or of some extraordinary shape.[1424] In the first case they diligently watched the appearance of the plant above ground, and then covering it over with fresh earth, and repeating the same operation three times, the cucumbers it bore were found to be seedless. The same effect was produced by steeping the seeds in sesamum-oil for three days before they were sown. They were made to grow to a great length by having vessels of water[1425] placed daily within a few inches of their points, which, exciting by attraction a sort of nisus in the fruit, drew them forward as far as the gardener thought necessary.[1426] They were made, likewise, to assume all sorts of forms by the use of light, fictile moulds,[1427] as in the case of the citron. Another method was, to take a large reed,[1428] split it, and clear out the pith; then introducing the young cucumber into the hollow, the sections of the reed were bound together, and the fruit projected itself through the tube until it acquired an enormous length. It is observed by Theophrastus, that if you steep the seeds of cucumbers in milk, or an infusion of honey, it will improve their flavour.[1429] They were, moreover, believed to expand in size at the full of the moon, like the sea-hedgehog.[1430] A fragrant smell was supposed to be communicated to melons[1431] by constantly keeping the seed in dry rose-leaves. To preserve the seed for any length of time, it was sprinkled with the juice of house-leek.
The Megaréans, in whose country melons, gourds,[1432] and cucumbers were plentiful, were accustomed to heap dust about their roots during the prevalence of the Etesian winds, and found this answer ofof irrigation.[1433] It appears from the following proverb,—“The end of cucumbers and the beginning of pompions,”—that the former went out of season as the latter came in.[1434]
To procure a plentiful crop of asparagus, they used to bury the shavings of a wild ram’s horn, and well water them.[1435] By banking up the stalks, moreover, immediately after cutting the heads, they caused new shoots to spring forth, and thus enjoyed a fresh supply throughout the year. This plant was probably obtained from Libya,[1436] where it was said to attain, in its wild state, the height of twelve, and sometimes even of thirty cubits;[1437] and on the slopes of Lebanon, in Syria, it has in our own clay been seen from twelve to fifteen feet high.
That kind of cabbage which we call savoys was supposed to flourish best in saline spots, on which account the gardeners used to sift pounded nitre[1438] over the beds where it was sown, as was the practice also in Egypt. In and about Alexandria,[1439] however, there was said to be some peculiar quality in the earth which communicated a bitter taste to the cabbage. To prevent this they imported cabbage-seed from the island of Rhodes, which produced good plants the first year, but experienced in the second the acrid influence of the soil.[1440] Kumè was celebrated for its fine cabbages, which, when full-grown, were of a yellowish green colour, like the new leather sole of a sandal. Broccoli and sea-kale and cauliflowers would appear to have been commonly cultivated in the gardens of the ancients. There was, likewise, among them a sort of cabbage supposed to have some connexion with the gift of prophecy;[1441] and by this, probably, it was, that certain comic personages used to swear, as Socrates by the dog, and Zeno by the caper-bush.
Radishes[1442] were rendered sweet by steeping the seeds in wine and honey, or the fresh juice of grapes: Nicander speaks of preserved turnips.[1443] Parsley-seed was put into the earth in an old rag, or a wisp of straw,[1444] surrounded with manure, and well-watered, which made the plant grow large. Rue they sowed in warm and sunny spots, without manure.[1445] It was defended from the cold of winter by being surrounded with heaps of ashes,[1446] and was sometimes planted in pots, probably to be kept in apartments for the sake of its bright yellow flowers,[1447] and because, when smelt, it was said to cure the head-ache. The juice of wild rue, mixed with woman’s milk, sharpened the sight, in the opinion of the ancients.[1448] The juice of sweet mint, which was a garden herb, squeezed into milk,[1449] was supposed to prevent coagulation, even should rennet be afterwards thrown into it.
Both the root and bean of the nymphæa nelumbo or red lotus,[1450] were eaten in Egypt,[1451] where its crimson flowers were woven into crowns which diffused an agreeable odour, and were considered exceedingly refreshing in the heat of summer.[1452] This plant was by the Greeks of Naucratis denominated the melilotus, to distinguish it from the lotus with white flowers. Theophrastus[1453] observes, that it grows in the marshes to the height of four cubits, and has a striped root and stem. This lotus was also anciently found in Syria and Cilicia, but did not there ripen. In the environs of Toronè in Chalcidice,[1454] however, it was found in perfection in a small marsh.
The lupin,[1455] and the caper-bush, probably cultivated for the beauty of its delicate white flowers,[1456] deteriorated in gardens,[1457] as did likewise the mallows,[1458] which, together with the beet, were said to acquire in gardens the height of a small tree.[1459] The stem of the mallows was sometimes used as a walking stick. Its large pale red flower which