golden crown fashioned of bean-leaves which had been taken from an Italian

tomb, and which, doubtless,

had adorned the brows of some once-revered personage, and the thought came from the olden time: Was he, by chance, of the valiant Fabii, one of whom erected a triumphal stone arch on the Sacra Via, three hundred of whom once perished together in the Veientine war?

At the feast of the goddess Carna, in her temple on the Cœlian, used to be offered a mess of beans. Ovid explains this custom by saying that when her cult was instituted the Latin soil produced only beans and spelt. But Macrobius tells us further that beans were looked upon as a great source of vitality: quod his maxime rebus vires corporis roborentur; otherwise, the origin then of our phrase, "full of beans." He says also that the Kalends of June were called Fabariæ because beans were then ripe and were called for in sacrificial rites. Pliny says that in the administration of justice, a black bean signified condemnation, while a white one meant "not guilty." The black variety was also much used as a funeral offering to the Lemures, and was laid in tombs. There is no doubt, therefore, that however much it had become despised in Imperial days, in preceding periods the bean had been one of the most important plants of the Roman garden.

But the Fabii were by no means the only illustrious family deriving their name from a garden vegetable. The Cæpiones owed theirs to capa-an onion; the Lentuli theirs to lens, the lentil; while the Pisones derived theirs from "pisum," the pea; moreover, Cicero, the cognomen of Marcus Tullius, like that of Professor Ceci to-day, is from cicer, the chick-pea. In Satire V. 177, Persius tells us that at the feast of Flora vetches, beans, and lu2 Saturnal, i. 123.

pines were scattered broadcast among the populace gathered together in the Circus Maximus. The significance of

this was doubtless the same as that intended by the rice, peas, and beans still thrown at weddings in various countries.

The potato was, of course, wanting to the Roman garden, but Cato considered the cabbage (brassica) to be the very king of vegetables, and it is likely that many varieties of the plant were cultivated already in his day. Brassica est quæ omnibus holeribus antistat,' and he liked it both cooked and raw, dressed with vinegar. The best kind of artichokes (cinara) came from Carthage, whence had been imported the malum Punicum, or pomegranate; and also, apparently, the finest figs. For one recollects the clever use made by the same Cato of a bunch of quite fresh Carthaginian figs, which, being suddenly produced from beneath his toga, were intended to convince his hearers that great Carthage was become too near a commercial rival in the Mediterranean for the security of Rome.

Feniculum or fennel, and lactuca, lettuce both of them, with the Phoenicians, sacred to Adonis-were regarded, as they still are here, as particularly good for the "Minister of the Interior," and also as sleep-producers. Venus is said to have salved the wounds of Adonis with lettuce. Pliny mentions a family who were not ashamed of their name, in fact a branch of the Gens Valeria: Lactucini. Pumpkin (cucurbita) and cucumber (cucumis) may both have been cultivated in quite early times. The Emperor Tiberius, probably a carefully temperate man, at one time is said to have eaten cucumber daily. Intybus, or endive, and wild asparagus were greatly esteemed, though the latter was thought inferior to a kind grown at 3 Cato, R. R. 156.

Ravenna, and to that brought from Germany.

I turn from these vegetables, however to the fruit-trees, which in early days must perforce have been rare, perhaps including only apples, pears, certain nuts, together with the almond and the fig, and even these came to Rome chiefly from other districts in Italy, such as Picenum, Nola, and Taranto. The malum Punicum or pomegranate, which has always thriven in Roman soil, was no doubt a very early introduction from Carthage, perhaps by way of Sicily; and of course, the olive was regarded almost as native though brought up from Campania by one of the Licinian Gens." But so much during the later Republic did the Romans apply themselves to fructiculture that some ancient writers even go so far as to describe Italy (as some have called England) one great orchard: ut tota pomarium videatur.* At that period rich amateurs vied with one another in the culture of apples and vines, and after Lucullus had introduced the cherry from Cerasus (on his way home from his campaign against Mithridates) of that fruit also; so that we hear of malum Claudianum, Appianum, Cestianum, of Vitis Licinia, Sergia, Cominia, and finally of Cerasa Juniana, Aproniana, and Pliniana. The bericocca, or apricot, is mentioned by various authors as malum pracor. Peaches multiplied, while chestnuts, pistacium from Spain, nuts from Thasos, and quinces from Crete, formed the integral portions of the festive repast.

But, meantime, what was happening to the primitive Roman garden? It is obvious that powerful influences were operating all on the side of its elaboration. What, indeed, in Roman life did not begin to feel, or could resist, the electric forces of increased wealth?

The spread of education, the importation of Greek teachers and semi-oriental habits, foreign wares and foreign plants, and foreign gods, both after the Punic wars, and especially after the conquest of Greece, fatally affected the simplicity of Roman life, and the spirit that haunted the Roman garden likewise felt the change, as did Venus, the garden-goddess herself, and Mars, the god of the wheatfields. To simple utility was given for partner costly ornament.

Then perfumes, derived from specially cultivated flowers, began to obtain recognition in fashionable life, and incense was more freely burned in the temples. And I must confess that if the Tuscan dealers in perfumes and pot-pourris thronged the Vicus Tuscus leading into the Forum, the immediate vicinity of the Cloaca Maxima was not altogether an inappropriate situation for the centre of their commerce. the words of our own poet, all the spices of Arabia might sometimes fail to sweeten that little spot. From simple burnt laurel, verbena (herba sabina), and juniper, people advanced to the use of Cilician crocus, myrrh, costum speciosum, and cinnamon.

In

At the same time liqueurs were resorted to, and we find myrtle wine, palm-wine, and mastic made from wild lentisk, from which toothpicks likewise were cut. Absinthe was favored, the especially that imported from Black Sea; also mint, thyme, and anise. The stamens of the crocus were kept for coloring the dishes.10

But the garden itself probably most felt the change when the architecture of the house underwent improvement by the addition of the Greek peristylium or colonnaded court. Houses with no peristylium still kept their flower-gardens at the rear; as may be seen in the houses of Pansa, Epidius Rufus, and

that of the surgeon at Pompeii; although in the latter instance both peristylium and rear-garden occur, the latter behind the former. In fact, the more precious or flowering portion of the garden was transferred to the peristylium, which it brightly adorned and made fragrant, and where it could be enjoyed by the entire household.

Of course, matters did not stop here. Enrichments of various kinds presently supervened in the peristylium, or close, by the addition of carven wellheads, fountains and statues, and the marble-lined "impluvium" or tank, in which, later on, were placed roots of scented lilies brought from the rivers of Africa. Finally, there came over artists who covered the court of the rich man with frescoes in brilliant panels. And in this manner, it seems to me at least, the Roman pleasuregarden may have had its "genesis." It was an expansion of the garden in the peristyle.

But although some such pleasuregardens, on quite a limited scale, marked the evolution from the mere strip of flower-garden-marked, that is to say, the superior rank and estimation put upon the place for flowers-the authorities practically agree in regarding Lucullus as the real creator of the great princely pleasure-garden, a place of sumptuous private entertainment. And I shall presently come to refer more closely to this. The example of the millionaire was certainly imitated with rapidity, on a smaller scale, by all the rich and leisured folk of the succeeding times.

Varro" says: "Saturi fiamus ex Africa et Sardinia," and he complains that the most fruitful districts of the land are being converted into these pleasure-gardens, and that the operation is attended by increasing dearness of the cereals. And, but little later than

11 R. R. ii. 20.

this," we find Horace lamenting that the luxury of possessing myrtle-woods, violet-beds, and plantations of roses has become so general that there is scarcely room for the cultivation of more useful plants. Truly we do not often find a poet deliberately regretting that the cabbage gives way to the rose, or the onion to the violet.

And this, perforce, brings me to an agreeable point in my subject, namely, the consideration of the amazing (but who will say undue?) importance attained in Roman civilization by the Rose. There seems to have been no known period when the rose was not at home with the Romans. It belongs to their earliest traditions, and it flourished wherever they conquered. For they grew roses and imported them also. They raised them from seeds and likewise from runners, or threads of root. They knew all about grafting onto wild stocks, all about budding, pruning, and fumigating. Yet notwithstanding the favoring climate, the demand for this national passion of theirs could not be supplied.

Roses were planted both singly and in groups, sometimes actually in whole plantations, and thus arose even a profession of rose-merchants. They possibly used glass-houses for the more delicate kinds13

Condita sic puro numerantur lilia vitro, Sic prohibet teneras gemma latere rosas,

-so as to save them from frost. The culture of roses commenced in February. Of the various species raised, the Campanian was the earliest; later appeared the scented Milesian rose and the rose of Palestrina; while the Carthaginian roses bloomed every month and were called "monthly roses." For its sweet powerful oil, the rose of Cyrene was highly esteemed, and the

12 Odes, II. xv. 5.

13 Martial, Ep. IV. xxii. 5, 6.

twice-flowering little roses of Pæstum held great favor.

At first the Romans possessed but three or four sorts; the wild hedgerose, the

A

musk-rose, the pimpernelleaved rose, and the Gallica. In Pliny's day, however, he is able to enumerate ten varieties of garden-rose, having for coloring white, light pink, crimson, and yellow. Zell points out how much they were given to planting roses, by referring to sums of money given by grateful children to celebrate the return of their parents (after travel) by the planting of a new rose.1⁄4 soldier also gives money to plant a rose on the day he returned from the war. In a will a bequest is made by the testator that three myrtles and three roses be planted upon each successive anniversary of his birthday. Tacitus tells us that the deservedly illfated Vitellius beheld the dreadful batthe-field of Bedriacum, near Cremona, strewn with laurels and roses. It was the custom to sprinkle the ashes of the departed with wine, incense, and roseleaves, before placing them in the fuDeral urn. The graves of relations were most religiously decked out with roses "purpureosque jacit flores,"and on the 23rd of May was celebrated each year a Rose-feast for the departed. It finished with a banquet in which roses were distributed to each of the partakers, and these were, presently, thrown upon the tombs. Plenty of inscriptions relating to this will be found in C. I. L. iii. 662, 754. And this fête des roses appears to have maintained its influence until it passed into Christian usage.15

There were in actual fact four days in the year upon which the flower-gardens were heavily taxed for supplies"solemnia sacrificia"; (1) Birthday; (2) Parentalia (February 13); (3) Rosalia;

Epigraph. i. 107, and E. F. Wustemann, Caterhaltungen aus der alten Welt fur Gartenand Blumenfreunde, 37-68.

(4) Dies viola. The outsides of all the monuments were adorned on these occasions with roses and violets, while the lamps were lit within them." There is a sarcophagus in the Capitoline Museum, whereon the Genius of Life holds in her hand a wreath of roses.

Again, in ordinary life the joy of roses entered largely; for the cushions were filled with rose-leaves in the triclinia, and the floor was often strewn with them.

Nero caused roses to pour their rare perfumes from the vault of the banqueting-hall in his "golden house" upon his guests. Lampridius tells us, in his Life of Heliogabalus, that the beds and pavements of the palace (Flavian) were strewn with flowersviolets, lilies, hyacinths, narcissi, and roses-when Heliogabalus feasted; and from this to suffocating his guests with them was perhaps no very great step. A little later, the Emperor Carinus (281 A.D.) had caravans of roses from Milan; while in the south whole shiploads of them were wafted continually across the sea from Alexandria and New Carthage. It is pleasant to fancy ourselves falling in the track of one of those vessels at night upon the starlit These must surely have been dried roses and their leaves!

sea.

And once again, another use for roses: on festival days the statues of the gods were crowned with wreaths of roses; and if the head of the statue could not be reached, then the crown was laid at the feet. The portraits of all beloved persons were likewise wreathed with roses; while the paths of triumphant warriors were strewn with them, or they were flung into the chariot as it passed on the route through the Forum up to the Capitol. Moreover, the rose was regarded as the symbol of reserve or si15 Of. Bellermann, Die altesten christlichen Begrabnisstatten, p. 16, st. 5.

lence, or typical of the secrecy of a trusted friend. The Anthologia Latina contains an epigram's regarding the "Intercourse of Persons in Love," and it is said that a custom "sometimes" prevailed of suspending a rose above the company. This action was intended to show that what was uttered there must not pass outside; hence "sub rosa." At Baix, when people went out on water-parties, they used even to sprinkle the sea with roses, as if it were the path of the God of Love.

But the adoration of the rose did not end here!

It was used by the maîtres de cuisine with quinces as an essence for delicate dishes. Apicius even made rose-soufflées and rose-salads. The globules of dew were swept off roses with a bird's feather and mixed with wines and liqueurs. Pliny gives a recipe for rosewine, and baths of rose wine and absinthe were a vicious novelty introduced by the Syrian Heliogabalus.

19

But from the interesting literature of the rose I must cut myself adrift here to return but briefly to the sumptuous and ever more sumptuous gardens which grew it, and let it breathe softly through their dark avenues of ilex and along their white marble colonnades and pergulæ; gardens that far surpass anything of the kind now to be found here or elsewhere. (1) For in these, dropping, terrace by terrace, down the slopes of the Capo-le-Case, the Gregoriana, and Sistina, for example, there occurred in the gardens of Lucullus (as perfected later by Valerius Asiaticus) magnificent avenues of carefully cropped ilex, box, cypress, and

bay, overshadowing marvellous fountains, and interrupted here and there by graceful temples, shrines, and porticoes, along which the roses and jasmine twined and garlanded themselves, and where the swallows and

18 v. 127, tom. ii. 471. 19 Plin. H. N. xiv. 10, 19.

swifts coursed up and down in the dazzling Roman sunlight. There, too, stood that marvellous Hall of Apollo, wherein Lucullus once feasted Cicero and Pompey at the cost of 50,000 drachmæ. There also, later, Messalina desperately took refuge with her mother, Lepida, and presently heard the garden-gates behind her being beaten and broken open by the centurion, Euodus, who had come to make an end of her. Some of the mosaic floors that have felt the feet and been swept by the garments of the great people of those days, are still lying in situ, obscured beneath No. 57 in the Via Sistina and No. 46 in the Via Gregoriana. From one of its multitude of pedestals or niches came forth the well-known "Slave sharpening his blade," in the Uffizi at Florence. The head of Ulys

ses in the Vatican was likewise found when digging the foundation for the cipollino column that now stands in the Piazza di Spagna.

(2) Trinità dei Monti, the Villa Medici, and the Pincian were included in gardens of similar splendid character belonging to the Achilii; and here, in 1868, besides nymphea, porticoes, and hemicycles, was found a votive tablet dedicated to "Sylvanus" by Tychicus, freedman of Manius Acilius Glabrio, the keeper of his gardens.20

(3) Below these, towards the Piazza del Popolo, succeeded the gardens of the Domitii, wherein was buried Nero. That Emperor's demon, it is well known, was supposed to haunt that spot, even as late as the twelfth century; and the crows which then roosted in a walnut-tree over his tomb were regarded by Pope Paschal the Second as creatures connected but too intimately with the certain abode of the first persecutor of the Church, and he cut it down.

(4) Across the city, on the Esquiline 20 Cf. Ersilia Caetani, 'Il Monte Pincio,' Miscellanea Archæologica, 1891, p. 211.