LECTURE VII.

COLUMELLA.

BOOK X.

A COURSE of Lectures on the Rural Economy of the Ancients would not be complete without some mention of their Gardens, and of the Plants cultivated within their precincts.

It is true, that Virgil has passed over this department of rural economy in his Georgics, alleging as a reason, a want of space for its full consideration; although no one can help regretting the omission, who reads the beautiful lines in which he introduces a casual allusion to the subject:

Atque equidem, extremo ni jam sub fine laborum
Vela traham, et terris festinem advertere proram :
Forsitan et, pingues hortos quæ cura colendi
Ornaret, canerem, biferique rosaria Pæsti:
Quoque modo potis gauderent intuba rivis,
Et virides apio ripæ; tortusque per herbam
Cresceret in ventrem cucumis: nec sera comantem
Narcissum, aut flexi tacuissem vimen acanthi,
Pallentesque ederas, et amantes litora myrtos.
Namque sub Ebaliæ memini me turribus arcis,
Qua niger humectat flaventia culta Galæsus,

Coryciuma vidisse senem, cui
pauca relicti
Jugera ruris erant: nec fertilis illa juvencis,
Nec pecori opportuna seges, nec commoda Baccho.
Hic rarum tamen in dumis olus, albaque circum
Lilia, verbenasque premens vescumque papaver,
Regum æquabat opes animis: seraque revertens
Nocte domum, dapibus mensas onerabat inemtis.
Primus vere rosam, atque auctumno carpere poma:
Et, quum tristis hiems etiam nunc frigore saxa
Rumperet, et glacie cursus frenaret aquarum,
Ille comam mollis jam tondebat hyacinthi,
Estatem increpitans seram zephyrosque morantes.
Ergo apibus fœtis idem atque examine multo
Primus abundare, et spumantia cogere pressis
Mella favis; illi tiliæ, atque uberrima pinus ;
Quotque in flore novo pomis se fertilis arbos.
Induerat, totidem auctumno matura tenebat.
Ille etiam seras in versum distulit ulmos,
Eduramque pirum, et spinos jam pruna ferentes,
Jamque ministrantem platanum potantibus umbras.
Verum hæc ipse equidem spatiis exclusus iniquis
Prætereo, atque aliis post me memoranda relinquo.
(GEORG. iv. 116.)

But what Virgil declined, Columella has attempted to supply in the 10th book of his Treatise, in which he presents us with a poem on Gardening, not destitute of elegance; though in a few parts more turgid in its style, and more far

a It has been questioned, whether Virgil really meant that his old man was a native of Corycia, or whether he did not give him this title out of compliment to his skill in gardening. For the Cilicians, of which Corycus was a city, were famous for their skill in gardeniug. Voss, however, observes, that certain Cilician pirates, whom Pompey subdued, were transplanted by him to Calabria, and supplied with land. Hence this old man may have been one of the number of the above colony.

fetched in its allusions, than the severer taste of the poet, whom he proposes to himself as his model, would have permitted. He has also given us the greater part of the same directions, divested of their poetry, in a chapter of his 11th book.

Both together, however, impart to us, it must be confessed, but a slight insight into Roman gardening, the descriptive part being very meagre, and the number of plants enumerated falling considerably short of a hundred. We must therefore draw largely from other sources, and especially from Pliny, whose notices of the plants known at that period are far more extensive than those which Columella has given us.

In the earliest periods of Roman history every family had its garden, and, as little animal food was consumed, it was from this source that the population principally drew its subsistence.

Hence in the laws of the Twelve Tables, the term hortus is synonymous to heredium or inheritance; and the word villa is nowhere made use of. As a proof indeed of the honour paid to gardens by the old Romans, Pliny remarks, that men of the highest rank were willing to borrow their names from its contents, as in the Valerian family, where the Lactucarii did not think themselves disgraced by taking their names from the Lettuce.

These however were mere kitchen gardens,

GARDEN &

PORTICO, POMPEI.