Hi ■ ■HH ■ m m ■ ■ IH v ■ ■ A V c ° N c * 1 "■ * ^ % x» " / '•<>. £ -nt r .*' W CULTIVATED PLANTS AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS IN THEIR MIGRATION FROM ASIA TO EUROPE BY f VICTOR HEHN EDITED BY JAMES STEVEN STALLYBRASS editor of grimm's " teutonic mythology," etc., etc. CHEAP EDITION LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO. PATERNOSTER SQUARE 189I 13011 W* tlje RIGHT HONOURABLE WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE. THIS BOOK IS (by permission) Iftejspectfullp 2DttucatctL iMk 1898 PREFACE. The history of our Domestic Animals and Cultivated Plants is a subject of absorbing interest to the educated man, and (if he knew it) to the uneducated man too. It forms no small part of the history of Man himself and his slow advance to civilization. We cannot afford to kick down the ladders we. have climbed by. If our venerable friend the " lowing Steer " has now " doffed the weary yoke " for good and all, and even his quite recent suc- cessor Dobbin bids fair to be driven off the field by a mechanical substitute, " the divel's oan team ; " yet, some three or four thousand years ago, with our first wooden plough just invented, and the steam-plough still a long way ahead, what could we have done without " the ox and the ass to ear the ground " ? And we have not quite done with our old friends yet ; not till we have learnt to relish milk and beef manufactured without the aid of milkmaid or butcher; not till the invalid, advised to "take horse-exercise," consents to take it alongside Master Tom in the day-nursery. And not then. The Iron Horse was to have ex- terminated his prototype of flesh and blood, but Dobbin seems inclined to stay ; nay, if we except the plough-horse and the stager, he is in greater request tnan ever. And who can state the sum of our obligations to the sheep, the pig, the camel, the dog, and even poor mousing Puss ? Or why should Chanticleer and his family, with other bipeds of the poultry- yard, be forgotten ? And much the same may be said of Culti- vated Plants — the grains, the potherbs, garden-flowers, fruit-trees, timber, and even ornamental trees. I RE FACE. Now the history of the Plants and Animals of Europe — of their reclamation from a wild state to the service of man, and their dis- tribution in their present locale — is susceptible of two or three different methods of investigation, which sometimes clash, and lead to opposite conclusions. It is certain that some of them are not natives of the countries where we find them ; that they have been imported from abroad. But which of them ? whence, and along what route ? how early, and by whom ? Our answers to these questions will be different, accordingly as we lean chiefly on Natural Science, or on Ancient History, Literature, and even Language. The purely scientific man will judge chiefly by the suitability of soil and climate. If he finds a plant flourishing pretty abun- dantly in Greece or Italy now, and knows of no climatic or geo- logic changes that would exclude its having flourished there 5,000 years ago, he will at once pronounce it indigenous, and scout the notion of its having been imported. But now listen to the scholar, and he may tell you that Homer never mentions such a plant ; that later poets speak of it in a vague way as something very choice and very holy, and always in connection with some particular deity : they may have tasted its fruit, may have seen the figure of its flowers (probably conventional) in emblematic painting or carving, but have not the faintest notion of its shape or size, whether it be a grass, a shrub, or a tree ; till at last, in the time of Darius or Alexander, the plant itself emerges into clear visibility. Your inference will be, that it came to Greece within historical times. Or suppose the plant was common in Greece in Homer's time, so common that all memory of its introduction had died away, except in half-mythical traditions, say of the migration of a tribe, the founding of a city, and so forth ; — is such Tradition to be despised? Why should not the plant have been imported a thousand years before Homer ? Who knows how long Phoenician commerce, colonization, and conquest had been active, how long "great Zidon " and " the strong city Tyre " had stood? Lastly, where History, Literature, and even Tradition fail us, may not the modern science of Language come to our aid ? Sup- pose the name of the plant stands isolated in Greek, but has its root and a family ol relations in Hebrew or Persic ; that it can be PREFACE. traced along the coast of Asia Minor and across a string of ^Egean Islands to the south of Greece, or round by the Euxine and Thrace to Northern Greece, following the very track of Phoenician commerce or Iranian conquest and migration; — can we doubt whence the name and the thing must have come ? Professor Hehn thinks that of late years the Scientist has had too much his own way, that it is time for the Historic and Philo- logic methods to come into play, and have their say. Hence his book, which he modestly calls a historico - linguistic sketch. "Sketch" is a light word for the load of learning he pours out before us. Comparative Philology is not the thing of lucky guesses that the Etymology of our fathers used to be ; it has well-ascer- tained laws, which raise it to the dignity of a science. He holds that Europe owes much more to Asia than the mere botanist and mere zoologist are willing to admit. In particular, that the Flora of Southern Europe has been revolutionized under the hand of Man ; that the evergeen vegetation of Italy and Greece is not indigenous, but is mainly due to the sacred groves planted round the temples of Oriental gods and goddesses ; that in this way the laurel has followed the worship of Apollo, the cypress and myrtle that of " Ashtoreth of the Zidonians " (Aphro- dite), the olive that of Athena, and so on. At the same time, the reverence for the Olive, the Vine, the Fig, &c, was not all super- stitious fancy, but founded on their value to man as the source (and therefore symbol) of a higher type of life. He has much to say on the Indo-Europeans or Aryans at the time of their settling in this continent. He is inclined to place their status as to culture not so high as most recent writers have done. He even thinks they stood at a lower stage of civilization than the builders of the Lake-villages in Switzerland ; that instead of these being a " mysterious pre-Aryan race," they were Aryans at a comparatively advanced stage, for they cultivated barley, wheat, and flax, &c. In fact, the low condition of the Aryans on entering Europe, and their subsequent obligations, both to other Aryans (Iranians) in Asia, and above all to the Semitic race in Palestine, form perhaps the central idea of the whole book. The Translator has judged it best, for the convenience of the PREFACE. common reader, to banish from the body of the book many Greek and Latin citations — on which the Author rather prides himself — and disquisitions on the exact value of ancient words. In revising her Translation for the press, I have taken the liberty to restore some of this omitted matter, where it seemed essential to the argu- ment. If too much has been omitted, the Translator apologizes to the learned Author on the ground that she wished his book to be read. Readers with an appetite for philology will probably still find an abundant ftast in the " Notes," which are translated in full. J. S. S. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . . . . * . 3 . . IJ THE HORSE (Equus caballus) „ . . 35 THE VINE ( Vitis vinifera) 69 the fig-tree {Fiats Carted) ...*.. 85 THE olive-tree {Olea Europe delight of poets (witness the splendid descriptions in the Book of Job and in Homer's Iliad) — that glossy, proud, aristocratic, quivering, nervous animal, with its rhythmic action — has his home nevertheless in one of the wildest and most inhospitable regions of the world — the steppes and pasture-lands of Central Asia, the realm of storms. There, we are assured, the wild horse still roams under the name of Tarftan, which tarpan cannot always be distinguished from the only half-wild Musin, or fugitive from tame or half-tame herds. It grazes in troops, under a wary leader, always moving against the wind, nostrils and ears alert to every danger, and not seldom struck by a wild panic which drives it full speed across the im- measurable plain. During the terrible winter of the steppes, it scrapes the snow away with its hoofs, and scantily feeds on the dead grasses and leaves which it finds beneath. It has a thick, flowing mane and bushy tail, and when the winter cold com- mences, the hair all over its body grows into a kind of thin fur. And in this very region lived the first equestrian races of whom we have any knowledge — in the east the Mongols, in the west the Turks ; taking those names in their widest sense. Even now the existence of these races is bound up with that of the horse. The Mongol thinks it shameful to go on foot ; he is always on horseback, and when he occasionally dismounts, he moves and stands as if completely out of his element. Before a Mongolian boy can w r alk, he is lifted on to a horse and clings to its mane ; 36 THE HORSE. thus he grows up on the animal's back, and at last becomes one with it. This mode of living, continued for thousands of years from generation to generation, has given a distinguishing stamp to the physical form of the Mongolian. His legs are bowed, his walk is clumsy, and the upper part of his body leans forward. When in his tent, his restless, wandering eyes have the expression of those of a rider in the immeasurable steppes, always watching the horizon to detect the smallest cloud of dust. His riches consist in the number and size of his half-wild Tabun ; when he wants a young animal, he catches it with the lasso. The milk of the brood-mares is his drink and means of intoxication (great practice and strength are required to milk the mares after they are hobbled) ; horseflesh is his customary and favourite food. It is true that Buddhism has attempted to abolish the last-named article of food among the modern Mongols, and the pious Lama at least abstains from its enjoyment. The skin and hair of the horse are also useful to the Mongol ; out of the first he cuts his indispensable thongs, the latter serves for ropes and sieves, and he clothes himself with the skin of young colts. From the wide plains of that part of the world the horse migrated into the highlands of Northern India, the well-watered valleys of Turkestan, and the districts and deserts of the Jaxartes and Oxus. In those parts the Turkoman's horse is even now distinguished for its intelligence, strength, and endurance. With very scanty provision the Turkoman rides a hundred kilometres (sixty-three miles) without stopping ; attacks, plunders, and disappears, before his victims recover from their surprise. He often spends the night asleep on the back of his animal in the middle of the desert, which does not afford him one drop of water for his favourite. He loves his horse, Vambery tells us, better than wife or child, better than himself; it is touching to see the care taken of his animal by this rude, rapacious son of the desert ; how he clothes and protects it from cold and heat, and spends all he can afford on its saddle and bridle. In the eyes of the Kirghis too the horse is the very ideal of beauty. " He loves his horse," says W. Radloff, " better than his sweetheart, and a fine animal can tempt the most respectable and honest man to THE HORSE. 37 steal." But it must be remarked that the Turkoman breed, though pure in the main, has been largely crossed with Arab blood, and to this mixture owes part of its noble qualities. That the horse in its original wildness also roamed westward of Turkestan, over the steppes of the present South-eastern and Southern Russia, and to the foot of the Carpathians, seems likely- enough ; not so likely that even the forest region of Central Europe once abounded in troops of that animal. And yet much historical testimony seems to put the fact beyond a doubt. Varro speaks of Spanish wild horses; and Strabo writes, " In Iberia there are many deer and wild horses." Wild horses as well as wild bulls lived among the Alps, as we learn again from Strabo ; and Pliny tells us, not only in the Alps but in the north generally. Nor are the Middle Ages wanting in proofs of the existence of wild horses in Germany and the countries east of Germany. At the time of Venantius Fortunatus the onager — under which name may be understood the wild horse — was hunted in the Ardennes, as well as bears, stags, and wild boars. In Italy wild horses were seen for the first time during the rule of the Longobards, under King Agilulf (Paul. Diac. 4, n). In 732 Pope Gregory III. writes to St. Boniface : "Thou hast permitted to some the flesh of the wild horse, and to most that of the tame. Henceforward, holy brother, thou shalt in no wise allow it." So, up to that time, the apostle of the Germans had been very liberal, perhaps because in his native island he had been accustomed from his youth to the habit which appeared so horrible to the Italian at Rome. Among the benedictions of Monk Ekkehard of St. Gallen (about 1000 a.d.) to be pronounced over the meats served in the refectory of that monastery, one refers to the flesh of wild horses, which must therefore have been eaten by the pious brethren. An old German proverb says : " A foal taken from a herd of wild horses will sooner be tamed than a depraved man learn to be ashamed." In the " Sachsen-spiegel," where it treats of women's outfit and dowry, it is decreed that wild horses which have not always been guarded shall not be reckoned as part of such property. In a Westphalian document of 13 16, the fishing, game, and wild horses of a certain forest are apportioned to one 38 THE HORSE. Hermann. Not alone in the time of the Merovingians, but at the end of the sixteenth century, wild horses would seem to have lived in the Vosges mountains, the wild borderland between two nationalities ; for Rosslin, in his account of Alsace and the Vosges (Strasburg, 1593), thus circumstantially describes them : " Horses that be of their kind much wilder and shyer than the stag; also much more difficult to take even in traps like the stag ; yet when they are tamed, which is accomplished with great toil and trouble, they make the very best horses, that equal those of Spain and Turkey, and surpass them in many things, and are hardier, for they are accustomed to cold and to coarse food, and are sure-footed, being as used to mountains and rocks as the chamois." If wild horses were thus found in the cultivated west and south of Germany, they must have existed still longer in the wild country on the Baltic, in Poland and Russia. In fact, we find innumerable proofs of this down to modern times. At the time of Bishop Otto of Bamberg, in the first half of the twelfth century, Pomerania was rich in all kinds of game, in- cluding wild oxen and horses. At the same period wild horses are mentioned as extant in Silesia, whence Duke Sobeslaus in 1 132 " carried away many captives, and herds of wild mares not a few." It is known, and is confirmed by many literary allusions, that till the time of the Reformation, and even later, the woods of Prussia were inhabited by wild horses. Toppen's History of Masovia (Geschichte Masurens, Danzig, 1870) says : "In the time of the Teutonic Knights, wild horses and other game were hunted chiefly for their skins. In 1543 Duke Albert sent an order to the commander at Lyck, bidding him take measures for the preserva- tion of the wild horses." Proofs of the horse being an object of the chase in Poland and Lithuania are found far into the seventeenth century. As to Russia, it is sufficient to quote the remarkable words of Vladimir Monomach, prince of Tchernigov, who lived from 1053 to n 25. He says of himself, in his pos- thumous exhortation to his sons (preserved in the " Lawrentian Chronicle ") : " But at Tchernigov I did this : I caught alive and bound with my own hands from ten to twenty wild horses ; and as I rode along the river Ross (which formed a sort of boundary THE HORSE. between the Russians and the wild Turkish Polovtsy), I caught similar horses with my own hands." To form a correct judgment of such passages, it is necessary to weigh the following facts. In the oldest historic times the horse, among Europeans, was kept as it is now by the Asiatic nomads. It grazed at a distance from the settlements in large, half-wild herds {stud, A.S. stod, Slav, stado, O.H.G. stuof)\ and when a full- grown animal was needed, it was caught and broken in by severe methods, under which many a poor beast must have been throttled to death. The Old Norse saying, " Feed the horse at home, the dog abroad," was a later rule, giving much the same advice as the Greek proverb which has become naturalized among us: "The master's eye makes a fat horse." In earlier times the freedom in which young horses were bred must have frequently led to com- plete feralityboth in individuals and in whole herds; the former — for example, mares at breeding time — running away and getting lost ; and the latter, when hunted by wolves or persecuted by gad-flies, rushing panic-stricken into the wilderness, to become objects of the chase like stags and elks. The fact that in pre-civilized times Central Europe, as far as Spain, was covered with dense forests, makes the hypothesis that that region was one of the natural homes of the horse improbable, for this animal is a native of the steppes, needing wide grass-lands and space in which its speed could be of avail in escaping from the larger beasts of prey. '1 he very way in which some of those facts are recorded seems to point rather to horses gone wild than to those originally wild. When the Vosges horses, though with difficulty, do get broken in ; when Duke Sobeslaus drives home herds of wild mares from Silesia ; when the fishing, the game, and the vagi equi of a West- phalian district are assigned to Hermann, and the untended horses of an estate are not to be included in a bride's outfit — in all these cases we may suppose that only fugitive horses are meant. So the animals found in Pomerania by St. Otto, and in Prussia by the Teutonic Knights, may have been born in a wild state, and yet the progeny of merely fugitive mares; and this becomes the more probable the longer those regions had been the scene of war and rapine. It is still more likely that this was 4 o THE HORSE. the case in Tchernigov. In that borderland, close to the nomadic hordes, the woods may well have been the refuge of fugitive animals. It must be added that the epithet "white," given by Herodotus to the wild horses that grazed about the lake out of which the Hypanis flowed, shows that they were sacred herds kept in a partly free state. Turning from the European chase to the steppes of Asia, the true home of the wild horse, we meet with the important fact, that the farther a country lies from this point of departure, the later is the appearance of the horse and its historical mention in that country, and the more clearly are the modes of breeding the animal seen to be derived from neighbouring nations to the east and north-east of it. In Egypt, to begin with the remotest member, no figure of a horse or of a war-chariot has ever been found under the so-called "old kingdom." It is only when the period of the Shepherd Kings is over, and the eighteenth dynasty with its campaigns has commenced (about 1800 B.C.), that we find both pictorial representations and the first mention in the papyri (so far as they have been deciphered) of the horse and of war-chariots equipped in Asiatic fashion. The conjecture that the pastoral tribe of the Hyksos had introduced the novel animal, and with it the new art of war, into Egypt, is very tempting, but remains unsupported by any historical proof. It may have been the kings of the above-mentioned eighteenth dynasty that first made acquaintance with the horse and chariot during their peaceful or warlike relations with Syria. The Egyptian name for chariot is almost identical with the Hebrew, and the Egyptian word for horse, sus, is a Semitic one. In Egypt, as in Asia, the horse was kept exclusively for war; not one picture shows that it was ever employed in domestic or agricultural work, for what little seems to point to such a thing we may leave unnoticed as being too doubtful. Achilles is thinking of war-chariots when he says of Egyptian Thebes : " The world's great empress on the Egyptian plain That spreads her conquests o'er a thousand states, And pours her heroes through a hundred gates, Two hundred horsemen, and two hundred cars From each wide portal issuing to the wars."— Iliad. THE HORSE. 41 What the Egyptian himself thought of the use of the horse we learn from the following mythic story : " Osiris asked Horus what animal was most useful in war. When Horus answered, 'The horse,' Osiris was astonished, and inquired further, 'Why not rather the lion ? ' Then Horus said, ' The lion may be useful to him who requires assistance, but the horse serves to scatter and destroy the flying enemy.' '' If we may trust Egyptian pictures, the lion was so far tamed by the Egyptians as to accompany Pharaoh to battle ; it was chained to the chariot and let loose at the proper moment. As to the time when the horse became known to the Semites of Western Asia, we are limited to the evidence of the Old Testa- ment — the Pentateuch, the Book of Joshua, etc. ; but when were these books written? There is not a piece in this collection that does not consist of different parts, or that has not passed through the hands of successive revisers. If some single written notes of the time of the Israelite Conquest were really preserved, they may have been interwoven into the narrative. As to the rest, the oldest biblical author, the so-called Elohist, whose book is cer- tainly not older than the time of the Kings, can have had no other source than tradition, which, in accordance with its nature, had been forming and reforming its material during long periods of time. So we cannot be quite sure whether any given passage of the biblical reports was inspired by genuine tradition, by later theocratic or national views, or by the spirit of descriptive poetry. Descriptions of the horse are not wanting in the so-called books of Moses, nor in the historical books. In Joshua, for example, chap. xi. 4, we read, " And they (the Canaanites) went out, they and all their hosts with them, much people, even as the sand that is upon the sea-shore in multitude, with horses and chariots very many ; " and the contents of such passages are confirmed by the song of Deborah, which must be far older than the foundation of the monarchy, and probably belongs to the thirteenth century before Christ. In Judges v. 22, we read, " Then were the horse- hoofs broken by means of the prancings, the prancings of their mighty ones; " and in ver. 28, "Why is his chariot so long in coming ? why tarry the wheels of his chariot ? " But in these 42 THE HORSE. descriptions the horse is never mentioned as a domesticated animal ; it has no share in the wanderings and battles of the Children of Israel ; it is the warlike servant of their neighbours and enemies, prancing and stamping before the war-chariot or beneath the rider. As a war-horse, and as such only, it is also celebrated in the fine description in the Book of Job. In the household its place is taken by the ass. " Thou shalt not covet," says the Decalogue, the commands of which were derived from a relatively very ancient period, "thy neighbour's wife, . . . nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is his." The horse, the chief object of rapine among mounted nomads, is here, very signifi- cantly, never mentioned. When we are told later that King Josiah abolished, among other heathen abominations, the horses and chariots that were sacred to the sun — this was a feature of the Iranian worship of the sun introduced from Media. No wonder that we meet with no mention of the horse among the Ishmaelites or Arabs, that southern branch of the Semitic race. Nowhere in the Old Testament do we find horses accom- panying the shepherds of the Arabian desert ; those people travel only with camels and asses, and the mode of warfare in the despotic kingdoms from the Tigris to the Nile is unknown to them. Quite in agreement with the above is the fact that the Arabs in the army of Xerxes rode only on camels. Herodotus writes, "The Arabs were all mounted on camels, which yielded not to horses in swift- ness." And Strabo informs us that in Arabia Felix there were neither horses nor mules : " There is a superfluity of domestic animals and herds, with the exception of horses, mules, and swine." It was the same in the country of the Nabathsei : " There are no horses in the country ; their place is supplied by camels." And surely Strabo, the friend and companion of ^Elius Gallus, who led the grand but unfortunate expedition into the heart of Arabia, was as well informed about the peninsula as any one living at that time. Again, at the battle of Magnesia, Antiochus the Great, like Xerxes, led Arabs mounted on dromedaries. Those who find these ancient reports incredible, because Arab horses are now considered the noblest of the species, forget the fact that similar cases, so far from being rare, are very common indeed THE HORSE. 43 in the history of culture. In the sand-seas of Arabia, where oases form the islands, the camel, that ship of the desert, was of greater use than a horse ; it could move as swiftly as the latter, and go for a long time without water ; it fed on the herbs of the desert, and carried on its broad back the women and children, the tents and provisions of the wandering nomads. To the above direct evidence we may add the negative testimony of Publius Vegetius, a later compiler. He numbers and describes all the different equine races known to the ancients, but says nothing about Arab horses. Of African horses, which we might have supposed akin to the Arabian breed, he says they were used in the circus as being the fleetest, but he adds that they were of Spanish blood. An embassy was sent from Antioch to buy up race-horses, not in near Arabia but in distant Spain, and was pro- vided by Symmachus with a letter of introduction to a Spanish horsebreeder. An older contemporary of Symmachus, however, Am. Marcellinus, in the latter half of the fourth century, mentions the fleet horses and slender camels of the Saracens, whose country he imagines as extending from the Tigris to. the cataracts of the Nile. At about the same time the Emperor Valens pos- sessed Saracen cavalry, which he sent against the Goths who were desolating the land. Here then is evidence that in the last days of antiquity and the dawn of the Middle Ages, the Arab horse, if not then introduced for the first time, must have grown, under careful handling and a favourable climate, into the noble and beautiful animal we now admire. The Arab horse is already spoken of with affectionate partiality, and used in similes both in the Koran and in fragments of pre-Islamite poetry, supposing these to be preserved in a genuine form. Turning to the Eastern Semites, the Babylonians and Assyrians in the region of the Euphrates and Tigris, we find on the walls of excavated palaces numerous and vivid representations of the war- chariot drawn by richly caparisoned horses. (Layard's "Nine- veh.") It was no doubt from this region that the new engine of war travelled westward and south-westward to the Syrians on the Mediterranean and the Egyptians in the valley of the Nile. It must have been in the plains of Mesopotamia that the application 44 THE HORSE. of the chariot to swift attack and as swift retreat for the archer was invented. Wherever, in the sculptures of Nineveh, we meet with a rider armed with bow-and-arrow, his horse is invariably led by another horseman ; if the former wields the spear instead of the bow, he has no assistant. The archer was obliged to have both hands free in order to clutch at the quiver, bend the bow, and send the arrow straight at the mark ; for the Assyrian had not yet become so entirely one with his animal as the Parthian was later on, and the Turkoman is now. Therefore he had recourse to a second horseman, and afterwards to the light two-wheeled chariot, drawn by two horses and holding two men. In this chariot the warrior stood erect, looking freely around, with his driver by his side. In the very act of flight he could turn round and still let fly at the pursuing enemy. But even in the Assyrian wars, chariot- fighting seems to have been a prerogative of the rich, as was, in other times and among other nations, fighting on horseback. An Assyrian king is never represented on foot nor on horseback, but always in a chariot, except when besieging a fortress, where rapidity of movement was no desideratum. Only two horses were actually harnessed to the chariot, but a third, and sometimes a fourth, ran loose at the side, ready to replace the former if wounded or otherwise disabled. The horses in these pictures are, like the men, represented in a highly conventional form ; yet Place, the author of " Nineveh and Assyria," asserts that among the modern Kurds, an Iranic race, he found very similarly shaped animals. And all the circumstances point to the Semitic horse having come from Iranian countries, just as the Egyptian horse came from Semitic countries. Thus the prophet Ezekiel informs us (xxvii. 14) that Tyre procured her horses from Togarmah, that is, from Armenia and Cappadocia : " They of the house of Togarmah traded in thy fairs with horses and horsemen and mules." Lower down to the south-east, in India, we visibly get farther away from the centre of the circle described by the propagation of the horse. In India horses were neither frequent, nor beautiful, nor strong; they were introduced from countries on the north- west, and easily degenerated. The ancients not seldom mention this peculiarity of a country otherwise so rich in all natural THE HORSE. 45 gifts; and the accounts of modern authors agree with theirs. But on the frontier, among the Vedic tribes in the Land of the Five Rivers (Panj-ab), the horse was highly valued. It was used in war and for sacrifice ; was never ridden, but drew the war-chariot However, just as other things prove that the life led by those tribes was not entirely original, but had been greatly influenced by western civilization, so we find that the Vedic war-chariot exactly resembles in all particulars that described by Homer, and both resemble the Assyrian chariot from which they were copied. In Carmania, west of the Indus, the ass was used instead of the horse, even in war; and in Persis, whence issued the founder of the Persian empire, the horse was almost entirely wanting, and the art of riding was unknown. Young Cyrus shouted with delight when he learnt to manage the noble beast at his grandfather's court, for in his mountain home it was unusual to keep or ride horses, and the animal was hardly ever seen. Afterwards, when he took up arms against the Medes and Hyrcanians, and had to face their swift cavalry, he recommended his followers thenceforth to " mount the steed and fly at the foe as if on wings." To the eloquent speech that Xenophon puts into his mouth on this occasion, one of his nobles, Chrysantas, responds approvingly; "and from that time," adds Xenophon, " no Persian gentleman ever likes to be seen on foot." Hence, as we are told in Strabo's works, there was inscribed on the tomb of Darius that the king had not only been a faithful friend, but the best rider, archer, and hunter. On this point, as well as in their form of government, their clothing, manners, and customs, the Persians copied their kinsmen the Medes, following the Babylonian model only so far as this was already established among the Medes. To consider the horse a sacred and prophetic animal, a sacrifice fit for the God of Light ; to picture the chariot of the great king as drawn by pure white horses, and the Immortals as riding on white steeds ; and to incorporate the word a$pa, "a horse," in compound names of heroes and inferior gods — all this is Median and Bactrian, and was adopted by the Persian faith. Strabo says, "The whole of the present form of war called Persian, the preference for archery and riding, the splendour with which royalty is surrounded, and the rever- 46 THE HORSE. ence paid to the king as to a god — all this was taught the Persians by the Medes." Media was the land of horses; whence they spread throughout Asia. The former country was well fitted for the purpose, partly by its natural construction, partly by the dis- position of the inhabitants; it even formed the transition from Iran to Turan, that is, from the settled to the wandering tribes of Iranian blood. " Media," says Polybius, " is distinguished for its superior races of men and horses ; in the latter it excels all Asia, and for this reason the royal studs were established there." Strabo praises the Median and Armenian breed of horses : " Both lands are excep- tionally rich in horses ; there is a meadow-region, called Hippo- botos, through which travellers who wish to go from Persis and Babylon to the Caspian Gates have to pass. In this region, in the time of the Persians, 50,000 mares are said to have been pastured, but the herds belonged to the king." It was in Media that the celebrated Nisaean horses, famed throughout antiquity, were bred. According to Herodotus : " In Media there is a wide plain called Nesaion ; in this plain are bred the large horses named after it." Strabo says that these horses came from the meadow Hippobotos, which also he places in Armenia : " The Nisaean horses that, being the largest and best, are used by the Persian kings, come, some say from Media, others from Armenia. . . . Armenia is so blessed with horses that it is not inferior in that respect to Media, and the Nisaean horses used by the Persian kings are also found there ; the Satrap of Armenia sent every year 20,000 young animals to the feast of Mithras." These horses were as swift as those of the modern Turkomans ; and Aristotle says in praise of the Hyrcanian dromedaries, that, when they once began to go, they even outran the Nisaean horses, the swiftest of all. These horses were of peculiar form, resembling the so-called Par- thian horse of the Asiatic Greeks in Strabo's time. Am. Marcel- linus had himself seen troops of warriors thus mounted. Nisaea itself occurs frequently as the name of towns and districts on both sides of the Oxus, and had no doubt only an appellative signifi- cance. The Nisaean horses therefore came, as it seems, from the frontier of modern Turkestan, a region whence issued, at all times, THE HORSE, 47 the nomadic hordes who invaded the cultivated lands of the East. There, as far as the Jaxartes or Tanais (both Iranic names of the same river), and beyond it, north of the Caspian and the Black Sea, to the European Tanais (Don), Borysthenes (Dnieper), and Ister (Danube), lived the equestrian nomads, Parthians, Massa- ge tse, Dahae, Sarmatae, Chorasmians, Scythians, and other tribes, called by the general name of Sacae. Ancient authors frequently describe the manners of these tribes with more or less detail. Herodian gives the following of the Neo-Parthians, against whom the Emperor Alexander Severus marched : " They not only use the horse and the bow for war, like the Romans, but they grow up from childhood in the use of them, passing their lives in hunting. They never lay aside their quivers, nor get off their horses, but use them constantly, either against enemies or the beasts of the chase." The Dahae rode through wide, waterless deserts, halting only at rare intervals ; and thus they invaded Hyrcania, Nesaea, and the plains of Parthyaea. The Sacian cavalry was the best in the Persian army. When Xerxes was in Thessaly, whose horses were esteemed the best in Greece, he instituted races between the native breed and those he had brought with him, and his horses proved to be far superior. The Sacian horses were remarkable for enduring the hardships of the desert. One that the Emperor Probus captured from the Alani, or a similar people, " was of very insignificant appearance, but could gallop a hundred miles a day for eight or ten days together." Herds of beautiful animals must have been kept by Scythian princes, as well as in Media, for King Philip, the father of Alexander the Great, took 20,000 full-bred mares from the Scythians at the mouth of the Ister, and sent them to Macedonia for breeding purposes. The horses of the Sigynnae, a people that lived on the Caspian Sea, are described as resembling in many ways the wild tarpan of Tartary and Mongolia ; they were covered with hair five inches long ; they had blunt noses, and were so small that they could not carry a rider, but were harnessed to carriages instead, which they drew at a great speed. The Sigynnae were of Median origin, but their animals had either remained stationary at the earliest stage, or degenerated from it, while the rest of the Sacae had improved 4 8 THE HORSE. theirs by mixture with the improved breed in the richer pastures and milder climate of Media. But this Median horse itself had originally come from Turan, the home of those north-eastern branches of the great Iranian stock, which, as far as the light of history reaches, are always found a horse-riding race. Now, as the cradle of the central Indo-Europeans (Aryans) must be imagined as situated in or near that region, we find ourselves again facing our main question — Were they roaming tribes of horsemen (like the ancient Turanians) that detached themselves from the parent stock and inundated Europe ? or did they, like the Assyrians and Egyptians, receive the tamed horse at a later period from their former home on the sources of the Oxus and Jaxartes ? That the Indo-Europeans were acquainted with the horse is proved by its name akva, which is found, with more or less variety of sound, among all the branches of that family ; as, for instance, in Sanskrit a$va, Anglo-Saxon esh, Old Irish ech, Latin equus, and many others ; it is only lost in the Slavic languages. The word is derived from the root afc, " to hasten," and was applied to the horse as implying its speed, perhaps in contrast to the slow ox. The conception of the horse as of a swift and fleeting animal ope- rates for a long time in many myths and in poetical language. The sun hastens through heaven, and therefore the Persians and Massagetse sacrificed the horse, as the swiftest animal, to the God of Day. Herodotus says of the Massagetae : " They worship the sun, and sacrifice horses to that god. The mean- ing of this sacrifice is the dedication of the swiftest of all earthly creatures to the swiftest of all divinities." Homer calls the sun "untiring," and the same epithet is applied to Notus and Boreas by Sophocles, while Pindar also describes the chariot-horses as " untiring." Mythically the horse is re- garded as one with the storm ; this comes out very clearly in the fable of Boreas fructifying the mares of Erichthonius ; and in Homer the horses fly without bending the ears of the corn, and skim the foam of the grey sea : " These lightly skimming, as they swept the plain, Nor ply'd the grass, nor bent the tender grain ; And when along the level seas they flew, Scarce on the surface curl'd the briny dew." — Iliad. THE HORSE. 49 The horse is also called "stormy," "storm-footed;" "more rapid than the hawk," " swift as the bird." The horses of Rhesus " flew like the wind," and those of Achilles were " sons of Zephyrus and the harpy Podarge " (namely, the swift-footed ; the harpies are destructive blasts of wind) ; they " fled with the blowing of the wind; "and one of them says himself: " No, — could our swiftness o'er the winds prevail, Or beat the pinions of the western gale." — Iliad. ^Eolus himself, the ruler of winds, is called Hippotades, i.e., son of Hippotes (horseman). In the pictures of the northern Edda also, wind and storm are represented as horses. Odin, the god of wind, is carried by his eight-legged grey horse Sleipnir. Winter, represented as a giant, builds a castle for the gods, and is assisted by his horse Svadilfari, or the north wind; but before the ice- palace is quite finished, Loki transforms himself into a mare — the south wind — and entices Svadilfari from his work, so in spring the work is still unfinished, and Thor smashes the giant's skull with his hammer ; and so on. In the German legend of the Wild Hunt, at the head of which rode Wodan on his white horse, we have merely the midnight storm transformed into a horse and his rider. The belief prevalent in Roman times, that on the coast of Lusi- tania mares were impregnated by the wind, may be connected with these ancient representations ; Varro, who first mentions it, calls it an incredible but nevertheless true fact. The horse being thus known to the aborigines, and dwelling in their imaginations as the emblem of speed, so that its very name was derived from that quality, we may imagine the animal, in relation to man, at three stages ; either as the mere object of the chase, which flew like lightning and was difficult to overtake ; or as an animal for riding, which carried the wandering nomad to his goal, encircling and urging forward the grazing herds ; or, finally, as harnessed to waggons, drawing the kibitka, and serving the purposes of migration. But the last is improbable, for in this case speed was not the desideratum, but rather powerful muscles and strong necks. The Scythians, though an equestrian people, are described by Herodotus and Hippocrates 4 5 o THE HORSE. as riding in waggons drawn by oxen, and the campaigns and migratory marches of the other European nations are spoken of, when first met with in history, as being accomplished in the same manner. When the Cimbrians lost the battle against the Romans, the women threw their children under the wheels of the waggons and the hoofs of the draught animals, while the men, not finding trees enough to hang themselves on, bound them- selves to the legs or horns of oxen, drove the animals in oppo- site directions, and were thus torn into pieces. The bullock- cart, as a remnant of very ancient tradition, still appears at re- ligious and political ceremonies at a time when all other things were greatly changed. Tacitus tells of the goddess Nerthus riding in a carriage drawn by cows ; so with the ancient Gallic goddess, whom Gregory of Tours calls Berecynthia. When a dead Goth was carried to the grave, his funeral car was drawn by bullocks ; Gothic and Merovingian kings were drawn to the people's assem- blies, and to all places where they appeared publicly, by oxen ; and in the same manner were conveyed royal and noble women. On the column of Antoninus two captured princesses are repre- sented riding in a cushioned carriage drawn by an ox ; near them marches a bearded man, his hands bound behind his back, escorted by two Roman soldiers. This is quite the rule ; women and children in the bullock- cart, the warrior on foot. Traces of the most ancient times are also found among the Greeks and Romans, where bullocks were the common draught animals. The invention of the waggon and taming of the ox must be thought of in one connexion. We learn from the touching fable of Cleobis and Biton, related to King Croesus by Solon, that the priestess of the Argive Hera used to ride from the city to her temple in an ox-car. In such a carriage Cadmus must have fled with Harmonia from Thebes to the barbarians, and founded in Illyria the town of Bou-thoe (ox-run). The ox alone was employed in domestic and field work, and harnessed to the plough ; a house, a wife, and a plough-ox formed the basis of a rustic household. " But, before all things, a house, a wife, and a ploughing-ox.' — Hesiod. Pie who has no oxen can move no weight, and says to his THE HORSE. 51 neighbour, " Give me a pair of oxen and thy waggon ; " but the other replies, " My oxen have to work for me." A proverb says, " The waggon draws the ox ; " the same thing as our " Putting the cart before the horse." The ox, the fellow-worker of man, was as inviolable as man himself. " And this was the custom in Attica ; not to sacrifice the ox, who bore the yoke and toiled at the plough or waggon, for he too was a countryman, and shared the labour and toil cf man." A saying of Pythagoras runs as follows : " Lay not thy hand on the plough ing-ox." Among the Homeric Greeks the horse was used only in war, and in exactly the same way as among the Oriental nations ; it was not ridden, but harnessed to the chariot. Riding, of course, was not unknown to the Homeric poets, as indeed how could it be ? When the storm has shattered the raft that much-enduring Ulysses had made on Calypso's isle, he escapes on a plank, sitting on it as "on the back of a racer." When Diomed and Ulysses steal the horses of Rhesus by night, the former wants to carry off the chariot of the murdered king ; but, on the advice of Minerva, the heroes mount the animals instead, and hasten back to their ships. Under the circumstances described this was most natural ; how often they must have seen the boy who took the animals to water doing the same ! In another scene in the Iliad a man has chosen four swift animals from a herd grazing at liberty, and has to take them along the high-road to the town ; he mounts and leaps, while at full gallop, from the back of one to that of another, to the admiration of all beholders. With the exception of these few cases, from which we cannot infer real riding in the present sense of the word, the horse, in Homer, serves only to draw the chariot. The combats before the walls of Troy are conducted in just the same manner as those we see depicted on the walls of the palaces at Koyunjik or Khorsabad. The light war-chariot has one axle and two eight- spoked wheels, is drawn by two horses harnessed to the pole, and brings the hero up to his enemy, when he leaps down and hurls his spear or draws his sword. The horses wait till the moment comes to take their master back to his comrades. The warrior is accompanied by a friend and companion, who stands at his left 5 2 THE HORSE. side as charioteer ; while the one fights in armour with shield and lance, the other directs the steeds. Sometimes a whole squadron of chariots advances in line to the attack, as in the fourth book of the Iliad, where Nestor places his men so that the chariots are in front, the strong foot-men in the rear, and the weak in the middle ; giving orders that no charioteer is to press forward, or lag behind, for in that way, long ago, towns and ramparts had been forced : " Our great forefathers held this prudent course, Thus rul'd their ardour, thus preserv'd their force ; By laws like these immortal conquests made, And earth's proud tyrants low in ashes laid." — Iliad. The Trojans and their allies fought in the same manner as the Greeks, and there is no doubt that the whole form of war and the use of the horse itself had been borrowed from Asia. Ares him- self, the God of War, fights either on foot or in a chariot ; never on horseback. In the fifth book of the Iliad the wounded Aphrodite, in haste to reach Olympus, borrows of Ares his war-chariot and horses, which carry her swift as an arrow to the abode of the gods. Hence he is depicted on the shield of Herakles, standing on the seat of his chariot, lance in hand, before him his swift steeds, terrible to behold ; and Pindar calls him, " Aphrodite's brazen- charioted spouse." Even apart from war, Homer does not describe the horse as used for riding. Thus, in the third book of the Odyssey, we see Telemachus and Pisistratus driving right across mountainous Peloponnesus, from Pylus to Lacedsemon, standing in their chariot, not riding up and down the passes or in the pebbly beds of the torrents. Their harness and other appoint- ments are the same as those of the warriors on the plain of Troy ; beside the hero stands Pisistratus, holding the reins and guiding the horses. When Menelaus, in parting from Telemachus, wishes to present him with three horses and a chariot, Telemachus declines the gift, reminding the would-be giver that Ithaca has neither spacious racing-grounds nor plains ; " Not one of the islands lying in the sea is a fit place for driving the swift chariot, and Ithaca least of all." In such countries, therefore, the horse was useless. Again, at funeral games in the most ancient times THE HORSE. 53 there were no races on horseback ; the games at the funeral of Patroclus (Iliad xxiii.) consist in chariot-racing, boxing, wrest- ling, running, fencing, throwing the ball, shooting, and hurling the spear. On the chest, whereon were depicted the celebrated games instituted by Acastus at the burial of Pelias, the artist has not represented horse-races, but only two-horse chariots in mid career, wrestlers, boxers, discus-throwers, and runners. Those earliest times have only left us very conventional repre- sentations of the horse ; those of a later period, when art was in its prime, show, in the opinion of judges, the slender Oriental type, not an importation of the aboriginal type from the distant north. A few features of the oldest form of worship have yet to be mentioned as pointing likewise to Iranian influence. The Per- sians worshipped rivers by sacrificing horses. When Xerxes arrived at the Strymon, the magians sacrificed white horses to that stream ; and in Tiberius's time, the Parthian Tiridates conciliated the river Euphrates by sacrificing a horse. Even so the Trojans were accustomed to throw living horses into the eddies of the Scamander ; Achilles says to them — " Your living coursers glut his gulfs in vain." — Iliad. Off the Argive coast there was a spring of sweet water, forming a whirlpool in the middle of the sea. Into it the Argives, in the very earliest time, used to throw horses as a sacrifice to Poseidon. The Rhodians used, every year, to throw into the sea a team of four horses dedicated to the Sun. To sacrifice horses to the Sun, to regard white horses — a sickly, abnormal breed produced by cultivation — as being by this colour sacred to the God of Light, and then as gods' horses in general and as kings' horses, was an Iranian custom and religious fancy, which is found here and there in Greece, and even in Italy. Castor and Pollux, both Gods of Light, ride on snow-white horses ; so they appeared, clad in their scarlet mantles, when coming to the aid of Locrians at the battle of the river Sagra. They are wedded to the blithe and shining daughters of Leucippus, whose bright being is revealed in his name. Both yEschylus and Sophocles represent Day rising with white horses, and chasing away Night's dismal round. When 54 THE HORSE. Exaenetus of Agrigentum returned home as a victor, he was accom- panied by his rejoicing fellow-citizens with three hundred carriages drawn by white horses ; and Camillus, after taking Veii, entered the city riding in triumph in a chariot drawn by white horses, which act was blamed by his contemporaries as an encroachment on the rights and glory of the God of Day. The Lacedaemonians sacrificed horses to Helios on the summit of the Taygeton ; which custom could not be Phoenician, for the Phoenicians did not use horses in their religious ceremonies. It was rather derived from the Iranians of Asia Minor ; and if the original Greeks really arrived at their future home riding the small, shaggy horses of the steppes, all traces of the fact had certainly disappeared before the earliest period known to us. It is not quite so with Thrace, a land lying north of Greece, and celebrated by Homer for its horses. Homer's account might indeed be purely mythical : Thrace might be the home of the horse as it was of northern storms ; the wild waves rushed down from the Thracian sea; the horse symbolized the storm and the white foam of the waves ; it was therefore created by Poseidon (Neptune), and used in the games in honour of that god. But the Thracian horses of the Epic look too realistic and his- torical to be merely mythical. The Thracians had anciently much intercourse with the nations of Asia Minor ; and Rhesus, with his horses whiter than snow, his chariot and weapons more fit for a god than a man, is copied from an Iranian spirit of light ; it is therefore in the darkness of night that he is despoiled of his horses and his life. Thrace, however, like Asia Minor, lies near the home of the northern horsemen, and the Thracian breed might have come straight from the country of the Hippomolgi (mare- milkers). And in like manner it is probable that the tamed horses of the Slavs, Lithuanians, and Germans were descended from those of their neighbours, the Iranian horsemen. — Of the Slavs, Tacitus expressly says they were not a horse-riding nation like the Sarmatians, that their strength lay in infantry, and he therefore prefers to class them with the Germans. Afterwards, when the Slavs had advanced to the Elbe and Oder on the heels of the retreating Germans, the historians of the Middle Ages mention THE HORSE. 55 a worship of the horse as prevailing among them, which forcibly reminds us of that among the Iranians. They dedicate a white horse to Svatovit, the God of Light, and a black horse to Triglav, the evil one ; the latter horse is never ridden, but the former is sometimes mounted by a priest. Horses are prophetic of good and evil fortune, and the temples at which they are kept become oracles. In the legend relating to the origin of Bohemia, it is a demonic horse that shows the envoys of Libussa the way to Premysl, the chosen ruler. This contrast of light and dark, and the sacred character of the horse, as well as the name for God, dogu, must have been derived from the Sarmatian and Alanian neighbours. — Ancient witnesses describe the Lithuanians as drinkers of horse-milk : a custom which, though unknown to the Germans, had spread from the horsemen of the South-Russian steppes to the Baltic. Wulfstan tells King Alfred that " there is so much honey in the land of the Estes (that is, Prussians) that the king and rich persons leave all the mead to the poor, them- selves drinking the milk of mares." That this "milk " was dis- tilled and intoxicating, we learn from Adam of Bremen and Peter of Dusburg. In Lithuania, then, as among the Iranians, mares were kept in great herds, and driven together to be milked, to which process the animals gradually became accus- tomed, especially if they were led to drink at the same time. The milk was fermented, and became an intoxicating beverage much liked by the nobles ; from which last circumstance we may con- clude that the breeding of horses was an art derived from abroad. A note on Adam's Chronicle would seem to indicate that even the Goths in Sweden intoxicated themselves on mares' milk; but the milking of mares was never a habit among pure Teutonic races, and the annotator's "Sembi et Gothi" must, as Grimm says, have stood for Samo-getse. — The cult of the horse among the Germans has also some peculiarly Iranian features. Horses were sacrificed to the gods, drew the sacred chariot, and had the gift of prophecy ; the white colour was most sacred, just as among the Persians, Scythians, and other nations. Roman judges con- sidered the German horses insignificant and ignoble. Caesar speaks of them as small and ill-shaped, though inured to great 56 THE HORSE. labour. Tacitus says they were not conspicuous for beauty or speed. Possibly the type of these horses was very similar to that of the horses of the steppes — "small, swift, and stubborn," as Strabo says of those to the north of the Euxine. The German, like the Slav, was much firmer on foot than on horseback, except perhaps a few tribes to the east, which had associated more closely with the Iranian inhabitants of the steppes. Turning to the other side of Germany, Procopius pretends that the horse was totally unknown to the Germans of the north-west, to the Angles settled in Britain, and the Warnes, whom he places on the Lower Rhine. " These islanders are more warlike than the other bar- barians, but they always fight on foot. They do not even know a horse by sight, and the animal is not to be found in Brittia. If one of these people come as ambassador or otherwise to the Romans or Franks, he is incapable of mounting a horse, and must be lifted on. So, too, if he would dismount, he must be set on the ground. Also the Warnes are no riders, but go on foot." At the period of which Procopius speaks, this is very improb- able, and perhaps the accounts he made use of referred to the marsh -lands of the north-west, a region impenetrable to horses. Instead of the Angles he should have named the Frisians, and instead of Britain, one of the river-islands of the Continent. But the Batavians, the inhabitants of the island at the mouth of the Rhine, were considered the very best riders among the Germans, accustomed to swim the Rhine on horseback in their armour. Ancient writers also describe the Caledonian horse as being small and insignificant, it was therefore related to the German animal, and represented the old Celtic breed, which, in Gaul, had long since been crossed and improved. Dion Cassius says of the Caledonians : " They have small, swift horses, but also go on foot, walking very fast, and standing very firmly in battle." So the Caledonians too were swift runners, as the Germans and Wends were in comparison with the Sarmatians; and cavalry among them was of secondary consideration in war. Rather did the horse- man need a nimble and strong foot-companion, who accompanied him, and came to his assistance at critical moments. This combina- tion of riding and running among the Germans is circumstantially THE HORSE. 57 described by Caesar : " Tliere were (in the army of Ariovistus) six thousand horsemen, and the like number of very nimble and powerful footmen, whom the former for their own safety's sake had selected from the whole, and with whom they remained in communication during the battle. To these, when necessary, the horsemen retreated ; if the battle went ill at any point, the footmen hurried up ; if a horseman was wounded and fell from his animal, the footmen surrounded and protected him; if it was necessary to go quickly forward or back, the practice in running of these footmen was so great that they kept pace with the horses, holding on by their manes." Long before that time the Bastarnae were accustomed to mix such auxiliary troops among their horse ; and we learn from some reports that the Gauls, who resemble the later Germans the more, the farther back we penetrate into their history, did not rely on their cavalry alone, but supported those troops by powerful infantry. So, from Gaul to the mouth of the Danube, it was a general North- European custom. It is true that, now and then, we hear of a similar mode of fighting among the Southern nations ; but, as will be seen on closer examination, it was of a very different nature. The Iberians rode to battle two on one horse, and then one of the riders fought on foot ; and Diodorus says of the Celto-Iberians, that when they had fought on horseback with success, they jumped off and did astounding deeds on foot. The stratagem once used by the Romans in the second Punic war was similar. When Capua was besieged by Q. Fulvius Flaccus, and the Roman cavalry, being fewer in number, were on the point of yielding to that of the besieged, the centurion Q. Navius thought of the following means of putting an end to this shameful state of things; he chose the strongest and swiftest youths out of all the legions, and armed them with long spears ; these youths mounted behind the horsemen, and at a given signal sprang off, so that a battle on foot and on horseback was developed at the same moment : the surprise and the wounds received put the enemy to flight. Probably this stratagem was not an impromptu invention on the part of the centurion, but had either been seen or heard of by him among the barbarians or the Greeks. Alexander the Great is said to have invented a 58 THE HORSE. kind of cavalry more lightly armed than the Hoplites, but more heavily than the regular cavalry, and practised in fighting both on foot and on horseback. Like Gustavus's dragoons, this doubly exercised troop was not a product of national custom, but of military art. We might fancy we found this compound system of fighting in the Odyssey, where it is said of the Cicones, a Thracian tribe : "All expert soldiers, skill'd on foot to dare, Or from the bounding courser urge the war;" but the expression "from horses" means, everywhere else in Homer, fighting/ww the chariot, and thus the tactics of the Cicones would quite agree with those mentioned in the Iliad. Then why is it expressly mentioned? Because it was something unexpected in a barbarian race? To our surprise, however, this Trojan and Ciconian chariot-fighting agrees with the war-customs which Caesar afterwards found in use among the Celts of Britain. Like the heroes before Troy, the Celts rolled into battle in their chariots. Caesar minutely describes their tactics : " First, they ride about in all directions shooting their missiles, and trying to throw the enemy's ranks into confusion. Then having crept in among their own horse, they suddenly spring from their chariots and fight on foot. Meanwhile their drivers retire, and stand ready, if the warriors are hard pressed, to offer them a speedy retreat. So they combine the speed of horse with the steadfastness of foot. Their practice therein is so perfect that they can guide or stop a horse when at full gallop on a steep mountain-side; and run backwards and forwards on the pole, or step on the yoke, and then return into the chariot again in a moment." Agricola witnessed the same manner of battle in the Grampians ; and Mela says that the chariots were armed with scythes, a point on which Caesar and Tacitus are silent. Other historians say that such war-chariots were in use among the Belgians, which leads to the conclusion that, during the great Celtic migrations in the east in the neigh- bourhood of Iranian and Thracian peoples, the custom had been borrowed from the latter ; and that after it had died out on the Continent, it was still preserved in the British Isles like so THE HORSE. 59 many other ancient customs. The scythe-chariot was Asiatic j and driving into battle, as we have seen, was altogether a custom of Assyria, Persia, and Asia Minor. Poets, in their fancies about pre-historic ages, have sometimes raised the question whether riding or driving was the oldest. Lucretius thinks that for an armed man to mount a horse and guide it with the rein is older than to go to battle in a chariot ; and he may be right in this sense, that though the waggon in itself is a very ancient invention, yet it is a far step from the rude, lumbering ox-wain of early ages to the light, swift, elegant, metal- bound and two-wheeled chariot of the Assyrians. The use of the ox as a draught-animal might invite men to train the captured horse for a like purpose; but it was more natural to mount it, cling to its back with hands and feet, and ride it till it grew tired and willing. And, as we have seen, the horse was always a war- like animal, whose value consisted in speed, and the rider only thought of harnessing it to a lightly rolling vehicle, capable of holding himself and a companion, in order to achieve more com- pletely his warlike aims. If we take all the above data together, we find that nowhere in Europe, neither among the classic nations of the south, nor the North-European nations from the Celts in the west to the Slavs in the east, is the high antiquity of the horse and of its subjugation to man betrayed by any clear traces or undoubted evidence. Many facts, indeed, seem positively to exclude any acquaintance with the animal in early times ; for instance, the fact of the Homeric Greeks not riding, as they must have done had they possessed the animal from the first, but only driving, as they had seen the Asiatics do. We have therefore no ground for imagining the Indo-Germans (Aryans) in their earliest migrations as a horse-riding people, galloping over Europe with loose rein, and catching men and animals with horse-hair lasso. But if the horse did not then accompany them on their great march through the world, it must have been the Iranian branch, which remained near the original point of departure, that learnt the art of riding later ; and from whom did they learn it if not from the Turks, who dwelt next behind them, and in course of time drew nearer and nearer? 6o THE HORSE. To those Turks, and to the Mongols beyond them, must be attributed the first capture of the swift, single-hoofed animal of the steppes, and the art of using it for hunting and war. When the Turks first showed themselves to the civilized people of the West, they were a horse-riding nation to an extent till then unknown, not excepting even the Scythians, Parthians, and other Iranian tribes. " The Huns," say the ancient historians (Suidas, Mar- cellinus, etc.), "fall at every step — they have no feet to walk, they live, wake, sleep, eat, drink, and hold counsel on horseback." Their animals were strong and ugly, and therefore must have come fresh from the steppes of Northern Asia. So Zosimus: "They are unable to set their feet firmly on the ground, but live entirely on horseback, even sleeping on their animals," etc. The steppe was the birthplace of the horse ; the yellow sons of the steppe tamed the animal, and, succeeding in that, founded their whole lives upon it. After that their creative power was spent, and when they rode to the west they could only destroy. If, as modern discoveries seems to indicate, Media either had an original Turanian, that is, non-Aryan population, or, being originally peopled by Iranians, was subjugated by immigrant Turanians — the fact would explain how Media became the cradle of horse-breeding and the art of riding for the whole of Western Asia (note 12). GREEKS, ITALIANS, PHOENICIANS. In the earliest twilight shed by history on the Greek peninsula, what we can discern is the following. The nation whose fame, under the name of Hellenes, afterwards filled the world, had prob- ably fought its way through mountain and forest from the eastern side of the Adriatic to Dodona in Epirus, with which place posterity connected its oldest recollections and conceptions of ancient worship and primitive life. Here was a halting point, and thence issued the two general national names : that of Hellenes, which prevailed more in the east ; and that of Graikoi, which clung to the west of the peninsula, and was accepted by the opposite Italians, but died away in the mother country. From Epirus the immigrant march, doubtless in avoidance of GREEKS, ITALIANS, PHOENICIANS. wild hordes pressing in from the north, crossed the pathless mountains to Thessaly, where we find a second but still very ancient Dodona; and thence extended over the neighbouring lands, the accessible islands, and the southernmost part of the peninsula, which is almost entirely surrounded by the sea. At a much later period, when the small tribe of Dorians, leaving its home on Parnassus, had victoriously overrun the Peloponnesus, the preparatory time of unstable migrations and mingling of races ceased, and the populations of the peninsula permanently took possession of the settlements in which history has since accustomed us to see them. Everywhere, before the true Greek age, we must imagine a former period of the Pelasgians, a name in which either a former age and elder civilization has been personified (the name probably meaning forefathers, the grey in age: note 13), or in which the memory of a branch of the same nation, which preceded and was afterwards absorbed by the Greeks proper, has been preserved. What happened to the Pelasgians, happened also to the early extinguished races which we may comprise under the name of Leleges (probably meaning selected, in another form Locrians), and which may be traced, as scattered remnants of Western Greece, across the islands to isolated points on the coast of Asia Minor. Like the Pelasgians they formed part of the first great immigrations, and were scattered, or subdued, or driven across the sea, by multi- tudes pressing on their rear. As far as we can make out, their starting point was Acarnania and the opposite islands (note 14). At this earliest period the division of the nations is not at all clear, and we find transitions on every side. Progressive civilization first created the contrast between Barbarian and Hellene. Races ethnologically akin, but which had stood still at earlier stages of culture, and whose dialect was no longer understood, seemed now to be of doubtful or foreign blood. Among such half-Hellenes of intermediate position were numbered the ^Etolians and Acar- nanians; farther north the Thesprotians and Molossians in the once Greek Epirus; and on the opposite side, the afterwards great and famous Macedonians, a name which signifies tall people, just as Minyse means little people. 62 THE HORSE. These formed the connecting links to two widely spread nations, the Thraciaiis to the east and the Illy nans to the west, which in fact belonged to the Indo-European family, and were therefore not absolutely foreign to the Hellenes, but, by long separation and diverse fates, were already at such a distance that when the two met they had no longer any sense of kinship in blood or civiliza- tion. It is a matter of doubt whether these two great races followed south of the Danube in the wake of the primitive Greeks after these had penetrated into their own peninsula, or whether the latter pushed their way, fighting, past the former. Pott, in his " Inequality of Human Races," is of the latter opinion. It is of no small detriment to the elucidation of the early history of Indo- Germanism in Europe, that the languages of both those nations are lost to us for ever — languages which would have afforded a key for solving so many problems concerning the dispersion, the course of migration, and the successive arrivals of the principal members of that system of nations. For the Thracians, together with the kindred Getae and Dacians, and the Illyrians with their branches, the Pannonians and Veneti, form the central mass from which numerous connecting threads spread to all sides. They were closely allied to the Greeks and also to the Phrygians, and through the latter to the Armenians and the Iranian races ; with the last, indeed, they were besides directly connected through the Scythians and Sarmatians ; some not insignificant traces also point to a connexion with the Lithuano-Slavs and Germans in the north, and the Celts in the west. An important link in the chain of languages and nations being thus missing, we are reduced in our grouping of the same to isolated observations, which may be valued by different persons in different degrees. Of one of those languages a valuable remnant at least seems to be preserved in the Albanian dialect ; but this idiom exists only in its modern and much disfigured form, having been deeply influenced by surrounding tongues both in ancient and modern times. It is often doubtful what must be attributed to primitive affinity and what to foreign influence, and all this together has hitherto prevented comparative philology, which has enough to do elsewhere, from attempting any extensive excavation in this field, though perhaps it hides much that is valuable (note 15). GREEKS, ITALIANS, PUCE NIC I A, VS. 63 The Thracians (the name seems of Greek origin, meaning the rough or mountain folk) had early experienced the effects of Asiatic culture, and their southern branches in their turn influenced the north of Greece ; the Illyrians lead us on the opposite side to the sister peninsula, Italy. There, under the name of Veneti, Heneti, or Eneti, the Illyrians had not only occupied the country at the mouths of the Po and other Alpine rivers, but, as many traces of names prove, and as direct evidence confirms, had ex- tended at a very early time along the whole of the eastern coast down to the southern point of the peninsula, without, however, crossing the Apennines. The Messapians and Japygians in the south-east of the peninsula, together with the neighbouring peoples, may also be reckoned as belonging to the Illyrian stock. Along the great pathway of the nations, round the Venetian Gulf, either pushing the Italo-Illyrians to one side and before them, or, vice versa, pressed forward by them to the south and south- west, the Italians proper advanced into the peninsula. This people, as is evident to an unprejudiced mind, had separated comparatively late from the primitive Hellenes. Among the sub- divisions into which it parted on the new soil, and which perhaps owed their existence to the shocks of successive intermittent im- migrations, the Latins settled in the plain south of the Lower Tiber, and on the adjoining volcanic hills. The Sabellians advanced along the ridge of the mountain-chain itself; the Umbrians ex- tended from the Lower Po and the plains skirting the Adriatic Sea, across the peninsula to the western coast ; and, close to them on the north-west, in the mountains that descend to the Gulfs of Genoa and Spezzia, settled the Ligyans or Ligurians, a non-Italian people. Whether the immigrants along the west coast of Italy, down as far as Sicily, found Iberians and Libyans settled there, whom they drove away or destroyed, is a thing more to be guessed at than asserted or denied. But the Umbrians, at a very early period, were split into groups and subjugated by a new inroad from the north ; the mysterious, but probably Aryan, Etruscans settled themselves firmly, from the Alps to the Tiber, in all the upper half of the peninsula, and became powerful on the sea, after- wards advancing even to Campania, until they were more and more 64 THE HORSE. limited and weakened by the Celts, who, breaking in from beyond the Alps, took permanent possession of the plains of Upper Italy. But meanwhile the warlike, roving, and reiving pastoral nations of both Greece and Italy had gradually turned their attention to husbandry, and thereby taken the first and mightiest step on the path of humanity. That in the Greco-Italian period before the immigration, nay, that even in the heart of Asia, they had culti- vated the ground and fed on the fruit of Demeter, has often been asserted with more or less probability; but the proofs brought forward in support of the assertion are scarcely tenable. A com- parison of the names for spelt and barley only shows that at a time when the Greeks, Lithuanians, and Germans were yet united, certain grain-bearing grasses were known by names common to two or more nations. The language of a pastoral nation must naturally have been rich in names for plants and grasses. There is only one word-root (Grk. aro-, Lat. ara-, Lith. ar-, Goth. arj- y to ear or plough) that might be taken as proof of an acquaintance with ploughing and the plough, before the dispersion of the nations over Europe. The long migration from the regions beyond the Sea of Aral must have been interrupted by intervals of repose, during which, according to their longer or shorter duration, the beginnings, but only the beginnings, of the art of husbandry were possible. As soon as the love of change revived, the hard and tiresome labour of turning up the sod, so hateful to all pastoral peoples, was once more neglected, leaving behind it only a general acquaintance with the art. We may therefore presume that the Graeco-Italians were only acquainted with the half-nomadic hus- bandry still to be found among the Bedouins, the nations beyond the Volga, and elsewhere. The original plough was a piece of naturally bent wood, such as was sought and found in the forest, and still known as late as Hesiod ; while the different parts of the constructed plough, mentioned both by Homer and Hesiod, have quite different names in Greek and in Latin. We must infer that the plough was invented, or derived from a foreign nation, only after the separation of the Greeks and Latins in their new homes (note 1 6). The plant which they cultivated may have been millet, which was a kind of grain very early common to both East and GREEKS, ITALIANS, PHCENICIANS. 65 West. Side by side with millet we often find the turnip and bean, two very ancient fruits, called by common names, and the plant- ing of which probably preceded the art of husbandry (note 17). However that may be, when the restless pastoral nations found a settled abode in the sea-bordered lands of Greece and Italy, when the old roving spirit sobered down into purely local flittings and fightings, then those "Who settled close to the sea, Or in the vale far from its foaming waves ; And, at the foot of the gloomy ravine, Turned up the fruitful soil " — Hesiod. must have been tempted by the rich black soil and favourable skies to cultivate corn. The Pelasgians became a peasant people, bend- ing their faces to mother earth, and gaining their livelihood by the cultivation of the ground ; goading the ox before them, and sweating under the " labour imposed on men by the gods " (Hesiod). The shepherd, who clung to the forest-clad mountains, rejoiced in greater freedom. Shy of work, and rapacious like all shepherds, he attacked the dwellings, fences, and barns of the husbandmen; and, on a small scale, the same conditions ruled which, on a large one, ruled between Iran and Turan, between the Gauls shortly before Caesar and the Germans, and afterwards between the Germans and Hungarians. Thus human wants led to solid dwellings, walls, and forts on the heights — protective works to shield the fields against the wild neighbours of the mountains. So in many parts of Greece, under the names of Ephyra (watch-tower), Larissa (more correctly Larisa — endowed with fat soil; Larisa is the daughter of Piasos = fat ; and in the Thessalian Larisa rule the Aleuades = thrashers, pounders), and Argos (fruit-plain opening towards the sea), we meet with solid settlements of husbandmen and builders from the dark to the historic ages. While the kindred nations in the north continued their un- settled mode of life, the Graeco-Italian races settled down com- fortably in their new and splendidly furnished home, waiting for the impulse that should rouse them from their natural dulness and launch them on an endless career of culture. This impulse 5 66 THE HORSE. was given by their contact with the Semites, a clever race in comparison with the heavier Aryan nature, rich in the power of abstraction and already far advanced in many arts of civilization. Sidonian Phoenicians, in company with Carians, had occupied the islands of the JEgaean Sea perhaps as early as the thirteenth or fourteenth century B.C. According to their custom, they had taken possession of small islands and isolated promontories along the edge of the continent, as being commodious and safe points for trade and manufacture ; from the more northerly islands they had crossed over to Thrace, and had there come in contact with immi- grant Phrygians ; they ruled in Bceotia and Attica (remember the legends of Europa and of the Athenian tribute to Crete) ; and from the island Cythera, a very ancient seat of Phoenician culture, they made good their footing on the opposite Lacedaemonia, occupied Corinth, where Aphrodite (the Phoenician Astarte) and Elis, where Herakles (the Phoenician Melkarth), were anciently worshipped ; and perhaps even went up the coast of the Ionian Sea as far as the iEtolians, Thesprotians, and Illyrians. At suitable places they carried on purple-fisheries and dye-works ; they dug mines;, and engaged in profitable commerce with the children of nature who lived around their factories, a commerce in which, after the fashion of the most ancient and also modern times, cheating and robbery went hand in hand. What the natives could give in exchange was naturally only the produce of their herds and forests, such as hides, wool, wood, wild honey, cattle, and sheep, also strong youths and beautiful maidens — that is, slaves. What they received was of many kinds : all sorts of trinkets that tempt savages — images, boxes of bronze or glass, ready-made clothes {chiton and tunica are Phoenician words), iron and other metal tools, knives, and weapons; the products of various handicrafts; the mechanics of masonry ; mythical stories, ideas of West-Asiatic religious symbolism and cruel rites of sacrifice. It is true that the foreign element, which must have been numerically weaker, was gradually absorbed by the nationality of the natives, and as a separate existence died out; it is true that after the Dorian Migration enterprising emigrants streamed out of Greece in re- peated sea-expeditions, passing from island to island, then to GREEKS, ITALIANS, PHCENICIANS. 67 single points of the Carian and Lydian coast, and thence again to others, even peopling and subjugating the once Semitic islands of Crete and Rhodes ; it is true that, during this period of a Greek occupation of the ^Egean, Phoenicians from Tyre no longer appear on the Hellenic shore except as merchants, and in single ships. But many ideas and much knowledge derived from them were not rooted out when they were driven away or assimilated ; they re- mained behind as a half-intelligible religious cult, as a national custom whose origin was soon forgotten, or as a valuable and pro- ductive possession in implements, inventions, and modes of culti- vation. Who shall decide whether the Greeks had brought with them the knowledge of the potter's wheel, of the loom and spindle ; or whether that knowledge was obtained from the Carians, Lydians, and Phoenicians (note 18)? whether the words denoting metals and many trade terms did not also originate among those peoples (notes 19 and 20)? Phoenician sanctuaries had been adopted by the Greeks and gradually transformed by the more liberal Hellenic spirit without ever entirely losing their original type ; Asiatic trees which surrounded the ancient places of worship, branches and flowers that had served as ancient symbols, continued to propagate in their new home. The wine that first came from across the sea. the sweet dried fruits, the fragrant oil, might take root and flourish in the land itself; and if some beginnings of such culture died out again in Hellas proper, they were revived by their own colo- nization of the East — they flowed back to the mother country from Crete and Rhodes, from Naxos and Thasos, and from the new settlements on the Anatolian coast. Semitic cultivation of the olive, the vine, and the fig found a home on the hills that bordered the sown field ; and the plantation that constantly re- quired a nurturing hand found a place beside the field that was merely ploughed with oxen, sown, and then left to the care of the heavenly and subterranean gods. As if by a miracle, a picture of the manners, occupations, and ideas of mankind at that period has been preserved to us in the Homeric poems ; but, full of light as that picture is, it leaves many riddles unsolved, and though it seems to bear faithful witness, it must be accepted with great caution. For in the epics of Homer and Hesiod all is not equally 68 THE HORSE. valuable ; naive songs with genuine legendary contents and the clever work of later revisers and imitators, poems full of antique faith and later productions of profane rhapsodic skill, are more or less deftly, and with more or less probability, all enclosed in one frame. It is necessary to fix our eyes upon the most ancient portions as far as they can be recognised ; what lies behind Homer is wrapt in an obscurity which is only now and then illuminated by some passing ray from the science of language or from the religious myth. THE VINE. (VITIS VINIFERA.) We find wine in general use among the Greeks of Homer, and in that poet's works wine is looked upon as a natural gift of the country. Calypso, on the departure of Ulysses, gives him bread, wine, and clothes, the three first necessaries of life. In bread and wine lie the strength of men, and the gods are distinguished from mortals by their needing no food and drinking no wine. Little children are reared on wine; Phoenix the son of Amyntor gives food and drink to the infant Achilles, cutting up his meat and holding the wine-cup to his lips : full oft have his garments been soiled by the boy bringing up in childish fashion what he has drunk. Young ladies and their maids drink like the men ; when Nausicaa goes to wash linen on the sea-beach, her mother provides her not only with meats and cates, but also with wine in a goat- skin (note 21). In the eighteenth book of the Iliad we find figured on Achilles' shield, not only fallow-fields and crops ripe for the harvest, with other scenes of rural life, but also a vineyard in which the vintage is being joyfully gathered. As with the Greeks, so with the Trojans : Hector, encamping with his hosts on the river-side, causes the horses to be unharnessed and fed, and oxen and sheep and delicious wine to be brought for the men. Grecian towns and districts are described as rich in vines. A number of ancient towns and districts derive their names from the vine and vine-culture. If we inquire at what place in Greece the cultivation of the vine was first commenced, the answer seems to be given in numerous legends relating to the origin of the vine ; but such legends generally melt away under examination into a mere mythic symbolism of the budding, blossoming, and withering of the plant, or of the antagonism between the novel fetters of civilization 7o THE VINE. and the rude and free forest life of shepherds. In one legend, Southern ^Etolia is the birthplace of the vine ; there, a dog (Sinus, the hot season) bore to the son of Deucalion, Orestheus (man of the mountain), the end of a branch ; he buried it in the earth, and from it grew a vine rich in grapes ; therefore he gave his son the name of Phytios (planter), and the son of Phytios was Oineus, named after the vine. Exactly the same thing is told by the neighbouring Locrians as having happened to them; and their surname of Ozolse is derived from the sprouting of the first vine- stock. In the Iliad the ^Etolian Oineus represents the genial culture of the vine. He refused to sacrifice to Artemis, and was therefore pursued by the destroying boar. His brothers are Agrios (the wild) and Melas (the black, foul), that is, the goatherd, which name is the same in sense as that of Melantheus, the wicked goat- herd of the Odyssey. His son, the hunter Meleager, who saves his fortress from the besieging Curetes, is the husband of Cleo- patra ; Cleopatra's mother, again, is Marpessa (the female brigand), whose parents are Idas (the wooded mountain), and Euenine (the daughter of the ^Etolian river Euenos). So in the Calydonian legend of the wine-man as given by Homer, we see not only the rivalry of hostile races, but also that of the different modes of life they lead. In many other places besides ^Etolia, the vine was said to have been first created or given to man by Dionysus (Bacchus) ; thus, in the Attic demos Icaria, to Icarius, who is both father of Erigone (the Spring-born) and master of the dog Maira (the twinkler = Sirius), and a multitude of transparent legends, and of cheerful or awful festivals in different places, celebrate the memory of that god's birth, adventures, sufferings, and glorious deeds. But Thrace, more than all other places, seems the principal home and point of departure of the worship of Dionysus. There was situated the oldest Nysa, that mentioned by Homer : " Bacchus, and Bacchus' votaries he drove With brandished steel from Nysa's sacred grove. " Thence wine-laden ships came daily to the Greek camp before Troy (note 22); then Ulysses received from Maron (note 23), the priest of Apollo, and the son of Euanthes, that is, of Dionysus THE VINE. 71 himself — the delicious wine with which he intoxicated the Cyclop. A remarkable passage in Herodotus mentions an independent and warlike Thracian mountain tribe, the Satres, who possessed a Dionysian oracle. The worship of that god penetrated into the interior of the country up to the Hsemus mountains. Doubtless this Thracian wine-god originated in the opposite Asia Minor, with whose customs and religions military inroads had early made the Thracians acquainted. The great invasion of Mysians and Teucrians, for instance, which Herodotus places before the siege of Troy, may have introduced Sabos-worship, the vine, and the art of fermenting the juice of the grape, to the wild Thracians, " the worshippers of Ares," for Mysia was celebrated for its wealth of grapes. The representations of a suffering and then triumphant God of the Sun or Year ; the heart-breaking laments and furious mirth with which the Thyiades celebrated his death and resurrec- tion ; the double character in which Dionysus and Apollo, or Ares and Dionysus, melt into one ; this, with all that holds of it, smacks of Phrygia and of Western Asia in general. In the Thracian, as in the ^Etolian myth of Bacchus, through all the symbolism of nature we get glimpses of a contrast in culture, of an antagonism of rival races. Homer's Lycurgus, who pursues the nurses of Dionysus in sacred Nyseion till the terrified god himself takes refuge in the depths of the sea, may indeed, like Pentheus in Bceotia, be an image of winter ; but, as " krateros Lyko-orgos" (the stern wolf-man), as a son of Dryas (the forest), as " andro-phonos " (man-slayer), with the ox-felling axe (note 24) in his hand, he is the bloodthirsty Thracian mountaineer, who affrights the peaceful vine-dresser by his- sudden attacks, and will not tolerate the new-fangled religious rites. In this sense we explain that passage in the Odyssey where Maron, the priest of Apollo, rewards the hero not only with gold and silver, but with twelve amphorae of wine, for protecting him and his wife and child : " Him and his house heaven moved my mind to save, And costly presents in return he gave, .... And twelve large vessels of unmingled wine, Mellifluous, undecaying, and divine ! "—Odyssey. 72 THE VIAE. But the use of wine, and the religion that saw in wine all the fulness of nature, spread throughout Thrace, and with the Thracians it moved further south ; filled Macedonia, where the Mimallones and Kloddnes (bacchanals) raved ; reached Parnassus and Delphi, whence Apollo only by degrees dislodged his brother- god ; it passed on to Thebes, where Semele, the goddess of the earth (note 25) bore to Zeus her glorious son; to Mount Cithseron in Bceotia ; and, personified as Eumolpus, to Attica, and Eleusis in countless ramifications elsewhere. But this stream of culture, from the very first, encountered one originally identical but coming from the opposite direction, that of the Phoenicians or Caro-Phoenicians. The coast of Thrace was an old haunt of Phoenician colonization and commerce ; Phoenicians had first opened the gold-mines on Mount Pangaeus, occupied the isle of Thasos, rich in gold and wine, and thence founded emporiums on the coasts of Thrace and the Hellespont, which their successors the Parians had much difficulty in maintaining. Wherever the Phoenicians landed, they would tempt the barbarians to trade with them by offering the wine they had brought with them ; and where they settled permanently they would compel the aborigines to cultivate the vine. From Crete, a centre of Phoenician coloniza- tion, this culture and the legend attached to it found their way to the islands of the JEgsean, to Naxos, Chios, and farther still. Fr. Osann's " (Enopion and his Kin " shows that the diffusion of viti- culture through the Hellenic world was personified in the story of a Cretan family travelling by way of Naxos to Chios, which then becomes the centre of an improved culture, and of numerous colonies that propagate the vine. Now, according to a tradition as old as Hesiod, even the Thracian Maron of the Odyssey was a son or grandson of this (Enopion ; and thus the two branches or outlets of Greek wine-cultivation meet in one (note 26). That wine reached the Greeks through the Semites we learn from the identity of name (Hebr. yatn, Ethiop. and Arab, wain, Gr. voinos, Lat. vinum). The course taken by civilization makes it extremely improbable that the Semites should have borrowed the word from the Aryans ; that is, from the Graeco-Italians, for the Iranians have it not. Attempts to show from Sanskrit that THE VINE. 73 wine was an original possession of the unseparated Aryan races have fallen through, and, in the eyes of the unprejudiced, only prove the contrary. The true home of the vine, which is the luxuriant country south of the Caspian Sea, was also, as far as can be historically determined, close to the cradle of the Semitic race, or of one of its chief branches. There in the woods, the vine, thick as a man's arm, still climbs into the loftiest trees, hanging in wreaths from summit to summit, and temptingly displaying its heavy bunches of grapes. There, or in Colchis on the Phasis, in the countries lying between the Caucasus, Ararat, and Taurus, the primitive methods of cultivation we read of in the works of the Greeks and Romans are still practised ; for instance, the dividing of vineyards by cross-paths running from north to south (cardd) and east to west {limes decumanus) ; the pitching or chalking of the amphorae, the burying of them in the ground, etc. There grow the spicy, orange-yellow wines of penetrating odour, and the precious Cachetian grape yields a juice so intensely dark-red that ladies write their letters with it. From those regions the vine accompanied the teeming race of Shem to the lower Euphrates in the south-east, and to the deserts and paradises of the south-west, where we afterwards find them settled, and developing the peculiar civilization which succeeded the Egyptian and long preceded the Aryan. To the Semites, then, who even invented the distillation of alcohol, who accomplished the gigantic abstractions of mono- theism, measurement, money, and alphabetic writing (a kind of mental distillation, on the threshold of which the Egyptians had halted), belongs also the dubious fame of having arrested the juice of the grape at the stage of fermentation, and so produced an ex- hilarating or stupefying beverage. From Syria the cultivation of the vine spread to the Lydians, Phrygians, Mysians, and other Iranian or half-Iranian nations which had in the meantime moved up from the east. Thus it entered the Greek peninsula from the north, while at the same time Phoenician commerce, Carian colonies, and also old Greek communities that had crossed from Europe to Asia, brought the wonderful invention, and in time the plant itself, direct by sea. At the time of the Homeric Epos and Hesiod's poems, its introduction had long been accomplished and forgotten, 74 THE VINE. the existence of the vine and of wine was taken for granted, and attributed, like all the blessings of life, to the instructions or the creating hand of a deity. The earliest voyages of the Greeks to the west must have intro- duced the intoxicating beverage to the Italian coast, for that wine came to Italy from Greece is proved by the word vinum, its neuter form being accounted for by imitation of the accusative voinon (note 27). The Greek sailors found a simple shepherd folk, on whom the foreign wine had the same stupefying effect as on the Centaurs mentioned by Pindar: "When the Pheres became acquainted with the man-subduing power of sweet wine, they hastily pushed the white milk from the tables, drank out of silver horns, and wandered helplessly about." That in Latium milk was older than wine is proved by ordinances attributed to Romulus, according to which white milk, and not wine, was to be poured out to the gods ; and Numa decreed that wine should not be sprinkled on the bier, which shows that wine was not yet in use at the oldest funeral ceremonies. For there was a time when the Romans only practised agriculture, and the cultivation of the vine had not yet been introduced. It is remarkable that in that country, as in Greece, legends of battles between the nations are connected with the introduction of the vine. A much noted legend relates that Mezentius, King of Caere, demanded of the Latins the first- fruits of their vineyards, or the first wine from the press; but that they vowed these things to Jupiter, and so won the victory over the wicked tyrant. The rule of the Etruscans in Campania and Latium was probably broken by an alliance of the Greeks and Latins ; and the faint remembrance of this victory got mixed up with that of the introduction of Greek viticulture and that of the institution of firstfruits to Jupiter Liber and Venus Libera. The 19th of August, the day of the foundation of two temples to Murcia and Libitina, goddesses of the harvest, now also became the day of the vinalia rustica, which was preceded on the 23rd of April by the vinalia priora, both feasts connecting the younger cultivation of the vine with the older cultivation of the field. It was natural that Jupiter should be the patron of the new gift, and that his priest, the Flamen Dialis, should consecrate the harvest ; THE VINE. 75 for all fecundity and fruits of the earth were attributed to that god. The surname Liber, which makes him the god of wine, is a trans- lation from the Greek; the Greek genealogy, which made Bacchus a son of Jupiter, had not taken root in Italy. The vine soon grew so luxuriantly on the mountains of South Italy, that already in the fifth century B.C. Sophocles calls Italy the favourite land of Bacchus, and Herodotus calls the southern point of Italy the land of vine-poles — CEnotria. CEnotria was the land where the vine was trained on poles, in contrast with Etruria and Campania, for instance, where it twined round trees; or Massilia and Spain, where it was cut short and left without support; with Brundusium, where it spread roof-like over trellis-work or cords ; or Asia Minor, where it crept upon the ground. These different methods of training resulted partly from the nature of the soil, which was either rocky and hot or damp and rich in humus, partly from the want of sufficient wood or cane, and partly from the habits of those by whom the cultivation had been introduced, and the kind of grape they brought with them. The abundance of timber in the country afterwards called Lucania and Bruttium — also called Italia from the cattle-breeding connected with those woods— may have led to the general use of proper vine-poles, and the name CEnotria may have been given by those Greeks who were accustomed to train the vine freely on the ground or on trees (note 28). In the districts at the mouth of the Po the vinestock must have been introduced very early by Greek maritime commerce, although the low and damp ground seemed little favourable to its cultivation. Even Strabo was surprised at the co-existence of marshes and flourishing vines. The vine grew well near Ravenna, bearing the heat and rains, nourishing itself on the mists, and yielding abun- dance of wine, and the same is remarked of other northern grapes. Wine in Ravenna was cheaper than water, so that the poet Martial says he would rather possess a tank of water than a vine- yard, and complains that a cheat of a publican has sold him pure wine instead of wine and water. Picenum, where the geographical names and other things indicate that it was anciently connected with the mouth of the Po, is very early described as rich in wine. We read in Polybius that Hannibal cured the horses of his army 76 THE VINE. with the old wine of that country, of which there was an abun- dance ; and long afterwards the wines of Picenum were still exported to Gaul and the East. There grew the celebrated Praetutian grapes, resembling the Istrian, and were identified by Pliny with the Pucinian grapes that grew on the river Timavus near Aquileia. The Picene vine had therefore been propagated from the old Greek times along the west coast of the Adriatic to the very head of that gulf. Polybius, who speaks as an eye- witness, praises the wine of the extensive and fertile plains that stretched from the Po to the foot of the Alps. Most likely the vine grew there already when the Celts invaded Italy, tempted by its southern wines and fruits. Martial speaks of the vine-covered slopes of the volcanic Euganean hills near Padua. The Rhcetian wines, that is, the wines of what is now Tyrol and Valtelin, were anciently celebrated. They really owe their immortality to Virgil, who considered them only second to Falernian wine; but perhaps he eulogized the Rhcetian wine because Augustus particularly liked it. Strabo joined in the song of praise, most likely echoing Virgil. The district of Verona, too, was celebrated long after for its wines. Cato was of opinion that of all kinds of culture that of the grape was the most profitable ; and during the last years of the Roman Republic, Italy had become such a wine country that the relation between wine and corn was reversed ; wine was exported, and corn imported. But the cultivation of the vine had also long since begun to cross the borders of Italy and make itself at home in the north and west. Columella quotes from an older writer on agri- culture, Saserna, the opinion that the climate had changed, for districts formerly too cold to produce oil and wine had now a superfluity of both. The truth is, the cultivation of these plants constantly spread northward, not because the climate changed, but through gradual acclimatization. In modern times — com- pared to the Middle Ages — the reverse has taken place; the cultivation of the vine has retired from the northern districts, where it had ceased to be profitable. Northern France, the southern counties of England, Thuringia, and Brandenburg, etc., once produced wine ; but with progressing commerce it became THE VINE. 77 more convenient to purchase the wines of more favoured countries in exchange for the grains which their own soil brought forth in greater plenty and with greater certainty. But the introduction of the vine into France, occurring within historical times, and known to us from scattered notices, probably affords a fair picture of the processes by which it was introduced to the peoples in the interior of Italy centuries before. The first vinestock on Gallic soil was doubtless planted by the hand of a Massiliote ; the vine flourished on the hills around Massilia (Strabo). The mode of culture was the same as that common in Asia Minor, without props or poles. Then the colonists, spreading eastward and westward, propagated this industry along the coast. The natives — Ligurians, Iberians, and afterwards Celts — bartered the raw pro- ducts of their country for wine, just as in later times the inhabitants of Aquileia bartered their oil and wine for Illyrian slaves, cattle, and skins. At first it was only the rich that drank the Italian and Massilian wines, while the poor continued to use the national drink made of fermented grain. Gradually the new culture spread into the interior ; the more distant tribes learned to cultivate the plant themselves, and transform the juice of the grape into wine ; till at length the Romans, who were not only a nation of warriors, but of shrewd traders, began to be jealous, and in the interests of Italian exportation made it a condition of peace with the Trans- alpine tribes that they should abstain from cultivating the vine and olive. " Pretty specimens of justice we are ! " says Cicero, in an outburst of honest indignation (De Repub. 3, 9, 16). Even when the region between the Pyrenees, Cevennes, and Alps had become Provincia Narbone?isis, wine was still largely imported from Italy. This is proved by Cicero's speech in defence of Fonteius, who had actually ventured to levy a toll on Italian wines. Then followed Caesar's conquest of the whole country as far as the North Sea and the Rhine, after which Roman civilization, manners, and customs inundated the land. In the first century of the empire, Gaul appears already as an independent and rival wine country, with its own peculiar growths of grape and wine, though not without indications of a culture but recently adopted and still young. At that time Gaul stood in relation to Italy as Italy 78 THE VINE. had stood in primitive times to Greece, and Greece before that to Syria, Phrygia, and Lydia. Gallic wines pleased the Italian palate. Burgundy was drunk, though not under that name. It tasted of pitch (as some Burgundy does now), and was indeed artificially treated with resin and pitch. It was much appreciated at home, but was also exported to Italy. Gallic varieties of grape, which had been produced by transplantation to new soils, were trans- mitted to Italy and propagated there. The virtues ascribed to these Gallic vines entirely consist in greater resistance to an un- favourable climate, productiveness even on poor soil, and endurance of cold, rain, and wind ; they all bear abundance of fruit, and yield a large quantity of must ; they easily degenerate when removed to another soil, and have therefore no stable character ; the grape called helvennaca does not thrive well in Italy, but remains small and easily decays ; the aroma of the Allobrogian wine is rapidly lost, and so on. It was owing to this want of durability that the wines of Massilia, which somewhat resembled the present Cette wines, were smoked in the Grecian manner ; and the Provence wines in general came into the market not only disfigured by smoking, but by the addition of herbs and spices. The ancients had recourse to all sorts of means, such as boiling, smoking, and mixing, because they were not yet acquainted with brandy, by which our sherries, ports, marsalas, and other southern wines are kept from spoiling. It was in the natural course of things, that during the empire the culture of the vine should not only become permanent in Gaul, but be extended to the valleys of the Garonne, the Marne, and the Moselle, though it did not as yet cross the Rhine. But, if not the vine, yet wine itself soon became known to the neighbouring Germans, who by their acceptance of this product concluded the fateful compact with Gallic-Roman civilization; while the more distant tribes, from their so-called sense of liberty, that is, from their adherence to the half-nomadic hunting and pastoral life inherited from their forefathers, refused to admit so suspicious a gift. (More than a thousand years later it fared with the Germans in Norway as once with the Romans in Germany — they were now the southerners who introduced wine, corrupted the people, and were therefore THE VINE. 79 refused admittance into Bergen by King Sverris). However, the cultivation of the vine in the Roman provinces threatened to choke the cultivation of grain to such a degree that the Emperor Domitian, in an excess of anxiety, ordered that half and more than half of all the vineyards outside Italy should be destroyed — which order, naturally, could not be carried out. Prohibition of the Oriental custom of castration being issued about the same time, Apollonius said that the emperor spared men but eunuchized the earth. In Ionia, and Asia generally, the execution of the above-named order was warded off by an embassy (note 29). But the cultivation of the vine in the provinces must always have been regarded unfavourably by Italy, for it is recorded specially of the Emperor Probus, that he permitted the provinces of Gaul, Spain, and Britain (according to others, Gaul, Pannonia, and Mcesia), to possess vineyards and make wine. So drinkers of Tokay may toast the Emperor Probus, who had a short reign, but is become a legendary hero — a sort of wine saint. Less eulogized in song, but not less important, is another pro- duct of civilization, introduced into Transalpine Europe from the south at the same time as wine — we mean vinegar: French, vinaigre (sour wine) ; Gothic, akeit (from acetuni) ; Anglo-Saxon, oced; Pol. Wall. Bulg., ocel> etc. The Russian and Lithuanian names for vinegar, uksus and uksosas, were derived from the Greek, that is, from Byzantium, though there is now no country with a greater partiality to everything sour than the wide tract from the Car- pathians to the Chinese Wall. Vinegar mixed with water was a common beverage among the Italian people and in the Roman camps, from which it may have spread into the barbaric countries. If we compare the present condition of viticulture with what it was in ancient times, we find that it has in some degree followed the general course of history ; that is, it has declined in the countries of its origin, and stands at the highest point of develop- ment in those countries where it was introduced the latest. When Western Asia, the cradle of the vine, was overwhelmed by nations of the faith of Islam, it was natural that a product, the enjoy- ment of which was forbidden to the conquerors, should no longer nourish. In all countries that came under Arab government — in 8o THE VINE. North Africa, Sicily, and Spain — the cultivation of the vine declined, for the ruling class in their Semitic temperance were more addicted to the worship of water and cooling shade than to that of heating drinks. Some fanatical princes would not even tolerate the existence of wine ; for example, the Caliph Hakem II. of Spain, who caused almost all the vines in that country to be uprooted, leaving only about the third part of the vineyards standing for the sake of the ripe grapes, dried fruit in the shape of raisins, or syrup and grape-honey, the use of which was per- mitted to Mohammedans. What Islam could not quite accomplish in Spain — as the present sherry and Malaga wines prove — was com- pleted in Morocco. The Atlantic coast of Morocco was anciently a very productive and celebrated wine district, into which the vine had been introduced, not by the Carthaginians, but by other Phoenicians long before. There lay the promontory of Ampelusia (vine-cape), now Cape Spartel, and the ancient town of Lix, whose Punic and Punico-Roman coins have the bunch of grapes for their distinctive mark, and of whose inhabitants it is related that they nourished themselves on the berries of wild vines. Strabo says that the vinestocks of Maurusia were so thick that two men could not span them, and they bore bunches of grapes three feet long. Other historians mention the large production of wine, and con- sequent export, in this district. The culture must still have been going on in the Middle Ages when the Arabs arrived, for the town they built on the site of ancient Lix was named El-Araish (vine- yard). But now, in consequence of the Arab dominion, this ex- tremely fruitful country possesses scarcely any or no vineyards, and only among the free Shelluhs of the Rif has Islam failed to eradi- cate the forbidden drink (note 30). Modern Greece — after so many fatalities, after centuries of ethnologic and economic degradation — produces, with few exceptions, very bad wine ; the fame of her Chian, Lesbian, Thasian has long since evaporated, and the resinous Resinato — at which Liudprand grumbled so long ago as 968 on his ambassadorial journey to Constantinople — is not cal- culated to revive it. Perhaps currants are only a variety of grape produced by degeneration. They are said to have come from the Isle of Naxos, and to have been unknown in the Morea before THE VINE. 1600. It is remarkable that they wander, as it were, from place to place. They have disappeared from Naxos, exist no longer at Corinth whence they received their name, and are now only found in Patras, Zante, and Cephalonia. In Italy the Ostrogoth and Longobardian princes and nobles, like all barbarians, certainly cared more for the quantity than the quality of their wine which the subjugated colonists were obliged to furnish. He who drinks out of his vanquished enemy's skull at a banquet will like best what is pungent and strong, and, above all things, will desire to empty and refill his warlike bowl as often as possible. The Normans in the south, the German kings on their march to Rome, and their accompanying dukes, earls, barons, and men-at-arms were all famous drinkers, but no fastidious con- noisseurs. To this add the inalienable property in land, which kept the labouring classes ignorant and stupid, the everlasting and destructive invasions, and the insecurity and barbarism of life in general, which permitted no investment of capital for any length of time. Perhaps a few ecclesiastical proprietors made an exception, and the cellars of some venerable monasteries might now and then contain fine old wines ; but we must not imagine that the taste of the bishops and abbots of the Holy Roman Empire was very refined, for they, like the knights, were also the children of a rude period. They not only drank wine without water — in contrast to the "human" custom of the ancients — but generally liked it best when boiled with spice, berries, and honey, vinum moratum, claratiwi — a sort of mixed drink or claret ) that is sometimes mentioned by the ancients, but only as one of the secondary uses of the product that served for daily enjoyment. Having regard to these unfavourable conditions, we may well suppose that all higher culture of the vine had declined after the Roman period. When we read Pliny's lengthy treatise on wine, or the passage on the same subject in the first book of Athenaeus, we see clearly that the taste and wealth of the Roman nobles must have kept that branch of industry in constant activity. An infinite variety of wines was produced (" as the Libyan sands, or the waves of the sea," says Virgil), of which one kind was patronized 6 82 THE VINE. by this magnate, another by that. Eagerness to outdo one another led to ever new experiments, both in choosing the grape and in the treatment of the juice; fashions changed, but not more rapidly than the natural qualities of the plant. Thus, in the time of Augustus, the wines grown on the borders of Latium and Campania — made known to all the world by Horace under the names of Falernian, Massic, and Ca^cuban — were considered the finest in the peninsula; but Pliny reports that in his time, two generations later, they were valued no longer, which, he adds, is a proof that every soil has its appointed time. He had said shortly before, that Falernian was no longer so good as formerly, because the producers thought more of quantity than quality. Manufacturers of wine in Greece and Italy are now reproached with exactly the same thing. Under the prevalent system of farming, based on the natural production, the quantity alone is looked at. and that mode of cultivation is preferred which promises the greatest yield ; the vintage is carelessly gathered, ripe and unripe grapes mixed together, and, to produce the darkest possible colour, for which there is a general demand, the must is tapped too late, so that the vegetable slime and colouring matter contained in the skins of the grapes passes into the wine, causing the sour fermentation which commonly takes place in Italian wines before the end of the year. There is, besides, the high temperature prevailing during the pro- cess of fermentation in autumn, as well as the want of solid air- tight barrels and cool cellars. The temperature of the latter is seldom lower than the average temperature of the year. The mode of preservation common among the ancients was perhaps really more suitable to a warm climate than our barrels, with which the Romans first became acquainted through the Cis- Alpine Gauls and Alpine tribes, and which thence spread farther south (note 31). The Oriental wine-skins have at least the advantage of entirely excluding the air, and of shrinking as the wine is used, of being easily packed, and also of serving for a couch or seat during a journey. It is universally admitted that in modern times the palm in the production of wine is due to Central and Southern France. Whilst Italy almost entirely consumes the thirty million hectolitres THE VINE. 83 of her yearly produce, and has therefore little to spare for export, France, on the contrary, till the vine-louse began its ravages, pro- duced double the quantity at a money value of about 2,000 to 3,000 million francs, and became the chief exporting country, supplying all parts of the world with the finest wines as well as com- mon table wines. The Department de l'Herault alone furnished on the average from 12 to 15 million hectolitres — three or four times as much as the whole kingdom of Portugal. It is a remark- able fact that vines now produce the best wines in places close to the northern limit of their extension, where the plant was only gradually and with difficulty, and last of all, acclimatized ; wines now famed over the world under the names of Burgundy, Johannisberg, etc. Here, of course, culture and technical skill have done their utmost ; and who knows what they might not accomplish if adopted in the original homes of the vine ? In this connexion, a fact that meets our eye in the first two or three centuries of the Middle Ages deserves serious attention. At that time, we find the Western world thought of the wines of Pales- tine as the strongest and finest \ just as we now quote the ports and sherries of the Pyrenean peninsula ; and this wine of the Phoenician-Philistine coast was greatly valued at the Byzantine court. It was the Arab invasion that put an end to its production and the commerce founded upon it. In ancient times the vinestock was carried to all the countries surrounding the Mediterranean ; has it now, we might ask, when civilization embraces the whole earth in an ever-increasing degree, spread over all parts of the world ? The answer must be in the negative. In the southern hemisphere, with the slight exception of Cape Colony, the narrow belt of climate in which the vine will flourish is not to be found. In the so-called New World the attempts to cultivate it with profit have had no great success. North America produces perhaps one million hectolitres, and native Californian is to be had in most United States hotels, but it is described as having no agreeable flavour. Wine, we might say, loves not the west, and clings to the neighbourhood of its old home. In some parts of Australia there are said to exist tolerably extensive vineyards, mostly planted by Germans, but the Australian b 4 THE VINE, Bordeaux is too heating, the Australian Moselle and Rhenish have no aroma — and so on. At two points only, and quite at the end of the Middle Ages, has the hand of man really extended the region of the vine, namely, in Madeira and the Canaries — which may in a sense be said to belong still to Europe and the Mediterranean. Prince Henry the Voyager introduced shoots of the vine from the Peloponnesus and Crete into Madeira; and Alonzo de Lungo transplanted vines from Madeira to Teneriffe about the year 1507. The wine yielded there by Grecian grapes became celebrated all over the world ; but lately the grape-fungus has destroyed this culture, and it is being revived with difficulty. But the cultivation of the vine in those islands is also interesting, because there it comes nearest to the climate of the tropics ; the vineyards even of Southern Persia and of the Cape are further away from the equator than the Isle of Ferro at 27 48' latitude. 7 HE FIG-TREE. (ficus carica.) it is natural that we should take the fig-tree, " the sister of the vine," as Hipponax already called it, for our next subject. The real fatherland of the fig-tree is Semitic Western Asia, Syria, and Palestine, where it grows the most luxuriantly, and bears the sweetest fruit. The Old Testament often mentions the tree, especially in connexion with the vine, and is full of figures and similes taken from it To sit under one's own vine and fig-tree is equivalent to enjoying a peaceful and happy existence. In Lydia, wine and figs were so much considered the chief blessings of life that those who advised Croesus not to march against Cyrus rested their arguments on the fact that the Persians drank not wine but water, and ate no figs. Phrygia was also famed for its abundant fig-trees. But at the time and in the scenes embraced by the Iliad, the fig-tree is not yet found on the western coasts and islands of Asia Minor, still less then could it have been known in the mainland of Greece. The first Greek mention of the fig-tree we find in the Odyssey, and there only in passages which are evident interpolations. In the book containing the description of Ulysses's descent into the nether world, which itself seems to consist of various pieces of different ages, figs, among other fruit, hang above the head of tamishinGf Tantalus : o Above, beneath, around his hapless head, Trees of all kinds delicious fruitage spread ; There figs, sky-dyed, a purple hue disclose, Green looks the olive, the pomegranate glows ; There dangling pears exalting scents unfold, And yellow apples ripen into gold." 85 THE FICTREE. These verses are repeated in a fragment, awkwardly foisted into the really antique description of the palace of Alcinous, in order to bring in also the garden of the Phaeacian king : " The reddening apple ripens here to gold, Here the blue fig with luscious juice o'erflows, With deeper red the full pomegranate glows, The branch here bends beneath the weighty pear, And verdant olives flourish through the year." And finally, in the last scenes of the Odyssey, a late addition, we find Laertes designated the planter of fig-trees. Even Hesiod knows nothing of the fig-tree or its cultivation ; but in the works of Archilochus (700 B.C.) we find it mentioned as the product of his native island Paros, in a verse that is probably not much younger than the last- quoted passage of the Odyssey. In later times Attica and Sicyon boasted of producing the finest figs ; nay Demeter herself rewarded Phy talus, who had hospitably entertained her in Attica, by causing a fig-tree to sprout up from the earth. That this gift was felt to be the forerunner of a nobler and more cultivated life, is proved by the name given to a mass of dried figs presented at the Athenian feast of the Plynteria: a name signifying that the cultivation of the fig was the guide to purer manners (note 32). Wine and figs became necessaries of life in Greece, as common to the poor as to the rich. As the Arab is content with a handful of dates, so a few dried figs sufficed the Attic idler who spent his day staring about, and, according to the season, lying in the sun or in the shade. The epithet philo-sukos (lover of figs) applied to Plato might have been equally bestowed on all Athenians; and the story of the Persian king Xerxes shows how proud the Athenian was of his country's production. Xerxes, namely, caused Attic figs to be set before him whenever he dined, to remind him that the land where they grew was not yet his, and that instead of receiving the fruit as a tribute, he was obliged to buy it from abroad. The city of Syko-phants (lit., fig-informers) defended herself from Persian thraldom, but, as that nickname reminds us, she could not escape the decay of her political morality, and the ruin that ensued. Into Southern and Central Italy the fig-tree must have been introduced by the Greek colonists. It is found THE FIG-TREE. 87 interwoven with the legend of the origin of Rome, for Romulus and Remus are said to have been suckled by the she-wolf under the Ficus ruminalis — a feature of the legend that evidently owes its existence to the same symbolism that placed that showy and fertile tree in the Eden of the Hebrews (note 33). Under the Caesars the varieties and names of fig-trees had become so nume- rous, that Pliny thought the formative law which keeps a species permanent was evidently changing. As late as the reign of Tiberius, the finest varieties of the fig-tree were still being transplanted to Italy direct from Syria. As it was then, so it is now ; the fig, both fresh and dried, is the common and wholesome food of the Italian people, particularly in the south. Besides the kinds that bear fruit once a year, there is a variety that bears twice — in summer and in late autumn — the Ficus bifera. The ripe fruit must be eaten as soon as plucked, and cannot bear much handling. Cato used this fact as a striking argument before the Roman Senate, when he produced a fig from Carthage which was still perfectly fresh, saying, " So near to our walls is the enemy ! " But we may reasonably imagine it had been plucked unripe, and that time and pressure had matured it. Smyrna figs, now considered the best, were also known in Italy in ancient times, being sent there pressed in boxes as they are now. The Ficus duplex of Horace may still be found in South Italy, where the mode of treatment can be learned from actual sight better than from the words of ancient authors. As is the case with all cultivated fruit-trees, there were, and are, many varieties of fig, but particularly two kinds — one dark purple, the other green, still called neri and bianchi, the black and the white. The latter being sweeter are chiefly used for drying, the former are eaten fresh. In hot countries the fig- tree, with its gigantic leaves pendent from its gnarled and many- jointed branches, affords a welcome shade in the Greece and Italy of to-day as in Palestine of old. The wild fig grows picturesquely out of the chinks of old walls, in ruins, and on rocks. Its wood, spongy and brittle while new {inutile lignum), is said, when properly dried, to become as hard and firm as oak. THE OLIVE-TREE, (OLEA EUROP/EA, L.) Like the fig-tree, the olive is a native of the south part of Western Asia, and in this, its proper home, it was very early cultivated and improved by the Semitic races. In all parts of the Old Testa- ment we find oil in common use for food, for sacrifice, for burning in lamps, and for anointing the head or body. Towards the interior of Asia the cultivation ceases, for the olive-tree loves the sea and limestone mountains. Egypt also produced no olive oil. The wild olive was frequent on the Greek coasts of Asia Minor, in the islands, and in Greece itself, and we find it often mentioned in the Homeric poems. Its evergreen foliage, the great age it attained, its indestructible vitality, and its hard wood, which admits of a high polish, attracted the notice of the people and of epic legend. Thus, in the Iliad, Pisander's axe has a long, well-polished handle of olive-wood : "An olive's cloudy grain the handle made." The Cyclop's club is of the same material ; so, in Theocritus and elsewhere, is the club of Hercules. Ulysses built his marriage-bed on the stump of an olive still firmly rooted in the ground : " Full in the court An olive spread its ever-verdant head. I lopp'd the branchy head ; aloft in twain Severed the bole, and smoothed the shining grain : Then posts capacious of the frame I raise, And bore it regular from space to space ; Athwart the frame, at equal distance, lie Thongs of tough hides that boast a purple dye." THE OLIVE-TREE. 89 The olive is evidently chosen for its stability, because it clings to the ground with far-spreading roots, and symbolizes the security of the marriage bond. A wild olive stands at the entrance of the cave where the Phseacians land the sleeping Ulysses, and is therefore called " sacred : " "'High at the head a branchy olive grows, And crowns the perched cliffs with shady boughs. Now, seated in the olive's sacred shade, Confer the hero and the martial maid." The oleaster (wild olive), with the branches of which the victors were crowned at Olympia, was said to have been brought to Elis from the extreme west by Hercules, a legend adopted by Pindar. In the market-place of Megara stood a very ancient wild olive, dating from the heroic ages. Thus the existence of the wild olive in Greece is vouched for by the oldest authorities and tra- ditions; but it is very improbable that, in a climate somewhat rude, and amongst a nation still young and undeveloped (com- pared to the Semites), it was ever cultivated into an oil-bearing tree ; far more likely its cultivation was introduced to the Greeks, with other valuable things, by neighbouring nations. The question is, how early ? Oil is not unknown to the Homeric world, but evidently only as a foreign production, to be used by the rich and noble. When the heroes have washed or bathed, their bodies are anointed with oil in the Oriental fashion, and rendered sleek and supple. When Nausicaa goes to the sea-shore, she receives from her mother a flask of scented oil. The corpse of Patroclus is washed and anointed with oil ; so are the manes of Achilles' horses, for they were sons of Zephyros, and immortal. In the treasure-house of Telemachus lay gold, bronze, wine, and scented oil. The salve used by the goddesses is especially costly and of rare virtue. Hera, when tempting Zeus, anoints herself with divine oil, which fills heaven and earth with its perfume. In Cyprus, the Graces anoint Aphrodite with immortal oil such as appertains to the gods. Penelope, in her grief, neither bathes nor anoints herself; but she sinks into a slumber, during which Athena purifies her face with the balm of immortal beauty used 90 THE OLIVE-TREE. by Cytherea when she joins in the dance of the Graces. The explanation of two other passages in Homer was a puzzle even to tne ancients : in one, the garments of dancing youths are described as softly shining with oil ; in the other, oil drips from the clothes of maids as they sit. Either the author merely compares the liquid lustre of the stuff to that of oil ; or, according to a modern interpretation, the threads had been soaked in oil to make the fabric flexible or glossy, so that it still dripped with oil when the maids had it on ! — a hypothesis that hardly needs refuting. As scented garments were common in the East and among the epic gods, at least of the later epics, one might suppose that the author meant some volatile oil with which the dress was slightly sprinkled; but there is no mention of scent, only of shining^ and the analogy of the Greek word here employed points to the first opinion, already given by the ancient commentators. The white stone bench on which Nestor sits before the door of his house is also described as shining with fat, that is, glossy as if it were covered with fat. The jars used at the funeral of Patroclus doubtless contained honey and animal fat, two substances highly prized by primitive man, and therefore bestowed on the dead. When the river Titaresius is described in the Catalogue of Ships as rolling " his easy tides " into the Peneus, and yet not mixing with the latter stream, the author had no doubt observed the fact while bathing and anointing himself, that oil floats on the top of water. Taking all the passages together, they would seem to prove that oil was not a common native product, but a cosmetic introduced from the East, which gradually supplanted animal fats. It was used for anointing the body, but not for food or light. It is always very long before a northern people will reconcile itself to dressing its food with oil. As a German peasant relishes large pieces of fat bacon, but is rarely to be persuaded to pour oil over his vege- tables or fry his meat in it, so the Gauls, as Posidonius tells us, refused to use oil in the kitchen. It must have been the same with the ancient Greeks. So much the less can we expect that the tree itself had been already really cultivated. Among the rural scenes depicted on the shield of Achilles, we find a black field with ploughmen on it, a harvest scene, a vineyard and a vintage, herds THE OLIVE-TREE, 91 of sheep and cattle, but no olive grove. We saw before that the olive-tree and its fruit are mentioned in the same passages of the Odyssey that speak of the fig-tree, but that these passages are late additions, and probably were not composed before the begin- ning of the Olympiads. This is not to be doubted of the end of the Odyssey, and as to the other two passages, which, taken together, are really only one, they show clear traces of later insertion. Even in them the Olive-tree is only described as a garden-tree like the apple, pear, pomegranate, and fig, planted for the sake of its eatable fruit, and not as the object of cultivation for the production of oil. In one of the most original and glorious parts of the Odyssey, however, there is a verse, which, if the usual interpretation were correct, would oblige us to believe in the existence of cultivated olive-trees. Ulysses, thrown on the shores of Scheria, finds in the forest two trees growing together, and serving as a protection against sun and wind : " There grew two olives, closest of the grove, With roots entwined, and branches interwove ; Alike their leaves, but not alike they smiled With sister-fruits ; one fertile, one was wild." The Greek words are: "The one a p/iylia, the other an elaia" Now if phylia meant the oleaster, the other can only be the fruit- bearing olive-tree. But phylia is one of those words by which the ancients themselves no longer knew what the poet meant. Ammonius says the mastich, others a degenerate olive with myrtle-like leaves ; and Eustatius declares that many people used it in that sense down to his day. Pausanias mentions it as one of the species of unfruitful olive-trees. This later use of the name may very likely have originated in the very passage of Homer we have quoted. The word phylia by its derivation clearly gives a general and abstract meaning, that of a plant, particularly an evergreen plant, which is especially rich in vitality. If we must guess at some particular plant, the myrtle, which is not otherwise mentioned by Homer, would be the most probable in connection with a passage in Theophrastus, who says that some trees seem to love each other, and relates (quoting an older authority, 92 THE OLIVE-TREE. Androtion) that the myrtle and olive-tree used to intertwine their roots, and the myrtle branches to grow through the boughs of the olive, while other plants shunned the neighbourhood of the olive- tree. It is possible that this belief also was derived from Homer ; but whatever plant may be supposed (for instance, the stone-lime, or some kind of elceagnus), the second tree mentioned in the passage, the elaia, is here, as elsewhere, the wild bushy oleaster, a plant of the woods, growing near the water far from the town, as the poet expressly says. It is not so easy to decide about another passage, in which the olive-tree is mentioned. Here it is related that Menelaus pierced Euphorbus, the son of Panthous, with his spear, and the wounded man fell to the ground like the sprout of a verdant olive-tree which a planter cultivates in a solitary, well-watered place ; soft airs breathe on it from all sides ; it bursts into white blossom ; but suddenly a whirlwind dashes it to the ground. Here it is certainly possible to suppose that it was a slip of oleaster, intended some day to yield, not fruit indeed, but shade, timber, and green leaves ; still the planting of a forest- tree is not very likely in the Homeric age so rich in woods. So, taking all together, we may say that, during the probably long period of which Homer's poems are the monument, we see the cultivation of the fig and olive at first unknown and foreign, then distantly announcing itself, and lastly, in later additions and a simile, coming forward bodily, and, as we might have expected, on the Ionian coasts and islands first of all. It was there also that the cultivation of oil flourished in the post-Homeric period. ^Eschylus calls the island of Samos "olive-planted," and an anecdote that Aristotle of Thales relates bears still older witness as to Miletus and Chios. Thales, it seems, on meteorological grounds surmised that an unusually rich olive-crop was to be expected ; he therefore hired for the coming year all the olive- presses in Miletus and Chios, and as the harvest really turned out very abundant, he made a large profit by letting the presses ; thus proving that even a philosopher can derive a practical benefit from his science. In the Isle of Delos, which is sur- rounded by the Ionian Cyclades, and where from early times Ionian pilgrims assembled to hold their yearly processions — THE OLIVE-TREE. Latona, in giving birth to her divine Twins, had either clasped in her arms the Delian palm-tree, or held by an olive-tree, or leaned against both. The chorus in Euripides' " Iphigenia in Tauris " longs for the palm, the laurel, and the sacred olive of Delos. Strabo makes the goddess merely rest under an olive-tree after the birth of her children, by which turn of speech the conflicting forms of the myth were happily reconciled. The Ephesians afterwards declared that the birth at the foot of the olive-tree had not happened at Delos, but at Ephesus, and that the tree still existed, there being also a spring at Ephesus called " Under the Olives," which was mixed up with the legend of the foundation of that city. As the olive-tree is otherwise altogether foreign to the worship of Apollo (for the one dedicated to that god at Miletus is quite an exception), we may suppose that the olive in Delos, and the myth connected with it, were not native to that island, but owed their existence to the Athenians, and the rising worship of Pallas Athena; but in Rhodes, once an entirely Phoenician island, which afterwards belonged to the Dorians, the olive-tree must have existed in very ancient times. There the town of Lindos possessed a temple of Athena built by the Danaids, and containing offerings left by Cadmus, with an olive-grove that outrivalled the olive-trees of Attica. On the mainland of Greece, in the parts described by Hesiod, and therefore within the sphere of ^Eolian-Bceotian customs, there are still no traces of the cul- tivation of the olive. Among the later Greeks, Athens was considered the original seat of such culture ; and there is a remarkable saying in Herodotus, that "at a time not long past there was not an olive-tree in the world except those at Athens." Accordingly, when the Epidaurians, on the failure of their crop, applied to the oracle at Delphi, they were advised to make statues of Damia and Auxesia from the wood of the tame olive ; they therefore asked permission of the Athenians to cut down one of their olive-trees as being the most sacred, or because none existed elsewhere. The Athenians consented on condition that the Epidaurians should sacrifice every year to Athena Polias and to Erechtheus. At that time the ^Eginetes were still subject to Epidaurus ; but after that they fell away from their mother city, 94 THE OLIVE-TREE. carried off the two images, and having neglected the promised sacrifices, incurred the enmity of Athens. Herodotus says nothing about the date of this event, but it probably took place about the middle of the sixth century b.c Already at the commencement of that century Solon promulgated laws concerning the cultivation of the fig and olive, which must therefore have had some impor- tance ; although Pisistratus, Athena's protege, is said to have first encouraged the planting of the useful olive in the hitherto bare and treeless country. In the Athenian Academy stood the sacred olive-trees (morice) dedicated to the goddess, which, unlike other sacred possessions, must have yielded a rich profit, for the numerous oil-vases given as prizes at the games instituted by Pisistratus were filled with oil from those trees. The trees in the Academy were from the stock of the mother olive in the citadel, which Athena herself had created and which, after being burnt by the Persians, sprouted up again spontaneously. From the Greek epithet applied to it, it must have been a mere groundling sucker. The fact that the Athenians distinguished by different names the wild from the cultivated olive proves that the cultiva- tion of the felix oliva had taken firm hold in Attica. Pindar mentions it in one of his hymns, and Herodotus makes the oracle speak of the tame olive. The whitish limestone soil of the Attic peninsula, unfriendly to corn, was just the reverse for olives ; and there, to quote the words of the chorus in " GEdipus at Colonus," the trees flourished " more than in the land of Asia or the great Dorian Isle of Pelops." But how came Pallas Athena to be patroness of the new culture, and why were oil and the cultivation of the olive so intimately and variously mixed up with the worship of the Goddess of Light who sprang from the head of Jupiter ? Suidas says, because oil served for lighting, and the olive-tree fed the flame of the lamp; from which we perceive that the use of oil for burning came second in order of time, as its use for food came third. Homer is not yet aware of any connexion between the olive and the goddess, for the adjective sacred used once in the Odyssey cannot be taken as indicating such a connexion. But when oil formed the principal source of riches and the character- istic product of the Attic land, when the Athenians boasted that. THE OLIVE-TREE. 95 not long before, the cultivated olive was to be found only in their country, when they claimed all places where corn and olives grew as their property, they could not do otherwise than dedicate the pride and blessing of their country to that country's goddess, and look upon it as her gift. It may be the fact that wild olives grew on the rock of the citadel, that one of them was grafted with a fruit-bearing olive from over the sea, and supplied other slips and cuttings, and that the root of the vivax oliva put forth fresh shoots after the burning of the city by the Persians ; but the myth had no need of such realistic support. When at the end of the Persian war the old national hero, Theseus, and his deeds and adventures, reappearea in a transfigured light, he also was said to have broken oft" a branch of the sacred olive-tree before sailing for Crete, to have wrapped it in white wool, and uttering a prayer, to have laid it before Apollo's statue in the Delphinium. In Sicyon too, which, like Attica, had a soil favourable to the olive, and produced in abundance the " Sicyonian berry," the old fabulous king, Epopeus, had built a temple to Athena, and the goddess had shown her favour by causing a spring of oil to flow in front of the temple — thus directly bestowing on Epopeus the oil which the Athenians and their descendants only procured by dint of planting, plucking, and pressing the berries. In the first century of the Olympiads, when the coast-lands of the west — Italy, Sicily, Gaul — became the beat of innumerable and flourishing Greek colonies, a new and more extensive field was opened for the cultivation of the olive-tree, in which it flourished almost as well as under its native skies. In the course of the seventh, and certainly the sixth century B.C., the beautiful hill and coast districts of the islands and of South Italy were gradually covered with evergreen and fruit- bearing groves of olives. Possibly, however, it was not Greek but Phoenician hands that sowed the first olive seed or planted -the -first cutting in the soil of the distant west. A myth related of Aris- tseus seems to contain a faint remembrance of such an occurrence. Aristaeus, an ancient Arcadian, Thessalian, and Boeotian pastoral divinity, whom the first colonists had brought into Sicily, was believed by their descendants to be the inventor of the olive and 96 THE OLIVE-TREE. of oil. In this myth it is worthy of note, that Aristaeus is not said, like Athena, to have created the olive-tree, but to have invented oil or the olive ; that he taught the preparation of oil, to which belongs the use of the press ; and that for this reason he was worshipped by the Sicilians during the olive harvest. But the same Aristaeus, before ever he came to Sicily, had been ruler of Sardinia, which island was foreign to the Greeks ; had there intro- duced agriculture and tree-culture — the island having till then been inhabited only by very many large birds — and had begotten two sons. From Sardinia he went to Sicily, civilized that island also, and among other rural arts invented the process of gaining oil from olives. Now, as Aristaeus could not hold his ground against the new overpowering and dazzling worship of Apollo and Dionysus (though essentially kindred deities), but sank into the position of their son or tutor, he was evidently one with a Libyo- Phoenician god whom the Greek colonists had found in Sicily when they came there, and had adopted as their own. This god, a son of the nymph Cyrene, and the first planter of the silphion in Cyrenaea, could only have come to Sardinia from Africa; from Sardinia he goes to Sicily, and his plant or invention must have followed the same path. The myth says nothing about the time of this occurrence, and it must remain doubtful whether or not the Greeks found olive-groves in the vicinity of the Phoenician commercial settlements of which they took forcible possession. Afterwards, when oil had become an important article of com- merce in the Grecian fatherland also, the two streams of civilization met in Sicily : the Carthaginian, and that modelled on the type of Attica, etc. Turning to the mainland of Italy, we meet, at the first step, with a kind of chronological notice ; a piece of good fortune that is very rare in the ancient history of culture. Pliny, quoting the annalist L. Fenestella, says that at the time of Tarquinius Priscus, in 616 B.C., not an olive-tree existed in all Italy. If this report be not a mere echo of the passage in Herodotus — and the addition of "nor in Spain and Africa," leads to such a suspicion — we may make a positive use of it to claim for the age of the Tarquins, an age of lively intercourse with the Greeks of Campania, the fame THE OLIVE-TREE. 97 of having brought the olive, together with other Greek arts, to Latium. Perhaps the report originated from a Cumanian docu- ment. At any rate, the Latin words oliva and oleum^ which are derived from the Greek, prove that the tree was introduced by Greeks and no others ; and many of the words relating to the kinds of olive and the preparation of the oil are also Greek terms very little altered in the Latin tongue. When the apex of the Flamen Dialis's hat consists of an olive branch bound up and fastened with wool, it results that this very old custom was never- theless younger than the date of the arrival of the Greeks in Italy and their intercourse with the Latins. For what is the wool- bound olive branch but the elpeaaovr] borrowed from the Greeks ? A reminiscence of this may be contained in the statement that Ascanius first instituted the Virga lanata at Alba ; it was therefore neither Etruscan nor Sabine. Virgil indeed makes King Numa and the priest of Mars appear adorned with olive branches, but his poetic fancy has here evidently bestowed on heroes of the primitive age the later Grecian customs. In the triumphal pro- cessions of victorious generals, even the servants who had not been in the battle wore wreaths of olive, a Greek sign rather of peaceful than of warlike enterprise. At the ovations, which were an inferior kind of triumph, the crown of honour consisted of olive leaves. At the feast celebrated July 15th in honour of Castor and Pollux, crowns of olive were worn as ornaments ; and the adoration paid to the said heroes originated in Magna Grsecia. These facts are all signs of an acquaintance with the olive in the early days of the republic, but not a proof of its real cultivation. The latter must have spread from the various Greek centres to wherever the soil was favourable, first on the coasts and then in the interior, in proportion as the natural prejudice against the use of oil was overcome. Amphis, a comic poet who lived in the latter half of the fourth century, about the time of Philip and Alexander of Macedon, speaks in praise of the oil of Thurii, which stood on the site of ancient Sybaris. Thence and from Tarentum probably came the Calabrian and Sallentine olives mentioned by Cato ; and the celebrated Licinian olive of Campania, and that from Mount Taburnus on the borders of Campania and Samnium, 7 98 THE OLIVE-TREE. will have been first introduced by the Campanian Greeks. The Sabine mountains were covered with olives, but the kind called Sergia, though a large tree, which endured the cold well and was rich in oil, lacked fineness — it had therefore undergone the changes observed in vines when transplanted to colder regions in the north. At the other side of the Apennines, where the splendid corn-fields commence, the climate, then as now, was unfavourable to the cultivation of the olive, but the tree still flourished in ancient Picenum, now the province of Ancona, which may be reckoned as belonging to South Italy. In the first century b.c. Italy was so rich in oil that it outrivalled all other countries in the quality and cheapness of the product. Favoured by the soil and climate of Provence, the olive, like the vine, gradually spread from Massilia to the interior of Gaul, though not like the vine as far as the Marne and Moselle. The olive plantations on the Ligurian coast, which is still one immense luxuriant olive-grove, were no doubt of Massiliote origin. Where the mountains begin to rise at a short distance from the sea, the olive-tree was no longer found, so that the wreaths and branches worn or carried by the inhabitants when they went to meet Han- nibal, cannot have been of olive, although the word used by Polybius has generally that meaning. In Strabo's time Genoa furnished these mountain-folk with oil, and received in exchange cattle, skins, and honey. On the other side of Italy, near the mouth of the Po, the low, marshy ground forbade the introduction of the olive, though the trade of this district with the Ionian islands, with Tarentum and afterwards Syracuse was both ancient and brisk. On the other hand, the opposite coast — that of Istria and Liburnia, with their sunny hills slanting towards the sea, and protected at the back by high mountains — was extremely favourable to the cultivation of the olive ; and, indeed, the oil from the west coast of the peninsula of Istria was prized next to Italian oil, and rivalled that of Spanish Bsetica. The oil exported from Aquileia to the Illyrians on the Danube in exchange for cattle, skins, and slaves, must have been that received from Istria; and it is an interesting fact that the Pannonians and Celts of the former region, in Strabo's time, were eager not only for wine, welcome to THE OLIVE-TREE. 99 all barbarians, but also for oil, though it may be only for burning in lamps. Even in the time of the Goths, after so many alarms and disturbances, that region had a superabundance of oil. Apicius, a celebrated gourmand of the time of Tiberius, and other authors, give instructions for artificially producing Liburnian oil, which must therefore have been still celebrated. Strabo says that the above-mentioned province of Bsetica exported not only much, but the finest oil ; and Bsetican Corduba excelled or equalled the celebrated olive groves of Venafrum and Istria. It was natural that Spain, being a southern land, and possessing great variety of position and soil, should have adopted the new culture in proportion as foreign civilization took root, first on the coasts, then in the interior. When the Roman Empire had reached its utmost extent, the cultivated olive had also spread from its starting-point at the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean to all the countries in which it is now found, and throve in many parts of the south of Europe as if native there (note 34). According to popular belief (entertained also by the ancients) the European olive bears fruit only once in two years ; but this is only true in so far that the tree, when exhausted by an extraordinary yield of fruit, cannot produce the same quantity the following year, unless assisted by the most favourable weather or extra culture. It is also not quite true that the olive, as Theophrastus believed, is never found farther from the sea than seven and a half geo- graphical miles. This is only true in the sense that the tree loves the breath of the Mediterranean; but the expanse of the Lake of Garda, for example, is also sufficient for its well-being. Its proper sphere of propagation, however, coincides almost exactly with that of the oval formed by the coast-lands and bays of the Mediterranean. Beautiful, in a romantic sense, Minerva's tree cannot be said to be, but nothing so readily excites a sense of peaceful order and cultivation than the rows of trees in an olive plantation, with their whispering leaves and twisted trunks softly shading the slopes of the hills or the gently undulating plains; and, like Columella, we are fain to bestow upon the olive the epithet ^prima omnium arborum, "chief of all trees." It is not every- THE OLIVE-TREE. where that the oil produced can equal that of Provence, Genoa, or Lucca. The oils from Calabria, Sicily, and Sardinia, are generally impure, and fit only to make soap, or be used in the manufacture of cloth. The reason lies in the faulty method of preparation, which, in its turn, is explained by the agrarian and economic conditions prevalent there. Particular care is needed in gathering the harvest ; the fruit, as soon as ripe, should be plucked by hand, berry by berry, and put into the oil-press without loss of time ; rapidity and cleanliness are all-important. But in most places there is a great want of capital, utensils, and hands. The naturally tender fruit is knocked off the trees with sticks, or, what is worse, is allowed to fall at its own time, over-ripe and half-rotten (the ancients already complained of both these prac- tices). Then the fruit remains lying on the ground, and begins to ferment before an oil-press is at liberty. The latter is also generally so ill-constructed that it causes a waste of labour, and a considerable part of the oil is left in the press. Now as the common man prefers this evil-smelling produce to the best Provence table-oil on account of its stronger taste, he is naturally not inclined to take any extra trouble to produce better oil. But with all this, there is no denying the progress lately made. When once the condition of the farmers is improved by a healthier cir- culation of blood in the body politic, the cultivation of oil will be a source of riches to all the mountainous southern regions of the new kingdom. "There are two liquids," says Pliny, "that are agreeable to the human body : inwardly wine, outwardly oil ; both coming from trees, but oil the more necessary." Democritus of Abdera, the celebrated philosopher, who attained an age of more than a hundred years, when asked how a man could preserve his health and prolong his days, answered, " Use inwardly honey, outwardly oil." A similar reply was given by Pollio Romilius, who also lived a hundred years, when the Emperor Augustus asked him by what means he had remained so robust : " By wine and honey inside, and oil outside." Now- adays oil is no longer used as an external cosmetic, or only in the form of soap ; but it is just the latter article, a northern invention unknown to the ancients, that has entirely superseded the Oriental- THE OLIVE-TREE. 101 Greek custom of anointing the body, which in Italy, indeed, was only usual among the upper classes. The anointing of Kings and Kaisers, and extreme unction, still remain as faint echoes of the old Roman time. DOMIC I LI A TION. TREE-CUL TV RE. Wherever the cultivation of the three before-mentioned plants — the vine, the fig, and the olive — was prosecuted on a large scale, there the face of the country and the habits and manners of the people were of necessity changed. Tree-culture was one step more on the path to settled habitations ; with and by it men first became permanently domiciled. The transition from a nomadic to a settled life has nowhere been sudden ; it was always accom- plished in many intermediate stages, at each one of which the nations often remained stationary for centuries. The wandering shepherd hastily sows a piece of ground, from which he as hastily gathers the ensuing harvest ; next spring he chooses another and fresh piece, which is no sooner stripped of its spoils than he neglects it in turn. When a tribe has settled on some especially fertile spot, building fragile huts, there too the soil is exhausted in a few years ; the tribe breaks up its quarters, loads its animals and waggons with its movable goods, and goes on to new ground. Even when such a settlement has become more permanent, the idea of individual right to the ground is not yet realized. The cultivated land, of which there is an abundance in comparison to the scanty population, is common property like the pastures, and is divided anew among the people every year. Such was the con- dition of the Germans in the time of Tacitus, and this is the plain meaning of that historian's words, which have been carefully ex- plained in a contrary and more welcome sense by patriotic com- mentators. The communistic, half-nomadic form of civilization, which was closely connected with ancient patriarchal life, still prevails in many parts of Russia, among the Tartars, Bedouins, and other races. During this first stage of agriculture, cattle- D OMICIL I A TION. TREE- CUL TURK. breeding is still the principal occupation, milk and flesh are the staple food, roving and plunder the ruling passion. The huts or houses are lightly built of wood, and easily take fire ; the plough is nothing but a pointed branch guided by slaves taken in war, and only slightly scratches the ground ; the foresight of the com- munity is very short, extending only from spring to autumn. The sowing of seed in winter is a considerable advance, but the decisive step is taken when the Culture of Trees commences. Then only arises the feeling of a settled home and the idea of property. For a tree requires nursing and watering for many years before it will bear fruit, after which it yields a harvest every year, while the covenant with the annual " grass " which Demeter taught men to sow is at an end the moment the grain is gathered. A hedge, the sign of complete possession, is raised to protect the vineyard or the orchard ; for the mere husbandman a boundary stone had been sufficient. The sown field must wait for dew and rain, but the tree-planter teaches the mountain rivulet to wind round his orchards, and in so doing gets involved in questions of law and property with his neighbours — questions that can only be solved by a fixed political organization. One of the oldest political documents with which we are acquainted, the treaty sworn to by the Delphic Amphictyons, contains a decree that " running water shall not be cut off from any of the allied cities either in peace or in war." A house surrounded by fruit trees is intended, like them, to last for many years ; it is therefore built of stone, and internally decorated with hereditary property, and the acquisitions of pro- gressive civilization. Iron is found, and gradually becomes a more and more frequent, and at last the principal, material for all implements. The gods themselves become nobler : the shepherd, who is accustomed to slaughter animals, and whose poetry revels in pictures of frightful gashes given with the stone-axe, will offer to his deities raw and bleeding victims ; the husbandman sacrifices to Ceres and Terminus with gentler offerings of bruised spelt and salt, garlands and cakes ; but wine first attuned the hardy peasant to mildness and mirth, and made him delight in dramatic games; while it was the olive, the tree of Minerva, 104 D MIC I LI A TION. TREE-CUL TV RE. goddess of intellectual light, that first furnished a symbol for peace and prayer and kindness. The ancient epic poets already distinguish carefully between the three methods of utilizing the ground — cattle-breeding, or flesh, milk, and wool ; agriculture, or the sweet fruit of the halm, the nourisher of mankind ; and lastly, tree-planting, or wine and oil. For the last two stages (of which the third becomes the more limited to the vine the older the passage is), the technical expres- sions, aroo, I ear or till, aroura, ear-th, or til-th, are contrasted with phyteus, I plant, phytalia, plantation. Diomed says that his father dwelt in a rich house, and possessed many fertile fields, orchards, and herds : " There, rich in fortune's gifts, his acres till'd, Beheld his vines their liquid harvest yield, And numerous flocks that whitened all the field." — Iliad. Sarpedon says to Glaucus : "Why boast we, Glaucus, our extended reign, Where Xanthus' streams enrich the Lycian plain, Our numerous herds that range the fruitful field, And hills where vines their purple harvest yield ? " Achilles asks ^Eneas : " Has Troy proposed some spacious tract of land An ample forest, or a fair domain Of hill for vines and arable for grain ? " — namely, as the prize for killing him. The ^Etolians offer Meleager, if he will take part in the fight : " Full fifty acres of the richest ground, Half pasture green, and half with vineyards crowned." In another Homeric passage, there is added to the description of corn-fields, gardens, and pastures, in a remarkable manner, the fishing on the sea : " In wavy gold thy summer vales are dressed, Thy autumns bend with copious fruit oppressed ; With flocks and herds each grassy plain is stored, And fish of every kind thy seas afford." — Odyssey. Later prose writers also mention the corn-field and plantation DOMICILIATION. TREE-CULTURE. 105 together as the two integral parts of agriculture. In Xenophon's "CEconomicus," Socrates converses with Ischomachus about agri- culture, and asks whether plantations may be considered a part of it. " Certainly," replies Ischomachus ; and the dialogue goes on to discuss the depth and width of ditches, irrigation, choice of ground, etc., with exclusive reference to the vine, olive, and fig- tree. As Demeter (Ceres) is the goddess of the fruits of the field, so the half-Oriental Dionysus (Bacchus) is especially the personification of the fruit of trees, and the blessings derived from it ; though an inscription at Selinus seems to make Demeter also a guardian of the orchard. It was the same in Italy. There also corn-field and plantation were co-ordinated branches of culture. Dionysius of Halicar- nassus praises Italy as excluding no kind of culture ; here it is treeless, because it produces corn ; there poor in grain, because planted with trees, etc. Appian tells us that when the Romans were conquering Italy, they offered the waste land to all who would cultivate it, u requiring only as yearly rent a tenth of the produce of sown land, and a fifth of that of planted land." The combination of purely arable cultivation with the planting of vines and fruit-trees appeared so natural to Cn. Tremellius Scrofa, an inhabitant of South Italy, and contemporary of Varro, that he remarks the absence of the last kind of culture in Transalpine Gaul and the Rhine districts, as well as the custom of manuring with marl, and the use of ashes instead of salt. It is interesting that the sacred books of the Zends also men- tion the same threefold utilization of the ground. In the " Ven- didad " the question is asked : " What is the third thing that is most agreeable to this earth ? " And Ahura-mazda replies : " The place, O holy Zarathustra, where cultivation produces most corn, hay, and fruit-bearing trees." " Fourthly, Who is the fourth that fills this earth with the greatest contentment ? " Ahura-mazda answers : "He who cultivates most corn, grass, and trees that afford nourishment, O holy Zarathustra." Herodotus relates that Mardonius the Persian, when persua- ding Xerxes to march against the Athenians, praised Europe as a beautiful country where the soil was very fertile, and all kinds of 106 DOMICILIATION. TREE-CULTURE. fruit-trees grew. On the other hand, Herodotus describes Baby- lonia as rich in corn, but utterly devoid of fruit-trees. In the Old Testament and in the Greek epics we find orchards described as being surrounded with ditches, hedges, or walls, while the sown field was open. Like the vineyard in the parable, Isaiah v. : " My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruit- ful hill ; and he fenced it, and gathered the stones thereof, and planted it with the choicest vine ; " so the vineyard figured on the shield of Achilles was also surrounded with a hedge and ditch. Oineus, the ruler of Kalydon, killed his own son Toxeus (archer) because he had dared to leap the ditch that surrounded the vines. The material used for fencing is rather dubiously described by an etymologically obscure name, ai/xaaia — either thorns or stones, or even both together, according to the character of the district. At least we read in the Odyssey that the god-like swineherd fenced his court with stones, and planted thorns upon them : " The wall was stone from neighbouring quarries borne, Encircled with a fence of native thorn ; " for "encircled" read "surmounted." Such enclosed orchards and vineyards are still to be found all over South Italy, the lanes winding between walls and hedges of prickly bushes that hide the view from the dusty traveller. And in that part of the world, even now, a piece of ground that is walled or hedged in is universally considered more valuable than an t open one. In Homer's time, it is weak persons, especially old men, that are entrusted with the care of trees, and who, bent to the earth, plant, dig, and prune. Fighting, ploughing, and mowing was the work of lusty youths and men. This is clearly seen in a passage in the Odyssey ; Eurymachus, one of the suitors, laughs at Ulysses' bald head, and proposes to hire him : " To tend the rural trade, To dress the walk, and form the embowering shade." To which Ulysses angrily replies : "Should we, O prince, engage In rival tasks beneath the burning rage DOMICILIATION. TREE-CULTURE. 107 Of summer suns ; were both constrained to wield Foodless the scythe along the burdened field ; Or should we labour while the ploughshare wounds, With steers of equal strength, th' allotted grounds : Beneath my labours how thy wondering eyes Might see the sable field at once arise ! Should Jove dire war unloose, with spear and shield And nodding helm, I tread the ensanguined field, Fierce in the van : then wouldst thou, wouldst thou — say — Misname me glutton on that glorious day ? " So too Laertes, full of years, has retired to the gardens, where his companion is the aged slave Dolios, whom Penelope had brought from her father's house to that of her husband. The implement used was either the one-bladed spade mentioned in the Iliad, or the two-pronged rake named in contrast with the plough in a fragment of ^Eschylus, with other tools of the same kind. When men began to cultivate trees, wars became more disas- trous, there being more objects to destroy. According to the earliest custom — not wanting notice in Homer, and still existing among the Bedouins — it was a common privilege of war and punishment of the enemy to drive away the herds or steal the horses. Frequently the owners pursued the retreating robbers, and recovered their property ; at the worst, the lost cattle were soon replaced by new. The Germans retreated into their forests and swamps, and the Romans were unable to harass them. " Why should we risk a pitched battle with you ? " said Idan- thyrsus, king of the Scythians, to Darius ; " we have no cities to be taken and no plantations to be rooted up." In our own era, in 181 2, the Russians acted in a similar manner ; they even burnt their own capital which consisted mostly of wooden houses, re- treated farther and farther into the inhospitable interior, leaving their defence to distance, climate, and the wilderness. It is very different where men dwell in substantial houses surrounded by vines, olives, and fig-trees ; there a cruel foe can cause a desola- tion that will endure for a generation to come. The water-courses are destroyed, and thereby the chief spring of life cut off ; it costs more time and money to restore them than can be obtained aftei a disastrous war. The olive-trees are cut down, and grow again 108 DOMICILIATION. TREE-CULTURE. but slowly ; the vine requires many years before it can bear fruit. The Mosaic law indeed forbade the destruction of fruit-trees; Deuteronomy xx. 19 : " When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them ; for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down : " but the Old Testament itself is a proof that this law was never observed in the fury of the fight. For example, the national hero of the Hebrews, Samson, not only burnt the corn in the enemy's country (which would grow again next year), but also the vines and olives, not so easy to re- place. When Alyattes, King of Lydia, was unable to take Miletus, he wasted the district every year, destroying trees and corn. In later times the East was repeatedly desolated by invading hordes and has never recovered its former prosperity. The history of the Greeks is full of similar barbarisms — both before and after Plato, who would not suffer them in his " Republic," at least between Greeks. How often, while reading Thucydides, do we not meet with the significant words, " They wasted Attica, both the districts where the vegetation had been before destroyed and had sprouted anew, and those which had been spared by former invasions " ! A passage in a speech by Lysias clearly proves how the Peloponne- sians treated the olive-groves of Attica : " Ye know that at that time many regions were covered with olive-trees, most of which are now destroyed; and the country has since then become barren." During the first Messenian war the trees were spared, but only because the Lacedaemonians regarded the country as their own ; afterwards they wasted it all the more. During their wars with the Eleans, as Herodotus relates, " When the army had marched into the enemy's country and had already begun to cut down the trees, an earthquake happened ; " and farther on, " he marched against the city, devastating and burning the land." In modern Greek wars of liberation, the common method of punish- ing the enemy was to cut down and uproot ; and the mediaeval chronicles of Southern Italy too frequently mention the same manner of treating an enemy's country. Barbarossa decreed that those who destroyed vineyards or orchards should be punished like incendiaries. On the other hand, a rebel and evil-doer not DOMICILIATION. TREE-CULTURE. 109 only forfeited his life, but his house was pulled down, his fruit-trees felled, and his vines uprooted (note 35). The French in Algiers have had an opportunity of learning how different half agriculture is from full agriculture ; or agriculture joined to nomadic customs from agriculture which includes tree- culture. To get at the swift Arabs, the European columns were obliged to rival them in rapidity and cunning, for if a rumour of the approach of the enemy had reached a village only two hours before his arrival, nothing was to be found in the place where it was hoped that the Arabs might be overtaken but the still warm ashes of their camp-fires. The tribe had retreated farther into the interior, and when pursued went on retreating till they gained the inaccessible desert Their crops were mown down by the French, their herds, when found, were driven away, and then sometimes the tribe would humbly submit; but the same scene was probably repeated the following year. Very differently did the Kabyles of the Djurdjur mountains behave when invaded. These direct descendants of the ancient Libyans are a horticultural people, with houses partly made of stone, possessing strictly divided freeholds, marked off by hedges and walls over which hang boughs full of fruit, and with a strong sense of attachment to the place of their birth. They live among the mountains where it is difficult to reach them ; but when this is once accomplished, a small fortress with a scanty garrison is sufficient to hold them in check. They pay tribute regularly, and are content if left undisturbed to practise their own customs and communal government. A few roads are made through their mountains, the unaccustomed safety they enjoy encourages them to visit the markets and exchange their wares ; and imperceptibly, but surely, European civilization penetrates among the hitherto seclusive and suspicious race. The density of a population is also in exact proportion to its more or less complete conversion from a nomadic life. A Bedouin family requires for its support a large space, of which it only partially makes use ; the Kabyles cultivate the soil and elicit from it a ten- fold produce ; in the one case square miles are indispensable, in the other a garden a few feet square is quite sufficient. ASSES, MULES, GOATS. Contemporaneous with the adoption of the novel culture, be- cause closely connected with it, were the introduction of the Ass, the breeding of Mules, and the propagation of the Goat. The patient, hardworking, and intelligent Ass, which obediently fulfilled many domestic duties — driving the mill and the draw-well; carrying baskets full of earth to the hills ; and accompanying its master to market and feast, loaded with the produce of the soil — had no need of fat meadows, shady trees, and ample space like the ox; it was content with what came first, the way-side herb, the refuse of the table, with straw, twigs, thistles, and brambles. That the ass came to Greece from Semitic Asia Minor and Syria — though its original home may have been Africa, where its relations still live — is taught us by the history of language (note 36), and con- firmed by the oldest known conditions of nations and culture. In the epic time, when cattle-breeding and agriculture were the chief occupations, the ass had not yet become a common domestic animal ; it is only mentioned once in the Iliad, and that only in a simile invented and inserted by a poet who was prejudiced against the Salaminians and Athenians ; the simile is paradoxical and awkwardly paired with the one preceding. In the Odyssey, the second part of which afforded plenty of opportunity for noticing such an animal, the ass is never named at all; nor is it spoken of by Hesiod. As the Latin word asinus has an archaic form which seems to reach back to a period preceding the Greek colonization, the animal must have come into Italy overland through the Illyrian tribes ; or must we suppose that the people of Cumge, when they founded their first city on the present Isle of Ischia, still said asnos? Later on, in Italy the ass, besides being valued for the ASSES, MULES. m domestic duties he performed, was of great use in facilitating import and export in the mountainous parts of the peninsula. Oil and wine and even corn were carried on donkey-back from the interior to the sea ; Varro tells us that merchants kept herds of asses expressly for that purpose. The ass, and with it its name, accompanied the progress of the culture of the vine and olive to the north, not crossing the limits of that culture. In proportion as the ure-ox, the bison, and the elk died out, the long-eared foreign beast become domesticated in Gaul, receiving various names, and living in the customs, jokes, proverbs, and fables of the people. Germany, however, proved too cold for the animal. The Mule, already frequently mentioned by Homer, came from Pontic Asia Minor, or, as Homer expressly says, from the Henetians, a Paphlagonian people : "Where rich Henetia breeds her savage mules ; " — Iliad. on which the Scholiast remarks, " The crossing of the ass with the horse was first invented by the Henetians." In another passage it is the Mysians who bring mules to Priam : " Last to the yoke the well-matched mules they bring (The gift of Mysia to the Trojan king)." The Mysians and Paphlagonians were neighbours, and the way to the latter led through the country of the former. In a fragment by Anacreon the Mysians are directly named as the inventors of mule-breeding. The mention in the Old Testament of Togarmah — that is, Armenia or Cappadocia — as the place whence the best mules came agrees with the above (Ezekiel xxvii. 14) ; the law forbade the Israelites themselves to breed mules. Still later we hear of Cappadocian and Galatian mules, it being reported of the first that they had the power of reproduction ; they must there- fore have enjoyed especially favourable natural conditions. Very remarkable, because analogous to the religious ideas of the Israelites (perhaps also to those of other Semitic and half- Semitic races), is the old prohibition ascribed to the mythic period against breeding mules in the land of the Eleans. King CEnomaus, son of Neptune and father of Hippodameia, is said to 112 ASSES, MULES, GOATS. have pronounced a curse against such breeding, and from that time the Eleans took their mares out of the country to be put to asses. Perhaps this Elean custom was only a pious survival from those early times, when the only mules in Greece were intro- duced from the East, and national feeling was against the unnatural mixture. In the Odyssey we are told that Naemon of Ithaca possessed twelve mares in fertile Elis with their mule foals : " For Elis I should sail with utmost speed, T'import twelve mares which there luxurious feed, And twelve young mules, a strong laborious race, New to the plough, unpractised in the trace." The mule, as represented in the epics, is already a hard-working animal, used for field-labour, harnessed to the waggon, or carrying loads, and it is frequently described as patient and laborious. A well-known verse of Theognis says that the mule was preferred to the ass as being the stronger animal. The abstract Greek appellations hemi-onos (half-ass), andoreus, oureus (mountain-animal, found in Hesiod and throughout antiquity in this double form), are striking. The last name is explained by the Iliad, where the mule is described as bearing heavy loads of wood from the moun- tains to the plains (Books xvii. and xxiii). The mulus, or mule, was brought to Italy, as the name proves, from Greece (note 37). The Latin name was afterwards used by all the nations which adopted the animal. In Varro's time, just as now, carts were drawn along the high-roads by mules, which were not only strong, but pleased the eye by their handsome appearance. The Greeks were equally delighted with the animal, and Nausicaa's car is drawn to the sea-shore and back by mules. The Goat was used as a domestic animal in the mountainous districts of the south, where cultivation more resembled that of gardens than of fields. It feeds on the spicy herbs that grow on sun-heated cliffs, is content with tough shrubs, and yields aromatic milk. Stony Attica, which was rich in figs and olives, also nourished innumerable goats; and one of the four old Attic phylae was named after the goat. Even if the animal came into Europe with the first Aryan immigrants, and accordingly the GOATS, BEES. 113 Hellenes and Italians had not to make its acquaintance after reaching their new home, yet it was only there, and under the Semitic mode of cultivation there adopted, that it found its proper place and true use (note 38). It is obvious, too, that the keeping of Bees could only have been adopted after the rise of tree-culture. The man who planted his own olives, for the fruit of which he had to wait for years, could easily keep beehives within his enclosed ground, nursing the bees through the winter, increasing their number by colonies derived from the parent-stock, and in due season receiving the reward of his exertions in the shape of honey and wax. Aristaeus, the inventor of oil, also invented apiculture, and Autuchos, i.e., the self-possessing, is named as his brother. Homer knows nothing of bee hives; the simile of the Achseans gathering together "like bees flying out of a cleft in the rock," is derived from the swarm- ing of wild bees. We first meet with an artificial beehive in a not very old passage in Hesiod's Theogony; in it the working-bees are distinguished from the drones, which latter are compared to women! In those days the shepherd robbed the wild honey-combs which he found in the forest, and if the spoil was abundant he made mead of the honey ; the husbandman fermented his flour into a kind of raw beer; the vintner often mixed the honey from his hives with his wine, which he then called mulsum, and believed that the enjoyment of this beverage would lengthen his days (note 39), STONE ARCHITECTURE. It has already been hinted in the previous pages, that with the increased stability of life resulting from the invention of horticul- ture, the dwellings of men also acquired a more enduring character. In fact, it was from the south-eastern corner of the Mediterranean coast, that stone architecture first gradually spread, like wine and oil, to all the coasts and peninsulas of Southern Europe, and thence to the whole civilized world. In very early times the Phoenicians had taught the art of building walls and terraces to the Greeks ; the Greeks imparted this knowledge to the Etruscans and Latins; and from Italy, at a very late period, it spread to the nations north of the Alps. When the Indo-Europeans from the Sea of Aral and the Caspian Sea (with the then shape of which we are not acquainted) wandered westwards with their herds, what they came to was either immeasurable steppe or continuous and endless forest. In the former, so favourable for roving, there were no materials to be found for building houses ; so the Scythians and Sarmatians lived in their waggons covered with basket-work. These waggons were very large, being often supported not on four, but on six wheels. Hippocrates writes : " They are called Nomads because they have no houses, but live in waggons ; the smallest of which have four wheels, but the others six;" so that the houses on wheels mentioned by Pindar might be called movable houses. And in fact, Hippocrates continues : " These waggons are roofed with felt; they are built like houses, some twofold, some three- fold ; they protect their occupants from rain, wind, and snow, and are drawn sometimes by two, sometimes by three oxen." The women lived in the waggons, the men rode. The Slavs, who were STOATE ARCHITECTURE. 115 the northern neighbours of the Sarmatians, adopted many of their customs, but they were not a riding or driving nation ; they were robbers roaming through the forests, but yet they built houses. What this oldest Slavo-Germano-Celtic house was like, we learn even now from the similar dwellings of roving nations on the borders of Europe and Asia ; for example, the Turkomans. The framework and roof consist of poles, and the two united form a kind of cylinder, rounded at the top. The whole is covered with felt, and the rectangular opening which serves for a door is also curtained with felt. In the sculptures on the column of Antoninus this kind of house is represented in a probably improved form, and it is so described by Greeks and Romans, whose reports are not contradicted by the early Middle Ages. In the sculptures above-mentioned the fortifications of the Marcomanni and Quadi, stormed by Marcus Aurelius, are dis- tinctly seen to consist of wicker-work bound by crossed and twisted ropes ; the dwellings are circular with rounded roofs, no windows, and square doors ; they seem to be interwoven with rushes or canes and bound with ropes. The houses of the Celts are similarly described by Strabo, and those of the remote Caledonians and Maeotians were still constructed in this way in the time of Jornandes, when their kinsmen on the continent had long adopted the Roman fashion. The Slavs too are described by Procopius as dwelling in such huts of wicker-work, which they could easily forsake, and build others in another place. " The Suevi," says Strabo, " and the neighbouring nations live in huts built only to last a day." Seneca describes the houses and customs of the •Germans and nations on the Danube in the same way. Tacitus afterwards reports that the Germans were ignorant of the use of mortar and bricks. The huts above described had no foun- dations, and a thief could enter them at night by digging a passage under ground. The roof rested simply on the walls, and there was no interior division, for the Alemannian law declared that a new-born child had lived when it had opened its eyes and seen the roof and the four walls ; such a house must have been no longer round but square, like the Dacian houses on Trajan's column, which besides have a window above the n6 STONE ARCHITECTURE. door. How slight the whole structure was, is proved by a law punishing any one who scatters to pieces another's house. It is natural that such houses were constantly exposed to fire: the enemy threw firebrands on the roof of rushes; the robber secretly set fire to the wood-work ; an accidental flame rapidly consumed the slender pillars and the dry osiers that bound them together. The very hearth in the centre of the house, which sent its smoke up to the roof and dried the wood-work, and the common northern custom of lighting up the house in the long winter evenings by means of a torch stuck in a crevice, must often have been the cause of destruction. Not seldom may the occupants sleeping on the ground have perished in the smoke and flame ; but, if they escaped with their lives, a new house was speedily built, impervious at first to the rain, unstained with soot, and happily free of the vermin that had infested the old habitation. The foremost in the great Indo-European march, the Celts, had on moving towards the West come upon the Iberians, who, if conjecture be right, were the outermost link of a great chain of nations, reaching from the valley of the Nile and the north coast of Africa, through modern Spain, to the Channel and the Atlantic Ocean. Did the impulse to erect the stone monuments which we find under different forms and names {nuragen, dolmen, crom- lech, etc.) in Algiers as well as in Sardinia, Western France, and the British Isles, belong to this race ? and had the Celts, in their later erections, only inherited the custom from their predecessors ? Was it the same impulse, arrested in the north-west at its rudest stage, that prompted the building of the temples of Egypt, and rose almost into the sphere of beauty and true art ? In consequence of their geographical position, the Celts very early came in contact with Phoenician, Grecian, and Roman civilization ; they learnt to sink a stone foundation into the ground, to hew stones, fit them and cement them with mortar, and thus settle per- manently on their native soil. The Germans learnt the art much later ; the Slavs of the East have scarcely learnt it to this day. Purely agricultural nations were still quite content with wooden houses, wicker barns (Lith. Metis, and Old Slavic kleti, outhouse, storeroom; Gothic hleithra, tent, arbour; while the Old Celtic , STONE ARCHITECTURE. 117 cUtct, Irish diat/i, Cymric cluit, still retain the original mean- ing of wicker-work, hurdle ; French date, etc.), and with mere hurdles for their horses and cattle. When the Vineyard came, and not till then, appeared the murus (Old Irish mur) that enclosed it, the stone-paved street {via strata) that led past it, and soon connected with one another the stone hamlets (villas), markets (mercatus), wells (puteos), convents, churches, and ere- long the cities. If we could doubt that real architecture origi- nated in the countries around the Mediterranean, and slowly advanced from south to north, and from west to east, the history of the commonest words would prove it to be the fact. Our word chalk was derived from the Latin calx, which in turn was derived from the Greek. Our tile and mortar are from the Latin tegula, mortarium ; our tower from turn's ; our fenster (window) and soller (attic), from the fenestra and solarium ; our post and pillar from postis and pilarium ; our chimney from caminata, and so on (note 40). When the Slavs migrated into the regions of the Oder and Danube, they cannot have been acquainted with any masonry, for all their expressions for such work are derived partly from Byzantium, partly from Germany, and a few from the Turkish language — as the science of philology proves. Bohemian Prague on the Moldau is a city of splendid houses, for it lies close to the European West, and was built with its assistance. Russian Moscow was, and partly is, a mere wooden camp, like the Budine settlements described by Herodotus ; and if the popular songs bestowed the epithet " white-stoned" on their imperial residence, on account of the few stone edifices it con- tained (which were built by Italians fetched for the purpose), it only proves that such another wonder was not to be found in their sphere of experience. When the Roman-German West had once mastered the southern mode of building, it reared its towers and spires in longing aspiration to the skies, almost to the height of the Egyptian pyramids — this, however, was a morbid barbaric impulse, from which the balanced nature of the Greek had pre- served him. The terraced horizontal architecture of the Medi- terranean city, rising on all sides up to a castle-crowned hill, or amphitheatrically surrounding some beautiful bay, is hardly met n8 STONE ARCHITECTURE. with beyond the district of the olive ; from that point to the north begins the pointed Gothic architecture of the mystic-minded masters of the architectural guilds. We do not know exactly how high were the Babylonian-Assyrian terraces of brick ; what is still left standing is about as lofty as the tallest trees, the sequoia of California, and the eucalyptus of Australia — from four to five hundred feet : thus far it is possible for organic life and the art of man to raise themselves above this planet. As once the Hamitic- Semitic stone supplanted the primitive material, wood; so this in its turn, is being supplanted, in our new technical and mechanical civilization, by glass and iron — glass, an almost incorporeal thing • and iron, found late and only intended for implements — the materials of a demonic and magic art that would have seemed to the ancients incomprehensible as an edifice of vapour, or else an illusion of the senses, like the pearly bridge of Iris. BEER. When the Roman Empire was complete, its limits closely cor- responded with those of the vine and olive. Where in the north the climate was too cold, or in the south too hot for the vine, or where olive oil was no longer an article of daily consumption, there also the Roman no longer ruled, or only temporarily- and there ended the world of the ancients. Even modern Europe may be fairly divided into a wine-and-oil land and a beer-and-bntier land : the region of the first is that part of Europe which leans towards the Mediterranean Sea; the region of the last the part that slants towards the North Sea and Baltic. In the most ancient times it was far otherwise. On collecting the passages relating to the history of beer and butter scattered through the writings of the Greeks and Romans, we are astonished at the extent of the sphere in which both these articles, now considered as especially belonging to the north, were found ; and at the fact that whole countries and nations have abandoned their use. The gift of Bacchus supplanted the old native turbid drink boiled out of grain, and Minerva's boon banished the fat that shepherds had churned out of the milk of sheep, cows, and mares. It was like the victory of a new religion and foreign manners over old barbaric ways, the attachment to which was very slowly lost, first among the chiefs and nobles, and at last among the mass of the people. We are informed by Herodotus and others that the Egyptians — that primitive pre- Semitic race, which perhaps had developed a peculiar civilization ages before the Indo-Europeans invaded Europe — used a drink made out of barley. In the poems of ^Eschylus, a King of Argos cries to the Danaids, who had come from Egypt, that here they will find a manly population and not drinkers of barley-wine. In places where the soil would not permit the production of wine, the god Osiris himself had taught the people to make a drink of BEER. barley, almost equal to wine in pleasantness and strength. "The Egyptians," says the Academician Dio, " who are a people much inclined to drink, have invented a substitute for wine for those too poor to buy it ; namely, wine made from barley : when this is drunk, it makes men merry; they sing and dance, and behave exactly as if full of sweet wine." And in Strabo's time, the citizens of Alexandria — a place only existing since the Macedonian period with a very mixed population — generally drank the same old Egyptian beverage. Theopbrastus is the first to mention its name, and under this name zythos, Latin zythum^ the drink is often ailuded to by Greek and Latin authors. We can quite understand that the Egyptians would try to vary the taste of the sweet slimy beverage by the addition of pungent substances, and the fact is proved by a passage in Columella, which speaks of the bitter lupine. Strabo says even of the more distant Ethiopians that they lived on millet and barley, and prepared a drink out of those products. The English travellers who have lately penetrated to the sources of the Nile, found a kind of raw intoxicating beer in use among the half-negro tribes, who drink it out of gourds. Among the pre-Indo-European Iberian race in Spain, which was genealogically or historically connected with the Libyans in Africa, beer was drunk in the earliest times. Pliny calls Spain an " excellent beer-land," where the people knew how to keep and improve it. The customs attributed by Strabo to the Iberian tribes living near the Atlantic coast are so singular and wild, that when the same author says the Lusitanians drank beer, we must suppose that this was an ancient Lusitanian habit, and not derived from the Celts. " But wine," adds Strabo, " is very rare among them," from which we infer that at that early time the vine was at least beginning to be cultivated in the land where now it rules alone. Polybius men- tions a characteristic trait of attachment to the national drink in a half-Grecianized, and so half-civilized, Iberian king. His palace is in all respects a copy of that of the Phaeacian king in Homer — and even that was barbaric — with one exception ; in the centre of the building stand gold and silver vessels filled with barley-juice. It makes a similar impression when we read of the BEER. 121 heroic Numantians, that when on the point of engaging in battle, they feasted on half-raw meat — like modern Englishmen — and raised their spirits with the fermented juice of wheat or other grain. Pliny first tells us the names of these Spanish drinks, ccelia and cerea. Strabo relates that the Ligurians, probably a branch of the Iberians, ate meat and drank beer. Another set of originally beer-drinking nations in the south-east of the continent belong however to the great Indo-European family. Archilochus speaks of the nearly related Phrygians and Thracians drinking bruton, barley-wine or beer, as early as 700 B.C. Hecataeus says that the Paeonians, a people of Thrace, drank bruton made of barley, and parabia made from millet with the admixture of a spicy root called konyze. East of the Phrygians lived the Armenians, of whose use of a similar beverage Xenophon was an eye-witness. The celebrated Ten Thousand, after coming down from the Carduchian mountains, rested in some Armenian villages on their way to the Chalybes. Among other things, they found there large tubs of what we must call beer, still brimful of the barley; the drink, which was sucked through straws, was intoxicating when unmixed with water, but very pleasant to those accustomed to it. Xenophon does not say what name the natives gave their drink ; but that the taste for beer requires to be learnt is proved by what is even now observed in inhabitants of southern countries, who at first dislike the brown drink, but after some practice often become passionately fond of it (note 41). We learn from authors of a later period, that the Illyrians and Pannonians called beer sabaia or sabaium ; but by that time it had become a poor and common beverage, only drunk by the vulgar, while the better classes, who already spoke Latin and Greek, had long since drunk wine instead. When the Emperor Valens besieged Chalcedon, the men on the walls mocked at him, calling him a sabaiarius, beer-drinker. Cassius Dio, who ought to know them, having governed Dalmatia and Upper Pannonia, pictures the Pannonians as a poor northern people, living in a wintry climate which produced neither wine nor oil, and not only eating but drinking their millet and barley. More than two centuries later, the remarkable report of Priscus, who traversed the Pannonian BEER. plains in 448 a.d., with the Greek embassy sent to King Attila, furnishes a vivid picture of the country and the habits of its mixed races. Instead of wheat the embassy were everywhere supplied with millet, and instead of wine with mead — so-called by the natives ; while the servants got millet and a drink prepared from barley, which the barbarians called camum. But we are not told which barbarians used this name; certainly not the Huns, for the word is more ancient than the arrival of that horde in Europe. In Ulpian's Digest (beginning of the third century) ca??ium is not to be reckoned in legacies as wine ; and in the so- called edict of Diocletian of the year 301 the maximum price of camum is prescribed among other things. The word seems to be Celtic, and may have become domesticated in Pannonia during the great Celtic migrations, or been brought there by Roman soldiers. All this proves that in what is now Hungary, in Illyria and Thrace, that is, in the larger northern half of the Greco-Turkish peninsula ; in Phrygia, Armenia, Egypt, Spain and Portugal, and down to the mountains of the Genoese coast, beer — now almost unknown to the common people in those countries — was once in general use. Turning to the inhabitants of Central and Northern Europe, the Celts, Germans, Lithuanians, and Slavs — all of them nations of Indo-European blood — we get our oldest account of the food and drink of the first-named people, the Celts, from Pytheas of Massilia, who probably lived in the time of Aristotle, or soon after. Strabo reports him as saying of the nations with whom he became acquainted on his coasting voyage to the Northern Sea, that they had " hardly any garden fruits or domestic animals, that they fed on millet and other herbs, berries, and roots ; while those who cultivated corn and honey prepared their drink also out of those substances " (therefore beer and mead). The winter of the Scythians, that is, of northern peoples in general, the long nights, the fur clothing, subterranean dwellings, and lastly the fer??iented drink instead of wine, are described by Virgil (Georg. III. 376-383) in almost the same words as by Tacitus afterwards : "Et pocula lseti Fermento atque acidis imitantur vitea sorbis" BEER. "3 At the beginning of the first century B.C. beer was the popular beverage of the Celts in Central France, while the upper classes already drank Massiliote wine. Celtic beer is not seldom men- tioned by later authors ; in Northern France, Belgium, and the British Isles it held its ground both under the Roman Empire and through the Middle Ages, and does so to the present day. The Emperor Julian, who had seen and no doubt tasted it, but who clung to classical manners and recoiled from the barbaric, whether east or north, ridicules the Parisian pseudo-Bacchus in a well- known epigram, "Child of the bearded barley, wilt thou call thyself Dionysus? " and so on. Ammianus knows the Gauls as a people fond of wine, but forced to put up with beer and cider as substi- tutes. The korma of Posidonius, koun?ii of Dioscorides, still lives in Celtic languages, with the usual change of m into v and/ The word may be of the same origin as the Spanish cerea, in which case both name and thing may either have come from Spain to the Celts, or travelled with the Celts from Gaul to Celtiberia. In a more developed form, as cervesia, cerevisia, it occurs first in Pliny, then quite commonly in the Middle Ages, and still exists in the Romance tongues, as French cervoise, etc. Another Celtic word, brace, meaning first a kind of grain (spelt), then malt, beer-spice, and beer itself, has, with its numerous offshoots and the general sense of " fermentation " running through them, found its way into Middle Latin, the N. Romance tongues, and even German A proof of the deeply rooted custom of beer-drinking among the British Celts is afforded by the life of St. Bridget. That saint re- peated the miracle of the marriage at Cana, with the difference that she changed the water into beer. She also increased the store of beer, milk, and butter by a mere glance of the eye. East of the Celts, the Germans became the more addicted to beer-drinking the more they turned their attention to agriculture. Caesar does not speak of beer as a German drink, but a century and a half later Tacitus does ; though Pliny, when he mentions beer, is silent as to the Germans. These, when pressing forward to the Lower Rhine and the sources of the Danube, must have soon adopted the use of beer from the Celts; those on the Lower Danube must have found the beverage among the primitive Thracians and Pan- 124 BEER. nonians, and were probably till then unacquainted with it ; but it is a well-known fact that barbarians adopt nothing more readily than the means of intoxication. Grimm derives the German word bier from the Latin bibere, and the North-German word ale (which passed to the Finns and Lithuanians) from the Latin oleum. Those who are startled by this, must remember that beer is a pro- duct and a pleasure of the agriculturist, and that its manufacture, even when rude, demands a knowledge of technics only possible where agriculture is practised ; that there was a period when the Germans roved through Europe as a pastoral nation ; that at the period when we first become acquainted with them, they were only beginning to adopt a settled mode of life, and that it is therefore foolish to regard beer and beer-drinking as originally German, and inseparable from the essence and idea of Germanism ; that, if the use and brewing of beer had been the ruling characteristic custom of the Germans, the ancients would not have been so chary of mentioning it, and would not have withheld from us the names of beer and ale, for they reported all the Thracian, Spanish, and Celtic names of the things that struck them as strange ; that, finally, the nearest neighbours of the Germans, the Prussians, in the time of Wulfstan and King Alfred, drank only mead and fermented mares' milk, and were ignorant of beer, which allows us to make certain inferences as to the Germans in the earlier stages of their civiliza- tion. In any case, the raw fermentum which was drunk in the " subterranean dens " of the Germans of Tacitus, would be very distasteful to their modern and fastidious descendants. To say nothing else, let it be remembered that the hop-plant only reached Germany (apparently from the east) in consequence of the German movement against E.ome, though it has now frequently run wild, and that the mixing of this narcotic plant with beer only came into gradual use in the Middle Ages. It is true that St. Columban, about the year 600, once found a cupa filled with beer, and hold- ing about twenty-six modii, among the Suevians, who were about to offer it to their god Wodan ; but in the course of the Middle Ages beer went almost entirely out of use in South Germany, owing to the same agencies as in South and Central France ; so that Bavaria became entirely a wine-land, till in recent times North- BEER. 125 German beer, by improved methods of preparation, especially the art of making it keep, and by cheapness of price, again recovered the ground lost. Beer, which at the beginning of European history was chiefly a Celtic beverage, is now considered a distinguishing mark of the German man and German manners ; so completely do modes of civilization, in the course of long periods, shift from land to land and from nation to nation, and so easily is he deceived who has his eye on the present alone ! At the same time, we allow that malt, that is, the melted, softened, is a true German word (so the all-healing " extract of malt " can boast of being at least half German) ; but brewing is a word whose origin cannot be decided with any certainty : the Thracian bruton looks as though it must mean the brewed; the Lithuanian bruwele, brewer, is isolated, and must have been borrowed from the German. The Gothic leithus ( = sicera, intoxicating drink), which is also found in the other Teutonic tongues, and has only lately died out in High German, seems identical with the Old Irish lind, now linn, lionn, leann or llyn, according to the dialect, so that leithus stands for linthus, and' is probably borrowed from the Celtic, especially as it is wanting in the Slavic. Still farther east, the Lithuanians have borrowed their alus (beer) from their German neighbours, but the Slavs have formed their own pivo quite in an abstract manner from the verb piti, to drink. The Old Slavic olu, olovina, sicera, New Slavic ol, cerevisia, and Wallachian olovin, have the same origin as our ale, Old Norse d'l. Another Slavic word, braga, braha. bray a (a common drink similar to beer, Lithuanian, broga), points to the Celtic brace. As it is wanting in the Teutonic languages (a sign of late and foreign derivation), and as it may have been bor- rowed by the Lithuanians from the Slavic, perhaps after the in- troduction of brandy, it may have reached the Slavs after the time when Celtic races had wandered back again to Bohemia and Pannonia, and into the Danubian districts. Of the two Finnic and Esthonian expressions for the commonest small beer (potus vilissimus ex hordeo), kalja, kalli and taari, taar, the first resembles the Spanish calia; not that we would venture to deduce from it an Iberian-Finnish relationship or connexion. 126 MEAD. In the lime-tree forests of the east of Europe, among the nomads and half-nomads of the Volga region, quite at the back of the Slavs, the intoxicating drink made of honey played a greater part than beer, and was certainly much older. It may be presumed that mead was a primitive drink of the Indo-Germans when they migrated into Europe, and that it only, like so many other things, lasted longer in the east of the continent. In Greece, where beer-drinking was always considered a barbaric custom, we find here and there some traces of a drink made of honey having preceded the wine period. The Taulantians, an Illyrian people, made wine from honey. "When the honey is squeezed out of the combs," says Aristotle (besides other pro- cesses), "an agreeable strong drink, like wine, is produced. Some persons succeeded in producing the same in Greece, dif- ferent in no way from old wine; but afterwards, with all their exertions, they could not hit upon the right mixture." It is perhaps a sign of the abundance of honey in the regions beyond the Ister, that the Thracians in the time of Herodotus said the country was so full of bees that it was impossible to penetrate into it. The same thing was once believed of Liineburg Heath. Mead is further distinguished as a Scythian beverage, made from the honey of wild bees. The Byzantine envoy Priscus gives the native Pannonian name medos^ which is identical with the Old Irish mid, Old Cambrian med, and the Slavic medu; the last being not only honey and mead, but sometimes (in composition) standing for wine, like the Greek methic. The modern Lithuanians dis- tinguish medus^ honey, from middus, mead ; in the corresponding German word the meaning of honey has entirely disappeared. Even now in Slav countries beer is not the popular, indispensable, traditional drink; it is true mead also has become rarer every year in Russia and Poland, principally because sugar has put an end to bee-keeping ; its place is taken by that devilish invention, brandy, which decimates the present generation, and poisons the life-springs of the next. BUTTER. The history of butter runs parallel to that of beer. Butter may be termed a product of the art and habits of the shepherd, as beer is of those of the husbandman. Milk kept in skins would of course, when carried about on horseback or in a waggon — and all northern nations rode in waggons — be churned into butter, and the effect produced on cream when exposed to the warmth of the stove was similar. The butter thus separated could be used either for eating, for anointing the hair, or as salve for wounds. The Greeks and Romans of the best period were ignorant of butter, and there is no sign of their having been acquainted with it before the introduction of olive oil. In spite of this, rather early testimony describes the nations in the vicinity of the two classic lands as making butter^ which they must therefore have learned to produce after the dispersion of the nations. That great traveller, Solon, speaks of the fat obtained by stirring milk, and uses it as a simile for the gain which selfish leaders know how to extract from political disturbance. Before the time of Herodotus, Hecataeus said that the Pseonians on the Strymon, the same that lived in pile dwellings and brewed two kinds of beer, "used salve made of the oil of milk." The comic poet Anaxandrides, who flourished about the middle of the fourth •century B.C., speaks of rough-haired, butter-eating men sitting at the table of the Thracian king Kotys, who married his daughter to Iphicrates. Herodotus had heard a vague report of a Scythian mode of treating the milk of mares ; after saying that the nomadic Scythians used to blind their slaves, he continues, " they make them sit round the hollow wooden milk-vessels and stir (or swing) them round and round ; the stuff that rises to the top is skimmed, 128 BUTTER. and considered more valuable than what sinks to the bottom. " Hippocrates describes the process more particularly. " The Scy- thians," he says, " pour mares' milk into wooden vessels, which they then shake; thereby the parts are separated, and the fat, which they call boutyron, being light, swims at the top, while the heavier portion, sinking to the bottom, is taken out, dried, and thickened, and is then called horse-cheese ; in the middle is the whey." This knowledge of the substance and the name was no doubt obtained from Greek colonists on the Pontic coast (note 42). However, Aristotle seems either ignorant of, or not to have noticed, the general use of butter, at least he never mentions the name, production, or use of butter in his long description of the milk of animals ; at the very most a few passing words might be supposed to relate to butter. By the physicians butyrum is now and then mentioned as a medicament ; but Pliny, and even Galen, still think it necessary to explain both the word and the origin and use of the article to their readers. We may presume that as the Thracians and Scythians made butter, the Phrygians would do so too; and in fact Hippocrates has an expression, pikerion, that seems to indicate Phrygian butter. A small quantity of butter — very small compared with the other articles necessary for the royal table — is mentioned as being daily furnished for the Persian court. The butter is named along with sesam oil and tere- binth oil, while the absence of olive oil from the list is characteristic. A verse in the Old Testament shows that the Jews, at least at a certain period, were acquainted with butter ; Proverbs xxx. 33 : " Surely the churning of milk bringeth forth butter." The same thing seems true of the half-Semitic island of Cyprus, where butter was called elphos (Hesychius), which Gesenius explains as Phoeni- cian, but John Schmidt as the Sanskrit sarpis. In the " Periplus maris Erythraei" (written under Titus and Domitian), it is said that butter was brought from India to the ports of the Red Sea, and that tropical land is spoken of as rich in rice, wool, sesam oil, and butter ; wounded elephants were healed there by being made to swallow butter, or by having their wounds smeared with it. Strabo says that in Arabia, in the country of King Aretas, the army of ^Elius Gallus could only get butter instead of oil. BUTTER. 129 From Strabo also we learn that the Ethiopians of the utmost south used butter and fat, and the Lusitanians in the far west, butter instead of oil. No doubt this Indian, Arabian, Ethiopian, and Lusitanian butter was a liquid fat, just as, in the present time, the Bedouin Arabs are greedy drinkers of the butter they obtain from the milk of their sheep and goats. At the feast held in Sicily in honour of the return of the Erycinian Venus, the whole neighbourhood around her temple smelt of butter, as a proof that the goddess had really returned from Africa. The temple on the promontory of Eryx originally belonged to the Elymians, a nation whose origin is doubtful and hidden in legends. Whether they were a remnant of the Iberian race spread through the islands of the western Mediterranean, or had really immigrated from Asia, they are spoken of as a cow-keeping race, and worshipped a corresponding deity, whose presence was announced by the butter, whether used as ointment on the hair and body or steaming in the pan. Pliny speaks of barbarians in general, which from his point of view meant principally Germans, as " delighting in butter, the possession of which distinguishes the rich from the poor." The rich were able to keep butter, because they did not immediately consume the milk of their large herds. Pliny's description of the making of butter, however, is confused and unpractical, another proof that the article was foreign to the classic world. In another place he remarks that the more civilized and half-Romanized races used butter, as well as milk and eggs, in making pastry. At this time, then, appeared the art of making cakes, which had remained undeveloped among the Greeks and Romans for want of butter, and because of the very slight use they made of yeast — the use of which is likewise a Northern custom. It is remarkable enough that the word butter came to most nations of Western and Central Europe in a round- about way from the Pontus Euxinus across Greece and Italy — two countries which scarcely knew and did not value the article designated by that word. Perhaps a trace of its origin is pre- served in the Magyar word vai ; Lapp, wuoi ; Finnic and Esthc- nian woi\ woi'd, etc. The art of rendering butter, by means of repeated washing, 9 [30 BUTTER. patting, and salting, as pure and firm as we now see it, seems to have originated among the North-German races. Even now the difference between the butter of North and of South Germany consists in the mode of preparation j in North Germany the butter is salted^ as in Scandinavia and England; in South Germany butter is eaten fresh, and food is prepared with schmalz (the smelted, melted), that is, liquid butter. In the Alemannian districts (not in the Swabian) this butter-schmalz is called anke (a word that Grimm considers akin to ungere\ and also schmutz. The Scandinavians call butter smear (Swedish smo'r, smdrja, etc., like our O.H.Germ. anchun-smero, anc-sm'ero). Salbe, salve, may also have been a primitive German word for butter. The Slavs have the same word for butter as for oil ; maslo, literally a thing to smear with {mdzati), thus agreeing with the above German expressions. Both nations, Germans as well as Slavs, smeared their hair, it would seem, with liquid butter, which when it turned rank, would not diffuse the best of odours. That the Celts, at least those of Galatia in Asia Minor, used to anoint themselves with evil-smelling butter is proved by an anecdote in Plutarch. A Lacedaemonian lady visited Berenice, the wife of King Dei'otarus ; when they came within smelling distance, they simultaneously turned their backs on each other, the odour of ointment being apparently repugnant to the one, and that of butter to the other. In out-of-the-way villages of northern countries this custom has not yet died out among the women and children, but elsewhere it has been supplanted by the use of pomatum, in which, as the name indicates, some sweet-scented fruit (Ital. porno) is mixed. Originally it was also a dye for the hair, and only in recent times has it become a mere ointment. The invention, like that of soap, seems to be an old Belgian one, for the ancient Gauls, like their Parisian descendants of to-day, were artists of the toilette. How can we more fittingly conclude our remarks on the three primitive plants of the earliest higher civilization — the Vine, Olive, and Fig-tree — than by quoting the significant parable in the ninth chapter of Judges ? I will write it down, as I fear the Book containing it nowadays is but seldom read : " The trees VINE. OLIVE. FIG. 131 went forth on a time to anoint a king over them ; and they said unto the Olive-tree, Reign thou over us. But the Olive-tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? And the trees said to the Fig-tree, Come thou, and reign over us. But the Fig-tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees ? Then said the trees unto the Vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the Vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? Then said all the trees unto the Bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. And the Bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow : and if not, let fire come out of the Bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon." What a picture of Syrian nature and Semitic life ! Those monstrous thorns and prickly plants of the desert, the acacia bushes — which a man cannot approach unless he be armed with long iron prongs to grasp and cut — become as dry as skeletons in the summer heat, and afford no " shade ; " if by accident they catch fire, the conflagration spreads to the very horizon, devouring the fruit-trees it finds on its way. So the destructive fires of conquest and despotism raged all over Asia, devouring all humble homes, all hives of peaceful industry. The terrible majesty of the rulers of Nineveh and Babylon glowed merciless, like the sun in summer, burning up nations as the thornbush did the cedars of Lebanon; while the Olive, the Fig-tree, the Vine, resembled the man who, within his small province, accomplishes works of peace, and benefits mankind. And to this day, politics and "music" — in the Greek sense — are sworn enemies. Our great poet experienced it when he attempted to " soar above the trees," and truth and love and, above all, poetry, which cheereth God and man, threatened to dry up within him. From that time he hated Revolution, which seemed to him the flaming thornbush that destroyed both garden and plantation. FLAX. HEMP. (TJNuM USITATISSIMUM.I (CANNABIS SATIVA.) In what part of the world flax originally appeared is one of the many questions relating to cultivated plants that cannot yet be answered decisively. The dry rocky soil of the Mediterranean countries, the long summer drought and the sudden floods of autumn, not being favourable to the growth of flax, its original home has been sought in the colder and more humid regions of Central Europe. But Egypt and Colchis show that it is not the southern heat but the want of moisture that prevents the thriving of the plant in the classic lands. When we hear of modern travellers finding wild flax in Northern India, on the Altai moun- tains, or at the foot of the Caucasus, and of its "growing spontaneously all over Macedonia and Thrace," there is always the possibility of a plant so long and extensively cultivated having merely escaped the custody of man and gone wild in those places. The twofold use to which both flax and hemp were put is another important fact in their history ; namely, the use of their oily fruit for food, and that of their fibre for ropes and tissues. The two uses are not always found combined on the same soil and by the same nation, and it is still a question which of the two first led to the cultivation of the plant. In modern India linseed is pressed for oil, but the plant itself is not utilized ; in Abyssinia, too, it only serves for food. Herodotus says that the Scythians threw hemp seed on hot stones at funeral ceremonies, at once purifying and intoxicating themselves with the fumes ; it is added immediately after, that the Thracians moreover wove the plant into clothes very similar to linen, implying that the Scythians did not. We FLAX. 133 find the Greeks very early baking linseed, as well as poppy and sesam seeds, in honey, by way of pastry. During the Peloponne- sian war, when the Athenians blockaded the Isle of Sphacteria, divers brought to the besieged skins full of poppy-seed in honey and pounded linseed. " In Italy, north of the Po," says Pliny, " there was formerly a very sweet rustic food made of linseed, which is now used only in sacrifices ; " — from the locality and the sacrificial use we may conclude that this was an ancient Celtic or Ligurian custom. Far richer than the history of linseed as food is the history of flax as a material for manufacture. The cultivation of flax in Egypt and Western Asia goes back to the remotest antiquity. Linen stuffs and clothes, napkins and fillets, tents and nets, ropes and sails, are met with in universal use among the Egyptians, among the Phoenicians, and in the Old Testament. The mural paintings of ancient Egypt represent the whole process of pre- paring the flax ; the steeping, beetling, combing, bleaching, etc. The microscope has proved that the mummies were wrapped in linen (note 43), although assertions to the contrary have been made. When we consider the length of the linen strips so used, the number of the dead — it would have been an abomination to bury a corpse in wool — and the universal use of linen as clothing by the living ; when we hear that the only costume of the priests was of pure linen, they being only permitted to wear an upper mantle of woollen when outside the temple ; and when we consider the large exportation going on in those days, we are astonished at the quantity of linen which must have been produced in the regions of the Nile. The world-wide fame of the delicate and artistic fabrics which came from the Nile, and the quality of the linen found on many mummies, prove that the Egyptian excelled in this manufacture. King Amasis made gifts of linen corselets to the Lacedaemonians, and to the temple of Athena at Lindos in the Island of Rhodes, interwoven with figures of animals and embroidered with gold and cotton, the fibres being of such fine- ness that each thread contained three hundred and sixty of them (note 44). The identity of the Greek chiton, kithon (tunic) with the Phoenician for linen, kitonet, keionet, proves that the latter 134 FLAX. HEMP. bartered linen to the inhabitants of the Mediterranean coasts for other wares. The Phoenicians, in their turn, procured the material not only from Egypt, but from Palestine, where, as the Old Testa- ment teaches us, flax was universally spun by the women, and made into clothes, girdles, laces, lamp-wicks, etc. As the cotton shrub {Gossyphim herbaceum) also grew in some of the warmer parts of Palestine, it may be that cotton fabrics and fine linen were not always distinguished in language or commerce. Phoe- nician ships were not only impelled by means of oars, but also by linen sails ; but what were the ropes used in the ships made of? Perhaps of the Egyptian plant byblus, for flax seems hardly strong enough. When Xerxes erected his great bridge of boats over the Hellespont many centuries later, the Egyptians had to furnish the necessary ropes of byblus, and the Phoenician ropes of leuko-linon, white flax. Salmasius understood this to mean macerated flax •, in contrast to raw. But the whiteness of the ropes that support a bridge is of no consequence, strength only is required, and leuko-linon means no other than the leukea, leukaia (spart-grass, Stipa tenacissima), which Athenseus says was procured from Spain by Hiero II. for his splendid ship. In Xerxes' time the Phoenicians had long known and used this Spanish plant. The Babylonians too, more in the interior of the Asian continent, wore linen tunics. Strabo already praises the Babylonian town Borsippa for its linen, and what was true of his time, will, in such a stationary country, have been also true of a much earlier period. Farther north the cultivation of flax flourished at Col- chis, that is, in the marshy regions at the south-western foot of the Caucasus, where it grew so abundantly and was of such good quality that Herodotus thought it another proof of the identity of race between the Colchians and Egyptians (note 45). This Colchian flax and the fine flax of Carthage were used for all kinds of nets. The whole of the East was acquainted with the art of dyeing linen, interweaving it with lustrous threads, embroidering it with arabesques or figures in gold-thread, etc. ; and linen gar- ments, ornamented in this manner, and of an almost transparent fineness, formed the gorgeou:; costume worn at the courts and harems of the Great King and his satraps. The priests of Western FLAX. *35 Asia, those of Jehovah not excepted, were clad, like the Egyptians, in pure white linen, the symbol of light and innocence. When the high priest entered the Holy of Holies, he put off his gay outtr garment, and assumed one woven of white byssus. This Egyptian and Asiatic custom was afterwards adopted in Europe by the Pythagoreans, the Orphic priests, the priests of Isis, and by penitents and pilgrims ; it is preserved to this day in the white surplices used in Christian churches. The gaily embroidered linen satis and flags with gold and purple borders, and the similar awnings used on the ships and barks of the Oriental despots were famous ; and this half-barbarie luxury was adopted by the Greek kings. Theseus, sailing home from Crete, hoisted a purple sail as a sign of his safety; and Alcibiades, triumphantly returning to his native land from banish- ment, ventured to run into harbour on a trireme with purple sails. Cleopatra's ship at Actium had also such a sail, by the help of which, towards the close of the battle, she made for the open sea. Another certainly very ancient use of flax in Asia was to make it into linen corselets, by which, in war or the chase, the sharp arrows of the enemy, or the teeth and claws of lions and panthers, were blunted. The Phoenician and Philistine crews in the armada of Xerxes wore linen corselets ; so did the Assyrian warriors. Xeno- phon says that the king of the Susians assumed the customary linen armour; and the Ten Thousand found the same sort of war clothing among the Chalybes in Armenia. The Mossynceci, a Pontic nation, wore tunics down to the knee, as coarse as the sacks into which the Greeks of that time used to stuff their bed-cushions when remov- ing or travelling. In the Carthaginian army, which consisted of mercenaries of many nations, the linen corselets was a common piece of armour. That the Greeks of the epic period could not be ignorant of a product anciently known throughout Asia, goes without saying. The only question is, whether the linen clothing mentioned by Homer was imported, or whether the raw material was native, and spun and woven into stuffs by the women ? It is evident from the name, and probably from the connexion in which it occurs, that othone, the fine white linen garment worn by women, that 136 FLAX. HEMP. a product of Asiatic and not of Grecian skill. In the Iliad, we see Helen — a queen who was already acquainted with Semitic and Phrygian luxury, and had just woven a purple garment on which the battles of the Trojans and Achseans were embroidered — hurrying from her chamber wrapped in white linen. On Achilles' shield there are figured — " The maids in soft cymars of linen dress'd ; The youths all graceful in the glossy vest." In the wonderful Phseacian palace some fifty maidens, dressed in close-woven garments that drip with oil, ' ' Form the household train ; Some turn the mill, or sift the golden grain ; Some ply the loom ; their busy fingers move Like poplar leaves when Zephyr fans the grove." The fine bed-sheets for which Homer uses a European name, linon^ not to be found in the East, might still be of foreign make. Linen, besides fleeces and woollen stuffs, was indispensable for a well-prepared bed : "Meantime, Achilles' slaves prepared a bed, With fleeces, carpets, and soft linen spread." The same description applies to the couch prepared for Ulysses on board the Phaeacian ship. Of what material the sails of the Homeric ships were made, the Odyssey teaches us by the constant epithet of " white sails," that is, linen; and when Calypso brings cloths (pharea) to Ulysses, of which to make sails for his new ship, the adjectives used, being the same as those which describes Calypso's own garment (pharos), show that these cloths were also linen. Flax, however, could not have been the material of the ropes. Of what these consisted is sufficiently shown by passages in the Odyssey. The broken mast of Ulysses' ship was bound with a rope of neafs leather, which is also described as " well-twisted," therefore consisting of many smaller thongs twisted together. But, besides straps of neat's leather, we find in the Odyssey a rope of byblos, with which Philcetius causes the outer gate to be fastened : FLAX. 137 " Secures the court and with a cable ties The utmost gate (the cable strongly wrought Of byblus reed, a ship from Egypt brought)." Now, as these cables of Egyptian bast must have been brought to the Greeks by Semitic sailors, the cloth of Calypso's dress, and sail-cloth in general, may have been also imported from foreign lands. Homer further uses the word linon for fishing-lines and nets, and for the thread on the spindle. Patroclus thrusts his sword into the jaws of Thestor, and drags him out of his chariot as an angler draws out a fish with a flaxen line. Sarpedon calls to Hector to beware of falling into the toils of the enemy, as if caught in the meshes of a linen-net. Linon appears in the symbol of the Fates spinning the thread of life : Achilles is to suffer the destiny spun for him by the Fates with linen thread at his birth. When we remember that even now raw flax is sent by ship- loads to the southern countries, there to be spun by the women and girls sitting outside their houses, or while tending their sheep and goats, we may well imagine the women of Homer (and, like them, the Fates) spinning Egyptian, Palestine, or Colchian flax into thread and weaving it into nets. It is another question whether the word linon be not a much older one in Europe, known there before the introduction of flax, and signifying fibre in general, and the stuffs knitted or woven from it. Fishing with the line or the net is a very primitive occupation, and even savages know how to twist fibres and plait flexible matting from all kinds of nettle-plants or from the bast of certain trees. And why should the Fates in Homer spin specially flaxen, and not woollen threads, as they do later? The linen corselets mentioned twice in the Catalogue of Ships may have been Asiatic wares. In one of these passages, which has quite the appearance of being a late insertion, Ajax the leader of the Locrians is called lino-thorax (linen-corseleted) ; in the other, the same epithet is applied to the son of Merops, an ally of the Trojans. It is not surprising that the latter, a half-barbarian Asiatic, should appear in the same dress as the Chalybes described by Xenophon; but the adjective applied to the leader of the Locrians is evidently connected with the manner of battle peculiar to that race of Greeks j they did not 138 FLAX. HEMP. fight man to man, or hurl the spear, nor did they wear iron helmets and shields, but used arrows and slings, shooting at the enemy from a distance, and they wisely wore the lighter tunic, quilted or woven. From that time the linen corselet is now and then mentioned through the whole of Greek antiquity. In the famous oracle, now become proverbial, which was given forth to the ^Egians in the middle of the seventh century B.C., the Argives are styled "linen-corseleted." Alcseus (600 B.C.) mentions breastplates of linon ; at Olympia were preserved three linen corselets offered by Gelon and the Syracusans after their victories by land and sea over the Carthaginians ; and Pausanias saw corselets of the same description hanging in various sanctuaries — for instance, in the temple of the Gryneian Apollo ; Iphicrates furnished the Athenian warriors with linen corselets instead of the former iron ones, to make them more nimble. Amidst the band of the ^Eginetes, Teucer the brother of Ajax wears over a sleeve- less, richly-pleated under-shirt a linen corselet " double-winged," the two ends of which fall forward over his shoulders ; Hercules, over an under-garment with a pleated border, has a linen corselet, but with only one end hanging over his left shoulder ; the Locrians retained this kind of garment, both in accordance with Homeric precedent and the ancient custom of that partly pre-Hellenic race ; and it was natural that Hercules the hero, armed with club and bow, should wear with the lion's hide the oldest war-costume, not the coat of mail or panoply of the Dorian chivalry. But woollen clothing was the rule among the Greeks, for linen was considered luxurious and effeminate, equally when white and lustrous, and when ornamented by dyeing embroidery and fringes. The Ionians in Asia adopted the long flowing linen garment from their Carian subjects and rich neighbours ; from the Ionians the custom spread to the kindred Athenians, who very early adopted Oriental civili- zation. Herodotus relates as the occasion of it, that after an unlucky battle with the ^Egtnetes, the only Athenian soldier that escaped was pricked to death by the infuriated women, to whom he brought the news of their husbands' loss, with the pins of their brooches that fastened their dresses; it was therefore decreed that they should lay aside the Dorian woollen robe, which was FLAX. 139 merely thrown on and fastened with pins, and adopt the Ionian, or, as Herodotus adds, really Old-Carian linen tunic {kithon), which was ready sewed and shaped, and required no brooch. But this Ionian linen dress went out of use again at Athens, for Thucydides says, in a much disputed passage, that towards the time of the Peloponnesian war the ancient woollen garment was once again worn by the Athenians, and only a few of the richer conservative citizens refused to abandon their accustomed luxury. Since that time only the women wore linen textures, the finer kinds of which were procured from foreign countries. There is no certain ancient testimony as to the cultivation of the plant itself in Greece. In Hesiod's poems flax is never mentioned ; and even later it is only once named by Theophras- tus as requiring a fertile soil. At a very late period Pausanias says that the inhabitants of Elis sowed hemp, linseed, and byssus, according to the nature of the ground. Leake, in his " Morea," says that flax grows in Elis even now, but is of a coarse kind. It is certain that at no time did flax hold a prominent place in Greek agriculture as it did in many parts of Asia. Linen clothes and stuffs must have reached Italy at an early period. If Diogenes of Laerte be right, linen was not yet known in the cities of Magna Graecia at the time of Pythagoras, i.e., the latter half of the sixth century B.C., so that the philosopher, unlike the later Pythagoreans, was obliged to dress in pure white wool ; but probably what is meant is, that the Ionian linen dress was not in use at Croton, and Pythagoras dressed like every one else. The Latin word linuM does not agree in quantity with the Homeric linon, but it does with the usage of the Athenian Comic poets ; therefore, if it was a borrowed word, it had come from a district whose dialect was nearly related to the Attic. At an early period we hear of old Roman linen books, libri lintei, to whose authority some annalists still refer ; from the name we may suppose that they were written on bast) it could not be real linen, because the ancients did not weave long pieces of stuff intended to be cut, as we do, but single articles of apparel ready for immediate use. Prom Livy we learn that after the middle of the fifth century B.C. the Etruscans of Veii wore linen armour; at least their king, 140 FLAX. HEMP. Tolumnius, wore a linen corselet when he rode to battle, for he was killed by A. Cornelius Cossus, who dedicated the thorax linteus of his vanquished enemy to the temple of Jupiter Feretrius in the Capitol. When that temple, after falling into decay, was restored by Augustus, he read the inscription on the thorax itself, so that its genuineness could not be doubted. The Faliscans, neighbours of the Veians, who had taken part in the same battle, are described by the poet Silius Italicus as wearing linen. Another Etruscan city, the ancient Tarquinii, not very far off, supplied linen for sails to the Roman fleet towards the end of the second Punic war, when all the allies were obliged to furnish whatever material their several countries produced. The whole region ot the Tiber, where it flowed to the sea through shrubby wildernesses, is described by Gratius Faliscus as growing flax. That damp region was not only peculiarly fitted for the plant, but was the scene of a very early commerce. Livy tells us that the Samnites, towards the end of the fourth century b.c, raised two armies, one having shields overlaid with gold, and one with silver, and both wearing plumes on their helmets; the warriors with gilt shields wore parti-coloured linen tunics, those with silvered shields white tunics, the coloured ones being probably dyed and woven in the distant East, for their possession of the precious metals of itself implies commerce with foreign countries. Still more significant is another event reported by Livy, which till now has scarcely attracted the attention of mythologists. In the year 293 B.C., the Samnites with great difficulty collected an army of 40,000 men near Aquilonia. In the centre of the camp was a space two hundred feet every way, surrounded with trellis-work and planks, and roofed over with linen. There, in accordance with old traditions and the text of a liber Witeus, a sacrifice was offered up, and then the nobles of the people were led in one by one. The sight of the unusual form of sacrifice, the altar in the midst of the covered space, the newly-slaughtered animals lying around, and the centurions standing with drawn swords, greatly impressed the man who entered ; he felt more like a victim than like a sacrificer. He first had to swear not to reveal what he saw and heard, and then, in a horrible formula, invoking destruction FLAX. 141 on himself, his family, and his kindred, he made a solemn oath to follow his leaders to battle, never to fly from the field, and immediately to kill any one whom he saw attempting to do so. When some men, at the beginning of the ceremony, refused to take the oath, they were killed at the foot of the altar, and the sight of their corpses made those who followed more compliant. The nobles having thus bound themselves by oath, the general singled out ten men, whom he ordered to choose each a com- panion, and these again others, so that finally an army of 16,000 was assembled. This legion was called the legio linteata, from the covering of the place where they had sworn to conquer or to die. They received splendid weapons and plumed helmets ; nevertheless they were completely destroyed by the Romans in one bloody battle. But why was the place covered with linen, and why was the legion named from that fact? Possibly under the operation of Pythagorean religious ideas, by which the Sam- nites, as other things prove, were not uninfluenced. When the Romans entered upon the inheritance of the Samnites and Greeks, linen garments, vestes lintece, were, as in the East and in Greece, a costly and luxurious apparel : among luxuries of the East, such as purple from Tyre, incense, sweet-smelling essences, fine wines, gems, and pearls, Cicero mentions linen dresses, much as we say " diamonds and lace." The boys who served at sumptuous banquets wore tight-fitting linen, so as to be nimbler in their movements. Beautiful freed-women revealed rather than hid their charms by gauzy textures of the isles of Cos and Amorgos ; rich magnates and emperors spread a linen roof over the theatre or forum to protect the spectators, or the judges and the judged, from the rays of the sun. Amid the changes of fashion, of which there were complaints as early as the Republican period, new shapes in linen dresses, kerchiefs, fillets, etc., were frequent; there were the supparus (originally the name of a small sail, then of a woman's dress, like the later camisia, shirt or chemise), and the sudarium, a kind of napkin or handkerchief, which — as Catullus says that it came from a celebrated flax region in Spain, and Vatinus calls it white — must have been made of linen. It was. afterwards called ovarium, and formed part of the dress of Chris- 42 FLAX. HEMP. tian priests at mass. Linen thread was used for fishing lines, for tying letters, for weaving stout bathing towels and table-cloths ; the latter, under the name of mantelia, mantela, intended to preserve the costly wood from being marked by the dishes. But the plant itself could hardly, or only to a small extent, have been cultivated in that part of Italy which lay south of Rome, although that half of the peninsula was, in the early times of the Roman dominion, the civilized part, that which gave and took, the high road into the old world, the part to which one might say the eyes of the capital were turned. Cato never alludes to flax, Varro but slightly, and Columella names it once, together with pease, beans, and lentils, as a thing that might possibly find a place in some corner of the kitchen-garden. But a chapter on flax and its culture in the nineteenth book of Pliny opens to us a very different view, one that carries us outside of the Graeco-Roman world. Here we learn that though on its introduction to Europe the culture of flax, which had long flourished on the Nile and in the heart of Asia, did not take kindly to the warm mountainous regions of the two classic peninsulas, it soon throve luxuriantly in the damp, foggy plains of the barbarians, in freshly broken land still rich in the humus of the forest. Herodotus describes a maiden of the Paeonian nation in Thrace with flax on her spindle ; at the opposite end of Europe, Spain is celebrated both in early and late times for its flax production ; at the battle of Cannae the Iberians wore purple-bordered linen tunics; fine sieves of linen-thread were originally a Spanish invention; the Emporians manufactured linen; the fine product of Tarraco (called there by the Phoenician name carbasus, itself supposed to be the Indian word for cotton) and of Saetabis, stood in high repute, and is often mentioned ; and though this may not surprise us with regard to places on the Mediterranean coast, which were early open to various civilizing influences, we hear with astonish- ment of flax being cultivated by the rude Asturians in the distant city of Zcelae on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean ; and of linen, armour being worn by the wild robber-tribes of Lusitanians in the interior. But in Italy there had been, from the earliest times, a zone of flax-culture in all the parts accessible from the Adriatic, FLAX. I4 , both in the well-watered plains, in the tract inhabited first by Etruscans and then by Celts, and in the Ligurian and Venetian districts. Pliny mentions different kinds of North-Italian flax as the best in Europe after that of Spain ; namely that of Fanza in the Romagna (even now highly valued), that of Retovium (near Voghera), and that of the regio aliana between the Po and Ticino (the two last being on Old Ligurian ground). We have already seen that the Etruscans cultivated flax very early, another proof of the connexion of that people with the north, and of the Tiber being a border line where two civilizations met. As for the other side of the Alps, Pliny describes all the inhabitants of Gaul as weaving linen, up to the Celtic inhabitants of the Netherlands, the Morini, who were considered the outermost nation, so that Belgian flax and Flemish linen can date their pedigree from the first century a.d. There is a trace of this in the Italian word renso, " fine flax," from the town of Rheims whence it came. Pliny says, " This industry has spread even to the Germans at the other side of the Rhine ; the German woman knows not a dress more beautiful than the linen one ; they sit in subterranean chambers and there spin and weave." Tacitus says much the same, i.e., that the women dress like the men, but more frequently wrap themselves in linen drapery ornamented with crimson. While we thus find the flax industry early adopted by the nations of Central Europe, because it suited their soil and climate, by Celto-Iberians on the Bay of Biscay, by Ligurians on the Upper Po, and by Thracians, Celts, and Germans ; the very name of linen shows that they had all derived the plant from the classic nations, for that name extends all over the Continent, from the Basques at the foot of the Pyrenees, through all the Celtic and Germanic races to the Lithuanians, Slavs, Albanians, Magyars, and Finns ; and is found in languages of the most varied origin (note 46). And not only did linen become a common necessary of life and find several new applications among the barbarians, but those new uses made their way into the customs of the then declining ancient world. Linen as an essential part of everybody's dress is of northern origin. As the use of stuffed beds, bolsters, and M4 FLAX. HEMP. pillows covered with linen, was introduced into Italy from Gaul — for antiquity was content with mere stramenta, i.e., layers of carpets and soft stuffs — so the linen under-garment, the true shirt, with which the Greeks and Romans were unacquainted in its present form, was introduced by the barbarians, under the new Gallic name of camisia, "chemise," which occurs for the first time in St. Jerome. Before that time, only women of high rank wore linen next the skin. Pliny remarks that even in his time the family of the Serrani would not tolerate the shift as an article of female dress, doubtless from a conservative attachment to old customs. It was not a southern and classic, but a northern and barbarian taste, that made the Emperor Alexander Severus, as his biographer ^Elius Lampridius reports, delight in fresh white linen because it was not rough like wool, and scorn the luxurious Oriental garment, purple-striped or even embroidered with gold thread. A few decades later, the Emperor Aurelian presented the Roman populace with sleeved white tunics manufactured in different provinces, and also undyed linen ones from Egypt and Africa. We learn by an edict of 301, that the long-celebrated Syrian looms already furnished coarse linen for the common people and slaves, there being among the articles mantles of Gallic cut, with hoods like those now worn by monks ; binders for wrapping the feet in place of the modern stocking \ sheets, and covers for mattrasses and pillows, and various other things copied (we believe) from the Gauls, and which became common neces- saries among the lower classes only during the Imperial period. A century later, St. Augustine tells us in so many words that " outer garments are of wool, inner garments of linen," which the saintly Father, with the mystical wit of the Middle Ages, compares to the carnal and the spiritual mind. Neither Pliny nor Tacitus tells us whether the raw flax spun by the German women was imported from Gaul, like the red dye, or whether flax was already cultivated in the interior, or limited to the country on the Rhine, which had been the first to share in Gallic culture. The dress worn by Cimbrian prophetesses — whom Strabo describes as going barefoot, dressed in mantles of fine flax confined by iron girdles and brooches, can hardly point FLAX, i 4S to so early a cultivation of flax on the Lower Elbe; for the Cimbrians, if really of Germanic race, had, before their destruc- tion by the Romans, roamed through Celtic, and even Celto- Iberian lands, and had certainly become somewhat mixed with that race. A legendary event is reported in the pre-Italian history of the Longobards, which might possibly allude to a German cultivation of flax. The Herulians, overcome by the Longobards, mistook in their flight a field of blooming flax for a lake, threw themselves into it as if to swim, and so were overtaken by the enemy and destroyed. But the scene of this legend is the region of the Theiss in Pannonia, where flax had long been cultivated; and the time is late, about 500 a.d. As the movement of German tribes went on, linen clothing became more and more widely spread among them, and towards the end of that movement it is expressly called the national dress of the Germans. When the Goths, under the Emperor Valens, crossed the Danube, their linen dresses trimmed with tassels excited the greed of the Greeks. The Franks wore hose, some of leather, some of linen (Agathias), and the elders of the Visigoths dirty Unen and short fur coats (Sidon. Apollinaris). Formerly, a shirt of glossy linen, with red linen hose, was the costume of aristocratic Franks. But in the time of Charlemagne the young princes already preferred the short, striped Gallic sagum, while the emperor continued to use the old national costume. When the Germans — who for many centuries had been quiet inhabitants of the coasts, and had only dared to plunder the neighbouring shores of Belgium in light boats or the hollowed trunks of trees — suddenly began to undertake distant piratic voyages ; the result may be due as much to the increasing extension of flax and the production of sail-cloth, as to their growing acquaintance with iron and Roman methods of shipbuilding. At all events, in Caesar's time the Veneti of Brittany, who frequently crossed to the kindred races in Britain, used sails of skin or leather and iron cables; "Either," says Caesar, " because they were ignorant of the use of flax, or, what is more likely, because the storms are so violent in those regions." But of what substance were the Venetic sail ropes, which the Roman sailors cut in two with sharp 10 r 4 6 FLAX. HEMP. sickles fixed on long poles, so that the ships became immovable, and were obliged to surrender? Probably of leather thongs, for not only the Greeks of Homer's time, but the Illyrian Liburnians used such ropes. The Normans cut their cables out of the skins of walruses and seals; and down to modern times the fishing-nets in Iceland were made of strips of leather. Where hempen ropes have been found, there probably the sails were hempen also. In Pliny's time sailcloth was manufactured all over Gaul, and the industry had spread to the districts at the mouth of the Rhine, from which we may conclude that it was not known there before. The Suiones, ancestors of the Normans, did not (according to Tacitus) know the use of sails, or separate rows of oar-benches ; both ends of their ships were alike, so that they could land any- where without turning — an arrangement imitated by Germanicus in part of his ships when he cruised in the North Sea in 16 a.d. These ancient northern ships were no doubt exactly fitted for threading the islands, belts, and fiords of the northern coasts ; in the summer they probably even crossed from the Isle of Goth- land to the Gulfs of Finland and Riga : but it was only after the adoption of sails and iron from the south that the adventurous voyages of the Vikings commenced. The German word segel, sail (Anglo-Saxons^/, Old Norse segl), was probably of Celtic origin (Old Irish seol, soot) or came direct from the Latin sagulum. The Lithuanians and Poles borrowed the German word ; the Bohemians resorted to the phrases " piece of linen," and "wind-catcher;" the South Slavs said "skirt" for sail ; the Russians adopted the Greek fih&ros in the form fiarus — all quite late productions. Since those times flaxen textures have always been the favourite clothing of the German. The southern nations, who lived more in the open air, needed woollen clothes as a protection against changes of temperature ; but the Germans, especially in the north, who were confined to the house in winter, and had an inborn sense of cleanliness, preferred the smooth, light linen which was pleasant to the skin in their close and heated huts, which showed every spot of dirt, could easily be washed, and Secame softer and more flexible the oftener the process was LIN EM. 147 repeated. Plutarch praises these qualities: "Linen," he says, '• makes a smooth and always clean dress, does not oppress the wearer by its weight, is suitable at every season, and harbours no vermin;" and in fact the last-named torment, from which the much-lauded primitive times suffered to an extent of which our idealists have no idea, was and is a characteristic feature of all fur-wearing nations. In an Old Norse legend, a merman is cap- tured by a king, and of all the things he sees on land, three please him the best : cold water for the eyes, flesh for the teeth, and linen for the body. This legend comes from the very bottom of the German heart. The demonic Frau Berchta and the synonymous Holla, who are represented spinning, and are the patrons of flax-culture, are a proof of the value laid on that industry and its products by national sentiment. At a time when paper money and saving-boxes did not exist, linen, as well as silver vessels, was the sign of wealth, the pride and delight of the mother, and the dowry of the daughters. Jean Paul says some- where that if the devil desired to seduce a German Hans-frau, he would best succeed by making her a present of a roll of fine linen. In Goethe's poem, Alexis exclaims : '* Nor such toys and trinkets only shall your lover win for you ; What delights the heart of housewife, that he'll fetch you too, Lengths of costly linen ! You shall sit and stitch and hem and fell, Clothing you and me, and maybe some one else as well." And the father in Hermann and Dorothea thus expresses himself : '* Not in vain prepares the mother, for many a year and long, Store of linen for the daughter, of texture fine and strong." For, besides other excellent qualities, linen has that of keeping unspoiled for years, while wool has many enemies. The Western Slavs were acquainted with flax and linen early in the Middle Ages. We are told that the Bishop of Aldenburg received from the whole country of the Wagrians and Obodrites forty bundles of flax as the tax for every plough ; so that those neighbours of the Germans must have cultivated flax at a time when the bishopric of Aldenburc was still in existence. Henry 148 FLAX. HEMP. Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, in a deed dated 1158, ordains that de unco (for every hook = plough) toppus lini unus shall go to the see of Ratzeburg. At the beginning of the twelfth century the Rani in the Isle of Riigen had no coined money : goods were paid for with linen cloth. In like manner Old Norse codes value every- thing by yards of linen, which stood at a much higher price than the coarse native cloth — wadmal. Farther east, linen was for a long time the general medium of exchange, and even in the eighteenth century it was demanded as passage-toll by Caucasian tribes : " The Dugors," says Giildenstadt, " wanted five shirts or forty yards of linen for every man of my company, two shirts per horse, and five more per carrier in crossing : but my stock of linen did not go so far." With advancing agriculture, flax spread into the interior of the great East-European plain, where the fresh soil of the lake and forest regions was very favorable to its cultivation. Whole villages in the heart of Russia took to weaving linen, and adorned their towels and sheets with red borders, like the Germans of Tacitus. When the country was opened to commerce, sail-cloth became an important article of export, until the cotton manufacture, unnatural, dear and sickly, yet backed by protective duties, drew capital away from this ancient and national branch of industry. Flax throve particularly well in the damp regions bordering the Baltic, and for centuries the linen and tow of Riga, and the linseed shipped from there, were much in request. Leaving the history of flax among the modern European nations to historians of technics and political economy, we will only mention further the fact, that one of the most important inven- tions, that of making Paper out of linen rags, was rendered pos- sible by the general cultivation and use of flax throughout Europe. It could never occur to the ancients, for in their time there was no large accumulation of rags demanding further application. Perhaps, if the rags of linen clothes, sheets, tablecloths, and the like, had accumulated to the same extent as potsherds, which are said to have formed a whole hill at Rome, this new kind of libri lintei might have made their appearance even then ; for, in fact, lint made of old linen was not unknown to the Greek and LINEN. PAPER, 149 Roman surgeons. With the cultivation of cotton in Western Asia, the knowledge of the cotton-paper of China had also spread to Samarkand, and thence by means of the Arabs to Mecca, and from Mecca to Spain. It must have been in Spain then, that the use of linen instead of cotton rags was first tried ; and it is an interesting fact that the town Xativa, the ancient Saetabis so celebrated for its flax under the Romans, produced in the twelfth century a.d. the most excellent paper, which was exported to both East and West. From Spain the art gradually extended to France, Burgundy, Germany, and Italy. Now, as it was paper made of linen that first made the later invention of printing a fruitful one, as the general application of writing to every depart- ment of life, and with it the whole of modern culture, rests on the cheapness and excellence of that material — the historian of civili- zation feels so impressed with the importance of the plant that produces it, that he would fain, in antique fashion, bestow on it the epithet holy or divine, which the ancients, knowing only half its uses, neglected to do. And do not let us forget the art of painting on canvas, nor the application of linseed oil to painting, which, if not invented in the old home of flax, the Netherlands, was at least brought to perfection there, and raised into a noble branch of art The East in ancient times may have produced fine textures, and bathed them in the brilliant hues engendered in those sunny lands ; but they are outrivalled by our Brabant laces, our Flemish table-linen, our cambrics and lawns, produced amid storm and fog in the environs of the ocean. We also know how to wash our white garments with alkaline soaps ; Nausicaa and early anti- quity could only rinse them in running water, while the half- superstitious, half-practical methods of the fullers at Rome had only makeshifts to work with. Just as, in the Middle Ages, the linen sail " that toils for all " (Goethe) had banished the banks of oars, and set free the slaves chained to them ; so in these days steam is more and more superseding the sail with its many ropes, and lessening the number of the crew. Cotton, which the ancients only knew from afar, has come and set a thousand factories in motion, and clothed millions of men ; and its first serious collision with the linen fibre led to the important discovery 150 FLAX. HEMP. of spinning flax by machinery. Then there came a time of dearth, when King Cotton seemed about to be deprived of his glory, and wool and flax again to take the first rank. But the crisis passed, and without letting cotton go, European industry draws more every day upon the treasures of tropical lands and distant con- tinents, while searching for new fibrous plants and utilizing them by chemical and technical science. We need only refer to jute, China-grass, and the New Zealand flax {JPhonnium fenax), and to the importance these materials have already attained. — In the classic countries, to come back to our point of departure, the cultivation of flax has remained stationary since ancient times. In Greece it is almost nil. The well-watered plains of Lombardy and Venice produce valuable sorts of summer and winter flax, which, by careful and peculiar processes, perhaps derived from antiquity, yield a very white and durable ware. Tuscany (the land of the old Etruscans), the Romagna, and the Marches still grow a good deal of flax ; but the farther south we go, the more sporadic becomes the cultivation, being undertaken chiefly for the sake of the seed and oil. Modern Italy on the whole, in spite of the many looms of Lombardy, does not in the production of linen come up to countries lying farther north : Hibernia hiding in her fogs ; the land of the Batavians ; Westphalia, the seat of the Cheruscans ; Silesia, the land of the Lygians. As cotton first became a world-product by being transplanted to America, so did flax when it reached the north of Europe, which formed the colonial country of this Old-Egyptian and Babylonian plant, as America was that of the East- Indian plant. The twin brother of flax, the Cannabis sativa or Hemp, belongs nevertheless to another family, that of the urticacece. or nettles, and has spread through the world in other ways and much later. It was unknown to the Eg)ptians — not a trace of the fibre of hemp has been found in the wrappings of mummies — and also to the Phoenicians (note 47). The Old Testament never mentions it. It was not generally known in Greece at the time of Herodotus, for that writer describes it to his readers as a strange plant. But the Scythians cultivated hemp, and purified and intoxicated them- HEMP. '5* selves by means of the seed ; it was therefore in use among the Medo-Persian races at the back of the Western Asiatics ; and originally came from Bactria and Sogdiana, the regions of the Aral and Caspian Seas, where it is said to grow luxuriantly in a wild state to this day. The use of hashish, an intoxicating drug made of the Cannabis indica, finds its parallel in the Scythian custom at the time of Herodotus. The Thracians wove dresses from the fibre of this plant, which did not come to them from Asia Minor — else the Greeks would have been acquainted with it also — but from their neighbours to the north-east on the Tyras and Borysthenes. From the Pontus and Thrace this excellent material for rope was exported to the Greeks, just as the Greek navy now obtains its hemp from Russia. Under the unchanged name of cannabis, cannabus, the plant migrated in comparatively recent times to Sicily and Italy. When Hiero of Syracuse built his celebrated ship, in constructing which he drew upon all countries for their best materials, the hemp and pitch were procured from the R. Rhodanus in Gaul ; so that the hemp there must have been uncommonly fine. Had it been transplanted there from Italy ? or had it travelled along the great chain of Celtic nations that already stretched from Gaul to Pannonia and the Haemus ? The satirist Lucilius, about ioo B.C., is the oldest Roman author that mentions hemp. Cato speaks of neither flax nor hemp. When the Spanish broom, spar turn or Stipa tenacissima, was introduced in the second Punic war, it hindered the extension of hemp, which is seldom mentioned, and was probably but little cultivated. Nevertheless it grew luxuriantly in a few fertile regions ; for instance, in the celebrated tract of country round Reate, in the land of the Sabines, where it attained the height of a tree. The Greco-Roman name for the plant, originally Median, but also found in the old Indian languages (note 48), runs unchanged through all European tongues, in proof of its origin, the Teutonic tongues making the usual change of b into/ and/: A. -Saxon hcenep, Old Norse hanpr, Old High German hanaf. The German names for the male and female plants, fimmel and maschel, are of Latin or Italic origin; fimmel =femella, maschel ■= masculus, but with a mistaken and reversed application, for fimmel is really the male plant, which, 152 I- LAX. HEMP. because it is shorter and weaker, popular prejudice took to be the female. Hemp is now found all over Europe, and is so entirely indifferent to climatic influences that the East Indies and the Russian ports on the Baltic, nay, Archangel near the polar circle, share the English market between them. In modern Italy hemp is grown in large quantities in the districts south of the Lower Po, reachiDg the height of a man ; the produce is partly consumed in Italy for ropes and sail-cloth, and partly exported abroad. Cultivation for the sake of the seed is unusual in the South, but takes a prominent place in Russia, where, during the long and strict fasts, hemp-oil is commonly used for food. We will finally remark, that the well-known fibre sold in European markets under the name of Canton or Manilla hemp is no hemp at all, but is produced from the stalk of a tropical plant, a kind of banana ; it is said to be much more flexible, more elastic, and lighter in weight than the common hemp, having the property of floating on the water, and of not freezing when in a wet state during voyages in the northern regions. LEEK, ONION. The primitive nations of the world, besides making use of and cultivating nutritious plants, animals, and domestic fowls, greedily sought for exciting spices and condiments, among which salt held, and holds to this day, the foremost place. The vegetable kingdom furnished many sharp and pungent juices, discovered at first by accident, and afterwards eagerly looked for on the mountains. According to natural disposition and the degree of culture, their effect on the finer or coarser nerves of the succeeding races was very different. Silphium — "a plant whereof comes benzoin," says Pliny — and which the early Greeks thought the most delicious of condiments, was afterwards quite forgotten ; either because it was no longer forthcoming, or, as we believe, because tastes had changed. The laserfiitium, or master-wort, which, centuries later, the Romans imported from Asia and believed to be the same plant as the Greek silphium, was probably Ferula asafatida, or giant-fennel, the addition of which to his food agreeably tickled the cloyed palate of the aristocratic rake. So, about the onion, people hold very different opinions as regards it even now. The odour of garlic about the Oriental is quite unbearable to the German of Lower Saxony, and the onion-scented breath of the Russian is a wall of separation permitting no approach. By this criterion we might divide the nations into two groups : the garlic- lovers and the garlic-haters; which might be distinguished in Europe as the nations of the Mediterranean, and the nations of the North Sea and Baltic. If it be true that the plants we are now examining were indi- genous to the interior of Asia, where botanists say they have found them growing wild in the steppes; then migration and t54 LEEK. OX ION. intercourse must have extended them very early towards the south-west, in proof of the attraction which such strong condi- ments have for the natural man. In Egypt we find onions and garlic established articles of food from the very beginning, and the customs of the Egyptians were fixed and settled at an epoch when perhaps no Indo-Germans existed. The Israelites in the wilder- ness longed for the leek-plants of the Nile-valley (Numb. xi. 5) : "We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely ; the cucum- bers, and the melons, and the leeks {khatzir\ and the onions (betzaltm), and the garlic (shumim)." During the building of the great pyramid of Cheops, says Herodotus, 1,600 talents of silver were spent alone in radishes, onions, and garlic for the workmen, as may be read on the pyramid itself in Egyptian characters. As the Egyptians connected even the commonest things with the mysteries of their religion, it was inevitable that these favourite plants should be reverenced as sacred, worshipped as gods, and therefore not touched by the pious or by priests. Pliny says that the Egyptians swore by the garlic and the onion. Juvenal mocks at this, saying that in that case the Egyptian gods grew in the kitchen-garden. Plutarch reports that the priests declared the reason why they would not eat onions or garlic was because those plants only grew during the waning of the moon ; but adds his own opinion that onions were neither good for fasters nor for feasters, for in the first they awakened desire,, and from the last they drew tears. In another passage he limits this prohibition of the onion to the priests of Pelusium, i.e., a locality immediately adjoining the leek-loving Philistines and other Semites. And this is confirmed by Lucian, and still more precisely by Sextus Em- piricus, who says it was the worship of Zeus Kasios at Pelusium that excluded the onion, just as that of the Libyan Aphrodite excluded garlic. That Philistaea produced onions is proved by the celebrated onion of Ascalon described by Theophrastus, after which is named to this day the scallion or shalot, scalogno, echalotte, which our people have Germanized into esch-lanch, as if ash-leek. The Cretan onion was similar to, or the same as that of Ascalon — perhaps the Philistines during their early wanderings and voyages had transported this onion from one coast to the LEEK. ONION. :55 other. The Mother of the Gods, too, like Libyan Aphrodite, excluded garlic-eaters from her temple. For, when the witty and impious philosopher Stilpo, after eating his fill of garlic, lay down to sleep in the sanctuary of the goddess, she appeared to him in a dream, and asked, "Art thou a philosopher, and fearest not to transgress the law?" To which the sage replied, "Give me something else to eat, and I will abstain from garlic." The Israelites, ever since their regretful thoughts strayed from the sandy waste around them to the garlic of Egypt, have remained fast friends of that vegetable, both before and since the destruction of Jerusalem, whether at home in their Holy Land or in the Dispersion under Talmudic and Rabbinic rule. It is not at all unlikely that the much-talked-of foetor Judaicus^ which caused the Jews to be despised and repelled by all ancient and modern nations, originated in their general use of this strongly smelling plant. A comical anecdote told by Ammianus shows that in his time the Jews already stood in the same ill-repute. When Marcus Aurelius, victorious over the Marcomanni and Quadi, was crossing Palestine on his way to Egypt, the odour and tumult of the Jews were so disagreeable to him that he exclaimed, " O Marcomanni, Quadi, and Sarmatians ! I have found a people even worse than you ! " (When a part of the Locrians in Greece were named Ozolse — the stinking — the nickname was probably due, not to any food, but to their dress : they wore the old-fashioned goat- skins, which exhaled an odour like that of Russia-leather.) From a list of things daily provided for the head-cook of the Persian court, we find that there was a considerable consumption of garlic and onions at the Great King's table : besides cummin, silphium, etc., there is set down a talent's weight of garlic per diem, and half a talent of onions of a strong kind. The high antiquity of the onion is confirmed by Homer, who mentions it by the name of kromyon both in the Iliad and Odyssey. In the Iliad the onion appears as an addition to the drink offered by the fair-haired Hecamede to old Nestor on his returning thirsty from the battle ; and in the Odyssey the shining tunic of Ulysses is compared to the thin peel of a dry onion. As old, or perhaps older, than these Homeric passages is the name of a once Mega- 156 LEEK. ON J ON, rian and afterwards Corinthian township Kromyon, Kretnyon, a name evidently derived from the onions grown there. In after ages, Megaris was famed (or defamed) for its cultivation and vast consumption of garlic ; a proverb calls crocodile's tears " Megarian tears," such as he sheds who looks at a cut onion. In very old times, when that little country was not yet Dorian or even Ionian, it had been conquered or overrun, first by Carians and then by Leleges, who perhaps introduced the Oriental kinds of allium. The name of the mythic founder of the town, Kromos, the son of Neptune, leads to the supposition of a shorter primitive form of the word for onion (kromydn) which may be identified with the name extending from Switzerland to Scandinavia, ramser, ramsel, rams (Allium ursimim, wild garlic), and the A. -Saxon hramsa ; Eng. ramsen, ramson, buckrains ; Irish creamh ; Lith. kermusze ; Pol. trze7nucha\ Russ. cere?nsa, etc. The Latin cepe, ccepa, onion, has evidently its analogue in the Arcadian kapia, garlic : but the supposition that the word contains the notion of head, ccBpa capitata, takes us to a far-distant stage of speech, when cap-ut and keph-ale had not yet developed their suffixes. And yet those suffixes date from the time when the European nations were one, for caput corresponds exactly to the Old Norse hbficth (for hafuth), and the Greek word to the A. -Saxon hafela, heafola ; but as the suffixes were still doubtful, the naked root itself may have held its ground among certain tribes, and when the garlic or onion came from the East, it may have been applied to those vegetables. A legend relating to the origin of the Italian Locrians, shows that among them the Greek kephale, head, could also mean an onion- head. When these people first landed in Italy, they swore that they would share the land with the original inhabitants, the Sici- lians, in peace and friendship, as long as they still trod the earth, and wore their heads on their shoulders. But they poured earth into their shoes, and carried heads of onions on their shoulders, hidden under their garments ; and, having got rid of both, they were released from their oath, and took sole possession of the country. Thence came the proverb, " The oath of the Locrians ! " (note 49). For a similar play on the words caput and cepa, see Ovid's " Fasti," 3, 339. LEEK. ONION. 157 Among the different Greek names for onions, one, gethyllis, has a peculiar interest, because connected with a religious custom, and more likely to be ancient. At the festival of the Theoxenia at Delphi, at which all the gods were Apollo's guests, whoever brought the largest gethyllis (leek-onion) was entitled to a share of the sacrificial feast, the reason being that Leto, when pregnant, had craved for such an onion. In Greece, after the date of Homer, as well as in Italy, onions were the commonest and favourite food of the people. Nearly every scene in the comedies of Aristophanes proves this to have been the case at Athens ; so do many anecdotes and figures of speech. With increased civilization and consequent polish of manners, and with greater delicacy of the nerves, the former liking changed in the higher classes to loathing. It then meant the reverse of good to wish that any one " might eat onions ; " and the smell of garlic was proof of a person's vulgarity, or was con- sidered a remnant of barbarism. When Alyattes, King of Lydia, invited the sage Bias of Priene to visit him, the latter dismissed the messenger with the brief answer, " May the king eat onions ? " — that is, shed tears. The same story is told by Plutarch of Pit- tacus of Mitylene, with an addition : " May the king eat onions and swallow hot bread ! " The Homeric custom of seasoning wine with onions, more fitted for sailors than for kings, aroused the astonishment of later generations, who, however, supposed that the onion meant was the sweet onion, which is still eaten in the East, and has such a mild taste and smell that it can be eaten raw, while another kind was termed the weeping onion. In a Greek comedy the Athenians, " according to ancient custom," serve the Dioscuri with cheese, olives, and leeks at breakfast ; and Varro says : "The words of our forefathers, no doubt, were odorous of garlic, but the breath of their spirit was all the nobler." Plautus and Aristophanes speak of the smell of garlic as a sign of poverty,, and disgusting to the noble. In Horace's well-known Third Epode, that delicately organized poet expresses, half in joke, his intense dislike of garlic. " Hard is the stomach of the reapers," he exclaims ; " to me garlic seems a poison given me by a wicked witch ! In future let it be given to criminals instead of hemlock ! 158 LEEK. ONION. It scorches my limbs like the sun of Apulia, like the Nessus-gar- ment of Hercules ! Should ever, O Maecenas, the whim take thee to eat of this herb, may thy mistress refuse to kiss thee, and fly from thy embrace to the farthest end of the couch ! " The last idea is often repeated by Greek and Roman poets (to-day one might say it of smoking or taking snuff) ; in a comedy by Alexis or Antiphanes, the hero, when dining with boon-com- panions, refuses to eat leeks, because his breath might be disagreeable to his lady-love. Xenophon, in his " Symposium," makes Charmides say in excuse of a husband who had a jealous wife : " Worthy sirs, Niceratus likes to come home smelling of onions, so that his wife may feel sure that no one has been kiss- ing him." In the same way Aristophanes makes an unfaithful wife chew garlic early in the morning, to prove her innocence to her husband when he returns from his post as sentry. On the other hand, the penetrating taste and smell of onions and garlic caused people to imagine that those vegetables possessed a magic power of breaking charms and neutralizing poison. This power was supposed to pertain to all strong-smelling substances, for instance, smoke of sulphur, which purified a hall stained with murder. An essay on the healing-power of onion-bulbs was attributed to Pythagoras. Garlic was also used in the composi- tion of various medicines, especially among the peasantry, says Pliny. It is said that Pythagoras taught people to fasten a squill to their thresholds to ward off evil. Just as, in the Odyssey, the herb moly — so-called by the gods, with a black root and milk- white flower, difficult for men to dig up, but easily obtained by the gods — makes Ulysses strong to frustrate the arts of Circe ; so afterwards, in many parts of Greece, various herbs which served as counter-charms, now one, now another, were called by the same name, and among them all kinds of the allium or garlic species. In certain districts of Arcadia, as Theophrastus tells us, in the important 15 th chapter of the ninth book of his " History of Plants," there grew a herb moly, with a round, onion-shaped root, and leaves like those of the squill, which served as an anti- dote to poison and magic, but unlike the herb described by JHomer, in that it was quite easy to dig up. In the north of Asia LEEK. ONION. 159 Minor, and in the Pontus region, where all kinds of poisons and antidotes, charms and counter-charms, styptics and roots sove reign against a serpent's bite, were to be found, the mountain-rue (Ruta graveolus or montand), bore the Homeric name of moly, and was doubtless used in purifying corn-fields. This name had been brought into that region by the Greek colonists with their Homer, and had passed, like other Grecisms, into the Cappadocian and Galatian languages. For even if moly was originally a stranger, it seems a hundred times less probable that the presumable parent word should have been preserved for so many centuries among the immigrating Galatians and the distant Cappadocians than that Homer was in this, as in so many other cases, the common source. The Germans became acquainted with the real onion through the Italians, as is shown by the German names, Zwiebel and Bolle, both derived from the Italian cipolla. But north of the Alps, another remarkable word crosses Europe from east to west, through the languages of the three great races, Celts, Germans, and Slavs, with the primary meaning of " succulent herb," and the more definite meanings of " leek, onion, garlic " : Old Irish /us, Welsh llysian, Corn, les = herb, leek (s for x, as in dess = dexter, ses = sex, ess = ox, etc.) ; Gothic Iauk-s, Old Norse lauk-r, A. -Saxon ledc; and Slav, luku, Lith. liikai. That the k remains unchanged shows the word to be not a congener, but a borrowed word. Whence came it, then, and in which direction did it travel? Grimm derives lauk-r from lukan, to lock ; if so, it originated with the Germans, and was borrowed by the Slavs and Celts right and left ; but this looks unlikely. As the primary meaning of " herb " is found chiefly in Celtic tongues, while the more limited sense of " leek, onion," is apparently the only one in the Slavic ; and as the Celts were in civilization centuries ahead of their neighbours to the east, it seems most probable that it spread from Gaul to the Germans, and thence to the Slavs. The final s in the Celtic word might easily be taken by the Germans for a mere sign of the nominative, and be left out. In the time of Herodotus the Alaz- ones and Callipides, near Olbia on the Black Sea, cultivated leeks or onions ; but these half-Grecianized Scythians were not nearer in situation to the later Slavs than they soon became to the ap- 160 LEEK. ONION. proaching Celts ; mentally they were much farther. Among the Thracians the onion was an old-established and indispensable article, if we may trust the description, by an ancient writer, of a Thracian marriage custom. At the nuptials of Iphicrates with the daughter of King Kotys, the newly- wedded pair received, among other more costly gifts, a bowl of snow, a cellar full of millet, and a pot of onions twelve cubits deep. Afterwards, when the Slavs took possession of Thrace, they inherited the Thracian millet and onion. Among Teutonic nations in the north the leek seems to have possessed the same magic power attributed to it in Asia Minor and Greece. It was thrown into the drinking cup to protect the drinker from treachery. In the Lay of Sigurd-rifa, it is said : " Bless the filling of the cup, to protect thee from danger ; and put leek in the drink. Then I know well that never for thee will the mead be mixed with perfidy." When Helgi was born, his father Sigmundr returned from battle wearing the noble leek, probably as a sign of victory : " The king himself left the tumult of battle to bring the noble leek to the young hero.' , The German knoblauch, garlic, is a corruption of kloblauch, which Grimm has explained as cloven-leek, from klieben, to split ; and the Slav, cesniiku, from cesati, to comb, shows that he is right. The Saxon gdrledc, Old Irish gairleog, Old Norse geir-lankr, means literally, spear-leek. The opposite of the gar-leek is expressed by the rustic Latin word unto, the single undivided onion, whence the French oignon, onion ; the French cive, civette, chives, is only the Latin ccefia. To this day onions and garlic are as much used and avoided in the south of Europe as they were in the time of Plautus and Aris- tophanes. Not a peasant in Italy neglects, where possible, to grow onions in his garden, and industriously eat them, while the higher classes make very scanty use of them. The Spaniards are still fonder of garlic than the Italians. We need scarcely remind our readers of the amusing scene in " Don Quixote," when that noble knight, seeing a peasant girl on the highroad, mistakes her for the beautiful Dulcinea of Toboso, but is rather puzzled by the strong smell of garlic which pervades the person of the supposed noble dame, and explains it as a trick of the magicians who have so LEEK. ONION. 161 long persecuted him and now spoil the sweetest moment of his life. The consumption of onions at Byzantium was so enormous, even at the royal table, that it disgusted Liudprand, Bishop of Cremona, who was himself an Italian, and therefore accustomed to that vegetable. " The ruler of the Greeks," he says in his ambassadorial report of 968 a.d., " has long hair, and wears a train, wide sleeves, and a cap like a woman's ; ... he eats garlic, onions, and leeks, and swills bath-water " (that is, wine prepared with resin and chalk). Another time the same author writes : " He ordered me to come to dinner, the meats at which smelt strongly of garlic and onions, and were spoiled with oil and fish- brine." At that very time an Oriental, the geographer, Ibn Hauqal, made the same complaint of a western town, the capital of Sicily. In his description of Palermo, he ascribes to the inhabitants every kind of public vice and folly ; calls them stupid and impious, lukewarm to everything good, and inclined to everything bad ; " the habit of eating raw onions morning and evening, which dis- turbs their brains and blunts their intellect, is at the root of their sad condition. Their appearance and conduct proves this ; they rather drink stagnant than running water, are not afraid of stink- ing food, and are dirty in their persons ; in the finest houses the fowls run about unhindered," etc. A commentator, Yakut, ex- plains this passage by the testimony of a medical book, accord- ing to which onions so deaden the brain and the senses that he who has eaten of them can no longer distinguish pure water from stagnant. May not the old belief in the magic power of the onion have had an influence on this opinion, the effect being only reversed ? IT CUMMIN. MUSTARD. Two other spicy plants come also from the East — the cummin- plant, cuminwn, cyminum; and mustard, sinapis alba and nigra. The Greek name for the first plant, kyminon, is a clear proof of this. The Hebrew word kammon must have had a similar sound in the other Semitic languages ; from one of these came the Greek form, and passed into the Roman cwninum ; from which again all the present European names of the plant are derived, though we Ger- mans give it a new suffix in hummel, and the Poles shorten it into kmm, Russian tmin. The road traversed by spicy plants is there- fore the same as that observed in many other objects of culture, and is, so to speak, historically normal. Theophrastus reports that to make cummin thrive it was necessary to utter curses and blasphemies while sowing it. It might be possible to explain this superstition, but, as far as we can see, it would throw no new light on the history of the plant. Dioscorides says the Ethiopian cummin was the best, and that Hippocrates called it " the royal ; " but no such epithet is to be found applied to the plant in the works of Hip- pocrates that we now possess, and perhaps the naturalist's memory played him false. Polyamus reports that Ethiopian cummin was used at the Persian court. The next best kind was the Egyptian, which, according to Dioscorides, also grew in Galatia and Cilicia in Asia Minor, and (by transplantation) in Tarentum j in fact, modern Greece still imports cummin from the harbours of the Levant, especially from Smyrna, and it is largely cultivated in Apulia in Italy. Among the Romans, says Pliny, the cummin of Carpetania, in the heart of Spain, was most valued, and after it that of Ethiopia, Africa, or even Egypt. Throughout antiquity cummin was valued as a mildly exciting and agreeable spice. A writer of CUMMIN. MUSTARD. 163 comedies mentions herbs, cummin, salt, water, and oil as the principal requisites in cooking fish ; and Pliny says that cummin agreeably excites a flagging appetite. As salt was a symbol of friendship, u sharers of salt and cummin " meant intimate friends. It was an aspiring herb, in sublime tendens, and possessed the power of blanch- ing a too-blooming cheek. Such seeds as the Roman cummin, the black cummin, nigella saliva, the coriander, and others, naturally played a less important part after pepper was discovered. Of these we single out the black cummin, because among the Romans it went by the Eastern name of git, gith, and thus bears on its face the impress of its origin. It is mentioned first by Plautus ; later, by Columella and Pliny, as something quite common. In Greece it had quite a different name, and therefore cannot have reached Italy from that country. Therefore it could only have been intro- duced at such an early period by the Carthaginians from Africa. Now the Africans called the coriander goid (Diosc. iii. 64), which, pronounced as in modern Greek, would be gidh, the same name that the Roman applied to nigella saliva; and we may add that gad is the Hebrew for coriander. It is indifferent whether this gad was originally Semitic or borrowed ; even the distinctness of the two plants presents no difficulty, considering the inexactness and fickleness of the popular speech of commerce. The cummin really indigenous to Central Europe, carum carvi, is largely used to this day; both on bread, and in cheese, cabbage, etc., but above all as " double-cummin " in brandy, it is much (often too much) relished by the Hyperboreans. Mustard is equally mentioned by the Attic comic dramatists as a well-known biting substance, exciting tears and grimaces, but excellently calculated to give a relish to insipid meats. The Athe- nians called it napy ; while the Hellenistic name was sindpi, or sinapy, whence the Latin sinapi, or sinapis. The first form — which is also seen in the extension, napeion — is remarkably like the Latin napits (navew, turnip), to which the mustard-plant bears some re- semblance, and the name of the one may have been given to the other. The elder Greek writers all use napy for mustard ; it is only in the Macedonian time, and with the Alexandrian poet Nicander, asw sindpi became common, and then the older name went uot 164 CUMMIN. MUSTARD. of use. In Italy the word sinapis, or sinapi, was exclusively used ; while napus meant only the turnip. It seems improbable that this similarity of sound can be accidental, but there is nothing to show in what relation the two forms stood to each other. The double form might have its foundation in the laws of the language from which the word was derived ; but what language was that ? At Athens the mustard of Cyprus was considered the best. Benfey conjectures that the word was originally Sanskrit, but altered first by the Persians, and then by the Greeks into sinapi. The analogy of some Egyptian words of double form {silt or seselis, sari or sisaron, etc.) would rather lead us to guess an Egyptian origin for napy and sinapi. The Italian mostarda, French moutarde, etc., came from mustum, the must with which the mustard was mixed ; but the German word sen/, like the German names for vinegar, onion, cummin, oil, salad, lettuce, endive, chicory, cress, celery, parsley, fennel, anise, and many others, came from Italy. LENTILS AND PEAS, The first cultivation of the pulses was very near in point of time to that of the flour-yielding grasses. The pulses were almost equal to the latter in value, either as affording nourishment for men and animals, or seed for fallow ground ; and, like them, the more valuable because the seeds can be kept a long time and carried far. We have already, in passing (note 17), spoken of the Bean as a very ancient article of food ; and Lentils and Peas, in the countries where they grew wild, must have been very early noticed by the shepherds on account of their edible seeds. From that point to the artificial extension of the plants was but a step. But where did they grow wild? As naturalists hitherto have failed to tell us anything certain about the original home and first cultivation of these plants, we are again obliged to have recourse to the ancient testimony preserved in language, and handed down till the dawn of history. But in the present case we find, even there, very indecisive answers to our questions ; for, first, the names of the plants under examination are of such a general character that they may be very old, while the seed or grain of which they speak may be very young; secondly, while we rejoice to find a corresponding individual nomenclature among different nations, a doubt arises whether the agriculture of a much later age may not have carried the word abroad ; and, thirdly, in the latter case, which would still be instructive, it is often doubtful whether the transmission was in this or in that direction — for instance, from north to south, or the contrary. The only thing we can clearly perceive is that the Lentil was a product of pre-Indo-Germanic culture, and came to the European nations from the south-east ; while the Pea — we mean all the species of that plant — belongs to 1 66 LENTILS AND PEAS. Central Asia, and thence found its way past the Pontus into Europe. The fact that the lentil grew in Egypt — particularly in the half- Semitic borderland of Pelusium and elsewhere in the Delta of the Nile, where stood Phacussa, or Phacussse, the lentil-town — is sufficiently proved. The tiny fragments of hewn stone which Strabo saw lying in heaps at the foot of the pyramids in the shape of lentils, were said by the people to be the petrified remains of the meals eaten by the builders — which at least proves that those most ancient of masons were thought of as lentil-eaters. Biblical history shows us that the Israelites were fond of lentils, for a dish of which the eldest son of the patriarch sold his birthright. David, when in the desert, is provided by his friends with lentils among other things; (2 Sam. xvii. 28) they "brought beds and basins, and earthenware vessels, and wheat, and barley, and flour, and parched corn, and beans, and lentils, and parched pulse." The old Hebrew name for lentils, adas/iim, is still used by the Arabs, and has been adopted by the Persians. The Greeks, those pupils of the Semites, must have soon become acquainted with the fruit. It is true that Homer never mentions it ; but eating lentils was a custom of the common people at Athens in the middle of the fifth century B.C., and Aristophanes could write, "Now that he is rich he will no longer eat lentils; formerly, when he was poor, he ate what he could get." " No lentils, pray ! " cries one of Pherecrates' dramatic personages, "for the breath of one who eats lentils smells ! " The Greeks called the lentil-bean and the dish made of it phake, and the plant and its seed phakos, an obscure word that has no analogy with any other, and never reached Italy. The Romans, who served lentils and salt at funeral banquets, called the former lens, lentis, a word not derived from any Greek source. Nor can we guess whence it came ; even the Latin gives no hint. In the usual way the lentil migrated from Italy across the Alps to Germany, and to the Lithuanians and Slavs. The German linsi, li/ise, the Lithuanian lenszis, the Slavic lesta, etc., are simply the Latin lens, lentis, modified to suit the barbarian tongue. The Slavs have also another expression, socivo, Russian cecevica, Polish soczevica, etc. ; with these compare LENTILS AND PEAS. 107 the Old Prussian licutkekers (lentils), and keekers (peas). Like the last, the assibilated Slavic forms are only an echo of the Latin cicer, German kicher, Italian cece, and French chiehe. Among the different names for the Pea and its varieties the most interesting, because one of the oldest, and still existing, is the Greek erebinthos. It occurs in Homer side by side with the bean. Helenus, the son of Priam, has shot an arrow at Menelaus, which rebounds from his armour "as on some wide threshing- floor the dark beans and erebinths leap from the winnower's fan in a whistling wind." The passage does not inform us what kind of pea is meant, whether the chick-pea, the flat, the common, or what. Theophrastus, many centuries after, uses erebinthos in the sense of chick-pea, for he speaks of its pod as being round. Stript of the suffix inth, it seems the same as the other word for pea, orobos ; and the oldest form of the word seems to have been vorvos, and to have come from Asia Minor. To Asia Minor it could not have come from the tropical palm-lands towards India, nor from Syria or Egypt, for none of these had the pea ; it must therefore have come from the region of the Pontus and Caucasus. When the Greeks brought the culture of the pea into Italy, the Latins called it ervum, from which was derived the Anglo-Saxon earfe; but, curiously, the other Teutonic tongues show the word in an elongated form — Low German, ervet ; High German, arawzz, now erbse. Did they develop this prolongation independently ? If we look at the matter more closely, we may find that not the Latin ervum, but the fuller Greek form exeb-inth, was the real source of araw-lz, and the rest ; and that the time when peas be- came known to the Germans was that during which the Goths and other German nations came into direct contact with the Greek language, or with nations of half-Grecian culture on the lower Danube. Besides orobos and erebinthos, the Greeks had another very old name for the common pea, pisos, pison, which all etymologists connect with the root to which belongs the Latin pinsere, pisere, to pound, to stamp; but this gives us no hint as to the antiquity of the fruit. By this name the pea is not described as something fit to pound or grind, but as the sort of grains or crumbs produced 1 68 LENTILS AND PEAS. by bruising or crushing, and may have been first applied to gravel, shingle, hail, etc. — Lithuanian/M