formed that in the early days of Rome, as well as at Athens, it was as great a crime to slay an ox as a man. It is curious, indeed, that in the few places in which Pliny mentions beef, either roasted, or taken as broth, it is recommended as a medicine, and not as an article of diet. It may be collected, too, both from the prose writers de Re Rustica, and from Virgil himself, that the great value of oxen, in their opinion, was for ploughing, as that of sheep was for their fleece and milk. In the Latin language, indeed, there is no single word for beef, mutton, or veal, just as is the case in our own Saxon-English; the French words for these articles of food being generally adopted, because the latter were chiefly consumed by our Norman conquerors. Do not, however, let me be misunderstood; I am far from meaning that beef and mutton were not eaten at Rome, and in Italy, during the period to which allusion is made: common sense will indicate the reverse,-for what was to become of the fatted oxen offered as sacrifices to the gods, if not devoured by the priests and their attendants? At the same time, whilst beef does not seem to have been a favourite dish amongst the wealthy Romans, and is scarcely noticed in the long catalogue of luxuries dwelt upon with so much unction by Athenæus, it was probably beyond the reach generally of the poorer classes; and we must recollect that the warmth of the climate in Greece and Italy renders animal food in general, and especially the more stimulating kinds, less wholesome, and less sought for, than in more northern latitudes. Profuse as the suppers of a luxurious Roman were, the dishes appear to have been of a lighter kind than those of a feudal Baron; a sirloin of beef would have scarcely obtained the same cordial testimony of approbation from a Roman emperor, as it elicited from our Charles II.; and an ox roasted whole would probably have been looked upon with disgust by the people in general." In ancient Rome the sheep was valued principally for its wool and its milk, the latter employed in the form of ewe-milk cheese; an article unknown in this country, except in a few remote parts of Scotland and Wales; and the only cheese of any reputation made of this material on the Continent being that of Rochfort, Dr. Daubeny informs us. Cheese made from cow's milk was considered less digestible than that from the milk of the sheep. Of this last Columella mentions two kinds, the soft and the hard; the former, probably, resembling our cream cheeses, the latter those for keeping. Pliny, we may here observe parenthetically, enumerates many varieties of cheese, and would appear to place that made from cow's milk in the first rank; but as to butter (butyrum), he seems to say that the use of it was almost wholly confined to barbarous nations; meaning, probably, the peoples of Germany and Scythia. Among the Romans, he says, it was employed as an ointment for infants. So, too, in Columella, the word butyrum, occurring but once, is mentioned as an application to a wound in a sheep. In hot countries it is difficult to prevent butter from becoming rancid. On the subject of poultry, as an article of food, the Romans, we find, "had large preserves, not only of poultry and pigeons, but even of thrushes and quails, enclosed in pens called ornithones, for the supply of the table at pleasure." Indeed, for thrushes alone they had large rooms provided, each capable of holding several thousand birds. In fattening them, the birds were only allowed just light enough to enable them to see their food, but a good supply of fresh water was always provided. The other birds fattened as articles of food were turtle-doves, peacocks, quails, geese, and ducks. Columella, who gives very minute instructions as to the feeding of each of these, makes mention also of meleagrides, now known as gallinas, or guinea-fowls. Pliny, we may add, gives a curious, and, so far as our The credit of knighting the sirloin has been also given to Henry VIII. and James I. We are thus guarded in our expression, because the passage might possibly mean that it was in use with the more wealthy Romans as well." experience goes, an unfounded statement, that these last birds were not in favour at Roman tables, on account of their disagreeable smell. In their gastronomic tastes and propensities, such as their fondness, for example, of sow's udder, womb, and paps, snails, and other equal abominations, the Romans were disgustingly exquisite-not very much unlike the Chinese of the present day. The following passages give us a further insight into their resources for titillating the palate : "Varro also gives us a detailed account of a preserve for dormice, which was to be paved, to prevent the animals from escaping, and to have within the enclosure oaks to support them with acorns. But when the mice are to be fattened for the table, they are to be kept in the dark in stone jars, and fed with acorns, walnuts, and chesnuts. We learn also from Pliny that preserves for sea-snails, or periwinkles, were first formed before the civil war between Cæsar and Pompey. Many distinct kinds of conchifera, from Africa, Illyria, and various other countries, were then introduced. They were fattened with a mixture of boiled wine, meal, and other substances, so that they became quite an article of luxury; and the art of breeding was brought to such perfection, that the shell of a single animal could contain as much as 80 quadrantes, or 15 quarts. Minute directions are given in Varro (b. iii. c. 14) as to the construction of the cochlearia, in which snails and shell-fish were preserved." As an ingredient in our farrago libelli, we must find room for a word or two about bees; the more particularly as in the following passage Columella speaks of a method of bee-hunting singularly resembling one adopted in North America at the present day : "It is known," he says, "that when the pastures afford suitable materials for honey, bees are fond of resorting to the fountains that lie near, and to these the bee-hunter resorts, to observe the number that come. Should this be small, he concludes the spot to be unfavourable; but if considerable, he is encouraged to proceed; and for this purpose the following was the method adopted by the Roman bee-hunter. In the first place, he mixed red-cchre with water, and smeared with it the grass in the neighbourhood of the spring. By this means the backs of all the bees that resorted there became coloured red, and this mark enabled him to recognise them when they returned from their flights; from the time occupied in which, he could tell the distance of their hives from the spot to which they had resorted. If this were near, there would be little difficulty in discovering where it lay, which might then be done simply by following the bees in their track homewards. If, however, it were distant, the beehunter took a reed, and made a hole in it, which he filled with honey or sweet-syrup. When several bees, attracted by this, entered the hole, he closed it with his thumb, and let out one single bee at a time. This he chased as far as he could, and when he had lost sight of it, let out another, and then another, until he could follow it to the entrance of the hive. Should this be a cave, he smoked out the bees, and drove them into some contiguous bush or tree, where he could collect them in an appropriate vessel. But if it were a hollow tree, he sawed it across at a distance both above and below the hive, and covered over the apertures with cloth. Thus was he enabled to carry home the hive of bees. The method adopted by the North American bee-hunter is similar, though somewhat more scientific." Quitting the useful, we come to the ornamental; the great love among the Romans of the flower-garden,-in the days of the Empire, at least:"In proportion," our author says, "as civilization and wealth increased, a taste for ornamental plants became prevalent; and even in Rome itself, as we are informed by Pliny, it was the fashion of the day, among the lower classes, to have little gardens in the front of their houses, until debarred from that indulgence by the necessity of i Said in reference to one of the pinna, Dr. Daubeny thinks. To us it appears that this passage (b. xix. c. 19) bears reference to flowers planted in pots and stands on the inner window-sills of the poor; for he says that the burglaries, almost innumerable, had compelled the poor "to shut out the sight of the mimic gardens in their windows with bars to the passers-by." shutting out the robbers which so abounded in the city. That flower-pots were common in the windows of the Roman citizens, appears also from an Epigram (xi. 19) of Martial." With the wealthier Romans, of course, the ornamental gardens were of extensive size, and much expense was lavished upon their decoration. Bad taste, however, in clipping and hacking their trees and shrubs into all kinds of fantastical forms and devices was widely prevalent; and from the Younger Pliny's description of his Tuscan villa, it would seem, as Dr. Daubeny says, that the Romans in his time had not advanced beyond that stiff and formal style of gardening which prevailed here a century or two ago, and is still in vogue on the Continent. C. Matius Calvena, it is said, the friend of Julius Cæsar and favourite of Augustus, was the first to introduce this monstrous method of distorting nature by cutting trees into regular shapes. “But Nature,” says the learned author, "was not in all cases entirely banished; for, as already seen, thickets and meadows were interspersed in Pliny's garden with formal avenues; and we have an inkling of better taste in the praise bestowed by Martial upon the rural retreat of Faustinus, and in the ridicule he casts upon the Daphnonas, Platanonas, &c.-the stiff avenues of laurels, plunes, and cypresses-belonging to another acquaintance, more famous for his ostentation than for his hospitality; as well as in Nero's attempt to introduce into the gardens of his imperial palace, fields, lakes, woods, and landscapes, under the guidance of Severus and Celer. Still, however, the chief admiration of the Romans appears to have been lavished upon the ingenuity displayed in clipping and pruning their trees into a number of fantastic. shapes,-walls, figures of beasts, ships, letters, and so forth, being thus imitated. The box was especially tortured in this manner. The cypress-tree, too, as Pliny says, was clipped and trained to form hedgerows, or else was twisted into various forms, according to the caprice of adepts in the art of gardening, (ars topiaria,) representing scenes of hunting, fleets, and various other objects, which it clothes, as it were, with a thin and short leaf, that is always green." From the fact that Plutarch speaks of the practice of planting roses and violets side by side with leeks and onions, Dr. Daubeny seems to be of opinion that even in his time flowers and vegetables were planted indiscriminately, and that the ornamental part of the garden was not kept distinct from the useful. With all deference, it does not appear to us that such a conclusion is by any means warranted. At the present day, it is a not uncommon belief that the scent of roses and violets is rendered more powerful if onions are planted near them, and in ancient times, so far as we recollect, a similar belief was prevalent. If such was the case, the onion and the leek would be considered by the virtuoso in horticulture little short of a necessary adjunct of his flower-garden. In speaking of the peach, Columella alludes to the fabulous story that the tree was poisonous in Persia, and had been introduced into Egypt by the Persian kings for the purpose of punishing the people, but that it lost its venomous properties when thus transplanted. Dr. Daubeny queries whether this mistake might not arise from a knowledge of the poisonous properties of the prussic acid existing in the kernels of the peach; but the Elder Pliny gives a more satisfactory explanation of the story, by informing us that in reality it is not the persica, or peach, that is meant, but the persea, a fruit first introduced into Egypt at Memphis, by Perseus, and mostly identified at the present day with the Balanites Egyptiaca of Delille, somewhat like a date in appearance. For some of his pictorial illustrations, Dr. Daubeny informs us that he is indebted to plates taken from drawings accompanying the Vienna MS. |