Identifier: lecturesonromanh00unse (find matches)
Title: Lectures on Roman husbandry, delivered before the University of Oxford; comprehending such an account of the system of agriculture, the treatment of domestic animals, the horticulture &c., pursued in ancient times, as may be collected from the Scriptores rei rusticae, the Georgics of Virgil, and other classical authorities, with notices of the plants mentioned in Columella and Virgil;
Year: 1857 (1850s)
Authors: Daubeny, Charles,1795-1867
Subjects: Agriculture Agriculture
Publisher: Oxford, Printed by J. Wright (etc.)
Contributing Library: Yale University, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Open Knowledge Commons and Yale University, Cushing/Whitney Medical Library

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Text Appearing Before Image:
but a slight insight into Roman gar-
dening, the descriptive part being very meagre,
and the number of plants enumerated falling con-
siderably short of a hundred. We must therefore
draw largely from other sources, and especially
from Pliny, whose notices of the plants known at
that period are far more extensive than those
which Columella has given us.
In the earliest periods of Roman history every
family had its garden, and, as little animal food
was consumed, it was from this source that the
population principally drew its subsistence.
Hence in the laws of the Twelve Tables, the
term hortus is synonymous to heredium or in-
heritance; and the word villa is nowhere made
use of. As a proof indeed of the honour paid to
gardens by the old Romans, Pliny remarks, that
men of the highest rank were willing to borrow
their names from its contents, as in the Valerian
family, where the Lactucarii did not think them-
selves disgraced by taking their names from the
Lettuce.
These however were mere kitchen gardens,
Text Appearing After Image:

Lit. W. Gell
Garden & Portico. Pompeii

LECT.VII.] ROMAN HUSBANDRY. 213

containing such plants and trees alone as were
subservient to the daily uses of life; and in Cato's
work, the only notice we have of a garden is of
this description, although it be true, that, accord-
ing to Pliny, he recommended that plants which
could be used for chaplets should be likewise
cultivated in it.
In proportion however as civilisation and wealth
increased, a taste for ornamental plants became
prevalent; and even in Rome itself, as we are in-
formed 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 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 of Martial,

Donasti, Lupe, rus sub urbe nobis :
Sed rus est mihi majus in fenestra. (xi. 19.)

Of these mimic gardens a representation is
given by sir W. Gell in his Pompeiana^b, where a
house may be seen depicted, with its walls painted
with trees, fountains, and birds, in imitation of a
real garden, and with the small area it enclosed,
ornamented with vases of flowers.

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