Theophrastus describes two distinct trees; the one simply as Συκαμίνος, the other as Συκαμῖνος Αἰγυπτία, both which Linneus has confounded under Genus Ficus, as F. Sycamorus. On considering the extracts from Theophrastus subjoined in a note, it may be looked on as decisive, that according to his account the Συκαμίνος of Book i. was different from the Συκαμῖνος Alyuria, Book iv. which was a native of Egypt, and not met with in Syria or Greece. This matter admits of further illustration by a reference to Athenæus, ii. c. 37, on the subject of the fruits of the ancients. He there expressly says συκάμινα, οὐ τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς Αἰγυπτίας Συκῆς, ἀλλ ̓ ἅ τινες συκάμερα λέγουσιν, and afterwards μόρα δὲ τὰ συκάμινα, παρ' Αἰσχύλῳ ἐν Φρυξίν. They are likewise accurately described by him in another place, as μeλáyxvμa, μιλτόπρεπτα, is still more accurately by Sophocles, as φοινίξαντα, yógyuña μogá. We find by Nicander in his Georgics, that he γόγγυλα μορά. drops the term Σύκο, and calls the tree simply Μορέης or Mορέα, in imitation of the Alexandrians of his time. This was adopted by the Romans, and they called the tree morus, and the fruit morum: as Horace says "nigris prandia moris." Phaneas likewise, a disciple of Aristotle, as Athenæus informs us, a native of Eresium, calls the fruit of the ἄγεια Συκαμίνος, μόρον, and describes it so as not to be mistaken, as τὸ μόρον, τὸ βατῶδες, from its likeness to the blackberry Bariov, Salmonius apud Athenæum. It is strange, however, that the name of sycamore should be given to the greater maple tree, which every reader of the New Testament in our version must suppose to be the tree which Zaccheus climbed up. 3. Káλapos. This word which occurs several times in the New Testament in its more general sense signifies the knotted stalk in the Gramineæ of Linneus. In Theophrastus it is appro rangement of his history of plants, afford me an opportunity of laying before your readers all that is recorded by him concerning Συκαμίνος μήτρα σκληρότατα aal úhov. i. c. 8. arbor decidua sero quaλoßáλwv. i. c. 12. fructus you xal δέρματος. (i. e. non carnosus) χύλος οἰνώδης (uva similis) i. c. 16. ἄνθος χνόωδες (filamentis solis constans.) N. B. This is decisive against its being a ficus i. c. 17. ἄνθος ἔχει ἐν τοῖς ὅλοις περὶ καρπίοις· οὐ μὲν ἐπ ̓ ἄκροις, οὔτ ̓ ἐν τοῖς περιειλήφασι καθ ̓ ἔκαστον, ἀλλ' ἐν τοῖς ἀνάμεσον· εἰ μὴ ἄρα οὐ σύνδηλον διὰ τὸ χνοώδες. ib. This is a very particular, though very obscure description, arising from our ignorance of the technical language employed. The word xvous, however, so often occurs in describing flowers that we cannot err in calling it the filamentous part; either the antheræ or the pistillum. He clearly asserts this ävdes xroudes not to be situated in a separate calyx, nor on the summit of the fruit, but in the intermediate parts; and if we look at the generic character of the female flower of Morus in the Genera Plantarum, &c. we shall find it to be "flores congesti." This accurate author in this instance seems to have confounded the amentum with the female fructification; but he has in other Monaceous Genera distinctly and accurately described the Catkin, or amentum, &c. priated to the reed, the arundo of Linneus. He enumerates and describes seven species. In Matt. xi. 7. Káλaμos ún ávéμou saλevoμévous, it means, probably, that weak grassy species called A. epigeios; but in Matt. xxvii. 29. and the parallel passage in St. Mark, it must be referred to Arundo Donax, or Bambusa. These large growing woody arundines have universally obtained the appellation of cones; these cut to a proper length have, in all ages, from their lightness, been used as canes or walking-sticks. When left to their full length they were used anciently as measuring-rods, as may be observed in many passages of the Old Testament, particularly Ezek. xl. 5. and it must have been a stick of this kind which the soldiers made use of to affix the sponge filled with vinegar at our Saviour's crucifixion. In the former of the passages quoted, the word reed may be properly retained, in the latter, it must be translated cane, which, if not the true botanical term, is, at least, what is used in commerce and in common acceptation. HIEROBOTANICUS. P. S. I forgot to mention another species of calamus which occurs in the New Testament and the Old, viz. C. scriptorius, of Pliny, is probably, Arundo phragmitis L. though not enumerated by him. It is, however, K.xagaxias of Theophrastus without any doubt, and though the term agárow to write is lost in modern language, and the instrument záλapos passed into Latin as its name; yet the person describing, xagánτng, has obtained in its simple and metaphorical sense among all the languages of modern Europe. CLASSICAL CONNEXIONS. NO. I. So long as the remains of Greek and Roman genius, involving the history of both nations, shall continue to obtain that rank in the ages been allotted business of liberal education, which has now for to them; the connexion of modern with ancient literature must be valued as contributing not less to the enlargement of mind, than to the cultivation of taste. Thus, it is obvious to remark, that to the perusal of Phædrus and Horace, there should naturally be added the satires of Boileau and Pope, the fables of Fontaine and Gay. The sagacious hint of Tacitus, and the profound disquisition of Polybius on a government of balanced powers, cannot but be interesting to the readers of Blackstone and De Lolme. To him who would understand the nature of language, and of the parts of speech, so called in their origin and their use, may safely be recommended the "Enea Птegóvra of Horne Tooke. He may consider it as a rich appendix to the poor account given of the matter in the 2d sect. of Dionysius, Tegì σuvbéσews ovoμátov, being nearly all which was known at that day. The proofs of goodness and wisdom (for power at once proves itself) in the works of creation, early occupied the wisest of heathen minds. Whoever will compare on this subject the arguments of Socrates, as recorded by his faithful memorialist, [Xenophon, l. iv. c. 3.] with the Natural Theology of Paley, will witness with delight the simple acorn of truth, risen up and spread out into the full tree of knowledge. But these, however important, are topics too general and too wide to yield readily either the profit or the pleasure, which instances of a closer and more particular kind may afford. Let us proceed rather to examples of that connexion proposed, specific and individual. 1. While the young scholar is surveying the Plague at Athens in the graphic page of Thucydides, which, of course, he will collate with the strong poetical copy by Lucretius; let him be entertained and fascinated with the History of the Plague in London by Daniel De Foe. That work, half fable and half true story as it is, in simplicity and pathos, in imposing touches of reality, and interesting detail of fact, even among the large list of his ascertained writings stands unsurpassed. The effects of this dreadful visitation in destroying whatever of moral, of humane, of religious feeling, adorns or consoles our nature, have been well told by the Greek historian. In a different age, apparently too under far better auspices, similar consequences resulted from a similar situation. The far spreading plague which ravaged Florence in the year 1348, gave occasion to the Decame ron of Boccaccio; which is itself no small evidence, that what depopulated the city, dismoralised it also. For the licentiousness of some of his tales, this indeed has been expressly urged as the apology and his own Introduction, while it gives a clear and lively narrative of the pestilence, sufficiently shows how misery and vice kept company with each other. 2. Civil discord, like the plague, puts religion and morality too much in abeyance with the greatest as with the lowest of mankind. Of the French Revolution, with its atrocious horrors, it was hardly in the power of declamation, at one time, τραγωδεῖν καὶ διεξιέναι xat regBody. Yet amongst all the atrocities of the reign of ter ror, it would be difficult to find any, perhaps, which had not a parallel in the convulsions of Greece, during the Peloponnesian war, and particularly in that of Corcyra. From the comparatively narrow scene and scale on which every thing there was carried on, political enmity and personal hatred engendered a yet more hellish animosity between them. Take one specimen, Thucyd. I. iv. c. 47. By an act of the foulest perfidy, the democrats then taking their turn of revenge, had got into their power the miserable remuant of the opposite party. What followed? The very bitterness of death. Παραλαβόντες δὲ αὐτοὺς οἱ Κερκυραῖοι, ἐς οἴκημα μέγα καθεῖςξαν· καὶ ὕστερον ἐξάγοντες κατὰ εἴκοσιν ἄνδρας, διήγον διὰ δυεῖν στοίχοιν, ὁπλιτῶν ἑκατέρωθεν παρατεταγμένων, δεδεμένους τε πρὸς ἀλλήλους, καὶ παιομένους, καὶ κεντουμένους ὑπὸ τῶν παρατεταγμένων, εἶπου τὶς τινὰ ἴδοι ἐχθρὸν ἑαυ τοῦ· μαστιγοφόροι τε παριόντες ἐπετάχυνον τῆς ὁδοῦ τοὺς σχολαίτερον προσιόντας. C. 48. Καὶ ἐς μὲν ἄνδρας ἑξήκοντα ἔλαθον τοὺς ἐν τῷ οἰκήματι τούτῳ τῷ τρόπῳ ἐξαγαγόντες καὶ διεφθείραντες. ᾤοντο γὰρ αὐτοὺς μεταστήσαντάς ποι ἄλλοτε ἄγειν. κ. τ. λ. 3. Our own history is quite stocked enough with bad materials -to show what the weakness and wickedness of human nature in its paroxysms can do. On the restoration of Charles II. the bodies of the regicides deceased were torn from the sanctity of the grave. In the spirit which gave it birth, this exceeded even that, with which the living were consigned to death or imprisonment. But even under the mild reign of the Georges, to pass over the punishments after the fight of Culloden, what shall we say to the vengeance on Kennington Common, and the exhibition of rebel heads on Temple Bar? Honest attachment to the cause of fallen royalty is an offence, which Kings, safe on the throne, surely ought to be the first to forgive. The clemency of Julius Cæsar as a conqueror forms a most valuable part of the historic property of mankind. And since it would be difficult to replace it, if lost, by any other such character equally illustrious at once, and well authenticated; he can be no friend to his species who would now take that character away. So to overcome and so to forgive, is hardly to be paralleled in any hero upon record. But yet how few, how very few Englishmen entertain or express any opinion of that extraordinary man, but what they have gotten from Addison's political tragedy of Cato, or the prologue to it, alike political, of Pope? The tone so given to public feeling is yet discernible in the writings of flashy reviewers and sickly philanthropists. Well here is splendid poetry at least. : Ev'n when proud Cæsar 'midst triumphal cars, Ignobly vain, and impotently great, Show'd Rome her Cato's figure drawn in state; And honor'd Cæsar's less than Cato's sword. But for the fact: this is one of the many tricks, which poetry has played, to rob us of real and ascertained examples of worth, and to give us, instead of them, mock pictures of excellence which never existed. Honest Hooke, who dedicated his Roman History to our great satirist, might have taught him better, if they had been earlier acquainted. But the apocryphal story from Appian, told at some second or third hand, suited the purpose of the day; and Julius Cæsar was gibbeted accordingly. It is not enough remarked, that the editors of Latin poets, for common use, have shown a plentiful lack of acquaintance with the sources of Greek original, from which their authors either borrowed or stole. Still less was it for a long time suspected, that those authors knew Grecian history not quite so well, as we do or may do at the present day. Juvenal, for instance, could insultingly write, Yet to the full as ignorantly, if in so noble a passage one could find any fault, he wrote thus also. At vindicta bonum vitâ jucundius ipsâ * * Chrysippus non dicet idem, nec mite Thaletis Shall we consider what follows as a mere figure of speech, and therefore to be forgiven? |