A complete dictionary of the Greek and Roman antiquities explaining the obscure places in classic authors and ancient historians relating to the religion, mythology, history, geography and chronology of the ancient Greeks and Romans, their ... rites and customs, laws, polity, arts and engines of war : also an account of their navigations, arts and sciences and the inventors of them : with the lives and opinions of their philosophers / compiled originally in French ... by Monsieur Danet ; made English, with the addition of very useful mapps.

HORTUS,

A Garden. The Romans under the name of a Garden, did not only mean a piece of Ground planted with Trees and Flowers, but also Country Houses, with an extent of Ground divided into Gardens, Parks, Meadows and Vineyards. In this sense ancient Writers speak of the fine Gar∣dens of Caesar, Salust and Maecenas, which were built in and out of Rome, with great Magnificence, in regard to both Structures and Gardens.

The Gardens of the Romans were princi∣pally adorn'd with several Walks, Trees, Beds of Flowers, Orchards, Water-works, and other Ornaments.

They had also other Gardens, called Pen∣siles, hung up and carried upon Wheels, which were planted with Fruit-trees, Vines, Melons, and Cucumbers; and they remov'd them from one place to another, according to the weather. Those Gardens were cover∣ed with Ising-Glasses, and the Sun darting his Beams upon the Glasses, made the Fruit∣ripen

naturally, as we learn by this Epigram of Martial. l. 8. Ep. 4.

Pallida ne Cilicum timeant pomaria brumam; Mordeat & tenerum fortior aura nemus: Hibernis objecta notis specularia puros Admittunt soles & sine fece diem.

We may read also upon this subject, the 68th Epigram of the same Book, where he compares the Vines that Entellus kept in Win∣tor, as green and full of Grapes as in Au∣tumn, with the Apple-trees that Alcinous King of the Phaeaces, preserv'd by the art of Ising-Glass. Pliny reports, that Tiberius kept also his Fruits and Cucumbers by the same Art: Nullo quippe die contigit ei, pensiles corum hortos premoventibus in soles rotis olitoribus. rursusque hi∣bernis diebus intra specularium, &c.

They raised likewise Gardens on the top of their Houses, in imitation of the Gardens of Babylon, built by a King of Babylon and Sy∣ria called Cyrus, to please the humour of a Persian Courtezan, whom he loved. This Garden was of a square figure, and born up with Pillars rais'd one upon another, and founded upon beams of stone sixteen foot long, and six foot broad, whereupon was laid the first Bed made with Reeds, joined and cemented together with a kind of a li∣quid Bitumen taken out of a Lake, the pro∣perty whereof was to unite so strongly the parts cemented therewith, that it was impos∣sible to separate one from another. There was another Pavement of Brick laid upon the first; and in fine, a third of Tiles and Lead; and upon these Beds they laid the Earth.