CHAPTER VIII.

HOMER'S MAGIC HERBS.

THERE are certain low-lying districts in southern Spain where the branched lily, or king's spear, blooms in such profusion that whole acres, seen from a distance towards the end of March, show as if densely strewn with new-fallen snow. Just such in aspect must have been the abode of the Odyssean dead. There, along boundless asphodel plains, Odysseus watched Orion, a spectral huntsman pursuing spectral game there Agamemnon denounced the treachery of Clytemnestra: there Ajax still nursed his wrath at the award of the Argive kings: there Achilles gnawed a shadowy heart in longing, on any terms, for action and the upper air: thither Hermes conducted the delinquent souls of the suitors of Penelope. A tranquil dwelling-place: where the stagnant air of apathy was stirred only by sighs of inane regret.

Homer's asphodel grows only in the under world, yet it is no mythical plant. It can be quite clearly

identified with the Asphodelus ramosus, now extensively used in Algeria for the manufacture of alcohol, and cultivated in our gardens for the sake of its tall spikes of beautiful flowers, pure white within and purple-streaked without along each of the six petals uniting at the base to form a deeply-indented starry corolla. The continual visits of pilfering bees attest a goodly store of honey; while the perfume spread over the northern shores of the Gulf of Corinth by the abundant growth of asphodel was said to have given their name, in some far-off century, to the Ozolians of Locris.

Introduced into England about 1551, it was succeeded, after forty-five years, by the yellow asphodel (Asphodelus luteus), of which already in 1633 Gerard in his Herbal reports great plenty in our London gardens.' Hence Pope's familiarity with this kind, and his consequent matter-of-course identification of it with the classical flower in the lines,

By those happy souls who dwell

On yellow meads of asphodel:

wherein he has entirely missed what may with some reason be called the local colouring of Hades.

In order to explain the lugubrious associations of the branched asphodel, we must go back to an early

'The daffodil has no other connexion with the asphodel than having unaccountably appropriated its name, through the old French affodille. It is a kind of narcissus, while the asphodel belongs to the lily tribe.

stage of thought regarding the condition of the dead.

Instinctively man assumes that his existence will, in some form, be continued beyond the grave. Only a few of the most degraded savages, or a handful of the most enlightened sceptics, accept death with stolid indifference as an absolute end. The almost univer

sally prevalent belief is that it is a change, not a close. Humanity, as a whole, never has admitted and never can apostatise from its innate convictions by admitting that its destiny is mere blank corruption. Apart from the body, however, life can indeed be conceived, but cannot be imagined; since imagination works only with familiar materials. Recourse was then inevitably had to the expedient of representing the under world as a shadowy reflection of the upper. Disembodied spirits were supposed to feel the same needs, to cherish the same desires, as when clothed in the flesh; but they were helpless to supply the first or to gratify the second. Their opulence or misery in their new abode depended solely upon the pitying care of those who survived them. This mode of thinking explains the savage rites of sacrifice attendant upon primitive funeral ceremonies: it converted the tombs of ancient kings into the treasure-houses of modern archæologists; and it suggested a system of commissariat for the dead, traces of which still linger in many parts of the world.

Here we find the clue we are in search of. It is

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afforded by the simple precautions adopted by unsophisticated people against famine in the realm of death. Amongst the early Greeks, the roots of the branched lily were a familiar article of diet. The asphodel has even been called the potato of antiquity. It indeed surpassed the potato in fecundity, though falling far below it in nutritive qualities. Pliny, in his Natural History,' states that about eighty tubers, each the size of an average turnip, were often the produce of a single plant; and the French botanist Charles de l'Écluse, travelling across Portugal in 1564-5, saw the plough disclose fully two hundred attached to the same stalk, and together weighing, he estimated, some fifty pounds. Moreover, the tubers so plentifully developed are extremely rich in starch and sugar, so that the poorer sort, who possessed no flocks or herds to supply their table with fat pork, loins of young oxen, roasted goats' tripe, or similar carnal delicacies, were glad to fall back upon the frugal fare of mallow and asphodel lauded by Hesiod. Theophrastus tells us that the roasted stalk, as well as the seed of the asphodel served for food; but chiefly its roots, which, bruised up with figs, were in extensive use. Pliny seems to prefer them cooked in hot ashes, and eaten with salt and oil; but it may be doubted whether he spoke from personal experience.

Their consumption, however, was recommended by the example of Pythagoras, and was said to have helped to lengthen out the fabulous years of Epime

nides. Yet, such illustrious examples notwithstanding, the degenerate stomachs of more recent times. have succeeded ill in accommodating themselves to such spare sustenance. When about the middle of last century the Abate Alberto Fortis was travelling in Dalmatia, he found inhabitants of the village of Bossiglina, near Traù, so poor as to be reduced to make their bread of bruised asphodel roots, which proving but an indifferent staff of life, digestive troubles and general debility ensued. last recorded experiment of the kind. the human economy are far better, more widely, and almost as cheaply subserved by the tuber brought by Raleigh from Virginia. The plant of Persephone is left for Apulian sheep to graze upon.

This is the

The needs of

Asphodel roots, accordingly, rank with acorns as a prehistoric, but now discarded article of human food. They were, it is likely, freely consumed by the carliest inhabitants of Greece, before the cultivation of cereals had been introduced from the East. There is little fear of error in assuming that the later Achæan immigrants found them already consecrated by traditional usage to the sustenance of the deadperhaps because the immemorial antiquity of their dietary employment imparted to them an idea of sacredness; or, possibly, because the slightness of the nourishment they afforded was judged suitable to the maintenance of the unsubstantial life of ghosts. At any rate, the custom became firmly established of