Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1827) Vol 1.djvu/86

62 enumerate all the articles, either of the animal or the vegetable reign, which were successively imported into Europe from Asia and Egypt ; but it will not be unworthy of the dignity, and much less of the utility of an historical work, slightly to touch on a few of the principal heads. 1. Almost all the flowers, the herbs, and the fruits that grow in our European gardens, are of foreign extraction, which, in many cases, is betrayed even by their names : the apple was a native of Italy ; and when the Romans had tasted the richer flavour of the apricot, the peach, the pomegranate, the citron, and the orange, they contented themselves with applying to all these new fruits the common denomination of apple, discriminating them from each other by the additional epithet of their country. 2. In the time of Homer, the vine grew wild in the island of Sicily, and most probably in the adjacent continent; but it was not improved by the skill, nor did it afford a liquor grateful to the taste, of the savage inhabitants. A thousand years afterwards, Italy could boast, that, of the fourscore most generous and celebrated wines, more than two thirds were produced from her soil. The blessing was soon communicated to the Narbonnese province of Gaul ; but so intense was the cold to the north of the Cevennes, that, in the time of Strabo, it was thought impossible to ripen the grapes in those parts of Gaul. This difficulty, however, was gradually vanquished; and there is some reason to believe, that the vineyards of Burgundy are as old as The olive, the age of the Antonines. 3. The olive, in the western