Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/477

 by Lucian. He sleeps upon it, holding the fibula in his left hand. His feet are adorned with boots (cothumi) and his simple petasus is tied under his chin. In this form the petasus illustrates the remark of Theophrastus, who, in describing the Egyptian Bean, says, that the leaf was of the size of the Thessalian petasus. For the purpose of comparing these two objects, a representation of the leaves of the plant referred to, is introduced into the same Figure (3); taken from the "Botanical Magazine," Plates 903, 3916, and Sir J. E. Smith's "Exotic Botany," Tab. 31, 32. The petasus here shown on the head of Endymion, the original statue being as large as life, certainly resembles very closely both in size and in form the leaf of the Egyptian Bean, which is the Cyamus Nelumbo, or Nelumbium Speciosum of modern botanists.

The flowers of umbelliferous plants are aptly called by Phanias [Greek: petasôdê], i. e. like a petasus. The petasus, as worn by the two shepherds, who discover Romulus and Remus, in a bas-relief of the Vatican, is certainly not unlike the umbel of a plant. See Plate IX. Fig. 4.. ''Hist. Plant.'' iv. 10. p. 147, ed. Schneider.]