CHAP. I. gardens of Babylon, that he was also thought [8] [9] Cyrus, the younger, a manual planter of gardens. [10] to be the author thereof. Ahasuerus (whom many conceive to have been Artaxerxes Longimanus), in the country and city of flowers1, and in an open garden, entertained his princes and people, while Vashti more modestly treated the ladies within the palace thereof. But if, as some opinion 2, King Ahasuerus were Artaxerxes Mnemon, that found a life and reign answerable unto his great memory, our magnified Cyrus was his second brother, who gave the occasion of that memorable work, and almost miraculous retreat of Xenophon. A person of high spirit and honour, naturally a king, though fatally prevented by the harmless chance of post-geniture; not only a lord of gardens, but a manual planter thereof, disposing his trees, like his armies, in regular ordination. So that while old Laertes hath found a name in 94 Homer for pruning hedges, and clearing away thorns and briars; while King Attalus lives for his poisonous plantations of aconites, henbane, hellebore, and plants hardly admitted within the walls of Paradise; while many of the ancients do poorly live in the single names of vegetables; all stories do look upon Cyrus as the splendid and regular planter. According whereto Xenophon3 describeth his 1 Sushan in Susiana. 2 Plutarch, in the Life of Artaxerxes. 3 Καλὰ μὲν τὰ δένδρα δι ̓ ἴσου δὲ τὰ πεφυτευμένα, ὀρθοὶ δὲ οἱ στίχοι τῶν δένδρων, εὐγώνια δὲ πάντα καλώς. In Economico [4, § 21]. Sardis. gallant plantation at Sardis, thus rendered by CHAP. I. Strebæus. "Arbores pari intervallo sitas, rectos Xenophon's description ordines, et omnia perpulchrè in quincuncem of his plantadirecta." Which we shall take for granted as tion at being accordingly rendered by the most elegant of the Latins1, and by no made term, but in use before by Varro. That is, the rows and orders so handsomely disposed, or five trees so set together, that a regular angularity, and thorough prospect, was left on every side. Owing this name not only unto the quintuple number of trees, but the figure declaring that number, which being doubled at the angle, makes up the letter X, that is, the emphatical 95 decussation, or fundamental figure. Now though, in some ancient and modern [11] practice, the area, or decussated plot might be a perfect square, answerable to a Tuscan pedestal, and the quinquernio or cinque point of a die, wherein by diagonal lines the intersection was rectangular; accommodable unto plantations of large growing trees, and we must not deny ourselves the advantage of this order; yet shall we chiefly insist upon that of Curtius and Porta 2, in their brief description hereof. Wherein the decussis is made within in a longi- Explanation lateral square, with opposite angles, acute and boidal or obtuse at the intersection, and so upon pro- lozenge gression making a rhombus or lozenge figuration, which seemeth very agreeable unto the original figure. Answerable whereunto we observe the 1 Cicero in Cat. Major (c. 17]. 2 Benedict. Curtius de Hortis. Bapt. Porta in Villa. of the rhom formation. 1 Compared to St. An drew's cross; CHAP. I.* decussated characters in many consulary coins, and even in those of Constantine and his sons, which pretend their pattern in the sky; the crucigerous ensign carried this figure, not transversely or rectangularly intersected, but in a decussation, after the form of an Andrean or Burgundian 96 cross, which answereth this description. [12] Where by the way we shall decline the old theme, so traced by antiquity, of crosses and crucifixion; whereof some being right, and of one single piece without transversion or transom, do little advantage our subject. Nor shall we take in the mystical Tau, or the cross of our blessed Saviour, which having in some descriptions an Empedon, or crossing footstay, made not one single transversion. And since the learned Lipsius hath made some doubt even of the cross of St. Andrew (since some martyrological histories deliver his death by the general name of a cross, and Hippolytus will have him suffer by the sword), we should have enough to make out the received cross of that martyr. Nor shall we urge the Labarum, and famous standard of Constantine, or make further use thereof, than as the first letters in the name of our Saviour Christ, in use among Christians, before the days of Constantine, to be observed in sepulchral monuments of martyrs, in the reign of Adrian and Antoninus; and to be found 97 in the antiquities of the Gentiles, before the advent of Christ, as in the medal of King Ptolemy, signed with the same characters, and 1 Of Marius, Alexander. Roma Sotterranea. 1 might be the beginning of some word or name, CHAP. I. which antiquaries have not hit on. We will not revive the mysterious crosses of [13] Egypt, with circles on their heads, in the breast and the Egyptian of Serapis, and the hands of their genial spirits, cruxansata. not unlike the character of Venus, and looked on by ancient Christians with relation unto Christ. Since, however they first began, the Egyptians thereby expressed the process and motion of the spirit of the world, and the diffusion thereof upon the celestial and elemental nature; implied by a circle and right-lined intersection, a secret in their telesmes and magical characters among them. Though he that considereth the plain cross1 upon the head of the owl in the Lateran obelisk, or the cross 2 erected upon a pitcher diffusing streams of water into two basins, with sprinkling branches in them, and all described upon a two-footed altar, 98 as in the hieroglyphicks of the brazen table of Bembus, will hardly decline all thought of Christian signality in them. We shall not call in the Hebrew Tenupha, or [14] ceremony of their oblations, waved by the priest The Tenuunto the four quarters of the world, after the Jewish pha of the form of a cross, as in the peace offerings. And rabbins. if it were clearly made out what is remarkably delivered from the traditions of the rabbins,— that as the oil was poured coronally or circularly 1 Wherein the lower part is somewhat longer, as defined by Upton de Studio Militari, and Johannes de Bado Aureo, cum comment. clariss. et doctiss. Bissæi. 2 Casal. de Ritibus., Bosio, La Trionfanie Croce. CHAP. I. upon the head of kings, so the high-priest was [15] The quincunx much used by the ancients, little discoursed of by the moderns. [16] Considerable, for its several com anointed decussatively or in the form of an X,— though it could not escape a typical thought of Christ, from mystical considerators, yet being the conceit is Hebrew, we should rather expect its verification from analogy in that language, than to confine the same unto the unconcerned letters of Greece, or make it out by the characters of Cadmus or Palamedes. Of this quincuncial ordination the ancients practised much, discoursed little; and the moderns have nothing enlarged; which he that more nearly considereth, in the form of its square rhombus, and decussation, with the 99 several commodities, mysteries, parallelisms, and resemblances, both in art and nature, shall easily discern the elegancy of this order. That this was in some ways of practice in divers and distant nations, hints or deliveries there are from no slender antiquity. In the modities, hanging gardens of Babylon, from Abydenus, mysticisms, parallelisms, Eusebius, and others1, Curtius describeth this rule of decussation. In the memorable garden of Alcinous, anciently conceived an original fancy from Paradise, mention there is of well contrived order; for so hath Didymus and Babylon and Eustachius expounded the emphatical word. the planta- Diomedes, describing the rural possessions of his father, gives account in the same language of trees orderly planted. And Ulysses being a boy, was promised by his father forty fig and resem- Alcinous; tions of Diomed's father; 1 "Decussatio ipsa jucundum ac peramanum conspectum præbuit." Curt. Hortar. 1. 6. |