As regards the rose and the lily, the doubt becomes wellnigh certainty. Both gave rise to Homeric epithets; neither takes in the Homeric poems a concrete form. The Iranic derivation of their Greek names, _rhodon_ and _leirion_, shows the native home of each of these matchless blossoms to have been in Persia.[238] Thence, according to M. Hehn, they travelled through Armenia and Phrygia into Thrace, and eventually, by that circuitous route, reached Greece proper. Commemorative myths strewed the track of their progressive transmissions. Thus, the mountain Rhodope in Thrace took its name from a ‘rosy-footed’ attendant upon Persephone, in the ‘crocus-purple hour’ of her capture by ‘gloomy Dis;’ and in the same vicinity were located the Nysæan Fields—the scene of the disaster—then, for a snare of enticement to the damsel, ablaze with roses and lilies, ‘a marvel to behold,’ with narcissus, crocuses, violets, and hyacinths.[239] Moreover, roses, each with sixty leaves, and highly perfumed, were said to blossom spontaneously in the Emathian gardens of King Midas;[240] Theophrastus places near Philippi the original habitat of the hundred-leaved rose; and roses were profusely employed in the rites of Phrygian nature-worship. Footnote 238: Hehn, _op. cit._ p. 189. Footnote 239: _Hymn to Demeter._ Footnote 240: Herodotus, viii. 138. Dim rumours of their loveliness spread among the Homeric Greeks. The standing Odyssean designation of Eos as ‘rosy-fingered,’ alternating, in the Iliad, with ‘saffron-robed,’ heralded, it might be said, the European advent of the flower itself. For rose-gardens can have lain only just below the Homeric horizon. Their ambrosial products did not indeed come within mortal reach, but were at the disposal of the gods. By the application of oil of roses, Aphrodite kept the body of Hector fresh and fair during the twelve days of its savage maltreatment by Achilles; and oil of roses was later an accredited antiseptic. Archilochus seems to have been the first Greek poet to make living acquaintance with the blushing flower of Dionysus and Aphrodite, which became known likewise only to the writers of the later books of Scripture. The ‘Rose of Sharon’ is accordingly believed to have been a narcissus. Allusions to the lily do not occur in the Odyssey, and are vague and ill-defined in the Iliad. The flesh of Ajax might intelligibly, if not appropriately, be designated ‘lily-like’; but the same term applied to sounds conveys little or no meaning to our minds. Even if we admit a far-fetched analogy between the song of the Muses, as something uncommon and tenderly beautiful, and a fragile white flower, we have to confess ourselves bewildered by the extension of the comparison to the shrill voices of cicadas, rasping out their garrulous contentment amidst summer foliage.