The slenderness, then, of Homer’s acquaintance with the finer kinds of bloom introduced gradually from the East, is apparent from his seeming ignorance of their ravishing perfumes, no less than from the inadequacy of his hints as to their beauty of form and colour. His love of flowers was in the instinctive stage; it had not come to the maturity of self-consciousness. They obtained recognition from him neither as symbols of feeling, nor as accessories to enjoyment. Nausicaa wove no garlands; the cultivation of flowers in the gardens of Alcinous is left doubtful; Laertes pruned his pear-trees, and dug round his vines, but reared for his solace not so much as a poppy. No display of living jewellery aided the seductions of Circe’s island; Calypso was content to plant the unpretending violet; Aphrodite herself was without a floral badge; floral decorations of every kind were equally unthought of. Flowers, in fact, had not yet been brought within the sphere of human sentiment; they had not yet acquired significance as emblems of human passion; they had not yet been made partners with humanity in the sorrows of death, and the transient pleasures of a troubled and ephemeral existence. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VII. HOMERIC MEALS. HEROIC appetites were strong and simple. They craved ‘much meat,’ and could be completely appeased with nothing else; but they demanded little more. They needed no savoury caresses or spicy blandishments. Occasion indeed to stimulate them there was none, though much difficulty might arise about satisfying them. For they disdained paltry subterfuges. Fish, game, and vegetables they accepted in lieu of more substantial prey; but under protest. Hunger, in consenting to receive such trifles, merely compounded for a partial settlement of her claim. The Homeric bill of fare was concise, and admitted of slight diversification. Day after day, and at meal after meal, roast meat, bread, and wine were set before perennially eager guests, in whose esteem any fundamental change in the materials of the banquet would certainly have been for the worse. Variety, in fact, was in the inverse ratio of abundance. Want alone counselled departures from the beaten track of opulent feasting, and compelled the reluctant adoption of inadequate expedients for silencing the imperative outcries of famine. Nevertheless it cannot be supposed that the epical setting forth of Achæan culinary resources was as exhaustive as the menu of a Guildhall dinner. For where would be the ‘swiftness’ of a narrative which could not leave so much as a dish of beans to the imagination? Homeric criticism is indeed everywhere complicated by the necessity of admitting wide gaps of silence; and in this particular department, so much evidently remains in those gaps, that our list of comestibles must be to a great extent inferential.