Another favourite fruit was the peach, introduced from Persia into Greece.[675] The citron, too, though supposed by some not to have been known to the ancient inhabitants of Hellas, perfumed in later ages the tables of the Greeks with its delicious fragrance. This is the fruit which, according to King Juba, was called in Africa “the apple of the Hesperides,” a name bestowed by Timachidas on a rich and fragrant kind of pear called _epimelis_. The oldest Greek writer who has described the citron tree is Theophrastus,[676] who says it was found in Persia and Media. Its leaf, he observes, resembled that of the laurel, the strawberry tree, or the walnut. Like the wild pear tree, and the oxyacanthos, it has sharp, smooth, and very strong prickles. The fruit is not eaten, but together with the leaves exhales a sweet odour, and laid with cloths in coffers protects them from the moth. The citron tree, is always covered with fruit, some ripe and fit to be gathered, others green, with patches of gold; and, in the midst of these, are other branches covered thick with blossoms. It now forms the fairest ornaments of the gardens of Heliopolis, where it shades the Fountain of the Sun. ----- Footnote 675: Vict. Var. Lect. p. 892. Footnote 676: Hist. Plantarum, iv. 4. 2. The orange attains great perfection in Crete. Mr. Pashley speaks of twelve different kinds, and nearly as many sorts of lemons. Travels, i. 96, seq. ----- Antiphanes observes, in his Bœotian, that it had only recently been introduced into Attica: A. ’Twould be absurd to speak of what’s to eat, As if you thought of such things; but, fair maid, Take of these apples. B. Oh, how beautiful! A. They are, indeed, since hither they but lately Have come from the great king. B. By Phosphoros! I could have thought them from the Hesperian bowers, Where th’ apples are of gold. A. There are but three. B. The beautiful is no where plentiful.[677] ----- Footnote 677: Ap. Athen. iii. 27. Mitford, Hist. Greece, i. 154, note 59, misled by Barthelemy (Anacharsis, ch. 59) confounds Antiphanes, the comic poet, born B. C. 407 (Clinton, Fast. Hellen. ii. 81) with Antiphon, the master of Thucydides, born B. C. 479, and who died in the year 411, four years before the birth of Antiphanes.—Clinton, ii. 31, 37. -----