The Greek name for fennel is _marathon_. The Battle of Marathon took its name from the plant. The story goes that a youth named Pheidippides ran to Sparta to seek aid for Athens when the Persian fleet appeared, and he was told that the Spartans could not come until after the full moon. Very disheartened, he was returning to Athens when Pan appeared to him and promised victory, giving the youth a piece of fennel as a token of his prophecy. The battle took place on a field full of fennel and was known henceforth as the Battle of Marathon (490 B. C.). Statues of the youth always represented him as holding a sprig of fennel. Browning has told the story in his "Pheidippides." III _Sweet Marjoram, Thyme, and Savory_ MARJORAM (_Origanum vulgare_) was a favorite plant in Tudor and Stuart times. An old writer informs us that "Sweet Marjoram is not only much used to please the outward sense in nosegays and in the windows of houses, as also in sweet powders, sweet bays and sweet washing waters, but is also of much use in physic." _Perdita_ classes it with hot lavender and savory.[77] Shakespeare, appreciating its delicate and delightful scent, brings this out most beautifully in his "Sonnet XCIX": The forward violet thus did I chide:-- Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells If not from my love's breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells, In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed. The lily I condemnèd for thy hand, And buds of marjoram had stolen thy hair. [77] "The Winter's Tale"; Act IV, Scene III. This comparison is even more lovely than Milton's description of _Sabrina_ with her "loose braid of amber-dropping hair." In Shakespeare's time several species were grown: the common, the winter, and the sweet. They were all favorite pot-herbs and were used in salads, if we may believe the _Clown_ in "All's Well That Ends Well": LAFEN. 'Twas a good lady, 'twas a good lady; we may pick a thousand sallets ere we light on such another herb. CLOWN. Indeed, sir, she was the Sweet Marjoram of the sallet, or, rather, the Herb of Grace. LAFEN. They are not sallet-herbs, you knave, they are nose-herbs. CLOWN. I am no great Nebuchadnezzar; sir, I have not much skill in grass.[78] [78] Act IV, Scene V. Parkinson writes: "The common Sweet Marjoram (_Marierome_) is a low herb, little above a foot high, full of branches and small whitish, soft, roundish leaves, smelling very sweet. At the tops of the branches stand divers small, scaly heads, like unto knots, of a whitish green color, out of which come, here and there, small, white flowers, and afterward small reddish seed. Called _Mariorama_ in Latin, it is taken of most writers to be the Amaracus, or Sampsuchum, of Dioscorides, Theophrastus and Pliny."