Pompeii Treasured Flowers

Pompeii Treasured Flowers

Among the ruins of the city of Pompeii, near Naples, I was impressed with evidence of how people cultivated trees, shrubs, and flowers.

Here is a photo from my visit to Pompeii. [below]

What amazed me was that Pompeii, a colony of Rome by the time of its destruction in A. D. 79,  knew and appreciated horticulture quite early.

It was a time when many other cultures avoided even depicting something as simple as a flower because that was what pagans did, they claimed, especially in their rites of idolatry.  Muslims, Christians, and Jews avoided any link to pagan practices.

That seems strange because eventually Christianity adapted pagan rituals and holidays, reinterpreting them for the spread of the faith.  The celebration of Christmas is a good example.

Jack Goody writes in his book The Culture of Flowers: “In antiquity flowers were grown in Pompeii for two main reasons: for garlands (coronae) and for perfume (odor).”

The streets of Pompeii are still there, as well as images of plants in frescoes that I saw in some of the homes.

Plants, including flowers, were important to the various classes of the people of Pompeii

Goody writes, “Cultivated flowers are essentially products of advanced agriculture, of gardening, so we rarely find them under simple hoe agriculture…The growth of the culture of flowers represents a growth of the standard of living of the rich.”

Flowers in Pompeii provided the color in garlands worn on the head, and the scent of perfume for the body.

Cultures over the centuries have used flowers according to the tenets of their moral principles. The Roman use of flowers, as at Pompeii, differed from other contemporary cultures both in the East and the West.

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