Athenaeus, The Deipnosophists
C. D. Yonge, B.A., Ed.

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Of roses, says Theophrastus in his sixth book, there are many varieties. For most of them consist only of five leaves, but some have twelve leaves; and some, near Philippi, have even as many as a hundred leaves. For men take up the plants from Mount Pangæum, (and they are very numerous there,) and plant them near the city. And the inner petals are very small; for the fashion in which the flowers put out their petals is, that some form the outer rows and some the inner ones: but they have not much smell, nor are they of any great size. And those with only five leaves are the most fragrant, and their lower parts are very thorny. But the most fragrant roses are in Cyrene: on which account the [p. 1090] perfumes made there are the sweetest. And in this country, too, the perfume of the violets, and of all other flowers, is most pure and heavenly; and above all, the fragrance of the crocus is most delicious in those parts." And Timachidas, in his Banquets, says that the Arcadians call the rose εὐόμφαλον, meaning εὔοσμον, or fragrant. And Apollodorus, in the fourth book of his History of Parthia, speaks of a flower called philadelphum, as growing in the country of the Parthians, and describes it thus:—“And there are many kinds of myrtle, —the milax, and that which is called the philadelphum, which has received a name corresponding to its natural character; for when branches, which are at a distance from one another, meet together of their own accord, they cohere with a vigorous embrace, and become united as if they came from one root, and then growing on, they produce fresh shoots: on which account they often make hedges of them in well-cultivated farms; for they take the thinnest of the shoots, and plait them in a net-like manner, and plant them all round their gardens, and then these plants, when plaited together all round, make a fence which it is difficult to pass through.”