Again, of the figs called prodromi, or precocious the same Theophrastus makes mention in the third book of his Causes of Plants, in this way—“When a warm and damp and soft [p. 130] air comes to the fig-tree, then it excites the germination, from which the figs are called prodromi.” And proceeding further, he says—“And again, some trees bear the prodromi, namely, the Lacedæmonian fig-tree, and the leucomphaliac, and several others; but some do not bear them.” But Seleucus, in his book on Languages, says that there is a kind of fig called προτερικὴ, which bears very early fruit. And Aristophanes, in his Ecclesiazusæ, speaks of a double-bearing fig-tree—
Take for a while the fig-tree's leavesAnd Antiphanes says, in his Scleriæ—
Which bears its crop twice in the year.
'Tis by the double-bearing fig-tree there below.But Theopompus, in the fifty-fourth book of his Histories, says—“At the time when Philip reigned about the territory of the Bisaltæ, and Amphipolis and Græstonia of Macedon, when it was the middle of spring, the fig-trees were loaded with figs, and the vines with bunches of grapes, and the olive-trees, though it was only the season for them to be just pushing, were full of olives. And Philip was successful in all his undertakings.” But in the second book of his treatise on Plants, Theophrastus says that the wild fig also is double-bearing; and some say that it bears even three crops in the year, as for instance, at Ceos.
