This article is part of a short series on ancient Roman fruit varieties, specifically apples. Please see the Series Introduction for background information and a bibliography, the page on Modern-Day Survivors? for my investigation of ‘Decio’ and ‘Court Pendu Plat’, and the Summary and Conclusions page for an overview of my findings.
Ancient Roman Authors and Sources
Once I started looking into the subject, I very quickly discovered that when it comes to researching ancient Roman apple varieties, there is a rather limited number of relevant, original sources to refer to.
This is frustrating but understandable, because of course an enormous amount of literature from the Ancient Roman era – which spanned a vast period of history, from 753 BCE to 476 AD – will have been lost over the intervening centuries, and a lot of what does remain is fragmentary, sometimes known about only via quotes or references in later works.
Having said that, there are a few surviving works on the subjects of agriculture and large estate management that provide useful detail on the subject of fruit. Most of them give more weight to growing olives and vines than apples and pears, as you’d expect from Mediterranean-based agricultural writers, but assorted pome1 fruits do get a mention, in varying amounts of detail.
Here’s what I’ve been able to find out about those authors and their works:
Mago the Carthaginian
Very little is known about the life of this north African writer, but his treatise on agriculture, De Re Rustica (as it was later called in Latin translation) is reputed to be the only work deliberately retrieved from the destruction of Carthage by Rome in 146 BCE. The complete work has been lost, and only fragmentary references to it in other works survive to the present day.
Marcus Porcius Cato (234 BCE – 149 BCE)
Cato the Elder was the architect of the destruction of Carthage, but when he wasn’t annihilating Rome’s enemies he was a dedicated student of agriculture. His work De Agri Cultura (On Agriculture)2 was written c. 160 BCE.
An English language translation by Reginald Fairfax Harrison is online at Project Gutenberg, although it seems to be heavily abridged. Bill Thayer’s website contains the text of the 1934 Loeb Classical Library edition, with Latin text by George Goetz and an English translation by W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash, which seems to be a lot more comprehensive.
Cato mentions a number of “apples”, although as we’ll see, not all of them are apples as we’d understand them.
Marcus Terentius Varro (116 BCE – 27 BCE)
Varro was a Roman citizen of high rank who fought against and was later pardoned by Julius Ceasar, was proscribed by Mark Anthony, and then favoured by Augustus, before eventually retiring to his farm to write Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres (Three Books of Rural Topics) a.k.a. De Re Rustica in c. 36 BCE3.
Archive.org has a 1912 Latin edition by George Goetz. Bill Thayer’s website contains the text of the 1934 Loeb Classical Library edition, with Latin text by Goetz and an English translation by W. D. Hooper and H. B. Ash. There’s also a 1918 translation by “A Virginia Farmer”, Reginald Fairfax Harrison, of both Cato’s De Agri Cultura and Varro’s Rerum Rusticarum Libri Tres that is available at Project Gutenberg.
Varro quotes extensively from Cato and so the apple varieties he mentions are mainly repeats, with a couple of additions.
Publius Vergilius Maro (70 BCE – 19 BCE)
Virgil was one of the most famous Roman-era poets, Virgil’s second major work was Georgica (The Georgics, or Agriculture), which consisted of 2,188 hexametric4 verses. Book II is on the subject of trees, including fruit trees, but he doesn’t seem to mention any varieties by name 5.
Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (c.1st CE)
Columella was another writer whose biography is sketchy, but he’s thought to have been born in Gades – modern-day Cádiz – and, after a career in the army, he retired to his estates and wrote his own De Re Rustica (On Agriculture) and probably6 De Arboribus (On Trees)7, in c. 50 CE8.
Archive.org has volume II of the 1954 Loeb Classical Library edition of De Re Rustica, with both the recension of the Latin, and the English translation by E. S. Forster and Edward H. Heffner.
Columella names a few newer apple varieties as well as some old favourites.
Cloatius Verus (c. turn of 1st Century BC / CE?)
Cloatius is only known about through later references, such as Macrobius‘s Saturnaliorum Libri Septem (Seven Books of the Saturnalia). He has been described as an “Augustan lexicographer and antiquarian” who wrote a long-lost work called Ordinatorum Graecorum (The Order of the Greeks?).
Later sources do refer to a list of apple varieties that Cloatius provided in Ordinatorum Graecorum, fragments of which, mostly via the Saturnalia of Macrobius, are available at latin.packhum.org.
Gaius Plinius Secundus (23/24 – 79 CE)
Pliny the Elder was a Roman statesman and scholar, probably best remembered for his dramatic death during the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE. Towards the end of his lifetime he produced Naturalis Historia (Natural History) in c. 77 CE, which according to Wikipedia is “a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world”. Book XV is dedicated to olives, olive oil and fruit trees.
Archive.org has volume IV of the 1960 Loeb Classical Library edition, with an English translation by H. Rackham, of Naturalis Historia, which includes Book XV, as does the Perseus Digital Library edition, which provides Latin by Karl Friedrich Theodor Mayhoff, (1906) and an English translation by John Bostock (1855).
Pliny had plenty to say on what he considered to be the best varieties of apples and I’ll be looking at them in detail.
Quintus Gargilius Martialis (d. c. 260CE?)
Another writer about whom very little is known9 except that he wrote De Hortis (On the Garden, On Gardens?) a Latin edition of which can be found online at digiliblt.uniupo.it. It seems to be a work that is only concerned with the medicinal uses of plants and fruits, and doesn’t mention any particular fruit varieties.
Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus Palladius (late C4th – early C5th CE?)
Palladius was another writer of unknown biography, whose works Opus Agriculturae (Work on Agriculture) a.k.a. De re rustica (On Agriculture), and De Insitione (On Grafting) are thought to have been written c. 400 CE.
Rev. Barton Lodge edited a volume entitled Palladius on Husbondrie between 1873 and 1879, a middle English translation of Opus agriculturae that was based on a manuscript of c.1420 housed in Colchester Castle, which he accompanied with a more modern re-interpretation of the middle English version. It is available on Archive.org. A revised edition of Opus Agriculturae, in Latin, edited by J. C. Schmitt in 1898, is also available on Archive.org.
Palladius is not a rich source of apple variety names, taking a line that was to be oft-repeated by so many other botanical writers in later centuries, as we’ll see.
There we have it. Nine ancient Roman writers on agriculture, of whom six are useful sources of ancient Roman apple varieties, or in some cases, “apple” varieties.
Time now to take a closer look at what these sources tell us about which apples were available to the Roman fruit grower, around two thousand years ago.
Apple Varieties in the Source Material
Cato – De Agri Cultura (On Agriculture) c.160 BCE
In chapter VII of De Agri Cultura, Cato advises on the importance of establishing a plantation – in the sense of an orchard – as part of a suburban farm, and in the process he mentions a few ancient Roman fruit varieties. Via the Goetz edition of the Latin original, the relevant quote from chapter VII reads as follows:
“Poma, mala strutea, cotonea Scantiana, Quiriniana, item alia conditiva, mala mustea et Punica (eo lotium suillum aut stercus ad radicem addere oportet, uti pabulum malorum fiat), pira volaema, Aniciana sementiva (haec conditiva in sapa bona erunt), Tarentina, mustea, cucurbitiva, item alia genera quam plurima serito aut inserito.”
In the 1934 Loeb edition, Hooper and Ash translated the above as:
“Plant or ingraft all kinds of fruit — sparrow-apples, Scantian and Quirinian quinces, also other varieties for preserving, must-apples and pomegranates (the urine or dung of swine should be applied around the roots of these to serve as food for the fruit); of pears, the volema, the Anician frost-pears (these are excellent when preserved in boiled wine), the Tarentine, the must-pear, the gourd-pear, and as many other varieties as possible.”
We therefore have five varieties of “apples” to add to an initial list:
- ‘Mala strutea’, or ‘sparrow-apples’. At this point, I did wonder whether a “sparrow-apple” was the equivalent of what we might call a “crab-apple” today; the sort of fruit a sparrow might feed on?
- ‘cotonea Scantiana’ – suggested to be a quince rather than an apple. ‘Scantius’ was a Roman family name, so it could have been named for a member of that gens.
- ‘(cotonea?) Quiriniana’ – suggested to be a quince rather than an apple. ‘Quirinius’ was another Roman family name, or gens, so it could have been named for them.
- ‘mala Mustea’ – translated here to ‘must-apples’, perhaps suggesting a flavour of grape-must?
- ‘mala Punica’ – pomegranate, the ‘Punic’ element suggesting a Carthaginian connection.
Apparently all five of these varieties of “apples”, or rather pome fruits, were suitable for storage in an cool, dry room with a window in the north wall to allow cooling breezes to blow through them. That’s all Cato has to say on the subject of “apples”, but it’s an interesting start.
Varro – Rerum rusticarum libri tres (Three Books of Rural Topics) a.k.a. De re rustica c.37 BCE
When it comes to apple varieties, Varro gets most of his information from Cato, but he does add a few interesting details, once again within the general context of preserving and storing fruit. Here’s Goetz’s Latin transcript of Chapter LIX of Rerum rusticarum libri tres, according to the 1934 Loeb edition via Bill Thayer’s website:
“De pomis conditiva, mala struthea, cotonea, Scantiana, Scaudiana, orbiculata et quae antea mustea vocabant, nunc melimela appellant, haec omnia in loco arido et frigido supra paleas posita servari recte putant. Et ideo oporothecas qui faciunt, ad aquilonem ut fenestras habeant atque ut eae perflentur curant, neque tamen sine foriculis, ne, cum umorem amiserint, pertinaci vento vieta fiant;”
Hooper and Ash’s English translation of which is given as:
“The varieties of apples for preserving are the smaller and larger quinces, the Scantian, the Scaudian, the small round, and those formerly called must-apples, but now called honey-apples. It is thought that all these keep well in a dry and cool place, laid on straw. For this reason those who build fruit-houses are careful to let them have windows facing the north and open to the wind; but they have shutters, to keep the fruit from shrivelling after losing its juice, when the wind blows steadily.”
Here’s another version of the same passage, this time from the Harrison edition:
“Of storing pome fruits
LIX. The pome fruits, like the preserving sparrow apples, quinces and the varieties of apples known as Scantian, and ‘little rounds’ (orbiculata) and those which formerly were called winesap (mustea), and now are called honey apples (melimela), can all be kept safely in a cold and dry place when laid on straw, and so those who build fruit houses take care to have the windows give upon the north wind and that it may blow through them: but they should not be left without shutters for fear that the fruits should lose their moisture and become shrivelled by the effect of the continuous wind.”
By way of comparison, the following is a Google Translate version, with a bit of amendment for sense-making, of the first part of the same passage:
“As for preserved apples, struthea, cotoneas, scantians, scaudians, orbiculates, and what they formerly called mustea, now they call melimela, all these things they rightly think to be kept in a dry and cold place on top of straw…”
Google Translate was a little off-target with some of the above, translating “mala struthea” to ‘bad ostriches’, rather than ‘sparrow-apple’. Google also suggested “honeydew” in place of “honey-apple” and drew a blank for “mustea”, which online-latin-dictionary.com much more helpfully says means “must-like, of new wine fresh or young”. Or, as H. Frederic Janson suggested in Pomona’s Harvest (1996), “mustea” could perhaps translate to “winesap”.
As we can see, there’s a bit of confusion over which varieties of ‘Poma’ – pome fruits – are apples as we’d understand them today, and which might actually be quinces instead. The Hooper and Ash edition suggests that ‘mala strutea’ (‘sparrow-apples’) and ‘cotonea Scantiana’ are types of quince; according to an editorial footnote:
“Cotonea (mala) are the κυδώνια of the Greeks, our quinces; the struthea were a smaller variety of the same.”
Meanwhile, ‘Scantian’ is considered to be an apple, rather than a quince per Cato10, as are ‘Scaudian’ and ‘orbiculata’, or ‘little round’.
The Harrison edition though suggests that the “preserving sparrow apple” might be an apple after all, and confirms that “cotonea” is a quince, and somehow misses out the ‘Scaudian’ completely, before agreeing that the ‘Scantian’ and ‘orbiculata’ are both apples. But both translations also agree that the ‘mustea’ or ‘must-apple’ has, by Varro’s time, been re-named ‘melimela’ or ‘honey-apple’11.
All of which means we can now update the list of extant varieties to:
- ‘Mala strut(h)ea’ – ‘sparrow apples’, which are either a small apple (a crab apple?) or a small quince.
- ‘cotonea’ – a large quince.
- ‘Scantiana’ – Depending on where the translator places the commas12 in the Latin version, either ‘cotonea Scantiana’ is a ‘Scantian’ quince, or ‘coneoa’ is a quince, whilst ‘Scantiana’ is a ‘Scantian’ apple. Again, ‘Scantius’ is a Roman family name, so the fruit could have been named for a member of that gens.
- ‘Quiriniana’ – a type of quince.
- ‘Mustea’ – ‘must-apples’, or ‘winesap’ apples, which since Cato’s time have been re-named ‘Melimela’, or ‘honey-apples’.
- ‘Scaudian’ – an apple, possibly named for the Scaudius family.
- ‘Orbiculata’ – ‘small round’ or ‘little round’ apples.
Columella – De Re Rustica (On Agriculture) c.35 CE
Book V, Chapter X, sections 18-20 of De Re Rustica lists numerous recommended fruit varieties, including pears and apples. Here’s the Latin version from the 1954 Forster and Heffner edition:
“Curandum est autem, ut quam generosissimis pyris pomaria conseramus. Ea sunt Crustumina, regia, Signina, Tarentina, quae Syria dicuntur, purpurea, superba, hordeacea, Aniciana, Naeviana, Favoniana, Lateritana, Dolabelliana, Turraniana, volaema, mulsa, praecocia, venerea, et quaedam alia, quorum enumeratio nunc longa est. Praeterea malorum genera exquirenda maxime Scaudiana, Matiana, orbiculata, Cestina, Pelusiana, Amerina, Syrica, melimela, Cydonia : quorum genera tria sunt, struthia, chrysomelina, mustea. Quae omnia non solum voluptatem, sed etiam salubritatem afferunt.”
Forster and Heffner’s translation of the above is as follows:
“We must take care to plant our orchards with the most excellent pear-trees that we can find. These are the Crustuminian, the Royal, the Signine, the Tarentine, which are called Syrian, the Purple, the Superb, the Barley-pear, the Anician, the Naevian, the Favonian, the Lateritan, the Dolabellian, the Turranian, the Warden-pear13, the Honey-pear, the Early-ripe, the Venus-pear and certain others, which it is a long task to enumerate now. Moreover, the following kinds of apple should be especially sought after, the Scaudian, the Matian, the Globe-apple, the Cestine, the Pelusian, the Amerian, the Syrian, the Honey-apple and the Cydonian (of which there are three kinds, the Sparrow-apple, the Golden apple and the Must-apple). All these cause not only pleasure but also good-health.”
The translators of this edition also added the following footnotes:
Scaudian = Called after a certain Scaudius (ref Pliny N.H.).
Matius = Called after C. Matius, a favourite of Augustus.
Cestine = Called after a certain Cestius.
Pelusian = From Pelusium in north Egypt.
Amerian = From Ameria, a town of Umbria.
Cydonian = Malum Cydonium is the quince. Cydonia is a town in Crete.
Must-apple = So called according to Pliny (N.H.) because it ripens quickly.
Columella suggested that ‘mala struthea’ or ‘sparrow-apple’ was a type of quince rather than apple, as now is ‘mustea’ or ‘must-apple’, along with ‘chrysomelina’ or ‘golden-apple’. Apparently Columella considered quinces to be a sub-set of apples (“malorum genera”), grouping them together as “Cydonia”, from which we no doubt get the current binomial for the culinary quince: Cydonia oblonga.
Interestingly, Columella also listed the ‘melimela’ or ‘honey-apple’ as an apple in its own right, rather than it being another name for the ‘mustea’ quince. Perhaps the old association between ‘mustea’ and ‘melimela’ was no longer thought to be the case, or a different apple had adopted the name ‘melimela’ in the seventy years between Varro and Columella?
With Columella’s repetition of some of Varro’s varieties and the addition of a few more, the list is now getting quite long, so I think that rather than repeating it here, I’ll save the detail for the main summary section.
A quick recap though: we now have eight, nine or ten varieties of actual apples, genus ‘Mala’, that were considered worthy of mention, and another five, six or seven quinces which, by this early part of the CE, seem to have been re-classified as ‘Cydonia’, with a nod to Crete, which seems to be a sub-genus of ‘Mala’. Some of the quinces still carried ‘apple’ themed common names as well, as in ‘sparrow-apple’ and ‘must-apple’, which does adds to the ambiguity somewhat.
Cloatius Verus – Ordinatorum Graecorum (The Order of the Greeks?) via Macrobius’s Saturnalia
Cloatius’s work has not survived, but he is referenced in the Saturnalia by Macrobius. Volume three, chapter XIX opens with a discussion on the considered difference between nuts and apples. Here’s the Latin version, via Bill Thayer’s Website:
“Sunt de agricultura scriptores qui nuces et mala sic dividunt ut nuces dicant omne pomum quod foris duro tegatur et intus habeat quod esui est, malum vero quod foris habeat quod est esui et durum intus includat.”
And the translated version, via ChatGPT:
“There are agricultural writers who divide nuts and apples in this way: they call any fruit a nut that is covered externally by a hard shell and contains something edible inside; an apple, on the other hand, is that which has something edible on the outside and encloses something hard inside.”
This is an interesting take on the opinion of the day, and perhaps help to explain the use of the “mala” prefix for so many fruits that we wouldn’t consider to be “apples” today, such as citrons, peaches, pomegranates etc. and it’s worth noting that Macrobius used the apple-specific term “malorum” rather than the more general “pomum” here, so he was talking about “apples”, not “pome fruits”.
The next section of the Saturnalia references a list of apple varieties according to Cloatius:
“His praemissis malorum enumeranda sunt genera, quae Cloatius in Ordinatorum Graecorum libro quarto ita diligenter enumerat: Sunt autem genera malorum: Amerinum cotonium citreum coccymelum conditivum ἐπιμηλὶς musteum Mattianum orbiculatum gratianum praecox pannuceum Punicum Persicum Quirianum prosivum rubrum Scaudianum silvestre struthium Scantianum tibur Verianum. Vides Persicum a Cloatio inter mala numeratum, quod nomen originis suae tenuit, licet iam dudum nostri soli germen sit.”
And the ChatGPT translation:
“With this established, the types of apples must be enumerated, which Cloatius lists so diligently in the fourth book of Ordinatorum Graecorum. The types of apples are as follows: Amerinum, Cotoneum, Citreum, Coccymelum, Conditivum, Epimelis, Musteum, Mattianum, Orbiculatum, Ogratianum, Praecox, Pannuceum, Punicum, Persicum, Quirianum, Prosivum, Rubrum, Scaudianum, Silvestre, Struthium, Scantianum, Tibur, and Verianum. You see that the Persicum is included among apples by Cloatius, as it retains the name of its origin, even though it has long been a product of our own soil.”
Some of the variety names above are familiar from Varro and Columella. Others are clearly some of the “apples” discussed above. Others are potentially new varieties of actual apple. Again, rather than re-work the main list here, I’ll save the detail for the main summary section at the end of the article.
Pliny the Elder – Naturalis Historia (Natural History) c.77 CE
Pliny had a lot to say on the subject of fruit. Book XV of Naturalis Historia is devoted to fruit trees, opening with an eight chapter discussion of olives and oil production. Then in chapters IX to VXII we find a wide-ranging discussion of ‘Other Fruit Trees’, that covers many different types of fruit, from pine cones to pears.
Chapter X, via the 1938 Rackham edition, covers quinces in detail:
“His proxima amplitudine mala quae vocamils cotonea et Graeci cydonea ex Creta insula advecta. incurvatos trahunt ramos prohibentque crescere parentem. plura eorum genera : chrysomela incisuris distincta colore ad aurum inchnato, qui candidior nostratia cognominat, odoris praestantissimi. est et Neapolitanis suus honos. minora ex eodem genere struthea odoratius vibrant, serotino proventu, praecoci vero mustea. strutheis autem cotonea insita suum genus fecere Mulvianum, quae sola ex his vel cruda manduntur, iam et virorum salutatoriis cubiculis inclusa ac simulacris noctium consciis inposita. sunt praeterea parva silvestria, e strutheis odoratissima et in saepibus nascentia.”
The translation from the same edition reads:
“The fruit next to these [pine cones, in previous section] in size is the one that we call the quince and the Greeks cydoneum, which was introduced from the island of Crete. This fruit drags down the boughs in a curve and checks the growth of the parent tree. There are several kinds of quinces : the ‘golden apple’ is cleft with incisions and has a colour verging on gold, a brighter tinge of which gives a name to our native quince, and has an exquisite scent. The Naples quince is also highly esteemed. The smaller variety of the same kind, the sparrow-apple, gives out a rather pungent smell, and ripens late, whereas the must quince ripens very early. Grafting the ordinary quince on the sparrow-apple has produced a special kind, the Mulvian quince, which is the only one of the quinces that is eaten even raw ; these at the present day are kept shut up in gentlemen’s reception-rooms, and are placed on the statues that share our nights with us. There is also a small wild quince, the scent of which is the most powerful next to that of the sparrow-apple and which grows in the hedges.”
The ‘sparrow-apple’ is still around, as ‘chrysomela’, but ‘cotonea’ now seems to refer to quinces in general, rather than a particular type or variety. There are also two new high-quality varieties, the ‘Neapolitanis’ and ‘Mulvianum’14, as well as a highly-scented, small, wild quince, “parva silvestria”.
Chapter XI offers a discussion of various types of peaches, pomegranates, pears and nectarines, which, according to Pliny, via Rackham:
“We give the name of apples, although they really belong to a different kind, to peaches and to pomegranates, of which we have specified nine kinds among the trees of Carthage … one variety of pear called the pound pear asserts by its name the largeness of its weight. But the palm among peaches belongs to the nectarine : the Gallic and the Asiatic varieties are named after their nationalities.”
Chapters XII and XIII cover “a vast crowd of plums”, and include descriptions of the “barley-plum”, “donkey-plum”, “wax-plum” and more, as well as the “Damascena”, or damson, “named from Damascus in Syria”15, and the “myxae”, or Assyrian plum.
Then, in chapters XIV and XV Pliny mentions several “apple” varieties, although once again, some of them are fruits that might not be considered apples per se.
I’ll skip the Latin this time, but here’s the text of chapter XIV as translated by Rackham:
“XIV. Of the apple class there are a number of varieties. We have spoken of citrons when describing the citron-tree ; the Greeks, however, call them ‘Medic apples’, after their native country. Equally foreign are the jujube-tree and the tuber-apple, which themselves have only recently come into Italy, the former from Africa and the latter from Syria. Sextus Papinius, who was consul in our own day, introduced each of them in the last years of the principate of his late Majesty Augustus, having grown them in his camp from slips ; the fruit is more like a berry than an apple, but the trees make a particularly good decoration for terraces – as nowadays we have whole forests of vegetation growing even over the roofs of our houses. There are two kinds of tuber-apple, the white and the red Syrian, so called from its colour. The fruit called wool-fruit, growing in the district of Verona but nowhere else in Italy, is virtually an exotic ; it is covered with a woolly down, which grows also in very large quantities on the sparrow-quince and the peach, but which has given its name to this fruit in particular as it has no other remarkable property to recommend it.
Here, all apparently classified as “apples”, we have the ‘Medic apple’, which is actually a citron; the jujube-tree, Ziziphus jujuba, or red date, which was introduced to Italy from Africa, according to Rackham; two kinds of “tuber-apple”16, and the wool-fruit, which is apparently similar in appearance to sparrow-quince and peach, which means it must be covered in downy fuzz, but it has “no other remarkable property to recommend it”.
The Perseus Digital Library edition of Naturalis Historia is perhaps more helpful in adding both context and detail to this chapter. For a start, translator John Bostock gives the chapter title as being on the theme of “pomes” rather than apples specifically. This makes more sense from a botanical perspective, as apples are a type of pome fruit, but not all pome fruits are apples.
Bostock also provides a few helpful footnotes: the ‘Medic apple’ is given as “Medica” instead, indicating “of Media”, once a region of north-west Iran in the Persian Empire; the jujube is “Zizyphus vulgaris of Lamarck17“; the tuber-apple is “A variety of the jujube, Fée18 is inclined to think. A nut-peach19 has also been suggested.”; and as for the wool-fruit: “a variety of quince, Fée thinks. Pliny probably had never seen this fruit, in his opinion, and only speaks after Virgil”.
Back to the Rackham translation for the general gist of Chapter XV:
“XV. Why should I hesitate to indicate by name the remaining varieties of fruit, seeing that they have prolonged the memory of those who established them for all time, as though on account of some outstanding achievement in life? Unless I am mistaken, the recital will reveal the ingenuity exercised in grafting, and will show that nothing is so trifling as to be incapable of producing celebrity. Well then, there are kinds of fruit that have their origin from Matius and Cestius, from Mallius, and likewise from Scaudius ; and on the last a member of the Claudian family named Appius grafted the quince, producing the fruit called Appian ; this has the smell of a quince, the size of a Scaudian apple, and a ruddy colour. And in order that nobody may imagine that it has gained its position by influence due to distinction and family, there is also a Sceptian apple named from a freedman who discovered it, which is remarkable for its round shape. Cato also mentions a Quirnian apple, and a Scantian which he says is stored in casks. But the apple naturalized here most recently of all is a small one with a most agreeable flavour named the Petisian. The Amerian and the Little Greek apples have advertised their places of origin, but all the rest have derived their name from definite reasons – ‘twin’ apples from their attachment of relationship, as they never grow singly, the ‘Syrian red’ from its colour, the pear-apple from its affinity ; the must-apple was named from its quickness in ripening, but is now called the honey-apple from its honey flavour ; the round apple from its shape, which forms an exact sphere – the Greeks, who call this apple the Epirotic apple, prove that it was first produced in Epirus ; the orthomastium (Greek for ‘erect teat’) is so called from its resemblance to a teat, and the eunuch apple of the Belgians is named from its having no pips. The leaf-apple has a single leaf, or occasionally a pair of leaves, sprouting out from the middle of its side ; the the ragged-apple very quickly shrivels up into wrinkles ; the lung-apple swells in a solid lump. Some apples are of the colour of blood, because they derive their origin from a graft of the mulberry ; but all apples are red in the parts that have been turned towards the sun. There are also wild apples with little attraction of flavour and an even sharper scent ; their special faulty is that of horrible sourness, and it is so powerful that it will blunt the edge of a sword. Another apple is named ‘flour-apple’, a very bad kind, although it is the earlies to come on and hastens to be picked.”
Both the Rackham and Bostock translations agree that the purpose of this chapter is to name and describe the other, or remaining, varieties of fruit.
The first few in the list, we’re told, are named after people whose main claim to fame is that they grafted a new variety of apple: thus apples named after ‘Matius’, ‘Cestius’, and ‘Mallius’ – all Roman gens, or family names – and also ‘Scaudius’, although Bostock has this variety as ‘Scandius’20 instead, and adds in a footnote that “The Scandian is thought to have been a winter pear”. We’re also told that someone called Appius grafted a quince on a ‘Scaudian’ apple to create one known as the ‘Appian’ – which would make a lot more sense if the Scaudian / Scandian was a pear, not an apple, as the graft would be much more likely to be compatible – and that the ‘Sceptian’ is named for a freedman, or ex-slave, or in Bostock’s translation, the son of a freedman.
Other pomes, the latest varieties to have been introduced to Italy in Pliny’s day, are named for various places: the ‘Petisian’ (Bostock: “Hardouin21 says that this is the “Pomme d’api” of the French; it is the “Court-pendu” with Adrian Junius.”), the ‘Amerinian’ (Bostock: “The ‘Pomme de Saint Thomas’, according to Adrian Junius: Dalechamps identifies it with the ‘pomme de Granoi’.”) and the ‘little Greek’ (Bostock: “‘Græcula.’ So called, perhaps, from Tarentum, situated in Magna Græcia.”).
Then there is a list of apples named for their physical characteristics or the circumstances in which they grow: ‘gemella’, or ‘twins’, which always grow in pairs; ‘syricum’, from its colour (Bostock: “[The] ‘red’ apple. The red calville of the French, according to Hardouin; the Pomme suzine, according to Dalechamps.”); ‘melapium’ or ‘pear-apple’ (Bostock: “The Girandotte of the French; the appel-heeren of the Dutch.”); ‘musteum’ or ‘melimela’ (Bostock: “The “early ripener.” Dalechamps identifies it with the pomme Saint Jean, the apple of St. John.”), which re-established that connection between the two; the spherical ‘orbiculatum’, the teat-shaped ‘orthomasticum’, the pip-less ‘spadonium’ of the Belgæ (Bostock: “Or eunuch. The Passe pomme, or Pomme grillotte of the French.”); the single-leaved ‘melofolium’ (Bostock: “Or ‘leaf apple.’ Fée remarks that this occasionally happens, but the apple does not form a distinct variety.”); the rapidly-shrivelling ‘pannuceum’ (Bostock: “The Pomme pannete, according to Dalechamps: the Pomme gelée of Provence.”); and the ‘pulmoneum’ (Bostock: “Or ‘lung’ apple. The Pomme folane, according to Dalechamps.”).
Finally, Pliny mentions blood-red apples, whose colour he says is due to their being grafted on the mulberry, which is botanically doubtful; small, wild apples with a particularly pungent smell; incredibly sour apples, without a specific name; and then “mealy” early apples that should be gathered and eaten as soon as possible.
There are quite a few additions here to the previously known varieties. Once again, rather than re-work the main list, I’ll save all that detail for the main summary section.
Palladius, Opus Agriculturae (On Agriculture) a.k.a. De re rustica c. 400 CE (?)
Unfortunately, in the poetic Opus Agriculturae, Palladius doesn’t provide us with a list of the apple varieties that were still popular in his day, some 320 or so years after Pliny the Elder. Instead, in a section of the text headed ‘de Melo22‘ he opts for a classic cop-out, one that was to be employed by numerous pomological writers in later years:
“eorum plura sunt genera, quae numerare superfluum est”
According to Rev. Barton Lodge’s Palladius on Husbondrie (1873-79), the middle English translation of this phrase is:
“Her kyndes forto write I wol not waste.
And the 1898 Schmitt revision of Opes Agriculturae, run through Google Translate, gives it as:
“There are many kinds of them, which it is unnecessary to enumerate.”
In other words, Palladius was far too busy to waste his time on listing apple varieties. Although he did subsequently mention one variety by name. In verse 128 of that middle English version we find:
“The meles rounde, ycalde orbicular,
Withouten care a yere may keped be.”
According to Lodge, this means: “The round apples, called orbicular, keep well for a year”. Schmitt’s revision gives the original Latin phrase as:
“mela rotunda, quae orbiculata dicuntur, since cura toto anno seruare se possunt”
Google Translate suggests that this means something along the lines of: “round apples, which are called round, since they can be kept all year round”, and Google also translates the word “orbiculata” alone as “circular”; either version clearly links ‘orbiculata’ back to various earlier references: Cato’s “orbiculates“, Columella’s “globe apple”, and Pliny the Elder’s “round apple”.
Palladius also mentions ‘Malo punico’ a.k.a. pomegranate, some sort of bifurcated apple to which he doesn’t apply a name, and talks about making both pear wine and “Liquamen Castimoniall”; most likely a salt-fermented, and possibly non-alocholic pear liquor that could potentially have been used as a food seasoning or condiment by those who preferred it to garum – the obligatory ancient Roman fermented fish sauce – or, as suggested by Edith Evans, those who couldn’t use garum in various religious ceremonies and so had to opt for a non-fish alternative.
That’s everything I’ve been able to glean from the ancient Roman writers themselves. But in the course of my research I’ve come across references to numerous later works that translated and interpreted these original sources, and some of their authors asserted links between ancient Roman apple varieties and the current varieties of their day. I think it would be a good idea to take a look at a few of these later sources and see what they can add to the story.
Later Sources – The Renaissance and Beyond
The works of the ancient Roman writers mentioned above would have had a massive influence on later pomological scholars, particularly during the Renaissance era. As I understand the situation, the rediscovery of many classical era works in the medieval era, mostly via the scholars of the Arabic world, made books that had previously been lost to Christendom available once again.
As a result, during what has been called the Scientific Revolution and European Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the inherited wisdom of Classical Greece and Rome, along with the Bible, seems to have become the basis for a great many schools of thought in Western learning.
This state of affairs apparently continued until the dawn of the Enlightenment era, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when scholars sought to establish new, more modern modes of scientific enquiry, many of the classical ideas were challenged, and new paradigms of knowledge and methods of enquiry were established.
Here is an example of a passage of pomological prose, written during the Renaissance era, that clearly draws from the works of those ancient Roman writers:
“There are such sundry sortes of Apples, differing both in shape and savour, as are scarcely to be numbered. In the olde time the chiefest Apples were Septians, very great and rounde, Martians, Claudians, Matians, and Appians so called of their first founders : some againe tooke their names of their Countries, as Camerians, and Grecians : so others of their colours, as redde, sanguine, silken, and golden. We have at this day that are cheefe in price the Pippen, the Romet, the Pomeroyal, the Marligold, with a great number of others, that were too long to speake of.”
This quote is from Foure Bookes of Husbandry … Newly Englished, and Increased (1586 edtn), in which Barnabe Googe translated Konrad Heresbach‘s Rei Rusticae Libri Quatuor (Four Books of Rural Matters) (1570), the Latin original of which can be found at Archive.org.
On closer examination it seems that in the passage above Googe’s translation wanders away from the Heresbach original, no doubt when Googe decided to add one of his increasements to the text. Whereas Googe broke off from listing ancient Roman apples to talk about the varieties of his day that are “cheefe in price”, a comparison with the 1570 edition of Heresbach shows that the original author continued to list various types of Roman-era apples in a manner that is highly familiar. In fact, unless I’m much mistaken, Heresbach seems to have copied large sections from Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia pretty much word-for-word.
Other Renaissance-era scholars sought to match up those ancient Roman fruit varieties with some of the well-known apples of their day. One name that cropped up a few times in the footnotes in John Bostock’s translation of Pliny’s Naturalis Historia was “Dalechamps”, a.k.a. Jacques Daléchamps, who in 1586 produced his Historia Generalis Plantarum. In liber tertius of that work Daléchamps discussed fruit trees and made constant reference to the classical sources. In doing so he mentioned some of the Roman apples that we’ve already encountered, via the styli of Cato, Columella and Pliny the Elder, and added some new ones besides, then proceeded to equate some of them with sixteenth century apple varieties, such as:
‘Petitia’ = ‘Apioles’
‘Serica’ = ‘Suzine’
‘Piris’ = ‘Giraudette’, ‘Pommepoire’
‘Mustea’ / ‘Melimela’ = ‘Pomme de Sainct Jean’
‘Orbiculata’ = ‘Pomme Rose’
‘Orthomastica’ = ‘Pomme Taponne’
‘Belgae’ = ‘Pomme Grillate’, ‘Pomme de passepomme’
‘Pannucea’ = ‘Panettes’
‘Pulmonea’ = ‘Pommes follanes’
An even earlier source is De Natura Stirpium Libri Tres (Three Books on the Nature of Plants) (1536) by Jean Ruel (a.k.a. Ioannes Ruellius / Ruellio), book III of which contains a lengthy entry on Malus. I can spot a few familiar variety names in the text, but I’m afraid I was rather defeated by the density of the Latin. From what I was able to unpick, whilst Ruel discussed varieties of apples mentioned by the ancient Roman writers including Cato and Cloatius, and then described some of the popular varieties of his day, he doesn’t seem to have made any explicit links between the two.
It’s also important to bear in mind that it would be practically impossible to prove whether or not Daléchamps, or any other author of the period, was making a statement of accepted fact when equating Roman-era apple varieties to those of their time, or simply expressing their own, or a commonly-held, opinion; a point I’ll come back to in the main conclusions section.
As the Scientific Revolution and Renaissance had given way to the Age of Enlightenment, so the latter was superseded, in England at least, by the more scientifically rigorous and deeply inquisitive era of the nineteenth century Victorian-era pomologists. One of the greatest of these was surely Dr. Robert Hogg, author of some of the most highly-regarded pomological reference works of the nineteenth century. I don’t think it would be right to look into the concept of classical apple varieties, and the idea that they might have continued down to the present day, without seeing what this notable gentleman had to say on the subject.
The following passage is from pages 2-4 of the introduction to Hogg’s British Pomology (1851), in which he discussed the history of the apple in general, and of the apple’s presence in, and importance to, the British Isles in particular:
“Some authors have ascribed the introduction of the apple into this country to the Romans, and others to the Normans ; in both cases however, without any evidence or well grounded authority. Mr Loudon23 says, “The apple was in all probability introduced into Britain by the Romans, as well as the pear ; and like that fruit, perhaps, re-introduced by the heads of religious houses on their establishment, after the introduction of christianity”. It is more probable that it has existed as an indigenous tree throughout all ages, and that the most ancient varieties were accidental variations of the original species, with which the forests abounded.”
After providing a few paragraphs of evidence for the existence and cultivation of apples in pre-Roman Britain, Hogg goes on to say:
“It would be too much to say that all the varieties cultivated at an early period, were indigenous to this country ; many no doubt were introduced at the Norman conquest, and it is probable that in the middle ages some varieties were introduced from the continent, by members of the different religious houses which then existed, who not unfrequently had personal intercourse with France, and who devoted considerable attention to horticulture ; but there is every reason to believe that the earliest varieties were native productions. The oldest works which treat on the cultivation of fruits, afford little or no information as to these early varieties. In some ancient documents of the twelfth century we find the Pearmain and Costard mentioned, but the horticultural works of the period are too much occupied with the fallacies and nonsense which distinguish those of the Roman agricultural writers, to convey to us any knowledge of the early pomology of this country.”
In other words, it seems that Hogg would have been much happier if medieval and Renaissance writers had spent more time listing the native British varieties of apple and pear, rather than endlessly recycling and re-writing the works of the classical authors, which he seems to have held in scant regard.
Which rather begs a question: have I, in the course of this article and like those horticultural writers of earlier times, just been chasing down nothing more than, in Hogg’s words, “the fallacies and nonsense which distinguish those of the Roman agricultural writers”?
Personally, I think Hogg is being a little too harsh there. He’s clearly an extremely knowledgeable and erudite scholar of both pomology and the Classics. Perhaps he read and translated the original sources for himself and, realising that some of those ancient Roman authors’ works included elements of ritual and mysticism in their advice on how to graft, plant and grow fruit trees, he concluded that all their writing on the subject must therefore be fallacious and nonsensical.
Having looked as closely at the ancient Roman source material as I have though, I don’t see any reason to conclude that the fruit varieties listed by the likes of Cato, Columella and Pliny weren’t the varieties that were highly renowned in their day. Or at least in someone’s day, even if later writers had repeated earlier references without taking current availability into account.
Rather, I think it’s the assumed links between those ancient Roman apple varieties and those of the sixteenth century, as asserted by the likes of Daléchamps and company, that are on shakier ground. These seem to me to be little more than expressions or repetitions of somewhat wishful opinions, rather than demonstrable, evidence-backed facts. There’s no chain of evidence – no records of orchards planted, varieties grafted, continuation ensured – that would strengthen the case for the longevity of any supposedly ancient Roman apples.
After all that, where are we with regards to actual Roman apple varieties? How likely is it that any of them could have survived to the modern day, particularly the two varieties I used as examples at the start of the article?
For the full story of my investigations into the heritage of ‘Decio’ and ‘Court Pendu Plat’, please see: Ancient Roman Apple Varieties – Modern-Day Survivors?
To jump ahead to a list of ancient Roman apple and quince varieties, and a shorter overview of my ‘Decio’ / ‘Court Pendu Plat’ research, please see: Ancient Roman Apple Varieties – Summary and Conclusions.
Footnotes
- Eytmonline.com has an interesting entry on the word ‘pome‘: “Late Latin or Vulgar Latin *poma ‘apple,’ originally plural of Latin pomus ‘fruit,’ later ‘apple'” and also Pomona, which quotes (Michiel?) de Vaan’s opinion that ‘pomum’ is: “Possibly from *po-emo- ‘taken off, picked’; *po-omo- or *pe-omo- are also conceivable”. ↩︎
- Described on Wikipedia as “a rambling work on agriculture, rituals, and recipes”. ↩︎
- This date is according to H. Frederic Janson, Pomona’s Harvest: An Illustrated Chronicle of Antiquarian Fruit Literature (1996) p. 17, and although other scholars date it slightly differently, most the estimates I’ve seen all seem to be within a few years. ↩︎
- A type of poetic metre. ↩︎
- As I’ve already admitted, I’m not even vaguely fluent in Latin, so I might be wrong, but skim-reading what seemed to be the relevant passages didn’t turn up any variety names that I recognised from elsewhere ↩︎
- The definite identity of the author is unknown, but it is usually ascribed to Columella. ↩︎
- This work details the planting, propagation and general care of vines, olives and assorted pome fruits, without mentioning any varieties. ↩︎
- The date is according to H. Frederic Janson in Pomona’s Harvest: An Illustrated Chronicle of Antiquarian Fruit Literature (1996). ↩︎
- The little that is known can be found in this article at Cambridge.org. ↩︎
- Hooper and Ash also translated and edited this volume, but honestly, you can’t expect them to remember and/or cross-reference every single detail. ↩︎
- Perhaps an example of ancient Roman re-branding? ↩︎
- Bearing in mind that a number of Latin scholars have argued that there was most likely very little punctuation in ancient Latin texts and that most commas would have been added according to the conventions of later transcribers and translators. ↩︎
- In a side-note on the ‘volaema’ pear, the translators say: “Vergil, Georg. 88. Servius derives the name from vola and says it means ‘hand-filler’.” Which suggests a particularly large pear, hence perhaps the editor’s association with the Warden, a class of very large, long-storing, culinary pears that used to be hugely popular in England. ↩︎
- The latter of which was apparently used as an air-freshener in night-time bedrooms. ↩︎
- The text adds; “it has been grown in Italy for a long time, though it has a larger stone and less flesh here than in its country of origin, and here it never dries into wrinkles, because it lacks its native sunshine.” ↩︎
- The Wikipedia entry on Sextus Papinius claims the ‘tuber-apple’ is a type of crab-apple, although sadly without and corroborating evidence. ↩︎
- Presumably Jean-Baptise Lamarck’s Flore Francoise (1778) ↩︎
- French botanist Antoine Laurent Apollinaire Fée. ↩︎
- Possibly an almond? ↩︎
- Neither ‘Scaudius’ nor ‘Scandius’ are listed as Roman nomina, but there is a ‘Scantius’, as mentioned earlier. It’s possible that the ‘Scaudian’ / ‘Scandian’ is a result of mis-reading ‘Scantian’, although Varro did mention both varieties separately, so perhaps not. ↩︎
- Probably the French classicist Jean Hardouin. ↩︎
- According to etymonline.com, ‘melo’ is related to ‘malic’, and both terms come from Greek mēlon (Doric malon). ↩︎
- John Claudius Loudon, Scottish botanist and author of numerous horticultural works. ↩︎