Gardens as Public Place: Pliny and the Renaissance Garden

The Greeks were a gregarious and town-loving people with a strong communal sense; they were gossipers, interminable debaters, like all democrats much more interested in every-body else's affairs than their own, a people whose public life was more important than their private. They talked in the streets, they talked in the market-place, and eventually they developed gardens in which to talk. They were also much given to competitive athletics, and those two sides to their character they succeeded in satisfying in one spot which contained the essential features of a sports arena, a temple, and a coffee-house. The names of several such places are in common use among us today. Academies and Lyceums, although they are nowadays schools or places of learning, were originally rather more than that. We have no plan of the original Academy, but we know its history, which is typical of many of the gymnasiums scattered throughout the Greek world. It was at first the shrine or sacred grove dedicated to an obscure hero, Academus, in whose honour games were played. The games themselves were a religious occasion, but competitive games require frequent practice, so it became the custom to exercise and train in the grove. Here gossiping Athenians found something to watch and criticize while they idled in the shade of the sacred trees. Seats were provided for the spectators and a covered walk for bad weather. A building in which the games could be played under cover if necessary was the next step. Baths followed. Other neighbouring sites and shrines were absorbed; other games honoured other heroes or even the high gods themselves; Heracles, Hermes, Hephaestus, Prometheus and Zeus had their occasions. In this public spot the philosophers held their conversations. Here Plato at first taught, and when later he moved his school on to a piece of ground which he owned adjoining the gymnasium he still called it the Academy. We have in all this not only the beginning of public parks with their treed walks, their seats and central games-playing area, but we have a nucleus of public facilities that form a sort of social centre. In the gymnasium at Athens there was the Museum; in that at Syracuse the Odeon. The Greeks had a genius for synthesis and such a place as the Academy became Hyde Park Corner, Regent's Park, the Festival Hall, the British Museum, the White City and Westminster Abbey, all in one. The sacred origin never disappeared entirely although only the aura created by its material impedimenta remained. The original shrine contained perhaps a tomb, a statue, or a funerary urn.