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Man Made Hills With Gardens:
Pliny and the Renaissance Garden
When these mud houses collapse, as they not
infrequently do, it is the custom to build the
successor on top of the heap of rubble. The mud-buildings
of western Asia have been climbing upon the shoulders
of their dead selves to higher things for so
many thousands of years that they have now buried
ancient Babylon under a formidable mountain of
mud over a hundred feet high. Garden mounts of
not very dissimilar form are recorded from places
as far apart as ancient China and fifteenth-century
America. If there is a common source, as there
may be, it is very remote. The idea behind the
artificial hills of Babylon, China and America
seems only to be that the abode of the gods is
in high places. There is no direct line of continuity
between the hanging gardens of Persia and the
much smaller man-made hills of the Middle Ages
in Europe; it is a case of quite different circumstances
giving rise to similar results. In the protracted
time of troubles the ruins of the ancient Roman epistyles
made admirable defensive areas on
the lines of a stockade. Bulwarks of earth were
often thrown up against the inner sides of the
walls to strengthen them and give the advantage
of height to the defenders. Sometimes in order
to provide a look-out tower a central mound of
earth was built also. The mount itself remained
for long after its protective role was outdated,
and it continued to be copied in gardens which
had never themselves been part of a system of
defense: The association of man-made hills with
gardens has significance more important than
the interest of their origin. They are a sign
that the Middle Ages were trying to look beyond
the protective walls behind which, physically,
spiritually, and intellectually, the Christian
West had succeeded in preserving itself alive.
Once the protective walls were down the Middle
Ages were at an end and the sensual world without
limit stretched out invitingly. The fortress
slowly became a villa; the view became more important
than the wall.
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