Book 2
13
The country abounds in flowers and plants of all kinds, -cultivated and otherwise. Lucian makes a villainous pun here, contrasting hemeros (cultivated) with skieros (fond of darkness), as if the former word meant-‘fond of daylight.’ (hemera)! The grape-vines yield twelve vintages a year, bearing every month; the pomegranates, apples and other fruit-trees were said to bear thirteen times a year, for in one month, their Minoan, they bear twice. Instead of wheat-ears, loaves of bread all baked grow on the tops of the halms, so that they Jook like mushrooms. In the neighbourhood of the city there are three handed and sixty-five springs of water, as many of honey, five hundred of myrrh—much smaller, however—seven rivers of milk and eight of wine.
