Publisher's Synopsis
In 1976, John Raven caused a stir in the University of Cambridge when he began his "Gray Lectures on Plants and Plant Lore in Ancient Greece" with a reappraisal of long-accepted identifications of ancient names for modern plants. He soon ranged to wider questions of classical botany, in myth, medicine and illustration, from the plants of Homer and Sappho, to Theophrastus and Theocritus, Hippocrates and Dioscorides. He examined Minoan art and the tulips of modern Crete. In a tour-de-force, he sought the very pool on Cos, where fair Hylas was snatched by waternymphs, to the dismay of Hercules.;John Raven's four Gray lectures are here presented with another he gave in Oxford in 1971, which is illustrated with photographs by Faith Raven. These lectures display John Raven's lifetime's intimacy with Greek plants on the ground. His themes are discussed and expanded in the light of recent research by distinguished and botanical and classical scholars: Dr William Stearn and Professors Nicholas Jardine and Peter Warren. Two related papers (one unpublished) by Alice Lindsell, a pioneer in the field, are included, and extracts from her "Botanical Sketchbook, made in Greece in 1930-31", are published among the abundant colour plates.
