Hebe, daughter of the King’s gardener, had been warned that all the plants in the garden were poisonous. She often played among the statues and fountains, but she never ate any of the berries.
[King Attalus] commendably affected plantations of venomous vegetables - Sir Thomas Browne, The Garden of Cyrus.
Hebe, daughter of the King’s gardener, had been warned that all the plants in the garden were poisonous. She often played among the statues and fountains, but she never ate any of the berries.
King Attalus used to wander there, burdened with matters of state. People complained of the number of guards the Roman ambassador had brought with him. They said the Romans were poison because they wanted to take over the kingdom, but then they complained also about the barbarian armies threatening the borders. King Attalus used to sit under the willow tree by the waterfall, and gaze at the purple nightshade, the flower of death that grew everywhere like a weed.
There Hebe would come and talk to him, because she felt he ought to be happy, as she was.
“Aren’t all the flowers pretty?” she would say, and he would nod his heavy head in agreement.
One day she smiled, and stretching out her arms to take in all the garden, she asked: “A garden of venomous vegetables. Why?”
He picked a henbane flower. “This is for pains in the stomach,” he said. “Too much will kill, but a little will ease.”
“What about this one?” she asked, bringing him the cheerful feverfew like a bunch of daisies.
“It gives ulcers in the mouth;” he replied, “but a little is good for pains in the head.”
Then she picked the black hellebore. “This is the strangest flower I ever saw,” she remarked, holding his gaze with her childish eyes.
“That too can kill,” he said; “but a little is good for pains in the heart.”
Years went by, and Hebe fell in love with a Roman guard. Her father was shocked and forbade the match, but at Hebe’s entreaty King Attalus approved it, so there was nothing the gardener could do. On the day of the wedding, King Attalus provided hundreds of white roses still with their thorns. On his own cloak he pinned one black hellebore. Everyone was happy, and King Attalus wept freely.
When later he died, the people found that the kingdom was cured of barbarians, for King Attalus in his will had given everything to the Roman Empire.
copyright Martin Dace 2002