Giovanni Gioviano Pontano: De Hortis Hesperidum (Book II)

This second book of Giovanni Gioviano Pontano’s didactic poem on citrus cultivation turns to the different kinds of citrus. The poet announces that the first part is finished and that he is called to other labours of the garden, since the offspring of the Hesperides are not of one kind: the whole family of citrus is divided into many sorts under new names, which bear different fruits on different stocks. He invokes the Pleiades and the Muses of gardens, and his own dead family, praying that roses bloom on the tomb of Virgil. Later passages lament the cruel fate that has driven a friend through foreign peoples and the kingdoms of France.

Pontano combines precise horticultural knowledge with mythological ornament and personal feeling, and the poem’s references to exile and loss reflect the fall of the Aragonese dynasty of Naples, which Pontano had served, after the French invasions. The work stands with his Urania and Meteora among the major didactic poems of the Renaissance. The text follows the edition of B. Soldati (1902).