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Bible Encyclopedias
Amaranth
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or or Amarant (from the Gr. a uipavros, unwithering), a name chiefly used in poetry, and applied to certain plants which, from not soon fading, typified immortality.
Thus Milton (Paradise Lost, iii. 353) "Immortal amarant, a flower which once In paradise, fast by the tree of life, Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows, And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life, And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven Rolls o'er elysian flowers her amber stream: With these that never fade the spirits elect Bind their resplendent locks." It should be noted that the proper spelling of the word is amarant; the more common spelling seems to have come from a hazy notion that the final syllable is the Greek word civOos, " flower," which enters into a vast number of botanical names. The plant genus Amarantus (natural order Amarantaceae) contains several well-known garden plants, such as love-liesbleeding (A. caudatus), a native of India, a vigorous hardy annual, with dark purplish flowers crowded in handsome drooping spikes. Another species A. hypochondriacus, is prince's feather, another Indian annual, with deeply-veined lanceshaped leaves, purple on the under face, and deep crimson flowers densely packed on erect spikes. "Globe amaranth" belongs to an allied genus, Gomphrena, and is also a native of India. It is an annual about 18 in. high, with solitary round heads of flowers; the heads are violet from the colour of the bracts which surround the small flowers.
In ancient Greece the amaranth (also called xpvaavOquov and EXixpvvos) was sacred to Ephesian Artemis. It was supposed to have special healing properties, and as a symbol of immortality was used to decorate images of the gods and tombs. In legend, Amarynthus (a form of Amarantus) was a hunter of Artemis and king of Euboea; in a village of Amarynthus, of which he was the eponymous hero, there was a famous temple of Artemis Amarynthia or Amarysia (Strabo x. 448; Pausan.
i. 3 1, P� 5).
See Lenz, Botanik der alt. Griech. and Rom. (1859); J. Murr, Die Pflanzenwelt in der griech. Mythol. (1890).
These files are public domain.
Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Amaranth'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/a/amaranth.html. 1910.
