AMARANTH, or Amarant (from the Gr. άμάραντος, 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 άνθος, “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-lies-bleeding (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 lance-shaped 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 χρυσάνθεμον and ἑλιχρυσος) 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. 31, p. 5).
See Lenz, Botanik der alt. Griech. und Röm. (1859); J. Murr, Die Pflanzenwelt in der griech. Mythol. (1890).