Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder: Letters, Panegyricus & Natural History
The Plainspoken Classics - Scriptorium Press (First Edition, 2026)
An original AI translation made directly from the source language.
https://openscriptorium.com

Translated from the Latin by Scriptorium Press, 2026 (483,567 Latin words, 712 batches): the Perseus text of the Letters, The Latin Library text of the Panegyricus, and Mayhoff’s Teubner text of the Natural History. Claude Sonnet 5.5 translation fleet; Claude Opus 5.5 referee audit of every batch against the Latin, with every finding ruled on and fixed; Claude Opus 5.5 arbitration, and translation of the opening and closing of every book and of the most-read letters (Vesuvius, 6.16 and 6.20; the haunted house, 7.27; the Christians, 10.96–97). Zero shared 8-word runs with earlier public-domain English translations (Melmoth and its revisions, Firth, Bostock and Riley, Holland). Numbers are given as the Latin reads; where the Latin is lost the English shows [….]. The number before each paragraph is its place in the edition: letter and section in the Letters (.0 is the greeting), chapter in the Panegyricus, section in the Natural History.


======== Letters — Book I ========

1.0| Pliny to his friend Septicius Clarus
1.1| You have often urged me to collect and publish any letters I had written with a little more care than usual. I have collected them, without keeping to the order of their dates — after all, I was not writing a history — but just as each one came to hand.
1.2| It remains for neither of us to regret it: you your advice, I my compliance. For the result will be that I shall hunt out the ones that still lie neglected, and if I add any more I shall not suppress them. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Maturus Arrianus
2.1| Since I foresee that your arrival will be later than I hoped, I am handing over the book I promised you in my earlier letters. Please read it and correct it, as you usually do — all the more because I do not think I have ever before written anything in quite the same spirit of emulation.
2.2| For I have tried to imitate Demosthenes, always your favorite, and Calvus, lately mine — at least in the figures of speech; for the force of such great men only "the few whom a just…" can attain.
2.3| Nor did the material itself — I am afraid it is immodest to say so — resist this rivalry: it consisted almost entirely of vigorous argument, which roused me from the sleep of a long idleness, if indeed I am the sort of man who can still be roused.
2.4| Yet I have not entirely shunned the paint-pots of our Marcus whenever some pleasant digression, not out of season, invited me to stray a little from the road; for I wanted to be sharp, not grim.
2.5| Do not suppose that I am asking for indulgence with this disclaimer. On the contrary, to make you ply your file all the harder, I will confess that both I and my companions are not averse to publishing it — provided only that you add your white pebble to our error.
2.6| For something certainly has to be published — and if only it might be this above all, since it is ready! You hear the wish of an idle man — and it has to be published for several reasons, chiefly because the little books I have already sent out are said to be still in people's hands, although they have now lost the charm of novelty; unless, that is, the booksellers are flattering my ears. But let them flatter, by all means, so long as this lie makes my studies more welcome to me. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Caninius Rufus
3.1| How is Comum, your darling and mine? How is that lovely villa on the edge of town, that colonnade where it is always spring, that densely shaded plane grove, that canal, green and sparkling like a jewel, that lake lying below and at your service, that drive, soft underfoot and yet firm, that bath which the sun floods and circles all day, those dining rooms for the crowd and those for the few, those bedrooms for the day and for the night? Do they have hold of you, and share you among themselves by turns?
3.2| Or are you, as you used to be, called away by constant trips to look after your estate? If they have hold of you, you are a happy and fortunate man; if not, you are "one of the many."
3.3| Why not — for it is time — hand over these low and petty cares to others, and claim yourself for your studies in that deep and fertile retreat of yours? Let this be your business and your leisure, your labor and your rest; let your waking hours, and even your sleep, be given to these.
3.4| Shape something, hammer something out, that will be yours forever. For all the rest of your possessions will fall to one master after another when you are gone; this, once it begins to be yours, will never cease to be yours.
3.5| I know what spirit, what talent I am urging on. Only make the effort to be worth as much in your own eyes as you will seem to others, if you are worth that much to yourself. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his mother-in-law Pompeia Celerina
4.1| What abundance there is at your houses at Ocriculum, at Narnia, at Carsulae, at Perusia — and at Narnia a bath besides! You can judge from my letters, for there is no need of yours any longer: that one short, old letter of yours is quite enough.
4.2| Upon my word, what is mine is not so much mine as what is yours; there is this difference, though, that your servants receive me with more care and attention than my own. The same thing will perhaps happen to you, if you ever stop at my places.
4.3| I wish you would, first so that you may enjoy my property just as I enjoy yours, and then so that my servants may wake up at last, for they await me with unconcern and almost carelessly.
4.4| With lenient masters, the servants' fear wears off through sheer familiarity; they are roused by new faces, and they work harder to win their masters' approval through others than through the masters themselves. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Voconius Romanus
5.1| Have you ever seen anyone more timid and more abject than Marcus Regulus since Domitian's death? Under him he had committed crimes no smaller than under Nero, only better hidden. He began to dread my anger, and he was right to: I was angry.
5.2| He had fanned the danger of Arulenus Rusticus and exulted at his death, so much so that he gave a public reading of a book, and published it, in which he assails Rusticus, and goes so far as to call him "the Stoics' monkey," adding "branded with the Vitellian scar" — you recognize Regulus' eloquence —
5.3| and he savages Herennius Senecio so immoderately that Mettius Carus said to him, "What business have you with my dead? Do I trouble Crassus or Camerinus?" — men whom Regulus had prosecuted under Nero.
5.4| Regulus believed that I had taken all this badly, and so he had not even invited me when he gave the reading. Besides, he remembered how murderously he had attacked me myself before the Centumviral Court.
5.5| I appeared for Arrionilla, wife of Timo, at the request of Arulenus Rusticus, with Regulus on the other side. In one part of the case we were relying on an opinion of Mettius Modestus, an excellent man; he was then in exile, relegated by Domitian. And here, look, Regulus says to me: "I ask you, Secundus, what you think of Modestus." You see the danger if I had answered "well," the disgrace if "badly." I can only say that on that occasion the gods stood by me. "I will answer," I said, "if the centumviri are going to give judgment on this." Again he said: "I ask what you think of Modestus."
5.6| Again I replied: "Witnesses have been accustomed to be questioned against defendants, not against men already condemned." A third time he said: "I no longer ask what you think of Modestus, but how you judge Modestus' loyalty."
5.7| "You ask what I think," I said; "but I do not consider it even right to put a question about a man on whom sentence has been pronounced." He fell silent; praise and congratulation followed me, because I had neither damaged my reputation by some answer that was perhaps useful but dishonorable, nor entangled myself in the snares of so treacherous a question.
5.8| So now, terrified by his conscience, he seizes upon Caecilius Celer, and then Fabius Iustus, and begs them to make peace between him and me. Not satisfied, he went on to Spurinna, and said to him in suppliant tones, as the most abject of men is when he is afraid: "I beg you to call on Pliny at his house in the morning, but really early in the morning - for I cannot bear the anxiety any longer - and by whatever means to see that he is not angry with me."
5.9| I had woken up; a message reached me from Spurinna: "I am on my way to you." "No, I am coming to you." We met in the portico of Livia, as each of us was heading toward the other. He lays out Regulus' instructions and adds his own entreaties, sparingly, as befitted an excellent man pleading for one so unlike himself. I said to him: "You must decide for yourself what you think should be reported back to Regulus.
5.10| It is not right that I should deceive you. I await Mauricus" - he had not yet come back from exile - "and therefore I cannot give you any answer one way or the other, since I shall do whatever he decides; for it is fitting that he be the leader in this plan and I the companion."
5.11| A few days later Regulus himself came up to me while I was attending on a praetor; he followed me there and asked for a private word. He said that he feared a remark he had once made in a centumviral trial, when replying to me and Satrius Rufus, remained lodged deep in my mind: "Satrius Rufus, who has no rivalry with Cicero and is content with the eloquence of our age."
5.12| I replied that I now understood it had been said with malice, because he himself admitted it, though it could otherwise have been thought a compliment. "For I do have a rivalry with Cicero," I said, "and I am not satisfied with the eloquence of our own age;
5.13| for I believe it is utterly foolish, when one is imitating, not to set before oneself the very best models. But you, who remember this trial, why have you forgotten the other, in which you put to me the question what I felt about the loyalty of Mettius Modestus?" He turned noticeably pale, although he is always pale, and said hesitantly: "I asked it not to harm you, but to harm Modestus." See the man's cruelty, who does not disguise that he wished to harm an exile.
5.14| He added a splendid reason: "He wrote," he said, "in a certain letter that was read out before Domitian: 'Regulus, the most worthless of all two-footed creatures'"; which Modestus had indeed written most truly.
5.15| This was more or less the end of our conversation; for I did not want to go further, so as to keep everything free for myself until Mauricus comes. Nor does it escape me that Regulus is "hard to pull down"; for he is rich, an intriguer, courted by many and feared by more, which is generally stronger than love.
5.16| Yet it can happen that these things, shaken, totter and fall; for the favor of bad men is as unreliable as they are themselves. But, to repeat myself, I await Mauricus. He is a serious, prudent man, schooled by many trials, and able to foresee the future from the past. With him as my guide I shall settle both what to attempt and when to keep quiet.
5.17| I have written this to you because it was right, given our mutual affection, that you should know not only all that I have done and said, but also my plans. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Tacitus
6.1| You will laugh, and you may laugh. I, the man you know, have caught three boars, and very fine ones too. "You yourself?" you say. Yes, myself; yet not so as to depart altogether from my idleness and quiet. I sat by the nets; beside me lay not a hunting spear or lance but a stylus and writing tablets; I was thinking something over and jotting it down, so that even if I brought back empty hands I would still bring back full wax tablets.
6.2| You have no reason to despise this kind of study; it is wonderful how the mind is roused by the stir and movement of the body; and all around, the woods and solitude and that very silence that is granted to hunting are great incitements to thought.
6.3| So when you hunt, you may, on my advice, carry tablets along with your bread basket and flask: you will find that Minerva roams the mountains no less than Diana. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Octavius Rufus
7.1| See to what height you have raised me, when you have given me the same power and the same kingship that Homer gave to Jupiter Best and Greatest: "To him the father gave one thing, but the other he refused."
7.2| For I too can answer your wish with a like nod and a like refusal. Indeed, just as it is right for me, especially at your demand, to excuse myself from appearing for the Baetici against one man, so it suits neither my good faith nor the steadfastness you value in me to appear against a province which I once bound to me by so many services, so many labors, even so many dangers of my own.
7.3| I shall therefore hold to this compromise: of the two things, one or the other of which you ask, I shall choose the one in which I satisfy not only your eagerness but also your judgment. For I need not consider so much what you, an excellent man, want at the moment, as what you will always approve.
7.4| I hope to be at Rome around the Ides of October, and to confirm these same things in person to Gallus, on your word and mine; but even now you may pledge to him my intention: "He spoke, and nodded with his dark brows."
7.5| For why should I not deal with you everywhere in Homeric verses? Since you will not allow me to deal with you in your own, for which I burn with such desire that I seem to myself able to be corrupted by this reward alone, so that I might even appear against the Baetici.
7.6| I almost passed over what should least of all have been passed over: that I received the excellent careotae, which now have to compete with figs and mushrooms. Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Pompeius Saturninus
8.1| Your letter was handed to me at a most opportune moment, in which you demanded that I send you something of my writings, when I had myself intended just that. So you have added spurs to a horse already running, and have removed both your excuse for refusing the labor and my shyness in demanding it.
8.2| For it is not fitting that I should use what has been offered with timidity, nor that you should object to what you yourself demanded. Still, you should not expect any new work from an idle man. What I am going to ask is that you give your attention once more to the speech which I delivered before my fellow townsmen when I was about to dedicate a library.
8.3| I remember, indeed, that you have already marked certain places, but in a general way; so now I ask that you attend not only to the whole of it but also go through its small parts with your usual file. For after the correction we shall be free either to publish or to hold it back.
8.4| Indeed, perhaps the method of correction itself will bring this very hesitation of ours down on one side or the other, since it will either find the speech unworthy of publication as it handles it over and over, or make it worthy by that very trial.
8.5| Though the causes of this hesitation of mine lie not so much in the writing as in the very kind of subject: for it is somewhat boastful, as it were, and lofty. This will burden our modesty, even if the style itself is restrained and low, because we are compelled to speak both of the generosity of our ancestors and of our own.
8.6| This is a precarious and slippery ground, even when necessity lends it charm. For if even the praises of others are usually received by ears not quite fair, how hard it is to ensure that a speech of someone discoursing about himself or his own people does not seem tiresome! For we begrudge honorable conduct itself, and rather more its renown and proclamation, and only those good deeds do we twist and carp at less that are laid away in obscurity and silence.
8.7| For this reason I often ask myself whether we ought to have composed this, whatever it is, for ourselves alone, or for others too. That it should be for ourselves, this consideration advises: that most things necessary for getting a matter done do not, once it is done, keep an equal usefulness or favor.
8.8| And, not to look for examples further afield, what was more useful than to follow the plan of a generous gift even with the pen? For by this we achieved, first, that we dwelt on honorable thoughts; next, that we saw their beauty through longer treatment; finally, that we guarded against regret, the companion of a sudden largess. From these there grew a certain training in despising money.
8.9| For while nature has constrained all men to guard it, a love of liberality, weighed at length and for a long time, released us from the common chains of avarice, and our generosity seemed likely to be the more praiseworthy because we were drawn to it not by some impulse but by deliberation.
8.10| To these reasons was added that we were promising not games or gladiators but an annual outlay for the maintenance of freeborn children. Moreover, the pleasures of the eyes and ears so little need recommendation that they ought not so much to be stirred up by a speech as held back;
8.11| but that someone should willingly undertake the weariness and labor of bringing up children must be won not only by rewards but also by carefully chosen exhortations.
8.12| For if doctors accompany healthy foods lacking in pleasure with rather soothing words, how much more fitting it was for one who advises the public to lead them with courteous speech to a most useful gift, though not equally popular? especially as we had to strive that what was given to parents should also be approved by the childless, and that the rest should both patiently wait for and deserve the honor of the few.
8.13| But as at that time we were more concerned for common advantages than for private boasting, since we wished the purpose and effect of our gift to be understood, so now, in the manner of publishing, we fear that we may seem to have served not the interests of others but our own praise.
8.14| Besides, we remember with how much greater spirit the fruit of honorable conduct is laid up in conscience than in reputation. For glory ought to follow, not be pursued, and if by some chance it does not follow, that which has deserved glory is not on that account any less beautiful.
8.15| But those who adorn their good deeds with words are believed to proclaim them not because they have done them but in order to proclaim that they have done them. So what would have been splendid if another reported it fades when the doer himself reviews it; for when men cannot destroy the deed, they attack the boasting about it. Thus, if you do things that should be kept silent, the deed itself is blamed; if you do not keep silent about things that deserve praise, you are blamed yourself.
8.16| But for me a certain particular consideration stands in the way. For I delivered this very speech not before the people but before the town councillors, and not in the open but in the council chamber.
8.17| I therefore fear it may not be quite consistent that, having shunned in speaking the flattery and acclamation of the crowd, I should now chase the same by publishing; and that, having kept the common people themselves, for whom the provision was made, apart by the threshold and walls of the council chamber, lest I fall into any appearance of canvassing, I should now go hunting, as though by open display, even for those whom our gift concerns in nothing except as an example.
8.18| You have the causes of my hesitation; nevertheless I shall follow your advice, whose authority will serve me in place of reason. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Minicius Fundanus
9.1| It is a marvel how in the city the account of each single day stands, or seems to stand, but of several days together does not.
9.2| For if you ask someone "What have you done today?", he would answer: "I attended a ceremony of the manly toga, I went to an engagement party or a wedding; this man asked me to witness the sealing of a will, that one to appear for him in court, another to a consultation."
9.3| These things, on the day you do them, seem necessary; the same things, if you reckon that you have done them every day, seem empty, much more so when you have gone away. For then the recollection comes: "How many days I have used up on how frigid a set of affairs!"
9.4| This is what has happened to me since I have been at my Laurentine villa, where I either read something or write something or even give leisure to the body, by whose props the mind is held up.
9.5| I hear nothing that I would regret hearing, I say nothing that I would regret saying; no one at my house tears at anyone with spiteful talk, and I myself blame nobody, except myself when I write too inelegantly; I am troubled by no hope and no fear, disturbed by no rumors: I speak only with myself and with my little books.
9.6| O upright and unspoiled life! O sweet and honorable leisure, and almost more beautiful than any business! O sea, O shore, true and secluded house of the Muses, how much you discover, how much you dictate!
9.7| So you too, as soon as there is an opportunity, leave behind that din and empty running about and those very silly labors, and give yourself to study or to leisure.
9.8| For it is better, as our friend Atilius said most learnedly and wittily at once, to be at leisure than to do nothing. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friend Attius Clemens
10.1| If our city has ever flourished in the liberal studies, it flourishes now most of all.
10.2| There are many famous examples; one would be enough, the philosopher Euphrates. I observed him closely, even in his home, in Syria, when I was a very young man serving in the army, and I took pains to be loved by him, although there was no need for pains. For he is easy to meet and open, and full of the kindness which he teaches.
10.3| And would that I had fulfilled the hope he then conceived of me as much as he has added to his own virtues! or else it is that I now admire them more because I understand them better.
10.4| Yet even now I do not understand them well enough; for just as only a craftsman can judge a painter, a sculptor or a modeler, so only a wise man can see through a wise man.
10.5| Still, as far as I am allowed to discern, many things in Euphrates stand out and shine so that they catch and move even moderately learned people. He argues with subtlety, weight and ornament, and often even reproduces that famous Platonic loftiness and breadth. His speech is copious and varied, sweet above all, and such as to lead and drive even those who resist.
10.6| In addition there is his tall frame, his handsome face, his long hair, his great white beard; which, though they may be thought accidental and empty, nevertheless win him the greatest reverence.
10.7| No roughness in his dress, no gloom, much severity; you would respect meeting him, not dread it. The holiness of his life is of the highest; his courtesy is equal: he attacks vices, not men, and does not chastise those who err but corrects them. You would follow him as he advises, attentive and hanging on his words, and you would long to be persuaded even after he had persuaded you.
10.8| Then he has three children, two of them boys, whom he has brought up with the greatest diligence. His father-in-law is Pompeius Iulianus, great and distinguished in the rest of his life as well as in this one thing, that though himself the leading man of his province, among the highest possible matches he chose a son-in-law who was foremost not in office but in wisdom.
10.9| Yet why should I say more about a man whom I may not enjoy? Is it that I may be the more tormented that I may not? For I am pulled apart by a duty as great as it is troublesome: I sit on the tribunal, I annotate petitions, I draw up accounts, I write very many letters, and very unliterary ones.
10.10| Now and then I complain to Euphrates of these occupations - for even that, when it happens, how rarely! He consoles me, and asserts that this too is part of philosophy, and indeed its most beautiful part: to conduct public business, to hear and judge cases, to bring forth and practice justice, and to put into use what philosophers themselves teach.
10.11| But one thing he does not persuade me of: that it is better to do these things than to spend whole days with him listening and learning. So the more I urge you, who have the leisure, when you next come to the city - and you should come the earlier for this reason - to entrust yourself to him to be polished and filed.
10.12| For I do not, like many, begrudge others a good which I lack myself; on the contrary, I feel a certain sense and pleasure if I see that what is denied to me remains abundant for my friends. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his friend Fabius Iustus
11.1| For a long time you have sent me no letters. "There is nothing," you say, "to write." Then write just that, that there is nothing to write, or only that with which the men of old used to begin: "If you are well, it is good; I am well."
11.2| That is enough for me; for it is the greatest thing. Do you think I am joking? I ask in earnest. Tell me how you are; I cannot remain ignorant of it without the greatest anxiety. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Calestrius Tiro
12.1| I have suffered a very heavy loss, if the loss of so great a man should be called a loss. Corellius Rufus has died, and by his own will, which rubs my grief raw. For it is the most sorrowful kind of death, one that seems neither natural nor fated.
12.2| For in the case of those who are ended by disease, there is at any rate great consolation in the very necessity; but in the case of those whom a summoned death carries off, this grief is incurable, that they are believed to have been able to live long.
12.3| Corellius, indeed, was driven to this resolution by the highest reason, which for the wise stands in place of necessity, though he had very many reasons for living: a most excellent conscience, a most excellent reputation, the greatest authority, and besides a daughter, a wife, a grandson, sisters, and, among so many pledges, true friends.
12.4| But he was struggling with so long and so unjust a sickness that these great prizes of living were outweighed by the reasons for death. In his thirty-third year, as I used to hear from him, he was seized by pain in his feet. This was inherited by him from his father; for diseases, like other things, are commonly handed down by a kind of succession.
12.5| This he conquered and broke by abstinence and holy living, so long as he was in the green of life; at last, when it grew worse with old age, he sustained it by the strength of his spirit, though he suffered incredible torments and the most undeserved agonies.
12.6| For by now the pain no longer settled in his feet alone, as before, but roamed through all his limbs. I came to him in the days of Domitian as he lay at his country house near the city.
12.7| The slaves withdrew from the bedroom - it was his custom whenever a more trusted friend came in -; even his wife, though most capable of every secret, would go away.
12.8| He looked around and said: "Why do you think I bear these great pains for so long? - in order, of course, to outlive that brigand, if only by one day." Had you given this spirit a body to match, he would have done what he wished. Yet a god was present at his vow, and he, having gained it, now about to die free and without care, broke the many but lesser ties of life.
12.9| His sickness had grown worse, and he tried to mitigate it by temperance; when it persisted, he fled it by firmness. Now a second, a third, a fourth day: he was abstaining from food. His wife Hispulla dispatched to me Gaius Geminius, a friend we shared, with the saddest of messages, that Corellius had resolved to die and could not be turned by the entreaties either of his family or of his daughter; I alone remained, by whom he might be called back to life.
12.10| I ran. I had nearly arrived when Iulius Atticus brings word from the same Hispulla that not even I would now achieve anything: so obstinately had he hardened more and more. He had said, indeed, to the doctor who was bringing him food: "I have decided" - a phrase that left as much admiration in my mind as longing.
12.11| I think what a friend, what a man I lack. He filled out his sixty-seventh year, a span long enough even for the strongest; I know. He escaped lifelong sickness; I know. He died with his own people surviving, with the commonwealth flourishing, which was dearer to him than everything; this too I know.
12.12| Yet I grieve for his death as though he were both young and of the sturdiest health, and I grieve - you may think me weak - on my own account. For I have lost, I have lost the witness, the guide, the teacher of my life. In sum, I shall say what I said to my close companion Calvisius in my fresh grief: "I fear I shall live more carelessly."
12.13| So bring me consolations, but not these: "He was old, he was infirm" - for those I know -, but some new ones, some great ones, which I have never heard, never read. For what I have heard and read comes to mind of its own accord, but is overcome by so great a grief. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Sosius Senecio
13.1| This year has brought a great crop of poets: in the whole month of April there was hardly a day on which someone was not giving a recitation. It pleases me that the studies thrive, that men's talents put themselves forward and show themselves, although people gather slowly to listen.
13.2| Most sit about in the lounges and wear out the time for listening with chatter, and from time to time order word to be brought whether the reciter has come in yet, whether he has delivered his preface, whether he has unrolled a large part of the book; then at last, and even then slowly and hesitantly, they come, and yet do not stay but leave before the end, some covertly and by stealth, others openly and freely.
13.3| But, by Hercules, in our parents' memory they say that Claudius Caesar, when he was walking on the Palatine and heard a shout, asked the cause, and when it was said that Nonianus was reciting, suddenly and unexpectedly came in upon the reciter.
13.4| Now even the idlest of men, though invited long beforehand and repeatedly reminded, either does not come or, if he comes, complains that he has wasted a day - because he has not wasted it.
13.5| But so much the more are they to be praised and approved who are not held back from the zeal of writing and reciting by this idleness or arrogance of listeners. For my part, I have failed almost no one. Most of them, to be sure, were friends;
13.6| for there is hardly anyone who loves our studies without also loving us. For these reasons I have spent more time in the city than I had intended. I can now go back to my retreat and write something which I shall not recite, lest I seem to have been not a listener but a creditor to those whose recitations I attended. For as in other matters so in the duty of listening, the favor is lost if it is demanded back. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend Iunius Mauricus
14.1| You ask that I find a husband for your brother's daughter; and rightly you lay this chiefly on me. For you know how greatly I looked up to and loved that supreme man, with what exhortations he nurtured my youth, and with what praises he brought it about that I seemed worth praising.
14.2| There is nothing you could entrust to me that is greater or more welcome, nothing more honorable for me to undertake, than to choose a young man from whom grandchildren worthy of Arulenus Rusticus may be born.
14.3| Such a man would have had to be sought for a long time, had Minicius Acilianus not been ready and, as it were, provided in advance; he loves me most intimately as a young man loves a young man - for he is younger by a few years - and respects me as an elder.
14.4| For he wishes to be shaped and trained by me as I used to be by you. His country is Brixia, from that Italy of ours which still keeps and preserves much modesty, frugality, and even the rusticity of old.
14.5| His father is Minicius Macrinus, foremost of the equestrian order, because he aimed at nothing higher; for though enrolled by the deified Vespasian among the men of praetorian rank, he most steadfastly preferred an honorable quiet to this ambition of ours - shall I call it ambition or dignity?
14.6| He has a maternal grandmother, Serrana Procula, from the town of Patavium. You know the manners of that place: yet Serrana is an example of strictness even to the people of Patavium. He also has the good fortune of an uncle, Publius Acilius, of almost unmatched seriousness, prudence and good faith. In sum, there will be nothing in the whole household that will not please you as if it were in your own.
14.7| Acilianus himself has great vigor and industry, though joined with the greatest modesty. He has run through quaestorship, tribunate and praetorship most honorably, and has already, on his own account, spared you the necessity of canvassing.
14.8| He has a gentleman's face, suffused with abundant blood and abundant color, he has a freeborn beauty of the whole body and a certain senatorial grace. These things I by no means think should be neglected; for this ought to be given to the chastity of girls as a kind of reward.
14.9| I am unsure whether to add that his father has large resources. For when I imagine you, for whom we are seeking a son-in-law, I think nothing should be said of means; when I look at the customs of the public and even the laws of the state, which judge that men's property is to be looked at among the first things, even this does not seem something to pass over. And indeed, for one thinking about descendants, and several of them, in choosing a match this too must be put in the reckoning.
14.10| You may perhaps think that I have indulged my affection and raised him above what the facts allow. But I pledge my good faith that you will find everything far larger than I proclaim. I do love the young man most ardently, as he deserves; but this very thing is the mark of a lover, not to burden him with praises. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Septicius Clarus
15.1| Hey, you! You promise to come to dinner, and you do not come? Judgment is pronounced: you will repay the outlay to the last as, and it is no small sum.
15.2| There were ready a lettuce apiece, three snails each, two eggs each, halica with honeyed wine and snow - for this too you will count, indeed this above all, since it perishes on the dish -, olives, beets, gourds, bulbs, a thousand other things no less elegant. You would have heard comic actors, or a reader, or a lyre player, or - such is my generosity - all of them.
15.3| But you, at I do not know whose house, preferred oysters, sows' wombs, sea urchins, Gaditanian dancers. You will pay the penalty, I do not say what. You acted harshly: you grudged, I do not know whether to yourself, certainly to me, yet to yourself as well. How much we would have played, laughed, studied!
15.4| You can dine more lavishly at many houses, but nowhere more merrily, more simply, more unguardedly. In sum, try it, and unless afterward you make your excuses to others rather than to me, always make them to me. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Erucius
16.1| I loved Pompeius Saturninus - I mean our friend - and praised his talent even before I knew how varied, how supple, how many-sided it was; but now he holds, has, and possesses me altogether.
16.2| I have heard him plead cases, keenly and ardently, and no less polished and ornate, whether he delivered a prepared or an extemporaneous speech. There are apt and frequent sentiments, a weighty and graceful structure, sonorous and old-fashioned words. All this pleases wonderfully when it is carried along with a certain rush and flood, and it pleases if it is gone over again.
16.3| You will feel what I felt when you take his speeches in your hands, which you will readily compare to those of any of the ancients whose rival he is.
16.4| Yet the same man will satisfy more in history, whether by brevity or clarity or sweetness or even splendor and loftiness of narration. For in the speeches set in assemblies there is the same force as in his orations, only tighter and more confined and more compressed.
16.5| Besides, he makes verses, such as my Catullus or Calvus would make, in truth such as Catullus or Calvus did. What charm, what sweetness, what bitterness, what love they have! He inserts, to be sure, but on purpose, some rather harsh ones among the soft and smooth; and this too like Catullus or Calvus.
16.6| Recently he read me some letters; he said they were his wife's. I believed I was reading Plautus or Terence released from meter. Whether they are his wife's, as he affirms, or his own, as he denies, he is worthy of equal glory, whether he composes those, or has made the wife he took as a girl so learned and polished.
16.7| He is therefore with me the whole day; the same man before I write, the same when I have written, the same even when I am at rest, I read as though he were not the same.
16.8| I both urge and advise you to do likewise; for it ought not to harm his works that he is alive. Or, if he had flourished among those we have never seen, we would be seeking out not only his books but even his portraits, and does the honor and charm of the same man, now that he is present, languish as if from satiety?
16.9| But it is perverse and spiteful not to admire a man most worthy of admiration, just because it falls to us to see him, converse with him, listen to him, embrace him, and not merely to praise him but to love him. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Titianus
17.1| Good faith and duty are still a concern to men; there are those who play the friend even to the dead. Titinius Capito has obtained from our emperor permission to set up in the forum a statue of Lucius Silanus.
17.2| It is a fine thing, worthy of great praise, to use the friendship of the emperor for this, and to test how much influence you have in the honors of others.
17.3| It is Capito's custom altogether to honor famous men; it is remarkable with what reverence and zeal he keeps in his house, wherever he can, the portraits of the Bruti, the Cassii, the Catos. The same man adorns the life of each of the most famous with excellent poems.
17.4| You may know that he himself abounds in very many virtues, who so loves those of others. The honor owed to Silanus has been rendered, and Capito has provided for the immortality of Silanus and of his own alike. For it is no more fitting and distinguished to have a statue in the Roman people's forum than to set one up. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Suetonius Tranquillus
18.1| You write that, frightened by a dream, you fear that you may suffer some misfortune in the pleading; you ask that I request a postponement and excuse you for a few days, at least the next one. It is difficult, but I shall try, "for a dream too is from Jupiter."
18.2| It matters, however, whether you are accustomed to dream of things that will come true or of their opposite. When I reflect on my own dream, the one you fear, it seems to me to portend an excellent pleading.
18.3| I had taken on the case of Iunius Pastor, when as I slept my mother-in-law seemed to be rolled at my knees, begging me not to plead; and I was about to plead when I was still a very young man, I was to appear in the four-court trial, I was to appear against the most powerful men in the state and even friends of Caesar, each of which could shake my mind after so sad a dream.
18.4| I pleaded nevertheless, reasoning on that line: "One omen is best: to defend one's country." For to me my country, and anything dearer than country, seemed to be good faith. It turned out well, and indeed that pleading opened to me the ears of men, that one opened the door of fame.
18.5| So consider whether you too, following this example, may turn that dream to the good; or if you think safer that precept of all the most cautious people, "What you doubt, do not do," write back just that.
18.6| I shall find some stratagem and plead your case, so that you can plead it when you wish. For your situation is indeed different, and mine was different. A centumviral trial can in no way be deferred; yours can be, though with difficulty. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Romatius Firmus
19.1| You are my fellow townsman and fellow student and, from the beginning of our lives, my comrade; your father was a friend to my mother and my uncle, and to me as well, as far as the difference of age allowed: great and weighty reasons why I should undertake to increase your standing.
19.2| That you have a property assessment of a hundred thousand is sufficiently shown by your being a town councillor among us. So that we may enjoy you not only as a councillor but also as a Roman knight, I offer you three hundred thousand sesterces to fill out the equestrian means.
19.3| The length of our friendship guarantees that you will remember this gift: I do not even remind you of what I should remind you, were I not sure you will do it of your own accord, to use the rank given by me as modestly as possible, because given by me.
19.4| For an honor must be guarded the more anxiously when in it the kindness of a friend also has to be protected. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Tacitus
20.1| I often have a debate with a certain learned and skilled man, who likes nothing so well in pleading cases as brevity.
20.2| I admit that it should be kept, if the case permits: otherwise it is collusion to pass over what should be said, collusion too to touch hastily and briefly what ought to be driven in, fixed and repeated.
20.3| For to most things a certain force and weight is added by a longer treatment, and as iron is pressed into the body, so a speech is pressed into the mind, not more by the blow than by the dwelling upon it.
20.4| Here he deals with me by authorities and shows me, among the Greeks, the speeches of Lysias, among our own those of the Gracchi and of Cato, very many of which are indeed clipped and short: I set against Lysias, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hyperides and many besides, against the Gracchi and Cato, Pollio, Caesar, Caelius, and, first of all, Marcus Tullius, of whom it is said that his best speech is the longest. And by Hercules, as with other good things, so any good book is better the bigger it is.
20.5| You see how for statues, images, paintings, and finally the forms of men and of many animals, and of trees too, if only they are handsome, nothing recommends so much as size. The same happens with speeches; indeed greatness adds a certain authority and beauty even to the rolls themselves.
20.6| These things, and many others that I am accustomed to say to the same effect, he, being in debate slippery and impossible to hold, evades in such a way that he maintains that these very men, on whose speeches I rely, spoke fewer words than they published.
20.7| I think the opposite. Witnesses are the many speeches of many men, and Cicero's for Murena and for Varenus, in which a brief and bare sort of note of certain charges is given by their headings alone. From these it is clear that he said a great deal that he omitted when he published.
20.8| The same man says in the speech for Cluentius that he pleaded the whole case alone, by the old custom, and that for Gaius Cornelius he pleaded four days, so that we cannot doubt that what he said at greater length over several days - as was necessary - he afterward cut back and cleaned up and compressed into a single book, large indeed, yet one.
20.9| "But a pleading is one thing, a speech another." I know that some think so, but I - perhaps I am mistaken - am persuaded that it can happen that a pleading is good that is not a good speech, but that a pleading cannot fail to be good which is a good speech. For the speech is the model of the pleading and, as it were, its original pattern.
20.10| For that reason in all the best we find a thousand turns that were spoken off the cuff, even in those which we know were only published, as in the Verrines: "The artist - who? who was it? you rightly remind me; they said it was Polyclitus." It follows therefore that a pleading is most perfect which most closely reproduces the likeness of the speech, provided it receives a proper and due amount of time; if that is denied, the orator is in no way at fault, the judge very greatly so.
20.11| In support of this opinion of mine are the laws, which grant the longest times and urge on those who speak not brevity but fullness - that is, thoroughness - which brevity cannot supply except in the very narrowest cases.
20.12| I shall add what practice has taught me, an excellent teacher. I have often pleaded, often judged, often sat on a council: one thing moves some, another others, and for the most part small things draw the greatest. Men's judgments vary, their inclinations vary. Hence those who have heard the same case together often feel differently, and sometimes the same, but from different movements of the mind.
20.13| Besides, each man favors his own invention, and embraces it as if it were the strongest when another says what he himself foresaw. To all, therefore, something must be given to hold, something to recognize.
20.14| At one time, when we were appearing together, Regulus said to me: "You think everything in the case must be followed out; I see the throat at once, and I press it." What he has chosen he certainly presses, but in choosing he often errs.
20.15| I replied that it could happen that where he thought it the throat it might be a knee or an ankle. But I, I said, who cannot make out the throat, try everything, test everything, in short "move every stone";
20.16| and as in the cultivation of a field I tend and work not vineyards only but also orchards, and not orchards only but also fields, and in the fields themselves sow not spelt or winter wheat alone but barley, bean and the other pulses, so in pleading I scatter more seeds, as it were, more widely, so as to gather in what comes up.
20.17| For the minds of judges are no less obscure, uncertain and deceptive than weather and soils. Nor does it escape me that the supreme orator Pericles is praised by the comic poet Eupolis in this way: "Besides his speed, a certain Persuasion perched on his lips. So he enchanted, and alone of the orators he left the sting in his hearers."
20.18| But to this same Pericles neither that Persuasion nor that charming would have come, by brevity or speed or both - for they differ - without the highest ability. For to delight and persuade requires abundance of speech and room, but only he who not merely pricks but fixes it in can leave a sting in the hearers' minds.
20.19| Add what a second comic poet says about that same Pericles: "He flashed lightning, he thundered, he stirred all Greece into turmoil." For it is not a lopped and cut-off speech, but a broad and magnificent and lofty one, that thunders and lightens, and in the end shakes and mixes everything.
20.20| "Yet the best is moderation": who denies it? But he does not keep moderation any less who falls below the matter than he who goes above it, who speaks more tightly than he who speaks more freely.
20.21| And so you often hear, just as "immoderately and redundantly," so also "meagerly and feebly." One man is said to have exceeded the material, another not to have filled it. Both are equally at fault, but the one errs through weakness, the other through strength; which, though it may not be a fault of a more polished talent, is certainly a fault of a greater one.
20.22| Nor, when I say this, do I approve that Homeric "measureless of speech," but the other: "and words like wintry snowflakes," not because the other too does not please me very much: "few, but very piercingly" - if however a choice is given, I want that speech like winter snows, that is, thick and unceasing but also abundant, in short divine and heavenly.
20.23| "But a short pleading is more welcome to many." It is, but to idle people, and it is ridiculous to look upon their delicacy and sloth as though it were judgment. For if you had these in your council, it would be better not only to speak briefly but not to speak at all.
20.24| This is my opinion so far, which I shall change if you disagree; but I ask that you plainly explain why you disagree. For although I ought to yield to your authority, I nevertheless think it more proper in so great a matter to be overcome by reason than by authority.
20.25| So, if you think I am not mistaken, write and tell me so in as short a letter as you like — but do write, for you will confirm my judgment; if I am mistaken, get ready a very long one. Haven't I bribed you, by laying on you the necessity of a brief letter if you come over to my view, and of a very long one if you dissent? Farewell.
21.0| Pliny to his friend Plinius Paternus
21.1| I value the judgment of your eyes as highly as that of your mind — not because you have a great deal of sense (don't flatter yourself), but because you have as much as I have; though that too is a great deal.
21.2| Joking aside, I think the slaves who were bought for me on your advice look well. What remains is that they be honest, and with slaves for sale that is better judged by the ears than by the eyes. Farewell.
22.0| Pliny to his friend Catilius Severus
22.1| I have been stuck in the city for a long time now, and in a state of shock. I am deeply troubled by the long and stubborn illness of Titius Aristo, a man I admire and love above all others. There is no one weightier, purer or more learned than he, so that it seems to me that not just one man, but literature itself and all the liberal arts are in the gravest danger in the person of one man.
22.2| How expert he is in private and public law alike! What a store of facts, of precedents, of antiquity he holds! There is nothing you could wish to learn that he cannot teach; certainly for me, whenever I am looking for something obscure, he is a treasure-house.
22.3| And then, what trust his words command, what authority, what restrained and becoming deliberation! Is there anything that he does not know straightaway? And yet he often hesitates and doubts, because of the conflict of arguments, which with keen and powerful judgment he traces back to their origin and first causes, distinguishes and weighs.
22.4| Besides this, how sparing he is in his diet, how modest in his dress! I am in the habit of looking at his very bedroom and his very bed as a sort of image of the old-time frugality.
22.5| All this is crowned by a greatness of soul that refers nothing to show and everything to conscience, and looks for the reward of a good deed not from popular talk but from the deed itself.
22.6| In short, you will not easily compare with this man any of those who parade their pursuit of wisdom by their bodily dress. He does not, it is true, frequent the gymnasia or the colonnades, nor does he entertain his own leisure and that of others with long disputations; instead he lives in the toga and in public business, and helps many people as their advocate and more as their adviser.
22.7| Yet he would not yield first place to any of those philosophers in purity, in devotion, in justice, or even in courage. You would marvel, if you were there, at the patience with which he bears this very illness — how he resists the pain, how he puts off his thirst, how he lies through the incredible burning of his fevers without moving and with his covers kept on.
22.8| Recently he called me and a few others, those he loves most, to his side and asked us to consult the doctors about the outcome of his illness, so that if it were incurable he might leave life of his own accord, but if it were only difficult and long, he might resist and stay;
22.9| for, he said, he owed it to his wife's prayers, he owed it to his daughter's tears, he owed it also to us his friends, not to desert our hopes, provided they were not empty, by a voluntary death.
22.10| This I consider an especially hard thing and worthy of the highest praise. For to rush to death on a sort of impulse and instinct is something shared with many; but to deliberate and weigh its reasons, and, as reason advises, either to take up or to lay aside the decision for life or death — that belongs to a mighty soul.
22.11| And the doctors do promise us a good outcome. It remains for the god to nod assent to their promises and at last to release me from this anxiety; once freed from it, I shall go back to my Laurentine villa — that is, to my books and writing tablets and my studious leisure. For as things are, sitting at his bedside I have no time to read or write anything, and in my anxiety no wish to.
22.12| There you have what I fear, what I hope for, and even what I plan for the future. In return, send me word of what you did, what you are doing, and what you intend to do — but in happier letters than mine. It will be no small comfort in my distress if you have nothing to complain of. Farewell.
23.0| Pliny to his friend Pompeius Falco
23.1| You ask whether I think you ought to plead cases while you are tribune. It matters very much what you think the tribunate is: an empty shadow and a title without honor, or a sacrosanct power, which it is fitting that no one should humble — not even its holder.
23.2| When I was tribune myself, I may have been wrong to think I was something; but acting as if I were, I refrained from pleading cases. First, because I considered it unseemly that the man for whom everyone ought to rise and to whom everyone ought to give way should stand while all the rest were seated; that the man who could order anyone at all to be silent should have silence imposed on him by the water-clock; that the man whom it was sacrilege to interrupt should even have to listen to abuse, and should seem spineless if he let it go unpunished and arrogant if he punished it.
23.3| There was also this dilemma before my eyes: if by chance either the party I was assisting or the one I was opposing appealed to me, should I intervene and give help, or keep quiet and silent, and so turn myself into a private citizen as if I had resigned my office?
23.4| Moved by these reasons, I preferred to show myself a tribune to everyone rather than an advocate to a few.
23.5| But as for you — I will say it again — it matters very much what you think the tribunate is, and what role you take on yourself; and a wise man must fit a role to himself in such a way that he can carry it through to the end. Farewell.
24.0| Pliny to his friend Baebius Hispanus
24.1| My close companion Tranquillus wants to buy a little farm that a friend of yours is said to be trying to sell.
24.2| Please see to it that he buys it at a fair price; that way he will be glad he bought it. For a bad purchase is always unwelcome, most of all because it seems to reproach the owner with his own folly.
24.3| In this little farm, provided the price smiles on him, there are many things to tempt my Tranquillus' appetite: the nearness of the city, the convenience of the road, the moderate size of the house, and the extent of the land, enough to distract him rather than to tie him down.
24.4| For owners who are scholars, as he is, it is more than enough to have just so much ground that they can rest their heads, refresh their eyes, stroll along the boundary path and wear down a single track, and know every one of their little vines and count their little trees. I have set all this out for you so that you may better understand how much he will owe me, and I you, if he buys this little property, which is recommended by such advantages, on terms so sound that it leaves no room for regret. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book II ========

1.0| Pliny to his friend Voconius Romanus
1.1| After an interval of several years, the eyes of the Roman people have been offered a remarkable spectacle, one well worth remembering: the public funeral of Verginius Rufus, a very great and very distinguished citizen, and no less fortunate.
1.2| He outlived his own glory by thirty years; he read poems written about himself, he read histories, and he was present at his own posterity. He held a third consulship, so that he reached the highest summit open to a private citizen, since he had refused that of the emperor.
1.3| He escaped the Caesars to whom his virtues had made him suspect and even hateful, and he left behind him, safe on the throne, the best of emperors and the one most friendly to him, as though he had been kept in reserve for this very honor of a public funeral.
1.4| He passed his eighty-third year in the deepest tranquillity, and in equal veneration. He enjoyed sound health, except that his hands used to tremble, though without pain. Only the approach of death was rather harsh and drawn out, but even this was to his credit.
1.5| For while he was practicing his voice in preparation for delivering, as consul, his speech of thanks to the emperor, a book of some size that he happened to have taken up slipped, by its very weight, from the hands of an old man standing up. As he went after it and picked it up, his foot gave way on the smooth and slippery floor; he fell and broke his hip, which was badly set and, with his age working against it, knit poorly.
1.6| The funeral rites of this man brought great distinction to the emperor, great distinction to our age, great distinction also to the Forum and the Rostra. His eulogy was delivered by the consul Cornelius Tacitus; for this was the crowning addition to his good fortune — a eulogist of the greatest eloquence.
1.7| And he, for his part, has departed full of years, full of honors, even those he refused; yet we must miss him and long for him as a model from an earlier age — and I above all, who loved him as much as I admired him, and not only in public life.
1.8| First, because we shared the same district, our towns were neighbors, and even our lands and properties adjoined; and besides, because when he was left as my guardian he showed me a parent's affection. So he supported my candidacy with his vote; so he hurried from his retreats to attend the inauguration of every one of my offices, although he had long since given up duties of that kind; so, on the day on which the priests customarily name those whom they judge most worthy of the priesthood, he always named me.
1.9| Indeed, even during this last illness, fearing that he might be appointed one of the five commissioners who were being set up by decree of the senate to reduce public expenditure, he chose me, a man of my age, to present his excuses, although he had so many friends still living who were old men and former consuls — and in these terms: "Even had I a son, I should entrust this to you."
1.10| For these reasons I cannot help weeping on your shoulder over his death, as if it were premature — if indeed it is right to weep at all, or even to call it death at all, when what has ended for so great a man is his mortality rather than his life.
1.11| For he lives and will live forever, and he will move even more widely in the memory and talk of men now that he has withdrawn from their sight.
1.12| I want to write to you about much else, but my whole mind is fixed on this one contemplation. I think of Verginius, I see Verginius, Verginius I hear, address and hold in images that are empty now, but still fresh. Perhaps we have, and shall have, some citizens his equal in virtue; none in glory. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Paulinus
2.1| I am angry — I am not sure whether I ought to be, but I am angry. You know how unfair love can be at times, how often uncontrollable, and always quick to take offense over trifles. This cause, though, is a serious one, and perhaps a just one; but I, as if it were no less just than serious, am seriously angry that there has been no letter from you for so long.
2.2| You can win me over in one way only: if now, at least, you send me a great many very long ones. That is the only excuse I will accept as genuine; all others will seem false. I am not going to hear "I wasn't in Rome" or "I was rather busy"; as for "I was rather unwell," may the gods not allow it. For my part I am enjoying my villa, partly with study and partly with idleness, both of which are born of leisure. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Nepos
3.1| Isaeus' great reputation had gone before him, but he has been found to be greater still. He has the utmost facility, fullness and richness of speech; he always speaks extempore, but as though he had written it out at length. His language is Greek — or rather Attic; his introductions are polished, spare and charming, and at times weighty and elevated.
3.2| He calls for several themes for debate; he leaves the choice to his audience, and often the side he is to take as well; he rises, arranges his cloak, and begins. At once everything is at his command, almost all at the same time; recondite ideas present themselves, and words — and what words! — sought out and refined. His extensive reading and extensive writing shine through in these impromptu speeches.
3.3| His openings are apt, his narration clear, his argument keen, his summing up forceful, his ornament lofty. In short, he instructs, delights and moves you, and you could not say which he does best. He has frequent enthymemes and frequent syllogisms, compact and finished, something that is a great achievement even with the pen. His memory is incredible: he repeats from the very beginning what he has said extempore, without slipping by so much as a word.
3.4| He has reached so great a mastery through study and practice; for day and night he does nothing else, listens to nothing else, talks of nothing else.
3.5| He has passed his sixtieth year, yet he remains merely a declaimer of the schools — and there is no class of men more sincere, more straightforward, or better. For we who wear ourselves out in the Forum and in real lawsuits learn a good deal of malice, however unwillingly;
3.6| the school, the lecture hall and the fictitious case are a harmless thing, without weapons, and no less happy, especially for old men. For what could be happier in old age than what is sweetest in youth?
3.7| That is why I judge Isaeus not only the most eloquent of men but also the happiest. And if you do not long to get to know him, you are made of stone and iron.
3.8| So if not for other reasons, nor for ourselves, at least come to hear this man. Have you never read how a man of Gades, stirred by the name and glory of Livy, came from the farthest edge of the world to see him, and as soon as he had seen him went away? It is tasteless, unlettered, sluggish and almost even shameful not to think worth so much a knowledge than which none is more pleasant, none more beautiful, none in short more humane.
3.9| You will say: "I have here those to read who are no less eloquent." True; but there is always an occasion for reading, not always for hearing. Besides, as is commonly said, the living voice affects far more. For although what you read may be sharper, what delivery, face, bearing and even the gesture of the speaker fix in the mind sits deeper;
3.10| unless indeed we think false that saying of Aeschines, who, after he had read out to the Rhodians a speech of Demosthenes while all admired it, is said to have added: "What then, if you had heard the very beast?" and Aeschines was, if we believe Demosthenes, the clearest-voiced of men. Yet he admitted that the one who had brought forth those same words delivered them far better.
3.11| All this tends to one end, that you should hear Isaeus, even if only for the sake of having heard him. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his friend Calvina
4.1| If your father had owed money to several creditors, or to any single one other than me, there might perhaps have been reason to hesitate whether to enter upon an inheritance that would be a burden even to a man.
4.2| But since I, led by the duty of kinship, when all others were dismissed who were, I do not say more troublesome, but more exacting, stood forth as sole creditor, and since in his lifetime, when you were marrying, I contributed a hundred thousand to your dowry, besides the sum which your father named as if from my own funds - for it had to be paid from my own -, you have a great pledge of my easy dealing, in reliance on which you should take up the good name and honor of the dead man. And lest I urge you to this by words more than by deeds, whatever your father owed me I shall order to be entered as received from you.
4.3| Nor need you fear that this gift would be a burden to me. Our means, to be sure, are altogether modest, my rank expensive, my income, owing to the condition of my little farms, I do not know whether smaller or more uncertain; but what falls short in income is made up by thrift, from which, as from a spring, our liberality flows.
4.4| That, however, must be so regulated that it does not dry up through excessive spending; but regulated in other cases, whereas in your case its account will easily stand, even if it has exceeded the measure. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Lupercus
5.1| The pleading, both often demanded by you and often promised by me, I have presented to you, though not yet the whole of it; for a part is still being polished.
5.2| Meanwhile it was not improper that the portions which seemed to me more finished should be handed to your judgment. To these I ask you to bring the attention of a writer. For so far I have had in hand nothing for which I ought to show greater anxiety.
5.3| For in other pleadings only our diligence and good faith are laid before men's judgment, but in this one our family feeling as well. Hence the book also grew, while I rejoice to adorn and enlarge my native town, and at once serve both its defense and its glory.
5.4| Yet you should cut away these very parts as far as reason requires. For whenever I look to the fastidiousness and pleasures of readers, I understand that our recommendation must be sought even from the very moderateness of the book.
5.5| Yet I, who demand this austerity from you, am compelled to ask what is the opposite, that in most places you relax your brow. For there are some things to be given to the ears of young men, especially if the subject does not resist; for descriptions of places, which will be rather frequent in this book, it is right to pursue not only as history but almost as poetry.
5.6| But if anyone should appear who thinks that we have been more cheerful than the severity of oratory demands, the remaining parts of the pleading will have to win over his - if I may so put it - gloom.
5.7| We have certainly striven to hold readers of whatever different kinds through several styles of speaking, and as we fear that some part may not be approved by some according to the nature of each, so we seem able to trust that the variety itself will recommend the whole to all.
5.8| For in the matter of banquets too, although each of us abstains from most of the dishes, we nevertheless all commonly praise the whole dinner, and the things our stomach refuses do not take away the pleasure from those by which it is taken.
5.9| And I wish this to be received in such a way that I do not believe I have attained it, but that I have labored to attain it, perhaps not in vain, if only you will apply your care for now to these parts, soon to those that follow.
5.10| You will say that you cannot do it carefully enough unless you have first learned the whole pleading: I admit it. For the present, however, these parts will become more familiar to you, and some of them will be such that they can be corrected piece by piece.
5.11| For if you were looking at the severed head of a statue or some limb, you could not indeed from it discern the harmony and proportion, yet you could judge whether that very part was elegant enough;
5.12| and for no other reason are the openings of books passed around, than that some part is thought to be finished even without the rest.
5.13| A certain sweetness of talking with you has carried me on too far; but now I shall make an end, lest I exceed in a letter the measure which I think should be observed even in a speech. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Avitus
6.1| It is long to go back further, and it does not matter how it happened that I, a man by no means intimate with him, dined at the house of a certain person who seemed to himself elegant and careful, to me both stingy and extravagant at once.
6.2| For to himself and a few he set out certain rich dishes, to the rest cheap and scanty ones. The wine too he had divided into three kinds in tiny little flasks, not to give the power of choosing but to deny the right of refusing, one for himself and us, another for lesser friends - for he has his friends in grades -, another for his own freedmen and ours.
6.3| The man reclining next to me noticed it and asked whether I approved. I said no. "What custom, then, do you follow?" he said. "I put out the same for all; for I invite people to dinner, not to be branded, and I make equal in everything those whom I have made equal at table and couch."
6.4| "Even the freedmen?" "Even they; for then I reckon them fellow diners, not freedmen." And he said: "It costs you a great deal." "Not at all." "How can that be?" "Because, of course, my freedmen do not drink the same as I do, but I the same as my freedmen."
6.5| And by Hercules, if you keep your gullet in check, it is not burdensome to share with several what you use yourself. That, then, must be repressed, that must be brought, so to speak, into order, if you are sparing of expense, which you will provide for rather more rightly by your own self-restraint than by another's insult.
6.6| Why all this? That the luxury of certain people at table may not impose upon you, a young man of excellent nature, under the appearance of frugality. It suits my love for you, whenever something like this occurs, to warn you beforehand by an example what you ought to avoid.
6.7| So remember that nothing is more to be avoided than that new partnership of luxury and stinginess; which, though most shameful when separate and apart, are more shameful joined. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Macrinus
7.1| Yesterday the senate, on the emperor's proposal, decreed Vestricius Spurinna a triumphal statue, and not in the way it was granted to many who never stood in a battle line, never saw a camp, never in short heard the sound of trumpets except at shows, but as to those who won that distinction by sweat and blood and deeds.
7.2| For Spurinna by force and arms brought back the king of the Bructeri into his kingdom, and by a mere display of war he thoroughly subdued a most fierce people by terror, which is the most beautiful kind of victory.
7.3| And this he received as the reward of valor, that as a consolation of grief, that to his son Cottius, whom he lost while away, the honor of a statue was given. This is rare in a young man; but the father deserved this too, whose most grievous wound had to be treated with some great remedy.
7.4| Besides, Cottius himself had given so clear a proof of his nature that his short, narrow life should have been prolonged by a kind of immortality. For he had such holiness, gravity, even authority, that he could challenge in virtue those old men to whom he is now equalled in honor.
7.5| By this honor, as I interpret it, provision has been made not only for the memory of the dead and the grief of the father, but also for an example. Such rewards, set up even for young men, provided they are worthy, will whet the youth to good pursuits; and joys from children who survive, and such glorious consolations for those who are lost, will whet leading men to raise children.
7.6| For these reasons I rejoice at the statue of Cottius in public, and no less in private. I loved the thoroughly accomplished young man as ardently as I now miss him impatiently. It will therefore be most pleasing to me to look at this likeness of his again and again, to look back at it, to stand beneath it, to pass by it.
7.7| For if the images of the dead set in our homes lighten our grief, how much more these, in which in a most crowded place not only their appearance and faces but also their honor and glory are recalled! Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Caninius
8.1| Are you studying, or fishing, or hunting, or all together? For all can be done together at our Larius. For the lake supplies fish, the woods that ring the lake supply game, and that deep retreat supplies studies in abundance.
8.2| But whether you are doing all together or one thing, I cannot say "I envy you"; yet I am tormented that it is not allowed to me too, who long for it as the sick long for wine, baths, springs. Shall I never break these tightest snares, if I am refused leave to loose them? Never, I think.
8.3| For new business grows onto old, and yet the earlier is not finished: with so many bonds, so many chains, as it were, a larger column of occupations stretches out day by day. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Apollinaris
9.1| The candidacy of my friend Sextus Erucius keeps me anxious and restless. I am affected by care, and the anxiety which I did not undergo on my own behalf I suffer as if for a second self; and besides, my modesty, my reputation, my standing are brought into the balance.
9.2| I obtained for Sextus the broad stripe from our Caesar, I obtained the quaestorship; by my vote he has reached the right to seek the tribunate, and if he does not obtain it in the senate, I fear I shall seem to have deceived Caesar. So I must exert myself that all may judge him to be such as the emperor believed him to be on my word. Even if this cause did not spur my zeal, I should still wish to help a young man most upright, most serious, most learned, in short most worthy of every praise, and indeed along with his whole house.
9.4| For his father is Erucius Clarus, a man holy, of the old school, eloquent and practiced in pleading cases, which he defends with the utmost good faith and equal steadfastness and no less modesty. He has an uncle, Gaius Septicius, than whom I know nothing truer, nothing more straightforward, nothing more candid, nothing more faithful.
9.5| All love me, vying with one another and yet equally, and now I can return thanks to all in one man. And so I take friends by the hand, I entreat, I canvass, I go round houses and public lounges, and as far as I have strength by authority or favor, I try it by prayers, and I beseech you to think it worth while to take some part of my burden.
9.6| I shall repay in turn if you ask it back, and I shall repay it even if you do not ask. You are loved, courted, attended: only show that you wish it, and there will be no lack of those who desire what you desire. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friend Octavius
10.1| What a patient man you are, or rather hard and almost cruel, to hold back for so long such remarkable books!
10.2| How long will you begrudge both yourself and us, yourself the greatest praise, us the pleasure? Let them be carried on the lips of men and travel as far as the Roman tongue extends. The expectation is great and already long, which you ought not to go on disappointing and putting off.
10.3| Certain of your verses have become known, and against your will have broken out of their enclosures. Unless you draw these back into a body, they will, like wanderers, find at some time someone to whom they are ascribed.
10.4| Keep mortality before your eyes, from which you can claim yourself free by this one monument; for all else, fragile and perishable, falls and ceases no less than men themselves.
10.5| You will say, as you usually do: "My friends will see to it." I do wish you friends so faithful, so learned, so hard-working that they can and will undertake so much care and effort, but consider whether it is not rather imprudent to hope from others what you do not provide yourself.
10.6| And about publication, meanwhile, as you wish: at least give a recitation, so that you may the more want to let them go, and so that you may at last receive the joy that I have long since confidently anticipated on your behalf.
10.7| For I imagine what a concourse, what admiration, what shout, even what silence awaits you; in which silence, when I speak or recite, I take no less delight than in a shout, provided only the silence be keen and intent, and eager to hear what comes next.
10.8| From so great a fruit, so ready to hand, stop defrauding your studies by that endless delay; when it exceeds the measure, it is to be feared that it will earn the name of inertia and sloth or even of timidity. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his friend Arrianus
11.1| It is usually a joy to you if anything has been done in the senate worthy of that order. For although you have withdrawn out of love of quiet, the care of the public majesty still sits in your mind. Hear, then, what has been done in these days, famous for the distinction of the person, wholesome for the severity of the example, everlasting for the greatness of the matter.
11.2| Marius Priscus, accused by the Africans, whom he governed as proconsul, gave up his defense and asked for judges. I and Cornelius Tacitus, ordered to appear for the provincials, thought it fitting to our good faith to make known to the senate that Priscus had exceeded in savagery and cruelty the charges for which judges could be given, since he had taken money for condemning, even for killing, innocent men.
11.3| Fronto Catius replied and begged that nothing be inquired into beyond the law on extortion, and this man, most skilled at moving tears, filled all the sails of his pleading with a kind of wind of pity.
11.4| Great was the contention, great the shouts on both sides, some saying that the senate's jurisdiction was confined by the law, others that it was free and unbound, and that the punishment should be as great as the defendant's crime.
11.5| Finally the consul designate Iulius Ferox, an upright and holy man, proposed that judges be given to Marius for the time being, but that those be summoned of whom it was said that they had sold the punishment of innocent men.
11.6| This proposal not only prevailed, but after so many disagreements was the only one that drew a crowd, and it was noted from experience that favor and pity have keen and violent first onsets, but gradually settle down, as though quenched by counsel and reason.
11.7| Whence it happens that what many defend with a mingled shout, no one wishes to say while the rest are silent; for when you are separated from the crowd, the view lies open of things that the crowd hides.
11.8| Those who had been ordered to appear came, Vitellius Honoratus and Flavius Marcianus; of whom Honoratus was charged with having bought for three hundred thousand the exile of a Roman knight and the ultimate penalty for seven friends of his, Marcianus with having bought for seven hundred thousand several punishments of a single Roman knight; for he had been beaten with clubs, condemned to the mines, and strangled in prison.
11.9| But a timely death took Honoratus from the senate's inquiry, and Marcianus was brought in with Priscus absent. Therefore Tuccius Cerialis, a consular, by senatorial right demanded that Priscus be notified, either because he thought he would be more pitiable or more hated if present, or - what I chiefly believe - because it was entirely just that a common charge be defended by both, and if it could not be cleared, be punished in both.
11.10| The matter was put off to the next senate, the very sight of which was most majestic. The emperor presided - for he was consul -, and besides, the month of January, among its other distinctions, is above all crowded by a full attendance of senators; moreover the importance of the case, with the expectation and rumor increased by the postponement, and the passion implanted in mortals to learn great and unusual things, had summoned everyone from every side.
11.11| Imagine what anxiety we felt, what fear, we who had to speak in that assembly, in the presence of Caesar, on so great a matter. I have spoken in the senate more than once; indeed nowhere am I usually heard more kindly: yet then everything, being new, moved me with a new fear.
11.12| Before me, besides the things I have said above, was the difficulty of the case: the defendant stood there who had been now a consular, now a septemvir of the epulones, but now neither.
11.13| It was therefore exceedingly burdensome to accuse a man already condemned, whom, while the atrocity of the charge pressed upon him, the pity for a condemnation as good as completed protected.
11.14| Nevertheless, I somehow gathered my spirit and thought, and began to speak, with no less assent from my hearers than anxiety in myself. I spoke for almost five hours; for to the twelve water-clocks, which I had received as the most generous, four were added. So true is it that the very things which seemed likely to be hard and adverse to me as I was about to speak turned out favorable as I spoke.
11.15| Caesar indeed showed me so much zeal, so much even concern - for to say anxiety is too much - that he repeatedly admonished my freedman, who was standing behind me, to look after my voice and my side, since he thought I was straining more vehemently than my slenderness could bear. Claudius Marcellinus replied to me on behalf of Marcianus.
11.16| The senate was then dismissed and called back for the next day; for the pleading could not now be begun, except to be cut in two by the intervention of night.
11.17| On the next day Salvius Liberalis spoke for Marius, a subtle, orderly, keen and eloquent man; in that case he brought out all his arts. Cornelius Tacitus replied most eloquently and, what is outstanding in his oratory, with dignity.
11.18| Fronto Catius spoke again for Marius, remarkably, and, as the occasion now demanded, spent more time in entreaties than in defense. Evening shut off his speech, yet not so as to cut it short. And so the proofs went out into a third day. Already this very thing is fine and ancient, that the senate was parted by night, summoned for three days, and held together for three days.
11.19| Cornutus Tertullus, consul designate, an excellent man and firmest on behalf of truth, proposed that the seven hundred thousand which Marius had received be paid into the treasury, that Marius be banned from the city and Italy, and that Marcianus be additionally banned from Africa. At the end of his proposal he added that, since I and Tacitus, having had the advocacy laid upon us, had acquitted ourselves carefully and bravely, the senate judged that we had done so as was worthy of the roles entrusted to us.
11.20| The consuls designate assented, as did all the consulars as far as Pompeius Collega: he proposed that the seven hundred thousand be paid into the treasury and that Marcianus be relegated for five years, and that Marius be left to the penalty for extortion which he had already suffered.
11.21| There were many in each opinion, perhaps even more in this latter, being either looser or softer. For some even of those who seemed to have agreed with Cornutus followed the man who had spoken after them.
11.22| But when the division was made, those who had stood by the chairs of the consuls began to go over to the opinion of Cornutus. Then those who were letting themselves be counted with Collega crossed to the other side; Collega was left with a few. Afterwards he complained much about those who had urged him on, especially about Regulus, who had abandoned him in the motion which he himself had dictated. Regulus has otherwise so changeable a nature that he dares very much and fears very much.
11.23| This was the end of a most ample inquiry. There remains, however, a public duty not light: Hostilius Firminus, lieutenant of Marius Priscus, who, mixed up in the case, was heavily and violently harassed. For both from the accounts of Marcianus and from the speech which he had made in the council of the people of Leptis it was proved that he had lent his services to Priscus for a most shameful ministry, and had stipulated from Marcianus fifty thousand denarii, and besides that he himself had received ten thousand sestertia under a most foul title, in the name of a perfumer, a title which was not out of keeping with the life of a man always groomed and pumiced.
11.24| It was agreed, Cornutus proposing, that a report be made on him at the next senate; for then, by chance or by conscience, he had been absent.
11.25| You have the affairs of the city; write in turn of the country. How are your little trees, how your vineyards, how your crops, how your most delicate sheep? In sum, unless you return a letter equally long, you need not expect afterward anything but the very shortest. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Arrianus
12.1| That public duty which I wrote recently remained in the case of Marius Priscus, I do not know whether adequately, yet is cut short and shaved close.
12.2| Firminus was brought into the senate and answered the known charge. Different proposals of the consuls designate followed. Cornutus Tertullus proposed that he be removed from the order, Acutius Nerva that no account of him be taken in the allotment of a province. This proposal prevailed as being milder, though it is in other respects harsher and gloomier.
12.3| For what is more wretched than to be cut out and removed from senatorial honors, and yet not to be free of the labor and trouble? What is heavier than, afflicted with so great a disgrace, not to lie hidden in solitude, but to offer oneself on this highest watchtower to be gazed at and pointed out?
12.4| Besides, what is less fitting or becoming in public matters? To sit in the senate branded by the senate, and to be made equal with those very men by whom he has been branded; to have been removed from a proconsulship because he behaved shamefully as a lieutenant, and yet to judge proconsuls, and, himself condemned for filth, either to condemn or to acquit others!
12.5| But this seemed best to the greater number. For opinions are counted, not weighed; nor can anything else be done in a public council, in which nothing is so unequal as equality itself. For though wisdom is unequal, the right of all is equal.
12.6| I have fulfilled my promise and discharged the pledge of my former letter, which, judging from the lapse of time, I infer you have already received; for I gave it to a hurried and careful courier, unless he met some hindrance on the road.
12.7| It is now your part to repay first that letter and then this with letters such as can return from there most abundantly. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Priscus
13.1| You too most eagerly seize occasions to put me under obligation, and there is no one to whom I am more glad to owe.
13.2| For two reasons, then, I have decided to ask of you above all the favor I most want granted. You command a very large army: hence you have a generous supply for kindnesses, and besides a long time in which you have been able to promote your friends. Turn now to mine, and these are not many.
13.3| You would prefer them many; but for my modesty one or two is enough, or rather one.
13.4| He will be Voconius Romanus. His father was distinguished in the equestrian rank, his stepfather more distinguished, or rather a second father - for he succeeded to this name too by his affection -, his mother from among the foremost. He himself was recently flamen of Hither Spain - you know the judgment of that province, how great its seriousness.
13.5| I loved him closely and intimately when we studied together; he was my companion in the city, he my companion in retreat, with him I mixed serious matters, with him jests.
13.6| For what is there either more faithful as a friend or more pleasant as a comrade than he? There is a marvelous sweetness in his talk, and marvelous also in his very face and expression.
13.7| In addition there is a talent lofty, subtle, sweet, ready, learned, in pleading cases; and as to letters, he writes them so that you would believe the Muses themselves were speaking Latin. He is loved by me very much, and yet is not outdone.
13.8| I, for my part, as a young man, at once conferred on him, a young man, as much as I could for my age, most eagerly, and recently I obtained for him from the best of emperors the right of three children; which, although he gives it sparingly and with selection, he yet indulged to me as though he were choosing.
13.9| These benefits of mine I can protect in no way better than by increasing them, especially as he himself interprets them so gratefully that while receiving the earlier he deserves the later.
13.10| You have what sort of man he is, how approved and dear to me, and I ask you to promote him according to his talent and your fortune. Above all love the man; for though you grant him as much as you most amply can, you can grant him nothing more than your friendship; and that you might know the better that he is capable of it even to the most intimate familiarity, I have briefly set out for you his pursuits, his character, in short his whole life.
13.11| I would extend my prayers if you did not dislike being asked for long and if I had not done this throughout the whole letter; for he asks, and most effectively, who gives the reasons for asking. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus
14.1| You guess truly: I am pulled in pieces by centumviral cases, which exercise me more than they delight me. For most are small and slight; rarely does one occur that is notable either for the distinction of the persons or the greatness of the business.
14.2| Besides, there are few with whom it is a pleasure to speak; the rest are bold, and for the most part obscure young men, who have crossed over here to declaim, so irreverently and rashly that our friend Atilius seems to me to have said it exactly: that boys begin at the forum with the centumviral cases as at school with Homer. For here too, as there, what is greatest came first.
14.3| But, by Hercules, before my memory - so the older men are accustomed to say - not even the most noble young men had a place unless some consular brought them forward: with such reverence was that most beautiful work honored.
14.4| Now, with the barriers of modesty and reverence broken down, everything lies open to everybody, and they are not led in but burst in. Hearers follow, like the pleaders, hired and bought. A contractor is approached; in the middle of the basilica the sportulae are handed out as openly as in a dining room; from one trial to another they pass for the same pay.
14.5| Hence they are now called, not without wit, "Sophocleses," from "wisely" and "to be called," and the Latin name given to the same men is Laudiceni;
14.6| and yet the ugliness, branded in both languages, grows day by day. Yesterday my two nomenclators - they are, to be sure, of the age of those who have lately taken the toga - were dragged off to applaud at three denarii each. That is what being most eloquent costs. At this price benches however numerous are filled, at this price a huge circle is gathered, at this price endless shouts are stirred up, when the mesochorus has given the signal.
14.7| For a signal is needed among people who do not understand, who do not even listen;
14.8| for most do not listen, and none applaud more. If you ever pass through the basilica and want to know how each man speaks, there is no need to climb the tribunal, no need to lend your ear; guessing is easy: know that he speaks worst who will be applauded most.
14.9| The first to introduce this manner of being listened to was Larcius Licinus, though only so far as to canvass hearers. So, at least, I remember hearing from my teacher Quintilian.
14.10| He used to tell it: "I was attending Domitius Afer. While he was speaking before the centumviri in his grave and slow way - for this was his kind of pleading - he heard from nearby an immoderate and unaccustomed shout. Astonished, he fell silent; when silence came, he resumed what he had broken off.
14.11| Again a shout, again he fell silent, and after the silence began. The same a third time. At last he asked who was speaking. The answer was: 'Licinus.' Then, breaking off the case, he said: 'Centumviri, this art has perished.'"
14.12| What was in any case beginning to perish when it seemed to Afer to have perished, is now almost utterly extinguished and overturned. I am ashamed to report what is said, and in how broken a delivery, and with how feeble shouts it is received.
14.13| Only the clapping, or rather only the cymbals and drums, are missing from those songs: the howling - for by no other word can a praise unseemly even in theaters be expressed - is there in plenty.
14.14| Yet as for me, the interest of my friends and the reckoning of my age still delay and hold me; for I fear that I may seem not to have left these indignities, but to have fled the labor. Still, I appear more rarely than usual, which is the beginning of gradually leaving off. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Valerianus
15.1| How are your old Marsi treating you? How is the new purchase? Do the fields please, now that they have become yours? That is rare indeed; for nothing is so welcome to those who have gained as to those who covet.
15.2| My mother's estates treat me rather inconveniently, yet they delight me as my mother's, and besides, by long endurance I have grown callous. Constant complaints have this end, that one is ashamed to complain. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Annius
16.1| You, with your usual diligence, warn me that the codicils of Acilianus, who made me heir for a part, are to be held as unwritten, because they were not confirmed by the will;
16.2| which law is not unknown even to me, since it is known even to those who know nothing else. But I have laid down for myself a certain law of my own, that I should uphold the wishes of the dead, even if they fail in law, as though they were complete. Now it is agreed that those codicils of Acilianus are written in his own hand.
16.3| Therefore, although the will does not confirm them, they shall nevertheless be observed by me as confirmed, especially since there is no room for an informer.
16.4| For if it were to be feared that the people would snatch away what I had given, I should perhaps have to be more hesitant and more cautious; but since an heir is allowed to give what has settled into the inheritance, there is nothing to stand in the way of that law of mine, to which the public laws are not opposed. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Gallus
17.1| You wonder why my Laurentine villa, or - if you prefer - my Laurens, delights me so greatly; you will cease to wonder when you learn the charm of the villa, the convenience of the site, the extent of the shore.
17.2| It lies seventeen miles from the city, so that when what had to be done is done you can stay there with the day still whole and in order. It is approached by more than one road; for both the Laurentine and the Ostian lead to the same place, but the Laurentine must be left at the fourteenth milestone, the Ostian at the eleventh. On either side a road follows that is sandy in part, rather heavy and longer for a team, but short and soft for a horse.
17.3| The scene varies on this side and that; for now the road is narrowed by woods meeting it, now it spreads out and opens through very broad meadows; there are many flocks of sheep, many herds of horses and cattle, driven down from the mountains in winter, which grow sleek on the pastures and the warmth of spring. The villa is roomy for its uses, not costly to keep up.
17.4| In the first part of it is an atrium, plain yet not mean; then porticoes curved round in the likeness of the letter D, which enclose a small but pleasant courtyard. This is an excellent shelter against storms; for it is protected by window panes and much more by overhanging eaves.
17.5| Opposite the middle is a cheerful cavaedium, then a quite beautiful dining room, which runs out toward the shore and, whenever the sea is driven by the southwest wind, is lightly washed by the last waves, already broken. On every side it has folding doors or windows no smaller than doors, and so from the sides and the front it looks out on, as it were, three seas; at the back it looks back on the cavaedium, the portico, the courtyard, the portico again, then the atrium, the woods and the distant mountains.
17.6| On the left of this, set back a little, is a large bedroom, then another smaller, which with one window admits the rising sun and with the other keeps the setting; from this it looks also on the sea lying below, farther off indeed but more safely.
17.7| By the projection of this bedroom and of that dining room a corner is enclosed, which holds and kindles the purest sunshine. This is the winter quarters, this also the exercise ground of my household; there all winds are silent, except those that bring cloud, and take away the clear sky before the use of the place.
17.8| Attached to the corner is a bedroom curved into an apse, which follows the circuit of the sun with all its windows. In its wall a cupboard is let in in the form of a library, which holds books not to be read but to be read again and again.
17.9| Next adjoins a sleeping room, with a passage between, which, raised on a floor and piped, spreads and supplies here and there the heat it has gathered to a healthy temperature. What remains of this side is kept for the use of slaves and freedmen, most of the rooms so neat that they can receive guests.
17.10| On the other side is a most elegant bedroom; then either a large bedroom or a moderate dining room, bright with abundant sun and abundant sea; after this a bedroom with an anteroom, in height a summer room, in its defenses a winter one; for it is withdrawn from all winds. To this bedroom another bedroom and anteroom are joined by a common wall.
17.11| Next comes the cold-room of the bath, spacious and spread out, in whose opposite walls two basins, as if thrust out, are curved, ample enough if you consider the sea nearby. Beside it lie the anointing room, the hypocauston, and the propnigeon of the bath, then two rooms more elegant than costly; adjoining is a wonderful warm pool, from which swimmers look at the sea,
17.12| and not far off the ball court, which meets the hottest sun when the day is already declining. Here a tower rises, under which are two apartments, as many in the tower itself, besides [….] which commands the widest sea, the longest shore, the most delightful villas.
17.13| There is another tower too; in this a bedroom in which the sun is born and set; behind it a broad storeroom and granary, under this a dining room, which, of a troubled sea, suffers only the crash and sound, and that already faint and dying; it looks on the garden and the carriage drive, by which the garden is enclosed.
17.14| The carriage drive is bordered with box or, where the box fails, with rosemary; for the box, in the part where it is sheltered by the buildings, is abundantly green; in the open air and open wind, and though sprayed from far off by the sea, it dries up.
17.15| Alongside the drive on its inner circuit lies a tender and shady vine walk, soft and yielding even to bare feet. The garden is clothed with mulberry and fig in plenty, trees for which that soil is especially fertile, though less kind to the rest. With this view, no worse than the face of the sea, [….] far from the sea enjoys it, and is surrounded at the back by two apartments, under whose windows lies the entrance court of the villa and another garden, rich and rustic.
17.16| From here a covered gallery extends, almost like a public work. There are windows on both sides, more on the sea side, one each on the garden side but fewer on alternate ones. When the day is clear and still, all of them stand open; when it is disturbed by winds from this side or that, those on the side where the winds are quiet stand open without harm.
17.17| In front of the gallery is a terrace scented with violets. The gallery increases the warmth of the sun poured in by its reflection, and as it holds the sun so it checks and keeps off the north wind, and as much heat as there is in front, so much cold is there behind; likewise it stops the southwest wind, and so it breaks and ends the most opposite winds, one from one side, one from another. This is its pleasantness in winter, greater in summer.
17.18| For before noon it tempers the terrace, after noon the nearest part of the drive and garden, with its shade, which, as the day grows or shrinks, falls now shorter, now longer, on this side or that.
17.19| The gallery itself is then most without sun, when the fiercest sun stands upon its roof. Besides, with its windows open it receives the west winds and sends them through, and never grows oppressive with sluggish, stagnant air.
17.20| At the head of the terrace, and next the covered gallery of the garden, is an apartment which is my darling, truly my darling: I built it myself. In it is a sun room, one side of which looks on the terrace, the other on the sea, both on the sun, and a bedroom whose folding doors look on the covered gallery, and whose window on the sea.
17.21| Opposite the middle wall a zotheca withdraws most elegantly, which by window panes and curtains drawn over or drawn back is now added to the bedroom, now taken away. It has room for a couch and two chairs; at the foot the sea, at the back the villas, at the head the woods: so many aspects of places it both separates and blends with as many windows.
17.22| Joined to it is a bedroom for night and sleep. It does not feel the voices of the slaves, the murmur of the sea, the motion of storms, the light of lightning flashes, nor even daylight, unless the windows are opened. This is the effect of its deep and remote seclusion, because a passage lying between divides the bedroom's wall from the garden and so swallows every sound in the empty space between.
17.23| Attached to the bedroom is a very small hypocauston, which, through a narrow opening, either lets out or holds the heat placed beneath, as need requires. Then an anteroom and a bedroom extend into the sun, which, taking it as it rises, they keep, slanting indeed but still, beyond noon.
17.24| When I have withdrawn into this apartment, I seem to be away even from my own villa, and I take great pleasure in it, especially at the Saturnalia, when the rest of the building rings with the license of the days and festive shouts; for I do not disturb my household's games, nor they my studies.
17.25| This convenience, this charm lacks only running water, but it has wells, or rather springs; for they are at the surface. And altogether the nature of that shore is marvelous: wherever you move the ground, water meets you ready at hand, and pure, not even slightly spoiled by the nearness of the sea.
17.26| The neighboring woods supply fuel in plenty; the colony of Ostia provides the other supplies. For a frugal man even the village is enough, which one villa separates from mine. In it are three public baths for hire, a great convenience if perhaps a sudden arrival or a rather short stay discourages heating the bath at home.
17.27| The shore is adorned, with most pleasing variety, by roofs of villas, now continuous, now broken, which present the look of many cities, whether you use the sea or the shore itself; which a long calm sometimes softens, more often a frequent and opposing swell hardens.
17.28| The sea does not abound in costly fish, yet it yields excellent soles and prawns. But our villa also supplies inland produce, milk above all; for the herds gather there from the pastures, if ever they are looking for water or shade.
17.29| Do I now seem to you to have just reasons for living in, dwelling in, and loving this retreat? You are too much a city man if you do not long for it. And would that you did long for it! that to so many and such great endowments of my little villa the greatest recommendation may be added by your company. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Mauricus
18.1| What could have been laid on me by you more pleasant than that I should find a teacher for the children of your brother? For by your kindness I go back to school, and as it were take up again that sweetest of ages: I sit among young men as I used to, and even find out how much authority I have with them from my studies.
18.2| For lately in a crowded lecture room they were joking loudly among themselves in the presence of many of our order; I came in, they fell silent; which I would not report, if it did not concern their praise more than mine, and if I did not wish you to hope that your brother's sons can learn well.
18.3| For the rest, when I have heard all who profess it, I shall write what I think of each, and I shall bring it about, so far as a letter will let me, that you will seem yourself to have heard them all.
18.4| For I owe this loyalty and this zeal to you, and I owe them to your brother's memory, especially in a matter of such importance. What could matter more to you both than that the children — I would say "your" children, except that you now love them more than your own — should turn out worthy of that father, and of you as their uncle? I would have claimed this responsibility for myself even if you had not entrusted it to me.
18.5| Nor am I unaware that in choosing a teacher one has to risk giving offense; but for your brother's sons I ought to accept not only offense but even feuds with as much equanimity as parents do for their own. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Cerialis
19.1| You urge me to read my speech to a fairly large gathering of friends. I will do it, since you urge me, though I have strong doubts.
19.2| For I am well aware that speeches, when they are read aloud, lose all their drive and heat, and almost their very name, since what usually recommends them and at the same time sets them alight is the bench of jurors, the crowd of advocates, the suspense over the outcome, the reputation of more than one speaker, and the partisan enthusiasm of the audience divided between the sides; and in addition the speaker's gestures, his stride, even his moving about, and a bodily vigor that matches every movement of the mind.
19.3| This is why those who plead sitting down, although they keep for the most part all the same advantages as those who stand, are nonetheless weakened, as it were, and diminished by the mere fact that they are seated.
19.4| For those who read aloud, the chief aids of delivery, the eyes and the hands, are actually hampered. So it is less surprising if the attention of the listeners flags, when it is neither captured by any external charms nor stirred by any goads.
19.5| Added to this, the speech I am talking about is combative and, so to speak, argumentative. Besides, nature has so arranged it that what we have written with labor we think will also be listened to with labor.
19.6| And really, how few listeners are so upright that they are not more pleased by sweet and sonorous writing than by what is austere and compressed? This disagreement is thoroughly shameful, but it exists, because it usually happens that listeners demand one thing and jurors another, although otherwise a listener ought to be most affected by the very things that would move him most if he were a juror.
19.7| Still, it may be that, in spite of these difficulties, novelty will recommend this book — novelty among us, that is; for among the Greeks there is something that, though different, is not wholly unlike it.
19.8| For just as it was their custom to refute laws they charged with contradicting earlier laws by comparing them with others, so we had to establish that what we were claiming was contained in the law on extortion, by drawing both on this law itself and on others. This is in no way pleasing to the ears of the inexperienced, and so it ought to find all the more favor with the learned, the less it has with the unlearned.
19.9| If I decide to read it, I intend to invite all the most learned people. But do think over carefully, on your own, whether it should be read at all; set down on both sides all the pebbles I have put in motion, and choose the side on which reason wins. For it is you who will have to give an account of your reasons; my compliance will be my excuse. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Calvisius
20.1| Get an as ready and hear a golden story — or rather stories; for the new one has put me in mind of earlier ones, and it does not matter which I start with.
20.2| Verania, the wife of Piso, was lying gravely ill — I mean the Piso whom Galba adopted. Regulus came to visit her. First of all, the impudence of the man, to visit a sick woman whose husband he had been the bitterest enemy of, and to whom he himself was utterly hateful!
20.3| Granted, if he only came; but he even sat down right by her bed and put to her the question of the day and the hour of her birth. When he heard, he composes his face, fixes his eyes, moves his lips, works his fingers, calculates. Nothing. After keeping the poor woman in suspense for a long time, he says, "You are in a critical year, but you will come through.
20.4| To make this clearer to you, I will consult a haruspex whom I have often put to the test."
20.5| Without delay he makes a sacrifice, and declares that the entrails agree with what the stars indicate. She, credulous as people in danger are, asks for her will-tablets and writes in a legacy for Regulus. Soon afterward she grows worse, and as she is dying she cries out against this worthless, treacherous man, worse even than a perjurer, who had sworn falsely to her by the life of his own son.
20.6| Regulus does this no less wickedly than frequently — calling down the wrath of the gods, whom he himself deceives every day, on the head of his unhappy boy.
20.7| Velleius Blaesus, the well-known wealthy ex-consul, was struggling with his last illness and wanted to change his will. Regulus, who hoped to get something from the new tablets because he had recently begun to court him for a legacy, kept urging and begging the doctors to prolong the man's breath somehow or other.
20.8| Once the will was sealed, he changes his role, turns his address around, and says to the same doctors: "How long will you go on racking the wretched man? Why do you grudge a good death to someone you cannot give life to?" Blaesus dies, and as if he had heard everything, leaves Regulus not a thing.
20.9| Are two stories enough, or by the rule of the schools do you demand a third? There is material for one.
20.10| Aurelia, a distinguished woman, had put on her finest tunics to seal her will. When Regulus came to witness the sealing, he said, "Please leave me these."
20.11| Aurelia thought the man was joking; he kept pressing her in earnest. In short, he forced the woman to open her tablets and leave him the tunics she had on; he watched her writing, and checked whether she had actually written it. And Aurelia, in fact, is alive, but he forced this on her as though she were about to die. And this man accepts inheritances and legacies as if he deserved them.
20.12| But why do I strain myself over this, in a city where for a long time now wickedness and dishonesty have had no smaller rewards — rather, greater ones — than modesty and virtue?
20.13| Look at Regulus, who from being poor and insignificant has advanced through his crimes to such wealth that he told me himself that when he consulted the omens on how soon he would complete sixty million sesterces, he found the entrails doubled, which portended that he would have a hundred and twenty million.
20.14| And he will have it, if he continues as he started, dictating other people's wills to the very people whose wills they are — the most wicked kind of forgery there is. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book III ========

1.0| Pliny to his friend Calvisius Rufus
1.1| I am not sure I have ever spent a more pleasant time than I did recently at Spurinna's — so much so that there is no one I would rather imitate in old age, if only I am granted the chance to grow old; for nothing is better ordered than that way of life.
1.2| For my part, I take as much delight in a well-arranged human life as in the fixed course of the stars — especially the life of old men. For in the young a certain confusion, and a kind of turbulence as it were, does not ill suit them; whereas to the old, everything calm and orderly is fitting, since for them busy activity comes too late and ambition is disgraceful.
1.3| Spurinna keeps to this rule most faithfully; indeed, even these small matters — small, that is, if they were not done every day — he moves through in a fixed order and, as it were, in a cycle.
1.4| In the morning he stays in bed; at the second hour he asks for his shoes and goes for a walk of three miles, exercising his mind no less than his body. If friends are with him, the most honorable conversations unfold; if not, a book is read aloud — sometimes even when friends are present, provided they do not mind.
1.5| Then he sits down, and there is a book again, or conversation, which is better than a book; next he gets into his carriage and takes with him his wife, a woman of exceptional character, or one of his friends, as he did me lately.
1.6| How fine, how delightful that privacy is! How much of the old days there is in it! What deeds, what men you get to hear about! With what precepts you are steeped! — although he has imposed on his modesty this restraint, that he should not seem to be lecturing.
1.7| After covering seven miles he walks a mile again, sits down again, or betakes himself to his bedroom and his stylus. For he writes lyric poems, very learned ones, and in both languages; they have a wonderful sweetness, a wonderful charm, a wonderful gaiety, and their grace is crowned by the purity of the writer.
1.8| When the hour of the bath is announced — the ninth hour in winter, the eighth in summer — he strolls naked in the sun, provided there is no wind. After that he plays ball vigorously and for a long time; for with this kind of exercise too he fights against old age. Once bathed, he lies down and puts off his meal for a little while; meanwhile he listens to someone reading something lighter and more agreeable. All through this time his friends are free to do the same things or something else, if they prefer.
1.9| Dinner is served, as elegant as it is frugal, on plain, old silver; Corinthian bronzes are also in use, which he enjoys without being obsessed by them. Dinner is often punctuated by comic actors, so that even pleasures may be seasoned with learning. He takes some of the night as well, even in summer; no one finds it long, so genial is the company in which the party is drawn out.
1.10| This is why, past his seventy-seventh year, the strength of his hearing and sight is unimpaired, why his body is nimble and lively, and why the only thing he has from old age is wisdom.
1.11| This is the life that I claim in advance, in my prayers and thoughts, and I shall enter on it most eagerly as soon as the reckoning of my years allows me to sound the retreat. Meanwhile I am worn down by a thousand labors, and for these the same Spurinna is both my comfort and my model;
1.12| for he too, as long as it was honorable, performed his public duties, held magistracies, governed provinces, and earned this leisure with much labor. So I set myself the same course and the same goal, and I sign my name to it now in your presence, so that if you see me carried further, you may summon me to court on the strength of this letter of mine and order me to rest, once I have escaped the charge of idleness. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Vibius Maximus
2.1| What I would have offered your friends myself, if I had the same opportunity, I think I may now rightly ask of you for mine.
2.2| Arrianus Maturus is the leading man of Altinum; when I say "leading," I am not speaking of his wealth, of which he has more than enough, but of his purity and justice, his seriousness and good sense.
2.3| I rely on his counsel in business and his judgment in my studies; for he excels above all in loyalty, above all in truthfulness, above all in understanding.
2.4| He loves me — I can say nothing warmer — as you do. He has no ambition; that is why he has kept himself in the equestrian rank, when he could easily rise to the highest. Still, I am bound to advance and honor him.
2.5| So I set great store by adding something to his standing when he does not expect it or know of it — indeed, perhaps, even against his wishes; but adding something that would be distinguished without being burdensome.
2.6| Please confer on him something of this kind at the first opportunity you have; you will have me, and you will have him, as a most grateful debtor. For although he does not seek such things, he receives them as gratefully as if he coveted them. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Corellia Hispulla
3.1| Since I am not sure whether I looked up to your father, a man of the greatest dignity and integrity, more than I loved him, and since I have a singular affection for you, both in memory of him and for your own sake, I cannot help wishing, and I will even strive as far as lies in my power, that your son may grow up like his grandfather — his maternal grandfather, I prefer, although his paternal grandfather too was a distinguished and respected man, and his father and his uncle were also conspicuous for their brilliant reputation.
3.2| He will grow up like all of them only if he is steeped in honorable studies, and it matters very much from whom above all he receives them.
3.3| Until now the requirements of boyhood have kept him within your household, and he has had his teachers at home, where there is little or even no occasion for going astray. Now his studies must be carried outside the threshold; now we must look around for a teacher of Latin rhetoric whose school is marked by strictness, modesty, and above all purity.
3.4| For our young man has, along with the other gifts of nature and fortune, exceptional beauty of body, and at this slippery time of life we must look for someone who will be not just his teacher but also his guardian and guide.
3.5| I seem, then, able to point out to you Iulius Genitor. I love him; yet the affection for the man, which was born of judgment, does not stand in the way of my judgment. He is a man of correct character and weight, a little even rough and hard, considering the license of these times.
3.6| How much his eloquence is worth, you can believe from many, for the ability to speak is open and exposed and seen at once; the life of men has deep recesses and great hiding places, and for this take me as surety for Genitor. Your son will hear from this man nothing that will not profit him, will learn nothing it would have been better not to know, and will be reminded by him no less often than by you and me with what portraits he is burdened, what names and how great he bears.
3.7| So with the gods favoring, hand him over to a teacher from whom he may learn first character, then eloquence, which is badly learned without character. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his friend Caecilius Macrinus
4.1| Although both the friends whom I had with me and the talk of men seem to have approved what I did, I yet value highly knowing what you think.
4.2| For I have a wonderful longing to know, now the thing is done, the judgment of the man whose counsel I would have wished to seek while the matter was still open. When I was about to begin a public work at my own expense and had hurried off to Tuscany, having obtained leave as prefect of the treasury, envoys of the province of Baetica, about to complain of the proconsulship of Caecilius Classicus, asked the senate for me as their advocate.
4.3| My colleagues, excellent men and most affectionate toward me, spoke first about the requirements of our common office and tried to excuse and release me. A decree of the senate was made, most honorable, that I should be given to the provincials as patron if they obtained it from me.
4.4| The envoys were brought in again and a second time asked for me, now present, as advocate, imploring my good faith which they had tried against Massa Baebius, citing the compact of patronage. A most distinguished assent of the senate followed, such as usually goes ahead of decrees. Then I said: "I cease, Conscript Fathers, to think that I have brought just reasons for excusing myself." Both the modesty of my speech and the reason were approved.
4.5| Now what drove me to this decision was not only the consent of the senate, though this most of all, but also some other considerations, lesser indeed, yet still weighty. It came into my mind that our forebears had pursued even the wrongs of single guests by voluntary prosecutions, so that I thought it the more shameful to neglect the rights of public hospitality.
4.6| Besides, when I recalled how great perils I had undergone for the same Baeticans in my earlier advocacy, it seemed that the merit of the old service should be preserved by a new one. For it is so arranged that you overturn earlier kindnesses unless you heap them up with later ones. For however often men are put under obligation, if you refuse them one thing, they remember only that which was refused.
4.7| I was also influenced by the fact that Classicus had died, and what in cases of this sort is usually most grievous, the danger to a senator, had been removed. I saw, therefore, that my advocacy would bring no less favor than if he were alive, and no ill will.
4.8| In sum I reckoned that, if I discharged this duty now for the third time, my excuse would be easier if a case arose which I ought not to prosecute. For when there is some limit to all duties, then freedom's pardon is best prepared by compliance.
4.9| You have heard the motives of my plan: what remains is your judgment, on one side or the other, in which the plainness of one who disagrees will be as pleasing to me as the authority of one who approves. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Baebius Macer
5.1| It is very gratifying to me that you read my uncle's books so diligently as to wish to have them all and to ask which they all are.
5.2| I shall play the part of an index, and even make known to you in what order they were written; for this too is not an unwelcome piece of knowledge to scholars.
5.3| "On Throwing the Javelin from Horseback, one book"; this he composed with equal talent and care while serving as commander of a cavalry wing. "On the Life of Pomponius Secundus, two"; by him he was singularly loved, and discharged this to the memory of his friend as a kind of debt.
5.4| "The Wars of Germany, twenty"; in which he gathered up every war that we have fought against the Germans. He began it while serving in Germany, warned by a dream: as he slept, the image of Drusus Nero stood by him, who, victor over Germany far and wide, died there; he commended his memory to him and begged him to rescue him from the wrong of oblivion.
5.5| "The Students, three," divided into six rolls because of their size, in which he trains the orator from the cradle and perfects him. "Of Doubtful Speech, eight": he wrote it under Nero in the last years, when slavery had made every kind of study dangerous if rather freer and loftier.
5.6| "From the End of Aufidius Bassus, thirty-one." "Histories of Nature, thirty-seven," a copious, learned work, no less varied than nature itself.
5.7| Do you wonder that a busy man finished so many volumes and so many exacting matters in them? You will wonder the more if you learn that he for some time pleaded cases, that he died in the fifty-sixth year of his life, and that the time in between he spent distracted and hindered, partly by very great duties, partly by friendship with emperors.
5.8| But his talent was keen, his zeal incredible, his vigilance the highest. He began to work by lamplight at the Vulcanalia, not for the sake of omens but for study, immediately from deep night, in winter indeed from the seventh hour, or at the latest the eighth, often the sixth. He was, to be sure, a man who fell asleep most readily, a sleep that sometimes came on him and left him even in the midst of his studies.
5.9| Before daylight he went to the Emperor Vespasian - for he too used the nights -, then to the duty assigned him. On returning home he gave what remained of the time to his studies.
5.10| After eating, which by day he took light and easy in the manner of the ancients, in summer, if he had any leisure, he would lie in the sun, a book was read, and he made notes and extracts. For he read nothing without making extracts; he used also to say that no book was so bad that it did not profit in some part.
5.11| After the sun he usually washed in cold water, then took a snack and slept a very little; soon, as if on another day, he studied until dinner time. During dinner a book was read and annotated, and at that, at speed.
5.12| I recall that a friend of his, when the reader had pronounced certain words wrongly, called him back and made him repeat them; my uncle said to him: "Had you understood?" When he nodded, "Why then did you call him back? By this interruption of yours we have lost more than ten lines."
5.13| So great was his thrift of time. In summer he rose from dinner by daylight, in winter within the first hour of night, and as if compelled by some law.
5.14| This was in the midst of his labors and the din of the city. In the country only the time of the bath was taken from his studies - when I say the bath I mean the inner rooms; for while he was being scraped and rubbed, he would hear something read or dictate -.
5.15| On a journey, as though freed from other cares, he gave himself to this one thing: at his side a secretary with a book and tablets, whose hands in winter were protected with sleeves, so that not even the harshness of the weather should rob him of any time for study; for which reason at Rome too he was carried in a chair.
5.16| I recall being scolded by him for walking: "You could," he said, "not lose these hours"; for he thought all time lost that was not spent on studies.
5.17| By this intensity he completed all those volumes and left me one hundred and sixty notebooks of selections, written on both sides and in a very small hand; by which reckoning this number is multiplied. He himself used to relate that, while serving as procurator in Spain, he might have sold these notebooks to Larcius Licinus for four hundred thousand sesterces, though at that period there were a good many fewer.
5.18| Does it not seem to you, as you recall how much he read and how much he wrote, that he was never in any duties or in friendship with an emperor; again, when you hear how much labor he spent on his studies, that he neither wrote enough nor read enough? For what is there that those occupations could not hinder, or that this persistence could not accomplish?
5.19| And so I am accustomed to laugh when some call me studious, who, if I am compared with him, am most idle. And what of me, whom partly public duties, partly those of friends pull in all directions? Who of those who sit over letters all their lives, compared with him, would not blush as if given to sleep and inertia?
5.20| I have stretched out the letter when I had intended to write only what you asked, which books he left; yet I trust that these things too will be no less welcome to you than the books themselves, since they can rouse you with the goads of emulation not merely to read them but also to work up something similar of your own. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Annius Severus
6.1| From the inheritance that has come to me, I recently bought a Corinthian statuette, small indeed but charming and finely wrought, as far as I understand, who perhaps in everything, in this certainly, understand very little: yet this statuette even I understand.
6.2| For it is nude, and neither hides its faults, if there are any, nor displays its merits too little. It represents an old man standing; the bones, muscles, sinews, veins, even the wrinkles appear as of one breathing; the hair is sparse and receding, the forehead broad, the face drawn, the neck thin; the arms hang, the breasts lie flat, the belly has sunk in;
6.3| from behind too the same age shows as from behind. The bronze itself, as far as its true color indicates, is old and ancient; all in short such that it can hold the eyes of craftsmen and delight those of the unskilled.
6.4| This tempted me to buy, though I am a mere beginner. I bought it not to have it at home - for I have no Corinthian bronze at home so far - but to put it in our native town in a crowded place, and best of all in the temple of Jupiter;
6.5| for it seems a gift worthy of the temple, worthy of the god. You therefore, as you do all that is enjoined on you by me, take up this care, and order a base made at once, of whatever marble you wish, to bear my name and offices, if you think these should be added as well.
6.6| I shall send you the statuette itself as soon as I find someone who will not mind the burden, or bring it with me myself - which you prefer. For I intend, if the reckoning of my duties permits, to run over there.
6.7| You rejoice that I promise to come, yet you will frown when I add "for a few days": for these same things, which do not yet allow me to leave, will not let me be away longer. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Caninius Rufus
7.1| Word has just come that Silius Italicus has ended his life by starvation at his place near Naples.
7.2| The cause of death was his health. A growth had formed on him, incurable, and weary of it he ran down to death with unalterable resolve, happy and fortunate to his last day, except that of his two sons he lost the younger, but left the elder and better flourishing and even of consular rank.
7.3| He had damaged his reputation under Nero - he was believed to have accused of his own accord -, but in the friendship of Vitellius he had behaved with wisdom and courtesy, had brought back glory from the proconsulship of Asia, and had washed away the stain of his former activity by an honorable retirement.
7.4| He was among the leading men of the state without power, without envy: he was greeted and courted, and, much lying on his couch in his bedroom, which was always thronged not by reason of his fortune, he spent his days in most learned conversation when he had leisure from writing.
7.5| He wrote poems with more care than talent, and sometimes tested men's judgment by recitations.
7.6| At last, as his years advised, he withdrew from the city and kept himself in Campania, and was not moved from there even by the arrival of the new emperor:
7.7| great credit to Caesar, under whom this was free, great credit to him who dared to use this freedom.
7.8| He was a lover of the beautiful to the point of being blamed for buying too much. He owned several villas in the same places, and loving the new ones, neglected the earlier. Everywhere there were many books, many statues, many portraits, which he not only had but venerated, Virgil's before all, whose birthday he celebrated more religiously than his own, chiefly at Naples, where he used to visit his tomb as a temple.
7.9| In this calm he went past his seventy-fifth year, his body delicate rather than infirm; and just as he was the last man made consul by Nero, so too he was the last to die among all whom Nero had made consuls.
7.10| This too is notable: he died the last of the consulars of Nero's time, under whose consulship Nero perished. When I recall it, pity for human frailty comes over me.
7.11| For what is so cut short, so brief, as the longest life of a man? Does not Nero seem to you to have been only just now, only just now? while meanwhile of those who held the consulship under him, no one now survives.
7.12| Yet why do I wonder at this? Recently Lucius Piso, father of that Piso who was killed in Africa by Valerius Festus by a supreme crime, used to say that he saw in the senate no one whom he himself as consul had asked for an opinion.
7.13| The very vitality of so great a multitude is shut in by such narrow limits that those royal tears seem to me worthy not only of pardon but of praise; for they say that Xerxes, when he had surveyed with his eyes the immense army, wept, because so brief an end hung over so many thousands.
7.14| But so much the more let us extend this time, whatever it is, so futile and perishable, if not by deeds - for the material of these is in another's hand -, then certainly by studies, and since long life is denied to us, let us leave something by which we may testify that we have lived.
7.15| I know that you need no spurs: yet my affection for you calls me out to urge on one who is also running, as you are wont to do me. "Good is the strife" when friends in turn sharpen one another by mutual exhortations to the love of immortality. Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Suetonius Tranquillus
8.1| You act, in keeping with the rest of the respect you show me, in asking so anxiously that I transfer to your kinsman Caesennius Silvanus the tribuneship that I secured for you from Neratius Marcellus, a most distinguished man.
8.2| For me, as it is most pleasant that you yourself should be tribune, so it is no less welcome to see another made one through you. For I do not think it fitting that you should begrudge the titles of family affection, which are more beautiful than all offices, to one whom you wish to increase in honors.
8.3| I also see that, since it is admirable both to earn kindnesses and to give them, you will win both praises at once if you bestow on another what you yourself earned. Besides, I understand that it will be to my glory too, if from this act of yours it is not unknown that my friends can not only hold tribunates but give them.
8.4| Therefore I obey your most honorable wish. For the name has not yet been entered in the lists, and so we are free to put Silvanus in your place; and I hope your gift will please him as much as mine pleases you. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Minicianus
9.1| I can now write out to you how much labor I have drained in the public cause of the province of Baetica.
9.2| For it was manifold, and was pleaded repeatedly with great variety. Whence the variety, whence the several pleadings? Caecilius Classicus, a foul and openly wicked man, had conducted his proconsulship in that province no less violently than sordidly, in the same year as Marius Priscus in Africa.
9.3| Now Priscus was from Baetica, Classicus from Africa. Hence a saying of the Baeticans was current, not without charm, as grief often makes men witty: "I gave a bad one and I received one."
9.4| But Marius was prosecuted to the end by a single city in its public capacity and by many private persons; on Classicus the whole province bore down. He forestalled the accusation by a death either chance or voluntary. For his death was infamous, yet ambiguous: for as it seemed credible that he wished to leave life when he could not be defended, so it was strange that he should have fled by death the shame of condemnation, who had not been ashamed to commit what deserved condemnation.
9.6| None the less Baetica persisted in accusing even the dead man. This was provided for by the laws, but it had lapsed, and after a long interval was then revived. The Baeticans added that they at the same time denounced the partners and agents of Classicus, and demanded an inquiry against them by name.
9.7| I appeared for the Baeticans, and with me Lucceius Albinus, a man copious and ornate in speaking; whom, though I had long loved him in return, I began from this partnership in duty to love more ardently.
9.8| Glory, especially in studies, has in it something that cannot be shared; yet between us there was no rivalry, no contention, since each strained under an equal yoke, not for himself but for the cause, whose greatness and usefulness seemed to demand that we should not take on so great a load in single pleadings.
9.9| We feared that day, voice and lungs might fail us if we embraced so many charges and so many defendants in a single bundle, as it were; next, that the attention of the judges might not only be wearied by many names and many causes but even confused; then, that the influence of individuals, brought together and mixed, might receive even for single defendants the strength of all; finally, that the most powerful might slip out by penalties on others, a sacrifice of atonement as it were, once the most worthless of them had been handed over.
9.10| For favor and canvassing hold sway most of all when they can lie hidden under some show of severity.
9.11| In our council there was in mind that Sertorian example, who ordered the strongest and the weakest soldier to take the horse's tail - the rest you know. For we too saw that so numerous a column of defendants could be overcome only if it were plucked at one by one.
9.12| It was agreed to show first Classicus himself guilty: this was the most suitable passage to his partners and agents, because partners and agents could not be proved guilty unless he were guilty. Of these we at once linked two men with Classicus, Baebius Probus and Fabius Hispanus, each strong in influence, Hispanus also in eloquence. And so far as Classicus is concerned the labor was brief and quick.
9.13| He had left in his own hand a written record of what he had received from each matter and each cause; he had also sent letters to Rome to a certain little mistress, boastful and exultant, in these very words: "Hurrah, hurrah, I am coming to you a free man; I have already realized four million sesterces by selling part of the Baeticans."
9.14| With Hispanus and Probus there was much sweat. Before I entered upon the charges against them, I held it necessary to take pains to establish that service was a crime: for had I not done so, I would have proved the agents in vain.
9.15| For they were not defended in such a way as to deny it, but so as to ask pardon for necessity; they said they were provincials and compelled by fear to obey every command of proconsuls.
9.16| Claudius Restitutus, who answered me, a practiced, watchful man and ready for any sudden event, is accustomed to say that never had so much darkness, so much confusion been poured over him as when he saw snatched away and wrested from his defense the very things in which he placed all his confidence.
9.17| The outcome of our plan was this: the senate decided that the goods of Classicus which he had before the province should be separated from the rest, those to be left to his daughter, these to the despoiled. It was added that the sums he had paid to creditors be recalled. Hispanus and Probus were relegated for five years; so grave did that seem which at the start was doubted to be a crime at all.
9.18| A few days later we prosecuted Claudius Fuscus, the son-in-law of Classicus, together with Stilonius Priscus, who had been tribune of a cohort under Classicus, with unequal outcome: Priscus was excluded from Italy for two years, while Fuscus was acquitted.
9.19| In the third pleading we thought it most convenient to bring several together, lest, if the hearing were drawn out longer, the justice and strictness of the judges should flag through a kind of satiety and weariness; and besides, there remained lesser defendants, reserved for this place on purpose, except the wife of Classicus, who, as she seemed implicated in suspicions, so seemed not sufficiently convicted by proofs;
9.20| for the daughter of Classicus, who herself was also among the defendants, did not even cling to suspicions. And so, when in the last pleading I came to her name - for it was not to be feared at the end, as it had been at the start, that thereby the authority of the whole accusation might be diminished -, I thought it most honorable not to press one who did not deserve it, and I said this very thing both freely and variously.
9.21| For now I asked the envoys whether they had shown me anything which they were confident could be proved in fact; now I asked advice of the senate, whether it thought I ought, if I had any ability in speaking, to direct it at the throat of an innocent person like some weapon; finally I closed the whole passage with this end: "Someone will say: do you then judge? I do not judge, yet I remember that I was given as an advocate from among the judges."
9.22| This was the end of a most numerous case, some being acquitted, more condemned and even relegated, some for a time, others forever.
9.23| By the same decree of the senate our industry, good faith and steadfastness were approved by the fullest testimony, a worthy and the only equal reward for so great a labor.
9.24| You can conceive in your mind how tired we are, who had to plead so often, so often dispute, and question, support and refute so many witnesses.
9.25| Then how arduous, how troublesome it was to say no to the friends of so many defendants who asked in private, and to resist openly those who opposed! I shall relate one of the things that I said. When some of the very judges cried out against me on behalf of a most influential defendant, I said: "He will be no less innocent if I say everything."
9.26| From this you will guess what contentions, even what offenses, we underwent, if only for a short time; for good faith for the moment offends those whom it resists, then is looked up to and praised by those very men. I could not have brought you more into the present business.
9.27| You will say: "It was not worth it; what have I to do with so long a letter?" Then do not keep asking over and over what is going on at Rome. And yet remember that a letter is not long which has embraced so many days, so many hearings, in short so many defendants and causes.
9.28| All of which I seem to myself to have followed up no less briefly than carefully. I said "carefully" rashly: it comes to mind that I had passed over something, and indeed late, but though out of order it shall be given. Homer does this and many after his example; it is besides most becoming, but that is not why I am doing it.
9.29| One of the witnesses, either angry that he had been summoned against his will, or suborned by one of the defendants to disarm the prosecution, demanded that Norbanus Licinianus, envoy and investigator, be put on trial, on the ground that he was colluding in the case of Casta - she is the wife of Classicus.
9.30| It is provided by law that the defendant be finished first, and then an inquiry be made about the colluder, evidently because the good faith of an accuser is best judged from the accusation itself.
9.31| Yet for Norbanus neither the order of the law, nor the name of envoy, nor the duty of investigation was a protection; such a blaze of ill will rose against him, a man otherwise infamous who had used Domitian's times as many did, and who was then chosen by the province for the inquiry not as a good and faithful man but as an enemy of Classicus - he had been relegated by him -.
9.32| He demanded that a day be given him and the charges set out; he obtained neither, and was forced to answer at once. He answered; the man's evil and perverse nature makes me doubt whether confidently or steadfastly, certainly most readily.
9.33| Many things were charged against him which hurt him more than the collusion; indeed two consulars, Pomponius Rufus and Libo Frugi, damaged him by testimony, to the effect that under Domitian he had assisted the accusers of Salvius Liberalis before a judge.
9.34| He was condemned and relegated to an island. So when I accused Casta, I pressed nothing more than that her accuser had fallen by the charge of collusion; I pressed in vain, however; for a contrary and novel thing happened, that with the accuser condemned for collusion the defendant was acquitted.
9.35| You ask, what did we do while this was going on? We informed the senate that we had learned the public case from Norbanus and must learn it again from the beginning, if he were proved a colluder, and so, while he was being finished as a defendant, we sat. Afterward Norbanus attended on all the days of the hearing and carried the same steadfastness or boldness to the end.
9.36| I ask myself whether I have again omitted something, and again I have almost omitted it. On the last day Salvius Liberalis sharply rebuked the remaining envoys, as though they had not finished off all the defendants whom the province had entrusted to them, and, being vehement and eloquent, brought them into peril. I shielded excellent men and the same most grateful ones: they at any rate declare that they owe it to me that they escaped that whirlwind.
9.37| This will be the end of the letter, truly the end; I shall not add a single letter more, even if I perceive that I have still passed something over. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friends Vestricius Spurinna and Cottia
10.1| That I had composed something about your son I did not tell you when I was last at your house, first because I had not written it in order to tell of it, but to satisfy my love and my grief; then because you, Spurinna, when you heard, as you yourself told me, that I had recited, I believed had heard at the same time what I recited.
10.2| Besides, I feared to disturb you on feast days, if I brought back the memory of a most grievous loss. Even now I hesitated a little whether, at your demand, to send only what I recited or to add what I think of reserving for another volume.
10.3| For it is not enough for my feelings to follow with a single little book a memory most dear and most sacred to me, whose fame will be better provided for more widely if it is parceled out and arranged.
10.4| But as I hesitated whether to show you everything I have already composed or to put off some part, it seemed more straightforward and friendly to send everything, especially as you assure me it will remain among yourselves until you are pleased to let it go.
10.5| For the rest, I ask that with equal frankness you indicate to me anything you think should be added, changed or omitted.
10.6| It is hard to bend the mind so far in grief; hard, but yet, as you would advise a sculptor, a painter making the likeness of your son, what to express, what to correct, so form and guide me too, who am trying to make not a fragile and perishable but, as you think, an immortal likeness: which will be the more lasting the truer, the better, the more finished it is. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his friend Iulius Genitor
11.1| Our friend Artemidorus is altogether of so kindly a nature that he exalts the services of his friends to something greater. Hence he also carries about my merit, true as it is, in a praise above the merit.
11.2| For my part, when the philosophers had been expelled from the city, I stayed with him at his suburban estate, and to make it the more noticeable - that is, more dangerous - I was praetor. Money too, of which he then had need in a larger amount, to pay off debt contracted for most honorable causes, while certain great and wealthy friends were muttering, I borrowed myself and gave to him free of interest.
11.3| And this I did when seven of my friends had been either killed or relegated, killed Senecio, Rusticus, Helvidius, relegated Mauricus, Gratilla, Arria, Fannia, so many thunderbolts hurled around me that, as if scorched, I foretold by certain signs that the same destruction hung over me too.
11.4| Yet I do not believe that I thereby earned the exceptional glory he proclaims, but only escaped disgrace.
11.5| For I loved Gaius Musonius, his father-in-law, with admiration, as far as my age allowed, and Artemidorus himself, even then, during my time as military tribune in Syria, I embraced in close intimacy, and this was the first proof of some natural ability that I gave, that I seemed to understand him as a man either wise or next to and most like a wise man.
11.6| For out of all who now call themselves philosophers, you will hardly find one or two of such sincerity, such truth. I pass over with what endurance of body he bears winters and summers alike, how he yields to no labors, how he grants nothing in food or drink to pleasures, how he keeps his eyes and mind in check.
11.7| These are great things, but in another man; in him they are the least, if compared with his other virtues, by which he earned the honor of being chosen as son-in-law by Gaius Musonius out of all the followers of all ranks.
11.8| When I recall this it is indeed pleasing that he heaps me with such praises, both among others and with you; yet I fear lest he exceed the measure, which his kindliness - for I return to the point from which I began - is wont not to keep.
11.9| For in this one thing the man, otherwise most prudent, is at times caught in an error, honorable indeed but still an error, that he thinks his friends worth more than they are. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Catilius Severus
12.1| I will come to dinner, but I bargain at once now: let it be quick, let it be frugal, let it overflow only with Socratic conversations, and in these too keep measure.
12.2| There will be duties before dawn, which not even Cato was allowed to meet with impunity, though Gaius Caesar so reproaches him as to praise him.
12.3| For he describes how those who met him blushed when they uncovered the head of a drunken man; then he adds: "You would think that it was not Cato who had been caught by them, but they by Cato." Could more authority be given to Cato than if even drunk he was so venerable?
12.4| Let our dinners, however, have a fixed measure of time, as of preparation and expense. For we are not men whom not even enemies could blame, unless they praised at the same time. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Voconius Romanus
13.1| The book in which I lately, as consul, gave thanks to the best of emperors I have sent at your demand, and would have sent even had you not demanded it.
13.2| In this I would have you consider the difficulty as well as the beauty of the subject. In other speeches the novelty itself keeps the reader attentive; in this one everything said is well known and commonplace; so the reader, as if at leisure and carefree, attends only to the diction, in which it is harder to satisfy when it alone is judged.
13.3| And would that at least the order, the transitions and the figures were looked at together! For to find things admirably and to express them grandly even barbarians sometimes do, but to arrange aptly and to vary the figures is denied except to the learned.
13.4| Nor must one always strive after the lofty and sublime. For as in a painting nothing recommends the light more than shadow, so it befits a speech to lower itself as much as to raise itself.
13.5| But why do I say this to a most learned man? Rather this: mark whatever you judge needs correcting. For I shall believe the rest pleases you the more if I learn that some things displeased. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend Acilius
14.1| An atrocity, not worthy merely of a letter, was suffered by Larcius Macedo, a man of praetorian rank, from his own slaves; he was otherwise a proud and cruel master, and one who remembered too little, or rather too much, how his own father had been in slavery.
14.2| He was bathing at his villa at Formiae. Suddenly the slaves stand around him. One seizes his throat, another strikes his face, another his chest and belly, and even - foul to say - batters his private parts; and when they thought him lifeless, they throw him onto the hot pavement, to test whether he was alive. He, whether because he did not feel it, or because he pretended not to feel it, lay motionless and stretched out and gave full credence to a death completed.
14.3| Only then, as if relaxed by the heat, is he carried out; the more faithful slaves receive him, the concubines run together with wailing and shouting. So, roused by the voices and revived by the coolness of the place, with his eyes lifted and his body moved, he declares that he lives - and now it was safe.
14.4| The slaves scatter; a great part of them were seized, the rest are sought. He himself, barely restored over a few days, died not without the consolation of revenge, avenged while alive as the slain are wont to be.
14.5| You see to how many dangers, how many insults, how many mockeries we are exposed; and there is no reason for anyone to be secure because he is indulgent and gentle; for masters are killed not by any judgment on them but by crime.
14.6| But so much for that. What else is new? What? Nothing, otherwise I would add it; for the paper still remains, and the holiday allows more to be woven in. I shall add what occurs to me opportunely about the same Macedo. When he was bathing in a public bath at Rome, a notable and even, as the outcome taught, ominous thing happened.
14.7| A Roman knight, lightly nudged by a slave of his with the hand, to give passage, turned round, and struck not the slave by whom he had been touched but Macedo himself with the palm so hard that he almost fell.
14.8| So the bath was for him, as if by certain steps, first the place of insult, then of destruction. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Silius Proculus
15.1| You ask that I read your little books in my retreat and examine whether they are worthy of publication; you use prayers, you allege an example: you ask that I take some spare time away from my own studies and bestow it on yours, and you add that Marcus Tullius fostered the talents of poets with wonderful kindness.
15.2| But I need neither to be asked nor urged; for I revere poetry itself most religiously and I love you very much. I shall therefore do what you desire as carefully as willingly.
15.3| I think I can already reply that the work is a fine one and should not be kept back, so far as I could judge from the parts you read in my presence, provided your recitation did not deceive me; for you read most charmingly and with the greatest skill.
15.4| Yet I trust I am not so led by my ears that all the points of my judgment are snapped off by their enchantments: they may perhaps be dulled and a little blunted, but they cannot be torn out or wrenched away.
15.5| So I do not rashly pronounce on the whole work at this moment; on the parts I shall make trial by reading. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Nepos.
16.1| I believe I have noticed that among the deeds and sayings of men and women some are more famous and others greater. My opinion was confirmed by yesterday's conversation with Fannia. She is the granddaughter of that Arria who was both a comfort to her husband in death and an example to him. She told me many things about her grandmother no less great than this one, but more obscure; I think you will find them as marvellous to read as I did to hear.
16.3| Her husband Caecina Paetus was ill, and her son was ill too, both of them, as it seemed, mortally. The son died, a youth of outstanding beauty and equal modesty, dear to his parents no less for other reasons than because he was their son. For him she so arranged the funeral and so conducted the obsequies that her husband knew nothing of it; indeed, whenever she entered his bedroom, she pretended that the boy was alive and even better, and very often, when he asked what the boy was doing, she answered: "He has slept well, he has eaten with appetite." Then, when the tears she had long held back overcame her and burst forth, she went out; then she gave herself to grief; when she was satisfied, she came back with dry eyes and composed face, as though she had left her bereavement outside. That other act of hers was certainly splendid: to draw the sword, to pierce her breast, to pull out the dagger, to hold it out to her husband, and to add the immortal and almost divine words: "Paetus, it does not hurt." Yet when she did and said these things, glory and eternity were before her eyes; so it is greater, without the reward of eternity, without the reward of glory, to hide her tears and cover her grief, and, having lost a son, to go on playing the mother.
16.7| Scribonianus had taken up arms in Illyricum against Claudius; Paetus had been on his side, and when Scribonianus was killed he was being dragged to Rome. He was about to board the ship; Arria begged the soldiers to let her be put aboard with him. "Surely," she said, "you are going to give a man of consular rank some little slaves, from whose hand he may take his food, by whom he may be dressed, by whom he may be shod; I will provide everything alone." She did not obtain it: she hired a small fishing boat and followed the huge vessel in the tiniest of craft. In the presence of Claudius, when the wife of Scribonianus professed to give information, she said: "Am I to listen to you, in whose lap Scribonianus was killed, and you live?" From this it is clear that her plan of a most glorious death was not sudden. Indeed, when Thrasea, her son-in-law, begged her not to persist in dying, and among other things said, "Do you then want your daughter, if I have to die, to die with me?", she answered: "If she shall have lived with you as long and in such harmony as I with Paetus, I do." This answer increased her family's anxiety; she was watched more closely; she noticed it and said: "You accomplish nothing; you can make me die badly, but you cannot make me not die." As she said this, she sprang out of the seat and drove her head against the opposite wall with huge force, and collapsed. When she was revived she said: "I had told you I would find some hard way to death, should you refuse me an easy one." Do these deeds seem to you greater than that "Paetus, it does not hurt," the point these deeds led to? Yet meanwhile that saying is carried about by mighty fame, and these deeds by none. From this one gathers what I said at the beginning, that some deeds are more famous and others greater. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Julius Servianus.
17.1| Is all well, that your letters have for so long stopped? Or is all well, but you are busy? Or are you not busy, but the opportunity of writing is either rare or none?
17.2| Relieve me of this scruple, which I cannot bear, and relieve me even by sending a courier on purpose. I will give him his travelling money, I will even give him a reward, if only he reports what I wish.
17.3| I myself am well, if it is being well to live in suspense and anxiety, waiting hour by hour and fearing for a most dear life whatever can happen to a human being. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Vibius Severus.
18.1| The office of consul laid on me the duty of giving thanks to the emperor in the state's name. When I had done this in the senate, in accordance with the character of the place and the occasion, as custom required, I thought it most fitting for a good citizen to embrace the same matter more fully and richly in a book,
18.2| first so that our emperor's virtues might be commended to him by true praises, then so that future emperors might be advised in advance, not as by a teacher but yet by an example, by which road above all they might strive to the same glory.
18.3| For to lay down what an emperor ought to be is indeed fine but burdensome and almost arrogant; but to praise the best of emperors, and thereby to show posterity, as from a watchtower, a light to follow, has the same usefulness and no arrogance.
18.4| I took no small pleasure, moreover, in this: when I wished to recite this book to my friends, they were summoned not by notes or by little letters but only told "if convenient" and "if you are quite free" - and in Rome one is never quite free, nor is it ever convenient to hear a recitation - and yet, in the foulest weather besides, they came together for two days, and when my modesty had wished to bring the recitation to an end, they demanded that I add a third day.
18.5| Am I to think this honour was paid to me, or to literary studies? To studies, I prefer, which, almost extinct, are being warmed back to life.
18.6| But for what subject did they show this diligence? The very one which in the senate too, where we had to endure it, we used to find tiresome even for a moment; now people are found who are willing to recite it and to hear it over three days, not because the writing is more eloquent than before, but because it is written more freely and therefore also more gladly.
18.7| So this too will be added to the praises of our emperor, that a thing once as hated as it was false has now become as lovable as it is true.
18.8| But I admired remarkably both the eagerness and the judgment of the listeners: for I observed that the most severe passages satisfied them most of all.
18.9| I remember, to be sure, that I recited to few what I wrote for all; nonetheless, as though everyone's opinion were going to be the same, I rejoice at this severity of ear, and as theatres once taught musicians to sing badly, so now I am led to hope that the same theatres may teach musicians to sing well.
18.10| Everyone who writes in order to please will write such things as they have seen to please. And for my part I trust that in this kind of subject the method of a more cheerful style holds good, since those pieces I wrote more tersely and tightly might rather seem brought in and forced upon the subject than those I wrote more gaily and, as it were, more exultantly. Yet I pray none the less earnestly that some day the day may come - and would that it had come already! - when these sweet and charming pieces give way to those austere and severe ones, even though they hold their place by rightful possession.
18.11| You have my proceedings of three days; having learned them, I wished you to take, though absent, as much pleasure, both on behalf of literary studies and on my own, as you could have received if present. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Calvisius Rufus.
19.1| I take you into counsel on my household affairs, as I am accustomed to. Estates neighbouring my lands, and even interspersed among them, are for sale. Many things about them attract me; some, and no less weighty, deter me.
19.2| First attracting me is the very beauty of joining them; then, what is no less useful than pleasant, that I can visit both with the same trouble and the same travelling expense, have them under the same steward and almost the same managers, cultivate and adorn one villa and merely look after the other.
19.3| Included in this calculation are the cost of furniture, the cost of household stewards, gardeners, workmen, and even hunting equipment; it matters a great deal whether you bring these together in one place or scatter them in different places.
19.4| On the other side I fear it may be unwise to subject so great a property to identical storms and identical accidents; it seems safer to try the uncertainties of fortune with a variety of possessions. The change of soil and climate also holds much pleasure, and so does that very travelling among one's own property.
19.5| Now, the main point of our deliberation: the lands are fertile, rich and well watered; they consist of fields, vines and woods, which furnish timber and from it an income as moderate as it is steady.
19.6| But this prosperity of the land is worn down by feeble cultivators. For the former owner repeatedly sold off the pledged goods of the tenants, and while he reduced the tenants' arrears for the time being, he exhausted their strength for the future, and through the failure of that strength the arrears grew again.
19.7| They therefore need to be stocked with slaves, all the more costly because honest ones; for I myself keep no one in chains anywhere, nor does anyone there. It remains for you to know at what price they seem likely to be bought. Three million sesterces, not because they were not at one time five million, but through this shortage of tenants and the general hardness of the times, as the income of the lands has gone back, so has the price.
19.8| You ask whether we can easily gather this very three million. I am indeed almost wholly in landed estates, yet I lend out a little at interest, and it will not be troublesome to borrow; I shall take it from my mother-in-law, whose strongbox I use no differently from my own.
19.9| So let this not trouble you, if the other points do not stand in the way, which I should like you to examine as carefully as possible. For in all matters, and in the arrangement of resources especially, you have a great surplus of experience and foresight. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Maesius Maximus.
20.1| Do you not remember often reading what contentions the law on the ballot stirred up, and how much glory or blame it brought to its proposer himself?
20.2| But now in the senate the same measure has been approved, as the best, without any dissent: all demanded ballots for the day of the elections.
20.3| We had certainly, with those open and manifest votes, exceeded the licence of public assemblies. Neither time for speaking, nor restraint in keeping silent, nor finally the dignity of sitting was observed.
20.4| Great and discordant shouts came from every side; everyone ran forward with his own candidates; there were many throngs in the middle and many knots of people and an unseemly confusion; so far had we departed from the custom of our fathers, among whom everything was arranged, moderate and calm, and kept the majesty and the decorum of the place.
20.5| Old men survive from whom I am used to hear this order of the elections: when the candidate's name was called, there was the deepest silence; he spoke for himself; he set out his life, and produced witnesses and supporters, either the man under whom he had served as a soldier, or the man whose quaestor he had been, or both if he could; he added some of those who backed him; they spoke weightily and briefly. This helped more than entreaties.
20.6| Sometimes the candidate attacked the birth or the age or even the character of a rival. The senate listened with a censor's gravity. So more often the worthy prevailed than the favoured.
20.7| Now, corrupted by immoderate partiality, they have run down to the silent ballot as if to a remedy; which for the time being was plainly a remedy - for it was new and sudden -,
20.8| but I fear that, as time passes, faults may arise from the remedy itself. For there is a danger that shamelessness may creep in with silent votes. How many people care as much about honorable conduct in secret as in public?
20.9| Many fear their reputation; few fear their conscience. But I am running ahead too quickly to the future. Meanwhile, thanks to the ballot tablets, we shall have the magistrates who most deserved to be elected. For just as in trials before recuperators, so in these elections we were caught, as it were, unawares, and proved honest judges.
20.10| I have written you this, first so that I might write you some news, and secondly so that I might sometimes talk about public affairs — a subject which we must neglect all the less, the rarer our opportunity for it is compared with that of the men of old.
20.11| And really, how long must we go on with those commonplaces: "What are you doing? Are you keeping well?" Let our letters, too, have something in them that is not low or petty, nor shut up within private affairs.
20.12| Everything, it is true, is under the control of one man, who for the common good has taken on himself alone the cares and labors of all; yet, by a wholesome balance, certain streams flow down even to us from that most generous fountain, and we can both draw from them ourselves and, by letters, serve them, as it were, to our absent friends. Farewell.
21.1| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Priscus. I hear that Valerius Martial has died, and I am grieved. He was a gifted man, sharp and keen, and in his writing he had a great deal of wit and of gall, and no less sincerity.
21.2| When he was leaving Rome I had sent him on his way with money for the journey; I had given this to our friendship, and I had given it also to the little verses he composed about me.
21.3| It was the custom of old to honor those who had written the praises of individuals or of cities either with honors or with money; but in our times this custom, like other fine and distinguished ones, has been among the first to fall out of use. For since we have stopped doing things worthy of praise, we also think it foolish to be praised.
21.4| Do you ask what the verses were for which I repaid him? I would send you back to the book itself, were it not that I know some of them by heart; if you like these, you will look up the rest in the book.
21.5| He addresses his Muse and bids her look for my house on the Esquiline and go to it with reverence: "But take care you do not, drunk, knock at that eloquent door at a time that is not yours. / He gives his whole days to stern Minerva, / while for the ears of the Hundred he labors at / what the ages and posterity might / set even beside the pages of Arpinum. / You will go more safely when the lamps are late; / that hour is yours, when Lyaeus runs riot, / when the rose reigns, when the hair is drenched. / Then even stern Catos might read me."
21.6| Was I right, then, to send off the man who wrote this about me in the friendliest way at the time, and to grieve now that he has died as my dearest friend? For he gave me all that he was able to, and would have given more had he been able. And yet what greater thing can a person be granted than glory, praise and eternity? "But what he wrote will not be eternal." Perhaps it will not; but he wrote it as though it would be. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book IV ========

1.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Calpurnius Fabatus
1.1| You long to see your granddaughter, and me with her, after so long a time. Your longing is welcome to us both, and, upon my word, it is mutual.
1.2| For we in turn are gripped by an incredible longing for you both, and we will not put it off any further. In fact we are already tying up our bags, and we mean to hurry as fast as the conditions of the road allow.
1.3| There will be one delay, but a short one: we shall turn aside into Tuscany, not to cast an eye over our lands and estate — that can be put off — but to perform a duty that cannot be avoided.
1.4| There is a town near our properties, called Tifernum Tiberinum, which chose me as its patron when I was hardly more than a boy, with all the more enthusiasm the less judgment it had. It celebrates my arrivals, is distressed at my departures, and rejoices in my honors.
1.5| In this town, to repay its kindness — for to be outdone in affection is most disgraceful — I have built a temple at my own expense, and since it is ready, it would be irreverent to put off its dedication any longer.
1.6| We shall be there, then, on the day of the dedication, which I have decided to celebrate with a public banquet. We may perhaps stay on the following day as well, but we shall make all the more haste on the road itself.
1.7| I only hope we find you and your daughter strong and well! For we shall certainly find you cheerful, if you receive us safe and sound. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Attius Clemens
2.1| Regulus has lost his son — the one misfortune he did not deserve, because I do not know whether he counts it a misfortune. The boy had a keen but unsettled character, though he might have followed the right path if he had not taken after his father.
2.2| Regulus emancipated him so that he could become his mother's heir; and once he was emancipated — or "sold off," as people commonly put it, knowing the man's character — Regulus courted him for his money with a foul pretense of indulgence, strange in a parent. It is incredible, but think of Regulus.
2.3| Yet now that he has lost him, he mourns him like a madman. The boy had many ponies, both in harness and unbroken; he had dogs, large and small; he had nightingales, parrots and blackbirds: Regulus slaughtered them all around the pyre.
2.4| That was not grief, but a display of grief. People flock to him in astonishing numbers. They all loathe and hate him, and yet, as if they approved of him, as if they loved him, they run to him and crowd his house; and, to put what I feel in a few words, in currying favor with Regulus they imitate Regulus.
2.5| He keeps himself across the Tiber in his gardens, where he has filled an enormous stretch of ground with huge colonnades and the riverbank with statues of himself — for he is as extravagant in the midst of the greatest greed as he is vainglorious in the midst of the greatest infamy.
2.6| So he is plaguing the city at the unhealthiest time of year, and he thinks the plague he causes is a consolation. He says he wants to marry — this too, like everything else, perversely.
2.7| You will soon hear of the wedding of a mourner, the wedding of an old man; the one is too early, the other too late. Do you ask how I can predict this?
2.8| Not because he says so himself — nothing is more of a lie than that — but because it is certain that Regulus will do anything that should not be done. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Arrius Antoninus
3.1| That you have been consul twice, like the men of old; that you were proconsul of Asia as hardly one or two have been before you or after you — your modesty does not allow me to say "no one"; that in integrity, in authority, and in age too you are the first citizen of the state — all this is indeed venerable and splendid; yet it is in your hours of relaxation that I admire you even more.
3.2| For to season that austerity with equal charm, and to join so much good humor to the utmost dignity, is as difficult as it is great. You achieve this not only by the incredible sweetness of your conversation but even more, above all, by your pen.
3.3| For when you speak, the honey of Homer's old man seems to flow from your lips, and what you write seems to be filled and woven together by bees with flowers. That, at any rate, is how I felt myself when I had lately been reading your Greek epigrams, and your mimiambi.
3.4| What refinement there is in them, what grace; how sweet they are, how loving, how witty, how correct! I thought I was holding Callimachus or Herodes, or something even better than these — though neither of them perfected, or even attempted, both forms.
3.5| That a Roman should speak such Greek! I swear I would not say that Athens itself is so Attic. In short, I envy the Greeks because you chose to write in their language. For it needs no guessing what you could express in your native speech, when you have produced such brilliant works in this grafted and imported one. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his friend Sosius Senecio
4.1| I love Varisidius Nepos very dearly: he is a hard-working, upright and eloquent man, which with me counts for most of all. He is also closely related to Gaius Calvisius, my close companion and your friend; for he is his sister's son.
4.2| I ask you to give him greater distinction, both for himself and for his uncle, with a six-month tribunate. You will oblige me, you will oblige our Calvisius, you will oblige the man himself — a debtor no less reliable than you think us.
4.3| You have conferred many benefits on many people; I would venture to maintain that you have placed none better, and only one or two equally well. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Julius Sparsus
5.1| They say that, when the Rhodians asked him, Aeschines read out his own speech and then that of Demosthenes, and that both were received with the loudest applause.
5.2| I am not surprised that this happened to the writings of such great men, since a speech of mine was recently heard by the most learned people with such interest, such approval, and even such effort over two days, although no comparison of one side with the other, no contest so to speak, sharpened their attention.
5.3| For the Rhodians were roused not only by the merits of the speeches themselves but also by the goad of comparison, whereas my speech won approval without the attraction of rivalry. Whether it deserved to, you will know when you have read the book, whose length does not allow me to preface it with a longer letter.
5.4| For we ought to be brief in this letter at least, where we can be; so that it may be the more excusable that we have extended the book itself, though not beyond the size of the cause. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Julius Naso.
6.1| My Tuscan estate, I am told, has been battered by hail; in the region beyond the Po there is the greatest abundance, but an equal cheapness: only my Laurentine estate is bringing me income.
6.2| I own nothing there except a house and a garden and straightaway sands, yet it alone is bringing me income. For there I write most, and I cultivate not a field, which I do not have, but myself, by my studies; and already I can show you there, as in other places a full granary, a full bookcase.
6.3| So you too, if you covet sure and fruitful estates, acquire something on this shore. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Catius Lepidus.
7.1| I often tell you that Regulus has force in him. It is wonderful how he accomplishes whatever he sets himself to. He decided to mourn his son: he mourns as no one does. He decided to make as many statues and images of him as possible: he drives all the workshops at this; he fashions that boy in colours and wax, in bronze, silver, gold, ivory and marble.
7.2| He himself, indeed, not long ago, having gathered a huge audience, recited a book on his life; on the life of a boy, but he recited it. He had it copied in a thousand copies and sent it through the whole of Italy and the provinces. He wrote officially that the town councillors should choose from their own number the one with the best voice to read it to the people: it was done.
7.3| This force of his, or by whatever other name the determination to obtain whatever you want is to be called, if he had turned it to better ends, how much good it could have accomplished! Although there is less force in good men than in bad, and as "ignorance brings boldness, but reasoning brings hesitation," so modesty weakens upright characters and boldness strengthens perverse ones.
7.4| Regulus is the example. A weak chest, an indistinct utterance, a stammering tongue, a very slow invention, no memory, nothing in short but a deranged talent, and yet by impudence and that very frenzy he has arrived at being thought an orator.
7.5| So Herennius Senecio turned that saying of Cato's about the orator wonderfully the other way against him: "An orator is a bad man unskilled in speaking." By Hercules, Cato himself did not so well express the true orator as this man has expressed Regulus.
7.6| Have you anything with which to repay such a letter in kind? You have, if you write whether any of my companions in your town, or even you yourself, have read this mournful book of Regulus's like a hawker in the forum, "raising the voice, of course, as Demosthenes says, and exulting and bawling."
7.7| For he is so inept that he can draw laughter from us sooner than groans: you would believe the piece had been composed by a boy, not about one. Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Maturus Arrianus.
8.1| You congratulate me because I have received the augurate: you do so rightly, first because it is fine to gain the judgment of a most weighty emperor even in lesser matters, then because the priesthood itself is both ancient and sacred, and this too is plainly holy and distinguished about it, that it is not taken from a man while he lives.
8.2| For other priesthoods, though almost equal in dignity, are taken away as they are bestowed; in this one fortune is allowed only as far as to give it.
8.3| To me this also seems worthy of congratulation, that I have succeeded Julius Frontinus, a leading man, who on the day of nomination through these successive years used to name me among the priests, as though co-opting me into his own place; which the outcome has now so confirmed that it did not seem to be chance.
8.4| You, as you write, are especially delighted by my augurate for this reason, that Marcus Tullius was an augur. For you rejoice that I am following in the honours of the man I long to rival in my studies.
8.5| But would that, as I have obtained the same priesthood, and the consulship at a much younger age than he did, so in old age at least I could attain his genius in some part!
8.6| But doubtless what lies in the hands of men has fallen to me and to many; that other thing, as it is hard to obtain, so it is too much even to hope for, since it can be given only by the gods. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Ursus.
9.1| In these days Julius Bassus has pleaded his cause, a man of toil and made famous by his misfortunes. He was accused under Vespasian by two private persons; sent back to the senate, he hung long in suspense, and was at last acquitted and vindicated.
9.2| He feared Titus as a friend of Domitian; he was banished by Domitian; recalled by Nerva, and having drawn Bithynia by lot, he returned as a defendant, accused no less sharply than he was faithfully defended. There were various opinions, but most of them the more lenient, so to speak.
9.3| Pomponius Rufus spoke against him, a man ready and vehement; Rufus was followed by Theophanes, one of the delegates, the firebrand and origin of the accusation.
9.4| I replied. For Bassus had charged me to lay the foundations of the whole defence, to speak of his distinctions, which were great for him both from the renown of his family and from the very dangers he had undergone,
9.5| to speak of the conspiracy of informers, which they kept up for profit, to speak of the causes through which he had offended every most factious man, such as Theophanes himself. He had also wished me to meet the charge by which he was most pressed. For on the others, though graver to hear, he deserved not only acquittal but even praise;
9.6| this weighed against him, that, a simple and incautious man, he had accepted certain things from provincials as a friend - for he had been quaestor in the same province -. The accusers called these thefts and plunderings, he himself called them gifts. But the law forbids even gifts to be accepted.
9.7| Here what was I to do, what road of defence was I to enter on? Should I deny it? I feared it would plainly look like theft, if I was afraid to confess it. Besides, to deny a manifest fact is the part of one who aggravates a charge, not one who dissolves it, especially since the defendant himself had left his advocates no room to manoeuvre. For he had said to many, and even to the emperor, that he had accepted only little presents, and only on his birthday or at the Saturnalia, and had sent them to very many.
9.8| Should I then ask pardon? I would have cut the defendant's throat, if I conceded that he had offended in such a way that he could be saved only by pardon. Should I defend it as rightly done? I should not have helped him, but should myself have shown impudence.
9.9| In this difficulty I decided to hold some middle course: I seem to have held it. My speech, as happens in battles, was broken off by night. I had spoken three and a half hours, and an hour and a half remained. For when by the law the accuser had received six hours and the defendant nine, the defendant had so divided the time between me and the man due to speak after me, so that I should use five hours and he the rest.
9.10| The success of my pleading urged me to silence and an ending; for it is rash not to be content with prosperity. Besides this I feared that my bodily strength might fail me in a repeated labour, which is harder to renew than to continue.
9.11| There was also the danger that the rest of my speech would suffer coldness as laid aside and tedium as resumed. For as torches keep their fire by constant shaking, but recover it with great difficulty once it is let go, so both the speaker's warmth and the hearer's attention are preserved by continuity and languish by an interval and, as it were, a slackening.
9.12| But Bassus begged me with many prayers, almost even with tears, to fill my allotted time. I obeyed and put his advantage before my own. It turned out well: I found the senate's spirits so lifted and so fresh that, by my earlier speech, they seemed more roused than sated.
9.13| Lucceius Albinus followed me, so fittingly that our speeches are believed to have had the variety of two and the continuity of one.
9.14| Herennius Pollio replied urgently and weightily, then Theophanes again. For he did this also, like everything else, most impudently, that after two men, consulars and eloquent, he claimed time for himself, and a rather generous one. He spoke into the night, and even after lamps were brought in at night.
9.15| On the following day Homullus and Fronto pleaded for Bassus wonderfully; the evidence occupied a fourth day.
9.16| Baebius Macer, consul designate, proposed that Bassus was liable under the law on extortion; Caepio Hispo, that judges be given with his rank preserved; both rightly.
9.17| "How can that be," you say, "when they proposed such different things?" Because to Macer, looking to the law, it was consistent to condemn a man who had accepted gifts contrary to the law, and Caepio, thinking it lawful for the senate - as it is - both to mitigate and to tighten laws, not without reason granted pardon to an act forbidden indeed, yet not unusual.
9.18| Caepio's proposal prevailed; indeed, as he rose to give his opinion he was greeted with acclamation, which is usually given to speakers when they sit down. From this you can judge with what agreement it was received when he spoke, since it was so favoured when he was only seen about to speak.
9.19| Yet in the city, as in the senate, men's judgments are divided into two parties. For those who liked Caepio's proposal criticize Macer's as rigid and harsh; those who liked Macer's call the other lax and even self-contradictory, for they deny that it is consistent to keep in the senate a man for whom you have granted judges.
9.20| A third proposal was made as well: Valerius Paulinus, agreeing with Caepio, proposed in addition that a report be made about Theophanes when he had reported on his embassy. For he was charged with having done in the accusation many things which fell under that very law under which he had accused Bassus.
9.21| But the consuls, although it was wonderfully approved by the greatest part of the senate, did not pursue this proposal.
9.22| Paulinus nevertheless gained a reputation for justice and firmness. When the senate was dismissed, Bassus was received by a great crowd of men, with great shouting, with great joy. What made him popular was the renewed old repute of his perils, a name known by dangers, and, in a tall frame, a sorrowful and squalid old age.
9.23| You will have this letter meanwhile as a forerunner; you will await the speech, full and laden. You will await it long; for on so great a matter it must be revised neither lightly nor hastily. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friend Statius Sabinus.
10.1| You write me that Sabina, who left us as her heirs, ordered nowhere that her slave Modestus be free, yet wrote for the same man a legacy thus: "To Modestus, whom I ordered to be free".
10.2| You ask what I think. I have conferred with men learned in the law. All agree that neither freedom is owed, because it was not given, nor the legacy, because she gave it to her own slave. But to me there seems a manifest error, and therefore I think we should act as though Sabina had written what she herself believed she had written.
10.3| I am confident you will come to my opinion, since you are accustomed to guard most scrupulously the wishes of the dead, which for good heirs to have understood is as good as law. For with us honour counts no less than necessity with others.
10.4| Let him therefore remain in freedom with our permission, and enjoy the legacy as if she had provided for everything most carefully. For she did provide, in choosing her heirs well. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Minicianus.
11.1| Have you heard that Valerius Licinianus is giving lectures in Sicily? I think you have not yet heard: the news is recent. This man, of praetorian rank, was lately counted among the most eloquent pleaders of causes; now he has fallen so far as to become an exile from a senator, a teacher of rhetoric from an orator.
11.2| So he himself said in his preface, with grief and gravity: "What sport you make for yourself, Fortune! For you make professors out of senators, and senators out of professors." There is in this remark so much bile, so much bitterness, that he seems to me to have taken up teaching in order to say it.
11.3| When he had entered wrapped in a Greek cloak - for those who are barred from water and fire lack the right to the toga - after he had composed himself and looked round at his dress, he said: "I am going to declaim in Latin."
11.4| You will say these things are sad and pitiable, yet that he deserved it, who stained these very studies with the crime of incest.
11.5| He did confess to incest, but it is uncertain whether because it was true, or because he feared worse if he denied it. For Domitian raged and seethed, abandoned amid enormous odium.
11.6| For when he had set his heart on burying alive Cornelia, the chief of the Vestals, as one who thought his age made illustrious by examples of this kind, by the right of pontifex maximus, or rather by the savagery of a tyrant and the licence of a master, he summoned the other pontiffs not to the Regia but to his villa at Alba. And with no less crime than that which he seemed to avenge, he condemned her, absent and unheard, of incest, when he himself had not only defiled his brother's daughter by incest but had even killed her; for as a widow she died of an abortion.
11.7| The pontiffs were sent at once to see that she was buried and put to death. She, stretching out her hands now to Vesta, now to the other gods, cried out many things, but this most often: "Caesar thinks me unchaste, by whose sacrifices, when I performed them, he conquered and triumphed!"
11.8| Whether she said this flattering or mocking, from confidence in herself or from contempt of the emperor, is doubtful. She went on saying it until she was led to punishment, whether innocent I do not know, but certainly as an innocent woman.
11.9| Indeed, when she was being let down into that underground place and her gown caught as she descended, she turned and gathered it up, and when the executioner held out his hand to her, she shrank away and recoiled, and thrust off the foul touch, as from a body plainly chaste and pure, with a last act of holiness, and in every respect of modesty "she took great care to fall decently".
11.10| Moreover Celer, a Roman knight, with whom Cornelia was charged, while he was being beaten with rods in the comitium, kept to this cry: "What did I do? I did nothing."
11.11| So Domitian burned with the infamy of cruelty and injustice. He seizes Licinianus, because he had hidden Cornelia's freedwoman on his estates. Licinianus was warned in advance by those who cared for him that, if he did not want to suffer the comitium and the rods, he should take refuge in confession as in pardon. He did so.
11.12| In his absence Herennius Senecio spoke on his behalf something like that line: "Patroclus lies dead." For he said: "From an advocate I have become a messenger; Licinianus has withdrawn."
11.13| This was so welcome to Domitian that he betrayed himself by his joy, and said: "Licinianus has acquitted us." He added too that his sense of shame should not be pressed; and he allowed him, if he could, to snatch something from his property before the goods were confiscated, and gave him a mild exile as a kind of reward.
11.14| From which, however, he was afterwards moved to Sicily by the clemency of the deified Nerva, where he now lectures and avenges himself on fortune in his prefaces.
11.15| You see how obediently I comply with you, I who write not only of city affairs but even of foreign ones so carefully that I go back to the beginning. And indeed I thought that you, because you were away at the time, had heard nothing else about Licinianus than that he was banished for incest. For rumour reports the sum of things, not their order.
11.16| I deserve that in turn you write out in full what is going on in your town, what in the neighbourhood - for certain notable events are accustomed to occur - in short whatever you like, provided only you report it in a letter no less long. I shall count not only pages but even lines and syllables. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Maturus Arrianus.
12.1| You love Egnatius Marcellinus and often even commend him to me; you will love and commend him more, if you learn his recent act.
12.2| When he had gone out to his province as quaestor, and the secretary who had fallen to him by lot had died before the lawful time of salary, he understood and resolved that what he had received, to give to the secretary, ought not to stay with himself.
12.3| So on his return he consulted Caesar, then, on Caesar's advice, the senate, what it wished done about the salary. A small question, but still a question. The secretary's heirs claimed it for themselves, the prefects of the treasury for the people.
12.4| The case was heard; the heirs' advocate spoke, then the people's, both very ably. Caecilius Strabo gave his opinion that the treasury should receive it, Baebius Macer that the heirs should have it: Strabo prevailed.
12.5| You, praise Marcellinus, as I did at once. For although it amply suffices him that he is approved by both emperor and senate, he will still rejoice in your testimony.
12.6| For all who are led by glory and fame are wonderfully pleased by approval and praise, even when it comes from lesser people. And Marcellinus so reveres you that he attaches the greatest weight to your judgment.
12.7| In addition to this, if he learns that his deed has reached as far as you, he must rejoice in the extent and course and travels of his praise. For somehow or other men are delighted even more by wide glory than by great. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Tacitus.
13.1| I am glad you have come safe to the city; and you have come, if ever, now especially longed for by me. I shall myself stay a few days yet at Tusculum, to finish the little work I have in hand.
13.2| For I fear that if I relax this exertion now at the very end, I shall hardly resume it. Meanwhile, so that nothing be lost through my haste, I ask in this letter, a kind of forerunner, what I shall ask in person. But first take the reasons for asking, then the very thing I ask.
13.3| When I was lately in my native town, the son of a fellow townsman, still wearing the boy's toga, came to greet me. I said to him, "Are you studying?" He answered, "Yes." "Where?" "At Mediolanum." "Why not here?" And his father - for he was with him, and had even brought the boy himself - said: "Because we have no teachers here."
13.4| "Why none? For it was of the greatest concern to you who are fathers" - and conveniently a good many fathers were listening - "that your children should above all study here. For where would they stay more pleasantly than in their native place, or be kept more chastely than under their parents' eyes, or at less expense than at home?
13.5| How little it is, then, to hire teachers with money pooled, and to add to their fees what you now spend on lodgings, on travelling money, on what is bought abroad - and everything is bought abroad! Indeed I, who have no children yet, am ready, for our commonwealth as for a daughter or a parent, to give a third part of whatever you decide to contribute.
13.6| I would even promise the whole, were I not afraid that this gift of mine might some day be corrupted by canvassing, as I see happen in many places where teachers are hired at public expense.
13.7| This fault can be met by one remedy only, if the right of hiring is left to the parents alone, and to the same parents is added the scruple of judging rightly by the necessity of contributing.
13.8| For men who are perhaps careless about another's money will certainly be careful about their own, and will take pains that no one but a worthy man receives money from me, if he is to receive it from them also.
13.9| So agree, unite, and take greater courage from mine, for I wish the sum I ought to contribute to be as large as possible. You can give your children nothing more honourable, your country nothing more welcome. Let those born here be educated here, and from infancy let them grow used to loving and frequenting their native soil. And would that you might bring in teachers so renowned that studies are sought from here by the neighbouring towns, and that, as now your children flow together to other places, so soon strangers may flow together to this one!"
13.10| I thought I should go back to these things deeper and, as it were, to the source, that you might the better know how welcome it would be to me if you took on what I enjoin. I enjoin it, and in view of the size of the matter I ask, that out of the throng of students that gathers to you from admiration of your talent, you look about for teachers whom we could approach, under this condition, however, that I bind my word to no one. For I keep everything free for the parents: let them judge, let them choose; I claim for myself only the care and the expense.
13.11| So if anyone is found who trusts in his own talent, let him go there on this footing, that he takes from here nothing certain but his own confidence. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend [Decimus] Paternus.
14.1| You perhaps, as you are accustomed, are both demanding and awaiting a speech; but I, as if from some foreign and dainty merchandise, bring out my trifles for you.
14.2| You will receive with this letter my hendecasyllables, with which I amuse the idle time in a carriage, in the bath, at dinner.
14.3| In these we joke, play, love, grieve, complain, grow angry, describe something now more tersely and now more loftily, and by that very variety try to bring it about that different pieces please different readers, and perhaps some please all.
14.4| If, however, some of them seem to you a little too wanton, it will be part of your learning to remember that those eminent and most weighty men who wrote such things refrained neither from lewdness of subject nor even from plain words; which we shun, not because we are more severe - how could we be? - but because we are more timid.
14.5| We know besides that the truest law of this little kind of work is the one Catullus expressed: "For it is fitting that the dutiful poet himself be chaste, but his little verses have no need of it, which then at last have salt and charm if they are soft and not very modest."
14.6| How much I value your judgment you can estimate even from this, that I preferred to have everything weighed by you rather than a selection praised. And indeed the most pleasing pieces cease to seem so once they begin to be all alike.
14.7| Besides, a wise and discerning reader ought not to compare different things with different, but weigh each one separately, nor think worse than another what is perfect in its own kind.
14.8| But why say more? For to excuse or commend trifles by a long preface is the most trifling thing of all. This one thing seems to need saying beforehand, that I mean to inscribe these trifles of mine "hendecasyllables," a title bound only by the law of the metre.
14.9| So, whether you prefer to term them epigrams or idylls, eclogues or, as many do, little poems or whatever else, you may; I vouch only for hendecasyllables.
14.10| I ask of your candour that what you are going to say to others about my little book, you say to me; nor is what I ask difficult. For if this little work of mine were the chief or the only thing, perhaps it might seem hard to say, "Find something to do"; it is gentle and humane to say, "You have something to do." Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Minicius Fundanus.
15.1| If I do anything well at all, I surely do this by judgment, that I love Asinius Rufus uniquely. He is an excellent man and a lover of good men. For why should I not number myself too among the good? He has also embraced Cornelius Tacitus - you know what a man - in close intimacy.
15.2| So if you approve us both, you must feel the same about Rufus also, since for forming friendships the closest bond is similarity of character.
15.3| He has several children. For in this too he has performed the duty of an excellent citizen, that he wished to enjoy his wife's fruitfulness abundantly, in an age when the rewards of childlessness make even single sons burdensome to most. Having despised those rewards, he has taken on also the name of grandfather. For he is a grandfather, indeed by Saturius Firmus, whom you will love as much as I do, if you look at him more closely as I have.
15.4| All this tends to this, that you may know how plentiful, how numerous a household you will bind by one favour; to ask which we are led first by a wish, then by a certain good omen.
15.5| For we wish for you, and we presage, the consulship in the coming year: so your virtues, so the emperor's judgments, bid us augur.
15.6| It happens, moreover, that in the same year the eldest of Rufus's children, Asinius Bassus, is quaestor, a young man - I do not know whether I should say what his father wishes me both to feel and to say, the modesty of the youth forbids it - better than his father himself.
15.7| It is hard to expect you to believe me about someone absent - although you are used to believing everything - that there is in him so much industry, uprightness, learning, talent, zeal, and memory too, as you will find by experience.
15.8| I could wish we had an age so fertile in good arts that you ought to prefer some others to Bassus: then I should be the first to urge you and advise you to look round and weigh at length whom to choose above all.
15.9| But as it is - yet I wish to say nothing too boastfully of my friend; I say this alone, that the young man is worthy to be taken, according to the custom of our ancestors, into the place of a son. And wise men, such as you, ought to receive from the commonwealth such children as we are accustomed to wish for from nature.
15.10| He will be an ornament to you as consul, a quaestor whose father is of praetorian rank, with consular kinsmen, to whom, in their own judgment, though he is still a very young man, he is already in turn an ornament.
15.11| So indulge my prayers, follow my advice, and above all, if I seem to hurry, pardon it, first because love for the most part runs ahead of its wishes; then because in a state in which everything is done as if by those who seize first, things that wait for the lawful time are not ripe but late; in sum because the anticipation of things one desires to obtain is itself pleasant.
15.12| Let Bassus already respect you as consul, and do you love him as quaestor, and let us, finally, who are most fond of you both, enjoy a twofold joy.
15.13| For since we love you and Bassus so, that we shall help both him, whoever his consul, and your quaestor, whoever he may be, in seeking office with all our power, toil and influence, it will be exceedingly pleasant for us if the reckoning of my friendship and of your consulship brings our zeal to bear on the same young man, if finally you, above all, come as helper to my prayers, you by whose vote the senate most gladly indulges and by whose testimony it most trusts. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Valerius Paulinus.
16.1| Rejoice on my account, on yours, and on the public's: honour still endures for studies. Lately, when I was to speak before the centumviri, there was no place for me to approach except from the tribunal, except through the judges themselves; so crowded was everything else.
16.2| Besides this, a certain well-dressed young man, his tunic torn, as often happens in a crowd, stood there wrapped only in his toga, and for seven hours.
16.3| For so long I spoke, with great labour, with greater fruit. Let us then work hard and not pretend another's idleness as an excuse for our own. There are those who will listen, there are those who will read; let us only labour at something worthy of ears and worthy of pages. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Clusinius Gallus.
17.1| You both advise and ask me to undertake the case of Corellia, who is absent, against Gaius Caecilius, consul designate. For the advice I thank you; for the request I complain. For I ought to be advised, so that I may know, but I ought not to be asked to do what it would be most shameful for me not to do.
17.2| Should I hesitate to defend Corellius's daughter? I have, to be sure, with that man against whom you call me in, not plainly intimacy but yet friendship.
17.3| To this is added the man's rank and this very office for which he is destined, for which we must show the greater reverence in that we have already discharged it ourselves. For it is natural that a man should wish what he has himself attained to be thought as exalted as possible.
17.4| But when I reflect that I shall stand by Corellius's daughter, all those considerations seem cold and empty. Before my eyes stands that man, than whom our age has produced none weightier, more upright, more subtle; whom, having begun to love from admiration, I admired more, contrary to what usually happens, after I had looked into him deeply.
17.5| For I looked into him deeply: he kept no secret from me, neither jesting nor serious, neither sad nor glad.
17.6| I was a very young man, and already he held me in honour, and even - I shall dare to say - in reverence, as an equal. He was my supporter and witness in seeking office, my escort and companion in beginning it, my counsellor and guide in exercising it, and finally in all my duties, although he was both frail and older, he was seen as if young and strong.
17.7| How much he added to my reputation at home, in public, and even with the emperor!
17.8| For when by chance talk had fallen on good young men in the presence of the emperor Nerva, and most were lifting me with praises, he held himself silent for a little while, which added greatly to his authority; then with the gravity you knew he said: "Secundus must be praised rather sparingly, because he does nothing except by my counsel."
17.9| By this remark he granted me what it would have been immoderate to ask in prayer, that I do nothing that is not most wise, since I did everything by the counsel of a most wise man. Indeed, even as he was dying, he said to his daughter - she is accustomed to tell it: "I have provided you with many friends, as far as a rather long life allowed, but chiefly Secundus and Cornutus.
17.10| When I recall this, I understand that I must take pains lest in any part I seem to have failed this trust in me of a most far-sighted man.
17.11| Therefore I shall most readily stand by Corellia and shall not refuse to incur offence; although I think I shall obtain not only pardon but even praise from that very man by whom - as you say - a new suit, perhaps, is being pressed as against a woman, if in the pleading I say these same things, more broadly of course and more richly than the narrowness of a letter allows, either as my excuse or even as my commendation. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Arrius Antoninus.
18.1| What stronger proof can I give you of my great admiration for your Greek epigrams than that I have attempted to rival some of them and render them in Latin? Yet for the worse. This happens first through the weakness of my talent, then through the poverty, or rather, as Lucretius says, the beggary of our native speech.
18.2| But if these pieces, which are both Latin and mine, seem to you to have some charm, how much grace do you think is in those that are brought out both by you and in Greek! Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his dear Calpurnia Hispulla.
19.1| Since you are an example of devotion, and loved your excellent brother, most loving to you, with equal affection, and love his daughter as your own, and show her not only an aunt's feeling but also that of the father she lost, I do not doubt that it will be the greatest joy to you to learn that she is turning out worthy of her father, worthy of you, worthy of her grandfather.
19.2| She has the highest sharpness of mind, the highest thrift; she loves me, which is a sign of chastity. To these is added a zeal for letters, which she has conceived from affection for me. She keeps my little books, reads them again and again, even learns them by heart.
19.3| With what anxiety she is filled when I seem about to plead, with what joy when I have pleaded! She arranges for people to bring her word what assent, what shouts I have roused, what outcome of the trial I have had. And when I give a recitation, she sits nearby, screened by a curtain, and takes in my praises with most eager ears.
19.4| She sings my verses, too, and fits them to the lyre, with no artist teaching her, but love, which is the best master.
19.5| For these reasons I am led to the surest hope that our harmony will be lasting and will grow greater day by day. For she loves not my age or body, which gradually decline and grow old, but my glory.
19.6| Nor would anything else become one brought up by your hands, trained by your precepts, who saw in your company nothing but what was holy and honourable, who finally had grown used to loving me through your praise.
19.7| For as you revered my mother in the place of a parent, you used from my boyhood to shape me, to praise me, and to foretell that I would be such as I now seem to my wife.
19.8| So we vie in thanking you, I because you gave her to me, and she because I was given to her by you, as if you had chosen each for the other. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Novius Maximus.
20.1| What I felt about each of your books I told you as I read each through; now hear what I judge about them all in general.
20.2| It is a work fine, strong, keen, lofty, varied, elegant, pure, figured, also spacious and spread out to your great credit, in which you have been carried very widely by the sails of talent and indignation together; and each of these has in turn been an aid to the other.
20.3| For indignation has given loftiness and grandeur to talent, and talent has given force and bitterness to indignation. Farewell.
21.0| Pliny to his friend Velius Cerialis.
21.1| A sad and bitter misfortune of the Helvidian sisters! Each died after childbirth, each having brought forth a daughter.
21.2| I am affected with grief, and yet I do not grieve beyond measure: so mournful it seems to me that fruitfulness has carried off most honourable girls in their first flower. I am tormented by the lot of the infants, who are orphaned at once and as they are born, tormented by the lot of the best of husbands, tormented also on my own account.
21.3| For their father, even though dead, I love most steadfastly, as is attested by my pleading and my books; of his three children one now survives, and, left alone, props and sustains a house founded shortly before on many supports.
21.4| Yet my grief finds rest in a great comfort, if only fortune preserves him strong and unharmed, and equal to that father and that grandfather. For his safety and his character I am the more anxious because he has become an only child.
21.5| You know the softness of my heart in love, you know my fears; so you need the less wonder that I fear most for the one in whom I hope most. Farewell.
22.0| Pliny to his friend Sempronius Rufus.
22.1| I sat in the court of the best of emperors, taken into his council. A gymnastic contest is celebrated at Vienna under a certain man's will. Trebonius Rufinus, an excellent man and our friend, during his duumvirate saw to its being done away with and abolished.
22.2| It was said that he had done so without public authority. He pleaded his own case no less happily than eloquently. What recommended his speech was that, as a Roman and a good citizen, he spoke in his own affair with maturity and weight.
22.3| When opinions were being asked, Junius Mauricus, than whom no man is firmer or more truthful, said that the people of Vienna ought not to have the contest given back to them; he added: "I wish it could also be abolished at Rome."
22.4| Steadfastly and bravely, you say; why not? But this is nothing new from Mauricus. He spoke no less bravely before the emperor Nerva. Nerva was at dinner with a small company; Veiento was next to him and even reclined on his bosom: I have said everything when I have named the man.
22.5| Talk fell on Catullus Messalinus, who, deprived of sight, had added to the evils of blindness a savage nature: he feared nothing, blushed at nothing, pitied no one; and so he was hurled by Domitian again and again at the best of men, just as weapons are, which themselves are carried blind and unforeseeing.
22.6| All were speaking together over dinner of this man's wickedness and bloody opinions, when the emperor himself said: "What do we think he would have suffered if he were alive?" And Mauricus said: "He would be dining with us."
22.7| I have wandered rather far, though willingly. It was decided to abolish the contest, which had infected the morals of the people of Vienna, as ours does everyone's. For the vices of the Viennese stay within themselves, ours wander widely, and as in bodies so in an empire the most grievous disease is the one that spreads from the head. Farewell.
23.0| Pliny to his friend Pomponius Bassus.
23.1| I took great pleasure when I learned from our common friends that you, as befits your wisdom, both arrange and bear your leisure, live most agreeably, and exercise your body now by land now by sea, discuss much, hear much, read much, and though you know a great deal, still learn something more every day.
23.2| So ought a man to grow old who has held the highest magistracies, commanded armies, and offered himself wholly to the commonwealth as long as it was fitting.
23.3| For the first and middle times of life we owe to our country, the last to ourselves, as the laws themselves advise, which release one older in years to leisure.
23.4| When will I be allowed, when will it be honourable by reason of age, to imitate that most beautiful example of quiet? When will my retirement receive the name not of idleness but of tranquillity? Farewell.
24.0| Pliny to his friend Fabius Valens.
24.1| Lately, when I had spoken before the centumviri in a court of four panels, the recollection came to me that I had pleaded as a young man likewise in a court of four panels.
24.2| My mind went on farther, as it does: I began to reckon whom I had had as partners of labour in this trial, whom in that. I was the only one who had spoken in both: so great are the changes made either by the frailty of mortality or by the mobility of fortune.
24.3| Some of those who then pleaded have died, others are in exile; for one age and health advised silence, one by choice enjoys a most happy leisure; another commands an army, another has been exempted from civil duties by the emperor's friendship.
24.4| How many things have changed around ourselves! We advanced by our studies, we were endangered by our studies, and again we advanced:
24.5| the friendships of good men helped us, the friendships of good men harmed us, and again they help. If you reckon the years, it is a short time; if the vicissitudes of events, you would think it an age;
24.6| which can be a proof that one should despair of nothing, trust nothing, when we see so many changes carried round in so swift a circle.
24.7| It is my habit to share all my thoughts with you, and to admonish you with the same precepts or examples with which I admonish myself; which was the reason for this letter. Farewell.
25.0| Pliny to his friend Maesius Maximus.
25.1| I had written to you that it was to be feared some fault would arise from the silent ballots. It has happened. At the latest elections, on some ballots there were many jokes and even things foul to tell, and on one, in place of the names of the candidates, the names of their supporters were found.
25.2| The senate flared up and with a great shout called down the emperor's anger on the man who had written it. He, however, escaped notice and lay hidden, perhaps was even among the indignant.
25.3| What do we think this man does at home, who in so great a matter, at so serious a moment, plays so like a buffoon, who in short is altogether witty and urbane and charming in the senate?
25.4| That confidence, "for who will know?", adds so much licence to depraved characters. He called for the ballots, took the stylus, bent his head, fears no one, despises himself.
25.5| Hence those jests, worthy of the stage and the platform. Where can you turn? What remedies can you seek? Everywhere the vices are stronger than the remedies. "But these things will be a care to him who is above us," to whom this idle and yet unbridled wantonness of ours adds every day much watching and much labour. Farewell.
26.0| Pliny to his friend Maecilius Nepos.
26.1| You ask that I see to the revising and correcting of my little books, which you have procured with the greatest zeal. I shall do it. For what ought I to undertake more gladly, you especially demanding it?
26.2| For when a man of the greatest dignity, learning and eloquence — and, on top of all this, a very busy man, about to govern a very great province — judges it worthwhile to take my writings around with him, how carefully must I see to it that this part of your baggage does not annoy you as superfluous!
26.3| So I will make every effort, first that you may find these companions as agreeable as possible, and second that on your return you may find others you would like to add to them. For you, as my reader, give me no small encouragement to new works. Farewell.
27.0| Pliny to his friend Pompeius Falco
27.1| It is now the third day since I heard Sentius Augurinus giving a reading, with the greatest pleasure on my part, and indeed even admiration. He calls them "little poems." Much of it is delicate, much of it lofty, much of it graceful, much of it tender, much of it sweet, much of it full of bile.
27.2| I think nothing more polished in this genre has been written for some years — unless perhaps I am misled either by my affection for him or by the fact that he has praised me.
27.3| For he took as a theme the fact that I sometimes amuse myself with verse. And indeed I will make you the judge of my judgment, if the second line of this very piece comes back to me; for I remember the rest, and have now got them clear.
27.4| "I sing my songs in little verses, / the kind in which my Catullus once sang, / and Calvus, and the poets of old. But what is that to me? / Pliny alone is all the earlier poets to me: / he leaves the Forum and prefers little verses, / and looks for something to love, and thinks he is loved. / That Pliny — oh, how many Catos he is! / Go now, whoever you are who love, and refuse to love!"
27.5| You see how sharp it all is, how apt, how finely expressed. I promise you the whole book will be up to this sample, and I will hand it to you as soon as he has published it. Meanwhile, love the young man, and congratulate our age on such a talent, which he adorns with his character. He spends his time with Spurinna, he spends his time with Antoninus; he is related by marriage to the one and a close companion of both.
27.6| From this you can guess how faultless a young man he must be, to be loved like this by such dignified old men. For the saying is very true: "knowing that a man is like those whose company he enjoys." Farewell.
28.0| Pliny to his friend Vibius Severus
28.1| Herennius Severus, a man of great learning, values highly the placing in his library of likenesses of two men from your town, Cornelius Nepos and Titus Catius, and asks me, if there are any in your place, as is credible, to arrange for them to be copied and painted.
28.2| I am entrusting this task to you above anyone else: first, because you comply with my wishes in the friendliest way; second, because you have the greatest reverence for literature and the greatest love for men of letters; and finally, because you revere and love your native town, and everyone who has added to its name, as much as the town itself.
28.3| I ask you to take on the most painstaking painter you can find. For although it is hard to produce a likeness from life, the imitation of an imitation is by far the most difficult of all; and I ask you not to let the artist you choose stray from it, not even to improve on it. Farewell.
29.0| Pliny to his friend Romatius Firmus
29.1| Come on, you! The next time the courts are sitting, come to serve as a juror by any means you can. There is no reason for you to sleep on your right ear, trusting in me. Absence does not go unpunished.
29.2| Look — Licinius Nepos, the praetor! A keen and resolute man, and a praetor too, he has imposed a fine even on a senator. The senator argued his own cause in the senate, but argued it in the manner of one begging pardon. The fine was remitted; but he was frightened, he had to beg, he needed indulgence.
29.3| You will say, "Not all praetors are so strict." You are mistaken; for only strict ones can introduce or revive a precedent of this kind, but once it has been introduced or revived even the most lenient can enforce it. Farewell.
30.0| Pliny to his friend Licinius Sura
30.1| I have brought you from my home country, as a little present, a problem entirely worthy of that profound learning of yours.
30.2| A spring rises in a mountain, runs down over the rocks, and is caught in a little dining room built by hand; held there for a little while, it falls into Lake Como. Its nature is remarkable: three times a day, with regular risings and fallings, it grows and diminishes.
30.3| This can be seen openly and observed with the greatest pleasure. You recline beside it and eat, and you even drink from the spring itself, for it is very cold; meanwhile, at fixed and measured intervals, it either recedes or rises.
30.4| You put a ring or anything else on the dry ground; the water gradually laps around it and finally covers it, then uncovers it again and little by little leaves it. If you watch for long enough, you can see both happen a second and a third time.
30.5| Is there some hidden current of air that now opens and now closes the mouth and throat of the spring, according as it meets the water when it is driven in, or withdraws when it is expelled?
30.6| We see this happen with bottles and other vessels of the same kind, whose outlet is not wide or immediately open. For they too, though tilted and pointing downward, hold back what they pour out in a series of gulps, as it were, because of the resistance of the air struggling against it.
30.7| Or is the nature of the ocean also the nature of this spring, and is this small body of water held back and let out by turns on the same principle by which the ocean is driven forward or sucked back?
30.8| Or, just as rivers that flow down into the sea are turned back by contrary winds and an opposing tide, is there something that drives back the outflow of this spring?
30.9| Or is there a fixed amount in the hidden channels, so that while they are gathering up what they have drained away, the stream is smaller and more sluggish, and when they have gathered it, it comes out livelier and larger?
30.10| Or is there some kind of balance, concealed and unseen, which, when it has been emptied, stirs up the spring and draws it out, and when it has been filled, checks and chokes it?
30.11| Search out for yourself the causes — for you can — that produce so great a marvel; for me it is quite enough if I have described clearly enough what it produces. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book V ========

1.0| Pliny to his friend Annius Severus
1.1| A legacy has come my way, a modest one, but more welcome than the largest. Why more welcome than the largest? Pomponia Galla had disinherited her son Asudius Curianus and left me as her heir, naming as my co-heirs Sertorius Severus, who has held praetorian rank, and some other eminent Roman knights.
1.2| Curianus kept begging me to present my share to him as a gift and so help him with a precedent in his favor; at the same time he promised me, by a private understanding, that the share would remain mine all the same.
1.3| I answered that it did not suit my character to do one thing in public and another in secret; besides, it was not quite honorable to make gifts to a man who was both rich and childless; and in short, a gift from me would do him no good, whereas a renunciation would, and I was ready to renounce my share if it became clear to me that he had been unjustly disinherited.
1.4| To this he said, "I ask you to look into it yourself." After a moment's hesitation I said, "I will; I do not see what reason I have to think myself lesser than I seem to you. But remember now, at the outset, that I will not lack the firmness to give judgment for your mother, if that is where honesty leads."
1.5| "As you wish," he said, "for what you wish will be what is fairest." I called in as advisers the two men our city then held in the highest regard, Corellius and Frontinus.
1.6| With them beside me I took my seat in my own room. Curianus said what he thought would help his case. I replied briefly, since no one else was there to defend the dead woman's good name; then I withdrew, and on the advice of my council I said, "Curianus, it is our view that your mother had just reasons to be angry with you." After this he brought a suit before the Centumviral Court against the other heirs, though not against me.
1.7| The day of the trial was approaching. My co-heirs wanted to settle and come to terms, not from any doubt about their case but from fear of the times. They were afraid of what they saw had happened to many others: that they might go into a suit before the Centumviral Court and come out of it on a capital charge.
1.8| And there were some among them who could have been reproached with friendship with Gratilla and with Rusticus.
1.9| They ask me to talk to Curianus. We came together in the temple of Concord. There I said, "If your mother had made you heir to a quarter of her estate, could you complain? What if she had in fact named you sole heir, but had drained the estate with legacies so that no more than a quarter was left to you? So it ought to be enough for you, disinherited by your mother, to receive a quarter from her heirs, and I will add to it myself.
1.10| You know that you did not bring a suit against me, and that two years have now passed and I have acquired everything by prescription. But so that my fellow heirs may find you easier to deal with, and so that your respect for me may not have cost you anything, I offer you as much again for my own share." I reaped the reward not only of a clear conscience but also of a good name.
1.11| So it is this Curianus who has left me a legacy, and he has marked my action, which (unless perhaps I flatter myself) was in the old style, with a notable honor.
1.12| I have written this to you because, about everything that either delights or troubles me, I am used to talking with you no differently than with myself; and also because I thought it hard to cheat you, who love me so much, of the pleasure that I was feeling myself.
1.13| For I am not so much a philosopher as not to care whether the things I believe I have done honorably receive some kind of testimony and, as it were, a reward. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Calpurnius Flaccus
2.1| I have received some very fine thrushes, and I cannot match them with an equal reckoning, either from the city's stores while I am at Laurentum or from the sea in such stormy weather.
2.2| So you will get back a letter that is barren and plainly ungrateful, one that does not even imitate the shrewdness Diomedes showed in exchanging gifts. But, kind as you are, you will forgive it all the more readily because it confesses it does not deserve forgiveness. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Titius Aristo
3.1| Of your many kindnesses that are welcome and pleasant to me, this one is perhaps the greatest: you did not think you ought to hide from me that there had been a long and full conversation at your house about my light verses, that the difference of opinions had carried it a good way, and that there were even some people who, while they did not find fault with the writings themselves, criticized me, in a friendly and frank way, for writing and reciting such things.
3.2| To them I give this answer, which will only add to my guilt: yes, I do sometimes write verses that are not very serious, I do; for I also listen to comedies, and watch mimes, and read the lyric poets, and understand Sotadeans; besides, I sometimes laugh, joke, play, and, to sum up every kind of harmless relaxation in a word, I am human.
3.3| Nor am I at all annoyed that people hold such an opinion of my character that those who do not know that the most learned, the most serious, the most upright men have often written such things are surprised that I write them.
3.4| But from those who know which authors I follow, and how great they are, I am confident that I can easily obtain leave to go astray, provided it is in the company of men whose playful work, and not only their serious work, it is praiseworthy to imitate.
3.5| Should I be afraid (I will name no one living, so as not to fall into any appearance of flattery), should I be afraid that it does not quite befit me to do what befitted Marcus Tullius, Gaius Calvus, Asinius Pollio, Marcus Messala, Quintus Hortensius, Marcus Brutus, Lucius Sulla, Quintus Catulus, Quintus Scaevola, Servius Sulpicius, Varro, Torquatus (indeed the Torquati), Gaius Memmius, Lentulus Gaetulicus, Annaeus Seneca, and most recently Verginius Rufus, and, if private examples are not enough, the deified Julius, the deified Augustus, the deified Nerva, and Tiberius Caesar?
3.6| For I pass over Nero, although I know that things sometimes done even by bad men are not corrupted by it, but remain honourable because they are more often done by good men. Among these one must count especially Publius Virgil, Cornelius Nepos, and earlier Accius and Ennius. These were not senators, to be sure, but sanctity of character does not differ by ranks.
3.7| I recite, however, though whether they did so I do not know. Yes: but they could be content with their own judgment; my steadiness is too modest for me to think a thing sufficiently finished merely because I approve it.
3.8| So I follow these reasons for reciting: first, that the man who recites himself strains rather more keenly at his writings through respect for his hearers; then, that on points he doubts he decides as if by the opinion of a council.
3.9| He is also advised in many things by many people, and if he is not advised, he sees what each one thinks from face, eyes, nod, hand, murmur, silence; and these, by signs plain enough, distinguish judgment from courtesy.
3.10| And so if any of those who were present should happen to care to read those same pieces, he will understand that I have changed or omitted some things, perhaps even on his own judgment, although he himself said nothing to me.
3.11| And I argue all this as if I had summoned the people into a lecture hall, not friends into a bedroom; to have many such friends has been a glory to many and a reproach to no one. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his friend Julius Valerianus.
4.1| A small matter, but the beginning of a not small one. Sollers, a man of praetorian rank, asked the senate to be permitted to set up a market on his lands. The envoys of the Vicetini spoke against it; Tuscilius Nominatus appeared for them.
4.2| The case was adjourned. At a later session of the senate the Vicetini entered without an advocate and said they had been deceived, whether by a slip of the word or because they so thought. Questioned by Nepos the praetor whom they had instructed, they answered, the same as before. Asked whether he had then appeared free of charge, they answered, for six thousand sesterces; asked whether they had given anything again, they said a thousand denarii. Nepos demanded that Nominatus be brought in.
4.3| So far on that day. But as I augur, the matter will go farther. For most things merely touched and stirred at all creep very widely. I have pricked up your ears.
4.4| How long you must now, how coaxingly you must ask, to learn the rest! unless you come to Rome before, because of this very matter, and prefer to be a spectator rather than a reader. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Novius Maximus.
5.1| I have been told that Gaius Fannius has died; this news threw me into heavy grief, first because I loved the man, polished and eloquent, then because I was accustomed to use his judgment. For he was keen by nature, practised by experience, and most ready in truth.
5.2| Besides that, his own fate torments me: he died under an old will, he omitted those he loved most, and favoured those he was more offended by. But this is somehow tolerable; heavier is this, that he left a most beautiful work unfinished.
5.3| For although he was drawn away by pleading cases, he was writing the ends of those killed or banished by Nero, and had already finished three books, subtle and careful and in pure Latin and midway between conversation and history; and he longed to complete the rest the more eagerly the oftener these were read again and again.
5.4| To me, though, the death of those who are preparing something immortal always seems bitter and untimely. For those given to pleasures, who live as it were from day to day, end the causes of living every day; but for those who think of posterity and extend their memory by their works, no death is not sudden, since it always breaks off something begun.
5.5| Gaius Fannius, indeed, foresaw what happened long before. It seemed to him in the quiet of night that he was lying on his couch arranged in the posture of a student, with his writing-case before him - as he was accustomed; soon he imagined that Nero had come, sat down on the bed, taken out the first book which he had published about his crimes, and rolled it through to the end; that with the second and third he did likewise, then went away.
5.6| He was terrified and interpreted it thus, that the end of writing would be the same for himself as the end of reading had been for Nero: and it was the same.
5.7| When I recall this, pity comes over me, at how much watching and how much labour he spent in vain. My own mortality and my own writings run through my mind. And I do not doubt that you too are frightened by the same thought, for those things you have in hand.
5.8| So, while life holds out, let us strive that death find as few things as possible that it can destroy. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Domitius Apollinaris.
6.1| I loved your care and anxiety, in that when you heard I was going to my Tuscan estate in summer, you advised me not to, thinking it unhealthy.
6.2| The Tuscan coast, which stretches along the shore, is certainly heavy and pestilential; but my estates have drawn back far from the sea, and indeed lie under the Apennine, the healthiest of mountains.
6.3| And so, that you may lay aside all fear for me, hear the temper of the climate, the position of the region, the pleasantness of the villa, which will be pleasing for you to hear and for me to relate.
6.4| The climate in winter is cold and frozen; myrtles, olives, and whatever else delights in constant warmth, it scorns and rejects; yet it tolerates the laurel, and even produces it most glossy, though sometimes, but not oftener than near our city, it kills it.
6.5| The mildness of summer is wonderful: the air is always stirred by some breath, though it has breezes more often than winds.
6.6| Hence many old men: you may see grandfathers and great-grandfathers of men already young, hear old tales and the talk of ancestors, and when you have come there you might think you were born in another age.
6.7| The form of the region is most beautiful. Imagine some immense amphitheatre, such as nature alone could fashion. A wide, spreading plain is ringed by mountains, and the mountains at their topmost part have tall and ancient groves.
6.8| There the hunting is plentiful and varied. From there coppice woods come down with the mountain itself. Among these are rich and earthy hills - for hardly anywhere does a stone turn up, even if sought - which yield nothing in fertility to the flattest plains, and ripen a plentiful harvest, only later, but no less fully.
6.9| Below these along the whole slope vineyards stretch, and weave a single appearance far and wide; at their edge and bottom, as at a margin, orchard trees grow.
6.10| Then meadows and fields, fields which only huge oxen and the stoutest ploughs break up: the very tenacious soil, when first cut, rises in such great clods that it is mastered only by the ninth furrow.
6.11| The flowery, jewelled meadows nourish trefoil and other herbs, ever tender and soft and, so to speak, fresh. For all things are fed by never-failing streams; but where there is most water there is no marsh, because the land slopes, and whatever moisture it has received and not absorbed it pours out into the Tiber.
6.12| That river cuts through the middle of the fields, bearing ships, and carries down all the crops to the city, in winter and spring only; in summer it sinks, and leaves the name of a great river to a dry bed, and resumes it in autumn.
6.13| You will take great pleasure if you look out on this position of the region from the mountain. For you will seem to see not lands but some picture painted for exceptional beauty: with such variety, with such arrangement, wherever your eyes fall, they will be refreshed.
6.14| The villa, set at the foot of a hill, looks out as if from the top: the slope rises so gently and gradually, the incline deceiving, that when you do not think you are ascending, you feel you have ascended. Behind it has the Apennine, but at a greater distance; from it it receives breezes even on the clearest and calmest day, not sharp and immoderate, but weary and broken by the very distance.
6.15| With a large part of itself it faces south and invites the summer sun from the sixth hour, the winter sun somewhat earlier, into a portico broad and long in proportion. In this there are many rooms, an atrium too in the manner of the ancients.
6.16| In front of the portico is a xystus, divided into many shapes and cut up with box; from it a sloping, downward-lying bed, on which box has traced the figures of beasts facing one another; acanthus on the level, soft and I might almost say liquid.
6.17| Round this runs a walk enclosed by closely clipped greens of various shapes; beyond these a riding-track in the manner of a circus, going round the many-shaped box and the low little trees kept in check by the hand. Everything is fenced by a wall: this the stepped box covers and hides.
6.18| Then a meadow, no less to be seen for nature than those parts above for art; then fields further on and many other meadows and orchards.
6.19| At the head of the portico a dining-room runs out; through its folding doors it sees the end of the xystus and straightaway the meadow and much country, through its windows on this side the flank of the xystus and the part of the villa that juts out, on that side the grove and foliage of the adjoining hippodrome.
6.20| Opposite nearly the middle of the portico a garden-suite withdraws a little; it surrounds a little court which four plane trees overshadow. Between these water overflows from a marble basin and with gentle spray cherishes the plane trees around and the ground beneath the planes.
6.21| In this suite is a bedroom that shuts out daylight, noise and sound, and joined to it a dining-room for daily use and for friends: it looks on that little court, the wing of the portico, and everything the portico looks upon.
6.22| There is also another bedroom, green and shady from the nearest plane tree, adorned with marble up to the dado, and a painting imitating branches and birds sitting on the branches does not yield to the charm of the marble.
6.23| In it a little fountain, in the fountain a basin; around it several small pipes blend a most pleasant murmur. In the corner of the portico a very spacious bedroom faces the dining-room; with some windows it looks down on the xystus, with others on the meadow, but in front on a pool, which serves the windows and lies below them, pleasant in sound and sight;
6.24| for the water, leaping down from a height and received in marble, turns white. The same bedroom is very warm in winter, because it is bathed in abundant sun.
6.25| Adjoining is a hypocaust, and if the day is cloudy, steam let in takes the place of the sun. Then the roomy and cheerful dressing-room of the bath is followed by the cold room, in which there is a wide, shaded bathing-pool. If you want to swim more widely or more warmly, in the courtyard there is a pool, nearby a well, from which you can be braced again if you regret the warmth.
6.26| Joined to the cold room is the middle room, to which the sun is very kindly present; to the hot room more so, for it projects. In this there are three descents, two in the sun, the third farther from the sun, not farther from the light.
6.27| Over the dressing-room is placed a ball court, which holds several kinds of exercise and several rings of players. Not far from the bath are stairs which lead to the covered gallery, first to three suites. Of these one overlooks that little court with the four plane trees, another the meadow, another the vineyards, and they have different quarters of the sky as their outlook.
6.28| At the top of the covered gallery is a bedroom cut out of the gallery itself, which looks on the hippodrome, vineyards, mountains. Joined to it is a bedroom exposed to the sun, especially the winter sun. From here rises a suite which attaches the hippodrome to the villa. This is the face, this the use, from the front.
6.29| On the side is a summer covered gallery set on high, which seems not to look at the vineyards but to touch them. In the middle a most healthful dining-room receives a breeze from the Apennine valleys; behind, by very wide windows, it looks on the vineyards, by folding doors likewise on the vineyards but, as it were, admitted through the gallery.
6.30| From the side of the dining-room, which has no windows, stairs bring up what the dinner needs by a more private route. At the end is a bedroom to which the gallery itself offers no less pleasant a prospect than the vineyards. Beneath lies a gallery like an underground one; in summer it is stiff with enclosed cold and, content with its own air, neither desires breezes nor admits them.
6.31| Behind both galleries, where the dining-room ends, begins a portico, wintry before midday, summery as the day declines. By it two suites are reached, in one of which are four bedrooms, in the other three, which, as the sun goes round, enjoy either sun or shade.
6.32| Far, far surpassing this arrangement and the charm of the buildings is the hippodrome. It opens out in the middle and is at once offered whole to the eyes of those entering; it is surrounded by plane trees; these are clothed in ivy, so that the topmost are green with their own leaves and the lowest with another's. The ivy runs over trunk and branches and joins the neighbouring planes by its passing. Between these lies box; the outer box is surrounded by laurel, which adds its shade to that of the planes.
6.33| This straight boundary of the hippodrome is broken at the far end into a semicircle and changes its look: it is surrounded and covered by cypresses, darker and blacker with their denser shade; in the inner rings - for there are several - it receives the purest daylight.
6.34| From there it even brings out roses, and tempers the chill of the shades with a not unwelcome sun. When that varied and manifold curve is finished, it is returned to the straight boundary, and not to this one only, for several paths are separated by box coming between.
6.35| In one place a little meadow, in another the box itself, cut into a thousand shapes, sometimes letters, which tell now the master's name, now the craftsman's: small cones rise alternately, fruit trees are set in alternately, and in a most refined work there is a sudden imitation of country brought in. The middle space is adorned on either side with shorter plane trees.
6.36| After these, acanthus, smooth and winding on either hand, then more figures and more names. At the head is a semicircular couch of white marble, sheltered by a vine; four little columns of Carystian marble stand under the vine. From the couch water flows out through small pipes, as if pressed out by the weight of those reclining; it is received in a hollowed stone, held by a slender marble rim, and so secretly regulated that it fills and does not overflow.
6.37| The appetizer and the heavier part of the dinner are set on the rim; the lighter floats round in the shapes of little boats and birds. Opposite, a fountain sends out water and takes it back; for water thrown up high falls back into itself, and through joined openings is both swallowed and raised again. Facing the couch, a bedroom gives back to the couch as much adornment as it receives from it.
6.38| It shines with marble, with its folding doors it projects and opens onto greenery, and with upper and lower windows it looks up to and down on other greenery. Next a little alcove draws back, as if into the same bedroom and another. Here is a bed and windows on every side, and yet the light is dim, the shade pressing on it.
6.39| For a most luxuriant vine climbs over the whole roof to its peak. You would lie there no differently than in a grove, only that, unlike in a grove, you would not feel the rain.
6.40| Here too a fountain rises and is drawn off at once. Marble seats are placed at several spots, which help those wearied by walking as the bedroom itself does. Little springs lie beside the seats; through the whole hippodrome channelled streams murmur, and follow where the hand has led them: with these now this greenery, now that, sometimes all at once, is watered.
6.41| I should have avoided this long since, lest I seem too fine-spun, had I not proposed to go round every corner with you by letter. For I was not afraid it would be laborious for you to read what would not have been laborious to visit, especially as you could, if you liked, rest in between and, laying the letter aside, sit down, as it were, quite often. Besides, I have indulged my love; for I love what for the most part I began myself, or, begun, brought to perfection.
6.42| In sum - for why should I not reveal to you either my judgment or my error? - I think the writer's first duty is to read his title and ask himself again and again what he has begun to write, and to know that if he lingers on his subject he is not long, but is very long if he brings in and drags in something else.
6.43| You see in how many verses Homer, in how many Virgil, describes the arms, here of Aeneas, there of Achilles; yet each is brief because he does what he has set out to do. You see how Aratus pursues and gathers even the smallest stars; yet he keeps measure. For this is not a digression of his, but the work itself.
6.44| In like manner, we, "small things with great", when we try to set the whole villa before your eyes, if we say nothing brought in and as it were off the road, it is not the letter that describes but the villa that is described which is large. But back to the point from which I began, lest I be rightly reproved by my own law, if I am longer in this that I have strayed into.
6.45| You have the reasons why I prefer my Tuscan estates to my Tusculan, Tiburtine and Praenestine ones. For besides what I have related, the leisure there is deeper and richer and therefore more secure: no necessity of the toga, nobody nearby to summon you, everything placid and quiet, which itself adds to the healthiness of the region, as the sky is purer and the air clearer.
6.46| There I am best in mind, there best in body. For I exercise my mind with studies, my body with hunting. My household too nowhere live more healthily; until now at least I have lost none there - pardon the saying - of those I had brought with me. May the gods only preserve for me in future this joy, this credit for the place! Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Calvisius Rufus.
7.1| It is agreed that the state can neither be instituted heir nor take a prelegacy; but Saturninus, who left us as his heirs, gave a fourth part to our commonwealth, and then in place of the fourth part a prelegacy of four hundred thousand. If you look to the law, this is void; if to the dead man's wish, it is valid and firm.
7.2| But to me the wish of the dead man - I am afraid in what way the jurists will take what I am about to say - counts for more than the law, at any rate in what he wished to reach our common country.
7.3| Am I to deny the town to which I contributed sixteen hundred thousand sesterces of my own slightly more than a third of four hundred thousand from an unexpected inheritance? I know that you too are not averse to my judgment, since as an excellent citizen you love the same commonwealth.
7.4| I should like you therefore, when the town councillors are next convened, to indicate what the law is, sparingly however and modestly; then to add that we offer the four hundred thousand, as Saturninus directed. This is his gift, his generosity; let ours be called only compliance.
7.5| I have refrained from writing this officially, first because I remembered that, by reason of the closeness of our friendship and by capacity of your prudence, you both ought and can discharge my part as well as your own; then because I feared I might not seem to have kept in a letter the measure which in conversation it is easy for you to keep.
7.6| For conversation is regulated by face, gesture, the voice itself; a letter, stripped of all such recommendations, is exposed to the ill-will of interpreters. Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Titinius Capito.
8.1| You urge me to write history, and you are not the only one: many have often advised me of this, and I wish it, not because I trust that I shall do it well - one would believe that rashly without trial - but because it seems to me most fine, above all, not to let die those to whom eternity is due, and to extend the fame of others together with one's own.
8.2| Nothing, however, so stirs me as love and desire of lasting, a thing most worthy of a man, especially of one who, conscious of no fault, does not dread the memory of posterity.
8.3| So I think day and night "if in any way I too could lift myself from the ground"; for that suffices for my wish; that other is beyond wish, "and victorious to flit through the mouths of men"; "although, oh -": but this is enough, which history almost alone seems to promise.
8.4| For a speech and a poem have little charm unless eloquence is supreme; history, however written, delights. For men are curious by nature and are caught by knowledge of things however bare, so that they are drawn even by bits of gossip and little tales. And I am driven to this pursuit also by an example at home.
8.5| My uncle, who by adoption was also my father, wrote histories, and most scrupulously. I find among the wise that it is most honourable to follow the footsteps of one's forebears, provided they have led the way on the right road. Why then do I hesitate?
8.6| I have pleaded great and weighty cases. These, even if my hope from them is slight, I intend to revise, lest that great labour of mine perish with me unless I add this remaining effort.
8.7| For if you take account of posterity, whatever is not completed is as if not begun. You will say: "You can at once rewrite your pleadings and compose history." Would that I could! But each is so great that it is more than enough to accomplish one.
8.8| In my nineteenth year I began to speak in the forum, and even now I see only dimly, as through a fog, what an orator should provide.
8.9| What if something new is added to this burden? Oratory and history do have much in common, but more that is different even in those very things which seem common. The one narrates, the other narrates, but differently: for the one most things humble and sordid and drawn from the common stuff are fitting, for the other everything recondite, splendid, lofty;
8.10| the one is more often adorned by bones, muscles, sinews, the other by certain swellings and, as it were, manes; the one pleases above all by force, bitterness, pressing on, the other by flow and sweetness and even softness; finally, the words are different, the sound different, the construction different.
8.11| For it matters a great deal, as Thucydides says, whether it is a "possession" or a "competition piece"; of which oratory is the one, history the other. For these reasons I am not led to confuse and mix two unlike things, different by the very fact that they are greatest, lest, disturbed by so great a kind of mixture, I do in one place what I ought to do in the other; and therefore I ask for the time being leave, not to depart from my own words, to call in advocates.
8.12| You, however, think now which times I should most take up. Old ones, written of by others? The inquiry is ready, but the comparison burdensome. Untouched and new? Heavy offence, slight thanks.
8.13| For besides the fact that among such vices of men there are more things to blame than to praise, then if you praise you will be said to have been sparing, if you blame, excessive, however fully you did the one and however restrainedly the other.
8.14| But these things do not hold me back; for I have courage enough to be trustworthy: I ask you to pave the way for what you urge, and choose the subject, lest for me now ready to write another just reason for hesitation and delay arise again. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Sempronius Rufus.
9.1| I had come down into the Basilica Julia, intending to hear those to whom I had to reply at the next adjournment.
9.2| The judges sat, the board of ten had come, the advocates were moving about, there was a long silence; at last a message from the praetor. The centumviri are dismissed, the day is taken off, to my delight, who am never so prepared that I do not rejoice at a delay.
9.3| The cause of the delay is Nepos the praetor, who holds inquiry according to the laws. He had put up a brief edict, warning accusers, warning defendants that he would carry out what was contained in the decree of the senate.
9.4| Beneath the edict lay the decree of the senate: by this all who had any business were ordered to swear, before they pleaded, that they had given, promised or pledged nothing to anyone on account of advocacy. For in these words and a thousand others besides, advocacies were forbidden to be sold or bought; yet when the business was finished, it was permitted to give money only up to ten thousand.
9.5| Moved by this act of Nepos, the praetor who presides over the centumviral court, intending to deliberate whether to follow the example, gave us unexpected leisure.
9.6| Meanwhile throughout the whole city Nepos's edict is carped at and praised. Many say: "We have found one to straighten the crooked! What? Were there no praetors before him? And who is this to mend public morals?" Others on the contrary: "He has acted most rightly; about to enter office, he learned the laws, read the decrees of the senate, represses the foulest bargains, and does not suffer a most beautiful thing to be sold most shamefully."
9.7| Such talk is everywhere, which will nevertheless prevail one way or the other from the outcome. It is altogether unfair, but accepted by custom, that honourable plans, or shameful ones, are approved or censured according as they turn out well or badly. Hence for the most part the same acts get now the name of diligence, now of vanity, now of independence, now of madness. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friend Suetonius Tranquillus.
10.1| Free at last the pledge of my hendecasyllables, which promised your writings to our common friends. They are called upon daily, demanded insistently, and there is already danger that they will be forced to accept a summons to produce them.
10.2| I too am hesitant in publishing, yet you have beaten even my hesitation and slowness. So either break off delays now, or take care lest those same little books, which our hendecasyllables cannot draw out of you by blandishments, be wrung from you by the scolding of limping scazons.
10.3| The work is finished and complete, and the file no longer polishes it but wears it down. Let me see your title, let me hear the volumes of my Tranquillus being copied, read, sold. It is fair that in a love so mutual we should receive from you the same pleasure which you enjoy from us. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Calpurnius Fabatus.
11.1| I have your letter in hand, and from it I learned that you have dedicated a most handsome portico under your name and your son's, and on the following day promised money for the adornment of the gates, so that the completion of the earlier generosity might be the beginning of a new one.
11.2| I rejoice first at your glory, some part of which flows back to me because of our closeness; then because I see my father-in-law's memory carried forward in most beautiful works; lastly because our native place flourishes, which to have improved by anyone is pleasing to me, by you most joyful.
11.3| For the rest, I pray the gods to grant you that spirit, and that spirit the longest possible time. For it is clear to me that once you have finished what you lately promised, you will begin something else. For generosity once stirred does not know how to stand still, and its beauty is commended by the very practice. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Terentius Scaurus.
12.1| About to recite a little speech which I think of publishing, I called together some people so that I might feel awe, a few so that I might hear the truth. For I have a twofold reason for reciting, one that I may be strained by anxiety, the other that I may be admonished if anything by chance escapes me as my own.
12.2| I got what I sought: I found those who gave me the full benefit of their counsel, and I myself besides noted certain things to be mended. I have corrected the book, which I have sent to you.
12.3| You will learn the subject from the title, the book will explain the rest, which ought by now to be so accustomed that it is understood without a preface.
12.4| I should like you to write me what you think of the whole and of the parts. For I shall be either more cautious in holding it back or more resolute in publishing, as your authority comes to one side or the other. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Julius Valerianus.
13.1| Both you ask and I promised, if you asked, that I would write to you what outcome Nepos's demand had about Tuscilius Nominatus. Nominatus was brought in; he pleaded for himself with no accuser. For the envoys of the Vicetini not only did not press him but even relieved him.
13.2| The sum of his defence: not good faith in his advocacy but steadfastness had failed him; he had come down as one who would plead, and had even been seen in the senate-house, then, terrified by the talk of his friends, had withdrawn; for he had been warned not to resist so stubbornly, especially in the senate, the wish of a senator, who was now contending not about a market but about favour, reputation and rank, otherwise he would suffer greater ill-will than lately.
13.3| Before this, certainly, but by a few, there had been shouting at him as he went out. He added entreaties and many tears; indeed through the whole pleading, a man practised in speaking took pains to seem rather to beg for mercy - for that is both more favoured and safer - than to be defended.
13.4| He was acquitted by the opinion of the consul designate Afranius Dexter, the sum of which was: Nominatus would indeed have done better if he had carried through the Vicetini's cause in the same spirit in which he had taken it up; yet since he had fallen into this kind of fault not by fraud, and was shown to have committed nothing worthy of censure, he should be released, on condition that he return to the Vicetini what he had received.
13.5| All assented except Fabius Aper. He proposed that he be forbidden advocacy for five years, and although he had drawn no one with his authority, he stayed firmly in his opinion; indeed he even forced Dexter, who had first proposed the opposite, by producing the law on holding the senate, to swear that what he had proposed was for the good of the state.
13.6| Although this was a lawful demand, some cried out against it; for it seemed to reproach the proposer with canvassing. But before the opinions were spoken, Nigrinus, tribune of the plebs, read out a petition, eloquent and weighty, in which he complained that advocacies were sold, that even collusions were sold, that people were banded together for lawsuits, and that it was set down as glory to draw large and fixed incomes from the spoils of citizens.
13.7| He read out the heads of laws, reminded the senate of its decrees, and at the end said the best of emperors must be petitioned, that since the laws and decrees of the senate were despised, he himself should remedy such great vices.
13.8| A few days, and the emperor's letter, severe and yet moderate: read it yourself; it is in the public records. How glad I am that in pleading causes I have always abstained not only from bargain, gift, reward, but even from presents!
13.9| It is right, to be sure, to avoid what is dishonourable not as unlawful but as shameful; yet it is pleasant if you see publicly forbidden what you never allowed yourself.
13.10| There will perhaps, indeed without doubt, be less praise and more obscure fame for this resolution of mine, when all will do from necessity what I did of my own will. Meanwhile I enjoy the pleasure, when some call me a prophet, and others say in sport and jest that a check has been put on my plundering and my greed. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend Pontius Allifanus.
14.1| I had retired to my town when it was reported to me that Cornutus Tertullus had received the charge of the Aemilian Way.
14.2| I cannot express with what joy I was affected, on his account and on my own: on his, because, although he is - as he is - far removed from all canvassing, an office given unasked should nevertheless be pleasing to him; on my own, because the duty entrusted to me delights me somewhat more now that I see an equal one given to Cornutus.
14.3| For it is not so gratifying to be raised in rank as to be put on a level with the good. And what is better than Cornutus, what more upright, what in every kind of praise more perfectly cast on the model of antiquity? This is known to me not by reputation, which he otherwise enjoys, best and most deserved, but by long and great trials.
14.4| Together we love, together we have loved nearly all whom our age has produced for emulation among both sexes; this partnership of friendships has joined us in the closest intimacy.
14.5| A bond of public association was added; for he was, as you know, my colleague, sought almost by prayer, in the prefecture of the treasury, and was so also in the consulship. Then I looked most deeply into what a man and how great he was, when I followed him as a master and revered him as a parent, which he deserved not so much by maturity of age as by his life.
14.6| For these reasons I congratulate myself as I do him, and no more privately than publicly, that at last men reach honours by virtue and not, as before, perils.
14.7| I should stretch the letter without end if I indulged my joy. I turn aside to what this news found me doing here.
14.8| I was with my wife's grandfather, I was with my wife's aunt, I was with friends long missed, I was going round my small farms, hearing many rustic complaints, reading accounts unwillingly and hurriedly - for I was schooled in other papers, in other letters - and I had begun also to prepare myself for the journey. For I am shut in by the narrowness of my leave, and by this very fact, that I hear the office has been entrusted to Cornutus, I am reminded of mine. I wish your Campania too would release you about the same time, so that no day of our companionship may be lost when I return to the city. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Arrius Antoninus.
15.1| When I try to rival your verses, then most of all I discover how good they are. For as painters rarely portray a beautiful and perfect face except to its disadvantage, so I slip and fall away from this original.
15.2| Wherefore I urge you the more to put out as many as possible, which all would long to imitate and no one, or very few, could. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Aefulanus Marcellinus.
16.1| In the deepest sadness I write this to you, the younger daughter of our friend Fundanus having died. Than that girl I never saw anything more charming or more lovable, nor anyone more worthy not merely of a longer life but almost of immortality.
16.2| She had not yet completed 14 years, and already she had the prudence of an old woman, the gravity of a matron, and yet the sweetness of a girl together with a maiden's modesty.
16.3| How she clung to her father's neck! How lovingly and modestly she embraced us, her father's friends! How she loved her nurses, her attendants, her teachers, each according to his duty! How eagerly, how intelligently she read! How sparingly and under watch she played! With what self-control, with what patience, with what steadiness too she bore her last illness!
16.4| She obeyed the physicians, encouraged her sister and father, and sustained herself, deserted by bodily strength, by vigour of mind.
16.5| This lasted in her to the very end, nor was it broken by the length of her illness or by fear of death, so that she left us the more and the heavier causes of longing and grief.
16.6| O plainly sad and bitter funeral! O time of death more unworthy than death itself! She was already betrothed to an excellent young man, the day of the wedding already chosen, we already invited. What joy was changed to what mourning!
16.7| I cannot express in words how great a wound my heart received when I heard Fundanus himself, as grief finds many mournful things, giving orders that what he had been going to spend on clothes, pearls and gems should be spent on incense and ointments and perfumes.
16.8| He is indeed learned and wise, as one who from the beginning of his life has given himself to higher studies and arts; but now he scorns everything he has heard and often said, and, all other virtues driven out, he is wholly devotion.
16.9| You will pardon him, you will even praise him, if you consider what he has lost. For he has lost a daughter who reproduced his character no less than his mouth and face, and had copied the whole father with marvellous likeness.
16.10| So if you send him any letter about so just a grief, remember to bring consolation not as if rebuking and too strong, but gentle and humane. That he may admit it more easily, a space of time between will do much.
16.11| For as a wound still raw dreads the hands of the healers, then bears them and even seeks them out, so a fresh grief of mind rejects and shuns consolations, soon longs for them, and rests in them when kindly applied. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Vestricius Spurinna.
17.1| I know how much you favour the liberal arts, how much joy you take if noble youths do something worthy of their ancestors. All the more hastily I report that I was today in the lecture hall of Calpurnius Piso.
17.2| He was reciting a poem on the transformation of figures into stars, a learned and certainly splendid subject. It was written in elegiacs, flowing and tender and smooth, and also lofty, as the place demanded. For he rose fittingly and variously, now lifting, now settling; he changed high to low, slight to full, severe to pleasing, all with equal talent.
17.3| He recommended these things by a most sweet voice, and his voice by modesty: much blood, much anxiety in his face, a great ornament in a reciter. For somehow or other fear becomes men in their studies more than confidence.
17.4| Not to say more - though I like to say more, the finer the things about a young man, the rarer about a noble - when the recitation was over I kissed the youth much and long, which is the keenest spur of advice, and I urged him with praises to continue along the path he had started, and to carry before posterity himself the light which his ancestors had carried before him.
17.5| I congratulated his excellent mother, I congratulated his brother too, who from that lecture hall brought away no less glory of devotion than the other of eloquence: so remarkably, while he recited, did first the brother's fear, then his joy, stand out.
17.6| May the gods grant that I report such things to you oftener! For I favour our age, that it be not barren and worn out, and wonderfully wish that our nobles may have something beautiful in their houses besides their ancestral images; which now seem to me silently to praise these young men, to exhort them, and, what is enough for the glory of both, to acknowledge them. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Calpurnius Macer.
18.1| It is well with me because it is well with you. You have your wife with you, you have your son; you enjoy the sea, springs, greenery, the field, a most agreeable villa. Nor do I doubt that it is most agreeable, in which a happier man had settled himself before he became the happiest.
18.2| I, on my Tuscan estate, both hunt and study, which I do sometimes in turn, sometimes together; yet I cannot even now declare whether it is harder to catch something or to write it. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Valerius Paulinus.
19.1| I see how gently you treat your household; so I shall confess to you the more frankly with what indulgence I treat mine.
19.2| I always have in mind both that Homeric line "he was gentle as a father" and this of ours, "father of a family." But if I were by nature harsher and more hard, the weakness of my freedman Zosimus would still break me, to whom so much the greater kindness must be shown as he now needs it more.
19.3| He is an honest, dutiful, lettered man; and his art, his title as it were, is comic actor, in which he does very much. For he delivers keenly, wisely, fittingly, even gracefully; he also uses the lyre skilfully, beyond what a comic actor needs. The same man reads speeches and histories and poems so agreeably that he seems to have learned this alone.
19.4| I have set this out for you carefully, that you may know the more how many and how pleasant services this one man renders me. To this is added a long affection for the man, which the very dangers increased.
19.5| For it is so arranged by nature that nothing so rouses and kindles love as the fear of losing; and this I have suffered for him more than once.
19.6| For some years ago, while he was delivering intently and urgently, he brought up blood, and for this reason, sent by me to Egypt, after a long sojourn he returned recovered lately; then, while for successive days he put too much strain on his voice, reminded by a little cough of his old weakness he brought up blood again.
19.7| For which reason I have determined to send him to your estates which you hold at Forum Julii. You have told me many times that the climate there is wholesome and that the milk is exceptionally well suited to cures of this sort.
19.8| I ask therefore that you write to your people that the villa and the house be open to him, and that they also contribute to his expenses, if anything is needed.
19.9| He will need but little; for he is so thrifty and self-controlled that by frugality he restrains not only luxuries but even the necessities of health. As he sets out I shall give him as much travelling money as will suffice for one going to your place. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelius Ursus.
20.1| The Bithynians again: only a short while after Julius Bassus, they have also denounced Rufus Varenus, proconsul, Varenus whom lately against Bassus they had asked for and received as advocate. Brought into the senate, they demanded an investigation.
20.2| Varenus asked that he too be allowed to summon witnesses for his defense. The Bithynians objected, and the matter was taken up for a hearing. I spoke for Varenus, not without success; whether well or badly, the published speech will show.
20.3| For in actual pleading fortune rules in both directions: memory, voice, gesture, the occasion itself, and finally either liking or dislike for the defendant all take away a great deal of credit and also add it. A book is free of offense, free of favor, free of both lucky and unlucky chances.
20.4| Fonteius Magnus, one of the Bithynians, answered me with a great many words and very little substance. Most Greeks, like him, take glibness for fullness: they whirl out such long and such lifeless periods in a single breath, like a torrent.
20.5| So Julius Candidus has a neat way of saying that eloquence is one thing and talkativeness another. For eloquence has fallen to scarcely one or two people, indeed, if we believe Marcus Antonius, to nobody; but this thing that Candidus calls talkativeness has fallen to many, and most of all to the most shameless.
20.6| The next day Homullus spoke for Varenus, shrewdly, forcefully, elegantly; Nigrinus spoke against him, concisely, weightily, with ornament. Acilius Rufus, the consul-elect, proposed that the Bithynians be granted their inquiry, and passed over Varenus' request in silence.
20.7| That was a way of refusing it. Cornelius Priscus, a former consul, granted both the prosecutors and the defendant what they asked for, and carried the vote. We won something that is neither covered by the law nor very usual, but just all the same.
20.8| Why it is just I am not going to explain in a letter, so that you will want to read the speech. For if that line of Homer is true, "For men praise that song the most / that sounds newest in the ears of those who listen," I must take care not to pluck off, by the chatter of a letter, the charm and bloom of novelty, which is the chief recommendation of that little speech. Farewell.
21.0| Pliny to his friend Pompeius Saturninus
21.1| Your letter affected me in different ways, for it held news partly happy and partly sad. Happy, because it told me that you are being kept in the city ("I wish I weren't," you say; but I wish it), and also because it promised that you would give a reading as soon as I arrived. Thank you for waiting for me.
21.2| The sad news is that Julius Valens is seriously ill; though even this is not sad if it is judged by his own interests, since it is to his advantage to be freed as soon as possible from a disease that cannot be cured.
21.3| But this is not merely sad, it is truly grievous: Julius Avitus has died on his way home from his quaestorship. He died on board ship, far from his most loving brother, far from his mother and his sisters
21.4| (these things mean nothing to the dead, but they meant something while he was dying, and they mean something to those who survive); and what is more, a young man of such great gifts has been cut off in his first bloom, who would have reached the highest things if his virtues had come to maturity.
21.5| How he burned with love for learning! How much he read, and how much he wrote too! And all of it has now passed away with him, with no profit to posterity.
21.6| But why do I give way to grief? If you slacken the reins on it, there is nothing that does not become a vast subject. I will put an end to this letter, so that I can also put an end to the tears the letter has drawn from me. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book VI ========

1.0| Pliny to his friend Tiro
1.1| As long as I was beyond the Po while you were in Picenum, I missed you less; now that I am in the city and you are still in Picenum, I miss you far more. Perhaps it is because the very places where we are usually together remind me of you more sharply; or because nothing sharpens our longing for the absent so much as nearness, and the closer you come to the hope of enjoying someone's company, the less patiently you bear being without it.
1.2| Whatever the cause, rescue me from this torment. Come, or I will go back to where I hurried away from so rashly, if only to find out whether, when you begin to be in Rome without me, you send me letters like these. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Arrianus
2.1| Now and then in the courts I find myself looking for Marcus Regulus; I will not say missing him.
2.2| Why, then, do I look for him? He had respect for his craft: he was anxious, he went pale, he wrote his speeches out, though he could not learn them by heart. Even the fact that he painted around his right eye or his left (the right if he was going to plead for the plaintiff, the other if for the defendant), that he shifted a white patch now over one eyebrow, now over the other, that he always consulted the soothsayers about the outcome of a case: all this came from excessive superstition, but also from a great respect for his craft.
2.3| And then there were things that were most agreeable for those who spoke alongside him: he asked for unlimited time, and he rounded up people to listen. For what could be more agreeable than to speak for as long as you like with the odium of it falling on someone else, and at your ease before an audience gathered by another man, as though you had caught it there by chance?
2.4| But however that may be, Regulus did well to die; he would have done better to die sooner. For now he could certainly have lived without harm to the public, under an emperor under whom he had no power to do harm.
2.5| That is why it is permissible to look for him now and then. For since his death the habit has spread everywhere and grown strong of both granting and asking for two water-clocks, or one, and sometimes even half of one. Those who speak would rather have spoken than be speaking, and those who listen would rather be finished than give judgment. Such is the carelessness, such the laziness, such, in a word, the disrespect for our craft and for the risks involved.
2.6| Are we wiser than our forefathers, or more just than the laws themselves, which allow so many hours, so many days, so many adjournments? Those men were dull and slow beyond measure; we speak more plainly, understand more quickly, and judge more scrupulously, because we rush through cases in fewer water-clocks than it used to take days to unfold them.
2.7| O Regulus, you who obtained from everyone by canvassing what very few grant to honesty! For my part, whenever I sit as a judge (which I do even more often than I plead), I give as much water as anyone asks for, however much that is.
2.8| For I think it rash to guess how long a case will be before it has been heard, and to set a time limit on a matter whose extent you do not know, especially since the first thing a judge owes to his oath is patience, which is a great part of justice. But some things are said that are superfluous. Yes, they are; but it is better for these to be said too than for necessary things not to be said.
2.9| Besides, whether they are superfluous you cannot know until you have heard them. But it is better to talk about these things face to face, like many other faults of our society. For you too, out of love for the common good, often wish to see amended things that are now hard to correct.
2.10| Now let us look back at our own households. Is everything going well in yours? In mine there is nothing new. For my part, good things are all the more welcome to me because they last, and troubles are the lighter because I have grown used to them. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Verus
3.1| Thank you for taking on the cultivation of the little farm I gave my nurse. At the time of my gift its value stood at a hundred thousand sesterces; later, as its income fell, its value also went down, but now, under your care, it will recover.
3.2| Only remember that what I am entrusting to you is not trees and land (though these too), but my little gift, and that it be as productive as possible matters no more to her who received it than to me who gave it. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his Calpurnia
4.1| Never have I complained more about my duties, which would not let me either go with you when you set out for Campania for your health, or follow straight after you once you had gone.
4.2| For now above all I wanted to be with you, so that I could believe my own eyes about what you were doing for your strength and your frail little body, and whether you were getting through the pleasures of your retreat and the riches of the region without harm.
4.3| Indeed, even if you were well, I would miss you and not without worry; for it is a state of suspense and anxiety to know nothing for a while about someone you love most ardently.
4.4| But as it is, the thought both of your absence and of your poor health terrifies me with an uncertain and shifting anxiety. I fear everything, I imagine everything, and, as is the nature of those who are afraid, I picture most of all the things I most dread.
4.5| So I beg you all the more earnestly to take care of my fear with one letter, or even two, every day. I will feel easier while I am reading, and I will be afraid again the moment I have read. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Ursus
5.1| I had written that Varenus had won leave to summon witnesses. To most this seemed fair, to some unfair, and stubbornly so, above all to Licinius Nepos. At the next meeting of the senate, when other business was being brought forward, he spoke about the last decree of the senate and reopened a case that had been settled.
5.2| He added that the consuls ought to be asked to bring forward a motion, on the model of the law on electoral bribery, concerning the law on extortion: whether it was the senate's pleasure that a clause be added to that law for the future, so that, just as under it the prosecutors had the power of making inquiry and of summoning witnesses, so too the defendants should have it.
5.3| There were some to whom this speech of his was displeasing, as late and untimely and preposterous, since, having let slip the time for speaking against it, it rebuked what was done when he could have met it.
5.4| Juventius Celsus, the praetor, rebuked him as a corrector of the senate, both at length and vehemently. Nepos replied, and Celsus again; neither restrained himself from insults.
5.5| I do not wish to relate what I was distressed to hear them say. All the more I disapproved of some of our number, who ran now to Celsus, now to Nepos, as the one or the other spoke, from desire of listening, and now as if to goad and inflame, now as if to reconcile and compose, more often prayed for one of them singly, sometimes for both, that Caesar be favourable, as at some show.
5.6| To me that also was extremely bitter, that each had been told what the other was preparing. For Celsus replied to Nepos from a pamphlet, and Nepos to Celsus from his writing tablets.
5.7| So great the talkativeness of friends, that men about to quarrel knew this very thing about each other, as though it had been agreed. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Fundanus.
6.1| If ever, now especially I should wish you to be at Rome, and I ask that you be. I need a partner in my prayer, labour and anxiety. Julius Naso is seeking office; he seeks it with many, with good men, whom it is as glorious as it is difficult to surpass.
6.2| So I am in suspense and exercised by hope, affected by fear, and I do not feel that I am a consular; for again I seem to myself a candidate for all the offices I have run through.
6.3| He deserves this care by his long affection for me. My friendship with him is not, it is true, one handed down from our fathers - my age made that impossible -; yet when I was scarcely a youth, his father used to be pointed out to me with great praise. He was fondest not only of studies but even of students, and almost daily came to hear those whom I then attended, Quintilian and Nicetes Sacerdos; he was a man otherwise famous and weighty, and one who ought to benefit his son by the memory of himself.
6.4| But many in the senate now do not know that man, many know him but revere only the living. So much the more must this son, setting aside his father's glory, which is a great distinction but carries little influence, strive and labour for himself.
6.5| This he has always done diligently, as if foreseeing this time: he has gained friends, he has cultivated those he gained, and me at least, as soon as he allowed himself to judge, he chose for love and imitation.
6.6| When I plead he stands by anxiously, when I recite he sits beside me; he is present even at my first and just-born little works, now alone, formerly with his brother, whose recent loss obliges me to take up his part and fill his place.
6.7| For I grieve both for him, most unworthily snatched by an untimely death, and for this one, deprived of the help of an excellent brother and left to friends alone.
6.8| For these reasons I demand that you come, and join your vote to mine. It matters very much to me to show you off, to go round with you. Such is your authority that I think I shall ask my own friends the more effectively with you.
6.9| Break off whatever holds you: this my time, this good faith, this even my dignity demands. I have taken up a candidate, and it is known that I have taken him up; I canvass, I run the risk; in sum, if Naso is given what he seeks, the honour is his; if it is refused, the rejection is mine. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his Calpurnia.
7.1| You write that you are affected not moderately by my absence, and have this one comfort, that in place of me you hold my little books, often even lay them where I used to lie.
7.2| It is pleasing that you miss me, pleasing that you find rest in these poultices; in turn I read your letters again and again and take them in my hands again and again as if new.
7.3| But by that I am the more kindled to longing for you: for if her letters have so much sweetness, how much charm is in her conversation! Yet do write as often as possible, although this so delights me that it tortures. Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Priscus.
8.1| Atilius Crescens you both know and love. For who a little distinguished is there who does not know or does not love him? Him I love not as many do, but most closely.
8.2| Our towns are separated by a journey of one day; we began to love each other as very young men, which is the most ardent love. It remained afterwards, and did not cool by judgment but grew strong. Those know it who look more closely at either of us. For he carries my friendship about by the widest proclamation, and I make plain how great a care to me are his modesty, quiet and security.
8.3| Indeed, when he feared the insolence of a certain man about to enter the tribunate of the plebs, and had told me so, I replied: "no one, while I live". Why this? That you may know that Atilius cannot receive injury while I am unharmed.
8.4| Again you will say, "Why this?" Valerius Varus owed him money. His heir is our Maximus, whom I too love, but you more closely.
8.5| I ask therefore, I even demand by the right of friendship, that you see to it that for my Atilius not only the principal but also the interest of several years be safe. He is a man most abstinent of what is another's and careful of his own; he is supported by no gains, he has no income except from thrift.
8.6| For the studies in which he most excels he practises only for pleasure and glory. Even the smallest loss weighs on him; although to repair what you have lost is heavier.
8.7| Relieve him of this scruple, relieve me of it: let me enjoy his charm and his wit. For I cannot see him sad, whose cheerfulness does not let me be sad.
8.8| In sum, you know the man's pleasantries; I should like you to take care that injury not turn them into gall and bitterness. What force he has when offended, believe from what he has in love. A great and free talent will not bear loss together with insult.
8.9| But, even if he bears it, I shall judge the loss mine, the insult mine, and I shall be angry not as on my own account but - that is - more heavily. Though why do I deal in warnings and, as it were, threats? Rather, as I had begun, I ask, I beg that you take pains lest he think himself, as I very much fear, neglected by me, or I myself by you. And you will give it, if this is as much your care as that is mine. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Tacitus.
9.1| You recommend to me Julius Naso as a candidate. Naso to me? What if you recommended me myself? I bear it, however, and pardon. For I should have recommended the same man to you, if I had been away while you stayed at Rome.
9.2| Anxiety has this about it, that it thinks everything necessary. You, however, I advise to ask others; I shall be the servant, helper and sharer of your prayers. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friend Albinus.
10.1| When I came to my mother-in-law's villa at Alsium, which for some time was Rufus Verginius's, the place itself renewed, not without pain, my longing for that best and greatest of men. For he used to cherish this retreat and even to call it the little nest of his old age.
10.2| Wherever I betook myself, my mind sought him, my eyes sought him. I wished also to see his monument, and was sorry to have seen it.
10.3| For it is still unfinished, nor is the difficulty of the work the cause, a modest and rather slight one, but the sloth of the man to whom the charge was entrusted. Indignation arises with pity, that after the tenth year from his death his remains and neglected ashes lie without inscription, without name, though his fame ranges over the whole world.
10.4| Yet he had commanded and provided that that divine and immortal deed be inscribed in verses: "Here lies Rufus, who, when Vindex was beaten, once claimed the empire not for himself but for his country."
10.5| So rare is good faith in friendships, so ready the forgetting of the dead, that we ourselves ought even to build our tombs and anticipate all the duties of heirs.
10.6| For who need not fear what, as we see, has befallen Verginius? The wrong done to him his own renown makes at once more unworthy and better known. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus.
11.1| O happy day! Called into council by the prefect of the city, I heard pleading on opposite sides young men of the highest hope and the highest character, Fuscus Salinator and Ummidius Quadratus, an outstanding pair, who will be an ornament not only to our times but to letters themselves.
11.2| Wonderful in both is integrity, steadfastness unimpaired, becoming bearing, Latin speech, manly voice, tenacious memory, great talent, even judgment; each of which pleased me, and among these this, that they themselves looked on me as a guide, as a master, and to those who listened they seemed to rival me, to press on in my footsteps.
11.3| O happy day - I will repeat it - and to be marked by me with the whitest pebble! For what is more joyful publicly than for the most distinguished young men to seek name and fame from their studies, or more desired by me than to be set up as a pattern for those who are striving for the right?
11.4| I pray the gods that I may have this joy for ever; from the same I ask, with you as witness, that all who think it worth while to imitate me may wish to be better than I. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Fabatus.
12.1| You really ought not to recommend to me with a hesitating hand those you think should be protected. For it befits you to help many, and me to take up whatever concerns your care.
12.2| So for Bittius Priscus I shall do as much as I can, especially in my own arena, that is, before the centumviri.
12.3| Of the letters which, as you say, you wrote me "with an open heart," you bid me forget; but of none do I more gladly remember. For from them I feel especially how greatly you love me, since you have called me to account as you used to do with your own son.
12.4| Nor do I conceal that they were the more pleasing to me because I had a good cause, having attended with the greatest zeal to what you wished attended to.
12.5| So I ask again and again that always with the same frankness, whenever I seem to be idle - I say "seem," for I shall never be idle - you scold me, which I shall understand to proceed from the highest love, and you will rejoice that I have not deserved it. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Ursus.
13.1| Have you ever seen anyone so toiling and harried as my Varenus? What he had obtained with the greatest exertion he had to defend and, as it were, ask for again.
13.2| The Bithynians dared to carp at and undermine, before the consuls, the senate's decree, and even to make accusations to the emperor in his absence; sent back by him to the senate, they did not desist. Claudius Capito spoke, more irreverently than steadily, as one who accused a decree of the senate before the senate.
13.3| Catius Fronto replied weightily and firmly. The senate itself was wonderful; for even those who earlier had denied Varenus what he sought, after it had been granted, voted that the same be granted;
13.4| for it was right for individuals to dissent while the matter was still open, but once it was settled, what the majority had resolved had to be upheld by all.
13.5| Only Acilius Rufus, and with him seven or eight others (seven, in fact), held to their earlier opinion. Among this small band were some whose sudden gravity, or rather imitation of gravity, was laughed at.
13.6| But you can judge for yourself how much awaits us in the battle itself, when these skirmishes have been stirred up by what was a kind of prelude and preliminary run to it. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend Mauricus
14.1| You are tempting me to your place at Formiae. I will come on this condition: that you do nothing that is inconvenient for you; and by this same agreement I protect myself in turn. For what I pursue is not sea and shore, but you, leisure and freedom; otherwise it would be better to stay in the city.
14.2| For one must do everything either at someone else's pleasure or at one's own. My own stomach, certainly, is so made that it wants nothing unless it is whole and unmixed. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Romanus
15.1| You missed an extraordinary scene. So did I, but the story reached me fresh. Passennus Paulus, a brilliant Roman knight, and one of exceptional learning, writes elegies. It runs in his family: he comes from the same town as Propertius, and even counts Propertius among his ancestors.
15.2| He was giving a reading, and began like this: "Priscus, you bid me..." At this Javolenus Priscus, who was there as a close friend of Paulus, said: "Indeed I do not bid you." Imagine the laughter, the jokes.
15.3| Priscus is, to be sure, of doubtful sanity, yet he takes part in public duties, is called in to councils, and even gives public opinions on the civil law; all the more reason why what he did then was both ridiculous and remarkable.
15.4| Meanwhile another man's madness cast something of a chill over Paulus. So careful must those who are going to give readings be to see not only that they themselves are sane, but also that they invite sane people. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Tacitus
16.1| You ask me to set down for you how my uncle died, so that you can hand it down to posterity more truthfully. I am grateful; for I see that, if his death is made famous by you, undying glory lies in store for it.
16.2| For although he perished in the ruin of the loveliest of lands, together with peoples and cities, in a disaster that will be remembered, as if he were to live forever; and although he himself produced a great many works that will endure, still the everlasting life of your writings will add much to his lasting fame.
16.3| For my part, I count those people happy to whom the gods have granted either to do things worth writing about or to write things worth reading, and those most happy to whom they have granted both. My uncle will be among their number, through his own books and through yours. All the more gladly, then, do I take up the task you lay on me; indeed I claim it for myself.
16.4| He was at Misenum, in personal command of the fleet. On the ninth day before the Kalends of September, at about the seventh hour, my mother pointed out to him that a cloud of unusual size and appearance was coming into view.
16.5| He had been out in the sun, then had a cold bath, had eaten a light meal lying down, and was at work; he called for his sandals and climbed to a spot from which that wonder could best be seen. A cloud was rising (to those looking from a distance it was unclear from which mountain; later it was learned that it was Vesuvius), whose likeness and shape no tree would have expressed better than a pine.
16.6| For it was carried up to a great height on what was like a very tall trunk and then divided into a number of branches. I believe this was because it had been lifted by a fresh blast of air, and then, as the blast weakened, was left without support, or else, overcome by its own weight, it thinned out and spread sideways. At times it was white, at times dirty and blotched, according to whether it had carried up earth or ash.
16.7| To a man of his great learning it seemed something important, and worth knowing about at closer range. He ordered a Liburnian galley to be made ready, and offered me the chance to come with him if I wished. I answered that I would rather keep on with my studies, and as it happened he himself had given me something to write.
16.8| He was leaving the house when he received a note from Rectina, wife of Tascus, terrified by the danger hanging over her (for her villa lay at the foot of the mountain, and there was no escape except by ship): she begged him to rescue her from such peril.
16.9| He changed his plan, and what he had begun in a spirit of inquiry he carried through in the spirit of a hero. He had the quadriremes launched and went aboard himself, intending to bring help not only to Rectina but to many others, for that lovely stretch of coast was thickly settled.
16.10| He hurried toward the place from which others were fleeing, and held his course and his helm straight for the danger, so free from fear that he dictated and had noted down every movement of that catastrophe, every shape it took, as he caught it with his own eyes.
16.11| Ash was already falling on the ships, hotter and thicker the closer they came; then pumice too, and black stones, scorched and cracked by fire; then suddenly shallow water, and the shore blocked by the debris of the mountain. He paused briefly, wondering whether to turn back; but when the helmsman urged him to do so, he said, "Fortune favors the brave: make for Pomponianus."
16.12| Pomponianus was at Stabiae, cut off by the bay between them (for the sea pours in there on a shore that gradually curves round in a sweep). There, although the danger was not yet approaching, it was in full view and, as it grew, would be very close, so he had put his baggage on board ship, resolved to flee if the contrary wind dropped. My uncle, carried in by that same wind, which was then most favorable to him, embraced the frightened man, comforted him, encouraged him; and to calm his fear with his own composure, he had himself carried to the bath. After bathing he lay down to dinner and ate, either cheerful or (which is just as great a thing) looking cheerful.
16.13| Meanwhile, from Mount Vesuvius, very broad sheets of flame and tall fires were blazing in many places, their glare and brightness heightened by the darkness of the night. To ease their fear, my uncle kept saying that these were fires the country people had left burning in their panic, and empty villas burning in the deserted countryside. Then he went to rest, and he truly slept; for those who were passing to and fro at his door could hear his breathing, which, owing to the size of his body, was the deeper and more resonant.
16.14| But the courtyard from which his room was reached had by now filled up with ash and pumice mixed together and had risen so high that, if he had stayed any longer in the bedroom, he would have been unable to get out. He was woken, came out, and rejoined Pomponianus and the others, who had stayed awake all night.
16.15| They took counsel together whether to stay under cover or to go out into the open. For the buildings were swaying with frequent and violent shocks, and seemed, as if torn from their foundations, to be moving now this way, now that, and then back again.
16.16| In the open, on the other hand, there was the fear of falling pumice, though it was light and porous; yet a comparison of the dangers chose this. With him, it was one reason that prevailed over another; with the others, one fear over another. They put pillows on their heads and tied them down with cloths; that was their protection against what was falling.
16.17| By now it was day elsewhere; there it was night, blacker and thicker than any night, though many torches and lights of various kinds relieved it. They decided to go out onto the shore and see from close at hand whether the sea would now allow anything; but it was still wild and against them.
16.18| There he lay down on a cloth that had been spread for him, and once and then again he called for cold water and drank it. Then flames, and the smell of sulfur that heralds flames, put the others to flight and roused him.
16.19| Leaning on two young slaves he stood up, and at once collapsed, as I gather because his breathing was choked by the denser fumes and his windpipe was blocked, which by nature was weak and narrow and often inflamed.
16.20| When daylight returned (the third day from the one he had last seen), his body was found whole and unharmed, covered, just as he had been dressed. The look of the body was more like a man asleep than a dead one.
16.21| Meanwhile at Misenum my mother and I... but this has nothing to do with history, and you wanted to know about nothing but his death. So I will stop.
16.22| I will add one thing: I have set down everything that I witnessed myself and everything I heard immediately afterward, when accounts are most accurate. You will pick out what matters most; for it is one thing to write a letter, another to write history, one thing to write for a friend, another to write for everyone. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Restitutus
17.1| I cannot keep myself from pouring out to you in a letter, since I could not do it face to face, a small fit of indignation that came over me at a reading given by a certain friend. A book of the highest finish was being read.
17.2| Two or three people, eloquent in their own eyes and those of a few others, listened to it like deaf mutes. They did not open their lips, they did not stir a hand, they did not even get up, if only because they were tired of sitting.
17.3| What gravity is this? What wisdom? Or rather, what laziness, arrogance, perversity, or worse, what madness, to spend a whole day on giving offense, on leaving as an enemy the man you came to as the dearest of friends? Are you more eloquent yourself?
17.4| All the more reason not to be jealous; for the man who is jealous is the lesser man. In short, whether you do better, worse, or the same, praise the man, whether he is your inferior, your superior, or your equal: your superior, because unless he deserves praise you cannot be praised yourself; your inferior or your equal, because it adds to your own glory that the man you surpass or match should seem as great as possible.
17.5| For my part, I make a habit of revering and even admiring everyone who achieves anything in literature; for it is a difficult, arduous, exacting pursuit, and one that scorns in return those who scorn it. Unless perhaps you judge otherwise. And yet who has more respect for this work than you, who is a kinder judge of it?
17.6| It was for this reason that I chose you above all to reveal my indignation to, since you were the one I could most count on to share it. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Sabinus
18.1| You ask me to take up the public case of the people of Firmum; and I will make the effort, though I am pulled in many directions by a great many duties. For I want to put both a most distinguished colony under obligation to me by my service as advocate, and you by a favor you will welcome greatly.
18.2| For since you have taken up our friendship, as you are fond of declaring, as a protection and an honor to yourself, there is nothing I ought to refuse you, especially when you ask on behalf of your native town. For what is more honorable than the prayers of a dutiful man, or more effective than those of a friend?
18.3| So pledge my word to your people of Firmum, or rather now ours. That they are worthy of my effort and devotion is guaranteed both by their own distinction and, above all, by this: it is likely that the people among whom a man like you has grown up are of the best. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Nepos
19.1| Do you know that the price of land has gone up, especially near the city? The cause of this sudden rise is something much talked about. At the last elections the senate gave voice to some highly honorable sentiments: "Candidates are not to give dinners, not to send presents, not to deposit money."
19.2| Of these, the first two were being done as openly as they were done without restraint; the third, though it was kept hidden, was known for certain.
19.3| Then Homullus, a friend of ours, making watchful use of this accord in the senate, asked, in place of giving a formal opinion, that the consuls should make the wishes of all known to the emperor, and beg him to use his foresight to deal with this abuse too, as he had with others.
19.4| He has dealt with it: he has restrained the candidates' expenses, those shameful and disgraceful expenses, by the law on electoral bribery; and he has ordered them to invest a third of their fortunes in landed property, thinking it unseemly (and it was) that those seeking office should treat Rome and Italy not as their homeland but as an inn or a lodging-house, like travelers passing through.
19.5| So the candidates are rushing about; they are vying to buy up anything they hear is for sale, and so they cause more of it to come up for sale.
19.6| Accordingly, if you have had enough of your Italian estates, this is the time to sell them, and by Hercules just as much the time to buy in the provinces, while these same candidates are selling there so as to buy here. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Tacitus
20.1| You say that the letter I wrote at your request about my uncle's death has made you want to know what fears, and what dangers too, I went through when I was left behind at Misenum (for I had broken off just as I was starting on that). "Though my mind shudders to remember... I will begin."
20.2| After my uncle had set out, I spent the rest of the time on my studies (that was why I had stayed behind); then came a bath, dinner, and sleep, broken and brief.
20.3| For many days before, there had been earth tremors, which were less alarming because they are usual in Campania; but that night they grew so strong that everything seemed not just to be shaken but to be overturned.
20.4| My mother burst into my bedroom; I was getting up in my turn, meaning to wake her if she were sleeping. We sat down in the open yard of the house, which kept the buildings apart from the sea by a short distance.
20.5| I do not know whether I should call it composure or foolishness (I was in my eighteenth year): I asked for a volume of Livy, and read it as if I had nothing else to do, and even went on making extracts, as I had begun. And now an acquaintance of my uncle's, who had recently come to him from Spain, when he saw my mother and me sitting there, and me even reading, rebuked her patience and my unconcern. I stayed just as intent on my book.
20.6| The first hour of the day had come, and the daylight was still faint and, as it were, sickly. The buildings around us had already been badly shaken, and though we were in an open place, it was a narrow one, and the fear of their collapse was great and certain.
20.7| Only then did we decide to leave the town. A stunned crowd followed us, preferring another's decision to its own, which in panic looks like prudence, and pressed on us and pushed us along in a huge column as we went.
20.8| Once we were clear of the buildings we stopped. There we saw many astonishing things and went through many terrors. The carriages we had ordered to be brought out kept running in opposite directions, though the ground was perfectly level, and would not stay in the same spot even when wedged with stones.
20.9| Besides this, we saw the sea being sucked back into itself and, as it were, driven back by the earthquake. Certainly the shore had advanced, and many sea creatures were stranded on dry sands. On the opposite side a black and dreadful cloud, torn by twisting, quivering bursts of fiery vapor, gaped open into long shapes of flame; these were like lightning flashes, but larger.
20.10| Then that same friend from Spain spoke more sharply and urgently: "If your brother, your uncle, is alive," he said, "he wants you to be safe; if he has died, he wanted you to survive him. So why are you slow to escape?" We answered that we would not allow ourselves to look to our own safety when we were uncertain about his.
20.11| Without waiting any longer he rushed off and got himself out of danger at full speed. Not long after, that cloud came down to the earth and covered the sea; it had surrounded Capri and hidden it, and had taken from sight the headland of Misenum.
20.12| Then my mother begged, urged, ordered me to escape however I could: a young man could do it, she said; she, weighed down by her years and her body, would die content if she had not caused my death. I answered that I would not be saved unless we were together; then I took her hand and made her quicken her pace. She obeyed reluctantly, and blamed herself for holding me back.
20.13| Now ash was falling, though still thinly. I looked back: a dense darkness was looming behind us, following us like a torrent pouring over the land. "Let us turn off," I said, "while we still can see, so that we are not knocked down in the road and trampled in the dark by the crowd of people going with us."
20.14| We had hardly sat down when night came: not a moonless or cloudy night, but the kind there is in closed rooms when a light has been snuffed out. One could hear women shrieking, the wailing of infants, the shouts of men; some were calling for their parents, others for their children, others for their husbands or wives, searching for them by voice and knowing them only by voice; some were lamenting their own fate, others the fate of their families; there were those who, from fear of death, prayed for death;
20.15| many raised their hands to the gods, but more took it that there were no gods anywhere any longer, and that this was the eternal and final night of the world. Nor were there lacking people who added to the real dangers with invented and false terrors. Some arrived announcing that this part of Misenum had collapsed and that part was on fire: the news was false, yet they were believed.
20.16| It grew a little lighter, which seemed to us not daylight but a sign of approaching fire. The fire, in fact, stopped some way off; then darkness again, ash again, thick and heavy. We kept getting up and shaking it off; otherwise we would have been buried and even crushed by its weight.
20.17| I could boast that not a groan, not a cowardly word escaped me in such dangers, had I not believed that I was perishing with everyone and everything with me: a wretched comfort in my mortality, and yet a great one.
20.18| At last that darkness thinned and drifted away like smoke or mist; soon there was real daylight, and the sun even shone out, but pale, as it usually is in an eclipse. Before our still-frightened eyes everything appeared changed, and covered with deep ash as if with snow.
20.19| We went back to Misenum, attended to our bodies as best we could, and spent an anxious, uncertain night between hope and fear. Fear won out; for the earthquake went on, and many people, beside themselves, were making a mockery of their own and others' misfortunes with terrifying prophecies.
20.20| Even then, though we had gone through danger and were expecting more, we had no thought of leaving until there was news of my uncle. You will read all this, which is by no means worthy of history, without intending to write it up; and you will have only yourself to blame, since you asked for it, if it seems unworthy even of a letter. Farewell.
21.0| Pliny to his friend Caninius
21.1| I am among those who admire the ancients, yet do not, like some, despise the talents of our own times. For nature is not as if weary and worn out so that she now produces nothing praiseworthy.
21.2| And indeed lately I heard Vergilius Romanus read to a few a comedy written on the model of Old Comedy, so well that it may some day itself become a model.
21.3| I do not know whether you know the man, although you should; he is notable for uprightness of character, elegance of talent, variety of works.
21.4| He has written mimiambs, delicately, sharply, charmingly, and in this kind most eloquently; for there is no kind which, if perfect, cannot be called most eloquent. He has written comedies, rivalling Menander and others of the same age; you might count these among those of Plautus and Terence.
21.5| Now for the first time he shows himself in Old Comedy, but not as if beginning. He lacked neither force, nor grandeur, nor subtlety, nor bitterness, nor sweetness, nor wit: he adorned the virtues, he pursued the vices; with invented names he used decorum, with true ones aptness.
21.6| Only about me he exceeded measure in excessive kindness, except that poets are allowed to lie.
21.7| In sum I shall wrest the book from him, and send it to you to be read, or rather learned by heart; for I do not doubt that, once you have taken it up, you will not lay it down. Farewell.
22.0| Pliny to his friend Tiro.
22.1| A great matter has been done, for all who are to govern provinces, great for all who trust their friends without reserve.
22.2| Lustricius Bruttianus, having detected his companion Montanius Atticinus in many shameful acts, wrote to Caesar. Atticinus added to his shameful acts by accusing the man he had deceived. The inquiry was taken up; I was in the council. Each pleaded for himself, and pleaded piecemeal and "by heads," a manner in which the truth is shown at once.
22.3| Bruttianus produced his will, which he said was written in Atticinus's hand; for by this both a secret intimacy and the necessity of complaining of one he had so loved were shown.
22.4| He listed foul and manifest crimes; which when Atticinus could not wash away, he threw them back in such a way that while defending himself he was proved base, while accusing, wicked. For he had corrupted a secretary's slave, intercepted the memoranda and tampered with them, and by the highest wickedness was using against his friend a crime of his own.
22.5| Caesar acted most beautifully: for he asked the opinion not on Bruttianus, but at once on Atticinus. He was convicted and relegated to an island; to Bruttianus a most just testimony of integrity was given, whom the glory of steadfastness also followed.
22.6| For defended most readily, he accused vehemently, and appeared no less keen than good and sincere.
22.7| I have written you this so as to forewarn you, who have drawn a province by lot, to trust yourself very much and not to trust anyone enough, then to know that if anyone by chance deceives you - which I pray against - vengeance is ready. But that there be no need of it, take heed again and again;
22.8| for it is not so pleasant to be avenged as it is wretched to be deceived. Farewell.
23.0| Pliny to his friend Triarius.
23.1| You urgently ask me to plead a cause belonging to your care, in other respects fine and famous. I shall do it, but not free. "How can it be," you say, "that you do not do it free?" It can: for I shall exact a fee more honourable than free advocacy.
23.2| I ask and even bargain that Cremutius Ruso plead with me. This is my habit and has already been done with several distinguished young men; for I wonderfully desire to show good young men to the forum, to commit them to fame.
23.3| If I owe it to anyone, I owe it to my Ruso, whether for his birth or for his exceptional affection for me; and I think highly of his being seen and heard in the same courts, on the same side.
23.4| Bind me, bind me before he speaks; for when he has spoken you will give thanks. I pledge that he will be equal to your anxiety, my hope, the greatness of the cause. His nature is the best, and he will soon bring forward others, if meanwhile he is advanced by us.
23.5| For no one's talent is so brilliant at once that it can emerge, unless subject-matter, opportunity, and also a patron and recommender fall to him. Farewell.
24.0| Pliny to his friend Macer.
24.1| How much it matters who does a thing! For the same deeds are either lifted very high or pressed very low by the renown or obscurity of those who do them.
24.2| I was sailing on our Larius when an older friend showed me a villa, and even a bedroom that juts out over the lake: "From this," he said, "a woman of our town once threw herself with her husband."
24.3| I asked the reason. The husband, from a long illness, was rotting with ulcers on the parts that are covered; his wife demanded to see them; for no one, she said, would report more faithfully whether he could be cured.
24.4| She saw, despaired, urged him to die, and she herself was companion of his death, indeed guide and example and compulsion; for she bound herself to her husband and threw herself into the lake.
24.5| This deed was not known even to me, a fellow townsman, until lately heard, not that it is less than Arria's famous deed, but that the woman herself was lesser. Farewell.
25.0| Pliny to his friend Hispanus.
25.1| You write that Robustus, a distinguished Roman knight, made a common journey with my friend Atilius Scaurus as far as Ocriculum, and afterwards appeared nowhere; you ask that Scaurus come, and lead us, if he can, to some traces of an inquiry.
25.2| He will come; I fear in vain. For I suspect that something of the kind happened to Robustus as once to Metilius Crispus, my fellow townsman.
25.3| For this man I had obtained the rank, and as he set out I had even given him forty thousand sesterces to equip and furnish himself, nor afterwards did I receive either a letter from him or any report of his end.
25.4| Whether he was waylaid by his own people or with his own people is doubtful; certainly neither he himself nor any of his slaves has appeared, any more than Robustus's.
25.5| Let us nevertheless try; let us summon Scaurus; let us grant this to your people, grant it to the most honourable prayers of the excellent young man, who with wonderful devotion and wonderful sagacity seeks his father. May the gods grant that he find the man himself, as he has already found with whom he had been!  Farewell.
26.0| Pliny to his friend Servianus.
26.1| I rejoice and congratulate you that you have betrothed your daughter to Fuscus Salinator. A patrician house, a most honourable father, a mother of equal praise; himself studious, lettered, even eloquent, a boy in simplicity, a young man in affability, an old man in gravity. For I am not deceived by love.
26.2| I love him, indeed, without reserve - so he has deserved by his services and his respect - yet I judge, and the more keenly the more I love; and I pledge to you, as one who has tested him, that you will have a son-in-law than whom a better could not be imagined even in prayer.
26.3| It remains that he make you a grandfather as soon as possible of children like himself. How happy that time, when I shall be able to take his children, your grandsons, from your lap as if they were my own children or grandchildren, and hold them, as it were, with equal right! Farewell.
27.0| Pliny to his friend Severus.
27.1| You ask me to consider what you, as consul designate, should propose in honour of the emperor. The finding is easy, the choosing not easy; for from his virtues the material is abundant. I shall write, however, or - what I prefer - tell you in person, if I first show you my hesitation.
27.2| I doubt whether I ought to advise you what I did myself. When consul designate I abstained from all this, if not flattery, at least the appearance of flattery, not as one free and steadfast, but as one who understands our emperor, whose special praise I saw to be this, that I should decree nothing as if from necessity.
27.3| I also remembered that very many honours had been conferred on all the worst emperors, from whom this best man could be separated by no other means more than by diversity of proposing; and this very thing I did not pass over by concealment and silence, lest that judgment of mine should seem not judgment but forgetfulness.
27.4| So I did then; but not all like the same things, nor even agree. Besides, the reason for doing or not doing something changes with the condition of the men themselves and also of things and times.
27.5| For the recent works of the greatest of emperors give opportunity to propose things new, great, true. For which reasons, as I wrote above, I doubt whether I should advise you now what I advised myself then. This I do not doubt, that I ought to contribute to your deliberation what I did myself. Farewell.
28.0| Pliny to his friend Pontius.
28.1| I know what cause was your hindrance from being able to go ahead of my arrival in Campania. But although absent you have migrated here entire: so great a supply, both of town and of country produce, has been offered me in your name, all of which I accepted shamelessly, but I accepted it.
28.2| For your people asked me to do so, and I feared that, if I did not, your anger would fall on me and on them alike. In future, unless you set a limit, I shall; and I have already warned your people that if they bring so much again they will carry it all back.
28.3| You will say I ought to use your property as my own. Indeed: but I spare it just as I spare mine. Farewell.
29.0| Pliny to his friend Quadratus.
29.1| Avidius Quietus, who loved me uniquely and - what I rejoice in no less - approved me, as he often recalled many other things of Thrasea - for he was his intimate - so also this, that he used to teach that causes should be taken up either of friends, or of the deserted, or those that bear on an example.
29.2| Why those of friends needs no interpretation. Why the deserted? because in these especially the steadfastness and humanity of the pleader are seen. Why those bearing on an example? because it matters very much whether a good or a bad one is brought in.
29.3| To these kinds of causes I would add, ambitiously perhaps, yet add, famous and illustrious ones. For it is fair to plead sometimes for glory and fame, that is, in one's own cause. These limits, since you consulted me, I set for your dignity and modesty.
29.4| Nor does it escape me that practice both is and is held the best teacher of speaking; I see also many of small talent and no letters who by pleading have attained to plead well.
29.5| But I also find most true what I received from Pollio, or as if from Pollio: "By pleading well it came about that I often pleaded, by pleading often, that I pleaded less well," because, of course, by too constant practice what is acquired is facility rather than ability, not confidence but rashness.
29.6| Nor did it prevent Isocrates from being held the greatest of orators that by weakness of voice and timidity of bearing he was hindered from speaking in public. So read much, write much, practise; so that you can speak whenever you like: you will speak when you ought to wish.
29.7| This moderation I have myself kept, roughly; sometimes I have yielded to necessity, which is part of reason. For I have pleaded certain cases by order of the senate, which however were among those of that division of Thrasea's, that is, those bearing on an example.
29.8| I appeared for the people of Baetica against Baebius Massa: the question was whether an inquiry should be granted; it was granted. I appeared again for the same complainants against Caecilius Classicus: it was asked whether the provincials should be penalized as the proconsul's associates and agents; they paid the penalty.
29.9| I prosecuted Marius Priscus, who, condemned under the law on extortion, was taking advantage of the leniency of a law whose severity he had exceeded by the monstrousness of his crimes; he was banished.
29.10| I defended Julius Bassus, a man as careless and unguarded as he was far from wicked; judges having been appointed, he remained in the senate.
29.11| I recently spoke for Varenus, who asked that he be allowed in turn to summon witnesses; it was obtained. For the future I pray that I may be bidden to do chiefly those things that it would become me to have done even of my own accord. Farewell.
30.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Fabatus
30.1| By heaven, we ought to celebrate your birthday just as we do our own, since the happiness of our household depends on yours, and it is through your diligence and care that we are cheerful here and free from anxiety there.
30.2| The Camillian villa, which you own in Campania, has indeed been battered by age; and yet the more valuable parts either remain whole or have been only very slightly damaged.
30.3| We are therefore taking care that it is repaired in the most sound manner possible. I seem to have many friends, but of the kind that you look for and that the matter demands, almost none.
30.4| For they are all men of the gown and of the city; but the management of country estates calls for someone hardy and rustic, to whom that hard work will not seem burdensome, nor the care mean, nor the lonely life dreary.
30.5| You are thinking of Rufus in a most honourable way; for he was a close friend of your son. What he could furnish us there, however, I do not know; that he is very willing, I believe. Farewell.
31.0| Pliny to his friend Cornelianus
31.1| Summoned to the council by our Caesar at Centum Cellae (that is the name of the place), I took great pleasure in it.
31.2| For what is more delightful than to observe the justice, the gravity and the courtesy of the emperor, even in retirement, where they are most fully unfolded? There were various hearings, which tested the qualities of a judge in many different kinds of case.
31.3| Claudius Ariston, the leading man of the Ephesians, pleaded his cause, a generous man and popular without harming anyone; hence envy, and an informer was set on him by men wholly unlike him, and so he was acquitted and vindicated.
31.4| On the following day Gallitta was heard, accused of adultery. She was married to a military tribune who was about to seek public office, and through her love for a centurion she had stained both her own standing and her husband's. The husband had written to the consular legate, and he to Caesar.
31.5| Caesar examined the proofs, dismissed the centurion from the service and even banished him. There remained the other part of the punishment, for a crime that could only be the act of two; but the husband, not without some reproach for his forbearance, was held back by love of his wife, whom indeed he had even kept at home after the adultery was reported, as if content to have removed his rival.
31.6| Urged to carry the prosecution through, he did so unwillingly. But she had to be condemned even against the wishes of her accuser: she was condemned and left to the penalties of the Julian law. Caesar added to his verdict the name of the centurion and a mention of military discipline, so that he might not seem to be summoning all cases of this kind before himself.
31.7| On the third day the hearing was introduced, tossed about by many discussions and varied rumours, concerning the codicils of Julius Tiro, which were agreed to be genuine in part, and in part were said to be forged.
31.8| Sempronius Senecio, a Roman knight, and Eurythmus, a freedman and procurator of Caesar, were being put forward as the persons charged. The heirs, while Caesar was in Dacia, had jointly written a letter asking him to take up the hearing.
31.9| He had taken it up; on returning he had appointed the day, and when certain of the heirs, out of a sort of deference to Eurythmus, were dropping the accusation, he had said, most admirably: "That man is no Polyclitus, and I am no Nero." Nevertheless he had granted a postponement to those who asked, and when its time had run out he had taken his seat to hear the case.
31.10| From the heirs' side only two came in; they demanded that all the heirs be compelled to proceed, since all had joined in the accusation, or that they too be permitted to withdraw.
31.11| Caesar spoke with the utmost gravity and the utmost moderation, and when the advocate of Senecio and Eurythmus said that the accused were being left under suspicion unless they were heard, he said: "I do not care whether those men are left under suspicion; I am left under it."
31.12| Then, turning to us: "Consider what we ought to do; for those men want to complain that they were allowed not to be accused." Then, following the council's opinion, he directed that all the heirs be notified that they should either proceed or each separately justify his reasons for not proceeding; otherwise he would pronounce even upon false accusation.
31.13| You see how honourable, how serious the days were; and they were followed by most pleasant relaxations. We were invited every day to dinner; it was modest, if you thought of the emperor. Sometimes we listened to entertainments, sometimes the night was drawn out in most agreeable conversation.
31.14| On the last day, as we were leaving (so careful was Caesar's kindness), guest-gifts were sent. But for me, as the gravity of the hearings, the honour of the council and the charm and simplicity of the company were delightful, so too was the place itself most delightful.
31.15| A very beautiful villa is surrounded by the greenest fields and overlooks the shore, in whose bay a harbour is just now being made. Its left arm has been fortified with very strong work, the right is being constructed.
31.16| In the harbour mouth an island rises up to break the sea thrown against it by the wind, and to give ships a safe passage on either side. It rises by an art worth seeing: a ship carries huge stones, very broad, and sets them against it; these, thrown down one upon another, stay by their own weight and are gradually built up into a kind of mole.
31.17| Already a rocky ridge stands out and can be seen; it breaks the waves that strike it, flinging them up to an immense height; there is a vast roar there and the sea all around is white. Piers will then be added to the rocks, so that in time they will look like a natural island. This will be a harbor, and it already bears its maker's name, and it will be of the greatest value; for a very long stretch of harborless coast will have the use of this refuge. Farewell.
32.0| Pliny to his friend Quintilian
32.1| You yourself are a man of the greatest restraint, and you have trained your daughter as was fitting for a girl of your house, and for Tutilius's granddaughter. Yet since she is to marry a most honorable man, Nonius Celer, whose public duties lay on him a certain need for display, she ought, in keeping with her husband's position, to have clothing and attendants, things that do not indeed increase her standing, but do adorn and equip it.
32.2| Now I know that you are very rich in spirit but modest in means. So I claim a share of your burden for myself, and as a second father to our girl I contribute fifty thousand sesterces. I would contribute more, were I not sure that only the smallness of this little gift could persuade your modesty not to refuse it. Farewell.
33.0| Pliny to his friend Romanus
33.1| "Take it all away," he says, "and remove the labors you have begun!" Whether you are writing something or reading, have it taken up and removed, and receive my speech, divine as those arms were (could I have said anything prouder?), but in truth, fine among my own speeches; for it is enough for me to compete with myself.
33.2| It is the speech for Attia Viriola, and it stands out for the rank of the person, the rarity of the precedent, and the importance of the trial. For a woman of distinguished birth, married to a man of praetorian rank, disinherited by her eighty-year-old father within eleven days of his bringing home a stepmother for her, under the spell of love, was suing for her father's property before the fourfold court.
33.3| One hundred and eighty judges were sitting (for that is how many the four panels add up to); there was a huge array of counsel on both sides, the benches were crowded, and besides, a dense ring of bystanders surrounded the very wide courtroom in a circle many rows deep.
33.4| The tribunal, too, was thronged, and even in the upper gallery of the basilica women as well as men were leaning over, eager to hear (which was difficult) and to see (which was easy). There was great expectation among fathers, great expectation among daughters, and great expectation among stepmothers too.
33.5| The result was mixed: we won before two panels and lost before as many. It was truly remarkable and astonishing, such a difference in the same case, with the same judges, the same counsel, at the same time.
33.6| It happened by chance, though it did not look like chance, that the losers were the stepmother, herself heir to a sixth, and Suburanus, who, disinherited by his own father, with extraordinary effrontery was laying claim to another man's father's property, not having dared to sue for his own.
33.7| I have set this out for you, first so that the letter might tell you what the speech could not; and secondly (for I will reveal my tricks) so that you would read the speech more gladly if you felt you were not reading it but attending the trial. Long as it is, I do not despair of its winning the favor due to a very short one.
33.8| For it is kept fresh by the wealth of material, the neat arrangement, the many little narratives, and the variety of style. There is much in it (I would not dare say this to anyone but you) that is lofty, much that is combative, much that is subtle.
33.9| For in the midst of those sharp and elevated passages there is often a need to do sums, and almost to call for counters and a reckoning board, so that the Centumviral Court suddenly turns into the form of a private hearing.
33.10| We gave sail to indignation, we gave it to anger, we gave it to grief, and in a very grand case, as on a great sea, we were carried along by many winds.
33.11| In short, some of my close friends have taken to thinking that this speech (I will say it again) is, among my speeches, the For Ctesiphon. Whether that is true you will judge very easily, since you know all of them so well by heart that you can compare them with this one while reading this one alone. Farewell.
34.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus
34.1| You did well to promise a gladiatorial show to our people of Verona, who have loved you for a long time, look up to you, and honor you. It was from there, too, that you took your dearly loved and most excellent wife, to whose memory some public work or show was owed, and this kind above all, which is most fitting for a funeral.
34.2| Besides, you were asked with such unanimity that to refuse would have seemed not firm but harsh. This too was excellent, that you were so ready and so generous in giving the show; for a great spirit is shown in such things as well.
34.3| I wish the African beasts, of which you had bought a great many, had arrived by the appointed day; but even though they failed to come, held up by bad weather, you have still earned the credit for it, since it was not your fault that you could not put them on show. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book VII ========

1.0| Pliny to his friend Geminus
1.1| This illness of yours, so stubborn, alarms me, and although I know that you are the most self-controlled of men, I am still afraid it may be allowed to take liberties with your character as well.
1.2| So I urge you to resist it with patience: that is praiseworthy, that is healthy. What I am advising lies within human nature.
1.3| I myself, at any rate, when I am well, am in the habit of speaking to my household like this: "I hope, if I happen to fall ill, that I will want nothing that would make me ashamed or sorry; but if the illness should get the better of me, I give you notice that you are to give me nothing without the doctors' permission, and you are to know that if you do, I will punish it as other people usually punish what is refused them."
1.4| And indeed, once when I had been burned up by a raging fever and was at last given some relief and rubbed with oil, and the doctor was handing me a drink, I held out my hand and told him to feel my pulse, and I gave back the cup, though it had already touched my lips.
1.5| Later, on the twentieth day of my illness, when I was being got ready for a bath and suddenly saw the doctors muttering, I asked the reason. They answered that I could bathe safely, but still not entirely without some misgiving.
1.6| "What need is there?" I said; and so I gave up, calmly and quietly, the hope of the bath I seemed already to be being carried into, and composed my mind and my face for abstinence again, just as a moment before I had composed them for the bath.
1.7| I have written this to you, first so that my advice would not come without an example, and secondly so that in future I myself would be bound to the same self-control, having pledged myself, as it were, by this letter. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Justus
2.1| How does it hang together that you insist you are hindered by constant business, and at the same time ask for my writings, which can barely get anyone at leisure to spend on them some time that would otherwise be wasted?
2.2| So I will let the summer, which is a restless and busy season for you people, run its course, and only in winter, when it is likely that you can be free at least in the evenings, will I look for what to offer you from my trifles.
2.3| In the meantime it is more than enough if my letters are not a nuisance; but they are, and so they will be shorter. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Praesens
3.1| Is it to go on so persistently, you now in Lucania, now in Campania? "Well," you say, "I am a Lucanian myself, and my wife is from Campania."
3.2| A fair reason for a longer absence, but not for a permanent one. Why not come back to the city some time, then? Here are your rank, your office, your friendships with those above you as well as those below. How long will you play the king? How long will you stay awake when you like and sleep as long as you like? How long will your shoes go unworn, your toga take a holiday, and the whole day be your own?
3.3| It is time for you to come back and see our vexations, if only so that those pleasures of yours do not grow dull from too much of them. Pay morning calls for a little while, so that you may enjoy receiving them more; get jostled in this crowd, so that solitude may delight you.
3.4| But what am I doing, foolishly holding back the very man I am trying to call out? For perhaps these very words will only urge you to wrap yourself more and more in your leisure; and I do not want it broken off, only interrupted.
3.5| For just as, if I were giving you dinner, I would mix sharp and tangy dishes with the sweet ones, so that a stomach dulled and cloyed by the sweet would be stirred up by the sharp, so now I urge you to season your most pleasant way of life every now and then with some sharpness, as it were. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his friend Pontius
4.1| You say you have read my hendecasyllables; you also ask how I came to start writing them, a man who seems to you a serious person, and who, as I admit myself, is no fool.
4.2| I have never been a stranger to poetry (for I will go back a long way); in fact, when I was fourteen years old I wrote a Greek tragedy. "What sort of tragedy?" you ask. I do not know; it was called a tragedy.
4.3| Later, when I was returning from military service and was held up by the winds on the island of Icaria, I wrote Latin elegiacs on that very sea and that very island. I have sometimes tried my hand at heroic verse too, and now for the first time at hendecasyllables, and this is how and why they were born. At my house at Laurentum, the books of Asinius Gallus comparing his father with Cicero were being read to me. I came across an epigram of Cicero's on his Tiro.
4.4| Then, when I had gone off at midday (for it was summer) to sleep, and sleep would not steal over me, I began to reflect that the greatest orators had both found pleasure in this kind of writing and counted it to their credit.
4.5| I set my mind to it and, contrary to my own expectation, after a long time out of practice, I set down in a very short space of time the very thing that had prompted me to write, in these lines:
4.6| As I read the books of Gallus, in which he ventured
to award the palm and the glory to his father over Cicero,
I found a saucy jest of Cicero's, one worth looking at
for the same genius with which he composed his serious works,
and with which, in human wit of many sorts and much charm,
he showed that the minds of great men take delight.
For he complains that Tiro, by a wicked trick, cheated his lover
and at night withdrew a few kisses owed him after dinner.
When I had read this I said: "Why, after this, do we hide our own loves,
and timidly bring none of them out into the open, nor confess
that we too know Tiro's tricks, Tiro's fleeting
caresses, and the stolen favors that add new flames?"
4.7| I went on to elegiacs, and these too I turned out no less quickly; I added others, spoiled by the ease of it. Then, when I had returned to the city, I read them to my friends; they approved.
4.8| After that I tried more meters, whenever I had any leisure, and above all when traveling. Finally I decided, following the example of many, to complete a separate volume of hendecasyllables on its own, and I do not regret it.
4.9| It is read, it is copied, it is even sung, and is performed now on the cithara, now on the lyre, even by Greeks, whom love of this little book has taught Latin.
4.10| But why do I speak so boastfully? Poets, after all, are allowed to rave. And yet I speak not of my own judgment but of that of others; whether they judge rightly or are mistaken, I am delighted. One thing I pray: that posterity too may either be mistaken in the same way or judge likewise. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his Calpurnia
5.1| It is incredible how much I am gripped by longing for you. The cause is first love, and then that we are not used to being apart. Hence I spend a great part of the nights awake, picturing you; hence by day, at the times I was accustomed to visit you, my feet themselves (as is most truly said) lead me to your room; and finally, sick and sad, like a man shut out, I turn back from the empty threshold. Only one time is free of these torments, when I am worn out in the forum amid the lawsuits of the Samici.
5.2| Judge for yourself what my life must be, who find rest in toil, and comfort in misery and anxieties. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Macrinus
6.1| A rare and remarkable thing has happened to Varenus, though it is still uncertain. The Bithynians are said to have dropped their accusation of him as rashly begun. "Said," do I say? The envoy of the province is here; he has brought the decree of the council to Caesar, he has brought it to many leading men, he has brought it even to us, the advocates of Varenus.
6.2| Yet that same Magnus persists; indeed he presses the excellent Nigrinus most stubbornly. Through him he was asking the consuls to compel Varenus to produce his accounts.
6.3| I was by now standing by Varenus only as a friend and had resolved to keep silent. For nothing would be so contrary as for me, an advocate assigned by the senate, to defend as a defendant one who needed not to appear a defendant.
6.4| When, however, after Nigrinus had finished his request, the consuls turned their eyes to me, I said: "You will learn that the reason for our silence is clear to us when you have heard the true envoys of the province." Nigrinus replied: "To whom were they sent?" I said: "To me also: I have the decree of the province."
6.5| He in turn: "It may be clear to you." To this I said: "If it is clear to you from the other side, it may be clear to me, too, which is better."
6.6| Then the envoy Polyaenus set out the reasons for the abandoned accusation and asked that no prejudice be done to Caesar's hearing. Magnus replied, and Polyaenus again. I myself spoke seldom and briefly, and kept well within silence.
6.7| For I have learned that sometimes keeping silent is no less the orator's part than speaking. Indeed I recall that for certain men on capital charges I helped more by silence than by the most careful speech.
6.8| A mother, having lost her son (for what prevents us from discussing literary matters, though the reason for writing the letter was another?), had denounced to the emperor his freedmen, who were also her own co-heirs, on charges of forgery and poisoning, and had obtained Julius Servianus as judge.
6.9| I had defended the accused before an immense gathering; for the case was very well known, and besides the talents on both sides were most distinguished. The inquiry put an end to the hearing, giving its verdict for the accused.
6.10| Afterwards the mother approached the emperor, declared that she had found new proofs. Suburanus was instructed to find time to reopen the finished case, if she brought anything new.
6.11| Julius Africanus appeared for the mother, grandson of that orator after hearing whom Passienus Crispus said: "Well, by heaven, well; but to what end so well?" His grandson, a talented young man but not a little shrewd, when he had said much and filled the time assigned, said: "Suburanus, I ask you to let me add a single word."
6.12| Then I, when everyone was looking at me as if I would reply at length, said: "I would have answered, had Africanus added that one word, in which I do not doubt everything was new."
6.13| I do not readily recall having won so much approval by pleading as I then did by not pleading. In the same way now, it has been both approved and well received that I have kept silent so far for Varenus.
6.14| The consuls, as Polyaenus asked, kept everything intact for the emperor; I await his hearing in suspense. For that day will give us, for Varenus, either security and leisure, or will lay upon us again the toil that was interrupted, with renewed anxiety. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Saturninus
7.1| Both recently to our friend Priscus and again, because you so ordered, I expressed thanks. I did so most gladly: for it is most pleasing to me that you, excellent men and very dear friends of mine, cling together so closely that each of you thinks himself under an obligation to the other.
7.2| For he too declares that he takes special pleasure in your friendship, and he competes with you in the most honourable competition of mutual affection, which time itself will increase. That you are kept occupied by business I take hard for this reason, that you cannot devote yourself to your studies. But if you finish one lawsuit through a judge and the other (as you say) yourself, you will begin first to enjoy leisure there, and then, satisfied, to return to us. Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Priscus
8.1| I cannot express how pleasant it is to me that our Saturninus renders you the warmest thanks to me in one letter after another.
8.2| Go on as you have begun, and love that excellent man as familiarly as you can, for you will gain great pleasure from his friendship, and not for a short time.
8.3| For although he is rich in every virtue, he is so above all in this, that he has the greatest constancy in affection. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Fuscus
9.1| You ask how I think you ought to study in the retreat which you have now long been enjoying.
9.2| Useful above all, and many recommend it, is to render Greek into Latin or Latin into Greek. This sort of practice gives one propriety and splendour of words, an abundance of figures, force of exposition, and, through imitation of the best, the ability to invent things like them; at the same time, what would have escaped the reader cannot escape the translator.
9.3| Understanding and judgment are gained from this. It will do no harm, once you have read a passage, to hold on to its subject and argument and write as if you were a rival, then compare it with what you read and weigh carefully where you or he has put it better. It is a great cause for rejoicing if you have something better in places, a great shame if he is better in everything. At times you may even choose the best-known pieces and compete with the chosen.
9.4| This is bold, yet not shameless, because the contest is private; although we see many who have undertaken contests of this kind to their great praise, and who, content to follow, have outstripped those they followed because they did not despair.
9.5| You can also revise, after forgetting them, what you have spoken, keeping much, passing over more, writing some things in between and others over again.
9.6| That is laborious and full of tedium, but fruitful by its very difficulty: to grow warm afresh and take up again the impulse that was broken off and dropped, and finally to weave new limbs, as it were, into the finished body without disturbing what came before.
9.7| I know that your chief study now is speaking in court; but for that reason I would not advise always this combative and, so to say, warlike style. For as lands are renewed by varied and changed seeds, so our talents are tilled by now this, now that exercise.
9.8| I want you at times to take up some passage from history, I want you to write a letter with more care. For often even in a speech the need for descriptions arises, not only of the historical but almost of the poetic kind, and a concise and pure style is sought from letters.
9.9| It is right also to relax in verse, I do not say continuous and long (for that cannot be completed except in leisure), but this sharp and short kind, which fittingly punctuates any amount of business and care.
9.10| They are called trifles; but these trifles sometimes win no less glory than serious works. And indeed (for why should I not urge you to verses in verses?)
9.11| as wax is praised when, soft and yielding, it follows learned fingers and, at their bidding, becomes a work, and now shapes Mars or chaste Minerva, now fashions Venus, now Venus' boy; and as sacred springs not only put out fires but often also refresh flowers and spring meadows, so it befits the human mind to be bent and led through arts that are not rigid, by a learned pliancy.
9.12| So the greatest orators, and the greatest men too, either exercised or delighted themselves in this way, or rather delighted and exercised themselves.
9.13| For it is wonderful how by these little works the mind is strained and relaxed. They admit loves, hatreds, angers, pity, wit, in short everything that is dealt with in life and even in the forum and in lawsuits.
9.14| They have the same usefulness as other poems, that bound by the necessity of metre we rejoice in free prose, and that we write more gladly what the comparison shows to be easier.
9.15| You have more perhaps than you asked; yet one thing I have omitted. For I have not said what I think should be read: although I did say it when I said what should be written. Remember to choose carefully authors of each kind. For they say that one should read much, not many things.
9.16| Who these are is so well known and approved that it needs no pointing out; and besides, I have stretched the letter so immoderately that while I advise you how you should study, I have taken away your time for studying. Why then do you not take up your tablets again, and write something of this, or that very thing you had begun? Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friend Macrinus
10.1| Because I myself, when I have learned the first part, long to join the last parts that have been torn from it, I think you too want to learn the rest about Varenus and the Bithynians. The case was pleaded, on one side by Polyaenus, on the other by Magnus.
10.2| When the pleadings were finished, Caesar said: "Neither party will complain of delay; I shall take care to ascertain the province's wishes."
10.3| Meanwhile Varenus has gained much. For how doubtful it is whether he is deservedly accused, when it is uncertain whether he is accused at all! What remains is that the province may not again approve what it is said to have condemned, and may repent of its repentance. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Fabatus
11.1| You wonder that my freedman Hermes, without waiting for the auction, sold to Corellia the inherited lands which I had ordered to be advertised, for my five-twelfths share out of 700,000 sesterces. You add that these could be sold for 900,000, and so you ask all the more whether I will hold to what he has done.
11.2| I do hold to it: hear on what grounds. For I wish it to be approved by you, and excused by my co-heirs, that I separate myself from them under the bidding of a greater duty.
11.3| I love Corellia with the highest respect, first as the sister of Corellius Rufus, a man whose memory is sacred to me, then as a close friend of my mother.
11.4| I also have old ties with her husband Minicius Justus, an excellent man; and with her son I had very great ones, so much so that when I was praetor he presided at my games.
11.5| She, when I was last there, told me that she wished to possess something around our Lake Como. I offered her out of my estates whatever she wished and at whatever price she wished, except those from my mother and father; for these I cannot give up even to Corellia.
11.6| When, therefore, an inheritance had fallen to me in which those estates lay, I wrote to her that they would be for sale. Hermes carried these letters, and when she demanded that he assign my portion to her at once, he complied. You see how firmly I ought to hold to what my freedman did in keeping with my own ways.
11.7| It remains that my co-heirs bear it with an even mind that I have sold separately what I was entirely free not to sell.
11.8| Nor are they forced to imitate my example: for they do not have the same ties with Corellia. They can therefore look to their own advantage, for which in my case friendship stood. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Minicius
12.1| I have sent you the petition drawn up by me, as you demanded, for your friend (or rather ours, for what is not common to us?) to use if the case should require it; I sent it rather late so that you should not have time to correct it, that is, to ruin it.
12.2| You will have the time, however, I do not know to correct it, but certainly to ruin it. For you, the zealous ones, strip away all the best parts.
12.3| If you do this, I shall take it in good part. For later, on some occasion, I shall use those parts as mine, and I myself shall be praised thanks to your fastidiousness, as in the passage where you will find a note, and something explained differently written above it.
12.4| For since I suspected that it would seem to you rather swollen, because it is more sonorous and lofty, I thought it not out of place, so that you would not torment yourself, to add straight away something more compressed and thin, or rather humbler and worse, but more correct in your judgment.
12.5| For why should I not follow up and harry your thinness on every side? I say this so that amid those occupations of yours you may sometimes laugh at something; this I say in earnest:
12.6| see that you pay me back my travelling money, which I spent by sending off a courier on purpose. For you, when you have read this, will condemn not parts of the petition but the whole petition, and will deny that it is worth anything, when you are asked for its price back. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Ferox
13.1| The same letter says both that you are not studying and that you are studying. Am I speaking in riddles? Quite so, until I state my meaning more distinctly.
13.2| For it says you are not studying, yet it is so polished that it could not have been written except by one who studies; or you are happy beyond all men, if you produce such things through idleness and leisure. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his Corellia
14.1| You act most honourably in asking and demanding so earnestly that I should order the price of the lands to be received from you not out of 700,000 sesterces, what you bought them for from my freedman, but out of 900,000, what you paid the tax-farmers for the twentieth part.
14.2| In return I both ask and demand that you consider not only what befits you but also what befits me, and that you allow me in this one matter to resist you in the same spirit in which I am accustomed to yield to you in everything. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Saturninus
15.1| You ask what I am doing. What you know: I am pulled apart by duty, I serve my friends, I study at times, which to do not at times but only and always I dare not say was more right, but certainly it was happier.
15.2| I would take it ill that you do everything other than what you wish, were it not that what you do is most honourable. For to look after the business of one's own state and to arbitrate between friends is most worthy of praise.
15.3| I knew that the companionship of our Priscus would be pleasant to you. I had known his simplicity, I had known his courtesy; that he is the same (which I knew less) most grateful, I find by experience, since you write that he remembers our services so pleasantly. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Fabatus
16.1| I love Calestrius Tiro very warmly; he is bound to me by ties both private and public.
16.2| We served in the army together, we were quaestors of Caesar together. He preceded me in the tribunate by the right of children, and I followed him in the praetorship, when Caesar had remitted a year to me. I have often retired to his villas, he has often recovered his health in my house.
16.3| He is now about to go to the province of Baetica as proconsul, by way of Ticinum.
16.4| I hope, or rather I am confident, that I shall easily secure that he turn aside from his journey to you, if you wish to free by the rod those whom you recently manumitted among your friends. You need not fear that this will be a trouble to him, to whom going round the whole world will not be long for my sake.
16.5| So put away that excessive diffidence of yours, and consult what you wish. What I ask is as pleasant to him as what you bid is to me. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Celer
17.1| Everyone has his own reason for reading aloud; mine, as I have often said already, is that if something escapes me (as certainly something does) I may be told of it.
17.2| All the more I wonder that you write that there were some who found fault with my reading speeches aloud at all; unless indeed they think these alone need no correction.
17.3| I would gladly ask them why they allow (if they do allow) that history should be read aloud, which is composed not for display but for trustworthiness and truth; why tragedy, which demands not an audience but a stage and actors; why lyrics, which require a chorus and a lyre, not a reader. But the reciting of these has by now been accepted by custom.
17.4| Is the man who began it, then, to be blamed? Although both certain of our own and Greeks too have read speeches aloud often.
17.5| Yet it is superfluous to recite what you have spoken. Granted, if it is all the same, to the same audience, and at once; but if you insert much and change much, if you take up some things new and some the same but after an interval, why should the reason for reciting what you have spoken be less acceptable than that for publishing it?
17.6| But it is hard for a speech to satisfy while it is being recited. That pertains to the labour of the reciter, not to a reason for not reciting.
17.7| Nor do I wish to be praised while I recite, but while I am read. And so I leave out no kind of correction. First I go through what I have written by myself; next I read to two or three; soon I hand it to others to annotate, and their notes, if I am in doubt, I weigh again with one or two; last of all I recite it to several, and, if you believe me at all, then I correct most sharply;
17.8| for I am the more careful the more anxiously I attend. And respect, shame and fear are the best judges, and indeed take it so: if you are going to speak with someone, however learned, but only one, are you not less shaken than if it were with many, even unlearned?
17.9| When you rise to plead, do you not then most distrust yourself, then wish to change, I do not say very many things, but everything? especially if the stage is wider and the ring of listeners more spread out; for even those shabby, dark-cloaked folk we revere.
17.10| If you think that each earliest passage is disapproved, are you not weakened and do you not collapse? I think it is because in the very number there is a certain great and pooled judgment, and what is of little weight in each single person is of very great weight in all.
17.11| And so Pomponius Secundus, the writer of tragedies, if a rather intimate friend happened to think something should be removed and he himself thought it should be kept, would say: "To the people I appeal," and so, from the people's silence or assent, followed either his own view or his friend's.
17.12| So much did he give to the people; rightly or otherwise, it is nothing to me. For I am accustomed to call not the people but certain chosen persons, whom I may look at, whom I may trust, whom, in short, I may both observe as individuals and fear as not individuals.
17.13| For what Marcus Cicero thought of the stylus, I think of fear: it is fear, fear is the harshest corrector. The very fact that we think we shall recite corrects; that we enter the hall corrects; that we grow pale, shudder, look around corrects.
17.14| And so I do not regret my custom, which I find most useful, and I am so little deterred by those petty remarks of theirs that I even ask you to point out something I may add to them.
17.15| For nothing is enough for my care. I think how great a thing it is to put something into the hands of men, and I cannot persuade myself that what one wishes to please always and everyone is not to be handled with many people and often. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Caninius
18.1| You are deliberating with me how the money you offered our townsfolk for a banquet may remain safe after you as well. An honourable consultation, but the opinion is not easy. If you count out the sum to the state, it is to be feared that it will melt away. If you give lands, that they will be neglected as public property.
18.2| For my part I find nothing more suitable than what I did myself. For in place of 500,000 sesterces which I had promised for the maintenance of freeborn boys and girls, I conveyed to the public agent an estate from my own worth far more; I took the same back with a rent charge imposed, to pay 30,000 a year.
18.3| By this the capital of the state is in safety and the income is not uncertain, and the land itself, because the rent is amply exceeded by its yield, will always find an owner by whom it is worked.
18.4| Nor am I unaware that I have spent somewhat more than I seem to have given, since the necessity of the rent-charge has broken the price of a very beautiful estate.
18.5| But one ought to put public advantages before private, eternal before mortal, and to look much more carefully to one's duty than to one's means. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Priscus
19.1| Fannia's health torments me. She caught it while attending the Vestal Junia, first of her own accord (for she is a relation), then also by the authority of the pontiffs.
19.2| For when the virgins are forced by the violence of illness to leave the atrium of Vesta, they are entrusted to the care and keeping of matrons. While Fannia diligently fulfils this duty, she has been caught in this danger.
19.3| Fevers have settled on her, the cough grows; extreme emaciation, extreme exhaustion. Only her spirit and courage are vigorous, most worthy of her husband Helvidius and her father Thrasea; the rest is slipping away, and wears me out not only with fear but with grief.
19.4| For I grieve that a very great woman is being torn from the eyes of the state, which I do not know whether it will see the like of again. What chastity she has, what sanctity, what gravity, what constancy! Twice she followed her husband into exile, a third time she was herself banished on account of her husband.
19.5| For when Senecio was on trial because he had composed books on the life of Helvidius and had said in his defence that he had been asked by Fannia, and Mettius Carus asked threateningly whether she had asked him, she replied: "I asked"; whether she had given him notes while he was writing: "I gave them"; whether with her mother's knowledge: "Without it"; finally she let fall no word yielding to the danger.
19.6| Indeed those very books, although destroyed by decree of the senate out of necessity and the fear of the times, she kept and held on to despite the confiscation of her property, and carried into exile the cause of her exile.
19.7| She is likewise so agreeable, so kindly, and finally (a gift to few) no less lovable than venerable! Will there be anyone whom afterwards we can point out to our wives? Will there be one from whom even we men may take examples of courage, whom, seeing and hearing her thus, we may admire as we do those women of whom we read?
19.8| To me the house itself seems to totter, and, wrenched from its foundations, to be about to fall in ruin, though it still has descendants. For with what virtues and what deeds will they manage that it should not fall as the last of its line?
19.9| What afflicts and torments me besides is that I seem to be losing again her mother, that woman (I can say nothing more illustrious) mother of so great a woman, whom she, as she gives her back and recalls her to us, will carry off with herself, and she will strike me with a wound both new and reopened at once.
19.10| I honoured both, I loved both: which more I do not know, and they did not wish to be distinguished. They had my services in prosperity, they had them in adversity. I was the comfort of them when banished, the avenger of them when returned; yet I did not make the account even, and I long all the more for this one to be preserved, that time may be left me to repay.
19.11| I was in these anxieties when I wrote to you; if some god turns them to joy, I shall not complain of the fear. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Tacitus
20.1| I have read your book and, as carefully as I could, I noted what I thought should be changed and what removed. For I am accustomed to say what is true, and you to hear it gladly. And no people bear reproof more patiently than those who most deserve to be praised.
20.2| Now I await from you my book with your annotations. O pleasant, O fair exchange! How it delights me that, if posterity takes any care of us, it will be told everywhere in what harmony, simplicity and good faith we lived!
20.3| It will be a rare and notable thing that two men, nearly equal in age and standing, with some name in letters (for I am obliged to speak rather sparingly of you too, because I speak of myself at the same time), the one fostered the studies of the other.
20.4| For my part, as a very young man, when you were already flourishing in fame and glory, I longed to follow you, and both to be and to be thought "next, though by a long interval." And there were many very brilliant talents; but to me you seemed (so the likeness of nature carried it) the most imitable and the one most to be imitated.
20.5| So I rejoice the more that if there is any talk of studies, we are named together, and that to those speaking of you I come up at once. Nor are there lacking those who are preferred to each of us.
20.6| But we are joined, and it makes no difference to me in what place; for to me the first is the one who comes next after you. Indeed you must have noticed in wills: unless someone happens to be a very close friend of one or other of us, we receive the same legacies, and equally.
20.7| All of which looks to this, that we should love each other the more ardently, since so many bonds bind us: studies, character, reputation, and finally the last judgments of men. Farewell.
21.0| Pliny to his friend Cornutus
21.1| I obey, dearest colleague, and I take care of the weakness of my eyes as you bid. For I came here in a covered carriage shut in on every side as if in a bedroom, and here I abstain not only from the stylus but also, with difficulty, from reading, and I study with my ears alone.
21.2| I make my bedrooms dark with the curtains drawn, yet not gloomy. The covered walk too, with the lower windows shut, has as much shade as light. So little by little I am learning to bear the light.
21.3| I take the bath because it helps, wine because it does no harm, yet very sparingly. So I have been used, and now there is a guardian at hand.
21.4| The hen I received gladly as sent by you; I saw that it was very fat with eyes keen enough, although still bleary. Farewell.
22.0| Pliny to his friend Falco
22.1| You will wonder less that I asked so urgently that you confer a tribunate on my friend, when you know who he is and what sort of man. I can now both name him to you and describe him, since you promise.
22.2| He is Cornelius Minicianus, an ornament of my region by either his standing or his character. Splendidly born, he has an abundance of means, and loves letters as the poor usually do. He is also a most upright judge, a most courageous advocate, a most faithful friend.
22.3| You will believe you have received a favour when you have looked at the man more closely, a man equal to all offices, all titles (I do not wish to say anything more elevated of so modest a man). Farewell.
23.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Fabatus
23.1| I am glad indeed that you are so strong that you can go to meet Tiro at Milan, but, so that you may remain so strong, I beg you not to impose on yourself so much labour against the reasonable measure of your age. Indeed I give notice that you should wait for him at home, and inside the house, and even inside the threshold of your bedroom.
23.2| For since he is loved by me as a brother, he ought not to demand from one whom I look up to in the place of a parent a duty which he would have excused his own parent. Farewell.
24.0| Pliny to his friend Geminus
24.1| Ummidia Quadratilla died a little short of her eightieth year, vigorous up to her last illness, and with a frame sturdy and strong even beyond what is usual in a matron.
24.2| She died with a most honourable will: she left as heirs her grandson for two-thirds and her granddaughter for a third. The granddaughter I know little; the grandson I love most warmly, a singular young man, to be loved not only by those whom he touches by blood, among his relatives.
24.3| And first, conspicuous in looks, he came through all the talk of the malicious both as boy and as youth, a husband before his twenty-fourth year, and, had god consented, a father. He lived in the household of a grandmother given to pleasure with the greatest strictness, and yet with the greatest deference.
24.4| She kept pantomime actors and favoured them more lavishly than befits a woman of rank. Quadratus watched these neither in the theatre nor at home, and she did not require it.
24.5| I heard her say herself, when she was commending her grandson's studies to me, that, as a woman with the idle leisure of her sex, she was in the habit of relaxing her mind with a game of draughts, and in the habit of watching her pantomime actors; but whenever she was about to do either, she always told her grandson to go away and study. This seemed to me to come not so much from love for him as from respect.
24.6| You will be surprised, and I was surprised too. At the last priestly games, when the pantomimes had been brought on for the opening contest, and Quadratus and I were leaving the theatre together, he remarked: "Do you know that today is the first time I have seen my grandmother's freedman dance?" That from her grandson.
24.7| But, by Hercules, men who were complete strangers to her, to honour Quadratilla (I blush that I called it honour), would rush about the theatre in the service of flattery, leaping up, clapping, admiring, and afterwards would reproduce for their mistress every gesture, songs and all; and now they will receive the tiniest of legacies, a tip for their theatrical labours, from the heir who never watched.
24.8| I tell you this, first because when anything new happens you are not unwilling to hear it, and then because it is pleasant for me to relive in writing the joy I had felt. For I rejoice in the dutiful affection of the dead woman and in the honour paid to an excellent young man; I am glad too that the house which once belonged to Gaius Cassius, the founder and father of the Cassian school, will serve a master no less great than he.
24.9| For my friend Quadratus will fill it and grace it, and will give back to it its former dignity, renown and glory, since as great an orator will go forth from it as that man was a jurist. Farewell.
25.0| Pliny to his friend Rufus
25.1| Oh, how many learned men are hidden and withdrawn from fame by their own modesty or love of quiet! And yet, when we are about to speak or give a reading, we fear only those who bring their studies out into the open, whereas those who keep silent surpass them in this further respect, that they pay the greatest of works the reverence of silence.
25.2| I write what I write from experience. Terentius Junior, having discharged the equestrian military posts, and also the procuratorship of the province of Narbonensis, with complete integrity, withdrew to his estates and preferred the most tranquil leisure to the offices that lay ready for him.
25.3| When he invited me to be his guest, I regarded him as a good master of a household, as a careful farmer, and I meant to talk about the matters in which I supposed he was occupied; and I had begun, when he called me back to literature with the most learned conversation.
25.4| How polished everything was, how Latin, how Greek! For such is his strength in both languages that he appears to excel most in the one he happens to be speaking just now. How much he has read, how much he remembers! You would think the man lived in Athens, not in a country house.
25.5| In short, he has increased my anxiety, and made me fear these retired and, as it were, rustic men no less than those whom I know to be most learned.
25.6| I advise you to do the same. For as in the camp, so also in our literary world, there are many in civilian dress whom, if you examine them carefully, you will find girded and armed, and indeed with the most ardent talent. Farewell.
26.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus
26.1| Recently the illness of a certain friend reminded me that we are at our best while we are sick. For what sick man is troubled by avarice or by lust?
26.2| He is no slave to love affairs, he does not hunt for offices, he disregards wealth, and however little he has he thinks it enough, as a man who will leave it behind. Then he remembers the gods, then that he is himself only a man; he envies no one, admires no one, despises no one, and does not even listen to malicious talk or feed on it: what he dreams of is baths and springs.
26.3| This is the sum of his cares, the sum of his prayers; and for the future, if he should happen to escape, he plans a soft and easy life, that is, a harmless and happy one.
26.4| So I can give to you and to myself, briefly, the precept which philosophers try to teach in a great many words, and indeed a great many volumes: that in health we should persevere in being the kind of men we promise to be when we are sick. Farewell.
27.0| Pliny to his friend Sura
27.1| Leisure gives me the opportunity to learn and you the opportunity to teach. I would therefore be most eager to know whether you think that phantoms exist, and have a form of their own and some divine power, or whether they are empty and unreal things that take their shape from our fear.
27.2| For my part, I am led to believe that they exist above all by what I hear happened to Curtius Rufus. While he was still poor and unknown, he had attached himself to the governor of Africa as one of his staff. As the day was declining he was walking in a colonnade, when the form of a woman was presented to him, larger and more beautiful than human. He was terrified, and she told him that she was Africa, and that she foretold what was to come: he would go to Rome and hold offices, and would even return to this same province with the supreme command, and would die there.
27.3| All of it came to pass. It is said, moreover, that as he was approaching Carthage and stepping off his ship, the same figure met him on the shore. Certainly he himself, when he had fallen ill, reading the future from the past and misfortune from his success, abandoned hope of recovery, though none of his household despaired of it.
27.4| Now, is not the story I shall set out, just as I received it, both more terrifying and no less wonderful?
27.5| There was a house at Athens, spacious and capacious, but notorious and pestilential. In the silence of the night a sound of iron could be heard, and, if you listened more closely, the clanking of chains, at first far off, then close at hand. Presently there appeared an apparition: an old man, worn away with leanness and filth, with a long beard and bristling hair; he wore fetters on his legs and chains on his hands, and shook them.
27.6| So those who lived there spent grim and dreadful nights awake through fear; sickness followed the sleeplessness and, as the terror grew, death. For in the daytime too, although the apparition had gone, the memory of the apparition wandered before their eyes, and the fear outlasted the causes of the fear. The house was therefore deserted, condemned to solitude, and left wholly to that monster; it was nevertheless advertised, in case anyone ignorant of so great an evil should wish to buy it or to rent it.
27.7| Athenodorus the philosopher arrived in Athens, read the placard, and on hearing the price, since its cheapness was suspicious, he asked about everything and was told; and nonetheless, or rather all the more, he rented the house. When evening began to come on, he ordered a couch to be made up for him in the first part of the house, called for his writing tablets, a stylus and a lamp, and sent all his people away into the inner rooms; he himself bent his mind, his eyes and his hand to writing, so that an idle mind should not conjure up for itself the phantoms it had heard about and empty fears.
27.8| At first there was the silence of night, as there is everywhere; then iron began to clank and chains to move. He did not raise his eyes or lay down his stylus, but steeled his mind and held it as a screen before his ears. Then the din grew louder and came nearer, and was heard now as if on the threshold, now as if inside the threshold. He looked round, and saw and recognized the figure that had been described to him.
27.9| It stood and beckoned with a finger, like one calling him. He, for his part, signed with his hand for it to hold on a moment, and bent once more over his tablets and stylus. As he wrote, the thing clanked its chains above his head. He looked round and saw it beckoning exactly as before; and without delay he picked up the lamp and followed.
27.10| It went with slow steps, as though weighed down by its chains. After it had turned aside into the house's courtyard, it suddenly melted away and deserted its companion. Left alone, he plucked some grass and leaves and laid them on the spot as a marker.
27.11| The next day he approached the magistrates and urged them to order that spot excavated. Bones were found, inserted in chains and entangled with them, which the body, rotted by time and the earth, had left bare and eaten away in the fetters. They were gathered up and buried at public expense. After that, once the spirit had been laid to rest with due rites, the house was free of it.
27.12| These things, indeed, I believe on the word of those who affirm them; what follows I can affirm to others myself. I have a freedman who is not without education. His younger brother used to sleep in the same bed with him. The boy seemed to see someone sitting on the couch, bringing blades up to his head, and even cutting the hair off the very crown of it. When day dawned, he himself was found shorn around the crown, and the hair was found lying there.
27.13| A short space of time passed, and then a second, similar event made the first believable. A slave boy was sleeping among a number of others in the pages' quarters. Two figures in white tunics came in through the windows (so he tells it), cut his hair as he lay there, and went back the way they had come. Daylight showed that he too had been shorn, with the hair scattered around him.
27.14| Nothing remarkable followed, except perhaps that I was not put on trial, as I would have been if Domitian, under whom these things happened, had lived longer. For in his desk was found an indictment of me submitted by Carus; from which it can be conjectured that, since it is the custom of the accused to let their hair grow long, the cutting of my slaves' hair was a sign that the danger hanging over me had been driven off.
27.15| So I beg you to bring your learning to bear on this. The matter is worthy of long and careful consideration on your part; nor am I myself unworthy to be granted the wealth of your knowledge.
27.16| You may even argue on both sides, as you usually do, but argue more strongly on one of them, so as not to send me away in suspense and uncertainty, since my reason for consulting you was to stop being in doubt. Farewell.
28.0| Pliny to his friend Septicius
28.1| You say that certain people have censured me before you, on the grounds that I praise my friends beyond measure at every opportunity.
28.2| I acknowledge the charge; I even embrace it. For what is more honourable than the fault of kindness? Yet who are these people, who know my friends better than I do? But even granting that they do, why do they begrudge me a most happy mistake? For even if my friends are not such as I proclaim them to be, I am still fortunate in that they seem so to me.
28.3| So let them turn this perverse carefulness on others; there are plenty of people who call finding fault with their friends good judgment. They will never persuade me to think that my friends are loved by me too much. Farewell.
29.0| Pliny to his friend Montanus
29.1| You will laugh, then you will be indignant, then you will laugh again, when you read what you could not believe unless you read it.
29.2| On the Tiburtine Road, within the first milestone (I noticed it very recently), there is a monument to Pallas inscribed as follows: "To him the senate, for his loyalty and devotion towards his patrons, decreed the insignia of a praetor and fifteen million sesterces, and he was content with the honour."
29.3| For my part, I have never admired things that come more often from fortune than from judgment; but this inscription above all reminded me how farcical and absurd are the honours that are sometimes flung away into this mud, into this filth, honours which, to crown it all, that gallows-bird dared both to accept and to refuse, and even to hand down to posterity as an example of moderation.
29.4| But why am I indignant? It is better to laugh, so that those whose good fortune carries them to the point of being laughed at may not think they have achieved something great. Farewell.
30.0| Pliny to his friend Genitor
30.1| It torments me that you have lost, as you write, a pupil of the highest promise. How could I fail to know that your studies were hindered by his illness and his death, since you are most scrupulous in every duty, and love most lavishly all those of whom you approve?
30.2| Even here the business of the city pursues me; for there is no lack of people who make me their judge or arbitrator.
30.3| Add to this the complaints of the country people, who, after my long absence, use my ears, and misuse them, as their right. There is also the pressing need to let my farms, which is extremely troublesome, so rare is it to find suitable tenants.
30.4| For these reasons my studies are snatched on sufferance, but I do study. For I am writing something and I am reading; but when I read, the comparison shows me how badly I write, though you give me confidence,
30.5| you who compare my little books on the avenging of Helvidius with Demosthenes' speech Against Meidias. I did indeed have that speech in my hands while I was composing them, not in order to rival it (that would be shameless and almost mad), but still to imitate and follow it, as far as the difference between the greatest talent and the least, or the unlikeness of the cases, would allow. Farewell.
31.0| Pliny to his friend Cornutus
31.1| Claudius Pollio longs to be loved by you, and he deserves it, first for this very longing, and then because he himself is devoted to you; for hardly anyone asks for that unless he gives it. He is in other respects an upright man, honest, quiet, and modest almost beyond measure, if anyone can be modest beyond measure.
31.2| When we served in the army together, I observed him not merely as a fellow soldier. He commanded a cavalry wing a thousand strong; and when the consular legate ordered me to go through the accounts of the cavalry wings and the cohorts, just as I found great and shameful greed in some, and negligence to match, so in him I found the highest integrity and anxious care.
31.3| Afterwards, when he was promoted to the most distinguished procuratorships, no opportunity corrupted him or turned him aside from his inborn love of honesty; he was never puffed up by success; he never let the variety of his posts break his unbroken reputation for kindness; and he met his labours with the same firmness of mind with which he now endures his leisure.
31.4| That leisure, indeed, he interrupted and set aside for a little while, greatly to his credit, when he was taken on by our friend Corellius as his assistant in buying and distributing land under the generosity of the Emperor Nerva. And what glory he deserves for having pleased, above all others, so great a man who had so wide a field of choice!
31.5| How respectfully, too, and how faithfully he cherishes his friends you can believe from the last wishes of many of them, among them Annius Bassus, a citizen of the greatest weight, whose memory he prolongs and extends with such grateful praise that he has published a book about his life; for he reveres literature as he does the other good arts.
31.6| That is a fine thing, and one to be approved for its very rarity, since most people remember the dead only so far as to complain about them.
31.7| This man, who is so very eager for your friendship, believe me, embrace him, take hold of him, even invite him, and love him as though you were repaying a favour. For in the duty of love the one who began first is not to be put under obligation but rewarded. Farewell.
32.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Fabatus
32.1| I am delighted that my friend Tiro's arrival gave you pleasure; and I am especially glad at what you write, that a great many slaves were set free on the opportunity offered by the proconsul's presence. For I desire our native town to be enlarged in every respect, but above all in the number of its citizens, since that is the surest ornament of towns.
32.2| I am also pleased, not as a seeker after popularity, but still pleased, by your adding that you and I were celebrated with votes of thanks and with praise. For, as Xenophon says, "praise is the sweetest thing to hear," at any rate if you think you deserve it. Farewell.
33.0| Pliny to his friend Tacitus
33.1| I predict, and my prediction does not deceive me, that your histories will be immortal; all the more, I will frankly confess, do I long to be included in them.
33.2| For if we usually take care that our likeness should be portrayed by the best artist available, ought we not to wish that our deeds should find a writer and herald like you?
33.3| So I point it out to you, although it cannot escape your diligence, since it is in the public records; still, I point it out to make you the more ready to believe that it will please me if you will adorn with your genius and your testimony an act of mine whose merit grew through its danger.
33.4| The senate had assigned me, together with Herennius Senecio, as the province of Baetica's advocate against Baebius Massa, and after Massa had been condemned it had decreed that his property should be held in public custody. Senecio, having learned that the consuls would be free to hear applications, came to me and said: "With the same unity with which we carried out the prosecution laid upon us, let us go to the consuls and ask them not to allow the property to be dispersed which it is their duty to hold in custody."
33.5| I answered: "Since we were appointed advocates by the senate, consider whether you think our role has been completed now that the senate's inquiry is over." And he said: "You will set yourself whatever limit you like, since you have no tie with the province except the one created by your own service to it, and that a recent one; I myself was both born there and was quaestor in it."
33.6| Then I said: "If you have fixed and settled on this, I will follow you, so that, if any ill will comes of it, it may not be yours alone."
33.7| We went to the consuls; Senecio said what the matter called for, and I added a few points. We had scarcely fallen silent when Massa complained that Senecio had played the part not of a loyal advocate but of a bitter personal enemy, and demanded that he be charged with impiety.
33.8| Everyone shuddered; but I said: "Most distinguished consuls, I fear that Massa, by his silence, has charged me with collusion, because he has not demanded that I too be charged." These words were taken up at once, and afterwards much talked of and praised.
33.9| Indeed, the deified Nerva (for even as a private citizen he paid attention to whatever was rightly done in public life) sent me a most weighty letter, and congratulated not only me but also the age, which had been granted an example (so he wrote) like those of the ancients.
33.10| These things, whatever they are worth, you will make better known, more famous and greater; and yet I do not ask you to go beyond the measure of what was actually done. For history ought not to overstep the truth, and for honourable deeds the truth is enough. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book VIII ========

1.0| Pliny to his friend Septicius
1.1| I completed the journey comfortably, except that some of my people fell ill in the scorching heat.
1.2| My reader Encolpius, indeed, the one who is both my serious business and my delight, had his throat so irritated by the dust that he coughed up blood. How sad this would be for him, and how bitter for me, if the man to whom literature owes all his charm should be made unfit for literature! Who after that would read my little books like this, or love them like this?
1.3| Whom would my ears follow like this? But the gods promise happier things. The bleeding has stopped, the pain has subsided. Besides, he himself is careful, we are anxious, the doctors are attentive. In addition, the healthiness of the climate, the seclusion and the quiet promise as much recovery as they do leisure. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Calvisius
2.1| Other people set off for their estates in order to come back richer; I go in order to come back poorer. I had sold my grape harvest to dealers who were competing to buy it. The price was tempting, both what it was then and what it seemed likely to become.
2.2| Hope was disappointed. It would have been simple to give everyone the same rebate, but not quite fair. And to me it seems an especially fine thing to practise justice at home as well as abroad, in small matters as well as great, in one's own affairs as well as in other people's. For if wrongdoings are equal, so also is the praise.
2.3| So I gave everyone, so that no one "should go away from me without a gift," one eighth of the price he had paid; then I looked after separately those who had laid out the largest sums on their purchases. For they had both helped me more and suffered a greater loss themselves.
2.4| Accordingly, for those who had bought for more than ten thousand, I added to that common and, as it were, public eighth a tenth of the amount by which they had exceeded ten thousand.
2.5| I fear that I have not made this clear enough; I will show it more plainly by a calculation. If any had happened to buy for fifteen thousand, they received both an eighth of fifteen thousand and a tenth of five thousand.
2.6| Besides this, when I reflected that some had paid back a good part of what they owed, some a little, and some nothing, I thought it by no means right that those whom good faith in payment had not made equal should be made equal by the generosity of the rebate.
2.7| So once again I remitted to those who had paid a tenth of what they had paid. For by this means, it seemed, I could most fittingly both show gratitude to each for the past according to his deserts, and also entice everyone for the future not only to buy but also to pay.
2.8| This method, or this good nature, has cost me a great deal, but it was worth it. For throughout the whole district both the novelty of the rebate and its form are praised. And of those very people whom I treated not, as the saying goes, by one measuring rod, but separately and by degrees, the better and more honest each man was, the more obliged to me he went away, having found that with me it is not the case that "in one honour are held both the base man and the noble." Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Sparsus
3.1| You indicate that the book I sent you most recently pleases you perhaps most of all my works. A certain very learned man is of the same opinion.
3.2| This leads me all the more to think that neither of you is mistaken, because it is not credible that both of you are mistaken, and also because I like to flatter myself. For I want each of my latest pieces to seem the most finished, and so even now, against that book, I favour a speech which I recently made public and which I shall share with you as soon as I find a reliable letter-carrier.
3.3| I have raised your expectations, and I fear the speech, once taken in hand, may disappoint them. Meanwhile, however, wait for it as though it will please you; and perhaps it will. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his friend Caninius
4.1| You are doing very well to prepare to write about the Dacian war. For what subject is so fresh, so rich, so lofty, what subject, in short, so poetic and, though dealing with the most real of events, so like a legend?
4.2| You will tell of new rivers let loose over the land, new bridges thrown across rivers, mountain precipices occupied by camps, a king driven from his palace, driven even from life, yet never despairing; on top of this, two triumphs celebrated, one of them the first over a nation until then unconquered, the other the last.
4.3| There is one difficulty, but it is the greatest: to match these things in words is an arduous and immense task, even for your genius, though it soars to the greatest heights and grows with the grandest works. There is some labour too in this, that the barbarous and savage names, above all the name of the king himself, should not jar in Greek verse.
4.4| But there is nothing that cannot be softened by skill and care, even if it cannot be overcome. Besides, if Homer is allowed to contract, lengthen and bend words, even soft and Greek ones, for the smoothness of his verse, why should a similar boldness not be allowed to you, especially when it is not self-indulgent but necessary?
4.5| So, by the right of poets, call upon the gods, and among the gods upon him whose deeds, works and plans you are about to relate; let out the ropes, spread your sails, and, if ever before, be carried along with all your genius. For why should I not also be poetic with a poet?
4.6| I make this bargain with you now: send me each part as soon as you have finished it, or rather even before you finish it, just as it is, fresh and rough and still like things newly born.
4.7| You will answer that pieces cannot please as much as a connected whole, or things begun as much as things completed. I know. And so they will be judged by me as beginnings, looked at as limbs, and they will await your final polish in my desk. Allow me to have this pledge of your love on top of all the others, that I should know even those things which you would wish no one to know.
4.8| In sum, I may perhaps be able to approve and praise your writings the more, the more slowly and carefully you send them out; but I shall love and praise you yourself the more, the more quickly and carelessly you send them. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Geminus
5.1| Our Macrinus has received a grievous wound: he has lost a wife of singular example, even if she had lived in an earlier age. He lived with her thirty-nine years without quarrel, without offence. What respect she paid her husband, while herself deserving the highest! How many and how great virtues, taken from different ages, she gathered and blended!
5.2| Macrinus has indeed a great consolation, that he held so great a good for so long, but from this he is the more embittered that he has lost it; for with the enjoyment of pleasures the pain of lacking them grows.
5.3| I shall therefore be anxious for my dearest friend until he can admit distractions and bear the scar, which nothing brings on so well as necessity itself, long time and the satiety of grief. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Montanus
6.1| You must already have learned from my letter that I recently noticed the monument of Pallas under this inscription: "To him the senate, for his loyalty and dutifulness toward his patrons, decreed the insignia of a praetor and fifteen million sesterces, being content with the honour of it."
6.2| Afterwards it seemed to me worth the trouble to look for the decree of the senate itself. I found it so copious and lavish that that most arrogant inscription seemed modest and even lowly. Let them come together and mingle, I do not say those ancients, the Africani, Achaici, Numantini, but these nearest, Marius, Sulla, Pompey (I do not wish to go further): they will lie below the praises of Pallas.
6.3| Am I to think that those who voted that were refined or wretched? I would say refined, if refinement became a senate; wretched, but no one is so wretched as to be forced to that. Was it ambition then and the lust to advance? But who is so mad as to wish to advance through his own and the public disgrace in a state in which the benefit of the most flourishing rank was that one might be the first in the senate to praise Pallas?
6.4| I pass over that the praetorian insignia are offered to Pallas, a slave (offered, of course, by slaves); I pass over that they vote that he should be not only urged but compelled to the use of gold rings; for it would be against the majesty of the senate if a praetorian used iron ones.
6.5| These are slight things and to be passed over; this is to be recorded, that in the name of Pallas the senate (and the senate-house has not been purified since) in the name of Pallas the senate gives thanks to Caesar because he himself had honoured him with the most honourable mention and had given the senate the power to testify its goodwill toward him.
6.6| For what is fairer for the senate than to seem sufficiently grateful to Pallas? It is added: "That Pallas, to whom all confess themselves obliged each to his own share, may receive the fruit of his singular loyalty and singular industry, most deservedly." You would believe that the bounds of empire had been extended and armies restored to the state.
6.7| To this is added: "Since no occasion of generosity could be presented to the senate and people of Rome more welcome than if it should fall to them to increase the means of the most abstinent and most faithful guardian of the emperor's wealth." This, then, was the wish of the senate, this the special joy of the people, this the most welcome occasion of generosity, if it should fall to them to increase the means of Pallas by draining the public wealth.
6.8| Now what follows? That the senate had indeed wished to decree that fifteen million sesterces be given from the treasury, and that the further his mind was from desires of that kind, the more earnestly they begged the parent of the state to compel him to yield to the senate.
6.9| This alone was lacking, that the matter should be dealt with Pallas by public authority, that Pallas should be asked to give way to the senate, that Caesar himself, as patron, should be called in to that most arrogant abstinence, that he should not scorn fifteen million sesterces. He scorned them, which was the only thing he could do, when such wealth was publicly offered, more arrogantly than if he had accepted.
6.10| Yet the senate bore even this, like one complaining, with praises, in these words: but since the best of emperors and parent of the state, asked by Pallas, had wished that part of the motion which concerned giving him fifteen million sesterces from the treasury to be dropped, the senate testified that it had gladly and deservedly begun to decree this sum among the other honours to Pallas for his loyalty and diligence, but that in this matter too it yielded to the will of its emperor, whom it thought it a sin to oppose in anything.
6.11| Picture Pallas as it were interposing a veto on the decree of the senate and moderating his honours, and refusing fifteen million sesterces as too much, while he had accepted the praetorian insignia as less;
6.12| picture Caesar obeying the prayers, or rather the command, of a freedman before the senate (for a freedman commands his patron, whom he asks in the senate); picture the senate testifying on every side that it had deservedly and gladly begun to decree this sum among the other honours to Pallas and would have gone on, had it not been obeying the will of the emperor, whom it was a sin to oppose in anything. So that Pallas should not draw fifteen million sesterces from the treasury, there was need of his own modesty and the senate's compliance, which in this matter above all would not have complied had it thought it a sin in any matter not to comply.
6.13| Do you think this is the end? Wait, and hear greater things: "In particular, since it is useful that the emperor's most ready kindness toward the praise and rewards of the deserving be made known everywhere, and above all in those places where the officials in charge of his affairs might be spurred to imitation, and since the most approved loyalty and blamelessness of Pallas could by example rouse the zeal for so honourable a rivalry, that what the best of emperors had read out in the most distinguished order on the 10th day before the Kalends of February just past, and the decrees of the senate made on those matters, be engraved in bronze, and that this bronze be fixed beside the statue of the deified Julius in armour."
6.14| It seemed too little that the senate-house should witness such disgraces: a most frequented place was chosen, in which things to be read by those present and by those to come might be set forth. It was resolved to record in bronze all the honours of a most fastidious slave, both those he refused and those he accepted so far as it concerned the decreers. The praetorian insignia of Pallas were incised and carved on public and eternal monuments, like ancient treaties, like sacred laws.
6.15| Such was the (what shall I call it? I do not know) of the emperor, of the senate, of Pallas himself, that they wished Pallas's insolence, Caesar's endurance, the senate's abasement to be fixed before the eyes of all. Nor were they ashamed to put forward a reason for the disgrace, an excellent and fine reason, that by the example of Pallas the rest might be roused by rewards to a zeal of rivalry.
6.16| Such was the cheapness of honours, even of those which Pallas did not disdain. Yet there were found men born in honourable station who sought and desired what they saw promised to slaves and given to a freedman.
6.17| How glad I am that I did not fall in those times, of which I am so ashamed as if I had lived in them! I do not doubt that you are affected in the same way. I know how lively and free your spirit is: so it is easier that you should feel as I do; although I may have vented my indignation in some places perhaps beyond the measure of a letter, you may believe that I have grieved too little rather than too much. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Tacitus
7.1| Neither as master to master nor as pupil to pupil (for so you write), but as master to pupil (for you are the master, I the opposite; and indeed you call me back to school, while I am still stretching out the Saturnalia), you have sent a book.
7.2| Could I have made a longer hyperbaton, and by this very thing prove that I am one who ought to be called not only not your master but not even your pupil? Yet I shall assume the role of master, and exercise on your book the right you gave, all the more freely because I am sending you nothing from myself meanwhile with which you may take your revenge. Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Romanus
8.1| Have you ever seen the spring of the Clitumnus? If not yet (and I think not yet; otherwise you would have told me), see it; I saw it recently, and I am sorry for my slowness.
8.2| A moderate hill rises, wooded and shady with ancient cypress. Beneath it the spring comes out and is forced forth in several veins, but unequal; and having struggled out, the pool it makes opens in a broad lap, pure and glassy, so that you can count the coins you throw in and the shining pebbles.
8.3| From there it is driven on, not by the slope of the place but by its own abundance and, as it were, weight, still a spring and already a very ample river, even bearing ships; these, meeting it and straining in opposite directions, it lets through and carries over, so strong that where it hurries itself, though over level ground, it is not helped by oars, yet the same stream is overcome with the greatest difficulty by oars and poles when going against it.
8.4| It is pleasant for those drifting for sport and play, as they turn their course, to vary toil with ease and ease with toil. The banks are clothed with much ash, much poplar, which the clear stream counts, as if submerged, in a green image. The chill of the water would rival snows, nor does its colour yield.
8.5| Nearby lies an ancient and sacred temple. Clitumnus himself stands there, clothed and adorned in the bordered toga; the oracular lots show a present and even prophetic divinity. Around are scattered several shrines, and as many gods. Each has his own worship, his own name, and some even their own springs. For besides that one, who is like the parent of the rest, there are smaller ones, distinct in their source; but they mingle with the river, which is crossed by a bridge.
8.6| That is the boundary of the sacred and the profane: in the upper part only sailing is permitted, below swimming too. The people of Hispellum, to whom the deified Augustus gave that place, provide a bath at public cost, and also lodging. Nor are there lacking villas which, following the loveliness of the river, stand at its edge.
8.7| In sum, there will be nothing from which you will not take pleasure. For you will study too: you will read many things by many people inscribed on every column and every wall, by which that spring and god are celebrated. You will praise many, you will laugh at some; though you, with your kindness, will laugh at none. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Ursus
9.1| For a long time I have taken neither book nor stylus in hand, for a long time I have not known what leisure is, what rest, what that idle yet pleasant doing nothing and being nothing: so many are the affairs of the Samici that allow me neither to withdraw nor to study.
9.2| For no studies are worth so much that the duty of friendship should be deserted, which the studies themselves teach us to guard most scrupulously. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his wife's grandfather Fabatus
10.1| The more you long to see great-grandchildren from us, the sadder you will be to hear that your granddaughter has miscarried, since in her girlish way she did not know she was pregnant, and for that reason omitted certain things that ought to be observed by pregnant women, and did things that ought to be omitted. She has atoned for this error with grave proofs, being brought into the greatest danger.
10.2| So, as you must take it hard that your old age is left, as it were, without descendants prepared, so you ought to give thanks to the gods that for the present they have denied you great-grandchildren in such a way as to preserve your granddaughter, to give them back later; and the hope of those is made more certain for us by this very fruitfulness, though it has been tested with too little success.
10.3| With the same words with which I exhort myself I now exhort, advise and encourage you. For you do not long for great-grandchildren more ardently than I for children, to whom I seem to be about to leave, from my side and yours, an easy road to offices, names widely heard of, and ancestral images that are not newly made. Let them only be born and change this grief of ours into joy. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his Hispulla
11.1| When I think of your affection toward your brother's daughter, softer even than a mother's indulgence, I understand that what is later must be announced to you first, so that joy taken in advance may leave no room for anxiety. Yet I fear that even after rejoicing you may fall back into fear, and so rejoice that she is freed from danger as to shudder at once that she was in danger.
11.2| Already cheerful, restored to herself and to me, she begins to recover, and measures the crisis passed by her convalescence. She was otherwise in the greatest danger (it may be said now without harm), through no fault of her own, though partly of her age. Hence a miscarriage, and a sad trial of a womb unknown.
11.3| So although it has not been your lot to console yourself for the loss of your brother by a grandson or granddaughter of his, remember that this is deferred rather than denied, since she is safe from whom it can be hoped. At the same time excuse the mishap to your father; it is one that women are readier to pardon. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Minicianus
12.1| For this one day only I make my excuse: Titinius Capito is to recite, and I do not know whether I am more obliged or more eager to hear him. He is an excellent man and to be counted among the chief ornaments of the age. He cultivates letters, loves, fosters and advances the studious, a harbour, bay and lap of many who compose something, an example to all, and finally, for literature itself, now growing old, the restorer and reformer.
12.2| He offers his house to those who recite, and attends the recitations not only at his own house with wonderful kindness; to me at least, if only I was in the city, he has never failed. Moreover, it is the more shameful not to return the favour, the more honourable the reason for returning it.
12.3| Or, if I were worn out in lawsuits, should I believe myself bound to the man who attends my appearances in court, whereas now, because all my business and all my care is in studies, am I less obliged to one who attends with such diligence, in a matter in which I can be obliged, I will not say alone, but certainly most?
12.4| But if I owed him no return, no mutual services, as it were, I should still be drawn either by the man's talent, most beautiful and, amid extreme severity, most sweet, or by the honourable nature of his subject. He is writing the deaths of famous men, among them of some very dear to me.
12.5| I seem therefore to be performing a dutiful office, and to be present, as it were at funeral eulogies, late indeed but so much the truer, of those whose funerals I was not permitted to attend. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Genialis
13.1| I approve that you read my little books with your father. It furthers your progress to learn from a most eloquent man what is to be praised and what blamed, and at the same time to be so trained that you grow accustomed to speaking the truth.
13.2| You see whom to follow, whose footsteps you ought to fill. O happy you, to whom has fallen one and the same model, the best and the closest, who finally have as the man to be imitated the very one to whom nature wished you to be most similar! Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend Aristo
14.1| Since you are most skilled in both private and public law, of which the senatorial part is a portion, I desire to hear from you above all whether I erred recently in the senate or not, not so as to correct the past (for it is late) but so that I may be instructed for the future if anything like it should occur.
14.2| You will say: "Why are you asking what you were bound to know?" The slavery of former times, as of other excellent arts, so too of senatorial law, has brought a kind of forgetfulness and ignorance.
14.3| For how few are so patient as to want to learn what they will not have in use? Add that it is difficult to retain what you have received unless you practise it. And so restored liberty finds us raw and inexperienced; kindled by its sweetness, we are forced to do some things before we know them.
14.4| Yet it was the institution of old that from our elders we learned not only by ear but also by eye what we should ourselves soon do and in turn hand down to those younger.
14.5| Hence young men were at once trained in the camp's service, so that by obeying they would grow accustomed to commanding, and to leading while they followed; hence those about to seek office stood by the doors of the senate-house, spectators of public counsel before they were sharers in it.
14.6| Each had his own father as master, or he who had no father had the foremost and oldest as a father. What power belonged to those moving a motion, what right to those giving an opinion, what force to magistrates, what freedom to the rest, where to yield and where to resist, what the time for silence, what the manner of speaking, what the distinction between opposing opinions, what the follow-up for those adding something to earlier speakers, in short the whole senatorial custom, they were taught by examples, which is the most trustworthy way of learning.
14.7| But we were indeed young men in the camps; but when courage was suspect and idleness in esteem, when leaders had no authority and soldiers no respect, when nowhere was command, nowhere obedience, when all was loose, in confusion, and even turned to the contrary, in short, more to be forgotten than held on to.
14.8| We too looked upon the senate-house, but a senate-house trembling and tongue-tied, when to say what you wished was dangerous, and what you did not wish, wretched. What could be learned then, what did it help to have learned, when the senate was summoned either to the utmost idleness or to the utmost wickedness, and, kept sometimes for mockery, sometimes for grief, never gave judgment on serious matters, often on sad ones?
14.9| The same evils we saw and endured for many years, already as senators, already as sharers in those evils; by them our talents were dulled, broken and bruised for the future as well.
14.10| It is a short time (for all time is the shorter the happier it is) in which we are allowed to know what we are, allowed to practise what we know. For which reason I ask all the more justly, first that you grant pardon to an error, if there is any error, then that you remedy it with your knowledge, since you have always made it your concern to treat public law and private alike, ancient and recent alike, rare and everyday alike.
14.11| And I think that even to those men, to whom the frequent handling of very many matters allowed nothing to be unknown, the kind of question I bring to you was either not well worn or even untried. Hence I am the more excusable if I have perhaps slipped, and you the more worthy of praise, if you can teach even what you may not have learned, since it lies in obscurity.
14.12| The matter before us concerned the freedmen of the consul Afranius Dexter, killed, it was uncertain whether by his own hand or by theirs, in wickedness or in obedience. One speaker (who? I; but it matters not) thought they should be freed from punishment after an examination under torture, another that they should be relegated to an island, another that they should be punished with death. The difference between these opinions was so great that they could not be anything but separate.
14.13| For what has killing in common with banishing? By heaven, no more than banishing with acquitting; although the opinion that acquits is somewhat nearer to the banisher's than the one that kills is (for each of the two leaves life, the latter takes it away), while meanwhile those who punished with death and those who banished were sitting together and putting off the disagreement by a temporary pretence of concord.
14.14| I demanded that the three opinions should stand each with its own number, and that two should not join in a short truce. I required, therefore, that those who thought they should be put to capital punishment should leave the banisher, and not meanwhile gather against the acquitters only to part from each other soon, since it would matter little whether the same thing displeased those whom the same thing had not pleased.
14.15| This also seemed to me quite amazing: that the one who had proposed that the freedmen be banished and the slaves put to death was obliged to have his opinion divided; whereas the one who would punish the freedmen with death was counted with the banisher. For if the opinion of one man had to be divided because it comprised two things, I could not find how the opinion of two men proposing such different things could be joined.
14.16| And indeed allow me to give you the account of my judgment here as there, now the matter is finished as though it were still open, and to join at leisure what I then said in pieces, with many shouting me down.
14.17| Let us suppose that three judges in all were given for this case; that to one it seemed right that the freedmen perish, to another that they be banished, to a third that they be acquitted. Will two opinions, forces combined, destroy the last, or will each separately be worth as much as the other, and the first be no more able to be joined to the second than the second to the third?
14.18| Therefore in the senate too opinions that are stated as different ought to be counted as opposed. But if one and the same man proposed that they should be put to death and banished, could they, by the opinion of one man, both perish and be banished? Would it in fact be thought a single opinion at all, which joined such different things?
14.19| How then, when one proposes punishment and another banishment, can that seem a single opinion which is stated by two, which would not seem single if stated by one? What? Does the law not plainly teach that the opinions of the one who kills and the one who banishes must be separated, when it orders the division to be made thus: "You who vote for this, go to this side; you who vote for anything else, go to that side where you stand"? Examine and weigh each word: "you who vote for this," that is, who think they should be banished, "to this side," that is, to the one on which sits he who proposed banishment.
14.20| From which it is clear that those who think they should be killed cannot remain on the same side. "Anything else": you note that the law, not content with saying "else," has added "all." Is there then any doubt that those who kill hold quite other views than those who banish? "Go to that side where you stand": does not the law itself seem to summon, force and push those who disagree over to the contrary side? Does the consul not also point out where each man must stay and where he must cross over, showing it not only by the solemn words but by hand and gesture?
14.21| But it will happen, they say, that if the opinions of the killer and the banisher are divided, the one that acquits will prevail. What is that to those voting? They certainly should not fight with every art and every device to prevent what is milder from happening. Yet those who punish and those who banish ought to be compared first with the acquitters, and then with each other. Just as at certain spectacles the lot sets someone aside and keeps him to contend with the victor, so in the senate there are some first contests, some second, and of two opinions the one that has come out higher awaits the third.
14.22| What of the fact that when the first opinion is approved the rest are done away with? By what reasoning, then, can there fail to be one and the same place for opinions, of which none exists afterwards?
14.23| I shall put it more plainly. Unless, when the one who banishes states his opinion, those who punish with death at once go off at the start to the other side, they will afterwards dissent in vain from the one with whom they had agreed a little before.
14.24| But why do I sound like one teaching, when I wish to learn whether opinions ought to be divided or one should go to the several sides? I did indeed obtain what I asked; nonetheless I ask whether I ought to have asked it. How did I obtain it? The man who held that the extreme penalty should be exacted, overcome, I do not know whether by right, but certainly by the fairness of my demand, dropped his own opinion and joined the banisher, fearing, of course, that if the opinions were divided, which otherwise seemed likely, the one that held the men should be acquitted would prevail by numbers. For there were far more in this single one than in either of the two singly.
14.25| Then those too who were drawn by his authority, deserted when he went over, left the opinion abandoned by its very author, and followed as a deserter the man whom they had followed as leader.
14.26| So from three opinions two were made, and of the two one held, the third having been thrown out, which, since it could not beat both, chose by which of them it would be beaten. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Junior
15.1| I have burdened you in dispatching so many volumes together, but I burdened you first because you had demanded them, and then because you had written that the vintages there are so thin that I clearly knew you would have time, as the saying is, to read a book.
15.2| The same is reported from my little farms. So I too shall be allowed to write things for you to read, provided only there is wherewithal for paper to be bought; or necessarily whatever we write, good or bad, we shall blot out. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Paternus
16.1| The illnesses of my household have worn me out, and deaths too, and of young people. There are two consolations, by no means equal to so great a grief, yet consolations: one the ease of manumitting (for I seem not to have lost them wholly untimely, since I lost them already free), the other that I allow even slaves to make a sort of wills, and I keep them as legal.
16.2| They give instructions and ask what seems good; I obey as though commanded. They divide, give, leave, only within the household; for to slaves the house is a kind of commonwealth and, as it were, a state.
16.3| But although I rest in these consolations, I am weakened and broken by the very same kindliness that led me to allow this. Yet I would not on that account wish to become harder. Nor am I unaware that others call misfortunes of this kind nothing more than a loss, and for that reason seem to themselves great and wise men. I do not know whether they are great and wise; men they are not.
16.4| For it belongs to a man to be affected by grief, to feel it, yet to resist and admit consolations, not to need no consolations.
16.5| But of this I have perhaps said more than I ought; yet fewer than I wished. There is, after all, a certain pleasure in grieving as well, especially if you weep in the bosom of a friend, with whom for your tears either praise or pardon is ready. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Macrinus
17.1| Is the weather there too harsh and stormy? Here are constant tempests and frequent floods. The Tiber has overflowed its bed and is spread deep over the lower banks;
17.2| although drained by the channel that our most far-sighted emperor made, it presses on the valleys, floats over the fields, and wherever the ground is level, water is seen instead of ground. Then the rivers it is accustomed to receive and carry down mixed with itself it drives back, as though meeting them, and so covers with foreign waters fields which it does not itself touch.
17.3| The Anio, the most delicate of rivers and for that reason, as it were, invited and held by the villas lying beside it, has broken and carried off a great part of the groves that shade it; it has undermined mountains, and, blocked in many places by the mass of falling earth, while seeking the road it lost, it has driven against roofs and cast and lifted itself over ruins.
17.4| Those whom that storm caught on higher ground have seen in one place the furnishings of the rich and heavy household goods, in another the implements of the country, here oxen, ploughs and drivers, there herds loosed and free, and amid these tree trunks or beams and roof-tops of villas floating about in various directions far and wide.
17.5| Nor were even those places free from the evil to which the river did not climb. For in place of the river there was incessant rain and whirlwinds cast down from the clouds, the works by which valuable lands are fenced were thrown down, monuments shaken and even shattered. Many were crippled, buried and crushed by accidents of this kind, and the losses were increased by mourning.
17.6| I fear that something like this may be happening there, in proportion to the danger, and I ask you, if nothing such has happened, to relieve my anxiety as soon as possible, but also, if such has happened, to report that too. For it makes very little difference whether you suffer adversity or expect it; except that there is a measure to grief, but none to fear. For you grieve as much as you know has happened, you fear as much as can happen. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Rufinus
18.1| It is plainly false what is commonly believed, that men's wills are a mirror of their character, since Domitius Tullus has appeared far better in death than in life.
18.2| For although he had offered himself to be courted for his legacy, he left as heir his daughter, whom he held in common with his brother, because he had adopted the girl born to his brother. He remembered his grandsons with very many and very pleasant legacies, and his great-granddaughter too. In sum, everything is full of family affection, and so much the more unexpected.
18.3| So there is varied talk throughout the whole city: some call him false, ungrateful, forgetful, and while attacking him betray themselves by most shameful confessions, complaining about a father, a grandfather and a great-grandfather, as if about a childless man; others on the contrary praise him for this very thing, that he has frustrated the wicked hopes of men whom, in keeping with the manners of the times, it is right to see so deceived. They add also that he was not free to die with another will: for he had not left wealth to his daughter but restored it, the wealth by which he had been enriched through his daughter.
18.4| For Curtilius Mancia, loathing his son-in-law Domitius Lucanus (he was the brother of Tullus), had made that man's daughter, his granddaughter, his heir on the condition that she be released from her father's power. Her father had released her, her uncle had adopted her, and so, the will being circumvented, the brother and partner had by the fraud of adoption called back into his brother's power the emancipated daughter, and indeed with very great wealth.
18.5| Moreover, it had been given to those brothers as if by fate to become rich, from men who most unwillingly made them so. Indeed Domitius Afer, who took them into his name, left a will pronounced eighteen years before, and afterwards so disapproved of it that he had the goods of their father advertised for sale.
18.6| Wonderful his harshness, wonderful their good fortune: his harshness, who cut off from the number of citizens a man whom he had also as a partner in his children; their good fortune, in that the man who had taken their father away stepped into their father's place.
18.7| But this inheritance too, from Afer, like the rest acquired with his brother, had to be passed on to the daughter of his brother, by whom Tullus had been made sole heir and preferred to his daughter, so as to be won over. All the more praiseworthy is the will, which family affection, good faith and honour wrote, in which finally thanks were returned to all his connections according to the duty of each, and returned also to his wife.
18.8| She received most charming villas, she received a great sum of money, an excellent and most patient wife, who deserved so much the better of her husband the more she was blamed for marrying. For a woman of famous birth, of approved character, declining in age, long a widow and long since a mother, seemed to have followed, with too little decorum, the marriage of a rich old man so ruined by disease that he could be a loathing to a wife whom he had married young and sound.
18.9| For, twisted and broken in all his limbs, he enjoyed such great wealth only with his eyes, and was not even moved in his little bed except by others; indeed (foul and pitiable to say) he offered his teeth to be washed and rubbed. It was often heard from himself, when he complained of the insults of his helplessness, that every day he licked the fingers of his slaves.
18.10| Yet he lived, and wished to live, chiefly sustained by his wife, who had turned the fault of a marriage begun into glory by her perseverance.
18.11| You have all the talk of the city; for all the talk is Tullus. An auction is awaited: for he was so rich that he furnished very large gardens, on the same day that he bought them, with very many and very ancient statues; so many most beautiful works he had in the storehouses, which he neglected. In return, if there is anything there worthy of a letter, do not hold back.
18.12| For not only are men's ears glad of novelty, but we are also instructed by examples in the plan of life. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus
19.1| Literature is both a joy and a solace to me, and nothing is so cheerful that it is not more cheerful through it, nothing so sad that it is not made less sad through it. And so, troubled by my wife's weakness, the danger of my household, and by the death too of certain persons, I have taken refuge in studies as the one relief from grief, which bring it about that I understand misfortunes better but bear them more patiently.
19.2| It is my custom to test by the judgment of friends what I am about to put into men's hands, above all by yours. So now, if ever, give your attention to the book which you will receive with this letter, because I fear that I myself, being sad, have given it too little. For I could force my grief to let me write; to write with a mind free and glad, I was not able. Moreover, as joy comes from studies, so studies come from cheerfulness. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Gallus
20.1| We are accustomed to set out on a journey, to cross the sea, to learn things which we neglect when they are placed before our eyes, whether because nature is so arranged that, careless of what is nearest, we pursue the far away, or because desire for all things languishes when the chance is easy, or because we put off, as if we would often see it, what is given us to see whenever we wish to look.
20.2| For whatever reason, there are very many things in our city and beside the city which we know neither by eye nor even by ear, which, if Achaea, Egypt, Asia or any other land fertile in marvels and a good advertiser of them had produced them, we should have heard of, read of and surveyed.
20.3| I myself at least recently heard and saw at once what I had neither heard nor seen before. My wife's grandfather had required me to inspect his estates at Ameria. As I was walking over them, a lake lying below was pointed out to me, called Vadimon; at the same time some incredible things were told.
20.4| I came to the lake itself. It is a lake marked out like a wheel lying flat, equal on all sides: no bay, no slant, everything measured equal, as if hollowed and cut by the hand of a craftsman. Its colour is whiter than blue, greener and deeper; the smell of sulphur, the taste medicinal; it has the power by which broken things are mended. Its extent is moderate, yet it feels the winds and swells with waves.
20.5| On it there is no ship (for it is sacred), but islands float on it, all grassy with reed and rush and whatever else the more fertile marsh and the very edge of the lake bring forth. Each has its own shape and size; all have a rubbed-away margin, because, dashed against the shore or against one another, they often rub and are rubbed. All have the same depth, the same lightness; for they descend with a low root in the manner of a keel.
20.6| This is seen from every side, the same water holding it at once suspended and submerged. At times they are joined and coupled and like a mainland, at times, when the winds disagree, they are scattered, sometimes, left by the calm, they float singly.
20.7| Often the smaller cling to the larger like small boats to cargo ships, often the larger and smaller among themselves take up a kind of race and contest; again, all driven to the same spot, they push forward the land where they have stood, and now here, now there, give the lake back and take it away, and only when they have held the middle do they not make it smaller.
20.8| It is agreed that cattle, following the grass, are accustomed to go onto those islands as onto the farthest bank, and do not perceive the ground to be moving until, carried off from the shore as if brought in and set down, they are frightened at the lake all around; soon, going out where the wind has carried them, they no more feel that they have come down than they felt that they had gone up.
20.9| The same lake is discharged into a river, which, when it has shown itself to the eye for a little way, is swallowed in a cavern and runs hidden deep, and if it received anything before it was drawn under, it keeps it and brings it out.
20.10| I have written you this because I believed it neither less unknown to you than to me nor less welcome. For you too, like me, are delighted by nothing so much as by the works of nature. Farewell.
21.0| Pliny to his friend Arrianus
21.1| As in life, so in studies, I think it most beautiful and most humane to mix severity and good humour, so that the former may not pass into gloom, the latter into wantonness.
21.2| Guided by this principle I punctuate my graver works with sport and jest. To bring these out I chose a most suitable time and place, and so that they might already begin to be accustomed to be heard by idle people and in a dining room, in the month of July, when lawsuits are most at rest, I placed chairs before the couches and seated my friends.
21.3| It happened by chance that on the same morning I was asked to a sudden advocacy, which gave me occasion to speak a preface. For I begged that no one should accuse me of being disrespectful to the work, because, when about to recite, although to friends and a few, that is, to friends twice over, I had not kept away from the forum and business. I added that I follow this order in writing too, putting necessities before pleasures, serious before agreeable, and writing first for friends, then for myself.
21.4| The book was varied both in its little pieces and in its metres. So we are accustomed to do, who put little trust in talent, to avoid the danger of satiety. I recited for two days. The assent of the hearers demanded it; and yet, as others skip some parts and take credit for skipping, I pass over nothing, and even say that I pass over nothing. For I read everything in order to correct everything, which cannot happen for those who recite selections.
21.5| But that is more modest and perhaps more respectful; this, however, more candid and more loving. For he loves who thinks himself so loved that he does not fear boredom; and besides, what do companions offer, if they come together for their own pleasure? He is delicate and like a stranger who prefers to hear a good book of a friend than to make it.
21.6| I do not doubt that you, in keeping with the rest of your affection for me, wish to read as soon as possible this book still new as must. You will read it, but revised, which was the reason for reciting; and yet you already know some parts of it. These, corrected afterwards or, as often happens with a longer delay, made worse, you will recognize again as new and rewritten. For when most things are changed, even those that remain seem changed. Farewell.
22.0| Pliny to his friend Geminus
22.1| Do you know those who, slaves of all passions, are angry at the vices of others as if they envied them, and punish most severely those whom they most imitate? Yet even those who need no one's clemency are befitted by nothing so much as mildness.
22.2| And I think him best and most faultless who pardons others as if he himself sinned every day, and keeps from sin as if he pardoned no one.
22.3| Therefore let us hold this at home, abroad, in every kind of life: to be implacable to ourselves, but placable to those too who know how to grant pardon only to themselves, and let us keep in memory what that gentlest man, and on that account too the greatest, Thrasea, used often to say: "He who hates vices, hates men." You ask perhaps what moved me to write this.
22.4| Recently a certain man (but it is better face to face; although not even then. For I fear that to pursue, to carp at and to relate what I disapprove may conflict with what I am just now advising). Whoever he was, of whatever sort, let him be passed over in silence; to mark him out would serve no purpose as an example, while not marking him out is very much a matter of kindness. Farewell.
23.0| Pliny to his friend Marcellinus
23.1| All studies, all cares, all distractions grief has removed, shaken out and torn from me, the grief which I have taken most heavily from the death of Junius Avitus.
23.2| He had put on the broad stripe in my house, he had been helped by my support in seeking offices; besides, he loved me so, and so respected me, that he used me as a moulder of his character, as a sort of master.
23.3| This is rare among our young men. For how many of them defer, as juniors, to another's age or authority? They are wise at once, they know everything at once, they respect no one, they imitate no one, and they are their own models. But not Avitus, whose chief wisdom was that he thought others wiser than himself, and whose chief learning was that he wanted to learn.
23.4| He was always asking advice about something, either about literature or about the duties of life, and he always went away as though he had been made better; and he had been made better, either by what he had heard or simply by having asked.
23.5| What deference he showed to Servianus, a man of the most exacting standards! As a military tribune he so understood and so won over Servianus, then legate, that when Servianus was moving from Germany to Pannonia he followed him not as a fellow soldier but as a companion and attendant. With what industry, with what modesty he served as quaestor, no less pleasant and agreeable to his consuls (and he served several) than useful to them! With what running about, with what watchfulness he sought this very aedileship of which he has been robbed! It is this, above all, that makes my grief fester.
23.6| His wasted labours rise before my eyes, his fruitless entreaties, and the office he only deserved; there comes back to my mind that broad stripe he assumed in my house, and there come back those first and those last votes of mine for him, those talks, those consultations.
23.7| I am moved by his youth, I am moved by the misfortune of his family. He had an aged mother, he had a wife whom he had married as a girl a year before, he had a daughter whom he had acknowledged only a little while ago. One day has turned so many hopes, so many joys into their opposites.
23.8| Only just designated aedile, a new husband, a new father, he has left behind an office never entered upon, a mother bereaved of her son, a widowed wife, and a daughter who is an orphan and never knew her father. It adds to my tears that I was absent and unaware of the disaster hanging over him, and learned in a single stroke that he had been ill and that he had died, so that I had no fear to accustom me to this heaviest of griefs. I was in such torment as I wrote this that this is all I wrote; for just now I am able neither to think of anything else nor to speak of anything else. Farewell.
24.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus
24.1| My love for you compels me, not to instruct you (for you have no need of an instructor), but still to remind you to hold to what you know and to observe it, or else it would be better not to know it.
24.2| Consider that it is to the province of Achaia that you have been dispatched, that true and pure Greece, where civilization and literature, and even agriculture, are believed to have been first discovered; that you have been sent to set in order the condition of free cities, that is, to men who are most truly men, to free men who are most truly free, who have kept the rights given them by nature through their courage, their merits and their friendship, and finally through treaty and religion.
24.3| Revere the gods their founders and the names of the gods; revere their ancient glory and this very old age, which in a man is venerable and in cities sacred. Pay honour to their antiquity, to their mighty deeds, and to their legends too. Take nothing away from anyone's dignity, nothing from anyone's liberty, nothing even from anyone's boasting.
24.4| Keep before your eyes that this is the land from which our laws were sent to us, which gave us laws not as a conquered people but at our request; that it is Athens you are visiting, Lacedaemon you are governing; and to snatch from them the shadow that remains and the name of liberty that is left to them would be harsh, savage and barbarous.
24.5| You see that doctors, although in sickness there is no difference between slave and free, nevertheless treat the free more gently and more mildly. Remember what each city once was, not so as to look down on it because it has ceased to be so; let there be no arrogance and no harshness.
24.6| And do not be afraid of contempt. Is anyone who holds military command and the rods of office held in contempt, unless he is mean and base, and the first to hold himself in contempt? Power does badly to test its strength by insulting others; respect is badly won by terror; and love is far more effective than fear at gaining what you want. For fear departs if you go away, but love remains; and just as fear turns into hatred, love turns into reverence.
24.7| You, above all, must remember again and again (for I shall repeat it) the title of your office, and interpret to yourself what and how great a thing it is to set in order the condition of free cities. For what is more fitting to a citizen than setting things in order, what more precious than liberty?
24.8| And then, how shameful if order should be turned into overthrow and liberty into slavery! Besides, you are in competition with yourself: you are weighed down by the reputation of your quaestorship, an excellent one, which you brought back with you from Bithynia; you are weighed down by the testimonial of the emperor; you are weighed down by your tribunate, your praetorship, and this very appointment, given you as a kind of reward.
24.9| All the more, then, must you strive not to seem to have been more humane, better and more skilful in a distant province than in one near the city, among slaves than among free men, when sent by lot than when chosen by judgment, when raw and unknown than when tried and approved; since, besides, as you have often heard and often read, it is far more disgraceful to lose praise than not to win it.
24.10| I would like you to believe that I have written this, as I said at the beginning, by way of reminding you, not of instructing you; although by way of instructing you too. For I am not afraid of having exceeded due measure in love; for there is no danger that what ought to be greatest should be too great. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book IX ========

1.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus
1.1| I have often advised you to publish as soon as possible the books you composed either in your own defence or against Planta, or rather both in your own defence and against him (for so the subject required); and now especially, having heard of his death, I urge and advise you to do so.
1.2| For although you have read them to many people and given them to many to read, I still do not want anyone to imagine that you began only after his death what you completed while he was alive. Keep your reputation for steadfastness safe. And it will be safe, if it is known to friends and enemies alike that your confidence to write was not born after your enemy's death, but that a publication already prepared was forestalled by his death.
1.3| At the same time you will avoid that "it is unholy against the dead." For what has been written about a living man and recited about a living man is published against him, even when he is dead, as though he were still living, if it is published at once. So if you have anything else in hand, put it off for the moment; finish this, which to those of us who have read it seemed complete long ago. But let it now seem complete to you as well: the matter itself does not call for your hesitation, and the state of the times cuts it short. Farewell.
2.0| Pliny to his friend Sabinus
2.1| It is pleasant of you to demand from me not only a great many letters but very long ones too. I have been rather sparing with them, partly because I respected your busy life, partly because I myself have been much distracted, mostly by tedious business, which both draws the mind away and wears it down. Besides, I have not had the material to write more.
2.2| For my situation is not the same as that of Marcus Tullius, to whose example you summon me. He had both the richest genius and, to match his genius, a most abundant supply of events, in their variety and in their greatness;
2.3| how narrow are the limits that confine me you see clearly even if I say nothing, unless perhaps I want to send you schoolroom letters and, so to speak, letters written in the shade.
2.4| But I think nothing could be less suitable, when I think of your arms, your camp, and in short your horns and trumpets, your sweat and dust and blazing suns.
2.5| There you have, I think, a fair excuse; and yet I am not sure I want you to accept it. For it is a mark of the greatest love to refuse to pardon the brevity of friends' letters, even when you know there is good reason for it. Farewell.
3.0| Pliny to his friend Paulinus
3.1| Each man has his own view: I think that man most blessed who enjoys in advance the assurance of a good and lasting reputation, and who lives, certain of posterity, in the glory that is to come. For my part, if I did not have the reward of everlasting fame before my eyes, I would be content with that rich and deep leisure.
3.2| For I think all men ought to reflect either on their immortality or on their mortality, and that those who do the first should strive and exert themselves, while those who do the second should rest and relax, and not weary a short life with perishable labours, as I see many doing, who by a pretence of industry, at once miserable and thankless, arrive at holding themselves cheap.
3.3| I say these things to you which I say to myself every day, so that I may stop saying them to myself if you disagree; although you will not disagree, since you are always pondering something glorious and immortal. Farewell.
4.0| Pliny to his friend Macrinus
4.1| I should be afraid that you would think the speech you will get along with this letter excessively long, were it not of a kind that seems to begin often and end often. For each charge contains, as it were, a separate case.
4.2| So wherever you begin and wherever you stop, you will be able to read what follows both as a fresh beginning and as a connected whole, and to judge me very long in the whole but very brief in the parts. Farewell.
5.0| Pliny to his friend Tiro
5.1| You are doing splendidly (for I make inquiries), and you must keep on, in commending your justice to the provincials by great humanity; the chief part of this is to embrace every man of the highest character, and so to be loved by the humbler people that at the same time you are held dear by the leading men.
5.2| Most people, however, while they fear that they may seem to grant too much favour to the powerful, earn a reputation for perversity and even for spite.
5.3| You have kept far away from that fault, I know; but I cannot restrain myself from praising you in the manner of one who advises you, for keeping such a balance that you preserve the distinctions of ranks and dignities; for if these are confused, upset and mixed together, nothing is more unequal than equality itself. Farewell.
6.0| Pliny to his friend Calvisius
6.1| I have spent all this time among my writing tablets and my books in the most delightful quiet. "How," you ask, "did you manage it in the city?" The races were on, a kind of spectacle that does not hold me in the slightest. There is nothing new, nothing varied, nothing that it is not enough to have watched once.
6.2| I am all the more surprised, then, that thousands upon thousands of men should so childishly keep longing to see horses running and men standing in chariots. If, however, they were attracted by the horses' speed or by the men's skill, there would be some sense in it; but as it is, they support a piece of cloth, it is a piece of cloth they love, and if in the middle of the race, in the thick of the contest, this colour were transferred over there and that one over here, their enthusiasm and support would cross over too, and they would suddenly abandon those drivers and those horses whom they recognize from afar and whose names they shout.
6.3| Such favour, such authority in one worthless tunic, I will not say among the common crowd, which is more worthless than the tunic, but among certain serious men; and when I recall them sitting so insatiably at a thing so empty, so dull and so endlessly repeated, I take a certain pleasure in not being taken by this pleasure.
6.4| And so during these days, which others waste in the idlest of occupations, I have been very gladly spending my leisure on literature. Farewell.
7.0| Pliny to his friend Romanus
7.1| You write that you are building. Good: I have found an advocate for my cause, for now I build with reason, since I build with you. For in this too we are not unalike, that you build by the sea and I by Lake Como.
7.2| On its shore I have several villas, but two especially, as they delight me, so they give me trouble.
7.3| One, set on rocks in the Baian manner, looks out over the lake; the other, equally in the Baian manner, touches the lake. And so I am accustomed to call the former tragedy and the latter comedy, the former because it is raised as if on buskins, the latter because it is as if on slippers. Each has its own charm, and each is the more pleasing to its owner by their very difference.
7.4| This one enjoys the lake more closely, that one more widely; this embraces one bay in a gentle curve, that one on a very lofty ridge divides two; there a straight carriage-drive extends on a long track above the shore, here it bends gently in a most spacious terrace-walk; that one does not feel the waves, this breaks them; from that one you can look down on fishermen, from this fish yourself, and cast a hook from the bedroom and almost from the little bed, as from a small boat. These are my reasons for adding to each what it lacks, on account of what it has in excess.
7.5| Yet why do I give you a reason? With you, to do the same will be reason enough. Farewell.
8.0| Pliny to his friend Augurinus
8.1| If, praised by you, I begin to praise you, I fear I shall seem less to put forward my judgment than to return a favour. But though I may seem to, I think all your writings most beautiful, and especially those about me.
8.2| This happens from one and the same cause. For you write best of what concerns your friends, and I read as best what concerns me. Farewell.
9.0| Pliny to his friend Colonus
9.1| I particularly approve that you are so grievously affected by the death of Pompeius Quintianus that you extend your love for the lost man into longing, not like most, who love only the living, or rather pretend to love, and do not even pretend except those whom they see flourishing; for they forget the wretched no differently than the dead. But in you there is lasting loyalty and such constancy in love that it cannot end except with your death.
9.2| And by heaven, Quintianus was a man who deserved to be loved by his own example. He loved the fortunate, he protected the wretched, he longed for the lost. And what probity was in his face, what hesitation in his speech, how in equal balance gravity and kindness! what zeal for letters, what judgment! with what dutifulness did he live with a father most unlike himself! how little did it hinder him from being thought an excellent man that he was an excellent son!
9.3| But why do I inflame your grief? Although you loved the young man so that you would rather have this than silence about him, especially from me, by whose praise you think his life is adorned, his memory prolonged, and that very age at which he was snatched away able to be restored. Farewell.
10.0| Pliny to his friend Tacitus
10.1| I wish to obey your precepts; but boars are in such short supply that Minerva and Diana, whom you say are to be worshipped alike, cannot come together.
10.2| And so I must serve Minerva only, but delicately, as in retirement and in summer. On the road I composed some rather slight things, to be deleted at once, with that chattiness with which conversations in a carriage are spun out. To these I added a few in the villa, when nothing else pleased. And so the poems lie quiet, which you think are most conveniently finished among woods and groves.
10.3| I have gone over one or two short speeches again; although that kind of work is unlovely and graceless, and more like the labours of the country than its pleasures. Farewell.
11.0| Pliny to his friend Geminus
11.1| I received your most pleasant letter, chiefly because you wished something to be written to you that could be inserted in the books. Material will turn up, either this very one that you indicate, or some better one. For there are in this a few stumbling blocks: cast your eyes about and they will meet you.
11.2| I did not think there were booksellers at Lugdunum, and all the more gladly I learned from your letter that my little books are sold, and I am delighted that they keep abroad the favour they have gathered in the city. For I begin to think it sufficiently finished, when judgments of men separated by such diversity of regions agree about it. Farewell.
12.0| Pliny to his friend Junior
12.1| A certain man was scolding his son because he bought horses and dogs rather expensively. After the young man had gone away I said to him: "Listen, have you never done anything your father could rebuke you for? 'Have done,' do I say? Do you not at times do what your son, if suddenly you were the father and he the son, would reprove with equal gravity? Are not all men led by some error? Does not one indulge himself in this, another in that?"
12.2| I wrote this to you, prompted by an example of immoderate severity, out of our mutual affection, lest at some time you too should treat your son too bitterly and harshly. Consider that he is a child and that you once were one, and exercise your fatherhood so as to remember that you are a human being and the father of a human being. Farewell.
13.0| Pliny to his friend Quadratus
13.1| The more eagerly and attentively you have read the books I composed on the avenging of Helvidius, the more earnestly you ask that I write out for you what lay outside the books and around the books, in short the whole order of the affair, in which by your age you did not take part.
13.2| When Domitian was killed I determined with myself and considered that there was great and fine material for pursuing the guilty, avenging the wretched, bringing oneself forward. Moreover, among the many crimes of many men none seemed more atrocious than that in the senate a senator had laid hands on a senator, a praetorian on a consular, a judge on a defendant.
13.3| I had besides a friendship with Helvidius, as great as it could be with a man who, for fear of the times, hid a mighty name and equal virtues in retirement; I had it with Arria and Fannia, of whom one was Helvidius's stepmother, the other the mother of his stepmother. But it was not so much private ties as public right, the indignity of the deed and the consideration of example that spurred me.
13.4| In the first days of liberty restored, each man had for himself demanded his own enemies, the lesser ones at least, with an unordered and tumultuous outcry, and at once had crushed them. I, thinking it both more moderate and more steadfast to press a most monstrous defendant not by the common odium of the times but by his own crime, when that first onset had by now sufficiently ceased to roar and anger, growing weaker by the day, had returned to justice, although I was then especially sad at the recent loss of my wife, sent to Anteia (she had been married to Helvidius); I asked her to come, because my fresh grief still kept me within my own doors.
13.5| When she came I said: "I have resolved not to endure your husband's death unavenged. Announce it to Arria and to Fannia" (they had come back from exile), "consider yourself, consider them, whether you wish to be added to a deed in which I do not need a companion; but I would not so favour my own glory as to begrudge you a share in it." Anteia carried the message, and they did not delay.
13.6| The senate met opportunely within three days. I had always referred everything to Corellius, whom I knew as the most far-sighted and wisest man of our time: in this, however, I was content with my own counsel, fearing he would forbid it; for he was more hesitant and cautious. But I could not bring myself to the point of not telling him on the same day that I was going to do what I was not deliberating whether to do, having learned by experience that on a matter you have resolved you should not consult those whose advice, once asked, you ought to obey.
13.7| I come into the senate, I ask the right to speak, I speak for a short while with the greatest assent. When I began to touch on the charge, to point out the defendant, though still without a name, from every side I was cried down. One said: "Let us know who it is about whom you report out of order"; another: "Who is the defendant before the motion?"; another: "Let us who survive be safe."
13.8| I listened unperturbed and undaunted: so great is the power of the honour of an undertaking, and so much does it differ for confidence or fear whether men are unwilling that you do something or do not approve it. It is long to review everything that was thrown about then on this side and that.
13.9| At last the consul: "Secundus, you shall speak in your turn, if you wish anything." "You had permitted," I said, "what you have permitted to everyone until now."
13.10| I sat down; other business was transacted. Meanwhile one of my consular friends, in a private and carefully managed conversation, rebukes me as having gone forward too boldly and incautiously, calls me back, warns me to desist, and adds: "You have made yourself marked for future emperors." "Let it be so," I said, "if they are bad."
13.11| He had scarcely gone when another came: "What are you daring? Where are you rushing? To what perils do you expose yourself? Why trust in the present, uncertain of the future? You are provoking a man already prefect of the treasury and soon to be consul, and besides propped up by what favour, what friendships!" He named a certain one who was then commanding in the east a very large army, not without great and doubtful rumours.
13.12| To this I replied: "All things I have foreseen and gone through in my mind beforehand," and I do not refuse, if chance so brings it, to suffer punishment for a most honourable deed, while I avenge a most shameful one.
13.13| Now it was time for opinions. Domitius Apollinaris, consul designate, speaks, Fabricius Veiento speaks, Fabius Postuminus, Bittius Proculus, colleague of Publicius Certus, about whom the matter was being raised, and stepfather of my wife whom I had lost, after these Ammius Flaccus. All defend Certus, not yet named by me, as if named, and by their defence take up the charge as if left in the middle.
13.14| What else they said it is not necessary to relate: you have it in the books; for I followed everything in their own words.
13.15| Avidius Quietus and Cornutus Tertullus speak against them: Quietus, that it was most unjust that the complaints of the grieving be shut out, and that therefore the right of Arria and Fannia to complain should not be taken away, and that it makes no difference of what order a man is, but what cause he has;
13.16| Cornutus, that he had been given by the consuls as guardian of Helvidius's daughter, when her mother and stepfather asked for it; that now too he could not bear to desert the parts of his duty, in which yet he would both set a limit to his own grief and carry through the most restrained feeling of those excellent women; who were content to remind the senate of the bloody flattery of Publicius Certus and to ask that, if the penalty of a most manifest disgrace were remitted, at least a mark like a censor's be branded on him.
13.17| Then Satrius Rufus, in a middle and ambiguous speech, said: "I think an injury has been done to Publicius Certus if he is not acquitted; he was named by the friends of Arria and Fannia, named by his own friends. We should not be anxious; for it is we, who think well of the man, who are also to judge. If he is innocent, as I both hope and prefer and, until something is proved, believe, you will be able to acquit him."
13.18| These men spoke, each in the sequence of his summons. It comes to me. I rise, use the opening which is in the book, reply to each. It is wonderful with what attention, with what shouts they received everything, those who a little before were crying me down: so great a turn followed either the dignity of the matter, or the outcome of the speech, or the constancy of the pleader.
13.19| I finish. Veiento begins to reply; no one bears it; he is shouted over and drowned out, so much so that he said: "I ask, Conscript Fathers, that you do not force me to implore the help of the tribunes." And at once the tribune Murena: "I permit you, most distinguished Veiento, to speak." Then too there was shouting against him.
13.20| In the delay, the consul, the names having been called and the division completed, dismissed the senate, and left Veiento almost still standing and trying to speak. He complained much of this "insult," as he called it, in a Homeric verse: "Old man, truly the young fighters are wearing you down."
13.21| There was hardly anyone in the senate who did not embrace me, kiss me and heap praise on me in rivalry, because I had brought back a custom long interrupted, of taking thought for the public good at the cost of taking on private enmities; because, in short, I had freed the senate from the odium in which it burned among the other orders, in that, severe to all others, it spared only senators by a kind of mutual pretence.
13.22| This was done in Certus's absence; for either he had suspected something of the sort or, as his excuse ran, he was unwell. And Caesar indeed did not send back to the senate a motion about him; yet I obtained what I had aimed at:
13.23| for Certus's colleague received the consulship, Certus his successor, and what I had said at the end plainly came about: "Let him give back under the best of emperors the reward he received from the worst." Afterwards I put my speech together again as best I could, and added much.
13.24| A chance event happened, but not as if by chance: after the books were published, Certus, within a very few days, caught by an illness, died.
13.25| I have heard from those who report it that this image haunted his mind and this his eyes, as if he saw me standing over him with a sword. Whether this is true I would not dare to affirm; yet it matters for the example that it should seem true.
13.26| You have a letter that, if you think of the length proper to a letter, is no smaller than the books you read; but you will charge it to yourself, who were not content with the books. Farewell.
14.0| Pliny to his friend Tacitus
14.1| You do not applaud yourself, and I write nothing more sincerely than about you. Whether posterity has any care for us I do not know; we at least deserve that there should be some, I do not say for talent (that would be proud), but for zeal and labour and respect for posterity. Let us only go on in the course begun, which, as it has brought few forward into light and fame, so has brought many out of darkness and silence. Farewell.
15.0| Pliny to his friend Falco
15.1| I had fled to Etruria to do everything at my own will. But not even in Etruria is this so: I am disturbed by so many petitions from farmers on every side, and such querulous ones, which I read somewhat more unwillingly than my own; for my own too I read unwillingly.
15.2| For I am revising some little pleadings, which, after a gap of time, is both cold and bitter work. Accounts are neglected as if I were away.
15.3| Sometimes, however, I mount a horse and play the father of the household to this extent, that I run through some part of the estates, but as an exercise ride. You keep up your custom, and write me, rustic as I am, the doings of the city in full. Farewell.
16.0| Pliny to his friend Mamilianus
16.1| I am not surprised that you took the greatest pleasure from that very abundant kind of hunting, since you write, in the manner of historians, that the number could not be counted. For us there is neither leisure nor wish to hunt: no leisure because the vintage is in hand, no wish because it is small.
16.2| We carry off, nevertheless, in place of new must, new little verses, and shall send them to you, who so pleasantly demand them, as soon as they seem to have finished fermenting. Farewell.
17.0| Pliny to his friend Genitor
17.1| I received your letter in which you complain that a dinner, however sumptuous, was a weariness to you, because buffoons, perverts and fools wandered among the tables.
17.2| Will you not relax something of your frowns? For my part I have nothing of the kind, but I put up with those who have it. Why, then, do I not have it? Because nothing of what a pervert offers that is soft, a buffoon that is wanton, a fool that is silly, delights me as unexpected or witty.
17.3| I am telling you not a reason but my stomach. And indeed how many do you think there are whom those things by which you and I are taken and led offend, some as foolish, some as most troublesome! How many, when a reader or lyre-player or comic actor is brought in, ask for their shoes, or recline with no less weariness than you endured those "prodigies" (for so you call them)!
17.4| Let us therefore grant indulgence to the amusements of others, that we may obtain it for our own. Farewell.
18.0| Pliny to his friend Sabinus
18.1| With what attention, what zeal, and finally what memory you have read my little books, your letter shows. You yourself therefore give yourself trouble, in drawing out and inviting me, so that I wish to share with you as much as possible.
18.2| I shall do so, but by parts and as if sorted, lest by constancy and abundance I trouble that very memory for which I thank you, and force it, loaded and as if oppressed, to let go single items for the many, the earlier ones for the later. Farewell.
19.0| Pliny to his friend Ruso
19.1| You indicate that you have read in a certain letter of mine that Verginius Rufus ordered to be inscribed on his tomb: "Here lies Rufus, who, Vindex once driven off, claimed the empire not for himself but for the fatherland." You find fault that he ordered it, and add that Frontinus did better and more rightly, in forbidding any monument to be made for him at all, and finally you ask what I think of both.
19.2| I loved both; I admired more the one you blame, and so admired him that I thought he could never be praised enough, and whose defence I must now undertake.
19.3| All who have done some great and memorable deed I judge worthy not only of pardon but of the highest praise, if they pursue the immortality they have earned, and strive to prolong the fame of a name that will live even by their last inscriptions.
19.4| Nor do I readily find anyone except Verginius whose modesty in proclaiming it was as great as the glory from his deed.
19.5| I am myself a witness, having been warmly loved and approved by him, that only once, and I was listening, was he led so far as to relate this one thing about his own affairs, that Cluvius had once spoken thus with him: "You know, Verginius, what good faith is owed to history; so if you read anything in my histories otherwise than you would wish, I ask you to forgive it." To this he replied: "Do you not know, Cluvius, that I did what I did so that it might be free for you to write whatever you pleased?"
19.6| Come now, let us compare this same Frontinus on this very point in which he seems to you more sparing and more restrained. He forbade a monument to be built, but in what terms? "Expense on a monument is superfluous; the memory of us will last, if we have deserved it by our life." Do you think it more restrained to give one's lasting memory to be read throughout the world than to mark in one place in two little verses what you have done?
19.7| Although I have no purpose of blaming the one, but of defending the other; and what defence can be more just in your eyes than from comparison with the man you preferred?
19.8| To my mind neither is to be blamed, since each strove for glory with equal desire, by a different route, the one in seeking the titles due, the other in preferring to be seen to have scorned them. Farewell.
20.0| Pliny to his friend Venator
20.1| Your letter was all the more pleasing to me the longer it was, especially since it spoke wholly of my little books; that they are a pleasure to you I do not wonder, since you love all that is mine as you love me.
20.2| I myself am just now gathering my vintage, thin indeed, yet richer than I had expected, if it is to gather when one now and then picks a grape, looks in at the press, tastes the must from the vat, and steals up on the city servants, who now preside over the country folk and have left me to the secretaries and readers. Farewell.
21.0| Pliny to his friend Sabinianus
21.1| Your freedman, with whom you had said you were angry, came to me and, falling at my feet, clung there as though they were yours. He wept much, begged much, was also silent much; in sum he made me believe in his true repentance: I believe he is reformed because he feels he has done wrong.
21.2| You are angry, I know, and angry deservedly, that too I know; but the praise of gentleness is greatest just when the cause of anger is most just.
21.3| You loved the man and, I hope, will love him: meanwhile it is enough that you let yourself be moved by entreaty. It will be possible to be angry again, if he deserves it, which you will do the more excusably having been entreated. Relax something for his very youth, for his tears, for your own indulgence. Do not torment him, do not torment yourself too; for you are tormented when, so gentle, you are angry.
21.4| I fear I may seem not to ask but to compel, if I join my prayers to his; yet I shall join them the more fully and lavishly the more sharply and sternly I rebuked him, having threatened in plain terms that I would never ask you again. That was for him, whom it was right to frighten, not the same for you; for perhaps I shall ask again, and obtain again: only let it be such that it becomes me to ask and you to grant. Farewell.
22.0| Pliny to his friend Severus
22.1| The health of Passennus Paulus has caused me great anxiety, and for many most just reasons. He is an excellent and most honourable man, most fond of us; besides, in letters he emulates, reproduces and gives back the ancients, Propertius above all, from whom he draws his descent, a true offspring and most like him in that in which that man was foremost.
22.2| If you take his elegies in your hands, you will read a work polished, soft and pleasant, and plainly written in the house of Propertius. Lately he has turned to lyric poems, in which he fashions Horace as in those the other: you would think, if kinship in studies has any force, that he is a relative of this one too. There is great variety, great pliancy: he loves as one who loves most truly, grieves as one most impatient, praises as one most generous, plays as one most witty, in short, he completes everything as if each were the only one.
22.3| For this friend, for this talent, I was no less sick in mind than he in body; at last he has recovered, at last I have. Congratulate me, congratulate letters themselves too, which in his danger ran so great a peril as they will gain glory from his safety. Farewell.
23.0| Pliny to his friend Maximus
23.1| It has often happened to me when pleading that the centumviri, after long keeping themselves within the authority and gravity of judges, all suddenly rose as if conquered and compelled, and praised me;
23.2| often I have carried from the senate such fame as I most wished: yet I never took greater pleasure than recently from a conversation of Cornelius Tacitus. He was relating that a Roman knight had sat beside him at the recent games in the circus. After various learned conversations this man had asked: "Are you an Italian or a provincial?" He had replied: "You know me, and indeed from my studies."
23.3| To this the other said: "Are you Tacitus or Pliny?" I cannot express how pleasant it is to me that our names, as though proper to letters and not to men, are returned to letters, and that each of us is known through these studies even to people to whom he is otherwise unknown.
23.4| Another similar thing happened a few days ago. There reclined with me an excellent man, Fadius Rufinus, and above him a fellow townsman of his, who had come to the city for the first time that day; Rufinus, pointing me out to him, said: "Do you see this man?" Then much about our studies; and the other said: "It is Pliny."
23.5| I shall confess the truth: I reap a great fruit of my labour. If Demosthenes rightly rejoiced because an Attic old woman recognized him thus: "This is Demosthenes," ought I not to rejoice in the fame of my name? I do indeed rejoice, and I say that I rejoice.
23.6| Nor do I fear to seem too boastful, when I put forward the judgment of others about me and not my own, especially to you, who envy no one's praises and favour ours. Farewell.
24.0| Pliny to his friend Sabinianus
24.1| You did well in receiving your freedman, once dear to you, back into your house and your heart at the urging of my letters. This will profit you; it certainly pleases me; first, because I find you so tractable that you can be ruled even in anger, then because you grant me so much that you either obey my authority or indulge my prayers. So I both praise and thank you; and at the same time I advise for the future that you show yourself placable to the faults of your household, even if there is no one to plead for them. Farewell.
25.0| Pliny to his friend Mamilianus
25.1| You complain of the throng of camp business and, as if you enjoyed the utmost leisure, you read, love and demand my sports and trifles, and urge me not moderately to compose more like them.
25.2| For I begin to seek from this kind of study not only amusement but glory too, after the judgment of you, a man most learned, most weighty, and above all this most truthful.
25.3| At present the conduct of business distracts me, moderately but still; when that is over I shall send something of the same Muses into that most kindly lap. You will give wings to my sparrows and little doves among your eagles, if they please even you; if they please only themselves, you will take care to have them kept in a cage or a nest. Farewell.
26.0| Pliny to his friend Lupercus
26.1| I said of a certain orator of our age, upright and sound indeed, but not grand or ornate enough, aptly I think: "He makes no mistake, except that he makes none."
26.2| For the orator ought to be raised up and lifted, sometimes even to boil over and be carried away, and often to approach the precipice; for generally beside the high and lofty lie steep drops. The road is safer over level ground, but lower and more depressed; falls are more frequent for those who run than those who crawl, but for the latter, if they do not slip, there is no praise, for the former there is some even if they slip.
26.3| For as in certain arts, so in eloquence nothing commends more than the risky. You see how great shouts are wont to be raised by those who climb on a rope to the top, when they seem about to fall at any moment.
26.4| For the things most wonderful are those most unhoped-for, most perilous, and as the Greeks express it better, hazardous. Therefore a helmsman's merit is by no means the same when he sails on a calm sea and on a stormy: then, with no one admiring, unpraised and inglorious he enters port, but when the ropes shriek, the mast bends and the rudders groan, then he is famous and next to the gods of the sea.
26.5| Why this? Because you seemed to me to have marked in my writings some things as swollen which I thought lofty, as shameless which I thought bold, as excessive which I thought full. But it matters a great deal whether you mark things as blameworthy or as striking.
26.6| For everyone notices what projects and stands out; but with keen attention one must judge whether it is immoderate or grand, high or monstrous. And to touch on Homer above all, whom could it escape in either direction: "and around, the great heaven trumpeted..." "in the air the spear leaned" and that whole line: "nor does a wave of the sea roar so loud"?
26.7| But there is need of examination and balance, whether these things are incredible and empty or magnificent and heavenly. Nor do I now think that I have said or could say anything like them (I am not so mad), but I want this understood, that the reins of eloquence must be loosened, and the rush of talents not broken back in the narrowest circle.
26.8| "But the case of orators is one thing, that of poets another." As if Marcus Tullius were less daring! Though I leave him out; for I think there is no doubt. But does Demosthenes himself, that standard and rule of the orator, hold himself back and restrain himself when he says those very well-known words: "foul men and flatterers and accursed ones," and again "I did not fortify the city with stones or with bricks," and at once "not to throw Euboea forward from the sea in front of Attica," and elsewhere: "But I think, men of Athens, by the gods, that he is drunk with the greatness of what he has done"?
26.9| What is bolder now than that most beautiful and longest digression: "for it is a disease"? What of these, shorter than the foregoing but equal in daring: "then I, against Python swaggering and pouring in a flood upon you"? From the same stamp: "but when someone, like this man, has grown strong through greed and wickedness, the first pretext and a small stumble throws everything off and dissolves it." Like these: "roped off from all the rights in the city" and likewise, in that very place: "You, Aristogeiton, have betrayed pity in these matters, or rather have abolished it altogether. Do not, then, moor at those harbours which you yourself silted up and filled with barriers." And he had said: "I see none of these places passable for him, but all steep, ravines, pits." And next: "I fear that you may seem to some to be training up whoever in the city wishes always to be wicked," and not enough: "for I do not suppose that our ancestors built these courts for you so that you might rear such men in them," in addition: "but if he is a huckster of wickedness and a retail-dealer and a money-changer" and a thousand such, to omit those which Aeschines calls marvels, not words.
26.10| I have fallen into the opposite: you will say that he too is blamed for these. But see how much greater is the man who is blamed than the man who blames, and greater for these very things too; for in other things his force, in these his grandeur shines out.
26.11| Did Aeschines himself, however, abstain from what he carped at in Demosthenes? "For ought the orator and the law to utter the same? but when the law sends out one voice, the orator another." In another place: "then it appears about everything in the decree." Again elsewhere: "but sitting in ambush and lying in wait at the hearing, you drive him into illegal arguments."
26.12| He so approved of it that he repeats it: "but just as in the horse races you drive him on into the very course of the business." Now those more carefully and tightly put: "but you make sores..." or "having seized him as a plunderer of affairs sailing through the commonwealth?"
26.13| I expect that some things from this letter, such as "the rudders groan" and "next to the gods of the sea," you will pierce through with the same marks as those I am writing about; for I understand that, while asking pardon for the former, I have fallen into those very things you had marked. But pierce them if you like, provided you set a day right now on which we may examine both those and these face to face. For either you will make me timid or I shall make you rash. Farewell.
27.0| Pliny to his friend Paternus
27.1| How great the power, how great the dignity, how great the majesty, in short how great the divinity of history is, I have felt both often at other times and lately. A certain man had recited a most truthful book, and had kept a part of it back for another day.
27.2| Behold, some friends of a certain man came, begging and imploring him not to recite what remained. So great is the shame of hearing what they did, in men who feel none at doing what they blush to hear. And he indeed granted what was asked (his good faith allowed it); the book, however, like the deed itself, remains, will remain and will always be read, the more because not at once. For men are spurred to learn what is put off. Farewell.
28.0| Pliny to his friend Romanus
28.1| After a long time I received your letters, three together, all most elegant, most loving, and such as they should be that come from you, especially when longed for. In one of them you impose on me a very pleasant service, that your letter be delivered to Plotina, a most revered woman: it shall be delivered.
28.2| In the same you recommend Popilius Artemisius: I at once provided what he asked. You also say that you have gathered a moderate vintage: this complaint I share with you, though in a most different part of the world.
28.3| In your second letter you report that you are at times dictating and at times writing a great deal, and so make us present to you. I thank you; I would thank you more if you had wished me to read those very things you write or dictate. And it was fair that you should know my writings as I know yours, even if they concerned someone other than me.
28.4| You promise at the end, when you have heard something more certain about the arrangement of our life, to be a runaway from your household affairs and to fly to us at once, we who are already weaving you fetters which you can in no way break.
28.5| The third letter contained that the speech for Clarius was delivered to you, and that it seemed fuller than it was when you heard me deliver it. It is fuller; for I inserted much afterwards. You add that you sent other letters written with more care; you ask whether I received them. I did not receive them, and am eager to. So send them at the first opportunity, with interest added indeed, which I (can I be more sparing?) shall reckon at centesimae. Farewell.
29.0| Pliny to his friend Rusticus
29.1| As it is better to do one thing outstandingly than many things moderately, so it is better to do very many things moderately if you cannot do one thing outstandingly. With this in view I try various kinds of studies, trusting none enough.
29.2| Therefore, when you read this or that, you will pardon each piece as one among many, not as one standing alone. Or is there an excuse in number in the other arts, but a harder law in literature, in which achievement is more difficult? But why do I speak of pardon as if ungrateful? For if you receive the next with the same kindness as the earlier, praise is rather to be hoped for than pardon begged. To me, however, pardon is enough. Farewell.
30.0| Pliny to his friend Geminus
30.1| You praise to me, often in person and now by letter, your Nonius, because he is generous to certain persons: I praise him too, if only not to these alone. For I want one who is truly generous to give to his country, his relatives, his connections and friends, but friends, I mean, who are poor, not like those who give chiefly to those who can give most.
30.2| These men, with gifts limed and barbed, I think do not bring out what is their own but snatch what is another's. There are those of like nature who take from one what they give to another, and seek the fame of generosity through avarice.
30.3| The first thing is to be content with one's own, then, in a kind of circle of fellowship, to approach those whom you know especially to be in need, sustaining and cherishing them. If he does all this, he is to be praised in every way; if one thing only, less, but still to be praised:
30.4| so rare is even an example of imperfect generosity. Such a craving for having has seized men that they seem to be possessed rather than to possess. Farewell.
31.0| Pliny to his friend Sardus
31.1| Since I left you, I have been no less with you than when I was at your house. For I read your book, going over again and again especially (for I shall not lie) what you wrote about me, in which you were most abundant. How many things, how various, how not the same about the same man and yet not different you said!
31.2| Shall I give praise and thanks together? I can do neither enough, and if I could, I should fear it would be arrogant to praise for the very things for which I was giving thanks. One thing I shall add: all seemed to me the more praiseworthy the more pleasing, the more pleasing the more praiseworthy they were. Farewell.
32.0| Pliny to his friend Titianus
32.1| What are you doing, what are you going to do? I myself live a most pleasant life, that is, a most leisurely one. Hence I do not wish to write longer letters, but wish to read them, the former as one fastidious, the latter as one at leisure. For nothing is lazier than the fastidious, or more curious than the idle. Farewell.
33.0| Pliny to his friend Caninius
33.1| I have come upon a matter that is true but very like a fiction, and worthy of that most joyful, lofty and plainly poetic talent of yours; I came upon it while over dinner various marvels were being related from this side and that. The author is greatly trustworthy: although what has a poet to do with trust? Yet he is an author whom you would have believed even if he were about to write history.
33.2| There is in Africa the colony of Hippo, close to the sea. A navigable lagoon lies beside it; from this an estuary comes out after the manner of a river, which by alternate turns, as the tide either checks or drives it, is now carried into the sea, now given back to the lagoon.
33.3| Every age here is taken with the love of fishing, sailing and even swimming, especially the boys, whom leisure and play invite. Their glory and courage is to be carried out farthest: he is the victor who leaves farthest behind both the shore and the swimmers with it.
33.4| In this contest a certain boy, bolder than the rest, was making for the farther waters. A dolphin met him, and now went before the boy, now followed, now circled him, finally went under him, set him down, went under him again, and carried him, trembling, first out to the deep, then turns to the shore and gives him back to the land and his comrades.
33.5| The report creeps through the colony; all run together, look at the boy himself as a marvel, question him, listen, tell. The next day they besiege the shore, look out to sea and at anything like the sea. The boys swim, among them that one, but more cautiously. The dolphin again at the time, again to the boy. He flees with the rest. The dolphin, as if to invite and call him back, leaps up, dives, and winds and unwinds various circles.
33.6| This on the second day, this on the third, this on many, until shame of fear came upon men reared in the sea. They approach and play with it and call it, even touch and stroke it as it offers itself. Boldness grows with trial. Most of all the boy who first tried it swims up to it as it swims, leaps on its back, is carried and carried back, thinks himself recognized and loved, loves in return; neither fears, neither is feared; his confidence and its gentleness grow.
33.7| Nor less do other boys go along on the right and the left, urging and warning. There went with them (this too is wonderful) another dolphin, only a spectator and companion. For it neither did nor suffered anything like it, but led that other one forth and back, as the other boys do the boy.
33.8| Incredible, yet as true as what went before: the dolphin, the carrier and playmate of the boys, was also wont to be drawn onto land, and dried on the sands, and when it had grown warm, rolled back into the sea.
33.9| It is agreed that Octavius Avitus, legate of the proconsul, out of a misplaced scruple poured perfume over it when it was drawn up on the shore, and that it, from the strangeness and smell of it, fled back into the deep, and was not seen except after many days, languid and sad, and soon, strength restored, took up its former playfulness and its usual services.
33.10| All the magistrates flowed together to the spectacle, by whose arrival and moderate stay the community was worn down with new expenses. Finally the place itself was losing its quiet and its seclusion: it was resolved to kill secretly that to which people were thronging.
33.11| With what pity, with what abundance you will lament it, adorn it, exalt it! Although there is no need for you to invent or add anything; it is enough that what is true not be diminished. Farewell.
34.0| Pliny to his friend Tranquillus
34.1| Resolve my uncertainty: I hear that I read badly, at least verses; for speeches I read well enough, but verses so much the less. I think therefore, when about to recite to intimate friends, of trying my freedman. This too suits an intimate audience, that the man I have chosen will read not well, but better, I know, if indeed he is not thrown into confusion.
34.2| For he is as new a reader as I am a poet. I myself do not know what I am to do meanwhile as he reads: whether I should sit fixed and silent and like a man with nothing to do, or, as some do, accompany what he delivers with murmurs, eyes and hand. But I think I dance no less badly than I read. Again I say, relieve my anxiety and write back truthfully whether it is better to read very badly than either not to do these things or to do them. Farewell.
35.0| Pliny to his friend Atrius
35.1| I have received the book you sent, and I thank you. At present, however, I am extremely busy. So I have not yet read it, although otherwise I want to very much indeed. But I owe such reverence both to literature itself and to your writings that I think it irreverent to pick them up unless my mind is at leisure.
35.2| I heartily approve of the care you take in going over your works again. Still, there is some limit: first, because too much care wears a work away more than it improves it; and second, because it calls us back from more recent work, and at the same time neither finishes the earlier pieces nor allows us to begin the later ones. Farewell.
36.0| Pliny to his friend Fuscus
36.1| You ask how I arrange my day in summer at my Tuscan estate. I wake when I please, usually around the first hour, often before, rarely later. The shutters stay closed; for in the silence and the darkness, wonderfully withdrawn from whatever distracts, free and left to myself, I do not make my mind follow my eyes but my eyes follow my mind, for they see what the mind sees whenever they see nothing else.
36.2| If I have anything in hand I think it out, think it out word for word, like someone writing and correcting, sometimes less, sometimes more, according as it could be composed and held in the memory with difficulty or with ease. I call my secretary, let in the daylight, and dictate what I have shaped; he goes away, is called back again, and is again dismissed.
36.3| At the fourth or fifth hour (for the time is not fixed and measured), as the day invites, I betake myself to the terrace or the covered colonnade, think out the rest and dictate it. I get into a carriage. There too I do the same as when walking or lying down; my concentration lasts, refreshed by the very change. I sleep again for a little, then walk, then I read aloud a speech, Greek or Latin, clearly and with emphasis, not so much for the sake of my voice as of my digestion; but at the same time my voice is strengthened as well.
36.4| I walk again, am oiled, take exercise, and bathe. While I dine, if my wife is with me or a few friends, someone reads aloud from a book; after dinner there is comedy or a lyre-player; then I walk with my people, among whom there are some learned men. So the evening is drawn out with varied conversation, and even the longest day is well laid to rest.
36.5| Sometimes something in this routine is changed; for if I have lain or walked a long time, after my sleep and my reading I ride, not in a carriage, but on a horse, which takes less time because it is faster. Friends turn up from the neighbouring towns and draw part of the day to themselves, and sometimes, when I am tired, come to my rescue with a well-timed interruption.
36.6| Sometimes I hunt, but not without my writing tablets, so that even if I have caught nothing I may still bring something back. Time is given also to my tenants, though not enough, as they themselves think; and their rustic complaints make my literary work and these city occupations more welcome to me. Farewell.
37.0| Pliny to his friend Paulinus
37.1| It is not in your nature to demand these conventional and, as it were, public courtesies from intimate friends against their own interest; and I love you too steadily to fear that you will take it otherwise than I would wish if I do not see you entering on your consulship right on the Kalends, especially since I am detained by the need to let my farms, which will settle things for a good many years, and in which I must adopt new plans.
37.2| For in the previous five-year period, despite large rebates, the arrears have grown; as a result most of my tenants no longer take any care to reduce their debt, since they despair of being able to pay it off in full; they even seize and consume whatever is produced, like men who think they will no longer be saving it for themselves.
37.3| So I must confront these growing evils and find a cure. There is one way of curing them: if I let the farms not for money but for shares of the crop, and then put some of my own people in charge as overseers of the work and guardians of the produce. And besides, there is no more just kind of return than what the land, the weather and the season bring in.
37.4| But this calls for great honesty, sharp eyes and many hands. Still, it must be tried, and, as in a chronic illness, any remedies that a change may offer must be attempted.
37.5| You see how far from frivolous is the reason that does not allow me to attend the first day of your consulship; yet I shall celebrate it here too, as if I were present, with prayers, with joy and with congratulations. Farewell.
38.0| Pliny to his friend Saturninus
38.1| Yes, I do praise our friend Rufus, not because you asked me to do so, but because he is most deserving of it. For I have read his book, perfect in every respect, to which my love for the man himself has added much charm in my eyes. Still, I have judged it; for those who read with malice are not the only judges. Farewell.
39.0| Pliny to his friend Mustius
39.1| On the advice of the soothsayers I must rebuild the temple of Ceres on my estate, better and larger; it is certainly old and cramped, although on its fixed day it is extremely crowded.
39.2| For on the Ides of September a great crowd gathers from the whole district, much business is transacted, many vows are made and many are paid; but there is no shelter nearby from either rain or sun.
39.3| So I think I shall be acting both generously and devoutly if I build the temple as beautifully as possible and add colonnades to the temple, the temple for the use of the goddess, the colonnades for the use of men.
39.4| I would like you, then, to buy four marble columns, of whatever kind you think best, and to buy marble with which to adorn the floor and the walls. We shall also have to make a statue of the goddess herself, since that old wooden one has lost some of its parts through age.
39.5| As for the colonnades, nothing occurs to me for the present that it seems I need to ask you to send from where you are, except that you should draw up a plan suited to the site. For they cannot be built round the temple, since the temple ground is hemmed in by a river and its precipitous banks on one side, and by a road on the other.
39.6| Beyond the road there is a very broad meadow, in which the colonnades could quite fittingly be laid out facing the temple itself; unless you find something better, you who are accustomed to overcome the difficulties of sites by your skill. Farewell.
40.0| Pliny to his friend Fuscus
40.1| You write that you were very pleased by my letter in which you learned how I spend my summer leisure at my Tuscan estate; you ask what I change from this in winter at my Laurentine villa.
40.2| Nothing, except that the midday sleep is cut out and a good deal of time is taken from the night, either before or after daylight; and, if there is the pressing need of a case to plead, which is frequent in winter, there is no longer any place after dinner for a comic actor or a lyre-player, but what I have dictated is gone over again and again, and at the same time the memory profits from the frequent correction.
40.3| There you have my habits in summer and in winter; you may add spring and autumn to these, which lie between winter and summer and, just as they lose nothing from the day, gain a very little from the night. Farewell.

======== Letters — Book X ========

1.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
1.1| Your devotion, most revered Emperor, had wished that you should take your father's place as late as could be; yet the immortal gods hastened to bring your virtues to the helm of the state which you had already taken up.
1.2| I pray, therefore, that every prosperity, that is, everything worthy of your age, may befall you, and through you the human race. I wish you strength and good cheer, best of Emperors, both in private and in public life.
2.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
2.1| I cannot express in words, Sir, how much joy you have brought me by thinking me worthy of the right of three children. For although you granted this at the request of Julius Servianus, a most excellent man and most devoted to you, I still understand from your reply that you bestowed it on him the more gladly because it was for me that he was asking.
2.2| I seem, then, to have attained the height of my wishes, since at the very beginning of your most happy reign you have shown that I belong among those who enjoy your special favour; and so all the more do I long for children, whom I wanted to have even in that most grim age, as you may believe from my two marriages.
2.3| But the gods knew better, for they kept everything untouched for your goodness; I preferred to become a father at this time rather, when I would be both safe and happy.
3A.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
3A.1| As soon as your kindness, Sir, promoted me to the prefecture of the treasury of Saturn, I gave up all briefs as an advocate (which in any case I had never undertaken indiscriminately), so that I might devote my whole mind to the office entrusted to me.
3A.2| For this reason, when the provincials asked for me as their counsel against Marius Priscus, I both begged to be excused from this duty and obtained my request. But when afterwards the consul designate proposed that those of us whose excuses had been accepted should be approached and asked to put ourselves at the senate's disposal and allow our names to be cast into the urn, I thought it most in keeping with the tranquillity of your reign not to oppose the wish of that most distinguished order, especially when it was expressed so moderately.
3A.3| I hope that you will consider that there is good reason for this compliance of mine, since I desire all my deeds and words to win the approval of your most upright character.
3B.0| Trajan to Pliny
3B.1| You have played the part both of a good citizen and of a good senator by rendering to that most distinguished order the compliance which it most justly required. I am confident that you will fulfil that part in keeping with the trust you have undertaken.
4.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
4.1| Your kindness, best of Emperors, which I experience in the fullest measure, encourages me to dare to be indebted to you on behalf of my friends as well; and among them Voconius Romanus claims for himself perhaps the foremost place, my fellow pupil and companion from earliest youth.
4.2| For these reasons I had also asked your deified father to promote him to the most distinguished order. But this wish of mine has been kept for your goodness, because Romanus' mother had not yet completed in a fully legal manner her gift of four million sesterces, which she had declared she was conferring on her son in a letter written to your father; this she has since done, at my prompting.
4.3| For she has transferred the estates, and has completed all the other formalities that are usually required to carry out a transfer.
4.4| Since, then, the obstacle that was delaying our hopes has been removed, it is with great confidence that I give you my pledge for the character of my friend Romanus, which is adorned both by liberal studies and by exceptional devotion to his family, the devotion that earned him this very gift from his mother, and also, immediately, his father's inheritance and adoption by his stepfather.
4.5| All this is enhanced by the distinction of his birth and of his father's wealth; and I trust that each of these qualities will gain much recommendation to your kindness from my entreaties as well.
4.6| I ask you therefore, Sir, to let me enjoy the congratulations I so deeply desire, and to grant this to what I hope is an honourable affection of mine, so that I may be able to take pride in your judgments not only in my own case but also in my friend's.
5.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
5.1| Last year, Sir, when I was afflicted by a very serious illness, to the point of danger to my life, I engaged a masseur-physician; and I can only repay his care and devotion as they deserve through the favour of your kindness.
5.2| I therefore ask you to grant him Roman citizenship. For he is of foreign status, having been freed by a foreign woman. His name is Arpocras; his patroness was Thermuthis, daughter of Theon, who died long ago. I also ask you to grant the full rights of Quirites to the freedwomen of Antonia Maximilla, a most distinguished lady, Hedia and Antonia Harmeris; I make this request of you at the request of their patroness.
6.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
6.1| I thank you, Sir, for granting without delay both the full rights of Quirites to the freedwomen of a lady closely connected with me and Roman citizenship to Arpocras, my masseur-physician. But when I was submitting his age and property as you had instructed, I was advised by people more experienced than I that I ought first to have obtained Alexandrian citizenship for him, and then Roman, since he was an Egyptian.
6.2| I, however, believing that there was no difference between Egyptians and other foreigners, had been content to write to you only that he had been freed by a foreign woman and that his patroness had died long ago. I do not complain of this ignorance of mine, through which it has come about that I am indebted to you more than once for the same man. So I ask you, in order that I may enjoy your favour lawfully, to grant him Alexandrian citizenship [and Roman] as well. To prevent anything from delaying your kindness again, I have sent his age and property to the freedmen of yours to whom you had directed me.
7.0| Trajan to Pliny
7.1| In accordance with the established practice of emperors, I have resolved not to grant Alexandrian citizenship lightly. But since you have already obtained Roman citizenship for Arpocras, your masseur-physician, I cannot bring myself to refuse this request of yours too. You will have to let me know which nome he comes from, so that I can send a letter for you to my friend Pompeius Planta, prefect of Egypt.
8.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
8.1| Sir, when your deified father had urged all citizens to generosity, both by a most beautiful speech and by a most honourable example, I asked him to allow me to move to the town the statues of emperors, which I had been keeping on distant estates, handed down to me through several successions just as I had received them, and to add a statue of himself.
8.2| He had granted me this with the fullest testimony of approval; I at once wrote to the decurions to assign a site where I could build a temple with my own money; in honour of the work itself they offered me the choice of the place.
8.3| But I was held back first by my own health, then by that of your father, and afterwards by the duties of the office entrusted to me by you; now I seem able, most conveniently, to hurry out to the spot. For my month's service comes to an end on the Kalends of September, while the month after it has several holidays.
8.4| I ask, therefore, above all that you allow me to adorn the work I am about to begin with your statue also; and then, so that I may do this as soon as possible, that you grant me leave of absence.
8.5| It is not in keeping with my frankness to hide from your goodness that you will, incidentally, be doing a very great service to my private affairs. For the letting of the lands I hold in the same region, which in any case exceeds 400, cannot be put off, so much so that a new tenant must carry out the next pruning. Besides, successive bad harvests force me to think of remissions of rent, an account of which I cannot draw up unless I am there.
8.6| I shall therefore owe to your indulgence, Sir, both the promptness of my dutiful tribute and the ordering of my affairs, if you give me thirty days' leave for both these purposes. For I cannot fix a shorter time, since both the town and the lands of which I speak lie beyond the hundred-and-fiftieth milestone.
9.0| Trajan to Pliny
9.1| You have given many reasons for asking leave, and all of them public ones; but for me your wish alone would have been enough. For I do not doubt that you will return to so demanding an office as soon as you can. I allow a statue of me to be set up by you in the place you desire, although I am very sparing of honours of that kind, so that I may not seem to have hindered the course of your devotion toward me.
10.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
10.1| Sir, I cannot express in words with what joy your letters have filled me, from which I learned that you have granted Alexandrian citizenship also to Harpocras, my masseur, although according to the established practice of emperors you had resolved not to give it lightly. I inform you that Harpocras is of the nome of Memphis.
10.2| I ask, therefore, most indulgent emperor, that you send a letter, as you promised, to Pompeius Planta, prefect of Egypt, your friend. As I am going out to meet you, so that I may the sooner, Sir, enjoy the joy of your most longed-for arrival, I ask that you allow me to go as far as possible to meet you.
11.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
11.1| My recent illness, Sir, put me under obligation to the physician Postumius Marinus; I can repay him in equal thanks by your kindness, if you will grant my prayers in accordance with your habitual goodness.
11.2| I ask, therefore, that you give citizenship to his relatives, to Chrysippus, Mithridates' son, and to Chrysippus's wife Stratonice, daughter of Epigonus, and likewise to the same Chrysippus's children, Epigonus and Mithridates, on the terms that they remain in their father's power and that the rights of patrons over freedmen be preserved for them. I ask likewise that you grant the right of Roman citizenship to Lucius Satrius Abascantus, Publius Caesius Phosphorus and Pancharia Soteris; this I ask from you with their patrons' consent.
12.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
12.1| I know, Sir, that our prayers cling to your memory, which holds most tenaciously to doing good. Yet since you have been indulgent in this matter too, I remind you and at the same time earnestly ask that you deem Attius Sura worthy of the honour of the praetorship, since a place is vacant.
12.2| Toward this hope, a man otherwise very quiet is encouraged by the splendour of his birth, by his utmost integrity in poverty, and above all by the good fortune of the times, which calls forth and lifts up the good conscience of your citizens to enjoy your indulgence.
13.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
13.1| Sir, since I know that it contributes to the witness and praise of my character to be honoured by the judgment of so good an emperor, I ask you to deem it fitting to add to the rank to which your indulgence has advanced me either an augurship or a septemvirate, since they are vacant, so that by right of priesthood I may publicly pray to the gods on your behalf, whom I now pray to in private devotion.
14.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
14.1| Best of emperors, I congratulate you, both on your own account and on that of the commonwealth, on your victory, the greatest, the most beautiful, the most ancient; and I pray the immortal gods that so happy an outcome may follow all your designs, while by such great virtues the glory of the empire is both renewed and increased.
15.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
15.1| Because I trust, Sir, that it is a matter of your concern, I report to you that I have sailed to Ephesus with all my party, round Malea, although held back by contrary winds. Now I intend to make for the province partly in coasting vessels, partly in carriages. For just as the heat is oppressive for travel by land, so the etesian winds are against continuous sailing.
16.0| Trajan to Pliny
16.1| You have reported rightly, my dearest Secundus. For it concerns me by what route you arrive in your province. And you wisely decide to use now ships, now carriages, as the places advise.
17A.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
17A.1| Just as I had a most healthful voyage as far as Ephesus, Sir, so from there, after I began to travel by carriage, I was troubled by the most oppressive heat and even by slight fevers, and I stopped at Pergamum.
17A.2| Again, when I had changed to small coasting boats, held back by contrary winds, somewhat later than I had hoped, that is on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of October, I entered Bithynia. Yet I cannot complain of the delay, since it fell to me, which was most auspicious, to celebrate your birthday in the province.
17A.3| I am now examining the expenditures, revenues and debtors of the community of Prusa; the more I handle the matter, the more necessary I understand this to be. For much money is being held back by private persons for various reasons; besides, certain sums are being paid out on outlays that are by no means lawful.
17A.4| I have written this to you, Sir, at the very beginning of my arrival.
17B.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
17B.1| On the fifteenth day before the Kalends of October, Sir, I entered the province, which I found in that obedience and that loyalty toward you which you deserve from the human race.
17B.2| Sir, consider whether you judge it necessary to send a surveyor here. For it seems that considerable sums of money could be recovered from the overseers of public works, if the measurements are honestly carried out. So at least I foresee from the accounts of Prusa, which I am handling most closely at this moment.
18.0| Trajan to Pliny
18.1| I could wish that you had been able to reach Bithynia without complaint from your frail body or from your party, and that your trip from Ephesus had been like the voyage which you had experienced up to that point.
18.2| On what day you arrived in Bithynia I learned, my dearest Secundus, from your letter. The provincials, I believe, will understand that provision has been made for them by me. For you also will take pains that it be clear to them that you were chosen to be sent to them in my place.
18.3| The accounts of the communities, moreover, must be examined by you before all else; for it is well established that they have been badly handled. I have hardly enough surveyors even for those works which are done at Rome or nearby; but in every province men can be found who may be trusted, and so you will not lack them, provided you are willing to examine things diligently.
19.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
19.1| I ask, Sir, that you guide me with your counsel in my uncertainty, whether I ought to maintain the prison guards through the public slaves of the communities, as has been done until now, or through soldiers. For I fear both that they will be guarded without enough fidelity by the public slaves, and that this duty will tie up no small number of soldiers.
19.2| For the present I have joined a few soldiers to the public slaves. Yet I see the danger that this very thing may become a cause of negligence in both, while each side trusts it can throw the shared fault on the other.
20.0| Trajan to Pliny
20.1| There need be no turning of more of our fellow soldiers to the holding of the prisons, my dearest Secundus. Let us persevere in the custom which that province has, that they be guarded by public slaves.
20.2| For it rests on your strictness and diligence that they do this faithfully. Above all, as you write, it is to be feared that if soldiers are mixed in with the public slaves, they will be more negligent through trust in one another; but let this too stay with us, that the fewest possible must be drawn away from the standards.
21.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
21.1| Gavius Bassus, prefect of the Pontic shore, came to me, Sir, with the greatest respect and the greatest attentiveness, and was with me for several days; so far as I could see, an excellent man and worthy of your indulgence. I made it known to him that you had instructed that he be content with ten beneficiarii, two horsemen and one centurion from the cohorts which you wished me to command.
21.2| He replied that this number did not suffice for him, and that he himself would write to you on the matter. This was the reason why I did not think that those he has beyond the number should be recalled at once.
22.0| Trajan to Pliny
22.1| Gavius Bassus has written to me also that the number of soldiers which I included in my instructions to be given to him is not enough for him. I have ordered what I wrote in reply to him to be added to this letter, so that you may know it. It makes a great difference whether the matter demands it or he wishes to use them more widely on this pretext.
22.2| We, however, must look only to what is useful, and, as far as can be done, take care that soldiers are not away from the standards.
23.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
23.1| The people of Prusa, Sir, have a bath; it is dirty and old. They therefore think it very important that a new one be made; and it seems to me that you can indulge their wish.
23.2| For there will be money from which it may be made: first that which I have already begun to recover and exact from private persons; then that which they themselves, accustomed to spend on oil, are ready to contribute to the work of the bath; which, besides, both the dignity of the community and the splendour of your age demand.
24.0| Trajan to Pliny
24.1| If the construction of a new bath is not going to overburden the resources of the people of Prusa, we can indulge their wish, provided that on that account nothing is levied or less is provided to them in future for their necessary expenses.
25.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
25.1| Servilius Pudens, the legate, came to Nicomedia, Sir, on the eighth day before the Kalends of December, and freed me from the anxiety of a long wait.
26.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
26.1| Rosianus Geminus, Sir, has been joined to me by your kindnesses to me in the closest bond; for I had him as quaestor in my consulship. I have found him most attentive to me; he shows me such respect after the consulship, and adds to the pledges of public connection the services of private friendship.
26.2| I ask, therefore, that you yourself favour my prayers before you, in keeping with his standing. If you believe me at all, you will grant him your indulgence; he himself will take pains to earn greater things in whatever you entrust to him. What makes me more sparing in praise is that I hope his integrity, honesty and industry are thoroughly known to you, not only through the offices he held in the City under your eyes, but also from his service as a comrade in arms.
26.3| There is one thing which, because of my affection for him, I do not yet seem to myself to have done fully enough, and I do it again and again, and ask you, Sir, to be willing that I should rejoice, as soon as possible, in the honouring of my quaestor's rank, that is, through him, of my own.
27.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
27.1| Maximus, your freedman and procurator, Sir, in addition to the ten beneficiarii whom you ordered me to assign to Gemellinus, an excellent man, affirms that six soldiers are necessary to himself as well. For the time being I thought they should be left in his service, as I had found them, especially since he was going to Paphlagonia to procure grain. Indeed, for his protection, because he so desired, I added two horsemen. For the future, I ask that you write back what you wish to be observed.
28.0| Trajan to Pliny
28.1| You have rightly furnished my freedman Maximus with soldiers now, as he sets out to procure grain. For he too was discharging an extraordinary duty. When he has returned to his former business, the two soldiers given by you will be enough for him, and as many from Virdius Gemellinus, my procurator, whom he assists.
29.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
29.1| Sempronius Caelianus, an excellent young man, sent me two slaves found among the recruits; I have postponed their punishment so as to consult you, the founder and strengthener of military discipline, about the manner of the penalty.
29.2| For I myself am uncertain, chiefly for this reason, that although they had already spoken the oath, they had not yet been distributed into units. I ask, therefore, Sir, that you write what I ought to follow, especially since it bears on precedent.
30.0| Trajan to Pliny
30.1| Sempronius Caelianus acted in accordance with my instructions in sending to you those about whom it will have to be inquired whether they appear to have deserved capital punishment. It matters, however, whether they offered themselves as volunteers, or were chosen, or even were given as substitutes.
30.2| If they were chosen, the examination was at fault; if they were given as substitutes, the blame lies with those who gave them; if they came of their own accord, knowing their own condition, they will have to be punished. For it does not matter much that they have not yet been distributed into units. For that day on which they were first approved demanded from them the truth about their origin.
31.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
31.1| With your greatness left unharmed, Sir, you must descend to my concerns, since you have given me the right to refer to you the matters about which I am in doubt.
31.2| In very many communities, most of all at Nicomedia and Nicaea, certain persons who were condemned either to the works or to the gladiatorial school and to similar kinds of punishments perform the duty and service of public slaves, and even receive an annual allowance like public slaves. When I heard this, I hesitated long and much over what I ought to do.
31.3| For I thought it too severe to return to their punishment, after a long time, most of them now old and, as is affirmed, living frugally and modestly, and I thought it not honourable enough to keep the condemned in public offices; again, I judged it useless for them to be fed idle by the commonwealth, and dangerous for them not to be fed.
31.4| Of necessity, therefore, I left the whole matter in suspense while I consulted you. You will ask, perhaps, how it came about that they were released from the punishments to which they had been condemned. I too inquired, but found nothing that I can affirm to you. While the decrees by which they had been condemned were produced, there were no records by which their release could be proved.
31.5| There were some, however, who said that they had been dismissed on their petitions, by order of proconsuls or legates. What added credibility was that it was believable that no one would have dared this without authority.
32.0| Trajan to Pliny
32.1| Let us remember that you were sent into that province because many things in it appeared to need correction. And this above all will need correcting, that those who had been condemned to punishment have not only been released from it without authority, as you write, but are even brought back into the position of honest servants.
32.2| Those, therefore, who were condemned within these last ten years and were not released by any proper authority, ought to be returned to their punishment; if any older ones are found, old men condemned more than ten years ago, let us distribute them to those services which are not far from punishment. It is customary also for such persons to be assigned to the baths, to the cleaning of sewers, and likewise to the repair of roads and streets.
33.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
33.1| While I was making a tour of another part of the province, a very great fire at Nicomedia destroyed many private houses and two public buildings, the Gerusia and the Iseon, although a street lay between.
33.2| It was spread more widely, first by the violence of the wind, then by the idleness of the people, who, it is well established, stood idle and motionless as spectators of so great an evil; and besides, there is nowhere in public any pump, any bucket, in short any apparatus for putting out fires. And these, as I have already directed, will be provided;
33.3| you, Sir, consider whether you think a guild of builders should be established, of 150 men at most. I shall take care that no one is admitted except a builder, and that they do not use the right granted for any other purpose; nor will it be difficult to watch so few.
34.0| Trajan to Pliny
34.1| It has indeed occurred to you, following the examples of a good many places, that a guild of builders could be established among the people of Nicomedia. But let us remember that that province, and especially those communities, have been troubled by factions of this kind. Whatever name we give, for whatever reason, to those who have been drawn together for the same purpose, they will soon become political clubs.
34.2| It is therefore better to provide the things that can help in checking fires, and to warn the owners of estates to hold them back themselves and, if the situation requires, to use the rush of the populace for this purpose.
35.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
35.1| We have undertaken, Sir, and likewise discharged, the solemn vows for your safety, in which the public welfare is contained, praying the gods that they may be willing for these vows always to be paid and always to be sealed.
36.0| Trajan to Pliny
36.1| That you, with the provincials, have paid and gladly pronounced vows to the immortal gods for my welfare and safety, I learned from your letter, my dearest Secundus.
37.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
37.1| On an aqueduct, Sir, the people of Nicomedia spent XXX CCCXVIII sesterces; it was abandoned while still unfinished, and has even been torn down; again, 200 was paid out on another aqueduct. This one too being abandoned, a fresh expenditure is needed, so that they may have water, who have badly wasted so great a sum of money.
37.2| I myself came to a very pure spring, from which the water seems to need to be brought, as was attempted at the beginning, by an arched structure, so that it does not come merely to the level, low-lying parts of the city. A very few arches still stand; some can be raised again with squared stone, which was taken from the earlier work; some part, as it seems to me, will have to be done in brickwork, for that is both easier and cheaper.
37.3| But above all it is necessary that you send either a water-finder or an architect, lest what happened happen again. This one thing I affirm, that both the usefulness and the beauty of the work are most worthy of your age.
38.0| Trajan to Pliny
38.1| Care must be taken that water be brought into the city of Nicomedia. I truly believe that you will undertake this work with the diligence you ought. But, by my faith, it belongs to that same diligence of yours to inquire through whose fault the people of Nicomedia have wasted so great a sum of money up to this time, lest, while they oblige one another, they both begin aqueducts and abandon them. Whatever you find out, bring it to my knowledge.
39.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
39.1| The theatre at Nicaea, Sir, built for the greater part but still unfinished, has drained more than ten million sesterces, as I hear; for the account of the work has not been examined: I fear to no purpose.
39.2| For it has settled and gapes with huge cracks, whether the cause is the damp and soft ground, or the stone itself, which is slight and crumbling: it is certainly worth deliberating whether it should be completed, or left, or even torn down. For the props and substructures with which it is constantly propped up seem to me not so much firm as costly.
39.3| Many things are owed to this theatre from the promises of private persons, such as the basilicas around it, and the porticoes above the auditorium. All these are now put off while what must be completed first is stalled.
39.4| The same people of Nicaea, before my arrival, began to rebuild a gymnasium lost in a fire, far more extensive and spacious than it had been, and have already spent a good deal; there is a danger that it will be to little use; for it is ill-arranged and sprawling. Besides, an architect, certainly a rival of the man by whom the work was begun, affirms that the walls, although twenty-two feet wide, cannot bear the loads placed on them, because they are filled in the middle with rubble and are not bound round with brickwork.
39.5| The people of Claudiopolis also, in a low-lying place, with a mountain even overhanging, are digging out rather than building an enormous bath, and that from money which the councillors added by your kindness either have already offered on their entry or will contribute at our demand.
39.6| Therefore, since I fear that there public money, and here your gift, which is more precious than any money, may be badly placed, I am compelled to ask you to send an architect, not only on account of the theatre but of these baths as well, to look into whether it is more useful, after the expenditure that has been made, to complete the works in some fashion as they were begun, or to correct what seems to need correcting and move what ought to be moved, lest, while we wish to preserve what has been spent, we spend badly what must be added.
40.1| Trajan to Pliny. What ought to be done about the theatre begun at Nicaea you will best deliberate and decide on the spot. It will suffice if I am told which opinion you have adopted. Then, however, demand the works from the private persons, when the theatre, on account of which those promises were made, has been completed.
40.2| The little Greeks are fond of gymnasia; perhaps for this reason the people of Nicaea took up its construction with a larger spirit: but they ought to be content with what can suffice for them.
40.3| What should be advised for the people of Claudiopolis about the bath which they began, as you write, in a not very suitable place, you will decide. Architects cannot be wanting to you. There is no province that does not have both skilled and talented men; only do not suppose it is quicker to send from the City, when they are accustomed to come to us even from Greece.
41.1| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan. To me, considering both the greatness of your fortune and of your spirit, it seems most fitting that works be shown which are worthy no less of your eternity than of your glory, and which will have as much usefulness as beauty.
41.2| In the territory of Nicomedia there is a very large lake. Across it marble, produce, timber and building materials are carried by boat, at moderate cost and effort, as far as the road; from there they are carried to the sea by wagons, with great effort and greater expense [….] this work demands many hands. But these, moreover, are not lacking. For in the countryside there is a great supply of men, and the greatest in the city, and there is sure hope that all will most willingly take up a work that is profitable to all.
41.3| It remains for you, if it seems good to you, to send a leveller or an architect, to examine carefully whether the lake is higher than the sea, which the craftsmen of this region maintain is higher by forty cubits.
41.4| I find in the same places a canal cut by a king, but it is uncertain whether to gather the moisture of the surrounding fields or to join the lake to the river; for it is unfinished. This too is doubtful: whether the king was cut off by death or gave up hope of completing the work.
41.5| But by this very thing—for you will bear with me as ambitious for your glory—I am spurred and kindled to long for you to complete what kings had only begun.
42.0| Trajan to Pliny
42.1| That lake can tempt us to want to join it to the sea; but it must plainly be carefully examined, lest, once let out into the sea, it flow away entirely; how much water it receives, and from where, must certainly be learned. You will be able to ask Calpurnius Macer for a leveller, and I shall send you from here someone skilled in works of this kind.
43.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
43.1| As I was inquiring into the expenses of the community of Byzantium, which are very great, I was informed, Sir, that an envoy is sent every year to greet you with a decree, and that twelve thousand sesterces are given to him.
43.2| Mindful, therefore, of your purpose, I thought that the envoy should be kept back, but the decree sent, so that the expense might be lightened and the public duty at the same time fulfilled.
43.3| Charged to the same community were three thousand sesterces, given each year under the name of travelling money to an envoy going to greet publicly the man who commands Moesia. I thought these should be cut off for the future.
43.4| I ask you, Sir, to be so good as to write back what you think, and either confirm my plan or correct my error.
44.0| Trajan to Pliny
44.1| You did very well, my dearest Secundus, in remitting to the people of Byzantium those twelve thousand that were spent on an envoy to greet me. They will fulfil this part even if only the decree is sent through you. The governor of Moesia too will forgive them if they have honoured him less expensively.
45.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
45.1| I ask that you write, Sir, whether permits whose day has passed are to be observed at all, and for how long you wish, and free me from hesitation. For I fear that, slipping through ignorance to one side or the other, I may either confirm what is forbidden or hinder what is necessary.
46.0| Trajan to Pliny
46.1| Permits whose day has passed ought not to be in use. For that reason I impose on myself, among my first duties, to send new permits through all the provinces before they can be wanted.
47.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
47.1| When I wished, Sir, to look into the public debtors and the revenue and expenses at Apamea, I was answered that all indeed desired that the accounts of the colony be read by me, but that they had never been read by any of the proconsuls; that they had had a privilege, and a most ancient custom, of administering their commonwealth at their own discretion.
47.2| I required that what they said and what they recited be put in a petition; I have sent it to you exactly as I got it, although I realized that most of it does not bear on the matter in question.
47.3| I ask you to be so good as to lead the way for me as to what you think I ought to observe. For I fear that I may seem either to have overstepped or not to have fulfilled the parts of my duty.
48.0| Trajan to Pliny
48.1| The petition of the people of Apamea, which you had attached to your letter, relieved me of the necessity of weighing what sort of reasons they have for wishing it to appear that those who held this province as proconsuls abstained from inspecting their accounts, when they themselves did not refuse that you should inspect them.
48.2| Their honesty must therefore be rewarded, so that they may know even now that the inspection you are about to make you will carry out at my wish, with the privileges they hold left unharmed.
49.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
49.1| Sir, before I arrived, the Nicomedians had started to add a new forum to the old one; in a corner of it is an extremely old temple of the Great Mother, which must either be rebuilt or moved, chiefly because it lies much lower than the work that is just now rising.
49.2| When I inquired whether any law had been laid down for the temple, I learned that the custom of dedication is one here and another among us. Consider, therefore, Sir, whether you think a shrine for which no law has been laid down can be moved without harm to religion; otherwise it is most convenient, if religion does not stand in the way.
50.0| Trajan to Pliny
50.1| You can, my dearest Secundus, without anxiety on religious grounds, if the position of the place seems to require it, transfer the Mother of the Gods' temple to the more suitable one; and do not be troubled that no law of dedication is found, since the soil of a foreign community is not capable of the dedication that is made under our law.
51.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
51.1| It is difficult, Sir, to express in words how great a joy I have received, because you have granted both to me and to my wife's mother that you transfer her kinsman Caelius Clemens into this province.
51.2| From this I understand fully the measure of your kindness, since I experience so complete an indulgence, together with my whole household; to repay it in equal thanks I do not even dare, although I could do so to the utmost. And so I take refuge in vows, and I pray the gods that I may be thought not unworthy of what you continually bestow on me.
52.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
52.1| The day, Sir, on which you preserved the empire by taking it up, we celebrated with as much joy as you deserve, praying the gods to keep you safe and flourishing for the human race, whose protection and security rest on your well-being. We led our fellow soldiers in the oath in the solemn manner, while the provincials swore the same with a rivalry of devotion.
53.0| Trajan to Pliny
53.1| With how much reverence and joy my fellow soldiers, together with the provincials, with you leading, celebrated the day of my accession, I was glad to learn, my dearest Secundus, from your letter.
54.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
54.1| Public moneys, Sir, by your foresight and my service, have already been collected and are being collected; I fear they may lie idle. For there is either no opportunity or a very rare one for buying estates, and no one is found who will owe money to the commonwealth, especially at twelve asses, the rate at which they borrow from private persons.
54.2| Consider, therefore, Sir, whether you think the interest should be reduced, and by this means suitable debtors invited, and, if even so they are not found, the money distributed among the decurions, on condition that they give proper security to the commonwealth; which, even against their will and refusal, will be less bitter once a lighter interest is fixed.
55.0| Trajan to Pliny
55.1| I too see no other remedy, my dearest Secundus, than that the amount of interest be reduced, so that public moneys may be more easily placed. Its rate you will fix according to the supply of those who will borrow. To compel unwilling persons to accept, which perhaps will be idle for them, is not in keeping with the justice of our times.
56.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
56.1| I give you the greatest thanks, Sir, that in the midst of your very great occupations you have deigned to guide me also in the matters about which I consulted you; and I ask that you do so now as well.
56.2| For a certain man came to me and reported that his opponents, relegated for three years by Servilius Calvus, a most distinguished man, were staying in the province; they, conversely, declared that they had been restored by the same man, and recited an edict. For this reason I believed it necessary to refer the matter to you untouched.
56.3| For just as it is provided in your instructions that I am not to restore those relegated by another or by myself, so nothing is laid down about those whom another has both relegated and restored. Therefore you, Sir, had to be consulted as to what you wished me to observe, as much, by Hercules, as about those who, relegated for ever and not restored, are caught in the province.
56.4| For this kind of case also has come before my hearing. A man was brought to me who had been relegated for ever by the proconsul Julius Bassus. Since I knew that the acts of Bassus had been rescinded and a right granted by the senate to all about whom he had decided anything of bringing their case afresh, but only for two years, I asked this man whom he had relegated whether he had approached and informed the proconsul. He said no.
56.5| By this it came about that I consulted you, whether you thought he should be returned to his punishment or something more severe, and what above all should be decided both for him and for any who might happen to be found in a like condition. I have appended to this letter the decree of Calvus together with his edict, and likewise the decree of Bassus.
57.0| Trajan to Pliny
57.1| What is to be decided about the persons who were relegated for three years by the proconsul Publius Servilius Calvus and soon restored by his edict and remained in the province, I shall write back to you shortly, when I have required from Calvus the reasons for that act.
57.2| The man who was relegated for ever by Julius Bassus, having had for two years the opportunity of bringing his case, if he thinks he was relegated wrongly, and has not done so but has persisted in staying in the province, must be sent under chains to the prefects of my guard. For it is not enough that he be returned to the punishment which he has evaded by contumacy.
58.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
58.1| When I was summoning jurors, Sir, about to begin an assize, Flavius Archippus began to ask for exemption as a philosopher.
58.2| There were some who said he should not be freed from the necessity of serving as juror, but should be removed altogether from the list of jurors and handed back to the punishment which he had evaded by snapping his fetters.
58.3| The sentence of the proconsul Velius Paulus was recited, in which Archippus was shown to have been condemned to the mines on a charge of forgery; he produced nothing to show that he had been restored; he alleged, however, in support of restoration both a petition which he had given to Domitian, and letters of his bearing on his honour, and a decree of the people of Prusa. To these he added your letters written to him, and added also your father's edict and letter, by which he had confirmed the benefits granted by Domitian.
58.4| And so, although such charges were laid against the same man, I thought nothing should be decided until I consulted you on what seemed to me to be worthy of your ruling. What was read out on both sides I have attached to this letter. LETTER OF DOMITIAN TO TERENTIUS MAXIMUS
58.5| Flavius Archippus the philosopher has obtained from me that I should order a field of up to 100 to be bought for him near Prusias, his native place, from the yield of which he might support his household. I wish this to be provided for him. You will enter the sum spent to the account of my liberality. LETTER OF THE SAME TO LAPPIUS MAXIMUS
58.6| I would wish you, my dear Maximus, to hold as commended to you the philosopher Archippus, a good man, whose character also answers to his profession, and to show him your full kindness in whatever he shall modestly ask of you. EDICT OF THE DEIFIED NERVA
58.7| Certain things, Citizens, the very good fortune of the times proclaims of itself, and a good emperor is not to be waited for in matters where it is enough that he be understood, since even the unprompted conviction of my fellow citizens can assure itself of this: that I have preferred the security of all to my own repose, so that I might both confer new benefits and preserve those granted before me.
58.8| Yet lest anything bring hesitation to the public rejoicing, whether through the distrust of those who obtained benefits or through the memory of him who granted them, I have thought it both necessary and glad to send my indulgence to meet those who doubt.
58.9| I do not wish anyone to think that what he obtained under another emperor, whether privately or publicly, is rescinded by me, at least in order that he may owe it to me instead. Let them be valid and certain, and let no one's rejoicing need renewed petitions, upon whom the fortune of the empire has looked with a kindlier face. Let them allow me to be free for new benefits, and let them know that only what they do not have is to be asked for. LETTER OF THE SAME TO TULLIUS JUSTUS
58.10| Since the ordering of all matters, begun in earlier times and completed, is to be observed, the letters of Domitian also must be stood by.
59.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
59.1| Flavius Archippus, by your safety and your eternity, asks me to send you the petition which he gave me. This I thought should be granted to him on his asking, yet in such a way that I made it known to his accuser that I would send it; the petition received from her I have likewise attached to this letter, so that you may more easily, as though both parties had been heard, see what you think should be decided.
60.0| Trajan to Pliny
60.1| Domitian could indeed have been unaware in what condition Archippus stood when he wrote so many things bearing on his honour; but it is more in keeping with my nature to believe that his condition too was helped by the intervention of the emperor, especially since the honour of statues has so often been decreed to him by those who were not ignorant of what the proconsul Paulus had pronounced about him.
60.2| None of this, my dearest Secundus, tends to this, that if any new charge is brought against him, you should think he ought to be heard the less. I have read the petitions of the accuser Furia Prima, and likewise of Archippus himself, which you had attached to your second letter.
61.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
61.1| You indeed, Sir, with the greatest foresight fear that the lake, if joined to the river and so to the sea, may flow away; but I seem, on the spot, to have found how to meet this danger.
61.2| For the lake can be brought by a canal as far as the river and yet not be let out into the river, but be held and at once divided off by leaving as it were a bank. Thus we shall achieve that the lake is not robbed of its water by being joined to the river, and yet it will be just as though it were joined. For it will be easy, over that very short piece of land which will lie between, to transfer the loads brought by the canal into the river.
61.3| This will be done so, if necessity compels, and, I hope, it will not compel. For the lake itself is high enough, and now sends out a river in the opposite direction; this, shut off from there and turned to where we wish, will pour out without any harm to the lake as much water as it now carries. Besides, along the stretch through which the canal is to be dug, streams fall in; if these are carefully gathered, they will add to what the lake gives.
61.4| Indeed, if it please us to carry the canal farther and, cut deeper, to bring it level with the sea, and to discharge it into the sea itself rather than into the river, the rebound of the sea will hold back and check whatever comes from the lake. And if the nature of the place offered us none of these things, it would still be easy to regulate the course of the water by sluices.
61.5| But both these and other matters the leveller will search out and examine with far more skill, and you ought plainly, Sir, to send him, as you promise. For the matter is worthy of your greatness and care. Meanwhile, on your authority, I have written to Calpurnius Macer, a most distinguished man, asking him to send the most suitable leveller possible.
62.0| Trajan to Pliny
62.1| It is plain, my dearest Secundus, that neither prudence nor diligence has failed you about that lake, since you have provided for so many things, through which it will not run the risk of being drained and will be of more use to us. Choose, therefore, that which the matter itself especially recommends. I believe Calpurnius Macer will see that you are furnished with a leveller, nor are those provinces without such craftsmen.
63.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
63.1| Lycormas, your freedman, Sir, wrote to me that if any embassy came from the Bosporus bound for Rome, it should be held back until his own arrival. No embassy indeed has yet come, at least to the city in which I am myself, but a courier of King Sauromates has come, whom I, using the opportunity which chance had offered me, thought should be sent on with the courier who preceded Lycormas on his journey, so that you could learn from the letters of Lycormas and of the king alike what perhaps you ought to know alike.
64.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
64.1| King Sauromates has written to me that there are certain matters of which you should be informed with the least possible delay. For this reason I helped the haste of the courier whom he sent to you with letters, by a permit.
65.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
65.1| There is a question, Sir, great and bearing on the whole province, about the condition and maintenance of those whom they call nurslings.
65.2| On this question, having heard the rulings of emperors, because I found nothing either particular or general that applied to the Bithynians, I thought you should be consulted as to what you wished observed; nor did I think I could, in a matter that required your authority, be content with precedents.
65.3| Before me, however, was read an edict said to be of the deified Augustus, bearing on Andania; also read were letters of the deified Vespasian to the Lacedaemonians, and of the deified Titus to the same and to the Achaeans, and of Domitian to the proconsuls Avidius Tigrinus and Armenius Brocchus, and likewise to the Lacedaemonians; I did not send these to you, both because they seemed poorly corrected and some of doubtful authenticity, and because I believed that true and corrected copies were in your archives.
66.0| Trajan to Pliny
66.1| That question, which concerns those born free, exposed, then taken up by certain persons and brought up in slavery, has often been handled, and nothing is found in the records of those emperors who were before me that was laid down for all the provinces.
66.2| There are, to be sure, letters from Domitian to Avidius Nigrinus and to Armenius Brocchus, which perhaps should be followed; but among the provinces about which he wrote, Bithynia is not one; and so I think neither that the claim should be denied to those who will be vindicated into freedom on a ground of this kind, nor that freedom itself should be bought back at the price of maintenance.
67.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
67.1| Concerning the envoy of King Sauromates: when of his own accord he had stopped two days at Nicaea, where he had found me, I did not think, Sir, that a longer delay should be made, first because it remained unsettled when your freedman Lycormas was likely to arrive, then because I myself was setting out for another part of the province, the necessity of my duty so requiring.
67.2| I thought these things should be brought to your knowledge, because I had lately written that Lycormas had asked me to hold back an embassy, if any came from the Bosporus, until his own arrival. For doing this any longer no defensible reason occurred to me, especially since the letters of Lycormas, which I did not wish to hold back, as I said beforehand, seemed likely to precede the envoy from here by some days.
68.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
68.1| Certain persons asked that I permit them to move the remains of their dead, either because of the injury of age or because of the onrush of a river and other things like these, to wherever they wished, following the example of the proconsuls; since I knew that in our City the college of pontiffs is usually approached for a cause of this kind, I thought you, Sir, as Pontifex Maximus, should be consulted as to what you wish me to observe.
69.0| Trajan to Pliny
69.1| It is hard to impose on the provincials the necessity of approaching the pontiffs, if for some just reasons they wish to move the remains of their dead from one place to another. You ought, then, rather to follow the examples of those who have governed that province, and as each case is, so either permit or refuse.
70.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
70.1| As I was inquiring, Sir, where at Prusa the bath you have granted could be made, a site pleased me where once stood a house, as I hear, beautiful, now disfigured by ruins. For by this we shall achieve that the most unsightly face of the city is adorned, and also that the city itself is enlarged and no buildings are taken down, but those which have fallen in through age are opened out into something better.
70.2| The condition of this house is as follows. Claudius Polyaenus bequeathed it to Claudius Caesar and ordered that a temple be made to him in the peristyle, and the rest of the house be let. From it the city received income for some time; then gradually, partly plundered, partly neglected, the whole house collapsed along with the peristyle, and now almost nothing of it is left except the ground; and whether you, Sir, give it to the city or order it to be sold, the city will receive it as a very great gift, because of the convenience of the place.
70.3| I intend, if you permit, to place the bath on the empty area, and to enclose the place in which the buildings were with an exedra and porticoes and to dedicate it to you, by whose kindness an elegant work, worthy of your name, will be made.
70.4| I sent you a copy of the will, faulty though it is; from it you will learn that Polyaenus left many things for the adornment of the same house, which, like the house itself, have perished, but will be sought by me as far as possible.
71.0| Trajan to Pliny
71.1| We can use for the building of a bath, among the people of Prusa, that area with the fallen house, which you write is vacant. You have not, however, made clear enough whether a shrine was made in the peristyle to Claudius. For if it was made, though it has collapsed, its sanctity has taken hold of the ground.
72.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
72.1| When certain persons demanded that I myself should hear cases on the acknowledging of children and the restoring of birth-status, both according to the letter of Domitian written to Minicius Rufus and according to the examples of the proconsuls, I looked to a decree of the senate bearing on the same kinds of cases, which speaks only of those provinces over which proconsuls preside; and therefore I put off the matter untouched, until you, Sir, instruct me what you wish me to observe.
73.0| Trajan to Pliny
73.1| If you send me the senatorial decree that has caused you to hesitate, I shall judge whether you ought to hear cases on acknowledging children and restoring true birth-status.
74.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
74.1| Appuleius, Sir, a soldier on duty at Nicomedia, wrote to me that a certain man named Callidromus, when he was being detained by the bakers Maximus and Dionysius, to whom he had let out his labour, took refuge at your statue, and, brought before the magistrates, declared that he had once been a slave of Laberius Maximus, and, captured by Susagus in Moesia and sent by Decibalus as a present to Pacorus, king of Parthia, had been in his service for several years, then had fled, and so had come to Nicomedia.
74.2| When he was brought to me and had told the same story, I thought he should be sent to you; this I did a little late, while I searched for a gem which he declared had been taken from him, bearing an image of Pacorus and the ornaments with which he had been adorned.
74.3| For I wished to send this too, if it could be found, along with the small clod which I have sent, which he said he had brought from a Parthian mine. It is sealed with my ring, whose device is a four-horse chariot.
75.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
75.1| Julius Largus, Sir, from Pontus, not yet seen by me or even heard of—doubtless he trusted your judgment—entrusted to me a certain stewardship and service of his devotion toward you.
75.2| For he asked in his will that I should enter upon and accept his inheritance, and then, after taking out fifty thousand sesterces as a legacy, return all the rest to the communities of the Heracleotae and the Tiani, so that it should be at my discretion whether I thought works should be made which would be consecrated to your honour, or quinquennial games should be established, which would be called Trajan's. This I thought should be carried to your knowledge chiefly so that you might consider what I should choose.
76.0| Trajan to Pliny
76.1| Julius Largus chose your good faith as though he knew you well. What, therefore, will best serve the perpetuity of his memory, consider yourself, according to the condition of each place, and follow what you judge best.
77.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
77.1| You acted with the greatest foresight, Sir, in instructing Calpurnius Macer, a most distinguished man, to send a legionary centurion to Byzantium.
77.2| Consider whether you think the people of Juliopolis too should be provided for in a similar way; their community, though very small, bears very heavy burdens, and suffers injuries the more serious the weaker it is.
77.3| Whatever you grant to the Juliopolitans will also benefit the whole province. For they are at the head of Bithynia, and give passage to very many who travel through it.
78.0| Trajan to Pliny
78.1| Such is the condition of the community of Byzantium, with a crowd of travellers streaming into it from every side, that, following the custom of earlier times, we have had to see to its offices by the protection of a legionary centurion. If
78.2| we think that the people of Juliopolis should be helped in the same way, we shall burden ourselves by precedent; for more will ask the same, the weaker they are. I have such trust in your diligence that I believe you will by every means act so that they are not exposed to injuries.
78.3| If any, however, behave contrary to my discipline, let them be checked at once; or, if they have committed more than can be adequately punished on the spot, then, if they are soldiers, you will make known what you have found to their commanders, or, if they are going to come toward the City, you will write to me.
79.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
79.1| It is provided, Sir, by the Pompeian law which was given to the Bithynians, that no one is to hold a magistracy or be in the senate under thirty years of age. By the same law it is laid down that those who have held a magistracy are to be in the senate.
79.2| There followed then an edict of the deified Augustus, in which he permitted lesser magistracies to be held from the age of twenty-two.
79.3| The question is therefore whether a man who has held a magistracy under thirty years of age can be enrolled in the senate by the censors, and, if he can, whether those also who have not held one can, by the same interpretation, be chosen senators from the age from which they are allowed to hold a magistracy; which otherwise is said to have been done hitherto and to be necessary, because it is rather better that the sons of honourable men be admitted into the council chamber than those from the common people.
79.4| I, asked by the censors designate what I thought, judged that those indeed who had held a magistracy under thirty years of age could be chosen into the senate both by the edict of Augustus and by the Pompeian law, since Augustus had permitted magistracies to be held under thirty years, and the law had wished that he be a senator who had held a magistracy.
79.5| But about those who had not held one, although they were of the same age as those to whom it was permitted to hold one, I hesitated; whence it came about that I consulted you, Sir, as to what you wished observed. I have attached to this letter the chapters of the law, and then the edict of Augustus.
80.0| Trajan to Pliny
80.1| I think the same as your interpretation, my dearest Secundus: that the Pompeian law was renewed by the edict of the deified Augustus only so far that those not under twenty-two years could hold a magistracy, and that those who had held one came into the senate of their own community. But I do not think that those under thirty who have not held a magistracy, merely because they can hold one, can be chosen into the council chamber of any place.
81.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
81.1| When I was at Prusa near Olympus, Sir, occupied with public business inside my lodging, about to go out the same day, the magistrate Asclepiades reported that I had been appealed to by Claudius Eumolpus. When Cocceianus Dion wished a work, whose charge he had undertaken, to be handed over to the community in the council, then Eumolpus, appearing for Flavius Archippus, said that Dion must render an account of the work before it was made over to the commonwealth, because he had done otherwise than he ought.
81.2| He added also that your statue was placed in the same building, and the bodies of the buried, Dion's wife and son, and he demanded that I hear the case from the tribunal.
81.3| When I replied that I would do so at once and would postpone my departure, he asked that I give a longer day for preparing the case and that I hear it in another city.
81.4| I answered that I would hear it at Nicaea. When I had taken my seat there to hear it, the same Eumolpus, as though still insufficiently prepared, began to ask for an adjournment; Dion, on the contrary, demanded that he be heard.
81.5| Much was said on both sides, even on the substance of the case. I, thinking that an adjournment should be granted and that you should be consulted in a matter bearing on precedent, told each party to give in written statements of their demands. For I wished you to learn what had been put forward chiefly in their own words.
81.6| Dion indeed said he would give his. Eumolpus replied that he would include in his statement what he demanded for the commonwealth, but that as to the buried, he was not an accuser but the advocate of Flavius Archippus, whose instructions he had conveyed. Archippus, for whom Eumolpus had been appearing at Prusa, said he would give a statement. But neither Eumolpus nor Archippus, although awaited for very many days, has yet given me statements; Dion gave his, which I have attached to this letter.
81.7| I was myself on the spot and saw that your statue also has been placed in the library, while the place in which Dion's son and wife are said to be buried is situated in an open court, which is enclosed by porticoes.
81.8| I ask you, Sir, to be good enough to guide me in this kind of hearing in particular, since otherwise expectation is great, as it must be in a matter which both has come to open admission and is defended by precedents.
82.0| Trajan to Pliny
82.1| You could have felt no hesitation, my dearest Secundus, over the matter on which you thought I should be consulted, since you knew my purpose very well, that reverence for my name is not to be won by the fear or terror of men, or by charges of treason.
82.2| Let that question therefore be dropped, which I would not admit even if it were supported by precedents, and let the account of the whole work completed under the charge of Cocceianus Dion be examined, since the interest of the community demands it and Dion neither refuses nor ought to refuse.
83.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
83.1| Asked, Sir, by the people of Nicaea in their public capacity, by the things that are, and should be, most sacred to me, that is, by your eternity and safety, to carry their petitions to you, I thought it wrong to refuse, and have attached to this letter the petition received from them.
84.0| Trajan to Pliny
84.1| For the people of Nicaea, who affirm that the claiming of the property of their citizens who die intestate was granted by the deified Augustus, you will have to give a hearing, bringing together all the persons concerned in the same matter, and calling in as advisers Virdius Gemellinus and my freedman Epimachus, procurators, so that, having weighed also the things said against it, you may decide what you believe best.
85.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
85.1| Maximus, your freedman and procurator, Sir, throughout all the time that we were together I found upright, industrious and diligent, and as most devoted to your affairs so most steadfast in discipline; I gladly follow him with my testimony before you, in the good faith which I owe you.
86A.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
86A.1| Gavius Bassus, Sir, prefect of the Pontic shore, upright, honest, industrious, and in all this most respectful to me, as I have found, I follow with my wish and my support alike, in the good faith which I owe you.
86B.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
86B.1| [….] than the things he hopes for, equipped by service with you, to whose discipline he owes it that he is worthy of your indulgence. With me both soldiers and civilians, by whom his justice and kindness have been thoroughly observed, have vied in giving him testimony, both private and public. This I bring to your knowledge, in the good faith which I owe you.
87.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
87.1| Nymphidius Lupus, Sir, a former chief centurion, I had as a fellow soldier when I myself was a tribune and he a prefect: from then I began to love him as a friend. Our affection afterwards grew by the long standing of our mutual friendship.
87.2| And so I laid my hand upon his repose and required that he equip me with his counsel in Bithynia. This he, with the greatest friendship, putting aside regard for his leisure and his old age, has already done and will do.
87.3| For these reasons I count his kinsmen among my own, his son above all, Nymphidius Lupus, an upright, industrious young man, most worthy of his excellent father, who will prove equal to your indulgence, as you can learn from his first trials, since as a cohort prefect he earned the fullest testimony of Julius Ferox and Fuscus Salinator, most distinguished men. You will crown my joy, Sir, and my gratification by honouring the son.
88.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
88.1| I wish, Sir, that you may spend this birthday, and very many others, as happily as possible, and that the glory of your virtue, flourishing in everlasting praise [….] safe and strong, you will increase by one work upon another.
89.0| Trajan to Pliny
89.1| I acknowledge your vows, my dearest Secundus, in which you pray that I may spend very many and very happy birthdays with the state of our commonwealth flourishing.
90.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
90.1| Sir, the people of Sinope lack water; it seems that it can be brought, both good and plentiful, from the sixteenth milestone. Yet right at the source, a little more than a thousand paces along, there is a suspect and soft place, which I have meanwhile ordered to be explored at modest cost, to see whether it can receive and bear the work.
90.2| Money, with our attention, will be raised and will not be lacking, if you, Sir, will favour this kind of work, for the health and the pleasantness of a colony that is very thirsty.
91.0| Trajan to Pliny
91.1| Go on as you have begun, my dearest Secundus, and investigate carefully whether the site you suspect can carry the structure of an aqueduct. I do not think there should be any doubt that water ought to be brought to the colony of Sinope, provided it can also manage the work with its own resources, since the project will contribute a great deal both to its health and to its pleasure.
92.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
92.1| The free and federated city of Amisus enjoys its own laws by the favor of your indulgence. In this city I was handed a petition concerning benefit societies, which I have attached to this letter, so that you, Sir, might decide what should be permitted or forbidden, and how far.
93.0| Trajan to Pliny
93.1| As for the people of Amisus, whose petition you enclosed with your letter: if their laws, which they enjoy by the favor of their treaty, allow them to have a benefit society, we can refrain from preventing them from having one, all the more readily if they use such contributions not for riots and unlawful gatherings but to relieve the want of the poorer members. In the other cities, which are bound by our law, a thing of this kind must be forbidden.
94.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
94.1| Suetonius Tranquillus is a man of the highest integrity, honor and learning. I have long admired his character and his studies, Sir, and took him into my household some time ago, and the more closely I have come to know him now, the more I have grown to love him.
94.2| Two reasons make the right of three children necessary for him: he has earned the good opinion of his friends, and his marriage has not been a fortunate one, so he must obtain from your kindness, through me, what the spite of fortune has denied him.
94.3| I know, Sir, how great a favor I am asking, but I am asking it of you, whose indulgence I experience in all my wishes. And you can gather how much I want this, since I would not ask it while away from you if I wanted it only moderately.
95.0| Trajan to Pliny
95.1| You certainly remember, my dearest Secundus, how sparingly I grant favors of this kind, since I am accustomed to assert even in the senate that I have not gone beyond the number I told that most distinguished order would be enough for me. Nevertheless I have granted your wish, and I have ordered it to be entered in my records that I have given Suetonius Tranquillus the right of three children on the terms I usually set.
96.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
96.1| It is my practice, Sir, to refer to you everything about which I am in doubt. For who can better guide my hesitation or instruct my ignorance? I have never taken part in investigations of Christians, and so I do not know what is usually punished, or investigated, or to what extent.
96.2| And I have been in no small doubt whether any distinction should be made for age, or whether those who are quite young should be treated no differently from the more mature; whether pardon should be given for repentance, or whether someone who has once been a Christian gains nothing by having ceased to be one; whether it is the name itself, even if free of crimes, or the crimes attached to the name that are punished. Meanwhile, with those who were reported to me as Christians, I have followed this procedure.
96.3| I asked them in person whether they were Christians. Those who confessed I asked a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; those who persisted I ordered to be led away. For I had no doubt that, whatever it was they were confessing, their stubbornness and unbending obstinacy surely ought to be punished.
96.4| There were others possessed by a similar madness whom, because they were Roman citizens, I have noted down to be sent to Rome. Soon, as usually happens, the charge spread through the very handling of the matter, and more varieties of case turned up.
96.5| An anonymous pamphlet was posted containing the names of many people. People who said they were not, and never had been, Christians, when they called upon the gods after me, repeating the words I dictated, and made offerings of incense and wine to your image, which I had commanded to be brought for this very purpose along with the statues of the gods, and who moreover cursed Christ, none of which those who are really Christians are said to be able to be forced to do, I thought should be let go.
96.6| Others, named by the informer, said that they were Christians and then soon denied it; they had been, they said, but had stopped, some three years before, some many years before, a few even twenty years before. All of these too both venerated your image and the statues of the gods and cursed Christ.
96.7| They maintained, however, that the whole of their guilt, or of their error, had been this: that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and to sing a song to Christ as though to a god, taking turns among themselves, and to pledge themselves by an oath — not to some crime, but to commit no theft, no robbery, no adultery, to keep faith, and not to refuse a deposit when asked to return it. When this was done, it had been their custom to disperse and to come together again to take food, but food of an ordinary and harmless kind; and even this they had stopped doing after my edict, by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political clubs.
96.8| This made me think it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was, even under torture, from two slave women who were called deaconesses. What I found was nothing but a perverse superstition, and an immoderate one.
96.9| So I put off the hearing and have hurried to ask your advice, since I judged the matter worth consulting you on, above all because of the number of people in danger. Many people of every age, of every rank, and of both sexes are being brought into danger and will continue to be. Nor has the contagion of this superstition spread through the cities only, but through the villages and the countryside as well; yet it appears that it can be halted and put right.
96.10| It is certainly well established that the temples, once nearly deserted, have begun to be thronged again, that the solemn rites long interrupted are being resumed, and that the meat of sacrificial victims, for which until recently a buyer was very rarely found, is on sale everywhere. From this it is easy to suppose what a multitude of people could be reformed if there were room for repentance.
97.0| Trajan to Pliny
97.1| You have followed the procedure you ought to have followed, my Secundus, in examining the cases of those who had been reported to you as Christians. For no general rule can be laid down that would have, as it were, a fixed form.
97.2| No search is to be made for them; if they are reported and proved guilty, they are to be punished, but on this condition: whoever says he is not a Christian and proves it by his actual conduct, that is, by worshipping our gods, shall obtain pardon through repentance, however suspect he may have been in the past. Anonymous pamphlets that are posted, however, ought to have no place in any accusation. For they set the worst of precedents and are not in keeping with our age.
98.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
98.1| Sir, the city of Amastris, elegant and well adorned alike, has among its chief works a very beautiful and also very long street. Along one side of it, for its whole length, there runs what is called a river but is in fact a most foul sewer, as disgusting in its utterly filthy appearance as it is pestilential in its most revolting smell.
98.2| For these reasons it concerns health no less than appearance that it be covered; which will happen if you allow it, and I will see to it that money is not lacking for a work as great as it is necessary.
99.0| Trajan to Pliny
99.1| It is reasonable, my dearest Secundus, that the water which flows through the city of Amastris be covered, if uncovered it harms health. That money is not lacking for this work you will see to, I am certain, with your usual diligence.
100.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
100.1| We have eagerly and joyfully fulfilled, Sir, the vows pronounced last year, and we have taken new ones, the soldiers and the provincials vying with one another in devotion, praying the gods to keep you and the commonwealth flourishing and safe with that kindness which, besides your many great virtues, you have earned by your exceptional piety, your obedience to the gods and the honor you pay them.
101.0| Trajan to Pliny
101.1| I was glad to learn from your letter, my dearest Secundus, that the soldiers together with the provincials, with you leading them in the words, have with the most joyful agreement fulfilled their vows to the immortal gods for my safety and have pronounced them for the future.
102.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
102.1| We have celebrated with due religious observance the day on which the guardianship of the human race was transferred to you by a most happy succession, commending both our public vows and our rejoicing to the gods who are the authors of your rule.
103.0| Trajan to Pliny
103.1| I learned with pleasure from your letter that the day of my accession was celebrated with due rejoicing and religious observance by the soldiers and provincials, with you leading them in the words.
104.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
104.1| Valerius Paulinus, Sir, has left me the rights over his Latin freedmen, with the exception of Paulinus; of these I ask you for the present to give full Roman citizenship to three. For I fear it would be excessive to call on your indulgence for all of them at once, since I ought to use it the more modestly the more fully I experience it. Those for whom I ask are Gaius Valerius Astraeus, Gaius Valerius Dionysius and Gaius Valerius Aper.
105.0| Trajan to Pliny
105.1| Since you wish, most honorably, to provide promptly through me for those whom Valerius Paulinus entrusted to your good faith, I have meanwhile ordered it to be entered in my records that I have given full Roman citizenship to those for whom you have now asked, and I shall do likewise in the remaining cases for which you may ask.
106.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
106.1| I was asked, Sir, by Publius Accius Aquila, a centurion of the sixth mounted cohort, to send you a petition in which he begs your indulgence regarding his daughter's status. I thought it harsh to refuse, since I knew how much patience and kindness you usually show to soldiers' requests.
107.0| Trajan to Pliny
107.1| I have read the petition of Publius Accius Aquila, centurion of the sixth mounted cohort, which you sent me; moved by his requests, I have given his daughter Roman citizenship. I have sent you the petition with my reply, for you to give back to him.
108.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
108.1| I ask you, Sir, to write back and tell me what rights you wish the cities of both Bithynia and Pontus to have in recovering money owed to them from leases, from sales, or for other reasons. I have found that most proconsuls granted them the right of first claim, and that this has held as if it were law.
108.2| I think, however, that your foresight should establish and confirm some rule by which their interests may be provided for permanently. For the arrangements those men made, however wisely they were granted, are short-lived and weak unless your authority attaches to them.
109.0| Trajan to Pliny
109.1| What right the cities of Bithynia or Pontus ought to have regarding money owed to the city on any account must be determined from the law of each one. For if they have a privilege by which they are ranked ahead of other creditors, it must be preserved; if they do not have one, it will not be right for me to grant it to the injury of private persons.
110.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
110.1| The public advocate of the city of Amisus, Sir, was suing Julius Piso before me for about forty thousand denarii given to him from public funds twenty years earlier, with the council and the assembly agreeing, and he relied on your instructions, which forbid gifts of this kind.
110.2| Piso, on the other hand, said that he had contributed a great deal to the city and had spent almost his entire fortune. He also cited the length of time that had passed, and asked that he not be forced to pay back, to the ruin of what remained of his standing, what he had received long ago in return for many services. For these reasons I thought the whole hearing should be postponed so that I could consult you, Sir, on what course you think should be followed.
111.0| Trajan to Pliny
111.1| Although my instructions forbid grants from public funds, still, so that the security of many people is not undermined, grants made some considerable time ago ought not to be reopened and claimed back as void. Whatever was done in this matter twenty years ago, therefore, let us leave alone. For I wish to provide for the people of every place no less than for public funds.
112.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
112.1| The Pompeian Law, Sir, which the peoples of Bithynia and Pontus follow, does not require those who are enrolled in the council by the censors to pay money; but those whom your indulgence has allowed certain cities to add above the legal number have paid in one thousand or two thousand denarii each.
112.2| Then Anicius Maximus, when proconsul, ordered that those enrolled by the censors should also pay something, though only in a very few cities, and different amounts in different cities.
112.3| It remains, then, for you yourself to decide whether in all the cities everyone who is enrolled as a councillor from now on ought to pay a fixed sum for admission. For what is to remain in force permanently should properly be established by you, whose deeds and words are owed eternity.
113.0| Trajan to Pliny
113.1| Whether everyone who becomes a decurion in each city of Bithynia ought to pay a fee for the office of decurion or not cannot be laid down by me as a general rule. I think, therefore, that the law of each city should be followed, which is always the safest course; but as for those who become decurions by invitation, I believe they will in fact see to it that by their payment they are preferred to the rest.
114.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
114.1| By the Pompeian Law, Sir, the cities of Bithynia are permitted to enroll as their citizens anyone they wish, provided he is not a citizen of any of the cities in Bithynia. The same law lays down the grounds on which men are to be expelled from the senate by the censors.
114.2| Some of the censors therefore thought they should consult me on whether they ought to expel a man who was a citizen of another city.
114.3| The law, while it forbade the enrolling of a citizen of another city, did not order anyone to be expelled from the senate for this reason; besides, I was told for certain that in every city there are very many councillors from other cities, and that many people and many cities would be thrown into confusion by that part of the law, which had long since fallen out of use by a kind of general consent. For these reasons I thought it necessary to consult you about what you think should be observed. I have attached the relevant clauses of the law to this letter.
115.0| Trajan to Pliny
115.1| You had good reason to hesitate, my dearest Secundus, about what reply you ought to give the censors when they asked whether men who were citizens of other cities, though of the same province, ought to remain in the senate. For both the authority of the law and the long custom that has prevailed against the law could have pulled you in opposite directions. I have decided on this compromise: that we make no change regarding the past, but that citizens of any city whatever who have been admitted remain, even though it was against the law, while for the future the Pompeian Law is to be observed. If we wished to enforce its force retroactively as well, a great deal would inevitably be thrown into confusion.
116.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
116.1| Those who assume the toga of manhood, or celebrate a wedding, or enter on a magistracy, or dedicate a public building, usually invite the whole council and also no small number of the common people, and give them two denarii or one denarius each. I ask you to write and tell me whether you think this should be allowed, and to what extent.
116.2| For my part, while I think the right to issue such invitations should be granted, especially on ceremonial occasions, I fear that men who invite a thousand guests, and sometimes more, may seem to exceed due measure and to fall into what looks like a public dole.
117.0| Trajan to Pliny
117.1| You are right to fear that an invitation may turn into what looks like a public dole when it exceeds due measure in numbers and brings people together for the customary handouts by whole bodies, as it were, rather than individually through personal acquaintance. But I chose your good judgment precisely so that you yourself might regulate the shaping of that province's ways and establish whatever would contribute to its lasting peace.
118.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
118.1| The athletes, Sir, think that the allowances you have established for the iselastic games are owed to them from the very day on which they were crowned; for what matters, they say, is not when they rode in triumph into their native city, but when they won the contest that entitles them to ride in. I, on the other hand, write that the very name 'iselastic' makes me strongly doubt whether the time to be considered is not rather that at which they rode in.
118.2| The same men are claiming allowances for a contest that you made iselastic, even though they won before it was made so. For they say it is only consistent that, just as they are not paid for those contests which ceased to be iselastic after they had won them, so they should be paid for those which began to be iselastic.
118.3| Here too I am in no small doubt, for fear that account might be taken of anyone retroactively and that what was not owed at the time of the victory might be paid. I ask you, therefore, to be so good as to resolve my doubt, that is, to interpret your own benefactions.
119.0| Trajan to Pliny
119.1| The iselastic allowance seems to me to become due only from the moment when a man has himself ridden into his own city. The allowances for those contests that I have decided to make iselastic are not owed retroactively if they were not iselastic before. Nor can it help the athletes' claim that they have ceased to receive allowances for those contests which I later decided were not iselastic, after they had won them. For although the status of the contests has changed, what they had received before is nonetheless not taken back.
120.0| Pliny to the Emperor Trajan
120.1| Up to this time, Sir, I have neither lent travel passes to anyone nor sent them out on any business but yours. A certain necessity has broken this unbroken practice of mine.
120.2| When my wife heard of her grandfather's death and wanted to hurry to her aunt, I thought it harsh to refuse her the use of them, since the value of such a duty lies in its speed, and I knew you would approve the reason for a journey whose cause was family devotion. I have written this to you because I felt I would be insufficiently grateful if I concealed the fact that, among your other benefactions, I owe this one too to your indulgence: that, trusting in it, I did not hesitate to act as though I had consulted you, since if I had consulted you, I would have acted too late.
121.0| Trajan to Pliny
121.1| You were right, my dearest Secundus, to trust my feelings, and there would have been no need for doubt if you had waited to consult me about whether your wife's journey should be helped by the passes I gave you for your official duties, since your wife was bound to increase the welcome of her arrival at her aunt's by its speed as well.

======== Panegyricus ========

1| Well and wisely, Conscript Fathers, did our ancestors establish the custom of beginning speeches, like actions, with prayers, because they held that men could undertake nothing duly and nothing with foresight without the help, the counsel and the honoring of the immortal gods. And by whom should this custom be practiced and observed rather than by a consul, or when more than when, by order of the senate and with the authority of the commonwealth, we are called upon to give thanks to the best of emperors? For what gift of the gods is more excellent or more beautiful than an emperor who is pure and upright and most like the gods themselves? Even if it had still been in doubt whether rulers are given to the earth by chance and accident or by some divine will, it would nonetheless be clear that our emperor was appointed by the gods. For he was not chosen by the hidden power of the fates, but was found by Jupiter himself, openly and in plain view: chosen, indeed, among the altars and the shrines, and in the very place where that god dwells, as manifest and present there as in the sky and the stars. All the more fitting and right is it, then, that I should pray to you, Jupiter Best and Greatest, once the founder and now the preserver of our empire, that I may be granted a speech worthy of a consul, worthy of the senate, worthy of the emperor; that freedom, good faith and truth may stand firm in everything I say; and that my speech of thanks may be as far from the appearance of flattery as it is from any compulsion.
2| For my part, I think that not only the consul but all citizens must strive not to say anything about our emperor in such a way that the same thing might seem capable of being said about another. Away, then, with those cries that fear used to wring from us; let us say nothing of the kind we said before, for we endure nothing of the kind we endured before; and let us not proclaim the same things about the emperor [openly] as before, for neither do we say the same things in private as before. Let our speeches mark the difference between the times, and let it be understood from the very kind of thanks we give to whom they were given, and when. Let us nowhere flatter him as a god, nowhere as a divinity; for we are speaking not of a tyrant but of a citizen, not of a master but of a father. He regards himself as one of us, and he stands out and rises above us all the more because he thinks himself one of us; and he remembers that he is a man no less than that he is set over men. Let us, then, understand our blessings and prove ourselves worthy of them by the use we make of them, and let us reflect again and again how shameful it would be to show greater deference to emperors who rejoice in the slavery of their citizens than to those who rejoice in their freedom. The Roman people, indeed, keep their discernment of emperors: with the same harmony with which a little while ago they acclaimed another as handsome, they acclaim this one as most valiant; and with the cries with which they once praised another's gestures and voice, they praise this one's devotion, self-restraint and gentleness. And what of ourselves? Is it our emperor's divinity that we are all accustomed to celebrate, or his humanity, his moderation, his approachability, as love and joy carry us along? And what could be so befitting a citizen, so befitting a senator, as the surname BEST, which we have added? The arrogance of earlier emperors has made it peculiarly his own. And how shared, how equal, is our cry, HAPPY ARE WE, HAPPY IS HE! And our alternating prayers, MAY HE DO THIS, MAY HE HEAR THIS, as though we would not say it unless he did it? At these cries he is even suffused with tears and deep blushes. For he recognizes and feels that they are said to him, not to the emperor.
3| So let the restraint that we all kept in that sudden glow of devotion be maintained by each of us individually and on reflection as well; and let us recognize that no kind of thanks is more sincere or more welcome than the kind that imitates those acclamations which have no time for pretense. As far as I am concerned, I shall labor to make my speech conform to our emperor's modesty and moderation, and I shall consider no less what his ears can bear than what is due to his virtues. It is the great and unaccustomed glory of the emperor to whom I am to give thanks that I am less afraid he will think me sparing in his praises than excessive. This is the one concern, the one difficulty that besets me: for to give thanks to one who deserves them is easy, Conscript Fathers. There is no danger that when I speak of his humanity he will think he is being reproached with arrogance; when of his frugality, with extravagance; when of his clemency, with cruelty; when of his generosity, with avarice; when of his kindness, with spite; when of his self-control, with lust; when of his industry, with idleness; when of his courage, with fear. Nor am I even afraid that I will seem grateful or ungrateful according to whether I say enough or too little. For I observe that even the gods themselves are pleased not so much by the carefully composed prayers of their worshippers as by their innocence and holiness, and that he is thought more welcome who brings to their shrines a pure and chaste mind than one who brings a studied hymn.
4| But the decree of the Senate must be obeyed, by which it was resolved, for the public good, that through the voice of the Consul, under the title of giving thanks, good emperors should recognize what they are doing, and bad ones what they ought to do. This is now all the more solemn and necessary because our father restrains and suppresses private expressions of thanks, and would stand in the way even of public ones, if he allowed himself to forbid what the Senate commands. In both, Caesar Augustus, you show moderation, both in not allowing thanks to be given to you elsewhere and in allowing them here. For this honour is not paid to you by yourself, but by those who give the thanks. You yield to our feelings, and the necessity is not ours, to proclaim your gifts, but yours, to hear them. Often, Conscript Fathers, I have turned over silently in my mind what sort of man, and how great, ought to be he by whose rule and nod seas, lands, peace and wars are governed; yet when in the meantime I imagined and shaped an emperor fitting for power made equal to the immortal gods, it never occurred to me to conceive, even in a wish, one like the man we see. One man has shone in war, but faded in peace; another the toga honoured, but not arms as well; one sought reverence by terror, another love by kindness; one lost in public the glory he had won at home, another at home the glory won in public. In short, no one has yet appeared whose virtues were not harmed by some neighbouring vice. But to our Emperor what harmony, what concord of all praises and of all glory has fallen! How nothing is taken from his severity by his cheerfulness, nothing from his dignity by his simplicity, nothing from his majesty by his kindness! His strength, his stature, the nobility of his head, the dignity of his face, and besides this a maturity of age that has not bent, and hair, adorned, not without some gift of the gods, with the early marks of old age to increase his majesty: do they not proclaim the emperor far and wide?
5| Such ought he to be whom neither civil wars nor a commonwealth crushed by arms, but peace, and adoption, and at last the divinities won over by prayer on earth, gave us. Or was it right that there be no difference between an emperor whom men had made and one whom the gods had made? Of whose judgment and favour toward you, Caesar Augustus, the proof shone out at once, when you were setting out to join the army, and by an unaccustomed sign. For other emperors either the abundant blood of victims or the left-handed flight of birds announced to those who consulted them: to you, as you went up the Capitol according to custom, there came the cry of citizens, though they were not intending it, as to one already emperor. For the whole crowd that had settled on the threshold, when the doors were thrown open at your entrance, greeted you, as it thought at the time, as a god, but, as the outcome showed, as emperor. Nor was it taken otherwise by all. For you yourself were unwilling to understand: you refused to rule, you refused; which was well in one who was to rule. And so you had to be compelled. You could not, moreover, be compelled except by the danger of your country and the tottering of the commonwealth. For you were set against taking up the empire, unless it had to be saved. Wherefore I think that that very madness and stir in the camp arose because your modesty had to be overcome by great force and great terror. And just as whirlwinds and storms commend the calm of sea and sky, so, I should believe, that tumult went before in order to increase the welcome of your peace. The condition of mortals has these changes, that adverse things are born from favourable, and favourable from adverse. God hides the seeds of both, and most often the causes of good and bad lie hidden under a different appearance.
6| A great disgrace, indeed, was stamped on that age, a great wound on the commonwealth. The emperor and parent of the human race was besieged, captured, shut in: the most gentle old man had taken from him the power of saving men; and there was torn from the emperor that which is the happiest thing in the principate, that nothing is done under compulsion. Yet if this was the only course that would bring you to the helm of public safety, I am close to exclaiming that it was worth it. The discipline of the camps was corrupted so that you might come as its corrector and reformer: a most wicked example was introduced so that the best might be set against it: in short, an emperor was forced to kill those he did not wish to kill, so that he might give an emperor who could not be forced. Long since you deserved to be adopted; but we should not have known how much the empire owed you, if you had been adopted earlier. The time was awaited in which it should be clear that you had not so much received a benefit as given one. The shaken commonwealth fled into your bosom, and, with the empire collapsing upon its emperor, it was conferred on you by the voice of the emperor. You were besought and summoned by adoption, as great commanders were once wont to be recalled from foreign and distant wars to bring help to their country. So son and father, in one and the same moment, each did the greatest service to the other: he gave you the empire, you gave it back to him. Alone, therefore, down to this age, for so great a gift you made the exchange equal by receiving it, nay rather you put under obligation the giver himself: for with the empire shared, you were made more anxious, he more secure.
7| O new and unheard-of road to the principate! No desire of your own, no fear of your own, but another's advantage, another's fear, made you emperor. You may seem to have gained what is the highest among men; yet happier was what you left behind: under a good emperor you ceased to be a private man. You were taken up into a partnership of labours and cares, and it was not the pleasant and prosperous side of that station but its harsh and hard side that drove you to take it on. You took up the empire after another had come to regret having taken it up. There was no kinship between the adopted and the one who adopted, no tie, save that each was the best of men, the one worthy to be chosen, the other to choose. And so you were adopted not, as one man after another was before, to please a wife. For it was not a stepfather but an emperor who made you his son, and with the same spirit in which he was the father of all, the deified Nerva became your father. Nor is it fitting that a son be taken in otherwise, if he is taken in by an emperor. Would you, about to hand over the Roman Senate and People, the armies, the provinces, the allies to a single man, receive your successor from the lap of your wife? Would you look for the heir of the supreme power only within your own house? Would you not cast your eyes around the whole city? And would you not reckon as nearest to you, as most closely bound to you, the man you found the best, the one most like the gods? He who is to rule over all ought to be chosen out of all. For you are not, as emperor, going to give a master to your own little slaves, so that you could be content with a kind of necessary heir, but an emperor to citizens. That is proud and kingly, unless you adopt one who it is agreed would have ruled even if you had not adopted him. Nerva did this, judging it made no difference whether you begot or chose, if children are adopted without judgment just as they are born: except that men bear more evenly one whom an emperor unluckily begot than one whom he badly chose.
8| He therefore carefully avoided this mischance, and took into his counsel not only the judgments of men but of the gods as well. And so your adoption was carried out not in a bedchamber but in a temple; not before the marriage bed but before the couch of Jupiter Best and Greatest: by which at last not our servitude but our freedom, safety and security were founded. For the gods claimed that glory for themselves: theirs was the work, theirs that empire; Nerva was only a minister: and he who adopted you obeyed as much as you who were adopted. A laurel had been brought from Pannonia, the gods so arranging it, to adorn with the emblem of victory the rising of an unconquered emperor. This the Emperor Nerva had placed in the lap of Jupiter: when suddenly, greater and more august than usual, having called together an assembly of men and gods, he took you as his son, that is, as the one help for failing affairs. Thence, as though he had laid down the empire, with what security, with what glory he was glad (for how little difference is there whether you lay down or share the empire, except that the latter is harder?), as if leaning on you present, supporting himself and his country on your shoulders, he grew strong in your youth and your vigour! At once every tumult subsided. That was not the work of the adoption, but of the adopted: and indeed Nerva would have acted rashly if he had adopted another. Have we forgotten how lately, after the adoption, the sedition did not cease but began? That would have been an incitement to anger and a firebrand of tumult, had it not fallen upon you. Is there any doubt that the emperor, who had lost respect, was able to give the empire through the authority of him to whom it was given? At once son, at once Caesar, soon Emperor, and sharer of the Tribunician power, you were made all things alike and at once: things which, shortly before, a true father conferred on his other son alone.
9| This is a great proof of your moderation, that you pleased not only as successor to the empire but also as partner and associate. For a successor must be had, even if you do not wish; an associate need not be had, unless you wish. Will posterity believe that one begotten of a father who was a patrician, ex-consul and triumphator, when he commanded an army, the bravest, the most distinguished, the most devoted to him, was not made emperor by that army? That to the same man, when he governed Germany, the name Germanicus was sent from here? That he himself did nothing to become emperor? That he did nothing except what he deserved and obeyed? For you obeyed, Caesar, and reached the principate by compliance, and nothing was done by you more in the spirit of a subject than that you began to rule. Already Caesar, already emperor, already Germanicus, absent and unaware, and after so many names, so far as concerned you, a private man. It would seem a great thing if I said, You did not know you were to be emperor: you were emperor and did not know that you were. But when the messenger of your fortune came to you, you would indeed have preferred to be what you had been, but it was not open to you. Would you not obey your emperor as a citizen, your commander as a legate, your father as a son? Where then would be discipline? where the custom handed down from our ancestors of undertaking, with even and ready mind, whatever task the emperor might impose? For what if he had entrusted you with province after province, war after war? You would think he could use the same right in recalling you to the empire as he used when he sent you to the army; and that it made no difference whether he ordered a legate to go or an emperor to return, except that there is greater glory in obedience in that which one wishes less.
10| The authority of the one who gave the order was increased by the fact that his authority had been brought to the extreme of danger: and that you might think the one who commanded should be obeyed the more, this was brought about by the fact that he was less obeyed by others. Besides this you heard the agreement of the Senate and People. That judgment, that choice, was not Nerva's alone. For men everywhere were asking this same thing in their prayers; he merely took it first by the right of an emperor, and was first to do what all were about to do. And indeed, by Hercules, this deed would not please all so greatly, had it not pleased before it was done. But with what restraint, good gods, you tempered your power and fortune! An emperor in titles and portraits and standards, but in modesty, labour and vigilance a commander and legate and soldier, when already you were going far ahead of your own standards and eagles, you claimed from that adoption nothing but a son's devotion and a son's obedience, and prayed for a long life and a long glory for this name. The providence of the gods had advanced you to the first place; you still wished to stay in the second, and even to grow old there: you seemed to yourself a private man so long as there was another emperor. Your prayers were heard, but only so far as it was useful to that best and most holy old man, whom the gods claimed for heaven, lest he do anything mortal after that divine and immortal deed. For this reverence is owed to the greatest work, that it be the last, and its author at once consecrated, so that someday among posterity it might be asked whether a god had already done it. So he was public parent by no title more than that he was yours. With vast glory and vast fame, when he had abundantly proved how well the empire sat on your shoulders, he left the world to you and you to the world; dear to all and longed for by that very fact, that he had provided against being longed for.
11| Him you honoured first with tears, as befitted a son, then with temples, not imitating those who did the same thing but with another mind. Tiberius dedicated Augustus to heaven, but to introduce the charge of treason: Nero dedicated Claudius, but to mock him: Titus dedicated Vespasian, and Domitian Titus: but the one so as to seem a god's son, the other a brother. You brought your father among the stars not to frighten citizens, not to insult the divinities, not to honour yourself, but because you believe him a god. This counts for less when it is done by those who think themselves gods also. But although you may worship him with altars, couches and a priest, you make and prove him a god by nothing more than by being such a man yourself. For in an emperor who has yielded to fate after choosing a successor, the one and likewise most certain proof of divinity is a good successor. Has any arrogance, then, come to you from your father's immortality? Do you rival these most recent men, idle and proud from the divinity of their parents, rather than those old and ancient ones? who won this very empire, which enemies had lately invaded and scorned; since of an emperor driven back and put to flight no greater proof was held than if a triumph was celebrated. So they had raised their spirits and shaken off the yoke: and they were no longer contending with us about their own freedom but about our servitude: and they would not even enter a truce except on equal terms, and they dictated terms before they would accept any.
12| But now terror and fear have returned to all, and the wish to do as they are told. For they see a Roman leader, one of those old and ancient ones, to whom plains covered with slaughter and seas stained with victories gave the name of commander. We receive hostages, therefore; we do not buy them: nor do we bargain, with huge losses and immense gifts, to appear as victors. They ask, they beg; we grant, we refuse, both from the majesty of the empire: those who have obtained give thanks; those who have been refused do not dare to complain. Would they dare, who know that you sat down beside the fiercest peoples at the very time that is friendliest to them and hardest for us: when the Danube joins its banks with frost, and, hardened by ice, carries huge wars on its back: when wild tribes are armed no more by weapons than by their own sky, their own star? But when you were close by, just as if the turns of the seasons had been changed, they were held shut in their hiding places; our columns rejoiced to range over the banks, and to use another's opportunity, if you allowed it, and of their own accord to carry their own winter to the barbarians.
13| Such was the reverence for you among enemies: what among soldiers? How did you win their admiration? When they bore hunger with you, bore thirst with you; when in that exercise on the Field you mingled the emperor's dust and sweat with the soldiers' squadrons, differing from the rest in nothing but strength and excellence; when in free combat you now brandished weapons at close quarters, now received those brandished at you, quick to rejoice in the soldiers' courage and glad whenever a heavy blow fell on your helmet or your shield; (for you praised those who struck, and urged them to dare: and they were already daring;) when, as spectator and umpire of men entering contests, you adjusted their arms, tried their weapons, and if anything seemed too hard for the one receiving it, you brandished it yourself. What of when you brought comfort to the weary and aid to the sick? It was not your custom to enter your own tent before you had visited those of your fellow soldiers, nor to give rest to your body except after everyone. For this admiration an emperor would not seem to me worthy, if he were such among the Fabricii, the Scipios and the Camilli. For then the ardour of imitation and always someone better would have kindled him. But after the zeal for arms was transferred from the hands to the eyes, from labour to pleasure; after at our exercises it is not some veteran, who has the honour of a mural or civic crown, who stands by, but a little Greek master: how great it is [alone] out of all to rejoice in the ancestral way, in ancestral virtue, and without rival and without example to strive with oneself, to contend with oneself, and, as he rules alone, so to be alone the one who ought to rule!
14| Were these not your cradle, Caesar, and your first training, when as a mere boy you increased your father's glory with the Parthian laurel, and already then earned the name of Germanicus, when you restrained the ferocity and pride of the barbarians by great terror at the report that reached them from close by, and joined the Rhine and the Euphrates by the fame of the admiration you won? when you traversed the world not more with your feet than with praises? always greater and more famous among those whom you were afterwards to meet. And you were not yet emperor, not yet son of a god. Germany is protected and divided off by very many peoples and the nearly boundless waste of the land lying between, and then by the Pyrenees, the Alps, and other immense mountains, unless they are compared with these. Through all this space, when you led the legions, or rather (such was the speed) swept them along, you never looked back for a carriage, never for a horse. A light one followed along, not as support for the road but as an ornament, and with the others: as one for which you had no use, except when on the day of a halt you stirred up the nearest plain with your briskness, your running about and your dust. Shall I wonder at the beginning of the labour, or at its end? It is much that you persevered; more, that you did not fear you could not persevere. Nor do I doubt that he who summoned you from Spain in the midst of those German wars as his strongest support, himself idle and envious of others' virtues even when he needed their help, conceived so great an admiration for you not without a certain fear, as great as that which the son of Jupiter, after cruel labours and harsh commands, always unconquered and unwearied, brought back to his king; when, in one expedition after another, you were found worthy of yet another commission.
15| As tribune, in your tender years, you travelled lands very far apart with the strength of a man: Fortune already then forewarning that you should long and thoroughly learn what you were soon to teach. For you were not content merely to have glimpsed the camp and to have passed through a short military service, as it were, but you served as tribune in such a way that you could at once be a general, and had nothing to learn at the time for teaching. In ten years of service you came to know the customs of peoples, the sites of regions, the advantages of places, and the differing temper of waters and sky, as you were used to bear your native springs and native star. How often you changed horses, how often worn-out arms! There will come a time, then, when posterity will be eager to visit, and to hand on to their descendants to be visited, what plain drank your sweat, what trees gave you shelter for rest, what rocks for sleep, and finally what roof you filled as a great guest: just as the sacred footprints of mighty commanders were then shown to you yourself in the same places. But that is for the future: for the present, any soldier a little older is reckoned as having you as a fellow soldier. For how few are there of whom you were not a comrade before you were emperor! Hence it is that you call nearly all by name, that you recall the brave deeds of each, and they have no wounds received for the commonwealth to count out to you, to whom you were at once the praiser and the witness.
16| But your moderation deserves still more to be proclaimed, that, brought up on the praises of war, you love peace: and because your father was a triumphator, or because a laurel was dedicated to Jupiter of the Capitol on the day of your adoption, you do not for that reason seek triumphs on every occasion. You do not fear wars, nor do you provoke them. It is a great thing, Emperor Augustus, a great thing to stand on the bank of the Danube, certain of a triumph if you crossed; and not to desire to fight with those who refuse: of which the one is achieved by courage, the other by moderation. For that you yourself do not wish to fight is moderation; your courage brings it about that your enemies do not wish to either. The Capitol, therefore, will someday receive not mimic chariots nor the images of a false victory, but an emperor bringing back true and solid glory, peace, tranquillity, and the submission of enemies so openly avowed that there was no one left to conquer. This is more beautiful than all triumphs. For never has it happened that we conquered, except out of contempt for our empire. But if some barbarian king should advance to such insolence and madness as to deserve your anger and indignation: he, whether defended by an intervening sea, or by immense rivers, or by a sheer mountain, will find all these so easy and so yielding to your valour that he will think the mountains have sunk, the rivers dried up, the sea cut off, and that it is not our fleets but the very lands that have been brought upon him.
17| I seem already to see a triumph heavy not with the spoils of provinces and gold wrung from allies, but with enemy arms and the chains of captured kings. I seem to recognize the mighty names of chieftains, and bodies not unworthy of the names. I seem to look upon floats laden with the monstrous daring of the barbarians, and each man following his own deeds with bound hands: then yourself aloft, standing on the chariot over the back of conquered peoples; before the chariot, however, the shields which you yourself have pierced. Nor would the spolia opima be lacking to you, if any of the kings dared to come to hand-to-hand fight, and did not shudder at the reach not only of your weapons but of your eyes and threats, though the whole field and the whole army were set between. You have deserved, by your very recent moderation, that whenever the dignity of the empire forces you either to bring war or to repel it, you will seem not to have conquered in order to triumph, but to triumph because you have conquered.
18| One thing after another comes to my mind. For how splendid it is that you restored the discipline of the camps, which had lapsed and been extinguished, driving out the evil of the preceding age, idleness and stubbornness and the disdain of obeying? It is safe to earn reverence, safe to earn affection: and no commander fears either not to be loved by his soldiers or to be loved; and thus, secure alike about offence and favour, they press on with their works, attend the exercises, and fit out arms, walls and men. For he is not an emperor who thinks that what is prepared against enemies hangs over himself and is aimed at himself: that was the belief of those who, when they did hostile things, were afraid. They, therefore, rejoiced that military pursuits grew sluggish, that not only spirits but the very bodies grew faint, and that even swords were dulled and blunted by neglect. Our commanders, moreover, feared not so much the plots of foreign kings as of their own emperors, nor so much the hands of enemies as the hands and steel of fellow soldiers.
19| It is the nature of the stars that the rising of stronger ones obscures the small and faint: likewise on the Emperor's arrival the dignity of the Legates is overshadowed. You, however, were greater than all indeed, but greater without diminishing anyone: each man kept the same authority when you were present as when you were absent: indeed to many reverence had even been added by the fact that you too revered them. And so, dear alike to the highest and the lowest, you had so mingled emperor and fellow soldier that you both strained the zeal and labour of all, as a taskmaster, and eased them, as a sharer and partner. Happy those whose loyalty and industry were approved not through go-betweens and interpreters but by you yourself, not by your ears but by your eyes! They achieved that even absent you trusted no one more than yourself about the absent.
20| Now the longings of the citizens were calling you back, and love of country overcame the love of the camp. Then came a peaceful and modest journey, such as plainly of one returning from peace. Nor indeed shall I put among your praises that on your coming no father, no husband was alarmed. In others chastity is affected; in you it is inborn and natural, and among those things for which you cannot claim credit. There was no tumult in the requisition of vehicles, no fastidiousness over lodgings; the allowance was the same as for others; in addition a retinue that was lightly equipped and obedient: you would say some great commander, and you above all, was going to the armies: so little, or at least so slight, was the difference between an emperor already made and one soon to be. How unlike was the passage of another emperor recently! if indeed that was a passage and not a plundering, when he practised the driving off of hosts' goods, and everything to right and left was burned and ground down, as if some force, or those very barbarians whom he was fleeing, had fallen on it. The provinces had to be persuaded that that journey was Domitian's, not an emperor's. And so, not so much for your own glory as for the common good, you set out in an edict what had been spent on each of you. Let an emperor grow accustomed to settling his accounts with the empire: let him go out, let him return, as one about to render an account; let him proclaim what he has consumed. So it will be that he does not consume what it would shame him to tell. Besides, future emperors, whether they wish it or not, will know, and, with the two examples set before them, will remember that men will form their guess about their character according as they choose the one or the other.
21| Did you not, by so many and such great merits, deserve some new honours, new titles? Yet you even refused the name of father of your country. How long a struggle we had with your modesty! how slowly we won! That name, which others took up on the very first day of their principate, like Emperor and Caesar, you put off until you too, a most sparing appraiser of your own benefits, acknowledged that you now deserved it. And so it fell to you alone of all to be father of your country before you were made so; for you were so already in our minds, in our judgments: and it made no difference to the public devotion what you were called; except that it seemed ungrateful to itself if it called you emperor and Caesar rather than father, when it experienced you as a father. With what kindness, what indulgence do you exercise that name! how you live with your fellow citizens as a parent with his children! how, returned an emperor, who had gone out a private man, you recognize and are recognized! You think us the same, yourself the same: equal to all, and greater than the rest only in being better.
22| And first, what a day that was, on which, awaited and longed for, you entered your city! Even this very fact, that you entered, how wonderful and joyful! For your predecessors used to be borne in and carried: I do not say in a four-horse chariot and with white horses, but on the shoulders of men, which was more arrogant. You, loftier and taller than others solely by the height of your body, celebrated not some triumph over our endurance but over the pride of emperors. And so neither age nor ill health nor sex held anyone back from filling their eyes with the unaccustomed sight. The little ones knew you, the young pointed you out, the old marvelled; even the sick, neglecting the orders of their physicians, crept forward to the sight of you as though to health and recovery. Then some declared they had lived long enough, having seen you, having received you; others, that they must live all the more now. Even the women then felt the greatest pleasure in their fertility, when they saw for what emperor they had borne citizens, for what commander soldiers. You could see the roofs crowded and straining, and not even a spot left empty that could take only a tiptoe, unsteady footing; the streets filled on every side, and a narrow path left for you; the people eager on this side and that, everywhere equal joy and equal shouting. The joy at your coming was felt as equally by all as you came to all: and that joy itself grew with your entrance, and was increased almost at every step.
23| It was welcome to all that you received the senate with a kiss, as you had been sent off with a kiss; welcome that you marked the distinguished men of the equestrian order by the honour of their names without a prompter; welcome that, when you greeted your clients, you added, almost unasked, some tokens of familiarity. Yet more welcome that you advanced gradually and calmly, as far as the crowd looking back allowed; that the people who ran to meet you stood around you also, indeed above all you; that on the very first day you entrusted your side to everyone. For not hemmed in by a band of guards, but surrounded on every side now by the flower of the senate, now by that of the equestrian order, according as one or the other kind of throng had grown stronger, you followed your lictors, silent and quiet: for the soldiers differed from the people in nothing, in dress, calm or modesty. And when you began to climb the Capitol, how glad for all was the memory of your adoption! how special the joy of those who had first hailed you as emperor in the same place! Indeed I should believe that your god himself felt a particular pleasure in his work. When indeed you stood in the same footsteps in which your father stood when about to bring forth that mighty secret of the gods, what joy among the bystanders! how fresh the shout! how like that day was to the day that begot this one! how full of altars, how august with victims everything was! how the prayers of all were gathered upon the safety of one! since they understood that they prayed for themselves and their children in what they prayed for you. From there you went to the Palatine indeed, but with such a countenance, with such moderation, as if you were seeking a private house: the rest each to his own household gods, to repeat their proof of joy where there is no necessity of rejoicing.
24| Such an entrance would have burdened another; you are daily more admirable and better, in the end such as other emperors only promise they will be. You alone, therefore, the lapse of time commends and enlarges. For you have joined and blended the most opposite things, the assurance of one long reigning and the modesty of one beginning. You do not press down the embraces of citizens to your feet, nor return a kiss with your hand. The Emperor keeps the kindliness of face and the modesty of hand that he had before. You walked on foot; you walk; you rejoiced in labour; you rejoice; and all those things around you are the same, Fortune has changed nothing in yourself. It is free, when the emperor goes through the public way, to stand still, to run to meet him, to accompany him, to pass by: you walk among us, not as though your presence were a favour granted; and you give access to yourself not so as to put us in your debt. Whoever has come up sticks to your side, and each man's own shame, not your pride, puts an end to the conversation. We are indeed ruled by you, and subject to you, but as we are to the laws. For they too govern our desires and lusts, yet move with us and among us. You stand out, you rise above, as honour does, as power does, which are over men indeed, yet are men's. Before you, emperors, from disdain of us and a certain fear of equality, had lost the use of their feet. They, then, the shoulders and necks of slaves carried above our faces; you, fame, glory, the devotion of citizens carry above emperors themselves; you are raised to the stars by the ground shared with all, and by the emperor's footprints mingled with ours.
25| Nor do I fear, Conscript Fathers, that I may seem too long, since it is most to be desired that the things for which thanks are given to the emperor should be many: which indeed it will be more respectful to keep whole and untouched for your own thoughts than to pick at and touch briefly; because it generally follows that things one is silent about seem to be as great as they are. Unless indeed it pleases to touch lightly on the tribes enriched, and the congiarium given to the people, and given in full, when the soldiers had received a part of their donative. Or is it the mark of a mean spirit to pay promptly rather to those who could more easily be refused? Yet even in this difference the principle of equality has been kept. For the soldiers were made equal to the people in that they received a part, but first; the people to the soldiers in that they received later, but the whole at once. And with what kindness it was divided! how great was your care that no one should be left without a share of your liberality! It was given to those who after your edict had been inserted in place of the struck-off: and those also were made equal to the rest to whom it had not been promised. One was kept back by business, another by ill health, this man by the sea, that by rivers: there was waiting and provision, so that it should count against no one that he had been sick, or occupied, or, finally, far away: let each come when he wished: let each come when he could. It is magnificent, Caesar, and yours, to bring the most distant lands near, as it were, by the genius of generosity, and to shorten immense distances by liberality: to step in against mishaps, to meet fortune, and strive with every means that no one of the Roman people, when you gave the congiarium, should feel that he had been more a man than a citizen.
26| When the day of the congiarium drew near, swarms of infants and a people yet to be used to sit along the streets and watch for the emperor's going out in public. It was a labour for parents to display their little ones and, having set them on their necks, to teach them flattering words and coaxing sounds: they gave back what they were told. And most of them dinned the emperor's deaf ears with vain prayers; not knowing what they had asked, what they had not obtained, they were put off until they plainly knew. You did not even endure to be asked, and although it would have been most delightful to your eyes to be filled with the sight of the Roman offspring, you nevertheless ordered all to be received and entered on the rolls before they saw you or approached you: so that from infancy they should experience the public parent in the gift of upbringing; that they should grow at your expense who would grow for you, and reach their years of service on your maintenance, and all owe to you alone as much as each owes to his own parents. Rightly, Caesar, do you undertake at your own cost the hope of the Roman name. For there is no kind of outlay more worthy of a great emperor, one who will deserve immortality, than that which is spent on posterity. The rich are encouraged to rear children by vast rewards and equal penalties; for rearing the poor there is one reason, a good emperor. If he does not cherish, increase and embrace with a generous hand those begotten in confidence in him, he hastens the setting of the empire and the setting of the commonwealth, and in vain do the leading men protect, with the people neglected, a head that is failing in its body and will totter with unsteady weight. It is easy to guess the joy you felt when the shout of parents, children, old men, infants and boys welcomed you. This was the first voice of your little citizens to fill your ears, to whom, when you were to give maintenance, you granted this greatest thing, that they did not have to ask. Above all, however, you are such a man that under you it is a pleasure, and an advantage, to rear children.
27| No parent now dreads anything for a son except the changes of human frailty; nor is the anger of the emperor counted among incurable diseases. Great indeed is the encouragement to rear children, to bring them up in the hope of maintenance, in the hope of congiaria; greater still in the hope of freedom, in the hope of security. And so let an emperor bestow nothing, provided he takes nothing away; let him not feed, provided he does not kill: and there will be no lack of those who long for sons. On the contrary, let him bestow and take away; let him feed and kill: he will in a short time have brought it about that all repent not only of their descendants but of themselves and their parents. Wherefore I would praise nothing more in your whole liberality than that you give the congiarium from your own, the maintenance from your own: and that from you the children of citizens are not nourished, like the whelps of wild beasts, on blood and slaughter: and, what is most welcome to the recipients, they know that what is given to them has been snatched from no one, and that with so many enriched, the emperor alone has been made poorer: although not even he. For he to whom everything of all belongs has himself as much as all have.
28| Your manifold glory calls me elsewhere: but where? as though I had already sufficiently revered and marvelled at your pouring out so great a sum of money, not, as one conscious of some crime, to turn talk away from pursuing it; nor to hold back the gloomy and sad talk of men with more cheerful matter. You have bought off no guilt with a congiarium, no cruelty with maintenance, nor was your cause for doing good that you might do ill with impunity. By that outlay love was sought, not pardon; and the Roman people left your tribunal bound by obligation, not merely placated. For you offered the congiarium glad to the glad, and secure to the secure; and what emperors before threw to the swollen passions of the people to soothe hatred of themselves, this you gave as innocently to the people as the people received it. A little fewer than five thousand, Conscript Fathers, were the freeborn whom our emperor's liberality sought out, found, and enrolled. These, the support of wars, the ornament of peace, are fed at public expense, and learn to love their country not only as a country but as a nurse. From these the camps, from these the tribes will be filled; from these someday will be born those who need no maintenance. May the gods give you, Caesar, the age you deserve, and preserve the spirit they have given: and how much greater a throng of infants you will see enrolled again and again! For it increases and grows daily: not because children are dearer to parents, but because citizens are dearer to the emperor. You will give congiaria, if you wish; [you will provide maintenance, if you wish:] yet they are born because of you.
29| I reckon the abundance of the grain supply to be like a perpetual congiarium. Care of this once added no less glory to Pompey than canvassing driven from the Field, the enemy driven from the sea, the East and the West traversed in triumphs. Nor did he open the roads in a more civil spirit than our father does, by authority, counsel and good faith; he opens harbours, has restored roads to the lands, the sea to the shores, the shores to the sea, and has so mingled different peoples in commerce that whatever was produced anywhere seemed to be born among all. Is it not given to see that, without injury to anyone, every year overflows for our uses? For the harvests are not, as if taken from an enemy, snatched away and doomed to perish in granaries, carried off while allies cry out in vain. The peoples themselves bring down what the earth bore, what the star nourished, what the year yielded: nor, pressed by new levies, do they fall short of the old tributes. The treasury buys whatever it seems to buy. Hence plenty, hence a grain supply, about which bidder and seller agree: hence satiety here, and nowhere hunger.
30| Egypt used to boast, in nourishing and increasing its seeds, that it owed nothing to rains and sky: since, always watered by its own river, and not wont to grow rich by any other kind of waters than those it itself had brought down, it was clothed with such crops that it vied, as though never to yield, with the most fertile lands. This land, by an unforeseen drought, withered to the point of the harm of barrenness: because the sluggish Nile had raised itself in its bed slowly and languidly, though even then it was to be compared with huge rivers. Hence a great part of the lands, accustomed to be submerged by the wandering river, glowed white with deep dust. In vain then did Egypt wish for clouds, and look back to the sky, when the parent of fertility himself, drawn in and shrunken, had held back the fruitfulness of that year in the same narrows in which he had held back his abundance. For that wandering river, when it is spread out, had not merely halted and stuck within the seized borders of the hills, but had also slipped back with a calm and soft glide over the flat and holding soil, and had not yet added enough moisture to the dry lands. And so the region, cheated of its flooding, that is of its fertility, called for Caesar's help, as it is wont to call for its river: nor was the span of its misfortunes longer than the time it took to report it. So swift, Caesar, is your power, and so intent and girded on all things alike is your goodness, that for those who have suffered something sadder in your age, it is enough for remedy and safety that you know.
31| For all peoples, indeed, I pray fertile years and thankful lands: yet I should believe that through this state of Egypt Fortune wished to try your powers, and to await your vigilance. For since you deserve that all things everywhere be favourable, is it not plain that if anything adverse befalls, material and a field are laid out for your praises and your virtues, since favourable things prove men fortunate, adverse ones prove them great? It had long been commonly said that our city could not be fed and sustained except by the resources of Egypt. That windy and insolent nation was proud that it fed a conquering people, and that on its river, in its ships, lay our abundance or our famine. We have poured back to the Nile its own supplies: it received the grain which it had sent, and carried back the harvests that had been conveyed away. Let Egypt learn, then, and believe by experience, that it does not furnish us with food but with tribute: let it know that it is not necessary to the Roman People, and yet let it serve. After this, if it will, let the Nile love its own bed and keep the measure of a river: this is nothing to the City, nor even to Egypt, except that from there vessels are sent back empty and vacant, like those returning, and from here full and laden, such as are wont to come; and with the office of the sea reversed, let winds that carry and a short voyage be sought from here instead. It would seem a wonder, Caesar, if the grain supply of the City had not felt an idle Egypt and a Nile that held back: it has overflowed even to there by your resources and your care, so that it was proved at once that we can do without Egypt, and that Egypt cannot do without us. It would have been all over with that most fertile nation, had it been free: it was ashamed of unaccustomed barrenness, and blushed at its hunger no less than it was tortured by it; when it was relieved by you alike in its need and its shame. The farmers marvelled at full granaries which they had not filled themselves, from what fields that harvest had been brought up, or in what part of Egypt there was another river. So by your kindness the land was not niggardly, and the Nile, compliant, has often flowed more bountifully for Egypt, but never more bountifully for our glory.
32| How pleasing it now is that all provinces have come into our trust and dominion, since there has come an emperor who transfers and returns the fruitfulness of lands now here, now there, as time and necessity demanded! who feeds and protects a nation severed by the sea as though it were some part of the Roman people and commons! The sky has never had so great a kindness as to enrich and cherish all lands at once: he drives out from all alike, if not barrenness, at least the evils of barrenness: he brings in, if not fruitfulness, at least the goods of fruitfulness: he links East and West by alternating supplies, so that all peoples may take in turn what is produced and desired everywhere, and learn how much more useful it is for those serving in a discordant liberty that there be one whom they serve. For while the goods of all are separate, each one's evils fall upon individuals; but when they are shared and mingled, the evils of individuals belong to no one, and the goods of all to everyone. But whether some divinity belongs to lands, or some genius to rivers, I pray both that soil and the river itself, content with this kindness of the emperor, may store the seeds in a soft bosom and restore them multiplied. We do not indeed ask back the interest: let it nevertheless think it must be paid, and excuse the deceptive faith of a single year by all years, and by all ages after, so much the more because we do not exact it.
33| Satisfaction was given both to the interests of citizens and to those of allies. A spectacle was then seen that was not enervated, nor loose, nor such as to soften and break the spirits of men, but one that inflamed them to noble wounds and contempt of death: since even in the bodies of slaves and criminals the love of praise and the desire of victory were seen. What liberality, then, in giving it, what justice he showed, untouched by every partiality, or above it! What was asked was granted: what was not asked was offered. He pressed on of his own accord, and urged us to desire it: and even so there were more things unlooked for, more sudden. How free, too, was the zeal of the spectators, how secure their favour! No one was charged, as used to happen, with disloyalty because he hated a gladiator: no one, made from spectator into spectacle, atoned for his wretched pleasures with the hook and the flames. Mad was that man, and ignorant of true honour, who gathered charges of treason in the arena, and interpreted it as being despised and scorned unless we also revered his gladiators, as cursing himself in them, as violating his own divinity, his own godhead; since he thought himself the same as the gods, and the gladiators the same as himself.
34| But you, Caesar, what a beautiful spectacle you have given us in place of that detestable one! We have seen the informers put on trial, like highwaymen, like robbers. They had settled not on a wilderness, not on a road, but on the temple, on the forum: no will was any longer safe, no status certain: neither childlessness nor children availed. The avarice of emperors had increased this evil. You turned your eyes to it, and as you had earlier restored peace to the camps, so afterwards you restored it to the forum: you cut out the evil within: and with farseeing severity you took care that a state founded on laws should not appear overthrown by laws. Although, then, both fortune and your liberality have offered us things to look upon, as they did, now the huge strength of men and their equal spirits, now the savagery of wild beasts, now an unknown gentleness; now those secret and hidden resources, first made common under you: yet nothing was more welcome, nothing more worthy of the age, than that it fell to us to look down from above on the upturned faces of the informers and their twisted necks. We recognized them and enjoyed it, when, like expiatory victims of public anxiety, over the blood of the guilty, they were led to slow punishments and heavier penalties. They were heaped into vessels hastily got together, and given over to the storms. Let them depart, let them flee the lands laid waste by informing: and if the waves and tempests have spared any of them for the rocks, let him inhabit bare crags and an inhospitable shore: let him lead a hard and anxious life, and, with the security of the whole human race left behind his back, mourn.
35| A memorable sight, a fleet of informers given over to all the winds, forced to spread sail to the tempests, and to follow the angry waves, to whatever rocks they bore them. It was a delight to look out at once from the harbour on the scattered vessels, and, beside that very sea, to give thanks to the emperor, who, with his clemency kept safe, had entrusted the vengeance of men and lands to the gods of the sea. How much the difference of times can do was then most plainly known, when to the same cliffs to which before the most innocent had been fastened, now the most guilty were fastened; and when all the islands, which a short time ago the throng of senators, now that of informers, filled, whom you have put down not only for the present but for eternity, shut up in that net of penalties. Do they go to snatch other men's money? Let them lose what they have: are they eager to drive men from their household gods? Let them be driven from their own: nor let them, as before, offer that bloodless and iron brow to be wounded in vain by pricks, and laugh at their brands; but let them see losses equal to the reward, and have no greater hopes than fears, and fear as much as they were feared. With a mighty spirit the deified Titus had provided for our security and vengeance, and was therefore made equal to the divinities: but how much more worthy of heaven, someday, are you, who have added so many things to those on account of which we made him a god! This was the harder because the Emperor Nerva, most worthy of you as son and successor, after he had added certain great things to the edict of Titus, seemed to have left nothing for you, who have devised so many things as if nothing had been found before you. How much favour each of these, if dispensed singly, would have added to you! But you poured out everything at once; as the sun and the day are brought forth not in some part, but all at once, and not for one or another, but for all in common.
36| How pleasing it is to see the treasury silent and quiet, and such as it was before the informers! Now that is a temple, now truly a god, not a despoiling-place of citizens and a cruel receptacle of bloody plunder, and in the whole world till now the one place in which, under the best of emperors, the good would be no match for the bad. Yet the honour of the laws remains, and nothing is wrenched away from the public advantage: no penalty has been remitted to anyone, but vengeance has been added, and the only change is that now it is not informers but the laws that are feared. But perhaps you do not restrain the privy purse with the same severity as the treasury. On the contrary, with so much the greater, as you believe that you may do more with what is your own than with what is public. Your agent, and even your procurator, is told: Come to court: follow to the tribunal. For a tribunal also has been devised for the principate, equal to the rest, unless you measure it by the greatness of the litigant. Lot and urn assign a judge to the privy purse: it is allowed to challenge, it is allowed to cry out: I do not want this one, he is timid and understands little of the blessings of the age: I do not want that one, because he loves Caesar bravely. The principate and freedom use the same forum. Which is your chief glory, the privy purse is more often beaten; its cause is never bad, except under a good emperor. This is a great merit: greater is it that you have such procurators that your fellow citizens, for the most part, would prefer no other judges. It is free to the one pleading to say: I do not want to choose him. For you add no necessity to your gifts, as one who knows that this is the sum of imperial benefits, if one may also not use them.
37| The burdens of empire forced most taxes into being, which served the common good but did harm to individuals. Among these the Twentieth was devised, a tolerable and easy tax for heirs who were outsiders, but a heavy one for members of the family. And so it was imposed on the former and remitted for the latter; it was evident, of course, with what grief men would bear, or rather would refuse to bear, the pinching and scraping away of something from goods they had earned by blood, by kinship, and finally by community of sacred rites, goods they had received never as another's property to be hoped for, but as their own, always possessed, and to be passed on in turn to the nearest heir. This gentleness of the law was kept for the old citizens; the new ones, whether they had come into the citizenship through Latium or by the emperor's favor, were held as complete strangers to those to whom they had been most closely joined, unless they had obtained the rights of kinship at the same time. So the greatest benefit was turned into the gravest injury, and Roman citizenship became a thing like hatred and discord and bereavement, since it tore apart the dearest pledges of affection, though their own dutifulness stayed whole. Yet there were found men with so great a love of our name that they thought Roman citizenship a fair exchange for the loss not only of the Twentieth but even of their ties of kinship; but it ought to have fallen freely above all to those by whom it was valued so highly. Therefore your father decreed that what had passed from a mother to her children, or from the children's goods to the mother, even if on acquiring citizenship they had not received the rights of kinship, should not be liable to the Twentieth. The same exemption he granted to a son in his father's goods, provided he had been brought back under his father's power; for he judged it shameless, arrogant, and almost impious that a tax-farmer should be inserted into these relationships, and that the most sacred bonds should be cut apart, as though by the intervention of the Twentieth, not without some guilt; and that no tax was worth so much that it should make children and parents strangers.
38| So far he went: more sparingly, perhaps, than befitted the best of emperors, but not more sparingly than befitted the best of fathers, who, when about to adopt the Best, did this also as a most indulgent parent: content to have tasted certain things, or rather merely to have pointed them out, he kept for his son a large and almost untouched field for doing good. At once, then, your generosity added to his gift, so that, as the son was exempt in his father's estate, so the father should be exempt in his son's inheritance, and should not, at the very moment he ceased to be a father, lose this too, which he had been. Admirably, Caesar, you do not allow the tears of parents to be taxed. Let a father possess his son's goods without diminution, and let him not receive a partner in the inheritance who has no share in the grief: let no one summon fresh and stunned bereavement to a reckoning, or force a father to know what his son has left. I magnify the emperor's gift, Conscript Fathers, when I show that his generosity has a reason in it. For a generosity that has no reason behind it must be judged ambition, boasting, extravagance, anything rather than generosity. It was worthy, then, Emperor, of your gentleness to lessen the injuries of bereavement, and not to suffer anyone, after the loss of a son, to be afflicted with yet another pain. Even so the thing is abundantly wretched, for a father to be sole heir to his son: what if he were to receive a co-heir not from the son? Add that, since the deified Nerva had decreed that children should be released from the obligation of the Twentieth in their father's goods, it was consistent that parents should obtain the same exemption in their children's goods. For why should a greater honor be held for descendants than for ancestors? Or why should the same equity not run backward also? You, Caesar, removed that exception, the condition that the son had been in his father's power: looking, I think, to the force and law of nature, which has always ordered that children be under their parents' authority, and has not, as among cattle, so among men, given power and command to the stronger.
39| Nor was he content to have taken the first degree of kinship away from the Twentieth: he exempted the second as well, and provided that a brother should be left free in his sister's goods, and the sister in her brother's, and that a grandfather and grandmother should be left free in those of a granddaughter and grandson, and they in turn in theirs. To those also to whom Roman citizenship had been opened through Latium he granted the same indulgence, and he joined the rights of kinship among them all together, at once and equally, in the manner of nature; things which earlier emperors were eager to have asked of them one by one, not so much with the mind to grant as to refuse. From this it can be understood what kindness, what spirit it took to gather and bind together families scattered and, so to speak, torn apart, and to bid them be born again; to bestow what was denied, and to grant to all what single persons often had not obtained, and finally to snatch from himself so many occasions of conferring favors, so numerous a store of putting men under obligation and of reckoning it to their account. It seemed unworthy to him, I believe, that a man should be asked for what the gods had given. You are sisters and brother, grandfather and grandsons; what reason is there, then, to ask that you be so? You are so by yourselves. And what? With all the rest of his moderation, he thinks it no less invidious to give an inheritance than to take it away. Gladly, then, approach the honors, take up the citizenship; no one cut off from this tie of kinship will be left stranded like a lopped-off trunk: all will enjoy the same pledges as before, but more honorably. And not even the remote degree of kinship, one already failing, will be compelled to pay the Twentieth on any amount whatever. For the common parent of all has fixed a sum which a tax-farmer can bear.
40| A small and slender inheritance will be free of the burden of the Twentieth; and if the grateful heir so wishes, the whole of it will serve the tomb and the funeral. No watcher, no censor will stand by. Whoever receives a modest sum from anyone's estate may hold it without anxiety and possess it in peace. The law of the Twentieth has been framed so that its danger cannot be reached except by wealth. The injustice has been turned into rejoicing, the injury into a prayer: the heir hopes that he may owe the Twentieth. It was added that those who for such reasons owed the Twentieth at the date of the edict, but had not yet paid it, should not pay it. Yet for the past not even the gods can bring help; you nevertheless brought help, and provided that each man should cease to owe what he would not afterward have owed. You have achieved the same as if we had never had bad emperors; with that disposition, if nature allowed, how gladly you would have poured back their blood and goods to so many plundered, so many butchered! You forbade the exacting of what had begun to be owed in an age not yours. Another man might be angry with the stubborn, and punish slowness in paying with a penalty of double or even quadruple; you think it makes no difference to the injustice whether you exact what ought never to have been owed or decree that it be owed.
41| You will bear with a consul's care and anxiety, Caesar. For when I reflect that you are the same man who remitted the contributions, paid the donative, offered the congiary, drove out the informers, and moderated the taxes, you seem to me to need questioning: have you reckoned well the revenues of the empire, or does an emperor's frugality have such great power that it alone suffices for so many expenses, so many outlays? For what is the reason why for others, who seized everything and kept what they seized as though they had seized nothing, everything fell short, while for you, who give so much away and take nothing, everything is left over? Emperors have never lacked men who, with solemn brow and stern eyebrow, stubbornly stood by the interests of the treasury; and the emperors themselves were of their own accord greedy and rapacious, and needed no teachers; yet they always learned more from us against ourselves. But to your ears the approach has been blocked to all other flatteries, and above all to avaricious ones. So they are silent and still, and since there is no one to be persuaded, there are no persuaders. Whence it comes that, though we owe you very much for your own character, we owe you more for ours.
42| Both the treasury and the public chest were enriched not so much by the Voconian and Julian laws as by the unique and singular charge of treason, brought against those who were free of any charge. The fear of this you have removed entirely, content with a greatness which none lacked more than those who claimed majesty for themselves. Loyalty has been restored to friends, dutifulness to children, obedience to slaves: they show respect, and they obey, and they have masters. For now it is not the slaves who are friends of our emperor, but we; nor does the father of his country believe himself dearer to other men's slaves than to his own citizens. You have freed all men from the accuser in the household, and with one sign of public safety you ended that war, so to call it, of slaves, in which you did no less for the slaves than for the masters. For you made the latter secure, the former good. In the meantime you do not wish to be praised, and perhaps it is not a thing to praise; yet it is welcome to those who remember that emperor who suborned slaves against the lives of their masters, and pointed out charges which he punished as though they had been brought in, a great and unavoidable evil, one to be suffered by each man as often as he had slaves like their emperor.
43| In the same class must be placed the fact that our wills are safe: not one man is heir of everyone, now because he has been named, now because he has not been named. You are not summoned by false or unjust tablets. To you there flees no one's wrath, no one's disloyalty, no one's madness; you are not named because another has given offense, but because you yourself have deserved it. You are written in the wills of friends, and passed over in those of strangers; and there is no difference between a private man and the emperor, except that now you are loved by more, for you also love more. Hold this course, Caesar, and it will be proved by experience whether it is more fruitful and more abundant for an emperor, not only for praise but for money, if men are willing to die with him as heir than if they are compelled. Your father gave much away, and you yourself have given. Let the recipient have proved ungrateful: still there remain those who enjoy his goods, and nothing from them comes back to you except glory. For a grateful debtor makes generosity more pleasant, an ungrateful one more famous. But who before you set this praise above money? How few of the emperors counted not even what came from his own as his, within our patrimonies? Did not the gifts of the Caesars, like those of kings, resemble hooks smeared with bait and snares covered with prey, since, as if drained and entangled out of private fortunes, they carried back with them whatever they had touched?
44| How useful it is to have come through adversity to the enjoyment of good fortune! You lived among us, you were in danger, you were afraid; such was then the life of the innocent. You know, and you have learned by experience, how greatly even those who make them so hate bad emperors. You remember what you used to wish with us, what you used to complain of. For you act as emperor by the judgment of a private man; nay, you show yourself better than the one whom you used to pray for. And so we have been so formed that, we for whom the height of our prayers was an emperor better than the worst, can now bear only the best. No one, then, is so ignorant of you, so ignorant of himself, as to covet that place after you. It is easier for someone to be able to be your successor than for anyone to wish it. For who would of his own will undertake the mass of your cares? Who would not shrink from being compared with you? You yourself have also learned by experience how burdensome it is to succeed a good emperor, and you offered it as your excuse to the man who was adopting you. Or are these easy and slight things to rival, that no one now pays for his safety with disgrace? Life is safe for all, and the dignity of life; nor is he any longer thought prudent and wise who spends his days in darkness. For under an emperor virtues have the same rewards as in the days of liberty; nor is the reward of good deeds only in conscience. You love the steadfastness of citizens, and upright and lively spirits you do not, as others did, crush and press down, but you cherish and raise up. It profits to be good, when it is enough and more than enough if it does no harm: to these you offer honors, to these priesthoods, to these provinces; these flourish in your friendship, these in your esteem. By this prize set on integrity and industry the like are sharpened, the unlike are drawn on: for the rewards of good and bad men make men good and bad. Few are so strong in character that they do not seek or shun the shameful and the honorable according as these have turned out well or badly; the rest, when the wage of toil is given to idleness, of watchfulness to sleep, of frugality to luxury, pursue those very same arts by which they see others have succeeded; and what sort those men are, such they wish to be and to seem; and while they wish, they become so.
45| And the earlier emperors, with the exception of your father, and besides him one or two more (and I have said too many), rejoiced rather in the vices of the citizens than in their virtues: first, because each man's own nature is pleased in another; next, because they thought those more patient of slavery whom it befitted to be nothing but slaves. Into the laps of these they heaped everything; but the good, shut away in leisure or neglect and as if buried, they brought out into the light and day only by informations and dangers. You choose your friends from the best, and by Hercules it is right that those should be dearest to a good emperor who were hateful to a bad one. You know that, as lordship and principate are different by nature, so the emperor is more pleasing to no men than to those who most resent a lord. These, then, you advance, and you show forth, as a pattern and model, what school of life, what kind of men pleases you; and therefore you have not yet accepted the censorship, nor the prefecture of morals, because you prefer to try our characters by favors rather than by remedies. And besides, I do not know whether an emperor does more for morals who allows men to be good than one who forces them. We are pliable, led in whatever direction by the emperor, and, so to speak, we are followers. For we long to be dear to him, to be approved by him; which unlike men would hope for in vain: and by the continuance of our compliance we have come to the point that nearly all men live by the morals of one. Moreover, things are not so badly arranged that we who are able to imitate a bad emperor should not be able to imitate a good one. Only go on, Caesar, and your resolve, your acts will have the force and effect of a censorship. For the life of the emperor is a censorship, and a perpetual one: to this we are steered, to this we are turned; nor do we need command so much as example. For fear is an unfaithful teacher of what is right. Men are better taught by examples, which have this good in them above all, that they prove that what they prescribe can be done.
46| And what terror could have accomplished what reverence for you accomplished? Someone once obtained that the Roman people should suffer the show of the pantomimes to be abolished; but he did not obtain that they should wish it. You were asked for what another had forced, and what had been a necessity began to be a favor. For the demand on you to abolish the pantomimes was made with no smaller a chorus of voices than the demand on your father to restore them. Both were right: for it was proper both that those whom a bad emperor had abolished should be restored, and that, once restored, they should be abolished. In those things which bad men do well, this measure must be kept, that it should appear the author was displeasing, not the deed. The same people, then, who were once spectators and applauders of an emperor on the stage, now turn away even from pantomimes and condemn effeminate arts and pursuits unbecoming to the age. From this it is plain that even the common crowd takes in the discipline of its emperors: a thing which would be most severe if done by one man, they have all made their own. Honor to you for this glory of dignity, Caesar, by which you have brought it about that what before was called force and command is now called morals. They have chastised their own vices, those who deserved to be chastised; and the same men are the correctors who were the ones to be corrected. And so no one complains of your severity, and it is free to complain. But since it is so arranged that men complain of no emperor less than of the one about whom they are most free to complain, in your age there is nothing in which every kind of men does not rejoice and delight. The good are advanced; the bad, which is the most tranquil condition of a state, neither fear nor are feared. You heal errors, but for those who beg it; and to all whom you make good you add this praise, that you do not seem to have compelled them.
47| What of the life, what of the morals of the young? How like an emperor you shape them! What honor you have for teachers of speaking, what regard for professors of wisdom! How under you the studies have regained breath and blood and fatherland! In earlier times savagery punished them with exile, when an emperor conscious of all vices banished arts hostile to vices, no more from hatred than from awe. But you hold those same arts in your embrace, in your eyes and ears. For you practice whatever they teach, and you love them just as much as you are approved by them. Is there anyone who professes the studies of humanity who would not praise, among all your qualities, and even in the first place, the ease of access to you? With a great spirit your father inscribed this citadel, before you emperors, with the name PUBLIC HOUSE; yet in vain, unless he had adopted one who could live there as in a public place. How well that inscription agrees with your character! And how you do everything as though no one but you had inscribed it! For what forum, what temples, are so open? Not the Capitol, nor that very seat of your adoption, is more public, more everyone's. There are no barriers, no graded steps of insult, nor, when a thousand thresholds have been passed, always something hard and obstructing beyond. Great was the stillness before you, great after you, yet nearest to you the greatest: so great a silence everywhere, so deep a modesty, that the examples of restraint and tranquillity are carried back from the emperor's house to small household gods and a narrow hearth.
48| And how you yourself receive everyone! How you wait! How you pass a great part of your days, among so many cares of empire, as if in leisure! And so we come together, not stunned as at other times, nor as men who would risk their lives by arriving late, but untroubled and cheerful, when it suits us. And when the emperor is admitting us, sometimes there is something that keeps us at home as more necessary: we are always excused to you, and never need to be excused. For you know that each man does himself the kindness of seeing you, of attending you; and so much the more freely and for the longer you provide the supply of this pleasure. Nor does flight and emptiness follow your levees. We linger, we stay, as in a common house, which lately a most monstrous beast had fortified with the greatest terror: shut up as if in a cave, now he lapped the blood of his kinsmen, now he came forth to the slaughter and murder of the most distinguished citizens. At the doors there hovered horror and threats, and equal fear for those admitted and those shut out. Besides this, he was himself terrible even to meet and to see: pride on his brow, anger in his eyes, a womanish pallor on his body, on his face shamelessness suffused with much red. No one dared approach or address him, as he always sought darkness and secrecy, and never came out of his solitude except to make a solitude.
49| Yet within those very walls and ramparts by which he seemed to guard his safety, he shut up with himself treachery and ambush, and the god who avenges crimes. Punishment thrust aside and broke through his guards, and through narrow and blocked approaches burst in no differently than through open doors and inviting thresholds; far from him then was his divinity, far those secret bedchambers and cruel retreats into which fear, and pride, and the hatred of men drove him. How much safer now, how much more secure is the same house, since it is defended not by watches of cruelty but of love, not by solitude and bars but by the crowds of citizens! Do we not learn, then, by experience, that the most faithful guard of an emperor is his own innocence? This is the unapproachable citadel, this the unassailable fortification, to need no fortification. In vain will he gird himself with terror who has not been hedged round with affection: for arms are provoked by arms. Do you, moreover, spend only the serious parts of your days in our sight and company? Is it not the same throng, and the same fellowship, that attends your relaxations? Is not your food always in the midst of us, your table always common? Is there not mutual pleasure from our dining together? Do you not draw out talk and give it back? Does not humane kindness lengthen the very time of your banquets, though frugality shortens them? For you do not, before midday, gorged from a solitary dinner, loom over your guests as a watcher and noter of them; nor, full yourself and belching before the fasting and empty, do you set out food, or rather throw it out, that you scorn to touch, and then, having hardly endured that proud pretense of dining together, return to a secret gluttony and hidden luxury. And so we do not admire gold, or silver, or the exquisite contrivances of dinners, but your sweetness and pleasantness; of which there is no satiety, since all is sincere, and true, and adorned with dignity. For no mysteries of foreign superstition, nor obscene wantonness, wander about the emperor's tables: but kindly invitation, and liberal jests, and honor for learning. Hence your sleep is sparing and brief, and no time is shorter for you, out of love for us, than what you pass without us.
50| But since we enjoy your possessions as sharers in them, how much our own things, those we have, are truly our own and ours! For you do not, having driven out the former masters, surround every pool, every lake, even every woodland pasture, in an immense possession; nor do rivers, springs, and seas serve the eyes of one man. There is something that Caesar sees as not his; and at last the empire of the emperor is greater than his patrimony. For much from the patrimony he brings back into the empire, which earlier emperors held, not that they themselves might enjoy it, but that no one else might. So into the traces and seats of noble men equal masters move, and no longer are the lodgings of the most distinguished men worn down with a slave as inhabitant or fall prostrate in foul desolation. It is given to look upon most beautiful houses, enlarged and flourishing, their neglect wiped away. This is your great service, not to men only, but to the very roofs: to halt ruins, to drive out solitude, to rescue vast works from destruction in the same spirit in which they were built. Those things are mute indeed and lack life, yet they seem to feel and to rejoice, that they shine, that they are frequented, that at some time they have begun to have a master who knows. There circulates under the name of Caesar an enormous list of things for sale; so that the avarice of that man should be detested, who coveted so many things when he had so many superfluous. Then it was deadly in the emperor's eyes for one man to have a roomier house, another a pleasanter villa. Now the emperor seeks masters for these same places, and installs them himself: those very gardens of a once great commander, that suburban estate that was never anything but Caesar's, we bid for, we buy, we fill. So great is the emperor's kindness, so great the security of the times, that he thinks us worthy of the emperor's things, and we do not fear that we seem worthy. Nor do you only give your citizens the means of buying, but you bestow and present all the most delightful things: you present, I say, the very things for which you were chosen, for which you were adopted; you transfer what you received by judgment, and you believe nothing more yours than what you hold through friends.
51| The same man is as sparing in building as he is careful in preserving. And so the roofs of the city are no longer shaken, as before, by the hauling of huge stones. Houses stand safe, and temples no longer totter. It is enough for you, and more than enough, having succeeded a most frugal emperor; you prefer to cut back and lop off something from what the emperor left as necessary. Moreover your father withdrew from his own uses what the fortune of empire had given; you withdraw from yours what your father did. But how magnificent you are toward the public! On one side porticoes, on the other shrines are pushed forward with hidden speed, so that they seem not finished, but only changed. Here the immense flank of the Circus rivals the beauty of temples, a seat worthy of a people victorious over nations, and no less worth seeing itself than the things that will be watched from it: worth seeing both for its general appearance and because the place of the commons and of the emperor is made equal. For along the whole length there is one aspect, everything continuous and level, and the emperor watching has no platform more his own than the things he watches. Your citizens will therefore be able to look at one another in turn: it will be given them to behold, not the emperor's bedchamber, but the emperor himself, sitting in public, among the people, to whom you have added five thousand places. For you had increased their number by the ease of the congiary, and had ordered a greater number to be taken on for the future by the pledge of your generosity.
52| If another had provided even one of these things, a head with rays and a seat among the gods would long since have stood for him in gold or ivory, and he would be invoked with more solemn altars and larger victims. You enter shrines only to worship; for you the greatest honor is to keep watch before the temples and to be set before the doorposts. So it comes about that the gods keep the highest summit among men, since you yourself do not covet that of the gods. And so your statue we see in the forecourt of Jupiter Best and Greatest, one or two, and these of bronze. But a little while ago all the approaches, all the steps, and the whole precinct gleamed on one side with gold, on the other with silver, or rather were defiled: when, mixed with the statues of an unclean emperor, the images of the gods looked sordid. These, therefore, of bronze and few, remain, and will remain as long as the temple itself; those of gold and countless paid their offering to public joy by slaughter and ruin. It was a delight to dash to the ground those most arrogant faces, to press on with iron, to rage with axes, as if blood and pain would follow each blow. No one was so restrained in joy and late rejoicing as not to think it a kind of vengeance to see the lacerated limbs, the mutilated members, and finally the fierce and dreadful images thrown down and smelted in the flames; so that out of that terror and those threats they were turned by fire to the use and pleasures of men. With similar reverence, Caesar, you allow thanks for your kindness to be rendered not at your Genius, but in the presence of the divinity of Jupiter Best and Greatest: that we owe to him whatever we owe, that whatever good you do is the gift of him who gave you. Before, indeed, huge herds of victims along the Capitoline way, intercepted for a great part of themselves, as it were, were forced to turn aside from the road: since the most terrible likeness of the most savage lord was honored with as much blood of victims as he himself poured out of human blood.
53| Everything, Conscript Fathers, that is said or has been said by me about other emperors has this purpose, to show how our father reforms and corrects the ways of the principate, corrupted and depraved by long custom. Besides, nothing is praised, without comparison, with sufficient gratitude. Moreover, this is the first duty of loyal citizens toward the best emperor, to pursue the unlike. For he will not have loved good emperors enough who does not hate bad ones enough. Add that there is no greater or wider service of our emperor than that it is safe to attack bad emperors. Has Nero slipped from our grief, though lately avenged? He would permit, I believe, that the fame and life of that man be torn at who was avenging his death; and he would not interpret as said against himself what is said about one most like him. Therefore I, Caesar, compare to all your gifts, and put before many, the fact that it is allowed us to be avenged daily on bad emperors even for the past, and to forewarn future ones by example, that there is no place, no time at which the shades of deadly emperors rest from the curses of those who come after. With the more constancy, Conscript Fathers, let us bring out both our griefs and our joys: let us rejoice in what we enjoy; let us groan over what we suffered. Both must be done at once under a good emperor. Let our private talk, let our conversations, let the very thanksgivings do this; and let them remember that an emperor in safety is best praised if his predecessors who deserved otherwise are blamed. For when posterity is silent about a bad emperor, it is plain that the present one does the same things.
54| And what place was left unaware of wretched flattery, when the praises of emperors were celebrated even in the games and at the contests, were danced, and were broken up, to every kind of mockery, with effeminate voices, measures, gestures? But this was shameful, that at the same time in the senate and on the stage they were praised, by the actor and by the consul. You have removed the arts of the stage far from your cult. So it is serious poems, and the eternal honor of the annals, that pay court to you, not this brief and shameful proclaiming: nay, the very theaters will rise in reverence for you with the greater unanimity, the more the stages are silent about you. But why do I wonder at that, when even those honors that are offered you by us, you either taste most sparingly or are accustomed to refuse altogether? Nothing before was done in the senate so common, so small, that those on whom the necessity of giving an opinion had fallen did not dwell on the praises of the emperors. We were consulted about increasing the number of gladiators, or about establishing a guild of carpenters: and as though the bounds of the empire had been extended, now huge arches, and inscriptions that would rise above the pediment of temples, now even months, and these not single ones, we dedicated to the name of the Caesars. They suffered it, and rejoiced as if they had deserved it. But now who among us, as if forgetful of the man about whom the matter is referred, spends the duty of giving his opinion on the honor of the emperor? This steadiness of ours is praise of your moderation: we obey you in that we assemble in the senate-house not for a contest of flatteries, but for the practice and function of justice, to render this gratitude to your simplicity and truthfulness, that we believe you wish what you wish and do not wish what you do not wish. We begin from there and end there, from which under another emperor we could not begin, nor in which end. For others too have declined most of the honors decreed them; no one before was so great that it was believed he did not want them decreed. This I think more splendid than any inscriptions, since your name is cut not on beams or stones but on monuments of everlasting praise.
55| It will go down through the ages that there was an emperor to whom, flourishing and unharmed, only moderate honors were decreed, and more often none. And indeed, if we wished to contend with the necessity of earlier times, we should be beaten: for pretense is more inventive in devising than truth, slavery than liberty, fear than love. At the same time, since all novelty has long since been used up by flattery, no new honor toward you remains except that we should at some time dare to be silent about you. Come now, if ever our dutifulness has broken silence and overcome your modesty, how few and how modest are the honors we decree that you do not refuse! so that it may appear that you repudiate the greatest honors not from pride and disdain, since you do not scorn lesser ones. This is finer, Caesar, than if you refused them all: for to refuse all is ambition; it is moderation to choose the fewest. By this tempering you take thought both for us and for the treasury: for us, because you free us from every suspicion; for the treasury, because you set a limit to its expenditure, as one who will not need to refill it, if drained, from the goods of the innocent. Your likenesses stand, then, such as were once dedicated to private men for outstanding services to the commonwealth. Statues of Caesar are seen of the same material as those of the Bruti and the Camilli. Nor does the cause differ. For they drove kings and a victorious enemy from the walls: this man keeps off and removes kingship itself, and whatever else captivity breeds; and he holds the seat of the emperor so that there may be no place for a master. And to me, looking at your wisdom, it seems less strange that you either beg off or moderate those mortal and perishable inscriptions. For you know where the true and everlasting glory of an emperor lies: where the honors are over which flames, old age, and successors have no power. For arches and statues, altars even and temples, oblivion demolishes and darkens, and posterity neglects and plucks at them; by contrast, a spirit that scorns ambition and subdues and bridles boundless power flourishes by the very passage of time, and is praised by none more than by those who are least obliged. Besides, as soon as anyone has become emperor, his fame is immediately eternal, though uncertain whether good or bad. It is not, then, a perpetual fame, which remains whether he will or no, that an emperor should desire, but a good one: and that is prolonged not by images and statues but by virtue and services. Nay, even these lighter things, the form and figure of the emperor, neither gold nor silver can express and keep better than the favor of men. And this falls to you abundantly and in full measure, whose most joyful face and lovable countenance sits in the mouth, the eyes, and the mind of all citizens.
56| You have noticed, I believe, Conscript Fathers, that for some time I have not been choosing what I relate: for my purpose is to praise the emperor, not the emperor's deeds. For even bad men do many praiseworthy things; only the best man himself can be praised. Wherefore there is no greater glory of yours, august Emperor, than that for those who give you thanks nothing needs to be veiled, nothing needs to be left out. For what is there in your principate that anyone's speech ought to leap over or pass by? What moment, or rather what point of time, is barren of kindness or empty of praise? Is not everything of such a kind that he seems to have praised you best who has narrated most faithfully? Whence it comes that my speech spreads out almost without measure: and yet I am speaking of a reign not two years old. How much I have said of moderation, and how much more remains! such as that second consulship, which you accepted because the emperor and father was bestowing it. But after the highest power of empire, and with it the power over all things, and over yourself too, was transferred to you by the gods, you refused a third consulship, though you could have played so good a consul. It is great to postpone an honor; to postpone glory, greater. Should I wonder at a consulship held, or at one not accepted? held not in the leisure of this city and the innermost lap of peace, but beside barbarian peoples: as they used to do whose custom it was to exchange the bordered toga for the general's cloak, and to follow victory into unknown lands. It was fine for the empire, glorious for you, when allies and friends came to you in their own country, in their own dwellings. Handsome was the sight of a consul: after many ages a tribunal built of green turf, surrounded with the honor not only of the rods but of javelins and standards. The majesty of the presiding officer was increased by the differing dress of the petitioners, their discordant voices, and the speech that was rarely without an interpreter. It is magnificent to give justice to citizens; what, to enemies? It is handsome to occupy a fixed portion of the forum; what, to press savage plains with the curule chair and the victor's foot? To overlook threatening banks is safe and quiet; what, to spurn barbarian uproar, and to quell the terror of the enemy by a display no less of togas than of arms? And so they saluted you as emperor, not before your images, but yourself present and listening: and the name which others earned by subduing enemies you earned by despising them.
57| This is the praise of a consulship held; here is that of one put off, that at the very beginning of your principate, as though already excused from honors and satiated, you refused a consulship which new emperors used to transfer to themselves from others for whom it was destined. There was even one who, at the end of his principate, wrenched away and seized a consulship which he himself had given, and which was already for the most part held. This honor, then, which emperors both at their beginning and at their end covet so much as to take it away, you yielded to private men, when it lay free and unclaimed. Was a third consulship invidious for you, or a first for an emperor? For the second you entered as emperor indeed, but under an emperor: and nothing can be reckoned to your credit in it, whether of honor or of example, except obedience. And is it so? A city that saw consuls five times, and even six, not those who were created as liberty was already expiring, by force and tumult, but men who, set aside and absent, had the consulships carried to their farms: in this city, you, the emperor of the human race, refused a third consulship as too heavy? Is one who is Augustus, and Caesar, and Father of his Country so much more moderate than even the Papirii and the Quinctii? But them the commonwealth summoned. What? Does not the same commonwealth summon you? Not the senate? Not the consulship itself, which seems to itself to be raised and to grow on your shoulders?
58| I do not call you to the example of him who by continuous consulships had made a certain long and undivided year: I compare you with those who, as often as they were consuls, certainly did not serve themselves. There was in the senate a man consul three times, when you were refusing a third consulship. Our unanimity had imposed on your modesty some burden, that as emperor you should be consul as often as a senator of yours; through excessive modesty you would have refused that, even as a private man. Does the son of a consular and triumphal man, when he is made consul for the third time, rise too high? Is this not owed him? Not earned by the distinction of his family alone? It fell, then, to private men to open the year and unlock the calendar: and this too was a sign of restored liberty, that the consul was someone other than Caesar. So, when the kings had been driven out, the free year began; so, long ago, servitude was thrust out and brought private names into the calendar. Wretched in their ambition were those who were always consuls as they were always emperors! Though it can seem no more ambition than envy and spite to possess all the years, and to hand on that highest ornament of purple only after it has been plucked and its bloom taken. But which should I admire first, your greatness of spirit, or your modesty, or your kindness? It was greatness of spirit, to abstain from an honor always sought; modesty, to yield; kindness, to let others enjoy.
59| But it is now time for you to do something for the consulship itself, to make it greater, and more august, by taking it up and holding it. For to refuse it too often has that ambiguous interpretation, or rather that one, as though you thought it lesser. You refused it as the greatest; but you will be able to persuade no one of this, unless at some time you also do not refuse. When you decline arches, trophies, statues, your modesty must be granted pardon; for those things might indeed be dedicated to you: but when we ask [that you take up and hold the consulship, we ask] that you teach future emperors to renounce idleness, to put off their pleasures for a little while, and for a little while, at least for a very brief time, as if roused from that sleep of good fortune, to put on the bordered toga, which when they could give it they seized; to mount the curule chair, which they hold back; to be, in short, what they coveted, and not wish to become consuls only in order to have been consuls. You held a second consulship, I know: that you could reckon to the armies, to the provinces, even to the other nations, but not to us. We hear indeed that you discharged every function of a consul; but we hear it. You are said to have been most just, most humane, most patient; but you are said. It is right that now and again we should trust our own judgment, our own eyes, and not always fame and rumors. How long shall we, absent, rejoice about one absent? Let it be allowed to find out whether that second consulship itself brought you any pride. Much does an intervening year avail in changing the character of men, more in that of emperors. We have learned, to be sure, that all virtues are present in one on whom some virtue falls: yet we long to find out whether now too a good consul and a good emperor are one and the same thing. For besides the fact that it is arduous to take on two powers at once, and these the highest, there is also some difference in each, since it befits an emperor to be as like as possible to a private man, a consul as unlike as possible.
60| And I see that last year the chief reason for refusing the consulship was that you could not hold it while absent: but now that you are restored to the city and to the public prayers, what is there in which you would more approve yourself than in what and how great were the things we longed for? It is little to come into the senate-house unless you also convene it; to be present at the senate unless you also preside; to hear those giving their opinions unless you also ask them in turn. Do you wish to restore to its majesty that most august tribunal of the consuls? Mount it. Do you wish reverence to stand firm for magistrates, authority for the laws, restraint for petitioners? Come. For what it would matter to the commonwealth, if you were a private man, whether it had you only as a consul or also as a senator, know that it now matters whether it has you only as emperor or also as consul. By so many and such great reasons, although the modesty of our Emperor struggled hard against them, it yielded at last. But in what manner did it yield? Not so as to make himself like private men, but to make private men his equals. For he accepted a third consulship in order to give one. He knew the moderation of men, he knew the shame of those who would not bear to be consuls for the third time, except with one who was three times consul. That was given in the past, though sparingly, to partners in wars, sharers of dangers; but you have granted it to singular men who deserved well and bravely of you, yet in the toga. You are bound by the care of both, by the watchfulness of both, Caesar. But in an emperor it is rare and almost unheard of that he should think himself under obligation, or, if he thinks so, should love it. You owe, then, Caesar, and you pay. But when you make men consuls for the third time, you seem to yourself not a great emperor, but a friend who is not ungrateful. Nay, even certain quite modest services of citizens you raise to something greater by the strength of your fortune. For you bring it about that each man seems to have given you as much as he has received from you. What shall I pray for this kindness? Only that you may always oblige and be obliged; and that you may leave uncertain whether it is more to the advantage of your citizens to owe to you, or to have given to you.
61| I seemed, for my part, to be looking upon that ancient senate, when, with a man thrice consul sitting by, I saw a consul designate for the third time asked for his opinion. How great they were then, and how great you! It happens, to be sure, that bodies however lofty and towering, set beside taller ones, shrink; likewise that the highest dignities of citizens are, as it were, pressed down by comparison with the summit of yours, and the nearer they have risen to your greatness, the more they seem to have descended from their own. Yet those men, though you could not make them equal to yourself, though you wished it, you have set so high that they are seen as far above the rest as they are below you. If you had conferred the third consulship of one man on the same year as yours, it would be taken as proof of a vast spirit. For as it belongs to good fortune to be able to do as much as you wish, so to greatness it belongs to wish as much as you can. Praiseworthy indeed is the man who deserved a third consulship; but more he under whom he deserved it: great and to be remembered is the man who received so great a reward; but greater he who gave it to the receiver. What of the fact that you adorned two at once, for their third consulship, with the sanctity of being your colleague? so that no one may doubt that this was your chief reason for extending your consulship, to embrace the consulship of two, and to give yourself as colleague not to one. Each had lately held a second consulship, given by your father, that is, by how much less than by you?; to the eyes of both the rods, laid down a little before, were still wandering; in the ears of both there still sat that solemn cry of the lictors and the herald before them; when again the curule chair, and again the purple: as of old, when the enemy was at hand and the commonwealth was brought to the utmost danger and demanded a man proved in honors, consulships were not given back to the same men, but the same men were given back to consulships. So great is your power of doing good that your indulgence rivals necessity. Just now they had put off the bordered togas; let them resume them: just now they had bidden the lictors go; let them recall them: just now their congratulating friends had withdrawn; let them return. Is that the nature of a man? The power of a man? To renew joys, to restore gladness, to give no rest to congratulations, nor allow other intervals for repeated consulships except while they are being ended? May you do that always, and may neither your spirit nor your fortune ever tire in this work. May you give third consulships to as many as possible, and when you have given third consulships to very many, may there still always remain more to whom you owe them.
62| Of all the benefits that are bestowed on the deserving, the joy overflows not more to the recipients themselves than to those like them: but especially from the consulship of these men such great gladness has come not to some part of the senate but to the whole senate, that everyone seems both to have given and to have received the same honor. For these are the very men whom the senate chose, and indeed first, when in reducing the public expenses it put the best men in charge of each. This, then, this is what drew them deep into the mind of Caesar. Have we not often enough found by experience that it is the condition of things that the favor of the senate either helps or harms with the emperor? Was not, a little while ago, nothing more deadly than that thought of the emperor? This man the senate approves, this one is dear to the senate. He hated those whom we loved; but we also those whom he did. Now between emperor and senate there is a contest in love for each most worthy man. We point out in turn, we trust in turn, and, what is the greatest sign of mutual love, we love the same men. Therefore, Conscript Fathers, favor openly, love steadily. Love no longer has to be hidden for fear of harming, nor hatred suppressed for fear of helping. Caesar approves and disapproves the same as the senate. He has you in council when you are present, and when you are absent too. He made consuls for the third time those whom you had chosen; and he did it in the order in which they had been chosen by you. Great is your honor in any case, whether he loves most those whom he knows to be dearest to you, or prefers no one to them, though he loves someone more. Rewards are set before the older, examples before the young: let them go, let them throng the houses, at last safe and open: whoever looks up to men approved by the senate, he above all wins the emperor's favor. For he thinks that what is added to each man is added to himself: and he places no glory in being greater than all, unless those whom he is greater than are very great. Stand firm, Caesar, in that principle of your purpose, and believe us to be such as each man's reputation is. To this give your ears, to this your eyes: do not look back at secret estimates, whisperings that lie in wait for no one more than for listeners. It is better to trust all than individuals: for individuals can deceive and be deceived: no one has ever deceived all, nor have all deceived anyone.
63| I return now to your consulship: although there are certain things that belong to the consulship, yet came before the consulship. First, that you were present at your own elections, a candidate, not only for the consulship but for immortality, and glory, and an example which good emperors would follow and bad ones would marvel at. The Roman people saw you in that ancient seat of its power: you endured that long chant of the elections, and a delay no longer to be mocked: and you were made consul as one of us whom you make consuls. How few of the preceding emperors held that honor as due to the consulship, or to the people? Did not some, limp with sleep and overflowing from yesterday's dinner, await the messengers of their elections? Others, indeed, were wakeful and sleepless, but within their own bedchambers, they were plotting exile and slaughter for the very consuls by whom they were being proclaimed consuls. O crooked ambition, ignorant of true majesty, to covet an honor which you disdain, to disdain what you have coveted: and when you look out from the nearest gardens upon the field and the elections, to be as absent from them as if you were separated by the Danube and the Rhine! Would you turn away from your own honor the suffrages you hoped for, and, content to have ordered yourself proclaimed consul, keep not even the pretense of a free state? Would you keep away from the elections, shut up and hidden, as though there a consulship were not being given to you but your command taken away? This was the conviction of the proudest masters, that they would seem to cease to be emperors if they did anything as senators do. Most, however, were kept away not so much by pride as by a certain fear. Did they, conscious of debaucheries and unclean nights, dare to pollute the auspices, and to defile the consecrated field with a wicked footstep? They had not so far scorned gods and men as to be able to bear the eyes of men and gods cast upon them in that most spacious seat. For you, on the other hand, both your moderation and your sanctity urged that you present yourself to the religion of the gods and the judgments of men.
64| Others deserved the consulship before they received it; you deserved it while receiving it too. The ceremonies of the elections had been completed, as far as the emperor was concerned, and already the whole crowd had stirred itself to go, when you, to the amazement of all, approach the consul's chair: you offer yourself to be bound to words unknown to emperors, except when they compelled others to swear. Do you see how necessary it was not to refuse the consulship? We should not have thought that you would do this, if you had refused. I am amazed, Conscript Fathers, and do not yet trust enough either my eyes or my ears: and I ask myself again and again whether I heard it, whether I saw it. The Emperor, then, and Caesar, and Augustus, the Pontifex Maximus, stood before the lap of the consul? And the consul sat, with the emperor standing before him? And he sat undisturbed, unafraid, as though it were the custom to do so? Nay, as he sat he dictated the oath to the one standing, and the other swore, and pronounced and spelled out the words by which he devoted his own head and house to the wrath of the gods, if knowingly he deceived. Great, Caesar, and equal is your glory, whether emperors afterward do this or do not. Is any proclamation worthy enough, that the same man did as consul for the third time what he did the first? The same as emperor as when a private man? The same as emperor as under an emperor? I do not know now, I do not know, whether that is finer which you swore with no one leading the way, or this which you swore with another leading.
65| On the Rostra too, with like scrupulousness, you yourself placed yourself under the laws: the laws, Caesar, which no one has written for an emperor. But you wish nothing more to be allowed you than us: so it comes about that we wish you more. This I hear now for the first time, learn now for the first time: the emperor is not above the laws, but the laws above the emperor: what is not allowed to the other consuls is not allowed to Caesar as consul. He swears to the law with the gods attending; for to whom would they attend more than to Caesar? He swears with those looking on to whom the same oath is to be sworn: not unaware, besides, that to no one is it more a matter of conscience to keep what he has sworn than to him whom it most concerns not to be forsworn. And so, when about to leave the consulship, you swore that you had done nothing against the laws. This was great when you promised; greater after you made it good. To come forward so many times upon the Rostra, and tread that place which the pride of emperors had never mounted, here to take up and here to lay down magistracies, how worthy of you, and how different from the habit of those who, after a consulship held a very few days, or rather not held, threw it away by edict! This in place of an assembly, in place of the Rostra, in place of an oath: that, of course, the ends might agree with the beginnings: and that by this alone they might be understood to have been consuls themselves, that others had not been.
66| I have not leapt over the consulship of our Emperor, Conscript Fathers; but I have gathered into the one place whatever had to be said about the oath. For we ought not, as with a barren and meager subject, to draw out and scatter the same form of praise, and handle it again and again. The first day of your consulship had dawned, on which you entered the senate-house and exhorted us, now singly, now all together, to resume liberty, to take up the cares of what was, as it were, an empire shared by all, to watch over the public interests and rouse ourselves. All before you said these same things; yet no one before you was believed. Before our eyes were the shipwrecks of many, whom an unforeseen whirlwind had struck down after they had been carried out on a treacherous calm. For what sea is so faithless as the blandishments of those emperors, in whom there was such fickleness, such deceit, that it was easier to have them angry than favorable? You, however, we follow untroubled and eager wherever you call. You bid us be free; we shall be. You bid us bring into the open what we think: we shall bring it. For until now we did not hold back through some cowardice and inborn torpor: terror, and fear, and that wretched prudence born of dangers warned us to turn our eyes, ears, and minds away from the commonwealth (there was, in fact, no commonwealth at all). But now, relying and leaning on your right hand and your promises, we unlock mouths fenced in by long servitude, and loosen a tongue bridled by so many evils. For you wish us to be such as you bid us be, and nothing in your exhortations to be painted over, nothing underhanded, in short nothing that is prepared to deceive one who believes, not without danger to the deceiver. For no emperor has ever been deceived, except one who first deceived others.
67| I seem, for my part, to have seen this feeling of the common parent, both from his speech and from the very delivery. How great was the weight of his thoughts! How unaffected the truth of his words! What assurance in his voice! What affirmation in his face! What faith in the eyes, the bearing, the gesture, in short in the whole body! He will always hold, then, to what he urged: and he will know that we, as often as we make trial of the liberty he gave, are obeying him. Nor need he fear that he will think us incautious if we use the faithfulness of these times steadily, we whom he remembers to have lived otherwise under a bad emperor. To utter vows both for the eternity of the empire and for the safety of the citizens? rather, we were accustomed to do so for the safety of the emperors, and because of them for the eternity of the empire. It is worth noting in what words these vows for our empire were undertaken: IF YOU HAVE RULED THE COMMONWEALTH WELL AND FOR THE ADVANTAGE OF ALL. Worthy vows, ever to be undertaken and ever to be paid. The commonwealth, with yourself as author, Caesar, has made this bargain with the gods, that they should keep you safe and unharmed, if you have kept the others so: if not, that they should turn their eyes from the guardianship of your [head], and leave you to vows that would not be undertaken openly. Others wished themselves to survive the commonwealth, and did so: for you your own safety is hateful, if it is not joined with the safety of the commonwealth. You allow nothing to be wished for you, unless it profits those who wish; and every year you send the gods into council about yourself; and you require them to change their decision if you cease to be such as you were chosen. But with a vast confidence in yourself, Caesar, you make a pact with the gods, that they keep you if you deserve it: though you know that whether you deserve it, no one knows better than the gods. Does it not seem to you, Conscript Fathers, that he turns these things over with himself by day and night? I, for my part, have armed even the hand of the prefect against myself, should the advantage of all so demand: but I do not beg off either the wrath or the neglect of the gods: rather I pray and beseech that the commonwealth may never undertake vows for me against its will; or, if it undertakes them against its will, that I may not be bound by them.
68| You take, then, Caesar, the most glorious fruit of your safety from the agreement of the gods. For since you make the exception, that THE GODS SHALL KEEP YOU ONLY IF YOU HAVE RULED THE COMMONWEALTH WELL AND FOR THE ADVANTAGE OF ALL, you are certain that you govern the commonwealth well, since they keep you. And so for you the day passes untroubled and glad, which held other emperors in care and fear: when, in suspense and stunned, and putting little trust in our patience, they awaited from this side and that the messengers of public slavery. And if by chance rivers, snows, or winds had held some back, they at once believed this was what they deserved; and there was no difference in their terror: for the reason that, since a bad emperor fears any more worthy man as his successor, and since there is no one who is not more worthy, all are feared. Your security is not put off by the delay of messengers, not by the slowness of letters. You know that oaths are sworn to you everywhere, since you yourself have sworn to all. No one withholds this from himself. We love you, indeed, in so far as you deserve; but we do this not out of love of you, but of ourselves: and may no day ever dawn on which not our advantage but loyalty, Caesar, makes vows for you. Shameful is the protection of an emperor for which a man can be reckoned a creditor. One may complain that emperors do not inquire into our private affairs, except those whom we hate. For if good emperors had the same care that bad ones had, what admiration of you everywhere you would find, what joy and exultation! What talk of all men with their wives and children, even at their household altars and hearths! You would know that those most tender ears are being spared. And besides, though hatred and love are opposites, they have this in common, that we love good emperors more unrestrainedly where we hate bad ones more freely.
69| Yet you took a proof of our affection and of our judgment, the greatest you could take in person, on that day when you so looked after the anxiety and the sense of shame of the candidates that no one's joy was troubled by another's sadness. Some departed with joy, others with hope: many had to be congratulated, no one consoled. Nor for that reason did you exhort our young men any the less to go round the senate, to make their petition to the senate, and so to hope for honors from the emperor if they had sought them from the senate. And in that connection, if any needed an example, you added that they should imitate you. A steep example, Caesar, and one which no candidate can imitate any more than any emperor can. For what candidate, even for one day, is more reverent toward the senate than you, both in your whole life and in that very time in which you judge of the candidates? Did anything else than reverence for the senate prevail with you, to offer to the young men of a most distinguished family the honor owed to their birth, but before it was owed? At last, then, nobility is not obscured but illumined by an emperor; at last those grandsons of mighty men, those descendants of liberty, neither does Caesar frighten nor does he fear them: nay, by hastening their honors he enlarges and increases them, and gives them back to their ancestors. If there is anywhere anything of ancient stock, anything of remaining distinction, he embraces it and revives it and brings it forward for the use of the commonwealth. There are in honor among men, and in honor of reputation, great names out of the darkness of oblivion, through the indulgence of Caesar, whose it is both to preserve nobles and to make them.
70| One of the candidates, as quaestor, had presided over a province, and in it had founded the revenues of a most distinguished city by an outstanding settlement. This you thought should be reported to the senate. For why should the condition, under you as emperor, who surpassed the distinction of your birth by your virtue, be worse for those who deserved to have noble descendants than for those who had had noble parents? How worthy of you, to announce these things always about our magistrates, and to make men good not by the punishments of the bad but by the rewards of the good! The young men were kindled and raised their spirits to emulate what they saw praised: and there was no one whom this thought did not come over, since he knew that whatever was done well by anyone in the provinces, you knew it all. It is useful, Caesar, and salutary for the governors of provinces, to have this confidence: that for their uprightness and industry the greatest reward is ready, the judgment of the emperor, the vote of the emperor. Until now, however, minds however sincere and upright, even if it did not twist them, a wretched but true reflection nevertheless dulled. For you see: if I do something well, Caesar will not know; or if he knows, he will not give testimony. So that same neglect, or malice, of emperors, since it promised impunity to bad counsels and no reward to right deeds, did not deter the one from crime, and did deter the other from deserving praise. But now, if anyone has governed a province well, to him a dignity won by virtue is offered. For the field of honor and glory lies open to all: from it let each seek what he desires, and, having gained it, owe it to himself. For the provinces too you have for the future taken away both the fear of injuries and the necessity of accusing. For if the men they have thanked are advanced by it, they will not be driven to complain of anyone. And besides [it is clear] that nothing helps a candidate more toward the following honors than those already completed. Best is a magistracy sought by a magistracy, an honor by an honor. I wish that he who has governed a province should cite, not only the letters of his friends, nor entreaties coaxed out by a conspiracy in the city, but the decrees of colonies, the decrees of states. Cities, peoples, nations are well inserted by the votes of consular men. The most effective kind of canvassing for a candidate is to give thanks.
71| Now with what assent of the senate, with what joy was it received, when you met the candidates with a kiss, as you named each! stepping down to the level, and as one of those congratulating. Should I wonder at you more, or blame those who made that seem great? when, as if fixed to their curule chairs, they put forth only a hand, and that hesitantly and sluggishly, like men reckoning it to your account. There befell, then, our eyes an unaccustomed sight, the emperor and a candidate [of a knight] standing together: [there fell to us] to behold one who gave honor equal to those who received it. Which deed of yours was celebrated by the whole senate with what true acclamation, ALL THE GREATER, ALL THE MORE AUGUST! For he to whom nothing remains to increase his eminence can grow only in one way, if he lowers himself, secure in his greatness. For the fortune of emperors is no further from any danger than from humility. To me, in truth, it was not so much your humanity as the earnestness of it that seemed admirable. For when you lent to your speech your eyes, your voice, your hand: as if you had entrusted those same things to another, you fulfilled every measure of courtesy. And even when the supporters of the candidates received their names with the honor they usually give: you too were among those receiving, and out of the emperor's mouth that senatorial assent was heard: and what we rejoiced to give by way of testimony before the emperor to the deserving, was given by the emperor. You made them, then, THE BEST in saying so: and not only the life of the men themselves was approved by you, but the judgment of the senate, and it rejoiced that it was honored no less than the men whom you praised.
72| For as to your prayer that the very ordering of the elections might turn out well and happily FOR US, FOR THE COMMONWEALTH, FOR YOU: is it not such that we ought to reverse this order of the vows? and entreat the gods, in short, that all you do and will do may turn out prosperously FOR YOU, FOR THE COMMONWEALTH, FOR US? or, if one should wish more briefly, FOR YOU ALONE? in whom both the commonwealth and we are. There was a time, and too long it was, when some things were adverse and others favorable to the emperor and to us: now things are common to you with us, as joyful as sad: and we cannot be happy without you any more than you without us. Or, if you could, would you have added at the end of the vows, THAT THE GODS MAY ASSENT TO YOUR PRAYERS ONLY IF YOU HAVE CONTINUED TO DESERVE OUR JUDGMENT? So far above everything do you set the love of your citizens that you wish to be loved first by us, then by the gods, and so by them, if you are loved by us. And indeed the ends of earlier emperors taught that not even the gods love any whom men do not love. It was hard to match these prayers of yours with praises: yet we have matched them. What ardor of love, what goads, what torches supplied us with those acclamations! They were not the voices of our talent, Caesar, but of your virtue and your deserts: such as no flattery ever invented, no one's terror ever wrung out. Whom have we so feared that we should feign these things? Whom have we so loved that we should declare these things? You know the necessity of slavery: when did you hear anything like it, and when did you say it? Fear contrives many things, but such as show they were sought by unwilling men; the invention of anxiety is one thing, of security another; one the discovery of the sad, another of the glad; pretense could produce neither. The wretched have their own words, the happy their own: and even if the same are now said by both, they are said differently.
73| You yourself are witness what joy was in every face. No one kept his cloak or dress, which he had only just put on. Then the roofs echoing with voices, and nothing shut enough against such shouting. Who then did not leap up from his place? Who felt that he had leaped up? Much we did of our own will, more by a kind of impulse and command. For there is in joy too a force that compels. Did your modesty at least set a limit to it? For the more we were checked by you, the more we blazed up, not from stubbornness, Caesar: but as it is in your power whether we rejoice, so how far is not in ours either. You yourself too confirmed the sincerity of our acclamations by the truth of your tears. We saw your eyes grow moist, your face cast down with joy, and as much blood in your face as there was modesty in your mind. And by this we were the more inflamed to pray that there might never be a different cause for your tears, and that you might never [wipe] your brow. Let us ask this very [temple], these seats, as if they would answer, whether they ever saw the tears of an emperor: but the tears of the senate they have often seen. You have burdened future emperors: but our descendants too. For these also will demand of their emperors that they deserve to hear the same: and those will be indignant that they do not hear it.
74| There is nothing I can say more fittingly than what was said by the whole senate: O HAPPY YOU! When we said it, we marveled not at your wealth but at your spirit. For this at last is true happiness, to seem worthy of happiness. But among the many things said that day wisely and gravely, there was above all [this]: TRUST US, TRUST YOURSELF. This we said with great confidence in ourselves, but with greater in you. For one man may perhaps deceive another, but no one will have deceived himself. Let him only look into his life, and ask himself what he deserves. Therefore it gave credit to our voices with the best of emperors, which among bad ones it took away. For although we did what lovers are accustomed to do, they nevertheless believed themselves not to be loved. Besides this we prayed that THE GODS MAY LOVE YOU AS YOU LOVE US. Who would say this either of himself, or to an emperor who loved us moderately? For ourselves indeed this was the sum of our vows, that THE GODS MAY LOVE US AS YOU DO. Is it true, what we cried out among these things: O HAPPY WE! For what is happier than we, for whom it is no longer to be wished that the emperor love us, but that the gods love us as the emperor does? A state devoted to religious observances, and always dutifully deserving the indulgence of the gods, thinks that nothing can be added to its happiness, except that the gods should imitate Caesar.
75| But why do I pursue and gather up the particulars? As if I could either embrace in speech or follow in memory what you, Conscript Fathers, resolved to send into the public record and to engrave in bronze, lest any forgetfulness intercept it. Before, only the speeches of emperors were usually committed to eternity by this kind of monument: our acclamations were shut up within the walls of the senate-house. For they were such that neither the senate nor the emperors could boast of them. But that these should go out to the multitude and be handed down to posterity was in the public interest and in the public dignity: first, that the world might be brought in as witness and party to our dutifulness: next, that it might be plain that we dare to judge of good and bad emperors, not only after their time: last, that it might be learned by experience that we were grateful before as well, but wretched, since we were not permitted before to prove that we were grateful. But with what eagerness, what effort, what shouting was it demanded of you that you should not suppress our feelings and your own deserts! and finally that you should provide for the future by example! Let emperors too learn to tell true acclamations from false, and let them owe it to your gift that they can no longer be deceived. The road to good fame is not to be prepared for them, only not to be abandoned by them: flattery is not to be driven away, but not to be brought back. It is clear both what they should do, and what they ought to hear if they do it. What now should I pray on behalf of the senate, over and above what I have prayed with the whole senate, except that the joy you then showed in your eyes may cling to your mind? May you love that day, and yet surpass it: may you deserve new things, hear new things: for the same things cannot be said except on account of the same deeds.
76| Now how ancient, how consular it was that for three whole days the senate sat after your example, though meanwhile you did nothing beyond a consul! Each man put whatever question he pleased: to dissent, to withdraw, and to offer the commonwealth the full benefit of his judgment, was safe: we were all consulted, and even counted: and the opinion prevailed that was not the first but the better. But who before dared speak, who dared open his mouth, except those wretches who were asked first? The rest, fixed and stunned, bore that mute and seated necessity of assent with what pain of mind, with what shuddering of the whole body! One man and he alone gave the opinion which all would follow and all disapprove, above all he himself who had given it. So true is it that nothing displeases all more than what is done as though it pleased all. Perhaps an emperor in the senate composed himself out of reverence for it: but once out, he at once took himself back into the emperor, and was accustomed to drive away, neglect, and despise all the duties of a consul. He, however, was consul as if he were only consul: he thought nothing beneath him except what was beneath a consul. And first, he came out of his house in such a way that no apparatus of imperial arrogance, no tumult of forerunners held him back. There was one delay at the threshold, to consult the birds and to revere the warnings of the divinities. No one was jostled, no one pushed aside: such was the quiet for travelers, such the modesty of the rods, that for the most part another's crowd compelled both consul and emperor to halt. His own attendance was so moderate, so restrained, that some ancient and great consul seemed to be walking under a good emperor. His way led more often to the forum, but frequently also to the Campus.
77| For he himself attended the elections of the consuls; he took as much pleasure from their proclaiming as before from their designation. The candidates stood before the emperor's curule chair, as he himself had stood before the consul's: and they were bound to the words to which a little before the emperor himself had sworn; one who thinks there is so much in an oath that he demands it of others also. The remaining part of the day was given to the tribunal. There, indeed, what scruple of equity! what reverence for the laws! Someone would approach him as emperor: he would answer that he was consul. No magistrate's right, no one's authority was lessened by him: it was even increased; since most matters he sent back to the praetors, and in such a way that he called them colleagues: not because it was popular and pleasing to the hearers, but because he thought so. He placed so much dignity in the office itself that he judged it no greater that some one should be called colleague by the emperor than that he was praetor. Besides this he was so constant on the tribunal that he seemed to be refreshed and restored by the labor. Which of us takes the same care, the same sweat? Who so serves or suffices for the honors he has sought? And indeed it is right that he who makes the consuls should excel all other consuls so far: for it seemed unworthy even to Fortune that one should be able to give honors who could not discharge them. Let him who is about to make consuls teach, and persuade those about to receive the highest honor, that he knows what it is that he is about to give: thus it comes about that they too know what they have received.
78| For this reason the senate more justly both asked and bade you to take a fourth consulship. Believe, from your own compliance, that this word belongs to command, not to flattery: that in no matter more should either the senate demand it of you, or you grant it to the senate. For as of other men, so of emperors, even of those who seem gods to themselves, all lifetime is short and frail to each. And so it befits every best man to strive and struggle that he may benefit the commonwealth even after himself, by monuments, namely, of moderation and justice, which a consul can establish in great number. This surely is your intention, to recall and bring back liberty. What honor, then, ought you to love more, what name ought you to use oftener, than that which restored liberty found first? It is not less the part of a citizen to be both emperor and consul together than to be consul only. Take account also of the modesty of your colleagues; colleagues, I say: for so you yourself speak, and wish us to speak. The memory of their third consulship will be a burden to their modesty until they see you consul. For what is enough for an emperor cannot but be too much for private men. Grant, Caesar, to those who pray, and and grant us the fulfillment of the vows which you are accustomed to support before the gods, and which lie in your own power.
79| Perhaps a third consulship is enough for you: but for us it is the less enough. That one taught us and led us to desire to have you as consul again and again. We should press it more mildly if we did not yet know what sort of man you were going to be. It was more tolerable that a trial of you be denied us than the use of you. Will it be given us to see that consul again? Will he hear, and give back, the voices he did most recently? And will he offer joy as great as he will himself take in? Will he preside over the public gladness, its author and cause? And will he try, as he is wont, to restrain our feelings, and not be able? Will there be for the dutifulness of the senate and the modesty of the emperor a happy and splendid contest, whether it be defeated or whether it conquer? I, for my part, anticipate some unknown joy, greater than the last. For who is of so weak a mind as not to hope for a consul the better the more often he has been one? Another man, if he had not at once given himself to idleness and pleasure, would still have restored himself from his labors by leisure and quiet: this man, released from the cares of a consul, took up those of an emperor, so careful in his tempering that neither as emperor did he seek the office of consul, nor as consul that of emperor. We see how he meets the longings of the provinces, the petitions even of individual cities. There is no difficulty in hearing, no delay in answering: they approach at once, they are dismissed at once: and at last the crowd of embassies shut out no longer besieges the emperor's doors.
80| What of all his judicial hearings, how mild a severity, how unrelaxed a clemency! Your seat is not for enriching the treasury, nor is there any other reward of your verdict to you than to have judged well. Litigants stand before you anxious not about their fortunes but about your estimate; nor do they fear so much what you think of their case as what you think of their character. O truly the part of an emperor, and even of a consul, to reconcile rival cities, to restrain swelling peoples not more by command than by reason: to intervene against the injustices of magistrates, and make undone whatever ought not to have been done: finally, in the manner of the swiftest of stars, to look upon everything, hear everything, and, when invoked from anywhere, to be present at once, like a divinity, and stand by! Such things, I should think, are what the parent of the world himself governs by his nod, if ever he has lowered his eyes to the lands and deigned to count the fates of mortals among divine works: from which part of his cares he is now free and released, and is at leisure for heaven alone, since he gave you to fulfill his office toward the whole race of men. For you fulfill it, and are equal to him who commissioned you, when every day of yours is laid to rest with the greatest benefit to us and with praise to you.
81| But if ever you have made an even account with the business that flows in on you, you count a change of labor as a kind of refreshment. For what relaxation is there for you except to range the woodland pastures, to rouse wild beasts from their lairs, to cross the huge ridges of mountains, and to set your foot on bristling rocks, helped by no one's hand, no one's footstep; and among these things, with pious mind, to approach groves and to meet divinities? Of old this was the trial of youth, this the pleasure; with these arts future commanders were schooled: to contend in running with fleeing beasts, in strength with bold ones, in cunning with crafty ones: and it was counted no mean glory of peace that the inroad of wild beasts had been removed from the fields and the labor of the countrymen freed, as from a kind of siege. That glory those emperors too claimed who could not go to the hunt themselves: they claimed it, however, by gathering with feigned skill beasts that had been tamed and broken in cages and then let loose for their own mockery. For him an equal sweat in capturing and seeking, and the highest and also the most welcome labor, to find. And indeed, if ever it pleased him to carry the same strength of body out to the seas, he does not follow with eyes or hands sails that merely float: but now he sits at the helm, now he strives with the strongest of his companions to break the waves, to tame the resisting winds, and to cross the opposing straits with oars.
82| How unlike that man, who could not bear the leisure of the Alban lake, and the torpor and silence of Baiae, nor even endure the beating and crash of oars, but shuddered at each stroke with shameful dread. And so, far from every sound, unshaken himself and unmoved, with his vessel tied up and bound fast, no differently than some expiatory victim, he was drawn along. A foul sight, when the Emperor of the Roman People followed another's course and another's pilot, as though in a captured ship. Nor even the rivers and streams were free of that deformity. The Danube and the Rhine rejoiced to carry that glory of ours, with no less shame to the empire that Roman eagles, Roman standards, in short a Roman bank, looked on at this than that the enemy's bank did: the enemy's, whose custom it is to range over those same rivers, now stiff with frost, or overflowing the plains, now liquid and flowing along, in vessels, and to cross them by swimming. Nor yet would I greatly praise in itself the hardness of body and of arms: but if a spirit stronger than all the body rules these, one that no indulgence of fortune softens, no imperial abundance twists toward sloth and luxury; then, whether he exercises on mountains or at sea, I shall marvel at a body glad in its work and limbs growing by labors. For I see that from ancient times the husbands of goddesses, and the sons of gods, were made famous no more by the dignity of their marriages than by these arts. At the same time I reflect, since these things are his sport and diversion, what and how great those serious and strenuous pleasures must be, and from what he withdraws into such leisure. For there are pleasures from which one best judges each man's gravity, sanctity, temperance. For who is so dissolute that some appearance of severity does not settle on his occupations? It is in leisure that we are betrayed. Did not most emperors devote this same time to dice, debauchery, and luxury, filling the relaxations of serious cares with a strain of vices?
83| This is the first thing that great fortune has: it allows nothing to be covered, nothing hidden: of emperors it lays open not only the houses but the very bedchambers and innermost retreats, and sets out and displays all secrets to be known by fame. But for you, Caesar, nothing could be more suited to glory than to be inspected through and through. Splendid indeed are the things you put forth in public; but not less those you hold at the threshold. It is magnificent that you hold yourself back and recall yourself from every contagion of vices, but more magnificent that you do so for your own people. For by how much it is harder to answer for others than for oneself, by so much is it more praiseworthy that, being yourself the best, you have made all around you like yourself. To many illustrious men it has been a disgrace that a wife was taken on too heedlessly or retained too patiently: so domestic infamy destroyed those distinguished abroad: and what kept them from being counted greatest citizens was that their husbands were lesser. For you a wife turns to honor and glory. For what is more holy than she? What more ancient in virtue? If the Pontifex Maximus has to choose a wife, would he not choose either her or one like her (but where is there one like her?)? How she claims nothing for herself from your fortune except joy! How steadily she reveres not your power but you yourself! You are for each other what you were: you approve one another equally: and prosperity has added nothing to you except that you began to learn how well each of you bears prosperity. How modest she is in dress! How sparing in attendance! How like a citizen in her walk! This is the husband's work, who so imbued, so trained her: for the wife the glory of compliance is enough. When she sees how no terror, no ambition accompanies you, should she not herself walk in silence too? And imitate, so far as her sex allows, a husband who goes on foot? It would be becoming in her even if you did the opposite. But under this modesty of her husband, how much deference a wife owes her husband! how much a woman owes herself!
84| And your sister, how she remembers that she is a sister! how in her your simplicity, your truthfulness, your candor are recognized! so that, if anyone compares her with your wife, he is forced to doubt which is more effective for living rightly, to be well brought up or to be happily born. Nothing is so prone to rivalries as emulation, in women especially: and it is born chiefly of close association, is fed by equality, and flares up into envy, whose end is hatred. All the more to be thought admirable is it that for two women in one house, and of equal fortune, there is no contest, no contention. They look up to each other, yield to each other: and though each loves you most unreservedly, they think it makes no difference to them which of them you love more. The same purpose is theirs, the same course of life, and nothing from which you could perceive they are two. For they strive to imitate you, to follow you. So each has the same manners because each has yours: hence moderation, hence also a lasting security. For they will never run the risk of being private women, who have not ceased to be. The senate had offered them the title of Augustae, which they vied in declining, as long as you had refused the appellation of father of your country: or because they judged there was more in it if your wife and sister were said to be so than if they were called Augustae. But whatever reason urged on them so great a modesty, they are the more worthy to be and to be held august in our minds because they are not so called. For what is more praiseworthy in women than if they place true honor not in the splendor of titles but in the judgments of men, and make themselves equal to great names even while they refuse them?
85| Already also in the minds of private men that ancient good of mortals, friendship, had grown old and faded, and in its place had come flatteries, blandishments, and a pretense of love worse than hatred. For in the household of emperors only the name of friendship remained, empty, of course, and mocked. For what friendship could there be among those of whom some seemed to themselves masters, others slaves? You have brought back this friendship, driven out and wandering: you have friends because you are yourself a friend. For love is not commanded, as other things are commanded of subjects: nor is there any feeling so upright, and free, and impatient of domination, nor any that more demands a return. An emperor may perhaps, unjustly, yet still be hated by some, even if he himself hates no one: to be loved he cannot be, unless he himself loves. You love, then, since you are loved, and in what is most honorable on both sides your whole glory lies: being made superior, you descend to all the duties of familiarity, and from emperor you lower yourself to friend; nay, you are never more emperor than when you play the friend out of the emperor. For since the fortune of emperors needs very many friendships, the chief task of an emperor is to provide friends. May this school of yours always please you, and may you hold to this, with your other virtues, most steadily: and may no one ever be persuaded that it is lowly for an emperor, except to hate. The most delightful thing in human affairs is to be loved, but no less to love: you enjoy each in such a way that, though you yourself love most ardently, you are loved still more ardently: first, because it is easier to love one than many: next, because you have such ability to oblige your friends that no one, unless he is ungrateful, can fail to love you the more.
86| It is worth recording what torment you laid upon yourself in order to refuse your friend nothing. You let go a most excellent man, dearest to you, unwilling and sad, as if you could not keep him. How much you loved him you learned by longing, torn and parted from him, while you yielded and were overcome. So, what is unheard of in speech, when the emperor and the emperor's friend wished different things, that was done which the friend wished. O deed to be committed to memory and letters! to choose a prefect of the guard not from those who push themselves forward but from those who draw back: and to give that same man back to the leisure he stubbornly loves: and, though you yourself are stretched with the cares of empire, not to begrudge anyone the glory of quiet. We understand, Caesar, how much we owe you for that laborious and busy post, when leisure is both sought from you and granted by you as the best of things. And I hear what confusion was yours when you escorted him as he departed! For when you had escorted him, you did not restrain yourself from giving him an embrace and a kiss as he went out upon the shore. Caesar stood on that watchtower of friendship, and prayed for the seas, and a swift return (if only he himself had wished), nor could he bear to see him go without following him again and again with vows and tears. As for the generosity, I say nothing. For with what gifts can this care of the emperor be matched, this forbearance, by which you deserved that he seemed to himself too strong, and almost hard? Nor do I doubt that he turned over in his mind whether to turn the helm back: and would have done so, except that it is happier and sweeter than even the very companionship of the emperor to long for an emperor who longs. And he indeed enjoys, as the greatest fruit of the office he took up, so the greater glory of the office laid down: you, however, by that ease of yours, achieved that you seem to hold no one against his will.
87| This was the act of a citizen, and most fitting to the common father, to compel nothing, and always to remember that no power can be given to anyone so great that liberty is not more welcome than power. You are worthy, Caesar, to entrust duties to those who wish to lay them down; to grant, unwillingly indeed, but still to grant, release to those who ask it; not to think yourself abandoned by friends who beg for rest; always to find both those whom you may call back from leisure and those whom you may restore to leisure. You also, whom our father deigns to look upon familiarly, cherish the judgment he has of you: this is your task. For an emperor, when he has shown in one man that he knows how to love, is free of blame if he loves others less. And who could love him moderately, when he gives no laws of loving, but receives them? One prefers to be loved in his presence, another in his absence: let each be loved as he prefers; let no one come into weariness by presence, no one into oblivion by absence. Each holds the place he once earned; and it is easier for the face of an absent man to drop from his eyes than for affection to drop from his mind.
88| Most emperors, though they were masters of the citizens, were slaves of their freedmen: by their counsels, by their nod they were ruled: through them they heard, through them they spoke: through them, nay from them, even praetorships, and priesthoods, and consulships were sought. You have for your freedmen the highest honor indeed, but as freedmen; and you believe it suffices them abundantly if they are thought honest and thrifty. For you know that great freedmen are a chief sign of an emperor not great. And first you keep in your service no one who is not loved by you, or by your father, or by some best one of the [emperors]; and at once, every day thereafter, you so shape these same men that they measure themselves not by your fortune but by their own: and they are so much the more worthy to have every honor paid them by us, because it is not necessary. Was it for just reasons that the Senate and People of Rome added to you the surname of THE BEST? It was ready, indeed, and lay in the open, yet it was new. You may know that no one before deserved what would not have had to be thought out, if anyone had deserved it. Or would it have been better to call you THE HAPPY? That is given not to character but to fortune: better THE GREAT? There is more envy in that than beauty. The best of emperors adopted you into his own family, the senate into the name of THE BEST. This is as much your own as it is your father's; nor does he who calls you TRAJAN designate you more definitely and distinctly than he who calls you THE BEST: as in old days the Pisones were pointed out for thrift, Laelius for wisdom, the Metelli for dutifulness. All these are contained at once in that one name. Nor can anyone be thought best unless he is more outstanding than all the best men in each one's own praise. Rightly, then, after your other titles this was added for you, as the greater. For it is less to be emperor and Caesar and Augustus than to be better than all emperors and Caesars and Augusts. And so that parent of men and gods is worshiped first under the name of BEST, then of GREATEST. All the more splendid is your praise, since it is agreed that you are no less best than greatest. You have gained a name which cannot pass to another, except that in a good emperor it will appear borrowed, in a bad one false: which, though all afterward may usurp it, will always nevertheless be recognized as yours. For as by the name AUGUSTUS we are reminded of him to whom it was first dedicated, so this title of THE BEST will never return to the memory of men without you, and as often as our descendants are compelled to call someone the best, so often will they recall who deserved to be so called.
89| With how great a joy you now rejoice, deified Nerva, when you see that he whom you chose as the best both is and is called the BEST! How glad you must be that, compared with your son, you are surpassed! For in nothing else is the greatness of your spirit better approved than that, being best yourself, you did not fear to choose a better. But you too, father Trajan (for you also, if not the stars, yet hold the seat nearest the stars), what pleasure you take when you behold that tribune, that soldier of yours, so great an emperor, so great a ruler! And with him who adopted him you contend most amicably, which was finer, to have begotten such a man or to have chosen him! Honor to you both for your mighty service to the commonwealth, on which you have conferred so great a good! Though to the one of you your son's virtue has given triumphal honors, to the other heaven: your praise is not less, that you have these things through a son, than if you had earned them yourselves.
90| I know, Conscript Fathers, that other citizens, and consuls above all, ought so to be affected as to think themselves bound publicly more than privately. For as it is more right and fine to hate bad emperors for the common injuries than for private ones, so good ones are more handsomely loved for what they do for the human race than for what they do for individuals. Since, however, it has become the custom that the consuls, when the public thanksgiving has been delivered, also declare in their own name how much they owe the emperor: grant that I discharge this duty not more for myself than for my colleague, Cornutus Tertullus, a most distinguished man. For why should I not give thanks for him also, to whom I owe no less? Especially since the most indulgent emperor has granted to both of us, in our harmony, things which, even if he had conferred them on only one, would have bound both of us equally. Each of us that despoiler and butcher of every best man had blasted with slaughters of friends, and with a thunderbolt hurled at one nearest. For we boasted of the same friends, we mourned the same friends lost: and as now hope and joy, so then grief and fear were common to us. The deified Nerva had this honor from our dangers, that he wished to advance us, if less as good men, still to advance us: because it would be a sign of a changed age that those flourished whose chief prayer before had been to slip from the emperor's memory.
91| We had not yet completed two years in a most laborious and important office, when you, best of emperors, bravest of commanders, offered us the consulship, so that the glory of speed was added to the highest honor. So great is the difference between you and those emperors who sought praise for their benefits out of difficulty, and thought honors more welcome to the recipients if despair first, and weariness, and a delay resembling rejection had turned them into a kind of stigma and shame. Modesty prevents us from reviewing with what testimony you adorned each of us: that you equated us, in love of the right, in love of the commonwealth, with those old consuls. Whether deservedly or not, let us not dare to decide either way; because it is neither right to detract from your assertion, nor easy to admit that what you have said about us, especially so splendid, is true. You nevertheless are worthy to make those men consuls of whom you can say such things. Grant pardon: among these benefits of yours, what is most welcome to us is that you wished us to be colleagues again. So mutual affection, so consistent a course of life, so one and the same principle of purpose demanded: and its force is such that the similarity of character lessens the glory of our harmony, and it would be as wonderful if one of us disagreed with his colleague as if with himself. It is not, therefore, temporary and sudden that each of us rejoices in his colleague's consulship as if it were his own a second time; except that those who become consuls again are indeed bound twice, but at different times: we receive two consulships together, together we hold them, and each in the other is consul, but both a second time and equally.
92| And how remarkable it was that you gave us, while we were prefects of the treasury, a consulship before you gave us a successor! One dignity was increased by another: the honor was not merely continued but doubled, and it anticipated the end of our other office, as though merely following it were too little. So great was your confidence in our integrity that you did not doubt you would act without prejudice to your own diligence if you did not allow us to become private citizens after the most important of offices. And what of the fact that you conferred our consulship on us in the same year as your own? So it is on no other page than the one that will receive you as consul that our names too will be added to the calendar of consuls, at whose head you yourself will be written. You deigned to preside over our elections, you deigned to lead us in reciting that most sacred formula; by your judgment we were made consuls, by your voice we were proclaimed, so that you were at once the supporter of our honors in the senate house and their proclaimer in the Campus. As for your having assigned to us that month above all others which your birthday adorns, how splendid that is for us! It will fall to us to celebrate by edict and by spectacle that day, glad with a threefold joy: it took away the worst of emperors, it gave us the best, and it brought forth one better than the best. Under your eyes a chariot more majestic than usual will receive us; we shall be carried along eagerly amid favorable omens and rival vows, which will be offered to you in your presence, uncertain from which side the louder cheering reaches our ears.
93| Above all, however, it seems we must proclaim that you allow those whom you have made consuls to be consuls; for no danger, no fear of the emperor weakens and breaks the spirits of consuls; there will be nothing we must hear against our will, nothing we must decree under compulsion. The office keeps and will keep the reverence due to it, and we shall not lose our authority in exchange for our security. And if anything should perhaps be taken from the eminence of the consulship, the fault will be ours, not the age's. For it is possible, as far as the emperor is concerned, it is possible for consuls to act as the emperors acted before. Can we make you any return equal to your benefits? None, except this: that we always remember that we have been consuls, and your consuls; that we think and vote as befits men of consular rank; that we conduct ourselves in the commonwealth in the belief that there is a commonwealth. Let us not withdraw our counsel or our labor, nor think ourselves cut off and, as it were, discharged by the consulship, but rather bound and fastened by it; and let us hold the same place in labor and care that we hold in reverence and dignity.
94| At the end of my speech, I, as consul, pray on behalf of human affairs to the gods who protect and guard our empire, and above all to you, Capitoline Jupiter, that you look with favor on your own benefits and add permanence to such great gifts. You heard what we used to pray for under a bad emperor; hear now what we wish for one utterly unlike him. We do not burden you with many vows. For we do not pray for peace, for concord, for security, for wealth, for honors: there is one simple vow of all of us, embracing all of these, THE SAFETY OF THE EMPEROR. Nor are we laying any new task upon you. For you took him into your protection even then, when you snatched him from the jaws of that most rapacious robber. Not without your help, when every lofty thing was being shaken, did this man, who was loftier than all, stand unshaken. He was passed over by the worst of emperors who could not be passed over by the best. You sent clear signs of your judgment when you gave up your name and your honor to him as he set out for the army. You, speaking your mind through the voice of an emperor, chose him as a son for that emperor, as a father for us, as a supreme pontiff for yourself. With all the greater confidence, therefore, in the very vows he himself orders to be pronounced on his behalf, I pray and beseech you, if he governs the commonwealth well, if he governs it for the good of all: first, that you preserve him for our grandsons and great-grandsons; and then that one day you grant him a successor whom he has begotten, whom he has shaped, and whom he has made like the man who was adopted; or, if fate denies this, that you be present in his counsel as he chooses, and show him someone whom it would be fitting to adopt on the Capitol.
95| How much I owe to you, Conscript Fathers, is recorded even in public monuments. You bore witness to my quiet conduct as tribune and my restraint as praetor; you all, in those duties too which you had laid on me because of my practice in defending the allies, gave the most venerable testimony to my steadfastness. Most recently you approved my designation as consul with such acclamations that I understand I must strive again and again to embrace this agreement of yours, to hold on to it and to increase it day by day. For I remember that it is judged most truly whether a man deserved an honor or not once he has obtained it. Only look with favor on this resolve of mine, and believe me: if, after being carried forward by a certain momentum under that most treacherous of emperors, before he declared his hatred of good men, I halted once he had declared it; if, when I saw what shortcuts to honors lay open, I preferred the longer road; if in bad times I was counted among the grieving and the fearful, and in good times among the secure and the rejoicing; if, finally, I love the best of emperors as much as I was hated by the worst, then I shall always serve your reverence in such a way as to regard myself not as consul, and soon a man of consular rank, but as a candidate for the consulship.

======== Natural History — Book I ========

Preface 1| The books of my Natural History, a work new to the Camenae of your Quirites, born in my house at its latest lying-in, I have decided to present to you, most delightful Emperor, in a rather free-spoken letter; for let that be your title, a most true one, while the title 'Greatest' grows old in your father. For you used to think that my trifles were something, to take the edge off, in passing, my fellow countryman Catullus (you recognize this camp word too): for he, as you know, by changing round the first syllables, made himself a little harsher than he wished to be thought by his dear Veraniuses and Fabulluses.
Preface 2| At the same time, by this impudence of mine, I may bring about what you complained recently was not happening in another cheeky letter of mine: that something should appear in the public record, and that everyone should know on what equal terms the empire lives with you.
Preface 3| You have celebrated a triumph and held the censorship, you have been consul six times and a sharer of the tribunician power, and, what you have made nobler than these by rendering it at once to your father and to the equestrian order, you are prefect of his praetorian guard; and all this you are for the commonwealth. To us, however, you are just as you were in our comradeship in camp, and the greatness of your fortune has changed nothing in you except that you can do as much good as you wish.
Preface 4| And so, while all other ways of showing veneration for you lie open to everyone else, to me, for honoring you more familiarly, there remains only boldness. You will therefore charge this to your own account, and in my fault you will forgive yourself. I have put on a brazen face, and yet I have got nowhere, since you meet me on another road, towering, and keep me at a still greater distance with the rods of office of your genius.
Preface 5| In no one has the force of eloquence ever more truly been said to flash like lightning, in no one more truly the tribunician power of oratory. With what a voice you thunder your father's praises! With what a voice you love your brother's! How great you are in poetry! What great fertility of mind! You have even devised a way to imitate your brother.
Preface 6| But who could assess these things without fear, when he is about to submit to the judgment of your genius, and that after provoking it? For the position of those who publish to the world and of those who dedicate to you by name is not the same. In the first case I could say: 'Why are you reading this, Emperor? It was written for the common crowd, for the mass of farmers and craftsmen, and, finally, for those who have leisure for study. Why do you make yourself a judge? When I undertook this task, you were not on this list of jurors. I knew you were too great for me to think you would come down to this.'
Preface 7| There is, besides, a kind of public right to challenge even learned judges. Marcus Tullius too makes use of it, though he is placed beyond every hazard of talent, and, what may surprise us, he defends himself through an advocate: 'Not by the most learned. I do not want Manius Persius to read this; I want Iunius Congius to.' And if Lucilius, who first established the sharp nose of satire, thought he had to say this, and Cicero thought he should borrow it, especially when he was writing on the commonwealth, with how much more reason do I protect myself against some judge?
Preface 8| But I have now deprived myself of these defenses by my dedication, since it makes a great difference whether one gets a judge by lot or chooses him, and there is much difference in the preparations made for an invited guest and for one who turns up unannounced.
Preface 9| When the candidates in a heated election deposited money with Cato, that enemy of corrupt canvassing, who rejoiced in his defeats as though they were honors not bought, they declared that they were doing this as the highest thing in human affairs for the sake of integrity. Hence that famous sigh of Marcus Cicero: 'O happy you, Marcus Porcius, from whom no one dares to ask anything dishonest!'
Preface 10| When Lucius Scipio Asiaticus made his appeal to the tribunes, Gracchus being one of them, he declared that he could be acquitted even by a judge who was his enemy. So true is it that whoever chooses a judge makes him the supreme judge of his case, whoever he may be.
Preface 11| That is why it is called an appeal. You indeed, placed on the loftiest summit of the human race, endowed with the highest eloquence and the highest learning, are approached with religious awe, I know, even by those who come to pay their morning respects, and so they take care that what is said to you is worthy of you. But country people offer milk to the gods, and many nations who have no incense make offerings with salted meal, and no one has ever been blamed for worshipping the gods in whatever way he could.
Preface 12| My rashness has been increased by this too: that the little books I have dedicated to you are of a lighter kind of work. For they have no room for talent, which in my case was in any event very moderate, nor do they admit digressions, or speeches, or dialogues, or marvelous accidents or varied outcomes, things pleasant to tell or attractive to readers, since the material is barren:
Preface 13| the nature of things, that is, life, is described, and that in its meanest part, with very many things that have to be named either by rustic terms or by foreign, indeed even barbarous ones, with an apology made in advance.
Preface 14| Besides, the route is not a road well trodden by authors, nor one on which the mind is eager to travel. Among us there is nobody who has attempted the same thing, no one among the Greeks who has dealt single-handed with all these subjects. In great part we look for what is pleasant in our studies; while the subjects that others are said to have handled, of immense subtlety, are buried in the obscure darkness of the matter. First of all I must touch on what the Greeks call 'the all-round education' (enkyklios paideia), and yet these things have become unknown or uncertain to people's minds; while others have been published by so many writers that they have been brought to the point of tedium.
Preface 15| It is an arduous thing to give novelty to what is old, authority to what is new, brilliance to what is worn out, light to what is obscure, charm to what is tedious, credibility to what is doubtful, and to everything its nature and to its nature all that belongs to it. And so even for those who have not achieved it, to have wished to do so is abundantly fine and magnificent.
Preface 16| For my part, I hold that there is a special claim in the studies of those who, having overcome difficulties, have put the usefulness of helping before the favor of pleasing; and this I have done myself already in other works, and I confess I am surprised that Livy, a most celebrated author, began in one volume of his histories, which he takes up from the origin of the city, in this fashion: that he had already won enough glory for himself, and could have sat idle, had not his restless spirit been fed by work. For surely it befitted him to compose those books for the glory of the people victorious over nations and of the Roman name, not for his own. It would have been the greater merit to have persevered from love of the work, not for his own mind's sake, and to have rendered this service to the Roman people, not to himself.
Preface 17| From 20,000 matters worthy of attention (since, as Domitius Piso says, there ought to be treasuries, not books), by the reading of about 2,000 volumes, few of which students touch on account of the obscurity of their subject, from a hundred chosen authors, we have enclosed them in 36 volumes, with very many things added which earlier writers either did not know or which life afterward discovered.
Preface 18| Nor do we doubt that there are many things that have escaped even us. For we are human, and occupied with duties, and we attend to these matters in spare hours, that is, at night, lest any of you think that these hours have been idle. We spend our days on you; we reckon our health against sleep, content with this one reward alone, that while we potter at these things, as Marcus Varro says, we live more hours. For surely life is wakefulness.
Preface 19| For these reasons and difficulties, to me, who dared promise nothing, you supply this very thing, that we write to you. This is the confidence of the work, this is the appraisal. Many things seem very precious for this reason, that they are dedicated to temples.
Preface 20| All of you, your father, you and your brother, we have treated in a proper work, having begun the history of our times from the end of Aufidius. Where that work is, you will ask. It was finished long since and is being secured; and besides it had been decided to entrust it to an heir, lest my life be judged to have given anything to ambition. Therefore I favor those who occupy the ground before me, and I favor also posterity, who, I know, will contend with us, as we ourselves have done with our predecessors.
Preface 21| You will have proof of this temper of mine in that in these volumes I have prefixed the names of the authors. For it is generous, I think, and full of a free man's honorable shame, to confess through whom you have advanced, not as most of those I have touched upon have done.
Preface 22| For know that when comparing authors I found that the most trustworthy of the recent writers had copied the old ones word for word and not named them, not with that Virgilian virtue of vying with them, nor with the Tullian candor, who in his work on the commonwealth professes himself the companion of Plato, and in the consolation on his daughter says, "I follow Crantor," and likewise Panaetius in the work on duties, volumes which you know are to be learned by heart, and not only held daily in the hands.
Preface 23| It is surely the mark of a servile spirit and an unhappy character to prefer to be caught in theft than to repay a loan, especially when the principal itself comes from interest. Among the Greeks the felicity of titles is wonderful:
Preface 24| they inscribed Kerion, by which they wished a honeycomb to be understood; others Keras Amaltheias, "horn of Amalthea," that is the horn of plenty, so that you may hope to draw even hen's milk from the volume; then Ia, Mousai, Pandektai, Encheiridia, Leimon, Pinax, Schedion: titles for which a man might forfeit his bail; but when you have gone inside, gods and goddesses, how little you will find in the middle! Our own writers are graver: Antiquities, Examples, Arts; the wittiest, Lucubrations, I suppose because Bibaculus was one and was so called. A little less does Varro claim in his satires: Sesculixes and Flextabula.
Preface 25| Among the Greeks Diodorus has stopped trifling, and has inscribed his history Bibliotheke. Apion indeed, the grammarian (the man whom Tiberius Caesar called the cymbal of the world, though he might better seem the drum of his own fame), wrote that those to whom he was composing something were being granted immortality by him.
Preface 26| I do not regret that I thought of no more charming title, and, so as not to seem to rail at the Greeks altogether, I should like it soon to be understood from the founders of painting and sculpting among them, whom you will find in these little books to have inscribed their finished works, even those with which we are never satisfied in admiring, with a provisional title, such as APELLES WAS MAKING or POLYCLITUS, as though the art were always begun and unfinished, so that against the variety of judgments the artist might have a recourse to pardon, as if about to correct whatever was found wanting, had he not been cut off.
Preface 27| Hence full of modesty is the fact that they inscribed all their works as if they were their last, and as if each had been snatched away by fate. Not more than three, as I think, are handed down inscribed outright HE MADE IT, which I shall report in their places. By this it became clear that the greatest assurance in his art had pleased the maker, and for this reason all those works were greatly envied.
Preface 28| I freely admit that many things can be added to my works, and not to these alone, but to all that I have published, so as by the way to guard against those scourges of Homer (for so I should more truly call them), since I hear that both Stoics and dialecticians and Epicureans (for from the grammarians I have always expected it) are in labor against the little books that I published on grammar, and keep bringing forth miscarriages these ten years, though even elephants bear more quickly.
Preface 29| As if I did not know that against Theophrastus, a man of such eloquence that he got from it a divine name, even a woman wrote, and that from this was born the proverb of choosing a tree for hanging.
Preface 30| I cannot restrain myself from setting down, on this point, the very words of Cato the Censor, so that it may appear that even to Cato, when he was writing on military discipline, though he had learned soldiering under Africanus, nay under Hannibal too, and had not been able to endure even Africanus, who as commander had brought home a triumph, there were ready at hand those who hunt fame for themselves by disparaging another's knowledge. "For what?" he says in that volume. "I know that if what is written were brought out openly, there would be many to find fault, but chiefly those who have no experience of true praise."
Preface 31| Their speeches I have let flow past. Nor was Plancus inelegant, when it was said that Asinius Pollio was preparing speeches against him, to be published by Pollio himself or his freedmen after Plancus's death, so that he could not reply: he said that only ghosts wrestle with the dead. With this saying he so beat back those speeches that among the learned nothing is judged more shameless.
Preface 32| Therefore, secure even against the fault-finding brawlers (vitilitigatores), whom Cato neatly compounded from "faults" and "litigants" (for what else do they do but quarrel or look for a quarrel?), we shall carry out the rest of our design.
Preface 33| Since your occupations had to be spared for the public good, I have appended to this letter what is contained in each of the books, and with the greatest care I have worked to see that you need not read them. By this you will also provide others the means not to read them through, but, as each man desires something, to look for that only and know where to find it. This was done before me in our literature by Valerius Soranus in the books which he entitled Epoptides. Whether the world is finite and whether it is one; of its form, of its motion. Why it is called the world; of the elements, of god, of the nature of the wandering stars, of the eclipses of the moon and sun. Of night
2.7| On the magnitude of the stars
2.8| What anyone has discovered in observation of the heavens (9. 10); on the motion of the moon
2.11| Motions and lights of the wandering stars, 35, canonica
2.12| Why the same stars appear higher, at other times nearer (13. 14); general rules concerning the wandering stars
2.15| What reckoning changes their colors
2.16| Motion of the sun; the reckoning of the inequality of the days
2.17| Why thunderbolts are assigned to Jupiter
2.18| Intervals of the stars
2.19| Musical matters concerning the stars
2.20| Geometrical matters concerning the world
2.21| On stars that appear suddenly; on comets; their nature and situation and kinds (22. 23); Hipparchan matters on recognizing stars
2.24| On heavenly portents through historical examples: torches, bolides
2.25| Heavenly beams; the chasm of the sky
2.26| On the colors of the sky; on the flame of heaven
2.27| On heavenly crowns; on sudden circles (28. 29); several suns
2.31| Several moons
2.32| Daylight at night
2.33| Burning shields
2.34| A portent of the sky noted once
2.35| On the running of stars
2.36| On the stars called the Castors
2.37| On the air
2.38| On regular weather (39-41); on the rising of the Dog Star
2.40| The fixed power of the seasons of the year
2.41| On irregular weather; on rains, and why it rains stones
2.42| On thunder and lightnings
2.43| By what reasoning an echo is returned; kinds of winds, their natures, observations (44-48); ecnephias, typhon
2.49| Whirlwinds, presteres, eddies, other prodigious kinds of storms
2.50| On thunderbolts (51-56); in what lands they do not fall, and why; kinds of lightning and wonders
2.52| The Etruscan observation of them, and the Roman
2.53| On calling down thunderbolts
2.54| General rules concerning lightning
2.55| What is never struck
2.56| That it has rained milk, blood, flesh, iron, wool, baked bricks
2.57| Portents
2.58| On stones falling from the sky; the Anaxagorean views on them
2.59| The rainbow
2.60| The nature of hail, snow, frost, mist, dew; images of clouds
2.61| Properties of the sky in places
2.62| The nature of the earth
2.63| On its shape
2.64| Whether there are antipodes; how water is interwoven with the earth; the reckoning of rivers (65. 66); whether the ocean surrounds the earth
2.67| What portion of the earth is inhabited
2.68| That the earth is the middle of the world
2.69| On the obliquity of the zones
2.70| On the inequality of the climes
2.71| Where eclipses do not appear, and why
2.72| What the reckoning is of daylight on the earth
2.73| Gnomonics on this matter
2.74| Where and when there are no shadows, where twice a year, where shadows are carried in the opposite direction (75. 76) [where the days are longest, where shortest]
2.77| On the first sundial
2.78| In what manner the days are observed
2.79| The difference of peoples with regard to the reckoning of the world
2.80| On earthquakes; on chasms of the earth; signs of a coming earthquake (81-83); remedies against coming earthquakes
2.84| Portents of lands recorded once
2.85| Wonders of earthquakes
2.86| In what places the seas have withdrawn; the reckoning of islands newly arisen (87. 88); which have arisen, and at what times
2.89| What lands the seas have broken through
2.90| Which islands have been joined to the mainland
2.91| What lands have been wholly changed into sea
2.92| What lands have themselves diminished
2.93| Cities swallowed by the sea
2.94| On vents
2.95| On lands always trembling; on islands always floating
2.96| In what places it does not rain
2.97| A heaped-up collection of wonders of the lands
2.98| By what reasoning the tides of the sea advance and recede
2.99| Where the tides do the same contrary to the rule
2.100| Wonders of the sea (101-105); what the power of the moon is over things of land and sea
2.102| What that of the sun
2.103| Why the sea is salt
2.104| Where the sea is deepest
2.105| Marvels of springs and rivers
2.106| Joined wonders of fires and waters (107-110); on maltha
2.108| On naphtha
2.109| What places always burn
2.110| Wonders of fires in themselves
2.111| The measure of the whole earth
2.112| The harmonic reckoning of the world
2.113| Total: facts, histories and observations 417. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Sulpicius Gallus. Titus Caesar, the Emperor. Quintus Tubero. Tullius Tiro. Lucius Piso. Titus Livy. Cornelius Nepos. Sebosus. Caelius Antipater. Fabianus. Antias. Mucianus. Caecina, who wrote on the Etruscan discipline. Tarquitius, likewise. Julius Aquila, likewise. Sergius Plautus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Hipparchus. Timaeus. Sosigenes. Petosiris. Nechepso. The Pythagoreans. Posidonius. Anaximander. Epigenes. Eudoxus. Democritus. Critodemus. Thrasyllus. Serapion the sundial-maker. Euclid. Coeranus the philosopher. Dicaearchus. Archimedes. Onesicritus. Eratosthenes. Pytheas. Herodotus. Aristotle. Ctesias. Artemidorus of Ephesus. Isidorus of Charax. Theopompus. the situation, peoples, seas, towns, harbours, mountains, rivers; measurements; the peoples that are or were in Baetica, Hither Spain, the province of Narbonensis, Italy as far as Locri (6-10), the Tiber, Rome
3.9| of 63 islands, among them the Balearics
3.11| Corsica
3.12| Sardinia
3.13| Sicily
3.14| Italy from Locri as far as Ravenna (15-20), the Po
3.20| Italy beyond the Po (21, 22), Histria
3.23| the Alps and the Alpine peoples
3.24| Illyricum, Liburnia
3.25| Dalmatia
3.26| the Norici
3.27| Pannonia
3.28| Moesia
3.29| the islands of the Ionian and the Adriatic
3.30| Total: towns and peoples [….]. Total: famous rivers [….]. Total: famous mountains [….]. Total: islands [….]. Total: towns or peoples that have perished [….]. Total: facts, histories and observations [….]. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Turranius Gracilis. Cornelius Nepos. Titus Livy. Cato the Censor. Marcus Agrippa. Marcus Varro. The deified Augustus. Varro Atacinus. Antias. Hyginus. Lucius Vetus. Pomponius Mela. Curio the father. Caelius. Arruntius. Sebosus. Licinius Mucianus. Fabricius Tuscus. Lucius Ateius. Ateius Capito. Verrius Flaccus. Lucius Piso. Gellianus. Valerianus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Artemidorus. Alexander Polyhistor. Thucydides. Theophrastus. Isidorus. Theopompus. Metrodorus of Scepsis. Callicrates. Xenophon of Lampsacus. Diodorus of Syracuse. Nymphodorus. Calliphanes. Timagenes. the situation, peoples, seas, towns, harbours, mountains, rivers; measurements; the peoples that are or were in Epirus (1-4), Achaia (5-10), Greece (11-13), Thessaly (14, 15), Magnesia
4.16| Macedonia
4.17| Thrace
4.18| the islands in front of these lands (19-23), among them Crete
4.20| Euboea
4.21| the Cyclades
4.22| the Sporades
4.23| the Hellespont, the Pontus, the Maeotis
4.24| Dacia, Sarmatia, Scythia (25, 26), the islands of the Pontus
4.27| Germany (28, 29), the 96 islands in the Gallic Ocean, among them Britain
4.30| Belgic Gaul
4.31| Lugdunensian Gaul
4.32| Aquitanian Gaul
4.33| Hither Spain from the ocean
4.34| Lusitania
4.35| the islands in the Atlantic sea
4.36| the measurement of the whole of Europe
4.37| Total: towns and peoples. Total: famous rivers [….]. Total: famous mountains [….]. Total: islands [….]. Total: towns or peoples that have perished [….]. Total: facts, histories and observations [….]. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Cato the Censor. Marcus Varro. Marcus Agrippa. The deified Augustus. Varro Atacinus. Cornelius Nepos. Hyginus. Lucius Vetus. Pomponius Mela. Licinius Mucianus. Fabricius Tuscus. Ateius Capito. Ateius, a philologist. AUTHORITIES FROM ABROAD: Polybius. Hecataeus. Hellanicus. Damastes. Eudoxus. Dicaearchus. Timosthenes. Eratosthenes. Ephorus. Crates, a grammarian. Serapion the Antiochene. Callimachus. Artemidorus. Apollodorus. Agathocles. Timaeus of Sicily. Myrsilus. Alexander Polyhistor. Thucydides. Dosiades. Anaximander. Philistides of Mallos. Dionysius. Aristides. Callidemus. Menaechmus. Aglaosthenes. Anticlides. Heraclides. Philemon. Xenophon. Pytheas. Isidorus. Philonides. Xenagoras. Astynomus. Staphylus. Aristocritus. Metrodorus. Cleobulus. Posidonius. the situation, peoples, seas, towns, harbours, mountains, rivers; measurements; the peoples that are or were in Mauretania, Numidia, Africa, the Syrtes, Cyrenaica (5, 6), the islands around Africa, the interior of Africa, Egypt (9-11), the Chora, the Thebaid, the Nile, Arabia which lies by the Egyptian sea, Idumaea, Syria, Palestine, Samaria (13, 14), Judaea, Phoenicia, Coele Syria, Antiochene Syria (18, 19), the Euphrates (20, 21), Cilicia and the peoples joined to it
5.22| Isauria; the Omanades
5.23| Pisidia
5.24| Lycaonia
5.25| Pamphylia
5.26| Mount Taurus
5.27| Lycia
5.28| Caria
5.29| Ionia
5.31| Aeolis
5.32| the Troad and the peoples joined to it
5.33| the islands in front of Asia, 212 in number (34-39), among them Cyprus
5.35| Rhodes, Cos
5.36| Samos
5.37| Chios
5.38| Lesbos
5.39| the Hellespont, Mysia
5.40| Phrygia
5.41| Galatia and the peoples joined to it
5.42| Bithynia
5.43| Total: towns and peoples [….]. Total: famous rivers [….]. Total: famous mountains [….]. Total: islands 118. Total: towns or peoples that have perished [….]. Total: facts, histories and observations [….]. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Agrippa. Suetonius Paulinus. Marcus Varro. Varro Atacinus. Cornelius Nepos. Hyginus. Lucius Vetus. Mela. Domitius Corbulo. Licinius Mucianus. Claudius Caesar. Arruntius. Livius the son. Sebosus. The records of triumphs. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: King Juba. Hecataeus. Hellanicus. Damastes. Dicaearchus. Baeton. Timosthenes. Philonides. Xenagoras. Astynomus. Staphylus. Dionysius. Aristotle. Aristocritus. Ephorus. Eratosthenes. Hipparchus. Panaetius. Serapion of Antioch. Callimachus. Agathocles. Polybius. Timaeus, a mathematician. Herodotus. Myrsilus. Alexander Polyhistor. Metrodorus. Posidonius, the author of a periplus or a periegesis. Sotades. Pyrrander. Aristarchus of Sicyon. Eudoxus. Antigenes. Callicrates. Xenophon of Lampsacus. Diodorus of Syracuse. Hanno. Himilco. Nymphodorus. Calliphanes. Artemidorus. Megasthenes. Isidorus. Cleobulus. Aristocreon. the situation, peoples, seas, towns, harbours; mountains; rivers; measurements; the peoples that are or were in the Pontus, the Mariandyni, the Paphlagonians, the Cappadocians (3, 8), the Themiscyrene region and the peoples in it, the Heniochi
6.4| the Colic region and its peoples; the peoples of the Achaei; the other peoples along the same stretch
6.5| the Cimmerian Bosporus
6.6| the Maeotis; the peoples around the Maeotis
6.7| Lesser Armenia, Greater Armenia
6.9| the river Cyrus, the river Araxes
6.10| Albania, Hiberia
6.11| and the Caucasian Gates joined to them
6.12| the islands in the Pontus
6.13| the peoples from the Scythian Ocean
6.14| the Caspian and Hyrcanian sea
6.15| Adiabene
6.16| Media, the Caspian Gates
6.17| the peoples around the Hyrcanian sea
6.18| the peoples of the Scythians
6.19| the situation from the Eastern Ocean; the Seres
6.20| the Indians (21-23), the Ganges
6.22| the Indus
6.23| Taprobane
6.24| the Ariani and the peoples joined to them
6.25| the voyages to India
6.26| Carmania
6.27| the Persian gulf
6.28| the kingdoms of the Parthians
6.29| Mesopotamia (30, 31), the Tigris
6.31| Arabia
6.32| the gulfs of the Red Sea
6.33| and the Trogodytice joined to it
6.34| Aethiopia
6.35| the islands of the Aethiopian sea
6.36| on the Fortunate Islands
6.37| the lands compared by measurements
6.38| the arrangement of the lands into parallels and equal shadows
6.39| Total: towns 1195. Total: peoples 576. Total: famous rivers 115. Total: famous mountains 38. Total: islands 108. Total: towns or peoples that have perished 95. Total: facts, histories and observations 2214. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Agrippa. Marcus Varro. Varro Atacinus. Cornelius Nepos. Hyginus. Lucius Vetus. Pomponius Mela. Domitius Corbulo. Licinius Mucianus. Claudius Caesar. Arruntius. Sebosus. Fabricius Tuscus. Titus Livius the son. Seneca. Nigidius. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: King Juba. Hecataeus. Hellanicus. Damastes. Eudoxus. Dicaearchus. Baeton. Timosthenes. Patrocles. Demodamas. Clitarchus. Eratosthenes. Alexander the Great. Ephorus. Hipparchus. Panaetius. Callimachus. Artemidorus. Apollodorus. Agathocles. Polybius. Timaeus of Sicily. Alexander Polyhistor. Isidorus. Amometus. Metrodorus. Posidonius. Onesicritus. Nearchus. Megasthenes. Diognetus. Aristocreon. Bion. Dalion. Simonides the Younger. Basilis. Xenophon of Lampsacus. the marvellous shapes of peoples; prodigious births; on the begetting of man; the times of giving birth, through famous examples, from the seventh month to the thirteenth; signs concerning the sex of women who are with child, before the birth; monstrous births; children cut from the womb
7.7| who are the vopisci
7.8| on the conception of human beings; on the generation of human beings
7.9| examples of resemblances
7.10| examples of the most numerous offspring
7.11| up to what years generation lasts
7.12| marvels concerning the monthly courses of women
7.13| what is the principle of generation
7.14| historical matters concerning teeth; historical matters concerning infants
7.15| examples of great size
7.16| infants born too soon
7.17| distinguishing marks of bodies
7.18| exceptional strength
7.19| outstanding speed
7.20| exceptional sight
7.21| a marvel of hearing
7.22| endurance of the body
7.23| memory
7.24| vigour of mind
7.25| clemency; greatness of mind
7.26| the highest renown for deeds accomplished
7.27| three supreme virtues in the same man? the highest innocence
7.28| the highest courage
7.29| outstanding talents
7.30| who were the wisest
7.31| the most useful precepts for life
7.32| on divination
7.33| the man judged best
7.34| the most chaste matrons
7.35| examples of the highest devotion
7.36| those who excelled in the arts (37-39): astrology, [grammar]; medicine
7.37| geometry, architecture
7.38| painting, engraving in bronze, in marble, in ivory; chasing
7.39| remarkable prices of men
7.40| on the highest good fortune
7.41| the rarity of continuity in families
7.42| marvellous examples of change; one twice proscribed
7.43| marvellous examples of honours
7.44| ten things most fortunate in one man
7.45| the misfortunes of the deified Augustus
7.46| whom the gods judged most fortunate
7.47| whom they ordered to be worshipped as a god while living; a marvellous thunderbolt
7.48| on the longest spans of life
7.49| on the variety of birth
7.50| varied examples in diseases
7.51| on death
7.52| those who were carried out for burial and came back to life
7.53| examples of sudden death
7.54| on burial
7.55| on the shades, on the soul
7.56| what each person has discovered in life
7.57| in which matters the first agreements among nations came about; on the ancient letters
7.58| when barbers first appeared
7.59| when sundials first appeared
7.60| Total: facts, histories and observations 747. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Verrius Flaccus. Gnaeus Gellius. Licinius Mucianus. Masurius Sabinus. Agrippina, wife of Claudius. Marcus Cicero. Asinius Pollio. Marcus Varro. Messala Rufus. Nepos Cornelius. Virgil. Titus Livy. Cordus. Melissus. Sebosus. Cornelius Celsus. Maximus Valerius. Trogus. Nigidius Figulus. Pomponius Atticus. Pedianus Asconius. Fabianus. Cato Censorius. The public records. Fabius Vestalis. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Herodotus. Aristeas. Baeton. Isigonus. Crates. Agatharchides. Calliphanes. Aristotle. Nymphodorus. Apollonides. Phylarchus. Damon. Megasthenes. Ctesias. Tauron. Eudoxus. Onesicritus. Clitarchus. Duris. Artemidorus. Hippocrates, a physician. Asclepiades, a physician. Hesiod. Anacreon. Theopompus. Hellanicus. Damastes. Ephorus. Epigenes. Berosus. Petosiris. Nechepso. Alexander Polyhistor. Xenophon. Callimachus. Democritus. Diyllus, a historian. Strato, who wrote against the discoveries of Ephorus. Heraclides of Pontus. Asclepiades, who wrote on the matters treated in tragedy. Philostephanus. Hegesias. Archemachus. Thucydides. Mnesigiton. Xenagoras. Metrodorus of Scepsis. Anticlides. Critodemus. on elephants (1-11); on their senses; when they were first yoked; on their teachability; marvels in their deeds; on the nature of wild beasts in understanding their own dangers; when elephants were first seen in Italy; their fights; by what means they are caught; by what means they are tamed; on their giving birth and the rest of their nature; where they are born. Their discord with the dragons; on the cleverness of animals; on dragons; the marvellous sizes of serpents; on the animals of Scythia; on those of the north, on the bison; the uri, the alces, the achlis, the bonasus; on lions (17-21); how they are begotten; what kinds of them there are; what is particular to their nature
8.19| who first gave a lion-fight at Rome, who gave the most lions in it
8.20| who first of the Romans yoked them; marvels in the deeds of lions
8.21| one whom a dragon recognized and saved
8.22| on panthers (23, 24); a decree of the senate and laws concerning African beasts; who first brought African beasts to Rome and when; who brought the most
8.24| on tigers; when a tiger was first seen at Rome; on their nature, when their young are taken
8.25| on camels; their kinds
8.26| on the camelopard; when first seen at Rome
8.27| on the chama; on the cephi
8.28| on the rhinoceros
8.29| on the lynx and the sphinxes; on the crocottas; on the cercopitheci
8.30| the land animals of Aethiopia
8.31| likewise of India; a beast that kills by its glance
8.32| on the serpents called basilisks
8.33| on wolves; whence the story of the men who change their skins
8.34| the kinds of serpents
8.35| on the ichneumon
8.36| on the crocodile
8.37| on the scincus
8.38| on the hippopotamus
8.39| who first showed it at Rome, and the crocodile
8.40| medicines discovered from animals
8.41| forecasts of dangers from animals
8.42| peoples driven out by animals
8.43| on hyenas (44, 45); on the corocottas; on the mantichoras
8.45| on wild asses
8.46| on creatures of water that are also of land (47-49); on beavers, on otters; on the sea calf, on stellions; on deer
8.50| on the chameleon
8.51| on the rest that change colour: the tarandrus, the lycaon, the thos
8.52| on the porcupine
8.53| on bears; on their young
8.54| on the Pontic and Alpine mice
8.55| on hedgehogs
8.56| the leontophonus; lynxes
8.57| badgers, squirrels
8.58| on snails
8.59| on lizards
8.60| the nature of dogs (61-63); examples of them with regard to their masters; those who kept dogs for the sake of battles; on their generation
8.62| remedies against rabies
8.63| the nature of horses (64-67); on the temperaments of horses; marvels of four-horse chariots; the generation of horses
8.66| those conceiving by the wind
8.67| on asses; generation among them
8.68| the nature of mules and of the other beasts of burden
8.69| on oxen (70, 71); their generation; Apis in Egypt
8.71| the nature of flocks (72-75); their generation; kinds of wool and of colours
8.73| kinds of garments
8.74| the nature and generation of goats
8.76| of swine likewise
8.77| on wild swine; who first established game-preserves for wild beasts
8.78| on apes
8.80| on the kinds of hares
8.81| on half-wild animals
8.82| which animals are not found in which places
8.83| where and which animals harm only foreigners; where and which harm only natives
8.84| Total: facts, histories and observations 787. FROM THE AUTHORS: Mucianus. Procilius. Verrius Flaccus. Lucius Piso. Cornelius Valerianus. Cato the Censor. Fenestella. Trogus. The public records. Columella. Virgil. Varro. Lucilius. Metellus Scipio. Cornelius Celsus. Nigidius. Trebius Niger. Pomponius Mela. Mamilius Sura. FROM FOREIGNERS: King Juba. Polybius. Herodotus. Antipater. Aristotle. Demetrius the natural philosopher. Democritus. Theophrastus. Euanthes. Scopas, who wrote on the Olympic victors. King Hiero. King Attalus. King Philometor. Ctesias. Duris. Philistus. Archytas. Phylarchus. Amphilochus of Athens. Anaxipolis of Thasos. Apollodorus of Lemnos. Aristophanes of Miletus. Antigonus of Cyme. Agathocles of Chios. Apollonius of Pergamum. Aristandrus of Athens. Bacchius of Miletus. Bion of Soli. Chaereas of Athens. Diodorus of Priene. Dion of Colophon. Epigenes of Rhodes. Euagon of Thasos. Euphronius of Athens. Hegesias of Maroneia. The Menanders from Priene and from Heraclea. Menecrates the poet. Androtion, who wrote about agriculture. Aeschrion, likewise. Lysimachus, likewise. Dionysius, translator of Mago. Diophanes, who prepared an epitome from Dionysius. King Archelaus. Nicander. the natures of water creatures; why the largest animals are in the sea; the monsters of the Indian sea; which are the largest in each ocean; on the shapes of Tritons and Nereids; on the shapes of sea elephants; on whales, on orcas; whether fish breathe, whether they sleep; on dolphins (7-10); whom they have loved; in what places they fish in partnership with men
9.9| other marvels concerning them
9.10| on the thyrsiones
9.11| on tortoises (12, 13); what kinds of water tortoises there are and in what manner they are caught
9.12| who first began to cut tortoise-shell
9.13| the arrangement of water creatures by species
9.14| on sea calves or seals; which lack hair and how they give birth
9.15| how many kinds of fish
9.16| which are the largest fish
9.17| cordylae, pelamydes; tunnies; the salting of these piece by piece; apolecti, cybia
9.18| amiae, scombri
9.19| which fish are not in the Pontus; which enter, which return by another route
9.20| why fish leap out of the water; the swordfish
9.21| that there are auguries from fish
9.22| in what kind of fish there are no males
9.23| which have a stone in the head; which lie hidden in winter; which are not caught in winter except on fixed days
9.24| which lie hidden in summer; which fish are star-struck
9.25| on the mugil
9.26| on the sturgeon
9.27| on the lupus; on the asellus
9.28| on the scarus; on the weasel-fish
9.29| kinds of mullets, the sargus
9.30| marvellous prices of fish
9.31| that the same kinds are not everywhere esteemed at dinners
9.32| on gills; on scales
9.33| fish that make sounds and fish without gills
9.34| which come out onto land; the seasons of capture
9.35| the arrangement of fish by the shapes of their bodies; the difference of turbots and passeres; on long fish
9.36| on the fins of fish and their manner of swimming
9.37| eels
9.38| murenae
9.39| kinds of flat fish
9.40| the echeneis; its effect
9.41| which fish change colour
9.42| on the swallow-fish; on the fish that shines at night; on the horned fish; on the sea dragon
9.43| on bloodless fish; which fish are called soft
9.44| on the cuttlefish; on the squid; on the pectunculi; which fly out of the water
9.45| on polyps (46-48); on the sailor polyp
9.47| on the sailor nauplius
9.49| those covered with a shell (50-52); on lobsters
9.50| kinds of crabs; on the pinnotheres; on sea urchins; on snails; on scallops
9.51| kinds of shells
9.52| how great a material for luxury the sea is
9.53| on pearls (54-59); how and where they are born
9.54| how they are found
9.55| what kinds of unions there are
9.56| what is to be observed in them; what their nature is
9.57| examples concerning them
9.58| when they first came into use at Rome
9.59| the nature of murices (60-65); on purples
9.60| which nations have purple
9.61| how wool is dyed from them
9.62| when the use of purple began at Rome, when the broad stripe and the bordered toga
9.63| on garments of shell-dye
9.64| on dyeing amethyst, on Tyrian, on hysginum, on coccum
9.65| on the pina and the pinnotheres
9.66| on the sensation of water creatures; the torpedo, the pastinaca, sea centipedes, the glanis; on the ram fish
9.67| on those which have a third nature, between animals and shrubs; on nettles
9.68| on sponges; what kinds there are and where they are born; that they are animals
9.69| on the caniculae
9.70| on those enclosed in a flinty shell; which are without any sensation in the sea; on the rest of the animals of filth
9.71| on poisonous creatures of the sea
9.72| on the diseases of fish
9.73| on their generation (74-77); marvels of generation
9.74| which both lay eggs and bear live young within themselves
9.75| those whose belly is split in giving birth and then closes
9.76| which have wombs; which couple with themselves
9.77| what is the longest life of fish
9.78| who first established fishponds; on oysters
9.79| who established ponds of murenae; famous fishponds
9.81| who first established ponds of snails
9.82| earth fish
9.83| on the mice in the Nile
9.84| how the anthias fish are caught
9.85| on starfish
9.86| on the marvels of dactyli
9.87| on the enmities and friendships of water creatures among themselves
9.88| Total: facts, histories and observations 650. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Turranius Gracilis. Trogus. Maecenas. Alfius Flavus. Cornelius Nepos. Laberius, the mime-writer. Fabianus. Fenestella. Mucianus. Aelius Stilo. Sebosus. Melissus. Seneca. Cicero. Aemilius Macer. Messala Corvinus. Trebius Niger. Nigidius. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Aristotle. King Archelaus. Callimachus. Democritus. Theophrastus. Thrasyllus. Hegesidemus. Sudines. Alexander Polyhistor. the natures of birds; on the ostrich (1); the phoenix; the kinds of eagles and their nature; when eagles began to be the standards of the legions; on the eagle that threw itself on the pyre of a maiden; the vulture; the bird called sanqualis; the immusulus; hawks (9-11); the buzzard; in what places hawks and men hunt birds in partnership; which bird alone is killed by its own kind; which bird lays a single egg; kites; the arrangement of birds by kinds
10.13| on birds of ill omen; in which months crows are not of ill omen
10.14| on ravens
10.15| on the owl
10.16| birds whose life or the knowledge of which has perished
10.17| which are born tail first
10.18| on night owls
10.19| on the woodpecker of Mars
10.20| on those that have hooked claws
10.21| on those that have toes (22-25); on peacocks
10.22| who first killed a peacock for food; who began to fatten them
10.23| on poultry
10.24| how they are castrated; on the cock that spoke
10.25| on the goose
10.26| who first established the goose liver
10.27| on the Commagene
10.28| chenalopeces, chenerotes, tetraones, otides
10.29| cranes
10.30| on storks
10.31| on the rest of the web-footed kind (32, 33); on swans
10.33| on foreign birds that come: quails, glottides, the cychramus; the otus; on our birds that depart, and where they go: swallows, thrushes, blackbirds, starlings
10.34| on birds that lose their feathers while in hiding: the turtle dove, the wood pigeon
10.35| which birds are year-round, which stay six months, which three months: galguli, hoopoes
10.36| the Memnonides
10.37| the Meleagrides
10.38| the Seleucides
10.39| the ibis
10.40| which birds are not found in which places
10.41| which change colour and voice (42-45); on the kind of the oscines
10.42| on nightingales
10.43| on the melancoryphi; the erithaci, the phoenicuri
10.44| the oenanthe, the chlorion
10.45| the season of the birds' breeding
10.46| halcyons; their days fit for sailing
10.47| on the rest of the water-bird kind
10.48| the cleverness of birds in their nests (49-51); the marvellous works of swallows; the bank swallows
10.49| the acanthyllis
10.50| the merops; on partridges
10.51| on pigeons; their marvellous works and their prices (52, 53, 54); differences in the flight and gait of birds
10.54| the apodes or cypseli
10.55| on the feeding of birds; the caprimulgi, the platea
10.56| on the talents of birds; the goldfinch, the taurus, the anthus
10.57| on birds that speak (58-60); parrots
10.58| the acorn-eating magpies
10.59| a riot of the Roman people on account of a speaking raven
10.60| the Diomedean birds
10.61| which animals learn nothing
10.62| on the drinking of birds; on the porphyrion
10.63| himantopodes
10.64| on the feeding of birds (65, 66); onocrotali
10.66| on foreign birds: Phalerides; pheasants; Numidian birds (67, 68); flamingos; attagens, cormorants; pyrrhocoraces, lagopodes
10.68| on new birds; the bibiones
10.69| on fabulous birds
10.70| who began to fatten hens, and which consuls were the first to forbid it
10.71| who first established aviaries; on the dish of Aesopus
10.72| the generation of birds (73-80); which animals besides birds lay eggs
10.73| the kinds and natures of eggs
10.74| the faults and remedies of brooding hens
10.75| the augury of Augusta from eggs
10.76| what hens are best
10.77| their diseases and remedies
10.78| kinds of herons
10.79| which are the urina eggs, which the cynosura, which the hypenemia; how eggs are best kept
10.80| which of winged creatures alone gives birth to live young and feeds them with milk
10.81| which land animals lay eggs; the generation of serpents
10.82| the generation of all land animals (83-87); what is the position of the animals in the womb
10.84| whose origin is still uncertain
10.85| on salamanders
10.86| which are born from things not begotten; which, once born, beget nothing; in which there is neither sex
10.87| on the senses of animals (88-90); that touch belongs to all, likewise taste; which have especially keen sight, which smell, which hearing; on moles; hearing in oysters
10.88| which of the fish hear most clearly
10.89| which of the fish smell most keenly
10.90| the diversity of animals in feeding (91-93); which live on poisons
10.92| which live on earth; which do not die of hunger or thirst
10.93| on the diversity of drink
10.94| which are at variance with one another
10.95| that there is friendship among animals, and the affections of animals; examples of the affection of serpents
10.96| on the sleep of animals
10.97| which dream
10.98| Total: facts, histories and observations 794. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Manilius. Cornelius Valerianus. The public records. Umbricius Melior. Masurius Sabinus. Antistius Labeo. Trogus. Cremutius. Marcus Varro. Aemilius Macer. Melissus. Mucianus. Nepos. Fabius Pictor. Titus Lucretius. Cornelius Celsus. Horace. Deculo. Hyginus. The Sasernae. Nigidius. Mamilius Sura. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Homer. Phemonoe. Philemon. Boethus, who wrote the Ornithogonia. Hylas, who wrote on auguries. Aristotle. Theophrastus. Callimachus. Aeschylus. King Hiero. King Philometor. Archytas of Tarentum. Amphilochus of Athens. Anaxipolis of Thasos. Apollodorus of Lemnos. Aristophanes of Miletus. Antigonus of Cyme. Agathocles of Chios. Apollonius of Pergamum. Aristandrus of Athens. Bacchius of Miletus. Bion of Soli. Chaereas of Athens. Diodorus of Priene. Dinon of Colophon. Democritus. Diophanes of Nicaea. Epigenes of Rhodes. Euagon of Thasos. Euphronius of Athens. Juba. Androtion, who wrote about agriculture. Aeschrion, likewise. Lysimachus, likewise. Dionysius, who translated Mago. Diophanes, who made epitomes from Dionysius. Nicander. Onesicritus. Phylarchus. Hesiod. the kinds of insect animals; the subtlety of nature in these things; whether they breathe; whether they have blood; on their body
11.3| on bees (4-23); what order there is in their work
11.5| what the commosis in it is; what the pissoceros is; what propolis is
11.6| what the erithace or sandaraca or cerinthus is
11.7| from which flowers their works are made
11.8| those captivated by a passion for bees
11.9| on drones
11.11| what the nature of honey is
11.12| which are the best honeys
11.13| what kinds of honey there are in particular places
11.14| how they are tested; on the erice or tetralix or sisyrum
11.15| how bees generate
11.16| what the system of their kings is
11.17| that sometimes the swarms are also a joyful omen
11.18| kinds of bees
11.19| on the diseases of bees
11.20| what is hostile to bees
11.21| on keeping bees together
11.22| on restoring them
11.23| on wasps, hornets; which animals make another's work their own
11.24| on the Assyrian bombyx (25-27); on bombylii, necydalis; who first discovered silk clothing
11.26| on the Coan bombyx; how Coan clothing is made
11.27| on spiders (28, 29); which of them weave; what the nature of the material for weaving is
11.28| the generation of spiders
11.29| on scorpions
11.30| on stellions
11.31| on cicadas; that they are without a mouth and without an outlet for food
11.32| on the wings of insects
11.33| on beetles; the lampyrides; the rest of the beetle kind
11.34| on locusts
11.35| on ants
11.36| chrysallides, the asilus, butterflies
11.37| on those animals which are born from wood or in wood
11.38| the animals of human filth; which animal is the smallest; the animals of summer
11.39| an animal that has no outlet for food
11.40| moths, cantharides, gnats; the animal of snow
11.41| the animal of fires, the pyrallis or pyrotocum
11.42| the hemerobion
11.43| the natures and histories of all animals limb by limb (44-97); which have crests, which have combs
11.44| kinds of horns; in which they are movable
11.45| on heads; in which there are none
11.46| on hair
11.47| on the bones of the head
11.48| on the brain
11.49| on ears; which have no ears; which hear without ears and without openings
11.50| on the face, on the forehead; on the eyebrows
11.51| on eyes (52-57); which animals are without eyes; which have only a single eye
11.52| on the diversity of eyes
11.53| what the principle of sight is; those who see by night
11.54| on the nature of the pupil; which do not blink; in which eyes that are torn out grow again
11.55| on eyelids; in which there are none, in which they are on one side only
11.56| in which there are no cheeks
11.57| on the cheekbones
11.58| on nostrils
11.59| cheeks, lips, chin, jaws
11.60| on teeth (61-64); what kinds of them there are; in which they are not on both sides, in which hollow
11.61| on the teeth of serpents; on their venom; which bird has teeth
11.62| marvels of teeth
11.63| the age of ruminants known from them
11.64| on the tongue; which are without it; on the sound of frogs; on the palate
11.65| on the tonsils; the uvula, the epiglottis; the windpipes; the gullet
11.66| the nape, the neck, the spine
11.67| the throat, the jaws, the stomach
11.68| on the heart (69-71); the blood, the spirit
11.69| in which the heart is largest, in which smallest, in which double
11.70| when it began to be examined in entrails
11.71| on the lung; in which it is largest, in which smallest; in which there is nothing else but a lung within; what the cause of speed in animals is
11.72| on the liver (73-76); on the head of the entrails; the observations of the haruspices about it; in which animals and in which places there are two livers
11.73| on the gall, where and in which it is double; in which animals there is none; in which animals it is elsewhere than in the liver
11.74| what its power is
11.75| in which the liver grows and wanes with the moon; the observations of the haruspices about these things, and marvellous portents
11.76| the praecordia; the nature of laughter
11.77| on the belly; in which there is none; which alone vomit
11.78| the small intestines, the billae, the belly, the colon; why certain animals are insatiable
11.79| on the omentum; on the spleen; in which animals there is none
11.80| on the kidneys; where animals have four; in which there are none
11.81| the chest, the ribs
11.82| the bladder; in which animals there is none; the flanks; on membranes
11.83| the womb, on its places; on wombs; on the womb of swine, the udder
11.84| which have fat, which have suet; on the nature of each; which do not grow fat
11.85| on marrows; in which there are none
11.86| on bones; on fishbones; in which there are neither bones nor fishbones; cartilages
11.87| on sinews; which are without sinews
11.88| arteries, veins (89-92); which have neither veins nor arteries; on blood, on sweat
11.89| whose blood thickens most quickly, whose does not clot; in which it is thickest, in which thinnest, in which there is none
11.90| in which there is none at certain times of the year
11.91| whether the chief place is in the blood
11.92| on the hide
11.93| on hairs and the covering of the hide; in which the mouth within and the feet beneath are hairy
11.94| on breasts; which birds have breasts; notable things among animals in the udders
11.95| on milk (96, 97); which animal alone sucks while running; on colostrum; on cheeses; from which animals they are not made; on rennet; kinds of food from milk
11.96| kinds of cheeses
11.97| the differences of the limbs of man from the other animals (98-113); on the arms, on the fingers
11.99| on the likeness of apes
11.100| on nails
11.101| on knees and the backs of the knees
11.102| in which limbs of the human body there is a sanctity
11.103| varicose veins
11.104| on gait; on feet and legs
11.105| on hoofs
11.106| the feet of birds
11.107| the feet of animals, from two to a hundred; on dwarfs
11.108| on the genitals; on hermaphrodites
11.109| on the testicles; the half-men of three kinds
11.110| on tails
11.111| on the voices of animals
11.112| on limbs that grow on afterwards
11.113| signs of vitality and of character from the limbs of men
11.114| on the soul; on diet
11.115| which, fed on poison, do not themselves perish but kill when tasted
11.116| for what causes man does not digest; on remedies for indigestions
11.117| how corpulence comes about, how it is reduced
11.118| what things by taste allay hunger and thirst
11.119| Total: facts, histories and observations 2700. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Hyginus. Scrofa. Saserna. Celsus Cornelius. Aemilius Macer. Vergil. Columella. Julius Aquila, who wrote on the Etruscan discipline. Tarquitius, likewise. Umbricius Melior, likewise. Cato Censorius. Domitius Calvinus. Trogus. Melissus. Fabianus. Mucianus. Nigidius. Mamilius. Oppius. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Aristotle. Democritus. Neoptolemus, who wrote the Melitourgika. Aristomachus, likewise. Philiscus, likewise. Nicander. Menecrates. Dionysius, the translator of Mago. Empedocles. Callimachus. Attalus the king. Apollodorus, who wrote on venomous beasts. Hippocrates. Herophilus. Erasistratus. Asclepiades. Themison. Posidonius the Stoic. The Menanders of Priene and of Heraclea. Euphronius of Athens. Theophrastus. Hesiod. King Philometor. the natures of trees; the honour paid to them (1, 2); on foreign trees (3-63); the plane (3-5); when it first came to Italy, and whence; the marvels of its nature; the chamaeplatani; who first began to clip pleasure-gardens; the Assyrian apple; how it is sown; the trees of India (8-17); when ebony was first seen at Rome; what kinds of it there are; the Indian thorn; the Indian fig; the shapes of Indian trees, without names; the flax-bearing trees of the Indians; the tree pala; the fruit ariena (12, 13); the trees of pepper; the kinds of pepper; bregma; ginger or zimpiber
12.14| caryophyllon; lycium or pyxacanthus of Chiron
12.15| machir
12.16| saccaron
12.17| the trees of the Arian people; likewise of Gedrosia; likewise of Hyrcania
12.18| likewise of Bactria; bdellium or brochum or malacha or maldacum; scordastum; in all perfumes or spices adulterations are described, tests, prices
12.19| the trees of Persis
12.20| trees on the islands in the Persian Sea; the cotton tree
12.21| the tree cynas; from which trees linen is made in the East
12.22| in what place none of the trees shed their leaves
12.23| in what ways the fruits of trees are made up
12.24| on costus
12.25| on nard; its 12 differences
12.26| asarum
12.27| amomum; amomis
12.28| cardamomum
12.29| on the incense-bearing region (30-32); on the trees which bear incense
12.31| what the nature of incense is and what kinds there are
12.32| on myrrh (33-35); on the trees which bear it
12.34| the nature and kinds of myrrh
12.35| on mastic
12.36| on ladanum, strobus
12.37| enhaemon
12.38| the tree bratus
12.39| the tree stobrum
12.40| on the felicity of Arabia
12.41| on cinnamum, cinnamomum, xylocinnamum
12.42| casia
12.43| cancamum, tarum
12.44| serichatum, gabalium
12.45| myrobalanus
12.46| phoenicobalanus
12.47| on the scented reed, on the scented rush
12.48| Hammoniacum
12.49| sphagnos
12.50| cypros
12.51| aspalathos or erysisceptron
12.52| maron
12.53| on balsam, opobalsam, xylobalsam
12.54| styrax
12.55| galbanum
12.56| on panax
12.57| spondylion
12.58| on malobathrum
12.59| on omphacium
12.60| bryon, oenanthe; massaris
12.61| elate or spathe
12.62| cinnamum comacum
12.63| Total: facts, histories and observations 469. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Mucianus. Virgil. Fabianus. Sebosus. Pomponius Mela. Fabius Proculus. Hyginus. Trogus. Claudius Caesar. Cornelius Nepos. Sextius Niger, who wrote on medicine in Greek. Cassius Hemina. Lucius Piso. Tuditanus. Antias. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus. Herodotus. Callisthenes. Isigonus. Clitarchus. Anaximenes. Duris. Nearchus. Onesicritus. Polyclitus. Olympiodorus. Diognetus. Nicobule. Anticlides. Chares of Mytilene. Menaechmus. Dorotheus of Athens. Lycus. Antaeus. Ephippus. Dinon. Adimantus. Ptolemy son of Lagus. Marsyas the Macedonian. Zoilus, likewise. Democritus. Amphilochus. Aristomachus. Alexander Polyhistor. Juba. Apollodorus, who wrote on scents. Heraclides, a physician. Botrys, a physician. Archedemus, likewise. Dionysius, likewise. Democles, likewise. Euphron, likewise. Mnesides, likewise. Diagoras, likewise. Iollas, likewise. Heraclides of Tarentum. Xenocrates of Ephesus. on foreign trees; on perfumes (1-5); when they began; their kinds and compositions, 21; the diapasmata, the magmata; the testing of perfume; how great luxury there is in perfumes; when first in use among the Romans; on palms (6-9); on their nature
13.7| how they are sown
13.8| the kinds of their fruit and their distinguishing marks, 49
13.9| the trees of Syria: pistacia, cottana, Damascene plums, myxae
13.10| the cedar; which trees bear the fruit of three years together
13.11| the terebinth
13.12| the rhus
13.13| the trees of Egypt; the Alexandrian fig
13.14| the Cyprian fig
13.15| the siliqua ceraunia
13.16| the Persian tree; on which trees fruits constantly spring up in succession
13.17| the cuci
13.18| the Egyptian thorn
13.19| gums, 8 kinds; sarcocolla
13.20| on papyrus (21-27); on the use of paper; when it began
13.21| how it is made
13.22| its kinds, 9
13.23| the testing of papers
13.24| the faults of papers
13.25| on the glue of papers
13.26| on the books of Numa
13.27| the trees of Aethiopia
13.28| the Atlantic tree
13.29| on the citrus tree (29-31); on citrus tables; what is approved or disparaged in them
13.30| the citrus apple
13.31| the lotus
13.32| the trees of Cyrenaica; paliurus
13.33| kinds of Punic apple, 9; balaustium
13.34| the trees of Asia and of Greece (35-47); epicactis; erice; the Cnidian grain or thymelaea or chamelaea or pyrosachne or cnestor or cneorum
13.35| tragion, tragacantha
13.36| tragos or scorpio, myrice or brya, ostrys
13.37| euonymos
13.38| the tree leon
13.39| andrachle
13.40| coccygia, apharce
13.41| ferula
13.42| thapsia
13.43| capparis or cynosbaton or ophios staphyle
13.44| saripha
13.45| the royal thorn
13.46| cytisus
13.47| the trees and shrubs in our sea (48, 49); likewise in the Red Sea
13.50| likewise in the Indian
13.51| likewise in the Trogodytic: phycos, grasson or zoster, sea bryon, the plocamos of Isis, the blepharon of the Graces
13.52| Total: facts, histories and observations 468. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Mucianus. Virgil. Fabianus. Sebosus. Pomponius Mela. Fabius Proculus. Hyginus. Trogus. Claudius Caesar. Cornelius Nepos. Sextius Niger, who wrote on medicine in Greek. Cassius Hemina. Lucius Piso. Tuditanus. Antias. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus. Herodotus. Callisthenes. Isigonus. Clitarchus. Anaximenes. Duris. Nearchus. Onesicritus. Polyclitus. Olympiodorus. Diognetus. Nicobule. Anticlides. Chares of Mytilene. Menaechmus. Dorotheus of Athens. Lycus. Antaeus. Ephippus. Dinon. Adimantus. Ptolemy son of Lagus. Marsyas the Macedonian. Zoilus, likewise. Democritus. Amphilochus. Aristomachus. Alexander Polyhistor. Juba. Apollodorus, who wrote on scents. Heraclides, a physician. Botrys, likewise. Archedemus, likewise. Dionysius, likewise. Democles, likewise. Euphron, likewise. Mnesides, likewise. Diagoras, likewise. Iollas, likewise. Heraclides of Tarentum. Xenocrates of Ephesus. fruit-bearing trees; on the nature of vines, in what ways they are planted; on the nature of grapes and the care of vines; the kinds of grapes, 91; famous achievements of cultivation and of vineyards; on the invention of honeyed wine; noble wines, 50; noble wines from overseas, 38; on the Opimian wine
14.16| notable matters concerning wine-stores; on the nature of wine; the kinds of salted wine, 7; on raisin wine and boiled-down musts and the kinds of sweet wines, 17
14.11| the kinds of second wine, 3
14.12| how recently noble wines began in Italy
14.13| observations on wine from King Romulus
14.14| which wines the ancients used
14.15| when four kinds of wine were first set out
14.17| 5 uses of the wild vine; which juice is the coldest by nature
14.18| the kinds of artificial wine, 66
14.19| hydromel or apomel or melicraton
14.20| oxymel
14.21| prodigious kinds of wine, 12
14.22| which wines it is not lawful to use at sacrifices
14.23| with which substances they season musts (24, 25); on pitch, on resins
14.25| on wine vessels
14.27| on vinegar; on lees
14.26| on cellars; on drunkenness
14.28| that the strength of wine is made from water and grain
14.29| Total: facts, histories and observations 510. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Cornelius Valerianus. Virgil. Celsus. Cato the Censor. The Sasernae, father and son. Scrofa. Marcus Varro. Decimus Silanus. Fabius Pictor. Trogus. Hyginus. Verrius Flaccus. Graecinus. Julius Atticus. Columella. Masurius Sabinus. Fenestella. Tergilla. Maccius Plautus. Fabius Dossennus. Scaevola. Lucius Aelius. Ateius Capito. Cotta Messalinus. Lucius Piso. Pompeius Lenaeus. Fabianus. Sextius Niger. Vibius Rufinus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Hesiod. Theophrastus. Aristotle. Democritus. King Hiero. King Philometor. King Attalus. Archytas. Xenophon. Amphilochus of Athens. Anaxipolis of Thasos. Apollodorus of Lemnos. Aristophanes of Miletus. Antigonus of Cyme. Agathocles of Chios. Apollonius of Pergamum. Aristandrus of Athens. Bacchius of Miletus. Bion of Soli. Chaereas of Athens. Cherestus, likewise. Diodorus of Priene. Dinon of Colophon. Epigenes of Rhodes. Euagon of Thasos. Euphronius the Athenian. Androtion, who wrote on agriculture. Aeschrion, likewise. Lysimachus, likewise. Dionysius, who translated Mago. Diophanes, who made epitomes from Dionysius. Asclepiades the physician. Erasistratus, likewise. Commiades, who wrote on the preserving of wine. Aristomachus, likewise. Hicesius, likewise. Themison the physician. Onesicritus. King Juba. the natures of fruit-bearing trees; on the olive (1-8); how long it was found only among the Greeks; when it first began to exist in Italy, Spain, Africa; on oil; the nations and the excellences of oil; what the nature of the olive and of oil in its beginnings is; the kinds of olives, 15; on the nature of oil
15.5| the cultivation of olive-trees; on preserving olives; in what manner oil is to be made
15.6| the kinds of artificial oil, 48; the cici tree or croton or sibi or sesamum
15.7| on the lees of oil
15.8| the kinds and nature of all fruits (9-34); the kinds of pine nuts, 4
15.9| the kinds of struthia, 4; the kinds of quinces, 4
15.10| the kinds of pomegranates, 9; the kinds of peaches, 7
15.11| the kinds of plums, 12
15.12| on the persea
15.13| the kinds of apples, 30; at what time each foreign fruit came into Italy, and from where
15.14| which most recently
15.15| the kinds of pears, 41
15.16| on the variety of grafts and the expiation of lightning
15.17| on preserving fruits and grapes
15.18| the kinds of figs, 29
15.19| historical matters on figs
15.20| on caprification
15.21| the kinds of medlar, 3
15.22| the kinds of service-berries, 4
15.23| the kinds of nuts, 9
15.24| the kinds of chestnuts, 8
15.25| siliquae
15.26| on fleshy fruits; on mulberries
15.27| on the unedo
15.28| the natures of acini; the natures of berries
15.29| the kinds of cherries, 9
15.30| cornels; mastic-trees
15.31| the differences of juices, 13 (32, 33); the myrtle (35-38); historical matters on the myrtle (36, 38); its kinds, 11
15.37| the laurel; its kinds, 13 (39, 40). Total: facts, histories and observations 520. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Fenestella. Fabianus. Virgil. Cornelius Valerianus. Celsus. Cato the Censor. The Sasernae, father and son. Scrofa. Marcus Varro. Decimus Silanus. Fabius Pictor. Trogus. Hyginus. Verrius Flaccus. Graecinus. Julius Atticus. Columella. Masurius Sabinus. Tergilla. Cotta Messalinus. Lucius Piso. Pompeius Lenaeus. Maccius Plautus. Fabius Dossennus. Scaevola. Lucius Aelius. Ateius Capito. Sextius Niger. Vibius Rufinus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Hesiod. Theophrastus. Aristotle. Democritus. King Hiero. King Philometor. King Attalus. Archytas. Xenophon. Amphilochus of Athens. Anaxipolis of Thasos. Apollodorus of Lemnos. Aristophanes of Miletus. Antigonus of Cyme. Agathocles of Chios. Apollonius of Pergamum. Aristandrus of Athens. Bacchius of Miletus. Bion of Soli. Chaereas of Athens. Cherestus, likewise. Diodorus of Priene. Dinon of Colophon. Epigenes of Rhodes. Euagon of Thasos. Euphronius the Athenian. Androtion, who wrote on agriculture. Aeschrion, likewise. Lysimachus, likewise. Dionysius, who translated Mago. Diophanes, who made epitomes from Dionysius. Asclepiades the physician. Erasistratus, likewise. Commiades, who wrote on the preserving of wine. Aristomachus, likewise. Hicesius, likewise. Themison the physician. Onesicritus. King Juba. the natures of wild trees; peoples without trees; marvels in the northern region of trees; on the acorn-bearers (3-13); on the civic crown; on the origin of crowns; those who were honoured with a crown of leaves; the kinds of acorns, 13; on the beech; on the other acorns; on charcoal; on the gall; how many things besides acorns the same trees bear (10-13); cachrys
16.11| coccum
16.12| agaricum
16.13| the bark of which trees is in use
16.14| on shingles
16.15| on the pine
16.16| the pinaster
16.17| the pitch-pine, the fir
16.18| the larch, the torch-pine
16.19| the yew
16.20| in what ways liquid pitch is made; how cedar oil is made
16.21| in what ways thick pitch is made; in what ways resin is boiled
16.22| zopissa
16.23| the timber of which trees is valued (24-29); the kinds of ash, 4
16.24| the kinds of linden, 2
16.25| the kinds of maple, 10
16.26| bruscum, molluscum, staphylodendron
16.27| the kinds of box, 3
16.28| the kinds of elm, 6
16.29| the nature of trees by situation (30, 31); which are of the mountains, which of the plains
16.30| which are of dry ground, which of water, which common to both
16.31| division of the kinds
16.32| which do not shed their leaves; on the rhododendron; which do not lose all their leaves; in what places none of the trees
16.33| on the nature of falling leaves
16.34| in which the leaves are of various colours; the kinds of poplars, 3; whose leaves change their shape
16.35| which leaves turn round every year
16.36| the care and use of leaves from palms
16.37| marvels of leaves
16.38| the order of nature in what is sown
16.39| which trees never flower; on junipers
16.40| on the conception of trees; on budding; on their bearing
16.41| in what order they flower
16.42| on the cornel; at what time each bears
16.43| those that bear the year round; those bearing for three years
16.44| which do not bear fruit; which are held to be unlucky
16.45| which most easily lose their fruit or flower
16.46| which do not bear everywhere
16.47| in what manner each bears
16.48| in which the fruit is born before the leaf
16.49| those bearing twice; those bearing three times
16.50| which age most quickly, which most slowly; early fruits; late fruits
16.51| in which several kinds of things are produced; crataegus
16.52| the differences of trees by their trunks and branches (53-56); the lotus or Greek bean
16.53| on branches
16.54| bark
16.55| roots
16.56| trees which have risen again of their own accord
16.57| in what ways trees are born [of their own accord]
16.58| differences of nature, not producing everything everywhere (58-60); where which do not grow
16.59| on cypresses
16.60| that things often spring from the earth which were not born there before
16.61| on ivy; its kinds, 20
16.62| smilax
16.63| on water plants (64-71); on reeds; the kinds of reed, 28
16.64| on arrow reeds
16.65| and on writing reeds and on pipers' reeds
16.66| on the Orchomenian reed and the fowler's and the fisher's; on the vine-dresser's reed; on the alder
16.67| on the willow; its kinds, 8
16.68| what besides the willow is useful for binding
16.69| on rushes, candle-rushes, canes, tegulum
16.70| on elders, on brambles
16.71| on the juices of trees
16.72| on the nature of timbers
16.73| on the felling of trees (74, 75); on the size of trees; on timbers for building; on sappinus
16.76| fire-making from wood
16.77| which feel no decay, which no splitting
16.78| historical matters on the durability of timbers
16.79| kinds of ship-worms
16.80| on timbers for the workshop
16.82| on timber to be glued
16.83| on veneers
16.84| the great age of enduring trees (85-89); a tree of 500 years planted by the elder Africanus in the city of Rome
16.85| trees from the founding of the City
16.86| trees in the suburbs older than the City
16.87| trees planted by Agamemnon; trees from the first year of the Trojan war; trees from the naming of Ilium; trees among the Trojans older than the Trojan war
16.88| likewise at Argos, trees planted by Hercules, planted by Apollo; a tree older than Athens
16.89| which kinds of trees last least
16.90| trees famous from some event
16.91| which have no place of their own to grow
16.92| which live on trees and cannot be born on the earth; their kinds, 9: cassytas, hyphear, stelis, hippophaestum; on the nature of mistletoe and the like
16.93| on making birdlime
16.94| Total: facts, histories and observations 1135. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Fetialis. Nigidius. Cornelius Nepos. Hyginus. Masurius. Cato. Mucianus. Lucius Piso. Trogus. Calpurnius Bassus. Cremutius. Sextius Niger. Cornelius Bocchus. Vitruvius. Graecinus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Alexander Polyhistor. Hesiod. Theophrastus. Democritus. Homer. Timaeus the mathematician. the natures of cultivated trees; the marvellous prices of trees; the nature of the sky in relation to trees; which quarter of the sky vineyards ought to face; what earth is best; on the 8 kinds of earth with which the Greeks, Britain and Gaul enrich the soil; on the use of ashes
17.5| on dung
17.6| which crops make the earth richer, which burn it
17.7| in what ways dung is to be used
17.8| in what ways trees are planted (9-21); those growing from seed
17.10| those that never degenerate
17.11| those growing from plants
17.12| those growing by tearing away, and from the shoot
17.13| on seed-beds; on transplanting seed-beds
17.14| on planting elms
17.15| on trenches
17.16| on the intervals between trees
17.17| on shade
17.18| on dripping water
17.19| which grow slowly; which quickly
17.20| those growing from layering
17.21| on grafting (22-26); in what way it was invented
17.22| kinds of grafting
17.24| budding
17.23| plastering
17.26| on grafting the vine
17.25| those growing from a branch
17.27| which are planted from cuttings, and in what manner
17.28| the cultivation of olive trees (29, 30); the arrangement of the work on shoots through the seasons of the year
17.30| on trenching around roots and on heaping earth up
17.31| on the willow-bed
17.32| reed-beds
17.33| on the other coppice wood for poles and stakes
17.34| the system of vineyards and of vines trained on trees (35, 36); that grapes may not be infested by animals
17.36| the diseases of trees
17.37| portents from trees
17.38| the medicines of trees (39-47); in what manner to water
17.40| marvels about irrigation
17.41| on scarification
17.42| in what manner to bore around; the castration of trees
17.43| caprification
17.44| what faults of pruning
17.45| what faults of manuring there are for trees
17.46| medicaments
17.47| Total: facts, histories and observations 1380. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Cornelius Nepos. Cato the Censor. Marcus Varro. Celsus. Virgil. Hyginus. The Sasernae, father and son. Scrofa. Calpurnius Bassus. Trogus. Aemilius Macer. Graecinus. Columella. Atticus Julius. Fabianus. Mamilius Sura. Dessius Mundus. Gaius Epidius. Lucius Piso. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Hesiod. Theophrastus. Aristotle. Democritus. Theopompus. King Hiero. King Philometor. King Attalus. King Archelaus. Archytas. Xenophon. Amphilochus of Athens. Anaxipolis of Thasos. Apollodorus of Lemnos. Aristophanes of Miletus. Antigonus of Cyme. Agathocles of Chios. Apollonius of Pergamum. Bacchius of Miletus. Bion of Soli. Chaereas of Athens. Cherestus, likewise. Diodorus of Priene. Dinon of Colophon. Epigenes of Rhodes. Euagon of Thasos. Euphronius the Athenian. Androtion, who wrote on agriculture. Aeschrion, likewise. Lysimachus, likewise. Dionysius, who translated Mago. Diophanes, who made epitomes from Dionysius. Aristandrus, who wrote on portents. the natures of crops; the devotion of the ancients to agriculture; what the first crown at Rome was; on the crown of ears of grain; on the jugerum; how often and at what times there was the greatest cheapness of grain; who wrote with distinction on agriculture; what is to be observed in acquiring a farm; on the siting of farmhouses
18.7| the precepts of the ancients on cultivating a field
18.8| the kinds of crops
18.9| the natures according to the kinds of grain (10-29); on spelt
18.11| wheat
18.12| barley (13-15, 18); polenta
18.14| barley-water
18.15| tragum
18.16| starch
18.17| siligo; similago
18.20| arinca or olyra; semen or zea
18.29| on the other kinds in the East
18.19| on the pounding of grain
18.23| on sesame; on erysimum or irio; on hormium
18.22| millet
18.24| panic
18.25| on leavens
18.26| the method and kinds of bread-making
18.27| when the baker's trade began at Rome
18.28| on pulses (30-33, 36); the bean
18.30| the kinds of chickpea
18.32| phaseoli
18.33| the pea
18.31| on turnips
18.34| rape
18.35| the lupin
18.36| fodder crops (37-43); vetch
18.37| ervum
18.38| silicia
18.39| rye or asia
18.40| mixed fodder
18.41| on ocinum; ervilia
18.42| medica
18.43| on oats; the diseases of crops
18.44| remedies
18.45| what ought to be sown in each kind of soil
18.46| the diversity of peoples in sowing
18.47| kinds of ploughshares
18.48| the method of ploughing
18.49| on harrowing, weeding, hoeing; on hurdle-harrowing
18.50| on the highest fertility of soil
18.51| the method of sowing the same field more than once in the year
18.52| manuring
18.53| testing of seeds
18.54| how much of each kind of grain is to be sown on a jugerum
18.55| on the times of sowing (56-61); the arrangement of the stars by days, and the earthly signs of the things to be done in the field
18.57| what ought to be done in the field in each month (62-74); on the poppy
18.61| on [….]
18.67| the causes of barrenness and the remedies (69, 70); on harvests
18.72| on keeping grain
18.73| on the vintage and the labours of autumn
18.74| the system of the moon
18.75| the system of the winds
18.76| the marking out of fields
18.77| forecasts (78-90) from the sun
18.78| from the moon
18.79| from the stars
18.80| from thunder
18.81| from clouds
18.82| from mists
18.83| from earthly fires
18.84| from waters
18.85| from the weather itself
18.86| from water animals, from birds (87, 88), from four-footed animals
18.88| Total: facts, histories and observations 2060. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Masurius Sabinus. Cassius Hemina. Verrius Flaccus. Lucius Piso. Cornelius Celsus. Turranius Gracilis. Decimus Silanus. Marcus Varro. Cato the Censor. Scrofa. The Sasernae, father and son. Domitius Calvinus. Hyginus. Vergil. Trogus. Ovid. Graecinus. Columella. Tubero. Lucius Tarutius, who wrote on the stars in Greek. Caesar the dictator, likewise. Sergius Plautus. Sabinus Fabianus. Marcus Cicero. Calpurnius Bassus. Ateius Capito. Mamilius Sura. Attius, who wrote the Praxidica. AUTHORITIES FROM ABROAD: Hesiod. Theophrastus. Aristotle. Democritus. King Hiero. King Philometor. King Attalus. King Archelaus. Archytas. Xenophon. Amphilochus of Athens. Anaxipolis of Thasos. Apollodorus of Lemnos. Aristophanes of Miletus. Antigonus of Cyme. Agathocles of Chios. Apollonius of Pergamum. Aristandrus of Athens. Bacchius of Miletus. Bion of Soli. Chaereas of Athens. Cherestus, likewise. Diodorus of Priene. Dinon of Colophon. Epigenes of Rhodes. Euagon of Thasos. Euphronius the Athenian. Androtion, who wrote on agriculture. Aeschrion, likewise. Lysimachus, likewise. Dionysius, who translated Mago. Diophanes, who made epitomes from Dionysius. Thales. Eudoxus. Philippus. Callippus. Dositheus. Parmeniscus. Meton. Criton. Oenopides. Conon. Euctemon. Harpalus. Hecataeus. Anaximander. Sosigenes. Hipparchus. Aratus. Zoroaster. Archibius. the nature and marvels of flax (1-6); its kinds and excellences, 17; in what manner it is sown and finished; when awnings were first used in theatres
19.6| on the nature of spartum (7-9); in what manner it is finished
19.8| when its use began
19.9| on the wool-bearing bulb
19.10| what things are born and live without a root; what things are born and cannot be sown
19.11| misy, iton, geranion
19.12| on truffles
19.13| pezicae
19.14| on laserpicium and laser; maspetum; magydaris (15, 16); on madder
19.17| on radicula
19.18| the delight of gardens (19, 20); the arrangement of things springing from the earth other than crops and shrubs
19.21| the nature, kinds and histories of the 10 things that grow in gardens (22-37); on the roots, flowers and leaves of all of them; in which garden plants the leaves fall
19.31| on which day each springs up
19.35| the nature of seeds; in what manner each is sown
19.36| of which there is a single kind each, of which there are several
19.37| the nature, kinds and histories of the 23 things sown in the garden for seasoning (38-55); born from its own tear
19.48| the ferulaceous kinds, 4; hemp
19.56| the diseases of garden plants
19.57| remedies (58, 59); in what ways ants are killed; remedies against caterpillars; against gnats; to which plants salt water is beneficial; the method of watering gardens
19.60| on the juices and flavours of garden plants; on the piperitis and the libanotis and the zmyrnum (61, 62). Total: facts, histories and observations 1144. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Maccius Plautus. Marcus Varro. Decimus Silanus. Cato Censorius. Hyginus. Vergil. Mucianus. Celsus. Columella. Calpurnius Bassus. Mamilius Sura. Sabinus Tiro. Licinius Macer. Quintus Birrius. Vibius Rufinus. Caesennius, who wrote the Kepourika. Castritius, likewise. Firmus, likewise. Potitus, likewise. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Herodotus. Theophrastus. Democritus. Aristomachus. Menander, who wrote the Biochresta. Anaxilaus. medicines from the things sown in gardens. from the wild cucumber, 26; from the elaterium, 27; from the snake cucumber or wild cucumber, 5; from the cultivated cucumber, 9; from the pepo, 11; from the wild gourd, the sompho, 1; from the colocynth, 13; from turnips, 9; from the wild turnip, 1; from the napus or bunion or bunias, 5; from the cultivated radish, 43; from the armoracia, 1; from the parsnip; from hibiscus or plistolochia or moloche agria, 11; from the staphylinus or wild parsnip, 22; from the gingidium, 1; from the siser, 11; from the sil, 12; from the inula, 11; from the onion, 27; from the cut leek, 32; from the headed leek, 39; from garlic, 61; from lettuce, 42; from the caprina, 4; from the caesapo, 1; from the isatis, 1; from wild lettuce, 7; from the hieracia, 17
20.26| from beet, 24
20.27| from the limonium or neuroides, 4
20.28| from intubus, which is the ambubaia, 4
20.29| from chicory or chrestus or pancration, 12
20.30| from hedypnois, 4
20.31| from the seris, 2 kinds, 7 medicines
20.32| from cabbage, 87
20.33| the cyma
20.35| from wild cabbage, 27
20.36| from lapsana, 1
20.37| from sea cabbage, 1
20.38| from the squill, 24
20.39| from bulbs, 30
20.40| from the bulbine, 1; the vomiting bulb
20.41| from cultivated asparagus, 17
20.42| from corruda or ormenon or the Libyan, 24
20.43| from apium, 17
20.44| from apiastrum or melissophyllum
20.45| from olusatrum or hipposelinum, 11; from oreoselinum, 2; from heteroselinum, 1
20.46| from parsley, 1; from buselinum, 1
20.47| from ocimum, 28
20.48| from eruca, 12
20.49| from nasturtium, 42
20.50| from rue, 84
20.51| from mentastrum, 20
20.52| from mint, 41
20.53| from pennyroyal, 25
20.54| from wild pennyroyal, 19
20.55| from nepeta, 9
20.56| from cumin, 16; from wild cumin, 26
20.57| from ami, 10
20.58| from the caper, 18
20.59| from ligusticum or panax, 3
20.60| from the ox cunila, 5
20.61| from the hen cunila or origanum, 5
20.62| from cunilago, 8
20.63| from soft cunila, 2; from libanotis, 2
20.64| from cultivated cunila, 3; from mountain cunila, 7
20.65| from piperitis or siliquastrum, 5
20.66| from origanum onites or prasion, 6
20.67| from tragoriganum, 9
20.68| from Heraclean origanum, 3 kinds, 30 medicines
20.69| from lepidium, 3
20.70| from git or melanthium, 23
20.71| from anesum or anicetum, 61 (72, 73); from dill, 9
20.74| from sacopenium or sagapenum, 13
20.75| from white poppy, 2; from black poppy, 8; on sleep; on opium; against the potions they call anodyne, fever-breaking, digestive and coeliac; from wild poppy, 2; meconium
20.76| from the rhoeas poppy, 2
20.77| from the horned poppy or glaucium or paralius, 5
20.78| from the Heraclean poppy or aphrode, 2; dia kodyon
20.79| from the tithymalus poppy or paralius, 3; in what manner the juice of herbs is to be collected
20.80| from purslane, 45; from peplus, 45
20.81| from coriander, 21
20.82| from atriplex, 14
20.83| from the mallow malope, 46; from the mallow malache, 1; from the mallow althaea or plistolochia, 19
20.84| from wild dock or oxalis or canterine dock or rumex, 1; from oxylapathum, 7; from hydrolapathum, 2; from hippolapathum, 6
20.85| from cultivated dock, 21; from bulapathum, 1
20.86| from mustard, 3 kinds, 48 medicines
20.87| from adarca, 48
20.88| from marrubium or prasion or linostrophon or philopaes or philochares, 29
20.89| from serpyllum, 18
20.90| from sisymbrium or thymbraeum, 13
20.91| from linseed, 27
20.92| from blitum, 6
20.93| from Athamantic meum, 7
20.94| from fennel, 23
20.95| from hippomarathum or myrsineum, 5
20.96| from hemp, 7
20.97| from the ferula, 8
20.98| from the thistle or scolymus, 6
20.99| the composition of theriaca
20.100| Total: medicines, histories and observations 1606. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Cato the Censor. Marcus Varro. Pompeius Lenaeus. Gaius Valgius. Hyginus. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Julius Bassus, likewise. Celsus. Antonius Castor. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Democritus. Theophrastus. Orpheus. Menander, who wrote the Biochresta. Pythagoras. Nicander. PHYSICIANS: Hippocrates. Chrysippus. Diocles. Ophion. Heraclides. Hicesius. Dionysius. Apollodorus of Citium. Apollodorus of Tarentum. Praxagoras. Plistonicus. Medius. Dieuches. Cleophantus. Philistion. Asclepiades. Crateuas. Petronius Diodotus. Iollas. Erasistratus. Diagoras. Andreas. Mnesides. Epicharmus. Damion. Dalion. Sosimenes. Tlepolemus. Metrodorus. Solon. Lycus. Olympias of Thebes. Philinus. Petrichus. Miccion. Glaucias. Xenocrates. the natures of flowers and of garlands; on strophia; who invented the mixing of flowers in wreaths; when little garlands were first so called, and why
21.3| who first gave crowns of silver and gold leaves; why they were called corollaria; on fillets; who first engraved them
21.4| how great the honour of crowns was among the ancients
21.5| the severity of the ancients about crowns
21.6| whom the Roman people honoured with flowers
21.7| plaited crowns; on stitched crowns; on those of nard; on those of silk
21.8| the deed of Queen Cleopatra with crowns
21.9| on the rose; its kinds, 12
21.10| medicines, 32
21.73| of the lily, kinds, 3 (n); medicines, 21
21.74| born from its own tear
21.11| of the narcissus, kinds, 3
21.12| medicines, 16
21.75| those whose seed is dyed, so that they are born tinted
21.13| in what manner each is born, sown, cultivated, under the several kinds (14-37); the colours of the violet, 3
21.14| medicines, 17
21.76| of the luteae, kinds, 5; medicines, 10; the caltha; the royal flower
21.15| baccar
21.16| medicines, 17
21.77| combretum, medicines, 1; crocus
21.17| medicines, 20
21.81| where the best flowers are; which flowers were in use in the Trojan times; on the nature of scents
21.18| iris
21.19| medicines, 41
21.83| saliunca
21.20| medicines, 2; polium or teuthrion
21.21| medicines, 18
21.84| which flower has one colour in the morning, another at midday, another at the setting of the sun; the rivalry of garments with flowers
21.22| amaranth
21.23| cyanus
21.24| medicines, 2; holochrysos, medicines, 3
21.85| petilium; bellio
21.25| chrysocome or chrysitis
21.26| medicines, 6; which shrubs furnish garlands with their flower
21.27| which with their leaf
21.28| melothrum; spiraea; origanum; cneorum or casia, kinds, 2; melissophyllum or melittaena
21.29| medicines, 21
21.86| melilotos, which is the Campanian garland (29, 37); medicines, 13
21.87| of trifolium, kinds, 3
21.30| medicines, 4
21.88| myophonum; of thyme, kinds, 2
21.31| medicines, 33
21.89| those that grow from the flower, not from seed; conyza
21.32| the flower of Jupiter; hemerocallis
21.33| medicines, 4
21.90| Helenium, medicines, 5
21.91| phlox, which is fragrant in its branches and leaf; habrotonum
21.34| medicines, 22
21.92| Adonium; kinds, 2; that which propagates itself; leucanthemum, medicines, 1
21.93| amaracum or sampsuchum
21.35| medicines, 11; nyctegreton or chenamyche or nyctalops
21.36| in what order of seasons flowers are born (38, 39); the crown anemone or phrenion
21.38| medicines, 10
21.94| the herb oenanthe, medicines, 6
21.95| melania; Heliochrysos, medicines, 11
21.96| lychnis
21.39| medicines, 7
21.98| gladiolus; hyacinth, medicines, 8
21.97| tiphyon; of pothos, kinds, 2; of orsina, kinds, 2; vicapervica or chamaedaphne, medicines, 4
21.99| which herb is always green; how long the life of each flower is
21.40| what is to be sown among the flowers for the sake of bees; cerintha
21.41| on the food of bees; on their diseases and remedies (42, 43); on poisoned honey and the remedies for it
21.44| on mad honey
21.45| on honey which flies do not touch
21.46| on hives; on beehives and the care of them
21.47| if bees feel hunger
21.48| on making wax; what its best kinds are; on Punic wax
21.49| the use of herbs growing of their own accord among any peoples; their natures, their marvels (50-108); fraga; tamnus; ruscus
21.50| medicines, 4
21.100| batis, kinds, 2; medicines, 2
21.101| the meadow parsnip; the willow-bed wolf; colocasia
21.51| medicines, 2
21.102| anthalium
21.52| anthyllium or anthyllum, medicines, 6
21.103| oetum; those whose roots bring forth nothing above ground: arachidne, aracos; candryala; hypochoeris; caucalis; enthryscum; scandix, the same as tragopogon; parthenium or leucanthes or amaracum or perdicium or muralis, medicines, 8
21.104| trychnum or strychnum or halicacabum or callias or dorycnion or manicon or peritton or neuras or morion or moly, medicines, 3
21.105| corchorus, medicines 6
21.106| aphace; achynops; epipetron; which never flowers, which always; of cnecus, kinds, 3
21.53| medicines, 3
21.107| herbs of the prickly kind (54-58); eryngium; glycyrrhiza
21.54| tribulus (54, 58); anonis
21.58| pheos or stoebe; hippophaes; of nettles, kinds, 4; lamium; scorpio
21.55| acorna; leucacanthos; chalceos; cnecos; polyacanthos; onopyxos; helxine; scolymos; chamaeleon; tetralix; atractylis or phonos; acanthice mastiche
21.56| cactos; [tenica, pappum, ascalia]
21.57| kinds of herbs by their stalks: coronopus; anchusa; anthemis; phyllanthes; crepis; lotos
21.59| differences of herbs by their leaves: which do not shed their leaves; which flower in parts
21.60| heliotropium, adiantum? herbs whose medicines will be told in the following book (29, 39); kinds of those with ears: stanyops; alopecuros; stelephuros or ortyx or plantago; thryallis
21.61| perdicium; ornithogale
21.62| those born after a year, flowering from the top, likewise from the bottom
21.63| the herb lappa which bears within itself; Opuntia, making a root from a leaf
21.64| iasine; chondrylla; picris; which flower the whole year
21.65| those in which the flower comes before the stalks emerge, those in which the stalk comes before the flower; which flowers three times
21.66| cypiros
21.67| medicines, 8
21.69| thesium; asphodelus or royal spear; anthericus or albucum
21.68| of rushes, kinds, 6; medicines, 4; cyperus, medicines, 14; cyperis; cypira
21.70| holoschoenos
21.71| medicines from the scented rush or teuchites, 10
21.72| medicines from asarum, 8
21.78| medicines from Gallic nard, 8
21.79| medicines from the herb they call phu, 4
21.80| [Syrian] crocomagma, medicines, 2
21.82| pesoluta, medicines, 1
21.108| the interpretation of Greek names in weights and measures
21.109| Total: medicines, histories and observations 730. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Cato the Censor. Marcus Varro. Masurius. Antias. Caepio. Vestinus. Vibius Rufinus. Hyginus. Pomponius Mela. Pompeius Lenaeus. Cornelius Celsus. Calpurnius Bassus. Gaius Valgius. Licinius Macer. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Julius Bassus, likewise. Antonius Castor. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus. Democritus. Orpheus. Pythagoras. Mago. Menander, who wrote the Biochresta. Nicander. Homer. Hesiod. Musaeus. Sophocles. Anaxilaus. PHYSICIANS: Mnesitheus, who wrote on garlands. Callimachus, likewise. Phanias the natural philosopher. Timaristus. Simus. Hippocrates. Chrysippus. Diocles. Ophion. Heraclides. Hicesius. Dionysius. Apollodorus of Citium. Apollodorus of Tarentum. Praxagoras. Plistonicus. Medius. Dieuches. Cleophantus. Philistion. Asclepiades. Crateuas. Petronius Diodotus. Iollas. Erasistratus. Diagoras. Andreas. Mnesides. Epicharmus. Damion. Dalion. Sosimenes. Tlepolemus. Metrodorus. Solon. Lycus. Olympias of Thebes. Philinus. Petrichus. Miccion. Glaucias. Xenocrates. the authority of herbs (1-7); peoples who use herbs for the sake of beauty; garments dyed with herbs; likewise the Gallic cloaks with pigment; on the sagmina; on the verbenae and the clarigatio; on the grass crown; on the rarity of it; those who alone were presented with that crown; the one centurion alone; medicines from the remaining ornaments: from eryngium or eryngion, which has a hundred heads, 30 (8, 9); from acanus, 1; from glycyrrhiza or adipson, 15; from stomatice, 1; from tribulus, kinds, 2, medicines, 12; stoebe or pheos
22.13| hippophaes, kinds, 2, medicines, 2
22.14| from nettle, 61
22.15| from lamium, 7
22.16| from scorpio, kinds, 2, medicines, 1
22.17| from leucacantha, which is phyllos or ischas or polygonatum, 4
22.18| from helxine, 12
22.19| from perdicium or parthenium or sideritis, which is urceolaris or astercum, 11
22.20| from chamaeleon or ixia or ulophytum or cynozolon, kinds, 2, medicines, 12; mastic
22.21| from coronopus
22.22| from anchusa, 14
22.23| from pseudoanchusa, which is echis or doris, 3
22.24| from onochilus or archebium or onochelis or rhexia or enchrysa, 10; a plant whose roots change colour (25)
22.25| from anthemis or leucanthemis or leucanthemum or chamaemelum or melanthium, kinds, 3, medicines, 11
22.26| from the herb lotus, 3
22.27| from lotometra, 2
22.28| from heliotropium or helioscopium or verrucaria, 12; from heliotropium or tricoccum or scorpiurum, 14
22.29| from adiantum or callitrichum or trichomanes or polytrichum or saxifrage, kinds, 2; medicines, 28; a shrub without a root (30); from picris, 1; from thesium, 1
22.31| from asphodel, 51
22.32| from halimus, 14
22.33| from acanthus or paederos or melamphyllum, 5
22.34| from bupleurum, 5
22.35| from buprestis, 1
22.36| from elaphoboscum, 9
22.37| from scandix, 8; from enthryscum, 2
22.38| from iasine, 4
22.39| from caucalis, 12
22.40| from sium, 11
22.41| from sillybum
22.42| from scolymus or limonium, 5
22.43| from sonchus, kinds, 2, medicines, 15
22.44| from condrion or condrilla, 6
22.45| on boleti, the peculiarity of their growth
22.46| on mushrooms; the marks of the poisonous; medicines from them, 9
22.47| from silphium, 7
22.48| from laser, 39
22.49| from propolis, 5; from honey, 16
22.50| from honey-water, 18 (51, 52); why with the kind of food manners also change
22.52| from honeyed wine, 6
22.53| from melitites, 3
22.54| from wax, 8
22.55| against the compositions of physicians
22.56| medicines from grain (57-76): from siligo, 1; from wheat, 2; from chaff, 2; from spelt, 1; from bran, 1; arinca; athera, 2
22.57| meal by kinds, medicines, 39
22.58| from polenta, 8
22.59| from pollen, 5; from porridge, 1; paper flour, 1
22.60| from alica, 6
22.61| from millet, 6
22.62| from panic, 4
22.63| from sesima, 7; from sesamoides, 3; Anticyric, 4
22.64| from barley, 9; from mouse barley, which the Greeks call Phoenician, 1
22.65| from ptisana, 4
22.66| from starch, 8; from oats, 1
22.67| from bread, 21
22.68| from the bean, 14
22.69| from the lentil, 32; phako epi telmaton, 2
22.70| from elelisphacus or sphacus, which is sage, 13
22.71| from the chickpea and cicercula, 26
22.72| from ervum, 20
22.73| from the lupin, 35
22.74| from irio or erysimum, which the Gauls call vela, 15
22.75| from hormium, 6
22.76| from darnel, 5
22.77| the herb miliaria, 1
22.78| from bromus, 1
22.79| from orobanche or cynomorium, 1
22.80| against the little creatures of pulses, 1
22.81| on zythum, 1; foam
22.82| Total: medicines, histories and observations 906. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: the same as in the previous book, and besides them Chrysermus, Eratosthenes, Alcaeus. medicines from cultivated trees: from vines, 20; from the leaves and tendrils of vines, 12; from the omphacium of vines, 14; from oenanthe, 21; from fresh grapes
23.6| from kinds of preserved grapes, medicines, 11
23.7| from vine shoots, 1
23.8| from the kernels of grapes, 6
23.9| from grape-pressings, 3
23.10| from the theriac grape, 4
23.11| from raisins or astaphis, 17
23.12| from wild astaphis or staphis or pituitaria, 12
23.13| from the wild vine or taminian grape, which is also the wild ampelos, 12
23.14| from salicastrum, 12
23.15| from the white vine or ampelos leuce or staphyle or melothrum or psilothrum or archezostis or cedrostis or madum, 31
23.16| from the black vine or bryonia or Chironia or gynaecanthe or apronia, 35
23.17| from must, 15
23.18| from Falernian, 6; from Alban, 2; from Surrentine, 3
23.20| from Setine, 1; from Statanian, 1; from Signine, 1
23.21| from other wines, 14
23.22| observations about wines, 61 (22, 23); to which sick people they are to be given, when to be given, in what way to be given; observations about these, 91 (24-26); from vinegar, 33
23.27| from squill vinegar, 17
23.28| from oxymel, 7; from oxyalme, 7
23.29| from sapa, 7
23.30| from the lees of wine, 12
23.31| from the lees of vinegar, 17
23.32| from the lees of sapa, 4
23.33| from olive leaves, 23
23.34| from the flower, 4; from the olive itself, 6
23.35| from white olives, 4; from black olives, 3
23.36| from the lees of oil, 21
23.37| from the leaves of the wild olive, 21
23.38| from omphacium, 3
23.39| from oenanthine oil, 28
23.40| from cicinum, 16
23.41| from almond oil, 16
23.42| from laurel oil, 9
23.43| from myrtle oil, 20
23.44| from chamaemyrsine or oxymyrsine, cypress oil, citrus oil, caryinum, Cnidian oil, mastic oil, balanine oil
23.45| from cyprinum and from the cypros itself, 15
23.46| from gleucinum, 1; from balsam oil, 15 (46, 47); from malobathrum, 5
23.48| from hyoscyaminum, 2; from thermine, 1; from narcissine, 1; from raphanine, 2; from sesamine, 3; from lily oil, 4; Selgitic, 1; Iguine, 1
23.49| from elaeomeli, 2; from pissinum, 2
23.50| from palms, 9
23.51| from the myrobalanus palm, 3
23.52| from the palm elate, 15
23.53| medicines from the flower, leaves, fruit, branches, bark, juice, wood, root and ashes of the several kinds (54-83); from apples, observations 6; from quinces, 25; from struthia, 1
23.54| from sweet apples, 6; from sour apples, 1
23.55| from citrus, 5
23.56| from pomegranates, 23 (57, 58); stomatice, 14
23.58| from cytinus, 9
23.59| from balaustium, 15
23.60| from pears, observations 13
23.62| from figs, 111
23.63| from wild figs, 42
23.64| from the herb erineus, 3
23.65| from plums, 4
23.66| from peaches, 2
23.67| from wild plums, 2
23.68| from the lichen of trees, 2
23.69| from mulberries, 49 (70, 71); stomatice or arteriace [or] panchrestos, 4
23.71| from cherries, 5
23.72| from medlars, 2; from service-berries, 2
23.73| from pine nuts, 13
23.74| from almonds, 29
23.75| from Greek nuts, 5
23.76| from walnuts, 24; an antidote
23.77| from hazelnuts, 3; from pistachios, 8; from chestnuts, 5
23.78| from siliquae, 5; from the cornel, 1; from unedones
23.79| from laurels, 69
23.80| from myrtle berries, 60
23.81| from myrtidanum, 13
23.82| from oxymyrsine or chamaemyrsine, which is ruscus, 6
23.83| Total: medicines, histories and observations 1418. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Gaius Valgius. Pompeius Lenaeus. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Julius Bassus, likewise. Antonius Castor. Marcus Varro. Cornelius Celsus. Fabianus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus. Democritus. Orpheus. Pythagoras. Mago. Menander, who wrote the Biochresta. Nicander. Homer. Hesiod. Musaeus, Sophocles, Anaxilaus. PHYSICIANS: Mnesitheus. Callimachus. Phanias the natural philosopher. Timaristus. Simus. Hippocrates. Chrysippus. Diocles. Ophion. Heraclides. Hicesius. Dionysius. Apollodorus of Citium. Apollodorus of Tarentum. Praxagoras. Plistonicus. Medius. Dieuches. Cleophantus. Philistion. Asclepiades. Crateuas. Petronius Diodotus. Iollas. Erasistratus. Diagoras. Andreas. Mnesides. Epicharmus. Damion. Dalion. Sosimenes. Tlepolemus. Metrodorus. Solon. Lycus. Olympias of Thebes. Philinus. Petrichus. Miccion. Glaucias. Xenocrates. medicines from wild trees: from the Italian lotus, 6; from acorns, 13; from the coccum of the holm oak, 3; from the gall, 23
24.5| from mistletoe, 9
24.6| from the balls of the acorn-bearers, 1; from the cerrus, 8
24.7| from the cork oak, 2
24.8| from the beech, 4
24.9| from the cypress, 23
24.10| from the cedar, 13
24.11| from cedris, 10
24.12| from galbanum, 26
24.13| from Hammoniacum, 24
24.14| from styrax, 12
24.15| from spondylium, 17
24.16| from sphagnos or sphacos or bryon, 5
24.17| from the terebinth, 6
24.18| from the pitch-pine, 8
24.19| from chamaepitys, 15
24.20| from pityusa, 6
24.21| from resins, 25
24.22| from pitch, 27
24.23| from pisselaeon or palimpissa, 16
24.24| from pissasphaltum, 2
24.25| from zopissa, 1
24.26| from the torch-pine, 1
24.27| from the lentisk, 22
24.28| from the plane, 15
24.29| from the ash, 5
24.30| from the maple, 1
24.31| from the poplar, 8
24.32| from the elm, 16
24.33| from the linden, 5
24.34| from the elder, 15
24.35| from the juniper, 21
24.36| from the willow, 14; Amerine, 1
24.37| from the vitex, 33
24.38| from the erice, 1
24.39| from broom, 5
24.40| from myrice, which is also tamarisk, 3
24.41| from virga sanguinea, 1
24.43| from brya, 19
24.42| from siler, 3
24.44| from privet, 8
24.45| from the alder, 1
24.46| from ivy, 39
24.47| from cistus, 5
24.48| from the red cissus, 2; from chamaecissus, 2; from smilax, 2; from clematis, 2
24.49| from the reed, 19
24.50| from papyrus, paper, 3
24.51| from ebony, 5
24.52| from the rhododendron, 1
24.53| from rhus, kinds, 2, medicines, 6; stomatice
24.54| from red rhus, 9
24.55| from erythrodanum, 11
24.56| from alyssum, 2
24.57| from radicula or struthion, 16; from apocynum, 2
24.58| from rosemary, 18
24.59| from cachrys, 5
24.60| from the Sabine herb, 7
24.61| from selago, 2
24.62| from samolus, 2
24.63| from gum, 11
24.64| from the Arabian thorn, 4
24.65| from the white thorn, 2; from acanthion, 1
24.66| from acacia, 18
24.67| from aspalathus or erysisceptrum or adipsatheon or diaxylon, 9 (68, 69); from the appendix thorn, 2; from pyracantha, 1
24.70| from paliurus, 10
24.71| from the holly, 10; from the yew, 1
24.72| from brambles, 51; stomatice
24.73| from cynosbatos, 3
24.74| from the Idaean bramble, 3
24.75| from rhamnus, kinds, 2, medicines, 5
24.76| from Lycium, 18
24.77| from sarcocolla, 2
24.78| from oporice, 2
24.79| from trixago or chamaedrys or chamaerops or Teucria, 16
24.80| from chamaedaphne, 6
24.81| from chamelaea, 6
24.82| from chamaesyce, 8
24.83| from the herb chamaecissus, 1
24.84| from chamaeleuce or farfarus or farfugium, 1
24.85| from chamaepeuce, 2; from chamaecyparissus, 2; from ampeloprason, 6; from stachys, 1
24.86| from clinopodium or cleopicton or zopyrontium or odmoides, 3
24.87| from the clematis centunculus, 3
24.88| from clematis or aetites or lagine, 10
24.89| from Egyptian clematis or daphnoides or polygonoides, 2
24.90| from arum, 42 (91, 92); from dracunculus, 2
24.93| from aris, 4
24.94| from milifolium or myriophyllon, 7
24.95| from pseudobunium, 4
24.96| from myrris or myrra or myriza, 8
24.97| from oenobreches, 3
24.98| the Magic herbs (99-102): coracesia and calicia
24.99| Minyas or Corinthia, 1
24.100| aproxi.; the Pythagorean herb, on relapses of diseases
24.101| aglaophotis or marmaritis; Achaemenis or hippophobas; Theombrotion or semnion; adamantis; Arianis, theronarca; Aethiopis or Meroïs; ophiusa; thalassaegle or potamaugis; theangelis; gelotophyllis; hestiateris or protomedia or casignete or Dionysonymphas; helianthis or heliocallis; hermesias; aeschynomene; crocis; onothuris; anacampseros
24.102| eriphia
24.103| the herb lanaria, 1; lactoris, 1; militaris, 1
24.104| stratiotes, 5
24.105| the herb from the head of a statue, 1
24.106| the herb from rivers, 1
24.107| the herb lingua, 1
24.108| the herb from a sieve, 1
24.109| the herb from dung-heaps, 1
24.110| the herb from the urine of dogs, 1
24.111| rodarum, 3
24.112| impia, 2
24.113| Venus's comb, 1
24.114| exedum, 1; notia, 1
24.115| philanthropes, 1; the dog's burr, 2
24.116| tordylon or syreon, 3
24.117| grass, 17
24.118| dactylos, 5
24.119| Greek hay, which is silicia, 31
24.120| Total: medicines, histories and observations 1176. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Gaius Valgius. Pompeius Lenaeus. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Julius Bassus, likewise. Antonius Castor. Cornelius Celsus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus, Apollodorus. Democritus. Orpheus. Pythagoras. Mago. Menander, who wrote the Biochresta. Nicander. Homer. Hesiod. Musaeus. Sophocles. Anaxilaus. PHYSICIANS: Mnesitheus. Callimachus. Phanias the natural philosopher. Timaristus. Simus. Hippocrates. Chrysippus. Diocles. Ophion. Heraclides. Hicesius. Dionysius. Apollodorus of Citium. Apollodorus of Tarentum. Praxagoras. Plistonicus. Medius. Dieuches. Cleophantus. Philistion. Asclepiades. Crateuas. Petronius Diodotus. Iollas. Erasistratus. Diagoras. Andreas. Mnesides. Epicharmus. Damion. Sosimenes. Tlepolemus. Metrodorus. Solon. Lycus. Olympias of Thebes. Philinus. Petrichus. Miccion. Glaucias. Xenocrates.
25.0| the natures of herbs growing of their own accord; the authority of herbs; on the origin of their use
25.1| who have written in Latin on their use
25.2| when that knowledge reached the Romans
25.3| who were the first of the Greeks to write on these things (4, 5); why those remedies are less practised; herbs found by marvellous means: cynorrhodon, medicines, 2; dracunculus stalk, 1; Britannica, 5
25.6| on the greatest pain
25.7| the discoverers of the famous herbs (7-39); moly, 3
25.8| dodeka theon, 1
25.9| paeony or pentorobos or glycyside, 1
25.10| panaces Asclepion, 2
25.11| panaces Heraclion, 3
25.12| panaces Chironion, 4
25.13| panaces Centaurion or Pharnacion, 3
25.14| Heraclion siderion, 4
25.15| hyoscyamus, which is the Apollinaris or altercum; kinds, 5; medicines, 4
25.17| linozostis or parthenion or Hermu poa, which is Mercurialis, kinds, 2; medicines, 22
25.18| Achillea sideritis or panaces Heracleum, which is milifolium or the royal broom, kinds, 6; medicines, 3
25.19| Teucria or hermione or splenios, 2
25.20| Melampodium or hellebore, which is veratrum, kinds, 3; in what manner it is gathered, in what manner it is tested
25.21| medicines from the black, 24; in what manner it is to be taken
25.22| likewise in the white; medicines from it, 23
25.23| to whom it is not to be given; observations about both kinds, 88 (24, 25); Mithridatia, 2
25.26| scordotis or scordion, 4
25.27| Polemonia or Philetaeria or chiliodynamus, 6
25.28| Eupatoria, 1
25.29| Centaurion or Chironion, 20
25.30| Centaurion lepton or libadion, which is the gall of the earth, 22
25.31| Centauris triorchis, 2
25.32| Clymenos, 2
25.33| Gentiana, 13
25.34| Lysimachia, 8
25.35| Artemisia or parthenis or botrys or ambrosia, 5
25.36| nymphaea or Heraclion or rhopalon or mallos; kinds, 2; medicines, 14
25.37| of Euphorbea, kinds, 2; medicines, 4
25.38| of plantain, kinds, 2; medicines, 46
25.39| buglossos, 2
25.40| cynoglossos, 3
25.41| buphthalmos or chalca, 1
25.42| herbs which peoples discovered (43-49); the Scythian, 3
25.43| hippace, 3
25.44| ischaemon, 2
25.45| cestros or psychrotrophon, which is Vettonica or serratula, 48
25.46| the Cantabrian, 2
25.47| consiligo, 1
25.48| the Iberian, 7
25.49| herbs discovered by animals (50-53): chelidonia, 6; canaria, 1; dictamnum, 8; pseudodictamnum or chondris; in which places herbs are most potent; that on account of herbs milk is drunk in Arcadia
25.53| aristolochia or clematitis or Cretica or plistolochia or lochia polyrrhizos, which is the apple of the earth, 22
25.54| argemonia, 4
25.56| agaricum, 33
25.57| echios, kinds, 3; medicines, 2
25.58| hierabotane or aristereon, which is verbenaca, kinds, 2; medicines, 10
25.59| blattaria, 1
25.60| molemonium, 1
25.61| pentapetes or pentaphyllon or chamaezelon, which is quinquefolium, medicines, 33
25.62| sparganion, 1
25.63| of daucus, kinds, 4; medicines, 18
25.64| theronarca, 2
25.65| persollata or arcion, 8
25.66| cyclaminos, which is the tuber of the earth, 12
25.67| cyclaminos cissanthemos, 4
25.68| cyclaminos chamaecissos, 3
25.69| peucedanum, 28
25.70| ebulum, 6
25.71| polemonia, 1
25.72| phlomos, which is verbascum, 15
25.73| phlomides, 2; phlomis lychnitis or thryallis
25.74| thelyphonon or scorpio, 1
25.75| phrynion or neuras or poterion, 1
25.76| alcima or damasonion or lyron, 18
25.77| peristereos, 6
25.78| antirrhinon or pararrhinon or wild lychnis, 3
25.80| euplia, 1
25.81| pericarpum, kinds, 2; medicines, 2
25.82| nymphaea Heraclia, 2
25.83| lingulaca, 1
25.84| cacalia or leontice, 3
25.85| callithrix, 1
25.86| hyssop, 20
25.87| lonchitis, 4
25.88| xiphion or phasganion, 4
25.89| psyllion or cynois or chrysallion or Sicelicon or cynomyia, 16; thryselion, 1
25.90| remedies for the eyes (91-103): anagallis or acorum, which is the cat's eye, kinds, 2; medicines, 6
25.92| aegilops, 2
25.93| mandragoras or Circeion or morion or hippophlomon; kinds, 2; medicines, 14
25.94| hemlock, 13
25.95| cremnos agrios, 3
25.96| molybdaena, 1
25.97| capnos truncated, which is the hen's feet, 1
25.98| capnos shrubby, 3
25.99| acorum or acorion, 17
25.100| of cotyledon, kinds, 2; medicines, 61
25.101| aizoum the greater or buphthalmon or zoophthalmon or stergethron or hypogeson or ambrosion or amerimnon, which is the great sedum or the eye or the little finger, medicines, 31; aizoum the lesser or erithales or trithales or erysithales, which is isoetes or sedum; medicines, 32
25.102| wild andrachle, which is illecebra, 32
25.103| erigeron or pappos or acanthis, which is senecio, 8
25.106| ephemeron, 2
25.107| Venus's basin, 1
25.108| batrachion, which is ranunculus or strumus, kinds, 4; medicines, 13
25.109| stomatice, kinds, 2
25.110| Total: medicines, histories and observations 1292. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Gaius Valgius. Pompeius Lenaeus. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Julius Bassus, likewise. Antonius Castor. Cornelius Celsus. Fabianus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus. Apollodorus. Democritus. Juba. Orpheus. Pythagoras. Mago. Menander, who wrote the Biochresta. Nicander. Homer. Hesiod. Musaeus. Sophocles. Xanthus. Anaxilaus. PHYSICIANS: Mnesitheus. Callimachus. Phanias the natural philosopher. Timaristus. Simus. Hippocrates. Chrysippus. Diocles. Ophion. Heraclides. Hicesius. Dionysius. Apollodorus of Citium. Apollodorus of Tarentum. Praxagoras. Plistonicus. Medius. Dieuches. Cleophantus. Philistion. Asclepiades. Crateuas. Petronius Diodotus. Iollas. Erasistratus. Diagoras. Andreas. Mnesides. Epicharmus. Damion. Sosimenes. Tlepolemus. Metrodorus. Solon. Lycus. Olympias of Thebes. Philinus. Petrichus. Miccion. Glaucias. Xenocrates.
26.0| the remaining medicines by kinds; on new diseases (1); what lichens are
26.2| when they first began in Italy
26.3| likewise the carbuncle
26.4| likewise elephantiasis
26.5| likewise colic
26.6| on the new medicine; on Asclepiades the physician
26.7| by what method he changed the old medicine
26.8| against the Magi
26.9| lichen; kinds, 2; medicines, 5
26.10| Proserpinaca, 1
26.11| bellis, 2
26.13| condurdum, 1
26.14| bechion or arcion or chamaeleuce, which is tussilago, 3
26.16| bechion, which is sage, 4
26.17| molon or syron, 1; amomum, 3
26.19| ephedra or anabasis, 3
26.20| geum, 3
26.21| tripolion, 3
26.22| gromphaena
26.23| [….], 2
26.24| chalcetum, 1 [molemonium, 1]
26.25| halus or cotonea, 5
26.26| chamaerops, 1; stoechas, 1
26.27| astragalus, 6
26.29| ladanum, 13
26.30| chondris or pseudodictamnum, 1; hypocisthis or orobethron, kinds, 2; medicines, 8
26.31| laver or sion, 2
26.32| potamogiton, 8; statice, 3
26.33| ceratia, 2; leontopodion or leuceoron or doripetron or thorybethron [….]; lagopus, 2
26.34| epithymon or hippopheos, 8
26.35| pycnocomon, 4
26.36| polypodion, 3
26.37| scamonia, 8
26.38| tithymalos characias [….]
26.39| tithymalos myrtites or caryites, 21
26.40| tithymalos paralius or tithymalis, 4
26.41| tithymalos helioscopios, 18
26.42| tithymalos cyparissias, 18
26.43| tithymalos platyphyllos or corymbites or amygdalites, 3
26.44| tithymalos dendroides or cobios or leptophyllos, 18
26.45| apios ischas or wild raphanus, 2
26.46| crethmon, 11; cachrys
26.50| anthyllion, 2; anthyllis, 2
26.51| cepaea, 1
26.52| hypericon or chamaepitys or corisson, 9
26.53| caros or hypericon, 10
26.54| callithrix, 1; perpressa, 1; chrysanthemum, 1; anthemis, 1
26.55| silaus, 1
26.56| the Fulvian herb
26.57| inguinalis or argemo
26.59| Chrysippeos, 1
26.60| orchis or Serapias, 5
26.62| satyrion, 3; Erythraean satyrion, 4
26.63| lappago or mollugo, 1; asperugo, 1
26.65| phycos, which is sea weed, kinds, 3; medicines, 5; the ox burdock
26.66| geranion or myrris or myrtis, kinds, 3; medicines, 6
26.68| onothera or onear, 3
26.69| acte or ebulum; chamaeacte
26.73| hippuris or ephedron or anabasis, which is horsetail, kinds, 3; medicines, 17
26.83| stephanomelis
26.84| erysithales, 1
26.85| polycnemon, 1
26.88| arsenogonon, 1; thelygonon, 1
26.91| mastos, 1
26.92| ophrys
26.93| Total: medicines, histories and observations 1019. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Gaius Valgius. Pompeius Lenaeus. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Julius Bassus, likewise. Antonius Castor. Cornelius Celsus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus. Apollodorus. Democritus. Juba. Orpheus. Pythagoras. Mago. Menander, who wrote the Biochresta. Nicander. Homer. Hesiod. Musaeus. Sophocles. Xanthus. Anaxilaus. PHYSICIANS: Mnesitheus. Callimachus. Phanias the natural philosopher. Timaristus. Simus. Hippocrates. Chrysippus. Diocles. Ophion. Heraclides. Hicesius. Dionysius. Apollodorus of Citium. Apollodorus of Tarentum. Praxagoras. Plistonicus. Medius. Dieuches. Cleophantus. Philistion. Asclepiades. Crateuas. Petronius Diodotus. Iollas. Erasistratus. Diagoras. Andreas. Mnesides. Epicharmus. Damion. Sosimenes. Tlepolemus. Metrodorus. Solon. Lycus. Olympias of Thebes. Philinus. Petrichus. Miccion. Glaucias. Xenocrates.
27.0| the remaining kinds of herbs; medicines from them: aconitum or thelyphonon or cammaron or pardalianches or scorpion, medicines, 4
27.2| Aethiopis, 4
27.3| ageraton, 4
27.4| aloe, 29
27.5| alcea, 4
27.6| alypon, 1
27.7| alsine, for the same things as helxine, 5
27.8| androsaces, 3
27.9| androsaemon or ascyron, 6
27.10| ambrosia or botrys or Artemisia, 3
27.11| anonis or ononis, 5
27.12| anagyros or acopon, 6
27.13| anonymos, 5
27.14| aparine or omphalocarpos or philanthropes, 4
27.15| arction or arcturon, 5
27.16| asplenos or hemionios, 2
27.17| Asclepias, 2
27.18| aster or bubonion, 3
27.19| ascyron and ascyroides, 4
27.20| aphaca, 3
27.21| alcibium, 1
27.22| alectoros lophos, which is the crest, 2
27.23| alum, which is symphytum petraeum, 14
27.24| red alga, 1
27.25| actaea, 1
27.26| wild ampelos, 4
27.27| absinthium; kinds, 3; medicines, 48
27.28| sea absinthium or seriphum, 2
27.29| ballote or black leek, 3
27.30| botrys or Artemisia, 1
27.31| brabilla, 1
27.32| sea bryon, 5
27.33| bupleuron, 1
27.34| catanance, 1; cemos, 1
27.35| calyx, 3
27.36| calyx or anchusa or rhinodia, 2
27.37| Circeia, 3
27.38| cirsion, 1
27.39| crataegonon, kinds, 2; medicines, 8
27.40| crocodileon, 2
27.41| cynosorchis or orchis, 4
27.42| chrysolachanum, kinds, 2; medicines, 3; coagulum of the earth, 2
27.43| cucullus or strumus or strychnos, 6
27.44| conferva, 2
27.45| Cnidian coccum, 2
27.46| dipsacos, 3
27.47| dryopteris, 2
27.48| drabe, 1
27.49| elatine, 2
27.50| empetros, which our people call calcifraga, 4
27.51| epicactis or elleborine, 2
27.52| epimedion, 3
27.53| ermeaphyllon, 3
27.54| of fern, kinds, 2, which the Greeks call pteris, others blachron, likewise thelypteris, nymphaea pteris, 11
27.55| the ox's thigh
27.56| galeopsis or galeobdolon or galion, 6
27.57| glaux, 1
27.58| glaucion, 3; collyrium, medicines, 2
27.59| glycyside or Paeonia or pentorobon, 20
27.60| gnaphalion or chamaezelon, 6
27.61| gallidraga, 1
27.62| holcus or aristis
27.63| hyoseris, 1
27.64| holosteon, 3
27.65| hippophaeston, 8
27.66| hypoglossa, 1
27.67| hypecoon
27.68| Idaea, 4
27.69| isopyron or phaselion, 3
27.70| lathyris, 2
27.71| leontopetalon or rhapadion, 2
27.72| lycapsos, 2
27.73| lithospermon or exonychon or Dios pyron or Herakleous, 2
27.74| moss of stone, 1
27.75| limeum, 1
27.76| leuce or mesoleucium or leucas, 3
27.77| leucographis, 5
27.78| medion, 3
27.79| myosota or myosotis, 3
27.80| myagros, 1
27.81| nyma, 1
27.82| natrix, 1
27.83| odontitis, 1
27.84| othonna, 1
27.85| onosma, 1
27.86| onopradon, 5
27.87| osyris, 4
27.88| oxys, 2
27.89| polyanthemon or batrachion, 3
27.90| polygonos or polygonion or thalattias or carcinothron or clema or myrtopetalos, which is sanguinaria or orios, kinds, 4; medicines, 33
27.91| pancration, 12
27.92| peplis or syce or meconion or mecon aphrodes, 3
27.93| periclymenon, 5
27.94| pelecinos, 2
27.95| polygala, 1
27.96| poterion or phrynion or neuras, 4
27.97| phalangitis or phalangion or leucacantha, 4
27.98| phyteuma, 1
27.99| phyllon, 1
27.100| pellandrion, 2
27.101| phaleris, 2
27.102| polyrrhizon, 2
27.103| Proserpinaca, 5
27.104| rhecoma, 36
27.105| reseda, 2
27.106| stoechas, 3
27.107| solanum, which the Greeks call strychnon, 2
27.108| Smyrnion, 32; sinon, 2
27.109| Telephion, 4
27.110| trichomanes, 5
27.111| thalietrum, 1
27.112| thlaspi or Persicon napy, 4
27.113| Trachinia, 1
27.114| tragonis or tragion, 3
27.115| tragos or scorpio, 4
27.116| tragopogon or come, 1
27.117| on the ages of herbs
27.118| in what manner the powers of each are made more effective
27.119| the differing faults of peoples
27.120| Total: medicines, histories and observations 602. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Gaius Valgius. Pompeius Lenaeus. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Julius Bassus, likewise. Antonius Castor. Cornelius Celsus. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus. Apollodorus. Democritus. Aristogiton. Orpheus. Pythagoras. Mago. Menander, who wrote the Biochresta. Nicander. PHYSICIANS: Mnesitheus. Callimachus. Timaristus. Simus. Hippocrates. Chrysippus. Diocles. Ophion. Heraclides. Hicesius. Dionysius. Apollodorus of Citium. Apollodorus of Tarentum. Praxagoras. Plistonicus. Medius. Dieuches. Cleophantus. Philistion. Asclepiades. Crateuas. Petronius Diodotus. Iollas. Erasistratus. Diagoras. Andreas. Mnesides. Epicharmus. Damion. Sosimenes. Tlepolemus. Metrodorus. Solon. Lycus. Olympias of Thebes. Philinus. Petrichus. Miccion. Glaucias. Xenocrates.
28.0| medicines from animals; whether there is some power of words in healing
28.3| that portents are both confirmed and averted (4, 5); remedies from a human being; against the Magi
28.2| from a man, medicines and observations 226; from a boy, 8 (6-19); from a woman, 61 (20-23); from foreign animals (24-32); from the elephant, 8
28.24| from the lion, 10
28.25| from the camel, 10
28.26| from the hyena, 79
28.27| from the crocodile, 19; Crocodilea, 11
28.28| from the chameleon, 15
28.29| from the scincus, 4
28.30| from the hippopotamus, 7
28.31| from the lynx, 5
28.32| medicines common to wild animals or to tame ones of the same kind (33-41); the use of milk and observations, 57
28.33| on cheeses, 12
28.34| from butter, 25
28.35| oxygala, 1
28.36| the use of fat and observations, 52
28.37| on suet
28.38| on marrow
28.39| on gall
28.40| on blood
28.41| particular medicines from animals, arranged by diseases (42-80): from the boar, 41; from the sow, 60; from the stag, 52; from the wolf, 27; from the bear, 29; from the wild ass, 12; from the ass, 76; from polea, 3; from the wild horse, 11; from the rennet of a foal, 1; from the horse, 42; from hippace, 1; from wild oxen, 2; from the ox, 81; from the bull, 53; from the calf, 59; from the hare, 64; from the fox, 20; from the badger, 2; from the cat, 5; from the goat, 124; from the he-goat, 31; from the kid, 21; on testing bull glue; and medicines from it, 7
28.71| Total: medicines, histories and observations 1682. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Lucius Piso. Antias. Verrius Flaccus. Fabianus. Cato the Censor. Servius Sulpicius. Licinius Macer. Celsus. Masurius. Sextius Niger, who wrote in Greek. Bitho of Dyrrachium. Rabirius the physician. Ofilius the physician. Granius the physician. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Democritus. Apollonius, who is also Mys. Meletus. Artemon. Sextilius Antaeus. Homer. Theophrastus. Lysimachus. Attalus. Xenocrates. Orpheus, who wrote the Idiophye. Archelaus, likewise. Demetrius. Sotira. Lais. Elephantis. Salpe. Olympias of Thebes. Diotimus of Thebes. Iollas. Andreas. Marcion of Smyrna. Aeschines the physician. Hippocrates. Aristotle. Metrodorus of Scepsis. Hicetidas the physician. Apelles the physician. Hesiod. Bialcon. Caecilius Bion, who wrote the Peri dynameon. Anaxilaus. King Juba.
29.0| medicines from animals; on the origin of medicine
29.1| on Hippocrates, when clinical medicine first arose, when medicine by anointing first arose
29.2| on Chrysippus the physician, on Erasistratus
29.3| on the empiric school
29.4| on Herophilus; on the rest of the famous physicians; how often the system of medicine has been changed
29.5| who was the first physician at Rome, and when
29.6| what the ancient Romans judged about physicians
29.7| the faults of medicine
29.8| remedies from wools, 35, and in the following book 25: 60
29.9| from oesypum, 32, in the following book 20: 52
29.10| from eggs, 22, in the following book 43: 65; what those eggs are; in what manner they are made wholly yellow
29.11| on the eggs of serpents
29.12| on making the Commagenum; medicines from it, 5
29.13| remedies from animals which are neither tame nor wild (14-40): from the ram, 5, and in the following book 7: 12; from the sheep, 22, and in the following book 55: 77; from mules, 1, and in the following book 5: 6; from horses, 1, and in the following book 3: 4; from the dog, 16, and in the following book 41: 57; from the mad dog, 3, and in the following book 2: 5; from the ichneumon, 1; from the mouse, 14, and in the following book 28: 42; from the shrew-mouse, 4, and in the following book 1: 5; from the dormouse, 2, and in the following book 3: 5; from the sorex, 1, and in the following book 2: 3; from the weasel, 19, and in the following book 25: 44; from the stellion, 4, and in the following book 12: 16; from the hedgehog, 5, and in the following book 13: 18; from the porcupine, 1, and in the following book 2: 3; from the lizard, 13, and in the following book 30: 43; from the salamander, 1, and in the following book 3: 4; from the snail, 6, and in the following book 63: 69; from the asp, 1, and in the following book 3: 4; from the basilisk, 4; from the dragon, 6, and in the following book 4: 10; from the viper, 14, and in the following book 21: 35; on viper salt
29.38| theriake echeon; from the snake, 8, and in the following book 27: 35; from the hydrus, 1; from the bova, 4, and in the following book 3: 7; from the enhydris, 1, and in the following book 2: 3; from the other serpents, 8, and in the following book 7: 15; from the scorpion, 4, and in the following book 2: 6; of spiders and phalangia, kinds, 11; medicines from them, 9, and in the following book 27: 36; from the cricket and the bull, 1, and in the following book 7: 8; from the scolopendra or multipede or milipede or centipede or woodlouse or iulus, 1, and in the following book 20: 21; the wonder of nature, which produces nothing without use
29.17| from the slug, 1, and in the following book 3: 4; [from the caterpillar, 1, and in the following book 2: 3]; from the earthworm, 2, and in the following book 22: 24; from the worm from trees, 1, and in the following book 4: 5; from birds: from the eagle, 4, and in the following book 3: 7; from the vulture, 8, and in the following book 9: 17; from the cock, 31, and in the following book 25: 56; from the hen, 10, and in the following book 22: 32; from the goose, 7, and in the following book 15: 22; [from the swan, 1, and in the following book 5: 6]; on making the fat of birds
29.39| from the raven, 2, and in the following book 4: 6; from the crow, 2, and in the following book 1: 3; from the hawk, 2, and in the following book 2: 4; from the kite, 2, and in the following book 6: 8; from the cenchris, 2; from the stork, 2, and in the following book 1: 3; from the duck, 4, and in the following book 2: 6; from the partridge, 7, and in the following book 7: 14; from the pigeon, 7, and in the following book 25: 32; from the wood pigeon, 2, and in the following book 14: 16; from the woodpecker of Mars, 1; from the turtle dove, 4, and in the following book 5: 9; from the swallow, 9, and in the following book 24: 33; from the night owl, 7, and in the following book 2: 9; [from the ulula, 1, and in the following book 1: 2]; from the owl, 2, and in the following book 5: 7; from the bat, 4, and in the following book 12: 16; from bees, 4, and in the following book 8: 12; from the buprestis, 5, and in the following book 1: 6; from the pityocampe, 5 [and in the following book 4: 6]; that the kindness of nature has put great remedies even into foul animals; from the beetle, 1, and in the following book 7: 8; from the blatta, 4, and in the following book 13: 17; on the kind of the cantharides
29.30| medicines from them, 5, and in the following book 11: 16; from the bedbug, 9, and in the following book 2: 11; from the fly, 7, and in the following book 5: 12; [from locusts, 4, and in the following book 3: 7]; from the attelebi, 1; from ants, 3, and in the following book 5: 8. Total: medicines, histories and observations 621. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Lucius Piso. Flaccus Verrius. Antias. Nigidius. Cassius Hemina. Cicero. Plautus. Celsus. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Caecilius the doctor. Metellus Scipio. Ovid the poet. Licinius Macer. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Palaephatus. Homer. Aristotle. Orpheus. Democritus. Anaxilaus. PHYSICIANS: Botrys. Apollodorus. Archedemus. Aristogenes. Xenocrates. Democrates. Diodorus. Chrysippus [the philosopher]. Orus. Nicander. Apollonius of Pitane.
30.0| the remaining medicines from animals, of the previous book; on the origin of magic
30.1| when and by whom it began; by whom it was made famous
30.2| whether Italy practised it; when the senate first forbade a human being to be sacrificed
30.3| on the Druids of the Gauls
30.4| on the kinds of magic
30.5| the opinion of the Magi about moles; medicines, 5
30.7| the remaining medicines, arranged by diseases, from animals of which the kinds are neither tame nor wild (8-53): from the sheep, 55, and in the previous book 22: 77; from the ram, 7, and in the previous book 5: 12; from wool, 25, and in the previous book 35: 60; from oesypum, 20, and in the previous book 32: 52; from mules, 5, and in the previous book 1: 6; from horses, 3, and in the previous book 1: 4; from the dog, 41, and in the previous book 16: 57; from the mad dog, 2, and in the previous book 3: 5; from the viverra, 1; from the mouse, 28, and in the previous book 14: 42; from the shrew-mouse, 1, and in the previous book 4: 5; from the dormouse, 3, and in the previous book 2: 5; from the sorex, 2, and in the previous book 1: 3; from the weasel, 25, and in the previous book 19: 44; from the stellion, 12, and in the previous book 4: 16; from the hedgehog, 13, and in the previous book 5: 18; from the porcupine, 2, and in the previous book 1: 3; from the lizard, 30, and in the previous book 13: 43; from the salamander, 3, and in the previous book 1: 4; from the snail, 63, and in the previous book 6: 69; the medicament akeraton
30.15| from the asp, 3, and in the previous book 1: 4; from the dragon, 4, and in the previous book 6: 10; from the viper, 21, and in the previous book 14: 35; from the snake, 27, and in the previous book 8: 35; from the bova, 3, and in the previous book 4: 7; from the enhydris, 2, and in the previous book 1: 3; from the amphisbaena, 3; from the other serpents, 7, and in the previous book 8: 15; from the scorpion, 2, and in the previous book 4: 6; of spiders and phalangia, kinds, 40; medicines, 27, and in the previous book 9: 36; from the cricket and the bull, 7, and in the previous book 1: 8; from the troxalis, 3; from the phryganion, 1; from the scolopendra or multipede or milipede or centipede or woodlouse or iulus, 20, and in the previous book 1: 21; [the wonder of nature, which produces nothing without use]; from the slug, 3, and in the previous book 1: 4; from the caterpillar, 1; from the earthworm, 22, and in the previous book 2: 24; from the worm from trees, 4, and in the previous book 1: 5; from the worm from herbs, 4; from the herpes, 1; from the tick, 4; from birds: from the eagle, 3, and in the previous book 4: 7; from the vulture, 9, and in the previous book 8: 17; from the ossifrage, 3; from the cock, 25, and in the previous book 31: 56; from the hen, 22, and in the previous book 10: 32; from eggs, 43, and in the previous book 22: 65; [from the Commagenum, 5, and in the previous book 4: 9]; from the goose, 15, and in the previous book 7: 22; from the swan, 5 [and in the previous book 1: 6]; from the otis, 2; from the raven, 4, and in the previous book 2: 6; from the crow, 1, and in the previous book 2: 3; from the hawk, 2, and in the previous book 2: 4; from the kite, 6, and in the previous book 2: 8; from the crane, 2; from the stork, 1, and in the previous book 2: 3; from the ibis, 2; from the ardiola, 1; from the duck, 2, and in the previous book 4: 6; from the mergus, 1; from the partridge, 7, and in the previous book 7: 14; from the pigeon, 25, and in the previous book 7: 32; from the wood pigeon, 14, and in the previous book 2: 16; from the galerita, 4; from the cuckoo, 1; from the woodpecker of Mars, 1; from the turtle dove, 5, and in the previous book 4: 9; from thrushes, 3; from the blackbird, 1; from the swallow, 24, and in the previous book 9: 33; from the night owl, 2, and in the previous book 7: 9; from the ulula, 1 [and in the previous book 1: 2]; from the hoopoe, 1; from the owl, 5, and in the previous book 2: 7; from the sparrow, 5; from the galgulus, 2; from the bat, 12, and in the previous book 4: 16; from cicadas, 1; from bees, 8, and in the previous book 4: 12; from wasps, 2; from the buprestis, 1, and in the previous book 5: 6; [from pityocampae, 4, and in the previous book 2: 6]; [that the kindness of nature has put great remedies even into foul animals]; from the beetle, 7, and in the previous book 1: 8; from the blatta, 13, and in the previous book 4: 17; on the kind of the cantharides; medicines from them, 11, and in the previous book 5: 16; from the bedbug, 2, and in the previous book 9: 11; from the fly, 5, and in the previous book 7: 12; from locusts, 4; from ants, 5, and in the previous book 3: 8. Total: medicines, histories and observations 854. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Nigidius. Marcus Cicero. Sextius Niger, who wrote in the Greek language. Licinius Macer. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Eudoxus. Aristotle. Hermippus. Homer. Apion. Orpheus. Democritus. Anaxilaus. PHYSICIANS: Botrys. Apollodorus. Menander. Archedemus. Aristogenes. Xenocrates. Diodorus. Chrysippus the philosopher. Philippus. Horus. Nicander. Apollonius of Pitane.
31.0| medicines from water creatures; the marvels of waters
31.1| the differences of waters
31.2| medicines; observations 266 (3-17); what waters are good for the eyes
31.3| what waters make fertility; what cure madness
31.4| what are good for those with stones
31.5| what for wounds
31.6| what preserve a pregnancy
31.7| what remove vitiligo
31.8| what give colour to wools
31.9| what to human beings
31.10| what give memory, what forgetfulness
31.11| what give keenness of the senses, what dullness, what a tuneful voice
31.12| what cause a distaste for wine, what make drunk
31.13| what take the place of oil
31.14| what are salt and bitter
31.15| those that discharge stones, those that cause laughter or weeping, those said to cure love
31.16| draughts that stay warm through three days
31.17| marvels of waters (18-20); those in which all things sink, those in which nothing
31.18| deadly waters; poisoned fish
31.19| which turn to stone or make stone
31.20| on the healthfulness of waters
31.21| on the faults of waters
31.22| the testing of waters
31.23| on the Marcian water
31.24| on the Virgo water
31.25| the method of finding waters
31.26| the signs of waters
31.27| the difference of waters by the kinds of earth
31.28| the system of waters through the seasons of the year
31.29| historical observation of waters suddenly arising or ceasing
31.30| the method of conducting water
31.31| in what manner medicinal waters are to be used and for what kinds of ill-health
31.32| likewise from sea waters, 29; what benefit sailing is, 5
31.33| in what manner sea water can be made in inland places, 1
31.34| in what manner thalassomel, 1
31.35| in what manner hydromel, 1
31.36| a remedy against foreign waters
31.37| from moss, medicines, 6; medicines from sands
31.38| on the kinds of salt and its preparations and medicines, observations 204 (39-45); on the historical authority of salt, 120
31.41| foam of salt (41, 45); flower of salt, 20; saltness, 2
31.42| on garum, 15; on muria, 15
31.43| on allec, 8
31.44| on the nature of salt
31.45| on the kinds of nitre and its preparations and medicines, observations 221
31.46| on sponges; medicines and observations, 92
31.47| Total: medicines, histories and observations 924. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Marcus Varro. Cassius of Parma. Cicero. Mucianus. Caelius. Celsus. Trogus. Ovid. Polybius. Sornatius. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Callimachus. Ctesias. Eudicus. Theophrastus. Eudoxus. Theopompus. Polyclitus. Juba. Lycus. Apion. Epigenes. Pelops. Apelles. Democritus. Thrasyllus. Nicander. Menander the comic poet. Attalus. Sallustius Dionysius. Andreas. Niceratus. Hippocrates. Anaxilaus.
32.0| medicines from water creatures; the supreme power of nature in antipathy
32.1| on the echenais, 2; on the torpedo, 7
32.2| on the sea hare, 5
32.3| marvels of the Red Sea
32.4| on the talents of fish; marvellous properties of fish (5-9); where oracular answers are given by fish
32.8| where they eat from the hand
32.7| where they recognize a voice; where they are bitter; where salt, where sweet, where not mute; that there is also sympathy or antipathy of places
32.9| when sea fish began to be in use among the Roman people; the ordinance of King Numa about fish
32.10| on coral; medicines and observations, 43
32.11| on the discord of marine creatures among themselves; from the pastinaca, 9; from the galeus, from the mullet, 15
32.12| on those whose living is in water and on land; on castoreum; medicines and observations, 56 (13, 14); on the tortoise; medicines and observations, 66
32.14| from the gilthead, 4; from the sea star, 7
32.16| from the sea dragon, 3; from salted fish, 25; from sardines, 1; cybium
32.17| from the sea frog, 6; river frogs, 52; the bramble frog, observations about them, 32
32.18| from the enhydris, 3; river crabs, 45; sea crabs, 7; from river snails, 7; from coracini, 4; from the porcus fish, 2
32.19| from the sea calf, 10; from the murena, 1; from the sea horse, 9; from sea urchins, 11
32.20| kinds of oysters and observations and medicines, 59; purple, 9
32.21| sea alga, 2
32.22| sea mouse, 2; from the sea scorpion, 11; from leeches, 6; from murices, 13; from conchylia, 5
32.23| fat of fish, 2; callionymus, 3; gall of the coracinus, 1; pectunculus, 1; cuttlefish, 24; ichthyocolla, 5
32.24| batia, 1; bacchus or mizyes, 2; sea lice, 2
32.25| canicula, 4; cetus, 1
32.26| from dolphins, 8; coluthia or coryphia, 3; alcyoneum, 7; tunny, 5
32.27| menae, 16; scolopendra, 2; saurus, 1; conchis, 1; silurus, 15
32.28| strombus or long shell, 6; tethea, 5
32.30| sea vegetable, 1; myaces, 35; mussels, 8; pelorides, 1; seriphum, 2; erythini, 2
32.31| from the sole fish, 1; turbot, 1; blendia, 1; sea nettle, 2; sea lung, 4; onyches, 4; from the water snake, 1; from the hydrus, 1; mugil, 1; from the pelamys, 4
32.32| sciaena, 1; perch, 4; from the squatina, 3; zmarides, 3
32.34| ophidion, 1
32.35| from the beaver, 4; bryon, 1
32.36| from the asellus, 1; phagrus, 1; from the whale, 1
32.38| polypus, 1
32.42| from the glanis, 1
32.45| glauciscus, 1
32.46| rubellio, 1; sea grape, 1; eel, 1
32.49| hippopotamus, 1; crocodile, 1
32.50| adarca or calamochnus, 3; reed, 8
32.52| the names of all the animals living in the sea, 176
32.53| Total: medicines, histories and observations 990. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Licinius Macer. Trebius Niger. Sextius Niger, a writer in Greek. Ovid the poet. Cassius Hemina. Maecenas. Iacchus. Sornatius. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Juba. Andreas. Salpe. Apion. Pelops. Apelles. Thrasyllus. Nicander.
33.0| the natures of metals; on gold (2-25); what its first recommendation is
33.3| on the origin of gold rings
33.4| on the measure of gold among the ancients
33.5| on the equestrian order; on the right to gold rings (6-9); on the decuries of jurors
33.7| how often the name of the equestrian order was changed
33.9| on military gifts of gold and silver
33.10| when a golden crown was first given
33.11| on the remaining use of gold, by women
33.12| on the gold coin
33.13| when bronze, silver, gold were first stamped; what the custom was before they were stamped; in bronze, what the greatest sum of the first census was; how often and at what times the valuation of bronze or of stamped coin was raised; on the desire for gold
33.14| who possessed the most gold and silver
33.15| when the first display of silver was in the arena, when on the stage
33.16| in which periods the Roman people's treasury held the greatest store of gold and silver
33.17| when coffered ceilings were first gilded
33.18| for what reasons gold has pre-eminent authority
33.19| the method of gilding
33.20| on finding gold
33.21| on auripigmentum
33.22| on electrum
33.23| the first golden statues
33.24| medicines from gold, 8
33.25| on chrysocolla (26-29); its use in paintings
33.27| medicines from chrysocolla, 7
33.28| on the goldsmiths' chrysocolla or santerna
33.29| marvels of nature in gluing together and finishing metal things
33.30| on silver
33.31| on quicksilver
33.32| on stimi or stibi or alabaster or larbasis or platyophthalmus; medicines from it, 7
33.34| on the dross of silver; medicines from it, 6; on the foam of silver; medicines from it, 7
33.35| on minium (36-41); how sacred it was among the ancients
33.36| on its discovery and origin
33.37| on cinnabaris
33.38| its use in paintings and in medicine (38, 39); kinds of minium
33.40| its use in paintings; on hydrargyrum
33.41| medicine from minium; on gilding silver
33.42| on goldsmiths' touchstones
33.43| kinds of silver and tests (44-55); on mirrors
33.45| on Egyptian silver
33.46| on immoderate wealth; whose resources were greatest
33.47| when the Roman people first scattered largesse
33.48| on luxury in silver vessels
33.49| examples of ancient frugality in silver
33.50| when silver was first added to couches
33.51| when immoderate platters were made
33.52| when silver was added to sideboards; when drums were made; immoderate prices of silver
33.53| on silver statues
33.54| famous works and artists in silver
33.55| on sil
33.56| who first painted with sil and by what method; on caeruleum; medicines from it, 2 (57, 58). Total: medicines, histories and observations 288. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Domitian Caesar. Junius Gracchanus. Lucius Piso. Marcus Varro. Corvinus. Atticus Pomponius. Calvus Licinius. Cornelius Nepos. Mucianus. Bocchus. Fetialis. Fenestella. Valerius Maximus. Julius Bassus, who wrote about medicine in Greek. Sextius Niger, likewise. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Theophrastus. Democritus. Juba. Timaeus the historian. Those who wrote on metallic medicine: Heraclides. Andreas. Diagoras. Botrys. Archedemus. Dionysius. Aristogenes. Democles. Mnesides. Attalus the physician. Xenocrates, likewise. Theomnestus. Nymphodorus. Iollas. Apollodorus. Pasiteles, who wrote on marvellous works. Antigonus, who wrote on toreutice. Menaechmus, likewise.
34.0| the mines of bronze (1-38); kinds of bronze (2-5); which is Corinthian
34.3| which is Delian
34.4| which is Aeginetic
34.5| on bronze dining-couches (4, 5, 8); on lampstands
34.6| on the ornaments of temples made of bronze
34.7| what was the first image of a god made of bronze at Rome
34.9| on the origin of statues and the honour of statues; kinds and shapes of statues; that ancient statues were togate, without tunics (10, 11); which were the first statues at Rome; to whom first set up publicly; to whom first on a column; when the rostra
34.11| to what foreigners statues were publicly set up at Rome
34.12| to what women statues were set up in public at Rome; which was the first equestrian statue publicly set up at Rome
34.13| when all statues set up privately were removed from public places
34.14| which was the first set up publicly by foreigners
34.15| that in antiquity there were also statuaries in Italy
34.16| on the immoderate prices of statues
34.17| on the most famous colossi in the city
34.18| famous works and artists in bronze, 366
34.19| differences of bronze and mixtures; on pyropus
34.20| on Campanian bronze; on preserving bronze
34.21| on cadmia
34.22| medicines from it, 15
34.23| the effects of burnt bronze in medicine, 10
34.24| on the dross of bronze; on the flower of bronze, the scale of bronze, the stomoma of bronze; medicines from them, 47
34.25| verdigris, medicines from it, 18
34.26| hieracium
34.27| scolex of bronze; medicines from it, 18
34.28| on chalcitis; medicines from it, 7; psoricon
34.29| sori; medicines from it, 3
34.30| misy; medicines from it, 13
34.31| chalcanthum or shoemakers' black; medicines from it, 17
34.32| pompholyx; spodium; medicines from them, 6 (33, 34); antispodium, kinds, 15
34.35| smegma
34.36| on diphryges
34.37| on the Servilian triens
34.38| on iron mines (39-46); images of iron; chasing in iron
34.40| differences of iron
34.41| on the iron they call living
34.42| the tempering of iron; remedies for rust
34.43| medicines from iron, 7
34.44| medicines from rust, 13
34.45| medicines from the scale of iron, 17; hygremplastrum
34.46| on lead mines (47-56); on plumbum album
34.47| on argentarium; on stagnum
34.48| on plumbum nigrum
34.49| medicines from lead, 15
34.50| medicines from the dross of lead, 15
34.51| spodium from lead
34.52| on molybdaena; medicines from it, 5
34.53| psimythium or cerussa; medicines from it, 6
34.54| sandaraca; medicines from it, 11
34.55| arrhenicum
34.56| Total: medicines 258; of these, for dog bites, for the head, alopecias, for the eyes 25, ears, nostrils, faults of the mouth, leprosies, gums, teeth; uvula, phlegm, throat, tonsils, quinsy, cough, vomiting, chest, stomach, shortness of breath, pains of the side, spleen, belly, tenesmus, dysentery, anus, private parts, stopping blood, gout, dropsy sufferers, ulcers, wounds 26, suppurations, bones, paronychia, the sacred fire, haemorrhoids, fistulas, callus, pustules, itch, scars, infants, women's ailments, psilothrum, restraining desire, for the voice, against frenzies. Total: facts, histories and observations 915. FROM THE AUTHORITIES: Lucius Piso. Antias. Verrius. Marcus Varro. Cornelius Nepos. Messala Rufus. Marsus the poet. Bocchus. Julius Bassus, who wrote about medicine in Greek. Sextius Niger, likewise. Fabius Vestalis. FOREIGN AUTHORITIES: Democritus. Metrodorus of Scepsis. Menaechmus, who wrote on toreutice. Xenocrates, likewise. Antigonus, likewise. Duris, likewise. Heliodorus, who wrote about the Athenians' votive offerings. Pasiteles, who wrote on marvellous works. Timaeus. Those who wrote on metallic medicine: Nymphodorus. Iollas. Apollodorus. Andreas. Heraclides. Diagoras. Botrys. Archedemus. Dionysius. Aristogenes. Democles. Mnesides. Xenocrates of Zeno. Theomnestus.
35.0| the honour of painting (1); the honour of likenesses
35.2| when shields in place of likenesses were first instituted; when first set up in public
35.3| when in houses
35.4| on the beginnings of painting; on monochrome paintings; on the first painters
35.5| the antiquity of paintings in Italy
35.6| on Roman painters; when painting first had dignity, and for what reasons; at Rome, those who displayed their victories painted
35.7| when foreign paintings first gained dignity at Rome (8-10); the method of painting
35.11| on pigments apart from the metallic (12-32); on artificial colours
35.12| on Sinopis; medicines from it, 11
35.13| on rubrica; on Lemnian earth; medicines from it, 9
35.14| on Egyptian earth
35.15| on ochre; medicines from rubrica, 3
35.16| leucophorum
35.17| Paraetonium
35.18| Melinum; medicines from it, 6
35.19| burnt cerussa
35.20| Eretrian earth, medicines from it, 6
35.21| sandaraca
35.22| sandyx
35.23| Syricum
35.24| atramentum
35.25| purpurissum
35.26| Indicum; medicines from it, 3
35.27| Armenium; medicines from it, 1
35.28| Appian green
35.29| anulare
35.30| which colours are not applied to a damp surface
35.31| with which colours the ancients painted
35.32| when the fights of gladiators were first painted and displayed
35.33| on the age of painting
35.34| the famous works and artists in painting, 405 (34-41); the first contest of painting
35.35| who painted with the brush (36, 37); on checking the song of birds
35.38| who painted encaustic with the cauterium or cestrum or the brush (39-41); what each first invented in painting
35.39| what is most difficult in painting; on the kinds of painting
35.40| who first painted coffered ceilings; when vaulted ceilings were first painted; marvellous prices of paintings; on the talent; the first inventors of modelling
35.43| who first expressed a likeness from the face
35.44| the famous artists in modelling, 14
35.45| on works of pottery; on Signine
35.46| varieties of earth (47-58); on Puteolan dust and other kinds of earth that turn to stone
35.47| on walls of rammed earth
35.48| on brickwork and the system of bricks
35.49| on sulphur and its kinds; medicines, 14
35.50| on bitumen and its kinds; medicines, 27
35.51| on alum and its kinds; medicines from it, 44
35.52| on Samian earth; medicines from it, 3
35.53| kinds of Eretrian earth
35.54| on earth to be washed for medicine
35.55| on Chian earth, medicines from it, 3; on Selinusian earth, medicines from it, 3; on pnigitis, medicines from it, 9; on ampelitis, medicines from it, 4
35.56| chalks for the use of garments: Cimolian, medicines from it, 9; Sardinian; Umbrian; a rock
35.57| argentaria; who, and whose freedmen, were all-powerful
35.58| earth from Galata; Clupean earth; Balearic earth; Ebusitan earth; medicines from them, 4
35.59| Total: medical remedies, histories and observations, 956. From the authors: Messala the orator; Messala the elder; Fenestella; Atticus; Marcus Varro; Verrius; Nepos Cornelius; Deculo; Mucianus; Melissus; Vitruvius; Cassius Severus; Longulanus; Fabius Vestalis. From foreign authors: those who wrote on painting: Pasiteles; Apelles; Melanthius; Asclepiodorus; Euphranor; Heliodorus, who wrote on Athenian dedications; Metrodorus, who wrote on the science of building; Democritus; Theophrastus; Apion the grammarian. Those who wrote on metallic medicine: Nymphodorus; Iollas; Apollodorus; Andreas; Heraclides; Diagoras; Botrys; Archedemus; Dionysius; Aristogenes; Democles; Mnesides; Xenocrates, son of Zeno; Theomnestus.
36.0| The nature of stones. Luxury in marbles (1-3). Who first had columns of foreign marble at Rome.
36.3| Who first displayed it in public works (2, 3). Who were the first to be praised for carving marble, and at what times.
36.4| On the Mausoleum of Caria. The celebrated works and artists in marble, 225. When marble was first used in buildings.
36.5| Who first sawed marble, and when.
36.6| Who first at Rome covered walls with marble facing.
36.7| In which ages each of the marbles came into use at Rome.
36.8| The method of sawing marble. On the sands with which it is sawn.
36.9| On the Naxian. On the Armenian.
36.10| On the marbles of Alexandria.
36.11| On onyx, or alabastrites. Remedies from it: 3.
36.12| On lygdinum, corallitic, Alabandic, Theban, Syenite.
36.13| On obelisks (14, 15). On the one in the Campus Martius that serves as a gnomon.
36.15| Marvellous works on earth (16-23). The Egyptian Sphinx. The pyramids.
36.17| The Pharos.
36.18| Labyrinths.
36.19| Hanging gardens. A hanging town.
36.20| On the temple of Diana of Ephesus.
36.21| The wonders of other temples.
36.22| On the fugitive stone. An echo resounding seven times. Buildings without a nail.
36.23| The marvels of works at Rome, 18.
36.24| On the magnet stone. Remedies from it: 3.
36.25| The Syrian stone.
36.26| On the sarcophagus, or Assian stone. Remedies from it: 10.
36.27| On chernites. On poros.
36.28| On bone-stones. On palmatian stones. On Taenarian stones. On Coranian stones, on black marbles.
36.29| On millstones. Pyrites; remedies from it: 7.
36.30| Ostracites; remedies from it: 4. Amiantus; remedies from it: 2.
36.31| Geodes; remedies from it: 3.
36.32| Melitinus; remedies from it: 6.
36.33| Gagates; remedies from it: 6.
36.34| Spongites; remedies from it: 2.
36.35| The Phrygian.
36.36| Haematites; remedies from it: 5. Schistos; remedies from it: 7.
36.37| Androdamas; remedies from it: 2. The Arabian. Miltites, or hepatites; anthracites.
36.38| Aetites. The Taphian. Callimus.
36.39| The Samian; remedies from it: 8.
36.40| The Arabian; remedies from it: 2.
36.41| On pumice; remedies from it: 9.
36.42| On mortars for medicine and others. The Etesian stone, chalazius.
36.43| The Siphnian. Soft stones.
36.44| Specular stones.
36.45| Phengites.
36.46| On whetstones.
36.47| On tuffs.
36.48| On the nature of flints. On the remaining stones used for building (49, 50). The kinds of masonry.
36.51| On cisterns.
36.52| On lime.
36.53| The kinds of sand; the mixing of sand and lime.
36.54| Faults in masonry. On plasterwork.
36.55| On columns. The kinds of columns.
36.56| Remedies from lime: 5.
36.57| On maltha.
36.58| On gypsum.
36.59| On pavements (60-64). The asarotos oecos.
36.60| What was the first pavement at Rome.
36.61| On open-air pavements.
36.62| Greek-style pavements.
36.63| When lithostrota first appeared.
36.04| When glass vaults first appeared.
36.64| The origin of glass.
36.65| Its kinds and the method of making it.
36.66| On Obsian ware.
36.67| Marvels of fire.
36.68| Remedies from fire and ash: 3.
36.69| Prodigies of the hearth.
36.70| Total: remedies from these, 89: for snakes, 3; the bites of wild beasts; for poisons; the head; the eyes; epinyctides; the teeth; dentifrices; the throat; scrofulous swellings; the stomach; the liver; phlegm; the testicles; the bladder; stones; panus; haemorrhoids; gout; for staunching blood; for those spitting blood; dislocations; the frenzied; the lethargic; epileptics; the melancholic; dizziness; ulcers; wounds to be cauterized, to be cut; spasms; bruises; blemishes; burns; consumption; the breasts; women's ailments; carbuncles; pestilence. Grand total: matters, histories and observations, 434. From the authors: Marcus Varro; Gaius Galba; Cincius; Mucianus; Cornelius Nepos; Lucius Piso; Quintus Tubero; Fabius Vestalis; Annius Fetialis; Fabianus; Seneca; Cato Censorius; Vitruvius. From foreign authors: Theophrastus; Pasiteles; King Juba; Nicander; Sotacus; Sudines; Alexander Polyhistor; Apion Plistonices; Duris; Herodotus; Euhemerus; Aristagoras; Dionysius; Artemidorus; Butorides; Antisthenes; Demetrius; Demoteles; Lyceas.
37.0| The origin of gems.
37.1| On the gem of the tyrant Polycrates, and that of King Pyrrhus (2, 3). Who were the best engravers.
37.4| The celebrated works of engraving. What was the first dactyliotheca at Rome.
37.5| Gems carried in the triumph of Pompey the Great.
37.6| When myrrhina was first brought in. Luxury in them.
37.7| Their nature.
37.8| On crystallus (9, 10). Remedy from it. Luxury in crystallus.
37.10| On amber (11, 12). The lies the authors have told about it.
37.11| Its kinds: 7. Remedies from these: [….].
37.12| Lyncurium. Remedies: 2.
37.13| On adamas, or anancites. Kinds of adamas: 6. Remedies: 2.
37.15| On smaragdi (16-19). Their kinds: 12.
37.17| Their faults.
37.18| Tanos, a gem. Chalcosmaragdos.
37.19| On beryls. Their kinds: 8. Their faults.
37.20| On opals. Their kinds: 7. Their faults and tests (21, 22). On sardonyx. Its kinds: [….]. Its faults.
37.23| On onyx. Its kinds: [….].
37.24| On carbuncles (25, 26). Their kinds: 12.
37.25| Their faults and tests.
37.26| Anthracitis.
37.27| Sandastros. Sandaresus.
37.28| Lychnis; its kinds: 4.
37.29| Carchedonia.
37.30| Sarda; its kinds: 5.
37.31| On topazos. Its kinds: 2.
37.32| On callaina.
37.33| On prasius. Its kinds: 3.
37.34| Nilion.
37.35| Molochitis.
37.36| On jasper. Its kinds: 17. Their faults.
37.37| On cyanus. Its kinds: 3.
37.38| On sappirus.
37.39| Amethystos; its kinds: 5. Socondion. Sapenos. Pharanitis. Aphrodites blepharon, or anteros, or paederos.
37.40| Hyacinthus.
37.41| On chrysolithus. Its kinds: 4.
37.42| On chryselectrum.
37.43| Leucochrysos. Its kinds: 3.
37.44| Melichrysi, xuthi.
37.45| Paederos, or sangenon, or syenites.
37.46| Asteria.
37.47| Astrion.
37.48| Astriotes.
37.49| Astolon.
37.50| Ceraunia. Its kinds: 4. Baetylos.
37.51| Iris.
37.52| Leros.
37.53| Achatae. Their kinds: 14. Acopos; remedies from it: [….]. Alabastritis; remedies from it: [….]. Alectoriae. Androdamas. Argyrodamas. Antipathes. Arabica. Aromatitis. Asbestos. Aspisatis. Atizoe. Augitis. Amphidanes, or chrysocolla. Aphrodisiaca. Apsyctos. Aegyptilla.
37.54| Balanitae. Batrachitis. Baptes. Beli oculus. Belus. Baroptenus, or baripe. Botryitis. Bostrychitis. Bucardia. Brontea. Boloe.
37.55| Cadmitis. Callais. Capnitis. Cappadocia. Callaica. Catochitis. Catoptritis. Cepitis, also called cepolatitis. Ceramitis. Cinaediae. Ceritis. Cireos. Corsoides. Corallachates. Corallis. Crateritis. Crocallis. Cyitis. Chalcophonos. Chelidoniae. Cheloniae. Chelonitis. Chloritis. Choaspitis. Chrysolampsis. Chrysopis. Cetionides.
37.56| Daphnea. Diadochos. Diphyes. Dionysias. Dracontias.
37.57| Encardia, or enariste. Enorchis. Exhebenus. Erythallis. Erotylos, otherwise amphicomos, otherwise hieromnemon. Eumeces. Eumithres. Eupetalos. Eureos. Eurotias. Eusebes. Epimelas.
37.58| Galaxias. Galactitis, or leucogaea, or leucographitis, or synechitis. Gallaica. Gassinnade. Glossopetra. Gorgonia. [….]
37.59| Heliotropion. Hephaestitis. Hermu aedoeon. Hexecontalithos. Hieracitis. Hammitis. Hammonis cornu. Hormiscion. Hyaeniae. Haematitis meniu, or xuthos.
37.60| Idaei dactyli. Icterias. Iovis gemma, or drosolithos. Indicae. Ion.
37.61| Lepidotis. Lesbia. Leucophthalmos. Leucopoecilos. Libanochrus. Limoniatis. Liparea. Lysimachos. Leucochrysos.
37.62| Memnonia. Media. Meconitis. Mithrax. Morochthos. Mormorion, also called promnion, or Alexandrion. Myrritis. Myrmecias. Myrsinitis. Mesoleucos. Mesomelas.
37.63| Nasamonitis. Nebritis. Nipparena.
37.64| Oica. Ombria, otherwise notia. Onocardia. Oritis, otherwise sideritis. Ostracias, or ostracitis. Ostritis. Ophicardelos. Obsiana.
37.65| Panchrus. Pangonus. Paneros, or panerastos. Ponticae; kinds: 4. Phloginos, or chrysitis. Phoenicitis. Phycitis. Perileucos. Paeanitis, or gaeanis.
37.66| Solis gemma. Sagda. Samothracia. Sauritis. Sarcitis. Selenitis. Sideritis. Sideropoecilos. Spongitis. Synodontitis. Syrtitis. Syringitis.
37.67| Trichrus. Thelyrrhizos. Thelycardios, or mucul. Thracia; kinds: 3. Tephritis. Tecolithos.
37.68| Veneris crines. Veientana.
37.69| Zathene. Zamilampis. Zoraniscaea.
37.70| Hepatitis. Steatitis. Adadu nephros. Adadu ophthalmos. Adadu dactylos. Triophthalmos.
37.71| Carcinias. Echitis. Scorpitis. Scaritis. Triglitis. Aegophthalmos. Hyophthalmos. Geranitis. Aëtitis. Myrmecitis. Cantharias. Lycophthalmos. Taos. Timictonia.
37.72| Ammochrysos. Cenchritis. Dryitis. Cissitis. Narcissitis. Cyamias. Pyren. Phoenicitis. Chalazias. Pyritis. Polyzonos. Astrapaea. Phlogitis. Anthracitis. Enygros. Polythrix. Leontios. Pardalios. Drosolithos. Melichrus. Melichloros. Crocias. Polias. Spartopolia. Rhoditis. Melitis. Chalcitis. Sycitis. Bostrychitis. Chernitis. Anancitis. Synochitis. Dendritis.
37.73| Cochlides.
37.74| On the shapes of gems.
37.75| The method of testing them.
37.76| A comparison of nature across the lands. A comparison of things by their prices.
37.77| Total: facts, histories and observations, 1,300. From the authors: Marcus Varro; the records of triumphs; Maecenas; Iacchus; Cornelius Bocchus. From foreign authors: King Juba; Xenocrates son of Zeno; Sudines; Aeschylus; Philoxenus; Euripides; Nicander; Satyrus; Theophrastus; Chares; Philemon; Demostratus; Zenothemis; Metrodorus; Sotacus; Pytheas; Timaeus of Sicily; Nicias; Theochrestus; Asarubas; Mnaseas; Theomenes; Ctesias; Mithridates; Sophocles; King Archelaus; Callistratus; Democritus; Ismenias; Olympicus; Alexander Polyhistor; Apion; Orus; Zoroaster; Zachalias.

======== Natural History — Book II ========

1| The world, and this thing which men have been pleased to call by another name, the heavens, beneath whose encircling vault all things live out their existence, it is right to believe to be a deity, eternal, immeasurable, neither begotten nor ever to perish. What lies outside it is no concern of men to search out, nor can the conjecture of the human mind grasp it.
2| It is sacred, eternal, immeasurable, wholly within the whole, or rather itself the whole; infinite and yet like something finite; certain in all things and yet like something uncertain; embracing within itself all things outside and inside; at once the work of nature and nature itself.
3| It is madness that some have pondered its measurement in their minds and dared to publish it; and that others again, taking or given an occasion from this, have taught that there are countless worlds, so that we should have to believe in as many natures of things, or, if a single nature brooded over them all, nevertheless in as many suns and as many moons and all the other heavenly bodies, immeasurable and countless, even in one world; as if the same questions would not always confront our thinking at the limit, out of a longing for some end; or, if this infinity could be ascribed to nature, the maker of all things, as if that same thing would not be easier to understand in a single world, especially so great a work.
4| It is madness, truly madness, to go out of it and to search what lies outside, as though everything within it were already plainly known; as if, indeed, anyone could take the measure of anything who does not know his own measure, or the mind of man could behold what the world itself cannot hold.
5| That its form is rounded into the shape of a perfect sphere is shown first of all by its name and by the agreement of mortals, who call it 'the orb'; but the evidence of the facts teaches it too: not only because such a figure everywhere inclines into itself in all its parts, must sustain itself, and encloses and holds itself together, needing no joints and perceiving neither end nor beginning in any of its parts; nor only because such a shape is the best suited to the motion with which, as will soon appear, it continually revolves; but also by the testimony of our eyes, because from whatever point it is viewed it appears convex and central, which could not happen with any other figure.
6| That this form, then, is carried round in an eternal and restless circuit with indescribable speed in the space of twenty-four hours, the rising and setting of the sun have left beyond doubt. Whether the sound of so vast a mass whirling in ceaseless rotation is immense and therefore beyond the perception of our ears, I for my part could not easily say, by Hercules, any more than whether the ringing of the stars carried round with it and rolling their own orbits is some sweet harmony of incredible charm. To us who live within it, the world glides on in silence alike by day and by night.
7| That countless images of animals and of all things are impressed upon it, and that its body is not perfectly smooth all over, as we observe in birds' eggs, as the most distinguished authorities have said, is indicated by evidence from things on earth, since from the seeds of all things falling from there countless images are born, especially in the sea, and for the most part monstrous ones, because the seeds are mixed together; and further by the testimony of sight, in one place the figure of a bear, in another of a bull, in another of a letter, with a whiter circle running across the middle over the top.
8| For my part, I am also moved by the agreement of nations; for the Greeks called it by a word meaning ornament, and we called it mundus from its perfect and complete elegance. Caelum, the heavens, we certainly named on the ground that it is engraved, as Marcus Varro interprets it.
9| The order of things supports this, with the circle called the zodiac marked out into the figures of twelve animals, and the course of the sun through them keeping to the same rule for so many ages.
10| Nor do I see any doubt about the elements, that there are four of them: highest that of fire, from which come all those eyes of so many shining stars; next that of air, which the Greeks and we call by the same word, aër, this life-giving element that passes through all things and is interwoven with the whole; by its force the earth, held suspended together with the fourth element, that of water, is poised at the middle point of space.
11| Thus by a mutual embrace of opposites a bond is formed: light things are held back by heavy ones from flying away, and heavy things, on the other hand, are held up from falling by the light ones striving upward. So with equal effort in opposite directions each stays in its own place, bound together by the restless circuit of the world itself; and as this always runs back into itself, the earth is lowest and in the middle of the whole, and stands hanging at the pivot of the universe, balancing the things by which it hangs; so that it alone is motionless, while the universe revolves around it; it is connected with all things, and all things rest upon it.
12| Between it and the heavens, suspended in the same air and separated by fixed intervals, are the seven stars which from their motion we call wandering, though none wander less than they. In their midst the sun is carried along, of the greatest size and power, the governor not only of the seasons and the lands but also of the very stars and of the heavens.
13| It is fitting to believe, when we consider his works, that he is the soul, or more plainly the mind, of the whole world, the chief governing principle and the divinity of nature. He supplies light to things and takes away darkness; he hides and he illuminates the other stars; he regulates the alternation of the seasons and the year, always reborn, according to nature's use; he dispels the gloom of the sky and even clears the clouds of the human mind; he lends his light to the other stars as well; glorious, pre-eminent, seeing all things and also hearing all things, as I see Homer, the prince of literature, held of him alone.
14| For this reason I think that to seek the likeness and form of god is a mark of human weakness. Whatever god is, if indeed there is any other, and in whatever region, he is wholly sense, wholly sight, wholly hearing, wholly life, wholly mind, wholly himself. To believe in gods without number, and even drawn from the vices of men, such as Modesty, Concord, Intelligence, Hope, Honour, Clemency, Faith, or, as pleased Democritus, in two only, Punishment and Benefit, is a greater step toward folly.
15| Frail and toiling mortality, mindful of its own weakness, has divided the divinity into parts, so that each person might worship in portions the one whose help he most needs. And so we find different names among different peoples, and within the same peoples deities without number; even the powers below are sorted into kinds, and diseases and many plagues too, while in anxious fear we long to have them appeased.
16| For this reason a shrine to Fever has been dedicated at public expense on the Palatine, an altar to Orbona beside the temple of the Lares, and one to Bad Fortune on the Esquiline. From this one may understand that the population of the heavenly beings is even greater than that of men, since individuals also make just as many gods out of themselves by adopting Junos and Genii for themselves; and certain peoples hold animals, and some even obscene things, as gods, and many things more shameful to mention, swearing by foul foods, and other things like them.
17| To believe that there are marriages among the gods, and that in so long an age no child is born from any of them, and that some are always aged and white-haired, others young and boys, dark in colour, winged, lame, hatched from an egg, living and dying on alternate days, is nearly the raving of children; but it surpasses all shamelessness to invent adulteries among them, then quarrels and hatreds, and even to make divinities of thefts and crimes.
18| For a mortal to help a mortal is god, and this is the road to eternal glory. By this road the leading men of Rome have gone, and by this road now, with heavenly stride, together with his sons, goes the greatest ruler of every age, Vespasian Augustus, coming to the aid of a weary world.
19| This is the oldest custom of giving thanks to those who deserve well, that they ascribe such men to the divinities. Indeed the names of other gods, and of the stars I have mentioned above, were born from the merits of men. That Jupiter or Mercury, or others, are called by different names among themselves and are a heavenly nomenclature - who would not admit, from an interpretation of nature, that this is laughable? That the supreme power, whatever it is, attends to the affairs of mankind, and is not defiled even by so grim and manifold a service - are we to believe it, or to doubt? It is hardly useful to judge which is more advantageous to the human race, since some have no regard at all for the gods, and others a shameful one.
21| They serve foreign rites and carry gods on their fingers; they worship monsters too, they condemn and devise foods, and impose dire commands on themselves, not leaving even their sleep untroubled. They choose neither marriages, nor children, nor in short anything else, except as the rites assist them. Others deceive on the Capitol and forswear themselves by Jupiter as he thunders. And these men crimes help, while those their own rites drive on with punishments.
22| Yet between these two opinions mortality has found for itself a middle divinity, so that even the guesswork about god might be made less plain. For in the whole world, in all places and at all hours, by the voices of all, Fortune alone is invoked and named, she alone is accused, she alone is put on trial, she alone is thought of, she alone is praised, she alone is blamed and worshipped with abuse, fickle [….], and by most thought blind as well, wandering, inconstant, uncertain, changeable, and the patroness of the undeserving. To her all expenses are charged, to her all receipts are credited, and in the whole account of mortals she alone fills both pages; and so subject are we to chance that chance itself stands in place of god, by which god is shown to be uncertain.
23| Another party rejects even her, and assigns events to a man's own star and to the laws of birth, holding that once for all, for all who will ever be, there was a decree from god, and that for the rest of time he has been given leisure. This opinion has begun to settle, and learned and unlearned alike run together toward it. Look: the warnings of lightning, the foreknowledge of oracles, the predictions of soothsayers, and even things small to mention, in the auguries - sneezes and stumblings of the foot. The deified Augustus reported that on the day he was nearly struck down by a mutiny of the soldiers he had put his left shoe on the wrong way round.
25| Each of these things entangles mortality, which has no foresight; so that amid them this alone is certain, that nothing is certain, and nothing is more wretched than man, or more proud. For the other living creatures have care only for their food, and in that nature's kindness supplies them of her own accord; and in one respect their lot is even to be preferred to every good: they do not think about glory, money or ambition, and above all not about death.
26| But it is useful for the conduct of life to believe, in these matters, that the gods attend to human affairs, and that punishments for wrongdoing, though sometimes late, since god is occupied in so great a mass of things, are yet never in vain; and that man was not born next to him so as to be near the beasts in worthlessness.
27| The chief consolations for the imperfect nature of man are these: that not even god can do everything - for he cannot kill himself, if he should wish, which he has given to man as the best thing amid so many penalties of life; nor can he grant mortals eternity or call back the dead, nor make it that one who has lived has not lived, or that one who has held honours has not held them; and he has no power over the past except that of oblivion; and (so that this partnership with god may be tied together with witty arguments as well) he cannot make twice ten not be twenty, or do many similar things. By these things the power of nature is plainly shown, and that this is what we call god. It has not been out of place to turn aside to these matters, because of the common and constant questioning about god.
28| From here let us return to the remaining parts of nature. The stars, which we have said are fixed to the heavens, are not, as the common people think, assigned to individuals among us, bright for the rich, smaller for the poor, dim for the failing, and shining according to each person's lot, counted out for mortals, as though each were born with its own man and died with him; nor do falling stars signify that anyone is being extinguished.
29| The heavens have no such fellowship with us that the brightness of the stars there should be mortal along with our fate. Glutted with too much nourishment from the moisture they have drawn up, they give back the surplus by fiery force when they are believed to fall, just as we notice happening with us too when lamps are lit with liquid oil.
30| Moreover, the nature of the heavenly bodies is eternal, since they are woven into the world and bound together in the weaving; but the power of those of them that could be identified, amid so great a subtlety, through their effects, brightness and magnitude reaches greatly to the earth, as we shall show in its place. The theory of the celestial circles, too, will be better stated in the mention of the earth, since the whole of it bears upon the earth, the discoverers of the zodiac alone not being put off. To have grasped its obliquity, that is, to have opened the doors of things,
31| is reported of Anaximander of Miletus, first, in the fifty-eighth Olympiad; then Cleostratus is said to have marked the signs in it, first those of the Ram and the Archer; the sphere itself much earlier Atlas. Now, leaving the body of the universe itself, let the rest be treated between heaven and earth.
32| It is certain that what they call the star of Saturn is the highest, and therefore appears smallest, and goes round in the greatest circle, and in the thirtieth year returns to the shortest beginnings of its seat; and that the courses of all the wandering stars, and among them those of the sun and moon, run contrary to the universe, that is, to the left, while that always rushes on to the right.
33| And although they are lifted up by it, with its ceaseless revolution of immense speed, and swept to their setting, yet each goes by an opposing motion through its own steps. This is so, that the air, rolled round in the same direction by the eternal whirl of the universe, may not grow sluggish in an idle ball, but may be spread out, divided and distributed by the opposing lash of the stars.
34| The star of Saturn, they say, is of a cold and stiff nature, and the circle of Jupiter is much lower than it, and therefore is carried round by a quicker motion, every twelve years. The third is that of Mars, which some call Hercules', burning with fire from the nearness of the sun, and turning about every two years or so; and so Jupiter, set between the two, is tempered by the excessive heat of this one and the rigidity of Saturn, and made wholesome.
35| Then the course of the sun is of three hundred and sixty parts, but in order that the observation of its shadows may return to its marks, five days are added to the years, and above that a fourth part of a day. For this reason in the fifth year one intercalary day is added, so that the reckoning of the seasons may agree with the sun's journey.
36| Below the sun goes a great star called the star of Venus, wandering in alternating course, and rivalling the sun and moon even in its names. For going ahead of the sun and rising before the morning, it has received the name of the Light-bringer, as if a second sun hastening the day; on the other hand, shining back from the west, it is called Vesper, as if prolonging the light and taking the place of the moon.
37| This nature of it Pythagoras of Samos was the first to discover, about the forty-second Olympiad, which was the 142nd year of the city of Rome. It is already beyond all the other stars in size, and of such brightness that shadows are cast by the rays of this one star alone. And so it has a wide range of names. For some have called it Juno's, some Isis', some the Mother of the Gods'.
38| By its nature all things on earth are generated. For at either rising, sprinkling the earth with a generative dew, it not only fills the conceptions of the earth, but stirs up those of all living creatures too. It runs through the zodiac's circuit in three hundred and forty-eight days, never moving away from the sun farther than forty-six parts, as Timaeus holds.
39| In a similar manner, but by no means in size or force, the star of Mercury, called by some Apollo's, next to it, is carried in a lower circle with a course nine days quicker, shining now before sunrise, now after sunset, never more than 22 parts distant from the sun, as Cidenas and Sosigenes teach. And so the reckoning of these stars is peculiar to them and not shared with those mentioned above.
40| For those are seen to be a fourth part of the heavens away from the sun, and a third, and often opposite to the sun, and all of them have larger circuits of complete revolution, to be set out in the reckoning of the great year.
41| But the last star surpasses the wonder of all, the one most familiar to the earth and found by nature as a remedy for darkness: the moon. This manifold and doubtful body has tormented the wits
42| of those who contemplate it, men most indignant at being ignorant of the nearest star: always waxing or waning, now with its face bent into horns, now divided in an equal portion, now curved into a circle, spotted and yet suddenly bright, immense when the orb is full and suddenly nothing, at one time all night, at another late, and in part of the day helping the light of the sun, failing and yet visible even in its failing - and hidden at the end of the month,
43| and then not believed to be in distress - and again low and high, and not even that in one way, but now brought close to the sky, now next to the mountains, now lifted to the north, now cast down to the south. All these things in it the first of men to detect was Endymion; hence the story is handed down of his love for her. We are surely not grateful toward those who, by labour and care, have opened up the light to us in this very light; and, by a strange plague of the human mind, it is a pleasure to bury blood and slaughter in annals, so that the crimes of men may become known to people who know nothing of the world itself.
44| Being therefore nearest the pole, and so with the smallest circuit, it completes in twenty-seven days and a third of a day the same spaces that the highest star, that of Saturn, completes in 30 years, as has been said. Then, lingering in conjunction with the sun for two days, at the slowest, from the thirtieth day it goes out again to the same turns, and is perhaps, of all the things that could be thoroughly learned in the heavens, the teacher that the year ought to be divided into the spaces of twelve months, since it overtakes the returning sun so many times at its starting-points;
45| that it is governed by the brightness of the sun, like the rest of the stars, since it shines wholly with a light it has borrowed from him, like the one we see flitting about in the reflection from water; that therefore with a gentler and imperfect force it only dissolves moisture and even increases it, which the sun's rays consume; that it is seen with unequal light because, full only when directly opposite, on the remaining days it shows to the earth only as much from itself as it receives from the sun;
46| that in conjunction it is not seen because, turned away, it throws back to him all the light it has drawn in, whence it received it. The stars, indeed, are doubtless fed by earthly moisture, because at half orb the moon is never seen spotted, clearly because it does not yet have the strength to draw up beyond its due measure; for the spots are nothing other than filth snatched up from the earth with the moisture. Its own eclipses, and the sun's - a thing most marvellous in the whole contemplation of nature and like a portent - prove to be indications of magnitudes and of shadow.
47| For it is clear that the sun is hidden when the moon comes between, and the moon by the earth's obstruction, and that they take turns, the moon by interposing itself taking those same rays of the sun away from the earth, and the earth taking them from the moon. When the moon passes under, sudden darkness is drawn over the earth, and in turn the star is dulled by the earth's shadow. Night is nothing other than the shadow of the earth, and the shape of the shadow is like a cone and a spinning top turned upside down, since it comes on only with its point and does not rise above the height of the moon, because no other star is darkened in the same way and a figure of this kind always fails at the point.
48| That shadows are used up in space is shown by the very high flights of birds. Therefore the boundary where they meet is the end of the air and the beginning of the aether. Above the moon all is pure and full of daylight. But by us the stars are seen through the night, as other lights are from darkness, and for these reasons the moon fails at night-time. Neither eclipse, however, is regular and monthly, owing to the zodiac's obliquity and to the many-wandering turns of the moon, as has been said, the motion of the stars not always agreeing to the scruples of the parts.
49| This reasoning draws mortal minds up into the heavens and, as if from there, reveals to those who contemplate it the size of the three greatest parts of nature. For the whole sun could not be taken from the earth by the intervening moon, if the earth were larger than the moon. A third vastness, that of the sun, will be disclosed from both, so that there is no need to search its size by the evidence of the eyes and by guesswork of the mind:
50| it is immense, because it casts the shadows of trees set out along boundary lines, for as many thousands of paces as you please, at equal intervals, as though it stood in the middle of the whole space; and because at the equinox it is directly overhead for all dwellers in the southern region at once; likewise because around the solstitial circle shadows of the inhabitants fall at midday to the north, but at sunrise toward the west; which could in no way happen unless it were much larger than the earth; and further, because at its rising it exceeds Mount Ida in breadth, embracing it widely on right and left, especially being separated by so great an interval.
51| The eclipse of the moon declares its size by no doubtful reasoning, just as it declares the smallness of the earth, in failing. For since there are three shapes of shadows, and it is agreed that, if the body that casts it is equal to the light, the shadow is cast in the likeness of a column and has no end; but if the body is greater than the light, that of an upright cone, so that its base is the narrowest and the length likewise unlimited; if the body is smaller than the light, the figure of a cone ending in a point at its tip results, and such a shadow is seen when the moon fails:
52| it is made plain, so that no further doubt remains, that the size of the earth is surpassed. And this by the silent indications of nature herself: for why, in the divided turns of the year, does the sun withdraw in winter, or restore the lands by the dark of the nights? Doubtless it would burn them up, and even so it burns up one part. So great is its size.
53| The reasoning behind both eclipses was first brought to the public among the Romans by Sulpicius Gallus, who was consul with Marcus Marcellus, but who was then a military tribune; having freed the army from anxiety, on the day before King Perses was defeated by Paulus he was brought forward to the assembly by the commander to predict an eclipse, and soon afterwards composed a volume as well. Among the Greeks the first of all to investigate it was Thales of Miletus, who predicted an eclipse of the sun in the 48th Olympiad, in its fourth year; this happened while Alyattes was king, in the 170th year after the founding of the city. After them Hipparchus foretold the course of both stars for 600 years, embracing the months of the nations, the days and hours, the positions of places and the appearances of peoples, with the age as witness, not otherwise than as a partner in the counsels of nature.
54| Mighty men, above mortal estate, who, having grasped the law of such great divinities and now freed the wretched human mind from fear of crimes or some death of the stars in eclipses - in which fear the lofty-voiced poets Stesichorus and Pindar were plainly caught at an eclipse of the sun - or, when mortality accuses sorcery in the moon and therefore helps her with discordant clatter - in which terror Nicias, the Athenian commander, ignorant of the cause, afraid to lead the fleet out of harbour, crushed their resources: blessings on your genius, interpreters of heaven, who have grasped the nature of things,
55| discoverers of proof, by which you have conquered gods and men! For who, seeing these things, and the fixed labours of the stars (since that is how it pleased men to call them), would not forgive mortals for being born subject to their own necessity? Now I shall touch briefly and by heads on matters admitted about them, with the reasoning given only in the places where it is quite necessary and in outline, for the argument of that kind does not belong to the work undertaken, and it is no less surprising that the causes of all things cannot be given than that anything is agreed.
56| It is certain that eclipses return to their own cycles in 223 months; that eclipses of the sun occur only at the last or the first moon, which they call conjunction, those of the moon only when full, and always short of where they were nearest; and that every year eclipses of both stars occur on fixed days and hours beneath the earth, and yet, though they occur above, are not seen everywhere, sometimes because of clouds, more often because the globe of the earth stands in the way, by the convexities of the world.
57| Within two hundred years it was discovered by the sagacity of Hipparchus that an eclipse of the moon sometimes occurs in the fifth month after the previous one, and of the sun in the seventh; that the same is hidden twice in 30 days above the earth, but is seen by others; and, what is most marvellous of all in this marvel, since it is agreed that the moon is dulled by the shadow of the earth, that this happens to her now from the side of the setting, now from that of the rising; by what reasoning, when at sunrise that dulling shadow ought to be under the earth, did it once happen that the moon failed at her setting, with both stars visible above the earth? For that both stars should be sought in 15 days also happened in our own age, in the consulship of the Vespasians, the father for the third time and the son.
58| It is not doubtful that the moon always has her horns turned away from the sun, looking to the rising if she is waxing, to the setting if she is waning; that she shines three-quarters and half a twelfth of an hour longer each day, adding from the second day until the full orb, and subtracting in the waning; and that she is always hidden within 14 parts of the sun. From this argument it is gathered that the size of the wandering stars is greater than that of the moon, since they emerge sometimes even from seven parts. But height forces them to seem smaller, just as the stars fixed in the heavens are not seen by day because of the sun's glare, though they shine just as at night, and this is made plain by an eclipse of the sun and by very deep wells.
59| Of the wandering stars, the three that we have said are placed above the sun are hidden as they travel with it, and rise in the morning when they depart from it, by never more than eleven parts. Afterwards they are governed by the contact of his rays, and in the trine, from 120 parts, make their morning stations, which are also called the first; then in opposition, from 180 parts, their evening risings; and again, approaching from the other side at 120, their evening stations, which they also call the second, until he catches up and hides them at twelve parts, which are called evening settings.
60| The star of Mars, being nearer, feels the rays even from the quartile, from 90 parts, whence the first and second motions have also received the name "ninetieth", so called from either rising. The same, when stationary, lingers in the signs for six months, whereas otherwise it stays two months, while the others do not fill four months in each station.
61| The two lower ones are hidden at evening conjunction in a similar manner, and, left behind by the sun, make their morning risings at as many parts, up to which, at the farthest bounds of their separation, they pursue the sun, and, having overtaken it, are hidden at the morning setting and pass by. Soon after, at the same interval, they rise in the evening, up to the limits we have mentioned. From these they retrograde toward the sun and lie hidden at evening setting. The star of Venus makes two stations, morning and evening, from either rising, from the farthest limits of its distance; those of Mercury are of too brief a moment to be detected.
62| This is the reckoning of the lights and their hidings, more perplexing in motion and wrapped in many marvels, since they change their sizes and colours, and the same ones approach the north and depart to the south, and are suddenly seen nearer to the earth or to the heavens. In these matters, I confess, I am going to report many things differently from my predecessors, and that these too belong to the service of those who first showed the ways of inquiry, provided only that no one despairs that the ages always make progress.
63| All this happens from several causes: the first is that of the circles which the Greeks call hapsides in the stars; for we shall have to use Greek words. Each of the stars has its own, different from those of the universe, since the earth is the centre of the heavens, as well as of the zodiac, which is set obliquely between the two vertices that they have named the poles. All this holds by the reckoning of the compasses, which is always beyond doubt. So from a different centre for each one its apsides rise up, and therefore they have different orbits and unlike motions, since the inner apsides must be shorter.
64| Thus, measured from the earth's centre, the highest apsides are these: Saturn's lies in Scorpio, Jupiter's in Virgo, Mars's in Leo, the sun's in Gemini, Venus's in Sagittarius, Mercury's in Capricorn, and the moon's in Taurus, at the middle of all their parts; and conversely their lowest points, the closest to the earth's centre, lie opposite. So it happens that they appear to travel more slowly when borne along their highest orbit, not because their natural motions speed up or slow down, which are fixed and single for each, but because lines drawn down from the topmost apsis must contract toward the centre, as the spokes do in wheels, and the same motion is felt at one time greater, at another less, by nearness to the centre.
65| The second cause of the heights is that they have their highest apsides, measured from their own centre, in other signs: Saturn at the twentieth part of Libra; for Jupiter it is the fifteenth of Cancer; Mars has Capricorn's 28th; the sun, Aries's 19th; Venus, Pisces's 27th; Mercury, Virgo's 15th; and the moon, Taurus's 3rd. The third reckoning of heights is understood as a measure of the heavens, not of a circle: that the stars rise or descend through the depth of the air, as the eyes judge.
66| Joined to this is the cause of the latitudes and the obliquity of the zodiac. Through this the stars we have mentioned are carried, and nothing is inhabited on earth except what lies beneath it; the rest, toward the poles, is parched. Only the star of Venus goes beyond it, by two parts, which cause is understood to bring it about that certain animals are born even in the deserts of the world. The moon also wanders through its whole breadth, but does not go beyond it at all. After these the star of Mercury ranges most widely, yet so that of the twelve parts - for that is the number of its latitude - it traverses no more than eight, and not these evenly, but two in the middle of it and four above, two below.
67| Then the sun is carried in the middle between two parts, uneven in its winding, serpentine course; the star of Mars through the four middle ones; that of Jupiter through the middle and two above it; that of Saturn through two, like the sun. This will be the reckoning of the latitudes of those descending to the south or climbing to the north. Most people have supposed, wrongly, that the third reckoning, that of those climbing up from the earth into the heavens, also consists in this, and that they rise equally. To refute them, an immense subtlety, embracing all those causes, must be unfolded.
68| It is agreed that the stars at their evening setting are nearest the earth both in height and in latitude, that the morning risings occur at the beginning of each, and the stations at the middle joints of the latitudes, which they call ecliptic. Likewise it is admitted that motion increases while they are near the earth, and decreases when they withdraw into the height. This reasoning is best confirmed by the heights of the moon. Equally there is no doubt that at the morning risings the motion is still increasing, and that from the first stations the three upper stars diminish it until the second stations.
69| Since this is so, it will be plain that from the morning rising the latitudes are climbed, since in that condition motion first begins to be added to more sparingly, while at the first stations the height also is ascended, since then for the first time the numbers begin to be subtracted and the stars to go backward. The reason of this matter must be given separately. Struck in the part we have mentioned, and in the triangle, by the ray of the sun, they are checked from running a straight course and are lifted by fiery force into the height.
70| This cannot be understood at once by our sight, and therefore they are thought to stand still, whence the name station has been taken. Then the violence of the same ray advances and forces those struck by its heat to go backward. This happens much more at their evening rising, when the whole sun is opposite and they are driven out to the highest apsides and are seen smallest, because they are most distant in height, and are carried with the smallest motion, smaller still when this happens in the signs of the highest apsides.
71| From the evening rising the latitude is descended, the motion now diminishing more sparingly, yet not increasing before the second stations, when the height too is descended, a ray coming over from the other side and with the same force pressing them back toward the earth that had lifted them into the heavens from the earlier triangle. There is so great a difference whether the rays come up from beneath or come over from above, and the same things happen much more at the evening setting. This is the reckoning of the upper stars; that of the rest is more difficult, and has been given by no one before us.
72| First, then, let it be said why the star of Venus never moves away from the sun farther than 46 parts, and Mercury's 20, and often swing back toward the sun short of these. Both have their apsides turned the other way, being placed below the sun, and as much of their circles lies beneath as lies above in those mentioned before, and therefore they cannot be farther away, since the curve of the apsides there has no greater length. So both, by a like reasoning, fix the measure by the margins of their apsides, and balance the spaces of length by the ranging of the latitudes. But
73| why do they not always reach forty-six parts and twenty? In fact they do, but the calculation deceives the canon-makers. For it appears that their apsides also move, since they never pass beyond the sun. And so when the margins fall on the very part of him, on either side, then the stars too are understood to reach their longest intervals. When the margins have been short of it, the stars themselves are forced to return more quickly by as many parts, since that is always the highest extremity for each of the two.
74| From this the reckoning of the motions, too, is understood to be reversed. For the upper stars are carried fastest at the evening setting, these slowest; the former are farthest from the earth in height when they move slowest, these when they move fastest, because as nearness to the centre speeds up the former, so in these the extremity of the circle does. The former begin to lessen their speed from the morning rising, these on the contrary to increase it; the former run backward from the morning station to the evening one, Venus from the evening to the morning.
75| It begins from the morning rising to climb in latitude, but to follow the sun in height from the morning station, swiftest at the morning setting and highest, while it falls off in latitude and lessens its motion from the evening rising, goes backward and at the same time descends in height from the evening station; the star of Mercury again climbs in both ways from the morning rising, and descends in latitude from the evening one, and when it has overtaken the sun it halts at an interval of fifteen parts, nearly motionless for four days.
76| Soon it descends from its height and goes backward from the evening setting to the morning rising, and only this star and the moon descend in as many days as they have ascended. Venus ascends in fifteen times more, while again Saturn and Jupiter descend in double, and Mars even in quadruple. So great is the variety of nature, but the reckoning is evident. For those that strive into the heat of the sun descend also with difficulty.
77| Many further secrets of nature, and laws which she herself obeys, can be set out regarding these matters; for example, in the star of Mars, whose course is the most unobservable, that it never makes a station in the trine with the star of Jupiter, and only very rarely when separated from it by 60 parts, which number produces the hexagonal figures of the universe; and that they do not make risings together except in two signs only, Cancer and Leo; that the star of Mercury makes evening risings rarely in Pisces and most often in Virgo, morning ones in Libra, likewise morning ones in Aquarius, most rarely in Leo; that its retrograde motion does not occur in Taurus or in Gemini, and in Cancer not before the twenty-fifth part;
78| that the moon makes two conjunctions with the sun in no other sign than Gemini, and sometimes does not conjoin in Sagittarius alone; that the last moon and the first are seen on one and the same day or night in no sign other than Aries - this too has fallen to few mortals, and from this comes the fame of Lynceus's seeing; that the star of Saturn and that of Mars fail to appear in the heavens, at most, for 170 days, that of Jupiter for 36 or, at least, with ten days taken off, that of Venus for 69 or, at least, 52, that of Mercury for 13 or, at most, 17.
79| The reckoning of the heights tempers the colours, since they take on the likeness of those into whose air they have come by ascending, and the circle of a strange course dyes them as they approach, the colder one toward pallor, the more burning toward redness, the windy one toward a bristling roughness, the sun and the joinings of the apsides and the extreme orbits toward black obscurity. Each has its own colour: Saturn's white, Jupiter's bright, Mars's fiery, the Light-bringer's glowing, Vesper's gleaming, Mercury's radiant, the moon's gentle, the sun's, when he rises, burning, afterwards radiant; by these causes the vision both of these and of those held in the heavens is linked together.
80| For at one time a crowded multitude is present around the half orbs of the moon, when the calm night lightly illuminates them, at another a thinness, so that we marvel they have fled, when the full moon hides them or when the rays of the sun, or else of those mentioned above have dazzled our sight. And the moon herself plainly feels the differences of the rays of the sun falling upon her, the rest being dulled by the curve of the universe, which bends them, except where the blows of the rays meet at right angles. And so at the quartile of the sun she is divided in half, at the trine she is enclosed in a half-empty orb, and she is filled at the opposition, and again waning she shows the same shapes at equal intervals, by a like reasoning to that by which the three stars above the sun do.
81| The sun himself has four differences, twice when the night is equalled to the day, in spring and autumn, falling into the centre of the earth at the eighth parts of Aries and Libra, and twice with the spaces exchanged, at the winter solstice for the increase of the day, in the eighth part of Capricorn, and at the solstice for the increase of the night, in as many parts of Cancer. The inequality arises from the obliquity of the zodiac, since an equal part of the universe is above and below the earth at all moments. But the signs which rise straight at their rising hold the light over a longer stretch; those that are oblique pass over in a swifter space.
82| It is hidden from most people, though discovered by the leading men of learning through great attendance on the heavens, that the fires that fall to earth and bear the name of thunderbolts belong to the three upper stars, but above all to Jupiter, which is set in the middle, perhaps because in this way it has driven out the contagion of excess moisture from the circle above and of heat from the one below; and so it has been said that Jupiter hurls thunderbolts. Therefore as a coal with a crackle from a burning log, so heavenly fire is spat out from the star, bringing foreknowledge with it, the star not idle in divine works even when a part of itself is cast off. And this happens chiefly when the air is disturbed, either because gathered moisture spurs the abundance on, or because the star is disturbed by a kind of labour, as of a star with child.
83| The intervals of the stars from the earth also many have tried to find out; and they have reported that the sun stands off from the moon nineteen times as far as the moon itself does from the earth. Pythagoras, however, a man of sagacious mind, gathered that from the earth to the moon is a distance of 126,000 stadia, from her to the sun twice that, and from there to the twelve signs three times that, in which opinion our Gallus Sulpicius also was.
84| But Pythagoras sometimes also uses a musical reckoning, and calls the distance of the moon from the earth a tone, from her to Mercury half that space, and from him to Venus likewise, from her to the sun one and a half times that, from the sun to Mars a tone [that is, the same as the moon stands from the earth], from Mars to Jupiter a half, and from Jupiter to that of Saturn, and thence one and a half times that to the zodiac; so that it is made up by seven tones, the harmony they call dia pason, that is, the totality of concord; in it Saturn moves on the Dorian note, Jupiter on the Phrygian, and likewise in the rest, a subtlety more pleasing than necessary.
85| A stadium makes 25 of our paces, that is, 625 feet. Posidonius says that the height from the earth to which clouds and winds and cloud-banks reach is not less than 40 stadia, and from there the air is pure and clear and of undisturbed light; but from the turbid air to the moon, twenty times a hundred thousand stadia, from there to the sun five thousand times a hundred thousand; and that by this space it happens that so immense a size of the sun does not burn up the lands. Many, however, have reported that clouds rise to a height of 900. These things are unascertained and inextricable, but must be handed on, because they have been handed on; among them, however, one method, that of geometrical inference, which never deceives, need not be rejected, if someone cares to pursue these things more deeply, and not as a measure - for to want that is almost the idleness of a madman - but only that an estimate may stand for a mind conjecturing.
86| For since it is apparent that the circle through which the orbit of the sun travels extends, along its circuit, over 360 and almost six parts, and the diameter always embraces a third of the circumference and a little less than a seventh of the third, it is apparent that, when half of it is taken away, since the central earth intervenes, about a sixth part of this immense space, which is grasped in the mind as the space of the circle around the earth, belongs to the space of height, and of the moon a twelfth, since she runs in an orbit so much shorter than the sun's.
87| Thus she comes to be in the middle between the sun and the earth. I wonder how far the shamelessness of the human heart advances, invited by some small success, as in the matters mentioned above reasoning gives the occasion of impudence. And having dared to divine the spaces of the sun to the earth, they apply the same to the heavens, since the sun is in the middle, so that straightway the measure of the universe itself comes within their fingers. For as many sevenths as the diameter has, so many twenty-seconds, they say, has the circle, as though the measure of the heavens stood plainly by the plumb-line.
88| The Egyptian reckoning, which Petosiris and Nechepso set out, gathers that single parts in the circle of the moon, as has been said, extend a little over 33 stadia at the least, in the widest circle, that of Saturn, double, and in that of the sun, which we have said is the middle, half of each measure. This computation has a great deal to be ashamed of, since, if the interval of the zodiac itself is added to the circle of Saturn, a multiplication that cannot even be numbered results.
89| A few things remain about the universe. For in the heavens themselves stars suddenly are born. There are many kinds of them. The Greeks call them cometae, ours crinitae, bristling with blood-red hair and shaggy like locks at the top. The same are called pogoniae when a mane spreads out from the lower part in the likeness of a long beard. The acontiae are brandished like a javelin, with the swiftest of signs. This was the one about which Titus Imperator Caesar, in his fifth consulship, wrote in a splendid poem, the most recent seen to this day. The same, when shorter and tapering to a point, they have called xiphiae; these are the palest of all, with a certain shine like a sword's and without any rays; a disceus, like its name, but amber in colour, sends out a few rays from its edge.
90| The pitheus is seen in the shape of casks, in a hollow of smoky light. The ceratias has the appearance of a horn, such as it was when Greece fought at Salamis. The lampadias imitates burning torches, the hippeus the manes of horses, of very swift motion and travelling in a circle around themselves. There is also a white comet, the dios cometes, shining with so silvery a hair that one can scarcely look at it, and showing in itself the image of a god in human form. There are also goats, in the appearance of fleeces and surrounded by some cloud. Once so far the image of a mane has been changed into a spear, in the 108th Olympiad, the 408th year of Rome. The briefest span in which they have been seen is recorded as 7 days, the longest 180.
91| Some move after the manner of the wandering stars, others stick fast, motionless; almost all are under the north itself, in some part of it that is not fixed, but above all in the white part that has received the name of the milky circle. Aristotle reports that several are seen at once, a thing found by no one else, so far as I know, and that by them severe winds or heats are foretold. They occur also in the winter months and at the southern pole, but there without any radiance. A dire one was observed by the peoples of Ethiopia and Egypt, to which Typhon, the king of that age, gave his name, of fiery appearance and twisted like a coil, grim also to look upon, and not so much a star as a kind of fiery knot.
92| Hair is sometimes scattered also upon the wandering stars and the others. But a comet is never in the part of the sky that sets; it is, for the most part, a terrifying star and not lightly atoned for, as in the civil upheaval in the consulship of Octavius, and again in the war between Pompey and Caesar, and in our own age at the poisoning by which Claudius Caesar left the empire to Domitius Nero, and then in his principate, almost continual and cruel. They hold that it matters into which regions it hurls itself, or from which star it takes its powers, and what likenesses it takes on, and in what places it flashes out:
93| that in the shape of flutes it portends for the art of music, for obscene morals in the shameful parts of the constellations, for talents and learning if it puts out a triangular figure or a square one with equal angles toward certain positions of the perennial stars; that they pour out poisons in the head of the northern or the southern serpent. A comet is worshipped in one place only in the whole world, in a temple at Rome, judged exceedingly auspicious by the deified Augustus himself, to whom it appeared at the start of his career at the games which he was holding for Venus Genetrix, shortly after the death of his father Caesar, in the college founded by him.
94| For in these words he declares his joy in [….]: "In the very days of my games a hairy star was seen for seven days in the region of the sky under the north. It arose around the eleventh hour of the day, and was bright and visible from all lands. By that star the common people believed it was signified that the soul of Caesar had been received among the divinities of the immortal gods, and on that account this sign was added to the statue of his head, which we soon after consecrated in the forum." This he said publicly; in his inner joy he interpreted that it was born for him, and that he was being born in it. And, if we admit the truth, it was salutary for the world. There are some who believe that these stars too are everlasting and go in their own orbit, but are seen only when left behind by the sun; others, that they are born from chance moisture and fiery force, and are therefore dissolved.
95| The same Hipparchus, never praised enough, than whom no one has more strongly confirmed the kinship of the stars with man and that our souls are part of the heavens, detected a new star, another one, born in his own age, and by its motion, from where it shone, was led to doubt whether this happened rather often and whether even those we think fixed also move; and so he dared, a thing improper even for a god, to count the stars for posterity and to register the constellations by name with instruments devised, through which he marked the places and magnitudes of each, so that it could easily be discerned from this not only whether they set and were born, but whether some wholly passed on and moved, likewise whether they grew and diminished, the heavens being left to all as an inheritance, if anyone were found to take up that bequest.
96| Torches also flash out, seen only when they fall, such as, when Germanicus Caesar was giving a spectacle of gladiators, ran across before the face of the people at midday. There are two kinds of them. Those that are plainly torches they call lampades, the other bolides, such as was seen at the evils of the Mutinenses. They differ in that torches make long trails with the front part burning, while a bolis burning throughout draws a longer track. Beams too flash out in a similar way, which they call dokoi, as when the Lacedaemonians, beaten in a naval battle, lost the empire of Greece. There is also a gaping of the sky itself, which they call chasma,
97| and a bloody appearance, and - than which nothing is more terrible to mortal fear - a fire falling toward the earth from it, as in the 107th Olympiad's third year, when King Philip was shaking Greece. And I judge that these come about at fixed times by the force of nature, like the rest, not, as most hold, from varied causes which the sharpness of wits devises, since they have indeed been forerunners of great evils; but I judge that those things happened not because these were done, but that these were done because those were going to befall, and that the reason for them is hidden by their rarity, and so is not known, as are the risings and eclipses mentioned above and many other things.
98| Stars are also seen with the sun for whole days, and often around the orb of the sun like garlands of corn-ears and many-coloured circles, as when Augustus Caesar, in his early youth, was entering the city after his father's death to take up a mighty name. The same garlands appear around the moon and around noble stars fixed in the heavens. Around the sun a bow appeared in the consulship of Lucius Opimius and Quintus Fabius, an orb in that of Gaius Porcius and Manius Acilius, a circle of red colour in that of Lucius Julius and Publius Rutilius. Portentous and longer eclipses of the sun also occur, such as when Caesar the dictator was killed and in the Antonian war, with a pallor continuing for almost a whole year.
99| And again several suns are seen at once, neither above the sun itself nor below, but to the side, never near the earth nor opposite it, nor at night, but at sunrise or sunset. Once they are reported to have been seen even at midday in the Bosporus, lasting from the morning time until sunset. Three suns even the ancients saw rather often, as in the consulships of Spurius Postumius and Quintus Mucius, of Quintus Marcius and Marcus Porcius, of Marcus Antonius and Publius Dolabella, and of Marcus Lepidus and Lucius Plancus; and our own age saw them under the deified Claudius as emperor, in his consulship, with Cornelius Orfitus as colleague. More than three at once are not reported ever to have been seen down to this age. Three moons also appeared, as in the consulship of Gnaeus Domitius and Gaius Fannius.
100| What many have called night suns, a light from the sky seen at night, occurred in the consulship of Gaius Caecilius and Gnaeus Papirius and often at other times, so that the look of day shone in the night. A blazing shield, sparkling, ran across from the west to the east at sunset in the consulship of Lucius Valerius and Gaius Marius. A spark seen to fall from a star and to grow as it approached the earth, and, after it had become the size of the moon, to have shed light as on a cloudy day, then, when it withdrew into the sky, to have become a lamp, is reported to have happened once only, in the consulship of Gnaeus Octavius and Gaius Scribonius. The proconsul Silanus saw it with his retinue. Shootings of stars are also seen, and never without fierce winds arising from that quarter.
101| Stars exist also on the sea and on land. I have seen, in the night watches of soldiers, a gleam of that shape cling to the javelins in front of the rampart; and they settle upon the yards of sailors and other parts of ships as with a kind of vocal sound, like birds changing their perch from place to place, heavy when they come single, sinking the vessels and, if they fall into the bottom of the keel, burning them; but when double they are salutary and heralds of a prosperous voyage, and by their coming they say that dire and threatening one called Helena is put to flight; and for this reason they assign this divinity to Pollux and Castor and invoke them at sea. The heads of men also gleam about at evening, with great foreboding. All is of uncertain reasoning and hidden in the majesty of nature.
102| So far on the universe itself and the stars: now the remaining notable things of the sky. For our ancestors also called this the sky, which by another name is the air, everything that, being like emptiness, pours out this vital breath. This region is beneath the moon and much lower, as I observe is almost agreed, mixing the infinite part of the air from the higher nature with the infinite part of the exhalation of the earth, and is confused with both lots. From here come clouds, thunder and the other thunderbolts, from here hail, frosts, rains, storms, whirlwinds, from here very many of the ills of mortals and nature's battle with herself.
103| The force of the stars presses down earthly things that tend toward the sky and draws to itself the same things that would not rise of their own accord. Rains fall, mists rise, rivers are dried up, hailstones rush down. The rays scorch and drive the earth toward the middle from every side; the same, broken, spring back and carry off with them what they could. Vapour descends from above and goes back up again. Empty winds rush in and return with their plunder. The drawing in of breath by so many living creatures pulls the spirit from the height, but it strains the other way, and the earth pours out breath as though into an empty sky.
104| Thus with nature going to and fro, discord is kindled, as by some engine, at the speed of the universe. Nor is there leave for the battle to stand still, but it is ceaselessly snatched along and rolled about, and around the earth shows the causes of things in an immense globe, from time to time weaving one sky after another over itself through the clouds. This is the kingdom of the winds. And so their chief nature is there and nearly embraces the rest of these causes, since most assign the casting of thunder and thunderbolts to their violence; indeed, that it sometimes rains stones is because they have been snatched up by the wind, and many things similarly. For this reason several matters must be spoken of together.
105| That some causes of storms and rains are fixed, but some fortuitous or as yet of unascertained reasoning, is clear. For who would doubt that summers and winters, and what in the seasons is understood to come round each year, happen by the motion of the stars? Therefore as the nature of the sun is understood in the tempering of the year, so too the remaining stars each have their own power and are fertile according to the nature of each. Some are productive of moisture dissolved into liquid, some of it congealed into frosts or drawn together into snow or frozen into hail, others of breath, others of mildness or of heat, others of dew, others of cold. Nor, indeed, should these be thought as great as they appear, since the reckoning of so immense a height shows that none of them is smaller than the moon.
106| Therefore each exercises its own nature in its own motion, which is plain: the passages of Saturn above all make rains. Nor is this the power only of the travelling stars, but of many also of those attached to the heavens, whenever they are impelled by the approach of the wandering stars or goaded by the casting of rays, as we perceive happens in the Suculae, which the Greeks on that account call by a name meaning rain. Indeed some do so of their own accord and at fixed times, like the rising of the Kids. The star of Arcturus hardly ever emerges without a stormy hail.
107| For who does not know that at the rising of the Dog-star the heat of the sun is kindled? The effects of this star are felt very widely on earth: the seas boil when it rises, wines surge in their cellars, pools are stirred. Egypt calls an animal the oryx, which it says stands facing the star at its rising and gazes at it, and as it were worships it, after it has sneezed. That dogs, indeed, throughout that whole period are driven above all into madness is not in doubt.
108| Indeed even parts of certain signs have their own power, as at the autumnal equinox and at the winter solstice, when we understand the star to be completed with storms, and not in rains and storms only, but in many experiences of bodies and of the countryside. Some are breathed upon by the star, others are stirred at fixed times in the bowels, the sinews, the head, the mind. The olive and the white poplar and willows turn their leaves round at the solstice. On the winter solstice day itself the herb puleium, hung up indoors and drying, flowers.
109| Membranes stretched with air are burst. Let him wonder at this who does not observe by daily experiment that one herb, which is called heliotropium, always looks at the departing sun and turns with it at all hours, even when a cloud overshadows. Further, that by the power of the moon the bodies of oysters and shellfish and all conchs grow and again diminish; and the more careful investigators have found that even the fibres of shrews correspond to the number of the moon; and that the smallest animal, the ant, feels the powers of the star, always idle at the moon's dark.
110| It is all the more shameful for a man to be ignorant, admitting especially that the eye diseases of certain beasts of burden grow and diminish with the moon. The vastness of the subject is a defence, it being divided in immense height into seventy-two signs, that is, images of things or living creatures, into which the experts have distributed the sky. In these they have noted 1,600 stars, those evidently remarkable in effect or in appearance, for example in the tail of Taurus seven, which they have called Vergiliae, in the forehead the Suculae, and Bootes, which follows the Seven Triones.
111| Apart from these causes I would not deny that rains and winds arise, since it is certain that a damp mist is breathed out from the earth, and at other times, because of heat, a smoky one, and that clouds are generated when moisture escapes upward, or from air condensed into liquid. Their density and body are inferred by no doubtful proof, since they overshadow the sun, which is at other times clearly visible even to divers at any depth of water.
112| Therefore I do not deny that into these also fires fall from above, from the stars, such as we often see in clear weather, by the stroke of which it is true that the air is shaken, since even hurled javelins whistle; but when they reach a cloud a discordant vapour is generated, as when glowing iron is dipped into water, and a smoky whirl is rolled. From this storms are born, and if breath or vapour struggles in the cloud, thunder is produced; if it bursts out burning, thunderbolts; if it strains along a longer stretch, lightning-flashes. By these the cloud is split, by those broken through, and thunders are the blows of fires driven in, and so at once the fiery cracks of the clouds flash.
113| It is possible also that a breath which has travelled up from the earth, pressed down by the repulse of the stars and held in by a cloud, makes thunder, nature choking the sound while it struggles, the crash being uttered when it bursts out, as in a membrane stretched with breath. It is possible also that that breath, whatever it is, is kindled by friction, while it is borne headlong. It is possible also that it is struck out by the clash of clouds, as with two stones, the lightnings sparkling. But all these things are fortuitous. Hence the brute and idle thunderbolts, such as have no reasoning of nature. By these mountains are struck, by these seas, and all other futile strokes. But those that foretell the future come from on high, at fixed times and from their own stars.
114| In like fashion I should not deny that winds, or rather blasts, can be generated by the dry and parched exhalation of the earth, and can also be produced by waters breathing out air that neither thickens into mist nor grows dense into clouds, and can also be driven by the impulse of the sun, since wind may be understood as nothing other than a wave of air, and in more ways as well. For we see them rise from rivers and snows and from the sea, and even in calm weather, and others, which they call altani, from the land. These, when they come back from the sea, are called tropaei, but if they go on, apogei.
115| The bends of mountains, however, and their frequent peaks, and ridges bent at the elbow or broken at the shoulders, the hollow folds of valleys, cutting the air which therefore rebounds by the unevenness - the cause that also makes voices echo in many places - generate winds without end. Even caves do, such as one in Dalmatia, vast in mouth and steep in its chasm, into which, if a light weight is thrown, a squall like a whirlwind flashes out even on a calm day; the place has the name Senta. And in the province of Cyrenaica a certain rock is reported as holy to the south wind; it is sacrilege to touch it with a human hand, the south wind at once rolling up the sands. In many houses too, moistened chambers shut in the shade have their own breezes. So little is a cause wanting.
116| But it matters a great deal whether it is a blast or a wind. Those that are fixed and blow through, which are felt not by some single tract but by whole lands, which are neither breeze nor squall but, as the very name implies, males, are winds, whether they are born from the unceasing motion of the universe and the contrary meeting of the stars, or whether this is that generative breath of the nature of things, wandering hither and thither as though in some womb, or air lashed by the unequal striking of the wandering stars and the many-shaped casting of rays, or whether they issue from stars of their own, the nearer ones, or fall from those fixed in the sky: it is plain that these too have a law of nature, not unknown, though not yet fully understood.
117| More than twenty Greek authors of old handed down observations on them. All the more I wonder, when the world was discordant and divided into kingdoms, that is, into limbs, that so many men took care for things so hard to discover, in the midst of wars especially and faithless hospitality, with pirates, enemies of all mortals, terrifying by report those about to pass; so that today each man in his own region comes to know some things more truly from their commentaries, though they never went there, than by the knowledge of the natives; whereas now, in a peace so festive, with the emperor so delighting in the progress of affairs and arts, nothing at all is learned by new inquiry, nay, not even the discoveries of the ancients are thoroughly learned.
118| The rewards were not greater, being scattered among many by the greatness of fortune, and those men dug these things out with no other reward than that of helping posterity. For it is the morals of men that have grown old, not the fruits; and an immense multitude sails the sea, which is open, whatever it is, and with a welcoming landing on every shore, but for the sake of gain, not knowledge. Nor does the blind mind, intent only on avarice, reckon that this very thing can be done more safely by knowledge. Therefore I shall treat the winds more scrupulously than the plan of the work perhaps requires, seeing so many thousands of sailors.
119| The ancients kept to four only, for as many parts of the world - and so Homer names no more - by a dull reckoning, as was soon judged; the next age added eight, with a reckoning too fine and cut up. The most recent preferred a mean between the two, adding four to the short list from the numerous one. Hence each of the four quarters of the sky has two: from the equinoctial east, the subsolanus; from the winter east, the vulturnus. The former the Greeks call apeliotes, the latter eurus. From the south the auster, and from the winter west the Africus; they call them notus and Libs. From the equinoctial west the favonius, from the solstitial west the corus; they call them zephyrus and argestes. From the north the septentrio, and between it and the solstitial east the aquilo, called aparctias and boreas.
120| A more numerous reckoning had inserted four others: thrascias, midway between the north and the solstitial west; likewise caecias, midway between the aquilo and the equinoctial east, from the solstitial east; Phoenices, midway between the winter east and the south; likewise, between Libs and notus, a compound of the two, midway between the south and the winter west, Libonotus. Nor is that the end. Some have even added one by the name of mesen between boreas and caecias, and between eurus and notus, euronotus. Particular peoples also have winds peculiar to themselves, not proceeding beyond a certain tract, such as sciron for the Athenians, turned a little from argestes, unknown to the rest of Greece. Elsewhere the same blast is called Olympias.
121| Common usage understands argestes under all these names. Caecias some call Hellespontias, and others call the same ones otherwise. Likewise in the province of Narbonensis the most famous of the winds is the circius, inferior in violence to none of them, which most often carries one to Ostia, cutting across the Ligurian sea. The same is not only unknown in the other parts of the sky, but does not even reach Vienna, a city of the same province: a few miles before, by the meeting with a modest ridge, that great wind is held in check! And Fabianus denies that the austri penetrate into Egypt. From which a plain law of nature appears, even the winds having a time and an end assigned.
122| Spring, therefore, opens the seas to sailors; at its beginning the favonii soften the winter sky, the sun holding the 25th part of Aquarius. That day is the sixth before the Ides of February. This agrees roughly with all those which I shall set down next, since with each intercalation they come a day earlier and in the following five-year period keep the order again. The favonius some call chelidonias from the sight of the swallow, on the eighth day before the Kalends of March; some indeed call it ornithias, blowing, from the coming of the birds, on the seventy-first day after midwinter, for nine days. The opposite of the favonius is the one we have called subsolanus.
123| Summer is given by the rising of the Vergiliae, in an equal number of parts of Taurus, six days ahead of the Ides of May, a season which is austral, with this wind opposed by the septentrio. In the hottest time of summer the Dog-star rises, with the sun entering the first part of Leo, which day is the fifteenth before the Kalends of August. About eight days before its rising the aquilones precede it, which they call prodromi.
124| Two days after the rising, the same aquilones blow more steadily for forty days. These they call etesiae. The heat of the sun, doubled by the burning of the star, is believed to soften them, and none of the winds are more fixed. After them the austri blow frequently again, as far as the star Arcturus, which rises eleven days ahead of the autumn equinox. With this the corus begins. The corus brings autumn; its opposite is the vulturnus.
125| After that equinox, in about 44 days, the setting of the Vergiliae begins winter, a time that is accustomed to fall on the third day ahead of the Ides of November; this belongs to the winter aquilo and is very unlike that summer one, opposite which is the Africus. Seven days before the winter solstice and as many after it the sea is laid calm for the brooding of the halcyons, whence those days have taken their name. The rest of the time is winter. Yet the savagery of storms does not close the sea. Pirates first forced men, at the risk of death, to rush into death and try the winter seas; now avarice compels the same.
126| Of the winds, the coldest are those we said blow from the north, and the corus near them. These both restrain the others and drive off clouds. Damp are the Africus and above all the auster of Italy. They say that in the Pontus too the caecias draws clouds toward itself. Dry are the corus and vulturnus, except when they are dying away. Snowy are the aquilo and septentrio. Hail is brought by the septentrio and the corus. The auster is sultry; the vulturnus and favonius are mild. These are drier than the subsolanus, and in general all winds from the north and the west are drier than those from the south and the east.
127| The most healthy of all is the aquilo; harmful is the auster, and more so when dry, perhaps because when damp it is colder. Living creatures are believed to be less hungry when it blows. The etesiae mostly cease at night and rise from the third hour of daylight. In Spain and Asia their blast is from the east, in the Pontus from the aquilo, in the other regions from the south. They blow also from the winter solstice, when they are called ornithiae, but milder and for few days. Two also change nature with their position: the auster of Africa is clear, the aquilo cloudy.
128| All the winds blow in their turns, and for the most part so that the contrary begins as the one ending. When the nearest rise as others fall, they go round from the left side to the right, as the sun does. For their monthly reckoning the fourth day of the moon decides most. By the same winds one sails in opposite directions with the sheets let out, so that at night the opposed sails mostly meet. Greater waves are raised by the auster than by the aquilo, since the former blows from below, from the bottom of the sea, the latter from the top. And therefore after the austri earthquakes are especially harmful.
129| By night the auster, by day the aquilo, is stronger, and those blowing from the east last longer than those blowing from the west. The septentriones for the most part cease on an odd number, an observation that holds in many other parts of nature too; so odd numbers are considered male. The sun both increases and checks the blasts: rising and setting it increases them, at midday in the summer seasons it checks them. And so in the middle of the day or the night they are mostly lulled, because they are loosened either by excessive cold or by heat. Winds are also lulled by rains. They are expected chiefly from where the scattered clouds have opened the sky.
130| Eudoxus thinks that, if one cares to observe the smallest cycles, the same turns return of all of them when four years are completed, not of the winds only, but of the other weather for the most part. And the beginning of that five-year period is always in the intercalary year at the rising of the Dog-star. So much for the general winds.
131| Now for the sudden blasts, which, arising when the earth exhales, as has been said, and cast down again, at times, with a skin of clouds drawn over, appear in many shapes. For wandering and rushing in the manner of torrents, as we have shown pleases some, they produce thunder and lightning. But borne in with greater weight and onrush, if they have burst a wide dry cloud, they generate a squall, called by the Greeks ecnephias; but if, wheeling more tightly in a pressed-down fold, they have broken out, without fire, that is, without a thunderbolt, they make a whirlwind, which is called typhon, that is, a brandished ecnephias.
132| This carries with it something torn from a freezing cloud, rolling and turning it and making its own ruin heavier by that weight, and changing from place to place in a rapid spin, the chief scourge of sailors, shattering not only yards but the very vessels, twisted; there is a slender remedy in vinegar poured out against it as it comes, whose nature is the coldest. The same, thrown back by the very impact, carries up into the sky what it has caught up with it and swallows it into the height.
133| But if it breaks out of a deeper cavity of a pressed-down cloud, though less wide than a squall and not without a crash, they call it a turbo, throwing down everything nearest. The same, more fiery and kindled while it rages, is called prester, scorching and trampling alike whatever it touches. There is no typhon from the aquilo, nor an ecnephias when the ground is snowy or snow is lying. But if it has at once broken the cloud and burst into flame and had fire, and did not conceive it afterwards, it is a thunderbolt.
134| It differs from the prester as flame from fire. This spreads widely by its blast, that is rolled together by its onset. A vortex, by returning on itself, differs from a turbo as a shriek from a crash; a squall differs from both in breadth, with the cloud rather scattered than broken. A fog like a beast also forms in the cloud, dire for sailors. There is also what is called a column, when thickened moisture, rigid, sustains itself; of the same kind also the aulon, when a cloud draws up water as through a pipe.
135| In winter and in summer thunderbolts are rare, from opposite causes: in winter the air, condensed, is packed by the thicker hide of the clouds, and every exhalation of the earth, stiff and cold, extinguishes whatever fiery vapour it receives. This reasoning keeps Scythia, and the frozen regions about, free from the fall of thunderbolts; on the other hand excessive heat does so for Egypt, since the hot and dry breaths of the earth, very rare and thin, condense into weak clouds.
136| In spring and autumn thunderbolts are more frequent, the causes of summer and winter being mixed up in each season; by this reasoning they are frequent in Italy, because the air, more changeable with a milder winter and a cloudy summer, is always in some way in spring or in autumn. And in those parts of Italy that slope down from the north toward warmth, such as the district of the city and of Campania, lightning flashes alike in winter and in summer, a thing that does not happen in any other situation.
137| Of the thunderbolts themselves several kinds are reported. Those that come dry do not burn but scatter; those that come damp do not burn but darken. The third is what they call the bright one, of a most marvellous nature, by which casks are emptied with their coverings untouched and no other trace left, and gold and bronze and silver are melted inside, the little purses themselves in no way scorched, and not even the seal of wax disfigured. Marcia, [….], chief of the Romans, when pregnant was struck, the offspring killed, and she herself lived without any other harm. In the prodigies of Catiline's time, at the municipality of Pompeii, Marcus Herennius, a decurion, was struck by lightning on a clear day.
138| The writings of the Tuscans hold that nine gods send thunderbolts, and that they are of eleven kinds; for Jupiter hurls three. The Romans have kept only two of these, assigning the daytime ones to Jupiter, the nocturnal to Summanus, those being rarer, certainly, for the same reason of a colder sky. Etruria thinks that they also burst out of the earth, those which it calls infernal, which occur in the winter season and are especially savage and accursed, though all those they consider earthly are not of the general sort nor coming from the stars, but from the nearer and more turbid nature. The proof is evident, that all those above, falling from the sky, have oblique strokes, but these, which they call earthly, straight ones.
139| And those which fall from nearer matter are believed to come out of the earth because from the rebound they leave no traces, whereas that reasoning is of a stroke not from below but from the front. Those who pursue these matters more subtly think that these proceed from the star of Saturn, as the burning ones do from Mars, as when Volsinii, the wealthiest town of the Tuscans, was burned up entire by a thunderbolt. They also call family ones, prophetic for a whole life, those that happen first when a man has obtained his household. They hold, however, that they portend private matters for no more than ten years, except those made at a man's first inheritance or on his birthday, and public matters for no more than thirty years, except at the founding of a town.
140| There is a record in the annals that by certain rites and prayers thunderbolts are either compelled or obtained. It is an old report of Etruria that one was obtained at Volsinii, when the city's fields had been laid waste and a monster was approaching which they called Olta, summoned by their king Porsina. And before him Numa had done this rather often, as Lucius Piso, a weighty authority, relates in the first of his annals, and Tullus Hostilius, who imitated it not quite rightly, was struck by lightning. We have groves and altars and rites, and among the Statores, the Tonantes and the Feretrii we have also received an Elicius Jupiter.
141| There is a varying opinion about this in life, according to each man's mind. To believe that rites command nature is the part of the bold, and no less of the dull to take away power from benefits, since in the interpretation of lightning too knowledge has advanced so far that it foretells some to come on a fixed day, and whether they will destroy, or whether others have first been made that lie hidden, with innumerable public and private trials in both. Let these things therefore be as it has pleased nature, some certain, some doubtful, some proved, some to be condemned: for the rest we shall not omit what is memorable in them.
142| That lightning is seen before thunder is heard, though they occur together, is certain, and no wonder, since light is faster than sound; the stroke and the sound coincide, nature so measuring it, but the sound is of the thunderbolt having set out, not of its being brought in; and the breath is still quicker than the thunderbolt, so everything is shaken and blown upon before being struck, and no one is touched who has first seen the lightning or heard the thunder. Lightning on the left is thought favourable, because the left is the side of the world on which the rising is. And not so much the coming is watched as the return, whether the fire rebounds from the stroke, or whether, the work done or the fire used up, the breath returns.
143| The Tuscans divided the sky into sixteen parts for this observation. The first runs from the north to the equinoctial east; the second goes on to the south; the third reaches the equinoctial west; the fourth takes what remains from the west to the north. These they again divided into four parts each, of which eight from the east they called left, and as many on the opposite side right. Of these the most dire are those that touch the north from the west. And so it matters a great deal where thunderbolts have come from and where they have withdrawn. It is best for them to return to the parts of the rising.
144| Therefore when they have come from the first part of the sky and withdrawn into the same, the highest good fortune is portended, such as we have heard was the portent given to Sulla the dictator. The rest are less favourable or dire in proportion to the part of the heavens themselves. Some lightning, they think, it is not right to announce or to hear, unless it is reported to a guest or a parent. The great vanity of this observation was caught out when the temple of Juno at Rome was struck in the consulship of Scaurus, who soon after was the first man.
145| At night rather than by day it lightens without thunder. One animal, man, it does not always kill; the rest it kills at once, nature evidently granting him that honour, though so many beasts excel in strength. All lie on the opposite side. A man, unless he is turned toward the parts struck, does not breathe again. Those struck from above sink down. One struck while awake is found with eyes shut, while asleep with eyes open. A man killed in this way it is not lawful to burn; religion has handed down that he be buried in the earth. No animal is set alight unless killed by the thunderbolt. The wounds of those struck by lightning are colder than the remainder of the body.
146| Of those things that are born from the earth, it does not strike the shrub of laurel, and it never descends into the earth deeper than five feet. And so the fearful think deep caves the safest, or tents of the skins of the beasts they call calves, since this is the only animal of the sea that is not struck, as among birds the eagle is not, which for this reason is pictured as the armour-bearer of this weapon. In Italy, between Tarracina and the temple of Feronia, towers stopped being built in the time of the Civil War, there being none of them that was not demolished by lightning.
147| Besides these, it has been entered in the records that it rained milk and blood, from the lower sky, in the consulship of Manius Acilius and Gaius Porcius and often at other times, and flesh in the consulship of Publius Volumnius and Servius Sulpicius, and that of it nothing rotted through that the birds had not carried off; likewise iron among the Lucani, in the year before Marcus Crassus was killed by the Parthians and with him all the Lucanian soldiers, a large number of whom were in the army. The form of the iron that rained was like sponges. The soothsayers warned of wounds from above. In the consulship of Lucius Paulus and Gaius Marcellus wool fell as rain around the fort of Carissanum, near which a year later Titus Annius Milo was killed. The acts of that year record that baked bricks rained down while he was pleading his cause.
148| The clash of arms and the blare of trumpets heard from the sky we have received in the Cimbrian wars, and often before and after. In the third consulship of Marius, heavenly arms were seen by the people of Ameria and Tuder, clashing together from the east and the west, those from the west being driven back. That the sky itself burns is no wonder at all, and has often been seen, when clouds are seized by a greater fire.
149| The Greeks celebrate Anaxagoras of Clazomenae as having predicted, by his knowledge of heavenly writings, in the 78th Olympiad, in its second year, on which days a stone would drop from the sun; and this took place by daylight in a region of Thrace, at the river Aegos, a stone which is shown even now, the size of a wagonload, of burnt colour, a comet also blazing on those nights. If anyone believes this prediction, he must at the same time admit that the divine power of Anaxagoras was a greater marvel, and that the understanding of the nature of things is dissolved and all confounded, if either the sun itself is believed to be a stone or a stone ever to have been in it. That stones fall often, however, will not be doubted.
150| In the gymnasium at Abydos for that reason a stone is revered to this day, a modest one indeed, but one which the same Anaxagoras is said to have predicted would come down in the midst of the lands. One is revered also at Cassandria, formerly called Potidaea, which was founded on account of it. I myself saw one in the territory of the Vocontii, brought down shortly before. The bows, as we call them, are frequent, and neither a marvel nor a portent. For they do not even foretell rainy or clear days with any confidence. It is plain that a ray of the sun, sent into a hollow cloud, is, with its edge driven back, refracted toward the sun; and that the variety of colours comes about by a mixture of clouds, fires and air. Certainly they do not occur except with the sun opposite, nor ever except in the form of half a circle, nor at night, although Aristotle reports that one was sometimes seen, which however he himself admits can occur only on the 30th day of the moon.
151| They occur chiefly in winter, from the autumnal equinox when the day is shortening. When it increases again, from the spring equinox, they do not appear, nor around the solstice with the longest days, but at the winter solstice [that is, with the shortest days] frequently; the same are high when the sun is low and low when the sun is high, and smaller at rising or setting, but spread out in width, narrow at midday but of larger circuit. In summer they are not seen around midday; after the autumn equinox, at any hour, and never more than two at once.
152| As for the remaining matters of the same nature, I see they are doubtful to few: that hail is generated by rain turned to ice, and snow by the same moisture more softly compacted, and frost from freezing dew; that in winter snow falls, not hail, and hail itself more often by day than by night, and melts much faster than snow; that mists occur neither in summer nor in the greatest cold, dews neither in frost nor in heats nor in winds, nor except on a clear night; that by freezing the liquid is reduced, and when the ice has melted the same measure is not found; that varieties of colours and shapes are seen in the clouds, according as the fire mixed in prevails or is overcome.
153| Furthermore, that certain places have certain peculiarities: the nights of Africa are dewy in summer; at Locri in Italy and at the Velinus lake rainbows appear every day; at Rhodes and Syracuse clouds are never drawn over so thick that the sun is not seen at some hour; such things will be told more suitably in their own places. Let this be said about the air.
154| Next comes the earth, the only part of nature to which, for her outstanding services, we have given the title of maternal veneration. She is to men what the heaven is to god: she receives us at birth, nourishes us when born, and, once we are brought forth, ever sustains us, and last of all, when we are already cast off by the rest of nature, embraces us in her lap, then above all as a mother covering us, sacred by no merit more than that by which she makes us too sacred, bearing even our monuments and inscriptions, prolonging our name and extending our memory against the brevity of life; whose divinity, in our anger, we invoke as a last curse, praying it lie heavy on those who are already nothing, as though we did not know that she alone never grows angry with man.
155| Waters rise into rains, stiffen into hail, swell into waves, rush down in torrents; the air is thickened into clouds, rages in storms: but she is kindly, gentle, indulgent, and ever the handmaid to the uses of mortals; what she produces under compulsion, what she pours forth of her own accord - what odours and flavours, what juices, what textures, what colours! With what good faith she repays the loan entrusted to her! What she nourishes for our sake! For harmful creatures are the fault of the vital breath: she must receive seeds and sustain what is begotten; but among bad things the blame is with the begetters. She, once a serpent has struck a man, receives it no more, and exacts punishment even in the name of the helpless. She pours forth healing herbs and is ever in labour for man.
156| Indeed it may be believed that out of pity for us she even established poisons, so that, in weariness of life, hunger - a death most alien to the earth's merits - might not consume us with slow wasting, so that crags might not scatter the torn body, so that the punishment of the noose, perverse as it is, might not torment us with the breath shut in, when a way out is sought, so that a death sought in the deep might not turn burial into food, so that the pain of iron might not tear the body. So it is: in pity she bred that by a very easy draught of which, the body unharmed and with all its blood, we may be extinguished without labour, like men who thirst, so that no birds or beasts touch the dead and the earth keeps the man who has perished by his own hand.
157| But let us admit the truth: the earth bred a remedy for our ills, and we make it the poison of life. For do we not use iron likewise, which we cannot do without? And yet we would not complain with justice, even if she had borne it for the sake of wrongdoing. Against one part of nature, indeed, we are ungrateful. What does she not serve man for, whether for luxury or for insult? She is thrown into the seas or, so that we may let in the straits, eaten away. By waters, iron, fire, wood, stone, grain, she is tormented at every hour, and much more to minister to our luxuries than to our nourishment.
158| And yet what she suffers at the top and outermost skin might seem tolerable: we penetrate into her bowels, digging veins of gold and silver and mines of copper and lead; we seek gems too and certain little stones, driving shafts into the depth. We drag out her bowels so that a gem may be worn on the finger, for which it is sought. How many hands are worn down so that one joint may shine! If there were any underworld, the tunnels of avarice and luxury would surely by now have dug it up again. And we wonder if she has produced anything for harm! For wild beasts,
159| I suppose, guard her and keep off sacrilegious hands. Is it not among serpents that we dig, and veins of gold we handle with the roots of poison? Yet the goddess is the more placable on this account, that all these outcomes of wealth tend to crimes and slaughters and wars, and that we water her with our blood and cover her with unburied bones, with which, as though reproached for our frenzy, she at last covers herself over and hides even the crimes of mortals. Among the charges of an ungrateful spirit I would reckon this too, that we do not know her nature.
160| Her shape is the first matter, on which there is agreement. We call it certainly the orb of the earth, and we admit that the globe is enclosed by its poles. For the form of a perfect orb is not found in such lofty mountains and such flat plains, but its embrace, if all the lines were taken together in a circuit, would make the figure of a perfect orb, a thing that the nature of things itself compels, not for the same causes we gave for the heavens. For there a hollow convexity inclines upon itself and presses upon its own pole, that is, the earth, from every side. This rises, solid and packed, like something swelling, and stretches outward. The universe inclines toward the centre, but the earth goes out from the centre, its immense globe forced into the form of an orb by the constant revolution of the universe around it.
161| Here there is a mighty battle of the learned and, on the other side, of the common people, over whether men are spread round the earth on every side and stand with their feet turned toward one another, and all have a similar crown of the head, and in the same way are trodden upon at whatever middle part; the other side asking why those opposite do not fall off, as though a reason were not at hand why they in turn should wonder that we do not fall. There comes in an opinion probable even to the unteachable crowd, that even if the globe is unequal, like the shape of a pine-cone, the earth is nevertheless inhabited on every side.
162| But what does this matter, when another marvel arises: that she hangs and does not fall with us, as though the force of the breath, enclosed especially in the universe, were uncertain, or could fall, nature resisting and denying where it could fall to. For as the seat of fires is nowhere but in fires, of waters nowhere but in waters, of breath nowhere but in breath, so for the earth, with everything keeping her off, there is no place except in herself. That a globe is formed is yet marvellous, amid so great a flatness of sea and plains. To this opinion Dicaearchus is a witness, a man of the first learning, who by the care of kings measured mountains, of which he reported Pelion the highest at 1,250 paces by the reckoning of the plumb-line, concluding that this was no portion of the whole roundness. This conjecture seems to me uncertain, not being unaware that certain peaks of the Alps rise over a long stretch and no less than fifty miles.
163| But it is chiefly among the common people that this dispute lies, if they are compelled to believe that the figure of waters too is drawn up into a summit. Yet nothing in nature is more manifest to the sight. For drops hanging everywhere form into little globes, and when thrown on dust or laid on the down of leaves are seen in perfect roundness, and in filled cups the middle swells most, which on account of the thinness of the liquid and the softness settling into itself is detected more easily by reasoning than by sight. And this is even more marvellous, that in filled cups a very little liquid added makes the excess flow round, whereas the contrary happens when weights are added, often up to twenty denarii each, evidently because the things received within lift the liquid to a peak, whereas liquid poured in slides off from the rising heap.
164| The same is the reason why land is not seen from ships but is visible from the masts of ships, and why, when a vessel recedes far, if something that gleams is tied to the top of the mast, it seems to descend gradually and at last to be hidden. Finally, the ocean, which we admit is the outermost, by what other shape would it cohere and not fall away, with no margin enclosing it beyond? This returns to the same marvel, how, even if it is globed, the outermost sea does not fall away. Against this, that, were the seas flat and of the form in which they appear, this could not happen, the Greeks, the discoverers, teach by geometrical subtlety, to their own great joy and great glory.
165| For since waters are carried from the height to lower places and this is their admitted nature, and no one doubts that on any shore they have come as far as the slope allows, it plainly appears, without doubt, that the lower anything is, the nearer it is to the centre of the earth, and that all lines sent out from the centre to the nearest waters become shorter than those from the first waters to the outermost sea; therefore the waters, wholly and from every part, incline toward the centre and for that reason do not fall away, since they press toward the interior.
166| We ought to believe that the artificer nature formed this so, that, since the dry and arid earth could not hold together by itself without moisture, nor on the other hand could water stand unless the earth supported it, they might be joined in mutual embrace, the earth opening bays, the water passing through all of it, within and without, above and below, the veins running about like bonds, and even bursting out on the topmost ridges, where, driven by the breath and pressed out by the earth's weight, it leaps like jets from siphons and is so far from danger of falling that it springs up to every highest and loftiest place. By this reasoning it is plain why the seas do not grow, though so many rivers flow into them daily. The earth, then, in its whole globe, is girt about the middle by a surrounding sea, and this is not to be investigated by arguments, but is known already by experience.
167| From Gades and the Pillars of Hercules, by the circuit of Spain and the Gauls, the whole west is navigated today. The northern ocean has been navigated for the greater part, under the auspices of the deified Augustus, Germany being sailed round by fleet to the promontory of the Cimbri, and from there an immense sea seen, or known by report, toward the Scythian region and the lands stiff with excess of moisture. For that reason it is least likely that the seas fail there, where the force of moisture prevails. Next, from the east, from the Indian sea under the same star, the whole part sloping toward the Caspian sea has been sailed through by Macedonian arms, under the rule of Seleucus and Antiochus, who wanted it to be named after themselves Seleucis and Antiochis.
168| And around the Caspian many shores of the ocean were explored, and little short of the whole north has been rowed through from one side or the other, so that even so a huge argument, that of the Maeotic marsh, leaves no place for conjecture, whether it is a gulf of that ocean, as I note many have believed, or a backwater of a divided position by a narrow strait. On the other side, from the same west of Gades, a great part of the southern gulf is navigated today around Mauretania. The greater part of it, and of the east, the victories of Alexander the Great also traversed as far as the Arabian gulf, where, in the campaign of Gaius Caesar, son of Augustus, the figureheads of ships from Spanish wrecks are reported to have been recognized.
169| And Hanno, when the power of Carthage flourished, sailing round from Gades to the end of Arabia, gave that voyage in writing, as Himilco was sent at the same time to learn the outer parts of Europe. Besides, Cornelius Nepos is the authority that a certain Eudoxus of his own day, fleeing King Lathyrus, left the Arabian gulf and was borne all the way to Gades, and long before him Caelius Antipater says he had seen a man who had sailed from Spain to Ethiopia for the sake of trade.
170| The same Nepos, on the northern circuit, relates that to Quintus Metellus Celer, colleague of Afranius in the consulship but then proconsul of Gaul, certain Indians were given as a gift by a king of the Suebi, having been swept into Germany by storms while sailing from India for the sake of trade. So the seas, flowing around on every side, divide the globe and take a part of the world from us, with no passable way from there to here or from here to there. This reflection seems suited to exposing the vanity of mortals, and calls on me to show, as though placed before the eyes, how great this whole thing is, whatever it is, in which nothing is enough for individuals.
171| First of all, it seems to be reckoned at half, as though no portion were taken from it by the ocean itself, which, poured all around the middle, and both discharging and receiving all the other waters, and nourishing whatever goes up into the clouds and the stars themselves, so many and so great, in what space of breadth, then, will it be believed to dwell? The possession of so vast a mass must be shameless and boundless.
172| Add that heaven has taken more from what remained. For since it has five parts, which they call zones, everything lying beneath the two outermost ones, on either side around the poles, this one which is called the seven oxen's and the one opposite which is called southern, is pressed down by hostile stiffness and everlasting frost. There is perpetual gloom in both, and, from the sight of milder stars being foreign, a malign light, whitish with frost alone. But the middle of the lands, where the sun's track runs, is scorched with flames and roasted by the heat at close quarters. Around, only two zones, between the burnt one and the frozen ones, are temperate, and they themselves are not passable to each other because of the fiery stars.
173| So heaven has taken three parts of the earth; the plunder by the ocean is uncertain. But the one portion left to us I do not know whether it is not in an even greater loss, if indeed the same ocean, poured into many gulfs, as we shall tell, barks so close at the inner seas by its approach that the Arabian gulf is 115 miles distant from the Egyptian sea, and the Caspian 375,000 from the Pontic; the same, flowing in between, enters through so many seas, by which it parts Africa, Europe and Asia - how much of the lands does it occupy?
174| Let there be reckoned further the measure of so many rivers and such great marshes; let lakes and pools be added, ridges already raised into the sky and steep even to look at, forests and precipitous valleys and wildernesses, and places deserted for a thousand causes; let these so many portions of the earth be taken away, nay rather, as many have handed down, a point of the universe (for the earth is nothing else in the whole): this is the material of our glory, this is our seat. Here we hold offices, here we exercise commands, here we crave wealth, here we, the human race, make an uproar, here we renew wars, even civil ones, and by mutual slaughter make the earth roomier! And,
175| to pass over the public frenzies of nations, this earth, in which we drive out our neighbours and by theft dig turf from a neighbour into our own soil, so that he who has measured out his fields most widely and has driven his neighbours out beyond report, what part of the earth does he enjoy, or, when he has extended it to the measure of his greed, what portion of it, at last, does he hold when dead?
176| That it is in the middle of the whole universe is established by no doubtful proofs, and most plainly by the equinox, with equal hours. For unless it were in the middle, it could not have equal days and nights, as is found, and the dioptrae confirm it especially, since at the equinoctial season rising and setting are seen from the same line, at the solstice the rising along its own line, and at the winter solstice the setting. Which could in no way happen unless it were placed at the centre.
177| Three circles, interwoven with the zones mentioned above, mark the inequalities of the seasons: the solstitial, from the highest part of the zodiac for us, toward the northern region, and opposite, toward the other pole, the winter one; likewise the equinoctial, proceeding in the middle circuit of the zodiac. The cause of the other things we marvel at lies in the shape of the earth itself, which is understood, by the same proofs, to be like a globe, with the waters along with it. For so it comes about, without doubt, that the stars of the northern region never set for us, and conversely those of the southern never rise, and again these are not seen by those, as the globe of the earth lifts itself against the midst of the sight.
178| The Trogodytice and the adjoining Egypt do not see the septentriones, nor does Italy see Canopus, or what they call Berenice's hair, likewise what under the deified Augustus they named Caesar's throne, notable stars there. And the rising height is so plainly curved that Canopus seems, to those looking from Alexandria, to stand out above the earth by about a fourth part of one sign, from Rhodes to graze the earth as it were itself, and in the Pontus not to be seen at all, where the septentrio is highest. The same is hidden from Rhodes, and more so from Alexandria; in Arabia, in November, hidden in the first watch, it shows itself in the second; at Meroe at the solstice it appears for a little while in the evening, and a few days before Arcturus rises it is seen along with the day.
179| Mariners' voyages discover this above all, in one place with the sea against them, in another sloping down, with stars suddenly visible and as though emerging from the strait, which had lain hidden in the curve of the ball. For the universe does not raise itself by this higher pole - or else these stars would be seen on every side - but these same stars are believed higher to those nearest and sunk to those far off, and as now this peak appears lofty to those placed on the downward slope, so to those who have crossed to that slope of the earth those rise up, while those that were high here sink, which could not happen except in the figure of a ball.
180| For this reason the dwellers in the east do not perceive the evening eclipses of the sun and moon, nor those dwelling in the west the morning ones, while the midday ones they perceive later than we. At Arbela, in the victory of Alexander the Great, the moon is reported to have failed in the second hour of the night, and the same moon rising in Sicily. The eclipse of the sun in the consulship of Vipstanus and Fonteius, who were consuls a few years ago, occurring on the day before the Kalends of May, was perceived in Campania between the seventh and eighth hours of the day, and the commander Corbulo reported it seen in Armenia between the tenth and eleventh hours of the day, the circuit of the globe revealing some things to some and hiding them from others. If the earth were flat, everything would appear at once to everyone and nights would not be unequal; for equal intervals of twelve hours would be seen alike by those placed elsewhere as in the middle, which now do not coincide in every part in the same way.
181| For this reason neither night nor day, though the same, is over the whole orb at once, the opposition of the globe bringing night, its circuit bringing day. This has been learned by many experiments, in Africa and Spain by Hannibal's towers, and in Asia, where, on account of terrors from pirates, a similar guard of watch-towers was raised, in which it has often been found that beacon fires lit in the sixth hour of the day were observed from behind in the third hour of the night by the farthest. The runner of the same Alexander, Philonides, covered from Sicyon to Elis, 1,200 stadia, in nine hours of the day, and from there, though the way was downhill, he several times came back in the third hour of the night. The cause was that when going his road was with the sun, and returning he met it going the other way and passed it in contrary encounter. For this reason those sailing to the west, though the day is shortest, overcome the spaces of a night voyage, as though accompanying the sun itself.
182| And the hour-reckoning vessels are not for use everywhere the same, the shadows of the sun changing themselves at every 300 stadia or, at the farthest, every 500. And so the shadow of the pin, which they call the gnomon, in Egypt at midday on the day of the equinox makes a little more than half the measure of the gnomon, in the city of Rome the shadow lacks a ninth part of the gnomon, in the town of Ancona there is a surplus of a thirty-fifth, and in the part of Italy called Venetia the shadow at the same hours is equal to the gnomon.
183| In a similar way they report that at the town of Syene, which lies 5,000 stadia above Alexandria, on the midday of the solstice no shadow is cast, and a well made for the sake of that experiment is lit up entirely. From which it is plain that the sun is then over the head at that place, which Onesicritus writes happens at the same time in India above the river Hypasis. And it is agreed that in the city of Berenice of the Trogodytae, and from there at 4,820 stadia, in the same nation at the town of Ptolemais, which was founded at the edge of the Red Sea for the first elephant hunts, this same thing happens during forty-five days before the solstice and as many after, and during those 90 days the shadows are cast to the south.
184| Again, at Meroe - this island and capital of the Aethiopian nation is inhabited 5,000 stadia from Syene on the river Nile - shadows vanish twice a year, when the sun is then in the eighteenth part of Taurus and the fourteenth of Leo. In the nation of the Oreti in India there is a mountain named Maleus, near which shadows are cast to the south in summer and to the north in winter. Only for fifteen nights does the septentrio appear there. In the same India, at Patala, a very celebrated port, the sun rises on the right, and shadows fall to the south.
185| While Alexander was staying there it was noted that the septentrio was seen only in the first part of the night. Onesicritus, his officer, wrote that in those places of India where there are no shadows, the septentrio is not seen, that those places are called ascia, and that the hours are not counted there. And Eratosthenes reported that in the whole Trogodytice shadows fall in the opposite direction twice forty-five days in the year.
186| So it comes about that, from the varying increase of light, at Meroe the longest day comprises 12 equinoctial hours and eight parts of one hour, at Alexandria 14 hours, in Italy 15, in Britain 17, where in summer bright nights doubtless show themselves, a thing reasoning compels us to believe, as on the days of the solstice, with the sun approaching nearer the summit of the universe, the lands lying beneath, in a narrow circuit of light, have continuous days for six months, and nights, on the contrary, when it is removed toward the winter solstice.
187| Pytheas of Massilia writes that this happens in the island of Thule, six days' sailing to the north of Britain, and some even affirm it for Mona, which is distant from Camalodunum, a town of Britain, about 200,000. This reckoning of shadows, and what they call gnomonice, was discovered by Anaximenes of Miletus, the pupil of Anaximander, of whom we have spoken, and he was the first to show at Lacedaemon the clock which they call the sciothericon.
188| The day itself different peoples have observed differently: the Babylonians as between two sunrises, the Athenians between two sunsets, the Umbrians from midday to midday, the whole common people from daylight to dark, the Roman priests and those who defined the civil day, likewise the Egyptians, as well as Hipparchus, from midnight to midnight. It is apparent that the intervals of light between sunrises are shorter near the solstices than at the equinoxes, since the zodiac lies more obliquely around its middle, but more upright near the solstice.
189| We must add what is linked to these celestial causes. For it is not doubtful that the Aethiopians, scorched by the heat of the neighbouring star, are born looking as though burnt, with frizzled beard and hair, and that in the opposite region of the world there are peoples with white, icy skin, with flowing yellow hair, fierce from the stiffness of the climate, while those are wise by quickness; and by the very evidence of the legs, in those the juice is called back by the nature of the heat into the upper parts, in these it is driven down into the lower parts by falling moisture; here grave wild beasts, there varied forms of animals are produced, and above all many shapes of birds, made swift by the fire; but the tallness of bodies in both, there by the thrust of the fires, here by the nourishment of moisture;
190| but in the middle of the earth, by a salubrious mixture from both sides, are tracts fertile for everything, with moderate habits of body and a great temperance in colour, gentle customs, clear senses, fertile minds capable of all nature, and these have the empires that never belonged to the outermost peoples, just as those never obeyed these, torn away and solitary, under the divinity of the nature that presses upon them.
191| The doctrines of the Babylonians hold that earth tremors and chasms, like everything else, happen by the force of the stars, but of those three to which they assign thunderbolts, and that they happen when the travelling stars are with the sun or in conjunction, and chiefly about the quadratures of the universe. A certain splendid and immortal divinity in this is, if we believe it, attributed to Anaximander of Miletus, the natural philosopher, who is said to have predicted to the Lacedaemonians that they should guard their city and houses, for an earthquake was impending, when their whole city collapsed and a great part of Mount Taygetus, jutting out in the shape of a ship's stern, broke off and weighed that disaster down with a further ruin. Another conjecture, but that too divine, is also attributed to Pherecydes, the teacher of Pythagoras, that from a draught of water out of a well he foresaw and predicted an earthquake to his fellow citizens.
192| If these things are true, how far at last can such men be seen to be from god, while they live? And these matters indeed are to be left to each person's judgment: I think it is not doubtful that winds are the cause. For the lands never tremble except when the seas are lulled and the sky so calm that the flights of birds do not hang, all the breath that bears them up having been withdrawn, nor ever except after winds, the blast being stored, of course, in the veins and hidden hollows of the earth. A tremor in the earth is nothing other than thunder in a cloud, nor a chasm anything other than when the thunderbolt bursts out, the shut-in breath struggling and striving to go out to freedom.
193| It is therefore shaken in different ways, and marvellous works are produced, in one place walls laid low, in another swallowed by a deep chasm, in another masses thrown up, in another rivers sent forth, sometimes even fires or hot springs, in another the course of rivers turned back. A terrible sound precedes and accompanies it, at one time like a murmur, at another like bellowing or human cries or the crash of clashing arms, according to the quality of the receiving matter and the form either of the caverns or of the tunnel through which it travels, thinner as it creeps along in a narrow place, hoarse in the same when curved back, rebounding in hard ones, seething in damp ones, surging in standing waters, raging against solid rock.
194| And so a sound is often produced even without a tremor. Nor is it ever shaken in a simple way, but trembles and vibrates. A chasm sometimes remains, showing what it has swallowed, sometimes hides it with the mouth closed and the ground drawn over again so that no traces are left, cities mostly devoured and a stretch of fields swallowed. Seaside places are shaken most, nor are mountainous ones free from such an evil. I have ascertained that the Alps and the Apennine have often trembled.
195| In autumn and spring the lands are moved more often, as thunderbolts are. Hence the Gauls and Egypt are shaken least, since here the cause of summer stands in the way, there that of winter. Likewise more often by night than by day. The greatest tremors occur in the morning and evening, but near daybreak they are frequent, and by day around midday. They happen also at an eclipse of the sun and moon, since the storms are then lulled, but especially when heat follows rains or rains follow heat.
196| Sailors also perceive them by no doubtful sign, when the swell suddenly rises without a breath of wind or is shaken by a blow. In ships too the timbers tremble as in buildings and give warning by a creak. Indeed even birds do not sit unafraid. There is also a sign in the sky, which precedes a future tremor either by day or a little after sunset in clear weather: a thin streak, as of a line of cloud, stretched out over a long space.
197| There is also in wells a muddier water, not without a disagreeable smell, just as in the same there is a remedy, of the kind that numerous caves provide; for they breathe out the breath that has been taken in. This is noted in whole towns: they are shaken less when hollowed out by frequent tunnels for drainage, and those that hang over such places are far safer, as is understood at Naples in Italy, its solid part being exposed to such mishaps. The safest parts of buildings are the vaults, also the corners of walls and the doorposts, which resist by alternate pushing. And walls built of earthen brick are shaken with less harm.
198| There is also a great difference within the kind of movement itself, for the earth is shaken in several ways. The safest is when it vibrates, making buildings rattle and creak, and when it swells up and rises, then sinks back with an alternating motion. It does no harm, too, when roofs collide and batter one another with opposing blows, since one movement is held back by the other. A billowing tilt, a kind of rolling like the swell of the sea, is dangerous, or when the whole movement drives itself in one direction. Tremors cease when the wind has broken out; but if they have persisted, they are not stilled before 40 days, and generally later, since some have lasted a year or even two.
199| Once there occurred an enormous prodigy of the lands, which I find in the volumes of the Etruscan discipline, in the territory of Mutina, in the consulship of Lucius Marcius and Sextus Julius. Two mountains ran together, charging at each other with a tremendous crash and then drawing back, while flame and smoke rose into the sky between them by day, and a great crowd of Roman knights, with their households and travellers, watched from the Aemilian Way. By that collision all the farmhouses were crushed, and a great many animals that had been inside were killed. This was the year before the Social War, which, I am inclined to think, was more deadly to the land of Italy itself than even the civil wars. Our own age has known an omen no less wonderful, in the final year of Nero the emperor, as we have set out in the account of his reign: meadows and olive groves, with a public road running between them, passed over into each other's places in the territory of the Marrucini, on the estates of Vettius Marcellus, a Roman knight who managed Nero's affairs.
200| Together with an earthquake there also come floods of the sea, evidently poured in by the same breath, or else taken into the hollow of the sinking earth. The greatest earthquake in the memory of mortals occurred in the principate of Tiberius Caesar, when twelve cities of Asia were laid low in a single night. The most frequent was in the Punic War, when in the course of one year news reached Rome of it fifty-seven times; and in that very year, while they were fighting at Lake Trasimene, neither the Carthaginians nor the Romans felt a very great earthquake. Nor is the evil a simple one, nor is the danger only in the quaking itself: the portent is equal to it or greater. The city of Rome has never trembled without that being a forewarning of some future event.
201| The same cause produces new lands, when that same breath, strong enough to lift, has not been able to burst out of the ground. For lands are born not only by the deposit of rivers, as the Echinades islands were piled up by the river Acheloüs, and by the Nile the greater part of Egypt (in which, as we believe Homer, there was a course of a night and a day from the island of Pharos), nor only by the retreat of the sea, as formerly at Circeii. This is recorded to have happened also in the harbour of Ambracia over a distance of ten miles, and of five miles at the Piraeus of the Athenians; and the Ephesian sea once washed the temple of Diana. If we believe Herodotus, there was sea above Memphis as far as the mountains of the Ethiopians, and likewise from the plains of Arabia; sea around Ilium and in all Teuthrania, and wherever the Maeander has brought in its plains.
202| Lands are born also in another way, and suddenly rise out of some sea, as though nature were making things even with herself and giving back in one place what a chasm has swallowed in another. The islands of Delos and Rhodes have long been recorded as famous; and smaller ones were born later: beyond Melos, Anaphe; between Lemnos and the Hellespont, Nea; between Lebedus and Teos, Halone; among the Cyclades, Thera and Therasia; among the same, in the 145th Olympiad, in its fourth year [after 130 years], Hiera, also called Automate, and two stadia from it, after 242 years, in our own age, in the consulship of Junius Silanus and Valerius [Balbus],
203| on the eighth day before the Ides of July, Thia. Before our time, one also emerged near Italy among the Aeolian islands, and likewise near Crete, 2,500 paces in extent, together with hot springs; another in the 163rd Olympiad's third year, in the Tuscan gulf, which burned with a violent blast, and it is recorded that, with a great multitude of fish floating around it, all those who had eaten of them at once died. So also they say the Pithecussae in the Campanian gulf arose, and soon afterwards the mountain Epopos on them, when flame suddenly burst out of it, was levelled to a flat plain. On the same island a town was swallowed into the depths, and by another movement of the earth a pool emerged, and by yet another, mountains having been rolled forward, the island Prochyta came into being.
204| For nature has made islands in this manner too: she tore Sicily from Italy, Cyprus from Syria, Euboea from Boeotia, Atalante and Macria from Euboea, Besbicus from Bithynia, and, from the headland of the Sirens, Leucosia. Again she has taken islands away from the sea and joined them to the land: Antissa to Lesbos, Zephyrium to Halicarnassus, Aethusa to Myndus, Dromiscos and Perne to Miletus, and Narthecusa to the promontory of Parthenius. Hybanda, once an island of Ionia, is now two hundred stadia from the sea; Ephesus has Syrie inland, and neighbouring Magnesia has Derasidae and Sapphonia.
205| Epidaurus and Oricum have ceased to be islands. She has swallowed lands entire: first of all where the Atlantic Sea is, if we believe Plato, over an immense space, and later also the inner sea. We see today Acarnania drowned by the Ambracian gulf, Achaea by the Corinthian one, and Europe together with Asia by the Propontis and the Pontus. Besides this the sea has broken through at Leucas, Antirrhium, the Hellespont, and the two Bosporuses. And, to pass over gulfs and pools, the earth devours herself. She swallowed Cibotus, a very high mountain with a town of Caria; Sipylus in Magnesia, and earlier in the same place a most famous city that was called Tantalis; the territories of the cities Galene and Gamale in Phoenicia, along with the cities themselves; and Phegium, a very lofty ridge of Ethiopia, as if the shores too were not treacherous in their ravages.
206| The Pontus took away Pyrrha and Antissa around Lake Maeotis, and the Corinthian gulf took Helice and Bura, whose traces appear in the deep. More than thirty miles of the island of Ceos were suddenly torn away and carried off, with very many of its people; in Sicily half of the city of Tyndaris was taken, and whatever is missing there from Italy; likewise Eleusis in Boeotia. Let earthquakes be passed over in silence, and whatever there is where at least the graves of cities remain, so that we may speak of the wonders of the earth rather than the crimes of nature. And, by Hercules, the things of the heavens would not be harder to relate.
207| There is the wealth of metals, so various, so rich, so fruitful, springing up again through so many ages, though fires, collapses, shipwrecks, wars and frauds ravage so much of it daily over the whole world, and luxury and so many mortals wear so much away; the painting of the gems, so manifold, the colours of the stones with their spots, and among them the whiteness of some, which shuts out everything but light; the power of medicinal springs; the perpetual blazes, through so many ages, of fires that flash out in so many places; deadly breaths, in some places let out from pits, or deadly from the very situation of the spot; in some places fatal to birds alone, as at Soracte in the district near the city; in others to all living creatures except man,
208| and sometimes to man as well, as in the territory of Sinuessa and of Puteoli. They call them spiracula, others Charonea: pits exhaling a deadly breath. So too in the land of the Hirpini, the place of Ampsanctus by the temple of Mephitis, which kills those who enter it; in the same way at Hierapolis in Asia, which is harmless only to the priest of the Great Mother. Elsewhere there are prophetic caves, from whose exhalation people grow intoxicated and foretell the future, as at Delphi, the most famous oracle. In these matters what other cause can any mortal bring forward than the divinity of nature, diffused through all things, breaking out now in one way and now in another?
209| Some lands, indeed, tremble at being walked on, as in the territory of Gabii, a short way from the city of Rome, for about two hundred iugera, under the gallop of riders; likewise in the territory of Reate. Some islands are always afloat, as in the Caecuban territory and the same Reatine, in that of Mutina, that of Statonia, and the lake of Vadimon, and at the Cutilian waters a shady wood, that is never found in one spot both by day and by night; in Lydia the islands called Calaminae, driven not only by winds but also by poles wherever one wishes, which in the Mithridatic war were the safety of many citizens. There are small ones also in the Nymphaeum, called Saliares, because in a chorus of song they move to the beat of the dancers' feet. In the great Tarquinian lake of Italy two groves float around, now assuming a triangular shape, now a round one, in their circuit, as the winds drive them, but never a square.
210| Paphos has a celebrated shrine of Venus, one court of which receives no rain; likewise at Nea, a town of the Troad, around the statue of Minerva; and in the same place the sacrifices left there do not putrefy.
211| Near Harpasa, a town of Asia, stands a fearful crag, movable with a single finger, yet resisting if it is pushed with the whole body. In the peninsula of the Tauri, in the community of Parasinus, there is an earth by which all wounds are healed. But around Assos in the Troad a stone is produced that consumes every body; it is named sarcophagus. Near the river Indus are two mountains: one by nature holds all iron fast, the other repels it, so that, if there are nails in a shoe, in the one the feet cannot be pulled free, in the other they cannot be made to stay. It is noted that at Locri and Croton there has never been a plague, nor an earthquake at Ilium, but that in Lycia there are always forty clear days after an earthquake. In the territory of Arpi, grain that is sown does not come up; at the Mucian altars in the Veientine territory, and near Tusculum, and in the Ciminian forest, there are places in which things driven into the ground cannot be pulled out. In the Crustuminian, hay that grows there is harmful, while outside it is wholesome.
212| Much has been said also of the nature of waters, but the tides of the sea, which come in and flow back, are the greatest marvel, in several ways indeed, but the cause lies in the sun and moon. Twice between two risings of the moon they flow in, and twice they return, always in twenty-four hours: first, as the heavens rise with her, they swell; soon, as she declines from the meridian height of the sky toward her setting, they subside; and again, as she approaches from the setting beneath the earth to the lowest part of the sky, opposite the meridian, they flood in,
213| and from there, until she rises again, they draw back into themselves; and they never ebb at the same time as the day before, as though gasping, with the greedy star drawing the seas along with her by a draught, and rising continually from a different quarter than the day before; yet returning at equal intervals and always at six-hour spacings, not of any given day or night or place, but equinoctial ones, and therefore unequal against the span of the ordinary hours, according as more or fewer of those measures fall into the day or the night,
214| and equal everywhere only at the equinox. A great proof, full of light and even of daytime utterance, that those are dull who deny that the stars pass beneath the earth and rise again, and that they present a like aspect to the lands there, indeed to the whole of nature, in the same workings of rising and setting, the star's course or other effect being no less manifest beneath the earth than when it moves past before our eyes.
215| The difference due to the moon is still more manifold, and first in periods of seven days. For the tides are moderate from the new moon to the half moon, and swell out more fully from that point and run strongest at the full. From then they grow gentler, equal by the seventh day to those at first, and again on the other side, at the half moon, they increase. At conjunction with the sun they are equal to the full. The same tides are milder when the moon is in the northern signs and withdrawing farther from the earth than when, having turned toward the south, she exerts her force with a nearer thrust. Every eight years the tides return to the beginnings of their motion and to equal increases, in the hundredth circuit of the moon. All these effects are increased by the yearly causes of the sun: the tides are greatest at the two equinoxes, and more at the autumnal than the spring one, while they are lowest at the winter solstice, and still more at the summer one.
216| Yet this is not in the very turning points of the seasons that I have named, but a few days after, just as it is not at the full moon or the last moon but afterwards, nor at once when the sky shows or hides the moon or she declines from the middle region, but generally about two equinoctial hours later, the effect of everything that happens in the heavens always reaching the earth more slowly than the sight of it, as with lightning, thunder and thunderbolts.
217| All the tides on the ocean, however, cover and lay bare larger spaces than in the rest of the sea, whether because the whole body of water acts more vigorously than a part, or because the open expanse feels more effectively the force of the star ranging freely, while the same force is held back by narrow confines. For that reason lakes and rivers are not stirred in a like manner. (Pytheas of Massilia is the authority that the tides above Britain swell by eighty cubits.) The inner seas too are shut in by the lands as in a harbour;
218| yet in some places a wider spaciousness obeys the rule, as in the many instances of voyagers carried from Italy to Utica on the third day over a calm sea and with no pressure on the sails, while the tide was boiling. These movements are detected nearer the shores more than on the deep, since in the body also the extremities feel the pulse of the veins, that is, of the breath, more. In most estuaries, however, owing to the different risings of the stars in each region, different tides arise, differing in time and not in principle, as in the Syrtes.
219| And some places have a nature of their own, as the strait of Tauromenium, which reverses its flow more often, and that in Euboea, which reverses it seven times in a day and a night. The same tide stands still for three days in the month, on the seventh, eighth and ninth day of the moon. At Gades, the spring nearest the shrine of Hercules, enclosed like a well, at some times rises and falls together with the ocean, at others does both at opposite times; in the same place another spring agrees with the movements of the ocean. On the bank of the Baetis there is a town whose wells diminish as the tide rises and increase as it goes out, standing still at the times between. The same nature belongs to a single well in the town of Hispalis, the rest being ordinary. And the Pontus always flows outward into the Propontis, and never flows back inward into the Pontus.
220| All seas are cleansed at the full moon, and some also at a fixed time. Around Messana and Mylae refuse like dung is cast up upon the shore, whence the story that the cattle of the Sun are stabled there. To these Aristotle adds (so that I may pass over nothing I know of) that no animal dies except at the ebbing of the tide. This has been observed by many on the Gallic ocean, and has been found true in man alone.
221| From this a true inference arises, that the moon is not without reason thought to be a star of breath; that it is this which saturates the lands, filling bodies as it approaches and emptying them as it withdraws. Hence, as she grows, shellfish grow, and those without blood feel the breath most; but the blood too, even of men, grows and diminishes with her light, and leaves and fodder also feel it (as will be told in its place), her force penetrating all things alike.
222| And so liquid is dried by the heat of the sun, and we have received that this is a masculine star, scorching and sucking up all things. Thus the taste of salt is boiled into the sea spreading widely, either because, the sweet and thin part having been drawn out, which the force of fire most easily draws, all the harsher and thicker is left (and for that reason the top water of the seas is sweeter than the deep; this is a truer cause of the harsh taste than that the sea is the everlasting sweat of the earth), or because very much vapour from the dry land is mixed into it, or because the nature of the earth infects it as it does medicinal waters. There is an example in Dionysius, tyrant of Sicily: when he was driven from that power, a prodigy occurred, that in one day the sea in the harbour turned sweet.
223| On the contrary, they say, the moon's is a feminine and soft star, and it loosens the moisture of the night and draws it, but does not carry it off. This is clear from the fact that she dissolves into decay, by her sight, the slain bodies of wild beasts, and recalls into the head the torpor contracted by those lulled in sleep; she melts ice again and loosens everything with her moistening breath. Thus the changes of nature are balanced and always suffice, some of the stars condensing the elements and others dispersing them. But the moon's nourishment is in fresh waters, as the sun's is in those of the sea.
224| Fabianus gives the deepest sea as 15 stadia. Others report that in the Pontus, opposite the people of the Coraxi (they call it the Depth of the Pontus), about three hundred stadia from the mainland, the sea has an immense depth, no shallows ever having been found. Fresh waters near the sea, bursting forth as though from pipes, make this the more wonderful. For the nature of waters never ceases from marvels. Fresh waters ride on the sea, being lighter beyond doubt; and so sea waters, whose nature is heavier, bear up better what rides upon them. Some fresh waters even pass over other fresh ones, as in the lake Fucinus the river Pitonius carried in, in Lake Como the Addua, in Verbannus the Ticinus, in Benacus the Mincius, in Sebinnus the Ollius, in Lemannus the Rhone: this one beyond the Alps, the others in Italy, passing over many miles in their hospitable crossing, bearing out only their own waters, and none more abundant than those they brought in. This is recorded also of the river Orontes of Syria and many others.
225| Some, indeed, out of hatred of the sea, go beneath the very shallows, like Arethusa, the spring of Syracuse, in which things thrown into the Alpheus are given back, a river that flows through Olympia and pours into the Peloponnesian shore. They go beneath the lands and are given back again: the Lycus in Asia, the Erasinus in Argolis, the Tigris in Mesopotamia; and things sunk in the spring of Aesculapius at Athens are given back at Phalerum. And in the plain of Atina a river that has sunk comes out after 20 miles, and in the territory of Aquileia the Timavus.
226| Nothing can sink in the Asphaltite lake of Judaea, which produces bitumen, nor in the Aretissa of Greater Armenia; this one, being nitrous, nourishes fish. In the Sallentine territory beside the town of Manduria, lies a lake filled to its margins, which is neither lessened by water being drawn off nor increased by water being poured in. In the river of the Cicones and in the Picene lake Velinus, wood thrown in is covered with a stony crust, and in the river Surius of Colchis so much so that the bark, still persisting, often covers what has already become stone. Similarly in the river Silerus beyond Surrentum not only twigs plunged in but also leaves turn to stone, though the water is wholesome to drink. At the outflow of the Reatine marsh a rock grows [and in the Red Sea olives and verdant shrubs spring up].
227| But the nature of very many springs is wonderful for their heat, and this even on the Alpine ridges, and in the very sea between Italy and Aenaria, in the gulf of Baiae and in the river Liris and many others. For there is fresh water to be drawn in the sea in very many places, as at the Chelidonian islands and at Aradus and in the ocean at Gades. In the hot waters of the people of Patavium green plants grow, in those of the people of Pisa frogs, at Vetulonii in Etruria, not far from the sea, fish. In the territory of Casinum a river is called Scatebra, cold, more abundant in summer; in it, as in Arcadia at Stymphalus, water mussels are produced.
228| At Dodona, the spring of Jupiter, though it is icy and puts out torches plunged into it, kindles them if they are brought to it after being quenched. The same fails always at midday, for which reason they call it anapauomenon, then, increasing, overflows toward midnight, and from that point gradually fails again. In Illyria, garments spread out above a cold spring are set alight. The pool of Jupiter Hammon is cold by day and boils at night. Among the Trogodytae a spring is called the Spring of the Sun, sweet, and coldest around midday; then, gradually growing warm, toward midnight it is troublesome with heat and bitterness.
229| The spring of the Po, in the middle of the summer days, as though pausing, is always dry. On the island of Tenedos after the summer solstice a spring always overflows, from the third hour of the night until the sixth, and on the island of Delos the spring Inopus rises and falls in the same way as the Nile and together with it. Opposite the river Timavus a small island lies out at sea, with hot springs that swell and shrink in step with the sea's tide. In the territory of Pitinum beyond the Apennine, the river Novanus, a torrent at every solstice, dries up in winter.
230| In the Faliscan territory all water drunk makes cattle white; in Boeotia the river Melas makes sheep black, the Cephisus, flowing from the same lake, white; the Penius black again, and the Xanthus near Ilium reddish, whence the river's name. In the Pontus the river Axiaces waters plains in which mares, pastured there, give black milk and nourish a people. In the Reatine territory a spring called Neminie rises now in one place and now in another, signifying a change in the price of grain. At Brundisium, in the harbour, a spring supplies sound water to sailors. Among the Lyncestae the water called acidula makes people drunk like wine; the same happens in Paphlagonia, and in the district of Cales.
231| On the island of Andros, in the temple of Father Liber, Mucianus, three times consul, believes that a spring always pours forth the taste of wine on the Nones of January. The day is called Theodosia. Near Nonacris in Arcadia the Styx, differing neither in smell nor colour, kills at once when drunk; likewise on the hill Liberosus of the Tauri there are three springs fatal without remedy and without pain. In the Carrinensian territory of Spain two springs flow close by, one rejecting everything, the other swallowing it. Among the same people another shows all its fish of a golden colour, though outside that water they differ in nothing.
232| In the Comensian territory near Lake Como a copious spring swells and subsides every single hour. On the island of Cydonea, before Lesbos, a hot spring flows only in spring. The lake Sannaus in Asia is tainted by wormwood growing round it. At Colophon, in the cave of Clarian Apollo, there is a pool by drinking of which marvellous oracles are given, the life of the drinkers being shorter. Rivers flowing backward our own age also saw, in the last days of the emperor Nero, as we have related in the account of his reign.
233| Who is unaware that every spring is colder in summer than in winter? And, among those truly astonishing works of nature, that bronze and lead sink in a lump, yet float when spread out; that of things of the same weight some sink and others are borne up; that loads move more easily in water; that the Syrian stone, however large, floats, yet sinks when broken up; that fresh corpses slip to the bottom and, when they swell, are lifted up; that empty vessels are drawn out no more easily than full ones; that rain waters are fresher for the salt-pans than the rest, and that salt is not formed unless fresh waters are mixed in;
234| that sea waters freeze more slowly and catch fire more quickly; that in winter the sea is warmer, and in autumn saltier; that everything is calmed by oil, and for that reason divers sprinkle it from the mouth, since it softens the harsh nature and carries light down; that snow does not fall on the open sea; and that, although all water is borne downward, springs leap upward, even at the roots of Aetna, which burns to such a degree that it belches out sand in a ball of flame for fifty or a hundred miles.
235| Let us now also give some wonders of fire, the fourth of nature's elements, but first those from waters. At Samosata, a city in Commagene, there lies a pool that gives off a burning mud, which they call maltha. When it has touched anything solid, it clings; moreover, at a touch it even follows those who flee. So they defended their walls when Lucullus was assaulting them: his soldier burned in his own arms. It is set alight by water; experiments have shown that it is put out only by earth. The nature of naphtha is similar. This is the name given to a substance that flows about Babylon and in the Austaceni of Parthia, in the manner of liquid bitumen. It has a great affinity with fires, and flames leap to it at once from any quarter at which it is seen. So they say that Medea burned her rival: when she had come to the altar to sacrifice, her garland caught fire.
236| But among the marvels of mountains, Aetna burns always by night, and for so long an age the supply of fire has sufficed, snowy in the winter seasons and covering the ash it has thrown out with frost. Nor does nature rage in that mountain alone, announcing to the lands their burning: in the territory of Phaselis the mountain Chimaera burns, and with an immortal flame by day and by night; Ctesias of Cnidos relates that its fire is kindled by water and put out by earth or dung. Likewise in Lycia the mountains of Hephaestus, touched by a blazing torch, burn, and to such a degree that the very stones of the streams and the sands burn in the waters themselves, and that fire is fed by rain; they tell that if anyone draws a furrow with a stick set alight from them, streams of fire follow. The summit of Cophas in Bactria burns by night.
237| A plain burns in Media and in Sittacene on the border of Persia, and at Susa, at the White Tower, in 15 chimneys, the largest of which burns even by day. At Babylon a kind of pool of the size of an iugerum burns; among the Ethiopians, near mount Hesperus, the fields burn at night like stars; likewise in the territory of the Megalopolitani. For if that pleasant crater of the Nymphaeum, which does not scorch the foliage of the dense grove above it and burns always beside a cold spring, falls silent, it portends dire things to the people of Apollonia, as Theopompus relates; it is increased by rains and discharges bitumen, which has to be tempered with that undrinkable spring and is in any case thinner than any other bitumen. But who would wonder at these things?
238| In the middle of the sea the islands Hiera and Lipara, of the Aeolian group near Italy, burned along with the sea itself for some days during the Social War, until an embassy of the senate made atonement. Yet the Ethiopian ridge called Theon ochema burns with the greatest conflagration, and throws out flames scorched by the heat of the sun. In so many places, by so many fires, nature burns the lands!
239| Furthermore, since the principle of this one element is prolific, and begets itself, and grows from the smallest sparks, what are we to think must be the nature of the earth in so many funeral pyres, which feeds without harm to itself the most greedy voracity in the whole world? Let there be added to these the innumerable stars and the huge sun; let there be added human fires, and those implanted in the nature of stones, and of wood rubbed together; now the clouds and the origins of lightning-bolts: it will surely surpass all wonders that there has been any day on which everything did not burst into flame, since even concave mirrors, held against the rays of the sun, kindle fire more readily than any other fire.
240| What of the innumerable small ones, but natural, that gush out? In the Nymphaeum a flame comes out of a rock, which is kindled by rain; one comes out too at the Scantian waters, this one weak, when it passes, and not lasting long on any other material (an ash tree, evergreen, covers this fiery spring); one comes out in the territory of Mutina on fixed days of Vulcan. It is found in authors that in the fields below Aricia the earth burns if a coal has fallen on it; in the Sabine and Sidician territory an oiled stone flames; in the Sallentine town of Gnatia, when wood is laid on a certain sacred rock there, flame at once appears; and on the altar of Juno Lacinia, placed in the open air, the ash stays unmoved though storms blow from every side;
241| indeed that sudden fires also arise, both in waters and in bodies, even human ones: that the lake Trasimene burned entire; that from the head of Servius Tullius, asleep in his boyhood, a flame flashed out; that Lucius Marcius in Spain, after the Scipios had been killed, while addressing an assembly and urging the soldiers to vengeance, burned in a similar manner, Valerius Antias relates. More of this soon and in more orderly fashion; for now wonders are being set out in a kind of mixture of all things. But my mind, now passing beyond the interpretation of nature, hastens to lead the minds of readers as though by the hand over the whole world.
242| Our part of the earth, the part I am describing, floating as it were in the ocean that surrounds it, as has been said, stretches furthest from east to west, that is, from India to the Pillars of Hercules consecrated at Gades: L̅X̅X̅X̅V̅. L̅X̅X̅V̅I̅I̅I̅ paces according to Artemidorus as authority, but according to Isidorus X̅C̅V̅I̅I̅I̅. X̅V̅I̅I̅I̅. Artemidorus adds a further 991,500 from Gades, going round the Sacred Promontory, to the Artabrian Promontory, where the front of Spain juts out furthest.
243| The measurement runs by a double route. From the river Ganges and its mouth, where it pours out into the Eastern ocean, through India and Parthyene to Myriandrus, a Syrian city lying on the Gulf of Issus, L̅I̅I̅.X̅V̅; from there, by the nearest sea route, to the island Cyprus, then Patara in Lycia, Rhodes, Astypalaea, an island in the Carpathian sea, Taenarum in Laconia, Lilybaeum in Sicily, and Caralis in Sardinia, X̅X̅I̅.X̅I̅I̅I̅; then to Gades 12,050; and this measurement as a whole, from the Eastern sea, comes to L̅X̅X̅X̅V̅.L̅X̅X̅V̅I̅I̅I̅.
244| The other route, which is more certain and can mostly be travelled by land: from the Ganges to the river Euphrates L̅I̅.L̅X̅I̅X̅; from there to Mazaca in Cappadocia 244,000; then through Phrygia and Caria to Ephesus 499,000; from Ephesus across the Aegean sea to Delos 200,000; to the Isthmus 212,500; from there by land [and the Laconian sea] and the Corinthian Gulf to Patrae in the Peloponnese 90; to Leucas 87,500; to Corcyra the same; to Acroceraunia 82,500; to Brundisium 87,500; to Rome 360,000; to the Alps, as far as the village of Scingomagus, 519,000; through Gaul to Illiberis by the Pyrenean mountains 468,000; to the ocean and Spain's coast 831,000; the crossing to Gades 7,500; and this measurement, by Artemidorus' reckoning, comes to L̅X̅X̅X̅I̅X̅X̅L̅V̅.
245| The breadth of the earth, from the southern quarter to the north, is smaller by about half: Isidorus reckons it at L̅I̅I̅I̅I̅.L̅X̅I̅I̅. This makes it plain how much has been taken away by the heat on this side and by the cold on that. For I do not suppose that land is lacking, or that the earth is not the shape of a globe, but that the uninhabitable parts on either side are unexplored. This measurement runs from the shore of the Ethiopian ocean, where habitation just begins, to Meroe 625,000; from there to Alexandria 12,050; Rhodes 584,000; Cnidus 87,500; Cos 25,000; Samos 100; Chios 94,000; Mytilene 65,000; Tenedos 119,000; the promontory of Sigeum 12,500; the mouth of the Pontus 312,500; the promontory of Carambis 350,000; the mouth of the Maeotis 312,500; the mouth of the Tanais 275,000; and this course can be made shorter, by short cuts across the sea, by 79,000.
246| Beyond the mouth of the Tanais the most careful authors have ventured no extravagant figure. Artemidorus judged that what lies further on is unexplored, although he admitted that Sarmatian tribes live around the Tanais, towards the north; Isidorus added 12,050 as far as Thule, which is a conjecture amounting to divination. For my part I understand that the territories of the Sarmatians are known over a distance no smaller than the one just stated. And in any case, how large must a region be that holds countless tribes forever changing their homes? Hence I believe that the further extent of the uninhabitable zone is much greater; for I know too that immense islands off Germany were discovered not long ago.
247| These are the facts about length and breadth that I think worth recording. As for the whole circumference, Eratosthenes, a man skilled in every refinement of learning but in this field above all others, and one whom I see approved by everyone, gave it as 252,000 stadia, a measure which by Roman reckoning makes thirty-one million five hundred thousand paces: an audacious venture, but grasped by argument so subtle that one is ashamed not to believe it. Hipparchus, who is remarkable both in refuting him and in all his other diligence, adds a little under 26,000 stadia.
248| Dionysodorus' figure rests on a different kind of credit; for I will not withhold the greatest example of Greek vanity. He was a Melian, famous for his knowledge of geometry, and he died in old age in his native land. His funeral was conducted by his female relatives, to whom the inheritance belonged. These women, while performing the rites over the following days, are said to have found in the tomb a letter in Dionysodorus' name addressed to those above: that he had made his way from the tomb to the lowest point of the earth, and that the distance there was 42,000 stadia. Nor were geometers lacking to interpret this: they said the letter meant that it had been sent from the center of the earth's globe, since that is the longest distance downward from the surface and is also the center of the sphere. From this followed a calculation by which they declared the circumference to be 252,000 stadia. Harmonic theory, which compels the nature of things to agree with itself, adds 12,000 stadia to this measure, and makes the earth the ninety-sixth part of the whole universe.

======== Natural History — Book III ========

1| So much for the position and the marvels of the earth, of the waters and of the stars, and for the plan and the measurement of the universe. Now for its parts, although this too is reckoned an endless task, and one not undertaken lightly without some censure, though in no field is indulgence more justly due, if indeed it is not in the least surprising that one born a man does not know everything human. For that reason I shall follow no single authority, but whichever I judge most truthful on each part, since it has been common to almost all of them that each described most carefully the regions in which he himself was writing.
2| Therefore I shall neither blame nor refute anyone. The bare names of places will be set down, with all the brevity allowed, their renown and its causes being deferred to their proper sections; for now the discussion concerns the whole. So I should like it to be taken as if the names were being pronounced stripped of their fame, as they were at the beginning, before any deeds were done, and as if there were in them a nomenclature indeed, but a nomenclature of the world and of the nature of things.
3| The entire circuit of the lands falls into three divisions: Europe, Asia and Africa. The starting point is in the west, at the strait of Gades, where the Atlantic ocean bursts in and spreads out into the inner seas. For one entering from here, Africa is on the right, Europe on the left, and Asia between them; the boundaries are the rivers Tanais and Nile. The mouth of the ocean that we have mentioned extends 15,000 paces in length and 5 in breadth, from Mellaria, a village in Spain, to the White Promontory in Africa, on the authority of Turranius Gracilis, who was born nearby.
4| Livy and Cornelius Nepos have recorded its breadth as less than 7,000 paces, and where it is widest, 10: through so modest a mouth so immense an expanse of waters opens out. Nor does great depth lessen the wonder, for frequent ribbons of whitish shallows frighten keels, and for this reason many have called the place the threshold of the inner sea. At the nearest point of the strait, mountains set on either side hem in the barrier, Abila in Africa and Calpe in Europe, the goals of the labors of Hercules. For this reason the natives call them the pillars of that god, and believe that when they were dug through they let in the seas that had been shut out before, and changed the face of nature.
5| First, then, Europe, the nurse of the people that conquered all nations, and by far the most beautiful of lands, which most authors have rightly reckoned not as a third part but as an equal one, the whole world being divided into two parts from the river Tanais to the strait of Gades. The ocean, pouring the Atlantic sea in through the gap we have described, and with greedy advance drowning whatever lands dreaded its coming, licks even those that resist it along the winding bends of their shores. It hollows out Europe most of all with frequent recesses, but chiefly into four principal gulfs, the first of which curves in an immense sweep from Calpe, the outermost mountain of Spain, as was said, to Locri and the promontory of Bruttium.
6| On this gulf the first land is Spain, the part called Further Spain, which is also Baetica; then, from the boundary at Murgi, Nearer Spain, which is also Tarraconensis, up to the ridges of the Pyrenees. Further Spain is divided lengthwise into two provinces, since Lusitania stretches along the northern side of Baetica, separated from it by the river Anas. This river rises in the territory of Laminium in Nearer Spain, and now spreading out into marshes, now drawing itself back into narrows, or hiding itself wholly in underground channels and delighting in being born again and again, it pours out into the Atlantic ocean. Tarraconensis, attached to the Pyrenees and running down along their whole side, and at the same time spreading crosswise from the Iberian sea across to the Gallic ocean, is divided from Baetica and Lusitania by Mount Solorius and by the ranges of the Oretani, the Carpetani and the Astures.
7| Baetica, named after the river that cuts through its middle, surpasses all the provinces in rich cultivation and in a certain fertile and peculiar brilliance. It has 4 judicial districts, those of Gades, Corduba, Astigi and Hispalis. Its towns number 175 in all, and among them are 9 colonies, 10 municipalities of Roman citizens, 27 granted Latin rights long ago, 6 free towns, 3 bound by treaty, and 120 paying tribute. Of these, the ones worth mentioning, or easy to pronounce in Latin, are: from the river Anas, along the coast of the ocean, the town of Ossonoba, surnamed Aestuaria, between the confluent rivers Luxia and Urium; the Hareni mountains; the river Baetis; the Curense shore with its curving bay, opposite which lies Gades, to be described among the islands; the promontory of Juno; the port of Baesippo; the town of Baelo; Mellaria; the strait from the Atlantic sea; Carteia, called Tartesos by the Greeks; and Mount Calpe.
8| Then, on the inner coast, the town of Barbesula with its river; likewise Salduba; the town of Suel; Malaca with its river, a town of the federated allies; then Maenuba with its river; Sexi, surnamed Firmum Iulium; Sel; Abdara; Murgi, the end of Baetica. Marcus Agrippa thought that this whole coast was of Punic origin; but from the Anas onward, the coast facing the Atlantic ocean belongs to the Bastuli and the Turduli. Marcus Varro records that the Iberians, the Persians, the Phoenicians, the Celts and the Carthaginians came into the whole of Spain; for the sport (lusus) of Father Liber, or the frenzy (lyssa) of those who revelled with him, gave Lusitania its name, and Pan was set over all of it as governor. But what is told of Hercules and Pyrene, or of Saturn, I consider fabulous above all else. The Baetis, rising in the province of Tarraconensis, not, as some
9| have said, at the town of Mentesa, but in the Tugiensian forest, near which is the river Tader that waters the Carthaginian territory, turns away at Ilorci from the pyre of Scipio, and bending westward makes for the Atlantic ocean, adopting the province as its own. It is modest at first, but takes in many rivers, from which it steals both their fame and their waters. Entering Baetica first from Ossigitania, charming in its pleasant channel, it is lined to right and left with frequent towns.
10| The most celebrated towns between this river and the shore of the ocean, inland, are: Segida, which is surnamed Augurina; Ulia, which is Fidentia; Urgao, which is Alba; Ebora, which is Cerialis; Iliberri, which is Florentini; Ilipula, which is Laus; Artigi, which is Iulienses; Vesci, which is Faventia; Singili, Ategua, Arialdunum, Agla Minor, Baebro, Castra Vinaria, Cisimbrium, Hippo Nova, Ilurco, Osca, Oscua, Sucaelo, Unditanum, Tucci Vetus, all in Bastetania, which slopes toward the sea. The jurisdiction of Corduba has, around the river itself, Ossigi, which is surnamed Latonium; Iliturgi, which is Forum Iulium; Ipra; Isturgi, which is Triumphales; Ucia; and, 14,000 paces distant inland, Obulco, which is called Pontificense; then Ripa; Epora of the federated; Sacili of the Martiales; Onuba; and on the right bank Corduba, a colony surnamed Patricia; then, where the Baetis first becomes navigable, the towns Carbula and Detumo, and the river Singilis, falling into the Baetis on the same side.
11| The towns of the jurisdiction of Hispalis are: Celti, Axati, Arua, Canama, Naeva, Ilipa, surnamed Ilpa, Italica; and on the left bank Hispal, a colony surnamed Romulensis; opposite, the town Osset, which is surnamed Iulia Constantia; Lucurgentum, which is the Genius of Julius; Orippo, Caura, Siarum, and the river Maenuba, itself too flowing into the Baetis from the right side. But among the estuaries of the Baetis are the towns Nabrissa, surnamed Veneria, and Colobana; the colonies Hasta, which is called Regia, and, inland, Asido, which is Caesarina.
12| The river Singilis, breaking into the Baetis in the order stated, washes the colony of Astigi, surnamed Augusta Firma, from which point it is navigable. The remaining colonies of this jurisdiction, exempt from tribute, are: Tucci, which is surnamed Augusta Gemella; Ituci, which is Virtus Iulia; Ucubi, which is Claritas Iulia; Urso, which is Genetiva of the Urbani; among these was Munda, seized with the younger Pompey. The free towns are Astigi Vetus and Ostippo; the tributary ones are Callet, Callicula, Castra Gemina, Ilipula Minor, Marruca, Sacrana, Obulcula, Oningi, Sabora, Ventippo. Not far from the river Maenuba, itself also navigable, dwell the Olontigi, Laelia and Lastigi.
13| The region, however, that extends from the Baetis to the river Anas, apart from what has been mentioned, is called Baeturia, divided into two parts and as many peoples: the Celtici, who border on Lusitania, of the jurisdiction of Hispalis; the Turduli, who border on Lusitania and the Tarraconensis, who go to Corduba for justice. That the Celtici came from the Celtiberi out of Lusitania is plain from their rites, their language, and the titles of their towns, which are distinguished in Baetica by their surnames:
14| to Seria is added Fama Iulia; to Nertobriga, Concordia Iulia; to Segida, Restituta Iulia; Contributa Iulia to Ugultunia, with which Curiga is now joined; Constantia Iulia to Lacimurga; Fortunales to the Steresi and Aeneanici to the Callenses. Besides these, in the Celtic country: Acinippo, Arunda, Arunci, Turobriga, Lastigi, Salpesa, Saepone, Serippo. The other Baeturia, which we have said belongs to the Turduli and the jurisdiction of Corduba, has towns of some note: Arsa, Mellaria, Mirobriga Regina, Sosintigi, Sisapo.
15| Of the jurisdiction of Gades, among Roman citizens: Regina; among Latins: Laepia Regia, Carisa, surnamed Aurelia, Urgia, called Castrum Iulium, and likewise Caesar's Salutariensis; tributary: Besaro, Belippo, Barbesula, Blacippo, Baesippo, Callet, Cappa with Oleaster, Iptuci, Ibrona, Lascuta, Saguntia, Saudo, Usaepo.
16| Marcus Agrippa gave its whole length as 475,000 paces and its breadth as 258,000, but when its boundaries extended as far as Carthage: a cause that quite often produces great errors in computing measurement, the scale of the provinces having been changed in one place and that of the routes in another, and paces having been increased or diminished. In so long an age the seas have encroached, elsewhere the shores have advanced, and the bends of rivers have twisted or straightened. Besides, different people have a different starting point of measurement, and different routes. So it happens that no two agree.
17| The length of Baetica now, from the end of the town of Castulo to Gades, is 250,000 paces, and from the maritime coast of Murgi 25 paces more; the breadth from Carteia to the Anas, along the coast, is 234,000 paces. Who could believe that Agrippa, with so great a man's diligence and, apart from this, his care in this work, when he was going to set the world before the world's gaze, made a mistake, and with him the deified Augustus? For he completed the portico containing it, begun by his sister from the plan and commentaries of Marcus Agrippa.
18| The old form of Nearer Spain, as of several provinces, has been considerably changed, inasmuch as Pompey the Great, on his trophies which he set up in the Pyrenees, attested that he had brought 866 towns, stretching from the Alps to the boundaries of Further Spain, under his sway. Now the whole province is divided into 7 jurisdictions: the Carthaginensis, Tarraconensis, Caesaraugustanus, Cluniensis, that of the Astures, the Lucensis, and that of the Bracari. There are in addition islands; setting aside mention of these, the province itself contains, besides those attached to others, 293 communities, 179 towns, among them 12 colonies, 13 towns of Roman citizens, 18 of the old Latins, one of the federated, and 135 tributary.
19| First on the coast are the Bastuli; after them, in the sequence in which they will be listed, receding inland, the Mentesani, the Oretani, and on the Tagus the Carpetani; next to them the Vaccaei, the Vettones and the Celtiberian Arevaci. The towns nearest the coast are Urci and Baria, assigned to Baetica; the region Bastitania, then Contestania; Carthago Nova, a colony, from whose promontory, called that of Saturn, the crossing to Caesarea, a city of Mauretania, is 197,000 paces. The rest on the coast: the river Tader; the exempt colony of Ilici, whence the Ilicitan gulf.
20| To this are attached the Icositani. Then, of the Latins, Lucentum; Dianium, tributary; the river Sucro, and a town once, the end of Contestania. The region Edetania, with a pleasant lake stretching in front of it, receding toward the Celtiberi. Valentia, a colony, 3,000 paces from the sea; the river Turium; and the same distance from the sea Saguntum, of Roman citizens, a town noted for its good faith; the river Udiva.
21| The region of the Ilergaones; the river Hiberus, rich in navigable trade, rising among the Cantabri, not far from the town Iuliobriga, flowing for 450,000 paces, and able to carry ships for 260 from the town of Vareia, on account of which the Greeks called the whole of Spain Hiberia. The region of Cessetania; the river Subi; the colony Tarraco, the work of the Scipios, as Carthage was of the Punic people. The region of the Ilergetes; the town Subur; the river Rubricatus, from which the Laeetani and the Indigetes.
22| After them, receding inland in the sequence in which they will be named, at the foot of the Pyrenees the Ausetani [Fitani], the Iacetani, and through the Pyrenees the Ceretani, then the Vascones. On the coast, the colony Barcino, surnamed Faventia; the towns of Roman citizens Baetulo and Iluro; the river Arnum; Blandae; the river Alba; Emporiae, a double town of old inhabitants and of Greeks, who were an offshoot of the Phocaeans; the river Ticer. From it, Pyrenaean Venus, on the other side of the promontory, 40,000.
23| Now the notable places will be given by jurisdictions, besides those mentioned above. At Tarraco 42 peoples bring their cases, of whom the most celebrated are, of Roman citizens, the Dertosani and Bisgargitani; of Latins, the Ausetani, the Ceretani who are surnamed Iuliani and those called Augustani, the Edetani, Gerundenses, Iessonienses, and the Teari who are called Iulienses; of the tributary, the Aquicaldenses, Aesonenses and Baeculonenses.
24| Caesaraugusta, an exempt colony, washed by the river Hiberus, where the town was formerly called Salduba, in the region of Edetania, receives 55 peoples: of these, of Roman citizens, the Bilbilitani, the Celsenses from the colony, the Calagurritani who are surnamed Nasici, the Ilerdenses of the people of the Surdaones, beside whom flows the river Sicoris, the Oscenses of the region of Suessetania, and the Turiassonenses; of the old Latins, the Cascantenses, Ergavicenses, Graccurritani, Leonicenses and Osicerdenses; of the federated, the Tarracenses; of the tributary, the Arcobrigenses, Andelonenses, Aracelitani, Bursaonenses, the Calagurritani who are surnamed Fibularenses, the Conplutenses, Carenses, Cincienses, Cortonenses, Damanitani, Ispallenses, Ilursenses, Iluberitani, Iacetani, Libienses, Pompelonenses and Segienses.
25| To Carthage come 65 peoples, apart from the inhabitants of the islands: from the colony Accitana Gemellense, from Libisosana, surnamed Foroaugustana, to which two the right of Italy was given, from the colony Salariensis; townsmen of old Latin right: the Castulonenses, who are called Caesarii Iuvenales, the Saetabitani who are Augustani, the Valerienses. Of the tributary the most celebrated are the Alabanenses, Bastitani, Consaburrenses, Dianenses, Egelestani, Ilorcitani, Laminitani, the Mentesani who are also Oretani, the Mentesani who are also Bastuli, the Oretani who are also called Germani, and the capital of Celtiberia, the Segobrigenses, and of Carpetania the Toletani, situated on the river Tagus, then the Viatienses and the Virgilienses.
26| To the jurisdiction of Clunia the Varduli bring 13 peoples, of whom it is enough to name only the Alabanenses; the Turmogidi, 4, among whom the Segisamonenses and the Segisamaiulienses. Into the same jurisdiction the Carietes and Vennenses go with 5 communities, among which are the Velienses. To the same the Pelendones of the Celtiberi, with 4 peoples, of whom the Numantini were famous, as were, among the 17 communities of the Vaccaei, the Intercatienses, Palantini, Lacobrigenses and Caucenses.
27| For among the 9 peoples of the Cantabri only Iuliobriga is worth mentioning, and among the 10 communities of the Autrigones Tritium and Virovesca. The Arevaci were named for the river Areva. Of these there are 6 towns: Secontia and Uxama, names which are often used in other places, besides Segovia as well as Nova Augusta, Termes and Clunia herself, the limit of Celtiberia. The rest slope toward the ocean: the Varduli of those already named, and the Cantabri.
28| Joined to these are the 22 peoples of the Astures, divided into Augustani and Transmontani, with the splendid city Asturica. Among them are the Gigurri, the Paesici, the Lancienses and the Zoelae. The whole number of the multitude comes to 240 free heads. The jurisdiction of Lucus has sixteen peoples, apart from the Celtici and Lemavi, who are obscure and of barbarous names, but about 166,000 free heads. In the same way the 24 communities of the Bracari, 285,000 heads, of whom, besides the Bracari themselves, the Bibali, Coelerni, Callaeci, Equaesi, Limici and Querquerni may be named without disdain.
29| The length of Nearer Spain, from the Pyrenees to the end of Castulo, is D̅C̅VII paces, and a little more along the coast; the breadth from Tarraco to the shore at Oiarso is 307,000, from the roots of the Pyrenees, where it is wedged together in a narrow strip between the two seas; then gradually widening, where it touches Further Spain, it adds as much and more to its breadth.
30| Almost all Spain teems with mines of lead, iron, bronze, silver and gold; Nearer Spain also with the specular stone, Baetica also with minium. There are also quarries of marble. To the whole of Spain the Emperor Vespasian Augustus granted the Latin right, which had been tossed about by the storms of the commonwealth. The Pyrenees mountains divide the Spains and the Gauls, with their promontories thrust out into two different seas.
31| The part of the Gauls which is washed by the inner sea is called the province Narbonensis, formerly called Bracata, parted from Italy by the Varus river and the ridges of the Alps, most wholesome to the Roman empire, and from the rest of Gaul on the northern side by the mountains Cebenna and the Jura; second to no province in the cultivation of its fields, the standing of its men and their manners, and the greatness of its wealth, and, in brief, more truly Italy than a province.
32| On the coast is the region of the Sordones, and inland that of the Consuarani; the rivers Tecum and Vernodubrum; the towns Illiberis, a slight trace of what was once a great city, Ruscino of the Latins; the river Atax, flowing from the Pyrenees through the Rubrensis lake; Narbo Martius, a colony of the Decumani, 12,000 paces distant from the sea; the rivers Araris and Liria. For the rest the towns are few, because of the lagoons lying in front:
33| Agatha, once of the Massilians, and the region of the Volcae Tectosages, and the place where Rhoda of the Rhodians was, whence the river Rhone, by far the most fertile of the Gauls, takes its name, rushing out from the Alps, passing through Lake Lemannus, carrying down the sluggish Arar and the torrents Isara and Druantia, no less violent than itself. Its two small mouths are called Libica, of which one is Hispaniense, the other Metapinum; the third, which is also the widest, is Massalioticum. There are authorities that a town Heraclea also existed at the mouth of the Rhone.
34| Beyond are the canals from the Rhone, distinguished by the work and name of Gaius Marius; the lagoon Mastromela; the town Maritima of the Avatici; above it the Stony Plains, a memorial of the battles of Hercules; the region of the Anatilii, and inland that of the Dexivates and Cavares; again, from the sea, that of the Tricorii, and inland that of the Tritolli, the Vocontii and the Segovellauni, and then the Allobroges. On the coast Massilia, of the Phocaean Greeks, federated; the promontory Zao; the harbour Citharista; the region of the Camactulici; then the Suelteri, and above them the Verucini.
35| On the coast, moreover, Athenopolis of the Massilians; Forum Iulii, a colony of the Octavani, called Pacensis and Classica; a river by the name of Argenteus; the region of the Oxubii and Ligauni, above whom the Suebri, Quariates and Adunicates. On the coast the Latin town Antipolis; the region of the Deciates; the river Varus, flowing out from the Alpine mountain Caenia.
36| Inland, the colonies: Arelate of the Sextani, Baeterrae of the Septimani, Arausio of the Secundani, in the territory of the Cavares Valentia, Vienna of the Allobroges. Latin towns: Aquae Sextiae of the Salluvii, Avennio of the Cavares, Apta Iulia of the Vulgientes, Alebaece of the Reii Apollinares, Alba of the Helvi, Augusta of the Tricastini, Anatilia, Aerea, Bormani, Comani, Cabellio, Carcasum of the Volcae Tectosages, Cessero, Carbantorate of the Meminii, the Caenicenses, the Cambolectri who are surnamed Atlantici,
37| Forum Voconi, Glanum Libii, the Lutevani who are also Foroneronienses, Nemausum of the Arecomici, Piscinae, the Ruteni, the Samnagenses, the Tolosani of the Tectosages, bordering on Aquitania, the Tasgoduni, Tarusconienses, Umbranici; of the Vocontii, a federated community, the two capitals Vasio and Lucus Augusti, and 19 obscure towns, as there are 24 attached to the people of Nemausus. To the register the Emperor Galba added from the Alpine peoples the Avantici and Bodiontici, whose town is Dinia. Agrippa gives the length of the province Narbonensis as 370,000 paces, and its breadth as 248,000.
38| Italy next, and first of its peoples the Ligures, then Etruria, Umbria, Latium, where are the mouths of the Tiber and Rome, the head of the lands, at an interval of 16 paces from the sea. Afterwards the shore of the Volsci and of Campania, then that of Picenum, Lucania and Bruttium, where Italy runs out farthest to the south into the seas from the almost crescent-shaped ridges of the Alps. From that point the coast of Greece, then the Sallentini, Poeduculi, Apuli, Paeligni, Frentani, Marrucini, Vestini, Sabini, Picentes, Galli, Umbri, Tusci, Veneti, Carni, Iapudes, Histri, Liburni.
39| I am not unaware that I may rightly be thought of ungrateful and sluggish mind if the land which is the nurse of all lands, and their parent too, chosen by the will of the gods to make the very heaven brighter, to gather scattered empires, to soften manners, to draw the discordant and savage tongues of so many peoples together into conversation through the commerce of speech, to give humanity to man, and in brief to become the single fatherland of all nations in the whole world, is spoken of in passing and in haste in this manner.
40| But what shall I do? Such is the nobility of all the places that one might touch upon, such the renown of each thing and each people, that holds me. The city of Rome, even alone in it, [….] and an appearance worthy now of so festive a neck, by what work at last ought it to be told? In what manner the coast of Campania, in itself, and that fortunate and blessed loveliness, so that it is plain that in one place there is a work of nature rejoicing?
41| Then truly all that life-giving and unfailing healthfulness, such a temperate climate of the sky, plains so fertile, hills so sunny, glades so harmless, groves so shady, so bountiful kinds of woods, so many breezes from the mountains, such fertility of grain, vines and olives, fleeces so noble for the flock, necks so rich for bulls, so many lakes, such abundance of rivers and springs pouring over the whole of it, so many seas, harbours, and a lap of lands open on every side to commerce and, as though to help mortals, running eagerly out into the seas itself!
42| I do not mention the talents and customs and men, and the nations overcome by tongue and hand. The Greeks themselves, a race most lavish in their own glory, have given judgment on it, in calling what a small part of it Great Greece! Surely what we did in mentioning the sky must be done in this part too, that we touch on some marks and a few stars. I only ask that readers remember that haste is being made to expound each thing in the whole world.
43| It is therefore most like an oak leaf, much greater in length than in breadth, bending to the left at its tip and ending in the shape of an Amazonian shield, where from its middle extension it is called Cocynthos, putting out two horns through crescent-shaped inlets: Leucopetra on its right side and Lacinium on its left. Its length extends from the Alpine boundary of Praetoria Augusta through the city and Capua, running on to the town of Regium, situated at its shoulder, from which, as it were, the curve of the neck begins, ten hundred thousand and twenty thousand paces, and the measurement would be much greater if taken as far as Lacinium, were it not that such a slant seems to turn aside to the flank.
44| Its breadth varies, being four hundred and ten thousand paces as measured between the Lower and Upper seas and the rivers Varus and Arsia; and at about the middle, around the city of Rome, from the mouth of the river Aternus, flowing into the Adriatic sea, to the mouths of the Tiber, 136,000, and slightly short of that from Castrum Novum on the Adriatic sea, Alsium, to the Tuscan sea; at no place does it exceed 200,000 in breadth. Taken all round, from the Varus to the Arsia, it makes X̅X̅, X̅L̅V̅I̅I̅I̅I̅ paces.
45| It is distant from the surrounding lands, from Histria and Liburnia, in some places a hundred miles, from Epirus and Illyricum fifty, from Africa less than two hundred, as Marcus Varro is the authority, from Sardinia a hundred and twenty miles, from Sicily 1,500, from Corcyra less than 80,000, from Issa 50. It advances through the seas toward the region of the sky in the south, but, if one were to demand this with careful exactness, between the sixth and the first winter hour.
46| Now we shall enumerate its circuit and its cities. In this matter it is necessary to state beforehand that we shall follow the deified Augustus, and the division made by him of the whole of Italy into 11 regions, but in the order that the course of the coasts will give; that the neighbourhoods of the cities cannot in any case be kept in a speech so hurried, and that for the inland part we shall therefore follow his arrangement in alphabetical order, having marked the colonies, which he recorded in that number. Nor is it easy to follow out the sites and origins, when land was given thirty times to the Ligurian Ingauni, to say nothing of the rest.
47| So, from the river Varus: Nicaea, founded by the Massilians; the river Palo; the Alps and the Alpine peoples with many names, but most of all the Capillati; Cemenelum, a town of the community of the Vediantii; the harbour of Hercules Monoecus; the Ligurian coast. The most celebrated of the Ligures beyond the Alps are the Salluvii, Deciates and Oxubii; on this side, the Veneni, Turri, Soti, Bagienni, Statielli, Binbelli, Maielli, Caburriates, Casmonates, Velleiates, and those whose towns we shall name next on the coast.
48| The river Rutuba; the town Album Intimilium; the river Merula; the town Album Ingaunum; the harbour Vada Sabatia; the river Porcifera; the town Genua; the river Fertor; the harbour Delphini; inland Tigulia; Segesta of the Tigulii; the river Macra, the end of Liguria. Behind all the places named above lies the Appennine mountain, the greatest of Italy, stretching in unbroken ridges from the Alps to the Sicilian strait. From its other side to the river Po, the richest of Italy, all places shine with noble towns: Libarna, Dertona, a colony, Iria, Vardacate, Industria, Pollentia, Carrea, which is surnamed Potentia, Forum Fulvii, which is Valentinum, Augusta of the Bagienni, Alba Pompeia, Hasta, Aquae of the Statielli. This region is the ninth by Augustus' division. The coast of Liguria between the rivers Varus and Macra extends 211,000 paces.
50| Joined to it is the seventh region, in which is Etruria, from the river Macra, itself with often changed names. The Pelasgi in ancient times drove the Umbri from it, and the Lydi these, from whose king they were called Tyrrheni, and soon, from their sacrificial rite, Tusci in the speech of the Greeks. The earliest town of Etruria is Luna, noted for its harbour; the colony Luca, receding from the sea, and nearer Pisae, between the rivers Auser and Arnus, sprung from the descendants of Pelops or from the Teutani, a Greek people. The shallows of Volaterra; the river Caecina; Populonium, once of the Etruscans, the only one of them on this shore.
51| From here the rivers Prile, soon Umbro, able to carry ships, and from it the district of Umbria; the harbour Telamo; Cosa of the Volcientes, settled by the Roman people; Graviscae; Castrum Novum; Pyrgi; the river of Caere, and Caere itself inland 7 miles, called Agylla by its Pelasgian founders; Alsium; Fregenae; the river Tiber, 284,000 paces from the Macra; inland the colonies Falisca, sprung from Argos, as Cato is the authority, which is surnamed that of the Etruscans, Lucus Feroniae, Rusellana, Seniensis, Sutrina.
52| For the rest: the Arretini Veteres, Arretini Fidentiores, Arretini Iulienses, the Amitinenses, the Aquenses with the surname Taurini, the Blerani, Cortonenses, Capenates, Clusini Novi, Clusini Veteres, the Florentini, placed along the flowing Arnus, Faesulae, Ferentinum, Fescennia, Hortanum, Herbanum, Nepet, Novem Pagi, the Prefecture Claudia Forum Clodii, Pistorium, Perusia, the Suanenses, the Saturnini, who were formerly called Aurini, the Subertani, Statonienses, Tarquinienses, Tuscanienses, Vetulonienses, Veientani, Vesentini, Volaterrani, the Volcentani with the surname Etrusci, and the Volsinienses. In that same region, the territories of Crustuminum and Caletra keep the names of old towns.
53| The Tiber, formerly called Thybris and earlier Albula, rises from the boundaries of the Arretini, about the middle of the length of the Appennine, thin at first and not navigable except when collected in ponds and let out, as are the Tinia and the Clanis flowing into it, in this manner after a gathering of nine days at a time, if rains do not help. But the Tiber, on account of its rough and broken course, is said not to be passable for any great distance even so, except for logs rather than for rafts. For 150,000 paces, not far from Tifernum and Perusia and Ocriculum, it divides Etruria from the Umbri and Sabines, and soon, on this side of 16,000 paces from the city, the territory of Veii from that of Crustumerium, then the Fidenate and Latin territory from the Vatican.
54| But below the Clanis of the Arretini it is increased by forty-two rivers, chiefly the Nar and the Anio, which is itself navigable and encloses Latium at the back; and it is no less swelled by the waters and so many springs led into the city, and therefore, able to carry ships of whatever size from the Italian seas, the gentlest merchant of the things that are born in the whole world, it is lined by more villas on its banks, almost alone, than other rivers in all lands, and is looked upon by them.
55| And no river is less free to move, enclosed on both sides, yet it does not fight against this, although it is frequent and sudden in its rises, standing nowhere more than in the city itself. Indeed it is understood rather as a prophet and monitor, always scrupulous in its swelling more truly than savage.
56| Ancient Latium was preserved from the Tiber to Circeii, 50 miles in length: so slender were the roots at the beginning of the empire. The colonists often changing, different peoples held it at different times: the Aborigines, Pelasgi, Arcadians, Siculi, Aurunci, Rutuli, and beyond Circeii the Volsci, Osci and Ausones, whence the name of Latium advanced as far as the river Liris. At the beginning is Ostia, a colony led out by a Roman king; the town Laurentum; Jupiter Indiges' grove; the river Numicius; Ardea, established by Danaë, mother of Perseus.
57| Then once Aphrodisium; Antium, a colony; the river and island Astura; the river Nymphaeus; Clostra Romana; Circeii, once an island surrounded by a vast sea, as is believed from Homer, and now a plain. It is a marvel what we can hand down to men's knowledge on this matter. Theophrastus, who first of foreigners wrote with some care about the Romans (for Theopompus, before whom no one made mention, said only that the city had fallen to the Gauls, and Clitarchus, nearest after him, only that an embassy had been sent to Alexander), he
58| already, beyond rumour, gave the measure of the island of the Circeii as 80 stadia, in the volume which he wrote in the magistracy of Nicodorus at Athens, which was the 440th year of our city. Whatever of land, therefore, is attached to the island beyond a circuit of 10 paces came to Italy after that year.
59| Another marvel after Circeii is the Pomptine marsh, which place Mucianus, three times consul, reported to have held 24 cities. Then the river Aufentum, above which the town Tarracina, called Anxur in the language of the Volsci, and where were Amyclae or Amynclae, destroyed by serpents; then the place Spelunca; the lake of Fundi; the harbour Caieta; the town Formiae, called Hormiae, which they thought was the ancient seat of the Laestrygones. Beyond was the town Pirae; there is the colony Minturnae, divided by the river Liris, formerly called Clanis; Sinuessa, the last in the Latium that was added, which some have said was called Sinope.
60| From here begins that fortunate Campania; from this gulf start the vine-bearing hills and the intoxication famed through all lands for its juice, and, as the ancients said, the supreme contest of Father Liber with Ceres. From here stretch the territories of Setia and the Caecuban; to these are joined the Falernian and Calenian; then rise the Massic, the Gauran and the Surrentine mountains. There the Leborine plains spread out, and the harvest is polished into the delicacy of alica. These shores are watered by hot springs, and beyond the rest in the whole sea are noted for conchylium and noble fish. Nowhere is the liquid of the olive more generous, this too a contest of human pleasure. The Osci held it, the Greeks, the Umbri, the Tusci, the Campani.
61| On the coast, the river Savo; the town Volturnum with its river; Liternum; Cumae of the Chalcidians; Misenum; the harbour of Baiae; Bauli; the lakes Lucrinus and Avernus, near which was once the town Cimmerium; then Puteoli, a colony, called Dicaearchea; and after it the Phlegraean plains; the Acherusian marsh, near Cumae;
62| on the shore, however, Neapolis, itself also of the Chalcidians, called Parthenope from the tomb of a Siren; Herculaneum; Pompeii, not far from Mount Vesuvius, which is in sight, with the river Sarnus washing it; the territory of Nuceria, and Nuceria itself 9,000 paces from the sea; Surrentum with the promontory of Minerva, once the seat of the Sirens. The voyage from Circeii extends 80,000 paces less 2,000. This region, from the Tiber, is kept as the first of Italy in the division of Augustus.
63| Inland, the colonies Capua, named from the X̅L̅ plain, Aquinum, Suessa, Venafrum, Sora, Teanum, which bears the surname Sidicinum, and Nola; the towns Abellinum, Aricia, Alba Longa, the Acerrani, Allifani, Atinates, Aletrinates, Anagnini, Atellani, Aefulani, Arpinates, Auximates, Abellani, Alfaterni, and those who are named from the Latin territory, likewise the Hernican, likewise the Labican; Bovillae, Caiatia, Casinum, Calenum, Capitulum Hernicum, the Cereatini who are surnamed Mariani, the Corani, sprung from the Trojan Dardanus, the Cubulterini,
64| the Castrimoenienses, Cingulani, the Cabienses on the Alban mount, the Foropopulienses from Falernum, the Frusinates, Ferentinates, Freginates, the Fabraterni Veteres, Fabraterni Novi, Ficolenses, Fregellani, Forum Appii, the Forentani, Gabini, the Interamnates Sucasini, who are also called Lirenates, the Ilionenses, Lanivini, Norbani, Nomentani, the Praenestini, their city once called Stephane, the Privernates, Setini, Signini, Suessulani, Telesini, the Trebulani surnamed Ballienses, the Trebani, Tusculani, Verulani, Veliterni,
65| the Ulubrenses, the Urbanates, and above them Rome itself, whose other name it is held a sin to speak except in the secret rites, and which Valerius Soranus pronounced, though it had been suppressed by a best and saving fidelity, and soon paid the penalty. It does not seem out of place to insert at this point an example of ancient religious practice, instituted for the sake of this silence above all. For the goddess Angerona, to whom sacrifice is made on the twelfth day before the Kalends of January, has a statue with its mouth bound and sealed.
66| Romulus left the City with three gates, or, if we believe those who give the most, four. Its walls, in the year of the foundation 826, under the Vespasians as emperors and censors, collected in a circuit 13 miles and 200, embracing seven hills. The city itself is divided into 14 regions, and has 265 crossroad shrines of the Lares. Its extent, by a measure running from the milestone set at the head of the Roman Forum to each of the gates, which today are 37 in number (so that the twelve gates are counted once, and 7 of the old ones are passed over, which have ceased to exist), makes in a straight line 20,765 paces.
67| Measured to the farthest of the roofs, together with the praetorian camp, from the same milestone through the streets of all the roads, the measure comes to a little more than 60,000 paces. If anyone should add the height of the roofs, he would surely form an estimate worthy of it, and would admit that the greatness of no city in the whole world could be compared with it. It is closed on the east by the rampart of Tarquin the Proud, among the first in marvellous work; for he made it equal to walls where the approach lay most open on level ground. The rest was fortified by very high walls or by steep mountains, except that roofs spreading out have added many cities.
68| In the first region, moreover, there were in Latium famous towns: Satricum, Pometia, Scaptia, Politorium, Tellena, Tifata, Caenina, Ficana, Crustumeria, Ameriola, Medullum, Corniculum, Saturnia, where Rome now is, Antipolis, which is now the Janiculum, in a part of Rome, Antemnae, Camerium, Collatia, Amitinum,
69| Norba, Sulmo, and with them the Alban peoples who used to receive meat on the Alban mount: the Albani, Aesolani, Accienses, Abolani, Bubetani, Bolani, Cusuetani, Coriolani, Fidenates, Foreti, Hortenses, Latinienses, Longani, Manates, Macrales, Munienses, Numinienses, Olliculani, Octulani, Pedani, Poletaurini, Querquetulani, Sicani, Sisolenses, Tolerienses, Tutienses, Vimitellari, Velienses, Venetulani, Vitellenses.
70| Thus of ancient Latium 53 peoples have perished without a trace. In the Campanian territory Stabiae was a town until the consulship of Gnaeus Pompeius and Lucius Cato, the day before the Kalends of May, on which day Lucius Sulla, as a legate in the Social War, destroyed it; it has now become a country house. Taurania also perished there. The remains of Casilinum are dying. Antias moreover is the authority that the Latin town Apiolae was captured by King Lucius Tarquinius, and that from its spoil he began the Capitol. From Surrentum to the river Silerus, 30 miles, was the Picentine territory, once of the Tusci, noted for the temple of Argive Juno founded by Jason. Inland the town of Salernum, Picentia.
71| From the Silerus begins the third region, the Lucanian and Bruttian territory, and not there either without frequent change of inhabitants. The Pelasgi held it, the Oenotri, the Itali, the Morgetes, the Siculi, mostly peoples of Greece, and lastly the Lucani, sprung from the Samnites under a leader Lucius. The town Paestum, called Posidonia by the Greeks; the Paestan gulf; the town Elea, which is now Velia; the promontory Palinurus, from which, where the gulf recedes, the crossing to the Columna Regia is 100 miles; the nearest river is the Melpes,
72| the town Buxentum, in Greek Pyxus; the river Laus. There was also a town of the same name. From it the Bruttian shore; the town Blanda; the river Baletum; the harbour Parthenius of the Phocenses; the Vibonensian gulf; the place Clampetia; the town Tempsa, called Temese by the Greeks; Terina of the Crotonians, and the huge Terinaean gulf. The town Consentia inland.
73| On the peninsula the river Acheron, from which the townsfolk are called Aceruntini. Hippo, which we now call Vibo Valentia; the harbour of Hercules; the river Metaurus; the town Tauroentum; the harbour of Orestes, and Medma. The town Scyllaeum; the river Crataeis, mother, as they have said, of Scylla. Then the Columna Regia and the Sicilian strait and two opposite promontories, from Italy Caenus, from Sicily Pelorum, at an interval of 12 stadia,
74| from where to Regium 94. Then Sila, a forest of the Appennine; the promontory Leucopetra, 15,000 paces; from it 51,000 to Locri, named from the promontory Zephyrium. They are 303,000 distant from the Silerus. And the first gulf of Europe is closed. In it the seas are named: where it breaks in, the Atlantic, by others the Great; where it enters, Porthmos by the Greeks, by us the Gaditan strait; when it has entered, the Spanish, so far as it washes the Spains, by others the Iberian or the Balearic; then the Gallic before the province Narbonensis;
75| then the Ligurian; from it to the island of Sicily the Tuscan, which of the Greeks some call Notium, others Tyrrhenian, and most of ours the Lower. The part beyond Sicily which lies by the Sallentini Polybius calls the Ausonian; Eratosthenes calls everything that lies between the ocean's mouth and Sardinia the Sardoan, from there to Sicily the Tyrrhenian, from this to Crete the Sicilian, and from that the Cretan.
76| The first of all the islands in these seas are the Pityussae, so called by the Greeks from the pine shrub; now each is called Ebusus, a federated community, a narrow strait flowing between. They extend 46,000, and are 700 stadia from Dianium; and just as many is Dianium by land from Carthago Nova, and as far from the Pityussae out to sea are the two Baliares, and toward Sucro, Colubraria.
77| The Baliares, warlike with the sling, the Greeks called Gymnasiae. The greater is 100 paces in length, and in circuit 475,000. It has the towns of Roman citizens Palma and Pollentia, the Latin Guium and Tucis, and there was a federated one of the Bocchori. From it the smaller is 30,000 distant, in length 40,000, in circuit 150. Its communities are Iamo, Sanisera and Mago.
78| From the greater, 12,000 out to sea, lies Capraria, treacherous with shipwrecks, and opposite the city of Palma, Menaria and Tiquadra and the small island of Hannibal. The soil of Ebusus drives away serpents; that of Colubraria breeds them, and so it is dangerous to all who do not bring in Ebusitan earth; the Greeks called it Ophiussa. Nor does Ebusus produce rabbits, which ravage the harvests of the Baliares.
79| There are about twenty other small ones in a shallow sea; and, on the Gallic coast by the mouth of the Rhone, Metina, then the one called that of the Blasci, and the three Stoechades, so called by the neighbouring Massilians on account of the order in which they lie. Their names are Prote, Mese, which is also called Pomponiana, and the third Hypaea; after these Sturium, Phoenice, Phila, Lero and Lerina opposite Antipolis, in which there is a memory of a town Berco.
80| In the Ligurian sea is Corsica, which the Greeks called Cyrnos, but nearer the Tuscan, stretching from north to south, 150,000 paces long, 50 wide for the greater part, in circuit 325,000. It is 62,000 from the shallows of Volaterra, has 32 communities and the colonies Mariana, led out by Gaius Marius, and Aleria, by the dictator Sulla. On this side is Oglasa; but within, and 60,000 paces from Corsica, Planasia, named from its appearance, level with the sea and therefore deceptive to ships.
81| Larger are Urgo and Capraria, which the Greeks called Aegilion, likewise Igilium and Dianium, which they called Artemisia, both opposite the Cosan shore; and Barpana, Menaria, Columbaria, Venaria; Ilva with its iron mines, circuit 100, 10 from Populonium, called Aethalia by the Greeks. From it Planasia, 28,000. Beyond these, beyond the mouths of the Tiber, in the territory of Antium, Astura; soon Palmaria, Sinonia, opposite Formiae the Pontiae.
82| In the gulf of Puteoli, however, Pandateria; Prochyta, not from Aeneas' nurse, but because it had been poured out from Aenaria; Aenaria, from the station of Aeneas' ships, called Inarime by Homer; Pithecusa, not from a multitude of apes, as some have thought, but from the potteries of jars. Between Pausilypum and Neapolis, Megaris; then, 8 distant from Surrentum, those of the emperor Tiberius,
83| noted for his citadel, Capreae, 11,000 in circuit; Leucothea; and out of sight, touching the African sea, Sardinia, less than 8,000 paces from the farthest parts of Corsica, those straits being still further narrowed by small islands called Cuniculariae, and likewise those of Phinto and Fossae, from which the strait itself is named Taphros.
84| Sardinia, extending on the east 188,000 paces, on the west 175,000, on the south 77,000, on the north 125,000, in circuit 565,000, is 200,000 from Africa at the Caralitan promontory, and from Gades |X̅I̅I̅I̅|.L. It has also, from the Gorditan promontory, two islands which are called those of Hercules; from the Sulcensian, Enosis; from the Caralitan, Ficaria.
85| Some place not far from it also the Leberides and Callode and the one they call Heras lutra. The most celebrated of the peoples in it are the Ilienses, Balari and Corsi; of the 18 towns, the Sulcitani, Valentini, Neapolitani, Bitienses, the Caralitani of Roman citizens, and the Norenses; and one colony, which is called At the Tower of Libiso. Sardinia itself Timaeus called Sandaliotis, from the shape of a sandal, Myrsilus Ichnusa, from its likeness to a footprint. Opposite the Paestan gulf is Leucosia, named from a Siren buried there; opposite Velia, Pontia and Isacia, both under the one name Oenotrides, a proof of Italy having been possessed by the Oenotri; opposite Vibo, small ones which are called Ithacesiae, from the watchtower of Ulysses.
86| But before all in fame is Sicily, called Sicania by Thucydides, Trinacria by many, or Trinacia, from its triangular shape, extending in circuit, as Agrippa is the authority, 618,000 paces; once joined to the Bruttian territory, then torn away when the sea flowed between; the strait is 15,000 in length, and in breadth 1,500 paces near the Columna Regia. From this proof of its splitting apart the Greeks gave the name Rhegium to the town situated on the margin of Italy.
87| In this strait is the rock Scylla, and likewise Charybdis, a whirling sea, both famous for their savagery. Of the triangular island itself, as we have said, the promontory called Pelorum, facing toward Scylla, turns toward Italy; Pachynum toward Greece, the Peloponnese being 440,000 distant from it; Lilybaeum toward Africa, at an interval of 180,000 from the promontory of Mercury and 190,000 from the Caralitan one of Sardinia. The promontories and sides are distant from each other by these spaces: by land route from Pelorum to Pachynum 176,000, from there to Lilybaeum 200,000, from there to Pelorum 242,000. There are 5 colonies and 63,000 cities or communities.
88| From Pelorum, on the coast facing the Ionian sea: the town Messana of Roman citizens, who are called Mamertini; the promontory Drepanum; the colony Tauromenium, formerly Naxos; the river Asines; mount Aetna, wonderful for its nocturnal fires. Its crater extends twenty stadia in circuit; the glowing ash reaches as far as Tauromenium and Catina, and the roar as far as Maroneum and the Gemelli hills.
89| The three rocks of the Cyclopes; the harbour of Ulysses; the colony Catina; the rivers Symaethus and Terias. Inland the Laestrygonian plains. The towns Leontini and Megaris; the river Pantagies; the colony Syracuse with the spring Arethusa, although the springs Temenitis, Archidemia, Magea, Cyane and Milichie are also drunk from in the Syracusan territory; the harbour Naustathmus; the river Elorum; the promontory Pachynum, from which [….] the front of Sicily the river Hyrminum, the town Camarina, the river Gelas, the town Agragas,
90| which our people have called Agrigentum; the colony Thermae; the rivers Achates, Mazaara, Hypsa and Selinuus; the town Lilybaeum, the promontory from it; Drepana; mount Eryx; the towns Panhormum, Soluus, Himera with its river, Cephaloedis, Haluntium, Agathyrnum, the colony Tyndaris, the town Mylae, and, where we began, Pelorias.
91| Inland, however, of Latin status: the Centuripini, Netini and Segestani; the tributary Assorini, Aetnenses, Agyrini, Acestaei, Acrenses, Bidini, Citarini, Drepanitani, Ergetini, Echetlienses, Erycini, Entellini, Egguini, Gelani, Galacteni, Halaesini, Hennenses, Hyblenses, Herbitenses, Herbessenses, Herbulenses, Halicuenses, Hadranitani, Imacarenses, Ichanenses, Iaetenses, Mutustratini, Magellini, Murgentini, Mutycenses, Menaini, Naxi, Noini, Petrini, Paropini, Phintienses, Semelitani, Scherini, Selinunti, Symaethii, Talarenses, Tissienses, Triocalini, Tyracinenses. The Zanclaei of the Messenians are in the Sicilian strait.
92| The islands facing toward Africa: Gaulos; Melita, 87,000 from Camarina, 113,000 from Lilybaeum; Cossyra; Hieronnesos; Caene; Galata; Lopadusa; Aethusa, which others have written Aegusa; Bucinna; and, 75,000 from Soluntum, Osteodes; and opposite the Paropini, Ustica. On this side of Sicily, however, opposite the river Metaurus, about 25,000 paces from Italy, seven called Aeoliae, the same as the Liparaean islands, Hephaestiades by the Greeks, Volcaniae by our people, and Aeoliae because Aeolus reigned there in Trojan times.
93| Lipara, with a town of Roman citizens, named from King Liparus, who succeeded Aeolus, formerly called Milogonis or Meligunis, is 25,000 from Italy; its circuit a little less than 5. Between this and Sicily is another, formerly called Therasia, now Hiera, because it is sacred to Vulcan, a hill in it vomiting forth flames by night.
94| The third is Strongyle, 6,000 paces from Lipara toward the rising of the sun, in which Aeolus reigned; it differs from Lipara only in a clearer flame, and from its smoke the inhabitants are said to predict what winds will blow within three days; whence it was thought that the winds obeyed Aeolus. The fourth is Didyme, which is smaller than Lipara; the fifth is Ericusa and the sixth Phoenicusa, both left to serve as pasture for their nearest neighbours. The last, and the smallest too, Euonymos. So far of the first gulf of Europe.
95| From Locri begins the front of Italy, called Magna Graecia, receding into three gulfs of the Ausonian sea, because the Ausones held it first. It extends 86,000, as Varro is the authority; most have made it 75,000. On that coast there are innumerable rivers, but those worth mentioning, from Locri, are the Sagra, and the traces of the town of Caulon, Mustia, the fort Consilinum, and Cocynthum, which some think the longest promontory of Italy. Then a gulf and the town Scolacium, Scylaceum, and Scylletium, a name given by the Athenians when they founded it, a place which the Terinaean gulf, meeting it, makes a peninsula, and on it the harbour called Hannibal's Camp; nowhere is Italy narrower: the breadth is 40,000 paces; and therefore Dionysius the Elder wished to cut it through at that place and add it to Sicily.
96| Navigable rivers there: the Carcinus, Crotalus, Semirus, Arogas, Thagines; inland the town Petelia; mount Clibanus; the promontory Lacinium, off whose coast, 10 from the land, is the island of Dioscoron, and another, Calypso's, which Homer is thought to have called Ogygia; besides these Tyris, Eranusa, Meloessa. Agrippa gives it as 70,000 distant from Caulon.
97| From the promontory Lacinium begins the second gulf of Europe, curved in a great circuit and bounded by the Acroceraunian promontory in Epirus, 75,000 distant from it. The town Croto; the river Neaethus; the town Thurii between the two rivers Crathis and Sybaris, where there was a city of the same name. Similarly between the Siris and the Aciris is Heraclea, at one time called Siris. The rivers Talandrum and Casuentum; the town Metapontum, where the third region of Italy comes to an end.
98| Of the inland Bruttii only the Aprustani; but of the Lucanians, the Atinates, Bantini, Eburini, Grumentini, Potentini, Sontini, Sirini, Tergilani, Ursentini, Volcentani, to whom the Numestrani are joined. Besides, that Lucanian Thebes perished, Cato is the authority, and that Pandosia was a city of the Lucanians, Theopompus says, in which Alexander of Epirus fell.
99| Connected is the second region, embracing the Hirpini, Calabria, Apulia and the Sallentini, with a gulf of 250,000, which is called the Tarentine from the town of the Laconians (situated in this innermost recess, the maritime colony that had been there being attached to it; it is 136,000 from the promontory Lacinium), sending out the opposite Calabria as a peninsula. The Greeks called it Messapia from a leader, and before that Peucetia, from Peucetius, brother of Oenotrus, in the Sallentine territory. Between the promontories there are 100. The breadth of the peninsula, from Tarentum to Brundisium by land route, extends 45,000, and much shorter from the harbour of Sasina.
100| The towns through the mainland from Tarentum: Uria, whose surname is Messapian, because of the Apulian one; Aletium; on the coast Senum, and Callipolis, which is now Anxa, 75,000 from Tarentum. Thence, 33,000, the promontory which they call the Iapygian Acra, where Italy runs out farthest into the seas. From it the town Basta and Hydruntum, nineteen miles, at the division of the Ionian and Adriatic seas, where the crossing into Greece is shortest, opposite the town of the Apolloniatae, the breadth of the strait running between being 50 and no more.
101| First Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, thought of continuing this interval by a crossing on foot, by throwing bridges across, and after him Marcus Varro, when he was in command of Pompey's fleets in the pirate war; other cares hindered both. From Hydruntum: Soletum, deserted; then Fratuentium; the harbour of Tarentum; the station Miltopes; Lupiae; Balesium; Caelia; Brundisium, 50 paces from Hydruntum, noted above all for the harbour of Italy and for a crossing at once surer and, as it were, longer, the Illyrian city Dyrrachium receiving it after a passage of 225,000.
102| Contiguous with Brundisium is the territory of the Poediculi. Nine young men and as many maidens from Illyria begot 12 peoples. The towns of the Poediculi: Rudiae, Gnatia, Barium; the rivers Iapyx, from the king, son of Daedalus, from whom the Iapygian Acra also takes its name; the Pactius; the Aufidus, flowing past Canusium from the mountains of the Hirpini.
103| From here Apulia, surnamed that of the Daunii, from a leader, the father-in-law of Diomedes; in it the town Salapia, famous for Hannibal's love of a courtesan; Sipuntum; Uria; the river Cerbalus, the end of the Daunii; the harbour Aggasus; the promontory of mount Garganus, from the Sallentine or Iapygian one, 234,000 in the circuit of the Garganus; the harbour Garna; the lake Pantanus; the river Fertor, rich in harbours. Teanum of the Apuli, and likewise Larinum, Cliternia; the river Tifernus.
104| Then the Frentane region. So the kinds of Apulians are three: the Teani, from a leader, of the Greeks; the Lucani, subdued by Calchas, who occupy places now held by the Atinates; of the Daunii, besides those named above, the colonies Luceria and Venusia, the towns Canusium and Arpi, at one time Argos Hippium, founded by Diomedes, then called Argyripa. Diomedes there destroyed the tribes of the Monades and Dardi and two cities, which passed into a jest in a proverb, Apina and Trica.
105| The rest inland in the second region: of the Hirpini one colony, Beneventum, with a more auspicious change of name, which was once called Maleventum; the Aeculani, Aquiloni, Abellinates surnamed Protropi, Compsani, Caudini, the Ligures who are surnamed Corneliani and those Baebiani, the Vescellani. The Ausculani, Aletrini, Abellinates surnamed Marsi, Atrani, Aecani, Alfellani, Atinates, Arpani, Borcani, Collatini, Corinenses, and, noted for a Roman disaster, the Cannenses, the Dirini, Forentani, Genusini, Herdonienses, Irini, the Larinates surnamed Frentani, Metinates from the Garganus, Mateolani, Neretini, Natini, Rubustini, Silvini, Strapellini, Turnantini, Vibinates, Venusini, Ulurtini. Of the inland Calabri: the Aezetini, Apamestini, Argetini, Butuntinenses, Deciani, Grumbestini, Norbanenses, Palionenses, Stulnini, Tutini. Of the Sallentini: the Aletini, Basterbini, Neretini, Uzentini, Veretini.
106| There follows the fourth region, of peoples among the bravest of Italy. On the coast of the Frentani, from the Tifernus, the river Trinium, rich in harbours; the towns Histonium, Buca, Hortona; the river Aternus. Inland the Anxani surnamed Frentani, the Carecini Supernates and Infernates, the Iuanenses. Of the Marrucini: the Teatini. Of the Paeligni: the Corfinienses, Superaequani, Sulmonenses. Of the Marsi: the Anxatini, Antinates, Fucentes, Lucenses, Marruvini. Of the Albenses: Alba at the Fucine lake.
107| Of the Aequiculani: the Cliternini and Carseolani. Of the Vestini: the Angulani, Pennienses, Peltuinates, to whom are joined the Aufinates Cismontani. Of the Samnites, whom the Greeks too called Saunitae, as well as Sabelli: the colonies Bovianum Vetus and another surnamed that of the Undecumani, the Aufidenates, Aesernini, Fagifulani, Ficolenses, Saepinates, Tereventinates. Of the Sabines: the Amiternini, Curenses, Forum Decii, Forum Novum, the Fidenates, Interamnates, Nursini, Nomentani, Reatini, the Trebulani who are surnamed Mutuesci and those called Suffenates, the Tiburtes, Tarinates.
108| In this region, of the Aequicoli there have perished the Comini, Tadiates, Caedici and Alfaterni. Gellianus is the authority that the town of the Marsi, Archippe, founded by Marsyas, leader of the Lydians, was swallowed by the Fucine lake; likewise that of the Vidicini in Picenum was destroyed by the Romans, Valerianus says. The Sabines, as some have thought, were called Sebini from religion and the worship of the gods; they dwell by the Velini lakes, among dewy hills.
109| The river Nar drains them with its sulphurous waters, seeking the Tiber from them; the Avens, coming from mount Fiscellus past the groves of Vacuna and Reate, refills them, burying itself in those same lakes. But from another part the Anio, rising in the mountain of the Trebani, brings down into the Tiber three lakes noted for their loveliness, which gave their name to Sublaqueum. Marcus Varro reports that the lake of Cutiliae in the Reatine territory, in which an island floats, is the navel of Italy. Below the Sabines is Latium; on the flank Picenum; behind, Umbria, the ridges of the Appennine fencing in the Sabines on both sides.
110| The fifth region is Picenum's, once of a most abundant population. 360,000 of the Picentes came under the protection of the Roman people. They are sprung from the Sabines by a vow of a sacred spring. They held it from the river Aternus, where now is the Hadrian territory and the colony Hadria, 6,000 from the sea. The river Vomanus; the Praetutian and Palmensian territory; likewise Castrum Novum; the river Batinus; Truentum with the river of that name, the only one of the Liburnian places remaining in Italy; the rivers Albula, Tessuinus, Helvinus, where the Praetutian region ends and that of the Picentes begins.
111| The town Cupra; the fort of the Firmani, and above it the colony Asculum, the most noble inland town of Picenum; Novana. On the coast Cluana, Potentia, Numana (a Siculan foundation), and the colony Ancona, founded by the same people, set beside the promontory Cunerus, at the very elbow of the coast as it bends, 183,000 from the Garganus. Inland the Auximates, Beregrani, Cingulani, the Cuprenses surnamed Montani, the Falerienses, Pausulani, Planinenses, Ricinenses, Septempedani, Tolentinates, Traienses, and the Urbesalvia Pollentini.
112| To these will be joined the sixth region, embracing Umbria and the Gallic territory on this side of Ariminum. From Ancona begins the Gallic coast, surnamed that of Toga-wearing Gaul. The Siculi and Liburni held most of that tract, above all the Palmensian, Praetutian and Hadrian territory. The Umbri expelled them, Etruria these, the Gauls this one. The Umbri are thought the most ancient people of Italy, so that they think them called Ombrii by the Greeks, because they survived the rains in the flooding of the lands. The Tusci are found to have conquered three hundred of their towns.
113| Now on the coast the river Aesis; Senagallia; the river Metaurus; the colonies Fanum Fortunae, Pisaurum with its river, and inland Hispellum and Tuder. For the rest: the Amerini, Attidiates, Asisinates, Arnates, Aesinates, Camertes, Casuentillani, Carsulani, the Dolates surnamed Sallentini, Fulginiates, Foroflaminienses, the Foroiulienses surnamed Concupienses, the Forobrentani, Forosempronienses, Iguini, the Interamnates surnamed Nartes, the Mevanates, Mevaniolenses, Matilicates, the Narnienses, which town
114| was formerly called Nequinum; the Nucerini surnamed Favonienses and Camellani, the Ocriculani, Ostrani, the Pitinates surnamed Pisuertes and others Mergentini, the Plestini, Sentinates, Sarsinates, Spoletini, Suasani, Sestinates, Suillates, Tadinates, Trebiates, Tuficani, the Tifernates surnamed Tiberini and others Metaurenses, the Vesinicates, the Urvinates surnamed Metaurenses and others Hortenses, the Vettonenses, Vindinates, Visuentani. In this region there have perished the Feliginates and those who held Clusiolum above Interamna, and the Sarranates, with the towns Acerrae, which were surnamed Vafriae, Turocaelum, which was Vettiolum, likewise the Solinates, Curiates, Falinates, Sapinates. Perished too the Arinates with Crinivolum, and the Usidicani, Plangenses, Paesinates and Caelestini. Ameria, written of above, Cato reports to have been founded 963 years before the war with Perses.
115| The eighth region has as its boundaries Ariminum, the Po and the Appennine. On the coast the river Crustumium; the colony Ariminum, with the rivers Ariminus and Aprusa; the river Rubico, once the end of Italy. From it the Sapis, Utis and Anemo; Ravenna, a Sabine town, on the river Bedesis, 105,000 from Ancona; and close to the sea, Butrium of the Umbri. Inland the colonies Bononia, called Felsina when it was the foremost city of Etruria, Brixillum, Mutina, Parma, Placentia.
116| The towns Caesena, Claterna, the Forums of Clodius, Livius, Popilius, of the Druentini, Cornelius, Licinius; the Faventini, Fidentini, Otesini, Padinates; the Regienses, from Lepidus; the Solonates and the Gallian glades, whose people are surnamed Aquinates; the Tannetani; the Veleiates surnamed Vetti Regiates; the Urbanates. In this region the Boii have perished, whose tribes Cato is the authority were 112, and likewise the Senones, who took Rome.
117| The Po, flowing from the lap of mount Vesulus, raised to the loftiest summit of the Alps, in the territory of the Ligurian Bagienni, from a spring worth seeing, and hiding itself in a tunnel and rising again in the territory of the Forovibienses, inferior in renown to no river, called Eridanus by the Greeks and made illustrious by the punishment of Phaethon, is swollen at the rising of the Dog Star by melting snows, more of a torrent for the fields than for ships, yet claiming nothing for itself from what it has seized, and, where it leaves it, bestowing a gift by its fertility.
118| Running 300,000 paces from its source and adding ninety less two by its windings, and receiving not only navigable Appennine and Alpine rivers but also immense lakes pouring themselves into it, it carries to the Adriatic sea 30 rivers in all, the most famous of them from the Appennine side being the Iactum, Tanarus, the Placentine Trebia, Tarus, Incia, Gabellus, Scultenna, Rhenus, and from the Alps the Stura, Orgus, the two Duriae, Sesis, Ticinus, Lambrus, Addua, Ollius, Mincius.
119| Nor is any other river of so great an increase within so short a space. It is pressed hard by the mass of its waters and driven into the deep, heavy upon the earth; although it is drawn off into streams and ditches between Ravenna and Altinum for 120,000 paces, yet where it discharges more widely it is said to make the Seven Seas. The Augustan ditch is drawn to Ravenna, where it is called Padusa, formerly named Messanicus. The next mouth from there has the size of a harbour, and is called that of the Vatrenus, where Claudius Caesar, returning in triumph from Britain, entered the Adriatic in that huge house, rather than ship.
120| This mouth was earlier called the Eridanus; by others the Spineticum, from the city Spina, which stood near, powerful, as is believed from the treasuries at Delphi, and founded by Diomedes. There the river Vatrenus, from the territory of Forum Cornelii, swells the Po. The next mouth from there is that of Caprasia, then Sagis, then Volane, which was formerly called Olane; all these are by the Flavian ditch, which the Tusci first made from the Sagis, the force of the river being carried off crosswise into the marshes of the Atriani, which are called the Seven Seas, with the noble harbour of the Tuscan town Atria, from which the sea now called Hadriatic was formerly called Atriatic.
121| From there the full mouths Carbonaria, Fossiones and Philistina, which others call Tartarus, all arising from the overflow of the Philistine ditch, with the Atesis from the Alps of Tridentum and the Togisonus from the fields of the Patavini joining. A part of them also makes the nearest harbour, Brundulum, as the two Meduaci and the Clodian ditch make Aedron. With these the Po mingles and pours itself out through them, reported by most to make, like the Nile in Egypt (what they call the Delta), a triangular figure between the Alps and the coast of the sea, in a circuit of stadia II.
122| It is a shame to borrow from the Greeks the account of Italy, yet Metrodorus of Scepsis says that, because around its spring there are many pitch trees, which in Gaulish are called padi, it received this name; in the language of the Ligures, indeed, the river itself is called Bodincus, which signifies bottomless. In support of this argument there is nearby a town Industria, with the old name Bodincomagum, where the chief depth begins.
123| The region from it is called Transpadana, the eleventh, wholly inland, to which it conveys everything of the sea in its fruitful channel. The towns: Forum Vibii, Segusio; colonies from the foot of the Alps, Augusta of the Taurini (from there the Po is navigable), of the ancient Ligurian stock; then Augusta Praetoria of the Salassi, near the twin gates of the Alps, the Graian and the Poenine (they record that the Poeni crossed by the latter, Hercules by the Graian); the town Eporedia, founded by the Roman people at the bidding of the Sibylline books. The Gauls call eporedias good tamers of horses.
124| Vercellae of the Libicii, sprung from the Sallui; Novaria from the Vertamocori, to this day a canton of the Vocontii, not of the Ligures as Cato thinks, of whom the Laevi and Marici founded Ticinum, not far from the Po, as the Boii, setting out from beyond the Alps, founded Laus Pompeia, and the Insubres Mediolanum. Cato is the authority that Comum, Bergomum, Licini Forum and some peoples round about are of the stock of the Oromobii, but confesses that he does not know the origin of the people, which Cornelius Alexander teaches arose from Greece, interpreting even the name as "people who pass their life in the mountains."
125| In this region the town of the Oromobii, Parra, perished, from which Cato said the Bergomates sprang, even now revealing itself as situated higher than it was fortunate. Perished also the Caturiges, exiles of the Insubres, and Spina, mentioned above, and likewise Melpum, outstanding for its wealth, which was destroyed by the Insubres, Boii and Senones on the very day when Camillus captured Veii, Cornelius Nepos has related.
126| There follows the tenth region of Italy, set beside the Adriatic sea, in which are Venetia; the river Silis from the mountains of Tarvisium; the town Altinum; the river Liquentia from the mountains of Opitergium, and a harbour of the same name; the colony Concordia; the rivers and harbours Reatinum, Tiliaventum Maius and Minus, Anaxum, into which the Varamus flows down, Alsa, Natiso with the Turrus, flowing past the colony Aquileia, situated 15,000 paces from the sea.
127| This region is that of the Carni, and joined to it that of the Iapudes; the river Timavus; the fort Pucinum, famous for its wine; the Tergestine gulf; the colony Tergeste, 33,000 from Aquileia. Beyond it six miles, the river Formio, 189,000 from Ravenna, the old boundary of an enlarged Italy, now that of Histria. This, as having been named from the river Hister, flowing out into the Adriatic from the river Danube, which is also the Hister, opposite the mouths of the Po, the sea between them sweetening by their contrary beating, most have said falsely, and Nepos too, a dweller on the Po;
128| for no river from the Danube pours out into the Adriatic sea. I believe they were deceived because the ship Argo came down by a river into the Adriatic sea close to Tergeste, and it is not now agreed by what river. The more careful relate that it was carried over the Alps on men's shoulders, but that it ascended the Hister, then the Savus, then the Nauportus, which has its name from this cause, rising between Emona and the Alps.
129| Histria runs out like a peninsula. Some have given its breadth as 40,000 and its circuit 125,000, and likewise of the adjoining Liburnia and of the Flanatic gulf, others 225,000, others of Liburnia 180,000. Some advanced Iapudia to the Flanatic gulf, 130,000 behind Histria, and then made Liburnia 150,000. Tuditanus, who subdued the Histri, inscribed on his statue there: FROM AQUILEIA TO THE RIVER TITIUS, 2,000 STADIA. The towns of Histria of Roman citizens: Agida, Parentium, and the colony Pola, which is now Pietas Iulia, once founded by Colchians; it is 105,000 from Tergeste. Next the town Nesactium and, now the end of Italy, the river Arsia. The crossing to Pola from Ancona is 120,000 paces.
130| Inland in the tenth region, the colonies: Cremona; Brixia in the territory of the Cenomani; of the Veneti, however, Ateste, and the towns Acelum, Patavium, Opitergium, Belunum, Vicetia. Mantua, alone remaining of the Tuscans beyond the Po. Cato is the authority that the Veneti are sprung of Trojan stock, and that the Cenomani dwelt near Massilia among the Volcae. The Feltrini, Tridentini and Beruenses are Raetic towns; Verona, of the Raeti and Euganei; the Iulienses, of the Carni. Then, those whom it is not pertinent to name more minutely: the Alutrenses, Asseriates, Flamonienses Vanienses and others surnamed Carici, the Foroiulienses surnamed Transpadani, the Foretani, Nedinates, Quarqueni, Tarvisani, Togienses, Varvari.
131| In this region there perished along the coast Irmene, Pellaon, Palsicium; of the Veneti, Atina and Caelina; of the Carni, Segesta and Ocra; of the Taurisci, Noreia. And a town at the twelfth milestone from Aquileia was destroyed by Marcus Claudius Marcellus, even against the will of the senate, Lucius Piso is the authority. In this region and the eleventh, there are famous lakes, and rivers which are their offspring or nurslings, if only they give back what they have received, as Lake Como the Addua, the Verbannus the Ticinus, the Benacus the Mincius, the Sebinnus the Ollius, the Eupilis the Lambrus, all inhabitants of the Po.
132| Caelius reports that the Alps extend in length 10 paces from the Upper sea to the Lower, Timagenes 25,000 paces less, and in breadth Cornelius Nepos 100, Titus Livius 3,000 stadia, each in different places. For they even sometimes exceed a hundred miles, where they separate Germany from Italy, and do not reach 70,000 in the rest of their extent, slender as though by nature's providence. The breadth of Italy below their roots, from the Varus through Vada Sabatia, the Taurini, Comum, Brixia, Verona, Vicetia, Opitergium, Aquileia, Tergeste, Pola, to the Arsia, gathers up 745,000 paces.
133| The inhabitants of the Alps are many peoples, but the famous ones, from Pola to the region of Tergeste, are the Fecusses, Subocrini, Catali and Menoncaleni, and next to the Carni the Taurisci, once so called, now Norici. Bordering on these are the Raeti and Vindelici, all divided into many communities. The Raeti are thought to be the offspring of the Tusci, driven out by the Gauls under a leader Raetus. Then, with the breast of the Alps turned toward Italy, there are the Euganean peoples of Latin right, of whom Cato enumerates 34 towns.
134| Of these the Trumplini, a people for sale with their lands, then the Camunni and several similar ones attached to the neighbouring municipalities. The Lepontii and Salassi the same Cato judges to be of the Taurisci people; most others believe the Lepontii to be those left behind from the company of Hercules, by an interpretation of the Greek name, their limbs having been burnt by snow in the crossing of the Alps. Of the same army, they say, were also the Graii, the inhabitants of the Graian Alps, and the Euganei, outstanding by birth, from which the name is drawn. Their capital is Stoenos.
135| Of the Raeti, the Vennonenses and Sarunetes live by the sources of the river Rhine; of the Lepontii, those who are called Uberi, by the source of the Rhone, in the same tract of the Alps. There are besides inhabitants granted Latin right, such as the Octodurenses and the neighbouring Ceutrones, the Cottian communities, and the Turi, sprung from the Ligures, the Bagienni Ligures and those called Montani, and many kinds of the Capillati, toward the border of the Ligurian sea.
136| It does not seem out of place to add at this point the inscription from the trophy of the Alps, which is as follows: TO THE EMPEROR CAESAR AUGUSTUS, SON OF THE DEIFIED, PONTIFEX MAXIMUS, SALUTED EMPEROR 13 TIMES, IN THE 17TH YEAR OF TRIBUNICIAN POWER, THE SENATE AND PEOPLE OF ROME, BECAUSE UNDER HIS LEADERSHIP AND AUSPICES ALL THE ALPINE PEOPLES WHICH REACHED FROM THE UPPER SEA DOWN TO THE LOWER HAVE BEEN BROUGHT UNDER THE SWAY OF THE ROMAN PEOPLE. ALPINE PEOPLES CONQUERED: THE TRUMPILINI,
137| · THE CAMUNNI · VENOSTES · VENNONETES · ISARCI · BREUNI · GENAUNES · FOCUNATES · FOUR PEOPLES OF THE VINDELICI: COSUANETES · RUCINATES · LICATES · CATENATES · AMBISONTES · RUGUSCI · SUANETES · CALUCONES · BRIXENETES · LEPONTII · UBERI · NANTUATES · SEDUNI · VARAGRI · SALASSI · ACITAVONES · MEDULLI · UCENNI · CATURIGES · BRIGIANI · SOGIONTII · BRODIONTII · NEMALONI · EDENATES · VESUBIANI · VEAMINI · GALLITAE · TRIULLATI · ECDINI · VERGUNNI · EGUI · TURI · NEMATURI. ORATELLI · NERUSI · VELAUNI · SUETRI.
138| Not added are the 15 Cottian communities, which had not been hostile, and likewise those attached to municipalities by the Pompeian law. This is Italy sacred to the gods, these are its peoples, these the towns of its nations. Besides this, Italy, which in the consulship of Lucius Aemilius Paulus and Gaius Atilius Regulus, when a Gallic uprising was announced, alone, without any foreign aids, and even then without the Transpadanes, armed 80,000 cavalry and 700,000 infantry, yields to no land in fertility in metals of every kind; but this has been forbidden by an old decree of the senators, bidding that Italy be spared.
139| The people of the Liburni is joined to the Arsia as far as the river Titius. Part of it were the Mentores, Himani, Encheleae, Bulini and those whom Callimachus calls Peucetii; now the whole is called by one name, generically, Illyricum. Few of the names of the peoples are worth saying or easy. The Iapudes and 14 communities of the Liburni go to the jurisdiction of Scardona, of whom it would not be wearisome to name the Lacinienses, Stulpini, Burnistae and Olbonenses. From that jurisdiction the Alutae, Flanates (from whom the gulf is named), Lopsi, Varvarini, and the exempt Asseriates have Italian right, and of the islands the Fertinates and Curictae.
140| For the rest, the towns along the coast from Nesactium are Alvona, Flanona, Tarsatica, Senia, Lopsica, Ortoplinia, Vegium, Argyruntum, Corinium, Aenona, the community of the Pasini, and the river Telavium, at which Iapudia ends. The islands of this gulf with towns, besides those indicated above, are Absortium, Arba, Crexi, Gissa and Portunata. Again on the mainland is the colony of Iader, which is 160,000 from Pola; then, 30,000 further, the island of Colentum; and at 43,000 the mouth of the river Titius.
141| The end of Liburnia and the beginning of Dalmatia is Scardona, on that river, 12,000 paces from the sea. Then come the ancient region of the Tariotae and the fortress of Tariona; Diomedes' promontory, or, according to others, the peninsula Hyllis, 100 in circuit; Tragurium, a town of Roman citizens, known for its marble; Siculi, a place to which the deified Claudius sent veterans; and the colony of Salona, 112,000 from Iader.
142| To Salona come for justice, with their strength divided into decuries, the Delmatae with 342 decuries, the Deuri with 25, the Ditiones with 239, the Maezei with 269 and the Sardeates with 52. In this tract are Burnum, Andetrium and Tribulium, fortresses made famous by battles. From the islands too come the Issaei, the Solentini, the Separi and the Epetini. After these are the fortresses of Petuntium, Nareste and Oneum. Narona, a colony and the seat of the third district, is 85 paces from Salona, lying on the river of its own name, 20,000 paces from the sea. Marcus Varro states that 89 communities used to resort there;
143| now almost the only ones known are the Cerauni with 24 decuries, the Daversi 17, the Desitiates 103, the Docleatae 33, the Deretini 14, the Deraemistae 30, the Dindari 33, the Glinditiones 44, the Melcumani 24, the Naresi 102, the Scirtari 72, the Siculotae 24, and the Vardaei, once the plunderers of Italy, with no more than 20 decuries. Besides these, the Ozuaei, Partheni, Cavi, Haemasi, Masthitae and Arinistae once held that tract.
144| The colony of Epidaurum is 100 paces from the river Naro. After Epidaurum come the towns of Roman citizens Rhizinium, Acruium, Butuanum, and Olcinium, which was formerly named Colchinium and was founded by Colchians; the river Drino, and above it the town of Roman citizens Scodra, 18,000 from the sea; and besides these the fading memory of many Greek towns and also of powerful communities. For in that tract were the Labeatae, Senedi, Rudini, Sasaei and Grabaei; and the Illyrians properly so called, the Taulanti and the Pyraei keep their name. On the coast is the promontory of Nymphaeum, and the town of Lissus, of Roman citizens, 100 paces from Epidaurum.
145| From Lissus begins the province of Macedonia. Its peoples are the Partheni and, behind them, the Dassaretae; the mountains of Candavia are 78,000 paces from Dyrrachium. On the coast are Denda, a town of Roman citizens; the colony of Epidamnum, called Dyrrachium by the Romans because of its ill-omened name; the river Aous, named Aeas by some; and Apollonia, once a colony of the Corinthians, lying 4,000 paces back from the sea, in whose territory the barbarian Amantes and Buliones live around the famous Nymphaeum. On the coast again is Oricum, a town founded by Colchians. There Epirus begins, with the Acroceraunian mountains, at which we fixed the end of this gulf of Europe. Oricum is 80,000 from the Sallentine promontory of Italy.
146| Behind the Carni and the Iapudes, where the great Hister flows, the Norici adjoin the Raeti. Their towns are Virunum, Celeia, Teurnia, Aguntum and Iuvaum, all of them Claudian, and Flavium Solvense. Adjoining the Norici are Lake Pelso and the deserts of the Boii; yet these are now inhabited, by the colony of the deified Claudius at Savaria and by the town of Scarabantia Iulia.
147| Then come the acorn-bearing lands of Pannonia, where the ridges of the Alps, growing gentler as they run from north to south through the middle of Illyricum, settle down in a soft slope to right and left. The part that faces the Adriatic sea is called Dalmatia and the Illyricum mentioned above; Pannonia stretches toward the north, and is bounded on that side by the Danube. In it are the colonies of Emona and Siscia. Famous and navigable rivers flow down into the Danube: the Draus, the more violent, from the Norici, and the Saus, the gentler, from the Carnic Alps, 120,000 apart; the Draus through the Serretes, Serapilli, Iasi and Andizetes, the Saus through the Colapiani and the Breuci. Such are the chief peoples;
148| besides them there are the Arviates, Azali, Amantini, Belgites, Catari, Cornacates, Eravisci, Hercuniates, Latovici, Oseriates and Varciani. There is Mount Claudius, with the Scordisci on its front and the Taurisci on its back. In the Saus is the island of Metubarbis, the largest of river islands. Other rivers worth mentioning: the Colapis, flowing into the Saus near Siscia, with its double channel forms an island there called Segestica; another river, the Bacuntius, flows into the Saus [….] at the town of Sirmium, where the community of the Sirmienses and the Amantini is. From there, 45,000 away, is Taurunum, where the Saus mingles with the Danube. Higher up the Valdasus and the Urpanus flow in, themselves not undistinguished.
149| Adjoining Pannonia is the province called Moesia, which runs down with the Danube all the way to the Pontus. It begins at the confluence mentioned above. In it are the Dardani, Celegeri, Triballi, Timachi, Moesi, the Thracians, and, bordering on the Pontus, the Scythians. Its famous rivers are, from the Dardani, the Margus, the Pingus and the Timachus; from Rhodope the Oescus; and from Haemus the Utus, the Asamus and the Ieterus.
150| The breadth of Illyricum, where it is greatest, totals 325,000 paces; its length, running from the river Arsia as far as the Drinius river, 530,000. Agrippa gives 175,000 for the stretch between the Drinius and the Acroceraunian promontory, and for the whole gulf of Italy and Illyricum, in circuit, 1,700,000. In it there are two seas, divided at the boundary we have drawn: the Ionian in the first part, and further in the Adriatic, which they call the Upper Sea.
151| No islands in the Ausonian sea deserve mention beyond those already named. In the Ionian there are a few on the Calabrian coast off Brundisium, which form a harbor by lying across its mouth; and opposite the Apulian coast Diomedia, conspicuous for the monument of Diomedes, and another of the same name, called Teutria by some. The coast of Illyricum is crowded with more than a thousand islands, since the sea is shallow by nature and estuaries with narrow channels run in among them. Famous are those off the mouths of the Timavus, with hot springs that rise with the tide of the sea; and near the territory of the Histri, Cissa, the Pullariae, and those the Greeks call the Absyrtides, after Medea's brother, who was killed there.
152| Near these are the ones they named the Electrides, in which amber, which they call electrum, was supposed to be found: the surest proof of Greek vanity, so much so that it has never been settled which of the islands they mean. Opposite Iader is Lissa, and the one that has been named; opposite the Liburni are several Crateae and no fewer Liburnicae and Celadussae; opposite Tragurium is Bova, and Brattia, praised for its goats, Issa, of Roman citizens, and Pharia with its town. From Issa, Corcyra, surnamed Melaena, with a town of the Cnidians, is 25,000 distant; between it and Illyricum is Melite, from which, as Callimachus states, Melitaean puppies get their name. 15,000 from it are the 7 Elaphites; and in the Ionian sea, 2,000 paces from Oricum, is Sason, known as a pirates' station.

======== Natural History — Book IV ========

1| The third gulf of Europe begins at the Acroceraunian mountains and ends at the Hellespont; not counting the smaller gulfs, it takes in 1,925,000 paces. On it lie Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, Phocis, Locris, Achaia, Messenia, Laconica, Argolis, Megaris, Attica, Boeotia, and again, from the opposite sea, those same Phocis and Locris, Doris, Phthiotis, Thessaly, Magnesia, Macedonia and Thrace. All the legend-making of Greece, like the glory of its literature, first shone out from this gulf, and for that reason we shall linger on it a little.
2| Epirus, taken as a whole, begins at the Ceraunian mountains. In it are first the Chaones, from whom Chaonia is named, then the Thesproti and the Antigonenses; the place Aornos, with its exhalation deadly to birds; the Cestrini; the Perrhaebi, whose mountain is Pindus; the Cassopaei, Dryopes, Selloe and Hellopes; and the Molossi, among whom are the temple of Dodonaean Jupiter, famous for its oracle, and Mount Talarus, celebrated by Theopompus for the hundred springs around its foot.
3| Epirus proper, stretching toward Magnesia and Macedonia, has behind it the Dassaretae mentioned above, a free people, and then the Dardani, a wild one. Along the left side of the Dardani stretch the Triballi and the Moesian peoples; in front they are joined by the Maedi and the Denselatae, and these by the Thracians, who reach all the way to the Pontus. Thus the heights of Rhodope, and then of Haemus too, are girded about and walled in. On the shore of Epirus stands the stronghold Chimera, among the Acroceraunian mountains,
4| and below it the spring called the Royal Waters; the towns of Maeandria and Cestria; the river Thyamis of Thesprotia; Buthrotum, a colony; and, most famous of all, the Ambracian Gulf, which takes in a spacious expanse of water through a mouth of 500 paces, and is 37,000 long and 15,000 broad. Into it is carried the river Acheron, which flows from the Acherusian lake in Thesprotia, 35,000 paces away, and is remarkable, to those who marvel at everything of their own, for a bridge a thousand feet long. On the gulf is the town of Ambracia. The rivers of the Molossi are the Aphas and the Aratthus; there is also the community of Anactorium and the place Pandosia.
5| The towns of Acarnania, which was formerly called Curetis, are Heraclia and Echinus, and, at the very mouth of the gulf, Actium, a colony of Augustus, having the renowned temple of Apollo and the free community of Nicopolis. Those who leave the Ambracian Gulf for the Ionian sea are met by the Leucadian coast and the promontory of Leucates; then by a gulf, and by Leucadia itself, a peninsula once called Neritis, which the labor of its inhabitants cut off from the mainland and the blowing of the winds gave back to it, heaping up a mass of sand; the place is called Dioryctos and is three stadia long. The town on it is Leucas, once called Neritum. Then come the cities of the Acarnanians, Alyzia, Stratos, and Argos surnamed Amphilochian. The river Achelous flows from Pindus, separating Acarnania from Aetolia and attaching the island Artemita to the mainland through its unceasing deposit of earth.
6| The peoples of the Aetolians are the Athamnanes, Tymphaei, Ephyri, Aenienses, Perrhaebi, Dolopes, Maraces and Atraces, from whose land the river Atrax empties into the Ionian sea. Calydon is a town of Aetolia, 7,500 paces from the sea, near the river Euenus. Then come Macynia and Molycria, behind which are Mount Chalcis and Taphiassus. On the coast is the promontory of Antirrhium, where the mouth of the Corinthian Gulf flows in, less than 1,000 paces wide, separating the Aetolians from the Peloponnese. The promontory that juts out opposite is called Rion. On the Corinthian Gulf are the towns of Aetolia, Naupactos and Eupalimna, and inland are Pleuron and Halicarna. The famous mountains are Tomarus in Dodona, Crania in Ambracia, Aracynthus in Acarnania, and in Aetolia Achaton, Panaetolium and Macynium.
7| Nearest the Aetolians are the Locri, called Ozolae, who are free of tribute. There are the town of Oeanthe, the port of Phaestian Apollo, and the Crisaean Gulf. Inland are the towns of Argyna, Eupalia, Phaestum and Calamisus. Farther on are the plains of Phocis around Cirrha, then the town of Cirrha, and Chalaeon, a port, 7,000 paces inland from which is the free town of Delphi, below Mount Parnassus, seat of the most famous oracle of Apollo on earth.
8| There are the Castalian spring and the river Cephisus, which runs past Delphi and has its source at the city of Lilaea. Besides these there was once the town of Crisa, and, together with the Bulenses, there are Anticyra, Naulochum, Pyrrha, Amphisa, which is exempt from tribute, Tithrone, Tithorea, Ambrysus and Mirana, the region called Daulis. Then, in the innermost part of the gulf, a corner of Boeotia lies on the water, with the towns of Siphae and Thebes surnamed Corsiae, near Mount Helicon. The third town of Boeotia on this sea is Pagae, from which the neck of the Peloponnese springs forward.
9| The Peloponnese, formerly called Apia and Pelasgia, a peninsula second to no land in renown, lies between two seas, the Aegean and the Ionian. It is like a plane-tree leaf because of its angular inlets, and its circuit totals 563,000 paces on the authority of Isidorus; following the gulfs adds almost as much again. The narrows from which it projects are called the Isthmus. At that place the seas we have named, bursting in from opposite directions, from the north and from the east, devour all its breadth, until, the sides having been eaten away on both hands by the contrary onset of such great waters to a gap of 5,000 paces, Hellas holds the Peloponnese by a narrow neck.
10| On one side the gulf is called Corinthian, on the other Saronic. Lecheae on one side and Cenchreae on the other mark the ends of the narrows, with a long and dangerous voyage around for ships whose size prevents their being carried across on wagons. For this reason King Demetrius, Caesar the dictator, the emperor Gaius and Domitius Nero tried to dig through these narrows with a navigable channel: an ill-omened undertaking, as the end of every one of them made plain.
11| In the middle of this space, which we have called the Isthmus, lies the colony of Corinth, formerly called Ephyra, built against a hill sixty stadia from each shore; from the summit of its citadel, which is called Acrocorinthus and contains the spring of Pirene, it looks out over the two opposite seas. The crossing from Leucas to Patrae, to the Corinthian Gulf, is 88,000 paces. From Patrae, a colony founded on the longest promontory of the Peloponnese, opposite Aetolia and the river Euenus, at a distance of less than 1,000 paces, as has been said, in the very mouth of the gulf, they reckon the Corinthian Gulf as running 85,000 in length all the way to the Isthmus.
12| The name of the province of Achaia begins at the Isthmus. Formerly it was called Aegialos, on account of the cities set in order along the shore. First there are those we mentioned, Lechaeae, the harbour of the Corinthians, then Olyros, a fort of the Pellenaeans, the towns Helice and Bura, to which the earlier ones fled when swallowed, Sicyon, Aegira, Aegium, Erineos. Inland Cleonae and Hysiae.
13| The harbour Panhormus, and the Rhium already pointed out, 5 from which promontory is Patrae, mentioned by us above. The place Pherae. In Achaia, of nine mountains Scioessa is the best known; the spring Cymothoe. Beyond Patrae the town Olenum, the colony Dyme, the places Buprasium and Hyrmine, the promontory Araxus, the Cyllenian gulf, the promontory Chelonates, from which to Cyllene 15,000 paces, the fort Phlius, which region was called Araethyrea by Homer, afterwards Asopis.
14| Then the territory of the Elei, who were formerly called Epioe. Elis itself is inland; and 13,000 from Pylus, inland, is the shrine of Olympian Jupiter, which through the fame of the games embraces the calendar of Greece, once a town of the Pisaei, with the river Alpheus flowing past it. But on the coast the promontory Ichthys; the river Alpheus, navigable for 6,000 paces; the towns Aulon and Leprium; the promontory Platanodes. All these face west,
15| but to the south is the Cyparissian gulf with the city Cyparissus, 75,000 in circuit; the towns Pylos and Mothone; the place Helos; the promontory Acritas; the gulf Asinaeus, from the town Asine; the Coronaean, from Corone. They are bounded by the promontory Taenarum. There is the region Messenia of eighteen mountains; the river Pamisus; and inland Messene itself, Ithome, Oechalia, Arene, Pteleon, Thryon, Dorion, Zancle, each famous at different times. The circuit of this gulf is 80,000, the crossing 30,000.
16| Then from Taenarum the Laconian territory, of a free people, and a gulf of 106,000 in circuit, 38,000 in crossing. The towns Taenarum, Amyclae, Pherae, Leuctra, and inland Sparta, Therapne, and where there were Cardamyle, Pitane, Anthia; the place Thyreae; Gerania. The mountain Taygetus; the river Eurotas. The gulf Aegilodes; the town Psamathus. The gulf Gytheates, from the town, from which the course to the island of Crete is surest. All are enclosed by the promontory Maleum.
17| The gulf that follows, as far as Scyllaeum, is called the Argolic, 50 in crossing, and 162,000 in circuit. The towns Boea, Epidaurus, surnamed Limera, Zarax, the harbour Cyphans. The rivers Inachus and Erasinus, between which is Argos, surnamed Hippium, above the place Lerna, 2,000 from the sea, and, with nine thousand added, Mycenae, and where they say Tiryns was, and the place Mantinea. The mountains Artemisius, Apesantus, Asterion, Parparus and others, 11 in number.
18| The springs Niobe, Amymone, Psamathe. From Scyllaeum to the Isthmus 80,000 paces. The towns Hermione, Troezen, Coryphasium; Argos called at other times Inachium, at others Dipsium; the harbour Schoenitas. The Saronic gulf, once wreathed with an oak grove, whence the name, ancient Greece so calling the oak; in it the town Epidaurus, famous for the shrine of Aesculapius; the promontory Spiraeum; the harbours Anthedus and Bucephalus, and Cenchreae, which we had mentioned above, the other part of the Isthmus with the shrine of Neptune, renowned for its games every fifth year.
19| So many gulfs tear at the coast of the Peloponnese, so many seas bark at it, since from the north the Ionian breaks in, from the west it is beaten by the Sicilian, from the south pressed by the Cretan, from the winter east by the Aegean, from the summer-solstice east by the Myrtoan, which, beginning from the Megarian gulf, washes all of Attica.
20| Its interior Arcadia holds chiefly, remote on every side from the sea, called at first Drymodes, soon Pelasgis. Its towns: Psophis, Mantinea, Stymphalum, Tegea, Antigonea, Orchomenum, Pheneum, Pallantium, whence the Palatium at Rome, Megalepolis, Gortyna, Bucolium, Carnion, Parrhasie, Thelpusa, Melaenae, Heraea, Pylae, Pallene, Agrae, Epium, Cynaethae, Lepreon of Arcadia, Parthenium, Alea, Methydrium, Enispe, Macistum, Lampia, Clitorium, Cleonae. Between these two towns lies the region Nemea, also called Bembinadia.
21| The mountains in Arcadia: Pholoe, with a town; likewise Cyllene, Lycaeus, on which is the shrine of Lycaean Jupiter, Maenalus, Artemisius, Parthenius, Lampeus, Nonacris, and besides these 8 obscure ones. The rivers: the Ladon, from the marshes of Pheneus; the Erymanthus, from the mountain of the same name, flowing down into the Alpheus.
22| The remaining communities of Achaia to be named: the Alipheraei, Abeatae, Pyrgenses, Paroreatae, Pharygenitae, Tortuni, Typanei, Thriusi, Tritienses. Domitius Nero gave freedom to the whole of Achaia. The Peloponnese in breadth extends 190,000, from the promontory of Malea as far as the town of Aegium on the Corinthian gulf; but across, from Elis to Epidaurus 125,000, from Olympia through Arcadia to Argos 68,000; from the same place to Pylos the measure has been stated. The whole, as though nature were balancing the incursions of the seas, rises into six and seventy mountains.
23| From the narrows of the Isthmus Hellas begins, called Graecia by our people. In it comes first Attica, called Acte in ancient times. It reaches the Isthmus with a part of itself which is called Megaris, from the colony Megara, opposite Pagae. These two towns lie where the Peloponnese runs out, on either side as though on the shoulders of Hellas, the Pagaei and, in addition, the Aegosthenenses being attached to the Megarians. On the coast the harbour Schoenos; the towns Sidus and Cremmyon; the Scironian rocks, 6,000 in length; Gerania, Megara, Eleusis.
24| There were also Oenoe and Probalinthos. Now from the Isthmus 55,000 are the Piraeus and the harbour of Phalerum, joined by a wall of 5 to Athens, which lies back. This free community has no need of any further proclamation: so great is the fame that overflows. In Attica the springs Cephisia, Larine, Callirrhoe Enneacrunos; the mountains Brilessus, Aegialeus, Icarius, Hymettus, Lycabettus; the place Ilisus. From the Piraeus, 45,000, the promontory Sunium; the promontory Thoricos, Potamos, Steria, Brauron, once towns; the village Rhamnus; the place Marathon; the Thriasian plain; the town Melita and Oropus on the border of Boeotia.
25| Of this region are Anthedon, Onchestos, Thespiae, a free town, Lebadea, and, not yielding to Athens in fame, Thebes, called the Boeotian, the fatherland, as they will have it, of two divinities, Liber and Hercules. And they assign the birthplace of the Muses to the grove of Helicon. To this Thebes are also given the glade Cithaeron and the river Ismenus. Besides, springs in Boeotia: Oedipodia, Psamathe, Dirce, Epicrane, Arethusa, Hippocrene, Aganippe, Gargaphie. Mountains besides those named: Mycalesus, Hadylius, Acontius.
26| The remaining towns between the Megarian territory and Thebes: Eleutherae, Haliartus, Plataeae, Pherae, Aspledon, Hyle, Thisbe, Erythrae, Glissa, Copae; near the river Cephisus, Lamiae and Anichiae, Medeon, Phlygone, Acraephia, Coronea, Chaeronea. On the coast, below Thebes: Ocalee, Eteonos, Scolos, Schoenos, Peteon, Hyrie, Mycalesos, Ireseum and Eleon, Ollarum, Tanagra, a free people, and in the very jaws of the Euripus, which the island of Euboea lying in front makes, Aulis, noted for its capacious harbour. The Boeotians the ancients called Hyantes.
27| The Locri are next, surnamed Epicnemidii, formerly called Leleges, through whom the river Cephisus is carried into the sea. The towns Opus, whence also the Opuntian gulf, and Cynus. On the shore of Phocis, one, Daphnus; inland Larisa, Elatea, and on the bank of the Cephisus, as we have said, Lilaea, and, facing Delphi, Cnemis and Hyampolis. Again the coast of the Locri, on which Larumna, Thronium, near which the river Boagrius is carried into the sea. The towns Narycum, Alope, Scarphia. Afterwards the Maliac gulf, so called by its inhabitants, in which are the towns Halcyone, Aegonia, Phalara.
28| Then Doris, in which are Sparthos, Erineon, Boion, Pindus, Cytinum. Behind Doris stands mount Oeta. There follows, with often changed names, Haemonia, also Pelasgis, and Pelasgic Argos, Hellas, also Thessaly and Dryopis, always named from its kings. There a king was begotten named Graecus, from whom Graecia; there Hellen, from whom the Hellenes. These same people Homer called by three names, Myrmidons, Hellenes and Achaeans. Of these the Phthiotae are named, dwelling next to Doris. Their towns: Echinus; in the jaws of the river Sperchius the narrows of Thermopylae, by which proof 4,000 from there Heraclea was called Trechin. The mountain Callidromus there; famous towns Hellas, Halos, Lamia, Phthia, Arne.
29| In Thessaly, moreover, Orchomenus, formerly called Minyius, and the town Alimon, by others Holmon, Atrax, Palamna; the spring Hyperia; the towns Pherae, behind which Pieria stretches toward Macedonia; Larisa, Gomphi, Thessalian Thebes, the grove Pteleon, the Pagasaean gulf, the town Pagasa, afterwards called Demetrias too, Tricca, the plains of Pharsalus with a free community, Crannon, Iletia. The mountains of Phthiotis: Nymphaeus, remarkable for a kind of topiary work of nature, Buzygaeus, Donacoessa, Bromiaeus, Daphusa, Chimarone, Athamas, Stephane.
30| In Thessaly there are thirty-four, the most noble of which are the Cercetii, Olympus of Pieria, Ossa, opposite which are Pindus and Othrys, the seat of the Lapithae; these slope toward the west, and toward the east Pelius, all curved in the manner of a theatre, with 75 cities enclosed in front of them like tiered seats. The rivers of Thessaly: the Apidanus, Phoenix, Enipeus, Onochonus, Pamisus; the spring Messeis; the lake Boebeis; and before all in fame the Penius, rising near Gomphi and flowing between Ossa and Olympus in a wooded valley for 500 stadia, half of that space being navigable.
31| In that course is what they call Tempe, 5 paces in length and about an iugerum and a half in breadth, with ridges rising gently convex on right and left beyond the sight of man, within a forest widely green; and the Penius glides, green with pebbles, pleasant along its banks with grass, melodious with the harmony of birds. It receives the river Horcon and does not take it in, but, floating on top like oil, as Homer said, bears it along a short space and casts it off, refusing to let waters of punishment, born of the dread powers, be mingled with its silvery ones.
32| Joined to Thessaly is Magnesia, whose spring is Libethra; the towns Iolcus, Ormenium, Pyrra, Methone, Olizon; the promontory Sepias; the towns Castana and Spalathra; the promontory Aeantium; the towns Meliboea, Rhizus, Erymnae; the mouth of the Penius; the towns Homolium, Orthe, Iresiae, Pelinna, Thaumacie, Gyrton, Crannon, Acharne, Dotion, Melite, Phylace, Potniae. For Epirus, Achaia, Attica and Thessaly extended in a line, the length is given as 490,000, and the breadth as 297,000.
33| Macedonia afterwards, of 150 peoples, renowned for two kings and once for empire over the lands, was formerly called Emathia. This, receding toward the Epirote peoples at the setting of the sun, behind Magnesia and Thessaly, is harassed by the Dardani; its northern part is protected from the Triballi by Paeonia and Pelagonia. The towns Aegae, in which it is the custom to bury the kings, Beroea, and in the region called Pieria, from its grove, Aeginium.
34| On the coast Heraclea; the river Apilas; the towns Pydna and Aloros; the river Haliacmon. Inland the Aloritae, Vallaei, Phylacaei, Cyrrestae, Tyrissaei; Pella, a colony; the town Stobi, of Roman citizens; then Antigonea; Europus on the river Axius, and of the same name the one through which the Rhoedias flows; Scydra, Eordaea, Mieza, Gordyniae.
35| Then on the coast Ichnae; the river Axius. At the end of this the Dardani, Treres and Pieres border Macedonia. From this river the Paeonian peoples: the Paraxiaei, Eordenses, Almopi, Pelagones, Mygdones. The mountains Rhodope, Scopius, Orbelus. Then, with the lap of the lands lying in front: the Arethusii, Antiochienses, Idomenenses, Doberi, Aestrienses, Allantenses, Audaristenses, Morylli, Garresci, Lyncestae, Othryonei, and the free Amantini and Orestae; the colonies Bullidenses and Dienses; the Xylopolitae; the free Scotusaei; Heraclea Sintica; the Tymphaei; the Toronaei.
36| On the coast of the Macedonian gulf, the town Chalastra, and inland Piloros, Lete, and at the middle of the bend of the shore Thessalonice, of free status (245,000 from Dyrrhachium to it), Therme on the Thermaic gulf, the towns Dicaea, Palinandrea, Scione, the promontory Canastraeum, the towns Pallene and Phlegra. In this region the mountains Hypsizonus, Epytus, Alcyon, Elaeuomne; the towns Nissos, Phryxelon, Mendae, and on the Isthmus of Pallene formerly Potidaea, now the colony Cassandrea, Anthemus, Olophyxus,
37| the gulf Mecyberna; the towns Myscella, Ampelos, Torone, Siggos, Stolos; the channel by which Xerxes, king of the Persians, cut mount Athos off from the mainland, for a length of 1,500 paces. The mountain itself runs out from the plain into the seas for 75,000 paces; the circuit of its base amounts to 150,000. A town on the summit was Acrothoon; now there are Uranopolis, Palaehorium, Thyssus, Cleonae, and Apollonia, whose inhabitants are surnamed Macrobii.
38| The town Cassera and the other jaws of the Isthmus; Acanthus, Stagira, Sithone, Heraclea, and the region of Mygdonia lying below, in which, receding from the sea, are Apollonia and Arethusa. On the coast again Posidium and a gulf with the town Cermorus; Amphipolis, free; the people the Bisaltae. Then the boundary of Macedonia, the river Strymon, rising in Haemus. It is worth recording that it is poured into seven lakes before it directs its course.
39| This is the Macedonia that once gained empire over the lands, that crossed Asia, Armenia, Iberia, Albania, Cappadocia, Syria, Egypt, the Taurus and the Caucasus, that ruled in Bactria, Media and Persia, having possessed the whole east, that, victor also over India, wandered over the footsteps of Father Liber and Hercules. This same is the Macedonia whose 72 cities our commander Paulus Aemilius plundered and sold in one day. So great a difference of fortune did two men afford!
40| Thrace follows, among the mightiest peoples of Europe, divided into 50 strategiae. Of its peoples, whom it would not be wearisome to name, dwell along the river Strymon on the right side the Denseletae and Maedi as far as the Bisaltae mentioned above; on the left the Digerri and many names of the Bessi as far as the river Mestus, which skirts the foot of mount Pangaeus, among the Haleti, Diobessi, Carbilesi; then the Brigae, Sapaei and Odomanti. The people of the Odrysae sends out the Hebrus, with the Carbileti, Pyrogeri, Drugeri, Caenici, Hypsalti, Beni, Corpili, Bottiaei and Edoni dwelling beside it.
41| In the same tract are the Sialetae, Priantae, Dolongae, Thyni, and the Coelaletae, the greater under Haemus and the lesser under Rhodope. Between them is the river Hebrus, and a town under Rhodope, formerly Poneropolis, soon, from its founder, Philippopolis, now, from its situation, called Trimontium. The height of Haemus is climbed by an ascent of 6,000 paces. The side turned away from it and sloping down to the Hister is held by the Moesi, Getae, Aedi, Scaugdae and Clariae, and under them the Sarmatian Arraei, whom they call Areatae, and the Scythians, and around the shores of the Pontus the Moriseni and Sitoni, the parents of the bard Orpheus.
42| So the Hister bounds it on the north, on the east the Pontus and Propontis, on the south the Aegean sea. On its coast, from the Strymon: Apollonia, Oesyma, Neapolis, Datos. Inland Philippi, a colony (325,000 from Dyrrhachium), Scotusa, the community of Topirus. The mouth of the river Mestus; mount Pangaeus. Heraclea, Olynthos, Abdera, a free community. The marsh and people of the Bistones. There was a town Tirida, dreaded for Diomedes' stables of horses; now there are Dicaea, Ismaron, the place Parthenion, Phalesina, Maronea, formerly called Orthagurea.
43| Mount Serrium; Zone; then the place Doriscum, able to hold X men (so Xerxes counted his army there); the mouth of the Hebrus; the harbour of Stentor; the free town Aenos, with the tomb of Polydorus, once the region of the Cicones. From Doriscum the coast curves to Macron Tichos, 112,000 paces, about which place the river Melas, from which the gulf is named. The towns Cypsela, Bisanthe, and Macron Tichos, so called because a wall stretched between the two seas, from the Propontis to the Melas gulf, shuts out the Chersonese which juts out.
44| For Thrace on the other side, beginning from the Pontic shore, where the river Hister empties, has very beautiful cities on that part: Histropolis of the Milesians, Tomi, Callatis, formerly called Cerbatis, and Heraclea. It had also Bizone, snatched away by a chasm of the earth; now it has Dionysopolis, formerly called Crunos; the river Zyras washes it. The Scythians surnamed Aroteres held all that tract. Their towns: Aphrodisias, Libistos, Zygere, Rhocobae, Eumenia, Parthenopolis, Gerania, where a people of Pygmies is reported to have been; the barbarians called them Catizi, and believe them driven off by cranes.
45| On the coast from Dionysopolis is Odessus of the Milesians, the river Pannysis, the town Ereta, Naulochus. Mount Haemus, sloping with a vast ridge down into the Pontus, had a town on its peak, Aristaeum; now on the coast Mesembria, Anchialum, where Messa had been. The region of Astice had the town Anthium; now it is Apollonia. The rivers Panisus, Iuras, Tearus, Orosines; the towns Thynias, Halmydesos, Develtum with a marsh, now called Deultum of the veterans, Phinopolis, next to which lies the Bosporus. From the mouth of the Hister to the mouth of the Pontus others have made 500 paces; Agrippa added 60,000; thence to the wall mentioned above 150,000; from it, along the Chersonese, 126,000.
46| But from the Bosporus the gulf Lasthenes, the harbour of the Old Men, and another that is surnamed that of the Women. The promontory Chryseon Ceras, on which the town Byzantium, of free status, formerly called Lygos; it is 711,000 paces from Dyrrhachium: so great is the length of the lands between the Adriatic sea and the Propontis.
47| The rivers Bathynias, Pidaras or Athyras. The towns Selymbria and Perinthus, joined to the mainland by a breadth of 200 feet. Inland Bizye, the stronghold of the kings of Thrace, hated by swallows because of the crime of Tereus; the region Caenica; the colony Flaviopolis, where earlier a town called Caela stood, and 50 paces from Bizye the colony Apros, which is 189,000 from Philippi. But on the coast the river Erginus; there was a town Ganos. Lysimachea too, now in the Chersonese, is deserted.
48| For there another Isthmus, of the same name and equal breadth, displays similar narrows. Two cities held the shores on either side in not dissimilar fashion, Pactye on the Propontis, Cardia on the Melas gulf, the latter having taken its name from the shape of the place; both were afterwards absorbed into Lysimachea, 5 paces from the Long Walls. The Chersonese on the Propontis had Tiristasis, Crithote, and Cissa, set beside the river Aegos; now it has Resisthon, 22,000 paces from the colony Apros, opposite the colony of Parium.
49| And the Hellespont, dividing, as we have said, Europe from Asia by 7 stadia, has 4 cities opposite one another, in Europe Callipolis and Sestos, in Asia Lampsacus and Abydos. Then the promontory of the Chersonese, Mastusia, opposite Sigeum, on the front of which, slanting, is Cynossema (so Hecuba's tomb is called), the station of the Achaeans and a tower, the shrine of Protesilaus, and at the extreme front of the Chersonese, which is called Aeolium, the town Elaeus. Then, to one making for the Melas gulf, the harbour Coelos and Panhormus and Cardia mentioned above.
50| The third gulf of Europe is closed in this manner. The mountains of Thrace besides those named: Edonus, Gygemeros, Meritus, Melamphyllos. The rivers falling into the Hebrus: Bargus and Syrmus. Macedonia, Thrace and the Hellespont have the length stated above; some make it 720,000. The breadth is 384,000.
51| The Aegean sea was given its name by a rock between Tenedos and Chios, rather than an island, Aex by name, from its appearance as of a goat, which the Greeks so call, suddenly leaping up from the middle of the sea. Navigators from Achaia see it on the right-hand side toward Antandrus, dire and pestilential. A part of the Aegaean is given to the Myrtoan, called from a small island which is seen by those making for Macedonia from Geraestus, not far from Carystus in Euboea. The Romans call all these seas by two names: Macedonian wherever it touches Macedonia or Thrace, Graeciense where it washes Greece. For the Greeks divide even the Ionian into the Sicilian and the Cretan, from the islands, likewise the Icarian, which is between Samos and Myconos. The other names are given by the gulfs, as we have said.
52| And such are the seas and peoples in the third gulf of Europe; the islands, however, opposite Thesprotia, 12,000 paces from Buthrotum and 50 from the Acroceraunian mountains: Corcyra, which has a city of the same name, a free community, and the town Cassiope and the temple of Cassian Jupiter, extending 97,000 in length, called by Homer Scheria and Phaeacia, by Callimachus also Drepane. Around it are a few, but, leaning toward Italy, Othronos; toward Leucas, Paxos; two Subotae, 5 separated from Corcyra.
53| Not far from these, before Corcyra, Ericusa, Marathe, Elaphusa, Malthace, Trachie, Pythionia, Ptychia, Tarachie; and from Phalacrum, the promontory of Corcyra, a rock into which, it is told, the ship of Ulysses was changed, from its similar appearance. Before Leucas and Aetolia, however, very many, of which the Teleboides, the same as the Taphiae, called by the inhabitants before Leucas Taphias, Carnos, Oxia, Prinoessa; before Aetolia the Echinades: Aegialia, Cotonis, Thyatira, Geoaris, Dionysia, Cyrnus, Chalcis, Pinara, Nystrus.
54| Before these in the deep, Cephallania, Zacynthus, each free, Ithaca, Dulichium, Same, Crocyle. From Paxos, Cephallania, formerly called Melaena, is 10,000 paces distant, and extends 93,000 in circuit. Same, destroyed by the Romans, yet still has three towns. Between this and Achaia, magnificent with its town and outstanding in fertility, Zacynthus, at one time called Hyrie, is 25,000 distant from the southern part of Cephallania. The mountain Elatus there is noted;
55| It itself amounts to 36,000 in circuit. From it Ithaca is 15,000 distant, on which is mount Neritus; the whole extends 25,000 in circuit. From it to Araxum, the promontory of the Peloponnese, 15,000. Before this, in the deep, Asteris, Prote; before Zacynthus, 35,000 toward the east wind, the two Strophades, called by others the Plotae; before Cephallania, Letoia; before Pylos, 3 Sphagiae, and as many before Messene, the Oenussae.
56| In the Asinaean gulf the three Thyrides; in the Laconian, Theganusa, Cothon; Cythera with a town, formerly called Porphyris. This lies 5 paces from the promontory of Malea, with a doubtful circuit for ships there on account of the narrows. In the Argolic gulf, Pityusa, Arine, Ephyre. Opposite the territory of Hermione, Tricarenus, Aperopia, Colonis, Aristera; opposite the Troezenian, Calauria, 50 distant from Plateae, Belbina, Lasia, Baucidias,
57| opposite Epidaurus, Cecryphalos, Pityonesos, 6,000 from the mainland. From this Aegina, of free status, is 15,000, of which the sailing along is 19,000; the same is 20,000 from the Piraeus, the harbour of the Athenians, and was formerly called Oenone. Off the promontory Spiraeum lie Eleusa, Adendros, the two Craugiae, the two Caeciae, Selacosa; and from Cenchreae, Aspis, 7,000, and in the Megarian gulf the Methurides, 4,000; Aegila, however, 15,000 from Cythera, and the same 25,000 from Phalasarna, a town of Crete.
58| Crete itself, facing south on one side and north on the other, stretches between the east and the west, famed for its hundred cities. Dosiades says that it was named from the nymph Crete, a daughter of Hesperis; Anaximander, after a king of the Curetes; Philistides Mallotes and Crates say that it was first called Aeria and afterwards Curetis; and some have thought that it was also called Macaron, from the mildness of its climate. Nowhere does it exceed 50 in breadth, and it is broadest around its middle; in length it fills 270,000, and in circuit 589,000. Curving into the Cretan sea, which is named after it, it thrusts out at its longest point a headland to the east, Samonium, facing Rhodes, and to the west Criu Metopon, toward Cyrene.
59| Its notable towns are Phalasarna, Elaea, Cisamon, Pergamum, Cydonea, Minoium, Apteron, Pantomatrium, Amphimala, Rhithymna, Panhormum, Cytaeum, Apollonia, Matium, Heraclea, Miletos, Ampelos, Hierapytna, Lebena, Hierapolis, and inland Gortyna, Phaestum, Gnosus, Polyrrhenum, Myrina, Lycastos, Rhamnus, Lyctus, Dium, Asium, Pyloros, Rhytion, Elatos, Pherae, Olopyxos, Lasos, Eleuthernae, Therapnae, Marathusa and Tylisos; and the record survives of about 60 other towns. Its mountains are Cadistus, Idaeus, Dictynnaeus and Corycus.
60| The island itself is distant, as Agrippa reports, from the Cyrenaic promontory Phycus, by way of its own headland called Criu Metopon, 125,000; likewise, by Cadistus, [….] from Malea in the Peloponnese 80,000; and from the island of Carpathos, by the headland Samonium, 60,000, in the direction of the west wind. Carpathos lies between it and Rhodes;
61| the remaining islands around it are, in front of the Peloponnese, two called Corycae and as many Mylae; and on the northern side, with Crete on one's right, opposite Cydonea Leuce and two called Budroae, opposite Matium Dia, opposite the promontory Itanum Onysia and Leuce, opposite Hierapytna Chrysea and Gaudos. In the same stretch lie Ophiussa, Butoa and Ramnus, and, past Criu Metopon, three islands called Acusagorus. Before the promontory Samonium lie Phocoe, Platiae, Syrnides, Naulochos, Harmedon and Zephyre.
62| But in Hellas, still within the Aegean, there are the Lichades, Scarphia, Corese, Phocasia and several others opposite Attica, without towns and therefore obscure. Opposite Eleusis, however, lies the famous Salamis. In front of it is Psyttalia, and from Sunium lies Helene, 5 away. Then comes Ceos, as far again from it, which some of our writers have called Cea and the Greeks also Hydrusa, torn away from Euboea. It was once five hundred stades long; later, when the sea devoured nearly four parts of it, those that inclined toward Boeotia, it kept as its remaining towns Iulis and Carthaea; Coresus and Poeeessa have perished. Varro is our authority that the more luxurious dress for women originated from this island.
63| Euboea, itself torn away from Boeotia, with so narrow a strait of the Euripus flowing between that they are joined by a bridge, is notable on the south for two promontories, Geraestus, which inclines toward Attica, and Caphereus, toward the Hellespont, and on the north for Cenaeum. Nowhere does it extend its breadth beyond 40,000, nowhere does it draw it in to less than 2,000; but in length it stretches along the whole of Boeotia from Attica as far as Thessaly, 150,000, and in circuit 365,000.
64| From the Hellespont, on the side of Caphereus, it is distant 225,000. Its cities were once Pyrrha, Porthmos, Nesos, Cerinthus, Oreus, Dium, Aedepsus and Oechalia, and are now Chalcis, opposite which on the mainland lies Aulis, Geraestus, Eretria, Carystus, Oritanum and Artemisium; it is renowned for the spring Arethusa, the river Lelantus and the hot waters called the Ellopiae, but better known still for Carystian marble. It was formerly called Chalcodontis or Macris, as Dionysius and Ephorus relate; Macra, as Aristides says; Chalcis, as Callidemus says, because copper was first found there; Abantias, as Menaechmus says; and, as the poets commonly call it, Asopis.
65| Outside it, in the Myrtoan sea, lie many islands, but the most famous are Glauconnesos and Aegilia, and, set in a circle around Delos from the promontory Geraestus, the Cyclades, which took their name from this. The first of them, Andrus, with a town, is 10 from Geraestus and 38,000 from Ceos. Myrsilus reports that it was itself called Cauros, then Antandros; Callimachus, Lasia; others, Nonagria, Hydrusa, Epagris. It extends 93,000 in circuit. A thousand paces from Andrus, and 15,000 from Delos, lies Tenos with a town, extending 15,000; Aristotle says that it was called Hydrusa on account of its abundance of water, and some call it Ophiusa. The others are Myconus, with Mount Dimastus, 15,000 from Delos, and Siphnus,
66| formerly called Meropia and Acis, 28,000 in circuit; Seriphus, 15,000; Prepesinthus; Cythnos; and the most famous of all by far, and in the middle of the Cyclades, celebrated for its temple of Apollo and its market, Delos, which, after being long tossed by the waves, as is reported, alone did not feel the movement of the earth down to the time of Marcus Varro; Mucianus reported that it was shaken twice. Aristotle says it was so named because it appeared suddenly, risen from the sea; Aglaosthenes says it was called Cynthia, and others Ortygia, Asteria, Lagia, Chlamydia, Cynethus and Pyrpyle, since fire was first discovered there. It measures 5 paces around and rises in Mount Cynthus.
67| Next to it is Rhene, which Anticlides calls Celadusa, also Artemite and Celadine. Then Syros, which the ancients reported to extend 20,000 in circuit, Mucianus 160,000; Olearos; Paros, with a town, 38,000 from Delos, famed for its marble, which they first called Platea and afterwards Minois. From it 7,500 away is Naxos, 18,000 from Delos, with a town, which they called Strongyle, then Dia, soon Dionysias from the fertility of its vines, and others called Sicilia the Lesser or Callipolis. It extends 75,000 paces in circuit and is half as large again as Paros.
68| Thus far, indeed, they are the Cyclades; the others following are the Sporades. They are Helene, Phacusa, Nicasia, Schinusa, Pholegandros, and, 38,000 paces from Naxos, Icaros, which gave its name to the sea; it extends the same distance in length, with two towns, a third having been lost, and was formerly called Doliche, Macris and Ichthyusa. It lies 50 from Delos toward the rising of the midsummer sun, and 35,000 from Samos, with a strait of 10 paces between Euboea and Andrus; from it to Geraestus is 112,500 paces.
69| Nor after this can an order be kept; so the remaining islands will be set down in a heap. Scyros; Ios, 18,000 from Naxos, venerable for Homer's tomb, 22,000 in length, formerly called Phoenice; Odia; Oletandros. Gyara, with a town, 15,000 paces in circuit, is 62,000 from Andrus, and from it Syrnos is 80,000; Cynethus; Telos, famous for its unguent, called Agathusa by Callimachus; Donusa;
70| Patmos, 30,000 in circuit; the Corassiae; Lebinthus; Gyrus; Cinara; Sicinus, which was formerly Oenoe; Heraclia, which was Onus; Casos, which was Astrabe; Cimolos, which was Echinusa; Melos, with a town, which Aristides calls Mimblis, Aristotle Zephyria, Callimachus Mimallis, and Heraclides Siphis and Acyta; this is the roundest of the islands. Buporthmos; Machia; Hypere, once Patage or, as others say, Platage, now Amorgos; Polyaegas; Sapyle; Thera, called Calliste when it first emerged. Torn away from it later was Therasia, and between the two there soon arose Automate, which is also Hiera, and in our own age Thia arose beside them. Ios is 25,000 paces from Thera. Next come Lea, Ascania, Anaphe and Hippuris.
71| Astypalaea, a free state, is 88,000 in circuit and is 125,000 from Cadistus in Crete; from it Platea is 60,000, and from there Caminia is 38,000, then Azibintha, Lamse, Atragia, Pharmacusa, Thetaedia, Chalcia, Calymna, on which there is a town, Coos, Eulimna, and from this Carpathos, which gave its name to the Carpathian sea, 25,000. From there to Rhodes, with a south-west wind, is 50; from Carpathos to Casos 7,000; from Casos to Samonium, the promontory of Crete, 30,000. In the Euboean Euripus, near its first entrance, are four islands called Petaliae, and at its exit Atalante. The Cyclades and Sporades, enclosed on the east by the Icarian shores of Asia, on the west by the Myrtoan sea of Attica, on the north by the Aegean sea, and to the south by the Cretan sea and the Carpathian, lie across 700,000 in length and 200,000 in breadth.
72| The Pagasaean gulf has before it Euthia, Cicynethus, Scyros mentioned above (but the outermost of the Cyclades and Sporades), Gerontia and Scandira; the Thermaean gulf has Iresia, Solymnia, Eudemia and Nea, which is sacred to Minerva; before Athos lie four; Peparethus, with a town, formerly called Euoenos, nine thousand; Sciathus, 15,000; Imbros, with a town, 88,000. The same island is 22,000 paces from Mastusia in the Chersonese, and is itself 62,500 in circuit; it is watered by the river Ilissus.
73| From it Lemnos is 22,000, which is 87,000 from Athos; it extends 115,500 paces in circuit and has the towns Hephaestia and Myrina, onto whose market-place Athos casts its shadow at the solstice. From it Thasos, a free island, is 6,000 paces away, once called Aeria or Aethria. From there Abdera on the mainland is 22,000, and Athos 62,500, the same distance as the free island of Samothrace, before the Hebrus, which is 32,000 from Imbros, 22,500 paces from Lemnos, and 38,000 from the Thracian coast; its circuit is 35,000; it rises in Mount Saoce, 10 paces in height, and it is the most harbourless of all. Callimachus calls it by its ancient name Dardania.
74| Between the Chersonese and Samothrace, about 15,000 on each side, lie Halonesos; beyond, Gethone and Lamponia; Alopeconnesos not far from Coelos, the harbour of the Chersonese; and certain obscure islands. Let the deserted islands in this gulf also be recorded, those whose names at least could be found: Avesticos, Sarnos, Cissyros, Charbrusa, Calathusa, Scyllia, Dialeon, Dictaea, Melanthia, Dracanon, Arconesos, Diethusa, Ascapos, Capheris, Mesate, Aeantion, Pateronnesos, Pateria, Calathe, Neriphus and Pelendos.
75| The fourth of the great gulfs of Europe begins from the Hellespont and ends at the mouth of the Maeotis. But the shape of the whole Pontus must be briefly embraced, so that its parts may be more easily known. A vast sea, lying before Asia and driven back from Europe by the stretching shore of the Chersonese, bursts into the lands by a narrow passage, carrying Europe away from Asia by an interval of 7 stades, as has been said. The first narrows they call the Hellespont; here Xerxes, king of the Persians, led his army across a bridge laid over ships. Then a slender Euripus stretches out over a space of 86,000 as far as Priapus, an Asian city, where Alexander the Great crossed over.
76| From there the water spreads out and again draws together into a narrow. The wide part is called the Propontis, the narrows the Thracian Bosporus, five hundred paces in breadth, where Darius, the father of Xerxes, carried his forces across by a bridge. The whole length from the Hellespont is 239,000. Then comes a vast sea, the Pontus Euxinus, formerly the Axenus, which occupies lands that recede far away; bent back in a great curve of its shores, it is extended from them on either side into horns, so that it is plainly the shape of a Scythian bow. At the midpoint of its curve it is joined to the mouth of the Maeotic lake. This mouth is called the Cimmerian Bosporus, with a breadth of 2,000 and 500 paces.
77| But between the two Bosporuses, the Thracian and the Cimmerian, by a direct course, as Polybius is our authority, the distance is 500. The circuit of the whole Pontus is twenty-one times, and 50, as Varro is our authority and, nearly, the ancients. Cornelius Nepos adds 350,000; Artemidorus makes it twenty-nine times and nineteen thousand; Agrippa 2,640,000; Mucianus 2,425,000. In a similar way, concerning the measurement of the European side, some have fixed it at 1,479,000, others at 1,100,000. Marcus Varro measures it in this way:
78| From the mouth of the Pontus to Apollonia is 187,500 paces; to Callatis the same; to the mouth of the Hister 125,000; to the Borysthenes 250,000; to Cherronesus, a town of the people of Heraclea, 375,000 paces; to Panticapaeum, which some call Bosporus, the last place on the coast of Europe, 212,500; the sum of which makes 1,437,500. Agrippa gives from Byzantium to the river Hister 560,000, and from there to Panticapaeum 638,000. The lake Maeotis itself, which receives the river Tanais flowing down from the Ripaean mountains and is the last boundary between Europe and Asia, is reported to extend 1,406,000 in circuit, by others 1,125,000. From its mouth to the mouth of the Tanais by a direct course it is agreed to be 275,000. The dwellers on its gulf were mentioned in the account of Thrace, as far as Histropolis. From there come the mouths of the Hister.
79| This river rises in Germany in the ridges of Mount Abnoba, opposite the Gallic town of Raurica, many thousands of paces beyond the Alps, and glides through countless peoples under the name of the Danube; with an immense increase of waters, and called the Hister from the point where it first washes Illyricum, it receives 60 rivers, about half of them navigable, and rolls into the Pontus by six vast channels. The first mouth is Peuce; then comes the island Peuce itself, on which the nearest channel, called [….], is swallowed up in a great marsh of 19,000 paces. From the same channel, and above Histropolis, a lake is formed, 63,000 paces in circumference; they call it Halmyris. The second mouth has the name Naracustoma, the third Calon Stoma beside the Sarmatian island, the fourth Pseudostomon and the island Conopon Diabasis, and afterwards Borion Stoma and Psilon Stoma. Each of these mouths is so great that it is reported that for 40,000 paces of length the sea is overcome and the water drunk is perceived to be sweet.
80| From there onward, all the peoples are Scythian, though they have held the coast adjoining in various ways: in some places the Getae, called Daci by the Romans; in others the Sarmatae, called Sauromatae by the Greeks, and among them the Hamaxobii or Aorsi; elsewhere the degenerate Scythians, sprung from slaves, or the Trogodytae, and soon the Alani and the Rhoxolani. The upper country, lying between the Danube and the Hercynian forest and extending to the Pannonian winter quarters at Carnuntum and the borders there of the Germans, is held on the plains and flat lands by the Sarmatian Iazyges, while the mountains and forest passes are held by the Daci, who were driven out by them as far as the river Pathissus,
81| from the Marus, or Duria, which separates them from the Suebi and the kingdom of Vannius; the far side is held by the Basternae and other Germans beyond. Agrippa reported that this whole tract, from the Hister to the ocean, is twelve times a hundred thousand paces in length, and in breadth, as far as the river Vistula from the deserts of Sarmatia, 400,000 less four thousand. The name of the Scythians has everywhere passed over to the Sarmatae and the Germans. Nor has that ancient appellation lasted for any others than those who live at the farthest edge of these peoples, almost unknown to the rest of mankind.
82| But from the Hister the towns are Cremniscoe and Aepolium, the Macrocremni mountains, and the famous river Tyras, which gives its name to the town where it was formerly called Ophiusa. On the same river the Tyragetae inhabit a spacious island; it is 130,000 from Pseudostomon, the mouth of the Hister. Next the Axiacae, who share the river's name, beyond whom the Crolyzi, the river Rhode, the gulf Saggarius, the harbour Ordesos, and 120,000 from the Tyras the river Borysthenes, and a lake and a people of the same name, and a town receding 15,000 paces from the sea, with the ancient names Olbiopolis and Miletopolis.
83| Again on the shore is the Achaeans' harbour, the island of Achilles, renowned through the tomb of that hero, and 125,000 paces from it a peninsula stretching crosswise in the form of a sword, named from the same man's exercising there Dromos Achilleos, whose length Agrippa gave as 80,000. The Sardi, Scythae and Siraci hold this whole tract. Next a wooded region gave its name to the Hylaean sea by which it is washed; the inhabitants are called Enoecadioe. Beyond is the river Panticapes, which divides the Nomads from the Georgi, and soon the Acesinus. Some report that the Panticapes joins the Borysthenes within Olbia, the more careful that it is the Hypanis, such being the great error of those who have placed it in the part of Asia.
84| The sea enters with a great recess, until it is distant from the Maeotis by an interval of 5 paces, enclosing vast spaces and many peoples. The gulf is called Carcinites. There are the river Pacyris and the towns Navarum and Carcine. Behind is the lake Buces, released by a ditch into the sea. The Buces itself is divided from the Coretus, a gulf of the Maeotic lake, by a rocky ridge. It receives the rivers Buces, Gerrhus and Hypanis, which come from opposite directions. For the Gerrhus separates the Basilidae and the Nomads, and the Hypanis flows through the Nomads and the Hylaei, by a channel made by hand into the Buces and a natural one into the Coretus. The region is called the Sindic region of Scythia.
85| But from Carcinites Taurica begins, once itself surrounded by the sea where the plains now lie; then it rises in vast ridges. There are thirty peoples of them, of whom 23 are inland; six towns: the Orgocini, Characeni, Assyrani, Stactari, Acisalitae and Caliordi. The ridge itself is held by the Scythotauri; they are shut in on the west by Cherronesus Nea, on the east by the Scythi Satarcae. On the coast from Carcine are the towns Taphrae, in the very narrows of the peninsula, and soon Heraclea Cherronesus, given freedom by the Romans; it was formerly called Megarice, of outstanding brilliance, preserving throughout all that tract the manners of Greece, with a wall 5 paces around.
86| From there the promontory Parthenium, Placia, a city of the Tauri, the harbour Symbolum, and the promontory Criu Metopon, opposite the promontory Carambis of Asia, running out through the middle of the Euxine with an interval of 170,000, a reckoning that most of all produces the shape of the Scythian bow. After it lie many harbours and lakes of the Tauri. Theodosia, a town, is 125,000 paces from Criu Metopon, and 165,000 from Cherronesus. Beyond were the towns Cytae, Zephyrium, Acrae, Nymphaeum and Dia.
87| There remains, by far the strongest, at the very entrance of the Bosporus, Panticapaeum of the Milesians, 87,500 paces from Theodosia, and from the Cimmerian town lying across the strait, as we have said, 2,500 paces. This is the breadth that there separates Asia from Europe, and it can for the most part be crossed on foot when the strait is frozen. The length of the Cimmerian Bosporus is 12,500 paces. It has the towns Hermisium and Myrmecium, and inside it the island Alopece. Through the Maeotis, from the farthest Isthmus, a place called Taphrae, to the mouth of the Bosporus, the length comes to 260,000.
88| From Taphrae, inland through the continent, are the Auchetae, among whom the Hypanis rises, the Neuri, among whom the Borysthenes rises, the Geloni, Thyssagetae, Budini, Basilidae, and the Agathyrsi with blue hair. Above them are the Nomads, then the Anthropophagi, and from the Buces, above the Maeotis, the Sauromatae and Essedones. But along the coast as far as the Tanais are the Maeotae, from whom the lake received its name, and behind them, farthest of all, the Arimaspi. Then come the Ripaean mountains and, from the ceaseless fall of snow resembling feathers, the region called Pterophoros, a part of the world condemned by nature and sunk in thick gloom, with no work but that of frost and the icy storehouses of the north wind.
89| Behind those mountains and beyond the north wind a happy people, if we believe it, whom they have called the Hyperboreans, passes a life of long years, celebrated in fabulous wonders. There the hinges of the world are believed to be, and the farthest circuits of the stars, with a six-month light [and one day] of the sun turned toward them, not, as the ignorant have said, from the spring equinox to the autumn one: once in the year, at the solstice, the suns rise for them, and once, at midwinter, they set. The region is sunny, of happy climate, free of every harmful breath. Their homes are groves and woods, and the worship of the gods is carried on by individuals and by crowds; discord and every sickness are unknown. Death comes only when they have had their fill of life; after feasting and anointing their old age with luxury, they leap from a certain rock into the sea; this kind of burial is the happiest.
90| Some have placed them in the first part of the shores of Asia, not in Europe, because there is a similar people with a similar situation, called the Attacori. Others have put them midway between the two suns, the setting of the antipodes and our rising, which can in no way be, since so vast a sea lies between. Those who have placed them anywhere other than in a six-month light have reported that they sow in the morning, reap at midday, pick the fruits of the trees at sunset, and hide in caves at night.
91| Nor is it allowed to doubt that people: so many authorities report that they were accustomed to send the first fruits of their crops to Delos for Apollo, whom they especially worship. Maidens carried them, venerable for some years through the hospitality of the nations, until, faith having been broken, they instituted that these offerings be deposited within the nearest borders of their neighbours, and that those should carry them on to the next, and so as far as Delos. Soon even this lapsed. The length of Sarmatia, Scythia, Taurica and the whole tract from the river Borysthenes has been given by Marcus Agrippa as 980,000, and the breadth as 716,000. I think the measurement in this part of the earth uncertain. But let the remaining parts of this gulf be told in the order begun, and its seas indeed we have named.
92| The Hellespont has no islands in Europe that need be mentioned. In the Pontus there are two, 1,500 from Europe and 14,000 from the mouth, the Cyaneae, called by others the Symplegades, and handed down in fables as having run together, because, separated by a small interval, they were seen as twins by those entering from the opposite side, and, the line of sight being slightly turned, gave the appearance of colliding. On this side of the Hister is one belonging to the people of Apollonia, 80,000 paces from the Thracian Bosporus, from which Marcus Lucullus brought the Apollo of the Capitol. What islands lie between the mouths of the Hister we have told.
93| Before the Borysthenes lies the Achillea mentioned above, also called Leuce and Macaron. The demonstration of these times places it 140,000 from the Borysthenes, 120,000 from the Tyras, and 50 from the island Peuce; it is encircled by about 10 paces. The others, in the gulf of Carcinites, are Cephalonesos, Spodusa and Macra. Before we depart from the Pontus, the opinion of many must not be omitted, who have thought that all the inner seas are born from that source, not from the strait of Gades, on an argument not improbable, since the tide, always flowing out from the Pontus, never flows back.
94| Next we must go out, so that the remaining parts of Europe may be told, and, having crossed the Ripaean mountains, the shore of the northern ocean must be followed on the left until Gades is reached. Several islands without names are reported in that region, of which one lying before Scythia, called Baunonia, is a day's voyage away; Timaeus reported that in the spring amber is thrown up on it by the waves. The remaining shores are uncertain. The northern ocean is marked by report. Hecataeus calls it the Amalchian sea, from the river Parapanisus, where it washes Scythia; in the language of that people the name means frozen.
95| Philemon says that it is called Morimarusa by the Cimbri, that is, the dead sea, from there as far as the promontory Rusbeae, and beyond that the Cronian. Xenophon of Lampsacus reports that at a three days' voyage from the shore of the Scythians there is an island of immense size, Balcia; Pytheas names the same island Basilia. Islands called the Oeonae are also said to exist, on which the inhabitants live on the eggs of birds and on oats; others, on which men are born with horses' feet, called Hippopodes; others of the Phanesii, on which very large ears cover their bodies, otherwise naked, entirely.
96| Then clearer report begins to open, from the people of the Inguaeones, which is the first in Germany. There is a mountain there, Saevo, immense and no smaller than the Ripaean ridges, which forms a vast gulf reaching to the promontory of the Cimbri, and called the Codanus, full of islands, the most famous of which is Scatinavia, of unascertained size, only a portion of it, so far as is known, being inhabited, by the people of the Hilleviones, in five hundred districts; for this reason they call it a second world. Aeningia is no smaller, in the common opinion.
97| Some report that these lands are inhabited as far as the river Vistula by Sarmatae, Venedi, Sciri and Hirri, that the gulf is called Cylipenus, and that at its mouth lies the island Latris, and soon another gulf, Lagnus, bordering the Cimbri. The promontory of the Cimbri, running far out into the seas, makes a peninsula called Tastris. From there 23 islands are known to Roman arms. The most famous of them are Burcana, called Fabaria by our people from the abundance of grain that grows there of its own accord, likewise Glaesaria, named by our soldiers from amber, called Austeravia by the barbarians, and besides these Actania.
98| But along the whole sea as far as the river Scaldis, the peoples of Germany dwell on the shore, in a measure that cannot be unravelled: so immoderate is the disagreement of those who report it. The Greeks and some of our writers have given the coast of Germany as 2,500,000; Agrippa, with Raetia and Noricum, gives the length as 636,000 and the breadth as CCX̅L̅V̅I̅I̅I̅, Raetia alone having nearly the greater breadth, and Raetia was in fact subdued at about the time of his death; for Germany was not wholly explored even many years afterwards.
99| If conjecture is permitted, the coast will not fall much short of the opinion of the Greeks, nor of the length given by Agrippa. There are five kinds of Germans: the Vandili, of whom the Burgodiones, Varinnae, Charini and Gutones are a part. The second kind is the Inguaeones, of whom the Cimbri, Teutoni and the tribes of the Chauci are a part.
100| The nearest to the Rhine are the Istuaeones, of whom [….]; the inland ones are the Hermiones, of whom the Suebi, Hermunduri, Chatti and Cherusci are a part. The fifth part is the Peucini and Basternae, bordering the Dacians mentioned above. The renowned rivers running down into the ocean are the Guthalus, the Visculus or Vistula, the Albis, the Visurgis, the Amisis, the Rhine and the Mosa. Inland, however, stretches the Hercynian ridge, inferior in fame to none.
101| In the Rhine itself, for nearly 100 in length, lies the most famous island, that of the Batavi and Cannenefates, and others of the Frisii, Chauci, Frisiavones, Sturii and Marsaci, which are spread out between the Helinium and the Flevum. So the mouths are called into which the Rhine, pouring out, spreads itself on the north into lakes and, on the western side, into the river Mosa, keeping in the mouth between these a modest channel for its own name.
102| Opposite this region lies the island of Britain, famous in Greek records and in ours, between the north and the west, facing with a great interval Germany, Gaul and Spain, by far the greatest parts of Europe. Its own name was Albion, when all the islands of which we shall speak soon were called Britanniae. It is 50 distant from Gesoriacum, on the shore of the people of the Morini, by the nearest crossing. Pytheas and Isidorus report that it extends 4,875,000 in circuit; for nearly 30 years now Roman arms have carried knowledge of it no farther than the neighbourhood of the Caledonian forest. Agrippa believes the length to be 800,000 and the breadth 300,000, and the same for Hibernia, but with the length 200,000 less.
103| Beyond it lies this island, distant by the shortest crossing from the people of the Silures 30,000. No other of the remaining islands is reported to be larger than 125,000 in circuit. There are, however, 40 Orcades, separated from one another by modest spaces; 7 Haemodae; 30 Hebudes; and between Hibernia and Britain Mona, Monapia, Riginia, Vectis, Silumnus, Andros; below them Samnis and Axanthos; and, scattered on the opposite side toward the Germanic sea, the Glaesiae, which more recent Greeks have called the Electrides, because amber was produced there.
104| The last of all that are mentioned is Tyle, on which, as we have indicated, there are at the solstice no nights, while the sun crosses the sign of Cancer, and, on the contrary, no days at midwinter. Some think that this happens for six months continuously. The historian Timaeus says that the island Ictis lies a six days' voyage inland from Britain, on which white lead is produced; to it the Britons sail in wicker vessels sewn round with hide. There are some who report other islands also, Scandiae, Dumna, Bergi, and the largest of all, Berrice, from which one sails to Tyle. A day's voyage from Tyle the sea is congealed, and by some is called the Cronian.
105| The whole of Gaul called Comata, under one name, is divided into three kinds of peoples, distinguished chiefly by rivers. From the Scaldis to the Sequana is Belgica; from it to the Garunna, Celtica, which is also Lugdunensis; from there to the extension of the Pyrenees mountain, Aquitanica, formerly called Aremorica. Agrippa gives the whole coast as 1,700,000 and 50; he has computed the length of the Gauls, between the Rhine and the Pyrenees and the ocean and the mountains Cebenna and Iura, by which he shuts out Gallia Narbonensis, as 420,000, and the breadth as 318,000.
106| From the Scaldis there dwell [texero], the Texuandri under several names, then the Menapi, the Morini, on the coast, joined to the Marsaci by the district which is called Gesoriacus, the Britanni, Ambiani, Bellovaci, Bassi. Inland, the Catoslugi, Atrebates, the free Nervi, Veromandui, Suaeuconi, the free Suessiones, the free Vlmanectes, Tungri, Sunuci, Frisiavones, Baetasi, the free Leuci, the Treveri, formerly free, and the allied Lingones, the allied Remi, Mediomatrici, Sequani, Raurici, Helveti, the colonies Equestris and Raurica. Of the peoples of Germany dwelling along the Rhine, in the same province are the Nemetes, Triboci, Vangiones, among the Ubii the colony Agrippinensis, the Guberni, the Batavi, and those of the Rhine whom we mentioned on the islands.
107| Gallia Lugdunensis has the Lexovii, Veliocasses, Caleti, Veneti, Abrincatui and Ossismi, and the famous river Liger; but a more conspicuous peninsula runs out into the ocean from the border of the Ossismi, 625,000 in circuit, with a neck 125,000 in breadth. Beyond it are the Namnetes; inland, the allied Aedui, the allied Carnuteni, the Boi, Senones, the Aulerci who are surnamed Eburovices and those who are Cenomani, the free Meldi, the Parisi, Tricasses, Andecavi, Viducasses, Bodiocasses, Venelli, Coriosvelites, Diablinti, Riedones, Turones, Atesui, and the free Segusiavi, in whose territory is the colony Lugudunum.
108| The peoples of Aquitanica are the Ambilatri, Anagnutes, Pictones, the free Santoni, the free Bituriges with the cognomen Vivisci, the Aquitani, from whom the province has its name, and the Sediboviates. Then, joined together into one town, the Convenae, Begerri, Tarbelli Quattuorsignani, Cocosates Sexsignani, Venami, Onobrisates and Belendi; the Pyrenean pass, and below it the Monesi; the Oscidates Montani, Sybillates, Camponi, Bercorcates, Pinpedunni, Lassunni, Vellates, Toruates, Consoranni, Ausci, Elusates, Sottiates, Oscidates Campestres, Succasses, Latusates, Basaboiates, Vassei, Sennates and Cambolectri Agessinates.
109| Joined to the Pictones are the free Bituriges who are called Cubi, then the Lemovices, the free Arverni, the free Vellavi, and the Gabales. Again, bordering the province of Narbonensis, are the Ruteni, Cadurci and Nitiobroges, and, separated from the people of Tolosa by the river Tarnis, the Petrocori. The seas around the coast: toward the Rhine, the northern ocean; between the Rhine and the Sequana, the Britannic; between that and the Pyrenees, the Gallic. There are several islands of the Venesti, and those which are called Venetic, and in the Aquitanian gulf Vliaros.
110| From the promontory of the Pyrenees Spain begins, narrower not merely than Gaul, but than itself as well, as we have said, immensely so, the ocean pressing on it from one side and the Iberian sea from the other. The ridges of the Pyrenees themselves, running from the equinoctial rising to the winter setting, make the Spains shorter there than along their southern side. The nearest coast belongs to Hither Spain, which is also the situation of Tarraconensis. From the Pyrenees, along the ocean, are the Vascones' pass, Olarso, the towns of the Varduli, Morogi, Menosca, Vesperies, the harbour of Amanus, where the colony Flaviobrica now stands.
111| The region of the Cantabri comprises nine states. The river Sauga. The harbour of Victoria of the Iuliobrigenses; from that place the sources of the Hiberus are 40,000 paces away; the harbour Blendium. The Orgenomesci, from the Cantabri; their harbour is Veseiasueca. The region of the Astures, the town Noega. In the peninsula the Paesici, and then of the jurisdiction of Lucus, from the river Navia, the Albiones, Cibarci, Egi, the Varri surnamed Namarini, the Adovi, Arroni and Arrotrebae. The Celtic promontory, and the rivers Florius and Nelo. The Celtici with the cognomen Neri, and above them the Tamarci, in whose peninsula there are three altars, the Sestian, dedicated to Augustus; the Copori; the town Noeta; the Celtici surnamed Praestamarci; the Cileni. Of the islands, Corticata and Aunios are to be named.
112| After the Cileni, of the jurisdiction of Bracara, are the Helleni and the Grovi, the fortress Tyde, all of Greek stock. The islands Siccae; the town Abobrica. The river Minius, spacious at its mouth, 4,000 wide; the Leuni, Seurbi, the Bracarian town Augusta, above whom is Gallaecia. The river Limia; the river Durius, among the greatest of Spain, which rises among the Pelendones and glides past Numantia, then through the Arevaci and Vaccaei, dividing the Vettones from Asturia and the Gallaeci from Lusitania, and there also keeping the Turduli apart from the Bracari. The entire region that has been described from the Pyrenees is crammed with mines of gold, silver, iron, and black and white lead.
113| From the Durius Lusitania begins. The ancient Turduli, the Paesuri, the river Vagia, the town Talabrica, a town and river Aeminium, the towns Conimbriga, Collippo and Eburobrittium. Then there runs out into the deep, in a vast horn, a promontory which some have called Artabrum, others Magnum, and many Olisiponense from the town, dividing land, sea and sky. With it the flank of Spain ends, and from its circuit the front begins.
114| Hence the north and the Gallic ocean lie on one side, the west and the Atlantic ocean on the other. The extent of the promontory they have given as 60,000, others as 90,000, and thence to the Pyrenees not a few as 1,200,000 and 50, and they place there a people, the Artabri, which never existed, by an evident error. For they have put there, with letters exchanged, the Arrotrebae, whom we placed before the Celtic promontory.
115| There is error also about famous rivers. From the Minius, which we mentioned above, the Aeminius, which some elsewhere understand and call the Limaea, is, as Varro is our authority, 200,000 distant; it was called by the ancients the river of Oblivion, and has much fable about it. From the Durius the Tagus is 200,000 distant, with the Munda flowing between. The Tagus is celebrated for its gold-bearing sands. From it, 160,000 away, the Sacred promontory leaps out from almost the middle of the front of Spain. Varro reports that from there to the middle of the Pyrenees the total comes to 1,400,000,
116| and to the Anas, where we separated Lusitania from Baetica, 126,000, and from Gades, with 102,000 added. The nations are the Celtici and the Turduli, and around the Tagus the Vettones, and from the Anas to the Sacred promontory the Lusitani. The towns worth remembering from the Tagus on the coast are Olisipo, famed for the conceiving of its mares from the west wind, Salacia, surnamed the Imperial City, and Merobrica. The Sacred promontory, and another, the Cuneus. The towns Ossonoba, Balsa and Myrtilis.
117| The whole province is divided into three jurisdictions, the Emeritensian, the Pacensian and the Scalabitanian, comprising in all 45 peoples, among which are five colonies, one municipality of Roman citizens, three of ancient Latin right, and 36 tributary. The colonies are Augusta Emerita, placed on the river Anas; Metellinensis; Pacensis; Norba, surnamed Caesarina, into which have been incorporated Castra Servilia and Castra Caecilia. The fifth is Scalabis, which is called Praesidium Iulium. The municipality of Roman citizens is Olisipo, surnamed Felicitas Iulia. The towns of ancient Latin right are Ebora, which is also Liberalitas Iulia, and Myrtilis and Salacia, which we have mentioned.
118| Of the tributary peoples, those it is no trouble to name, besides those already given among the surnames of Baetica, are the Augustobrigenses, Aeminienses, Aranditani, Arabricenses, Balsenses, Caesarobrigenses, Caperenses, Caurienses, Colarni, Cibilitani, Concordienses, Elbocori, Interannienses and Lancienses; the Mirobrigenses, surnamed Celtici; the Medubrigenses, surnamed Plumbari; the Ocelenses; the Turduli, called Bardili; and the Tapori. Agrippa recorded that Lusitania, with Asturia and Gallaecia, extends 540,000 in length and 536,000 in breadth. All the Spanish provinces together, measured from the two promontories of the Pyrenees by sea round the circuit of the whole coast, are reckoned to total 2,924,000, and by others 2,600,000.
119| Opposite Celtiberia are a number of islands, called the Cassiterides by the Greeks from their abundance of lead; and facing the promontory of the Arrotrebae are the 6 Islands of the Gods, which some have named the Fortunate Islands. At the very head of Baetica, 25,000 paces from the mouth of the strait, lies Gades, 12,000 long, as Polybius writes, and 3,000 broad. At its nearest point it is less than 700 feet from the mainland, elsewhere more than 7,000. Its own circuit is 15,000. It has a town of Roman citizens, who bear the name Augustani of the City of Iulia Gaditana.
120| On the side that faces Spain, about 100 paces off, is another island, 1,000 paces long and 1,000 broad, on which the town of Gades formerly stood. It is called Erythea by Ephorus and Philistides, Aphrodisias by Timaeus and Silenus, and the island of Juno by the natives. Timaeus says that among them the larger island used regularly to be called Cotinusa; our people call it Tartesos, the Carthaginians Gadir, this being the Punic word for a hedge. It was called Erythea because its first inhabitants, the Tyrians, were said to have come from the Erythraean Sea. Some think that Geryon lived on it, whose herds Hercules drove off. There are those who believe that his island is a different one, opposite Lusitania, and they call a certain island there by the same name.
121| Now that the circuit of Europe is complete, a summing-up must be given, so that nothing may be out of easy reach for those who wish to know. Artemidorus and Isidorus have recorded the length of it as 8,714,000, from the Tanais to Gades. Polybius wrote that the breadth of Europe from Italy to the ocean is 1,300,050, its extent being still unexplored even then. Italy itself, as we have said, measures X.XX to the Alps; and from there by way of Lugdunum to the Britannic harbour of the Morini, the line along which Polybius seems to take his measurement, is 1,169,000. But a more certain and a longer measurement is drawn from the same Alps toward the summer sunset and the Rhine's mouth, passing through the camps of the legions of Germany: 1,342,000. Next, Africa and Asia will be described.

======== Natural History — Book V ========

1| The Greeks called Africa Libya, and the sea that lies before it the Libyan sea. It is bounded by the Egyptian sea, and no other part of the world has fewer gulfs, its shores running obliquely a long way from the west. The names of its peoples and towns are for the most part quite unpronounceable except in their own languages, and in any case they mostly live in fortified strongholds.
2| At the beginning of its lands are the Mauretanias, which were kingdoms up to the time of Gaius Caesar, son of Germanicus, and were divided by his cruelty into two provinces. The outermost promontory on the ocean is named Ampelusia by the Greeks. There were once the towns of Lissa and Cottae beyond the Pillars of Hercules; now there is Tingi, founded long ago by Antaeus and afterwards named Traducta Iulia by Claudius Caesar when he made it a colony. It is 30,000 from Baelo, the nearest town of Baetica, by the crossing. 25,000 from it, on the coast of the ocean, is a colony of Augustus, Iulia Constantia Zulil, exempted from the rule of the kings and ordered to seek justice in Baetica. 35,000 from there is Lixos, made a colony by Claudius Caesar, about which the ancients told the most fabulous tales:
3| there, they said, were the palace of Antaeus, his contest with Hercules, and the gardens of the Hesperides. An estuary pours in from the sea along a winding course, and this is now interpreted as the dragons that stood on guard. It encloses an island which is the only part of the neighboring tract that the tides of the sea do not flood, although the tract is somewhat higher. On it there is also an altar of Hercules, and nothing remains of that famous gold-bearing grove except wild olives.
4| Less, surely, would people marvel at the monstrous lies of Greece told about these places and the river Lixus, if they reflected that our own writers too, quite recently, have handed down things about them only a little less prodigious: that this city was very powerful and larger than Great Carthage, and moreover that it lay opposite Carthage, and was separated from Tingi by a stretch of almost boundless length, and all the other things that Cornelius Nepos believed so eagerly.
5| 40,000 from Lixus, inland, is a second colony of Augustus, Babba, called Iulia Campestris, and a third, Banasa, at 75,000 paces, surnamed Valentia. 35,000 from it is the town of Volubile, which is equally distant from both seas. On the coast, 50 from Lixus, is the river Sububus, a magnificent and navigable river, which flows past the colony of Banasa. The same number of thousands of paces from it is the town of Sala, set on a river of the same name, already close to the deserts and infested by herds of elephants, but much more by the tribe of the Autololes, through whose land runs the road to Atlas, the most fabulous mountain of Africa.
6| They have recorded that it rises into the sky from the midst of the sands, rugged and barren on the side that slopes toward the ocean's shores, to which it gave its name, but shady, wooded and watered by gushing springs on the side that looks toward Africa, with fruits of every kind springing up of their own accord so abundantly that pleasure never lacks its fill.
7| None of its inhabitants is seen by day; everything is silent with nothing other than the dread of desert places; a wordless awe steals over the minds of those who come nearer, and over and above the dread, at the sight of it lifted above the clouds and close to the circle of the moon. At night the same mountain glitters with frequent fires, is filled with the revels of Aegipans and Satyrs, and resounds with the music of reed pipes and panpipes and the noise of drums and cymbals. Famous authors have recorded these things, besides the labors performed there by Hercules and Perseus. The distance to it is immense and uncertain.
8| There were also the commentaries of Hanno, a Carthaginian commander, who at the height of Punic power was ordered to explore the circuit of Africa. Most of the Greeks and of our own writers have followed him, and have recorded, among other things that are certainly fabulous, many cities founded there by him, of which neither any memory nor any trace survives.
9| While Scipio Aemilianus was campaigning in Africa, Polybius, the writer of annals, was given a fleet by him for the sake of exploring that part of the world and sailed round it. He recorded that from that mountain westward there are forests full of the wild beasts that Africa breeds; that it is 396,000 to the river Anatis, and from there to Lixus 205,000. Agrippa says that Lixus is 112,000 from the strait of Gades; that next comes a gulf called Sagigi, a town on the promontory of Mulelacha, the rivers Sububa and Salat, and the port of Rutubis, 224,000 from Lixus; then the Sun's promontory, the port of Rhysaddir, the Gaetulian Autoteles, the river Quosenus, the tribes of the Selatiti and Masati, the Masathat river, and the Darat river, where crocodiles are born.
10| Then, he says, a gulf of 616,000 is enclosed by a promontory of Mount Braca running out to the west, which is called Surrentium. After that comes the river Salsus, beyond which are the Perorsi Ethiopians, and behind them the Pharusii. Joined to these inland are the Gaetulian Darae, and on the coast the Daratite Ethiopians and the river Bambotus, full of crocodiles and hippopotamuses. From it unbroken mountains run all the way to the one we shall call Theon Ochema. From there to the promontory of Hesperu the sailing takes ten days and nights. In the middle of that stretch he placed Atlas, which all the other writers report to be at the furthest edge of Mauretania.
11| Roman arms first made war in Mauretania under the emperor Claudius, when the freedman Aedemon was avenging King Ptolemy, whom Gaius Caesar had put to death; and it is agreed that, as the barbarians fled, our forces reached Mount Atlas. And it was a point of glory, not only for the former consuls and commanders from the senate who conducted the campaign at that time, but also for the Roman knights who governed there afterwards, to have penetrated Atlas.
12| There are five Roman colonies in that province, as we have said, and it may seem passable to report, but this, in the great majority of cases, is found by experience to be most deceptive, because men of rank, if it is a trouble to track down the truth, do not mind lying through shame at their ignorance, and trust slips no more readily than when a weighty authority for a false thing appears. For my part I wonder less that certain things are unascertained by men of the equestrian order, and now even by those who enter the senate from there, than that they are unknown to luxury, whose force is felt as the most effective and the greatest, when forests are searched for ivory and citrus-wood, and all the Gaetulian rocks for murices and purpurae.
13| The natives report, however, that on the coast, 150,000 from Sala, there is the river Asana, with sea-water to drink but notable for its harbour, and soon the river which they call Fut; from it to the Dyris (for it is agreed that this is the name of Atlas in their language) is 200,000, with a river intervening whose name is Ivor. There, around it, few traces survive of ground once inhabited, remains of vines and palm-groves.
14| Suetonius Paulinus, whom we have seen as consul, the first of the Roman commanders to cross even the Atlas, over a space of some thousands, reported about its height what the others have, and that its lowest roots are filled with dense, tall forests of a kind of tree unknown, of notable height, with a smooth, knotless gloss; that the leaves are like cypress, except for the strength of their smell, and are covered with a fine down, from which by the application of art garments like those from the silkworm can be made. He said the summit is covered with deep snows even in summer.
15| He said that he had reached it by the tenth camp, and farther, to a river called the Ger, through deserts of black dust, with cliffs jutting out from time to time as though burnt, and places uninhabitable by reason of the heat, though he experienced them in winter time. Those who inhabit the nearest woodlands, which are filled with elephants and wild beasts and serpents of every kind, are called Canarii, since their diet is shared with that animal and they divide the flesh of wild beasts.
16| It is agreed well enough that a nation of Ethiopians, whom they call Perorsi, adjoins. Juba, father of Ptolemy, the first man to rule both Mauretanias, more memorable even for the fame of his studies than for his kingdom, reported similar things about the Atlas, and besides that a plant grows there, named euphorbea, called after his physician who discovered it. He celebrates its milky juice with marvellous praises, for clearness of sight and, on the other hand, against serpents and all poisons, in a volume dedicated to it alone. And enough and more than enough about the Atlas.
17| The length of the province of Tingitana is 170,000. The peoples in it: once the chief was that of the Mauri, from whom the name comes, whom most have called Maurusii; worn down by wars it has dwindled to a few families. Next to it had been that of the Masaesyli; it has died out in a similar way. Gaetulian peoples now hold the land, the Baniurae and the much the strongest Autololes, and a part of these formerly the Nesimi, who, torn away from them, made a people of their own, turned toward the Ethiopians.
18| The province itself, mountainous on the east, bears elephants, in Mount Abila also, and in those which they call the Seven Brothers, from their similar height. Joined to Abila, they overhang the strait. From them comes the coast of the inner sea: the navigable river Tamuda, once also a town; the river Laud, itself able to carry vessels. The town and harbour Rhysaddir; the navigable river Malvane.
19| The town Siga, opposite Malaca, situated in Spain, was the royal seat of Syphax, belonging now to the other Mauretania. For the names of kings were long retained, so that the farthest was called Bogudian, and likewise that of Bocchus, which is now Caesariensis. From it comes the Great Harbour, so called from its extent, with a town of Roman citizens. The river Mulucha, the boundary of Bocchus and the Masaesyli. Quiza Cenitana, a town of foreigners; Arsennaria, of Latins, 3,000 from the sea;
20| Cartenna, a colony of Augustus, with the second legion; likewise Gunugu, a colony of the same, settled with a praetorian cohort. The promontory of Apollo, and there the very celebrated town Caesarea, formerly called Iol, the royal seat of Juba, granted by the deified Claudius the rights of a colony; by his order, with veterans settled, Oppidum Novum, and, with Latin rights given, Tipasa, and likewise, by the Emperor Vespasian, Icosium, granted the same gift; the colony of Augustus Rusguniae; Rusucurium, honoured with the status of a state by Claudius; Rusazus, a colony of Augustus; Saldae, a colony of the same; likewise Igilgili;
21| the town Tucca, set upon the sea and the river Ampsaga. Inland, the colony Augusta, which is also Succhabar, likewise Tubusuptu, the states Timici and Tigavae. The rivers Sardabal, Aves and Nabar. The people Macurebi; the river Usar; the people Nababes. The river Ampsaga is 322,000 from Caesarea. The length of both Mauretanias is X. X̅X̅X̅V̅I̅I̅I̅, the breadth 467,000.
22| From the Ampsaga Numidia begins, famous for the name of Masinissa, called by the Greeks the land of Metagonitis; the Numidians are Nomads, from their changing of pastures, carrying round their mapalia, that is, their houses, on wagons. The towns Chullu and Rusicade, and from it, 48,000 inland, the colony Cirta, surnamed of the Sittiani, and another inland, Sicca, and the free town Bulla Regia. On the coast, however, Tacatua, Hippo Regius, the river Armua, the town Thabraca of Roman citizens, the river Tusca, the boundary of Numidia. Nor has it anything else notable besides the produce of Numidian marble and of wild beasts.
23| From the Tusca the Zeugitana region begins, and that which is properly called Africa. Three promontories, the White, then that of Apollo, opposite Sardinia, and that of Mercury, opposite Sicily, running out into the deep, form two gulfs, the Hipponian, the nearer, from the town which they call Hippo Dirutum, called Diarrhytum by the Greeks on account of its watering streams. Bordering it is Theudalis, an untaxed town, farther from the shore.
24| Then the promontory of Apollo, and on the other gulf Utica of Roman citizens, renowned for Cato's death; the river Bagrada; the place Castra Cornelia; the colony Carthago Magna on the remains of Carthage; the colony Maxula; the towns Carpi and Missua, and the free Clypea on the promontory of Mercury; likewise the free Curubis and Neapolis. Soon another division of Africa itself. Those who inhabit Byzacium are called Libyphoenices. So the region is named, 250,000 paces in circuit, of exceptional fertility, the land returning to the farmers a hundredfold yield as interest.
25| Here are the free towns Leptis, Hadrumetum, Ruspina and Thapsus. Then Thenae, Aves, Macomades, Tacape and Sabrata, touching the Lesser Syrtis, up to which Numidia and Africa extend 580,000 in length from the Ampsaga, and in breadth, so far as it is known, 200,000. That part which we have called Africa is split into two provinces, the old one and the new, separated by a ditch carried between the later Africanus's side and the kings' as far as Thenae, a town which is 216,000 from Carthage.
26| The third gulf is divided into twin gulfs, the dread of the two Syrtes with their shoaling and ebbing sea. To the nearer, which is the lesser, from Carthage Polybius gives 300,000; the Syrtis itself has an entrance of a hundred thousand paces and a circuit of three hundred thousand. By land, moreover, the way to it is by observation of the stars through deserts [….] with sands and through serpents. Next come woodlands filled with a multitude of wild beasts, and inland the solitudes of elephants, soon vast deserts, and beyond them the Garamantes, distant from the Augilae by a journey of 12 days.
27| Above them were the people of the Psylli, above whom is the lake of Lycomedes, surrounded by deserts. The Augilae themselves are situated at about the midpoint, at an equal interval on either side from Ethiopia, which inclines to the west, and from the region that lies between the two Syrtes, but the shore between the two Syrtes is 250,000. There are the state of Oea, the river and region Cinyps, the towns Neapolis, Taphra, Habrotonum, and a second Leptis, which is surnamed Magna. Then the Greater Syrtis, 625,000 in circuit, with an entrance of 312,000; [then] the people of the Cisippades dwell beside it.
28| In the innermost bay stood the shore of the Lotophagi, whom certain people have called Machroae, as far as the altars of the Philaeni; these are of sand. Not far from them, away from the mainland, a vast marsh takes the river Triton and from it receives its name; Callimachus called it Pallantias, and said it was on this side of the Lesser Syrtis, though many say it is between the two Syrtes. The promontory that closes the Greater is called Borion. Beyond is the province of Cyrenaica.
29| To this boundary Africa, from the river Ampsaga, has 516 peoples that obey Roman rule, among them six colonies, besides Uthina and Thuburbi already mentioned. There are 15 towns of Roman citizens, of which those to be named in the interior are the Absuritanum, Abutucense, Aboriense, Canopicum, Chiniavense, Simithuense, Thunusidense, Thuburnicense, Thinidrumense, Tibigense, the two Ucitana, the Greater and the Lesser, and the Vagense. One Latin town, the Uzalitanum. One tributary town, Castra Cornelia.
30| The free towns are 30, of which those to be named inland are the Achollitanum, Accaritanum, Avittense, Abziritanum, Canopitanum, Melizitanum, Materense, Salaphitanum, Tusdritanum, Thisicense, Tunisense, Theudense, Tagesense, Tigiense, Ulusubburitanum, another Vagense, [….]ense, and Zamense. Of the remaining number, not only states but most of them may also rightly be called nations, such as the Nattabutes, Capsitani, Musulami, Sabarbares, Massyli, Nicives, Vamacures, Cinithi, Musuni, Marchubi, and the whole of Gaetulia as far as the river Niger, which divides Africa from Ethiopia.
31| Cyrenaica, also called the Pentapolitan region, is made illustrious by the oracle of Hammon, which is 400,000 paces from Cyrene, by the Fountain of the Sun, and chiefly by five cities, Berenice, Arsinoe, Ptolemais, Apollonia and Cyrene itself. Berenice is on the outermost horn of the Syrtis, once called that of the Hesperides mentioned above, as the wandering fables of Greece have it. Not far before the town is the river Lethon, a sacred grove, where gardens are recorded. It is 375,000 from Leptis.
32| From it Arsinoe, called Teuchira, is 43,000, and then Ptolemais, with the ancient name Barce, 22,000. Soon after, 40,000 away, the promontory Phycus runs out through the Cretan sea, distant 350,000 paces from Taenarum, a promontory of Laconia, and from Crete itself 125,000. After that comes Cyrene, 11,000 paces from the sea; from Phycus the distance to Apollonia is 24,000, to Cherronesus 88,000, from where to Catabathmus is 216,000.
33| The Marmaridae dwell there, stretching from about the region of Paraetonium as far as the Greater Syrtis. After them are the Acrauceles, and now on the Syrtis coast the Nasamones, whom the Greeks earlier named Mesammones, from a feature of the place, situated in the middle of the sands. The Cyrenaic land is held fertile in trees for 15,000 paces in breadth from the shore, inland for the same space in grain only, and soon for 30,000 in breadth and 250,000 in length in laser alone.
34| After the Nasamones live the Asbytae and the Macae; beyond them the Amantes, an 11 days' journey from the Greater Syrtes to the west, themselves too surrounded by sands, yet they find wells without difficulty at a depth of about two cubits, the waters of Mauretania standing back up there. They build their houses of salt cut from their own mountains, like stone. From them to the Trogodytae is a journey of seven days toward the quarter of the winter sunset; with them the only trade is in the gem, which we call carbunculus, brought in from Ethiopia.
35| Between, turned toward the deserts of Africa said to lie above the Lesser Syrtis, lies Phazania, where we subdued the nation of the Phazanii and the cities Alele and Cilliba, likewise Cidamus, opposite Sabrata. From them a mountain stretches for a long space from east to west, called Ater by our people from its nature, like something burnt or set alight by the reflection of the sun.
36| Beyond it are deserts; the town Mathelgae of the Garamantes, and likewise Debris, where a spring pours out waters boiling from midday to midnight and the same number of hours freezing cold from midnight to midday; and the most famous Garama, the capital of the Garamantes, all subdued by Roman arms and triumphed over by Cornelius Balbus, the only man of all to be granted a triumphal chariot, though a foreigner, and the rights of a Roman citizen; for to him, born at Gades, citizenship was given together with the elder Balbus, his father's brother. And this is remarkable, that our authorities have reported the towns mentioned above as captured by him, but that in his triumph he led, besides Cidamus and Garama, the names and images of all the other nations and cities, which went in this order:
37| the town Tabudium; the nation Niteris; the town Miglis Gemella; the nation or town Bubeium; the nation Enipi; the town Thuben; the mountain named Niger; Nitibrum and Rapsa, towns; the nation Viscera; the town Decri; the river Nathabur; the town Thapsagum; the nation Tamiagi; the town Boin; the town Pege; the river Dasibari; then towns in succession, Baracum, Buluba, Alasit, Galsa, Balla, Maxalla, Cizania; the mountain Gyri, on which, the inscription had said, gems are produced.
38| The journey to the Garamantes was until now impassable, the robbers of that people covering the wells with sand (wells that need not be dug deep, if knowledge of the places is at hand). In the latest war, which they waged with the people of Oea at the start of the Emperor Vespasian's reign, a short cut of four days' journey was discovered. This route is called Past the Head of the Rock. The boundary of Cyrenaica is called Catabathmos, a town and a valley suddenly sloping down. To that limit Cyrenaic Africa extends from the Lesser Syrtis X.L̅X̅ in length, and in breadth, so far as it is known, 910,000.
39| The following region is called Libya Mareotis, bordering Egypt. The Marmaridae, Adyrmachidae, and then the Mareotae hold it. The measure from Catabathmus to Paraetonium is 86,000. In that tract inland lies Apis, a place famous for its religious cult in Egypt. From it to Paraetonium is 62,500, from there to Alexandria 200,000. The breadth is 169,000. Eratosthenes gives from Cyrene to Alexandria by the overland route 525,000.
40| Agrippa gave the whole of Africa's length, from the Atlantic sea with Lower Egypt, as 3,040,000; Polybius and Eratosthenes, reckoned the most careful, made it from the ocean to Carthage the Great 1,100,000, and from it to Canopus, the Nile's nearest mouth, 1,688,000; Isidorus gives from Tingi to Canopus 3,697,000; Artemidorus, 40,000 less than Isidorus.
41| These seas contain not so many islands. The most famous is Meninx, 25,000 in length and 22,000 in breadth, called Lotophagitis by Eratosthenes; it has two towns, Meninx on the side facing Africa and, on the other, Thoar; it lies 1,500 paces from the right-hand promontory of the Lesser Syrtis. From it, 100 paces away, opposite the left-hand one, is Cercina, with a free city of the same name, 25,000 long and half as wide where widest, but at the end not more than 5. Joined to this by a bridge, toward Carthage, is a very small island, Cercinitis.
42| From these, about 50 paces, lies Lepadusa, 6,000 long; then Gaulos, and Galata, whose soil kills scorpions, the dread creature of Africa. They are also said to die at Clupea, opposite which is Cossyra with a town. But opposite the gulf of Carthage are two Aegimoerae, and the Arae, rocks rather than islands, chiefly between Sicily and Sardinia. There are authorities who say that these also were once inhabited and have sunk.
43| In the inner circuit of Africa, however, toward the south and above the Gaetulians, with deserts intervening, the first of all to live there are the Libyan Egyptians, then the white Ethiopians. Above them are the Ethiopian nations, the Nigritae, named from the river, the Gymnetes and Pharusi, now touching the ocean, whom we called Perorsi at the end of Mauretania. Beyond all these lie vast solitudes toward the east as far as the Garamantes, Augilae and Trogodytae, in agreement with the very true opinion of those who place two Ethiopias above the deserts of Africa, and before all with Homer, who reports that the Ethiopians are divided in two, turned toward the east and the west.
44| The river Niger has the same nature as the Nile. It produces reed and papyrus and the same animals, and rises in flood at the same times. It rises between the Ethiopian Tarraelii and the Oechalicae. Their town is Magium. Some have set the Atlantes among the solitudes, and beside them the Aegipanes, half-beasts, the Blemmyae, the Gamphasantes, the Satyrs and the Himantopodes. The Atlantes are degenerate from human custom, if we believe it.
45| For they have no naming of any names among themselves, and they look upon the rising and setting sun with a dread imprecation, as deadly to themselves and their fields, and they do not see in sleep such things as other mortals. The Trogodytae dig out caves; these are their homes; their food is the flesh of serpents, and they make a squeaking, not a voice: so completely do they lack the commerce of speech. The Garamantes, having no marriages, live promiscuously with their women. The Augilae worship only the powers below. The Gamphasantes, naked and without experience of battles, gather with no outsider.
46| The Blemmyae are reported to have no heads, with mouth and eyes fixed to the chest; the Satyrs, apart from their shape, have nothing of human custom; the Aegipanes have the form commonly painted; the Himantopodes are some loose-footed folk, whose nature is to move by creeping; the Pharusi, once Persians, are said to have been companions of Hercules on his way to the Hesperides. Nor is there more to be recalled about Africa.
47| Asia adjoins it. Timosthenes reports that it extends from the Canopic mouth to the mouth of the Pontus 2,638,000 paces, and from the mouth of the Pontus to the mouth of the Maeotis, Eratosthenes 1,545,000; the whole, with Egypt, to the Tanais, Artemidorus and Isidorus give as L.X̅I̅I̅I̅.DCCL. Its many seas have taken their names from the dwellers on the shores; therefore they will be indicated together.
48| Next to Africa is inhabited Egypt, receding inland toward the south, where the Ethiopians stretch behind it. Its lower part the Nile, divided on the right and left, bounds with its embrace, separating it from Africa by the Canopic mouth and from Asia by the Pelusiac, over an interval of 170,000 paces. For this reason some have counted Egypt among the islands, since the Nile splits itself so as to form a triangular shape of land, and therefore many have called Egypt by the name of the Greek letter, Delta. The measure from the single bed of the river, where it first splits into its sides, to the Canopic mouth is 146, to the Pelusiac 156,000. The uppermost part, bordering Ethiopia, is called the Thebais.
49| It is divided into prefectures of towns, which they call nomoi: the Ombite, Apollonopolite, Hermonthite, Thinite, Phaturite, Coptite, Tentyrite, Diospolite, Antaeopolite, Aphroditopolite and Lycopolite. The region beside Pelusium has the nomoi Pharbaethite, Bubastite, Sethroite and Tanite. The remaining ones are the Arabian, the Hammoniac, extending to the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, the Oxyrynchite, Leontopolite, Athribite, Cynopolite, Hermopolite, Xoite, Mendesian, Sebennyte, Cabasite, Latopolite, Heliopolite, Prosopite, Panopolite, Busirite, Onuphite, Saite, Ptenethum, Ptemphum, Naucratite, Metelite, Gynaecopolite and Menelaite, the region of Alexandria, and likewise that of Libya, Mareotis.
50| The Heracleopolite nome is on an island in the Nile 50 paces long, on which is also a town, called that of Hercules. The Arsinoitae are two; these and the Memphite reach as far as the top of the Delta, on which the two Oasitae border, from Africa. Some of them change certain names and substitute other nomes, such as the Heroopolite and Crocodilopolite. Between the Arsinoite and the Memphite there was a lake, 250,000 in circuit or, as Mucianus reports, 450,000, and fifty paces in depth, made by hand, and called Moeris after the king who made it. From there Memphis is 62,000 paces distant, once the stronghold of Egypt's kings, from where to the oracle of Hammon is a journey of 12 days, and to the splitting of the Nile, which we called the Delta, 15,000.
51| The Nile, rising from uncertain sources, as it walks through deserts and burning lands over an immense space of length, and is sought only by unarmed report, without wars, which have found out all other lands, has its origin, as King Juba was able to discover, on a mountain of lower Mauretania not far from the ocean, in a lake immediately stagnant, which they call Nilis. There are found fishes called alabetae, coracini and siluri. A crocodile from there, too, dedicated by him as evidence of this in the temple of Isis at Caesarea, is on view today. It has been observed, besides, that according as snows or rains have saturated Mauretania, so the Nile increases.
52| Poured out from this lake, it disdains to flow through sandy and squalid lands, and hides itself for a journey of some days; soon it bursts out in another, larger lake, among the people of the Masaesyli of Caesariensian Mauretania, and, as it were, looks around at gatherings of men, with the same evidence of animals. Taken again into sands it is hidden once more for 20 days' deserts to the nearest Ethiopians, and, where it first senses a man again, it leaps forth, from a spring, as is likely, which they have called the Niger.
53| From there, dividing Africa from Ethiopia, though not yet thronged with peoples, yet full of wild beasts and monsters and the maker of forests, it cuts through the middle of the Ethiopians, named Astapus, which in the language of those peoples means water flowing out of darkness. It scatters islands so countless, and some of such vast size, that although with rapid speed it still flies past in a course of 5 days, not shorter; around the most famous of them, Meroe, the left channel is called Astabores, that is, branch of water coming from darkness, and the right Astosapes, which adds the signification of a side; nor is it Nile before it has joined itself entire with waters once more at one, and even so it was still named Giris for some thousands of paces beforehand, and in the whole by Homer Aegyptus and by others Triton.
54| Soon dashed upon islands, spurred on by as many provocations, at last shut in by mountains, and nowhere else more torrential, carried by hurrying waters to the place of the Ethiopians that are called Catadupi, at the last cataract, among rocks that stand in its path, it is believed not to flow but to rush headlong, with an immense roar. Afterwards gentle, its waters broken and its violence tamed, and also somewhat wearied by the distance, although it pours itself out through many mouths into the Egyptian sea, yet on fixed days, with a great increase, it spreads over the whole of Egypt and floats fertile over the land.
55| They have given various causes for this increase, but the most probable are the repulse of the Etesian winds blowing at that season from the opposite quarter, the sea being driven farther onto the coast, or the summer rains of Ethiopia, the same Etesian winds carrying clouds there from the rest of the world. Timaeus the mathematician put forward a hidden explanation: that its source is called Phiala, and that the river itself, panting with heat, is plunged into tunnels, in smoking rocks, where it hides. But the sun, brought close in those days, draws it out by the force of its heat, and it rises and overflows, and is hidden so that it may not be swallowed up.
56| This happens from the rising of the Dog Star, through the sun's entrance into Leo, the star standing perpendicular to the source, since shadows are consumed in that region; most hold the opposite view, that it flows more abundantly toward the north when the sun departs, which happens in Cancer and Leo, and that therefore it is then less dried up; that, again, when the sun has gone back to Capricorn and the southern pole, it is swallowed up and for that reason flows more sparingly. But if anyone should believe, with Timaeus, that it can be drawn out, there is a lack of shadows on those days and in those places without end.
57| It begins to rise at the new moon, whichever follows the solstice, gradually and modestly while the sun passes through Cancer, but most abundantly in Leo, and it subsides in Virgo in the same ways in which it grew. In Libra, as Herodotus relates, it is called back entirely within its banks on the hundredth day. While it is rising, it has been judged sacrilege for kings or prefects to sail on it. Its increases are ascertained by marks of measure in wells. The just rise is 16 cubits.
58| Lesser waters do not irrigate everything; greater ones detain it by receding more slowly. The latter use up the time for sowing while the soil is wet, the former give none because it is thirsty. The province reckons with both. At 12 cubits it feels famine, at 13 it still hungers, 14 cubits bring cheerfulness, 15 security, 16 delights. The greatest rise to this age was 18 cubits under the emperor Claudius, the least, 5, in the Pharsalian war, as if the river, by a kind of portent, turned away from the murder of Pompey. When the waters have stood, they are let in by opening the dams. As each part of the land is freed, it is sown. The same river alone of all breathes out no breezes.
59| The dominion of Egypt begins at the end of Ethiopia with Syene; so is called a peninsula of 1,000 paces in circuit, on which is a camp, on the Arabian side, and opposite is an island, 4,000 paces, Philae, 600,000 paces from the splitting of the Nile, from which we have said it is called the Delta. This space was set out by Artemidorus, who says that in it there were 250 towns; Juba gives 400,000 paces; Aristocreon, from Elephantis to the sea, 750,000. The island Elephantis, within the last cataract, 4,000 paces away and 16,000 above Syene, is inhabited; it is the end of Egyptian navigation, 585,000 paces from Alexandria: so greatly have the authors cited above erred. There Ethiopian ships are sold; for they carry them folded on their shoulders each time they reach the cataracts.
60| Egypt, besides its general glory of antiquity, boasts that in the reign of Amasis it was inhabited by 20,000 cities, and even now it is crowded with many, though undistinguished. Celebrated, however, are the city of Apollo, then that of Leucothea, Diospolis Magna, which is also Thebes, famed for its hundred gates, Coptos, the emporium for Indian and Arabian wares nearest the Nile, then the town of Venus, and again that of Jupiter, and Tentyris, below which is Abydus, the royal seat of Memnon and renowned for the temple of Osiris, 7,500 paces away from the river in the direction of Libya.
61| Then Ptolemais and Panopolis, and again the town of Venus, and in the Libyan part Lycon, where mountains end the Thebais. After these come the towns of Mercury, Alabastron, Canum and the Hercules town mentioned above. Then the city of Arsinoe and Memphis, already mentioned, between which and the Arsinoite nome, on the Libyan side, are the towers that are called pyramids, and the labyrinth, built on the lake of Moeris with no timber added, and the town Crialon. One more, inland and bordering Arabia, of great fame: the town of the Sun.
62| But Alexandria, on the shore of the Egyptian sea, may rightly be praised, founded by Alexander the Great in the part of Africa 12,000 paces from the Canopic mouth, beside the lake Mareotis, a place which was formerly called Rhacotes. Its plan was laid out by the architect Dinochares, of memorable talent in many ways; it was a space of 15,000 paces occupied, with a circuit curved to the likeness of a Macedonian cloak, fringed with a jagged outline, with angular projections on right and left, a fifth part of the site even then being dedicated to the palace.
63| The lake Mareotis, on the southern side of the city, sends commerce from the interior by a channel from the Canopic mouth, embracing also several islands; it is 30,000 across and 250,000 in circuit, as Claudius Caesar reports. Others make the schoeni extend 40 in length, and the schoenus 30 stades: thus the length would be 150,000 paces, and the same for the breadth.
64| There are also held in honour many towns within the courses of the Nile, especially those that gave their names to the mouths: not to all (for 12 are found, and four more, which they themselves call false mouths), but to the 7 most celebrated, the Canopic, nearest to Alexandria, then the Bolbitine, Sebennytic, Phatmitic, Mendesian, Tanitic, and last the Pelusiac. Besides these there are Butos, Pharbaethos, Leontopolis, Athribis, the town belonging to Isis, Busiris, Cynopolis, Aphrodites, Sais, and Naucratis, whence some name the mouth Naucratitic, which others call Heracleotic, preferring it to the Canopic, to which it is nearest.
65| Beyond the Pelusiac is Arabia, extending to the Red Sea and that fragrant and rich land renowned by the surname of the Blessed. This part is called that of the Catabani, the Esbonitae and the Scenite Arabs, barren except where it touches the borders of Syria, and famous only for Mount Casius. To these the Arabs are joined, on the east the Canchlei, on the south the Cedrei, both of whom then border the Nabataeans. One gulf of the Red Sea inclining toward Egypt is called the Heroopolitic, and another the Laeanitic or Aelanitic, 150,000 being the interval between two towns, Laeana and, on our sea, Gaza. Agrippa gives from Pelusium to Arsinoe, a town of the Red Sea, through deserts 125,000 paces: so slightly apart is there so great a diversity of nature.
66| Next Syria occupies the shore, in former times the largest of countries, and marked out by a great many names. For it was called Palaestine where it touches the Arabs, and Judaea, and Coele; then Phoenice, and where it recedes inland, Damascena; and, still more, southward, Babylonia, which is also Mesopotamia, between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and where the Taurus passes, Sophene; on this side of it Commagene, and beyond Armenia, Adiabene, called Assyria earlier; and where it touches Cilicia, Antiochia. Between Cilicia and Arabia its length is 470,000 paces.
67| The breadth, from Seleucia Pieria to the town of Zeugma on the Euphrates is 175,000. Those who divide more finely wish that Phoenice is poured around by Syria and is the maritime coast of Syria, of which Idumaea and Judaea would be a part, then Phoenice, then Syria. The sea that lies before it is all called the Phoenician. The Phoenician people itself has great glory for the invention of letters and of the arts of the stars, of navigation and of war.
68| From Pelusium come the camp of Chabrias, Mount Casius, the shrine of Jupiter Casius, and the tomb of Pompey the Great. Arabia is bounded at Ostracine, 65,000 paces from Pelusium. Soon Idumaea begins, and Palaestina, from the emergence of the lake Sirbonis, which some have given as 150,000 in circuit. Herodotus attached it to Mount Casius; now it is a modest marsh. The towns are Rhinocolura and, inland, Rhaphea, Gaza and, inland, Anthedon, and Mount Argaris. The region along the coast is Samaria; the free town Ascalo, Azotos, two Iamneae, one of them inland.
69| Iope of the Phoenicians, older than the flooding of the earth, as they say, sits on a hill, with a rock lying before it on which it shows the traces of Andromeda's chains. There the fabulous Ceto is worshipped. Then Apollonia, and Strato's Tower, which is also Caesarea, founded by King Herod, now the colony Prima Flavia, settled by the Emperor Vespasian, the end of Palaestine, 189,000 paces from the border of Arabia. Then Phoenice; and inland, of Samaria, the towns Neapolis, which was formerly called Mamortha, Sebaste on a mountain, and the higher Gamala.
70| Above Idumaea and Samaria Judaea spreads far and wide. Its part joined to Syria is called Galilaea; the part nearest Arabia and Egypt is Peraea, scattered with rugged mountains and separated from the rest of Judaea by the river Jordan. The remaining Judaea is divided into ten toparchies, in the order in which we shall name them: Hiericus, planted with palm-groves and watered by springs; Emmaus; Lydda; Iopica; Acrabatena; Gophanitica; Thamnitica; Betholeptephene; Orine, in which stood Hierosolyma, far and away the most famous of the cities of the East, and not of Judaea alone; and Herodium, with a notable town of the same name.
71| The river Jordan rises from the spring Paneas, which gave its name to Caesarea, of which we shall speak. A pleasant river and, as far as the lie of the places allows, courting, offering itself to the dwellers on its banks, as if unwilling it seeks the Asphaltite lake, dreadful by nature, by which it is drunk up in the end, and loses its praised waters, mixed with pestilential ones. So where the first opportunity of the valleys occurred, it pours itself into a lake which many call Genesara, 16,000 paces in length and 6,000 in breadth, fenced about with pleasant towns: on the east Julias and Hippos, on the south Tarichea (by which name some also call the lake), on the west Tiberias, wholesome for its warm waters.
72| The Asphaltite produces nothing but bitumen, from which it also has its name. It receives no body of living creatures; bulls and camels float; hence the report that nothing sinks in it. It exceeds 100 paces in length, and fills 75,000 at its greatest breadth and 6,000 at its least. Arabia of the Nomads looks upon it from the east, and from the south Machaerus, once the second fortress of Judaea after Hierosolyma. On the same side is a warm spring of medicinal healing, Callirhoe, displaying the glory of its waters in its very name.
73| On the west the Essenes keep away from the shores as far as they are harmful, a people alone and, in all the world, beyond all others marvellous, without any woman, having renounced all sexual love, without money, with the palm-trees for company. Day by day the throng of newcomers is born again in equal number, since those weary of life, whom fortune's waves drive to their ways, resort to them in large numbers. Thus through thousands of ages (incredible to say) a people is eternal in which no one is born. So fruitful for them is other men's weariness of life! Below these was the town Engada, second to Hierosolyma in fertility and groves of palm-trees, now another ash-heap. Then Masada, a fortress on a rock, itself also not far from the Asphaltite. And thus far is Judaea.
74| Joined to it, on the side of Syria, is the Decapolitan region, so called from the number of towns, in which not all observe the same ones; first, however, Damascus, fertile from the river Chrysorroas drained off for irrigation; Philadelphia; Rhaphana, all of them receding toward Arabia; Scythopolis, formerly Nysa, named from Father Liber having buried his nurse there, Scythians having been settled there; Gadara, with the Hieromices flowing past; Hippos, already mentioned; Dion; Pella, rich in waters; Garasa; Canatha. Tetrarchies run among and surround these cities, each like a kingdom, and kingdoms are joined to them: Trachonitis, Paneas, in which is Caesarea with the spring mentioned above, Abila, Arca, Ampeloessa, Gabe.
75| From here we must return to the coast and Phoenice. There was a town Crocodilon; there is a river. A memory of cities: Dorum, Sycaminum. The promontory Carmelus, and on the mountain a town of the same name, once called Acbatana. Near by, Getta and Geba; the stream Pacida or Belus, mixing sands fertile for glass into a small shore; it itself flows from the marsh Cendebia at the foot of Carmelus. Near by is the colony of Claudius Caesar, Ptolemais, which was formerly Acce. The town Ecdippa; the promontory Album.
76| Tyre, once an island divided from the mainland by 700 paces of very deep sea, but now linked with it by the works of Alexander in his assault; once famous for its offspring, having given birth to the cities Leptis, Utica, and that rival of the lands and greedy of the world, Carthage, and even Gades, founded outside the world: now all its renown consists in conchylium and purple. Its circuit is 19,000, with Palaetyrus enclosed within; the town itself occupies 22 stades. Then the towns Sarepta and Ornithon, and Sidon, maker of glass and parent of Boeotian Thebes.
77| Behind it the mountain Libanus, beginning, extends for 1,500 stades as far as Zimyra, which is surnamed Coele Syria. Equal to it, with a valley lying between, the opposing mountain Antilibanus stretches out, once joined to it by a wall. Behind this, inland, lie the Decapolitan region, the tetrarchies mentioned with it, and the whole expanse of Palaestine.
78| But on the coast likewise beneath Libanus are the river Magoras, the colony Berytus, which is called Felix Julia, the town Leontos, the river Lycos, Palaebyblos, the river Adonis, the towns Byblos, Botrys, Gigarta, Trieris, Calamos, Tripolis (so called because the Tyrians, Sidonians and Aradians hold it), Orthosia, the river Eleutheros, the towns Zimyra and Marathos, and opposite, Arados, a town of seven stades and an island two hundred paces distant from the mainland, the region in which the aforesaid mountains end, and, with plains lying between, the mountain Bargylus.
79| From here Syria begins again, Phoenice ending. The towns Carne, Balanea, Paltos, Gabala; the promontory on which is the free Laodicea; Dipolis, Heraclea, Charadrus, Posidium. Then the promontory of Antiochian Syria. Inland, the free Antiochia itself, surnamed Epi Daphnes; the river Orontes runs through and divides it. And on the promontory stands the free Seleucia, called Pieria.
80| Above it is a mountain with the same name as another, Casius. Its lofty height sees the sun rising through the darkness at the fourth watch, showing day and night alike by a short turning of the body. The circuit to the summit is 19,000 paces; the height straight up 4,000. But on the coast is the river Orontes, born between Libanus and Antilibanus near Heliopolis. The towns Rhosos, and behind, the Gates, which are called those of Syria, in the interval between the Rhosian mountains and the Taurus. On the coast the town Myriandros, the mountain Amanus, on which is the town of the Bomitae. It separates Cilicia from the Syrians.
81| Now let the interior be told. Coele has Apamea, which the river Marsyas separates from the Nazerini's tetrarchy; Bambyce, which by another name is called Hierapolis but by the Syrians Mabog, where the wondrous Atargatis, whom the Greeks call Derceto, is worshipped; Chalcis, surnamed At Belus, from which comes the Chalcidene region, the most fertile of Syria; and from there Cyrrestica: Cyrrum, the Gazetae, the Gindareni, the Gabeni, two tetrarchies which are called Granucomatitae, the Hemeseni, the Hylatae, the people of the Ituraei and those of them who are called Baethaemi, the Mariamnitani,
82| the tetrarchy which is called Mammisea, Paradisus, the Pagrae, the Penelenitae, the Seleucias besides the one mentioned, two, which are called At Euphrates and At Belus, and the Tardytenses. The remainder of Syria has, apart from those that will be told with the Euphrates, the Arethusii, Beroeenses, Epiphanenses at the Orontes, the Laodiceni who are surnamed At Libanus, the Leucadii and Larisaei, besides 17 tetrarchies divided into kingdoms with barbarous names.
83| And it will be most fitting to speak of the Euphrates in this place. It rises in the prefecture of Greater Armenia, Caranitis, as is reported by those who have most recently seen it: Domitius Corbulo says on the mountain Aga; Licinius Mucianus, under the foot of the mountain which they call Capotes, 12,000 paces above Zimara, at first named Pyxurates. It flows first through Derzene, then Anaetica, shutting the regions of Armenia off from Cappadocia. Dascusa is 75,000 paces from Zimara;
84| from there it is navigable to Sartona 50, to Melitene of Cappadocia 24,000, to Elegea of Armenia 10, having received the rivers Lycus, Arsanias and Arsanus. At Elegea the mountain Taurus meets it and does not resist, although stronger by a breadth of 12,000 paces. They call it Omma as it bursts in, and soon, when it has broken through, Euphrates, beyond too rocky and violent.
85| From there on the left it separates Arabia, the region called Orroea, by a measure of three schoeni, and on the right Commagene, but bears a bridge, even where it storms the Taurus. At Claudiopolis of Cappadocia it directs its course to the setting sun. At first the Taurus there carries it off in battle, and, beaten and cut apart, conquers in another way and drives it, broken, to the south. So that contest of nature is evened, the river going where it will, the mountain forbidding it to go where it would. From the cataracts it is again navigable. From there 40,000 paces away is Samosata, the capital of Commagene.
86| The Arabia mentioned above has the towns Edessa, which was once called Antiochia, Callirrhoe, named from a spring, and Carrhae, famous for the disaster of Crassus. Joined to it is the prefecture of Mesopotamia, which draws its origin from the Assyrians, in which are the towns Anthemusia and Nicephorium. Soon the Arabs who are called Praetavi; their capital is Singara. From Samosata, on the Syrian side, the river Marsyas runs in. Cingilla ends Commagene; the state of the Imenei begins. The towns washed are Epiphania and Antiochia, which are called At Euphrates, likewise Zeugma, 72,000 paces from Samosata, famous for the crossing of the Euphrates. Opposite it Seleucus, the founder of both, had joined Apamea to it by a bridge.
87| Those who adjoin Mesopotamia are called Rhoali. But in Syria are the towns Europum, once Thapsacum, now Amphipolis; the Scenite Arabs. So it is carried as far as the place Sura, where, turning to the east, it leaves to Syria the deserts of Palmyra, which reach as far as the city Petra and the region called Arabia Felix.
88| Palmyra, a city famous for its situation, the wealth of its soil and its pleasant waters, shuts its fields in on every side with a vast circuit of sands and, as if removed from the lands by nature, has its own fate between the two mighty empires of the Romans and Parthians, and is the first concern on each side whenever there is discord. It is distant from Seleucia of the Parthians, called At Tigris, 337,000 paces, from the nearest shore of Syria 203,000, and from Damascus 27,000 less.
89| Below the deserts of Palmyra lies the Telendene region, and the towns already named, Hierapolis, Beroea and Chalcis. Beyond Palmyra, too, Hemesa holds something out of these deserts, and likewise Elatium, nearer to Petra by half than Damascus is. From Sura, the nearest place is Philiscum, which belongs to the Parthians and lies on the Euphrates. From it to Seleucia is a voyage of ten days, and about as many to Babylon.
90| For the Euphrates divides at 594,000 paces from Zeugma, around the village Masice, and on the left side goes into Mesopotamia, flowing through Seleucia itself and around it, poured into the Tigris; but by its right-hand channel it makes for Babylon, once the capital of Chaldaea, and, passing through the middle of it, and likewise the place they call Mothris, is drawn off into marshes. It rises also itself, in the manner of the Nile, on fixed days, differing a little, and floods Mesopotamia when the sun holds the 20th part of Cancer. It begins to diminish when the sun has passed from Leo into Virgo, and returns entirely within its bed at the 29th part of Virgo.
91| But let us return to the coast of Syria, which Cilicia adjoins. The Diaphanes river, Mount Crocodilus, the Gates of the mountain Amanus, the streams Androcus, Pinarus and Lycus, the Issic gulf, the town Issos, likewise Alexandria, the river Chlorus, the free town Aegaeae, the Pyramus river, the Cilician Gates, the towns Mallos, Magirsos and, inland, Tarsos. The Aleian plains, the towns Casyponis, the free Mopsos, set upon the Pyramus, Tyros, Zephyrium, Anchiale.
92| The rivers Sarus and Cydnus, which cuts through the free city Tarsus far from the sea. The Celenderitis region with a town, the place Nymphaeum, Soloe of the Cilicians, now Pompeiopolis, Adana, Cibyra, Pinare, Pedalie, Alae, Selinus, Arsinoe, Iotape, Dorion, and beside the sea Corycos, the town of the same name, and a harbour and a cave. Then the river Calycadnus, the promontory Sarpedon, the towns Holmoe and Myle, the promontory and town of Venus, nearest to which is the island of Cyprus.
93| But on the mainland are the towns Mysanda, Anemurium and Coracesium, and the ancient boundary of Cilicia, the river Melas. Inland, however, the following are to be named: the Anazarbeni, who are now Caesarea, Augusta, Castabala, Epiphania, which was formerly Oeniandos, Eleusa, Iconium, and Seleucia above the river Calycadnus, surnamed Tracheotis, moved back from the sea from where it was called Hermia. Besides, inland, the rivers Liparis, Bombos and Paradisus, and the mountain Imbarus.
94| All have joined Pamphylia to Cilicia, neglecting the Isaurian people. Its inland towns are Isaura, Clibanus and Lalasis; it runs down to the sea at Anemurium, opposite the place mentioned above. In a similar way, all who have composed the same account have overlooked the people of the Omanades, which borders it, whose inland town is Omana. The remaining forts, 44, lie hidden among rugged valleys. On the summit dwell the Pisidae, once called Solymi, whose colony is Caesarea, also called Antiochia. The towns Oroanda and Sagalessos.
95| These Lycaonia encloses, turned toward the Asian jurisdiction, with which the Philomelienses, Tymbriani, Leucolithi, Pelteni and Tyrienses assemble. A tetrarchy is also given out of Lycaonia, on the side where it borders Galatia, of 14 states, with the very celebrated city Iconium. Of Lycaonia itself, Thebasa in the Taurus is celebrated, and Ide on the border of Galatia and Cappadocia. On its side, above Pamphylia, come the Milyae, offspring of the Thracians, whose town is Arycanda.
96| Pamphylia was formerly called Mopsopia. The Pamphylian sea is joined to the Cilician. The towns are Side and, on a mountain, Aspendum, Plantanistum, and Perga. The promontory Leucolla, the mountain Sardemisus. The rivers Eurymedon, flowing beside Aspendum, and Catarractes, beside which are Lyrnesus and Olbia, and, last on its coast, Phaselis.
97| Joined to it is the Lycian sea and the Lycian people, whence a vast gulf. The mountain Taurus, coming from the eastern shores, marks it off with the promontory Chelidonium, immense itself and the arbiter of countless peoples, on its right side northern, where it first rises from the Indian sea, on the left southern, and, stretching to the west, would split Asia in the middle, were it not that seas meet it as it presses on the lands. It therefore recoils to the north and, bent, seeks an immense road, nature, as if on purpose, setting seas against it from time to time, here the Phoenician, here the Pontic, there the Caspian and Hyrcanian, and opposite, the Maeotic lake.
98| It is therefore twisted, dashed among these barriers, and yet comes out victorious and winding as far as the kindred ridges of the Ripaean mountains, distinguished by numerous and new names wherever it advances: called Imaus in its first part, then Emodus, Paropanisus, Circius, Cambades, Pariades, Choatras, Oreges, Oroandes, Niphates, Taurus, and Caucasus where it surpasses even itself; where it sends out arms, like one repeatedly feeling out the seas, Sarpedon, Coracesius,
99| Cragus, and again Taurus, even where it gapes and opens itself to peoples, still claiming unity for itself under the name of Gates, which are called in one place of Armenia, in another of the Caspian, in another of Cilicia. Indeed even broken and fleeing the seas it fills itself with a great many names of peoples here and there, on the right called Hyrcanian, Caspian, on the left Parihedrus, Moschic, Amazonian, Coraxic, Scythian, and in the whole, in Greek, Ceraunian.
100| In Lycia, then, from its promontory, there are the town Simena, the Chimaera mountain, blazing at night, the state Hephaestium, itself also with ridges often blazing. The town Olympus was there; now there are the mountain places Gagae, Corydalla, Rhodiopolis. Near the sea Limyra with the river into which the Arycandus flows, the mountain Masicytus, the state Andria, Myra, the towns Aperlae and Antiphellos, which was formerly Habesos, and, in a recess, Phellos. Then Pyrrha, likewise Xanthus, 15,000 from the sea, and a river of the same name. Then Patara, which was earlier Pataros, and on a mountain Sidyma, the promontory Cragus.
101| Beyond is a gulf equal to the former; there are Pinara and Telmesus, which ends Lycia. Lycia once had 70 towns; now it has 36. Of these the most celebrated, besides those named above, are Canae, Candyba, where the grove of Eunias is praised, Podalia, Choma, with the Aedesa flowing past, Cyaneae, Ascandiandalis, Amelas, Noscopium, Tlos and Telandrus. In the interior it includes also Cabalia, whose three cities are Oenianda, Balbura and Bubon.
102| From Telmesus is the Asiatic sea, or Carpathian, and that which is properly called Asia. Agrippa divided it into two parts: one he enclosed: by Phrygia and Lycaonia in the east, by the Aegean sea in the west, on the south by the Egyptian, on the north by Paphlagonia; its length he made 470,000, its breadth 320,000. The other he bounded on the east by Lesser Armenia, on the west by Phrygia, Lycaonia and Pamphylia, on the north by the province of Pontus, on the south by the Pamphylian sea, 575 long and 325,000 broad.
103| The nearest coast has Caria, then Ionia, with Aeolis beyond it. Caria is poured around the middle of Doris, embracing it on both sides down to the sea. In it are the promontory Pedalium, the river Glaucus, bringing down Telmedium, the towns Daedala and Crya of the Fugitives, the river Axon, the town Calynda. The river Indus, rising in the ridges of the Cibyratae, receives 60 perennial rivers and more than a hundred torrents.
104| The free town Caunos, then Pyrnos. The harbour Cressa, from which the island Rhodes is 20,000 paces. The place Loryma, the towns Tisanusa, Paridon, Larymna, the gulf Thymnias, the promontory Aphrodisias, the town Hydas, the gulf Schoenus, the region Bubassus. There was a town Acanthus, by another name Dulopolis. On a promontory is the free Cnidos, Triopia, later called Pegusa and Stadia. From it Doris begins.
105| But it is fitting first to have indicated the back country and the inland jurisdictions. One is called Cibyratic; the town itself belongs to Phrygia. 25 states assemble there, with the very celebrated city of Laodicea. It is set upon the river Lycus, with the Asopus and Capros washing its sides, called first Diospolis, then Rhoas. The others in that assize, whom it may not be tedious to name, are the Hydrelitae, Themisones and Hierapolitae. A second assize took its name from Synnas; there assemble the Lycaones, Appiani, Corpeni, Dorylaei, Midaei, Iulienses and the remaining 15 obscure peoples.
106| The third goes to Apamea, formerly called Celaenae, then Ciboton. It is situated at the foot of Mount Signia, poured around by the rivers Marsyas, Obrimas and Orbas, which fall into the Maeander. There the Marsyas comes to light again, having risen and then been hidden a little way on. Where he competed with Apollo in the playing of the pipes is Aulocrene; so the valley is called, 10 paces from Apamea for those making for Phrygia. From this assize it is fitting to name the Metropolitae, Dionysopolitae, Euphorbeni, Acmonenses, Pelteni and Silbiani. The remaining 9 are obscure.
107| On the gulf of Doris are Leucopolis, Hamaxitos, Eleus and Etene. Then the towns of Caria: Pitaium, Eutane, Halicarnasus. Six towns were joined to it by Alexander the Great: Theangela, Side, Medmassa, Vranium, Pedasum and Telmisum. It is inhabited between two gulfs, the Ceramic and the Iasian. Then Myndos and where Palaemyndus was, Nariandos, Neapolis, Caryanda, the free Termera, Bargylia, and the town Iasus, which gave the Iasian gulf its name.
108| Caria shines forth in the fame of its inland names. For there are the free town Mylasa, Antiochia, where there were the towns Symmaethos and Cranaos; now the Maeander and Morsynus flow around it. In that tract there was also Maeandropolis; there is Eumenia, set on the river Cludrus, the river Glaucus, the town Lysias and Orthosia, the Berecynthian tract, Nysa, Trallis, also called Euanthia, Seleucia and Antiochia; the river Eudon washes it and the Thebaites waters it.
109| Some report that Pygmies lived there. There are besides Thydonos, Pyrrha, Eurome, Heraclea, Amyzon, the free Alabanda, which gave its name to that assize, the free Stratonicea, Labrayndos, Ceramus, Troezene and Phorontis. The more distant plead in the same court: the Orthronienses, Alindienses, Euhippini, Xystiani, Hydissenses, Apolloniatae, Trapezopolitae, and the free Aphrodisienses. Besides these there are Coscinus and Harpasa, set on the river Harpasus, by which Trallicon also was washed when it existed.
110| Lydia, however, poured around by the winding returns of the river Maeander, advances above Ionia, neighbouring Phrygia on the side of the sun's rising, bordering Mysia to the north, and embracing Caria on the southern part; it was formerly called Maeonia. It is most celebrated for Sardis, founded on the flank of Mount Tmolus, which was formerly called Timolus; from it flows the Pactolus, which is also the Chrysorroas, and from the spring Tarne by the Maeonians the city itself was called Hyde, famous for the Gygaean lake.
111| That jurisdiction is now called Sardiana, and there assemble in it, besides those named, the Macedonian Cadieni, the Philadelphini, and, themselves at the foot of Tmolus, set on the river Cogamus, the Maeonii, the Tripolitani (who are also the Antoniopolitae, washed by the Maeander), the Apollonhieritae, the Mysotimolitae and other obscure peoples.
112| Ionia, beginning at the Iasian gulf, is bent with a more numerous circuit of shores. In it first is the gulf Basilicus; the promontory and town Posideum; the Oracle of the Branchidae, so called, now of Apollo of Didyma, 20 stades from the shore; and from there 180 to Miletus, the capital of Ionia, formerly called Lelegeis and Pityusa and Anactoria, mother of over 90 cities throughout all seas, and not to be cheated of her citizen Cadmus, who first undertook to compose prose speech.
113| The river Maeander, rising from a lake on Mount Aulocrene, and flowing past very many towns and filled by numerous rivers, so winding in its bends that it is often believed to turn back, passes first through the Apamene region, then the Eumenetic and then the Hyrgaletic plains, last Caria, placid, irrigating all those fields with the richest silt, and gently glides into the sea at the tenth stade from Miletus. Then come the mountain Latmus; the towns Heraclea; Carice, of the mountain of that same name; Myus, which the Ionians are said to have founded first, having set out from Athens; Naulochum; Priene; on the coast called Troglea, the river Gaesus; a region sacred to all the Ionians and therefore called Panionia;
114| near by, founded by fugitives, as the name indicates, there was Phygela, and the town Marathesium. Above these lies Magnesia, marked out by the surname of the Maeander, sprung from Thessalian Magnesia. It is 15,000 paces from Ephesus and 3,000 more from Tralles. It was earlier named Thessaloche and Mandrolytia, and, set upon the shore, carried off with it the Derasidae islands from the sea.
115| Inland also Thyatira, washed by the Lycus, sometimes surnamed Pelopia and Euhippia. On the coast is Matium, and Ephesus, the work of the Amazons, sought earlier under many names: Alope, when the battle at Troy was fought, soon Ortygia, Amorges. It was also called Smyrna, with the surname Trachia, and Haemonion and Ptelea. It is raised on Mount Pion, and the Caystrus washes it, which rises in the Cilbian ridges and brings down many rivers and the Pegasaean lake, which the river Phyrites drives out. From these comes a great quantity of silt, by which it extends the lands, and already in the middle of the plains it has added the island Syrie. In the city are the spring Callippia and the temple of Diana, embraced from different regions by two Selenuntes.
116| After Ephesus comes another Matium, of the Colophonians, and inland Colophon itself, with the Halesus flowing by. Then the shrine of Apollo Clarius; Lebedos (there was also a town Notium); the Cyrenaean promontory; the mountain Mimas, 150,000 paces, running out and settling down on the plains of the mainland. In that place Alexander the Great had ordered that plain to be cut through, over a length of 7,500 paces, to join two gulfs and to surround Erythrae and Mimas with water.
117| Near them were the towns Pteleon, Helos and Dorion; now the river Aleon is there; Corynaeum; the promontory of Mimas; Clazomenae; Parthenie and Hippi, called Chytrophoria when they were islands. The same Alexander had ordered it to be joined to the mainland by two stades; inland Daphnus and Hermesta have perished, and Sipylum, which was formerly called Tantalis, the capital of Maeonia, where now is the lake Sale. Archaeopolis also perished, put in place of Sipylum, and in turn Colpe was put in place of it, and Libade in place of that.
118| Going back from there, 12,000 paces off, on the coast, is Smyrna, founded by an Amazon, restored by Alexander, delighting in the river Meles, which rises not far away. The most famous mountains of Asia for the most part unfold themselves in this tract: Mastusia, behind Smyrna, joined to the roots of Olympus and Termetis, ends in Draco, Draco in Tmolus, Tmolus in Cadmus, and that in the Taurus.
119| From Smyrna the river Hermus cuts the plains and adopts them to its own name. It rises near Dorylaum, a state of Phrygia, and collects many rivers, among them the Phryx, which, having given its name to the people, separates it from Caria, and the Hyllus and Cryon, themselves filled with rivers of Phrygia, Mysia and Lydia. At its mouth there was a town, Temnos; now at the extreme of the gulf are the rocks Myrmeces, the town Leucae on a promontory which was an island, and Phocaea, the end of Ionia.
120| A large part of Aeolis, which will soon be told, frequents the Smyrnaean assize, and besides, the Macedonian Hyrcani so called and the Magnetes from Sipylus. To Ephesus, however, the other light of Asia, the more distant assemble: the Caesarienses, Metropolitae, Lower and Upper Cilbiani, Mysomacedones, Mastaurenses, Briullitae, Hypaepeni and Dioshieritae.
121| Aeolis is nearest, formerly called Mysia, and the Troad which lies beside the Hellespont. There, from Phocaea, is the harbour Ascanius. Then there had been Larisa; there are Cyme, Myrina, which calls itself Sebastopolis, and inland Aegaeae, Itale, Posidea, Neon Tichos and Temnos. On the coast is the river Titanus and a city named from it (there was also Grynia, now only a harbour, once an island, taken hold of), the town Elaea, and the river Caicus coming from Mysia, the town Pitane, and the river Canaitis.
122| Canae, Lysimachea, Atarnea, Carene, Cisthene, Cilla, Cocylium, Thebe, Astyre, Chrysa, Palaescepsis, Gergitha and Neandros have perished; now there is the state Perperene, the Heracleotic tract, the town Coryphas, the rivers Grylius and Ollius, the region Aphrodisias, which was formerly Politice Orgas, the region Scepsis, the river Euenus, on whose banks Lyrnesos and Miletos have perished. In this tract is Mount Ida, and on the coast, which gave its name to the gulf and the assize, Adramytteos, once called Pedasus, the rivers Astron, Cormalos, Crianos, Alabastros and Hierus from Ida; inland the mountain Gargara and a town of the same name.
123| Again on the shore, Antandros, formerly called Edonis, then Cimmeris; Assos, which is also Apollonia (there was also a town Palamedium); the promontory Lectum, dividing Aeolis from the Troad. There was also a state Polymedia, Chrysa and another Larisa. The temple Zminthium endures. Inland Colone has perished. The Apolloniatae, from the river Rhyndacus, the Eresi, Miletopolitae, Poemaneni, the Macedonian Asculacae, Polichnaei, Pionitae, the Cilician Mandacandeni, the Mysian Abretteni and the people called Hellespontii, and other obscure peoples, bring their business to Adramytteum.
124| The first place in the Troad is Hamaxitus, then Cebrenia and Troas itself, called Antigonia, now Alexandria, a Roman colony; the town Nee; the navigable river Scamander; and on a promontory the town once called Sigeum; then the harbour of the Achaeans, into which the Xanthus flows, joined with the Simois and first forming a lake, Palaescamander. The others celebrated by Homer, the Rhesus, Heptaporus, Caresus and Rhodius, have no traces. The Granicus flows by a different course into the Propontis. There is, however, as before, the small state Scamandria, and Ilium, untaxed, 2,500 paces distant from the harbour, the source of all that fame. Outside the gulf are the Rhoetean shores,
125| inhabited by the towns Rhoeteum, Dardanium and Arisbe. There was also a town Achilleon, founded beside the tomb of Achilles by the Mytilenaeans and soon by the Athenians, where his fleet had stood at Sigeum. There was also Aeantion, founded by the Rhodians on the other horn, Ajax being buried there at an interval of 30 stades from Sigeum, and he himself at the station of his own fleet. Above Aeolis and part of the Troad, in the interior, is what is called Teuthrania, which the Mysians held in ancient times. There the river Caicus, already mentioned, rises. A people great by itself, even when the whole was called Mysia.
126| In it are Pioniae, Andera, Idale, Stabulum, Conisium, Teium, Balce, Tiare, Teuthranie, Sarnaca, Haliserne, Lycide, Parthenium, Cambre, Oxyopum, Lygdamum, Apollonia, and, by far the most famous in Asia, Pergamum, through which the Selinus flows and past which the Cetius runs, poured from Mount Pindasus. Not far off is Elaea, which we mentioned on the shore. The jurisdiction of that tract is called Pergamene. To it assemble the Thyatireni, Mossyni, Mygdones, Bregmeni, Hierocometae, Perpereni, Tiareni, Hierolophienses, Hermocapelitae, Attalenses, Panteenses, Apollonidienses, and other undistinguished states.
127| From Rhoeteum the small town Dardanium is 70 stades distant. Then 18,000 away is the promontory Trapeza, from which the Hellespont first stirs itself. Eratosthenes reports that the peoples of the Solymi, Leleges, Bebryces, Colycantii and Tripsedi have perished out of Asia, and Isidorus the Arienei and Capreatae, where Apamea, between Cilicia, Cappadocia, Cataonia and Armenia, was founded by King Seleucus and, because he had subdued very fierce peoples, was at first called Damea.
128| The first of the islands before Asia is at the Canopic mouth of the Nile, named, as they say, from Canopus, the helmsman of Menelaus; another, joined by a bridge to Alexandria, a colony of Caesar the dictator, is Pharos, once a day's sail distant from Egypt, now directing the course of ships by night fires from a tower; for Alexandria is approached from the sea by only three channels through deceptive shallows, Stegane, Posideum and Taurus. Then in the Phoenician sea, before Iope, is Paria, entirely a town, on which Andromeda is said to have been exposed to the monster, and the Arados already mentioned, between which and the mainland, at 50 cubits depth of open sea, fresh water, as Mucianus is our authority, is drawn from a spring through a pipe made of hides, all the way from the bottom.
129| The Pamphylian sea has obscure islands; the Cilician has, among the five greatest, Cyprus, lying before the east and west of Cilicia and Syria, once the seat of nine kingdoms. Its circuit Timosthenes gave as 427,500 paces, Isidorus as 375,000. The length between the two promontories, Clides and Acamas, which is on the west, Artemidorus gives as 162,500, Timosthenes as 200,000; Philonides says it was earlier called Acamantis, Xenagoras Cerastis and Aspelia and Amathusia and Macaria, Astynomus Crypton and Colinia. There are 15 towns in it,
130| Nea Paphos, Palaepaphos, Curias, Citium, Corinaeum, Salamis, Amathus, Lapethos, Soloe, Tamasos, Epidaurum, Chytri, Arsinoe, Carpasium and Golgoe. There were also Cinyria, Mareum and Idalium. It is 50 from Anemurium in Cilicia. The sea which stretches before it they call the Cilician Aulon. In the same region lies the island Elaeusa, and four before the promontory opposite Syria, the Clides, and again at the other end Stiria, opposite Nea Paphos Hiera Cepia, opposite Salamis the Salaminiae,
131| and in the Lycian sea Idyris, Telendos, Attelebussa, three sterile Cypriae, and Dionysia, formerly called Charaeta, then, opposite the promontory of the Taurus, an equal number of Chelidoniae, deadly to sailors; from them, with a town, Leucolla, Pactyae, Lasia, Nymphais, Macris, and Megista, whose city has perished. Then many obscure ones, but opposite the Chimaera Dolichiste, Choerogylion, Crambusa, Rhoge, eight Xenagorae, two Daedalea, three Cryeon, Strongyle, and opposite Sidyma the islands of Antiochus, and toward the river Glaucus Lagusa, Macris, Didymae, Helbo, Scope, Aspis, and Telandria, on which a town has perished, and Rhodusa, nearest to Caunos.
132| But the most beautiful is the free Rhodes, 125,000 in circuit or, if we prefer to believe Isidorus, 103,000, inhabited by the cities Lindus, Camirus and Ialysus, now Rhodes. It is distant from Alexandria in Egypt, as Isidorus reports, 583,000; as Eratosthenes, 469,000; as Mucianus, 500; from Cyprus 176,000. It was formerly called Ophiusa, Asteria, Aethria, Trinacrie, Corymbia, Poeeessa, Atabyria (after a king), then Macaria and Oloessa.
133| The islands belonging to the Rhodians are Carpathus, which gave the sea its name, Casos, Hagne, Eulimna, and Nisyros, distant from Cnidos 15,500, formerly called Porphyris, and in the same tract, midway between Rhodes and Cnidos, Syme; it is encircled by 37,500 and offers 8 harbours generously. Besides these, around Rhodes are Cyclopis, Teganon, Cordylusa, four Diabatae, Hymos, Chalce with a town, Teutlusa, Narthecusa, Dimastos, Progne, and from Cnidos Cisserusa, Therionarcia, Calydne with three towns, Notium, Nisyrus and Mendeterus, and on Arconnesos the town Ceramus. On the coast of Caria are those called the Argiae, 20 in number, and Hyetusa, Lepsia and Leros.
134| The most famous in that gulf is Coos, 15,000 distant from Halicarnasus, 100 in circuit, as most think, called Merope, Cea according to Staphylus, Meropis according to Dionysius, then Nymphaea. There is a mountain there, Prion; and they think that Nisyros was broken off from it, which was earlier called Porphyris. Caryanda with a town, and not far from Halicarnasus Pidossus; in the Ceramic gulf Priaponesos, Hipponesos, Pserima, Lampsa, Aemyndus, Passala, Crusa, Pyrraethusa, Sepiusa, Melano, and, a little distant from the mainland, the one which was called Cinaedopolis, since the shameless were left there by King Alexander.
135| The coast of Ionia has Aegeae and Corseae and Icaros, of which we have spoken, Lade, which was earlier called Late, and, among some obscure ones, two Camelitae neighbouring Miletus, the three Trogiliae of Mycale, Philion, Argennon, Sandalion, and the free Samos, 87,500 in circuit or, as Isidorus says, 100. Aristotle reports that it was first called Parthenia, afterwards Dryusa, then Anthemusa; Aristocritus adds Melamphyllus, then Cyparissia, others Parthenoarrhusa, Stephane. Rivers in it are the Imbrasus, Chesius and Hibiethes; springs, Gigartho and Leucothea; the mountain Cercetius. Adjacent are the islands Rhypara, Nymphaea and Achillea.
136| Equal in fame, 94,000 away from it, is the free Chios with a town, which Ephorus calls by the ancient name Aethalia, and Metrodorus and Cleobulus Chia, from the nymph Chione, some from snow, and Macris and Pityusa. It has the mountain Pelinnaeum, and Chian marble. In circuit it makes up 125,000, as the ancients reported; Isidorus adds 9,000. It is placed between Samos and Lesbos, most nearly opposite Erythrae.
137| Neighbouring are Tellusa, which others write Daphnusa, Oenusa, Elaphitis, Euryanassa, and Arginusa with a town. Now these are around Ephesus, and the ones called Pisistratus's, the Anthinae, Myonnesos and Diarrheusa (in both, towns have perished); Poroselene with a town; Cerciae, Halone, Commone, Illetia, Lepria, Aethre, Sphaeria, the Procusae, Bolbulae, Pheate, Priapos, Syce, Melane, Aenare, Sidusa, Pele, Drymusa, Anhydros, Scopelos, Sycusa, Marathusa, Psile, Perirrheusa, and many obscure ones.
138| Famous, however, in the open sea is Teos with a town, 72,500 from Chios and as far from Erythrae. Near Smyrna are the Peristerides, Carteria, Alopece, Elaeusa, Bacchina, Pystira, Crommyonesos, Megale; before the Troad the Ascaniae, three Plateae, then the Lamiae, two Plitaniae, Plate, Scopelos, Getone, Arthedon, Coele, the Lagusae and the Didymae.
139| Most famous, however, is Lesbos, 65,000 from Chios, called Himerte and Lasia, Pelasgia, Aegira, Aethiope, Macaria. It was renowned for nine towns: of these Pyrrha was swallowed by the sea, Arisbe overturned by an earthquake, Methymna drew Antissa into itself, itself a neighbour of nine cities of Asia at 37,000 paces. Agamede has perished too, and Hiera; there remain Eresos, Pyrrha and the free Mytilene, powerful for 1,500 years.
140| The whole island is compassed, according to Isidorus, 168,000, according to the ancients 195,000. It has the mountains Lepetymnum, Ordymnum, Macistum, Creon and Olympus. It is 7,500 paces from the nearest mainland. Islands placed beside it: Sandalium, five Leucae, among them Cydonea with a hot spring. The Arginusae are 4,000 paces distant from Aege. Then Phellusa and Pedna. Outside the Hellespont, facing the Sigean shore, lies Tenedus, called Leucophrys and Phoenice and Lyrnesos; it is 56,000 from Lesbos and 12,500 from Sigeum.
141| Then the Hellespont takes its onset, and the sea bears down, digging a boundary with eddies, until it breaks Asia off from Europe. That promontory we called Trapeza. From it 10 paces to the town Abydus, where the narrows are of 7 stades. Then the town Percote and Lampsacum, earlier called Pityussa, the colony Parium, which Homer called Adrastia, the town Priapos, the river Aesepus, Zelia, the Propontis (so it is called where the sea widens), the river Granicus, and the harbour Artace, where there was a town.
142| Beyond, Alexander joined to the mainland an island on which is the town of the Milesians, Cyzicus, formerly called Arctonnesus and Dolionis and Didymis, from whose summit rises the mountain Didymus. Soon the towns Placia, Ariace and Scylace, behind which is Mount Olympus, called Mysian, the state Olympena, the rivers Horisius and Rhyndacus, formerly called Lycus; it rises in the lake Artynia near Miletopolis, receives the Macestus and very many others, and divides Asia from Bithynia.
143| That country was called Cronia, then Thessalis, then Malianda and Strymonis. Homer called these people Halizones, since the nation is girdled by the sea. There was an immense city named Atussa; now there are 12 states, among them Gordiu Come, which is called Iuliopolis. On the coast Dascylos, then the river Gelbes, and inland the town Helgas, which is Germanicopolis, by another name Booscoete, like Apamea, which is now Myrlea of the Colophonians; the river Echeleos, the old boundary of the Troad and the beginning of Mysia.
144| Afterwards the gulf in which are the river Ascanium, the town Bryalion, the Hylas and Cios rivers, with a town bearing the same name, which was an emporium not far from the Phrygia that adjoins it, founded by the Milesians, in a place however which was called Ascania of Phrygia. Therefore it could not be more fittingly spoken of anywhere else.
145| Phrygia, lying above the Troad and the peoples mentioned from the promontory Lectum to the river Echeleus, borders Galatia on its northern side, Lycaonia, Pisidia and Mygdonia on the south, and touches Cappadocia on the east. The most celebrated towns there, apart from those already mentioned, are Ancyra, Andria, Celaenae, Colossae, Carina, Cotiaïum, Ceraine, Conium and Midaïum. There are authorities that the Moesi, Bryges and Thyni crossed over from Europe, from whom come the names Mysians, Phrygians and Bithynians.
146| It seems right to speak at the same time of Galatia too, which lies above and holds lands that for the most part belonged to Phrygia, together with Gordium, once its capital. The Gauls who settled that part are called the Tolostobogi, the Voturi and the Ambitouti; those who settled the region of Maeonia and Paphlagonia, the Trogmi. Cappadocia stretches along it on the north and the east, and its richest part has been occupied by the Tectosages. These, then, are the tribes over the whole tract, but the peoples and tetrarchies number 195 in all. The towns are Ancyra of the Tectosages, Tavium of the Trogmi, and Pisinuus of the Tolostobogii.
147| Besides these, well known are the Attalenses, Arassenses, Comenses, Dictienses, Hierorenses, Lystreni, Neapolitani, Oeandenses, Seleucenses, Sebasteni, Timoniacenses and Thebaseni. Galatia also touches Cabalia in Pamphylia, the Milyae who live around Baris, the Cyllanican and Oroandican tract of Pisidia, and likewise Obizene, a part of Lycaonia. Its rivers, besides those already mentioned, are the Saggarius and the Gallus, from which the priests who serve the Mother of the Gods took their name.
148| Now for the rest of the coast. From Cius, inland in Bithynia, is Prusa, founded by Hannibal below Olympus (from there to Nicaea is 25,000 paces, with Lake Ascanius in between); then Nicaea, at the far end of the Ascanian gulf, which was formerly Olbia; and Prusias, and likewise another below Mount Hypius. There were once Pythopolis, Parthenopolis and Coryphanta. On the coast are the rivers Aesius, Bryazon, Plataneus, Areus, Aesyros, and Geudos, which is also called Chrysorroas; and a promontory on which the town of Megarice once stood. From it the gulf used to be called Craspedites, because that town lay as it were on its hem. There was also Astacum, from which the same gulf is also called Astacenus; there was also the town of Libyssa, where there is now only the tomb of Hannibal. At the innermost point of the gulf is Nicomedia, the glory of Bithynia.
149| The promontory of Leucatas, which closes the Astacenus gulf, is 37,500 paces from Nicomedia; and then, as the lands draw together again, the narrows reach all the way to the Thracian Bosporus. On them is Calchadon, a free town, 62,500 paces from Nicomedia, earlier called Procerastis, next Colpusa, and afterwards the Town of the Blind, because its founders had not known how to choose a site, since Byzantium lies only 7 stadia away, on a site so much happier in every respect. Farther inland in Bithynia lie the colony of Apamea, the Agrippenses, the Iuliopolitae and Bithynion. The rivers are the Syrium, Laphias, Pharnacias, Alces, Serinis, Lilaeus, Scopas, and the Hieros, which divides Bithynia from Galatia.
150| Beyond Calchadon was Chrysopolis, then Nicopolis, from which the gulf still keeps its name, and on it is the port of Amycus. Then come the promontory of Naulochum, Estiae, and a temple of Neptune. The Bosporus, which once again severs Asia from Europe by a gap of 500 paces, is 12,500 paces from Calchadon, and from there to the first narrows is 8,750 paces, where the town of Spiropolis once stood. The whole shoreline is held by the Thyni, the inland parts by the Bithyni. This is the end of Asia, and of the 282 peoples counted from the boundary of Lycia up to this point. We have given the length of the Hellespont and the Propontis to the Thracian Bosporus as 239 paces. Isidorus gives 322,500 paces from Calchadon to Sigeum.
151| The islands in the Propontis are, off Cyzicus, Elaphonnesus, the source of Cyzicene marble, which is also called Neuris and Proconnesus. Then follow Ophiusa, Acanthus, Phoebe, Scopelos, Porphyrione, Halone with its town, Delphacie, Polydora, and Artacaeon with its town. There is also Demonnesos opposite Nicomedia, and likewise, beyond Heraclea and facing Bithynia, Thynias, which the barbarians call Bithynia. There are also Antiochia and, opposite the mouth of the Rhyndacus, Besbicos, 18,000 paces in circuit. There are also Elaea, the two Rhodusae, Erebinthote, Megale, Chalcitis and Pityodes.

======== Natural History — Book VI ========

1| The Pontus Euxinus, formerly called Axinus from its inhospitable savagery, also pours itself out between Europe and Asia, through a peculiar spite of nature, which indulges the greed of the sea without any limit. It had not been enough for it to have surrounded the lands with ocean and to have carried off part of them by enlarging its emptiness; not enough to have burst in through broken mountains and, with Calpe torn away from Africa, to have swallowed up spaces so much greater than those it left behind; not enough to have poured the Propontis through the Hellespont, devouring the lands once again: from the Bosporus too it spreads out into another waste, never sated, until the Maeotic lakes join their own plunder to it as it ranges abroad.
2| That this happened against the will of the lands is shown by so many narrows and by such small gaps where nature resists: at the Hellespont 875 paces, and at the two Bosporuses a crossing passable even by oxen, whence both take their name; and also by a certain harmonious kinship in their very separation, for the songs of birds and the barking of dogs are heard from one side to the other, and even exchanges of the human voice, conversation continuing between the two worlds, except when the winds carry that very voice away.
3| Some have made the measurement of the Pontus from the Bosporus to Lake Maeotis 1,338,500 paces; Eratosthenes made it 100 less. Agrippa gives 10,000 from Calchadon to the Phasis, and from there to the Cimmerian Bosporus 360,000. We set down the distances in general terms, as ascertained in our own age, since there has been fighting even at the very mouth of the Cimmerian Bosporus.
4| So, from the mouth of the Bosporus, there is the river Rebas, which some have called the Rhesus; then the Syris, the port of Calpas, and the Sangaris, one of the famous rivers. It rises in Phrygia and takes in vast rivers, among them the Tembrogius and the Gallus, and it is also called the Sagiarius by most writers. Then come the Coralius, where the Mariandyni begin; the gulf and the town of Heraclea, set on the river Lycus (it is 200,000 from the mouth of the Pontus); the port of Acone, dreaded for the poison aconitum; the Acherusian cave; the rivers Paedopides, Callichorum and Sonautes; the town of Tium, 38,000 paces from Heraclea; and the river Billis.
5| Beyond this river is the people of Paphlagonia, which some have called Pylaemenia, shut in behind by Galatia; the town of Mastya, founded by the Milesians; then Cromna, at which place Cornelius Nepos adds the Eneti, from whom he thinks we must believe the Veneti in Italy, who share their name, are descended; the town of Sesamon, now called Amastris; Mount Cytorus, 63,000 paces from Tium; then the towns Cimolis and Stephane, and the river Parthenius.
6| The promontory of Carambis, with its vast projection, is 325,000 from the mouth of the Pontus, or, as others have held, 350,000, and an equal distance from the Cimmerian Bosporus, or else, in the choice of some, 312,500. A town bearing the same name once stood there too, and another beyond it, Armine; now there is the colony of Sinope, 164,000 from Cytorus; the river Varecus; the people of the Cappadocians; the town of Caturia Gazelum; the river Halys, running down from the roots of the Taurus through Cataonia and Cappadocia; and the towns of Gangre and Carusa,
7| and the free town of Amisus, 130,000 from Sinope, with a gulf of the same name whose recess is so deep that it makes Asia almost an island, there being not more than 200,000 across the mainland to the Issic Gulf of Cilicia. In this whole tract, it is recorded, only three peoples can rightly be called Greek, the Dorian, the Ionian and the Aeolian, and all the rest are barbarians. Joined to Amisus was the town of Eupatoria, established by Mithridates; once he was defeated, both were named Pompeiopolis.
8| Inland, Cappadocia has a colony of Claudius Caesar, Archelais, past which the river Halys flows; the towns of Comana, past which the Salius flows, Neocaesarea, past which the Lycus flows, and Amasia, past which the Iris flows, in the region of Gazacena; and in Colopene, Sebastia and Sebastopolis, small towns but the equals of those named above. In the rest of its territory it has Melita, founded by Semiramis not far from the Euphrates, Diocaesarea, Tyana, Castabala, Magnopolis, Zela, and, below Mount Argaeus, Mazacum, which is now named Caesarea.
9| The part of Cappadocia that stretches along Greater Armenia is called Melitene; the part along Commagene, Cataonia; along Phrygia, Garsauritis, Sargaurasana and Cammaneni; along Galatia, Morimene, where the river Cappadox divides them, from which the people formerly called the Leucosyri took their name. From Neocaesarea, mentioned above, the river Lycus divides Lesser Armenia. Inland there is also the famous Coeranus; on the coast, following Amisus, the town and river Chadisia, and Lycastum, after which comes the Themiscyrene region; and the river Iris, which carries down the Lycus.
10| Inland is the community of Ziela, renowned for the rout of Triarius and the victory of Gaius Caesar. On the coast is the river Thermodon, which rises at a fortress called Phanoria and glides past the roots of Mount Amazonius. There was a town of the same name, and five others: Amazonium, Themiscyra, Sotira, Amasia and Comana, now Matium.
11| The peoples of the Genetae and the Chalybes; the town of Cotyora; the peoples of the Tibareni, and the Mossyni, who mark their bodies with signs; the people of the Macrocephali; the town of Cerasus; the port of Cordule; the peoples of the Bechires and the Buxeri; the river Melas; the people of the Machorones; the Sideni, and the river Sidenus, which washes the town of Polemonium, 120,000 from Amisus. Then the rivers Iasonium and Melanthium, and, 80,000 from Amisus, the town of Pharnacea; Tripolis, a fortress and a river; likewise Philocalia, and Liviopolis, which has no river; and, 100 from Pharnacea, Trapezus, a free town, shut in by a vast mountain.
12| Beyond it are the people of the Armenochalybes and Greater Armenia, 30,000 paces away. On the coast before Trapezus is the river Pyxites, and beyond it the people of the Sanni Heniochi; then the river Absarrus, with a fort of that name at its mouth, 140,000 from Trapezus. Behind the mountains of that place is Hiberia, while on the coast are the Heniochi, Ampreutae and Lazi; the rivers Acampseon, Isis, Nogrus and Bathys; the peoples of the Colchians; the town of Matium; the river Heracleum together with a promontory called by the same name; and the Phasis, which is the most celebrated river in the Pontus.
13| It rises among the Moschi and is navigable by ships however large for 38,500 paces, then by smaller ones over a long space, and can be crossed by 120 bridges. It once had many towns on its banks, the most celebrated Tyndaris, Circaeum, Cygnus and, at its mouth, Phasis. Most famous, however, was Aea, 15,000 paces from the sea, where the vast rivers Hippos and Cyaneos flow into it from opposite sides; now it has only Surium, itself named after the river flowing in there, up to the point to which we have said it can bear large ships. It also receives other rivers marvellous in size and number, among them the Glaucus. At its mouth is an island without a name, 70,000 from Absarrus.
14| Then another river, the Charies; the people Saltiae, called Phthirophagi by the ancients, and another, the Sanni; the river Chobus, flowing from the Caucasus through the Stuani; then the Rhoan; the region Egritice; the rivers Sigama, Thersos, Astelephus and Chrysorrhoas; the people Absilae; the fort Sebastopolis, 100 from the Phasis; the people of the Sanigae; the town Cygnus; the river and town Penius. Then, under many names, the peoples of the Heniochi.
15| Below lies the Colchian region of the Pontus, in which the ridges of the Caucasus are twisted toward the Ripaean mountains, as has been said, sloping down on one side to the Euxine and Maeotic sea, on the other to the Caspian and Hyrcanian sea. The remaining shores are held by savage nations, the Melanchlaeni and Coraxi, with the city of the Colchians, Dioscurias, beside the river Anthemus, now deserted, once so famous that Timosthenes reported that 300 nations of different languages came down to it, and that afterwards our people conducted business there with 130 interpreters.
16| Some think that Amphitus and Telchius founded it, the charioteers of Castor and of Pollux, and it is generally agreed that the Heniochi people descend from them. The town Heracleum is 100 from Dioscurias, and 70,000 from Sebastopolis. The Achaei, Mardi, Cercetae, and after them the Seraci and Cephalotomi. In the innermost part of that tract the very wealthy town Pityus was plundered by the Heniochi. Behind it are the Epagerritae, a people of the Sarmatae on the ridges of the Caucasus, behind which are the Sauromatae.
17| To these Mithridates had fled while Claudius was emperor, and told that the Thalosii were their neighbours, and touched on the east the straits of the Caspian sea; that these were dried up when the tide receded. On the coast, however, near the Cercetae, is the river Icarus; then the Achaei with the town Hierum and a river, 136,000 from Heracleum. Then the promontory Crunoe, from which the Toretae, a Sindic state, hold a steep brow, 67,500 from Hierum; the river Setheries. From there to the entrance of the Cimmerian Bosporus is 88,500.
18| But the peninsula itself, running out between the Pontus and the Maeotic lake, is of a length not greater than 67,500 paces, and a breadth nowhere under two iugera; they call it Eon. The coast of the Bosporus itself curves on both sides, from Asia and from Europe, into the Maeotis. The towns at the approach [of the Bosporus first] are Hermonasa, then Cepoe of the Milesians, soon Stratoclia and Phanagoria, and the almost deserted Apaturos, and last at the mouth Cimmerium, which was formerly called Chimerion. Then the lake Maeotis, called so in Europe.
19| From Cimmerium the Maeotici, Vali, Serbi, Serrei, Scizi and Gnissi dwell beside it. Then on the river Tanais, flowing in with a double mouth, dwell the Sarmatae, offspring, as they say, of the Medes, and themselves divided into many kinds. First the Sauromatae, Gynaecocratumenoe, the Amazons' marriages; then the Naevazae, Coitae, Cizici, Messeniani, Costoboei, Zecetae, Zigae, Tindari, Thussagetae and Tyrcae, as far as solitudes rough with wooded valleys, beyond which are the Arimphaei, who extend to the Ripaean mountains.
20| The Scythians call the Tanais itself Silis, and the Maeotis Temarunda, by which they mean the mother of the sea. At the mouth of the Tanais also there is a town. The neighbouring land was held first by the Carians, then the Clazomenians and Maeonians, afterwards by the people of Panticapaeum. There are those who report that around the Maeotis, as far as the Ceraunian mountains, these peoples live:
21| from the shore the Napitae, and above them the Essedones, joined to the Colchians by the summits of the mountains; then the Camacae, Orani, Autacae, Mazamacae, Cantiocaptae, Agamathae, Pici, Rymosoli, Acascomarci, and by the ridges of the Caucasus the Icatalae, the Imadochi, Rami, Anclacae, Tydii, Carastasei and Authiandae; the river Lagous from the Cathean mountains, into which the Opharus flows down, and there the peoples Cauthadae and Opharitae; the rivers Menotharus and Imityes, from the Cissian mountains; below, the Acdei, Carnae, Uscardei, Accisi, Gabri and Gegari, and about the spring of the Imityes the Imityi and the Apartaei.
22| Others say that the Scythian Auchetae, Athernei, Asampatae flowed into that region, and that by them the Tanaitae and Napaei were destroyed man by man. Some say that the river Ocharius glides through the Cantici and Sapaei, but that the Satharchei Hertichei, Spondolici, Synhietae, Anasi, Issi, Cataeetae, Tagorae, Caroni, Neripi, Agandaei, Meandaraei and Satharchei Spalaei crossed the Tanais.
23| The inner coast, and the places and rivers and dwellers, have been completed: now let there be given the immense region in the interior, in which I do not deny that I shall report many things otherwise than the ancients did, having investigated them with anxious care, since matters have lately been conducted in that region by Domitius Corbulo, and kings have been sent from there as suppliants, or the children of kings as hostages. We shall begin, however, with the people of the Cappadocians.
24| This one, the farthest-receding of all the Pontic peoples toward the interior, passes Lesser Armenia, Greater Armenia and Commagene on its left side, and on its right all the peoples named in Asia, spread over by very many tribes, and, climbing with great force toward the rising of the sun, crosses the ridges of the Taurus, Lycaonia, Pisidia and Cilicia, goes above the tract of Antiochia, and with its part which is called Cataonia strives as far as its region Cyrrestica. Thus there the length of Asia makes X̅I̅I̅.L, the breadth 640,000.
25| Greater Armenia, however, begins at the Parihedres mountains; it is taken from Cappadocia by the river Euphrates, as has been said, and, where the Euphrates departs, from Mesopotamia by the Tigris, a river no less famous. Armenia herself pours out each of them and makes the beginning of Mesopotamia, which is to lie between two rivers; what lies between there the Arab Orroei hold. So it carries its boundary on into Adiabene; shut in from there by transverse ridges, it spreads its breadth on the left to the river Cyrus, and across it to the Araxes, and its length as far as Lesser Armenia, being separated from that by the river Absarrus flowing down into the Pontus and by the Parihedres mountains, which pour out the Absarrus.
26| The Cyrus rises in the mountains of the Heniochi, which others have called the Coraxic; the Araxes rises on the same mountain as the Euphrates, at an interval of 6 paces, and, increased by the river Usis, itself too, as more have thought, is carried down by the Cyrus into the Caspian sea. The towns celebrated in Lesser Armenia are Caesarea, Aza and Nicopolis; in Greater, Arsamosata, nearest the Euphrates, Carcathiocerta on the Tigris, Tigranocerta on a height, and on the plains beside the Araxes, Artaxata.
27| Aufidius gave the size of the whole as fifty times a hundred thousand; Claudius Caesar gave the length from Dascusa to the border of the Caspian sea as 13,000 paces, and the breadth, half of that, from Tigranocerta to Iberia. It is divided, which is certain, into prefectures, which they call strategiae, some of them once single kingdoms, 120 in number, with barbarous names. Mountains shut it in on the east, but not at once the Cerauni, nor the region of Adiabene.
28| The space between the Cepheni hold; from these the Adiabeni hold the ridges beyond, but through the valleys the nearest to Armenia are the Menobardi and Moscheni. The Tigris and impassable mountains encircle Adiabene. On its left is the region of the Medes, looking out upon the Caspian sea. This is poured in from the ocean, as we shall say in its place, and is wholly girdled by the Caucasus mountains. The inhabitants along the border of Armenia will now be mentioned.
29| The nation of the Albani holds all the plain from the Cyrus, and soon the Iberians, separated from them by the river Ocazanes, flowing down from the Caucasus mountains into the Cyrus. The towns that stand out are, of Albania, Cabalaca, and of Iberia, Harmastus beside the river, and Neoris. The region Thasie and Thriare as far as the Parihedres mountains. Beyond are the Colchian solitudes, on whose side turned toward the Ceraunian mountains the Armenochalybes dwell, and the tract of the Moschi to the river Iberus, flowing down into the Cyrus, and below them the Sacasani and then the Macerones as far as the river Absarrus. So the flat or sloping lands are held. Again, from the border of Albania, along the whole front of the mountains, are the fierce nations of the Silvi, and below, of the Lupenii, and soon the Diduri and Sodi.
30| From them are the Caucasian Gates, by a great error called Caspian by many, an immense work of nature, the mountains suddenly broken, where gates have been added with iron-bound beams, a river of dreadful smell flowing beneath through the middle, and on this side, on a rock, a fort called Cumania, fortified to bar innumerable peoples from passage, the circle of the earth being there closed by gates, directly opposite the town of Harmastus on the Iberus. From the Caucasian Gates, through the Gurdinian mountains, the Valli and Suani, untamed peoples, nevertheless dig mines of gold. From them to the Pontus are very many kinds of the Heniochi, soon of the Achaei.
31| So stands this one of the most famous of lands. Some have reported that between the Pontus and the Caspian sea there lie no more than 375,000 paces, Cornelius Nepos 250,000: so again by such narrows is Asia beset. Claudius Caesar reported 150,000 as the distance between the Cimmerian Bosporus and the Caspian sea, and that Seleucus Nicator had thought of cutting through that space at the time when he was killed by Ptolemy Ceraunus. From the Caucasian Gates to the Pontus it is agreed to be about 200,000.
32| The islands in the Pontus are the Planctae, or Cyaneae, or Symplegades; then Apollonia, called Thynias, to be distinguished from that which is in Europe (it is distant from the mainland 1,000 paces, and encircled by 3,000), and opposite Pharnacea Chalceritis, which the Greeks called Aria and sacred to Mars, and on it birds fought with strangers with blows of their feathers.
33| Now that everything inside Asia has been told, let the mind cross the Ripaean mountains and advance outside along the shore of the ocean. This ocean, washing Asia on three sides of the sky, is called the Scythian on the north, the Eastern on the east, and the Indian on the south, and is divided by gulfs and by several names of the dwellers on its shores. But a great portion of Asia too, lying next to the north, stiff with the hostility of the star, has vast deserts.
34| From the farthest north wind to the beginning of the summer east are the Scythians. Outside them, and beyond the beginnings of the north wind, some have placed the Hyperboreans, spoken of at greater length in Europe. First known from there are the promontory of Celtica, Lytharmis, and the river Carambucis, where, wearied with the force of the stars, the ridges of the Ripaean mountains fail, and there we have heard of certain Arimphaei, a people not unlike the Hyperboreans.
35| Their dwellings are groves, their food berries; hair is considered a disgrace alike for women and men; their customs are gentle. Therefore, they tell, they are held sacred and are inviolate even to the savage peoples of their neighbours, and not only they themselves, but also those who have fled to them. Beyond them are plainly Scythians, Cimmerii, Cissi, Anthi, Georgi and the people of the Amazons, these reaching to the Caspian and Hyrcanian sea.
36| For it also bursts in from the Scythian ocean into the remote parts of Asia; it is called by several names by those who dwell around it, but the two most famous are Caspian and Hyrcanian. Clitarchus thinks it is no smaller than the Pontus Euxinus; Eratosthenes gives its measure, as 5,400 stadia, from the east and the south, along the shore of Cadusia and Albania, then through the Anariaci, Amardi and Hyrcani to the mouth of the Zonus river 4,800, and from there to the mouth of the Iaxartes 2,400; the sum of these makes X̅V̅. L̅X̅X̅V̅ paces.
37| Artemidorus subtracts 25,000 paces from this. Agrippa has reported that the Caspian sea and the peoples around it, and with them Armenia, bounded on the east by the Serican ocean, on the west by the ridges of the Caucasus, on the south by those of the Taurus, and by the Scythian ocean on the north, extend as far as is known 480,000 paces in length and 290,000 in breadth. There are some, however, who give the whole circuit of that sea, from the strait, as 25,000 paces.
38| It bursts in, moreover, through narrow jaws, long in extent; and where it begins to widen out, it bends aslant with crescent-shaped horns, as if descending from the mouth toward the Maeotian lake, resembling a sickle, as Marcus Varro states. The first gulf is called the Scythian; for on both sides the Scythians dwell by the narrows and pass to and fro among themselves, here the Nomads and Sauromatae under many names, there the Abzoae under no fewer. On the right from the entrance, the Udini, a people of the Scythians, hold the very point of the jaws; then along the coast the Albani, who, they say, are descended from Jason,
39| and from whom the sea there is called the Albanian. This people, spread over the Caucasian mountains, comes down as far as the river Cyrus, on the border of Armenia and Hiberia, as has been said. Above its coastal part and that of the Udini the Sarmatae, Uti, Aorsi and Aroteres are stretched out in front, behind whom are the Sauromatid Amazons already mentioned. Rivers run down through Albania into the sea, the Casus and the Albanus, then the Cambyses, rising in the Caucasian mountains, and next the Cyrus, which rises in the Coraxic mountains, as we have said. Agrippa states that the whole coast from the Casus denies access, by reason of very lofty cliffs, for 425,000 paces. From the Cyrus the sea begins to be called Caspian; the Caspi dwell by it.
40| In this place the error of many must be corrected, even of those who recently conducted operations in Armenia with Corbulo. For they have called the gates of Hiberia, which we have said are named the Caucasian, the Caspian Gates, and the maps drawn up and sent from there have this name written on them. And the threat of the emperor Nero was said to be directed to the Caspian Gates, whereas he was seeking those which lead through Hiberia against the Sarmatae, with scarcely any approach from them to the Caspian sea because of the mountains set in the way. There are, however, other gates joined to the Caspian peoples, which cannot be distinguished except by the record of the campaigns of Alexander the Great.
41| For the kingdoms of the Persians, which we now understand as those of the Parthians, are raised up between the two seas, the Persian and the Hyrcanian, by the ridges of the Caucasus. On both sides, down the slopes of its flanks, to Greater Armenia, on the part of its front that turns toward Commagene, Cephene, as we have said, is joined; and to it Adiabene, the beginning of the Assyrians, of which Arbilitis is a part, where Alexander overcame Darius, next to Syria.
42| All of it the Macedonians named Mygdonia, from a resemblance. Its towns are Alexandria, and likewise Antiochia, which they call Nesebis; it is 750,000 paces distant from Artaxata. There was also Ninos, set on the Tigris, facing the setting sun, once most famous. On the remaining front, which stretches toward the Caspian sea, lies Atrapatene, separated by the Araxes from the region of Otene in Armenia. Its town is Gazae, 450,000 paces from Artaxata and as many from Ecbatana of the Medes, of whom the Atrapateni are a part.
43| Ecbatana, the capital of Media, was founded by King Seleucus, 750,000 paces from Seleucia Magna, and 20,000 from the Caspian Gates. The other towns of the Medes are Phisganzaga, Apamea, surnamed Rhagiane. The cause of the name of the Gates is the same as above: the ridges are cut through by a narrow passage, so that scarcely single wagons can pass, 8,000 paces in length, the whole work made by hand. On the right and left cliffs hang over as if burnt, the tract thirsting, for 28,000 paces. The narrows are obstructed by brine collected from the rocks and discharged again from the same; besides, a multitude of serpents allows no passage except in winter.
44| Joined to the Adiabeni are the Carduchi, once so called, now the Cordueni, with the Tigris flowing past; next to these are the Pratitae, called "by the road," who hold the Caspian Gates. On the other side the deserts of Parthia and the ridges of the Citheni meet them. Next comes the most pleasant situation of that same Parthia, which is called Choara. There are two cities of the Parthians there, once set against the Medes: Calliope, and another, Issatis, on a rock; the capital of Parthia itself is Hecatompylos, which is 133,000 paces from the Gates. Thus the kingdoms of the Parthians too are shut off by doors.
45| Those who have gone out through the Gates are received at once by the Caspian people, reaching as far as the shores, the people who gave their name to the Gates and the sea. The left side is mountainous. From that people back to the river Cyrus the distance is given as 225,000 paces, and if one goes up from the same river to the Gates, 700,000. For they made this the hinge of the journeys of Alexander the Great, reporting from these Gates to the beginning of India 15,690 stadia, to the town Bactra, which they call Zariasta, 3,700, and from there to the river Iaxartes V.
46| From the Caspii, toward the east, lies a region called Apavortene, and in it Dareium, a place of renowned fertility; then the peoples Tapyri, Anariaci, Staures and Hyrcani, from whose shores the same sea begins to be called Hyrcanian, from the river Siderus. On this side of it are the rivers Maziris and Strator, all from the Caucasus. There follows the region of Margiane, famed for its sunny aspect, the only vine-bearing land in that tract, shut in on every side by pleasant mountains, with a circuit of 1,500 stadia, difficult of access because of sandy wastes for 120,000 paces, and itself lying opposite the Parthian tract.
47| In it Alexander had founded an Alexandria; when this was destroyed by the barbarians, Antiochus, son of Seleucus, restored it on the same spot as Syriana, with the Margus flowing through it, which is gathered into the lake Zotha; he had preferred that it be called Antiochia. The extent of the city is encompassed by 70 stadia. Into this city Orodes led down the Romans captured in the disaster of Crassus. Above its high places, along the ridges of the Caucasus, the fierce people of the Mardi extends as far as the Bactri, independent. Below that tract are the peoples Orciani, Commori, Berdrigae, Pharmacotrophi,
48| Chomarae, Choamani, Murrasiarae, Mandruani, the rivers Mandrus and Chindrus, and beyond them the Chorasmi, Gandari, Pariani, Zarangae, Arasmi, Marotiani, Arsi, Gaeli, whom the Greeks called Cadusii, Matiani, the town Heraclea, founded by Alexander, which, after being overthrown and restored, Antiochus named Achais, the Dribyces, through the middle of whose territory flows the river Oxus, which rises in the lake Oaxus, the Syrmatae, Oxyttagae, Moci, Bateni, Saraparae, Bactri, whose town is Zariastes, which was afterward called Bactrum from the river. This people holds the far side of the mountain Paropanisus, opposite the sources of the Indus;
49| it is enclosed by the river Ochus. Beyond are the Sogdiani, the town Panda, and at their farthest boundaries Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great. There are altars there set up by Hercules and Father Liber, likewise by Cyrus and Semiramis and Alexander, the limit of all their expeditions in that part of the earth, enclosed by the river Iaxartes, which the Scythians call Silis, and which Alexander and his soldiers thought to be the Tanais. Demodamas, general of the kings Seleucus and Antiochus, whom we follow most in these matters, crossed that river and set up altars to Apollo of Didyma.
50| Beyond are the peoples of the Scythians. The Persians called them all Sacae, from the nearest people; the ancients called them Aramii; the Scythians themselves call the Persians Chorsari and the Caucasus mountain Croucasis, that is, white with snow. The multitude of peoples is countless, and they live on equal terms with the Parthians. The most celebrated of them are the Sacae, Massagetae, Dahae, Essedones, Astacae, Rumnici, Pestici, Homodoti, Histi, Edones, Camae, Camacae, Euchatae, Cotieri, Authusiani, Psacae, Arimaspi, Antacati, Chroasai and Oetaei. There the Napaei are said to have perished at the hands of the Palaei. Famous among them are the rivers Mandragaeus and Caspasus.
51| In no other part is there greater inconstancy among the authorities, owing, I believe, to the countless wandering peoples. Alexander the Great has reported that a draught of the sea itself is sweet, and Marcus Varro that it was brought to Pompey, who was campaigning nearby in the Mithridatic war, as such, its salt undoubtedly overcome by the great size of the rivers flowing into it.
52| The same writer adds that it was ascertained under the leadership of Pompey that the Bactri can be reached from India in seven days, at the river Bactrus, which flows into the Oxus; and that Indian merchandise, carried up from it across the Caspian into the Cyrus, can be conveyed down to the Phasis, into the Pontus, by a journey over land of no more than 5 days. The islands in that whole sea are many; the one most commonly known is Zazata.
53| From the Caspian sea and the Scythian ocean the course turns toward the Eastern sea, the front of the shores being turned toward the east. The first part of it, from the Scythian promontory, is uninhabitable because of the snows; the next is uncultivated through the savagery of the peoples. The Scythian Anthropophagi live there, feeding on human bodies; for this reason vast wastes lie beside them, and a multitude of wild beasts, besetting a ferocity of men not unlike their own. Then again there are Scythians, and again deserts with beasts, as far as the ridge overhanging the sea which they call Tabis. Nor is that region inhabited before nearly half the length of that coast, which looks toward the summer sunrise.
54| The first people known there are the Seres, famous for the wool of their forests; they comb the white down of the leaves after steeping it in water, whence our women have a double labor in unravelling the threads and weaving them again: with so manifold a work, from so distant a part of the world, is this fetched, that a matron may be seen through her dress in public. The Seres are gentle indeed, but themselves like wild beasts in shunning the company of the rest of mankind; they wait for trade to come to them.
55| The first of their rivers known is the Psitharas, the next the Cambari, the third the Lanos, after which comes the promontory Chryse, the gulf Cirnaba, the river Atianos, the gulf and people of the Attaci, shut off from every harmful breath by sunny hills, with the same mildness of climate in which the Hyperboreans live. Amometus composed a volume about them separately, as Hecataeus did about the Hyperboreans. After the Attacori come the peoples Phuni and Thocari, and, already of the Indians, the Casiri, turned inland toward the Scythians; they feed on human bodies; the Nomads of India also roam. There are some who have said that from the north they are bordered by the Cicones and the Brisari.
56| But where the peoples are plainly established, the Hemodian mountains rise and the nation of the Indians begins, lying along not only the Eastern sea but also the southern one, which we have called the Indian. The part that faces the east stretches out in a straight line to the bend and the beginning of the Indian sea, and amounts to |X̅V̅I̅I̅I̅| |L̅X̅X̅V̅|; then the part that bends toward the south, X̅X̅I̅I̅I̅I̅. L̅X̅X̅V̅, as Eratosthenes reports, as far as the river Indus, which is the boundary of India on the west.
57| Many, however, have defined its whole length as forty days and nights of sailing under sail, and from north to south as 28,050; Agrippa has given its length as 3,300,000 and its breadth as 1,300,000. Posidonius measured it from the summer sunrise to the winter sunrise, setting it opposite Gaul, which he measured from the summer sunset to the winter sunset, the whole of it lying toward the west wind; and so he showed, by reasoning not in doubt, that the blast of that wind, set against it, benefits India and makes it healthy.
58| It has a different look of sky, and the stars rise differently; in each year come two summers and two harvests, with the blasts of the etesian winds in the winter between them, while at our midwinter gentle breezes blow there and the sea is navigable. Its peoples and cities are countless, if anyone wished to go through them all. For it has been laid open not merely by the weapons of Alexander the Great and the kings who followed him (Seleucus and Antiochus and their fleet commander Patrocles even sailed round into the Hyrcanian and Caspian sea), but also by other Greek authors, who stayed with the kings of the Indians, such as Megasthenes and Dionysius, sent by Philadelphus, and on that account have reported also the strength of the peoples.
59| There is, however, no room for exactness: so differing and incredible are the things reported. The companions of Alexander the Great wrote that in that tract of India which he subdued there were 5 towns, none smaller than Cos, and 9,000 peoples, and that India is a third part of all the lands, and the multitude of its peoples countless, on reasoning that is certainly plausible: for the Indians are almost the only people that never migrated beyond their own borders. From Father Liber to Alexander the Great their kings are reckoned at 153, over 6,451 years, and they add 3 months. The vastness of the rivers is marvelous;
60| it is reported that Alexander sailed on the Indus no day less than 600 stadia, and could not sail out of it before 5 months, with a few days added, and yet it is agreed that it is smaller than the Ganges. Seneca, who even among us attempted a treatise on India, reported that it has 60 rivers and a hundred and eighteen peoples. The labor would be equal to enumerate the mountains. The Imavus, Hemodus, Paropanisus and Caucasus are joined to one another, and from them the whole land runs down into an immense plain, like Egypt. But so that the description of the land may be understood,
61| we follow in the footsteps of Alexander the Great. Diognetus and Baeton, the surveyors of his marches, wrote that from the Caspian Gates to Hecatompylos of the Parthians there are as many thousands as we have said, thence to Alexandria of the Arii, a city which that king founded, 575,000, to Prophthasia of the Drangae 199,000, to the town of the Arachosii 565,000, to Ortospanum 175,000,
62| thence to the town of Alexander 50 — in some copies different numbers are found — that this city is placed at the very foot of the Caucasus; from it to the river Cophes and the Indian town of Peucolatis 237,000, whence to the river Indus and the town of Taxilla 60,000, to the famous river Hydaspes 120,000, to the Hypasis, no less renowned, [X̅X̅V̅. I̅I̅I̅I̅C̅C̅C̅L̅X̅X̅X̅X̅, which was the end of Alexander's marches, though he crossed the river and dedicated altars on the opposite bank. The letters of the king himself agree with these figures.
63| The rest from there was traversed by Seleucus Nicator: to the Sydrus 169,000, to the river Iomanes the same — some copies add 5 paces —, thence to the Ganges 112,500, to Rhodapha 569,000 — others give 325,000 for this stretch —, to the town Callinipaza 167,500 — others 265,000 —, thence to the confluence of the Iomanes and the Ganges 625,000 — most add 13,500 —, to the town of Palibothra 425, to the mouth of the Ganges 637,500. The peoples,
64| which it is no trouble to mention, from the Hemodian mountains, whose promontory is called Imaus in the language of the inhabitants, meaning snowy, are the Isari, Cosiri, Izi and, along the ridges, the Chirotosagi, and the Bragmanae, a surname of many peoples, among whom are the Mactocalingae; the rivers Prinas and Cainnas, which flows into the Ganges, both navigable; the peoples Calingae nearest the sea and above them the Mandaei, the Malli, whose mountain is Mallus, and the end of that tract is the Ganges.
65| Some have said that this river rises from uncertain sources, like the Nile, and waters the neighboring lands in the same way; others, that it rises in the Scythian mountains; that 19 rivers flow into it, of which the navigable ones, besides those already named, are the Crenacca, Rhamnumbova, Casuagus and Sonus. Others say that its springs burst out at once with a great roar, and that, thrown down over rocky and precipitous places, when it first reaches soft plains it rests in a certain lake, and flows gently from there, at the least 8,000 paces in breadth, at a moderate width 100 stadia, in depth nowhere less than 20 paces, past the last people, the Gangaridae Calingae. The royal seat is called Pertalis;
66| for the king 60,000 foot, 1,000 horse and 700 elephants keep watch, ready for wars. For among the milder peoples of the Indians life is lived in many divisions: some till the earth, others take up military service, others export their own wares and import foreign ones, the best and richest manage the commonwealth, give judgments and sit with the kings. A fifth class, devoted to wisdom, which is celebrated there and almost turned into religion, always ends life by voluntary death, on a funeral pyre first kindled. Besides these there is one thing, half wild and full of immense labor, by which the things named above are sustained: hunting elephants and taming them. With these they plough, by these they are carried, this is the livestock they know best, and with these they serve in the army and fight for their frontiers; strength, age and size determine the selection for the wars.
67| There is an island in the Ganges of great size, containing one people, by name Modogalinga. Beyond are situated the Modubae, Molindae, Uberae with a splendid town of the same name, Modressae, Praeti, Calissae, Sasuri, Passalae, Colebae, Orumcolae, Abali and Thalutae. The king of these keeps under arms 50 foot, 4,000 horse and 4,000 elephants. The stronger people of the Andarae, next, with very many villages and 30 towns fortified with walls and towers, furnishes its king 100 foot, 2,000 horse and 1,000 elephants. The Dardae are the most fertile in gold, and the Setae also in silver.
68| But of almost all in India, and not only in this tract, in power and renown the Prasi stand foremost, with their very large and wealthy city Palibothra, from which some call the people itself Palibothri, indeed the whole tract from the Ganges. For their king 600 foot, 30,000 horse and 9,000 elephants are paid every day, from which a vast conjecture of his wealth is made.
69| After these, in the interior, are the Monaedes and the Suari, whose mountain is Maleus, on which in winter the shadows fall northward, in summer southward, for six months each. Baeton states that the Septentriones appear in that tract once a year, and not for more than fifteen days; Megasthenes says the same happens in many places of India. The Indians call the southern pole Diamasa. The river Iomanes runs down into the Ganges through the Palibothri, between the towns of Methora and Chrysobora.
70| From the Ganges, in the region turned toward the south, the peoples are colored by the sun, already stained indeed, yet not yet scorched in the manner of the Aethiopians; the nearer they approach the Indus, the more they show it in color. The Indus begins at once from the people of the Prasii, in whose mountains the Pygmies are reported. Artemidorus states that between the two rivers there are 2,100,000.
71| The Indus, called Sindus by the inhabitants, pouring out on the ridge of the Caucasus mountain which is called Paropanisus, facing the sunrise, itself receives nineteen rivers, but the most famous are the Hydaspes, bringing four others, and the Cantaba, three; the Acesinus and the Hypasis are navigable in their own right; yet with a certain moderation of waters it is nowhere broader than 50 stadia or deeper than 15 paces, and it forms a very large island, which is named Prasiane, and another smaller, which is Patale.
72| It is itself navigable for 1,450,000 paces, according to the most sparing authorities, and, in a kind of company with the sun, turning toward the west, it pours into the ocean. I shall set down the measurement of the coast as far as it, as I find it, severally, although none of them agree with one another. From the Ganges' mouth to the promontory Calingon and the town Dandaguda 625,000, to Tropina 1,225,000, to the promontory of Perimula, where is the most celebrated emporium of India, 750,000, to the town Patala on the island which we mentioned above 620,000.
73| The mountain peoples between it and the Iomanes are the Caesi and the wild Caetriboni, then the Megallae, whose king has 500 elephants, the number of foot and horse being uncertain, the Chrysei, Parasangae and Asmagi, swarming with the tiger, a wild beast; they arm 30,000 foot, 300 elephants and 800 horse. The Indus shuts these in, surrounded by a ring of mountains and by wastes. Below the wastes, at 625,000, are the Dari and the Surae, and again wastes for 187,000, for the most part with sands surrounding them, no differently than islands by the sea.
74| Below these deserts are the Malthaecorae, Singae, Maroae, Rarungae and Moruni. These, inhabitants of the mountains which extend in a continuous tract along the coast of the ocean, free and without kings, hold the mountain hills with many cities. Then the Nareae, whom the very high mountain Capitalia of the Indians shuts in; its inhabitants on the other side dig far and wide the mines of gold and silver.
75| After these the Oratae, whose king has indeed only 10 elephants but ample strength of foot, the Suarattaratae — and these under their king do not keep elephants, relying on horse and foot —, the Odonbaeorae, the Sarabastrae with the fair city Thorax, fortified by marshy ditches, across which crocodiles, most greedy for human flesh, give no approach except by a bridge. And another town among them is praised, Automula, set on the shore where five rivers meet in one confluence, a famous emporium. Their king has 1,600 elephants, 150,000 foot, 5 horse. The king of the Charmae, poorer, has 60 elephants and small remaining strength.
76| After these comes the people of the Pandae, the only one of the Indians ruled by women. They say that the one daughter of that sex born to Hercules, and for that reason dearer to him, was given a special kingdom; those who trace their origin from her rule over 300 towns, with 150,000 foot and 500 elephants. After this series of three hundred cities come the Derangae, Posingae, Butae, Gogaraei, Umbrae, Nereae, Brangosi, Nobundae, Cocondae, Nesei, Palatitae and Salobriasae. The Orostrae touch the island Patala, from whose farthest shore to the Caspian Gates the distance is reported as 1,925,000.
77| From here next they dwell along the Indus, as the account climbs upstream against it: the Mathoae, Bolingae, Gallitalutae, Dimuri, Megari, Ardabae, Mesae, Abisari and Silae; then deserts for 250,000, after passing which come the Organagae, Abortae and Brasuertae, and after these wastes equal to the former. Then the Sorofages, Arbae, Marogomatrae, Umbritae and Ceae, of whom there are 12 nations, with two cities for each, the Asini, inhabitants of three cities; their capital is Bucephala, founded where the horse of King Alexander, which had this name, was buried.
78| Mountain peoples above these, lying under the Caucasus, are the Sosaeadae and Sondrae, and, for those who have crossed the Indus and run down along with it, the Samarabiae, Sambraceni, Bisambritae, Orsi, Andiseni, and the Taxilae with a famous city. Then, in a tract sloping down into the plains, whose whole name is Amendae, there are four peoples, the Peucolitae, Arsagalitae, Geretae and Assoi. For many do not limit it on the west by the river Indus, but add four satrapies, the Gedrosi, Arachotae, Arii and Paropanisidae, with the river Cophes as the last boundary; all of which others hold to belong to the Arii.
79| Many also assign to India the city Nysa and the mountain Merus, sacred to Father Liber, whence the origin of the story that he was born from the thigh of Jupiter; likewise the people of the Aspagani, fertile in vine, laurel, box and all the fruits that grow in Greece. What is reported that is memorable and almost fabulous about the fertility of the land, the kinds of crops, trees, wild beasts, birds and other animals, will be recorded, each in its own place, in the remaining part of the work, the four satrapies a little later, since my mind is hastening to the island of Taprobane.
80| But before it are others: Patale, which we have indicated as lying at the very mouth of the Indus, triangular in shape, 220,000 paces in breadth; outside the mouth of the Indus, Chryse and Argyre, fertile in metals, as I believe: for what some have reported, that the soil of these is gold and silver, I could hardly believe. From these, 20,000 paces, Crocala, and from it 12,000 Bibaga, crowded with oysters and shellfish, then Coralliba, 8,000 from the one named above, and many that are obscure.
81| That Taprobane was a second world was long thought, under the name of the Antichthones. That it is an island, the age of Alexander the Great and his achievements made clear. Onesicritus, the commander of his fleet, wrote that elephants are born there larger and more warlike than in India; Megasthenes, that it is divided by a river and that the inhabitants are called Palaeogoni, richer in gold and large pearls than the Indians. Eratosthenes also gave its measure: in length 7,000 stadia, in breadth 5, and that there are no cities, but 750 villages.
82| It begins from the Eastern sea, stretched before India between the sunrise and the sunset, and was once believed to be distant a voyage of 20 days from the Prasian people; later, since it was sought with papyrus ships and the rigging of the Nile, it was reckoned, by the course of our ships, at an interval of 7 days. The sea between is shallow, not more than six paces deep, but in particular channels so deep that no anchors reach the bottom. For this reason their ships have a prow at each end, so that there is no need to turn about in the narrows of the channel; the size is up to three thousand amphorae.
83| In sailing they make no observation of the stars; the Septentrio is not seen. They carry birds with them, which they release frequently, and follow the course of those seeking land. They do not sail more than four months in the year. They guard especially against the hundred days after the solstice, for then that sea is wintry.
84| So far as to what has been recorded by the ancients. We have had more careful knowledge in the principate of Claudius, since envoys were even brought from that island. It happened in this way. A freedman of Annius Plocamus, who had bought from the treasury the revenue of the Red Sea, sailing around Arabia, was carried off by north winds past Carmania, and on the 15th day put in at their port Hippuri; with the king's hospitable kindness he was taught the language during a period of six months, and afterward, when the king questioned him, told him of the Romans and Caesar.
85| The king admired the justice in what he heard in an extraordinary manner, because the denarii in the money captured were of equal weight, although their differing images showed that they had been made by several rulers; and, moved chiefly by this to friendship, he sent four envoys, the chief of whom was Rachia. From them it was learned that there are 500 towns, that the harbor is set toward the south at the town Palaesimundum, the most famous of all there and the royal seat, with 200,000 of the common people.
86| Inland there is a lake Megisba, 375,000 paces in circuit, enclosing islands fertile only in pasture; from it two rivers burst forth, the Palaesimundus, flowing past the town of the same name into the harbor by three channels, the narrowest of five stadia, the widest of 15, and the other, toward the north and India, by name Cydara. The nearest promontory of India, they said, is called Coliacum, a voyage of four days, with the Island of the Sun meeting one midway.
87| That sea is of a deep green color, and moreover bushy with trees, whose crests the rudders rub away. They marveled at the Septentriones and the Pleiades in our region as if in a new sky, admitting that not even the moon is seen above the earth among themselves except from the eighth day to the sixteenth; that Canopus shines in the nights, a great and bright star. But what was most wonderful to them was that their shadows fall toward our sky, not their own, and that the sun rises on the left and sets on the right, rather than the reverse.
88| The same men related that the side of the island which is stretched before India is of 10 stadia, from the winter sunrise; that beyond the Hemodian mountains they also look upon the Seres, known to them also from trade; that the father of Rachia had traveled there; that wild beasts come to meet newcomers there, and that they themselves exceed the size of men, with reddish hair, blue eyes, and a harsh sound of voice, with no common language. The rest is the same as our traders report: wares are placed on the farther bank of the river beside the goods for sale, and are taken away by them if the exchange pleases them. Hatred of luxury is never more just than when the mind, carried all the way there, considers what is sought, and how far, and why.
89| But not even Taprobane, though banished by nature outside the world, is free of our vices. Gold and silver are prized there too; marble like tortoiseshell, pearls and gems are held in honor; the whole heap of our own luxury is far greater. They said their own wealth was greater, but that among us there is more use of opulence. No one has a slave; no one sleeps on into the day or during the daytime; their buildings stand only moderately above the ground; the price of grain is never raised; there are no courts or lawsuits; Hercules is worshiped; a king is chosen by the people for age and clemency, one who has no children, and if he afterward begets any, he is set aside, so that the kingship may not become hereditary.
90| Thirty rulers are given it by the people, and no one is condemned to death except by the vote of several; even so there is an appeal to the people, and 70 judges are appointed: if these acquit the accused, the 30 thereafter have no standing, which is the gravest disgrace. The king has the cult of Father Liber, the rest that of the Arabs.
91| If the king does anything wrong, he is punished with death, though no one kills him, all turning away from him and even refusing him the commerce of speech. Festal days are spent in hunting; this is held to be most pleasing, with tigers and elephants. The fields are carefully tilled; there is no use of the vine, but they abound in fruits. There is also pleasure in fishing, especially for tortoises, with whose upper shells entire households of the inhabitants are roofed: they are found of such size. The life of men is moderate at a hundred years.
92| This is what has been learned about Taprobane. The four satrapies, which we put off to this place, stand as follows. In the mountains, from the peoples nearest the Indus. Capisene had the city Capisa, which Cyrus destroyed. Arachosia, with a river and a town of the same name, which some have called Cufis, founded by Semiramis. The river Erymandus flows past Parabeste of the Arachosii. Next to these, on the south, toward the part of the Arachotae, they place the Dexendrusi, on the north the Paropanisidae, and the town Cartana under the Caucasus, which was afterward called Tetragonis. This region is opposite Bactria; then that of the Arii, whose town is Alexandria, named from its founder, the Sydraci, Dangalae, Parapinae, Cataces, Mazi; at the Caucasus the Cadrusi, a town founded by Alexander.
93| Below all these the country is flatter. From the Indus is the Arian region, scorched by heats and surrounded by deserts, yet with much shade interspersed, it gathers cultivators chiefly around two rivers, the Tonberus and the Arosapes. The town is Artacoana; the river Arius, which flows past Alexandria, founded by Alexander. The town extends 30 stadia, and Artacabene, much more beautiful as it is more ancient, fortified again by Antiochus, extends fifty stadia.
94| The Dorsigi, a people; the rivers Pharnacotis and Ophradus; Prophthasia, a town of the Zaraspae, the Drangae, Euergetae, Zarangae, Gedrusi, the towns Peucolis, Lyphorta and Methorcum; deserts; the river Manain, the Acutri, a people, the river Eorus, the Orbi, a people, the navigable river Pomanus in the territory of the Pandae, likewise the Cabirus of the Suari, with a harbored mouth, the town Condigramma, the river Cophes. Into it flow the navigable Saddarus, Parospus and Sodamus.
95| Some want Daritis to be part of Ariana, and they give the length of both as 1,800,000, the breadth half less than that of India. Others have placed the Gedrusi and the Sires for 138,000 paces, then the Ichthyophagi, the Oritae, speaking a language of their own, not that of the Indians, for 200,000 paces. Alexander forbade all the Ichthyophagi to live on fish. Then they have placed the people of the Arbii for 200,000 paces, beyond them deserts; then Carmania, Persis and Arabia.
96| But before we go through these matters people by people, it is fitting to point out what Onesicritus reported, who sailed round with the fleet of Alexander from India into the interior of Persis, as recently set out by Juba, and then the voyage which has been discovered in these years and is kept up today. The voyage of Onesicritus and Nearchus does not give all the names of the stopping places, nor the distances, and Xylinepolis, founded by Alexander, from which they took their start, is not sufficiently explained as to beside what river or where it was.
97| These things, however, worthy of mention, are reported by them: a town founded by Nearchus on the voyage, and the river Arbis, capable of holding ships; opposite, an island 70 stadia away, Alexandria, founded by Leonnatus at the order of Alexander on the borders of the people; Argeruus with a healthy harbor; the navigable river Tonberus, around which are the Pasirae; then the Ichthyophagi, over so long a stretch that they sailed along it in a space of 30 days; the island called that of the Sun and also the Bed of the Nymphs, reddish, in which every animal is destroyed from uncertain causes;
98| the people Ori; the river of Carmania Hyctanis, with harbors and rich in gold. From it they noted that the Septentriones were first seen, and that Arcturus was not seen on all nights nor ever through the whole of them. They noted that the Achaemenidae held sway as far as there. Mines of copper and iron, and of arrenicum and minium, are worked. Thence is the promontory of Carmania, from which the crossing to the opposite coast, to the Macae, a people of Arabia, is 50 paces; three islands, of which only Oracta, which has water, is inhabited, 25,000 paces from the mainland; four islands already in the gulf before Persis — around these sea snakes of twenty cubits each swam up and terrified the fleet —,
99| the island Athotadrus, likewise the Gauratae, on which is the people of the Gyani; the river Hyperis in the middle of the Persian gulf, able to hold merchant ships, the river Sitioganus, by which one sails to Pasargadae on the seventh day, the navigable river Phristimus, an island without a name, the river Granis for ships of moderate size — it flows through Susiane, and on its right dwell the mountain Dexi, who prepare bitumen —, the river Zarotis, with a mouth difficult except to those who know it, two small islands; thence the navigation is shallow, like a marsh, though it is accomplished through certain channels;
100| the mouth of the Euphrates, the lake which the Eulaeus and the Tigris make near Characene, thence by the Tigris to Susa. They found Alexander there celebrating festal days, in the seventh month after he had departed from them at Patala, the third of the voyage. So Alexander's fleet sailed; afterward, from the promontory of Arabia Syagrus to Patala with the west wind, which they call there the hippalus, seemed the surest course, by estimate 1,332,000 paces.
101| A later age judged a nearer and safer course, if one made from the same promontory for the port of India called Sigerus, and for a long time the voyage was made so, until the merchant discovered shortcuts and India was brought near by profit: for it is sailed every year, with cohorts of archers placed on board, since pirates were very troublesome. Nor will it be tiresome to set out the whole course from Egypt, now for the first time opening up with sure knowledge: a matter worth attention, as India drains our empire of no less than HS.D in any year, and sends back wares which sell among us at a hundredfold.
102| The town of Juliopolis is 2,000 paces from Alexandria; from there they sail up the Nile to Coptos 309,000 paces, a course accomplished in 12 days when the etesian winds blow. From Coptos one goes by camels, with stations arranged according to the watering places: the first is called Hydreuma, 32,000 from Coptos, the second on a mountain, a day's journey, the third at a second Hydreuma, 85,000 from Coptos, then on a mountain; next at the Hydreuma of Apollo, 184,000 from Coptos, again on a mountain; next at the New Hydreuma, 236,000 from Coptos.
103| There is also another Hydreuma, the Old — it is called the Troglodytic — where a garrison keeps watch, on a detour of two miles; it is 7,000 from the New Hydreuma. From there to the town Berenice, where is the harbor of the Red Sea, is 257,000 paces from Coptos. But because the greater part of the journey is done at night on account of the heat, and the days are consumed in halts, the whole journey from Coptos to Berenice is completed on the twelfth day.
104| They begin to sail in midsummer before the Dog Star rises, or just after it has risen, and arrive about the thirtieth day at Ocelis in Arabia or at Cane in the frankincense-bearing region. There is also a third port, called Muza, which the Indian voyage does not seek, nor any but the traders in frankincense and Arabian perfumes. Inland the town, its royal seat, is called Sapphar, and another Save. For those making for India it is most advantageous to set out from Ocelis; from there they sail with the wind hippalus for 40 days to the first emporium of India, Muziris. It is not to be sought, because of the neighboring pirates, who hold a place named Nitrias, and it is not rich in wares; besides, the anchorage of ships is far from land, and cargoes are brought and carried off in small boats. Caelobothras was reigning there when I set these things down.
105| Another more useful port is that of the people called Neacyndi, which is named Becare. Pandion was reigning there, far from the emporium in a town in the interior called Modura. The region, however, from which they bring pepper in dugout boats to Becare, is called Cottonara. All these names of peoples, ports or towns are found in none of the earlier writers, from which it appears that the state of places changes.
106| From India they sail back at the beginning of the Egyptian month Tybi, our December, or at any rate within the sixth day of the Egyptian Mechir, which falls before our Ides of January: thus it happens that they return in the same year. They sail from India with the south-east wind, the volturnus, and when they have entered the Red Sea, with the southwest wind or the south. Now we shall return to our subject.
107| Nearchus wrote that the coast of Carmania extends twelve times fifty thousand paces. From its beginning to the river Sabis is 100 paces; from there vineyards are cultivated, and fields as far as the river Ananis, a space of 25 miles; the region is called Armuzia. The towns of Carmania are Zetis and Alexandria. In this part, then, the twin sea also bursts into the lands, which our people have called Red, the Greeks Erythrum, from a king Erythras, or, as others think, because the sun's reflection gives it such a color, others from the sand and the earth, others from the nature of the water itself.
108| But it is divided into two gulfs. The one on the east is called the Persian, with a circuit of 2,500,000, as Eratosthenes reports; opposite is Arabia, whose length is 1,500,000. Again it is enclosed by the other gulf, named Arabian. The ocean that flows into it they call the Azanian. The Persian gulf at its entrance has a breadth of 5; others have made it 4,000. From it to the innermost gulf, in a straight course, it is agreed to be almost 1,125,000, and its shape is in the likeness of a human head.
109| Onesicritus and Nearchus wrote that from the river Indus into the Persian gulf, and from there to Babylon by the marshes of the Euphrates, it is 1,700,000. In a corner of Carmania are the Chelonophagi, who roof their huts with the shells of tortoises and feed on the flesh. From the river Arabis they inhabit the promontory itself, hairy over the whole body except the head and clothed in the skins of fish.
110| Beyond the tract of these, toward India, Caecandrus is reported, a deserted island in the ocean, 50 paces off, and beside it, with a strait flowing between, Stoidis, rich in pearls. Joined to the promontory of the Carmani are the Harmozaei. Some insert the Arbii, 421,000 paces along the whole shore. There is the harbor of the Macedonians and the altars of Alexander on the promontory. The rivers Siccanas, then the Dratinus and the Salsum.
111| After it, the promontory Themisteas; the island Aphrodisias is inhabited. Thence the beginning of Persis, at the river Oratis, by which it is divided from Elymais. Opposite Persis are the islands Psilos, Cassandra and Aracha, with a very high mountain sacred to Neptune. Persis itself, lying toward the west, holds a coast of 550,000 paces, rich even in luxury, and long since transferred to the name of the Parthians. Now a few words on their empire.
112| The kingdoms of the Parthians are eighteen in all; for so they divide the provinces about the two seas, as we have said, the Red on the south, the Hyrcanian on the north. Of these 11, which are called the upper, begin at the border of Armenia and the Caspian shores, and reach to the Scythians, with whom they live on equal terms; the remaining 7 kingdoms are called the lower. As far as the Parthians are concerned, Parthyaea was always in the roots of the mountains often mentioned, which skirt all those peoples.
113| It has the Arii on the east, on the south Carmania and the Ariani, on the west the Pratitae Medes, on the north the Hyrcani, surrounded on every side by deserts. The farther Parthians are called Nomads. This side of the deserts, on the west, are their cities which we have mentioned, Issatis and Calliope; toward the summer east Pyropum, toward the winter east Maria, in the middle Hecatompylos, Arsace, the Nisaean region of Parthyene, a famous one, where there is Alexandropolis, named from its founder. It is necessary in this place to mark out also the Medes'
114| position and to carry the survey of the lands around to the Persian sea, so that the rest may thereafter be more easily known. For Media, lying across from the west and meeting Parthia obliquely, shuts off both kingdoms. It has, therefore, the Caspii and the Parthians to the east, Sittacene and Susiane, and Persis, to the south, on the west Adiabene, on the north Armenia.
115| The Persians have always dwelt by the Red Sea, on account of which that gulf is called Persian. The maritime region there is Ceribobus; but where it itself rises toward the Medes, a place is called Climax Megale, by a steep ascent of the mountain by steps, with a narrow entrance, up to Persepolis, the capital of the kingdom, destroyed by Alexander. Besides, it has on its farthest borders Laodicea, founded by Antiochus.
116| From there to the east the Magi hold the stronghold Phrasargis, in which is the tomb of Cyrus; and theirs also is the town Ecbatana, moved by King Darius to the mountains. Between the Parthians and the Arians the Paraetaceni run out. By these peoples and the Euphrates the lower kingdoms are shut in. The rest we shall describe starting from Mesopotamia, excepting its point and the peoples of the Arabs told of in the earlier volume.
117| Mesopotamia was entirely Assyrian, scattered in villages except for Babylon and Ninus. The Macedonians gathered it into cities on account of the richness of the soil. Besides those already mentioned it has Seleucia, Laodicea and Artemita; likewise, in the nation of the Arabs who are called Orroei and Mardani, Antiochia, which, founded by Nicanor, governor of Mesopotamia, is called Arabis.
118| Joined to these inland are the Arabs Eldamari, above whom, toward the river Pallacontas, is the town Bura, and the Salmani and the Masei, Arabs; joined to the Gordyaei are the Azoni, through whose land the river Zerbis falls into the Tigris; of the Azoni, the Silices, mountain people, and the Orontes, west of whom is the town Gaugamela, likewise Suae on the rocks. Above the Silices are the Sitrae, through whom the Lycus flows from Armenia; from the Sitrae toward the winter sunrise the town Azochis, then on the plains the towns Diospege, Polytelia, Stratonicea and Anthemus.
119| In the neighborhood of the Euphrates, Alexander ordered Nicephorion, which we have mentioned, to be founded, on account of the advantage of the place. At Zeugma too Apamea has been mentioned, from which those making for the east are met by the fortified town Caphrena, once of 70 stadia in extent and called the seat of the satraps, to which the tribute was brought, now reduced to a citadel.
120| Thebata remains, as it was, and, under the leadership of Pompey the Great, the boundary of the Roman empire, Oruros, L.CC from Zeugma. There are some who report that the Euphrates was diverted by the work of Gobares the governor, at the place where we said it splits, lest by its headlong course it should threaten Babylon, and that it is called by all the Assyrians Narmalchan, which means the royal river. Where it is diverted there was a town, Agranis, one of the greatest, which the Persians destroyed.
121| Babylon, the capital of the Chaldaean peoples, for a long time held the highest renown among cities in the whole world, on account of which the remaining part of Mesopotamia and Assyria was called Babylonia; it encloses 60,000 paces with 2 walls, two hundred feet high and fifty wide, at three finger-breadths per foot more than our measure, with the Euphrates flowing through it, a wonderful work in both. There still remains there the temple of Jupiter Belus; he was the discoverer of the science of the stars.
122| For the rest it has returned to solitude, drained by the neighborhood of Seleucia, founded for that reason by Nicator within the fortieth milestone, at the confluence of the Euphrates, led there by a canal, and the Tigris; which nevertheless is surnamed Babylonian, free today and independent, and Macedonian in its customs. They say it has 600,000 of the common people of the city, and that the shape of its walls is that of an eagle spreading its wings, and that its territory is the most fertile of the whole east. In turn, to drain it, the Parthians founded Ctesiphon in Chalonitis, near it at the third milestone, which is now the capital of the kingdoms, and when nothing was gained, King Vologesus recently founded another town in the neighborhood, Vologesocerta.
123| There are still in Mesopotamia the town Hipparenum, also a seat of Chaldaean learning, and this, like Babylon, beside the river [Narraga ] which falls into the Narraga, from which the community has its name. The walls of the Hippareni the Persians destroyed. The Orcheni too, the third seat of Chaldaean learning, are placed in the same region, facing south. After these the Notitae, Orothophanitae and Gnesiochartae.
124| Nearchus and Onesicritus report that it is 412,000 paces to sail on the Euphrates to Babylon from the Persian sea; those who wrote later give 440,000 to Seleucia; Juba gives from Babylon to Characene 175,500. Some say that it flows beyond Babylon in one continuous channel, before it is drawn off for irrigation, for 87,000, and over its whole course for 1,200,000 paces. The diversity of authors causes inconsistency of measure, since even the Persians determine their schoeni and parasangs each by a different measure.
125| Where it ceases to give protection with its channel, as the tract approaches the border of Charax, at once the Attali robbers, a people of the Arabs, trouble it; beyond whom are the Scenitae, and around the bend of the Euphrates the Nomads of Arabia, reaching to the deserts of Syria, from where, as we have said, it bends toward the south, leaving the solitudes of Palmyra.
126| Seleucia is distant from the head of Mesopotamia, for those sailing on the Euphrates, 1,125,000 paces, from the Red Sea, if one sails by the Tigris, 320,000, from Zeugma 724,000; Zeugma is 175 from Seleucia of Syria on our coast. This is the breadth of the lands there between the two seas, but of the Parthian kingdom 944,000. There is still a town of Mesopotamia on the bank of the Tigris near the confluences, which they call Digba.
127| But it is fitting to speak of the Tigris itself too. It has its source in the district of Greater Armenia, at a conspicuous spring in a plain. The place is named Elegosine; the river itself, where it flows more slowly, Diglito; where it is hurried along, from its swiftness it begins to be called Tigris: so the Medes call an arrow. It flows into the lake Aretissa, which bears up all weights put upon it and exhales nitrum in mists. The lake has one kind of fish, and this does not mix with the channel of the passing river, just as no fish from the Tigris swim across into the lake.
128| It is carried through it unlike it both in current and in color, and, when it has crossed it, meeting the mountain Taurus, is sunk into a cavern and, gliding beneath, bursts out on the other side of it. The place is called Zoaranda; that it is the same river is evident from the fact that it brings up what was sunk. Next it crosses another lake, which is called Thospites, and again is sunk into underground channels, and after 22,000 paces is given back near Nymphaeum. Claudius Caesar states that it flows so close to the Arsanias in the region Arrhene that, when they are swollen, they join and yet do not mix, and the lighter Arsanias floats on top for a space of about 4,000, and then, divided off, is sunk into the Euphrates.
129| The Tigris, however, having received from Armenia the famous rivers Parthenias and Nicephorion, separating the Arab Orroei and the Adiabeni and making the Mesopotamia we have described, having coursed past the mountains of the Gordyaei near Apamea, a town of Mesene, on this side of Seleucia in Babylonia 125,000 paces, is divided into two channels; by one it makes for the south and Seleucia, flooding Mesene; by the other, turned to the north, it cuts at the back of the same people the plains of Cauchae. Where the waters have come back together, it is called Pasitigris,
130| and later receives from Media the Choaspes and, as we have said, carried between Seleucia and Ctesiphon, pours itself into the Chaldaean lakes and fills them to an extent of 62,000 paces; then, spreading out in a vast channel, on the right of the town of Charax it is carried into the Persian sea with a mouth of 10 paces. Between the mouths of the two rivers there were 25,000 paces, or, as others report, 7,000, both being navigable. But for a long time the Orcheni and the dwellers along it, irrigating their fields, have blocked the Euphrates, and it is carried to the sea only through the Tigris.
131| The region next the Tigris is called Parapotamia. In it Mesene has been mentioned; its town is Dabitha. Joined to it is Chalonitis with Ctesiphon, with plantations not only of palms but also of olive and fruit trees. To it extends the mountain Zagrus, coming from Armenia between the Medes and Adiabeni, above Paraetacene and Persis. Chalonitis is 380,000 paces distant from Persis; some report that it is as far from the Caspian sea and from Syria by the shortest route.
132| Between these peoples and Mesene is Sittacene, also called Arbelitis and Palaestine. Its town is the Sittace of the Greeks, and on the east Sabdata, and on the west Antiochia between the two rivers, the Tigris and the Tornadotus, likewise Apamea, to which Antiochus gave his mother's name; it is surrounded by the Tigris and divided by the Archous.
133| Below is Susiane, in which is Susa, the old royal seat of the Persians, founded by Darius son of Hystaspes; it is 450,000 paces from Seleucia in Babylonia, and as far from Ecbatana of the Medes, by the mountain Carbantus. On the northern channel of the Tigris is a town, Barbitace; it is 135 from Susa. There, alone of mortals, with a wonderful hatred of gold, they collect it and bury it, so that nobody may use it. Joined to the Susians on the east are the Oxii, robbers, and 40 peoples of the Mizaei, of independent savagery.
134| Above them, subject to the Parthians, are the Mardi and the Saitae, who are stretched out above Elymais, which we joined to Persis on the coast. Susa is 250,000 paces from the Persian sea. Where the fleet of Alexander went up toward it by the Pasitigris, a village on the Chaldaean lake is called Aple, from which Susa is 62,500 paces by water. Next to the Susians on the east are the Cossiaei; above the Cossiaei to the north, Massabatene under the mountain Cambalidus, which is a branch of the Caucasus, whence by a very easy crossing into the Bactri.
135| The river Eulaeus separates Susiane from Elymais; it rises among the Medes, is hidden for a short space in a conduit and rises again, and glides through Massabatene. It goes around the citadel of the Susians and the temple of Diana, most august to those peoples, and itself also in great reverence, since the kings drink from no other and for that reason carry it to distant places. It receives the rivers Hedyphon, coming past the Asylum of the Persians, and the Aduna, from the Susians. A town beside it is Magoa, 15,000 paces from Charax; some place it at the edge of Susiane, nearest the wastes.
136| Below the Eulaeus is Elymais, on the coast joined to Persis, from the river Oratis to Charax 240,000 paces. Its towns are Seleucia and Sostrate, adjoining the mountain Chasirus. The coast which lies before it we have called, like the lesser Syrtes, inaccessible by reason of mud, the rivers Brixa and Ortacia carrying down a great deal of silt, Elymais itself being so wet that there is no approach to Persis except by a circuit around it. It is also infested by serpents, which the rivers bring down. The part of it most impassable is called Characene, from a town of Arabia that closes those kingdoms, about which we shall speak after setting out first the opinion of Marcus Agrippa.
137| For he reported that Media, Parthia and Persis, having the Indus on the east, the Tigris on the west, the Caucasian Taurus on the north and the Red Sea on the south, extend in length 1,320,000 paces and in breadth 840, and in addition that Mesopotamia by itself, shut in by the Tigris to the east, the Euphrates to the west, the Taurus to the north and the Persian sea to the south, is 800,000 paces in length and 360,000 in breadth.
138| Charax, the innermost town of the Persian gulf, from which the Arabia called Eudaemon runs out, is inhabited on a hill made by hand, between the confluence, with the Tigris on the right and the Eulaeus on the left, 2,000 paces in extent. It was founded first by Alexander the Great, colonists being led there from the royal city Durine, which then perished, the soldiers unfit for service being left there; he had ordered it to be called Alexandria, and the village Pellaeum, from his own native land, which he had made specially Macedonian.
139| The rivers overcame that town; afterward Antiochus, the fifth of the kings, restored it and named it after himself, and when it was again damaged, Spaosines son of Sagdodonacus, king of the neighboring Arabs, whom Juba falsely reports to have been a satrap of Antiochus, restored it with moles set in front and gave it his own name, the site being fortified nearby, 6,000 paces in length and a little less in breadth. Earlier it was 10 stadia from the shore — the Vipsanian portico also has it as maritime —, but Juba reports 50 paces;
140| now the envoys of the Arabs and our own traders, who came from there, affirm that it is 120,000 from the shore. In no part have lands brought down by rivers gained more or more quickly. This is the more wonderful as the tide advances far beyond that point and does not drive them back.
141| That Dionysius was born in this place, the most recent authority on the situation of the world, whom the deified Augustus sent ahead to examine everything in the east when his elder son was about to go to Armenia for Parthian and Arabian affairs, does not escape me, nor have I forgotten that each of them seemed to us at the beginning of the work the most careful authority on his own region: in this part, however, we choose to follow the Roman arms and King Juba, in the volumes written to the same Gaius Caesar about the same Arabian expedition.
142| Arabia, second to no people in extent, descends very far from mount Amanus, from the region of Cilicia and Commagene, as we have said, many of its peoples having been led there by Tigranes the Great, but of their own accord to our sea and the Egyptian shore, as we have taught, while the Nubaei also penetrate into the middle of Syria to Mount Libanus; to them are joined the Ramisi, then the Teranei, then the Patami.
143| The peninsula of Arabia itself, running out between the two seas, the Red and the Persian, surrounded by sea by a certain artifice of nature in likeness and size to Italy, looks toward the same part of the sky with no difference; this too is fortunate in that situation. Its peoples from our sea as far as the wastes of Palmyra we have described: the rest we shall now go through from there. The Nomads and harassers of the Chaldaeans are shut in by the Scenitae, as we have said, themselves wanderers, but named from their tents, which they pitch of haircloth wherever they please.
144| Then the Nabataei inhabit a town named Petra, in a valley of a little less than 2,000 paces in extent, surrounded by inaccessible mountains, with a stream flowing through it. It is 600,000 from the town of Gaza on our coast, and 135,000 from the Persian gulf. Here both the roads meet, that of those who sought Palmyra from Syria and that of those who came from Gaza.
145| From Petra the Omani dwelt as far as Characene, in towns once famous, founded by Semiramis, Abaesamis and Soractia; now there are wastes. Then there is a town which obeys the king of the Characeni, on the bank of the Pasitigris, named Forat, in which they assemble from Petra, and from there they sail 12,000 paces to Characene with the tide in their favor, and for those sailing from the Parthian kingdom the village Teredon. Below the confluence of the Euphrates and the Tigris, on the left of the river the Chaldaeans hold the land, on the right the Nomad Scenitae.
146| Some report that two other towns also are sailed past on the Tigris at long intervals, Barbatia and then Dumatha, which is a voyage of 10 days from Petra. Our traders say that Apamea too obeys the king of the Characeni, placed where the backwater of the Euphrates joins the Tigris; and that thus the Parthians, when they attempt an incursion, are kept off by works put in the way and by flooding.
147| Now from Charax we shall describe the coast, first searched out by Epiphanes. The spot where the Euphrates once had its mouth, the river Salsum, the promontory Caldone, an estuary more like a chasm than a sea, for 50 of the coast, the river Achenus, deserts 100 paces as far as the island Icarus, the gulf Capeus, which the Gaulopes and Gattaei inhabit, the Gerrhaic gulf, the town Gerrha, 5 paces in extent; it has towers made of square blocks of salt. From the shore 50, the region Attene,
148| opposite is the island Tylos, as many thousands from the shore, most celebrated for its very many pearls, with a town of the same name, and beside it another, smaller, 12,500 paces from its promontory; they report that beyond are seen large islands, which have not been reached; the circuit of this one is 112,500 paces, and it lies farther from Persis, approached by one narrow channel. The island of Ascliae, the peoples Nochaeti, Zurazi, Borgodi, Catharraei, Nomads, the river Cynos.
149| Beyond, Juba reports a navigation unexplored from that side because of rocks, passing over mention of the town of the Omani, Batrasavaves, and Omana, which earlier writers made a famous port of Carmania, and likewise Homna and Attana, which our traders say are now the most frequented towns from the Persian sea. From the river Canis, as Juba says, a mountain like something burnt, the peoples Epimaranitae, then Ichthyophagi,
150| a deserted island, the peoples Bathymi [….] Eblythaei mountains, the island Omoemus, the harbor Mochorbae, the islands Etaxalos and Inchobriche, the people Cadaei, many islands without names, but famous Isura, Rhinnea and the nearest, on which are inscribed stone stelae in unknown letters, the harbor Coboea, the deserted islands Bragae, the people Taludaei, the region of Dabanegoris, the mountain Orsa with a harbor, the gulf Duatas, many islands, the mountain Tricoryphos, the region Chardaleon, the islands Solanades, Cachina, likewise those of the Ichthyophagi. Then the Clari, the shore Mamaeum, where there are mines of gold, the region Canauna, the peoples Apitami and Casani, the island Devade, the spring Coralis, the Carphati, the islands Alaea and Amnamethus, the people Darae,
151| the islands Chelonitis, many of the Ichthyophagi, Odanda, deserted, Basa, many of the Sabaei. The rivers Thanar and Amnum, the islands Doricae, the springs Daulotos and Dora, the islands Pteros, Labatanis, Coboris and Sambrachate, and a town bearing the same name on the mainland. To the south many islands, the largest Camari, the river Musecros, the harbor Laupas, the Scenitae Sabaei, many islands, their emporium Acila, from which one sails to India,
152| the region Amithoscatta, Damnia, the Mizi, greater and lesser, Drymatina, the Macae; their promontory, opposite Carmania, is 50 paces distant. A marvelous thing is reported there: that Numenius, put in charge of Mesene by King Antiochus, fighting against the Persians, won a victory there on the same day with his fleet and, when the tide had gone back, again with his cavalry, and set up twin trophies in the same place to Jupiter and Neptune.
153| An island lies out in the deep, Ogyris, famous for King Erythras buried there; it is 125,000 paces from the mainland, and its circuit is 112,500. No less famous is another in the Azanian sea, Dioscuridu, distant from the farthest promontory Syagrus 280,000. The rest on the mainland, still from the south, are the Autaridae, a crossing of 8 days into the mountains, the Larendani and Catabani, the Gebbanitae with several towns, but the greatest Nagia and Thomna, with 65 temples; this is an indication of its size.
154| A promontory; from it the distance to the mainland of the Troglodytae is 50; the Thoani, Actaei, Chatramotitae, Tonabaei, Antiadalaei, Lexianae, Agraei, Cerbani, and the Sabaei, the most famous of the Arabs on account of frankincense, their peoples stretching to both seas. Their towns on the Red Sea shore are Merme, Marma, Corolia and Sabbatha; inland the towns Nascus, Cardava, Carnus and Thomala, to which they bring down wares of perfumes.
155| A part of them are the Atramitae, whose capital is Sabota, enclosing 60 temples within its walls; the royal seat of all, however, is Marebbata. They hold a gulf of 93,000, full of fragrant islands. Joined to the Atramitae in the interior are the Minaei. By the sea dwell also the Aelamitae, with a town of the same name, and joined to them the Chaculatae, the town Sibi, which the Greeks call Apate, the Arsi, Codani, Vadaei with a large town, Barasasaei, Lechieni, and the island Sygaros, which dogs do not enter, and those put ashore around its coasts die wandering.
156| The innermost gulf, in which are the Laeanitae, who gave it its name; their royal seat is Agra, and on the gulf Laeana or, as others say, Aelana: for our writers have written the gulf itself as Laeaniticus, others as Aelaniticus, Artemidorus as Alaeniticus, Juba as Leaniticus. The circuit of Arabia from Charax to Laeana is reported to be X̅L̅V̅I̅I̅.L̅X̅V̅ paces; Juba thinks it a little less than 4,000,000. It is broadest on the north between the towns Heroum and Charax.
157| For let the rest of its interior also be described. To the Nabataei the ancients joined the Thimanei; now there are the Taveni, Suelleni, Araceni, the Arreni with a town in which all trade assembles, the Hemnatae, Avalitae, the towns Domata and Haegra, the Thamudaei, the town Baclanaza, the Chariattaei, the Toali, the town Phodaca, the Minaei, who, as they think, trace their origin from Minos, king of Crete, among whom are the Carmei; the town Maribba, of 14,000 paces, Paramalacum, itself not to be despised, likewise Canon.
158| The Rhadamaei — and their origin too is thought to be Rhadamanthus, brother of Minos —, the Homeritae with the town Mesala, the Hamiroei, Gedranitae, Amphryaei, Lysanitae, Bachylitae, Samnaei, the Amaitaei with the towns Nessa and Chenneseri, the Zamareni with the towns Sagiatta and Canthace, the Bacaschami with the town Riphearina, a word by which they call barley, the Autaei, Ethravi, the Cyrei with the town Ehlataeis, the Chodae, the Aiathuri in the mountains with a town of 25,000 paces, in which is a spring Aenuscabales, which means "of camels,"
159| the town Ampelome, a colony of the Milesians, the town Athrida, the Calingi, whose town Mariba means "lords of all," the towns Pallon and Murannimal beside the river through which they think the Euphrates emerges, the peoples Agraei and Ammoni, the town Athenae, the Caunaravi, which means "very rich in herds," the Chorranitae, Cesani and Choani. There were also Greek towns, Arethusa, Larisa and Chalcis, destroyed in various wars.
160| Only Aelius Gallus, of the equestrian order, has so far carried Roman arms into that land, for Gaius Caesar, the son of Augustus, only looked out upon Arabia. Gallus destroyed towns not named by the authors who wrote before, Negrana, Nestus, Nesca, Magusus, Caminacus, Labaetia, and the Mariba mentioned above, of 6 in circuit, likewise Caripeta, where he advanced farthest.
161| The rest he brought back as explored: that the Nomads live on milk and the flesh of wild animals, the others press wine from palms, as the Indians do, and oil from sesame. That the Homeritae are the most numerous, that the fields of the Minaei are fertile, planted with palm groves, their wealth in cattle. That the Cerbani and Agraei excel in arms, most of all the Chatramotitae. That the Carrei have the widest and most fertile fields, the Sabaei are the wealthiest by the fragrant fertility of their forests, their gold mines, the irrigation of their fields, and their yield of honey and wax. About perfumes we shall speak in our own volume.
162| The Arabs wear turbans or live with uncut hair; the beard is shaved off except on the upper lip; among some even that is left uncut. And, wonderful to say, of their innumerable peoples an equal part lives by trade or by robbery. On the whole they are the richest of peoples, as the greatest wealth of the Romans and Parthians settles among them, since they sell what they take from the sea or the forests and buy nothing in return.
163| Now we shall go through the remaining, opposite coast of Arabia. Timosthenes estimated the whole gulf as four days' sail in length, two days' in breadth, the narrows 7,500 paces; Eratosthenes, from the mouth, 1,200,000 in each direction; Artemidorus, on the side of Arabia, 1,700,050,
164| and on the Troglodytic side 1,187,500 paces as far as Ptolemais; Agrippa 1,732,000, with no difference between the sides. Most have given the breadth as 475,000, and the mouth, turned toward the winter sunrise, some say extends 4,000, others 7,500, others 12,000.
165| The situation, however, is as follows: from the Laeanitic gulf there is a second gulf, which the Arabs call Aea, in which is the town Heroon. There was also Cambysu, between the Neli and the Marchadae, the sick of the army having been led there. The people Tyro, the harbor Daneon, from which to carry a navigable channel through to the Nile, at the part where it runs down toward the Delta, over the interval of 62,500 that lies between the river and the Red Sea, was first of all conceived by Sesostris, king of Egypt, then by Darius of the Persians, and then by the Ptolemy who followed, who also dug a canal 100 feet in breadth and 30 in depth, 37,500 paces in length, as far as the Bitter Springs;
166| beyond this the fear of flooding deterred them, the Red Sea having been found to be three cubits higher than the land of Egypt. Some do not give that reason, but say that it was lest the water of the Nile, which alone furnishes drink, be spoiled by the sea let in. None the less the whole journey is made overland from the Egyptian sea, and the way is threefold: one from Pelusium through the sands, in which, unless reeds fixed in the ground guide one, the road is not found, the wind constantly covering the tracks;
167| the second beyond Mount Casius, which returns after 60,000 paces to the Pelusiac road — the Arabs Autaei live along it —; the third from Gerrhum, which they call Agipsum, through the same Arabs, 60,000 shorter, but rough with mountains and without water. All these roads lead to Arsinoe, founded in the gulf Carandra by Ptolemy Philadelphus, who first explored Troglodytice, and named after his sister; the river which flows past Arsinoe he called the Ptolemaeus.
168| Next is a small town, Aenum — others write Philoterias for this —, then the Asaraei, savage Arabs born of intermarriages with the Troglodytae, the islands Sapirine and Scytala, then deserts as far as Myos Hormos, where there are the spring Tatnos, the mountain Aeas, the island Iambe, many harbors, the town Berenice, named for the mother of Philadelphus, to which we have described the journey from Coptos, the Arabs Autaei and Gebadaei.
169| Troglodytice, which the ancients called Midoe, others Midioe, the mountain Pentedactylos, a number of islands Stenae Dirae, no fewer Halonesi, Cardamine, Topazos, which gave its name to the gem. The gulf is crowded with islands: of these, those called Mareu have water, those of Eratos are dry; these were prefects of kings. Inland the Candaei, whom they call Ophiophagi, accustomed to feed on serpents; nor is any region more fertile in them.
170| Juba, who seems to have pursued these matters most carefully, omitted in this tract — unless it is a fault of the copies — a second Berenice, surnamed Panchrysos, and a third, called Epi Dires, remarkable for its position: for it is placed on a long projecting neck, where the narrows of the Red Sea are 7,500 paces from Arabia. The island Citis is there, itself bearing topazus.
171| Beyond are forests, where is Ptolemais, founded by Philadelphus for hunting elephants, and for that reason surnamed Epi Theras, beside the lake Monoleus. This is the region indicated by us in the second volume, in which, for 45 days before the solstice and as many after, the shadows are consumed at the sixth hour and fall to the south in the remaining hours, on the other days to the north, while in Berenice, which we put first, on the day of the solstice itself at the sixth hour the shadows are entirely consumed and nothing else new is noted, at an interval of 602,000 paces from Ptolemais: a matter of enormous importance and a place of immense subtlety, the world being caught there, since from there Eratosthenes conceived the notion of giving the measure of the earth, by an unquestionable reckoning of shadows.
172| From here the Azanian sea, the promontory which some have written Hippalus, the lake Mandalum, the island Colocasitis and many in the deep, on which there are very many tortoises. The town Sace, the island Daphnidis, the town Aduliton; this was founded by runaway slaves of the Egyptians from their masters.
173| In this place is the greatest emporium of the Troglodytae, and also of the Aethiopians; it is a voyage of 5 days from Ptolemais. They bring down chiefly ivory, rhinoceros horns, hides of hippopotamuses, tortoiseshell, sphingia, slaves. Above the Aethiopians, the Aroteres, are the islands called Aliaeu, likewise Bacchias, Antibacchias and Stratioton. From here on the coast of Aethiopia there is an unknown gulf, which is strange, since merchants search out the more distant parts, a promontory on which is the spring Cucios, sought by sailors;
174| beyond is the harbor of Isis, ten days' rowing distant from the town of the Adulitae; to it myrrh is brought by the Troglodytae. Two islands before the harbor are called the Pseudopylae, the inner as many, the Pylae; on one are stone stelae with unknown letters. Beyond, the gulf Avalites, then the island of Diodorus and other deserted ones, deserts also through the mainland, the town Gaza, the promontory and harbor Mossylites, to which cinnamum is brought down. Thus far Sesostris led his army. Some place one more Aethiopian town beyond, on the shore, Baragaza.
175| From the Mossylic promontory Juba wants the Atlantic sea to begin, to be sailed with the northwest wind as far as Gades, past his own Mauretanias, and his whole opinion is not to be withheld in this place. From the promontory of the Indians called Lepte Acra, by others Drepanum, he proposes that in a straight course, past Exusta, to the island Malichu it is 15,000 paces, thence to the place they call Sceneos 225,000 paces, thence to the islands Adanu 150,000:
176| so it comes out to the open sea at 1,875,000 paces. All the rest, on account of the heat of the sun, did not think it could be sailed. Moreover, Arabs from the islands, called Ascitae, trouble the commerce itself, since, laying two bags of ox-hide side by side as a bridge, they practise piracy with poisoned arrows. The same Juba reports that the peoples of the Troglodytae, the Therothoae, so named from hunting, are of marvelous speed, as are the Ichthyophagi, swimming like sea animals, and the Bangeni, Zangenae, Thalibae, Saxinae, Sirechae, Daremae and Domazenes.
177| He says moreover that those who dwell along the Nile from Syene as far as Meroe are not peoples of the Aethiopians, but of the Arabs; that the town of the Sun too, which we mentioned in the position of Egypt not far from Memphis, has Arabs as its founders. There are some who take even the farther bank away from Aethiopia and attach it to Africa. [They inhabited the banks, however, because of the water.] We, leaving to each the judgment in understanding, shall set down the towns on both sides, in the order in which they are reported, from Syene.
178| And first, on the side of Arabia, the people Catadupi, then the Syenitae, the towns Tacompson, which some have called Thatice, Aramum, Sesamos, Andura, Nasarduma, Aindoma Come with Arabeta and Boggia, Leupitorga, Tantarene, Emeae, Chindita, Noa, Goploa, Gistate, Megadale, Premni, Nups, Direa, Patigga, Bacata, Dumana, Radata, in which a golden cat was worshiped as a god, Boron, and in the interior Mallo, nearest to Meroe.
179| So Bion reported. Juba otherwise: a fortified town, Megatichos, between Egypt and Aethiopia, which the Arabs called Mirsion, then Tacompson, Aramum, Sesamum, Pide, Mamuda, Orambis beside a spring of bitumen, Amodata, Prosda, Parenta, Mania, Tessata, Gallas, Zoton, Grau Comen, Emeum, Pidibotae, Aendondacometae, villagers, Nomads living in tents, Cistaepe, Magadale, Parva Primis, Nups, Direlis, Patinga, Breves, Magasnei, Egasmala, Cramda, Denna, Cadeum, Atthena, Batta, Alana, Macua, Scammi, Gora on an island, after these Abale, Androgalis, Sere, Malli, Agoce.
180| From the side of Africa are reported, with the same name, a second Tacompsos, or a part of the first, Mogore, Saea, Aedosa, Penariae, Primis, Magassa, Buma, Linthuma, Spintum, Sidop, Censoe, Pindicitor, Acug, Orsum, Suara, Maumarum, Urbim, Mulon, a town which the Greeks called Hypaton, Pagoarca, Zamnes, from where elephants begin, Mambli, Berressa, Coetum. There was once also a town Epis, opposite Meroe, destroyed before Bion wrote.
181| These are the things reported as far as Meroe, of which at this time almost none survives on either side. At any rate, wastes were recently reported to the emperor Nero by the praetorian soldiers with a tribune whom he sent to explore, when, among his other wars, he was thinking of an Aethiopian one as well. Roman arms, however, also entered there in the times of the deified Augustus, under the command of Publius Petronius, himself of the equestrian order and prefect of Egypt. He stormed the towns, which are the only ones we find, in the order in which we shall give them: Pselcis, Primis, Bocchis, Forum Cambusis, Attena, Stadisis, where the Nile, hurling itself down, takes itself away by its roar from the hearing of the dwellers around.
182| He plundered Napata also. He advanced farthest from Syene, 870,000 paces, and yet Roman arms did not make the solitude there: Aethiopia was worn down by wars with the Egyptians, ruling and serving by turns, famous and powerful even down to the Trojan wars, when Memnon reigned. And that it ruled Syria and our shore in the age of King Cepheus is evident from the stories of Andromeda.
183| In a similar way they have reported variously about its measure as well, first Dalion, who was carried far upstream beyond Meroe, then Aristocreon and Bion and Basilis, and the younger Simonides, who stayed even five years in Meroe, when he wrote about Aethiopia. For Timosthenes, prefect of the fleets of Philadelphus, gave the journey from Syene to Meroe as 60 days, without measure, Eratosthenes 625,000, Artemidorus 600,000, Sebosus from the farthest parts of Egypt 1,675,000, and from the place last named 1,200,050. But all this dispute has recently been ended,
184| since from Syene the explorers of Nero reported 975,000 in the following stages: from Syene to Hiera Sycaminos 53,000 paces, thence to Tama 72,000, in the region of the Euonymitae Aethiopians, to Primis 120,000, to Acina 64,000, to Pitara 25,000, to Tergedum 106,000. They said that the island Gagaude is in the middle of that tract; that from there parrots were first seen, and from another, which is called Artigula, the animal sphingion, from Tergedum the cynocephali. Thence to Nabata 80,000; that town is small, the only one among those named. From it to the island of Meroe 360,000.
185| They said that around Meroe the grasses are at last greener, and something of forests has appeared, and tracks of rhinoceroses and elephants. That the town of Meroe itself is 70,000 paces from the entrance of the island, and beside it another island, Tadu, to those coming up by the right channel, which makes a harbor.
186| The buildings of the town are few; a woman, Candace, reigns, a name which has passed to the queens for many years now; the shrine of Hammon is held in reverence there and shrines are throughout the tract. Moreover, when the Aethiopians held power, that island was of great renown. They report that it was accustomed to furnish 250,000 armed men and 3,000 craftsmen. Other kings of the Aethiopians, 45 in number, are reported at the present day.
187| The whole people, however, was called Aetheria, then Atlantia, and later Aethiopia, from Aethiops, the son of Vulcan. That monstrous shapes of animals and men are born around its extremities is not at all surprising, given the fiery quickness of the artificer in forming bodies and carving figures. They say at any rate that on the innermost part of the east there are peoples without nostrils, with the whole face a level plane, others bereft of an upper lip, others without tongues.
188| some, with the mouth closed up and lacking nostrils, breathe through a single opening only, and draw their drink through reeds of oat grass, and eat the grains of the same oat grass growing of its own accord. For some, nods and movements of the limbs take the place of speech. For some the use of fire was unknown before Ptolemy Lathyrus, king of Egypt. Some have also reported a people of Pygmies among the marshes from which the Nile rises. On the coast, moreover, where we shall describe it, continuous mountains glow red like things on fire.
189| The whole tract from Meroe lies above the Troglodytae and the Red Sea, from Napata a journey of three days to the Red shore, rain water being kept for use in several places, the region between being very fertile in gold. The farther parts the Atabuli, a people of Aethiopians, hold. Then, opposite Meroe, the Megabarri, whom some have named Adiabari; they have a town of Apollo. A part of them are Nomads, who feed on elephants.
190| Opposite, in the part of Africa, are the Macrobii, and again, from the Megabarri, the Memnones and Dabelli, and at an interval of 20 days the Critensi. Beyond them the Dochi, then the Gymnetes, always naked, then the Anderae, Mattitae, Mesaches; these, from shame at their black color, smear their whole bodies with red ochre. But in the part of Africa are the Medimni, then the Nomads, living on the milk of cynocephali, the Alabi, and the Syrbotae, who are said to be eight cubits tall.
191| Aristocreon reports, on the side of Libya, from Meroe, the town Tolle at a journey of 5 days; thence, at 12 days, Esar, a town of the Egyptians who fled from Psammetichus; he says that 300,000 dwelt in it; opposite, on the Arabian side, is their town Diaron. Bion, however, calls Sape what the other calls Esar; and by that name itself strangers are signified. Their capital is on the island Sembobitis, and a third in Arabia, Sinat. Between the mountains and the Nile are the Simbarri, the Phalliges, and in the mountains themselves the Asachae, of many nations. They are said to be distant from the sea a journey of 5 days; they live by hunting elephants. An island in the Nile is subject to the queen of the Sembritae.
192| From it the Nubaei, Aethiopians, at a journey of 8 days; their town, set on the Nile, is Tenupsis. The Sesambri, among whom all quadrupeds are without ears, even elephants. But in the part of Africa the Ptonebari and Ptoemphani, who have a dog for king, divining his commands from his movements, the Harusbi, with a town situated far from the Nile, afterward the Archisarmi, Phalliges, Marigarri and Chasamari.
193| Bion reports other towns also on islands: from Sembobitis toward Meroe, over a whole journey of 20 days, on the nearest island the town of the Seberritae, under a queen, and another, Asara; on the second, the town Darde; a third they call Medoe, in which is the town Asel, a fourth, Garroe, of the same name as its town. Thence along the banks the towns Nautis, Modus, Demadatis, Secundum, Collocat, Secande, Navectabe with the territory Psegipta, Candragori, Araba, Summara.
194| The region above Sirbitum, where the mountains end, is reported by some to have coastal Aethiopians, the Nisicathae and Nisitae, which means men of three and four eyes, not because they are so, but because they use their arrows with special aim. But for that part of the Nile which stretches above the Greater Syrtes and the southern ocean, Dalion says there are the Vacathi, using only rain water, the Cisori, the Logonpori, a journey of 5 days from the Oecalices, the Usibalchi, Isbeli, Perusii, Ballii and Cispii.
195| The rest is deserts, then fabulous peoples: toward the west the Nigroe, whose king is said to have one eye in the forehead, the Agriophagi, who live mostly on the meat of panthers and lions, the Pamphagi, who chew everything, the Anthropophagi, who feed on human flesh, the Cynamolgi with dog heads, the Artabatitae, who walk on four feet, wandering like wild beasts, then the Hesperioe, the Perorsi and those we mentioned on the border of Mauretania. A certain part of the Aethiopians lives only on locusts, hardened by smoke and salt for a year's food; these do not pass the fortieth year of life.
196| Agrippa judged that the whole land of the Aethiopians, with the Red Sea, extends in length 2,170,000 paces, and in breadth, with Upper Egypt, 1,296,000. Some have divided the length thus: from Meroe to Sirbitum a voyage of 12 days, from there 15 to the Dabelli, from these a journey of 6 days to the Aethiopian ocean. In all, from the ocean to Meroe it is agreed among the authorities to be about 625,000 paces, and thence to Syene as much as we have said.
197| Aethiopia lies from the winter sunrise to the winter sunset. On its southern hinge forests, chiefly of ebony, are green. From the middle of it a lofty mountain overhanging the sea burns with eternal fires, called Theon Ochema by the Greeks. From it, by a voyage of four days, is the promontory called Hesperu Ceras, on the border of Africa, beside the Hesperian Aethiopians. Some also report in that tract moderate hills clothed in pleasant shade, of the Aegipans and Satyrs.
198| Ephorus has reported that there are very many islands in that whole sea, and Eudoxus and Timosthenes also; Clitarchus, that one was announced to King Alexander, so rich that the inhabitants exchanged horses for talents of gold, and another where a sacred mountain had been found, shaded with forest, a scent of marvelous sweetness distilling from the trees. Opposite the Persian gulf an island named Cerne lies facing Aethiopia, of which neither the size nor the interval from the mainland is agreed; it is reported to have only Aethiopian peoples.
199| Ephorus states that those sailing from the Red Sea cannot be carried to it, because of the heat, beyond certain columns — so small islands are called. Polybius has reported that Cerne is at the farthest part of Mauretania, opposite Mount Atlas, 8 stadia from the land; Cornelius Nepos, that it lies opposite Carthage especially, 1,000 paces from the mainland, and not larger than 2,000 in circuit. Another island is also reported opposite Mount Atlas, itself called Atlantis. From it, by a voyage of 5 days along the wastes, one comes to the Hesperian Aethiopians and the promontory which we have called Hesperu Ceras, from where the front of the lands first turns around to the west and the Atlantic sea.
200| Opposite this promontory too the Gorgades islands are reported, once the home of the Gorgons, two days' sail distant from the mainland, as Xenophon of Lampsacus relates. Hanno, a commander of the Carthaginians, penetrated to them and reported that the women's bodies were hairy, that the men escaped by their speed; the skins of two of the Gorgades he put in the temple of Juno, for the sake of proof and as a marvel, where they were seen until the capture of Carthage.
201| Beyond these still two islands of the Hesperides are reported, and everything around here is so uncertain that Statius Sebosus has given the course from the islands of the Gorgons to the islands of the Hesperides as a voyage of 40 days along Atlantis, and from these to Hesperu Ceras as one. Nor is the report of the islands of Mauretania more certain. It is agreed only that a few were found opposite the Autololes by Juba, in which he had established the dyeing of Gaetulian purple.
202| Some think that beyond these lie the Fortunate Isles and certain others, in which number the same Sebosus, also embracing the distances, reports that Junonia is 750,000 paces from Gades, and from it as far again toward the west Pluvialia and Capraria; that in Pluvialia there is no water except from rain. From these, 250,000, the Fortunate Isles, opposite the left side of Mauretania, toward the eighth hour of the sun; one is called Invallis from its convexity and another Planasia from its appearance, the circuit of Invallis being 300,000 paces; that trees there grow to a height of 140 feet.
203| Juba made inquiry about the Fortunate Isles as follows: that they lie also toward the south, near the west, 625,000 paces from the Purpurariae, so that one sails 250,000 above the west, then seeks the east for 375,000. The first is called Ombrion, with no traces of buildings; it has in the mountains a pool, and trees like the ferula, from which water is pressed, bitter from the black ones, pleasant to drink from the whiter.
204| The second island is called Junonia; on it there is only a small shrine built of stone. Near it, of the same name, a smaller one, then Capraria, crowded with large lizards. In sight of these is Ninguaria, which received this name from its perpetual snow, and is cloudy.
205| The one next to it is called Canaria, from the multitude of dogs of huge size — of which two were brought to Juba —; traces of buildings appear there. While all abound in fruit and in birds of every sort, this one abounds also in palm groves bearing dates and in pine nuts; there is also a quantity of honey, and papyrus and siluri are produced in the rivers. They are troubled by monsters, which are constantly cast up, decaying. And, the circuit of the lands having been abundantly described, outside and inside, the measure of the seas seems to be gathered into a narrow compass.
206| Polybius reported the length from the strait of Gades, on a direct course, to the mouth of the Maeotis as 3,337,500, and from the same starting point to Sicily 1,200,050, Crete 375,000, Rhodes 187,500, the Chelidoniae as much, Cyprus 325,000, thence to Seleucia Pieria in Syria 115,000, a computation which makes 2,440,000.
207| Agrippa rates this same interval from the strait of Gades to the Issic gulf along a direct length at 4,440,000, in which I do not know whether there is an error of number, since he gave the same course from the Sicilian strait to Alexandria as 1,400,050. The whole circuit through the gulfs named, from the same starting point, adds up, within the Maeotic lake, to 15,509,000; Artemidorus adds 756,000, and the same writer reported that with the Maeotis it is 17,390,000 paces.
208| This is the measure of unarmed men, challenging fortune with peaceful daring. Now the size of the parts themselves will be compared; however the diversity of authors will bring difficulty, it will nevertheless be viewed most fittingly with breadth added to length. According to this prescribed method, then, the size of Europe is [….], the length 8,714,000. Africa — that a mean computation may be taken from all the variety of those reporting — makes a length of 3,798,000; the breadth, where it is inhabited, nowhere exceeds 250,000.
209| But since Agrippa made it 910,000 in its Cyrenaic part, including its deserts as far as the Garamantes, as far as they were known, the whole measure that will come into the comparison makes 4,708,000. The length of Asia is admitted to be L.X̅I̅I̅I̅.DCCL; its breadth let it be computed from the Aethiopian sea to Alexandria, situated beside the Nile, so that the measure runs through Meroe and Syene, 1,875,000.
210| It follows, then, that Europe exceeds Asia in size by somewhat less than half of Asia, and that the same is larger than Africa by as much again and a sixth part of Africa. But if all the sums are mixed together, it will be clear that Europe makes up a third of the entire earth, and a little over an eighth, Asia a fourth and a fourteenth, and Africa a fifth and in addition a sixtieth.
211| To all this we will add one further science, a Greek invention of the most exquisite subtlety, so that nothing may be lacking in our survey of the lie of the lands: once the regions have been set out, it may also be known with which of them each region shares a fellowship of the stars, or a kinship of days and nights, and which have shadows equal to one another and the same curvature of the world. So this too shall be given, and the whole earth shall be divided among the sections of the sky. Now the segments of the world are several; our writers have called them circles, the Greeks parallels.
212| The first begins with the part of India that faces south. It extends as far as Arabia and the peoples who live along the Red Sea. It contains the Gedrosi, the Carmani, the Persians, the Elymaei, Parthyene, Aria, Susiane, Mesopotamia, Seleucia surnamed Babylonian, Arabia as far as Petra, Coele Syria, Pelusium, the lower parts of Egypt, which are called the Chora, Alexandria, the coastal parts of Africa, all the towns of Cyrenaica, Thapsus, Hadrumetum, Clupea, Carthage, Utica, both Hippos, Numidia, both Mauretanias, the Atlantic sea, the Pillars of Hercules. Within this embrace of the sky, at noon on the day of the equinox, the pointer they call a gnomon, 7 feet long, casts a shadow no more than 4 feet long; and the longest spans of night and day have 14 equinoctial hours, the shortest, conversely, 10.
213| The next circle begins from India where it slopes toward the west and runs through the middle of the Parthians, Persepolis, the nearer parts of Persis, Hither Arabia, Judaea, and the peoples who live about Mount Lebanon; it takes in Babylon, Idumaea, Samaria, Jerusalem, Ascalon, Joppa, Caesarea, Phoenicia, Ptolemais, Sidon, Tyre, Berytus, Botrys, Tripolis, Byblus, Antioch, Laodicea, Seleucia, the coastal parts of Cilicia, southern Cyprus, Crete, Lilybaeum in Sicily, and northern Africa and Numidia. A gnomon of 35 feet at the equinox makes a shadow 24 feet in length, while the longest day and night come to 14 equinoctial hours with two-fifths of one hour added.
214| The third circle rises from the Indians nearest Imavus. It stretches through the Caspian Gates, the parts nearest Media, Cataonia, Cappadocia, the Taurus, the Amanus, Issus, the Cilician Gates, Soli, Tarsus, Cyprus, Pisidia, Pamphylia, Side, Lycaonia, Lycia, Patara, Xanthus, Caunus, Rhodes, Cos, Halicarnassus, Cnidus, Doris, Chios, Delos, the middle Cyclades, Gythium, Malea, Argos, Laconia, Elis, Olympia, Messene in the Peloponnese, Syracuse, Catina, central Sicily, Sardinia's southern parts, Carteia, and Gades. 100 inches of gnomon make a shadow of 77 inches. The longest day is of 14 and a half equinoctial hours with a thirtieth of one hour.
215| Under the fourth circle lie the regions on the other side of Imavus, southern Cappadocia, Galatia, Mysia, Sardis, Smyrna, Sipylus, the mountain Tmolus, Lydia, Caria, Ionia, Tralles, Colophon, Ephesus, Miletus, Chios, Samos, the Icarian sea, the north of the Cyclades, Athens, Megara, Corinth, Sicyon, Achaia, Patrae, the Isthmus, Epirus, northern Sicily, the eastern part of Narbonese Gaul, and the coast of Spain from New Carthage and thence westward. To a gnomon of 21 feet answer shadows of 16 feet. The longest day has 14 equinoctial hours and two-thirds of one hour.
216| In the fifth segment are contained, from the entrance of the Caspian sea, the Bactri, Hiberia, Armenia, Mysia, Phrygia, the Hellespont, the Troad, Tenedos, Abydos, Scepsis, Ilium, the mountain Ida, Cyzicus, Lampsacus, Sinope, Amisus, Heraclea in Pontus, Paphlagonia, Lemnos, Imbros, Thasos, Cassandria, Thessaly, Macedonia, Larisa, Amphipolis, Thessalonica, Pella, Edesus, Beroea, Pharsalia, Carystus, Euboea of the Boeotians, Chalcis, Delphi, Acarnania, Aetolia, Apollonia, Brundisium, Tarentum, Thurii, Locri, Regium, the Lucani, Naples, Puteoli, the Tuscan sea, Corsica, the Baliares, and central Spain. The gnomon 7 feet, the shadows 6. The greatest length of the day, 15 equinoctial hours.
217| The sixth band, which contains the city of Rome, takes in the Caspian peoples, the Caucasus, the northern parts of Armenia, Apollonia above the Rhyndacus, Nicomedia, Nicaea, Calchadon, Byzantium, Lysimachea, the Chersonese, the Black Gulf, Abdera, Samothrace, Maronea, Aenus, Bessica, Thrace, Maedica, Paeonia, the Illyrians, Durrachium, Canusium, the farthest parts of Apulia, Campania, Etruria, Pisae, Luna, Luca, Genua, Liguria, Antipolis, Massilia, Narbo, Tarraco, central Hither Spain, and thence through Lusitania. Gnomon 8 feet, shadow 8. The longest span of the day is 15 equinoctial hours with a ninth part of one hour added, or, as Nigidius held, a fifth.
218| The seventh division begins from the other shore of the Caspian sea and runs over Callatis, the Bosporus, the Borysthenes, Tomi, the far side of Thrace, the Triballi, the rest of Illyricum, the Hadriatic sea, Aquileia, Altinum, Venetia, Vicetia, Patavium, Verona, Cremona, Ravenna, Ancona, Picenum, the Marsi, the Paeligni, the Sabines, Umbria, Ariminum, Bononia, Placentia, Mediolanum and everything from the Apennines, and beyond the Alps Aquitanian Gaul, Vienna, the Pyrenees, and Celtiberia. To a pointer of 35 feet, shadows of 36, though in part of Venetia the shadow is made equal to the gnomon. The fullest spans of the day are 15 equinoctial hours and three-fifths of an hour.
219| Thus far we have set forth the exact findings of the ancients. The most painstaking of their successors assigned what remains of the earth beyond these to three segments: one from the Tanais through Lake Maeotis and the Sarmatians reaching to the Borysthenes, and then through the Dacians and part of Germany, taking in the Gauls and the shores of the ocean, which would be of 16 hours; a second through the Hyperboreans and Britain, of 17 hours; and last the Scythian one, from the Ripaean ridges to Thule, in which, as we have said, days and nights run on continuously by turns.
220| The same writers also placed two circles before the starting point that we have used: the first through the island of Meroe and Ptolemais on the Red Sea, founded for elephant hunting, where the longest day would be half an hour more than 12 hours; the second running through Syene in Egypt, which would be of 13 hours; and these same writers added to each of the circles half an hour, up to the last. And so much for the lands.

======== Natural History — Book VII ========

1| Such, then, is the state of the world and, within it, of the lands, peoples, seas, notable [….], islands and cities. The nature of the living creatures in it is scarcely less worth contemplating than any other part, even though here too the human mind cannot follow out everything. First place will rightly be given to man, for whose sake nature seems to have brought forth everything else, though at a great and cruel price for such great gifts, so that it is hard to judge whether she has been to man a kinder parent or a harsher stepmother.
2| Before all else, of all living things man alone she clothes with resources not his own. To the rest she has given various coverings of their own: shells, crusts, hides, spines, shaggy coats, bristles, hair, down, feathers, scales, fleeces; even trunks and trees she has protected from cold and heat with bark, sometimes a double one. Man alone she flings, on his very birthday, naked upon the naked ground, straight into wailing and weeping; no other of all the animals is given to tears, and these at the very beginning of life. But laughter, by Hercules, even the earliest and quickest, is granted to none before the 40th day.
3| After this first lesson in the light come bonds that not even the wild beasts born among us receive, and fetters on all his limbs; and so, fortunately born, he lies bound hand and foot, weeping, the animal that is to rule all the rest, and he begins his life with punishment for one fault only: that he was born. Alas for the madness of those who, after such beginnings, think they were born for pride!
4| His first hope of strength, the first gift of time, makes him like a four-footed beast. When does man walk! When does he speak! When is his mouth firm enough for food! How long the crown of his head throbs, the mark of the greatest weakness among all living things! Then the diseases, and all the remedies devised against these ills, and these in turn overcome again and again by new ones! The other creatures know their own nature: some take up speed, others swift flight, others swimming; man knows nothing, nothing without teaching, not how to speak, not how to walk, not how to eat; in short, nothing at nature's prompting except to weep! And so there have been many who judged it best not to be born, or to be done away with as quickly as possible.
5| To man alone of living creatures has grief been given, to him alone luxury, and that in countless ways and in every single part of the body; to him alone ambition, to him alone avarice, to him alone a boundless craving for life, to him alone superstition, to him alone concern for burial, and even for what will come after him. No creature has a frailer life, none a greater lust for everything, none a more bewildered fear, none a fiercer rage. In short, the other animals live decently among their own kind. We see them gather together and stand firm against creatures unlike them: the savagery of lions does not fight within itself, the bite of serpents does not seek out serpents, and not even the monsters and fishes of the sea rage except against other kinds. But man, by Hercules, has most of his ills from man.
6| Of the human race as a whole we have spoken for the most part in our account of the peoples. Nor shall we now treat their rites and customs, which are countless and almost as many as there are communities of men; yet some things, I think, must not be passed over, and above all those of peoples who live farther from the sea, among which I do not doubt that some will seem portentous and incredible to many. For who believed in Ethiopians before he saw them? Or what is not a marvel when it first comes to notice? How many things are judged impossible until they have been done?
7| Indeed the power and majesty of nature lack credibility at every turn, if one takes in only its parts and not the whole of it in the mind. Not to mention the spots of peacocks, tigers and panthers and the markings of so many animals, a small thing to tell but immense to weigh: so many tongues of peoples, so many languages, such variety of speech, that to a foreigner a stranger is scarcely in the place of a man!
8| Again, though in our face and features there are ten parts or a few more, among so many thousands of men no two likenesses exist that cannot be told apart, something no art could achieve by imitation in a handful! Yet in most of these matters I shall not pledge my own credit, but shall rather refer them to the authorities, who will be cited for everything doubtful; only let no one disdain to follow the Greeks, since their diligence is so much greater, or their interest of so much older date.
9| We have shown that there are tribes of Scythians, indeed several, that fed on human bodies. This itself might seem incredible, did we not reflect that in the middle of the world [and in Sicily and Italy] there have been peoples of this monstrous kind, the Cyclopes and the Laestrygonians, and that very recently beyond the Alps it was the custom of those peoples to sacrifice a human being, which is not far from eating one.
10| But next to those who face the north, not far from the very rising of the north wind and the cave said to be its home, a place they call Ges clithron, the Arimaspi are reported to live, whom we have mentioned, marked out by a single eye in the middle of the forehead. Many write, but most notably Herodotus and Aristeas of Proconnesus, that they wage constant war around the mines with the griffins, a winged kind of wild beast, such as is commonly described, which digs gold out of tunnels, the beasts guarding it and the Arimaspi seizing it, each with a marvelous greed.
11| Beyond other Scythians, the Anthropophagi, in a great valley of Mount Imavus, is a region called Abarimon, in which live men of the woods with their feet turned backward behind their legs, of exceptional speed, who roam everywhere with the wild beasts. Baeton, the surveyor of Alexander the Great's marches, reported that these men cannot breathe under another sky, and that for this reason they are not brought to the neighboring kings and none were brought to Alexander.
12| that the earlier Anthropophagi, whom we have said to be toward the north, ten days' journey above the river Borysthenes, drink from the bones of human heads and use scalps with the hair on them as napkins before their breasts, according to Isigonus of Nicaea. The same writer says that in Albania some are born with a gray-blue keenness of eye, gray-haired from childhood at once, who see more by night than by day. The same, that the Sauromatae, 13 days' journey above the Borysthenes, take food always on the third day.
13| Crates of Pergamum says that in the Hellespont around Parium there existed a kind of men that he names Ophiogenes, who were accustomed to relieve the stings of serpents by touch and to draw the poison out of the body by laying on a hand. Varro says that there are still a few there, whose saliva cures the stings of serpents.
14| There was a similar people in Africa, the Psylli, as Agatharchides writes, named from King Psyllus, whose tomb is in a part of the Greater Syrtes. In their bodies was an inborn poison deadly to serpents, with whose smell they put them to sleep; and it was their custom to expose newborn children at once to the fiercest of them and thus to test the chastity of their wives, the serpents not fleeing from those born of adulterous blood. This people itself was almost destroyed by the Nasamones, who now hold those seats. A kind of men from them, however, who had fled or had been absent when the fighting took place, remains today in small numbers.
15| A similar kind still lasts in Italy, the Marsi, who are said to descend from the son of Circe, and for that reason that natural power is in them. And yet in all men there is a poison against serpents: they say that serpents struck with saliva flee as at the touch of boiling water; that if it has penetrated their throats, they even die, and most of all from the fasting mouth of a human. Calliphanes reports that above the Nasamones and those bordering them the Machlyes are androgynes, of both natures, having intercourse with each other in turns. Aristotle adds that in them the right breast is male, the left female.
16| In the same Africa, Isigonus and Nymphodorus say, there are certain families of bewitchers, by whose praise things approved perish, trees wither, infants die. Isigonus adds that there are some of the same kind among the Triballi and Illyrians, who bewitch and kill with the eye as well those they look at too long, especially with angry eyes, and that adults feel their harm more easily; more remarkable is that they have two pupils in each eye.
17| Women of this kind also in Scythia, who are called Bitiae, are reported by Apollonides. Phylarchus reports in Pontus a kind of Thibii, and many others of the same nature, whose marks, he says, are a double pupil in one eye, in the other the image of a horse; that they, moreover, cannot be drowned, not even when weighed down with clothing. A kind not unlike them, the Pharmaci in Aethiopia, Damon reports, whose sweat brings wasting to the bodies it touches.
18| That all women everywhere harm by their look who have double pupils, Cicero also, among us, is an authority. So much did nature, having produced in man the custom of wild beasts of feeding on human flesh, choose also to produce poisons in the whole body and in the eyes of some, so that there should be no evil anywhere that was not in man.
19| Not far from the city Rome, in the land of the Falisci, there are a few families called Hirpi. At the annual sacrifice, which is made to Apollo on Mount Soracte, they walk over a heap of burning wood without being burned, and on this account have by a perpetual decree of the senate exemption from military service and all other duties.
20| In the bodies of some, parts are born that are wonderful for some purpose, as in King Pyrrhus the great toe on his right foot, by whose touch he cured those suffering in the spleen. They report that it could not be burned with the rest of the body and was laid in a casket in a temple.
21| India and the tract of the Aethiopians especially abound in marvels. The greatest animals are produced in India. Dogs larger than the rest are the proof. Trees indeed are reported of such height that arrows cannot be shot over them—and the fertility of the soil, the temperateness of the climate and the abundance of waters bring it about, if one is willing to believe, that troops of horsemen are hidden under a single fig tree—, and reeds of such height that single joints, as a navigable boat, sometimes carry three men each.
22| It is agreed that many there exceed five cubits in height, that they do not spit, that they are afflicted by no pain of the head or teeth or eyes, and rarely of other parts of the body: so hardened are they by the moderate heat of the sun. Their philosophers, whom they call gymnosophists, stand from sunrise to sunset gazing at the sun with unmoving eyes, and all day long stand on hot sands on one foot and then the other. On a mountain whose name is Nulo, Megasthenes states, there are men with feet turned backward, having eight toes on each;
23| in many mountains, moreover, a kind of men with dogs' heads, clothed in the skins of wild animals, utter barking instead of speech, and, armed with claws, live by hunting and fowling; Ctesias writes that there were more than a hundred and twenty thousand of these, according to his report, and that in a certain people of India the women bear once in their lives, and the children turn gray at once. The same writer reports a kind of men called Monocoli, with a single leg each, of wonderful agility in leaping; the same are called Sciapodes, because in the greater heat they lie on the ground on their backs and shade themselves with the shadow of their feet. They are not far from the Troglodytae, and again west of them are some without necks, having eyes on their shoulders.
24| There are also satyrs in the eastern mountains of the Indians (the region is said to be that of the Catarcludi), a very swift animal, now going on four feet, now running upright in human form; on account of their speed they are not caught unless old or sick. Tauron calls a people of the Choromandae wild, without speech, of a horrible screech, with hairy bodies, gray-blue eyes and dogs' teeth. Eudoxus says that in southern India the men have feet a cubit long, the women so small that they are called Struthopodes.
25| Megasthenes says that among the Nomad Indians there is a people called the Sciratae, having only holes in place of nostrils, limp-footed in the manner of snakes. At the farthest bounds of India on the east, around the source of the Ganges, he places the people of the Astomi, without a mouth, whose whole body is hairy and clothed in the down of leaves, living only on breath and the smell which they draw in through their nostrils. They have no food and no drink, only the various scents of roots and flowers and wild apples, which they carry with them on a longer journey, so that the sense of smell may not fail; by a somewhat heavier odor they are killed without difficulty.
26| Above these, in the farthest part of the mountains, the Trispithami and Pygmies are described, not exceeding three spans in length, that is, three dodrantes, with a healthy climate and always in spring, the mountains being set against the north wind, and who, Homer too has reported, are harassed by cranes. The story is that, sitting on the backs of rams and goats, armed with arrows, they come down in spring in a whole column to the sea and destroy the eggs and young of those birds; that the expedition is completed in three months; that otherwise the coming flocks could not be resisted. Their huts are built of mud, feathers and eggshells.
27| Aristotle reports that the Pygmies live in caves, the rest about them as the others. Isigonus thinks that the Cyrni, a kind of Indians, live a hundred and forty years, and likewise the Macrobian Aethiopians and the Seres, and those who inhabit Mount Athos, the latter because they are fed on the flesh of vipers; and so neither on their heads nor in their clothing are there animals harmful to the body.
28| Onesicritus says that in those places of India where there are no shadows, men's bodies reach five cubits and two palms, and that they live 130 years and do not grow old, but die as in middle life. Crates of Pergamum calls the Indians who exceed a hundred years Gymnetae, not a few Macrobii. Ctesias says that a people of these, called the Pandae, situated in the valleys, live two hundred years, with white hair in youth,
29| which turns black in old age, while others, joined to the Macrobii, do not exceed forty years, and their women bear only once. Agatharchides reports this too, and adds that they are fed on locusts and are swift. Clitarchus gave them the name Mandi, and Megasthenes counts as many as three hundred villages of them. He says the women bear in the seventh year of life, and old age comes at the fortieth.
30| Artemidorus says that on the island of Taprobane a very long life is passed without any weakness of the body. Duris says that some of the Indians have intercourse with wild beasts, and that the offspring are mixed and half-wild. Among the Calingi, a people of the same India, women conceive at five years old and do not pass the eighth year of life. And elsewhere men are born with a hairy tail, of exceptional swiftness, others entirely covered by their ears. The river Arabis divides the Oritae from the Indians. These know no other food than fish, which they cut up with their nails, dry in the sun, and so make bread from them, as Clitarchus relates.
31| Crates of Pergamum says that the Troglodytae above Aethiopia are swifter than horses, and likewise that the Aethiopians exceed eight cubits in height; that this people is called Syrbotae. The people of the Nomad Aethiopians along the river Astragus, inclining to the north, called the Menismini, is twenty days' journey distant from the ocean. It lives on the milk of the animals which we call cynocephali, whose herds it pastures, the males being killed except for the sake of offspring.
32| In the wastes of Africa the shapes of men meet one from time to time and vanish in a moment. These and such like mockeries from the race of men nature has made for her own sport, for us marvels of her ingenuity. Of the single things, however, that she makes day by day and almost hour by hour, who could count them? To uncover her power it will be enough to have set these peoples among the prodigies. From here to the few admitted facts about man.
33| It is certain that triplets are born, by the example of the Horatii and Curiatii. More than that is counted among portents, except in Egypt, where the river Nile is fruitful by its drink. Just before the end of the deified Augustus, a woman Fausta, of the common people at Ostia, bore two boys and as many girls, a portent undoubtedly of the famine which followed. It is also found in the Peloponnese that a woman bore five at a birth four times, and that the greater part of her whole offspring lived. And in Egypt, Trogus states, seven are begotten at once in one womb.
34| There are also born those of both sexes whom we call hermaphrodites, once called androgynes and counted among prodigies, but now held as delights. Pompey the Great placed among the adornments of his theater figures famed as wonders, worked, for this reason, more carefully by the talents of great artists; among them one reads of Eutychis of Tralles, carried to the funeral pyre by 20 children, having borne 30 births, and Alcippe, who bore an elephant. This, however, is among the portents. For at the beginning of the Marsic war a slave woman bore a serpent, and offspring of many forms are brought forth in several ways among the monstrous births.
35| Claudius Caesar writes that a hippocentaur was born in Thessaly and died the same day, and in his principate we saw one brought to him from Egypt in honey. Among the examples is a child that returned at once to the womb, at Saguntum, in the year in which it was destroyed by Hannibal.
36| That women are changed into men is not fabulous. We find from the annals that, when Publius Licinius Crassus and Gaius Cassius Longinus were consuls, a girl at Casinum, while living with her parents, became a boy, and by order of the haruspices was taken away to a desert island. Licinius Mucianus has reported that he saw at Argos Arescon, whose name had been Arescusa, who had even been married, then grew a beard and manhood and took a wife; and that he saw a boy at Smyrna of the same lot. I myself saw in Africa, on the day of his wedding, Lucius Consitius, a citizen of Thysdrus, changed into a man, and he was alive when I set these things down.
37| [….] when twins are born, life is rare for the woman in childbed or for the offspring, except for one of the two; but if twins of both sexes are born, the safety of each is rarer still. Females are begotten more quickly than males, just as they age more quickly. Males move more often in the womb and are generally carried on the right side, females on the left.
38| For other living creatures there is a fixed time both for giving birth and for carrying the young; man is born throughout the year and after an uncertain space, one in the seventh month, another in the eighth, and up to the beginning of the eleventh. Before the seventh month none is ever viable. In the seventh, only those conceived on the day before or after the full moon, or at the interlunium, are born.
39| It is handed down in Egypt that birth also occurs in the eighth, and now even in Italy such births are viable, contrary to the opinions of the ancients. These things vary in many ways. Vistilia, wife first of Glitius and afterwards of Pomponius and Orfitus, most distinguished citizens, bore four children by them, always in the seventh month; she bore Suillius Rufus in the eleventh, Corbulo in the seventh, both of them consuls, and afterwards Caesonia, wife of the emperor Gaius, in the eighth.
40| In this number of months, for those born, the greatest danger is within the fortieth day, but for pregnant women in the fourth and eighth month, and miscarriages in them are fatal. Masurius states that Lucius Papirius, as praetor, when a second heir was bringing a suit, granted possession of the goods against him, although the mother said that she had carried the offspring for thirteen months, since no fixed time of giving birth seemed to be established.
41| From the tenth day after conception, pains in the head, dizziness and darkness of the eyes, loathing of foods, and overflow of the stomach are signs of a human being begun. The color is better for one carrying a male and the delivery easier, with movement in the womb on the fortieth day. All is the reverse in the other sex: an unbearable burden, a slight swelling of the legs and groin,
42| and the first movement on the 90th day. But there is most languor in both sexes when the offspring is sprouting hair, and at the full moon, a time which is especially hostile even to infants already born. Indeed the manner of walking and everything that can be mentioned matters in a pregnant woman, so that those who have eaten rather salty foods bring forth offspring lacking nails, and, if they have taken breath, are delivered with greater difficulty. A yawn in labor is fatal, just as a sneeze after intercourse causes miscarriage.
43| It moves to pity and even to shame to reckon how trivial is the origin of the proudest of animals, when for most women the cause of miscarriage is the smell from the extinguishing of lamps. From such beginnings tyrants are born, from such a hangman's spirit! You who trust in the strength of your body, you who embrace the gifts of fortune and do not think yourself even her foster child,
44| but her offspring, you whose mind is that of a commander, you who believe yourself a god, swelling at some success, you could have perished at so small a price! And even today you can perish for less: by how small a bite of a serpent's tooth, or, like the poet Anacreon, by the pip of a raisin, or like the praetor Fabius Senator, strangled by a single hair in a swallow of milk. He, in the end, will weigh life on an even scale who has always remembered human frailty.
45| For a child to come out feet first at birth is against nature, and from this circumstance they have called such children Agrippae, as born with difficulty, in which way Marcus Agrippa too is said to have been born, almost the one example of good fortune among all those born in this manner. Yet he too had poor health of the feet, a wretched youth, a life harassed amid arms and deaths and harmful to approach, a stock unlucky for the world in every line, but most of all through both Agrippinas, who bore the emperors Gaius and Domitius Nero, as many torches for the human race,
46| and besides, by shortness of life, being snatched away in his fifty-first year in the torments of the adulteries of his wife and the heavy slavery of his father-in-law, he is thought to have paid for the omen of his reversed birth. Nero also, who was emperor a little while ago and throughout his principate an enemy of the human race, was born feet first, as his mother Agrippina writes. The rule of nature is for man to be born head first; the custom is for him to be carried out feet first.
47| Those born with the mother cut open are born under better auspices, as the elder Scipio Africanus was born, and the first of the Caesars, named from the cut womb of his mother, for which reason they were also called Caesones. Manilius, who entered Carthage with an army, was born in the same way. They used to call Vopisci those of twins who, retained in the womb, were born when the other was destroyed by miscarriage. For the greatest marvels, though rare, appear around this.
48| Besides woman, few animals know intercourse when pregnant; only one or two superfetate. It stands in the records both of physicians and of those who took pains to follow such things that twelve births were expelled in one miscarriage. But where a little time has intervened between two conceptions,
49| both are carried through, as appeared in Hercules and his brother Iphicles, and in the woman who in a twin birth bore one like her husband and the other like her adulterer, likewise in the slave woman of Proconnesus, who by intercourse on the same day bore one like her master and the other like his steward, and in another, who in a regular delivery of five months produced one child, and again in another, who after delivering a seven-month child bore twins in the months that followed.
50| Those things are now common knowledge: that maimed children are variously born of sound parents, and sound of maimed; that the maimed appear in the same part, that certain marks and birthmarks and even scars are reproduced, and that in a fourth birth the mark of Dacian origin on the arm reappeared
51| (in the family of the Lepidi we have learned that three, with the order interrupted, were born with a membrane drawn over the eye); that some are like their grandfather, and of twins too, one like the father, the other like the mother, and that one born a year after the elder was as like him as a twin; that some women always bear children like themselves, some like the husband, some like neither, some a daughter like the father and a son like themselves. An undoubted example is Nicaeus, a famous boxer born at Byzantium, whose mother, born of an adultery with an Aethiopian, differed not at all in color from other women, while he himself reproduced his Aethiopian grandfather.
52| The reckoning of resemblances is immense, and in it many chance things are believed to have power: sight, hearing, memory, and images drawn in at the very moment of conception. A thought also, flying suddenly through the mind of either parent, is thought to fashion or mix a likeness, and for that reason there are more differences in man than in all other animals, since the speed of thoughts, the quickness of the mind and the variety of talent imprint manifold marks, while in other living creatures
53| the minds are unmoving and alike in all individuals, each in its own kind. A commoner named Artemon was so like Antiochus, king of Syria, that Laodice, the king's wife, when Antiochus was already dead, played through him a mime of his recommendation and of the succession to the kingdom. A certain Vibius, of the common people, and Publicius, a freedman, were like Pompey the Great in a look almost indistinguishable, reproducing that honest countenance and the very dignity of his distinguished brow.
54| A cause of this kind gave his father also the cognomen of his cook Menogenes, when he already had that of Strabo from the look of his eyes, since a slave likewise imitated his defect; the cheap slave of a pork dealer had given Scipio the name Serapio. The mime Salvitto gave the name to a Scipio of the same family after him, as Spinther, an actor of second parts, and Pamphilus, an actor of third parts, did to the colleagues Lentulus and Metellus as consuls, in which it was an exceedingly untimely coincidence also that the images of two consuls at the same time were seen on the stage.
55| On the other hand, the orator Lucius Plancus gave the actor Rubrius a cognomen, and again Burbuleius to Curio the father, and likewise Menogenes to Messalla the censor, actors in the same way. A fisherman in Sicily reproduced even the gaping mouth in speaking of the proconsul Sura, and the drawing back of his tongue and the tumult of his speech, not merely his appearance. A likeness to Armentarius the murmillo was cast in the teeth of Cassius Severus, the famous orator. [Recently, in the house of Junia, a man could not tell Gallio from his freedman Castellanus, nor the senator Agrippinus from the mime Sannio, surnamed Paris.]
56| Toranius, a slave dealer, sold to Antony, already a triumvir, two boys of exceptional beauty, one born in Asia, the other beyond the Alps, as twins: so great was the sameness. When afterward the fraud was detected by the boys' speech and he was reproached by an enraged Antony, who complained among other things of the size of the price (for he had bought them for two hundred thousand sesterces), the slave dealer, of a shrewd mind, replied that he had sold them at that very price because there was nothing wonderful in the likeness of any born from the same womb; but to find those born of different nations with so harmonious a figure was beyond all valuation; and he brought in so timely an admiration that that proscribing spirit, a moment before furious and with insult, reckoned nothing else in his estate as more the gift of his fortune.
57| There is a certain private incompatibility of bodies, and persons who are sterile with each other beget when they have joined with others, as Augustus and Livia. Likewise some men and some women beget only females or only males, and often alternate, like the mother of the Gracchi twelve times and Agrippina the wife of Germanicus nine times. For some, youth is barren; to some it is given to beget once in life.
58| Some women do not carry through their pregnancies, and those, if ever medicine and care have prevailed, generally bear a daughter. The deified Augustus, amid the rarity of other examples, saw his granddaughter's grandson, Marcus Silanus, born in the year in which he died, who, when he held Asia after his consulship, at the accession of the emperor Nero, was killed by his poison.
59| Quintus Metellus Macedonicus, though he left six children, left 11 grandsons, and the daughters-in-law, the sons-in-law and all who greeted him by the title of father, 27.
60| In the daily record of the age of the deified Augustus it is found that in his twelfth consulship, when Lucius Sulla was his fellow consul, on the third day before the April Ides, Gaius Crispinius Hilarus, of free-born common stock of Faesulae, with 8 children, among which number were two daughters, 27 grandsons, 18 great-grandsons and 8 granddaughters, a procession being carried before them all, sacrificed on the Capitol.
61| A woman does not bear after the fiftieth year, and the greater part stop the genital flow at 40. For among men, it is well known that King Masinissa begot a son after his 86th year, whom he named Methimannus, and Cato the Censor, with his eightieth year completed, begot one by the daughter of Salo, his client.
62| for which reason the offspring of his other children were surnamed Liciniani, these Saloniani, and of the latter was the man of Utica. Recently too, when Lucius Volusius Saturninus died in the prefecture of the city, it was known that Volusius Saturninus, who was consul, was born to him by Cornelia of the family of the Scipios after his 62nd year. And up to 75 the begetting of children is found common among obscure persons.
63| Woman is the only animal that menstruates; hence in the womb of one only arise what they have called moles. This is a shapeless, lifeless flesh, repelling the blow and edge of iron. It moves, and it stops the monthly courses like a pregnancy, sometimes fatal, sometimes growing old with the woman, sometimes dropping out by a quicker motion of the bowels. A similar thing is formed in the belly of men too, which they call scirron, as in Oppius Capito, a man of praetorian rank.
64| But nothing is easily found more monstrous than the flow of women. Must turns sour at its approach, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, the shoots of gardens are burned up, the fruits of trees under which they have sat fall off, the brightness of mirrors is dulled by the mere look, the edge of iron is blunted, as is the sheen of ivory, the hives of bees die, bronze and iron are at once seized by rust and a dire smell the air, dogs that have tasted it are driven mad, and the bite is infected with an incurable poison.
65| Indeed, the nature of bitumen, otherwise clinging and tenacious, in the lake of Judaea called Asphaltites, floating on the surface at a certain time of the year, cannot be torn from itself, but sticks to every contact, except to thread [….] which such a poison has infected. They say that even ants, the smallest of animals, have a sense of it, and that grain they have tasted is thrown away and not sought again afterward.
66| And this evil, of such kind and so great, arises in woman every thirty days, and more copiously at a three-month interval, in some women more often in a month, as in some never. But such women do not bear, since this is the material for generating a human, the seed from males gathering it into itself like a curd, and then at the proper time it is animated and given a body. Therefore, when it has flowed in pregnant women, weak or non-viable offspring are produced, or diseased, as Nigidius states; —
67| (the same writer thinks that a woman's milk is not spoiled for the child she is nursing if she conceives again by the same man) — conceptions are reported to be easiest when this state is beginning or ending. We have received as an advance sign of fertility in women that, when the eyes are smeared with a medicament, the saliva is tinged.
68| For the rest, it is not doubtful that in those born the front teeth appear in the seventh month, and first generally in the upper part, that the same fall out in the seventh year and others take their place; that some are even born with teeth, as Manius Curius, who for that reason was surnamed Dentatus, and Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, distinguished men. In females this was a case of ill omen in the times of the kings. When Valeria had been so born,
69| the response of the haruspices prophesying that she would be the ruin of the community to which she was carried, she was taken away to Suessa Pometia, at that time most flourishing, and a truthful outcome followed. — (Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, is evidence that some are born with the genital parts grown together, with an unlucky omen) — some are born with a continuous bone in place of teeth, as the son of Prusias, king of the Bithynians, in the upper part of the mouth.
70| Teeth, moreover, are so unconquered by fires that they are not burned with the rest of the body, yet the same, unsubdued by flames, are hollowed by the corruption of phlegm. They take their whiteness from a certain medicament. They are worn down by use and in some fail much earlier. Nor are they necessary only for food and nourishment, for the front teeth hold the governance of voice and speech, receiving the stroke of the tongue in a kind of harmony, and by the order of their arrangement and their size cutting short or softening or dulling words, and, when they are lacking, taking away all clearness.
71| Indeed an omen too is believed to lie in this part. Thirty-two are allotted to men, except in the nation of the Turduli: those who have had more are thought to be promised longer spans of life. Women have a smaller number: those who have twin teeth above on the right side, named from the dogs, promise the favors of fortune, as in Agrippina, the mother of Domitius Nero; the opposite on the left.
72| — (It is not the custom of peoples to cremate a human being before a tooth has been born) — but more soon about this, when the account runs through the body limb by limb. We have been told that Zoroaster alone of men laughed on the day on which he was born; that his brain throbbed so as to push back a hand laid on it, a presage of the knowledge to come.
73| It is certain that in the third year each has half the measure he will have. In general, however, it is nearly observed that the whole race of mortals is becoming smaller day by day, and that few are taller than their fathers, the fertility of seeds being consumed by the conflagration toward whose turns the age is now inclining. In Crete, when a mountain was rent by an earthquake, a body was found standing, of 46 cubits, which some say is Orion's, others Otus's.
74| The body of Orestes, dug up at the command of an oracle, is believed from the records to have been of 7 cubits. Indeed, nearly a thousand years ago the prophet Homer did not cease to lament that the bodies of mortals were smaller than those of old. The annals do not give the size of Naevius Pollio, but since he was almost killed by the concourse of the people, he was held a kind of prodigy. The tallest of men our age saw, in the principate of the deified Claudius, one named Gabbara, brought from Arabia, nine feet and as many inches in height.
75| Under the deified Augustus there were two, with half a foot added, whose bodies were kept as a marvel in the repository of the gardens of Sallust; their names were Pusio and Secundilla. In the same emperor's time the smallest man, Conopas by name, two feet and a palm in height, was a pet of his granddaughter Julia, and there was a woman, Andromeda, a freedwoman of Julia Augusta. Marcus Varro records that the Roman knights Manius Maximus and Marcus Tullius were two cubits tall, and we ourselves have seen them preserved in coffins. It is well known that children of a foot and a half are born, and some even taller, and that they complete the course of their life in their third year.
76| We find in the records that at Salamis the son of Euthymenes grew to three cubits in three years, slow in his gait, dull in his senses, though he even reached puberty and had a strong voice, and that he was carried off by a sudden contraction of his limbs when the three years had come round. Not long ago we ourselves saw almost all the same things, apart from puberty, in the son of Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman knight who administers the finances of Belgic Gaul. The Greeks call such people ektrapeloi; in Latium they have no name.
77| It has been observed that the distance a man has from his sole to the top of his head is the same as that between the longest fingertips when his hands are spread out; so too the strength is greater in the right side, in some equal in both, and in a few outstanding in the left hand, but never so in women. Males are the heavier, and so are the dead bodies of all living creatures compared with the living, and sleeping ones compared with the waking; the corpses of men float face upward, those of women face downward, as though nature were sparing the modesty of the dead.
78| We have learned that some people live with their bones knit together and without marrow. The sign of them is that they feel no thirst and give off no sweat, although we know that thirst too has been overcome by will, and that the Roman knight Julius Viator, of the allied Vocontian people, in his years as a ward was forbidden fluid by the doctors on account of a disease in which water spreads beneath the skin; habit became his nature, and in old age he went without drink. Others too have in many ways mastered themselves.
79| They say that Crassus, the grandfather of the Crassus killed among the Parthians, never laughed, and for that reason was called Agelastus, just as many have never wept. Socrates, famous for wisdom, was always seen with the same expression, neither more cheerful nor more disturbed. This steadiness of mind sometimes passes into a certain rigidity and a harsh, hard and unbending savagery of nature, and takes away human feelings, the people the Greeks call apatheis, of whom many have been found, and, strange to say, chiefly among the authorities on wisdom,
80| Diogenes the Cynic, Pyrrho, Heraclitus, Timon, who indeed was carried to the point of hatred of the whole human race. But these small distinguishing marks of nature are known in many people in various forms, as with Antonia, Drusus's wife, who never spat, and in Pomponius, the poet of consular rank, who never belched. (Those in whom nature has made the bones solid, who are very rare, are called horny.)
81| Varro is the authority that Tritanus, famous in a gladiators' school for fighting in Samnite armour, small in body but of exceptional strength, and his son, a soldier of Pompey the Great, had sinews running both straight and across in a lattice over the whole body, even in the arms and hands, and he tells a marvellous account of their strength, and also of how an enemy who challenged him, as he fought with his right hand unarmed, [….]
82| was overcome and finally seized [….] with a single finger [….] and carried into the camp. But Vinnius Valens served as a centurion in the praetorian guard of the deified Augustus; he used to hold up wagons loaded with wine-skins until they were emptied, and to stop carts by gripping them with one hand while the beasts strained against him, and to do other wonderful things, which can be seen carved on his monument.
83| The same Marcus Varro says: Rusticelius, called Hercules, used to lift his mule; Fufius Salvius carried up ladders two weights of a hundred pounds on his feet, the same on his hands, and two of two hundred on his shoulders. We too have seen a man named Athanatus, a prodigy of display, walk across the stage wearing a leaden breastplate of five hundred pounds and shod with buskins of five hundred pounds' weight. When the athlete Milo had taken his stand, no one could move him from his footprint, and when he held an apple no one could straighten out even one finger.
84| To have run 1,140 stadia from Athens to Lacedaemon in two days was a great feat for Philippides, until Anystis, a Lacedaemonian runner, and Philonides, who ran for Alexander the Great, covered the distance from Sicyon to Elis, 1,305, in a single day. Nowadays indeed we know that some in the circus endure 160,000 paces, and recently, in the consulship of Fonteius and Vipstanus, a boy 8 years old ran from noon to evening 75,000 paces. The wonder of this achievement will only be fully grasped if one considers the longest journey made in vehicles by night and day, that of Tiberius Nero hurrying into Germany to his sick brother Drusus. That was 200,000 paces.
85| Keenness of the eyes has furnished examples that most surpass belief. Cicero relates that the Iliad of Homer, a poem written on parchment, was enclosed in a nut. He says too that there was a man who could see 135,000 paces. Marcus Varro even gives him a name: he was called Strabo, and in the Punic war, from the promontory of Lilybaeum in Sicily, when the fleet was leaving the harbour of Carthage, he used to tell even the number of the ships. Callicrates made ants out of ivory, and other animals so small that their parts could not be distinguished by anyone else. Myrmecides too became famous in the same line for a four-horse chariot made of the same material, which a fly covered with its wings, and a ship that a little bee hid with its wings.
86| Hearing has one example that is marvellous: the battle in which Sybaris was destroyed was heard of at Olympia on the very day on which it was fought. For the report of the Cimbrian victory, and the Castors who announced to Rome the Persian victory on the very day it happened, were both visions and presages of divine powers.
87| Endurance of the body, since the lot of calamities is frequent, has produced countless proofs: the most famous among women is that of Leaena the courtesan, who under torture did not betray the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogiton; among men, that of Anaxarchus, who, being tortured for a similar reason, spat into the tyrant's face his tongue, bitten through by his teeth, which was the only hope of information.
88| Who has had the greatest memory, a good most necessary to life, is not easy to say, so many having won renown for it. King Cyrus could give back their names to all the soldiers in his army; Lucius Scipio to the Roman people; Cineas, the envoy of King Pyrrhus, to the senate and the equestrian order at Rome on the day after he had arrived. Mithridates, king of twenty-two nations, administered justice in as many languages, addressing each nation in turn before the assembly without an interpreter.
89| Charmadas indeed in Greece reproduced any volumes in the libraries that anyone demanded, as if he were reading them. Finally this skill was formed and devised by Simonides, the lyric poet, then brought to completion by Metrodorus of Scepsis, so that nothing that had been heard was not repeated in the very same words.
90| Nor is there anything else so fragile in man: it feels the injuries of diseases and accident, and even of fear, sometimes in part, sometimes entirely. One man, struck by a stone, forgot only his letters; another, who fell from a very high roof, lost the memory of his mother and relatives and kinsfolk; another, when ill, that of his slaves, and even of his own name, the orator Messala Corvinus. And so it often tries to fail and rehearses doing so, even when the body is at rest and sound. In sleep too it is cut off, as it creeps on, so that the empty mind asks where it is.
91| In vigour of mind I judge the most outstanding man ever born to have been Caesar the dictator, and I do not now recall his courage and steadiness, nor his loftiness capable of grasping everything contained in the heavens, but his own particular vigour and swiftness, winged by a kind of fire. We have been told that he was accustomed to write or read, and simultaneously to dictate and listen, and to dictate letters, on affairs of such importance, four at once [to secretaries, or, if he were doing nothing else, seven].
92| The same man fought in pitched battles fifty-two times, the only man to surpass Marcus Marcellus, who fought thirty-nine times. For apart from his victories in the civil wars, the eleven hundred thousand and ninety-two thousand men killed in battle by him I would not myself count as part of his glory, since this is even a great injury forced upon the human race, which he himself admitted to be so by not publishing the slaughter of the civil wars.
93| Let it more justly be credited to Pompey the Great that he took 846 ships from the pirates; to Caesar let there be assigned as his own and particular, besides what is said above, the distinction of clemency, in which he surpassed everyone to the point of regret. The same man gave an example of greatness of spirit with which no other can be compared.
94| For to list in this connection the spectacles he gave, the riches he poured out, or the magnificence of his works would favour extravagance: what was the true and incomparable loftiness of an unconquered spirit was this, that when Pompey the Great's cases of letters were captured at Pharsalus, and again Scipio's at Thapsus, he burned them in the best of faith and did not read them.
95| But it belongs to the glory of the Roman empire, and not only to that of one man, that all the titles of Pompey the Great's victories and triumphs be proclaimed in this place, equalling not only the splendour of the deeds of Alexander the Great but nearly even those of Hercules and Father Liber.
96| So, when Sicily had been recovered, where as a Sullan, first rising up in the cause of the republic, he took his first auspices, and when the whole of Africa had been subdued and brought under his sway, and from it the name of Great taken as spoil, a Roman knight, which no one before had been, he was carried back in a triumphal chariot, and at once crossed over to the setting of the sun, and after raising trophies on the Pyrenees he credited to his victory 876 towns brought under his sway from the Alps to the borders of Further Spain, and with greater spirit kept silent about Sertorius; and when the civil war, which stirred up every foreign war, was extinguished, a second time as a Roman knight he brought in triumphal chariots, having been commander-in-chief so many times before he was a soldier.
97| Afterwards he was sent to all the seas and then to the rising of the sun, and he brought back these titles to his country, in the manner of those who win in the sacred contests (for they are not themselves crowned but crown their native lands); these honours, then, he gave to the city in the shrine of Minerva which he was dedicating out of the spoils: GNAEUS POMPEIUS THE GREAT, COMMANDER, HAVING ENDED A WAR OF 30 YEARS, HAVING ROUTED, PUT TO FLIGHT, SLAIN, OR RECEIVED IN SURRENDER ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-ONE HUNDRED-THOUSANDS AND 83,000 MEN, HAVING SUNK OR CAPTURED 846 SHIPS, HAVING RECEIVED INTO ALLEGIANCE 1,538 TOWNS AND FORTS, HAVING SUBDUED THE LANDS FROM LAKE MAEOTIS TO THE RED SEA, PAYS A VOW DESERVEDLY TO MINERVA.
98| This is the summary of his deeds in the East. But of the triumph which he celebrated on the third day before the Kalends of October, in the consulship of Marcus Piso and Marcus Messala, this was the preface: WHEN HE HAD FREED THE SEA COAST FROM PIRATES AND RESTORED THE COMMAND OF THE SEA TO THE ROMAN PEOPLE, HE TRIUMPHED OVER ASIA, PONTUS, ARMENIA, PAPHLAGONIA, CAPPADOCIA, CILICIA, SYRIA, THE SCYTHIANS, THE JEWS, THE ALBANIANS, HIBERIA, THE ISLAND OF CRETE, THE BASTERNAE, AND IN ADDITION TO THESE OVER KING MITHRIDATES AND TIGRANES.
99| The sum of sums in that glory was (as he himself said in the assembly, when he was speaking of his own deeds) that he had received Asia as the farthest of the provinces and had returned it as the middle of his country. If anyone, on the other hand, wished in the same manner to review the deeds of Caesar, who appeared greater than he, he would certainly have to enumerate the whole circle of the earth, which will be agreed to be endless.
100| In the other kinds of virtue many people have been outstanding in various ways. Cato, the first of the Porcian family, is thought to have excelled in three supreme things in a man, being the best orator, the best general and the best senator; all of which seem to me, even if not earlier, yet more brilliantly to have shone in Scipio Aemilianus, and besides he lacked the hatred of very many which Cato suffered from. So let it be Cato's own that he pleaded his cause forty-four times, and that no one was more often prosecuted and always acquitted.
101| In whom courage has been most conspicuous is a question without bounds, above all if poetic fable is admitted. Quintus Ennius, admiring Titus Caecilius Teucer and his brother especially, added a sixteenth book of his Annals on their account. Lucius Siccius Dentatus, who was tribune of the plebs in the consulship of Spurius Tarpeius and Aulus Aternius, not long after the kings had been driven out, has indeed the most numerous votes: he fought in a hundred and twenty battles, was victor in eight single combats on challenge, and was marked by forty-five scars on the front of his body and none on his back.
102| The same man took 34 sets of spoils, was presented with eighteen plain spears, twenty-five trappings, eighty-three torques, 160 armlets, 26 crowns, among them 14 civic, eight golden, three mural and one siege-crown, a purse of bronze, and 10 prisoners and twenty oxen at once; he followed nine commanders celebrating triumphs chiefly through his own efforts, and besides (what I reckon the best of his achievements) he convicted before the people one of the generals, Titus Romilius, after his consulship, of bad conduct of a military command.
103| The distinctions of Capitolinus would be no less, if he had not lost them at the end of his life. Seventeen years before, he had taken two sets of spoils. First of all men as a knight he had received the mural crown; he had received six civic crowns, 37 gifts, 23 scars on the front of his body, he had saved Publius Servilius, master of the horse, being himself wounded in the shoulder and thigh. Above all he alone had saved the Capitol and in it the supreme interest of the state from the Gauls, if only he had not saved it for his own kingship.
104| But in these there are indeed great works of courage, but greater ones of fortune. To Marcus Sergius, as I at least judge, no one would rightly have preferred any man, though his great-grandson Catiline detracts from the favour due the name. He lost his right hand in his second campaign; in two campaigns he was wounded twenty-three times, and because of this he was useful with neither hand and neither foot, sound in one respect only, and a soldier disabled in very many campaigns afterwards. Twice he was captured by Hannibal (for it was not with any enemy whatever that he had to deal), twice he escaped from his chains, and for twenty months not a day passed when he was not guarded in chains or fetters.
105| With his left hand alone he fought four times, one day having two horses stabbed under him as he sat on them. He made himself a right hand of iron, and with it strapped on he fought, relieved Cremona from siege, defended Placentia, and took twelve camps of the enemy in Gaul, all of which appears from his own speech, delivered when in his praetorship he was barred from the sacred rites by his colleagues as disabled; what heaps of crowns he would have piled up had the enemy been different!
106| For it matters greatly into what times each man's courage has fallen. What civic crowns did the Trebia or the Ticinus or Trasimene give? What crown was earned at Cannae, where to have fled was the supreme work of courage? The rest, certainly, were victors over men; Sergius conquered even fortune.
107| Who could make a choice of the glory of talents through so many kinds of learning and so great a variety of subjects and works, unless perhaps it is agreed that no one has been more fortunate than Homer, the Greek bard, whether judged by the form of his work or by its matter?
108| And so Alexander the Great (for by distinguished judgements this lofty verdict will be best delivered, and without envy), among the spoils of Darius king of the Persians, a case of perfumes having been taken, which was costly with gold, pearls and gems, and his friends pointing out its various uses, since the warrior, soiled by the camp, was tired of perfume, said: No, by Hercules, let it be given to guard the books of Homer, so that the human mind's most precious product might be kept in the richest product of craft.
109| The same man ordered the household and hearth-gods of the poet Pindar to be spared when he was plundering Thebes; he counted the homeland of the philosopher Aristotle as his own, and mingled so kindly a testimony with the brilliance of so great a career. The killers of the poet Archilochus were exposed by Apollo at Delphi. Father Liber ordered the burial of Sophocles, prince of the tragic buskin, when he died, while the Lacedaemonians were besieging the walls and their king Lysander was repeatedly warned in a dream to allow his delight to be buried. The king inquired who had died at Athens, and without difficulty understood which of them the god had indicated, and gave peace to the funeral.
110| To Plato, the high priest of wisdom, the tyrant Dionysius, otherwise born to savagery and pride, sent a ship hung with fillets to meet him, and himself received him as he landed on the shore, in a four-horse chariot of white horses. Isocrates sold a single speech for twenty talents. Aeschines of Athens, the greatest orator, when he had read at Rhodes the accusation he had used, read also the defence of Demosthenes, by which he had been driven into that exile, and said, to those who were amazed, that they would have been more amazed still if they had heard the man himself pleading, having become by his misfortune a mighty witness for his enemy.
111| The Athenians drove Thucydides into exile as a general, and recalled him as the founder of history, admiring the eloquence of the man whose valour they had condemned. A great testimony also fell to Menander in the comic sock, from the kings of Egypt and Macedonia, who sought him with a fleet and through ambassadors, but a greater one from himself, when he preferred a conscious sense of letters to royal fortune.
112| Roman leaders too have borne witness even to foreigners. Gnaeus Pompey, when the Mithridatic war was finished, as he was about to enter the house of Posidonius, famous for his profession of wisdom, forbade his lictor to strike the door, as custom required, and the man to whom East and West had bowed lowered the fasces to the doorway of learning. Cato the censor, in that famous embassy of three leaders of wisdom from Athens, having heard Carneades, judged that the envoys should be dismissed as soon as possible, since with that man arguing it could not easily be discerned what was true.
113| What a change of manners! The former always held, besides, that all the Greeks should be driven out of Italy, but his great-grandson Cato of Utica brought home one philosopher from his military tribunate, and another from his mission to Cyprus; and it is memorable that of the two Catos the one drove that tongue away, the other brought it in.
114| But let us also review the glory of our own people. The elder Africanus ordered a statue of Quintus Ennius to be placed on his tomb, and that famous name, or rather spoil seized from a third part of the world, to be read in his last ashes with the title of the poet. The deified Augustus forbade the poems of Virgil to be burned, against the modest wish of his will, and so a greater testimony befell the bard than if he himself had approved his own work.
115| In the library which was the first in the world to be made public, at Rome, by Asinius Pollio out of the spoils of war, the likeness of Marcus Varro was set up, the only one of a living man, with no less glory, as I at least think, since the foremost orator and citizen, out of that multitude of talents which then existed, gave this crown to one man alone, than when Pompey the Great gave the same man the naval crown from the war against the pirates.
116| Roman examples are then countless, if one cares to pursue them, since a single nation has produced more eminent men in every kind than the other lands. But with what expiation, Marcus Tullius, could I pass you over in silence, or with what distinction should I proclaim you as most outstanding? With what rather than the testimony of that whole people, the most ample of nations, when from your entire life only the works of your consulship were chosen?
117| With you speaking, the tribes gave up the agrarian law, that is, their own livelihood; with you urging, they pardoned Roscius, the author of the theatre law, and bore with equanimity the stigma of the distinction of seats; with you pleading, the children of the proscribed were ashamed to seek office; your genius Catiline fled; you proscribed Marcus Antony. Hail, you first of all called father of your country, first to earn a triumph in the toga and the laurel of the tongue, and parent of eloquence and of Latin letters, who earned (as the dictator Caesar, once your enemy, wrote of you) a laurel greater than that of all triumphs, by as much as it is more to have advanced the bounds of the Roman mind so far than those of the empire.
118| In the remaining goods of the mind they surpassed other mortals: in wisdom, those who for that reason were surnamed Catus and Corculum among the Romans, and among the Greeks Socrates, preferred above all by the oracle of Pythian Apollo.
119| Again, mortals gave a partnership with the oracles to Chilon the Lacedaemonian, by consecrating at Delphi his three precepts in golden letters, which are these: that each should know himself, and desire nothing too much, and that misery is the companion of debt and of lawsuit. Moreover his funeral, when he had died at Olympia with joy at his son's victory, all Greece escorted. Divinity and a certain fellowship with the heavenly ones was most distinguished among women in the Sibyl, among men in Melampus among the Greeks, and in Marcius among the Romans.
120| Scipio Nasica was judged the best man once, from the foundation of the world, by the senate under oath, and the same man in the white toga, twice rejected, was branded by the people. In sum, he was not allowed to die in his own country, no more, by Hercules, than Socrates, adjudged the wisest by Apollo, was allowed to be outside chains. The most chaste woman was judged once, by the verdict of the matrons: Sulpicia, daughter of Paterculus, wife of Fulvius Flaccus, chosen from the hundred who had been appointed to dedicate the image of Venus according to the Sibylline books; and a second time by the test of religion: Claudia, when she brought the mother of the gods into Rome.
121| Examples of piety have appeared in endless number throughout the world, but at Rome there is one with which all the rest could not be compared. A woman of low rank among the plebeians, and therefore obscure, who had just given birth, obtained admission to her mother, who had been shut up in prison for punishment, though the doorkeeper had always searched her beforehand so that she should bring in no food; she was caught nourishing her mother from her own breasts. For this marvel the mother's life was given as a gift to piety, and both were granted perpetual maintenance, and that place was consecrated to the same goddess, a temple of Piety being built on the site of that prison, in the consulship of Gaius Quinctius and Manius Acilius, where now the theatre of Marcellus stands.
122| The father of the Gracchi, having caught snakes in his house, when it was answered that he himself would live if the one of the other sex were killed, said: No, kill mine; for Cornelia is young and can still bear children. This was to spare his wife and to consult the interests of the state; and it soon followed. Marcus Lepidus died, after a divorce, of love for his wife Appuleia. Publius Rutilius, hindered by a slight illness, died on the spot when told that his brother had been rejected in his candidacy for the consulship. Publius Catienus Philotimus loved his patron so much that, appointed heir to the whole estate, he threw himself on his funeral pyre.
123| Countless people have been distinguished for knowledge of various arts, yet it is fitting that only some be touched upon by those who pluck the flower of mankind: in astrology Berosus, to whom for his divine predictions the Athenians publicly set up a statue in the gymnasium with a gilded tongue; in grammar Apollodorus, whom the Amphictyons of Greece honoured; in medicine Hippocrates, who foretold the plague coming from the Illyrians and sent his pupils round the cities to help, for which service Greece decreed him the honours it decreed to Hercules. The same science in Cleombrotus of Ceos King Ptolemy rewarded at the Megalensian rites with a hundred talents, after King Antiochus had been saved.
124| Great also was the fame of Critobulus, for drawing an arrow out of King Philip's eye and treating the loss of sight without disfigurement of the face; but the greatest was that of Asclepiades of Prusa, who founded a new school, scorning the envoys and promises of King Mithridates, and discovered the method by which wine cures the sick; he brought a man back from his funeral and preserved him, but above all he made a wager with fortune that he should not be thought a doctor if he himself were ever in any way unwell. And he won, dying in extreme old age from a fall down a staircase.
125| A great testimony to Archimedes for his knowledge of geometry and machines fell to him from Marcus Marcellus, who forbade, when Syracuse was taken, that this one man be harmed, unless the thoughtlessness of a soldier should defeat the order. Chersiphron of Cnossus was also praised for building the admirable temple of Diana at Ephesus, Philon for the arsenal of 400 ships at Athens, Ctesibius for discovering the pneumatic principle and hydraulic organs, Dinochares for laying out Alexandria for Alexander when he founded it in Egypt. This same commander issued an edict that no one else than Apelles should paint him, none other than Pyrgoteles carve him, none other than Lysippus cast him in bronze. These arts have been made famous by many more examples.
126| King Attalus bid a hundred talents for a single panel by Aristides the Theban painter; Caesar the dictator bought two by Timomachus, the Medea and the Ajax, for eighty, meaning to dedicate them in the shrine of Venus Genetrix. King Candaules paid back in gold for the picture by Bularchus of the destruction of the Magnesians, a work of no moderate size. King Demetrius, surnamed the Besieger, did not burn Rhodes, so as not to burn a panel by Protogenes placed in that part of the wall.
127| Praxiteles was made famous by his marble, and especially by the Cnidian Venus, remarkable for the mad love of a certain young man, and by the valuation of King Nicomedes, who tried to exchange it for the great public debt of the Cnidians. The Olympian Jupiter of Phidias bears witness every day, and for Mentor the Capitoline one and the Ephesian Diana, to which his vessels of art were consecrated.
128| The highest price of a human being born in slavery up to this day, so far as I have found, was paid for one skilled in grammar, when Daphnis was sold by Attius of Pisaurum and Marcus Scaurus, the leading man of the state, bid IIID̅C̅C̅. In our own time actors have exceeded this, and not by little, but these bought their own freedom,
129| since already among our ancestors the actor Roscius is reported to have earned II D a year, unless anyone in this place looks for the steward of the Armenian war waged a little while ago on account of Tiridates, whom Nero freed for III |C̅X̅X̅X̅|. But that was the price of a war, not of a man, by Hercules as much as of lust, not of beauty, as was the price paid for Paezon, one of the eunuchs of Sejanus, III |D|, when Clutorius Priscus was the buyer. That insult indeed he turned to profit, having bought him amid the mourning of the state, since no one had leisure to accuse.
130| Of the peoples of the whole world, the one most outstanding of all in virtue has without doubt been the Roman. Which man has had the greatest happiness is not for human judgement, since each person defines prosperity itself in a different way and by his own character. If we wish to make a true judgement and to decide with every show of fortune rejected, no mortal is happy. Fortune deals more than abundantly and settles with generous indulgence with him who can rightly be called not unhappy. For even if there were nothing else, there is certainly the fear that fortune may grow weary, and once that has been admitted, happiness is not solid.
131| What of the fact that no mortal is wise at every hour? And would that as many people as possible judged this false, and not as if spoken by a prophet! Vain mortality, ingenious at deceiving itself, reckons after the custom of the people of Thrace, who put pebbles distinguished by colour into an urn as a test of each day, and on the last day separate and count them, and so pronounce on each person.
132| What of the fact that this day, praised by the brightness of its pebble, has been the origin of evil? How many have been ruined by the power they received! How many have been destroyed by good things and plunged into the extremes of punishment, those good things, of course, while that hour was one of joy! So it truly is: one day judges another, and only the last judges of all, and therefore no one is to be trusted. What of the fact that good things are not equal to bad even in equal number, and no joy is to be weighed against the least grief? Ah, vain and imprudent diligence! The number of days is compared, where weight is sought!
133| Only one woman in all time is found, Lampido of Lacedaemon, who was a king's daughter, a king's wife, a king's mother; only one, Berenice, who was daughter, sister and mother of Olympic victors; one family, the Curios, in which three orators arose in unbroken succession, and one of the Fabii, in which there were three consecutive leaders of the senate: Marcus Fabius Ambustus, then Fabius Rullianus his son, then Quintus Fabius Gurges, who was the grandson.
134| The other examples of changing fortune are countless. For what great joys does she produce except from evils, or what immense evils except from vast joys? She preserved the senator Marcus Fidustius, proscribed by Sulla, for 36 years, only to proscribe him a second time. He outlived Sulla, but only as far as Antony, and it is agreed that Antony proscribed him for no other reason than that he had been proscribed before.
135| She wished Publius Ventidius alone to triumph over the Parthians, but the same man she had led as a boy in the triumph of Gnaeus Pompey over Asculum, although Masurius is the authority that he was led in triumph twice; Cicero says he had been a muleteer in the army's bakery, and very many that he endured a needy youth in the soldier's boot.
136| There was also Balbus Cornelius the elder, consul, but he had been accused, and the jury had been sent out to decide whether the rods could lawfully be used on him; he was the first of foreigners, and even of those born on the ocean, to enjoy that honour, which our ancestors had denied even to Latium. There is also Lucius Fulvius among the notable examples, consul of the rebelling Tusculans, and when he had crossed over, at once adorned with the same honour by the Roman people; he alone triumphed at Rome in the very year in which he had been an enemy, over those of whom he had been consul.
137| One man up to this age has claimed for himself the surname of Fortunate, Lucius Sulla, adopted of course by civil blood and by assault on his country. And by what proofs of good fortune was he led to it? Because he had been able to proscribe and butcher so many thousands of citizens? O perverse interpretation, and unlucky for the time to come! Were those who then perished, whom we pity today, of no better lot, when everyone hates Sulla?
138| Come, was not the end of his life crueller than the calamity of all those proscribed by him, with his body eating itself away and breeding punishments for him? Even if he concealed this, and we believe that in his last dream, in which he in a way died, envy was conquered by glory in him alone, yet he confessed that this was lacking to his good fortune, that he had not dedicated the Capitol.
139| Quintus Metellus, in the speech which he delivered in the final praises of his father Lucius Metellus, pontiff, consul twice, dictator, master of the horse, a member of the Fifteen for distributing lands, who led in triumph the largest number of elephants from the First Punic War, left it written that he had accomplished ten greatest and best things, in seeking which wise men spend their lives:
140| for he had wished to be a foremost warrior, the best orator, the bravest general, to have the greatest affairs conducted under his own auspices, to enjoy the highest office, to be in the highest wisdom, to be held the first senator, to acquire great wealth in an honest way, to leave many children, and to be the most distinguished man in the state; these had befallen him and no one else since the foundation of Rome.
141| It is long to refute it and superfluous, when one single misfortune refutes it abundantly, since this Metellus passed an old age bereft of sight, having lost it in a fire when he rescued the Palladium from the temple of Vesta, for a memorable cause but with a wretched result. Hence it comes that he ought not to be called unhappy, yet cannot be called happy. The Roman people granted him what it had granted to no other since the foundation of time, that whenever he went to the senate he should be carried to the senate house in a chariot: a great and lofty gift to him, but given in place of his eyes.
142| The son too of this Quintus Metellus, who said those things of his father, is counted among the rare examples of human happiness: for besides the most ample honours and the surname of Macedonicus, he was borne to his pyre by four sons, one of praetorian rank, three of consular rank, two of whom had triumphed and one been censor, each of which few have attained even singly.
143| Yet in the very flower of his standing, he was seized by Gaius Atinius Labeo, whose surname was Macerio, a tribune of the plebs whom as censor he had expelled from the senate, as he was returning from the Campus at midday, when the forum and the Capitol were empty, and dragged to the Tarpeian rock to be thrown down; that numerous band indeed, which called him father, came running, but, as was necessary in a sudden event, slowly and as if to a funeral, since there was no right of resisting, or of driving off one who was sacrosanct, and he was about to perish through the works of his own virtue and censorship, when with difficulty a tribune was found to intervene, and from the very threshold of death he was called back by another's favour and lived afterwards,
144| the goods also being then consecrated by the man he had condemned, as if it were too little that the penalty of the throat twisted with a rope, and of blood forced out through the ears, had been exacted. For my part, I would count it among his calamities too that he was an enemy of the later Africanus, by the testimony of Macedonicus himself, who said: Go, my sons, celebrate my funeral; you will never see the funeral of a greater citizen. And he was saying this when there were already a Balearicus and a Diadematus, and he himself was already Macedonicus.
145| But if only that injury is to be estimated, who could rightly call him happy, who was in danger of perishing at the lust of an enemy, and not even an enemy such as Africanus? What was it worth to have conquered enemies? Or what honours and chariots did that violence of fortune not drive back, with the censor dragged through the midst of the city (for this had been the only way of delaying him), dragged to the Capitol, the very place into which he had himself, triumphing, not dragged even captives in such a manner, with the spoils of the gods?
146| This crime was made greater by the good fortune that followed, since Macedonicus was in danger of losing even a funeral so great [such], in which he was carried to his pyre by sons who had triumphed, as though triumphing even in his funeral. There is certainly no solid happiness which any insult has broken in life, much less so great a one. For the rest, I do not know whether it adds to the glory of the character or to the pain of indignation that among so many Metelli the so wicked audacity of Gaius Atinius was always unavenged.
147| In the deified Augustus too, whom all mortality in this judgement may name, if everything is carefully weighed, great volumes of human fortune would be found: the rejection in the mastership of the horse under his great-uncle, and Lepidus preferred against his candidacy; the odium of the proscription, through partnership in the triumvirate with the worst of citizens, and not even in an equal share,
148| but with Antony the heavier; the battle of Philippi, his illness, his flight and three days sick in a marsh, and (as Agrippa and Maecenas admit) swollen with water spread beneath the skin, in his hiding place; the shipwrecks in Sicily and again a hiding in a cave there; then in the flight by sea, with the enemy's band pressing, his prayers to Proculeius to bring him death; the anxiety of the Perusine strife, the worry of the war at Actium,
149| in the Pannonian wars a fall from a tower, so many mutinies of soldiers, so many dangerous illnesses of the body, the suspected hopes of Marcellus, the shameful sending away of Agrippa, his life so often sought by plots, the blame laid for the deaths of his children, and griefs sad not only through bereavement, the adultery of his daughter and the plans of parricide made public, the insulting withdrawal of his stepson Nero, another adultery in his granddaughter; then so many evils joined: lack of pay for the troops, the rebellion of Illyricum, the levy of slaves for want of young men, plague in the city, famine in Italy, the decision to die and a four-day fast, the greater part of death taken into the body;
150| next to these the disaster of Varus and the foul bruising of his majesty, the disowning of Postumus Agrippa after adopting him, the longing for him after his banishment, then the suspicion against Fabius and the betrayal of secrets, and from this the designs of his wife and Tiberius, his last care. In sum, that god, and whether he gained heaven or earned it I do not know, departed leaving as his heir the son of his enemy.
151| In this reckoning there come to mind the Delphic oracles, sent out by the god as if to rebuke the vanity of men. They are these two: that Pedius was the most fortunate, who had lately died for his country; and again, when consulted by Gyges, then the most powerful of the lands, that Aglaus of Psophis was the happier. This was an old man who in the narrowest corner of Arcadia farmed a small estate, yet one amply sufficing for a year's food, never leaving it, and, as is clear from his manner of life, with the least desire experiencing the least ill in life.
152| Euthymus the boxer, always victor at Olympia and defeated once, was consecrated while living and conscious, on the order of the same oracle and with the assent of Jupiter, greatest of the gods. His native place was Locri in Italy; I find that Callimachus marvelled as at nothing else that his statue there and another at Olympia were touched by lightning on that same day, and that the god ordered sacrifice to him, which was done both while he lived and after his death; and that there is nothing wonderful about him except this, that it pleased the gods.
153| Concerning the span and length of human life, not only the situation of places but the times, and the lot of each at birth, have made it uncertain. Hesiod, who first reported anything on this, fabulously, as I think, setting much above the age of men, attributed to the crow nine of our lifetimes, four times that to stags, three times that again to ravens, and the rest more fabulously still to the phoenix and the Nymphs.
154| The poet Anacreon assigns 150 years to Arganthonius, king of the Tartesians, and ten years more to Cinyras of the Cypriots, 200 to Aegimius; Theopompus gives 157 to Epimenides of Cnossus; Hellanicus says that some in Aetolia of the tribe of the Epii complete two hundred apiece, and Damastes supports him, recording that Pictoreus, outstanding among them in body and strength, lived even 300; Ephorus gives the kings of the Arcadians thirty years each;
155| Alexander Cornelius says that a certain Dando in Illyricum lived 500, Xenophon in his voyage round the coast that the king of the island of the Lutmii lived 600 and, lying sparingly, that his son lived 800. All this has come about through ignorance of the times. For some defined a year by summer, and another by winter; others by four divided seasons, like the Arcadians, whose years were of three months; some by the waning of the moon, like the Egyptians. And so among them it is reported that men have lived even single thousands of years.
156| But to pass to what is admitted: it is almost certain that Arganthonius of Gades reigned 80 years; they think he began at forty. It is beyond doubt that Masinissa reigned 60 years, and that Gorgias of Sicily lived 108. Quintus Fabius Maximus was augur for 63 years. Marcus Perpenna, and lately Lucius Volusius Saturninus, outlived all whom they had asked their opinion when they were consuls. Perpenna left seven of those whom he had chosen as censor; he lived 98 years.
157| In this matter it occurs to me to note also that there was just one five-year period in which no senator died, when the censors Flaccus and Albinus closed the lustrum, until the next censors, from the year of the city 579. Marcus Valerius Corvinus completed a hundred years, and between his first and sixth consulships there were 46 years. The same man sat in the curule chair twenty-one times, as often as no other. The pontiff Metellus equalled the span of his life.
158| And among women Livia, wife of Rutilius, passed 97 years; Statilia, in the reign of the emperor Claudius, of a noble house, 99; Terentia, Cicero's wife, 103; Clodia, wife of Ofilius, 115, who also gave birth fifteen times. The mime Lucceia performed on the stage for 100 years. Galeria Copiola, an interlude dancer, was brought back to the stage in the consulship of Gaius Poppaeus and Quintus Sulpicius, at the games vowed for the safety of the deified Augustus, in her 104th year; she had been brought on for her first appearance by the plebeian aedile Marcus Pomponius, in the consulship of Gaius Marius and Gnaeus Carbo, 91 years before, and by Pompey the Great, at the dedication of the great theatre, was brought back as an old woman, as a wonder.
159| Pedianus Asconius is the authority that Sammulla too lived 110 years. I wonder less at Stephanio, who first began to dance in the toga, dancing at both secular games, those of the deified Augustus and those which Claudius Caesar held in his fourth consulship, between which there were no more than 63 years, although he lived long afterwards too. On the summit of Mount Tmolus, which they call Tempsis, Mucianus is the authority that people live to 150; and in the censorship of Claudius Caesar the census recorded Titus Fullonius of Bononia as having the same number of years, and this, when compared with the censuses he had returned earlier, and with proofs of his life (for it was the emperor's concern), proved true.
160| The place itself seems to demand an opinion from the knowledge of the stars. Epigenes denied that 112 years could be completed, Berosus that 116 could be exceeded. There survives also the system which Petosiris and Necepsos handed down (they call it tetartemorion, from a portion of three signs), by which it appears that 124 years of life can fall to a man in the region of Italy. They denied that anyone passes the rising measure of 90 parts (what they call anaphoras), and that even these are cut short by the meeting of evil stars or by their rays and those of the sun. Again, the school of Aesculapius, which says that fixed spans of life are received from the stars, how much it assigns at most is uncertain.
161| They say, however, that longer times are rare, since at the notable moments of the hours of the moon's days, such as the 7th and 15th, which are observed by night and day, an enormous crowd is born under a stepped law of years that sets, which they call climacterics, those so born not generally passing their 54th year.
162| In the first place, then, the inconsistency of the art itself shows how uncertain the matter is. There are besides the evidences of the most recent census, which the Emperors Caesar Vespasian, father and son, as censors held within four years. Nor must all the registers be turned out; I shall give examples only from the middle region between the Apennines and the Po:
163| At Parma three people recorded 120 years, at Brixellum one, at Parma two 125, at Placentia one 130, at Faventia one woman, at Bononia Lucius Terentius, son of Marcus, 135; at Ariminum Marcus Aponius 140, and Tertulla 137. This side of Placentia, in the hills, is the town of the Veleiates, in which six reported 110 years, four a hundred and twenty, one 140, Marcus Mucius, son of Marcus, of the tribe Galeria, Felix.
164| And, not to dwell longer on an acknowledged matter, in the eighth region of Italy there were recorded as of a hundred years 54 people, of a hundred and ten 14, of a hundred and twenty-five two, of a hundred and thirty four, of a hundred and thirty-five or thirty-seven the same number, of a hundred and forty three.
165| Another inconsistency of mortality: Homer reported Hector and Polydamas born on the same night, men of such different lot. In the consulship of Gaius Marius and of Gnaeus Carbo for the 3rd time, on the fifth day before the Kalends of June, Marcus Caelius Rufus and Gaius Licinius Calvus were born on one and the same day, both orators indeed, but with such unequal outcome. This also happens every day in the whole world to those born at the same hours, and masters and slaves are born alike, kings and the destitute.
166| Publius Cornelius Rufus, who was consul with Manius Curius, lost the sight of his eyes while asleep, when he was dreaming that this was happening to him. On the other hand, Jason of Pherae, given up by the doctors for the disease of an abscess, when he sought death in battle, found a cure from the enemy with a wound in the chest. Quintus Fabius Maximus, consul, when battle was joined by the river Isara against the peoples of the Allobroges and Arverni on the sixth day before the August Ides, with 130,000 of the enemy slain, was freed from a quartan fever on the field.
167| Uncertain and fragile, clearly, is this gift of nature, whatever is given us, and grudging and brief even in those to whom it has come most generously, at least to those who look at the whole time of life. What of the fact that, by reckoning the night's rest, each man lives only half the span of his life, an equal part being spent like death or as a punishment unless rest has come? Nor are the years of infancy counted, which lack sense, nor those of old age that lives on to its punishment, dangers of so many kinds, so many diseases, so many fears, so many cares, death so often invoked, that no prayer is more frequent.
168| Nature, indeed, has granted men nothing better than the shortness of life. The senses grow dull, the limbs numb, sight dies before the rest, and hearing, and walking, even the teeth and the instruments of food, and yet this time is reckoned in the span of life. Therefore it is found as a wonder, and as a solitary example, that Xenophilus the musician lived a hundred and five years without any bodily trouble.
169| But, by Hercules, in all the rest, in the several parts of the limbs, as in no other animals, a pestilential heat or chill returns at fixed hours, and not only hours, but on three or four days and nights, even for a whole year. And there is moreover a disease by which wisdom for a while dies.
170| For nature has set certain laws even for diseases: that the fever of the four-day cycle never begins at midwinter, never in the winter months, and that some do not come after the sixtieth year of life; that others are laid aside at puberty, especially in women; that old men feel pestilence least. For diseases fall upon whole peoples, and by classes, sometimes the slaves, sometimes the order of leading men, and through other ranks. In this matter it has been observed that pestilence always goes from the southern parts toward the setting of the sun, and almost never otherwise, not in winter, and not so as to exceed three months.
171| Now the deadly signs: in the disease of madness, laughter; in the sickness of wisdom, care for fringes and the folds of the coverlet, neglect of those who rouse one from sleep, the discharge from the body of an unmentionable fluid; in the look of the eyes and nostrils the most unmistakable signs, and also continual lying on the back, an irregular or crawling beat of the veins, and whatever else has been observed by Hippocrates, prince of medicine. And though the signs of death are countless, there are none of health and security, since Cato the censor handed down to his son, as if from some oracle, an observation even about the healthy: that a youth with an old man's ways is a sign of early death.
172| The multitude of diseases is so endless that Pherecydes of Syros expired with a mass of serpents bursting out of his body. In some there is a perpetual fever, as in Gaius Maecenas; the same man in his last three years had no sleep at any moment of an hour. The poet Antipater of Sidon was seized by fever on one day only each year, his birthday, and was consumed by it after a fairly long old age.
173| Aviola, a man of consular rank, came back to life on the pyre, and since help could not be brought because the flame prevailed, was burned alive. A similar cause is reported in Lucius Lamia, a man of praetorian rank. For Gaius Aelius Tubero, who had held the praetorship, was brought back from the pyre, as Messala Rufus and most writers report. This is the condition of mortals. To these and such chances of fortune we are born, so that concerning man not even death ought to be trusted.
174| We find among the examples that the soul of Hermotimus of Clazomenae was accustomed to leave the body and wander, and from afar report many things that could be known only by one present, while the body was meanwhile half alive, until, when it was burned by his enemies, who were called Cantharidae, they took away from the returning soul, as it were, its sheath; and that the soul of Aristeas too was seen flying out of his mouth at Proconnesus in the form of a raven, with great fabulousness following this.
175| This I take in a similar way in the case of Epimenides of Cnossus, a boy tired by heat and journey, who slept in a cave fifty-seven years, and woke as if on the next day, marvelling at the face and change of things, and from then, as old age pressed on him in the same number of days, nevertheless lasted to the hundred and fifty-seventh year of his life. The female sex seems especially exposed to this ill by the turning of the womb, which if it is set right, breath is restored; to this belongs the famous volume among the Greeks by Heraclides, about a woman lifeless who was called back to life after seven days.
176| Varro too is the authority that, when he was dividing lands at Capua as one of the board of Twenty, a certain man who was being carried out through the forum returned home on foot. The same happened at Aquinum. At Rome also Corfidius, the husband of his maternal aunt, came back to life after the funeral had been contracted for, and that he carried out the undertaker of his own funeral to burial.
177| He adds marvels which it is fitting to relate in full: of the two brothers Corfidius, of equestrian rank, it happened to the elder that he seemed to have died, and when the will was opened and read, the younger, who was named heir, was attending to the funeral; meanwhile he who seemed extinct summoned the attendants by clapping, and related that he had come from his brother, that a daughter had been entrusted to him by him, that it was shown besides in what place he had buried gold with nobody knowing, and that he had asked to be carried out with the funeral equipment which he had provided. While he was telling this, the brother's household servants hurriedly announced that he was dead, and the gold was found where he had said.
178| Life is moreover full of such predictions, but they are not to be compared, since more often they are false, as we shall show by a great example. In the Sicilian war Gabienus, bravest of Caesar's fleet commanders, captured by Sextus Pompey, with his neck cut through by his order and scarcely holding together, lay on the shore all day. Then, when evening had come, with a crowd gathered by his groaning and prayers, he asked that Pompey come to him or send one of his confidants; for he had been sent back from the dead and had something to report.
179| Pompey sent a number of his friends, and Gabienus told them that Pompey's cause and his loyal party pleased the gods below; therefore the outcome would be what he desired; this he had been ordered to report; the proof of the truth would be that, when the commission was carried out, he would at once expire. And so it happened. There are examples also of things seen after burial, except that we pursue the works of nature, not prodigies.
180| But among marvels, and of the greatest frequency, are sudden deaths, which are the highest happiness of life, and which we shall show to be natural. Verrius has recorded very many; I shall keep a measure with selection. Besides Chilon, of whom we have spoken, Sophocles and Dionysius tyrant of Sicily died of joy, each on receiving news of a tragic victory, and that mother who at Cannae saw her son safe after a false report; of shame, Diodorus, professor of dialectic wisdom, when he could not at once resolve a playful question put to him by Stilpo.
181| Without evident causes there died, while putting on their shoes in the morning, the two Caesars, a praetor and the father of Caesar the dictator, who had held the praetorship (the one expired at Pisa, the other at Rome); Quintus Fabius Maximus in his consulship on the day before the Kalends of January, in whose place Gaius Rebilus sought a consulship of very few hours; likewise Gaius Volcatius Gurges, senator; all so healthy and in season that they were thinking of going forward; Quintus Aemilius Lepidus, already going out, striking his toe on the threshold of his bedchamber; Gaius Aufustius, after he had gone out, when he struck his foot in the comitium on his way to the senate.
182| An envoy also, who had argued the case of the Rhodians in the senate with great admiration, expired at once on the threshold of the senate house as he wished to go forward; so did Gnaeus Baebius Tamphilus, who had himself held the praetorship, after asking a boy the hour; Aulus Pompeius on the Capitol, after saluting the gods; Manius Juventius Thalna, consul, while sacrificing; Gaius Servilius Pansa, while standing in the forum at a shop in the second hour of the day, leaning on his brother Publius; the judge Baebius, while ordering an adjournment of bail; Marcus Terentius Corax, while writing tablets in the forum.
183| And in the year just past too, while speaking into the ear of one of consular rank, a Roman knight before the ivory Apollo which is in the forum of Augustus; above all, the physician Gaius Julius, while applying ointment, drawing a probe through the eye; Aulus Manlius Torquatus, of consular rank, as he reached for a cake at dinner; the physician Lucius Tuccius Valla, while draining a drink of mead; Appius Saufeius, who after returning from the bath had drunk mead and was sipping an egg; Publius Quintius Scapula, while dining at the house of Aquilius Gallus; Decimus Saufeius, a clerk, while lunching at his own home.
184| Cornelius Gallus, of praetorian rank, and Titus Hetereius, a Roman knight, died in the act of love, and, whom our own age has noted, two of the equestrian order with the same pantomime actor Mysticus, who was then of surpassing beauty. Yet the most elaborate tranquillity in death is reported by the ancients in the case of Marcus Ofilius Hilarus.
185| He was an actor of comedies, and when he had pleased the people very much on his birthday and was holding a banquet, after the dinner was served he asked for a hot drink in a porridge dish, and at the same time, taking the mask of that day and gazing at it, he transferred the garland from his own head to it, and stayed rigid in that posture with no one noticing, until the nearest of the guests reminded him that the drink was growing lukewarm.
186| These are fortunate examples, but on the other side those of miseries are countless: Lucius Domitius, of a most famous family, defeated at Massilia and captured at Corfinium by the same Caesar, drank poison from weariness of life, and after he had drunk it, strove by every means to live. It is found in the records that, when Felix, a driver of the red faction, was carried out, one of his supporters threw himself on his pyre, a trifling thing to say, so that this might not be credited to the glory of the artist, those of the opposing parties alleging that he had been overcome by the abundance of perfumes. When not long before, Marcus Lepidus of a most noble stock, whom we have said died of anguish over a divorce, was thrown from the pyre by the force of the flame and could not be put back because of the heat, he was burned naked beside it with other brushwood.
187| Cremation itself was not an ancient custom among the Romans: they were buried in the earth. But after they learned that men buried in distant wars were dug up, then it was instituted; and yet many families kept the ancient rites, as in the Cornelian family no one is reported to have been cremated before the dictator Sulla, and he is said to have wished it, fearing retaliation after the corpse of Gaius Marius was dug up. [Sepultus is understood to mean buried in whatever manner; humatus means covered with earth.]
188| After burial come the empty winding paths of the spirits of the dead. For all, from the last day, it is the same as before the first, and there is no more sensation after death, either for body or for soul, than before birth. For the same vanity extends itself into the future too, and invents for itself a life even for the times of death, sometimes by granting immortality to the soul, sometimes transformation, sometimes sensation to those below, and by worshipping the spirits and making a god of one who has already ceased even to be a man, as if in any way the manner of breathing differed from that of the other animals, or as if many creatures were not found longer-lived, for whom no one divines a like immortality. But what body has the soul by itself?
189| What substance? Where is its thought? How does it see, hear, or what does it touch? What use is there in these, or what good without them? Then what abode, or how great a multitude, is there of souls over so many ages, like shadows? These are the fictions of childish consolations and of a mortality greedy never to cease. Of the same kind is the vanity of Democritus about preserving the bodies of men and the promise of coming to life again, who did not come to life himself.
190| What madness, curse it, is this, that life should be repeated by death? Or what rest is there ever for the born, if in the heights the sensation of the soul remains, and among the dead the shades? That sweetness and credulity certainly destroy the chief good of nature, death, and double the grief of one about to die by the estimate of what is to come even after. For if living is sweet, to whom can it be sweet to have lived? But how much easier and surer for each person to trust himself, and to take a proof of security from the experience before birth!
191| It seems fitting, before we part from the nature of man, to indicate the discoveries made by each. Mercury instituted buying and selling, Father Liber the vintage; the same invented the diadem, the royal badge, and the triumph; Ceres the grains of corn, when before that they fed on acorn, and also grinding and making them in Attica, as some say, and in Sicily, for which she was judged a goddess. She also first gave laws, or, as others have thought, Rhadamanthus did.
192| I always judge that letters were Assyrian, but some wish them found among the Egyptians by Mercury, as Gellius says, others among the Syrians, and both say that Cadmus brought sixteen in number into Greece from Phoenicia, to which in the Trojan war Palamedes added four of this shape ζυφχ, and after him Simonides the lyric poet the same number ψξωθ, the force of all of which is recognized in our letters. Aristotle prefers that there were eighteen ancient ones and that two were added, χζ, by Epicharmus rather than by Palamedes.
193| Anticlides reports that a certain man named Menes invented them in Egypt, 15,000 years before Phoroneus, the most ancient king of Greece, and he tries to prove it from monuments. On the other side Epigenes, a weighty authority in the first rank, teaches that among the Babylonians observations of the stars for 720 years were inscribed on baked bricks; those who say the least, Berosus and Critodemus, 490,000. From this it appears that the use of letters is eternal. The Pelasgi brought them into Latium.
194| Brickyards and houses were first established by the brothers Euryalus and Hyperbius at Athens; before that, caves served for houses. Gellius is pleased to say that Toxius, son of Caelus, was the inventor of building in clay, taking the example from the nests of swallows. Cecrops named a town after himself, Cecropia, which is now the citadel at Athens. Some wish that Argos was founded earlier by King Phoroneus, some also Sicyon, but the Egyptians that Diospolis was founded among themselves much earlier.
195| Roof tiles were invented by Cinyras, son of Agriopa, and copper mines, both on the island of Cyprus, likewise the tongs, hammer, lever and anvil; wells by Danaus, brought from Egypt into Greece, where it was called Argos Dipsion; stone quarries by Cadmus at Thebes or, as Theophrastus says, in Phoenicia; walls by Thrason; towers, as Aristotle says, by the Cyclopes, by the Tirynthians, as Theophrastus says;
196| textiles by the Egyptians, the dyeing of wool at Sardis by the Lydians, spindles in wool-working by Closter, son of Arachne, linen and nets by Arachne, the fuller's art by Nicias of Megara, the cobbler's by Tychius of Boeotia. Medicine the Egyptians wish to have been found among themselves, others through Arabus, son of Babylon and Apollo; herb-lore and the preparing of drugs through Chiron, son of Saturn and Philyra.
197| To smelt and temper bronze, Aristotle says Scythes the Lydian showed, Theophrastus thinks Delas the Phrygian; the bronze-founder's workshop some ascribe to the Chalybes, others to the Cyclopes; iron, Hesiod says, in Crete those who were called the Dactyli of Ida. Silver was discovered by Erichthonius of Athens or, as others say, Aeacus; the mines of gold and the blowing of it by Cadmus the Phoenician at Mount Pangaeus, or, as others say, Thoas or Aeacus in Panchaia, or Sol, son of Oceanus, to whom Gellius assigns also the discovery of medicine from metals. Lead was first brought from the island Cassiteris by Midacritus. The blacksmith's workshop was invented by the Cyclopes,
198| pottery by Coroebus of Athens, in it the wheel by Anacharsis the Scythian or, as others say, Hyperbius of Corinth. The carpenter's workshop by Daedalus, and in it the saw, the axe, the plumb line, the drill, glue, fish-glue; but the square, the level, the lathe and the key by Theodorus of Samos, measures and weights by Phidon of Argos or Palamedes, as Gellius preferred; fire from flint by Pyrodes, son of Cilix, and to keep it in a fennel stalk by Prometheus;
199| the four-wheeled vehicle by the Phrygians, trade by the Phoenicians, the cultivation of vines and trees by Eumolpus of Athens, the mixing of wine with water by Staphylus, son of Silenus, oil and olive presses by Aristaeus of Athens, who also found honey; the ox and the plough by Buzyges of Athens or, as others say, Triptolemus;
200| the kingly state by the Egyptians, popular government by the Athenians after Theseus. The first tyrant was Phalaris of Agrigentum. Slavery was invented by the Lacedaemonians. Trial for a capital charge was first held on the Areopagus. Battle was first waged by the Africans against the Egyptians with the clubs they call phalanges. Shields were invented by Proetus and Acrisius when fighting each other, or by Chalcus, son of Athamas; the breastplate by Midias of Messene; the helmet, sword and spear by the Lacedaemonians; greaves and crests by the Carians.
201| The bow and arrow they say were invented by Scythes, son of Jupiter, others say arrows by Perses, son of Perseus; lances by the Aetolians; the javelin with thong by Aetolus, son of Mars; light skirmishers' spears by Tyrrhenus, who also invented the pilum; the axe by the Amazon Penthesilea; hunting spears by Pisaeus, and among artillery the scorpion, the catapult by the Cretans, the ballista and sling by the Syrophoenicians; the bronze trumpet by Pisaeus, son of Tyrrhenus; siege sheds by Artemon of Clazomenae;
202| the horse (which is now called the ram) among wall-breaking engines by Epius at Troy; riding on a horse by Bellerophon, bridles and horse-trappings by Pelethronius; fighting from horseback by the Thessalians, who were called Centaurs, living along Mount Pelion. The pair of horses was first yoked by the nation of the Phrygians, the four-horse team by Erichthonius. The order of an army, the giving of the signal, watchwords and watches Palamedes invented in the Trojan war, the signalling of watch-towers Sinon in the same, truces Lycaon, treaties Theseus.
203| Auguries from birds were invented by Car, from whom Caria is named; Orpheus added those from other animals; the examination of entrails by Delphus; divination by fire by Amphiaraus; the inspection of the entrails of birds by Tiresias of Thebes; the interpretation of portents and dreams by Amphictyon. Astrology by Atlas, son of Libya, or, as others say, by the Egyptians, or, as others say, by the Assyrians; the sphere in it by Anaximander of Miletus; the reckoning of the winds by Aeolus, son of Hellen.
204| Music by Amphion, the pipe and the single pipe by Pan, son of Mercury, the slanting flute by Midas in Phrygia, the double flutes by Marsyas in the same nation; the Lydian measures by Amphion, the Dorian by Thamyras the Thracian, the Phrygian by Marsyas the Phrygian; the lyre by Amphion, or, as others say, Orpheus, or, as others say, Linus. Terpander first sang on seven strings, 3 being added to the first 4; Simonides added an eighth, Timotheus a ninth. Thamyris first played the lyre without voice, Amphion, or as others say Linus, with song. Terpander composed songs for the lyre-singer. To sing to the flutes with the voice was begun by Ardalus of Troezen. The armed dance the Curetes taught, the pyrrhic Pyrrhus, both in Crete. The heroic verse we owe to the Pythian oracle.
205| Concerning the origin of poems there is great question; they are shown to have existed before the Trojan war. To compose prose speech was begun by Pherecydes of Syros in the time of King Cyrus, history by Cadmus of Miletus; gymnastic games in Arcadia by Lycaon, funeral games by Acastus at Iolcus, after him by Theseus on the Isthmus, by Hercules at Olympia; athletics by Pittheus, the ball for play by Gyges the Lydian; painting by the Egyptians, and in Greece by Euchir, a relative of Daedalus, as Aristotle holds, or, as Theophrastus holds, Polygnotus of Athens.
206| Danaus was the first to come by ship to Greece from Egypt; before that, men sailed on rafts, invented by King Erythras for use among the islands of the Red Sea. Some are found who think that the Mysians and Trojans devised them earlier, on the Hellespont, when they crossed against the Thracians. Even now in the British ocean boats are made of wickerwork with hide sewn round them, and on the Nile of papyrus, rushes and reeds.
207| Philostephanus is our authority that Jason was the first to sail in a long ship, Hegesias that it was Parhalus, Ctesias Semiramis, Archemachus Aegaeon; Damastes says the Erythraeans built the bireme, Thucydides that Aminocles of Corinth built the trireme,
208| Aristotle that the Carthaginians built the quadrireme, Mnesigiton that the Salaminians built the quinquereme, Xenagoras that the Syracusans built the ship of six banks; from that up to the ship of ten, Mnesigiton says Alexander the Great; up to twelve banks, Philostephanus says Ptolemy Soter; up to fifteen, Demetrius son of Antigonus; up to 30, Ptolemy Philadelphus; up to 40, Ptolemy Philopator, who was surnamed Tryphon. Hippus of Tyre invented the merchant ship, the Cyrenians the lembus, the Phoenicians the cumba, the Rhodians the celes, the Cyprians the cercyrus.
209| The Phoenicians invented the observation of the stars in sailing, the Copae the oar, the Plataeans its broad blade, Icarus sails, Daedalus the mast and yard, the Samians or Pericles of Athens the horse-transport, the Thasians decked long ships; before that, fighting was done only from the prow and the stern. Pisaeus the Tyrrhenian added the beaks, Eupalamus the anchor, Anacharsis the two-pronged anchor, Pericles of Athens grappling-irons and iron hands, Tiphys the gear for steering. Minos was the first to fight a battle with a fleet. Hyperbius son of Mars was the first to kill an animal, Prometheus an ox.
210| The first tacit agreement of all the nations was the consent to use the letters of the Ionians. That the old Greek letters were almost the same as the Latin ones are now will be shown by a Delphic table of ancient bronze, which is today on the Palatine, a gift of the emperors, dedicated to Minerva [in the library], with this inscription: "Nausicrates dedicated the tithe to the daughter of Zeus [….]"
211| The next agreement of the nations concerned barbers, but it came later to the Romans. They came into Italy from Sicily in the 454th year after the founding of Rome, brought by Publius Titinius Mena, as Varro is our authority; before that men went unshaven. The first of all to have himself shaved every day was the later Africanus. The deified Augustus always used razors.
212| The third agreement was in the observation of the hours, a matter now coming under reason; when and by whom it was discovered in Greece we have stated in the second book. This too came about later at Rome. In the Twelve Tables only sunrise and sunset are named; some years later midday was added as well, the consuls' attendant announcing it when, from the senate-house, he had sighted the sun between the Rostra and the Graecostasis; when the sun had sloped from the Maenian Column to the prison, he announced the last hour, but this only on clear days, until the First Punic War.
213| Fabius Vestalis reports that the first to set up a sundial was Lucius Papirius Cursor, 12 years before the war was fought with Pyrrhus, at the temple of Quirinus, when he dedicated it after his father had vowed it. But he indicates neither the principle of the dial that was made nor its maker, nor where it was brought from, nor in whose writings he found this.
214| Marcus Varro records that the first one set up in public was placed on a column beside the Rostra in the First Punic War by Marcus Valerius Messala the consul, after the capture of Catina in Sicily, and brought from there 30 years after the date recorded for the sundial of Papirius, in the year of the city 490. Its lines did not agree with the hours, yet people followed it for ninety-nine years, until Quintus Marcius Philippus, who was censor with Lucius Paulus, set up a more carefully arranged one beside it; and that gift was received as among the most welcome of the censors' works.
215| Even then, however, the hours were uncertain in cloudy weather until the next lustrum. Then Scipio Nasica, the colleague of Laenas, was first to divide by water the hours of nights and days alike, and he dedicated this clock under a roof in the year of the city 595. For so long had the daylight been undivided for the Roman people. Now we shall turn to the remaining animals, and first to those of the land.

======== Natural History — Book VIII ========

1| Let us pass to the remaining animals, and first to those of the land. The largest is the elephant, and the nearest to human understanding: for they understand the language of their homeland, obey commands, and remember the duties they have learned; they take pleasure in affection and in glory; indeed they have qualities rare even in man, honesty, good sense, fairness, and even a religious reverence for the stars and a veneration of the sun and moon.
2| Authors report that in the forest pastures of Mauretania, at a certain river whose name is Amilo, when the new moon begins to shine, herds of them come down, and there, purifying themselves, solemnly sprinkle themselves with water, and so, having saluted the heavenly body, return to the woods, carrying the tired calves before them.
3| They are believed also to understand the religion of others: when about to cross the sea, they will not board the ships until they have been coaxed by their driver's oath that they will return; and they have been seen, when worn down by sickness (for diseases attack even those great bulks), lying on their backs and throwing grass up toward the sky, as if enlisting the earth in their prayers. As for their teachableness, they do homage to the king, bend their knees, and offer garlands. Among the Indians the smaller ones, which they call bastards, do the ploughing.
4| At Rome they first went under the yoke drawing a chariot in Pompey the Great's African triumph, which is recorded to have happened earlier, when Father Liber triumphed over conquered India. Procilius says that in Pompey's triumph they could not go out through the gate yoked together. At the gladiatorial show given by Germanicus Caesar some even performed a kind of clumsy movement like dancers.
5| It was common for them to throw weapons through the air without the winds carrying them off, to stage gladiatorial bouts among themselves, or to play together in a frolicking war dance. Later they even walked on ropes, four of them carrying one on a litter in imitation of a woman in childbed; and in dining rooms full of people they went to their places through the couches, setting their feet so carefully that none of the drinkers was touched.
6| It is certain that one, slower of wit in taking in what was taught and often punished with beatings, was found at night rehearsing those same lessons. It is a wonder that they even climb ropes stretched upward, but more so that they come back down them, especially when they slope downward. Mucianus, three times consul, is our authority that one of them even learned the shapes of the Greek letters and used to write out in words of that language: "I myself wrote this and dedicated the Celtic spoils"; and likewise that he saw at Puteoli, when some that had been brought by sea were being made to disembark, how, frightened by the length of the gangway stretching far out from the shore, they turned round and went backward, so as to deceive themselves in judging the distance.
7| They know that the only prize for which they are hunted lies in their weapons, which Juba calls horns, but Herodotus, so much older, and common usage, more correctly, call teeth. For this reason, when these fall out through some accident or old age, they bury them. This alone is ivory; the rest, even in these, where the body covers them, is cheap bone. And yet of late, through scarcity, even their bones have begun to be cut into plates: for teeth of great size are now rarely found except from India; all the rest in our part of the world have gone to luxury.
8| Youth is recognized by the whiteness of the teeth. The beasts take the greatest care of them: they spare the point of one so that it may not be blunt for battle, and use the other for work, digging up roots and pushing heavy loads; and when surrounded by hunters they set in front those whose tusks are smallest, so that it may not be thought worth a fight, and afterward, when exhausted, they break the tusks by driving them against a tree and buy themselves off with the plunder.
9| It is a wonder that most animals know why they are sought, and also that almost all know what to beware of. The elephant, it is said, if it chances to meet a man wandering harmlessly in a lonely place, is gentle and peaceable, and will even show him the way; yet the same animal, if it notices a man's footprint before the man himself, trembles for fear of an ambush, stops at the scent, looks round, snorts its anger, and does not tread on it, but digs it out and hands it on to the next, and that one to the one behind, with the same message, down to the last; then the column wheels round and goes back and is drawn up in battle line. So long does that taint last for the smell of all of them, though for the most part it is not even from bare feet.
10| In the same way the tigress too, savage even to the other wild beasts and herself scornful even of the elephant's footprints, is said, on seeing a man's footprint, to carry off her cubs at once. How has she recognized it? Where has she seen before the one she fears? For it is certain that such forests are very little visited. No doubt they may wonder at the very rarity of the track. But from where do they know that it is to be feared? Indeed, why should they dread even the sight of him, when they are so far superior in strength, size and speed? This, surely, is the nature of things, this her power: that the fiercest and largest of wild beasts have never seen what they ought to fear, and yet understand at once when it is to be feared.
11| Elephants always move in herds. The oldest leads the column, and the one next in age closes the rear. When about to cross a river they send the smallest ahead, so that the larger ones going in may not wear down the bed and increase the depth of the water. Antipater is our authority that two of them used by King Antiochus in war were famous even for their names; for they know their names. Certainly Cato, though he removed the names of generals from his annals, recorded that the one which fought most bravely in the Carthaginian battle line was called Surus, from having one tusk broken off.
12| When Antiochus was testing a ford in a river, Ajax refused, though he was otherwise always the leader of the column. Then it was proclaimed that the leadership would belong to the one that crossed; and when Patroclus ventured it, the king for that reason presented him with silver trappings, in which they delight most of all, and with every other mark of first place. The one that had been disgraced chose death by starvation rather than dishonor. For their sense of shame is remarkable: the one defeated shuns the voice of the victor and offers him earth and leafy boughs. Out of modesty they never mate except in seclusion,
13| The male is five years old, the female ten. Mating takes place every two years, on five days, it is said, of each such year, and no more; on the sixth they wash in a river, and do not return to the herd before. They know no adulteries, nor are there any battles among themselves over females, so ruinous in other animals, not because they lack the force of love; for it is reported that one in Egypt loved a girl who sold garlands, and, lest anyone think her commonly chosen, she was wonderfully dear to Aristophanes, most celebrated in the art of grammar,
14| and another loved Menander of Syracuse, a young man just entering youth, in the army of Ptolemy, bearing witness to his longing, whenever he did not see him, by refusing food. And Juba reports that one loved a certain perfume-seller. In all of them the proofs of love were joy at the sight and artless caresses; coins which the people had given were kept and poured into the fold of her dress. Nor is it wonderful that those who have memory should love.
15| For the same author reports that one recognized, in old age, many years afterwards, the man who had been his driver in youth; the same, a certain divination of justice, when King Bocchus had set before thirty elephants the same number of men, tied to stakes, against whom he had resolved to vent his rage, with men running forward among the elephants to provoke them, and it could not be brought about that they should serve as ministers of another's cruelty.
16| Italy first saw elephants in the war of King Pyrrhus, and called them Lucanian oxen, as they were seen in Lucania in the year of the city 472; Rome saw them in a triumph 7 years after, added to the previous number, and the greatest number in the year 502, after the victory of the pontiff Lucius Metellus in Sicily, captured from the Carthaginians. They were 142 or, as some say, 120, carried across on rafts which he had laid on rows of jars fastened together.
17| Verrius reports that they fought in the circus and were killed with javelins, for want of a plan, since it had not been decided either to feed them or to give them to kings; Lucius Piso says they were only led into the circus and, so that contempt for them might grow, were driven by workmen holding blunted spears all round the circus. Nor do the authors who think they were not killed explain what was then done with them.
18| Famous is the combat of one of the Romans against an elephant, when Hannibal had forced our captives to fight among themselves. For he set the one who survived against an elephant, and that man, having agreed to be released if he killed it, met it alone on the sand and finished it, to the great grief of the Carthaginians. Hannibal, understanding that the fame of that combat would bring contempt on the beasts, sent horsemen to kill him as he departed. That their trunk is most easily cut off was shown by the experience of Pyrrhus's battles.
19| Fenestella reports that they fought at Rome first of all in the circus of Claudius Pulcher, in his curule aedileship, in the consulship of Marcus Antonius and Aulus Postumius, in the year 655 from the city's founding, and again twenty years later in the curule aedileship of the Luculli, against bulls.
20| In Pompey's second consulship too, when the temple of Venus Victrix was dedicated, twenty fought in the circus or, as some report, 18, with the Gaetulians hurling javelins from the other side, in the wonderful fight of one of them, who, his feet pierced through, crawled on his knees against the crowds, snatching shields and throwing them high into the air, which, falling, were whirled round in a circle to the pleasure of the spectators, as though they were flung by art and not by the fury of a beast. A great marvel was also in another which was killed with one blow; a javelin driven in beneath the eye had reached the vital parts of the head.
21| All together they tried to break out, not without harm to the people, as iron barriers had been placed round. For this reason Caesar the dictator, later about to give a similar spectacle, surrounded the arena with trenches, which the emperor Nero removed, adding places for the knights. But the elephants of Pompey, having lost hope of flight, sought the pity of the crowd in an indescribable attitude, begging them with a kind of lamentation, bewailing themselves, so that the people were moved by such grief that, forgetting the commander and the munificence devised for his honour, they all rose in tears and invoked curses on Pompey, which he soon paid for.
22| They fought also for Caesar the dictator in his third consulship: twenty against 500 foot soldiers, and again as many with towers, with sixty defenders each, the number of foot soldiers being the same as in the earlier show and an equal number of horse fighting against them; afterwards single ones for the emperors Claudius and Nero at the completion of gladiatorial shows.
23| Of the animal itself such gentleness is told toward the less strong that in a flock of sheep it moves aside with its trunk those it meets, lest it trample any unawares. They harm only when provoked, and this though they always walk in herds, being of all animals the least given to roaming alone. When surrounded by cavalry they take the weak, tired or wounded into the middle of the column, the line relieving in turn as if by command or reason.
24| When captured they are very quickly tamed with barley juice. They are captured in India by one of the tamed ones being driven by its rider, who beats the wild one when it has been caught alone or driven away from the herd; when it is tired he climbs across onto it and guides it just as he did the first. Africa takes them in pits, into which, when one has fallen, the others at once heap branches, roll down masses, build up mounds and try with all their strength to drag him out.
25| Formerly, for the sake of taming them, kings drove them by cavalry into a valley made by hand and deceptive over a long stretch, and shut within its banks and ditches they tamed them by hunger. The proof was that a branch held out by a man was gently accepted. Now for the sake of the tusks their feet, otherwise very tender, are pierced with javelins.
26| The Trogodytae, neighbours of Ethiopia, who live on this hunting alone, climb the trees near the elephants' path; from there they watch for the very last of the whole column and leap down onto its rump. The tail is seized with the left hand, the feet pressed against the left thigh; hanging so, with the right hand he cuts one hamstring with a sharp-edged double axe, and when that leg is slowed, fleeing, he strikes the sinews of the other hamstring, carrying out everything with the greatest speed. Others, in a safer but more deceptive way, fix huge bows stretched at a distance in the ground; young men of outstanding strength hold them, others strain with equal effort, and they plant the arrow-spears in the passing animals, then follow the traces of blood.
27| The females of the elephant kind are much more timid. They are tamed, when raging, by hunger and blows, with other elephants brought up to restrain with chains the one in tumult. At other times, too, especially around mating, they grow wild and with their tusks lay low the stalls of the Indians. For this reason they keep them from mating and separate the herds of females, which they keep no otherwise than herds of cattle. Tamed, they serve in war and carry towers of armed men on their backs, and finish the greater part of the wars of the East: they overturn battle lines and trample down armed men. The same are terrified by the slightest squeal of pigs, and wounded and frightened always retreat, with no less destruction of their own side. The African elephants fear the Indian ones and dare not look at them, for the Indian are also of greater size.
28| The common people think they carry in the womb for ten years, Aristotle for two years and no more than [to give birth once, and more than] one at a time; to live for two hundred years and some 300. Their youth begins at the sixtieth year. They delight in rivers above all and wander around streams, although otherwise they cannot swim because of the size of the body. The same cannot bear cold; this is their greatest evil, with swelling and a flux of the belly, and they feel no other kinds of disease. I find that by drinking oil the darts that stick in their body fall out, but that they stick more easily after sweat.
29| And eating earth is wasting to them, unless they chew it rather often; they swallow even stones; trunks of trees they have as most welcome food. They knock down palms that are too high with the forehead and so eat the fruit as it lies. They chew with the mouth, but breathe, drink and smell with what is not improperly called the hand. Of animals they hate the mouse most, and if they see the fodder placed in the manger touched by it, they refuse it. They feel the greatest torment in drinking when a leech has been swallowed, which I notice began to be commonly called a blood-sucker. When this has fixed itself in the very windpipe, it causes intolerable pain.
30| The hide on the back is very hard, on the belly soft; there is no covering of bristles, not even in the tail a defence for driving off the annoyance of flies (for even so great a bulk feels it), but the skin is latticed, and invites that kind of creature by its smell. So when they have taken in swarms with the skin stretched out, they suddenly draw the lattices together into wrinkles and crush those they have caught. This serves them for tail, mane and fleece.
31| The tusks have a great price, and from them comes the most luxurious material for the images of the gods. Luxury has found a recommendation, and another sought-after flavour in the callus of the hand, for no other reason, I believe, than that it seems to chew ivory itself. The size of tusks is indeed seen most in temples, but nevertheless Polybius reports, on the authority of the petty king Gulusa, that in the farthest parts of Africa, where it borders on Ethiopia, elephants' tusks serve in dwellings in place of doorposts, and that in these dwellings and in the cattle pens fences are made with elephants' tusks in place of stakes.
32| Africa bears elephants beyond the Syrtic deserts and in Mauretania, the Ethiopians and Trogodytae bear them, as has been said, but India bears the largest, and with them there is a perpetual feud with dragons, themselves of such size that they easily embrace them in coils and bind them with the knot of their nodes. That fight ends in the death of both; the beaten animal, falling, crushes the embrace with its weight.
33| There is a wonderful cunning in animals, each in its own cause, and very shrewd. The dragon has difficulty in climbing to so great a height; and so, having watched a well-worn path to the pasture, he throws himself from a lofty tree. The elephant knows he is no match for him in wrestling against the coils; so he seeks the rubbing of trees or rocks. The dragons guard against this and for that reason first bind the feet with the tail; the elephants undo the knots with the trunk; but the dragons hide their head in the very nostrils and at once shut off the breath and tear the softest parts. The same, when they meet them, rear up against them and aim chiefly at the eyes. So it happens that they are often found blind and worn out by hunger and the wasting of grief.
34| What other cause of such discord could anyone bring, except nature arranging a spectacle by matching equals? There is another account too of this combat. They say the blood of elephants is very cold; for that reason in scorching heat it is especially sought by dragons. Therefore, they say, the dragons, plunged in the rivers, lie in wait for them as they drink, and rising, fasten a bite in the ear, with the trunk bound, since that is the only place that cannot be defended by the trunk. The dragons, they say, are so large that they take in all the blood, and so the elephants are drained by them and fall dried up, and the dragons, drunk, are crushed and die with them.
35| Ethiopia produces them equal to the Indian, of twenty cubits each. The only wonder is where Juba got the belief that they are crested. The Ethiopians among whom they are chiefly born are called Asachaei; and they tell that on their seacoasts four or five at a time, interwoven like a hurdle, with heads raised as sails, are carried by the waves to better pastures in Arabia.
36| Megasthenes writes that in India serpents grow to such a size that they swallow whole stags and bulls; Metrodorus, that around the river Rhyndacus in Pontus they seize birds flying over, however high and swift, and swallow them by drawing breath.
37| There is a known case in the Punic wars, at the river Bagrada, of a serpent 120 feet in length, taken by the commander Regulus with ballistae and engines, as if it were a town; its skin and jaws lasted in a temple at Rome until the Numantine war. Credence is given to these by the boas, so called in Italy, which grow to such size that when they were killed on the Vatican under the deified Emperor Claudius, a whole infant was seen in the belly. They are fed at first by sucking cow's milk, from which they took the name.
38| There is no point in describing painstakingly the forms of the other animals, which have been brought together from everywhere and have fairly often come to Italy. Scythia produces very few, from want of shrubs, and Germany, bordering on it, few, yet notable kinds of wild oxen: the maned bisons, and the uri, outstanding in strength and speed, to which the ignorant crowd gives the name of bubali, though Africa produces that, resembling in some way a calf or a stag.
39| The north also bears herds of wild horses, as Asia and Africa do of asses, and moreover the alces, like a beast of burden, except that the height of the ears and neck distinguishes it; also one born on the island Scadinavia and never seen in this world, though told of by many, the achlis, not unlike it but with no bend in the joints of the legs, and for that reason not lying down but leaning against a tree in sleep, and the tree being cut, it is captured by this ambush, though otherwise it is remarkably swift. Its upper lip is very large; for that reason it goes backward in grazing, lest by going forward it be tangled.
40| They say that in Paeonia there is a wild animal called bonasus, with a horse's mane and in other respects like a bull, its horns so bent upon themselves that they are of no use in fighting. For this reason it helps itself by flight, discharging in it its dung, sometimes over a length of three iugera, the touch of which burns those following like some fire.
41| It is wonderful that leopards, panthers, lions and the like, with the point of the claws hidden in sheaths of the body, so that they may not be broken or blunted, walk and run with the claws turned away, and extend them only when seizing.
42| The lion has its chief nobility when the manes clothe the neck and shoulders; for this comes with age in those conceived from a lion. But those which leopards have begotten always lack this mark; so too the females. They have a great desire of mating, and for this reason the males are angry. Africa chiefly sees this, since from lack of water the wild beasts gather at a few rivers. Therefore there are multiform births of animals there, the males mating with females of each kind variously by force or pleasure; whence also the common saying in Greece that Africa always brings something new.
43| By the smell the lion perceives that the lioness has mated with a leopard in adultery, and rises with all his strength for punishment; therefore the female washes away that fault in a river or follows at a greater distance. That the young are born only once, the womb being torn by the edge of the claws in the birth, I see that the common people have believed.
44| Aristotle reports differently, a man whom, since I am to follow him in these matters for the most part, I think I should preface. When King Alexander the Great was inflamed with desire to know the natures of animals and entrusted this inquiry to Aristotle, a man supreme in every branch of learning, some thousands of men over the whole stretch of Asia and Greece were ordered to obey him, all those whom hunting, fowling and fishing supported and who had in their care preserves, herds, beehives, fishponds and aviaries, so that nothing born anywhere might be unknown to him. By questioning them he composed those famous nearly fifty volumes on animals. These, collected by me in brief together with what he had not known, I ask readers kindly to accept, as in all the works of nature and amid the longing of the most illustrious of all kings my care travels briefly.
45| He therefore reports that the lioness at her first litter bears five cubs, and every year one fewer, and from one becomes barren. They are at first shapeless and very small lumps of flesh the size of weasels, at six months they can scarcely walk and only at two months move; and in Europe, he says, lions exist only between the rivers Achelous and Nestus, but far surpass in strength those which Africa or Syria produces.
46| There are two kinds of lions, the compact and short one with more crisped manes. These are more timid than the long ones with simple coat; the latter are contemptuous of wounds. The males pass urine with a leg raised like dogs. Their smell is heavy, and their breath no less so. They drink rarely and feed on alternate days, and after a full meal sometimes go without food for three days. What they can, they swallow whole in chewing, and when the belly cannot contain their greed they extract it by putting their claws down the throat, or if they have to flee when full.
47| He shows that their life is long, by the proof that most are found with teeth gone. Polybius, the companion of Aemilianus, reports that in old age they attack man, since their strength is not enough to chase wild beasts; they then besiege the cities of Africa, and for that reason he saw them crucified, with Scipio, since the rest were deterred by fear of a like punishment from the same offence.
48| Of wild beasts only the lion has mercy towards suppliants. He spares those prostrate, and where he is fierce he roars rather at men than at women, at infants only from great hunger. Juba believes that an understanding of prayers reaches them; at any rate he heard that a captive woman returning to Gaetulia, in the forests, mitigated the attack of many by speaking to them, daring to say that she was a woman, a fugitive, weak, a suppliant of the most noble of all animals and ruler of the rest, a prey unworthy of its glory. The opinion about this varies according to the nature or chance of each, that beasts are soothed by speech, since even serpents are drawn out by song and forced to punishment; whether it is true or false, life has not decided.
49| The tail is the index of the lion's temper, as the ears are of horses; for nature gives these marks to every noble creature. A motionless tail, therefore, shows a calm lion, a gently moving one a lion that is fawning, which is rare: for anger is more frequent, at the beginning of which the ground is beaten, and as it grows the back is lashed as by a kind of spur. The greatest strength is in the chest. From every wound, whether from a claw or a tooth that has been set in, black blood pours. The same animals, when sated, are harmless.
50| Nobility is chiefly detected in dangers, not only in that way in which, scorning missiles, it long guards itself by terror alone, and as if bearing witness that it is compelled, rises, not as forced by danger but as angry at madness. There is that nobler sign of spirit: however great the force of dogs and hunters pressing, it retreats in the fields, in scorn and with halts, where it can be seen; but when it has entered thickets and woods it is borne at the fiercest speed, as though the place hid its shame. While pursuing, it leaps with a bound which it does not use in flight.
51| When wounded it knows the one who struck it, by a wonderful discrimination, and goes for him among any crowd; but the one who has thrown a weapon yet not wounded it, it seizes, whirls round and throws down, without wounding him. When a mother fights for her cubs, it is said to fix the sharpness of its eyes on the ground, so as not to be alarmed by the hunting spears.
52| For the rest they lack guile and suspicion, and do not look sidelong, and likewise do not wish to be looked at. It was believed that a dying lion bites the ground and gives a tear to death. And this animal, so great and so savage, is more terrified by the circles of turning wheels and empty chariots and the crests and even the crowing of cocks, but most of all by fires. It feels a sickness only of loathing of food, in which insult cures it, when it is driven to rage by the wantonness of apes tied near; then the taste of blood is a remedy.
53| The fight of several lions together at Rome was first given by Scaevola, son of Publius, in his curule aedileship; a hundred maned lions first of all by Lucius Sulla, who was later dictator, in his praetorship. After him Pompey the Great in the circus gave 600, among them 315 maned, Caesar the dictator 400.
54| To capture them was once a work of difficulty, especially by pits. In the principate of Claudius chance taught a method, which is almost shameful for so great a beast, when a shepherd of Gaetulia threw a cloak against the rush of one attacking; this spectacle was at once transferred to the arena, that great ferocity growing numb in an almost incredible manner when the head is covered with even a light throw, so that it is bound without resisting. Clearly all its force lies in the eyes, so that it is less wonderful that a lion shut in together with him was strangled by Lysimachus at Alexander's order.
55| Marcus Antony first put them under the yoke and harnessed them to a chariot at Rome, and indeed in the civil war, when the battle had been fought in the plains of Pharsalus, not without a certain portent of the times, that prodigy signifying that noble spirits were submitting to the yoke. For that he was so drawn with the mime-actress Cytheris went beyond even the monstrous portents of those calamities. The first man to dare to handle a lion and show it tamed is reported to be Hanno, among the most famous of the Carthaginians, and he was condemned on that very proof, since a man of such artful talent seemed able to persuade of anything, and freedom was ill entrusted to one to whom even ferocity had yielded so far.
56| There are indeed examples of chance mercies in them too. Mentor of Syracuse in Syria, when a lion met him and rolled before him as a suppliant, stunned with fear, as the beast kept setting itself in front of him as he fled on every side, and licked his footprints like one fawning, noticed in its foot a swelling and a wound. He drew out a splinter and freed it from the torment.
57| A painting at Syracuse bears witness to this event. In a similar way Elpis, a Samian by nation, carried by ship to Africa, seeing near the shore a lion with threatening jaws, sought a tree in flight, invoking Father Liber, since then is the chief place for prayers when there is no hope. But the beast had not pressed upon him as he fled, when it could have, and, lying down at the tree, sought pity with the very mouth with which it had terrified. A bone had stuck in its teeth from too greedy a bite and was tormenting it with hunger, a penalty not only in its own weapons; it gazed at him and, as it were, begged with dumb entreaties, while he, trusting in chance things, did not stand against the beast, and he hesitated much longer from wonder than from fear.
58| At last he came down and pulled it out, as the lion offered it and put it in position where it was most needed. And they say that as long as that ship stood on the shore, the lion repaid the favour by bringing in game. For this reason Elpis dedicated a temple to Father Liber at Samos, which from that deed the Greeks called the temple of kechenotos Dionysou. Shall we wonder afterwards that the footprints of men are understood by wild beasts, when they hope for help even from one of the animals? For why did they not go to others, or how do they know the healing hands of man? Unless perhaps the force of ills compels even wild beasts to try everything.
59| Equally memorable is what the natural philosopher Demetrius reports of a panther: that one lying in the middle of the road suddenly appeared, from longing for a man, to the father of a certain Philinus, a follower of wisdom; that he began to retreat in fear, but the beast rolled about, clearly fawning and throwing itself about in a grief that could be understood even in a panther. She had young, which had fallen far off into a pit.
60| The first sign of compassion, then, was not to be frightened; the next, to turn his attention to her; and following where she drew his garment with a light touch of her claws, when he understood the cause of her pain and at the same time the reward of his own safety, he took out the cubs, she escorting him with them until he was led beyond the wilds, glad and gambolling, so that it was readily apparent she was returning thanks and charging nothing in exchange, which is rare even in man.
61| These things lend credence also to Democritus, who tells that Thoas in Arcadia was saved by a dragon. As a boy he had reared it, being exceedingly fond of it, and his father, fearing the serpent's nature and size, had carried it off into wild places, in which, when he was surrounded by the ambush of robbers and the serpent recognized his voice, it came to his aid. For what is told of infants nourished with the milk of wild beasts when they had been exposed, as of our founders by a she-wolf, I think happens more fittingly by the greatness of their destinies than by the nature of the beasts.
62| The panther and the tiger are almost the only animals marked by variety of spots; in others there is one colour proper to each kind, only that of lions in Syria is black. In panthers the spots are small eyes on a white ground. They say that all four-footed creatures are wonderfully stirred by their smell, but terrified by the fierceness of the head; for this reason, with this hidden, they seize the rest, lured by the sweetness. There are some who report that on their shoulder there is a spot like the moon, growing into a circle and hollowing itself in the same way.
63| Now, throughout that whole kind, they call them variae, and pardi where they are males; the kind is most frequent in Africa and Syria. Some distinguish panthers from these by whiteness alone, and I have so far found no other difference.
64| There was an old decree of the senate that it should not be permitted to import African beasts into Italy. Against this Gnaeus Aufidius, tribune of the plebs, brought a measure to the people and allowed them to be imported for the sake of the circus games. The first to send variae, however, was Scaurus in his aedileship, 150 all together; then Pompey the Great sent 410, the deified Augustus 420.
65| On the fourth day before the May Nones, in the consulship of Quintus Tubero and Paullus Fabius Maximus, the same man, at the dedication of Marcellus' theatre, was the first of all to show a tamed tiger at Rome, in a cage, and the deified Claudius showed 4 together.
66| Hyrcanians and Indians produce the tiger, an animal of fearful speed and best known while its whole litter is being captured, which is always numerous. It is carried off by the man lying in wait on a horse as swift as possible, and he is changed at once to fresh ones. But when the mother, having young, finds the lair empty (for the males have no care of the offspring), she is borne headlong, tracking by scent. As she draws near, with a roar, the robber throws down one of the cubs; she lifts it in her mouth and, driven even faster by the weight, comes back and then catches up again, and so on, until he has returned to the ship, and her fierceness rages in vain on the shore.
67| The East pastures camels among its herds, of which there are two kinds, Bactrian and Arabian; they differ in that the former have two humps on the back, the latter one, and another under the breast on which they rest. In the upper row of teeth, like oxen, they are lacking in both kinds. All of them serve as beasts of burden on the back, and also as cavalry in battles.
68| Their speed is like a horse's, but each has its own measure, as of strength. It does not go beyond the accustomed distance nor take more than the load to which it is trained. They have a natural hatred for horses. They endure thirst even four days and fill themselves, when there is an opportunity to drink, both for the past and for the future, having first disturbed the water by trampling it; otherwise drinking does not please them. They live for fifty years, some for a hundred. Both sexes are themselves subject to madness. A kind of gelding has even been devised for the females who are prepared for war: they become stronger when mating is denied.
69| A certain likeness to these is transferred to two animals. The Ethiopians call a nabun one with a neck like a horse, feet and legs like an ox, a camel's head, its reddish colour set off by white spots, from which it is called camelopardalis; it was first seen at Rome at the circus games of Caesar the dictator. From then on it is seen from time to time, more conspicuous for its appearance than for ferocity, for which reason it has even acquired the name of wild sheep.
70| The games of Pompey the Great first showed the chama, which the Gauls called rufius, with the form of a wolf and the spots of pards. The same games showed from Ethiopia what they call kepoi, whose hind feet were like human feet and legs, and the front ones like hands. Rome has not seen this animal since.
71| At the same games was also seen the rhinoceros with a single horn in the nose, as often. This is born another enemy to the elephant: it sharpens its horn on rocks and prepares itself for the fight, in the struggle aiming chiefly at the belly, which it knows is softer. Its length is equal, its legs much shorter, its colour boxwood.
72| Lynxes, commonly numerous, and sphinxes with dark hair and two breasts on the chest, Ethiopia produces, and many other things like monsters: winged horses armed with horns, which they call pegasi; crocotae, as though conceived from a dog and a wolf, breaking everything with their teeth and at once finishing what they have swallowed in the belly; cercopitheci with black heads, the hair of an ass, and unlike the rest in voice; Indian oxen with one horn and with three; the leucrocota, a very swift beast the size of a wild ass, with stag's haunches, a lion's neck, tail and chest, a badger's head, a cloven hoof, the mouth slit open all the way to the ears, and a continuous bone in place of teeth —
73| (they say this beast imitates human voices. Among the same people is also the one called eale, the size of a river-horse, with the tail of an elephant, black or tawny in colour, the jaws of a boar, and having movable horns longer than a cubit, which it sets alternately in battle and varies, hostile or slanting, as reason has shown) —
74| but also the most savage wild bulls, larger than the farm ones, faster than all, tawny in colour, with blue-grey eyes, the hair turned the wrong way, the mouth gaping to the ears beside the movable horns. The hide has the hardness of flint, rejecting every wound. They hunt all wild beasts; they themselves are captured only in pits, and always die of their own ferocity.
75| Among the same peoples, Ctesias writes, there is born what he calls the mantichora, with a triple row of teeth meeting like the teeth of a comb, the face and little ears of a man, grey-blue eyes, a blood-red colour, the body of a lion, and a tail that fixes in its stings like a scorpion's; its voice is as if the notes of a pipe and a trumpet were mingled; of great speed, and especially greedy for human flesh.
76| In India there are also oxen with solid hooves and a single horn, and a beast named axis, with the hide of a fawn but more and whiter spots, sacred to Father Liber — (the Orsaean Indians hunt apes white over the whole body) — and a most fierce beast, the monoceros, in the rest of its body like a horse, in the head like a stag, in the feet like an elephant, in the tail like a boar, with a deep bellow, and a single black horn standing out two cubits in the middle of the forehead. They say this beast is not taken alive.
77| Among the Western Ethiopians there is a spring, the Nigris, which most have thought to be the source of the Nile, as the proofs we have given persuade. Near it a wild beast is called the catoblepas, otherwise of moderate size and sluggish in its other limbs, bearing with difficulty only its excessively heavy head (always hanging down to the ground), and otherwise the destruction of the human race, since all who have seen its eyes expire at once.
78| The same power belongs to the serpent called the basilisk. The province of Cyrenaica produces it, not more than twelve fingers in size, marked by a white spot on the head like a kind of diadem. With its hiss it drives away all serpents, and does not propel its body in many coils, as the rest do, but advances in the middle high and upright; it kills shrubs, not only those touched but those breathed on, burns up herbs and splits rocks: such is the force of the evil. It was once believed that when it was killed from a horse with a spear, the force travelling up through the spear destroyed not only the rider but the horse also. And for such a monster as this —
79| (for kings have often longed to see it dead) — the venom of weasels is deadly: so completely did it please nature that nothing should be without its match. They thrust these into its caverns, easily recognized by the corruption of the ground. The weasels kill it with their smell, and die at once, and the battle of nature is concluded.
80| But in Italy too the sight of wolves is believed to be harmful, and to take away for the moment the voice of a man whom they see first. Africa and Egypt produce them sluggish and small, the colder region rough and fierce. That men are turned into wolves and restored to themselves again we ought confidently to judge false, or else believe all the fabulous things that we have learned over so many ages. Why, however, that report is so deeply fixed among the common people that they have shape-changers in their curses will be shown.
81| Euanthes, not despised among the authors of Greece, writes that the Arcadians say that one chosen by lot from the family of a certain Anthus is led to a pool in that region, and, his clothing hung on an oak, swims across and goes off into the wilderness and is transformed into a wolf and joins with the others of the same kind for 9 years. If in that time he has abstained from man, he returns to the same pool and, when he has swum across, recovers his form, with the old age of nine years added to his former appearance. He adds this too, that he gets back the same clothing. It is wonderful how far Greek credulity goes!
82| There is no lie so shameless as to lack a witness. Likewise Apollas, who wrote of Olympic victors, tells that Demaenetus the Parrhasian, at a sacrifice which the Arcadians then still made to Jupiter Lycaeus with a human victim, tasted the entrails of the sacrificed boy and turned into a wolf, and that the same man, restored in the 10th year, trained himself in athletics at boxing and returned a victor from Olympia.
83| Moreover it is commonly believed that in the tail of this animal there is a love-poison in a small tuft of hair, and that it throws it away when captured, nor does it have power unless taken from the living animal. The days on which it mates are not more than twelve in the whole year. Among the auguries it is held that the wolf, when hungry, feeds on earth; if it does so with a full mouth after cutting across the path of travellers on their right, no omen is more excellent.
84| There are in that kind those who are called cervarii, such as we have said was seen in the arena of Pompey the Great, from Gaul. They say that for this, though chewing in hunger, if it looks back, forgetfulness of its food steals over it, and going away it seeks something else.
85| As to serpents, it is commonly said that most have the colour of the earth in which they are hidden. There are countless kinds. In the cerastes little horns often project from the body, four of them, by the movement of which, the rest of the body hidden, they entice birds to them. The amphisbaena has a double head, that is, one also at the tail, as if one mouth were too little to pour out venom. Some have scales, some markings, all deadly poison. The iaculus is hurled from the branches of trees, and serpents are to be feared not only on foot, but they fly like a missile from an engine. The necks of asps swell, and there is no remedy for the blow except by at once cutting off the parts touched.
86| This so deadly an animal has one feeling, or rather affection: they generally wander in pairs, and live only with a mate. And so, when either is killed, the other has an incredible care for vengeance: it pursues the killer and, in whatever throng of people, marks him alone by a kind of recognition, breaks through all difficulties, crosses distances and is stopped only by rivers or by very swift flight.
87| It cannot be said whether nature has produced evils or remedies more abundantly. First of all she gave this evil dull eyes, and made them see not facing forward but at the temples (and so it is roused more often by hearing than by sight); then a deadly war with the ichneumon.
88| This animal, born in the same Egypt, is best known for this glory. It plunges itself often into mud and dries itself in the sun, and soon, when it has armoured itself with several coats in the same way, it goes into the fight. In it, lifting its tail, it turns aside and receives the blows without effect, until, watching with head to one side, it attacks the throat. Not content with this, it conquers another animal no gentler.
89| The Nile has the crocodile, a four-footed evil, dangerous equally on land and in the river. This is the only land animal without the use of a tongue, the only one that presses its bite with the upper jaw moving, and in other respects terrible, its row of teeth packed together like a comb. In size it generally exceeds eighteen cubits. It lays eggs as large as geese eggs, and always hatches them out of the place to which in that year the Nile, at its greatest rise, is going to reach, by a kind of foreknowledge. No other animal grows from a smaller origin to a greater size. It is also armed with claws, and has a hide invincible against all blows. It spends the days on land, the nights in water, on account of warmth in each.
90| When it is sated with food of fishes and, with its mouth always full of food, given over to sleep on the shore, a small bird, which is called trochilos there, king of birds in Italy, invites it to open wide for the sake of its own food, first cleaning its mouth by hopping, then the teeth and the inner throat too, which gape as widely as possible for this pleasure of scratching; and when the ichneumon sees it overcome by sleep in this delight, it is sent in through the same throat like a missile and eats out the belly.
91| The scincos, born in the Nile, resembles the crocodile, though smaller even than the ichneumon; it is supreme among antidotes against poisons, and also for inflaming the desire of men. But in the crocodile there was a plague too great for nature to be content with one enemy of it. And so the dolphins, which enter the Nile and which have on the back, as if for this use, a knife-like fin, driving them from their prey and reigning as it were in their own river alone, otherwise unequal in strength, kill them by cunning. For all animals are skilled in this, and know not only their own advantages but also the weaknesses of their enemies, they know their own weapons, they know the opportunities and the unwarlike parts of the opponents. In the belly the skin of the crocodile is soft and thin: so the dolphins, as if frightened, dive, and going under the belly cut it with that spine.
92| Moreover there is a race of men hostile to this beast in the Nile itself, named from the island Tentyra, where they live. Their stature is small, but their presence of mind is wonderful in this one practice. This beast is terrible against those who flee, but fugitive against those who pursue.
93| But these alone dare to go against it; they even swim in the river and, mounted on its back as riders, when it gapes with head thrown back to bite, put a club into its mouth and, holding the ends of it on right and left, drive them captive to land as with reins, and with the voice alone they terrify them and force them to vomit up the recent bodies for burial. And so crocodiles do not swim to that one island, and are put to flight by the smell of that kind of men, as serpents are by the Psylli.
94| This animal is said to have dull eyes in the water, and out of it the keenest sight; and to pass the four months of winter always without food in a cave. Some think that this alone grows as long as it lives; and it lives a long time.
95| A larger beast in height is produced in the same Nile, the hippopotamus, with cloven hooves like those of oxen, the back and mane and neighing of a horse, a snub nose, the tail and curved teeth of boars but less harmful, a hide impenetrable, for shields and helmets, unless they are soaked with moisture. It grazes crops on a purpose, they say, determined beforehand for each day, and leaves the field with its tracks leading out of it, so that no ambush may be laid for it on its return.
96| Marcus Scaurus first showed it, with five crocodiles, at Rome, at the games of his aedileship, in a temporary channel. The hippopotamus has been in a certain part of medicine even a teacher. For, made fat by constant satiety, it comes out onto the shore to look at a recent cutting of reeds, and where it sees the sharpest stump, pressing its body on it, it wounds a certain vein in the leg and so unburdens a body otherwise diseased by the flow of blood, and covers the wound again with mud.
97| Something similar has been shown also by a bird in the same Egypt, which is called the ibis, washing itself with the curve of its beak by that part through which it is most wholesome for the burden of food to be discharged. Nor is it alone: in many animals things have been found that will be of use to man too. The herb dictamnum for drawing out arrows was shown by stags struck by that weapon, expelling it by feeding on that herb; the same, when struck by the phalangium, which is a kind of spider, or by something like it, heal themselves by eating crabs. There is also a special remedy against the bites of serpents with which lizards restore themselves, whenever they have joined battle with them and been wounded.
98| Chelidonia, most wholesome for the sight, swallows showed, treating with it the injured eyes of their young. The tortoise restores its strength against serpents by feeding on cunila, which they call bubula; the weasel, in hunting mice, by rue, when it has joined battle with them. The stork heals itself with origanum, the boar in its diseases with ivy, and by eating crabs, especially those cast up by the sea.
99| The snake, whose body is covered over with a membrane by its winter position, sheds that hindrance with the juice of fennel and springs forth glossy. It sheds first from the head, and no faster than in one day and night, turning it back, so that what was inside becomes the outside of the membrane. The same, with sight dimmed in its winter hiding place, rubs itself against the herb marathus, anoints the eyes and refreshes them; if the scales have grown numb, it scratches itself with the spines of juniper. The dragon quenches the nausea of spring with the juice of wild lettuce.
100| Barbarians hunt panthers with meat rubbed with aconitum. Anguish at once seizes their throats, for which reason some have called this poison pardalianches; but the beast heals itself against it with human excrement, and is otherwise so greedy for it that herdsmen on purpose hang it in some vessel higher than it can reach by a leap, and it wears itself out by leaping and striving and at last expires, though it is otherwise so slow to die that with its entrails thrown out it fights on a long time.
101| The elephant, having swallowed a chameleon of the same colour as foliage, meets this poison of its own with the wild olive. Bears, when they have tasted the fruit of the mandragora, lick ants. The stag resists poisoned fodder with the herb cinara. Wood-pigeons, jackdaws, blackbirds and partridges purge their yearly loathing with a laurel leaf; doves, turtle-doves and domestic fowls with the herb called helxine; ducks, geese and other water birds with the herb sideritis; cranes and the like with marsh rush. The raven, after killing a chameleon (which harms even its conqueror), extinguishes the hostile poison with laurel.
102| There are thousands more, inasmuch as the same nature of things has given to very many animals also the observation of the sky and foreknowledge of winds, rains and storms, each in a different way, which it is boundless to pursue, as boundless indeed as the rest of their partnership with individual men. For they forewarn of dangers too, not only by fibres and entrails, on which a great part of mortals depend, but by another kind of sign.
103| When ruins are impending, mice migrate beforehand, spiders fall first with their webs. Auguries indeed became an art among the Romans, and a college of priests most solemn of all. Among these, in frozen places, there is also the fox, otherwise an animal of dire cunning. Frozen rivers and lakes they cross only after its going and returning. It is observed that it estimates the thickness of the ice by putting its ear to it.
104| Nor are proofs of destruction less clear even from animals to be despised. Marcus Varro is the authority that in Spain a town was undermined by rabbits, in Thessaly by moles, that a community in Gaul was driven out by frogs, in Africa by locusts, and that the people of the island of Gyara in the Cyclades were put to flight by mice, that in Italy Amynclae was destroyed by serpents. This side of the Ethiopian Cynamolgi is a widely deserted region, the people removed by scorpions and solpugae, and the Rhoetienses were driven out by scolopendras, as Theophrastus is authority. But let us return to the remaining kinds of wild beasts.
105| That hyenas have both natures, and become males in alternate years and females in alternate years, and give birth without a male, the common people believe; Aristotle denies it. Its neck, like a mane, extends in one continuous piece with the spine, and it cannot turn except by the circling round of its whole body.
106| Many other marvels are reported, but chiefly that among the stalls of herdsmen it imitates human speech and learns someone's name, to call him out and tear him apart; likewise that it imitates the vomiting of a man to rouse the dogs that it will attack. That graves are dug up by this one animal in search of bodies. That the female is rarely caught. That in the eyes there are a thousand varieties and changes of colour. Moreover, that by the touch of its shadow dogs become mute, and that by certain magical arts every animal it has circled three times stays rooted to its spot.
107| From the mating of this kind the Ethiopian lioness bears the corocotta, which likewise imitates the voices of men and cattle. Its edge is perpetual: in each part of the mouth it has no gums but a continuous tooth, enclosed like a case so as not to be blunted by meeting. Juba is the authority that the mantichora in Ethiopia too imitates human speech.
108| The most hyenas are born in Africa, which also scatters a multitude of wild asses. The males of this kind, one at a time, rule herds of females; they fear rivals in lust and therefore guard the pregnant, and castrate male young by biting. The pregnant, on the other hand, seek hiding places and desire to give birth by stealth, and rejoice in abundance of lust.
109| The beavers of Pontus amputate these same parts from themselves when danger presses, knowing that they are sought for this; physicians call it castoreum. Otherwise the animal of dread bite cuts trees beside rivers as with iron, and when part of a man is seized does not loosen its bite before the bones, broken, crack. Its tail is of fish, the rest of the appearance that of an otter. Both are aquatic, and in both the hair is softer than down.
110| The rubeta frogs too, whose life is both on land and in moisture, stuffed with very many medicines, are said constantly to lay these aside and take them up again by feeding, always keeping the poisons alone for themselves.
111| The sea-calf too has a similar way of life, in the sea and on land, and a nature like that of beavers. It vomits its gall, useful for many medicines, and likewise the rennet for epileptic diseases, knowing that it is sought for these. Theophrastus is the authority that stellions shed old age in the manner of a snake, and therefore at once devour it, forestalling remedies for the falling sickness. They say that their bites are harmless in Greece, harmful in Sicily.
112| Deer too have their own malice, though the gentlest of animals. When pressed by the force of dogs they take refuge of their own accord with man, and in giving birth they avoid less the paths worn by human tracks than the secluded places favourable to wild beasts. Their conception comes after the rising of Arcturus. They carry their young for eight months each, sometimes twins. After conception they separate themselves, but the males left behind rage with the madness of lust and dig pits. Then their muzzles turn black, until rains wash them. The females, before giving birth, purge themselves with a certain herb called seselis, using it for an easier womb; after the birth they feed on two, called tamnus and seselis, and return to the fawn: they wish the first juices of the milk to be steeped in these, for whatever reason.
113| They exercise the young when born by running and teach them to practise flight; they lead them to steep places and show them how to leap. The males, now freed of the desire of lust, seek pasture eagerly; when they feel themselves very fat, they look for hiding places, admitting the inconvenient weight. At other times they always rest in flight, and stand and look back when the pursuit is close, then again resort to the defences of flight. This happens from pain in the intestine, so weak that it is ruptured within by a light blow.
114| They flee, however, when they hear the barking of dogs, always with the wind behind them, so that the scent goes away with them. The shepherd's pipe and singing soothe them when they have pricked up their ears, which are most keen of hearing; when they have lowered them, they are deaf. For the rest the animal is simple and so astonished with wonder at everything that when a horse or a heifer approaches nearer, they do not perceive the man hunting beside it, or if they perceive him, they marvel at the bow itself and the arrows. They cross seas in herds, swimming in a stretched-out line, laying their heads on the haunches of those ahead, and taking turns in returning to the rear. This is chiefly noted in those crossing from Cilicia to Cyprus. They do not see the lands, but swim toward their scent.
115| The males have horns and alone of animals lose them every year at a fixed time in spring. Therefore on that day they seek the most pathless places: they lie hidden, having lost them, as though unarmed, but even these grudging their own good. They deny that the right horn is ever found, as if endowed with some medicine, and this must be admitted to be the more remarkable since in game preserves too they shed every year. They think they are buried by them. But when either is burned, by its smell serpents are put to flight and epileptic diseases are detected.
116| They also carry in them signs of age, adding a single branch each year up to six years; from that time they grow again alike, and age cannot be distinguished; but old age is shown by the teeth, for they have either few or none, and no branches at the base of the horns, which in younger ones are usually seen projecting in front of the forehead.
117| In castrated males the horns neither fall off nor are born; they burst out, however, from budding swellings, at first like dry skin, then grow on tender stalks like reed-panicles, feathered with soft down. As long as they lack them, they go out to pasture at night. As they grow they harden in the heat of the sun, and keep trying them against trees; when they are satisfied with their strength, they go out into the open. Stags have been caught with ivy growing green on their horns, grown on them when they are tender, from rubbing on trees, while they test them, as on a piece of wood. There are sometimes white ones too, such as the hind of Quintus Sertorius is reported to have been, which he had persuaded the peoples of Spain was prophetic.
118| And these have a fight with the serpent: they track out its caves and drag them out, resisting, by the breath of their nostrils. Therefore the smell of burnt deer's horn is unique for driving away serpents, and against bites the chief remedy is from the rennet of a fawn killed in its mother's womb.
119| The life of deer is admitted to be long; after 100 years some were taken again, still wearing the gold collars that Alexander the Great had put on them, now covered over by the skin in great fatness. This animal does not feel fevers, and indeed cures this fear. We know that certain women of rank were accustomed on every morning to taste that flesh and for a long life were free from fevers, which they hold valid only if it dies by a single wound.
120| There is one of the same appearance, differing only in a beard and a fleece on the shoulders, which they call the tragelaphus, born nowhere else than beside the river Phasis. Africa almost alone does not produce deer, but it does the chameleon, although it is more common in India. Its form and size were those of a lizard, except that the legs are straight and higher. The flanks are joined to the belly as in fishes; and the spine stands out in the same way.
121| The muzzle, as in a small creature, not unlike a pig's, the tail very long, ending in a thinness, coiling itself in viper-like circles, the claws hooked, the movement slower like a tortoise's, the body rough like a crocodile's, the eyes in a hollow recess, with a slight separation, very large, and coloured like the body. It never covers them, nor does it look round by moving the pupils, but by turning the whole eye.
122| Itself high up, with the mouth always open, it alone of animals is fed neither by food nor drink nor by any other nourishment than air, with a mouth terrible to look at, harmless otherwise. And its nature of colour is more wonderful: for it changes it repeatedly in the eyes and the tail and the whole body, and always renders whatever it touches nearest, except red and white; when dead it is pale. The flesh in the head and jaws and at the joint of the tail is very scanty, and nowhere else in the whole body; blood only in the heart and around the eyes; the viscera without a spleen. It hides in the winter months, like lizards.
123| The tarandrus of the Scythians also changes its colors, as does nothing else among the animals clothed in hair, except in India the lycaon, which is reported to have a maned neck. For the thoes (this is a kind of wolf, taller in length but unlike them in the shortness of its legs, swift at leaping, living by the hunt, harmless to man) change their appearance, not their color, being shaggy through the winters and bare in summer.
124| The tarandrus has the size of an ox, a head larger than a deer's and not unlike it, branching horns, cloven hoofs, and a coat of hair as large as a bear's; but when it chooses to be of its own color, it is like an ass. Its hide is so hard that breastplates are made of it. When afraid, it takes on the color of all the trees, shrubs, flowers and places in which it lies hidden, and for that reason it is rarely caught. It would be a wonder for so many-sided an appearance to be given to a body; it is more wonderful that it is given to the hair as well.
125| India and Africa produce hystrices, covered with a spiny skin in the manner of hedgehogs, but the hystrix has longer quills and, when it stretches its skin, they are shot out like missiles. It fixes them in the muzzles of dogs that press upon it and hurls them a little farther. It hides itself during the winter months, which is the nature of many animals and above all of bears.
126| Their mating is at the beginning of winter, and not in the common manner of four-footed animals, but with both lying down and embracing; then they withdraw into dens separately, in which they give birth on the 30th day, at most five cubs. These are a white and shapeless flesh, a little larger than mice, without eyes, without hair; only the claws project. By licking they gradually shape it. And nothing is rarer than to see a bear giving birth. For this reason the males lie hidden for forty days, the females for four months.
127| If they have not found dens, they build them from a heap of branches and shrubs, impenetrable to rain and spread with soft foliage. In the first twice seven days they are pressed by so heavy a sleep that they cannot be roused even by wounds. Then in a marvelous way they grow fat in their torpor. That is the fat suited to medicines and effective against falling of the hair. After these days they sit up and live by sucking their forepaws. They warm their stiff cubs by pressing them to the breast, brooding no differently than birds on eggs.
128| Marvelous to tell, Theophrastus believes that during this time even the cooked flesh of bears, if kept, increases in bulk; that there is then no sign of food and nothing found in the belly but the least moisture, and only a few drops of blood around the heart, and nothing in the rest of the body.
129| They come forth in spring, but the males extremely fat, the reason for which is not obvious, since they are not fattened even by sleep, apart from the 14 days, as we have said. On coming out they devour a certain plant, arum by name, to loosen their intestines, which are otherwise clogged, and they chew twigs with their teeth, first softening their mouths. Their eyes are dulled, and this is the chief reason they seek honeycombs, so that the mouth, wounded all over by the bees, may relieve that heaviness by letting blood.
130| The head is the weakest part of the bear, which in the lion is the strongest. Therefore, when violence presses them, intending to throw themselves down from some rock they cast themselves with their hands covering the head, and often in the arena they are killed by a blow of the fist that breaks the skull. Spain believes there is a poison in the brain, and burns the heads of those killed in the shows before witnesses, since drunk it drives to the madness of bears. They walk even on two feet; they climb down a tree backwards.
131| They tire bulls by hanging from their muzzles and horns with all their feet, by their weight. Nor in any other of the animals is stupidity more cunning in doing harm. The annals record that, in the consulship of Marcus Piso and Marcus Messala, on the 14th day before the Kalends of October, Domitius Ahenobarbus, curule aedile, gave in the circus a hundred Numidian bears and as many Ethiopian hunters. I wonder that "Numidian" was added, since it is agreed that the bear is not born in Africa.
132| The Pontic mice also hide away in winter, the white ones at any rate, whose palate is most acute in tasting; how the authors came to know this I wonder. The Alpine ones also hide away, which are the size of meles, but these first carry fodder into their dens; indeed they relate that a male and female in turn, lying on their backs and embracing a bundle of gnawed grass, are dragged by turns to the den, each holding the other's tail in its teeth, and that for this reason their backs are rubbed bare at that season. Similar to these are those in Egypt, and likewise they sit upright on their haunches, walk on two feet, and use their forefeet as hands.
133| Hedgehogs too prepare food for winter, and having rolled over fruit lying on the ground so that it is fixed on their spines, and holding one more in the mouth, they carry it into hollow trees. The same creatures foretell a change of the wind from north to south by withdrawing into their bed. But when they sense a hunter, drawing in the mouth, the feet and the whole underside, where they have thin and harmless down, they roll themselves into the shape of a ball, so that nothing can be seized except the spines.
134| In despair, moreover, they discharge upon themselves a wasting urine, harmful to their own hide and spines, knowing they are caught for this. For that reason the art of hunting them is to empty the urine out first, and then the hide has its chief value; otherwise it is spoiled, brittle, with rotten spines that fall away, even if the creature, withdrawn by flight, lives. For this reason they pour over themselves this harmful fluid only in the last hope, since they themselves hate their own poison, so sparing themselves and awaiting the final limit, that for the most part captivity comes first. Afterwards the ball is loosened by sprinkling hot water, and, caught by one of its hind feet and hung up, it is killed by starvation. There is no other way to kill it and spare the hide.
135| The animal itself is not, as most of us suppose, superfluous to human life; if it had not those spines, the softness of fleeces given to mortals in the sheep would be to no purpose, for garments are finished smooth with this hide. Fraud has found great profit there too in a monopoly; about no matter have there been more frequent decrees of the senate, and there is no emperor to whom the complaints of the provincials have not been brought.
136| There is also a marvelous account of the urine of two other animals. We are told that the leontophonon is the name of a small creature, born nowhere else than where the lion is born; the lion, tasting it, though so great is his strength and he rules the rest of the four-footed animals, dies at once. So hunters burn its body and sprinkle it like meal over other flesh, lying in wait for the beasts, and they kill them even with the ash: so opposed is the poison. Not undeservedly, then, the lion hates it, and on seeing it breaks it and kills it without a bite; it, on the other hand, scatters its urine, knowing that this too is deadly to the lion.
137| The fluid of lynxes, voided in the places where they are born, freezes or dries hard into gems like carbuncles and shining with a fiery color, called lyncurium, and for this reason amber is said by most to be produced in this way. The lynxes know this and understand it, and out of envy they cover their urine with earth, and it hardens the more quickly for that.
138| Another cunning in fear belongs to the meles: by the stretching of its inflated skin it wards off the blows of men and the bites of dogs. Squirrels too foresee a storm, and having stopped up the holes on the side from which the wind is going to blow, they open doors on the other side. For the rest, their tail, which is hairier, serves them as a covering. So for the winters some have provided fodder, and for others sleep serves as food.
139| Of serpents the viper alone is said to hide in the earth, the others in the hollows of trees or rocks. And they endure even a year's hunger, provided only that cold is kept off. At the time of retreat all of them sleep deprived of venom. In a similar way snails too, indeed they a second time in the summers also, clinging especially to rocks or, even when upturned and torn away by some injury, still not coming out.
140| In the Balearic islands, indeed, those called cavaticae do not creep out from the hollows of the earth (nor do they live on grass) but cling to one another like grapes. There is also another, less common kind, covering itself with a lid attached to the same shell. These are always buried in the earth, and having once been dug up only around the Maritime Alps, they have now begun to be dug up in the Velitrine territory as well. The most highly praised of all are on the island of Astypalaea.
141| Lizards, a kind most hostile to snails, are said not to live beyond six months. Arabian lizards are a cubit long, and on Mount Nysus in India 24 feet in length, tawny or crimson or blue in color.
142| Of the animals too that live with us, many are worth knowing, and most faithful of all to man are the dog and the horse. We have heard that a dog fought against robbers for its master and, finished off with wounds, did not leave his body, driving off birds and wild beasts. We have heard of another in Epirus that recognized in an assembly the murderer of its master and by tearing and barking forced him to confess the crime. Dogs, 200 of them, led back the king of the Garamantes from exile, fighting against those who resisted. Because of wars the Colophonians and likewise the Castabalenses kept cohorts of dogs.
143| These fought first in the line of battle, never shrinking back; these were the most trustworthy auxiliaries and did not need pay. Dogs defended the houses of the Cimbri, placed on wagons, after the Cimbri were slain. A dog, when Jason the Lycian was killed, refused to take food and wasted away by hunger. Another, to which Duris gives the name Hyrcanus, when the pyre of King Lysimachus was kindled, threw itself into the flames, and likewise the dog of King Hiero.
144| Philistus also recalls Pyrrhus, the dog of the tyrant Gelo; and that of Nicomedes king of Bithynia is recalled, which tore his wife Cosingis because of a rather playful jest with her husband. Among us, the noble Vulcatius, who taught Cascellius the civil law, returning from his suburban estate on an asturco as evening fell, was defended by a dog against a highwayman; likewise the senator Caelius, sick at Placentia, was set upon by armed men, and he was not wounded until the dog was killed.
145| But above all in our own age it was attested in the public records of the Roman people, while Appius Junius and Publius Silius were consuls, when, in the matter of Nero the son of Germanicus, punishment was being carried out on Titius Sabinus and his slaves, that the dog of one of them could not be driven away even from the prison and did not leave the body when it was thrown down on the Gemonian steps, uttering mournful howls, in the presence of a great ring of the Roman people; and when someone from it threw food to it, it carried it to the mouth of the dead man. The same dog swam out, when the corpse was thrown into the Tiber, trying to hold it up, while a crowd poured out to see the animal's faithfulness.
146| They alone know their master, and recognize even a stranger if he comes suddenly; they alone know their own names, they alone the voice of the household. They remember journeys however long, and no creature but man has greater memory. Their onset and savagery is softened by a man sitting down on the ground.
147| Life finds out very many other things in them every day, but in hunting their cleverness and keen scent are chief. It examines the tracks and follows them, drawing on a leash the tracker who accompanies it to the beast; and when the beast is sighted, how silent and secret, yet how signifying is the pointing, first with the tail, then with the muzzle! So even when worn out by age, blind and weak, they are carried in the lap, catching the winds and scent and stretching out their muzzles toward the lairs.
148| The Indians want dogs to be conceived from tigers, and for this reason at the time of mating they tie up the females in the forests. They think that at the first and second litter the offspring are born too fierce, and only at the third do they rear them. The Gauls do the same with wolves; their packs each have a leader and chief from among the dogs. They accompany him in the hunt and obey him; for among themselves they exercise even authority.
149| (It is certain that they lick the water of the river Nile as they run, so as not to give the greed of crocodiles an opportunity.) When Alexander the Great was making for India, the king of Albania had given him as a gift one dog of unusual size, and, delighted by its appearance, he ordered bears to be let out against it, then boars, and then fallow deer; it lay motionless, in contempt. The commander, a man of lofty spirit, was offended by such sluggishness in so great a body and ordered it killed. Report carried this to the king. And so, sending a second, he added instructions that he should not wish to try it on small animals but on a lion or an elephant: he had had two, and with this one killed there would be no other besides.
150| Alexander did not delay, and saw the lion broken at once. Afterward he ordered an elephant brought in, and was delighted by no other spectacle more. For with its hair bristling over its whole body, it first thundered with an enormous bark, then rushed upon it, leaping at it, and rising against its limbs now on this side, now on that, in a skilled combat, attacking and evading just where there was most need, until it brought the animal down, whirled round in constant circling, the ground shaking at its fall.
151| The race of dogs has two litters a year. The proper age for bearing is a year. They are pregnant for sixty days. They give birth to blind young, and the more abundantly they are nursed, the later they receive sight, yet never after the 21st day nor before the seventh. Some report that if one is born, it sees on the ninth day, if twins, on the tenth, and that for each additional pup as many more days of delay in light are added, and that by the one which is female, born of a first-time mother, Fauns are seen. The best in a litter is the one which begins to see last, or the one which the mother carries first to the bed.
152| The madness of dogs when Sirius is burning, as we have said, is destructive to man, and so, for those bitten, deadly through fear of water. For this reason it is met by precautions through those 30 days, with chicken dung especially mixed into the dogs' food, or, if the disease has come first, hellebore. For the bite itself the only remedy, discovered lately by a kind of oracle, is the wild rose's root, called cynorrhoda.
153| Columella is the authority that if on the 40th day after a dog is born its tail is docked by biting, and the last joint of the tail is taken off with the sinew of the spine pulled out, the tail does not grow and the dogs do not become rabid. Among the prodigies, as far as I have noted, we have heard of a dog that spoke, and of a serpent that barked when Tarquinius was driven from his kingdom.
154| The same Alexander also had the fortune of a very rare horse. They called him Bucephalas, either from his grim look or from the mark of a bull's head impressed on his shoulder. They say he was bought for 13 talents from the herd of Philonicus of Pharsalus, the boy's fancy being already captured by his beauty. This horse, when decked in the royal trappings, would take no one but Alexander onto its back, though at other times it took anyone at all. In battles too he is reported to have given a certain memorable service: wounded in the attack on Thebes, he would not allow Alexander to pass to another horse; and many other things of the same kind, for which the king, when it died, conducted its funeral and surrounded its tomb with a city bearing its name.
155| The horse of Caesar the dictator, too, is said to have let no one else onto its back; it is also said to have had forefeet like a human being's, and it is set up in that form in front of the temple of Venus Genetrix. The deified Augustus also made a tomb for a horse, about which there is a poem of Germanicus Caesar. At Agrigentum the tombs of several horses have pyramids. Juba is the authority that a horse was passionately loved by Semiramis, even to the point of coupling.
156| The Scythian cavalry, indeed, resounds with the glory of its horses: when a petty king, fighting an enemy who had challenged him, was killed, and the enemy came to strip him, he was finished off by the dead man's horse with blows and bites; another horse, when the covering was drawn from its eyes and it learned it had coupled with its mother, made for the precipices and killed itself. For an equal cause in the territory of Reate we find a groom torn to pieces. For they have also an understanding of kinship, and in the herd a mare keeps company with her sister of the previous year even more willingly than with her mother.
157| Their docility is so great that the entire cavalry of the army of the Sybarites is found to have been accustomed to move in a kind of dance to the music of a band. The same animals have foreknowledge of battle and mourn lost masters: sometimes they shed tears out of longing. When King Nicomedes was killed, his horse ended its life by starvation.
158| Phylarchus reports that Centaretus of the Galatians, when Antiochus was killed in battle, took his horse and mounted it exultant, but that the horse, fired with indignation, with its bridle mastered so that it could not be ruled, went headlong over the precipices and died along with him. Philistus says that a horse, left behind by Dionysius, sticking in mud, when it had pulled itself out followed its master's tracks with a swarm of bees clinging to its mane, and by that portent the tyranny was seized by Dionysius.
159| Their natures are beyond description. Javelin-throwers find them obedient, the horses helping their difficult efforts with the very movement and straining of their bodies; likewise they hand to the rider the weapons gathered from the ground. For in the circus, yoked to chariots, they admit without doubt that they understand encouragement and glory.
160| At the circus games of the Secular Games of Claudius Caesar, when the driver of the whites, Corax, was thrown in the starting gates, the horses took the lead, held off those who opposed them, spread out, and did everything against their rivals that they ought to have done had a most skilled driver been in command; and, as it shamed men that their skills be surpassed by horses, when the lawful course was finished they stood at the chalk line.
161| A greater omen among the ancients occurred at the plebeian circus games, when the driver was thrown, and the horses, as if he were still standing, ran to the Capitol and three times circled the temple; but the greatest was that horses came from Veii to the same place with palm and garland, Ratumenna, who had won there, having been flung out, from whom the gate afterwards took its name.
162| The Sarmatians prepare their horses for a long journey by starving them the day before, giving only a little to drink, and so they mount them and ride a hundred and fifty miles in a continuous run. Some live fifty years, the mares a shorter span; the mares reach the end of their growth at five years, the males one year later. The form of horses, such as ought above all to be chosen, has been most beautifully set out by the poet Virgil; but we too have spoken of it in the book composed on throwing the javelin from horseback, and I see that it is well agreed among all. A different standard, however, is sought for the circus. And so, though two-year-olds are put under the yoke elsewhere in other service, there they are not admitted to competition before five years old.
163| In that kind they carry their young eleven months and give birth in the twelfth. Mating is at the spring equinox, common to both at two years old, but from the third year the offspring is sturdier. The male sires up to 33 years, seeing that after the twentieth year they are sent from the circus to breed. At Opus they say one lasted even to 40, helped only in raising the forepart of his body.
164| But for begetting, few animals are less fertile. For this reason intervals are allowed between coverings, and not even fifteen coverings in the same year can he endure. The desire of mares is extinguished when the mane is cut off. They bear every year up to the fortieth. A horse is reported to have lived 75 years.
165| In this kind the pregnant mare gives birth standing, and loves her offspring beyond others. And indeed in horses a poison of love is born, called hippomanes, on the forehead, the size of a dried fig, black in color, which the mare at once devours when the birth is delivered, or else does not admit the foal to the udder. If anyone has it, snatched away, the kind is driven to madness by the smell. If the mother is lost in the herd, the other mares who have foaled raise the orphan. They say that for the first three days after being born he cannot touch the ground with his mouth. The more spirited, the more deeply he dips his nostrils in drinking. The Scythians prefer to use mares in wars, since they pass urine without hindering their run.
166| It is agreed that in Lusitania, around the town Olisipo and the river Tagus, mares turned to face the west wind conceive a living breath, and that this results in a birth and the offspring is born very swift in this way, but does not live beyond three years. In the same Spain there is the Gallaecian people and the Asturian; of the equine kind they have those we call tieldones; they produce smaller ones, called asturcones, whose pace in running is not the common one but a soft rolling, with an alternating stretching of the legs, from which the art of trotting is said to be taught to horses. The horse has almost the same diseases as man, besides the turning of the bladder, as in every animal of the beast-of-burden kind.
167| Marcus Varro is the authority that an ass was bought for 400,000 sesterces by the senator Quintus Axius, a price, I think, that surpasses the price of all animals. The service of the kind is without doubt generous, in plowing also, but most of all in the breeding of mules. Their native country is also considered, the Arcadian ones in Achaia, in Italy the Reatine. The animal itself is very intolerant of cold. For this reason it is not bred in Pontus, and it is not put to mate at the spring equinox like other livestock, but at the solstice.
168| The males are worse during rest from work. Birth from the thirtieth month is the earliest, but from the third year proper, the same number as mares, in the same months and in a similar way. But an incontinent womb discharges the seed with urine, unless she is driven to a run with blows after mating. Rarely does she bear twins. When about to give birth she flees the light and seeks darkness, so as not to be seen by man. She bears all her life, which for her lasts to the thirtieth year.
169| Her fondness for her offspring is the highest, but her dislike of water greater: through fires they press to their young, yet if the smallest stream lies between, they shrink even from wetting their feet at all. Those in the herds drink only from springs they are accustomed to, and so as to go to the drinking by a dry path. They do not cross bridges, because the rivers show through the gaps, and, marvelous to say, they refuse to drink if the water is changed; to drink they must be forced or coaxed. And only a spacious looseness in their bed is safe; for they conceive various sights in their sleep with frequent kicking, and unless the kick has flashed out into empty space, the rebound from some harder material at once brings lameness.
170| The profit from them exceeds rich estates. It is known that in Celtiberia single females have produced four hundred thousand sesterces each, especially by the foaling of mules. They say that in these the hairs of the ears and eyelids matter; for although the rest of the body is of one color, as many colors as were there are given back. Maecenas began the custom of dining on their foals, and at that time they were greatly preferred to wild asses. After him the authority of the flavor of the ass perished. (When sight fails, this kind fails very quickly.)
171| From an ass and a mare a mule is born in the 13th month, an animal exceptional in strength for labors. For such births they choose mares neither younger than four nor older than ten, and they say that each kind is kept from the other unless in infancy of that kind which covers, milk has been drawn; for this reason, in the dark, they slip ass foals to the udders of mares, or colts to those of she-asses. A mule is born both from a horse and from a she-ass, but unbridled and of untamed slowness. All offspring of old animals are slow as well. The ass's mating following a conception from a horse destroys it by abortion,
172| A horse's mating after an ass's does not do the same. It has been observed that females are best got with young on the seventh day after giving birth, and that males get them with young better when tired. A female that has not conceived before she sheds the teeth called foal-teeth is understood to be barren, and so is one that has not begun to breed at her first covering. The ancients called the males born of a horse and a she-ass hinnuli, and, on the other hand, mules those that asses and mares produced.
173| It has been observed that what is born from two different kinds becomes of a third kind, and is like neither of the parents, and that those very creatures that are born so do not breed, in every kind of animal; therefore mules do not bear young. It is in our annals that they have often borne, but it was held as a prodigy. Theophrastus reports that in Cappadocia they commonly bear, but that the animal there is of its own kind. The kicking of a mule is checked by frequent drinking of wine.
174| In the records of several Greeks there is something born of a mare by the coupling of a mule which they called a ginnus, that is, a small mule. From a mare and tamed wild asses are born mules swift in running, of exceptional hardness of hoof, but of lean body and unbroken spirit. But the sire begotten of a wild ass and a she-ass surpasses all. The wild asses of Phrygia and Lycaonia are the best. Africa boasts of their foals, as outstanding in flavor, which she calls lalisiones.
175| It appears from the records of the Athenians that a mule lived 80 years; for they rejoiced, when they were building the temple on the citadel, that one, left behind through old age, urged on by its company and effort the beasts climbing up, and they made a decree that the grain dealers should not keep it away from their sieves.
176| The oxen of India are reported to have the height of camels, and horns four feet in breadth. In our world the Epirote have the highest praise, from the care, as they say, of King Pyrrhus already in his time. He achieved this by not calling them to breed before four years old; so they were very large, and to this day remnants of the stock last. But now yearlings are asked for fertility, though more tolerably two-year-olds, and bulls are used for breeding at four years. Single bulls fill ten cows in the same year. They say that if the bulls, after mating, go off to the right side, males have been begotten; if to the left, females.
177| Conception is completed by a single covering, and if it has gone astray, the female seeks the male again after the 20th day. They give birth in the 10th month; whatever is born before is useless. There are authorities who say that the cow calves on the very day she completes the tenth month. They rarely bear twins. Mating begins at the rising of the Dolphin, on the eve of the Nones of January, and lasts 30 days, and some also in autumn, among the nations that live on milk, so arranged that at every time of the year that food is left. Bulls do not mate more often than twice a day.
178| Oxen alone of the animals graze also walking backwards, among the Garamantes indeed in no other way. Life for the females is longest at 15 years, for the males 20. Their strength is in the fifth year. They are said to grow fat by washing in hot water, and if anyone, with the skin cut, drives breath into the inward parts with a reed.
179| Those not of fine appearance are not to be reckoned degenerate either: the Alpine have the most milk, with the smallest bodies, the most labor with the head, not the neck, yoked. The Syrian have no dewlaps, but a hump on the back. The Carian too, in part of Asia, ugly to see with a swelling standing up over the shoulders from the neck, with horns dislocated, are reported excellent at work; otherwise, those of black or white color are rejected for work. Bulls have smaller horns than oxen, and thinner.
180| The breaking-in of oxen is in the third year, later it is late, earlier premature. It is best when the young bullock is trained along with a broken one. For this animal we have as partner in labor and the cultivation of the field, and the care taken of it by our forebears was so great that among the examples is a man condemned by the Roman people, a day having been appointed, who, when his insolent favorite said in the country that he had not eaten tripe, had killed an ox, and was driven into exile as if he had killed his own farm tenant.
181| Bulls have nobility in their look, with a grim forehead, bristly ears, and horns ready for fighting, demanding battle. But the whole threat is in the forefeet. He stands with anger swelling, drawing back each foot in turn and scattering sand over his belly, and he alone of animals is fired by this spur.
182| We have seen them fight at command and, shown off for sport, be whirled round, falling on their horns be caught and again guided, and now lying be lifted from the ground, and even stand on the car of a two-horse chariot at speed like charioteers. It was an invention of the people of the Thessalians to kill bulls with a horse galloping alongside, by twisting the neck by the horn; the dictator Caesar first gave this spectacle at Rome.
183| From this come the rich victims and the most splendid appeasement of the gods. In this animal alone of all those with a long tail, the tail is not of complete measure at birth as in the rest: in this one alone it grows until it reaches right down to the feet. For this reason the test of victims in the calf is that it reach the joint of the hock; with a shorter one they do not obtain favorable omens. This too is noted, that calves carried to the altar on a man's shoulders are hardly ever favorable, just as neither with a limping nor with a foreign victim nor with one pulling itself away from the altars are the gods appeased. It is frequent among the prodigies of the ancients that an ox spoke, and when this was reported the senate was accustomed to meet in the open air.
184| The ox in Egypt is even worshiped in place of a divinity; they call him Apis. His mark is on the right side a whitening spot like the horns of the moon beginning to grow, and a knot under the tongue, which they call a cantharus. It is not lawful for him to pass certain years of life, and they kill him by drowning him in the fountain of the priests, to seek another with mourning to substitute, and until they have found him they grieve, even with heads shaved; yet he is never sought for long.
185| When found, he is led to Memphis by 100 priests. He has twin shrines, which they call chambers, the auguries of the peoples: to have entered the one is joyful, in the other he portends dread. He gives answers to private persons by accepting food from the hands of those who consult him. He turned away from the hand of Germanicus Caesar, who was dead not long after. Otherwise he is kept apart; when he rushes out into the crowds, he advances with the lictors clearing the way, and bands of boys accompany him singing a song in his honor; he seems to understand and to wish to be worshiped. These bands, suddenly frenzied, foretell the future.
186| A cow is shown to him once a year, marked with her own signs, though different ones, and they report that she is always found and put to death on the same day. At Memphis there is a place in the Nile which from its shape they call the Phiala, where every year they sink a golden and a silver bowl on the days which they hold as the birthdays of Apis. These are seven, and it is a marvel that on them no one is touched by the crocodiles, and that on the eighth, after the sixth hour of the day, the beasts' ferocity returns.
187| Great too is the favor of the flock, both in the appeasement of the gods and in the use of fleeces. As oxen cultivate the sustenance of men, so the protection of their bodies is owed to the flock. Breeding in both sexes is from two years old to nine, in some to 10; the offspring of first-time mothers are smaller. Mating for all runs from Arcturus' setting, that is, from the 3rd day before the Ides of May, up to the setting of the Eagle, that is, the 10th day before the Kalends of August. They carry the young 150 days; those conceived afterward are weak. The ancients called cordi those born after that time. Many prefer winter lambs to spring ones, since it matters more to be strong before the solstice than before midwinter, and this is the only animal for which it is of use to be born at midwinter.
188| It is natural for the ram to disdain young ewes and to go after old ones, and he himself is better with age, and a hornless one is more useful. His fierceness is restrained by boring his horn near the ear. With the right testicle tied up he begets females, with the left males. Thunder brings abortion to solitary sheep; the remedy is to gather them together, that they may be helped by company. They say males are conceived by a blast of the north wind,
189| females by the south, and in that kind of animal the rams' mouths are especially examined, because whatever color the veins under the tongue have, that is the color of the wool in the offspring, and it is mixed if there are several. A change of waters and of drink also varies it. Of sheep there are two chief kinds, the covered and the country kind, the former softer, the latter more particular in pasture, since the covered one is not troubled by brambles.
190| Of the coverings for it the Arabian ones are foremost. But the most highly praised wool is the Apulian, and that which in Italy is called of the Greek flock, elsewhere Italian; the third place is held by the Milesian sheep. The Apulian are short in fleece and famed only for cloaks; around Tarentum and Canusium they have the highest renown, and in Asia the Laodicean in the same kind. No white is preferred to that of the Po region, nor has any wool at this date exceeded a hundred sesterces to the pound.
191| Sheep are not shorn everywhere; in some places the custom of plucking lasts. There are many kinds of colors, since even those they call natural have no names in some ways: Spain has the best of black fleece, Pollentia near the Alps of gray, Asia of ruddy, which they call Erythraean, likewise Baetica, Canusium of tawny, Tarentum of its own dark color. All greasy wool has a medicinal power. The wool of Histria and Liburnia is nearer hair than wool, unfit for combed garments, and so is that which Salacia commends in Lusitania for checkered weaving. Similar is that around the Piscinae of the province of Narbonensis, similar too in Egypt, from which a garment, worn out by use, is dyed and again lasts through time. There is also the shaggy wool of coarse hair in carpets, now long held in the highest favor; Homer is the authority that they were certainly in use. The Gauls decorate these in one way, the nations of the Parthians in another.
192| Wools too, pressed together by themselves, make a garment, and if vinegar is added, they even resist iron, nay even fire, as the last refuse of the stuff. For what is drawn out in the bronze vessels of the polishers comes into use as stuffing, in the Gauls', I suppose, invention;
193| certainly it is distinguished today by Gallic names. Nor could I easily say at what age this began; for with the ancients the bed was of straw, as even now in camps. The gausapae began in my father's memory, the amphimallia in ours, as also the shaggy ventralia. For a tunic with the broad stripe woven in the manner of a gausape is only now beginning. Of wools the black take no color. Of the dyeing of the rest we shall speak in their own places, in the shellfish of the sea or the nature of herbs.
194| Marcus Varro is the authority, from his own seeing, that Tanaquil's wool, on her distaff and spindle (she was also called Gaia Caecilia), still lasted in his day in the temple of Sancus, and that the royal toga, wavy, made by her, was in the temple of Fortune, which Servius Tullius had used. Hence it came about that a dressed distaff and a spindle with its thread accompany maidens when they marry. She was the first to weave the straight tunic, such as are put on with the plain toga by the young recruit and by new brides. The wavy garment was first among the most splendid;
195| from it the sororiculata derived. Fenestella writes that shaved togas and the Phryxian ones began in the last times of the deified Augustus. The frequent poppy-patterned have an older origin, already noted in Torquatus under the poet Lucilius. The praetextae found their origin among the Etruscans. I understand that kings used the trabeae; painted garments are already found in Homer, and from them the triumphal ones were born.
196| The Phrygians invented making this with the needle, and for that reason such cloths are called Phrygian. King Attalus in the same Asia invented the weaving in of gold, whence the name Attalic. Babylon most celebrated the weaving in of different colors in picture-work, and gave it its name. To weave with very many threads, which they call polymita, Alexandria established; to divide with checks, Gaul. Metellus Scipio records among the charges against Cato that Babylonian dining-room coverings had already then sold for eight hundred thousand sesterces, which recently cost the emperor Nero four million sesterces.
197| The praetextae of Servius Tullius, in which the statue of Fortune that he had dedicated was wrapped, endured until Sejanus's end, and it was a marvel that they had neither fallen apart nor felt the injuries of moth-worms in five hundred and sixty years. We have seen by now even the fleeces of living sheep dyed with purple, scarlet and conchylium in pounds of a foot and a half, as though luxury compelled them to be born so.
198| In the sheep itself nobility is sufficiently shown by shortness of leg and by the covering of the belly. Those whose belly was bare they called apicae and condemned. The tails of the sheep of Syria are a cubit long, and in that part is the greatest share of the wool. It is thought premature to castrate lambs unless they are five months old.
199| There is in Spain, but chiefly in Corsica, a kind not unlike sheep, the musmones, with a fleece nearer to goat's hair than to a sheep's fleece; from this kind and from sheep the ancients called the offspring umbri. The head is the weakest part of the flock, for which reason they must be made to graze turned away from the sun, since the woolly are the stupidest of animals: where they have been afraid to go in, they follow one that is dragged by the horn. Their longest life is 10 years, in Ethiopia 13. For goats in the same place 11, in the rest of the world at most eight. Each kind is filled within the fourth mating.
200| Goats give birth even to four, but very rarely; they carry for 5 months, like sheep. He-goats become sterile with fatness. Before three years they breed less usefully, and in old age, and not beyond four years. They begin in the seventh month and while still sucking. A hornless one is more useful in either sex. The first mating in a day does not fill, the next is more effective and then the next. They conceive in November, so as to bear in March when the shoots swell, sometimes at a year old, always at two; if not by the third year, they are useless. They bear for eight years.
201| They are liable to miscarry from cold. A goat relieves eyes that are overspread by pricking with a rush, drawing blood, a he-goat with a bramble. Mucianus reported that he saw the cleverness of this animal on a very narrow bridge, when two met from opposite directions: since the narrowness would not admit turning around, and the length with its slenderness would not admit turning back blindly, with a torrent flowing threateningly underneath, one lay down and so the other stepped over it, trampling it.
202| Males they approve the most snub-nosed possible, with long and drooping ears, and shoulders as hairy as possible; the mark of nobility in the females is two small flaps hanging down from the neck on the body. Not all have horns, but in those that have them there are also signs of the years from the growth of knots. In hornless ones the abundance of milk is greater. Archelaus is the authority that they breathe through the ears, not the nostrils, and are never free of fever. For that reason, perhaps, their breath is hotter than that of sheep and their mating more ardent.
203| They say they also see by night no less than by day: hence, if those whom they call nyctalopes eat goat's liver, the evening sight is restored to them. In Cilicia and around the Syrtes they are clothed with a fleece fit for shearing. Goats, when the sun inclines to setting, are said in the pastures not to look at one another, but to lie turned away, while in the remaining hours they lie facing, and among kin.
204| A tuft of hair hangs from the chin of all, which they call aruncus. If anyone seizes one of the herd and drags it by this, the others look on, stupefied; this happens too when one of them has bitten a certain herb. Their bite is deadly to a tree. By licking the olive also they make it barren, and for that reason they are not sacrificed to Minerva.
205| The covering of the swine herd is from the west wind to the spring equinox, the age is the eighth month, in some places even the fourth, up to the eighth year. They bear twice a year, the time in the womb is four months, the number for fertility up to twenty, but they cannot rear so many. Nigidius reports that in the 10 days around midwinter they are born with teeth already. They are filled by one mating, which is even doubled on account of the ease of miscarrying. The remedy is that mating should not happen at the first desire nor before the ears are slack.
206| Males do not breed beyond the third year. Females wearied by old age couple lying down. For them to eat their young is no prodigy. The young of a sow is pure for sacrifice on the fifth day, of a sheep on the 7th day, of an ox on the 30th. Coruncanius said that ruminal victims were not pure until they became bidentes. A pig that has lost an eye is thought to die soon; otherwise life is up to 15 years, in some even twenty. But they become fierce, and the kind is otherwise subject to diseases, chiefly quinsy and scrofula.
207| A sign of a weak pig is blood at the root of a bristle plucked from the back, and a head slanting in walking. When very fat they feel a scarcity of milk, and with the first litter they are less numerous. Wallowing in mud pleases the kind. The tail is twisted; it is noted too that sacrifice goes more easily when it twists to the right than to the left. They fatten in 60 days, but more when fattening is begun with three days' fast. This animal is the dullest of all, and it was not inelegantly thought that breath was given it in place of salt.
208| It is established that a swineherd's voice was recognized when the pigs had been driven off by theft, and that, when they had sunk the boat by leaning over to one side, they came back. Moreover, leaders in the city learn to seek the market on market-day and the houses, and wild ones have the wit to confuse their tracks in a marsh and to lighten their flight with urine.
209| Females too are castrated, as are camels also, after two days without food, hung by the forefeet and the womb cut out; so they fatten more quickly. An art is also applied to the liver of the females as of geese, the invention of Marcus Apicius, feeding them on dried figs and, when they are sated, killing them suddenly after giving them a drink of honeyed wine. Nor does any other animal furnish richer material for the glutton: nearly fifty flavors, whereas the others have one each. Hence the pages of the censors' laws and the forbidding at dinners of paunches, glandia, testicles, wombs, and boars' heads, so that nevertheless no dinner of Publilius, the poet of mimes, after he had cast off slavery, is recorded without a sow's paunch, and he even gave it the name "sumen".
210| Wild swine, moreover, found favor. Already the speeches of Cato the censor reproach the boar's brawn. Yet when divided into three parts, the middle was served, called the boar's loin. The first of the Romans to set a whole boar before guests at a feast was Publius Servilius, the father of that Rullus who in Cicero's consulship brought forward the agrarian law: so recent is the origin of what is now a daily thing. And this too the annals noted, to be sure for the amendment of the manners of those at whose dinners not the whole meal, but at the beginning, two and three boars at a time are eaten.
211| Preserves for these and the other woodland animals were first devised among those of the toga by Fulvius Lippinus; he began to feed wild beasts in the territory of Tarquinii, and imitators were not long lacking, Lucius Lucullus and Quintus Hortensius.
212| Wild swine give birth once a year. The males are very rough in mating. Then they fight among themselves, hardening their ribs by rubbing against trees and plastering themselves with mud. The females are rougher in giving birth, and almost the same in every kind of beast. Boars do not breed except when a year old. In India the curves of the tusks are a cubit long; two come out from the snout, as many from the forehead, like the horns of calves. The hair of the wild kind is like bronze, in the rest black. But in Arabia the swine kind does not live.
213| In no kind is mixture with the wild so easy; the ancients called the offspring so born hybridae, as it were half-wild, and the name was carried over even to men, as to Gaius Antonius, Cicero's colleague in his consulship. Not only in swine, however, but in all animals as well, of whatever kind there is any tame one, there is found also a wild one of the same, seeing that so many kinds even of wild men have been described.
214| Goats, however, change into very many likenesses. There are goats, there are rock-goats, there are ibexes of marvelous swiftness, though with the head burdened by vast horns like sheaths of swords. On these it balances itself, as if whirled by some engine, especially on the rocks, seeking to leap from one mountain to another, and by the recoil springs more swiftly wherever it pleases. There are also oryges, said by some alone to be clothed with hair growing the opposite way and turned toward the head. There are also fallow deer and pygargi and strepsicerotes and many others not unlike. But the former the Alps send, the latter regions overseas.
215| Of apes too there are several kinds. Those nearest the figure of man are distinguished among themselves by their tails. They say that with marvelous cleverness they are smeared with birdlime and shod with snares in imitation of hunters; Mucianus says they have even played at draughts, and distinguish by sight nuts made of wax; that a hollow moon makes sad those of that kind that have a tail, and the new moon is greeted with leaping. For the other four-footed animals too are afraid of eclipses of the heavenly bodies.
216| The kind of apes has a special affection for its young. Those that have borne in tameness inside houses carry their young about, show them to everyone, and are glad that they be handled, like those who understand congratulation, and so for the most part kill them by embracing. The nature of the cynocephali is fiercer, as of the satyrs. The callitriches differ in nearly their whole appearance; there is a beard on the face, and the tail is spread wide in its front part. This animal is said not to live under any other sky than that of Ethiopia where it is born.
217| Of hares too there are several kinds. In the Alps they are white, and are believed to take snow for fodder in the winter months; certainly when it melts they turn reddish every year, and it is otherwise an animal reared in intolerable cold. Of the kind of hares are also those which Spain calls rabbits, of numberless fertility, and bringing famine to the Balearic islands by ravaging the harvests. (They hold the young cut out of the belly or taken from the udders, with the entrails not cleaned out, in highest favor as food; laurices
218| they call them.) It is certain that the Balearic people sought military help from the deified Augustus against their increase. There is great favor for the viverrae because of this hunting; they put them into the burrows, which in the ground have many openings (whence the animal's name too), and so catch the rabbits driven out above. Archelaus is the authority that as many as are the cavities of the body for excrement in the hare, so many are the years of its age; the number found is certainly various. The same says that each has both powers in it, and that it breeds equally without a male.
219| Nature in this regard has been kind, producing harmless and edible animals fruitful. The hare, born as prey to all, alone besides the dasypus conceives again while pregnant, rearing one, bearing in the womb another clothed with hair, another without down, another just begun, all at once. Attempts have also been made to make garments of hare's hair, which in touch is not as soft as on the skin, and which falls apart because of the shortness of the hair.
220| These are rarely tamed, though they cannot rightly be called wild; for there are many creatures neither gentle nor wild, but of a nature between the two, as among birds swallows and bees, in the sea dolphins.
221| In this class many have also placed these dwellers in our houses, the mice, an animal not to be despised even in public portents. When they gnawed the silver shields at Lanuvium, they foretold the Marsic War; when they gnawed the bands that the commander Carbo used in his footwear at Clusium, they foretold his death. There are several kinds of them in the region of Cyrenaica, some with a broad forehead, some with a pointed one, others with prickly hair like hedgehogs.
222| Theophrastus is our authority that on the island of Gyara, after they had driven out the inhabitants, they gnawed even iron, which by some natural property they also do among the Chalybes in the ironworks. In the gold mines, indeed, their bellies are cut open for this reason, and the theft is always detected; so great is their delight in stealing. The annals record that when Hannibal was besieging Casilinum a mouse was sold for 200 denarii, and that the man who sold it died of hunger while the buyer lived.
223| When white ones appear, they make a happy omen. For we have annals full of auspices broken off by the squeaking of sorices. Nigidius is our authority that sorices too lie hidden in winter, like dormice, which the censors' laws and the leading man Marcus Scaurus in his consulship removed from dinners in the same way as shellfish or birds brought in from another world.
224| This too is a half-wild animal, and the same man who set up preserves for boars set up preserves for it in jars. In this it has been noticed that they do not herd together unless they belong to the same forest, and that, if strangers separated by a river or a mountain are mixed with them, they fight to the death. With remarkable devotion they feed their parents when worn out by old age. Their old age is ended by the winter's rest, for these too lie hidden and sleep, and in summer they grow young again. The nitelae also have a like rest in winter.
225| It is a wonder that nature has not only given different animals to different lands, but also, within the same region, has denied certain kinds to certain places. In the Mesian forest of Italy these dormice are found only in one part. In Lycia the dorcades do not cross the mountains next to the Sexis, nor the onagers the boundary that divides Cappadocia from Cilicia. On the Hellespont stags do not pass into other territories, and around Arginusa they do not go beyond Mount Elaphus, and on that mountain their ears are even split.
226| On the island of Poroselene weasels do not cross the road. Likewise at Lebadea in Boeotia moles, when brought in, shun the very soil, though close by at Orchomenus they undermine all the fields. From their skins we have seen bedroom coverlets: so true is it that not even religious awe keeps luxury away from portents. In Ithaca hares brought in die, on the very edges of the shore at that, and so do rabbits on Ebusus, though they swarm in Spain and the Balearics nearby.
227| At Cyrene the frogs were dumb; frogs with voices were brought in from the mainland, and their kind survives. They are still dumb on the island of Seriphus; yet the same frogs, moved elsewhere, sing, which is reported to happen also in Lake Sicandrus in Thessaly. In Italy the bite of shrew-mice is venomous; the region beyond the Apennines does not have them. Wherever they are, if they cross a wheel-rut they die. On Olympus, the mountain of Macedonia, there are no
228| wolves, nor on the island of Crete; there, indeed, there are neither foxes nor bears, nor any harmful animal at all except the phalangium. We shall speak of that kind among the spiders in its place. More remarkable still, on the same island, outside the region of the Cydoneatae, there are no stags, and likewise no boars, attagens or hedgehogs; and in Africa there are neither boars nor stags nor roe deer nor bears.
229| Again, certain animals harmless to the natives kill newcomers, like the small snakes in Myrinthe, which are said to be born from the earth. Likewise in Syria, especially along the banks of the Euphrates, the snakes do not touch Syrians as they sleep, or, even if they bite when trodden on, are not felt to be harmful; but they are deadly to people of any other nation, killing them greedily and with torment, and for this reason the Syrians do not kill them. On the other hand Aristotle reports that on Latmus, a mountain of Caria, strangers are not harmed by the scorpions, but natives are killed. But we shall speak of the kinds of the remaining animals too [and besides those of the land].

======== Natural History — Book IX ========

1| The nature of the animals that we have called land animals, which live in a kind of fellowship with men, has been set out. Of the rest, it is agreed that the birds are the smallest. For this reason the creatures of the seas, rivers and lakes will be described first.
2| Among these there are many larger even than the land animals. The evident cause is the abundance of moisture. The lot of the birds, whose life is spent hanging in the air, is different. But in the sea, spread out so widely as a yielding and fertile source of nourishment, receiving the causes of generation from on high and with nature forever giving birth, very many creatures are found that are even monstrous, since seeds and first principles are tangled together and rolled into one another, now by the wind and now by the wave, in one way and another; so that the common opinion becomes true, that whatever is born in any part of nature is also in the sea, and many things besides which are found nowhere else.
3| Indeed, one may perceive that images not only of animals but of objects are present there, for those who look at the grape, the sword, the saws, and the cucumber, which is like the real one both in color and in smell; so that we should be less surprised that horses' heads stand out on such small snails.
4| The most numerous and the largest animals are in the Indian sea, among them whales of four iugera each and pristes of two hundred cubits each, since there locustae reach four cubits, and in the river Ganges there are eels too of thirty feet. But in the sea the monsters are seen most of all around the solstices.
5| For then whirlwinds rush down there, then rainstorms, then gales hurled down from the mountain ridges churn the seas up from the bottom and roll the monsters, driven up from the depths, along with the waves, in such a multitude, as at other times the tunnies, that the fleet of Alexander the Great drew up its line front to front against them just as if an enemy battle line were coming to meet it: otherwise, scattered, they could not have got through. They are not frightened by shouting, by noise or by blows, but by a crash, and they are thrown into confusion only by a collision.
6| Cadara is the name of a huge peninsula of the Red Sea; by its barrier a vast gulf is formed, which took King Ptolemy 12 days and nights of rowing to cross, since it receives the breath of no breeze. In the stillness of this place above all the monsters grow to a size that renders them motionless.
7| The commanders of Alexander the Great's fleets reported that the Gedrosi who live along the river Arabis make the doors in their houses from the jaws of the monsters and frame their roofs with the bones, of which many were found forty cubits long. There also beasts like cattle come out onto the land and, having grazed on shrub roots, go back; and some with the heads of horses, asses and bulls, which graze on the crops.
8| The largest animals in the Indian sea are the pristis and the whale; in the Gallic ocean the physeter, which rears itself up like a huge column and, rising higher than the ships' sails, belches out a kind of deluge; in the ocean off Gades the tree, spread out with branches so vast that it is believed for that reason never to have entered the strait. There also appear the so-called wheels, named from their likeness, divided each by four spokes, with two eyes on either side closing off their hubs.
9| An embassy of the people of Olisipo, sent for that purpose, reported to Tiberius, the emperor, that in a certain cave a Triton had been seen and heard playing on a shell, in the form in which it is known. Nor is the form of the Nereids a fiction, only their body is bristling with scales even where it has a human shape. For one was seen on the same shore, and as it died, the people who live nearby heard even its mournful song from far off; and the governor of Gaul wrote to the deified Augustus that a number of dead Nereids had appeared on the shore.
10| I have as authorities men of distinction in the equestrian order who say that they saw in the ocean off Gades a sea-man, perfectly like a man in his whole body; that he climbs aboard ships at night, that the side he sits on is at once weighed down, and that if he stays longer, it even sinks. In the reign of Tiberius, on an island off the coast of the province of Lugdunensis, the ebbing ocean left stranded more than three hundred monsters at once, of wonderful variety and size, and no fewer on the shore of the Santones, among them, besides the rest, elephants and rams with horns imitated only by a whiteness, and many Nereids.
11| Turranius reported that a monster was cast up on the shore at Gades measuring sixteen cubits between the two fins at the extremity of its tail, and had 120 teeth, the largest measuring three-quarters of a foot, the smallest half a foot. The bones of the sea-creature before which Andromeda was reported to have been set out were brought to Rome from Joppa, a town of Judaea, and shown among the other marvels by Marcus Scaurus in his aedileship: 40 feet long, the height of the ribs exceeding the Indian elephants, the thickness of the spine a foot and a half.
12| Whales even make their way into our seas. In the ocean off Gades they are said not to be seen before midwinter, but at fixed seasons to hide away in a certain calm and spacious bay, taking wonderful delight in giving birth there. The orcas know this, a monster hostile to them, whose likeness cannot be conveyed by any representation other than that of an immense mass of flesh savage with teeth.
13| So they burst into these secluded places and tear with their bite the whales' calves, or the mothers that have given birth or are still pregnant, and with their charge they gore them as if with the beaks of Liburnian galleys. The whales, unable to turn, helpless to fight back, and weighed down by their own bulk, being then also heavy with young or weakened by the pains of giving birth, know only one help: to flee into the deep and defend themselves by means of the ocean. The orcas, on the other hand, strive to meet them and put themselves in the way, to slaughter them when penned in the narrows, to drive them onto the shallows and dash them against the rocks. These battles are watched as if the sea were angry with itself, with no winds in the bay, but with waves raised by the breathing and the blows such as no whirlwinds could roll.
14| An orca was seen even in the harbor at Ostia, attacked by the emperor Claudius. It had come then while he was building the harbor, drawn by the wrecks of hides brought from Gaul, and, gorging itself for many days, had plowed a channel in the shallows, banked up by the waves to such a degree that it could by no means be turned about, and, while it pursued its food driven by the waves toward the shore, it stood out with its back far above the water like the keel of an overturned ship.
15| Caesar ordered many nets to be stretched across the mouths of the harbor, and setting out himself with the praetorian cohorts he gave the Roman people a spectacle, the soldiers heaping lances from the boats as they darted in; one of these we saw sunk, filled with water by the blowing back of the beast.
16| Ballaenae have their mouths in their foreheads, and therefore, swimming at the surface of the water, they blow out showers into the air. They breathe, moreover, by the agreement of all, as do very few others in the sea, which have a lung among the inner organs, since no animal is thought to breathe without it. Those who hold this opinion believe that fish, which have gills, do not give out breath and take it in again by turns, nor do many other kinds, even those without gills; I see that Aristotle was of that view and persuaded many distinguished for learning.
17| I do not conceal that I do not at once accede to this opinion of theirs, since in place of lungs other organs for breathing might be present, nature so willing, just as for many there is another fluid in place of blood. Who would wonder that this vital breath penetrates into waters, when he sees it even given out by them, and that it penetrates also into the earth, a part of nature so much denser, by the proof of the animals that live always buried, like moles?
18| There are other considerations that persuade me at least to believe that all things breathe in the waters by the lot of their own nature: first, the panting of fish noted often in the summer heat and a kind of yawning at other times when it is calm; the admission too of those themselves who are of the opposite opinion about the sleep of fish (for what place is there for sleep without breathing?); besides, the blowing out of bubbling waters, and the growth of the bodies of shellfish too through the moon's effect. Above all there is the fact that there will be no doubt that fish have hearing and smell, both of which are made from the substance of air. Smell, indeed, could be understood as nothing but tainted air. Wherefore let each think about these things as he pleases.
19| Gills are not in ballaenae or dolphins. These two kinds breathe by a pipe which reaches to the lung, in ballaenae from the forehead, in dolphins from the back. And the sea-calves, which they call phocae, breathe and sleep on land; so do tortoises, of which more soon.
20| The swiftest of all animals, not only of marine ones, is the dolphin, faster than a bird, keener than a dart, and unless its mouth were far beneath the snout, almost in the middle of the belly, no fish would escape its speed. But the providence of nature brings delay, because they do not seize unless turned on their backs and reversed, a cause which especially shows their velocity. For when, roused by hunger, they have pursued a fleeing fish into the lowest shallows and held their breath too long, they dart out to breathe like things shot from a bow, and leap with such force that they often fly over the sails of ships.
21| Mostly they roam in pairs; they bear young in the tenth month, in summertime, sometimes two. They nourish them at the teats, like the ballaena, and even carry their offspring while weak in infancy; moreover they long accompany them when grown, with great affection toward their young.
22| They grow up quickly; at 10 years they are thought to reach their greatest size. They live also to thirty years, which has been learned by cutting off the tail as a test. They hide for thirty days at about the time the Dog Star rises, and are concealed in an unknown manner, which is the more marvelous if they cannot breathe in water. They are accustomed to burst out onto the land, for an uncertain reason, nor do they die at once on touching the ground, and much more quickly if the pipe is closed.
23| Their tongue is, contrary to the nature of aquatic creatures, movable, short and broad, not differing from a pig's. In place of a voice they have a groan like a human being's, the back is curved, the snout turned up. For this reason all recognize the name Simo in a marvelous way and prefer to be so called.
24| The dolphin is an animal friendly not only to man but also to the art of music, soothed by the music of a band, but especially by the sound of the water-organ. It is not frightened of man as a stranger, comes to meet ships, plays alongside leaping, even races, and passes sails though full.
25| In the principate of the deified Augustus, a dolphin that had been carried into the Lucrine lake loved with marvelous affection the boy of a certain poor man, who was going from Baiae to Puteoli to the school; when, lingering at noon, the boy had often called it by the name Simo and enticed it with fragments of the bread he carried for the journey, it was drawn to him. I should be reluctant to tell it, were not the matter committed to writing by Maecenas and Fabianus and Flavius Alfius and many others. At whatever time of day it was called by the boy, however hidden and concealed, it flew up from the depths and, fed from his hand, offered its back for him to mount, sheathing the spines of its fin as in a scabbard, and carrying him thus taken up to Puteoli across the great expanse to the school, bringing him back in the same way, for several years, until the boy was carried off by disease; thereafter coming again and again to the accustomed place, sad and like one mourning, it too, as no one could doubt, died of longing.
26| Another, within these years, on the African coast at Hippo Diarrutus, in a similar way feeding from men's hands, offering itself to be stroked, playing with swimmers and carrying those placed upon it, was anointed with ointment by Flavianus, proconsul of Africa, and was lulled, as appeared, by the strangeness of the smell, and floated like a dead thing; it then avoided the company of men as if driven away by an injury for some months, and soon, returning, was the same marvel as before. The wrongs done to their hosts by officials who came to see it drove the people of Hippo to put it to death.
27| Before these, similar things are told of a boy in the city of Iasus: a dolphin was seen in love with him for a long time, and while eagerly following him as he went off toward the shore, it was carried onto the sand and died. Alexander the Great put the boy in charge of the priesthood of Neptune at Babylon, interpreting that love as that of a favoring divinity. In the same city of Iasus Hegesidemus writes that another boy too, Hermias by name, riding in the same way over the seas, when he was killed by the waves of a sudden squall and brought back, the dolphin, confessing itself the cause of death, did not return to the sea and died on dry land.
28| Theophrastus reports that the same thing also happened at Naupactus. There is no end of examples: the people of Amphilochia and of Tarentum tell the same of boys and dolphins. These make it believed that Arion too, of the art of the cithara-singer, when the sailors at sea were preparing to kill him in order to seize his earnings, having coaxed them to let him first sing to the cithara, threw himself into the sea after dolphins had been gathered by the song, and, taken up by one of them, was carried to the shore at Taenarum.
29| In the province of Narbonensis, in the territory of Nemausus, there is a pool called Latera, where dolphins fish in partnership with man. An innumerable host of mullets at a fixed time bursts out into the sea through the narrow mouth of the pool, observing the turn of the tide. For this reason nets cannot be stretched across, and the mass of the weight could in no way be borne, even if cleverness did not lie in wait for the moment. By similar reasoning they make straight for the deep, which is achieved by the nearby whirlpool, and hasten to escape the only place suited to spreading nets.
30| When the fishermen notice this (and a crowd runs together knowing the time and still more eager for this pleasure), and the whole people from the shore with as great a shout as they can call upon Simo to bring about the outcome of the spectacle, the dolphins quickly hear the wishes, the voice being carried on by a north wind, but more slowly with a south wind carrying it back from the opposite side; yet even then they hasten to fly unexpectedly to help.
31| The battle line appears, which is at once drawn up in the place where battle is to be joined. They set themselves against them from the deep and drive them, alarmed, into the shallows; then the fishermen throw around nets and lift them with forks. The swiftness of the mullets nonetheless leaps across; but the dolphins catch them, and content for the present to have killed, put off their food until victory.
32| The battle is hot with the work, and they rejoice in being enclosed in nets while pressing most bravely, and, lest this very thing spur the flight of the enemy, between the boats and nets and swimming men they slip out so gradually that they do not open an exit. By leaping, which is otherwise most pleasing to them, none tries to escape unless the nets are lowered for them. Having gone out, they at once fight before the barrier. So when the catch is finished they tear apart those they have killed. But aware that they have done more strenuous work than the reward of one day, they wait until the next, and are satisfied not only with fish but with a mash of bread in wine.
33| What Mucianus reports of the same kind of fishing in the Iasian gulf differs in this, that they come of their own accord, without being called, and take their share from the hands, and that each boat has its own dolphin as partner, even by night and by torchlight. Among themselves too they have a common partnership. When one was captured by the king of Caria and tied up in the harbor, a huge multitude of the others came together with a kind of sorrow that could be understood, seeking pity, until the king ordered it to be let go. Moreover some larger one always accompanies the little ones as a guardian, and they have been seen carrying one that was dead so that it would not be torn by the beasts.
34| Those called thursiones have a likeness to dolphins. They differ in the gloom of their appearance (for that playfulness is absent), but most of all in their snouts, being like the dogfish in their mischievousness.
35| The Indian sea sends out tortoises of such size that the surface of single ones covers habitable huts, and among the islands, particularly of the Red Sea, they sail in these as boats. They are caught in many ways, but chiefly when they have been carried out onto the surface of the sea in pleasant forenoon weather, with the whole back standing out, floating in the calm; the pleasure of breathing freely deceives them so far, forgetful of themselves, that with the shell dried by the sun's heat they cannot dive, and float against their will as a ready prey for hunters.
36| They say too that having gone out at night to feed and eagerly satisfied, they grow weary, and when they have returned in the morning they doze off at the very top of the water; this is betrayed by the sound of their snoring. Then three swim up silently and gently to each one; by two it is turned on its back, by the third a noose is thrown on it as it lies supine, and so it is dragged to land by several. In the Phoenician sea they are caught without any difficulty and come of their own accord at a fixed time of year to the river Eleutherus, in a great multitude poured out.
37| The tortoise has no teeth, but sharp edges to the beak, the upper part closing the lower like a box. In the sea they live on shellfish, with such hardness of mouth that they crush stones, and when they come out on land on grasses. They lay eggs like the eggs of birds, up to a hundred in number, and bury them outside the water and cover them with earth, which is rammed down with the breast and smoothed, and they brood them by night. They bring forth the young in the space of a year. Some think the eggs are warmed by them with the eyes and by looking at them, and that the females avoid coupling until the male places some stalk on one that has turned away.
38| The Trogodytae have horn-bearing ones, with broad but movable horns attached as to a lyre, with which in swimming they help themselves like oars; this is called the chelium, from an exceptional tortoise, but a rare one. For jagged rocks frighten the Chelonophagi, while the Trogodytae, to whom they swim, worship them as sacred. There are also land ones, called on that account in works chersinae, in the deserts of Africa, in the part where they are most rough with thirsty sands, living, as is believed, on dewy moisture. And no other animal arises there.
39| Carvilius Pollio first devised cutting the shells of tortoises into plates and covering couches and sideboards with them, a spendthrift and shrewd genius for the instruments of luxury.
40| The coverings of aquatic creatures are several. Some are covered with hide and hair, like sea-calves and hippopotami, others with hide only, like dolphins, with shell like tortoises, with the hardness of flints like oysters and conchae, with crusts like locustae, with crusts and spines like echini, with scales like fish, with rough skin like the squatina, with which wood and ivory are polished, with soft skin like murenae, others with none, like polypi.
41| Those that are clothed with hair give birth to a living animal, like the pristis, the ballaena, the sea-calf. The latter gives birth on land, and delivers the afterbirth in the manner of cattle. It couples fast in the manner of dogs; it sometimes bears more than two, and rears its young at the teats. It does not lead the young to the sea before the twelfth day, accustoming them to it gradually from then. They are killed with difficulty unless the head is crushed. Their sound is a lowing (whence the name of calf), yet they take training, and voice at the same time, and at command greet the people with an unmusical roar, and answer when called by name.
42| No animal is pressed by heavier sleep. With the fins which they use in the sea they also crawl on the ground in place of feet. Their skins, they say, even when stripped from the body, keep a feeling for the waters, and always bristle when the tide of the sea ebbs; besides, there is a sleep-bringing power in the right fin, and, placed under the head, it entices sleep.
43| Of those lacking hair only two give birth to a living animal, the dolphin and the viper. The species of fish are 74, besides those covered with crusts, which are 30. Of the individual ones we shall speak elsewhere; for now the natures of the most notable are treated.
44| Of exceptional size are the thynni. We find that one weighed 15 talents, and that the width of its tail was two cubits and a palm. In some rivers too they grow no smaller: the silurus in the Nile, the isox in the Rhine, the attilus in the Po, fattening by inactivity at times to a thousand pounds, taken with a chained hook and drawn out only by yokes of oxen. And the smallest of fish, called the clupea, attacking with wonderful greed a certain vein of it in the throat, kills it with its bite.
45| The silurus ranges wherever it is, attacking every animal, often drowning horses swimming over. It is drawn out especially in the Moenus, a river of Germany, with the long teams of oxen, and in the Danube with mattocks, very like a sea-pig. And on the Borysthenes an exceptional size is recorded, with no bones or spines interposed, with exceedingly sweet flesh.
46| In the Ganges of India there are those they call platanistae, with the snout and tail of a dolphin, and in size 16 cubits. Statius Sebosus reports as no small marvel that in the same river there are worms, with two gills, of six cubits, blue, which took their name from their face. These have such strength, he says, that elephants coming to drink are seized by the trunk in their jaws and dragged off.
47| The male thynni have no fin under the belly. They enter the Pontus from the great sea in the spring season in herds, and do not breed elsewhere. The offspring is called cordyla, which accompanies the females returning into the sea in autumn; but the muddy or mud-born ones begin to be called pelamydes, and when they have passed the year's time, thynni.
48| These, cut limb by limb, are valued for the neck and belly and the clidium, that is, when fresh and even then with heavy belching. In the remaining part, full of flesh, they are preserved with salt. Melandrya are called slices like oak chips. Of these the cheapest is that nearest the tail, because it lacks fat, the most approved that from the throat. But in another fish that about the tail is the most worked. The pelamydes are cut into pieces for apolecti and divided into kinds of cybia.
49| Every kind of fish grows up with special swiftness, most of all in the Pontus. The cause is the multitude of rivers bringing in sweet waters. They call the amia that of which the growth is perceived day by day. With the thynni these and the pelamydes enter the Pontus for sweeter food in herds, each under its own leaders, and first of all the scombri, whose color in the water is sulphurous, and out of it the same as the rest. These fill the fish-pickling places of Spain, when the thynni do not come.
50| But no beast harmful to fish enters the Pontus except sea-calves and small dolphins. The thynni enter by the right bank and leave by the left. This is thought to happen because they see better with the right eye, both being dull by nature. In the strait of the Thracian Bosporus, where the Propontis is joined to the Euxine, in the very narrows of the channel that separates Europe and Asia, there is a rock of marvelous whiteness, translucent from the bottom to the top, near Chalcedon on the side of Asia. Suddenly terrified at the sight of it, they always make in a headlong column for the opposite headland of Byzantium, for that reason called the Golden Horn.
51| And so the entire catch belongs to Byzantium, with great scarcity at Chalcedon, 1,000 paces apart across the intervening strait. They wait for a blast of the north wind, so as to leave the Pontus on a favoring current, and they are caught only as they enter the harbor of Byzantium. In midwinter they do not roam; wherever they are overtaken, they pass the winter there until the equinox. The same fish, often accompanying ships under sail with a marvelous kind of sweetness, are watched from the rudders for stretches of several hours and miles, not frightened even when a trident is thrown at them repeatedly. Some call those of the thynni that do this pompili.
52| Many pass the summer in the Propontis without entering the Pontus; likewise soleae, though rhombi enter, and there is no saepia, though the lolligo is found; of rock fish the turdus and merula are absent, as are shellfish, although oysters abound. All, however, winter in the Aegean. Of those entering the Pontus the trichiae alone do not return (for it will be right to use Greek names for the most part, since different regions have called the same fish by one name and another),
53| but these alone go up into the Hister [sea] and from it flow down through its underground veins into the Hadriatic sea, and so are seen there too going down and never coming up from the sea. The catching of thynni is from the rising of the Pleiades to the setting of Arcturus. In the rest of the winter time they lie hidden in the lowest depths, unless called out by some warmth or by full moons. They fatten so much that they burst open. Their longest life is two years.
54| There is a small animal in the likeness of a scorpion, of the size of a spider. It fastens itself with its sting under the fin of the thynnus and of the one that is called the sword, which often exceeds the size of a dolphin, and distresses it with so great a pain that they often leap into ships. This they do otherwise also, fearing the violence of others, mullets especially, of such exceptional swiftness that they sometimes leap over boats lying across.
55| There are omens too in this part of nature, and fish have foreknowledge. In the Sicilian war, as Augustus was walking on the shore, a fish leapt from the sea to his feet, and from this sign the seers replied (Sextus Pompey then claiming Neptune as his adoptive father, so great was the glory in naval power) that those who then held the seas would be under the feet of Caesar.
56| The females of fish are larger than the males. In one kind there are no males at all, as the erythinus and the channa; for all are caught heavy with eggs. Of every scaly kind they roam mostly in herds. They are caught before sunrise: then the sight of fish is most deceived. At night they rest, but on bright nights they see as well as by day. They say too that it makes a difference to the catch if the water is stirred up; and so more are caught at the second drag than the first. They delight in the taste of oil above all, then in moderate rains, and are nourished by them. For even reeds, though born in marsh, do not grow without rain, and otherwise wherever fish are constant in the same water, if it does not flow in, they die.
57| All feel extreme winter cold, but most of all those thought to have a stone in the head, such as lupi, the chromis, sciaena, phagri. When the winters have been harsh, many are caught blind. And so in these months they lie hidden in caves, as we have related in the kind of land animals, especially the hippurus and the coracini, not caught in winter except on a few fixed days and always the same ones, likewise the murena and orphus, conger, percae and all rock fish. The torpedo, psetta and solea, they say, hide through the winters in the earth, that is, in the hollowed bottom of the sea.
58| Some again, unable to bear heat, lie hidden in the midst of the hot weather for sixty days, as the glaucus, the aselli, the aurata. Of river fish, the silurus is stricken when the Dog Star rises, and at other times is always stupefied by lightning; this they think happens in the sea to the cyprinus. And besides, the whole sea feels the rising of that star, which is most apparent in the Bosporus. For seaweed and fish are carried to the surface, and all things turned up from the bottom.
59| The nature of mullets is laughed at: in fear, with the head hidden, they believe themselves wholly concealed. The same fish have a lust so heedless that in Phoenicia, and in the Narbonese province, at mating time, a male is let out of the fish-ponds into the sea with a long line fastened through the mouth to the gills, and drawn back by the same line, and the females follow to the shore, and again the males follow a female at the time of spawning.
60| Among the ancients the acipenser was held the most noble of fish, the only one of all with scales turned toward the mouth, opposite to the way they go in swimming; it is now in no honor, which I for my part wonder at, since it is rare to find. Some call it the elops.
61| Afterward, Cornelius Nepos and Laberius the poet of mimes have recorded that the highest authority belonged to the lupus and the aselli. Of lupi the most praised are those called lanati, from the whiteness and softness of the flesh. Of aselli there are two kinds, the callariae, which are smaller, and the bacchi, which are caught only in deep water and so are preferred to the former. But among lupi those caught in a river are preferred.
62| Now the foremost place goes to the scarus, which alone of fish is said to chew the cud and to feed on grasses and not on other fish, most frequent in the Carpathian sea. It never crosses of its own will the promontory of the Troad, Lectum. Brought from there in the principate of Tiberius Claudius, they were scattered and spread by Optatus, one of his freedmen, prefect of the fleet, between Ostia and the coast of Campania, with care applied for nearly five years, so that those caught were returned to the sea.
63| Afterward they are found in numbers on the coast of Italy, not caught there before, and gluttony has provided itself with flavors by stocking fish, and has given the sea a new inhabitant, so that no one need wonder that foreign birds breed at Rome. Next in the table's favor, though only for their liver, come the mustelae, which, marvelous to tell, even among the Alps the Brigantine lake of Raetia produces, rivals of the sea ones.
64| Of the rest in repute and favor the greatest, and in abundance, are the mulli, though the size is moderate, and they rarely exceed two pounds of weight, nor do they grow in fish-ponds and pools. Of the ocean, only the northern part and the nearest part of the west produce these. For the rest there are several kinds of them; for they feed on seaweed and on oysters and mud and the flesh of other fish, and are marked with a double beard on the lower lip. One of these, of the cheapest kind, they call lutarius;
65| this is always accompanied by another fish, by name sargus, and as it digs the mud, devours the food stirred up. Nor are those of the shore in favor. The most praised have the flavor of shellfish. Fenestella thinks the name was given to them from the color of mullei, a kind of shoe. They spawn three times a year; certainly so often the brood appears.
66| They say that the leaders of gluttony watch a mullus as it expires in a variegated and many-sided changing of color, growing pale in a manifold alteration of reddening scales, especially if it is watched shut up in glass. Marcus Apicius, born to every ingenuity of luxury, thought that the best way was to kill them in the garum called "of the allies" (for this too has found a surname) and to devise allec from their liver.
67| Asinius Celer, of consular rank, challenged all spendthrifts in this fish (for that is easier to say than who won), having bought one mullus under the emperor Gaius for 8,000 sesterces. This reckoning takes my mind aside to the contemplation of those who, in complaining of luxury, used to cry out that cooks were bought each at a higher price than horses. But now cooks are procured at the price of three horses, and fish at the price of three cooks, and hardly any mortal is now valued at more than he who most skillfully sinks his master's fortune.
68| Licinius Mucianus reported a mullus of 80 pounds caught in the Red Sea; what price would luxury pay for it, were it found on the shores near the city? It is also in nature that different fish hold first rank in different places: the coracinus in Egypt, the zaeus, also called faber, at Gades, around Ebusus the salpa, foul elsewhere and one that can nowhere be fully cooked unless beaten with a fennel-rod; in Aquitania the river salmo is preferred to all sea fish.
69| Of fish, some have gills in many layers, some single, some double. Through these they send out the water taken in by the mouth. The mark of old age is a hardness of the scales, which are not the same in every fish. Italy has two lakes at the roots of the Alps, called Larius and Verbannus, in which fish appear every year at the rising of the Pleiades, conspicuous with scales that are numerous and very sharp, in the form of the nails of boots, and are seen no longer than about that month.
70| Arcadia too marvels at its exocoetus, so called because it goes out onto dry land for the sake of sleep. Around Clitorium this is reported to be vocal and without gills, and by some called Adonis.
71| Those that are called sea-mice also go out onto land, and polypi and murenae, and moreover a certain kind of fish in the rivers of India, and then it springs back. For in most the reason for passing into pools and rivers is evident, that they may bring forth their young in safety, because there are none there to devour the offspring and the waves rage less. One would marvel the more that these causes are understood by them and the turns of the seasons kept, if one considers how few men know that the catch is richest as the sun travels through the sign of the Fishes.
72| Of sea creatures some are flat, like rhombi, soleae and passeres, which differ from rhombi only in the position of the bodies (the right side is uppermost in the former when they are turned over, in the passer the left), others long, like the murena and conger.
73| Therefore the differences of fins also arise, which are given to fish in place of feet, none having above four, some two, some none. Only in Lake Fucinus is there a fish that swims with eight fins. Two entirely for the long and slippery, as eels and congers, none for others, as murenae, which have no gills either. All these use the sea by a winding thrust of their bodies as serpents use the earth, and they crawl even on dry land; for this reason such creatures are also longer lived. And of the flat ones some have no fins, as the pastinacae (for they swim by their very breadth) and those that are called soft, like polypi, since the feet provide them with the service of fins.
74| Eels live eight years. They last also without water, five and six days when the north wind blows, fewer with the south [….] in winter, but the same fish do not tolerate a little water, nor turbid water. For this reason they are caught chiefly about the Pleiades, in rivers then particularly turbid. They feed at night. Of fish they alone do not float when dead.
75| There is a lake of Italy, Benacus, in the territory of Verona, sending out the river Mincius, at whose outflow at a yearly time, almost in the month of October, with the autumnal star (as is plain) having wintered the lake, rolled in waves, they are tumbled together in such wonderful multitude that in the traps of that river made for this very purpose balls of a thousand each are found.
76| The murena gives birth in any month, whereas other fish spawn at a fixed time. Its eggs grow very quickly. The common people think that when they have slipped onto dry shores they are impregnated by coupling with serpents. Aristotle calls the male that begets zmyrus; the difference, he says, is that the murena is variegated and weak, the zmyrus of one color and robust, and has teeth even outside the mouth. In northern Gaul on the right jaw of all murenae seven spots in the form of the Septentrio gleam with a golden color, in living ones only, and are extinguished together with the breath.
77| Vedius Pollio, a Roman knight among the friends of the deified Augustus, found in this animal a proof of cruelty, plunging condemned slaves into their fish-ponds, not as though the beasts of the land were insufficient for this, but because in another kind he could not watch a whole man torn apart at once. They say that the flavour of vinegar above all sends them into a frenzy. Their skin is very thin, whereas in eels it is thicker, and Verrius reports that boys wearing the praetexta were accustomed to be beaten with it, and for that reason it was not the custom to fine them.
78| Of flat fish there is another kind, which has cartilage in place of a backbone, such as the raiae, pastinacae, squatinae, torpedo, and those which the Greeks call by the names of ox, lamia, eagle and frog. In this number are also the squali, though not flat. All these together Aristotle called in Greek selache, being the first to impose this name on them. We cannot distinguish them, unless one is pleased to call them cartilaginous. All such, however, are flesh-eaters and feed on their backs, as we said of dolphins, and whereas other fish lay eggs, this kind alone, like those they call cete, bears a living animal, except the one they call the frog.
79| There is a quite small fish accustomed to rocks, called echeneis. When it clings to the keels, ships are believed to go more slowly, whence the name was given. For this reason it is also ill-famed for love potions and as the delay of trials and lawsuits, which charges it balances by one praise, stopping the flux of pregnant women from the womb and holding the birth until delivery. Yet it is not admitted as food. Some think it has feet; Aristotle [….] it with the likeness of fins added.
80| Mucianus says the murex is broader than the purpura, with a mouth neither rough nor round, and with the beak not projecting into angles, but like a shell closing itself on both sides. By clinging to the keel of the ship of Periander, he says, they held it standing in a full wind, while it carried noble boys to be castrated; the shells which performed this are worshiped at the temple of the Venus of the Cnidians. Trebius Niger says it is a foot long and five fingers thick, and delays ships; besides, he says, its power, kept in salt, is such that, brought near, it draws out gold that has fallen into the deepest wells.
81| The menae change from white and become blacker in summer. The phycis also changes, white the rest of the time, variegated in spring. It alone of fish makes a nest of seaweed and gives birth in the nest.
82| The hirundo, very like a bird, certainly flies, likewise the miluus; there comes to the surface of the sea a fish called from the evidence lucerna, and a fiery tongue thrust out through the mouth shines again on calm nights. Another raises from the sea horns nearly a foot and a half long, and has taken its name from them. Again the sea draco, when caught and put on sand, digs a hole for itself with its snout with marvelous speed.
83| Those fish lacking blood, of which we shall speak, are of three kinds: first those called soft, then those covered with thin crusts, finally those enclosed in hard shells. The soft ones are the lolligo, saepia, polypus and the rest of that kind. In these the head is between the feet and the belly, and all have eight little feet. In the saepiae and lolligo two of the feet are the longest and rough, with which they bring food to the mouth and in the wave steady themselves as with anchors; the rest are tendrils, with which they hunt.
84| The lolligo also flies out of the water, raising itself, as the pectunculi do, like an arrow. (In the kind of saepiae the males are variegated and blacker and of greater steadiness. When a female is struck with a trident, the males come to her help, but the female flees when the male is hit.) Both, however, when they feel themselves seized, hide in water darkened by the ink poured out, which is to them instead of blood.
85| There are many kinds of polypi. Those of the land are larger than those of the deep. They use all their arms as feet and hands, but the tail, which is forked and sharp, in coupling. And polypi have a pipe on the back, through which they send out the sea water, and they shift it sometimes to the right side, sometimes to the left. They swim slanting toward the head, which is very hard, by blowing while alive. Otherwise, along the arms, as with scattered cups, they cling by a kind of suction; they hold on their backs so that they cannot be pulled away. They do not seize the shallows, and in large ones the grip is weaker. Alone of soft creatures they come out onto dry land, if only it is rough; they hate smoothness.
86| They feed on the flesh of shellfish, whose shells they break by the embrace of their hair-like arms; and so their lair is detected by the shells lying before it. And although otherwise the animal is held dull, as one that swims up to a man's hand, in a matter in a way of its own household it is clever. It carries everything into its home, then casts out the shells with the flesh eaten away, and hunts the little fish that swim up to them.
87| It changes color to match the place, and most of all in fear. That it gnaws its own arms is a false opinion (for this happens to it from congers), but that they grow again, as tails do in colotes and lizards, is not false.
88| Among the chief marvels is that which is called the nautilus, by others the pompilus. Lying on its back, it reaches the top of the waters, raising itself little by little so that, with all the water sent out through a pipe, it sails easily as though relieved of bilge. Afterward, turning back its first two arms, it stretches between them a membrane of wonderful thinness, which serves as a sail in the breeze, while with the other arms it rows beneath, and with the middle of its tail it steers as with a rudder. So it goes upon the deep, delighting in the image of Liburnian ships, and if any fright intervenes, sinks itself by drawing in water.
89| Of the kind of polypi is the ozaena, so called from the heavy smell of its head, for which reason murenae especially pursue it. Polypi are hidden for two months. They do not live beyond two years. They die, however, always by wasting, the females more quickly and usually after spawning. Not to be passed over are the things learned about polypi when Lucius Lucullus was proconsul of Baetica, which Trebius Niger, one of his companions, reported:
90| that they are most greedy of shellfish; that these close at a touch, cutting off their arms, and of their own accord take food from the predator. The shellfish lack sight and every sense other than of food and of danger. So the polypi lie in wait for them when open and place a small stone outside the body, lest it be thrown out by the quivering: thus they go about securely and draw out the flesh. The shells draw themselves together, but in vain, being wedged apart. So great is the cleverness of animals even the dullest.
91| Besides, he says there is no animal more fierce for destroying a man in the water. For it wrestles in an embrace and sucks with its cups and drags with its many suckers, when it has made its attack on shipwrecked persons or divers. But if it is turned over, its force languishes; for lying on its back they stretch themselves out. The other things that the same man reported may seem nearer to a monster.
92| At Carteia, in the fish-salting works, one was in the habit of going out from the sea into their open tanks and plundering the salted fish there (marvelously, all sea creatures seek even their smell, for which reason fish-traps are smeared with it), and turned against itself the immoderate indignation of the keepers by the constancy of its thefts. Fences had been set in its way, but it crossed these by a tree, and could not be caught except by the keenness of dogs. These surrounded it at night as it returned, and the keepers, roused, were struck with terror at the strangeness. First of all, its size was unheard of, then its color, smeared with brine, and dreadful in smell. Who would have expected a polypus there, or recognized it so? They seemed to themselves to be fighting with a monster. For with its terrible breath it drove off the dogs, now lashing them with the tips of its hairs, now striking them with its stronger arms like clubs,
93| and it could be killed only with difficulty and many tridents. They showed Lucullus its head, of the size of a large jar, holding 15 amphorae, and, to use Trebius's own words, its beards, which one could scarcely have embraced with both arms, knotty like clubs, 30 feet long, with cups or little vessels the size of an urn, like basins, and teeth corresponding to the size. The remains kept as a marvel weighed 700 pounds. The same author says that saepiae and lolligines of the same size were cast up on that shore. In our sea lolligines of five cubits are caught, saepiae of two. Nor do these live longer than two years.
94| Mucianus reported another ship-bearing likeness seen by him in the Propontis: a shell keeled like a light vessel, with curved stern and beaked prow. In it, he says, hides a nauplius, an animal like a saepia, only for the partnership of play. This is done in two ways: in calm weather the rider lowers his little oars and strikes as with oars; but if a breath invites, these are put out for use as a rudder and the hollows of the cheeks are spread to the breeze. The pleasure of the one is to carry, of the other to steer, and at the same time it descends into two things without feeling, unless perhaps (for this much is agreed) it is a gloomy omen for those sailing, and human disaster is the cause.
95| Locustae are protected by a brittle crust, in that kind which lacks blood. They lie hidden for five months. Similarly crabs, which are concealed at the same time, and both, at the beginning of spring, cast off old age in the manner of serpents by a renewal of the skin. The rest swim in the waves; locustae float in the manner of creeping things, if no fear presses, in a straight course, with their horns, which are tipped with a round knob proper to them, stretched out to the sides; the same, raised in fright, they advance sideways. They fight among themselves with their horns. This alone of animals, unless it is boiled alive in hot water, has no firmness in its liquid flesh.
96| They live in rocky places, crabs in soft. In winter they seek sunny shores, in summer they withdraw into the shaded places of the deeps. All of that kind are harmed by winter, and fatten in autumn and spring and more at full moon, because the star softens the nights with a warm glow.
97| The kinds of crabs are carabi, astaci, maeae, paguri, Heracleotici, leones, and others less distinguished. The carabi differ from other crabs in the tail. In Phoenicia they are called hippoe, of such speed that they cannot be overtaken. Crabs have a long life, eight feet, all bent sideways. The female's first foot is double, the male's single. Besides, they have two arms with toothed claws. The upper part in these foremost is moved, the lower immovable.
98| The right arm is larger in all. Sometimes all gather together. They cannot overcome the mouth of the Pontus; for this reason they go out and go around, and a well-worn track appears. The pinotheras is called the smallest of every kind, and so is open to injury. Its cleverness is to hide itself in the shells of empty oysters, and, when it has grown, to move into more capacious ones. Crabs in fear go backward with equal speed.
99| They fight among themselves, rushing together with horns opposed like rams. They are a remedy against the bites of serpents. When the sun passes through the sign of the Crab, it is said that the very body of the crabs, when they have died, is changed on dry land into scorpions.
100| Of the same kind are the echini, which have spines in place of feet. Their way of going is to roll in a circle, and so they are often found with the spines worn down. Of these those are called echinometrae whose spines are longest and whose cups are smallest. Nor is the glassy color the same in all; around Torone white ones are produced, with a small spine. The eggs of all are bitter, five in number. The mouth is in the middle of the body, turned to the ground. They are said to foresee the savagery of the sea, and to wait for it, having seized small stones, steadying their mobility by the weight; they do not wish to wear down their spines by rolling. When sailors see this, they at once bridle their vessels with several anchors.
101| In the same kind are snails, of water and of land, which put themselves forth from the dwelling and stretch out and draw in two things like horns; they lack eyes, and so test the way ahead with their little horns. Scallops in the sea are reckoned of the same kind, themselves also hidden in great cold and great heat, and their "nails" shining in the dark like fire, even in the mouth of those chewing.
102| Of firmer shell now are the murices and the kinds of conchae, in which there is a great variety of nature at play. So many differences of colors, so many shapes: flat, hollow, long, crescent-shaped, rounded in a circle, cut off by half a circle, raised in a hump, smooth, wrinkled, toothed, grooved, with the top twisted like a murex, with the edge drawn out into a point, spread outward, folded back within,
103| now marked by streaks, hairy, curled, divided in channels, in the manner of a comb, undulating like roof tiles, latticed like a net, spread obliquely, straight, thickened, extended, curved, joined with a short knot, linked along the whole side, opening like clapping hands, curved back like a trumpet. Of these the Venereae sail, offering the hollow part of themselves and opposing it to the breeze, and sail over the surface of the waters. Scallops leap and fly out, and themselves make keels for themselves.
104| But why do I mention these things, so small, when the ruin of morals and luxury arises from no other source more than from the kind of conchae? Indeed, of the whole of nature, the sea is the most ruinous to the belly, in so many ways, with so many courses, so many flavors of fish, whose prices are made by the danger of those who take them.
105| Yet how small a share is this to those who reckon purpurae, conchylia, pearls! It had evidently been too little for the seas to be buried in gullets, unless they were also carried on hands, ears, head and the whole body, by women and men alike. What has the sea to do with clothes, what the waves and billows with fleece? Does not this nature of things rightly receive us only naked? Granted, let there be so great a partnership between the belly and it: what has it to do with the back? Is it too little that we who feed on dangers should also be clothed with them? So much do things sought at the cost of a man's life, through the whole body, give most pleasure.
106| The pearls, then, hold the beginning and the summit of the price of all things. The Indian ocean sends them chiefly, coming through so many seas among those beasts so many and so great that we have described, through so long a stretch of lands and under such burning of the sun. And by the Indians too they are sought on islands, and on quite few. Most fertile are Taprobane and Stoidis, as we said in the circuit of the world, likewise Perimula, a promontory of India. They are chiefly praised, however, around Arabia in the Persian gulf of the Red Sea.
107| The origin and begetting are shells, not much different from the shells of oysters. When the hour of the generative season stimulates them, they open with a kind of yawning and, it is said, are filled by a conception of dew, afterward, grown heavy, they bring forth, and the offspring of the shells are the pearls, according to the quality of the dew received. If pure it has flowed in, whiteness is seen; if turbid, the fruit too is dingy; the same turns pale when the sky threatens. For the conception, they say, comes from the dew, and they have a greater partnership with the sky than with the sea: hence they draw a cloudy color, or a clear one in proportion to the brightness of the morning.
108| If they are fed at the right time, the offspring too grows large; if it lightnings, the shells are pressed together and diminish in proportion to the degree of fasting; if it also thunders, frightened and suddenly compressed they produce what are called physemata, in appearance like inflated emptiness without body; these are the abortions of the shells. The sound offspring, however, are made up of many layers of skin, as it might not unfittingly be thought a callus of the body.
109| And so they are cleaned by those skilled. I wonder that they alone rejoice in the sky itself, redden in the sun and lose their whiteness like the human body. For this reason those of the deep keep the best quality, sunk deeper than the rays can penetrate. Yet they too turn yellow with age and grow dull with wrinkles, and that vigor which is sought exists only in youth. They thicken also in old age and cling to the shells and can be torn from them only with a file. Those that have only one face, and roundness from it, with the reverse flat, are for that reason called tympania. We see them still clinging to shells which, so endowed, are carried about to hold perfumes. Otherwise the unio in the water is soft, and as soon as taken out hardens.
110| The shell itself, when it has seen a hand, presses itself together and covers its wealth, knowing it is sought for the sake of that, and, if the hand is quick enough, cuts it off with its own edge, with no juster penalty, and is protected by other torments too, since the greater part is found among rocks, and in the deep too sea-dogs accompany; and yet the ears of women are not kept off.
111| Some report that, as with bees, so in the swarms of shells single ones, outstanding in size and age, are like leaders, of wonderful cleverness in guarding. The divers aim at these; when they are taken the rest, wandering, are easily enclosed in nets; then they are buried in plenty of salt in earthen vessels; when all the flesh has been eaten away, certain kernels of the bodies, that is, the uniones, fall to the bottom.
112| There is no doubt that they are worn down by use and change color through carelessness. All their merit lies in whiteness, size, roundness, smoothness and weight, qualities not easy to find, so much so that no two are found indistinguishable: hence the name of uniones, which Roman fastidiousness evidently imposed, for among the Greeks there is no other name than margaritae, nor even among the barbarians, the discoverers of the thing. And in the whiteness itself there is a great difference:
113| it is clearer in those found in the Red Sea, while in the Indian they resemble the scales of mirror-stones, though in other cases surpassing in size. The highest praise of color is to be called alum-white. The longer ones too have their own favor. They call elenchi those of lengthened, tapering form like the shape of alabaster flasks, ending in a fuller roundness.
114| To hang these from the fingers and two and three from the ears is the glory of women, and foreign names come to attend this luxury, sought out by ruined extravagance, since when they have done it they call them crotalia, as though they enjoyed the sound too and the very clashing of the pearls; and even poor women now desire them, saying that a pearl is a woman's lictor in public. Moreover they add them to the feet, and not only to the straps of sandals but to whole shoes. For it is no longer enough to wear margaritae, unless they tread on them and walk even on uniones.
115| In our sea they used to be found rather often around the Thracian Bosporus, reddish and small, in shells they call myae. But in Acarnania the one called pina produces them, whence it appears that they are not born in one kind of shell. For Juba also reports that in the Arabian ones the shell is like a cut scallop, rough like the echini, the unio itself in the flesh like hail. Shells of that kind are not brought to us. Nor are those found in Acarnania praised, huge and wild and of marble color. Better ones are around Actium, but these too small, and on the coasts of Mauretania. Alexander Polyhistor and Sudines think that they grow old and their color dies away.
116| That the body is firm is evident, because they are broken by no fall. They are not invariably located in the centre of the flesh, but now in one place, now in another, and we have by now seen them even at the extreme edges, as though coming out of the shell, and in some four and five. In weight, up to this date, few have exceeded a half-ounce by single scruples. That they are born in Britain, small and without color, is certain, since the deified Julius wished it understood that the breastplate that he dedicated in her temple to Venus Genetrix was made from British pearls.
117| I have seen Lollia Paulina, who was the wife of the emperor Gaius, not at any serious or solemn ceremonial preparation, but at the supper of even an ordinary betrothal, covered with emeralds and pearls shining in alternate weaving over her whole head, [with a coil] in the hair, on the ears, [necklaces] on the neck, on the fingers, a sum which came to forty million sesterces, she herself at once ready to prove the title by documents. Nor were they gifts of a spendthrift emperor, but ancestral wealth, evidently gained by the spoils of provinces.
118| This is the outcome of plunder; this was why Marcus Lollius, disgraced by the gifts of kings in the whole East, with friendship renounced by Gaius Caesar the son of Augustus, drank poison, so that his granddaughter might be looked at by lamplight covered with forty million sesterces! Let someone now reckon on one side how much Curius or Fabricius carried in their triumphs, imagine the processions of those men, and on the other side Lollia, a single little woman of the empire, reclining at table: would he not rather have them dragged from their chariots than have them conquer to this end?
119| Nor are these the highest examples of luxury. There were two of the greatest uniones through all ages; Cleopatra, last of the Egyptian queens, possessed both, passed down to her through the hands of Eastern kings. She, when Antony was being fattened daily on choice banquets, with proud and at the same time wanton disdain, as a queen and harlot, belittling all his splendor and apparatus, when he asked what could be added to the magnificence, replied that she would consume ten million sesterces at one supper.
120| Antony was eager to learn, but did not think it could be done. So wagers having been made, the next day, on which the judgment was to be given, she set before Antony, who was laughing and demanding the reckoning, a supper otherwise magnificent, so that the day might not be lost, but an ordinary one. But she declared that this was a mere extra and that the supper would consume the sum assessed, and that she alone would dine at ten million sesterces, and ordered the second course to be brought in. By her instruction the attendants set before her only one vessel, of vinegar, whose sharpness and force dissolves pearls into slime.
121| She was wearing at her ears at the time that singular and truly unique work of nature. And so, with Antony waiting to see what she would do, she took off one, dipped it, and swallowed it when dissolved. Lucius Plancus, the judge of her wager, laid his hand on the other, as she was preparing to consume it too in the same way, and pronounced Antony beaten, the omen being fulfilled. Fame attends the partner of that unio; after that queen, the victor in so great a contest, was captured, it was cut in two, so that at Rome in the Pantheon there should be in the ears of Venus, in each, half of that supper.
122| They will not bear off this palm, and will be robbed even of the glory of luxury. Earlier at Rome Clodius, son of the tragic actor Aesopus, left by him as heir in great wealth, had done this with uniones of great price, lest Antony be too proud of his triumvirate, being almost compared to an actor, and indeed brought to it by no wager (to make it the more royal), but to find out, for the glory of his palate, what pearls tasted like. And when they pleased him wonderfully, lest he alone know this, he gave single uniones to his guests also to swallow.
123| Fenestella reports that at Rome they came into mixed and frequent use after Alexandria was brought under our sway, and first began about the times of Sulla, small and cheap ones, in manifest error, since Aelius Stilo records that about the Jugurthine war the name uniones was being imposed, precisely on large pearls.
124| And yet this is a possession almost eternal; it follows the heir, passing into ownership like some estate: conchylia and purpurae every hour wear away, and for these the same mother, luxury, has made prices almost equal even to pearls.
125| Purpurae live at most seven years. They lie hidden, like murices, around the rising of the Dog Star, for thirty days. They gather in the spring season and by mutual rubbing produce the stickiness of a kind of wax in their saliva. In a similar way murices do too, but purpurae have that flower so sought for dyeing garments in the middle of their throat.
126| This is a white vein of very little liquid, from which is drunk that precious fluid, gleaming with the color of a darkening rose; the rest of the body is useless. They strive to take them alive, because with life they vomit out that juice. And from the larger purpurae they remove the shell and take it out, but the smaller they break alive with the shell, and so at last squeeze it out.
127| At Tyre the best in Asia, at Meninx in Africa and on the Gaetulian shore of the ocean, in Laconia in Europe. For this the fasces and axes of Rome make way, and the same is the majesty of boyhood, distinguishes the senate from the knight, is called in to appease the gods and brightens every garment, and in the triumphal one is mixed with gold. Wherefore let the madness for purpura also be excused. But whence come the prices for the conchylia, what is the foul odor in the dye, the harsh color in the sea-green and like a sea in anger?
128| The tongue of the purpura is a finger's length, with which it feeds, piercing the other shellfish: so great is the hardness of the sting. They are killed by the sweetness of water, and wherever a river runs in; otherwise, when caught, they live even fifty days on their own saliva. All shells grow very quickly, especially purpurae: in a year they fill out their size.
129| But if the account were to hurry past at this point, luxury would surely believe herself defrauded and condemn us for carelessness. For this reason we shall go through the workshops as well, so that, as in the food of grains the method is known, so all who delight in these things may be skilled in the reward of their own lives.
130| Of the shells for purpurae and conchylia (for the material is the same, but it differs in the mixing) there are two kinds: the bucinum, a smaller shell, in the likeness of that by which the sound of the trumpet is made (whence the reason for the name), cut at the rim with a round mouth; the other is called purpura, with a channeled beak running forward and the side of the little channel tubed inward, through which the tongue is thrust forth. Besides, it is studded up to the spire with spikes in a ring, about seven, which the bucinum does not have, but both have as many whorls as they have years. The bucinum clings only to rocks and is gathered around the cliffs.
131| Purpurae by another name are called pelagiae. Of them there are several kinds, distinguished by food and ground: the lutense, foul with mud, and the algense, nourished on seaweed, both the cheapest. Better is the taeniense, gathered in the taeniae of the sea, though this too is still lighter and thinner. The calculense is so called from the pebble in the sea, wonderfully fitted for conchylia, and far the best for purpurae is the dialutense, that is, fed on a varied kind of ground.
132| Purpurae are caught, moreover, with little baskets, rare in weave like fish-traps, thrown into the deep. In these is bait, shells that close and bite, like the mussels that we see. These half-dead shells, but restored to the sea and reviving with greedy gaping, the purpurae seek and attack with extended tongues. But they, stung by the sting, shut themselves and press together on what bites. So the purpurae, hanging by their own greed, are lifted up.
133| It is most useful for them to be caught after the Dog Star rises or before the season of spring, since when they have made wax, they have flowing juices. But [….] of the dyers is turned on this. Afterward the vein of which we spoke is removed, to which salt must be added, about a sextarius to every hundred pounds; the right time for steeping is three days, since the force is as much greater as it is fresher; it is made to boil in lead, and for each [hundred] amphorae of water, five hundred pounds of the drug are heated with an even and moderate steam, and for that reason by the channel of a distant furnace. So, the flesh being skimmed off from time to time, which must have adhered to the veins, about the tenth day, when the contents of the vat have liquefied, a fleece rinsed clean is dipped in as a test, and until the hope is satisfied the liquor is heated. A reddish color is worse than a blackish.
134| Wool is soaked for five hours, and again dipped when carded, until it drinks up all the gore. The bucinum by itself is condemned, since it gives up the dye: it is bound together with the pelagium in measure, and gives to its excessive blackness that sharpness and that gloss which is sought in scarlet. So, with their strengths mixed, one is roused or restrained by the other.
135| The sum of the drugs by the pound [….] for fleeces, of bucinum two hundred and of pelagium 111. So is made that outstanding color of amethyst. But the Tyrian is first saturated in pelagium, in an unripe, green vat, then changed over into bucinum. Its highest praise is in the color of clotted blood, blackish to look at and the same shining when looked at against the light. Whence blood is called purple by Homer.
136| I see that the use of purpura has always been at Rome, but in the case of Romulus in the trabea. For the toga praetexta and the broader stripe, it is well agreed that Tullus Hostilius, of the kings, first used them, after the Etruscans were conquered.
137| Cornelius Nepos, who died in the principate of the deified Augustus, says: "In my youth violet purple was in vogue, the pound of which sold for a hundred denarii, and not long after the red of Tarentum. To this succeeded the Tyrian dibapha, that could not be purchased for a thousand denarii to the pound. Publius Lentulus Spinther, curule aedile, was censured for being the first to use it on a praetexta. What man now," he says, "does not make dining-room coverings of that purple?" Spinther was aedile in the 691st year from the founding of the city, in the consulship of Cicero. Dibapha was then the name of what had been dyed twice, as though at splendid expense, in the way in which now nearly all the more convenient purples are dyed.
138| In a garment dyed with conchylium, all else is the same without bucinum, and besides the liquid is tempered with water and, in undivided proportion, with the excrement of human drink. Half the drugs are also added. Thus is produced that praised pallor, the full strength cheated away and so much the more diluted the more the fleeces are starved. The prices of the drug are indeed cheaper in proportion to the fertility of the shores, yet let those who buy such things at an immense price know that nowhere does pelagium exceed fifty sesterces per hundred pounds, and bucinum a hundred.
139| But other beginnings come from the end, and it pleases to play with expense and to double the play by mixing and again to adulterate the very adulterations of nature, as to dye tortoise-shell, to blend silver with gold so that electrum is made, to add bronze to these, as for Corinthian. It is not enough to have taken away from the gem the name of amethyst; again, when it is finished it is made drunk with Tyrian, so that there is from both a disreputable name and at once a double luxury, and when they have finished conchylia they think it better to pass over into Tyrian.
140| Regret must first have discovered this, the craftsman changing what he condemned. From that a method was born, and by monstrous ingenuity a fault was turned into something desired, and a twofold path of luxury was shown, so that one color might be covered by another, and made thus more pleasing and gentler, so it was said; indeed to mix in earthy things too and to dye with Tyrian what had been dyed with coccum, so that hysginum might be made. Coccum of Galatia,
141| a reddish berry, as we shall say among land things, or that around Emerita in Lusitania is in the greatest praise. But, so that the famous pigments may be finished together, with the berry a year old the juice is weak, and the same from the fourth year faded. So neither is it strong when fresh nor in old age. The method by which the beauty of men and of women alike believes itself made most splendid has been abundantly treated. Of the kind of conchae is also the pina.
142| It is born in muddy places, always upright and never without a companion, which they call pinoteres, others pinophylax; this is a small squilla, elsewhere a crab, a follower of the feast. The pina opens, offering its body, deprived of eyes, within to tiny fish. These at once leap in, and when boldness has grown with license, they fill it. The informer, watching for this moment, gives a sign by a light bite. She, by compression, kills whatever she has shut in and gives a share to her partner.
143| Whence I wonder the more that some have thought there is no sense in aquatic creatures. The torpedo knows its own power, not itself being numbed, and hides sunk in mud, seizing those of the fish which, swimming above in security, have been benumbed. (To its liver no tenderness is preferred.) Nor is the cleverness of the frog less, which in the sea is called the fisher. It puts forth the little horns standing out under its eyes when the mud is stirred, drawing the little fish to it as they leap, until they come so near that it leaps upon them.
144| In a similar way the squatina and the rhombus, hidden, move their extended fins in the likeness of little worms, and likewise those called raiae. For the pastinaca commits robbery from concealment, piercing those who pass with the spine, which is its weapon. A proof of its cleverness is that these, the slowest of fish, are found with the mullet, swiftest of all, in their belly.
145| Scolopendrae, like the land ones which they call centipedes, when the hook has been swallowed, vomit up all their inwards until they have cast out the hook, then swallow them back. But sea-foxes in a like danger gulp more, as far as the weak part of the line, where they can easily gnaw through. More cautiously the one called glanis bites the hooks from the rear and does not swallow them, but strips the bait. The aries ranges like a robber, and now hidden in the shadow of larger ships standing in the open water, waits if the pleasure of swimming should invite anyone, now with the head raised out of the water watches the boats of fishermen, and, swimming up hidden, sinks them.
146| For my part I think that sense is present also in those that are neither of animals nor of shrubs, but have a third nature from both, I mean nettles and sponges. Nettles roam at night and change their place. Their nature is of a fleshy leaf, and they feed on flesh. Their force is biting by itching, the same as that of the land nettle. So it draws itself together as much as possible, stiff, and when a little fish swims past spreads its leaf, and embracing devours it.
147| At other times, like something withering and suffering itself to be tossed by the wave in the way of seaweed, it attacks fish that touch it and those that scratch the itch by rubbing on a rock. The same by night seeks scallops and echini [….]. When it feels a hand brought near, it changes color and draws itself together. When touched it gives out a burning, and if there was a little interval, it hides. Its mouth is said to be at the root, and its excrement is given out through a thin pipe at the top.
148| We have received three kinds of sponges: the dense, very hard and rough is called tragos [that is], the dense and softer manos, the fine and close, from which paintbrushes are made, Achillium. All grow on rocks, are fed on shells, fish, mud. It appears that there is understanding in them, because when they have sensed the one tearing them off, they contract and are drawn away with much more difficulty; the same they do when the wave beats.
149| That they live on food is shown plainly by the small shellfish found in them. Around Torone they say that they are fed on these even when torn away, and grow again on the rocks from the roots left behind; the color of blood also clings to them, especially to the African ones, which are produced in the Syrtes. The manoe grow largest, but softest around Lycia, and in deep and windless water softer; in the Hellespont they are rough, and dense around Malea. They rot in sunny places, and therefore the best are in the deeps. In the living the color is the same blackish one as in the soaked.
150| They cling neither by a part nor wholly; for there are certain empty pipes between them, about four or five, through which they are thought to be fed. There are also others, but closed at the top. And it is understood that a certain membrane lies beneath their roots. It is agreed that they live a long time. The worst kind of all is that of those called aplysiae, because they cannot be washed clean; in these the pipes are large and the rest of the density thick.
151| The multitude of dogfish chiefly threatens divers around them with grave danger. The divers themselves say that a kind of cloud also thickens over their heads, like an animal of the flat fishes, pressing them and keeping them from coming back, and for that reason they have very sharp pointed rods attached to lines, because unless pierced through it will not depart, a work, as I judge, of darkness and fright. For a cloud and mist, in whose name they call this evil, no one has found among animals.
152| With the dogfish there is a dreadful fight. They go for the groin and heels and every white part of the bodies. The one safety is to go against them and terrify them first, for it fears man as much as it terrifies him, and so the lot is equal in the deep. When the surface of the water is reached, there the danger is doubtful, reason being taken away to go against it, while he tries to come up, and all safety is in his companions. They pull a rope tied to him from his shoulders; he, fighting, shakes it with the left hand to be a sign of the danger, while the right, having seized the rod, is in the fight.
153| The pull is moderate at other times; when they have come near the keel, unless they have snatched him up suddenly with very swift force, they watch him being devoured. And often divers already being drawn up are carried off out of their hands, unless they have helped the efforts of those pulling by rolling their bodies into a ball. Some stretch out tridents, but the monster has the cleverness to go under the boat and so fight from safety. All the care, then, is spent in watching for this evil. The surest security is to have seen flat fish, because they are never where the harmful beasts are, for which reason the divers call them sacred.
154| It must be admitted that those enclosed in a flinty shell have no sense, as oysters. Many have the same nature as a shrub, such as holothuriae, pulmones, stars. And so nothing is not produced in the sea, that even the summer animals of the taverns, troublesome with their nimble leap or those which hair especially hides, appear and are often drawn out gathered around the bait, which cause is thought to disturb the sleep of fish in the sea at night. Some are born in the fish themselves, in which number the chalcis is counted.
155| Nor do dire poisons cease, as in the hare, which in the Indian sea, pestilential even to the touch, at once produces vomiting and loosening of the stomach; in our sea it is a shapeless lump, only in color like a hare, in India in size and hair, only harder. Nor is it caught alive there. Equally deadly is the animal araneus, harmful with the sting on the spine of its back. But nothing anywhere is more abominable than the spine standing above the tail of the trygon, which our people call pastinaca, five twelfths of a foot in size: fixed in the root, it kills trees; as a weapon it pierces armor, by the force of iron and the evil of poison.
156| We have not learned that whole kinds of fish suffer diseases, as other animals, even wild ones, do. But that individuals are sick is made plain by the leanness of some, when in the same kind others are caught very fat.
157| In what way they generate, the desire and wonder of men does not suffer to be put off. Fish couple by rubbing their bellies with such speed that they deceive the sight, dolphins and the other cete in a like manner and a little longer. At mating time the female fish follows the male, striking his belly with her snout; at spawning the males follow the females in the same way, feeding on their eggs. Nor is coupling in itself enough for generation, unless, when the eggs have been laid, the males, moving among them, sprinkle the vital seed. This does not happen to all the eggs in so great a multitude; otherwise the seas and pools would be filled, since single wombs conceive countless.
158| The eggs of fish grow in the sea, some with the greatest speed, as those of murenae, some a little more slowly. Of the flat fish, those that have no tail [….] and the spined, and tortoises, come upon one another in coupling; polypi with a single tendril attached to the nostrils of the female, saepiae and lolligines with their tongues, joining their arms together and swimming in opposite directions; they give birth also by the mouth. But polypi couple with the head turned to the ground, the rest of the soft ones on their backs like dogs, likewise locustae and squillae; crabs by the mouth.
159| Frogs mount in coupling, the male seizing the female by the armpits with his forefeet, and the haunches with his hind feet. They give birth to very small black bits of flesh, which they call gyrini, remarkable only for their eyes and tail, soon the feet are formed, the tail splitting itself into the hind ones. And it is a marvel that in a half-year of life they dissolve into mud with no one seeing, and again in the spring waters those that were born are born anew, by a likewise hidden law, since this happens every year.
160| Mussels and scallops arise of their own accord in sandy places; those with a tougher shell, such as the murex and purpura, arise from a slimy secretion, as gnats do from souring liquid; the apua from sea foam when it grows warm, once a rainstorm has come in; but those covered with a flinty shell, such as oysters, arise from putrefying mud, or from the foam that gathers around ships standing for some time, and around fixed stakes, and especially around timber. It has recently been discovered in oyster beds that a fluid, productive of offspring, flows out of them like milk. Eels rub themselves against rocks; the scrapings come to life, and they have no other mode of procreation.
161| Different kinds of fish do not mate with one another, except the squatina and the raia; from them is born a fish resembling the raia in its front part, and among the Greeks it takes a name compounded from both.
162| Some creatures are produced at a certain time of year, in water as on land: in spring the scallops, slugs and leeches; and they vanish again in due season. Of fishes, the lupus and the trichias bear twice a year, and all rock fish; mullets three times, and the chalcis; the cyprini six times; scorpaenae twice, and the sargi, in spring and autumn; of the flat fish the squatina alone bears twice, in autumn, at the setting of the Pleiades; most fish bear in three months, April, May and June; the salpae in autumn; the sargi, the torpedo and the squali about the equinox; the soft-bodied creatures in spring; the sepia in every month. Its eggs, clinging together like a bunch of grapes by the glue of its ink, are followed by the male with his breath; otherwise they become barren.
163| Polypi mate in winter and lay their eggs in spring, in coils like a twisted vine-tendril, with such fecundity that, once the polypus is killed, the great number of eggs cannot be contained in the hollow of the head in which they were carried while it was pregnant; they hatch on the fiftieth day, and many of them perish because of their number.
164| Locustae and the others of thinner shell lay their eggs underneath themselves and so brood them. The female polypus sometimes sits on her eggs, and sometimes closes her cave with a lattice of interwoven arms. The sepia lays on earthy ground among reeds, or wherever seaweed has grown up, and hatches on the fifteenth day. Lolligines lay their eggs in the deep, clustered together like those of the sepia. Purpurae, murices and others of the same kind breed in spring. Sea urchins have their eggs at the full moons in winter; and snails are born in the winter season.
165| A torpedo has been found carrying eighty young, and it gives birth within itself, moving the very soft eggs to another part of the womb and hatching them there. So do all those that we have called cartilaginous. Thus it happens that these alone among fishes both conceive eggs and bring forth live young. The silurus, the male alone of all of them, guards the eggs once laid, often even for fifty days, so that they may not be devoured by others. The other females hatch them in three days, if the male has touched them.
166| The acus, or belone, is the only fish that gives birth with its womb splitting open because of the multitude; after the birth the wound closes up, which they report also of blind snakes. The sea mouse, on land, digs out a pit, lays its eggs and covers them over again with earth; on the thirtieth day it digs them up, opens them, and leads its young into the water. The erythini and channae are said to have wombs; the one that the Greeks call trochos is said to mate with itself. The young of all aquatic creatures are without sight in their first beginnings.
167| Concerning the lifespan of fishes we have lately received a memorable example. Pausilypum is a villa of Campania not far from Naples; there, in Caesar's fishponds, Annaeus Seneca writes that a fish put in by Vedius Pollio died after sixty years, two others of the same kind, its contemporaries, being still alive even then. This mention of fishponds reminds me to say a little more on the subject before we depart from aquatic creatures.
168| The first of all to devise oyster preserves was Sergius Orata, at Baiae, in the age of the orator Lucius Crassus, before the Marsic War; and not for the sake of gluttony but of greed, drawing great revenues from this device of his, for he was the man who first devised hanging baths, and so kept selling villas, one after another, spruced up for the market. He was the first to award the best flavor to the Lucrine oysters, since the same kinds of aquatic creatures are better in one place than in another,
169| as the lupus fish in the river Tiber between the two bridges, the rhombus at Ravenna, the muraena in Sicily, the elops at Rhodes, and other kinds likewise, not to carry out a full censor's review of the kitchens. The shores of Britain were not yet serving us when Orata was making the Lucrine famous. Afterward it was thought worthwhile to seek oysters as far off as Brundisium, at the farthest edge of Italy, and, lest there be a quarrel between the two flavors, it was lately contrived to feed up in the Lucrine the hunger caused by the long carriage from Brundisium.
170| In the same age the earlier Licinius Murena devised preserves for the remaining fishes, and the nobility then followed his example, Philippus and Hortensius among them. Lucullus, having even cut through a mountain near Naples, at greater expense than he had spent in building the villa, let in a channel and the seas, for which reason Pompey the Great used to call him Xerxes in a toga. When he had died, fish from that pond were sold for 4,000,000 sesterces.
171| A preserve of murenae for private keeping was devised before others by Gaius Hirrius, who at the triumphal banquets of Caesar the dictator lent six thousand murenae by number, on condition of repayment in kind; for he was unwilling to exchange them for a price or for any other merchandise. His villa, though less than modest, was sold by its fishponds for 4,000,000 sesterces.
172| Then came a love for individual fishes. At Bauli, in the Baian district, the orator Hortensius had a fishpond in which he so loved a murena that he is believed to have wept when it died. In the same villa Antonia, wife of Drusus, put earrings on a murena that she loved, and because of its fame some people longed to see Bauli.
173| Preserves for snails were first set up by Fulvius Lippinus in the Tarquinian territory, a little before the civil war that was fought with Pompey the Great; he kept their kinds distinct, so that there were separately the white ones that are produced in the territory of Reate, separately the Illyrian ones, notable for their size, the African ones, for their fertility, and the Solitan ones, for their excellence.
174| He even devised a way of fattening them with boiled-down must, spelt and other kinds of food, so that fattened snails too might fill out gluttony; and Marcus Varro is our authority that the fame of this art brought them to such a size that the shell of a single one would hold 80 quadrantes.
175| Still more marvelous kinds of fish are reported by Theophrastus. Around the irrigated lands of Babylon, when the rivers go down, some remain in holes that hold water, and from there come out to feed, walking on their little fins with frequent movement of the tail; and when hunted they flee back into their holes and stand in them facing outward; their heads are like the sea frog's, the rest of their parts like gobiones, and they have gills like other fishes.
176| Around Heraclea and Cromna, and in many places in Pontus, there is one kind that pursues the outermost waters of the rivers and makes burrows for itself in the ground and lives in them, even when the shore is dried out as the rivers ebb; so they are dug up, and only the movement of their bodies proves that they are alive.
177| Around the same Heraclea [and on the same] river Lycus, when it goes down, fish are produced from eggs left in the mud, which in seeking their food flutter with little gills, so that they do not need water; for this reason eels too live a long time when taken out of the water; and their eggs ripen on dry land, like those of tortoises. In the same region of Pontus fish are caught in the ice, especially gobiones, which do not show any movement of life except under the heat of the cooking pans.
178| And in these cases, however marvelous, there is still some reason. The same author reports that in Paphlagonia land fish, very pleasant to eat, are dug out of deep pits in places where no water stands, and he himself wonders that they are produced without mating; he thinks there is some force of moisture in those places, as there is in wells, as if fish were found in any wells. Whatever this may be, it certainly makes the life of moles, an underground animal, less surprising, unless perhaps these fish have the nature of earthworms.
179| But the flooding of the Nile lends credibility to all these, with a marvel that surpasses all of them. For when it uncovers the ground, little mice are found, the work of the generating water and earth only begun, already living in part of their body while the last part of their form is still earth.
180| Nor is it right to keep silent about the anthias fish, the stories about which I notice that many have believed. We have said that the Chelidonian islands lie off the promontory of Taurus, in the rocky sea of Asia; this fish is plentiful there and is quickly caught in one particular way. In a small boat and in clothes of the same color, and at the same hour for several days running, the fisherman sails out a fixed distance and throws out bait. But if anything is changed, the prey suspects a trick and guards against what it has feared. When this has been done often, at last one anthias, drawn on by habit, goes for the bait.
181| This one is marked with careful attention as the source of hope and the one who will win the catch over; nor is this difficult, since for several days it alone dares to approach. At last it finds some others too, and gradually, with more company, it finally brings shoals beyond counting, the oldest of them already accustomed to recognize the fisherman and to snatch food from his hand. Then the fisherman casts his hook in the bait a little beyond his fingers and seizes them one at a time rather than catches them, snatching them out of the shadow of the boat with a short pull so that the others do not notice, while another man inside receives the one snatched on patchwork cloths, so that no flapping or noise may drive the rest away.
182| It is useful to know the one that won them over for this purpose, so that it is not caught, since the shoal would flee for the future. They say that a partner at odds with another, out of malice, laid a trap for the leader, who was well known, and caught it; and Mucianus adds that it was recognized in the market by the partner who had been wronged, that a formula for damages was issued, and that he was condemned, with the damages assessed. These same anthiae, when they see one held on the hook, are said to cut the line with the spines they have on their backs, serrated like a saw, the one that is held stretching it out so that it can be cut. Among the sargi, though, the one that is held rubs the line against the rocks himself.
183| Besides these, I see authors famous for their wisdom marveling at the star in the sea. It has that shape, with very little flesh inside and a harder hide outside. They report that it has such a fiery heat that it burns everything it touches in the sea and digests all food at once. By what experiments this was learned I could not easily say, and I would think far more worth recording something that there is occasion to test every day.
184| Of the class of shellfish are the dactyli, named from their likeness to human nails. It is their nature to shine brightly in the dark when other light is taken away, and the more moisture they hold, the more they glow in the mouths of those who chew them, glow in their hands, and even on the floor and clothing when drops fall, so that it is plain beyond doubt that this property belongs to the juice, which we would marvel at even in the body.
185| There are also marvels of enmity and friendship. The mullet and the lupus burn with mutual hatred, and the conger and the murena, which gnaw off each other's tails. The locusta is so afraid of the polypus that if it sees one anywhere near, it dies; the conger in turn frightens the locusta; and again congers tear the polypus to pieces. Nigidius is our authority that the lupus gnaws off the tail of the mullet, and that these same fish are at peace in certain months; and that all fish whose tails are cut off in this way live.
186| But on the contrary there are examples of friendship, besides those whose partnership we have mentioned: the whale and the musculus. Since the whale's eyes are covered by the very heavy weight of its brows, the musculus swims in front, shows it the shallows dangerous to its bulk, and serves it in place of eyes. Next the natures of the birds will be described.

======== Natural History — Book X ========

1| Next comes the nature of birds. The largest of them, and almost of the class of beasts, the ostriches of Africa or Ethiopia, exceed in height a horseman sitting on his horse and surpass him in speed, their wings having been given them only for this, to help them as they run. Otherwise they are not fliers and do not rise from the ground. They have cloven hooves like a stag's, with which they fight, and which are useful for grasping stones, which they hurl with their feet as they flee against those pursuing them.
2| They have a marvelous ability to digest whatever they have swallowed without distinction, but no less marvelous is the stupidity of creatures of such height in the rest of the body, which think they are hidden when they have hidden their necks in a bush. The rewards from them are their eggs, which on account of their size are used by some as vessels, and the feathers that adorn the crests and helmets of war.
3| The Ethiopians and Indians produce birds of the most varied colors, beyond describing, and above all the famous phoenix of Arabia, perhaps a fable: only one in the whole world, and not often seen. It is said to be of the size of an eagle, with a golden sheen around the neck, purple elsewhere, a blue tail picked out with rose-colored feathers, its throat set off with tufts and its head with a crest of plumes.
4| The first of the Romans to write about it, and the most careful, was Manilius, that senator famed for the greatest learning with no teacher: he says that no one has ever existed who saw it feeding, that in Arabia it is sacred to the Sun, that it lives 540 years, that when it grows old it builds a nest of sprigs of casia and frankincense, fills it with scents and dies on top of it. Then from its bones and marrow is born first something like a little worm, which then becomes a chick; and its first act is to pay due funeral rites to its predecessor and carry the whole nest to the City of the Sun, which is near Panchaia, and lay it on the altar there.
5| The same Manilius reports that with the life of this bird the turning of the great year is accomplished, and that the signs of the seasons and the stars return again the same, and that this begins about noon on the day on which the sun has entered the sign of the Ram; and that the year of that revolution, as he wrote, in the consulship of Publius Licinius and Gnaeus Cornelius, was the 215th. Cornelius Valerianus records that a phoenix flew down into Egypt in the consulship of Quintus Plautius and Sextus Papinius. One was even carried to Rome during the censorship of the emperor Claudius, in the year of the city 800, and displayed in the Comitium, as is attested in the public records, but no one would doubt that it was a fake.
6| Of the birds we know, the eagle has the greatest honor and also the greatest strength. There are six kinds of them. The one the Greeks call melanaetos, also called the hare-eagle, is the smallest in size and outstanding in strength, blackish in color; it alone of the eagles feeds its young (the others, as we shall tell, drive them away), and it alone is without a scream and without a murmur.
7| It lives in the mountains. The second kind, the pygargus, lives in towns and on the plains, and has a whitish tail. The third, the morphnos, which Homer also calls percnus, and some also plangus and the duck-eagle, is second in size and strength; it lives around lakes. Phemonoe, who was called the daughter of Apollo, reported that it has teeth, though otherwise it is mute and has no tongue, and that it is the blackest of the eagles, with a longer tail; Boeus agreed with her. This one also has the clever trick of breaking tortoises it has seized by dropping them from on high, a chance that killed the poet Aeschylus, who, they say, was trying to avoid the collapse foretold for him by fate on that day by trusting himself to the open sky.
8| The fourth kind is the percnopterus, also called oripelargus, vulture-like in appearance, with very small wings, surpassing the others in the rest of its size, but unwarlike and degenerate, so that a raven can beat it; it is also always hungry and greedy, with a whining murmur. It alone of the eagles carries off dead bodies; the others settle down where they have made the kill. This one is the reason why the fifth kind is called gnesios, as being the true one and the only one of uncorrupted descent, of middling size, reddish in color, rarely seen. There remains the haliaetos, with the keenest sight of all, which hovers poised on high and, on seeing a fish in the sea, plunges headlong down on it and, scattering the water with its breast, snatches it.
9| The one we have placed third goes after water birds around the lakes, which dive again and again until it seizes them when they are drowsy and worn out. The fight is worth watching: the bird making for the refuge of the shore, especially if the reeds are thick, the eagle driving it off from there with a blow of the wing and, when it has gone after it in the lake, climbing up and showing its shadow from the shore to the bird swimming under the water, and the bird emerging again in a different place, where it least thinks it is expected. This is the reason why birds swim in flocks, because when there are many together they are not attacked, as they blind the eagle by splashing with their wings. Often too the eagles themselves, unable to bear the weight they have seized, go under with it.
10| The haliaetos alone, striking its chicks while they are still unfledged, forces them again and again to look straight into the sun's rays, and when it notices one blinking and its eyes watering, it throws it headlong from the nest as illegitimate and degenerate. The one whose gaze has held steady against the sun it rears.
11| The haliaeti have no kind of their own, but are born from the mating of different kinds of eagles. What is born from these, in turn, has its kind among the ossifragi, from which the smaller vultures are bred, and from these the large ones, which do not breed at all. Some add a kind of eagle which they call the bearded eagle, and the Tuscans call the ossifraga.
12| In the nest of the first three kinds of eagle and of the fifth, the stone aetites, which some have called gagites, is built in; it is useful for many remedies and loses nothing in fire. This stone is pregnant, with another inside it, which rattles when you shake it, as if in a womb.
13| But that medicinal power is found only in those taken from the nest. They nest on rocks and in trees, lay three eggs, and hatch two chicks; three have sometimes been seen. One they drive out, weary of feeding it. For at that season nature has denied food even to the parents themselves, taking care that the young of all wild creatures should not be carried off. Their talons too are turned inward on those days, and their feathers whiten from lack of food, so that they may well hate their own offspring. But the cast-out chicks are taken up by a related kind, the ossifragi, who rear them with their own.
14| Indeed the parent pursues even the grown young and drives them far away, as rivals, of course, in plunder. Besides, a single pair of eagles needs a great stretch of country for ravaging if it is to be fed to the full. So they mark out their territories and do not hunt in the neighborhood. What they seize they do not carry off at once, but first set it down, and only when they have tried its weight do they depart.
15| They die not of old age or sickness but of hunger, the upper part of the beak growing so much that its hook cannot be opened. They work and fly from midday on; in the earlier hours of the day, until the fora are filled with the assembly of men, they sit idle. Eagles' feathers devour the feathers of other birds when mixed with them. They say that this bird alone has never been killed by a thunderbolt; for that reason common usage has judged it the armor-bearer of Jupiter.
16| Gaius Marius, in his second consulship, assigned it specially to the Roman legions. Before that it had also been the first of five standards: wolves, minotaurs, horses and boars each went before a single rank. A few years earlier the eagle alone had begun to be carried into the line, the rest being left in camp; Marius abolished them altogether. Since then it has been remarked that there is hardly ever a legion's winter camp where there is not a pair of eagles.
17| The first and second kinds prey not only on quadrupeds of smaller size, but also fight battles with stags. Sitting on the antlers, it shakes into their eyes much dust gathered by rolling about, beating with its wings, until it drives the stag headlong over the cliffs. Nor is one enemy enough for it: there is a fiercer fight with the dragon, and much more uncertain, even though it takes place in the air. The dragon hunts the eagle's eggs with a malignant greed. For this reason the eagle seizes it wherever it is seen; the dragon binds its wings in manifold coils, entangling itself so that it falls down with the eagle.
18| Famous at the city of Sestos is the glory of an eagle: raised by a maiden, it repaid her kindness, at first with birds, then with game, which it brought to her; at last, when she had died, it threw itself onto her kindled pyre and burned up together with her. For this reason the inhabitants made at that place what they call a hero-shrine, named that of Jupiter and the Maiden, since the bird is ascribed to that god.
19| Of vultures the black are the strongest. No one has touched their nests; for that reason there were some who thought they flew in from another world over against ours. This is false: they nest on the highest cliffs; their young are indeed often seen, usually two. Umbricius, the most skilled haruspex of our age, reports that they lay thirteen eggs, that with one of them they purify the remaining eggs and the nest, and afterwards throw it away. Three days beforehand, moreover, they fly to the place where corpses are going to be.
20| The sanqualis bird and the immusulus are a great question for the Roman augurs. Some think the immusulus is the young of a vulture and the sanqualis an ossifragus. Masurius says the sanqualis is an ossifraga, but the immusulus the young of an eagle before its tail turns white. Some have affirmed that they have not been seen in Rome since the augur Mucius; I think, which is more likely, that they are not recognized, in the general neglect of everything.
21| We find sixteen kinds of hawks, among them the aegithus, lame in one foot, of the most favorable augury for marriage affairs and for cattle-keeping; the triorchis, named for the number of its testicles, to which Phemonoe gave the first place in auguries. The Romans call it buteo, and a family was even named after it, when with favorable omen it had settled on a commander's ship. The Greeks call epileus the one that alone appears at every season; the others depart in winter.
22| The distinction of kinds comes from their greed: some seize a bird only from the ground, others only one flitting around trees, others one perched on high, some one flying in the open. And so doves too have learned the dangers from them, and on seeing them settle down or fly up beneath, helping themselves by going against the hawk's nature. On the island of Cerne in Africa, in the ocean, the hawks of the whole of Masaesylia breed on the ground and are born nowhere else, accustomed to those peoples.
23| In the part of Thrace above Amphipolis, men and hawks hunt birds in a kind of partnership. The men rouse the birds out of the woods and reed-beds, and the hawks, flying over them, drive them down again; the fowlers share what is caught with them. It is reported that the hawks catch those sent up into the air for themselves and, when it is the time of capture, invite the men to the opportunity with a cry and a manner of flight. Wolves around the Maeotic marsh do something similar. For unless they have received their share from the fishermen, they tear the nets spread out.
24| Hawks do not eat the hearts of birds. The night hawk is called cybindis, rare even in woods, seeing less by day. It wages deadly war with the eagle, and they are often caught clinging together.
25| The coccyx seems to come from a hawk, changing its shape with the season, since at that time the others do not appear except for very few days. It too, seen for a short time in summer, is not seen afterwards. It is, however, the only one of the hawks without hooked talons, and is not like them in head nor in anything but color, and in its look is rather like a dove; indeed it is even devoured by a hawk, if ever they have appeared together, the only bird of all to be killed by its own kind.
26| It changes its voice also. It comes forward in spring and hides when the Dog Star rises, and between those times it lays in other birds' nests, especially the wood pigeon's, for the most part a single egg, which no other bird does, seldom two. The reason for putting its chicks in is thought to be that it knows itself hated by all birds; for even the little ones attack it. So it supposes that its stock will not be safe for its kind unless it deceives; therefore it makes no nest of its own, though otherwise a timid creature.
27| The mother, then, whose nest has been adulterated, rears the substituted chick. It, greedy by nature, snatches the food from the other chicks, and so grows fat and sleek and wins its nurse over to itself. She delights in its appearance and marvels at herself that she has borne such a one; in comparison with it she condemns her own as strangers and lets them be devoured even before her eyes, until the cuckoo, now able to fly, seizes her too. At that point no bird is compared with it for the sweetness of its flesh.
28| Kites, of the same genus as hawks, differ in size. It has been noted of them that this most rapacious and ever hungry bird never snatches anything edible from funeral dishes, nor at Olympia from the altar, nor even from the hands of those carrying it, except by a mournful omen for the towns of those sacrificing. The same birds seem to have taught the art of steering by the turnings of the tail, nature showing in the sky what was needed on the deep. Kites too lie hidden in the winter months, yet do not depart before the swallow. They are said, moreover, to be afflicted with gout from the solstices on.
29| The first distinction among birds rests chiefly on the feet: for they have either hooked talons, or toes, or are in the class of web-footed birds, such as geese and nearly all water birds. Those with hooked talons feed mostly on flesh alone;
30| crows also on other food, since they fly high and hurl onto rocks or tiles, again and again, a nut whose hardness resists the beak, until they can break it when shattered. The bird itself has an ill-omened chatter, though praised by some. From the rising of Arcturus to the arrival of the swallows it is noted that it is rarely seen in the groves and temples of Minerva, and in some places not at all, as at Athens; it is most ill-omened in the time of its young, that is, after the solstice. Besides, this alone also feeds its young for some time after they are flying.
31| All the rest of the same genus drive their chicks from the nests and force them to fly, as do ravens too, who are not fed on flesh alone either. But they drive their strong young farther away; and so in small villages there are no more than two pairs, and around Crannon in Thessaly one pair always. The parents give place to their offspring.
32| In this bird and the one mentioned above there are certain differences. Ravens breed before the solstice; they also fall sick for sixty days, chiefly from thirst, before the figs ripen in autumn. The crow is seized by disease from that time. Ravens lay, at the most, five. The common people suppose that they lay or couple by the mouth, and therefore that pregnant women, if they have eaten a raven's egg, give birth through the mouth, and altogether give birth with difficulty if they are carried under a roof. Aristotle denies it: by Hercules no more than the ibis in Egypt, but that kissing which is often seen, such as occurs in doves. Ravens alone in auspices seem to have an understanding of their own signs.
33| For when the Median guests were slain, they all flew away from the Peloponnese and the region of Attica. Their worst sign is when they gulp their voice as if strangled.
34| Night birds also have hooked talons, such as owls, the bubo and the ululae. The eyes of all these are dull by day. The bubo, funereal and above all abominated in public auspices, inhabits deserted places, and not only desolate but dire and inaccessible ones, a monster of the night, not vocal with any song but with a groan.
35| And so, in cities or generally seen in the daylight, it is a dire portent. That one perching on the houses of private men was not deadly in a number of cases I know. It never flies where it likes, but is carried off sideways. It entered the very shrine of the Capitol when Sextus Palpellius Hister and Lucius Pedanius were consuls, on account of which the city was purified on the nones of March that year.
36| The incendiary bird is also ill-omened, and we find it recorded in the annals that the city was often purified because of it, as in the consulship of Lucius Cassius and Gaius Marius, the year in which it was purified also because a bubo had been seen. What bird that is is not found nor reported. Some interpret it thus: that incendiary means any bird that appears carrying a coal from altars or hearths; others call it the spinturnix, but what this itself might be among birds I have found no one who said he knew.
37| I notice too that the bird called clivia by the ancients is not known — some call it clamatoria, Labeo prohibitoria — and in Nigidius a bird called super is mentioned, which breaks the eggs of eagles. There are besides very many kinds depicted in the Etruscan discipline, not seen for ages, which it is strange have now failed, when even those that human gluttony ravages are plentiful.
38| Among foreign writers, the one thought to have written most skillfully on auguries is named Hylas. He reports that the owl, the bubo, the woodpecker that hollows trees, the trygon, and the crow come out of the egg tail first, since from the weight of their heads the eggs lie turned about and bring the hinder part of the bodies against the mother to be warmed.
39| The battle of owls against other birds is skillful. Surrounded by a greater multitude, they fight back lying on their backs with their feet, and gathered into a tight mass are wholly protected by beak and talons. The hawk helps them, by a kind of league of nature, and shares the war. Nigidius reports that owls lie dormant for sixty days of winter and have nine voices.
40| There are also small birds with hooked talons, such as the woodpeckers, marked by the surname of Mars and great in auspices. In this class are the hollowers of trees, who climb straight upward in the manner of cats, while these even climb upside down, and by the sound of the bark when struck they perceive that food lies beneath. They alone of birds rear their young in hollows. Wedges driven by a shepherd into their holes are commonly believed to slip out when a certain herb is brought up by them. Trebius is the authority that a nail or wedge driven with however much force into a tree in which one has its nest springs out at once with a crack of the tree, as soon as it has settled upon [the nail or wedge].
41| They themselves are chief among the birds of Latium in auguries, from the king who gave this bird its name. One of their foreknown signs I cannot pass over. On the head of the city praetor Aelius Tubero, as he gave judgment from the tribunal in the forum, one sat so quietly that it was taken in the hand. The seers answered that destruction to the empire was portended if it were let go, but if it were killed, to the praetor. And he tore the bird to pieces at once, and not long afterwards fulfilled the prodigy.
42| Many in this genus also feed on acorns and fruits, but those that eat only flesh do not drink, except the kite, which is itself dire in auguries. Those with hooked talons do not flock together at all, and each preys for itself. Almost all fly high, except the nocturnal ones, and the larger the more so. All have big wings, but a slight body. They walk with difficulty; they seldom perch on rocks, the curve of the talons preventing it.
43| Now let us speak of the second class, which is divided into two kinds, the oscines and the alites. Song of the mouth gave the difference to the former, size to the latter; and so they will take precedence in order also, and among them the peacock tribe surpasses all the rest, in beauty, and in its understanding of it, and its glory. When praised, it spreads its jewel-like colors, most of all with the sun facing it, because they shine more brilliantly so. At the same time, by cupping its tail like a shell, it seeks a certain reflected shadow for the rest of its colors, which also gleam more brightly in shade, and draws together into a cluster all the eyes of its feathers, which it delights to have gazed upon.
44| The same bird, when its tail is lost at yearly turns with the leaves of the trees, hides in shame and mourning until another is born again with the flower. It lives 25 years. It begins to display its colors at the age of three. Authors report this animal to be not only vainglorious but also spiteful, just as the goose is modest, since some have added these traits as well in them, which I do not approve.
45| At Rome the orator Hortensius was the first to kill a peacock for food, at the inaugural banquet of his priesthood. Marcus Aufidius Lurco first began to fatten them, around the period of the latest pirate war, and made from that trade a revenue of sixty thousand sesterces.
46| Next in glory come these watchers of the night of ours, which nature produced to rouse mortals to their work and break their sleep. They know the stars, and mark off the hours by threes in the daytime with their song. They go to bed with the sun, and at the camp's fourth watch call men back to their cares and labor, nor do they let the sun's rising steal upon the unwary, and they announce the coming day by song, and the song itself by the clapping of their sides.
47| They rule their own kind and exercise kingship in whatever house they are in. This is obtained among themselves by fighting, as though they understood why spurs grow on their legs for that purpose, and often there is no end except in dying together. But if the palm has fallen to one, at once in victory he sings and proclaims himself the chief; the defeated hides in silence and bears servitude with difficulty. And yet the common sort, too, walk equally proud, with neck held steep, high with their crests, and alone of birds look often at the sky, raising also the sickle-shaped tail on high. And so they are a terror even to lions, the noblest of wild beasts.
48| Now some of these are born only for wars and constant battles — by which they have even made their native lands famous, Rhodes or Tanagra; second honor has been given to the Melic and Chalcidic breeds — so that the Roman purple plainly confers on the bird as much honor as it deserves.
49| Theirs are the most favorable tripudia; they daily govern our magistrates, and shut up or open their houses to them. They drive on or hold back the Roman fasces, they order battle lines or forbid them, auspices of all the victories won over the whole world. They above all rule the empire of the lands, and in their entrails and fibres are no less pleasing to the gods than rich victims. Their reversed and evening songs have portents too: for by crowing all night they foretold to the Boeotians that famous victory over the Lacedaemonians, the interpretation being drawn that the defeated bird does not sing.
50| Capons cease to crow; this is done in two ways, by burning the loins with white-hot iron, or the lowest part of the legs, then smearing the sore with potter's clay; they fatten more easily thus. At Pergamum every year a spectacle of cocks is given at public expense, like one of gladiators. It is found in the annals that in the territory of Ariminum, in the consulship of Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Catulus, a cock spoke in the villa of Galerius, once, as far as I know.
51| The goose too has a watchful care, attested by the Capitol's defense, at that time when the silence of the dogs betrayed the situation, for which reason the censors let out the feeding of the geese before all else. Indeed there is also the fame of a love at Aegium, for a boy of beloved beauty, by name [….] Olenius, and of Glauce, who played the cithara for King Ptolemy, whom a ram also is reported to have loved at the same time. Understanding of wisdom can seem to be in them too: thus a goose is said to have clung as a constant companion to the philosopher Lacydes, never leaving him, not in public, not in the baths, not by night, not by day.
52| Our countrymen are wiser, who have known them by the goodness of the liver. In force-fed geese it grows to a great size, and when taken out it is increased further by steeping in milk and honey wine. Nor is it without reason a matter of inquiry who discovered so great a good, Scipio Metellus, a man of consular rank, or Marcus Seius, a Roman knight of the same age. But what is agreed is that Messalinus Cotta, son of the orator Messala, discovered the way to roast their webbed feet and to dress them in dishes with cocks' combs; for I will faithfully award to each man's kitchen its palm.
53| It is a wonder in this bird that they come on foot from the Morini all the way to Rome. When weary they are moved forward to the front; so the rest push them on by natural crowding. White geese are another source of revenue, in the feather. In some places they are plucked twice a year, and again clothe themselves with plumage. Softer is the feather nearest the body, and the most praised comes from Germany. The geese there are white, but smaller; they are called gantae.
54| The price of their feather is five denarii per pound. And hence come charges, mostly against the prefects of auxiliaries, when whole cohorts have been sent from the guard post to this fowling; and luxury has advanced so far that without this equipment not even men's necks can now endure.
55| The part of Syria that is called Commagene discovered another use: their fat, in a bronze vessel with cinnamon, buried in a great deal of snow and softened by the icy cold, for the making of a splendid medicine, which is called Commagenum after the people.
56| Of the goose kind are the chenalopeces and the chenerotes, than which Britain knows no more elegant feast, generally smaller than a goose. The tetraones are adorned by their own gloss and perfect blackness, and by the scarlet red on their brows. The other kind of them exceeds vultures in size, whose color too it reproduces, and no bird, except the ostrich, fills a greater weight in body, so enlarged that it is even caught motionless on the ground. The Alps produce them, and the northern region. In aviaries they lose their flavor.
57| They die from stubbornness, with the breath held back. Next to them are the birds that Spain calls slow birds, and Greece otides, condemned as food; for once the marrow has been let out of the bones, disgust at the smell follows at once.
58| The Pygmy race has a truce when the cranes depart, as we said, since they fight against them. Immense is the stretch from which they come, if one reckons it, from the Eastern sea. They agree among themselves when they set out; they fly high to look ahead, choose a leader whom they follow, and have placed in the rear of the column, by turns, some to call out and to hold the flock together by voice.
59| They keep watch at night, holding a small stone in the foot, which, if loosened by sleep and falling, convicts the watcher of carelessness; the others sleep, with the head hidden under the wing, standing on each foot in turn. The leader looks ahead with neck erect and gives warning. The same birds when tamed frolic and perform certain circlings in an unseemly run, even alone.
60| It is certain that, when about to fly across the Pontus, they first of all make for the narrows between the two promontories, Criu Metopon and Carambis, then steady themselves with ballast; when they have crossed the middle, the pebbles are dropped from their feet, and, when they have reached the mainland, the sand from their throat. Cornelius Nepos, who died in the principate of the deified Augustus, when writing that thrushes had begun to be fattened a little before, added that storks were more in favor than cranes, whereas now the latter bird is among those most sought, while no one would wish to have touched the former.
61| From what place storks come, or where they betake themselves, is hitherto undiscovered. That they come from far off is not doubtful, in the same manner as cranes, the one arriving for the winter, the other for the summer. When about to leave they gather in fixed places and, accompanied in such a way that none of their kind is left behind except a captive and enslaved one, they withdraw on a day announced as if by law. No one has seen the column of those departing, though it is clear when it is about to depart, nor their coming, but we see that they have come. Both happen at night, and although they fly over farther or nearer places, they are nevertheless believed never to have arrived anywhere except by night.
62| They call it the Village of Python in Asia, in open plains, where they gather and murmur together, and tear apart the one that has arrived last, and so depart. It has been observed that they are rarely seen there once the Ides of August are past. There are those who affirm that storks have no tongue. So great is the honor given them for destroying serpents that in Thessaly killing one was a capital crime, and the penalty by the laws was the same as for a homicide.
63| Geese and swans also journey on a similar plan, but their flight is seen. In the manner of Liburnian ships they are borne with a beaked rush, cleaving the air more easily so than if they pressed on with a straight front; from behind the column is gradually extended as the wedge widens, and is presented to a generous breeze pushing it on. They lay their necks on those preceding, and take the weary leaders back to the rear. (Storks return to the same nests and in turn support their aged parents.) From the death of swans a mournful song is told, falsely, as I think, by some experiments. The same feed on one another's flesh.
64| But this migration of travellers across seas and lands does not allow the smaller birds, whose nature is similar, to be left out. For however much the size and strength of body of the birds mentioned above may seem to invite it,
65| quails always arrive even before the cranes, a small bird and, when it comes to us, earthbound rather than high-flying. These too fly in in similar fashion, not without danger to sailors, when they have drawn near the land. For they often fall upon the sails, and always at night, and sink the vessels. Their route is by fixed stopping-places. They do not fly with the south wind, a damp and heavier wind of course;
66| Yet they wish to be carried on a breeze because of the weight of their bodies and their small strength — hence that complaint of the flying birds, wrung out by their labor — and so they fly chiefly with the north wind, the ortygometra leading. The first of them approaching land a hawk seizes. When going back from here they always solicit company, and the glottis, the otus and the cychramus are persuaded and go away along with them.
67| The glottis puts out a very long tongue, whence its name. Enticed at first by the journey, it sets out eagerly, but repentance comes upon it in flight, because of the toil, of course: it is irksome to go back unaccompanied, and to follow; and it never goes on more than a day, and abandons the flock at the nearest stopping place. But another is found, left behind the previous year in a similar manner after each single day.
68| The cychramus, more persevering, hurries also to arrive at the lands it desires. And so by night [it] rouses them and reminds them of the journey. The otus is smaller than the bubo, larger than owls, with feathered ears standing out, whence its name too — some call it in Latin axio — an imitator of other birds, and a parasite, and in a way a dancer. It is caught without difficulty, like owls, while another circles round, as it is intent on one man.
69| But if a wind begins to hinder the column with a contrary blast, they take up small weights of stones, or fill the throat with sand, and fly steadied. Poison seed is the most welcome food to quails, for which reason tables have condemned them, and also because it is customary to spit at the sight of them on account of the falling sickness, which they alone of animals suffer besides man.
70| Swallows too depart in the winter months, the only bird of those lacking hooked talons that feeds on flesh. But they depart to neighboring places, following the sunny recesses of the mountains, and they have already been found there naked and plucked of feathers. They are said not to go under the roofs of Thebes, since that city was captured rather often, nor those of Bizye in Thrace, on account of the crimes of Tereus.
71| Caecina of Volaterrae, of the equestrian order, owner of chariot teams, carried off swallows he had caught, taking them with him to the city, and sent them to his friends as messengers of victory, returning to the same nest with the color of the victory smeared on them. Fabius Pictor also reports in his annals that, a Roman garrison being under siege by the Ligustini, a swallow taken from its chicks was brought to him, so that, with a linen thread tied to its foot, he might signify by knots on which day help would arrive and a sally should be made.
72| Blackbirds, thrushes and starlings too depart in the same way to neighboring places. But these do not lose their plumage nor hide, and are often seen where they go to seek winter fodder; and so in Germany thrushes are seen chiefly in winter. More truly the turtle dove hides and loses its feathers. Wood pigeons depart as well; where, in their case too, is uncertain.
73| It is peculiar to the starling kind to fly in flocks and to wheel round in a kind of ball, all pressing toward the center of the column. Of birds the swallow alone has a winding flight of swift speed, for which reasons it is not exposed to the rapacity of other birds. It alone of birds feeds only in flight. There is a great difference in the seasons of birds: some are perennial, as doves; some stay six months, as swallows; some three months, as thrushes and turtle doves; and some depart once they have raised their young, as the galguli and hoopoes.
74| Authors say that every year birds fly to Ilium from Ethiopia and fight at the tomb of Memnon, and for this reason are called Memnonides. That they do the same in Ethiopia every fifth year, around Memnon's palace, Cremutius reports as ascertained by himself. In a similar manner the Meleagrides fight in Boeotia. This is a kind of hen of Africa, humpbacked, speckled with various feathers. They were the last of the foreign birds admitted to the table, because of their unpleasant smell; but the tomb of Meleager made them famous.
75| Birds called Seleucides are those whose coming the inhabitants of Mount Cadmus obtain from Jupiter by prayers, when locusts are laying waste their crops. It is not known where they come from or where they go, and they are never seen except when their protection is needed. The Egyptians too invoke their ibises against the coming of serpents, and the Eleans Myiacoris, the god of flies, when a multitude of them brings pestilence; and they perish immediately after the sacrifice has been favorably made to that god.
76| But in the departure of the birds, owls too are reported to hide for a few days; their kind is said not to be on the island of Crete, and even if one is brought in, to die. For this also is a wonderful difference of nature: she denies one thing to some places and another to others, as she does kinds of crops or shrubs, so also of animals; that they are not born is commonplace, that they die when imported is marvelous. What is that which is adverse to the safety of a single kind, or what is that ill will of nature? Or who has set limits of lands for birds? Rhodes has no eagle.
77| Italy beyond the Po, near the Alps, has Lake Como, pleasant with its tree-planted fields, to which storks do not penetrate, just as within the eighth mile from it the immense flocks of jackdaws, in the neighboring district of the Insubres, do not either; the thieving of silver and gold is especially wonderful in this one bird. The woodpecker of Mars is said not to be in the territory of Tarentum. Lately, and as yet
78| rarely, kinds of magpies marked by long tails, called variae, have begun to be seen from the Apennine toward the city; it is peculiar to all of them to grow bald every year when turnips are sown. Partridges do not cross over the borders of Boeotia into Attica, nor does any bird fly over the temple consecrated to Achilles on the island in the Pontus where he is buried. In the territory of Fidenae near the city storks make neither young nor nest. But into the territory of Volaterrae a great force of wood pigeons flies in from the sea every year.
79| In the temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium at Rome neither flies nor dogs enter. There are many similar things besides, which I wisely omit from time to time in the individual kinds, sparing the reader's boredom, since Theophrastus reports that even doves and peacocks and deer are imported in Asia, and in Cyrenaica vocal frogs.
80| There is another wonder in the oscines. They commonly change color and voice with the season and suddenly become different, which in the larger class of birds only the cranes do; for these turn black with age. The blackbird turns reddish from black, sings in summer, stammers in winter, and is mute around the solstice. Its beak too, in yearlings, is transformed into ivory, at least in the males. In thrushes the color about the neck is varied in summer, in winter all of one color.
81| In nightingales there is a chattering song for 15 days and nights continuously without a break, while the buds of the leaves thicken, in no way the least of birds worthy of wonder. First, such a voice in so small a body, such persistent breath; then, in one bird, a perfect knowledge of music: the sound is delivered modulated, and now is drawn out in a long continuous breath, now varied with a turn, now marked off by a clipped note,
82| coupled by a twisted one, held out by a recalled one, darkened unexpectedly, sometimes murmuring even to itself, full, deep, high, rapid, extended, trilling where it seems good, highest, middle, lowest. And in short, in such tiny throats are all the things which human art has contrived with so many exquisite contrivances of pipes, so that it is not doubtful that this sweetness was foreshown by an effective omen, when it sang in the mouth of the infant Stesichorus. And lest anyone doubt that it is a matter of art, each has several songs, and not the same in all, but each its own.
83| They compete with one another, and the contest is openly spirited. The defeated often ends life by death, the breath failing before the song. Other younger ones practice and receive verses to imitate. The pupil listens with great attention and repeats, and they fall silent by turns: the correction of an error is understood, and in the teacher a certain rebuke.
84| Therefore they have the prices of slaves, and indeed higher than those at which armor-bearers were once procured. I know that one, white besides, which is almost unheard of, was sold for 6,000 sesterces, to be given as a gift to Agrippina, wife of the emperor Claudius. It has now often been seen that birds commanded to sing began to do so and alternated with a concert, just as men have been found who, by putting water into reed pipes set across and breathing into the hole, or by placing a small obstacle with the tongue, gave back the sound of them with indistinguishable likeness.
85| But these so great and so artful trills gradually cease after 15 days, nor so that you could say they are wearied or sated. Soon, as the heat increases, the voice becomes altogether different, neither modulated nor varied; the color too changes. Finally in winter itself the bird is not seen. In their tongues there is not that first thinness which other birds have. They lay in early spring, at most, six eggs.
86| The ficedulae are another matter, for they change shape and color at once. They have this name in autumn, afterwards they are called melancoryphi. So also the erithacus in winter is the same as the phoenicurus in summer. The hoopoe too changes, as the poet Aeschylus reports, a bird otherwise foul in its feeding, with a crest worth seeing, which folds, drawing it together and raising it along the length of the head.
87| The oenanthe indeed has even fixed days of hiding. At the rising of Sirius it hides, and from its setting comes forth, which we may wonder at, on the very days in each case. The chlorion also, which is wholly yellow, not seen in winter, comes forth about the solstices. Blackbirds around Cyllene in Arcadia, and nowhere else, are born white. The ibis about Pelusium alone is black, in all other places white.
88| The oscines, apart from the exceptions, do not readily have young before the spring equinox or after the autumnal one; before the solstice they are doubtful, after the solstice viable.
89| By this most of all the halcyons are notable. The days of their laying are known to the seas and to those who sail. The bird itself is a little larger than a sparrow, in color dark blue and purple only on the lower part, with white feathers mixed in at the neck, and a slender, long beak. Another kind of them is distinguished by size and by song: the smaller sing in reed beds.
90| To see a halcyon is most rare, and only at the setting of the Pleiades and around the solstices or midwinter, when it sometimes flies round a ship and at once goes off into hiding. They breed at midwinter, on days which are called halcyon days, the sea being calm and navigable throughout them, most of all the Sicilian. They make their nests in the seven days before midwinter and lay in as many days following.
91| Their nests have an admirable character, of the shape of a ball slightly raised, with a very narrow mouth, like large sponges. They cannot be cut through with iron, but are broken by a strong blow, like the dry foam of the sea. Nor is it found from what they are put together; they think from the spines of thorny fish, for they live on fish. They go up rivers also. They lay five eggs. Gulls nest on rocks, mergi also in trees. They lay at most three, but gulls in summer, mergi at the beginning of spring.
92| The halcyon's nest in its shape reminds us of the skill of the rest as well, and in no other respect are the talents of birds more to be admired. Swallows build with mud and strengthen it with straw. If ever there is a lack of mud, they wet their wings with much water and sprinkle dust; the nest itself they cover with soft feathers and tufts to warm the eggs, and at the same time so that it may not be hard for the tender chicks. In rearing they alternate in bringing food with perfect fairness. With remarkable cleanliness they carry out the droppings of the chicks, and when they are older teach them to turn around and discharge their fullness outside.
93| There is another kind of swallows, rustic and of the fields, which rarely in houses, differing in shape, but of the same material, build nests wholly turned upward, with the opening drawn out into a narrow neck and a capacious belly, wonderful in skill, both fit for concealing the chicks and soft for lining.
94| At the Heracleotic mouth in Egypt they set against the straying Nile a mound made by the continuous joining of their nests, impregnable, of about one stadium in length, which could not be completed by human work. In the same Egypt, near the town of Coptos, lies an island that is sacred to Isis, which, lest the same river tear it away, they fortify by labor, as the spring days begin strengthening its prow with chaff and straw, working on through the nights for three days with such toil that it is agreed many die at the work; and this service returns for them always with the year. There is a third kind of them: they hollow out the banks and so nest within.
95| (The chicks of these, burned to ashes, cure the deadly sickness of the throat and many other diseases of the human body.) They do not make nests, and they move away many days before, if the river is going to rise and reach them.
96| In the genus of the vitiparrae there is one whose nest of dry moss is so completed in a perfect ball that no entrance can be found. The acanthyllis, as it is called, weaves one of the same shape from flax. One of the woodpeckers hangs its nest from a twig at the first branches, like a cup, so that no quadruped can approach. They affirm that the galguli themselves take sleep hanging by their feet, because they hope thus to be safer.
97| Indeed it is now common to all to choose prudently the platforms of branches to support the nest, to vault it against rain or cover it with dense foliage. In Arabia a bird is called the cinnamolgus, nesting in twigs of cinnamon; the natives knock the nests down with lead-tipped arrows for the sake of the merchandise. Among the Scythians a bird of the size of the otis lays two eggs in a hare's skin always hung from the tops of branches.
98| When magpies sense that a man has noticed the nest too carefully, they carry the eggs across to another place. In those birds whose toes are not suited to grasping and carrying eggs, this is reported to be done in a wonderful manner. For having placed a twig over two eggs and joined it with the glue of the belly, the neck set underneath in the middle, they carry them off elsewhere balanced equally on each side.
99| Nor is the skill less in those which make their cradles on the ground, being kept by the weight of the body from seeking the heights. The merops is so called, feeding its parents, who are hidden away; it is pale within in the color of its feathers, dark blue above, and reddish in the front part. It nests in a cave dug to the depth of six feet.
100| Partridges fortify their lair with thorn and bush so well that they are amply walled against a wild beast. They heap over the eggs a soft covering with dust and do not brood in the place where they laid: lest any too frequent visiting be suspected, they move them elsewhere. These females indeed deceive their mates too, since in the intemperance of lust the males break their eggs, so that the females may not be detained by brooding. Then the males fight among themselves from desire for the females; they say the defeated one submits to mating.
101| Trogus says that quails do this too, and sometimes cocks, but that among partridges the wild males are mounted by the tame ones, and new or defeated males indiscriminately. They are also caught by the pugnacity of this same lust, as the leader of the whole flock comes out to battle against the fowler's decoy. When he is caught another comes forward, and then one after another. Again, around the time of conception, the females are caught coming out against the fowlers' female, to drive her off by quarreling.
102| Nor in any other animal is the work of lust equal. If females stand facing the males, they become pregnant from the breeze blowing from them, and gaping with the tongue put out they glow with heat during that time. They conceive also from the breath of birds flying over, often from merely hearing the male's voice, and so greatly does lust overcome even the love of offspring that the one brooding stealthily and in hiding, when she has perceived the fowler's female approaching her mate, calls him back and recalls him and even offers herself to lust. They are carried on indeed by such madness that they often sit on the heads of fowlers, blinded by the impulse.
103| If such a man begins to approach the nest, the mother runs out to his feet, pretending to be very heavy or lame in the loins, and suddenly in her run or in some short flight falls, as if with a broken wing or feet, but runs out again, escaping him just as he is about to seize her, and frustrating his hope, until she leads him away in a different direction from the nests. The same, in fright, free and unoccupied by maternal care, lies on her back in a furrow and covers herself with a clod gripped in her feet. The life of partridges is thought to last even to sixteen years.
104| After these, the habits of doves are most noticed, on a similar principle. There is in them very great chastity, and adultery is known to neither. They do not violate faith to a mate and keep their common home. Except a bachelor or a widow, none leaves the nest. And they endure their domineering males, sometimes even unjust ones, for there is suspicion of adultery, though it is not natural: then the throat is full of complaint and there are savage blows with the beak, soon afterward kissing in atonement and flattery around the entreaties of love in frequent circles of the feet.
105| The love of offspring is equal in both; often from this cause there is rebuke when the female goes more slowly to the chicks. To the one giving birth the male gives comfort and service. To the chicks at first they spit into the mouth saltier earth gathered in the throat, preparing them in time for food. It is peculiar to this kind and to turtle doves, when they drink, not to bend the neck back, and to drink abundantly in the manner of beasts of burden.
106| We have authorities that wood pigeons live to the thirtieth year, some to the fortieth, with one trouble only, of the talons — which is also the sign of old age — and which are cut back without harm. The song is alike in all and is made of the same triple verse, and besides with a groan at the close; in winter they are mute, from spring vocal. Nigidius thinks that if the wood pigeon is called by its name while it is brooding eggs under a roof, it leaves its nest. They lay after the solstice.
107| Doves and turtle doves live eight years each. The sparrow, on the contrary, has the shortest life, and its lustfulness is equal to it. Males are said not to last longer than a year, the proof being that at the beginning of spring no blackness appears on the beak, which begins from summer.
108| For females the span is somewhat longer. But doves have a certain understanding even of glory: you would believe they knew their colors and the arrangement of their variety; indeed it is sought also in their flight: to clap in the sky and furrow it in various ways. In this display they are offered as if bound to the hawk, their wings entangled by the noise, which is forced out only by the very shoulders of the wings, otherwise in free flight much swifter. The robber watches hidden by foliage and seizes the bird rejoicing in its very glory.
109| For this reason the bird called tinnunculus is to be kept with them; for it defends them and terrifies hawks by natural power so far that they flee its sight and voice. For this reason doves have a special love for them, and they say that if they are buried in the four corners in new pots smeared over, the doves do not change their abode — which some have sought also by gold, cutting the joints of the wings, with wounds not otherwise harmful —, though it is otherwise a wide-ranging bird. For they have an art of coaxing one another and seducing others, and returning more numerous in company by theft.
110| Indeed they have even been go-betweens in great affairs, letters tied to their feet at the siege of Mutina when Decimus Brutus sent them to the camp of the consuls. What did rampart and watchful siege, and even nets stretched across the river, profit Antony, with the messenger going through the sky? And many go mad with love of them. Over their roofs they build towers for them and recite the nobility and origins of individual birds, by a custom now old. Lucius Axius, a Roman knight, before the civil war of Pompey, sold single pairs for 400 denarii, as Marcus Varro reports. Indeed they have even made a district famous in Campania, where the largest are thought to grow.
111| Their flight leads one to consider the other birds too. In all other animals the gait is fixed and of one kind and proper to each in its own genus; birds alone are borne by varied courses both on earth and in air. Some walk, as crows; others hop, as sparrows and blackbirds; they run, as partridges and woodcocks; they throw their feet before them, as storks and cranes. They spread their wings and, hanging, beat them at long intervals, others more often, but only the first feathers,
112| others beat the whole sides; some indeed fly with them for the most part pressed together, and having struck the air once, some with a double stroke, are borne on: as if pressing it enclosed they shoot themselves upward, straight, or downward. You might think some were thrust, or again that these fall from a height, those leap. Ducks alone, and whatever are of the same kind, raise themselves at once on high and from the spot seek the sky, and this even out of water. And so, fallen into the pits in which we hunt wild beasts, they alone escape.
113| The vulture and nearly all the heavier ones do not fly up unless let go from a run or from some higher heap; they are steered by the tail. Some look around, others bend the neck, and none eats what they have seized with their feet. Many do not fly without voice, or on the contrary are always silent in flight. Upright, prone, slanting to the sides, face downward, some even on the back, they are borne, so that if several kinds are seen together they seem not to move in the same nature.
114| Those fly most which are apodes, because they lack use of feet, called cypseli by others, in the likeness of swallows. They nest on crags. These are the ones seen over the whole sea, and never do ships recede from land in so long and so continuous a course that apodes do not flit around them. Other kinds settle and perch; these have no rest except in the nest: they either hang or lie.
115| Their wits too are equally varied, above all in feeding. Some are called caprimulgi, in the look of a larger blackbird, thieves by night; for by day they lack sight. They enter the stalls of shepherds and fly to the udders of goats for the sake of sucking the milk, by which wrong the udder withers and blindness comes upon the goats they have so milked. The platea is named for flying to those which plunge into the sea and seizing their heads with a bite until it wrests away the catch. The same, when it has filled itself with devoured shellfish, vomits them cooked by the heat of the belly and so picks out the edible parts from them, casting out the shells.
116| Farmyard hens have also a religious sense. After laying an egg they bristle and shake themselves, and, turned about, purify themselves, or with some straw purify themselves and the eggs. Goldfinches, smallest of birds, do as bidden, not by voice only, but with feet and mouth in place of hands. There is a bird which imitates the lowing of cattle, called taurus in the territory of Arelate, otherwise small. A bird named anthus, too, driven from its grass fodder by the coming of horses, imitates the neighing of horses, avenging itself in this way.
117| Above all they reproduce human voices, parrots even conversing. India sends this bird, calling it the siptace, green over its whole body, set off only by a vermilion collar at the neck. It greets emperors and pronounces the words it is given, especially wanton in wine. Its head has the same hardness as its beak. When it is learning to speak, it is struck with an iron rod; otherwise it does not feel the blows. When it flies down, it catches itself on its beak, leans on it, and so makes itself lighter for the weakness of its feet.
118| Less renowned, because it does not come from far, but of more distinct talkativeness, is a certain kind of magpie. They love the words they speak and do not merely learn them, but, practicing within themselves with care and thought, they do not hide their intentness. It is agreed that they die when defeated by the difficulty of a word, and unless they hear the same words from time to time they are deceived in memory, and when searching are wonderfully cheered if in the meantime they hear that word. Nor is their form common, though not to be gazed at: they have comeliness enough in the appearance of human speech. But they say that others cannot learn besides those of the kind that feed on acorns,
119| and among them more easily those with five toes on their feet, and not even these except in the first two years of life. All that imitate human speech have broader tongues, each in its own kind.
120| Yet this has happened in nearly all: Agrippina, wife of Claudius Caesar, had a thrush imitating the speech of men, which had never been before. When I was publishing this, the young Caesars also had a starling, and likewise nightingales, teachable in Greek and Latin speech, and besides practicing constantly and speaking new things every day, in even longer connected sentences. They are taught in private and where no other voice is mixed in, with someone sitting by who often says what he wants stored in their memory, and coaxing them with food.
121| Let ravens too be given their due, attested also by the indignation of the Roman people, not only by their awareness. In the principate of Tiberius, from a brood hatched above the temple of the Castors a chick flew down into the neighboring cobbler's shop, commended also by religious feeling to the master of the workshop. Early accustomed to speech, flying out every morning onto the Rostra, facing the forum, it saluted Tiberius, then Germanicus and Drusus Caesar by name, and then the Roman people passing by, afterwards returning to the shop, wonderful in its constant service over several years. The proprietor of the nearest cobbler's shop killed it, whether out of a neighbor's rivalry or, as he wished it to appear, in sudden anger because its droppings had left a stain on his shoes; and this caused such consternation among the common people that he was first driven out of that district and soon put to death, and the funeral of the bird was celebrated with innumerable attendants, a bier spread over the shoulders of two Ethiopians, a flute-player going before and garlands of every kind up to the pyre, which had been built on the right of the Appian Way, at its second milestone, in the field called that of Rediculus.
123| So sufficient a just cause did the ingenuity of a bird seem to the Roman people for funeral rites, or for the punishment of a Roman citizen, in a city in which no one of many leading men had had his funeral escorted, and in which no one had avenged the death of Scipio Aemilianus, after Carthage and Numantia had been destroyed by him.
124| This was done in the consulship of Marcus Servilius and Gaius Cestius, on the fifth day before the kalends of April. Now too there was in the city of Rome, as I am publishing this, a crow belonging to a Roman knight, from Baetica, first wonderful in being quite black in color, then uttering several words strung together and constantly learning more and more. Nor is the recent fame of Craterus, surnamed Monoceros, in the region of Erizena in Asia, to be omitted, hunting by the work of ravens, in that he carried them into the woods sitting on his little horn and his shoulders; they tracked and drove the game, a habit being brought to such a point that even wild they accompanied him as he went out.
125| Some have thought it should be handed down to memory that one was seen, through thirst, heaping stones into a pitcher of a monument, in which rainwater remained but could not be reached; and so, being afraid to go down into it, it raised by such a heap as much water as would suffice for its drinking.
126| Nor will I pass over the Diomedian birds. Juba calls them cataractae, reporting that their teeth and eyes are of fiery colour, the rest white. They always have two leaders: one leads the column, the other brings up the rear. They hollow pits with the beak, then cover them with wickerwork and cover it with the earth previously dug out; in these they breed. All the pits have two doors: one faces the east, by which they go out to pasture, the other the west, by which they return. When about to discharge the belly they always fly up and against the wind.
127| These are seen in one place only in the whole world, on the island that we have said is renowned for Diomedes' tomb and shrine, opposite the coast of Apulia, resembling coots. Foreign strangers they harass with clamor, only to Greeks do they fawn, with a wonderful discrimination, as if granting this to the race of Diomedes, and every day they bathe that shrine with full throat and dripping wings and purify it, whence the origin of the fable that Diomedes' companions were changed into their shapes.
128| It must not be omitted, when we discuss intelligence, that among birds swallows are unteachable, and among land animals mice, while elephants do what they are ordered, lions submit to the yoke, in the sea seals and so many kinds of fish grow tame.
129| Birds drink by suction, those of them with long necks pausing and with the head thrown back as if pouring it into themselves; the porphyrio alone drinks by biting. The same is of a peculiar kind, dipping all its food in water time and again, then bringing it with the foot to the beak as with a hand. The most praised are in Commagene. Their beaks and their very long legs are red.
130| This is true also of the himantopus, much smaller, although of the same height of legs. It is born in Egypt. It stands on three toes. Its chief food is flies. Its life in Italy is a few days. All the heavier birds feed on grain; the high-flying ones on flesh alone; among water birds the mergi, accustomed to gulp greedily even what other birds give back.
131| The onocrotali have a likeness to swans and would not be thought to differ at all, were there not in the very throat a kind of second stomach. Into this the insatiable creature heaps everything, so that its capacity is wonderful. Then, when the plunder is finished, it gradually returns it from there into the mouth and carries it back into the true belly in the manner of a ruminant. Northern Gaul, nearest the ocean, sends these.
132| In the Hercynian forest of Germany we have heard of unseen kinds of birds, whose feathers shine like fires at night. In the others nothing worth recording occurs beyond fame made by distance: the phalerides in Seleucia of the Parthians and in Asia, the most praised of water birds, again the phasianae in Colchis — they lower and raise a pair of ears of feather —, the Numidicae in the part of Africa called Numidia; and all are now in Italy.
133| Apicius taught that the tongue of the phoenicopterus is of outstanding flavor, he who was the deepest gulf of all spendthrifts. The attagen, most famous as Ionian, vocal otherwise but dumb when caught, once reckoned among rare birds, is now in Gaul and Spain too. It is caught also about the Alps, where also the phalacrocoraces are, a bird peculiar to the Balearic islands, as the pyrrhocorax is to the Alps, black with a yellow beak, and the lagopus, of especial flavor. Its feet, with a hare's fur, gave it this name, white in the rest, of the size of doves.
134| It is not easy to eat it outside that land, since it is neither tamed in life and its body decays very quickly. There is also another of the same name, differing from quails only in size, most agreeable at table with its saffron-colored grease. Egnatius Calvinus, prefect of the Alps, has reported that he saw there the ibis, peculiar to Egypt.
135| In the civil wars of Bedriacum there came into Italy across the Po new birds too — for so they are still called —, in appearance of thrushes, a little below doves in size, pleasing in taste. The Balearic islands send a porphyrio even nobler than the one mentioned above. There too the buteo, of the hawk kind, is in honor at the table, and likewise the vibiones; so they call the smaller crane.
136| Pegasi, birds with horse's head, and griffins, with an eared hook of the beak, I think fabulous, the former in Scythia, the latter in Ethiopia. And I think the tragopan too, about which many affirm, larger than an eagle, with curved horns at the temples, of rusty color, with only the head red. Nor will the Sirens win belief, although Dinon, father of the celebrated author Clitarchus, affirms that they are in India and that those whom they have weighed down with sleep they tear apart, lulled by their song.
137| He who believes those things would surely not deny that serpents, by licking his ears, gave Melampus understanding of the speech of birds, or the things Democritus reports, naming birds from whose mingled blood a serpent is born, which whoever has eaten will understand the conversations of birds, and what he recounts privately about the one bird, the crested lark, even without these, in the immense labyrinth of life around auguries. The scopes are named by Homer as a kind of bird:
138| neither could I easily conceive in mind their satyr-like movements when they lie in wait, recorded by most, nor are the birds themselves now known, wherefore it will be better to have discoursed on those acknowledged.
139| The Delians began to fatten hens, whence arose the plague of devouring fat birds greasy in their own bodies. I find this first excepted in the ancient prohibitions of banquets by the law of the consul Gaius Fannius, eleven years prior to the third Punic War, that nothing winged should be served except one hen that was not fattened, which provision, then transferred, has gone through all the laws.
140| And a side road was found to defeat this: to feed cocks also on food soaked in milk; they are approved as much more agreeable so. Females, indeed, are not all chosen for fattening, nor except those with fat skin on the neck. Afterward came the arts of the kitchens, that the haunches be displayed, that they be divided into backs, that, spread out from one foot, they should fill the serving-trays. The Parthians too gave cooks their ways. Yet in this dealing nothing is pleasing whole, the haunch praised in one place, the breast alone elsewhere.
141| Aviaries were first established, with birds of all kinds shut in, by Marcus Laenius Strabo of Brundisium, of the equestrian order. From him we began to confine in a prison creatures to which nature had assigned the sky. Yet most notable in this memory is the dish of Clodius Aesopus, the tragic actor, valued at 100,000 sesterces, in which he served birds vocal with some song or human speech,
142| bought at 6,000 sesterces each, induced by no other sweetness than that he might eat in them an imitation of man, not even respecting his own earnings, those fat and deserved by voice, worthy indeed of the son by whom, as we said, pearls were devoured, yet not so that I would wish to make a true judgment of shamefulness between the two, except that it is less to have dined on the greatest riches of nature than on the tongues of men.
143| The generation of birds seems simple, though it too has its own wonders, since quadrupeds also lay eggs, chameleons, lizards and those we have mentioned [….], likewise serpents. Of winged creatures, however, those that have hooked talons are infertile. The cenchris alone of these lays above four eggs. Nature gave this to the class of birds, that their timid ones should be more fertile than their brave. Ostriches, hens and partridges [soli] lay the most. Birds couple in two ways, the female sitting on the ground, as in hens, or standing, as in cranes.
144| Some eggs are white, as those of doves and partridges; some pale, as those of water birds; some marked with spots, as those of the meleagrides; some of a red color, as those of pheasants and the cenchris. Within, however, every egg of birds is of two colors, in water birds more yellow than white, and that itself more sallow than in the others; that of fishes is of one color, with nothing white in it.
145| The eggs of birds are brittle from heat, those of serpents tough from cold, those of fishes soft from the moisture. Those of water creatures are round, the rest generally pointed at the top. They come out from the roundest part of themselves as they are laid, with a soft shell, but one hardening at once in whatever portions they emerge. Horatius Flaccus thinks that oblong eggs are of more pleasing flavor. The rounder ones produce a female, the others a male. The navel of eggs is at the apex, like a drop standing out on the shell.
146| Some couple at every season, as hens, and lay, except in the two midwinter months. Of these the young hens lay more than old ones, but smaller, and in the same clutch the first and last. The fecundity is so great that some lay sixty, some daily, some twice a day, some so much that they die exhausted. Hadrian hens have the highest praise.
147| Doves lay ten times a year, some even eleven times, in Egypt indeed even in the midwinter month. Swallows and blackbirds and wood pigeons and turtle doves lay twice a year, other birds generally once. Thrushes, nesting with mud on the tops of trees almost in a woven mass, breed in retirement. From coupling, in 10 days the eggs ripen in the womb, but hens and doves, when harassed by a feather plucked out or some other like injury, take longer.
148| In all eggs in the middle of the yolk is a small thing like a drop of blood, which they think is the heart of birds, supposing it to be generated first in the whole body: in the egg at least that drop leaps and throbs. The creature itself takes bodily form from the white liquid of the egg. Its food is in the yolk. In all, within, the head is larger than the whole body, the eyes compressed and larger than the head. As the chick grows, the white turns to the middle, and the yolk is poured around it.
149| If the egg is moved on the twentieth day, the voice of the creature, now alive inside the shell, is heard. From that time it grows feathers, lying so that its head is over the right foot and its right wing over the head. The yolk gradually fails. All birds are born feet first, contrary to the other animals.
150| Some hens lay all their eggs double and sometimes hatch twins, as Cornelius Celsus is authority, one larger; some deny that twins are hatched at all. They forbid setting under a hen more than twenty-five to be brooded. They begin to lay from midwinter. The best laying is before the spring equinox. Those hatched after the solstice do not reach the proper size, and fall short by so much the later they came forth.
151| It is most useful to brood eggs laid within ten days; old or fresher ones are infertile. They ought to be set in an odd number. On the fourth day after they began to be brooded, if, against the light, holding the egg by its tip with the hand below, a clear and uniform color shows through, they are thought to be sterile, and others must be substituted for them. There is also a test in water: the empty one floats, and so those that sink, that is, full ones, they wish set under. They forbid testing by shaking, since they do not breed when the vital veins are confused.
152| The beginning of brooding is given after the new moon, because those begun earlier do not come on. They are hatched faster in hot days; therefore in summer they bring out the brood on the nineteenth day, in winter on the 25th. If it thunders during brooding the eggs perish; and they are spoiled by hearing the voice of a hawk. A remedy against thunder is an iron nail placed under the straw of the eggs, or earth from a plough.
153| Some indeed produce young even without brooding, by nature's own accord, as in the dung heaps of Egypt. A witty thing is found about a certain drinker at Syracuse, who was accustomed to drink so long until, with the earth covering them, eggs brought forth their young.
154| Indeed they are brought to perfection even by man. Julia Augusta, in her first youth, pregnant with Tiberius Caesar by Nero, when she very much desired to bear a male child, used this girlish augury, warming an egg in her bosom and, when she had to put it down, handing it to her nurse through her bosom so that the warmth might not be interrupted; and she is reported not to have prophesied falsely. Perhaps from this was lately invented the practice of laying eggs in a warm place on chaff and warming them with a modest fire, a man turning them, and the brood likewise bursting forth from there on a fixed day.
155| A certain art of a poultry-keeper is reported, who said what would come from each egg. It is told too that when a hen died, their mates were seen taking turns succeeding to her place and doing the rest in the manner of a brooding mother, and abstaining from crowing. Beyond all is the wonder at duck eggs set under hens and hatched: first the hen not plainly recognizing the brood, then, uncertain, anxiously calling them together with clucking, finally lamenting around the pools of the pond as the chicks plunge in, nature leading.
156| The good breeding of hens is judged by an upright comb, sometimes also double, black feathers, a reddish mouth, and unequal toes, sometimes with one set crosswise above four toes. For sacred rites those with yellow beak and feet are not thought pure, for secret rites black ones. There is also a kind of dwarfs, not infertile among them, which is not so in any other kind of birds; but in those with spurs, fecundity is rare and brooding harmful to the eggs.
157| Most hostile to every kind is the pip, especially between the time of harvest and vintage. The remedy is hunger, and lying in smoke, provided it is made from laurel or the herb sabina, a feather inserted crosswise through the nostrils and moved every day; food is garlic with spelt, or soaked with water in which an owl has been steeped, or boiled with the seed of the white vine, and certain other things.
158| Doves kiss, by their own rite, before coupling. They generally lay two eggs, nature so ordering that some have more frequent broods, others more numerous. The wood pigeon and the turtle dove lay three at most and not more than twice in spring, and that only if the earlier brood has been spoiled; and although they have laid 3, they never rear more than 2. The third is fruitless; they call it urinum. The wood pigeon female broods from after midday to morning, the male for the rest.
159| Doves always bring forth one male and one female, the male first and the female on the next day. In that kind both brood, the male by day, the female by night. They hatch on the 20th day, and lay on the fifth day from coupling. In summer indeed they sometimes rear three pairs in two months, for they hatch on the 18th day and conceive at once; wherefore among the chicks eggs are often found, and some fly out, others break forth. The chicks themselves then breed at five months.
160| And the females themselves, if there is no male, mount one another equally and lay fruitless eggs from which nothing is produced, which the Greeks call hypenemia.
161| The peahen lays from her third year; in the first year one egg or two, in the next four or five, in the others twelve, not more, laying with pauses of two or three days, and three times a year if the eggs are set to be brooded by hens. The males break them from desire for the brooding females; wherefore they lay at night and in hiding places, or roosting on high, but unless received in soft bedding they are broken. Single males suffice for five mates each. When there are one or two females, fecundity is spoiled by lustfulness. The brood is hatched in three times nine days, or later, on the thirtieth.
162| Geese mate in water, and lay in spring or, should they have mated in midwinter, after the solstice, nearly 40, twice a year if hens hatch the first brood; otherwise the most eggs 16, the fewest 7. If anyone steals them, they lay until they burst. They do not hatch the eggs of others.
163| It is most useful to set 8 or 11 to brood. Only the females brood, for thirty days, or if the weather is milder, for 25. For their chicks the nettle is deadly by touch, and no less their greed, now from too great fullness, now by their own strength, when, having seized the root in the bite and often trying to pull it out, they snap their own necks. A remedy against the nettle is their root, placed under the straw after brooding.
164| There are three kinds of ardeolae: leucon, asterias, pelion. These are distressed in coupling; the males indeed, with screaming, pour blood even from their eyes. The pregnant females lay with no less difficulty.
165| The eagle broods for thirty days, and so do the larger birds generally; the smaller for twenty, as the kite and hawk. The kite generally never lays more than three, the one called aegolios four, the raven sometimes five. They brood the same number of days. The male feeds the crow while brooding. The magpie lays nine, the melancoryphus above 20, always in an odd number, nor have any others more: so much greater is fecundity in the small. The chicks of the swallow are blind at first, and of nearly all with a more numerous brood.
166| Fruitless eggs, which we called hypenemia, females conceive among themselves either by the imagining of mutual lust or from dust, and not doves only, but hens, partridges, peahens, geese, chenalopeces. They are sterile, and smaller, and of less pleasing flavor, and wetter. Some think they are also generated by wind, for which reason they call them zephyria as well. Urina, however, are produced only in spring when brooding has been abandoned, and others have called them cynosura.
167| Eggs steeped in vinegar are softened so far that they pass through rings. It is most useful to keep them in lomentum, or in winter in chaff, in summer in bran. They are believed to be emptied by salt.
168| Of winged creatures only the bat bears live young, and it alone has membranous wings. The same alone of winged creatures nurses with milk, putting its teats to them. It bears twins; it flits about, embracing its infants and carrying them with it. It is also reported to have a single hip joint. In food gnats are most welcome to it.
169| Again, among land animals, serpents lay eggs, of which nothing has yet been said. They couple by embrace, so wound about themselves that they may be thought one two-headed creature. The male viper thrusts his head into the female's mouth, which she gnaws off in the sweetness of pleasure.
170| Of land animals the same alone brings forth eggs within itself, of one color and soft, like fish. On the third day it hatches the young inside the womb, then each day bears one, about 20 in number. And so the rest, impatient of delay, burst through the sides when the parent is killed. Other serpents brood interwoven eggs in the earth and hatch the brood in the following year. Crocodiles brood in turns, male and female. But let the generation of the other land animals also be given.
171| Of two-footed creatures man alone bears live young. For man alone there is repentance of the first coupling, an augury indeed of a life from an origin to be repented. In other animals the couplings are fixed by times of the year, in man, as has been said, at all hours of day and night; others have satiety in coupling, man almost none.
172| Messalina, wife of Claudius Caesar, thinking this a royal palm, chose for that contest the most notorious of the prostitutes, a slave woman who sold herself for pay, and outdid her day and night in the twenty-fifth act of intercourse. In the human race there are for males these byways of lust, all devised in outrage against nature, and for females abortions. How much more harmful in this respect than wild beasts we are! Hesiod has reported that men are more eager for love in winter, women in summer.
173| Elephants, camels, tigers, lynxes, the rhinoceros, the lion, the dasypus and rabbits, whose genitals face backward, couple turned away from each other. Camels even seek solitude, or at least privacy, and one cannot intervene without disaster; they couple the whole day, and they alone of all. In the quadruped kinds with solid hoof, scent excites the males. Dogs, seals and wolves also turn away, and in the middle of coupling cohere even against their will.
174| Of the dasypodes mentioned above, for the most part the females mount first, in the rest the males. Bears, as has been said, lie spread out in human fashion, hedgehogs both standing embraced with one another, cats with the male standing and the female lying beneath, foxes thrown on their sides and the female embracing the male. The females of bulls and stags do not tolerate force; for that reason they keep walking while they conceive. Stags pass in turn to other females and return to the earlier. Lizards, like those without feet, know love by twining around.
175| All animals, the greater in body, the less fertile. Elephants, camels and horses bear single young; the acanthis, the smallest bird, twelve. Those that bear the most give birth soonest. The larger the animal, the longer it is formed in the womb. Those whose spans of life are longer are carried longer, and the age of those growing is not timely for generating.
176| Those with solid hooves bear single young; those with cloven hooves bear twins too; those whose foot is divided into toes bear more numerous young. But all the former produce completed offspring, these unformed, in which kind are lionesses and she-bears; and the fox gives birth to something even more shapeless than those mentioned above, and it is rare to see her giving birth. Afterward all these warm and shape their young by licking. They bear four at most. Dogs, wolves, panthers and thoes produce blind young.
177| Of dogs there are several kinds. Laconian dogs, male and female, breed in the eighth month; the bitches carry for 60 days, and at most 3 more. Other bitches also submit to coupling at six months. All conceive from a single coupling. Those that have conceived before the right time keep their pups blind longer, and all for the same number of days. They are thought to lift the leg when urinating generally at six months; that is a sign of completed strength. Females do the same sitting.
178| The litters are twelve in the most numerous, otherwise five or six, sometimes single, which they think portentous, as when all males or all females are born. They bear males first, and in the rest alternate. They are covered from the sixth month after the birth. Laconian bitches bear eight. In that kind the males have a peculiar lustfulness by labor. Laconian dogs live ten years, females twelve, other kinds 15 years, sometimes even 20, and they do not breed through their whole life, generally ceasing from the twelfth.
179| Cats and ichneumons are in the rest like dogs. They live six years. Dasypodes bear every month and conceive again while pregnant, like hares. They conceive immediately after birth; they conceive although the teats are dried by the young. They bear blind young. Elephants, as we said, bear single young the size of a three-month-old calf. Camels carry for 12 months; from their third year they bear in spring, and conceive again a year after the birth.
180| Mares they think are usefully covered only after the third year, or one year after foaling, and they force them unwilling. She-asses are believed to conceive most easily even on the seventh day. They advise cutting the manes of mares so that they submit to asses' coupling through lowness; for those with flowing manes are proud of their glory. After coupling they alone of animals run against the north wind or the south, depending on whether they have conceived a male or a female. At once they change color, with redder hair, or whatever it is, fuller; by this sign they stop admitting, even if willing. Nor does foaling hinder some from work, and pregnant mares deceive. We find that a pregnant mare of Echecrates the Thessalian won at Olympia.
181| They report that horses, dogs and pigs seek coupling in the morning, but that the females are more careful in coaxing after midday. Mares that are broken come into heat 60 days before the herd mares; swine alone pour foam from the mouth in coupling; the boar, on hearing the voice of a sow in heat, if not admitted, takes no food and wastes to leanness, and the females become so wild that they tear a man, especially one dressed in white. That frenzy is soothed by vinegar sprinkled on the genitals. The eagerness for coupling is thought to arise also from foods,
182| as rocket for a man, onion for cattle. It is a marvel that those of wild animals that are tamed do not conceive, like geese, boars only slowly, and stags only if reared from infancy. Pregnant quadrupeds ward off love, except the mare and the sow; but only the dasypus and the hare conceive again while pregnant.
183| All animals that bring forth live young bring them forth head first, the offspring turned about at the birth, otherwise laid out in the womb. Quadrupeds are carried with legs stretched out lengthwise and applied to their own belly; man is rolled up on himself with the nose set between the two knees.
184| Molae, of which we spoke before, they think are generated when a woman has conceived not from a male but from herself alone. Therefore they are not animated either, because it is not from two, and they have that life by themselves, nourishing, which falls to plants and trees. Of all that bear completed young, swine alone produce numerous offspring, for more is against the nature of solid-hoofed or cloven-hoofed animals.
185| Above all is the offspring of mice, not to be told without hesitation, although on the authority of Aristotle and of the soldiers of Alexander the Great. Their generation is said to consist in licking, not coupling. They have reported 120 born from one, and among the Persians pregnant ones found in the belly of the parent.
186| And they think they become pregnant by tasting salt. And so it ceases to be a wonder whence so great a force of field mice ravages the harvests, in which this also is hidden as yet, in what way that multitude suddenly dies. For neither are they found dead, nor is there anyone who has dug up a mouse in the field in winter. Very many thus come into the Troad and have already driven the inhabitants out from there. Their increase is in droughts. They say also that a little worm is generated in the head of those about to die. The mice of Egypt have hard hair like hedgehogs. The same go on two feet, like the Alpine ones too.
187| When animals of different kinds have coupled, they breed only if they have an equal time of birth. That lizards of the quadrupeds that produce eggs give birth by the mouth, as is commonly believed, Aristotle denies. Nor do the same brood, having forgotten where they have laid, since this animal has no memory; and so the young burst forth by themselves.
188| We have heard from many that a serpent is generated from the marrow of the human spine. For very many things arise from a hidden and blind origin, even in the quadruped class, such as salamanders, an animal in the shape of a lizard, spotted with stars, never appearing except in great rains and ceasing in fair weather. It has such coldness that it puts out fire by touch no otherwise than ice. By its slime, which it vomits from the mouth like milk, on whatever part of the human body it touches, all the hair falls off, and what has been touched changes its color into vitiligo.
189| Some things then are born from the unborn and without any like origin, as those mentioned above and whatever spring and a fixed season of the year generate. Of these some produce nothing, like salamanders, nor is there male or female in them, as neither in eels and all that generate neither an animal nor an egg from themselves. Of neither sex also is the kind of oysters and the rest that cling to the shallows or the rock.
190| But those that are generated of themselves, if they are divided into males and females, do indeed produce something by coupling, but imperfect and unlike, and from which nothing further is born, as flies produce little worms. This the nature of those called insects will make plainer, all of difficult explanation and [….] to be told in a work dedicated to them privately. Therefore the character of those mentioned and the rest of the account will be added below.
191| Of the senses, in man touch comes before the rest, then taste; in the others he is surpassed by many. Eagles see more clearly, vultures smell more keenly, moles hear more distinctly: buried in earth, so dense and soundless an element of nature, and besides with every voice tending upward, they overhear speech, and if one speaks of them, they are even said to understand and flee.
192| He to whom hearing is first denied among men, from him the use of speech is also taken away, nor are any naturally deaf who are not also mute. In sea oysters it is not likely that there is hearing, but at a sound the solenes are said to dive; therefore silence is also a custom among fishermen.
193| Fishes indeed have neither organs of hearing nor openings, yet that they hear is plain, seeing that in some preserves wild ones are seen gathering at a clap to food by habit, and in Caesar's ponds kinds of fish come to a name, and certain individuals. And so the mullet, lupus, salpa and chromis are reported to hear most clearly, and for that reason to live in shallows.
194| That they have smell is evident, since not all are caught with the same bait, and they smell before they approach. The fisherman drives out some even lurking in caves, by smearing the mouths of the rock with salt fish, they fleeing as if recognizing their own corpse, and from the deep they gather even to certain odors, as burned sepia and polypus, which therefore are thrown into the fish traps. They flee far from the smell of the bilge of ships, and most of all from the blood of fishes.
195| A polypus cannot be torn from the rocks; the same, when cunila is brought near, springs back at once from the smell. Purpurae also are caught with foul-smelling bait. For as to the remaining kind of animals, who could doubt? Serpents are put to flight by the smell of stag's horn, but most of all by that of styrax; ants are killed by that of origanum or lime or sulphur. Gnats seek sour things, and do not fly to sweet. The sense of touch belongs to all, even to those who have no other; for it belongs to oysters and to earth worms.
196| I would suppose that all have the sense of taste too. For why do different creatures seek different flavors? In which there is a chief variety and sport of nature: some prey with teeth, others with claws, others tear with the hook of the beak, others dig out with its breadth, others hollow with its point, some suck, some lick, sip, chew, devour. Nor is the variety less in the service of the feet, to seize, tear apart, hold, press, hang, and not cease to scratch the ground.
197| Roe deer and quails, as we said, grow fat on poisons, the gentlest of animals, and serpents on eggs, and the skill of dragons in this is worth watching: for they either swallow them whole, if the throat can already take them, then coil themselves up and break them inside and so cough up the shells; or, if the age is still too tender for the pups, they seize them in the ring of their coil and squeeze so gradually and powerfully that, a part being cut off as if by iron, they swallow the rest, which is held in the embrace. In a similar way, having swallowed birds whole, they bring up the feathers again with effort.
198| Scorpions live on earth. Serpents, when there is an opportunity, seek wine above all, though otherwise they need little drink; the same need very little and almost no food when they are kept shut up, as also spiders, which otherwise live by sucking. Therefore no venomous creature perishes from hunger or thirst. For they have neither heat nor blood nor sweat, which increase appetite by natural salt. In this kind all are more deadly if they eat their own kind before they do harm.
199| The kind of sphinxes and satyrs stores food in the treasuries of its jaws, then gradually brings it out from there with the hands for chewing, and what is for ants a store for a year is the custom of these for days or hours. One animal of those with digits is fed on grass, the hare; solid-hoofed animals on that and grain, and of the cloven-hoofed the swine on every food and roots. The wallowing of solid-hoofed animals is peculiar. All animals with serrated teeth are flesh-eaters; bears live also on grain, foliage, grapes, fruits and on bees, even crabs and ants; wolves, as we said, even on earth in hunger.
200| Cattle grow fat on drink, so salt is most suited to them; likewise beasts of burden, although on grain and grass too, evidently as they drink, so they eat. Besides those already mentioned, stags of the wild animals chew the cud when they are fed by us, and all do so lying down rather than standing, and in winter more than in summer, for seven months generally. The mice of Pontus also chew the cud in a similar manner.
201| In drinking, those with serrated teeth lap, and so do these common mice, though they are of another genus. Those with continuous teeth sip, as horses and oxen. Bears do neither, but also gulp water with a bite. In Africa the greater part of wild beasts do not drink in summer for lack of rain, for which reason Libyan mice that are caught die if they drink. The ever-thirsting parts of Africa produce the oryx, lacking drink by the nature of its place, and in a wonderful way a remedy for the thirsty: for the Gaetulian brigands endure by this aid, having found in their opened body bladders of a most wholesome liquid.
202| In the same Africa leopards settle in a dense tree and, hidden among the branches, leap down upon passers-by and attack from the seat of birds. And cats, in what silence, on how light a tread do they creep up on birds! How secretly do they watch, then leap upon mice! Their own droppings they dig up and cover with earth, understanding that that odor is a betrayer of themselves.
203| So it is not hard to see that there are certain senses beyond those mentioned above. For among them there are wars and friendships, whence also affections, besides those of which we have spoken in their several places. Swans and eagles are at odds; the raven and the chloreus, searching each other's eggs by night; likewise the raven and the kite, the former snatching its food from the latter; crows and the owl; eagles and the trochilus, if we believe it, since it is called king of birds; owls and the other smaller birds;
204| again, with the trochilus the weasel and the crow; the turtle dove and the pyrallis; ichneumons and wasps and phalangia spiders; the aquatic brenthos and the gull and the harpe; the harpe and the triorchis hawk; shrews and ardeolae, lying in wait for each other's young; (the aegithus, the smallest bird, with the ass: for rubbing itself against thorn bushes for scratching, the ass scatters its nests, which it so dreads that on hearing the voice of its braying it casts its eggs, and the chicks themselves fall from fear; therefore, flying to it, it hollows out its sores with its beak); foxes and kites; snakes and weasels and swine.
205| The aesalon is a little bird, a breaker of the raven's eggs, and its chicks are harassed by foxes. In turn this bird plucks the foxes' cubs and the vixen herself; when the ravens have seen this, they help it in return as against a shared enemy. The acanthis, too, lives among thorns; therefore it too hates asses, which devour the flowers of the thorn, and the aegithus so much that they believe their blood does not mix, and for that reason they slander it with many charges of poisoning.
206| Thoes and lions are at odds, and the smallest equally with the greatest. Caterpillars avoid an ant-infested tree. The spider swings itself on a thread onto the head of a serpent stretched out in the shade of its tree, and seizes the brain with its bite with such force that the serpent, hissing again and again and whirling in dizziness, cannot even break the thread from which the spider hangs, much less flee. Nor is there an end before death.
207| Again, friends are peacocks and doves, turtle doves and parrots, blackbirds and turtle doves, the crow and ardeolae against the fox kind in common enmities, the harpe and the kite against the triorchis. What, are not signs of affection found also in serpents, the least gentle class of animals? Told already are the things that Arcadia relates of a master saved by a dragon and recognized by the voice of the [dragon].
208| Let the marvel about the asp be credited to Phylarchus. He is the authority that when, in Egypt, an asp who came to the table of a certain man was constantly fed and had borne young, one of whom killed the host's son, she, returned to her habit of food, understood the guilt and put the young one to death, and afterward did not come back to the house.
209| The question of sleep calls for no difficult conjecture. Among land animals it is plain that all those which close their eyes sleep. Even those who are in doubt about the rest believe that water creatures too sleep, if only a little — not on the evidence of the eyes, since they have no eyelids, but because in their very stillness they are seen lying calm as if drugged with sleep, moving nothing but their tails, and starting in fright at any disturbance.
210| About tunnies this is asserted with more confidence, for they sleep beside banks or rocks, while the flat fishes sleep in the shallows, so that they are often lifted out by hand. Dolphins and whales are even heard snoring. That insects also sleep is evident from their silence, since they are not roused even when lights are brought close to them.
211| A human being, once born, is weighed down by sleep for some months; after that the waking time grows longer day by day. An infant dreams at once, for it both wakes in fright and imitates sucking. Some people, however, never dream, and we find instances in which a dream, coming against their habit, proved to be a sign of death for them. This is a large subject in life, and crammed with evidence pointing both ways: whether the mind at rest has some foreknowledge of things that come about by reason, or whether it is a matter of chance, like most things. If the case is argued from examples, they would surely come out even. It is almost universally agreed that dreams that follow straight after wine and food, or come when one has fallen asleep again, are empty visions. Sleep, moreover, is nothing other than the mind withdrawing into its own centre.
212| Besides man, it is evident that horses, dogs, cattle, sheep and goats dream; and for this reason it is believed to happen in all the creatures that bear live young. Of those that lay eggs it is uncertain, but that they sleep is certain. But let us pass on to the insects as well; for these remain, animals of boundless subtlety.

======== Natural History — Book XI ========

praef| There remain animals of boundless subtlety, since some writers have reported that they do not breathe and even lack blood. They are numerous and of many kinds, living the life of land creatures and of flying ones — some [….] winged, like bees, some in both ways, like ants, and some lacking both wings and feet — and all are rightly called insects, from the incisions which, now at the neck, now at the chest and belly, girdle the body and separate its members, which are joined only by a slender tube. In some, however, the fold of the incision does not run all the way round, but on the belly, or only on the back, the segments overlap like tiles with flexible joints. Nowhere else is nature's craftsmanship more worth beholding.
2| For in large bodies, or at any rate in the larger ones, the workshop had an easy task with material that obeyed it; but in these, so small and so nearly nothing, what reasoning, what power, what intricate perfection! Where has she lodged so many senses in the gnat? And there are other creatures smaller still to speak of. But where has she set its sight in front of it? Where has she fitted its taste? Where has she inserted its smell? And where has she engendered that fierce voice of its, so very loud for its size?
3| With what subtlety she has attached its wings, drawn out the long legs of its feet, laid out a hungry cavity to serve as its belly, and kindled in it a thirst greedy for blood, and above all human blood! And with what ingenuity she has pointed the weapon with which it pierces the skin, and — as though it had room to spare, when its slenderness cannot even be seen — has fashioned it with a twofold art, so that it should be at once sharp for boring and hollow like a pipe for sucking! What teeth she has fixed in the teredo for boring through oak, as their sound, like that of augers, bears witness, and how she has made wood its chief food!
4| Yet we marvel at the tower-bearing shoulders of elephants, at the necks of bulls and their savage tossings into the air, at the raids of tigers and the manes of lions, when nature is nowhere more wholly herself than in the smallest things. I therefore ask my readers not to condemn with disdain even what is reported of these creatures merely because they look down on many of them, since in the contemplation of nature nothing can seem superfluous.
5| Many have denied that insects breathe, and they make the case by reasoning, on the ground that they have no internal organs for the work of breathing. So, they say, insects live as crops and trees do; but it makes a very great difference whether something breathes or lives. For the same reason, they say, insects have no blood, since there is none in any creature that lacks a heart and a liver; and so too creatures that lack a lung do not breathe. From this a long series of questions arises.
6| For the same people also deny that insects have a voice, amid all the humming of bees and the noise of cicadas, and other things which will be weighed in their proper places. But to me, as I contemplate nature, she has always counselled me to think nothing about her incredible. Nor do I see why such creatures should be any more able to live without drawing breath than to breathe without internal organs — which we have shown to happen even in sea creatures, although the density and depth of the water shut out the air.
7| That some creatures should fly and yet lack breath, though they live in the very air; that they should have a sense of getting their food, of reproduction and of work, and even a care for the future; and that, although they have no organs to carry the senses as a keel carries a ship, they should nonetheless have hearing, smell and taste, and besides these the outstanding gifts of nature — skill, spirit, art: who would readily believe it?
8| I grant that they have no blood in the way that land animals have it, all of them alike among themselves. But just as in the sea the ink of the cuttlefish holds the power of blood, and in the purpura family that dyeing juice does, so in insects too, whatever their vital fluid is, that will be their blood. In the end, let everyone hold his own opinion: our purpose is to point out the evident natures of things, not to hunt for their doubtful causes.
9| Insects, so that this may be understood, do not appear to have sinews, bones, spines, cartilage, fat or flesh, nor even a brittle shell like certain sea creatures, nor anything that could rightly be called skin, but a body of a nature somewhere between all of these: like something dried out, softer than sinew, and in its other parts more truly protected than hard. This is all they have, and nothing besides. Inside there is nothing, except in a very few, a coiled intestine.
10| So when they are torn apart they show an extraordinary vitality, and their separate parts go on quivering, because whatever that principle of life may be, it resides not in particular members but in the whole body — though least of all in the head, and the head alone does not move unless it is torn off together with the chest. In no class of animal are there more feet; and those of them that have the most live longest after being torn apart, as we see in scolopendras. They have eyes, and among the senses they have touch and taste as well; some have smell too, and a few hearing.
11| But among all of these the first place belongs to bees, and rightly the chief admiration, since they alone of that class were born for the sake of man. They gather honey, the sweetest, finest and most wholesome of juices; they shape combs and wax for a thousand uses of life; they endure toil, complete their works, have a commonwealth, hold counsels even as individuals but have leaders as a body, and, what may be most wonderful of all, they have a moral character beyond the rest of the animals, though they belong to a kind neither tame nor wild.
12| So great is nature that out of what is almost the smallest shadow of an animal she has made something beyond compare. What sinews, what strength could we set beside such efficacy and industry? What men, by heaven, could we set beside them in reason — they who are certainly superior in this, that they know nothing but the common good? Let there be no question about the soul; let it be agreed about the blood as well: yet how little of it can there be in creatures so little? Let us weigh their intelligence after that.
13| They hide in winter — for whence would they have strength to bear frosts and snows and the blasts of the north winds? — as indeed do all insects, but for less time those that, hidden in our walls, are warmed early. As to bees, either the reckoning of times and places has changed, or the earlier writers erred. They hide from the setting of the Pleiades and lie concealed beyond their rising — so they do not lie hidden only until the beginning of spring, as those writers said, nor does anyone in Italy think of the hives before the beans are in flower —,
14| they go out to their works and labors, and no day, when the sky has allowed, is lost to idleness. First they build the combs, shape the wax, that is, make houses and cells, then the brood, afterward honey, wax from flowers, bee-glue from the tears of trees that produce gum, from the sap of willow, elm and reed, from gum, from resin.
15| With these they first coat the hive itself within all over, as with a kind of plaster, and with other bitterer juices against the greed of other small creatures, aware that they are about to make something others may covet; with the same they build wider doors around too.
16| Experts call the first foundations commosis, the second pissoceros, the third propolis, laid between the coats and the wax, of great use in medicines. Commosis is the first crust, of a bitter taste. Pissoceros comes over it, in the manner of pitch-makers, like a thinner wax. Propolis is from the milder gum of vines and poplars, of an already thicker matter with flowers added, not yet wax, however, but the stabilizing of the combs, by which all entrances of cold or injury are stopped, itself still heavy in smell, so that most people use it in place of galbanum.
17| Besides these, erithace is brought together, which some call sandaraca, others cerinthum. This will be the bees' food while they are working, which is often found stored away in the hollows of the combs, and itself of bitter taste. It is produced from spring dew and the sap of trees like gums; it is gathered smaller in figs, blacker with the breath of the south wind, better and reddish with the north winds, and most abundant in Greek nuts. Menecrates says it is a flower, but no one besides him.
18| They make wax from the flowers of all trees and crops except sorrel and echinopus; these are kinds of herbs. Falsely too is esparto excepted, since in Spain much honey in the esparto-fields tastes of that herb. Falsely also, I think, are olives excepted, since it is certain that very many swarms are produced when the olive crop comes. They harm no fruits. They do not settle on dead flowers, much less on bodies.
19| They work within 60 paces and, when the flowers nearby are used up, they send out scouts to farther pastures; caught at night on an expedition, they keep watch lying on their backs, to protect their wings from dew; let no one wonder that Aristomachus of Soli, captivated by love of them, did nothing else for fifty-eight years, and Philiscus of Thasos, tending bees in deserted places, surnamed Agrius, both of whom wrote about them.
20| The plan of the work is wonderfully divided: a station at the gates in the manner of a camp, rest until morning, until one rouses them with a double or triple hum, like some trumpet. Then all fly forth, if the day is going to be mild. For they foretell winds and rains when they keep within their dwellings; and so they have this rest among their foreknowledge of the mildness of the sky. When the column has gone forth to the work, some bring in flowers with their feet, others water in the mouth, and drops with the down of the whole body.
21| Those of them in their youth go out to the work and bring in the things mentioned above, the older ones work inside. Those which carry flowers load the thigh with the front feet, rough by nature for this, and the front feet with the mouth, and return wholly laden, spread out with their burden. They are received by three or four each, who unload them.
22| For inside also the duties are divided: some build, some polish, some supply, some prepare food from what has been brought; for they do not eat separately, lest an inequality of work and of food and of time arise. They build, beginning from the vaulting of the hive, and draw the web as from the top of a fabric, with two paths around each act of work, so that some enter by one, others go out by the other.
23| The combs, attached on the upper part and a little also at the sides, at once cling and hang; the bottom does not touch the hive, oblong or round, as the hive has demanded, sometimes also of two kinds, when two swarms with agreeing peoples have had unlike customs. They prop the falling waxes, with arched spaces between pillars from the floor, so that there is no lack of access for repairing.
24| The first three rows are generally built empty, so that nothing may be ready to tempt a thief; the last are filled most of all with honey. For this reason the combs are taken out with the hive turned away. The carriers seek favorable winds. If a storm arises, taking up a small weight of pebble they balance themselves; some report that it is placed on the shoulders. Near the ground they fly in a head wind, avoiding brambles.
25| There is a wonderful watchfulness of the work: they note the idleness of those who are slacking, rebuke them, and soon punish them with death. With wonderful cleanliness they clear everything out of the way, and no filth lies about among the works; indeed the excrement of the workers within, lest they go farther away, they gather into one place and discharge on stormy days and in rest from work.
26| When evening comes on, they hum less and less in the hive, until one flies round with the same hum that roused them, as if commanding rest, and this too in the manner of a camp. Then suddenly all fall silent. The common bees build houses first, then those for the kings. If a richer yield is hoped for, mess-mates are added, and drones. These are the smallest of the cells, but the drones themselves are bigger than the bees.
27| Drones, however, are without a sting, like imperfect bees, begun last by the tired or already worn-out ones, a late brood and as it were the servants of the true bees, for which reason the bees command them and drive them out first to the work, punishing the laggards without mercy. And they help them not only in the work but also in the breeding, the crowd contributing much to the warmth.
28| Certainly the greater their number has been, the greater is the yield of swarms too. When the honey has begun to ripen, the bees drive them away, and many attack each one and slaughter it. Nor is this kind seen except in spring. A drone with its wings taken off and thrown back into the hive itself takes the wings from the rest.
29| For their future commanders they build royal cells in the lowest part of the hive, large, magnificent, separate, standing out with a little knob, which if it is squeezed off, they are not born. All the cells are six-sided, from the work of single feet. None of these things is done at a fixed time, but they seize their tasks on clear days. They fill the cells with honey in one or two days at most.
30| This comes from the air and most of all at the risings of stars, and especially with Sirius itself shining forth, and not at all before the rising of the Pleiades, at the hours before dawn. And so then, at first dawn, leaves of trees are found dewy with honey, and if any have been out in the open in the morning, they feel their clothes greased with liquid and their hair clotted, whether that is the sweat of the sky or a certain spittle of the stars or the juice of the air purging itself; and would that it were pure and liquid and of its own nature, as it falls at first!
31| But as it is, falling from so great a height and growing much fouled while it comes, and tainted by the exhalation of the land it meets, besides being drunk from foliage and pastures and gathered into the little bellies of the bees — for they vomit it from the mouth —, and in addition spoiled by the juice of flowers and steeped in the faults of the hive and so often altered, it still brings great pleasure of a heavenly nature.
32| There it is always best where it is stored in the little jars of the best flowers. This happens in the region of Attica at Hymettus, and in Sicily at Hybla, soon on the island Calydna. At first, however, the honey is like diluted water, and in the first days it ferments like new wine and purges itself; on the twentieth day it thickens, soon is covered with a thin membrane, which forms from the foam of the fermentation itself. The best, least tainted with leaf, is drawn from the leaves of oak, linden and reeds.
33| The highest goodness depends on the nation, as we said above, in several ways. For in one place combs distinguished by their wax are produced, as in Sicily and among the Paeligni; in another an abundance of honey, as in Crete, Cyprus and Africa; in another by size, as in the northern regions, a comb having already been seen in Germany eight feet in length, black in its hollow part.
34| In any region, however, there are three kinds of honey. The spring honey, with the comb built from flowers, which is therefore called anthinum. Some forbid that this be touched, so that a strong brood may come out with abundant nourishment. Others leave the bees less of this than of any other honey, since a great richness follows at the rising of great stars, and besides at the solstice, when thyme and the grape begin to flower, the chief material of the cells.
35| In taking out the combs, however, careful management is necessary, since for lack of food they lose hope and die or scatter, whereas abundance brings sloth, and then they feed on honey and not on erithace. Therefore the more careful leave a fifteenth part of this vintage for the bees. The set day for beginning, as by a certain law of nature, if men would know or observe it, is the thirtieth from the swarm's being led out, and this vintage is generally closed in the month of May.
36| The second kind is the honey of summer, which is therefore called horaeon from its special seasonableness, with Sirius itself shining forth, about 30 days after the solstice. Around this an immense subtlety of nature has been laid open to mortals, were not the fraud of men to corrupt everything with ruin.
37| For from the rising of any star, but of the noble ones most, or a rainbow, if rains do not follow but dew grows warm under the rays of the sun, medicines are produced, not honeys, heavenly gifts for the eyes, ulcers and inward parts. If this is kept at the rising of Sirius, and it happens to coincide on the same day, as often, with the rising of Venus or Jupiter or Mercury, there is made no other sweetness and power for calling mortals' ills back from death than that of divine nectar.
38| Honey is gathered more abundantly at full moon, richer on a clear day. In all honey, that which has flowed of itself, like must and oil, is called acetum. All summer honey is most praiseworthy when reddish, as made in the drier days. White honey is not made where there is thyme, but is thought most suitable for the eyes and ulcers. From thyme it is of golden color, of most pleasing flavor, by which it is made plain; [….] rich in the little jars, thick from the sea dew. That which solidifies, however, is least praised.
39| Thyme honey does not curdle, and at touch sends out very fine threads, which is the first proof of goodness; that drops break off at once and spring back is held an indication of poor quality. The next test is that it be fragrant and from sweet to sharp, sticky, and translucent.
40| In the summer honey harvest Cassius Dionysius recommends that a tenth part be left to the bees, if the hives have been full; if less, in proportion, or, if empty, that they not be touched at all. For this vintage the Athenians gave as the sign of beginning the first appearance of the wild fig, others the day sacred to Vulcan.
41| The third kind of honey, least approved, is the forest honey, which they call ericaeum. It is gathered after the first autumn rains, when heath alone flowers in the woods, and for that reason is like the sandy kind. The rising of Arcturus, from the day before the Ides of September, produces it most. Some carry the summer harvest on to the rising of Arcturus, because from it to the autumn equinox there remain 14 days, and from the equinox to the setting of the Pleiades, in 48 days, heath is most abundant.
42| The Athenians call it tetralix, Euboea sisyrum, and they think it most agreeable to bees, perhaps because at that time there is no other abundance. This harvest, then, is closed generally when the vintage is over and the Pleiades have set, about the Ides of November. Reason persuades that two parts of it be left for the bees, and always those parts of the combs that have erithace.
43| From midwinter to the rising of Arcturus, for 60 days, they are nourished by sleep without any food. From the rising of Arcturus to the spring equinox, in a milder season, they are already awake, but still keep within the hive and go back to the foods stored up for that time. In Italy, however, they do the same from the rising of the Pleiades and sleep until it.
44| Some weigh the hives in taking out honey, thus apportioning how much they leave. Fairness is indeed required even in them, and they say that if the partnership is cheated the hives die. Above all, then, it is prescribed that those who take out the honey be washed and clean. They hate a stench and women's monthly courses.
45| When honey is taken out, it is most useful to drive the bees off with smoke, lest they grow angry or devour it greedily themselves. By more frequent smoke their sloth too is roused to work, for unless they have brooded, they make livid combs. On the other hand they are tainted by too much smoke, since honey feels the injury very quickly, souring at the least touch of dew. And on this account that kind is kept apart which they call acapnum.
46| In what manner they bring forth their young has been a great and subtle question among scholars. For the coupling of bees has never been seen. Most have thought they are shaped by the mouth from flowers fitly and usefully gathered; some, by the coupling of one, who in each swarm is called king: that he alone is male, of special size, lest he weaken; hence the brood is not produced without him, and the other bees accompany him as females a male, not as a leader. The yield of drones refutes that opinion otherwise probable. For what reason is there that the same coupling should produce others imperfect?
47| The earlier opinion would indeed be nearer, were not another difficulty to meet it. For sometimes in the outermost combs larger bees are born, which drive off the rest. This evil is called oestrus; how is it born, if they themselves shape their young?
48| What is certain is that they brood in the manner of hens. That which has hatched is first seen as a white little worm, lying across and clinging so that it seems part of the wax. The king is at once of honey color, as made from a chosen flower out of all abundance, and not a little worm but at once winged. The rest of the crowd, when it has begun to take shape, are called nymphs, just as drones are called serenes or cephenes.
49| If anyone takes the heads off either before they have wings, they are a most welcome food for the mothers. As time goes on they drip food in and brood, then murmuring most, for the sake, as they think, of making heat, which is necessary for hatching the young, until, the membranes that surround each being broken, the whole column comes forth as with eggs. This was seen at Rome on the suburban estate of a certain man of consular rank, the hives being made of transparent lantern horn.
50| The brood is completed within the 45th day. In some combs there forms what is called a nail, the hardness of bitter wax, when they have not brought forth a brood from there through disease or sloth or natural infertility; this is the abortion of bees. Those brought out, however, work at once with a certain discipline together with their mothers, and a crowd of equal age accompanies the young king. Several kings are begun, lest they be lacking.
51| Afterward, when the offspring of these has begun to be grown, by agreed vote they kill the worst, lest they divide the columns. There are two kinds of them: the better is red, the worse black and varied. All have an excellent form always, and twice as large as the rest, shorter wings, straight legs, a loftier gait, on the brow a spot gleaming white like a kind of diadem. Also in brightness they differ much from the common sort.
52| Let someone now ask whether there was one Hercules, and how many Father Libers, and the rest buried by the neglect of antiquity! Behold, in a small matter attached to our farmsteads, of which there is constant abundance, it is not agreed among authors whether the king alone has no sting, armed only with majesty, or whether nature gave it, but denied him the use of it. This is agreed, that the commander does not use a sting. Wonderful is the obedience of the common sort around him.
53| When he goes forth, the whole swarm is one and balls around him, surrounds him, protects him, does not suffer him to be seen. For the rest of the time, when the people are at work, he himself goes round the works within, like one exhorting, alone exempt. Around him are certain attendants and lictors, constant guardians of authority.
54| He does not go out except when the swarm is about to migrate. This is understood long before, murmuring sounding within for some days, an indicator of preparation, as they choose a suitable day. If anyone cuts off a wing of his, the swarm will not flee. When they have gone forth, each wants to be next to him and is glad to be seen at its duty. When he is tired they lift him on their shoulders; when more exhausted they carry him wholly. If any tired one has failed or has chanced to stray, he follows her by scent. Wherever he settles, there is the camp of all.
55| Then they make portents, private and public, hanging in a cluster in houses and temples, often expiated with great events. They settled on the mouth of the infant Plato as well, portending that sweetness of exceedingly sweet eloquence. They settled in the camp of the commander Drusus when a most successful battle was fought at Arbalo, by no means a constant interpretation of the haruspices, who think it always a dire omen. When the leader is seized the whole column is held,
56| when he is lost it dissolves and migrates to others. In any case they cannot be without a king. But they kill them reluctantly, when there are several of them, and rather pull down the houses of the newly born, if a yield is despaired of. Then they drive off the drones as well.
57| Although I see that even about these there is doubt, and some think they are a proper kind of their own, as with the thieves, the largest among them, but black and with a broad belly, so called because they devour honey by stealth. It is certain that drones are killed by the bees. They have no king in any case. And how they are born without a sting is a matter of inquiry.
58| In a damp spring the brood is better, in a dry the honey more abundant; but if food has failed some hives, they make an attack on the nearest with the purpose of plunder. But the others in turn draw up a line, and if a keeper is present, whichever party has felt that he favors it does not attack him. From other causes too they often fight and form two opposing armies and two commanders, chiefly when a quarrel breaks out in gathering flowers and each calls out its own; this fighting is wholly dispersed by throwing dust or by smoke, but is reconciled with milk or honeyed water.
59| There are bees also rustic and of the woods, rough in look, much more irascible, but outstanding in work and labor. Of the city bees there are two kinds: the best are short and varied and compact into roundness, the worse long and resembling wasps, still worse of these the hairy ones. In Pontus there are certain white ones that make honey twice a month, and about the river Thermodon two kinds, some that make honey in trees, others under the ground, with a threefold order of waxes, of most abundant yield. Nature gave bees a sting, joined to the belly for a single blow.
60| Some think that when this is fixed in, they die at once; some, not unless it is driven in so far that something of the intestine follows, but that afterward they are drones and do not make honey, as with strength unmanned, and cease alike to harm and to benefit.
61| There is on record a horse killed by them. They hate foul smells and flee far from them, but also from artificial ones; and so they attack those smelling of unguents. They themselves are liable to the injuries of very many animals. Wasps and hornets, degenerate of the same nature, assail them, and also of the gnat kind those called muliones. Swallows ravage them and certain other birds. Frogs lie in wait for them when they fetch water, which is their greatest work at the time when they are making offspring;
62| nor only those which beset pools and streams, but toads too come of their own accord and, creeping to the doors, blow at the gates: a sentinel flies out at this and is at once snatched away. Frogs are reported not to feel the bees' stings. Sheep too are hostile, since the bees extricate themselves from their wool with difficulty. They are killed even by the smell of crabs, if anyone cooks them near.
63| Indeed they feel diseases too by their own nature. The sign is a dull sadness, and when, brought out before the doors into the warmth of the sun, some offer food to the others, when they carry out the dead and accompany the funeral in the manner of mourners.
64| When the king is lost to this plague, the common crowd mourns with listless grief, not bringing food, not going forth; they only cluster with a sad murmur around his body. So the body is taken away once the crowd has been drawn off. Others, looking at the lifeless body, do not lessen the mourning; then too, unless help is brought, they die of hunger. Health is therefore judged by cheerfulness and sleekness. There are diseases of work also: when they do not fill the combs, they call it claron; likewise blapsigonia, if they do not complete the brood.
65| Hostile also is the echo, with a resounding sound, which strikes the frightened ones with alternate beat; hostile also fog. Spiders too are especially hostile: when they have gained enough strength to spin their web, they destroy the hives. The moth also, this lazy and unhonored creature, flitting up to lights that are lit, is a pest, and not in one way: for it both feeds on the waxes and leaves droppings from which wood-worms are produced; it also covers with spider-like threads wherever it has crawled, chiefly from the down of its wings.
66| Wood-worms too are born in the very wood, which seek wax especially. Greed of feeding is also a plague, too great a surfeit of flowers, in the spring season especially, with loose bowels. By oil not only bees but all insects are killed, above all if, with the head anointed, they are set in the sun.
67| Sometimes they themselves bring on causes of death for themselves, when they have sensed that the honey is being taken out, devouring it greedily, though otherwise they are sparing and would drive out prodigal and gluttonous bees just as they do idle and slothful ones. Their own honey also harms them, and smeared on from the rear they die. To so many enemies, so many chances — and what portion of them do I mention? — is so generous an animal exposed. We shall give the remedies in their places; for now the discourse is on nature.
68| They delight in clapping and the tinkling of bronze, and are called together by it. By which it is clear that the sense of hearing also is in them. When the work is done and the brood led out, their whole duty finished, they still have a customary exercise, ranging in the open and borne aloft, making circles in flight, and only then return to food.
69| Their longest life, if hostile and chance events turn out favorably, is seven years. Whole hives are reported never to have lasted beyond ten years. There are some who think that dead bees, if kept indoors in winter, then dried in the spring sun and warmed with lukewarm fig-wood ash, come back to life;
70| and that bees entirely lost can be restored by burying fresh ox bellies together with dung. Virgil says it is done with the dead body of young bullocks, just as wasps and hornets come from horses and scarab beetles from asses, nature changing certain creatures into others. But the mating of all these is observed, and yet in their offspring the nature is nearly the same as in bees.
71| Wasps make their nests high up out of mud, and in them their combs; hornets make theirs in hollows or underground. The cells of all of these are six-sided, but the combs are made of bark, like a spider's web. The brood itself is uneven, as with barbarians: one flies out, another is in the pupa, another in the grub, and all of this happens in autumn, not spring. They grow most at the full moon.
72| The wasps called ichneumones, which are smaller than the others, kill one kind of spider, called the phalangium, and carry it to their nests; then they plaster it over, and by brooding on these they produce their own kind. Moreover, all of them eat flesh, unlike bees, which touch no carcass. But wasps hunt the larger flies, and after cutting off the head carry away the rest of the body.
73| The wild hornets live in hollows of trees; in winter they hide like the other insects; their life does not pass two years. Their sting is hardly ever without fever. Authorities say that a man is killed by three times nine stings. Of the others, which appear milder, there are two kinds: the workers, smaller in body, which die in winter, and the mothers, which last two years; these are also gentle.
74| In spring they make nests, generally with four doors, in which the workers are to be generated. When these have been brought out, they then fashion other, larger nests, in which they bring forth the future mothers; at that point the workers perform their duty and feed them. The appearance of the mothers is broader, and it is doubtful whether they have stings, because they do not come out. They also have their own drones. Some hold that in all of these the stings fall off towards winter. Neither the race of hornets nor that of wasps has kings or swarms, but their multitude is continually renewed by offspring.
75| Among these there is a fourth kind, that of the bombyces, which arises in Assyria and is larger than those mentioned above. They fashion nests of mud in the shape of salt, attached to a stone, of such hardness that they can scarcely be pierced with darts. In these they make more wax than bees do, and then a larger grub.
76| And their origin is different. From a larger grub, putting out two horns of its own kind, there comes a urica, then what is called a bombylis, from this a necydallus, and from this in six months a bombyx. They weave webs in the manner of spiders, for women's clothing and luxury, which is called bombycina. The first to discover how to unravel them and weave them again was a woman on Cos, Pamphile, daughter of Plateas, who must not be cheated of the glory of devising a method for making women's clothes lay them bare.
77| They report that bombyces are also born on the island of Cos, from the blossom of the cypress, terebinth, ash and oak, shaken down by rains, with the breath of the earth giving it life. They say that at first they become small, naked butterflies, and soon, unable to endure the cold, they bristle with hairs and make themselves thick coats against winter, scraping the downy fluff of leaves with the roughness of their feet. This, they say, is gathered by them into fleeces and worked by combing with their claws, then drawn out into threads, thinned as if by a comb, and afterwards, taken up, is wrapped about the body in a rolling nest;
78| then it is taken away by man and the creatures are fed in earthenware vessels, with warmth and a food of bran, and thus feathers of their own kind grow upon them, and clothed in these they are sent off to other tasks. Those that have been caught for their wool grow soft with moisture, and are soon drawn out into threads on a rush spindle. And men have not been ashamed even to use these garments, for the sake of summer lightness: so far have manners departed from wearing a breastplate that even clothing is a burden. The Assyrian bombyx, however, we still leave to women.
79| To these may not unfittingly be joined the nature of spiders, worthy of special admiration. There are many kinds, and there is no need to describe them, since they are so well known. Those are called phalangia among them whose bites are harmful, with a small body, spotted and pointed, advancing by leaps. A second species of them is black, with the front legs very long. All have three joints in their legs.
80| The smallest of the lupi do not weave; the larger ones weave on the ground and spread small forecourts before their hollows. A third kind of them is conspicuous for its skilled work. It sets up webs, and its own belly supplies the material for so great a work, whether the nature of the belly is so spoiled at a fixed time, as Democritus holds, or there is some wool-bearing fertility within: with so measured a claw, so smooth and so even a thread does it draw out the warp, using its own weight.
81| It begins to weave from the middle, joining the weft in a circular course, and, widening the meshes at always equal intervals, but gradually growing from narrow, it fastens them with an indissoluble knot. With what art it hides the snares that run out from its checkered net! How the closely combed texture of the web seems to have no bearing on this, and the plan of the weft, firm of itself by a kind of polishing art! How yielding to breezes, and to what must not be refused as it comes, is the hollow of it!
82| You might think that the threads left over are stretched across the top in her weariness; but they are hard to make out, and, as in nets, the lines, when struck, throw the prey down into the hollow. And the den itself, with what architecture it is vaulted! And how much shaggier against the cold! How far it lies from the middle, and like a place intended for something else, yet so closed in that it cannot be seen whether anyone is inside or not! Consider its strength, when the winds break against it, when a mass of dust weighs it down!
83| The breadth of the web is often between two trees, when she practices her art and learns to weave; the length of the thread runs from the top and back again to the ground, and along that very thread she moves swiftly to and fro, rising and drawing down threads at once. But when a catch falls in, how watchful and ready is her rush! However far off at the edge the prey sticks, she always runs to the middle, because by shaking the whole she entangles it most. If the web is torn, she at once repairs it, mending it to its former smoothness.
84| For they even hunt the young of lizards, first wrapping the web about the mouth and only then seizing both lips with a bite, a spectacle fit for an amphitheater, when it happens. There are also omens from them. For when a rise of rivers is to come, they lift their webs higher. They weave in fair weather and unweave in cloudy, and so many cobwebs are a sign of rain. They think it is the female that weaves and the male that hunts; thus the services in their union are equal.
85| Spiders mate rump to rump and bring forth grubs like eggs; for their generation cannot be treated separately, since there is hardly any other method among insects. All of them, moreover, lay in the web, but scattered, because they leap and so discharge them. Only the phalangia brood in the den itself a great number, which, as soon as it has emerged, devours the mother, often the father also; for he helps in brooding. They lay as many as three hundred, the others fewer, and brood for three days. Spiders reach maturity in four times seven days.
86| In like manner to these, the land scorpions also bring forth grubs in the form of eggs and likewise perish, an untimely plague, with the poisons of serpents, except that by a heavier punishment they finish their victims by a slow death over three days; their sting is always deadly to virgins, and almost entirely so to women, but to men in the morning, when the scorpions go out of their holes before they have discharged their poison on some chance stroke while fasting.
87| The tail is ever poised to strike, and at no moment does it cease to rehearse, lest it ever fail an opportunity; it strikes with a sidelong blow and with a bent one. Apollodorus is the authority that a white poison is discharged by them, and he divides them into nine kinds by colors, most needlessly, since there is no way to know which he has declared least deadly. He says that some have double stings, and that the males are the fiercest, for he attributes mating to them, and that they are recognized by slenderness and length.
88| All have poison at midday, when they have become white-hot in the burning of the sun, and likewise, when they are thirsty, they cannot drink their fill. It is agreed also that those with seven joints in the tail are more savage; for most have six. This evil of Africa the south winds also make winged, lifting them as they spread their arms like oars; Apollodorus says plainly that some have wings.
89| Often the Psylli, who, bringing in the poisons of other lands, filled Italy with foreign evils for the sake of their gain, tried to import these too, but they could not live within the region of the Sicilian sky. They are nevertheless seen at times in Italy, but harmless, and in many other places, as around Pharus in Egypt.
90| In Scythia they kill even swine, which are otherwise more resistant to such poisons, the black ones indeed more quickly, if they have plunged into water. For a man who has been stung, the remedy is thought to be their own ash drunk in wine. They think that those drowned in oil, and stellions, are a great adversary, the latter harmless at least to those which themselves lack blood, being of the form of lizards; likewise scorpions do no harm at all to any creatures which have no blood.
91| Some think that their young are devoured by the parents themselves; that only one, the most cunning, is left, who, by placing himself on the very rump of his mother, is made safe from both tail and bite; that he is the avenger of the rest, who finally destroys his parents from above. They are born eleven at a time. The stelliones, after a fashion, have the nature of chameleons, living only on dew, and besides on spiders.
92| Similar is the life of cicadas, of which there are two kinds: the smaller, which appear first and perish last; they are mute. Next comes the flight of those that sing; they are called achetae, and the smaller of these, tettigonia. But the former are more tuneful. The males sing in both kinds, the females are silent. Peoples in the east eat them, even the Parthians, with their abundant means. Before mating they prefer the males, after mating the females, which are spoiled by their eggs, which are white.
93| They mate lying on their backs. There is a very sharp roughness on the back, with which they hollow out a place in the earth for their offspring. At first there is a grub, then from it what is called the tettigometra, whose shell they break about the solstices and fly out, always by night, at first black and hard. This is the one among living creatures that is also without a mouth; in place of it is a certain thing like the tongues of stinging insects, and this in the breast, with which they lick up dew. The breast itself is tubular. With this the achetae sing, as we shall say. For the rest there is nothing in the belly.
94| When roused and flying up, they let out moisture, which is the only proof that they are fed on dew. They alone have no opening for the body's waste. Their eyes are so dull that if someone draws near contracting and relaxing a finger, they pass by as though a leaf were playing. Some make two other kinds of them: the surcularia, which is larger, and the frumentaria, which others call avenaria, for it appears at the same time as the drying grain.
95| Cicadas are not born where trees are scarce, which is why there are none at Cyrene except around the town, nor in plains nor in cold or shadowy groves. There is also a certain difference of places for these. In the territory of Miletus they are in few places, but in Cephallania a certain river divides their scarcity from their abundance. And in the territory of Rhegium all are silent, while beyond the river, in the Locrian country, they sing. The nature of their wings is that of bees, but larger in proportion to the body.
96| Among insects, moreover, some bear two wings, as flies do, some four, as bees. Cicadas also fly on membranes. Those armed with stings in the belly have four. No creature whose weapon is in the mouth flies with more than two wings. For to the former it was given for revenge, to the latter for greed. In none of them do wings grow again once torn off. None that has a sting in the belly has two wings.
97| In some a crust grows over the wings as protection, as in scarabaei, whose wing is thinner and more fragile. A sting is denied them, but in a certain large kind of them there are very long horns, forked, with toothed pincers at the tip which close for a bite when it pleases them; these are even hung from the neck as remedies for infants. Nigidius calls them lucavi.
98| There is another kind of them again, which roll huge balls out of dung, backing and using their feet, and nestle in these their young, small grubs, against the harshness of winter. Others fly about with a great humming or lowing, others hollow out hearths and meadows with many holes, noisy with a shrill sound at night. The lampyrides shine at night like fires by the color of their sides and rumps, at one moment gleaming with the gaping of their wings, at another shadowed when they are pressed together; they are not conspicuous before the pastures are ripe or after they are cut.
99| On the contrary, the cockroaches live as nurslings of darkness and flee the light, being begotten especially in the damp steam of baths. Of the same family, the reddish and very large scarabaei dig dry earth and fashion combs, like a small, hollow sponge, with a medicated honey. In Thrace, close by Olynthus, lies a small place in which this one creature dies, and for this reason it is called Cantharolethrus.
100| The wings of all insects are without a split. None has a tail except the scorpion. It alone of them has both arms and a sting in the tail; of the rest, some have a sting in the mouth, like the asilus, or tabanus if one prefers to say so, likewise the gnat and some flies, and in all of these it is in the mouth and serves in place of a tongue. In some these stings are blunt and are not for piercing but for sucking, as in the kind of flies, in which the tongue is a plain tube. Nor do such creatures have teeth. In others small horns, idle, are held out in front of the eyes, as in butterflies. Some insects lack wings, as the scolopendra.
101| Insects that have feet move them sideways. In some, the last pair, longer, curve outward, as in locusts. These lay, with the stalk of the spine let down into the earth, eggs packed closely, in the autumn. They last through the winter; the following year, at the coming out of spring, they send small ones out of the earth, blackish, creeping without legs or wings. And so in a wet spring the eggs perish; in a dry spring the yield is greater.
102| Others report a double brood of them and a double destruction: that they lay when the Pleiades rise, then die when the Dog Star rises, and that others are born again; some say they are born again at the setting of Arcturus. It is certain that the mothers die when they have laid, a grub immediately growing around the throat which strangles them. At the same time the males perish. And though dying for so trifling a reason, single ones kill a serpent when they please, seizing its throat with their teeth. They are not born except in places full of cracks.
103| In India they are said to be three feet in length, and their legs and thighs, when dried, are used as saws. There is another death for them too: lifted in flocks by the wind, they fall into the seas or pools. This happens by chance and accident, and not, as the men of old supposed, because night dew has wetted their wings. For the same writers also reported that they do not fly at night because of the cold, not knowing that they even cross far seas, going without food for several days together (which should astonish us most) — the very hunger on account of which, as they know, they seek pasture abroad.
104| This plague is understood to be the wrath of the gods. For they are seen larger than usual, and they fly with such a whirring of wings that they are believed to be [other] birds, and they overshadow the sun while the peoples anxiously watch lest they cover their lands. For their strength suffices, and, as if it were little to have crossed the seas, they traverse immense tracts and cover the harvests with a dreadful cloud, burning much by their touch, and eating away everything with their bite, even the doors of houses.
105| They invade Italy chiefly when they have risen from Africa, and often the Roman people, for fear of want, have been forced to take refuge in the Sibylline remedies. In the region of Cyrenaica there is even a law to make war on them three times a year: first by crushing the eggs, then the young, and lastly the adults, with the penalty of a deserter on anyone who has been slack.
106| And on the island of Lemnos a fixed measure has been prescribed, which each person must bring to the magistrates of locusts killed. They also honor jackdaws for this reason, which meet them in opposing flight to their destruction. In Syria, too, people are compelled to kill them by military authority. So many parts of the world does this evil range over. Among the Parthians these also are welcome as food.
107| Their voice seems to proceed from the back of the head. In that place, at the joint of the shoulder blades, they are thought to have something like teeth, and by rubbing these together to produce the shrill sound, chiefly around the two equinoxes, as cicadas do around the solstice. The mating of locusts is that of all insects that mate: the female carries the male, the tip of the female's tail is bent back toward him, and the parting is slow. In all this kind the males are smaller than the females.
108| Most insects produce a grub; for ants also produce one like an egg in spring, [….] and these share their labor as bees do, but the bees make food, the ants store it. And if anyone compares the loads with their bodies, he would admit that none has greater strength in proportion. They carry them in their jaws; heavier ones they move backwards with the hind feet, straining with the shoulders. They also have a system of public affairs, memory, and care.
109| They gnaw the seeds they store, so that they may not sprout again from the earth; the larger ones they divide at the entrance; when wetted by rain they bring them out and dry them. They work by night too, at full moon, and cease at the moon's dark. Then in the work, what labor, what diligence! And since they bring in from different directions, one ignorant of another, fixed days are given as market days for mutual recognition.
110| What a running about of them there is then, and how careful a conversation and questioning of some with those they meet! We see flints worn by their journeys and a path made by their work, so that no one may doubt what even the smallest persistence can do in anything. Alone of living creatures besides man they bury one another. In Sicily they are not winged.
111| The horns of Indian ants, fixed up in the temple of Hercules at Erythrae, were a marvel. These ants brought gold out of their burrows in the earth, in the region of the northern Indians who are called Dardae. They are the color of cats and the size of Egyptian wolves. This gold, dug up by them in winter, the Indians steal in the heat of summer, when the ants have hidden in their tunnels because of the warmth; yet, roused by the scent, they dash out and often tear to pieces the thieves, though they flee on very swift camels. Such is their speed and fierceness together with their love of gold.
112| Many insects, moreover, are born otherwise also, and first of all from dew. This settles on the leaf of the radish in early spring and, thickened by the sun, is compacted to the size of a millet seed. From this a small grub stretches out, and in three days soon an uruca, which grows with added days, motionless, in a hard shell. It moves only at a touch, grown over with a spider's web, and they call it a chrysallis. Then, when the shell is broken, a butterfly flies out.
113| So some are generated from rain upon the earth, some also in wood. For not only cossi but also tabani are born from it, and others too, wherever there is excessive moisture, as within man tapeworms thirty feet long, and sometimes of greater length.
114| Then in lifeless flesh, and in the flesh and hair of living men too, from which foulness both the dictator Sulla and Alcman, among the most famous poets of Greece, died. This even plagues birds, and it kills pheasants unless they dust themselves;
115| of animals with hair, only the ass is believed immune to this evil, and sheep. They are also bred in a kind of clothing, especially woolen, in sheep killed by wolves. I find in authors also that certain waters in which we bathe are more fertile in creatures of this sort, since even wax breeds what is thought the smallest of animals. Others again are generated from the filth of dry soil, the petauristae, tumbling by the frisky play of their hind legs, others winged from damp dust in caves.
116| There is an animal of the same season, living with its head always fixed in blood and so swelling. It is the one animal that has no outlet for its food, and it bursts in excessive fullness, dying of the nourishment itself. It is never produced in beasts of burden, is frequent in oxen, sometimes in dogs, in which all kinds occur; in sheep and goats only this one. Equally marvelous is the thirst for blood of leeches in marsh water; for these too bury their whole head. There is a winged evil peculiar to dogs, mostly tearing the ears, which they cannot defend by biting.
117| The same dust creates moths in wools and clothing, especially if a spider is shut in with them. For being thirsty and absorbing all moisture, it increases the dryness. This is born also in papers. There is a kind of them dragging their coats after them, in the manner of snails; but their feet are seen. When stripped they expire.
118| If they have grown up, they make a chrysallis. The wild fig produces the fig gnats; the cantharides come from the grubs of figs and of the pear, the pine, the cynacantha and the rose. This poison has its remedies with it: the wings are a cure, and once they are removed it is deadly. Other kinds of gnats again are produced by a souring nature, since in old snow also are found reddish grubs, for snow itself reddens with age, rough with hair; in Media indeed they are white, larger and sluggish.
119| Even the element that is the enemy of nature produces some creatures. For in the copper furnaces of Cyprus, in the middle of the fire, there flies a winged four-footed creature of the size of a larger fly; it is called pyrallis, by some pyrotocon. As long as it is in the fire, it lives; when it has escaped by a somewhat longer flight, it dies.
120| The river Hypanis in the Pontus, about the solstice, brings down thin membranes in the shape of grapes, from which a winged four-footed creature bursts out, like the one mentioned above, and lives no longer than one day, whence it is called hemerobion. In the rest of such creatures the numbers are sevens from beginning to end: for the gnat and for grubs three times seven, for those bearing a body four times seven; the changes and passages into other shapes take three or four days. The other winged ones among them generally die in autumn by a wasting of the wings, the tabani even by blindness. Flies killed by moisture, if buried in ashes, return to life.
121| Now let the account be treated limb by limb, part by part of the body, apart from what has already been said. All that have blood have a head. On the head, in few animals and only in birds, there are crests, of different kinds: in the phoenix a tuft of feathers rising from the middle of it, in peacocks little shrubs of hair, in the stymphalis a curl, in the pheasant little horns, and besides in a small bird which, once called galerita from that, afterwards under the Gallic word alauda even gave its name to a legion.
122| We have said also to which bird nature gave a folding crest. Along the middle of the head from the beak she gave a crest to the kind of coots as well, curls to the woodpecker of Mars and to the Balearic crane, but the most distinguished ornament belongs to the barnyard fowl: fleshy, serrated; and we could not rightly say it is flesh or cartilage or callus, but something peculiar granted. As for the crests of dragons, no one is found who has seen them.
123| Horns have been given to many, both of water creatures and of sea creatures and of serpents, in various ways, but those rightly understood as horns belong only to the race of four-footed animals; for Actaeon and Cipus, even in Latin history, I take to be fabulous. Nowhere else is nature's playfulness greater. She played with the weapons of animals; she scattered them into branches, as in stags; to others she gave them single, as in the same kind to the subulones, named from the evidence; of others she spread them out into palms and sent fingers out from them, whence they are called platycerotes. She gave branching ones to roe deer,
124| but small, and did not make them shed, and twisted in a coil for the race of rams, as if to give them boxing-gloves, menacing ones to bulls; in this kind she gave them to females too, whereas in many kinds only to males; to wild goats curved backward over the back, to fallow deer curved forward; but upright, twisted in a circuit of ridges and sharpened to a smooth tip, as though fitted for lyres, in the strepsiceros, which Africa calls addax;
125| the same movable, like ears, in the herds of Phrygia; in those of the Trogodytae directed to the ground, for which reason they graze with the neck turned sideways; in others single, and this in the middle of the head or on the nose, as we have said. In some they are strong for charging, in others for striking, in others hooked, in others bent back, in others for tossing in several ways, upturned, convex, turned aside, all blackening to a point. In a certain kind they serve in place of hands for scratching the body, and in snails for feeling the way ahead; these are fleshy, as in the cerastes; in these sometimes single, in snails always two, so that they extend and spring back.
126| The barbarians of the northern lands drink out of urus horns and fill the two horns of a single head by the urnful; others tip spear shafts fixed with them to make points. Among us they are cut into plates and are translucent, and even spread a light shut inside them more widely, and they are applied to many other luxuries, now dyed, now coated, now of the sort called cestrota, a kind of painting.
127| (All have them hollow and solid only at the tip, except in stags, whose horns are wholly solid and shed every year) farmers cure the worn hooves of oxen by anointing the horns with fat, and the substance is so pliant that, in the living bodies themselves, they can be bent with hot wax, and in the newborn twisted in different directions, so that single heads come to have four horns.
128| In females they are mostly thinner, as in many of the flock; in sheep none, nor in does of stags; nor have those with many-cleft feet, nor any of the solid-hoofed, except the Indian ass, which carries one horn as its weapon. To cloven-footed animals nature gave two, to none having upper front teeth. Those who think that these are used up into horns are easily refuted by the nature of does, which have neither teeth (as the males do not either) nor yet horns. In the rest they adhere to the bones; in stags alone they grow out of the skin.
129| Fish have heads in the largest proportion of the body, perhaps that they may dive. To the race of oysters there are none, nor to sponges nor generally to others in which touch is the only one of the senses. In some the head is not distinguished, as in crabs.
130| Of all animals man has the most hair on the head, now indeed alike in males and females, at least among unshorn peoples. And even names come from it: the Capillati, inhabitants of the Alps, and Gallia Comata, though there is some difference in this between lands. For the Myconians are born without it, as in Caunus the spleen-sufferers. And certain animals are naturally bald, as ostriches and water ravens, whence their name among the Greeks.
131| Its falling out is rare in a woman, not seen in eunuchs, nor in anyone before the use of Venus, nor below the brain or below the crown or about the temples and ears. Of animals man alone has baldness, other than the inborn kind. Gray hair is found only in man and the horse, but in man always from the front part of the head, then afterwards from the back. Only some men have two crowns.
132| The bones of the head are flat and thin, without marrow, built with joints serrated like a comb. When broken through they cannot be made solid again, but when moderately removed they are not fatal, a fleshy scar taking their place. We have said in their place that they are weakest in bears and hardest in parrots.
133| All animals that have blood have a brain, and in the sea those we have called soft, although they lack blood, as the polypus. But man's is the largest in proportion and the moistest, and the coldest of all the viscera, covered by two membranes above and below, either of which, if ruptured, is fatal. Otherwise, in the male it is larger than in the female, in all it is without blood, without veins, and in the tallow-bearing animals without fat.
134| The learned teach that it is something other than marrow, since it hardens in cooking. In the middle of the brain of all there are small bones. In man alone it throbs in infancy and is not strengthened before the first beginning of speech.
135| This is the highest of the viscera [….] the vault of the head, without flesh, without blood, without filth. The senses have this as their citadel; hither the whole force of the veins tends from the heart, here it ends, this is the loftiest summit, here is the governance of the mind. In all animals it inclines forward, because the senses also stretch ahead of us. From it sleep proceeds, hence the nodding of the head. Creatures that have no brain do not sleep. In stags, it is reported, there are worms in the head, under the hollow of the tongue and about the joint where the head is joined, to the number of 20.
136| Ears are immobile only in man. From these come the surnames of the Flacci. Nor in any other part is there greater expense for women than in pearls hanging down; in the East indeed even men think it an ornament to wear gold in that place. In animals some have them larger, some smaller; in stags alone they are split and as if divided, in the shrew hairy, but all that bring forth live young have ears of some sort, except the seal and the dolphin, and those we called cartilaginous, and vipers:
137| these have only cavities in place of ears, apart from the cartilaginous fish and the dolphin, which nevertheless plainly hears. For it is soothed by song and is caught, stupefied by sound. How they hear is a wonder. The same have no trace of a nose either, though they smell most keenly. Of winged creatures, only the eagle owl and the horned owl have feathers like ears, the others have cavities for hearing; likewise the scaly creatures and serpents. In horses and every kind of beasts of burden the ears show the signs of the mind: drooping in the weary, quivering in the fearful, pricked up in the furious, relaxed in the sick.
138| A face is for man only; the rest have a mouth or a snout. The brow exists in others too, but in man alone it is an index of sadness, cheerfulness, gentleness, severity. In its upper part are a man's eyebrows, movable both together and alternately. In these too is a part of the mind: by them we refuse, by them we assent. They chiefly show disdain and pride. Elsewhere there is a receptacle of pride, but here it has its seat; it is born in the heart, comes up to here, hangs here. It found nothing higher and at the same time steeper in the body, where it might be solitary.
139| Beneath them lie the eyes, the most precious part of the body, which by the use of light distinguishes life from death. Not all animals have them; oysters have none, and in some shellfish they are doubtful. For scallops, if one moves his fingers against them as they gape, contract as if seeing, and razor-shells flee from approaching iron. Among four-footed animals moles have no sight; the likeness of eyes is there, if someone draws off the membrane stretched in front. And among birds, in the kind of herons, those they call leuci,
140| are said to lack one eye, and it is of the best augury when they fly to the south or north; for they say that dangers and fears are loosed. Nigidius says that locusts and cicadas have none. In snails two little horns fill the place of eyes by feeling ahead. Nor have earthworms any, nor any kind of worms.
141| Eyes in man alone are of different color; in the rest they are alike within each kind. In some horses they are bluish-grey, but in man they are of the most numerous variety and difference: larger, moderate, small; prominent, which they think duller, deep-set, which they think see most clearly, as also those of goat color.
142| Besides, some look at distant things, others see nothing unless held close. The sight of many is established by the brilliance of the sun, and they do not see on a cloudy day or after sunset. Others are duller by day and see by night beyond the rest. Of double pupils, and of those whose sight would be harmful, we have said enough. Grey eyes are clearer in darkness.
143| They say that Tiberius Caesar, and no other mortal born, had such a nature that, waking at night, for a short while he looked at everything not otherwise than in clear daylight, the darkness gradually closing in upon him. The deified Augustus had eyes bluish-grey like horses', with more white in them than a man's eyes have, for which reason he took it ill and angrily if they were looked at too closely;
144| Claudius Caesar had eyes at the corners, from a fleshy whiteness, repeatedly flooded with bloody veins; Gaius the emperor, rigid ones; Nero [….] dull, except when he screwed them up for things held close. There were 20,000 gladiators in the school of the emperor Gaius, and among them there were only two who did not blink before any threat, and for that reason were undefeated. So great a difficulty is this for man. In most people it is natural that they never cease blinking, and we have heard that these are the more fearful.
145| No eye is of one color; for all there is a common whiteness, and in the middle a differing color. And in no part are there greater signs of the mind in all animals, but especially in man, that is, of moderation, gentleness, pity, hatred, love, sadness, joy. In the gaze too they are of many forms: fierce, grim, blazing, heavy, sidelong, askance, lowered, caressing. Surely the mind dwells in the eyes.
146| they burn, they strain, they grow moist, they blink. Hence that tear of pity; when we kiss them, we seem to touch the very mind; hence the weeping and the streams that wet the face. What is that moisture, so fruitful in grief and so ready, and where is it at other times? But it is by the mind that we see, by the mind that we discern: the eyes, like certain vessels, receive the visible part of it and pass it on. So deep thought blinds, the sight being drawn inward. So in the falling sickness, when the mind darkens, people with open eyes see nothing.
147| Indeed hares sleep with eyes open, and many men, those the Greeks say are in Corybantic frenzy. Nature composed the eyes of many thin membranes, with hardened coats on the outside against cold and heat. These she keeps clean from time to time by the saliva of the tears, because they are slippery and mobile in the face of things rushing in.
148| In the middle of their orbs she cut a window, the pupil, whose narrowness does not let the uncertain sight wander but directs it as if through a channel, and things that happen to come in the way are easily avoided; around it are circles of black in some, of tawny in others, of grey in others, so that by a convenient mixture the light is received by the surrounding whiteness and, with its reflection tempered, does not clash. And so complete is the power of a mirror in them that this tiny pupil gives back the entire image of a human being. That is why most birds, when held in men's hands, go for the eyes above all, because seeing their own likeness in them they strive, as it were, toward their own kin.
149| Only certain beasts of burden feel diseases at the waxing of the moon. But man alone is freed from blindness by the drawing off of fluid. After the twentieth year sight has been restored to many; in some it was denied from birth with no fault of the eyes, and in many it was suddenly taken away in the same way without any previous injury. The most expert authorities report that veins run from the eyes to the brain; I should believe also to the stomach: at any rate no one has an eye torn out without an overflow from it.
150| To close them for the dying and open them again on the pyre is a sacred rite of the Quirites of great importance, established by custom in such a way that it is not lawful for the last sight of them to be seen by a man, and unlawful not to show them to the sky. Of animals, man alone has them distorted, whence the surnames Strabo and Paetus. Those among them who were born without one eye were called Cocles; those with both small, Ocellae; those who had lost an eye by injury had the surname Luscinus.
151| In nocturnal animals, such as cats, the eyes gleam and shine in the dark so that one cannot look at them; the goat and the wolf also have bright eyes and shoot out light. The eyes of seals and hyenas keep passing into a thousand colors. Even in the dark the eyes of many fish shine back, like dry sturdy logs and those rotten with age. We have said that those creatures do not blink which see not with sidelong eyes but by turning the head around.
152| They say the eyes of the chameleon are wholly turned round. Crabs look sideways, carrying their eyes enclosed in a fragile shell. In locusts and shrimps, for the most part, they project, very hard, under the same protection. Those whose eyes are hard see less than those whose eyes are moist. Of the young of serpents and the chicks of swallows, they say that if someone puts out their eyes, they grow again.
153| The eyes of all insects and of shell-covered creatures are movable, as the ears of four-footed animals. Those with fragile coverings have hard eyes. All such creatures, both fish and insects, have no eyelids and do not cover their eyes. Over them in all a membrane, transparent like glass, is stretched.
154| Man has eyelashes on both lids, in women even stained daily with dye: such is the striving after beauty that even the eyes are tinted. Nature had given them for another reason, as a kind of palisade of the sight and a projecting defense against creatures running at it or other things that fall upon it by chance. They say, not undeservedly, that they fall out in those who indulge excessively in Venus.
155| The rest have none, except those that have hairs on the remainder of their body; but four-footed animals have it only on the upper lid, birds on the lower, and also those with a soft hide, like serpents, and four-footed animals which lay eggs, like lizards. The ostrich alone among birds has eyelashes on both lids, like man.
156| Not even lids are possessed by all. Therefore there is no winking except in those that bring forth live young; the heavier birds close the eye with the lower lid, and the same wink from the corners, a membrane passing over. Doves and the like close both; but the four-footed that lay eggs, as tortoises and crocodiles, only the lower, without any winking, because of the very hard eyes.
157| The outer edge of the upper lid the ancients called cilium, whence also supercilia. This, when parted by some wound, does not grow together, as is the case in few members of the human body. Below the eyes are the cheekbones, in man only, which the ancients called genae, the interdict of the Twelve Tables forbidding women to scratch them. This is the seat of shame: there redness is chiefly displayed.
158| Below these are the cheeks, which show cheerfulness and laughter, and the higher nose, in man only, which newer manners have dedicated to crafty mockery. In no other animals do nostrils project: in birds, serpents and fish there are only openings for smelling, without nostrils, and hence the surnames Simi and Silones. In those born in the seventh month the openings of ears and nostrils have often been lacking.
159| The lips, from which the Brocchi and Labeones are named, and the mouth are good in those that bring forth live young, and rather hard. In place of these, birds have horny and sharp beaks, the same hooked in those that live by plunder, straight in those that gather, broad in those that root up herbs and mud, as also in the race of swine; in beasts of burden they serve in place of hands for gathering food. The mouths of those that live by tearing are more open. A chin is for no one except man, nor cheeks. The crocodile alone moves the upper jaw; land four-footed animals move it in the same way as the rest, and besides sideways.
160| There are three kinds of teeth: serrated, continuous, or projecting. Serrated ones close together like a comb, so that they are not worn down by meeting in opposition, as in serpents, fish, dogs; continuous, as in man, the horse; projecting, as in the boar, the hippopotamus, the elephant. Of the continuous, those which divide food are broad and sharp, those which finish it are double; those which separate them are called canine: these are the longest in the serrated.
161| Those that are continuous either run along both jaws of the mouth, as with the horse, or else lack front teeth in the upper jaw, as in oxen, sheep and all that chew the cud. Goats have no upper teeth except two front ones. None with serrated teeth has projecting ones; rarely females, and then without use. So when boars strike, the female swine bite.
162| No animal with horns has projecting teeth, but all have hollow ones; the rest have solid teeth. Of fish all have serrated, except the scarus; in this alone of water creatures they are flat. Moreover, in many of them there are teeth on the tongue and all over the mouth, so that by a crowd of wounds they soften what they cannot subdue by grinding, and in many on the palate [and even on the tail], besides turned toward the mouth, lest food fall out, since they have no means of holding it.
163| They are like those of the asp and serpents, but two in the upper part, right and left, very long, bored through with a slender tube, like the stings of scorpions, pouring in venom. The most careful authors write that this is nothing other than the gall of serpents, and that from it veins run under the spine to the mouth; some say there is one such tooth and that, because it is hooked, the snake turns on its back after biting; some that it then falls out and grows again, easily shaken off, and that those we see handled are without it. It is in the scorpion's tail, and in most there are three.
164| In vipers the teeth are hidden in the gums. The viper, pregnant with the same poison, pours out the venom in biting by the pressing back of the teeth. Of birds none has teeth, except the bat. The camel, one of those that are not horned, has no front teeth in the upper jaw. None of those that have horns has serrated teeth. Snails also have teeth. The proof is that vetch is gnawed even by the smallest of them.
165| But in marine creatures, that crustaceans and cartilaginous fish have front teeth, and that sea urchins have five, I wonder how it could have been learned. In place of teeth insects have a sting. Apes have teeth like man. The elephant has four inside for chewing, and besides these there project tusks, in males bent back, in females straight and pointing forward. The sea mouse, which goes before the whale, has none, but in place of them has a mouth bristling with hairs inside, and also the tongue and palate. Of small four-footed land animals, there are two front teeth on each side, very long.
166| In the rest they are born with the animal, in man after birth in the seventh month. In others they remain permanent; they are changed in man, lion, beast of burden, dog and ruminants, but in the lion and dog only those called canine. The right canine of the wolf is held to be of great efficacy. Molars, which come after the canines, no animal changes. In man the last, which are called genuine, are born about the twentieth year, in many at the eightieth, in women also, but in those in whom they were not born in youth.
167| It is certain that they fall out in old age and soon grow again. Zocles of Samothrace, whose teeth grew again after 103 years, was seen by Mucianus, who has reported it. Otherwise males have more than females, in man, sheep, goat, swine. Timarchus, son of Nicocles, at Paphos had two rows of molars; his brother did not change his front teeth and therefore wore them away. There is an example of a tooth born in a man even in the palate. Teeth lost from the canines by some accident never grow again. In the rest they turn reddish in old age; in the horse alone they grow whiter.
168| The age of beasts of burden is judged by the teeth. The horse has 40. At the thirtieth month it loses the two front teeth on each side, the next year as many next to them, when the so-called columellares come in; at the beginning of the fifth year it loses two, which grow again in the sixth year; in the seventh it has all of them, regrown and unchangeable.
169| In a gelded horse the teeth do not fall earlier. The race of asses loses them similarly at the thirtieth month, then at six-month intervals. If they have not foaled before the last ones fall, sterility is certain. Oxen change at two years. In swine they never fall. When this observation fails, old age in horses and other beasts of burden is recognized by projecting teeth, whitening of the eyebrows and hollows around them, when they are reckoned at about 16 years.
170| There is a certain venom in the teeth of men; for when bared they dim the brightness of a mirror held before them, and they kill unfeathered young doves. The rest about them has been said in the account of the generation of men. At their breaking through diseases seize the bodies of infants; the other animals that have serrated teeth cut them most painfully.
171| Tongues are not alike in all. The thinnest is in serpents, and three-forked, quivering, of dark color and, if you draw it out, very long; in lizards forked and hairy, and in seals also double, but of the hair-like thinness mentioned. In the rest it serves to lick around the mouth; in fish it adheres a little less than entirely, in crocodiles entirely; but for tasting, in place of the tongue, water creatures have a fleshy palate.
172| In lions, leopards and all of that kind, even cats, it is rough like overlapping scales and like a file, and by licking wears away the skin of man, which is the reason that even when tamed, once saliva reaches the neighboring blood, it provokes them to rage. We have spoken of the tongues of the purpurae.
173| In frogs the tongue is attached at the front, free at the back toward the throat, with which the males send out their voice when they are called ololygones. This happens at a fixed time, as they stir the females to mating. For then, with the lower lip let down to the level of the water, and a little water taken into the throat, the tongue quivers there and a wailing is squeezed out. Then the stretched pouches of the cheeks are translucent, and the eyes blaze, driven by the effort. Those with stings in the hind part have also teeth and a tongue, in bees even very long, and projecting in cicadas. Those that have a hollow sting in the mouth possess neither tongue nor teeth. In some insects the tongue is inside, as in ants; for the rest it is hidden, especially in the elephant.
174| In the rest it is always complete in its kind; in man alone it is so often bound by veins that they must be cut. We are told that the pontifex Metellus was so impeded in speech that he is believed to have been tormented for many months while he practised saying 'to Ops Opifera' for the dedication of her temple. In the others speech comes out about the seventh year. Many, however, have such a skill with it that an indiscriminate imitation of the voices of birds and animals is produced. In the rest the perception of flavors is in the front of the tongue; in man also in the palate.
175| Man has tonsils, the pig glands. What hangs between them at the end of the palate, under the name of uvula, is found in man only. Beneath it is a smaller tongue, in no creature that lays eggs. Its work is double, set between two pipes. The inner of these is called the arteria,
176| reaching to the lung and heart; this it covers during eating, while breath and voice pass through that one, lest if drink or food should stray into a foreign path, it should cause torment. The other, outer, may well be called the gula, by which food and drink fall down. It runs to the stomachus, and that to the belly. This it covers in turn when only breath or voice is passing, so that an untimely backflow from the belly may not interfere. The arteria consists of cartilage and flesh, the gula of sinew and flesh.
177| A cervix belongs to none except those which have both of these; the rest have a collum, those that have only the gula. But those that have a cervix, it is made flexible for looking around of many bones, vertebrate and round, and joined by knots of joints; only in the lion, wolf and hyena it is stiff with single straight bones.
178| For the rest it is joined to the spine, the spine to the loins, bony, but of rounded structure, with the marrow descending from the brain through the openings in the middle. They conclude that its nature is the same as the brain's, since if it is cut only through its very thin membrane the animal at once expires. Those with long legs have long necks, and likewise water birds, though they have short legs, and similarly hooked claws.
179| The throat swells in man only and in swine, mostly from a fault of the waters that are drunk. The upper end of the gula is called the fauces, the lower end the stomachus. By this name is meant the fleshy hollow beneath the arteria, attached to the spine, spread out in breadth and length like a flask.
180| Those that have no fauces have no stomachus either, nor neck, nor throat, as fish, and their mouths are joined to the belly. The sea tortoise has no tongue or teeth: it crushes everything with the edge of its beak. Afterwards the arteria and the stomachus, toothed with a callus in the manner of a bramble, for finishing the food, the notches diminishing toward whatever approaches the belly; the last part is rough like a smith's rasp.
181| In other animals the heart lies in the centre of the chest; in man alone it is below the left nipple, projecting forward with a spiral point. In fish alone it faces the mouth. They say this is the first thing formed in the newly conceived in the womb, then the brain, just as the eyes are formed most slowly, but these die first, the heart last. It has a special warmth. It certainly throbs and moves like a second animal within the animal, covered with a very soft and firm envelope of membrane, and protected by the wall of the ribs and breast, so that it may produce the chief cause and origin of life.
182| It gives a first dwelling within itself to the mind and blood, in a winding cavern, triple in large animals, double in all the rest. There the mind lives. From this source two great veins run to the front and back, and in a scattered series of branches, through others smaller, water all the members with the vital blood. This alone of the viscera is not wasted by diseases, and does not drag out the pains of life; when injured it brings death at once. When the rest are corrupted, vitality remains in the heart.
183| Animals are thought dull in which it is hard and stiff, bold in which it is small, timid in which it is very large. In proportion it is largest in mice, the hare, ass, stag and panther, weasels, hyenas, and all that are timid or harmful through fear. In Paphlagonia partridges have two hearts. In the heart of horses and oxen bones are sometimes found.
184| The Egyptians, who have the custom of preserving embalmed corpses, hold that it increases in man each year, and that two drachmas are added to its weight up to the fiftieth year, and as much is taken off after that, and that for this reason a man does not live beyond the hundredth year, through failure of the heart.
185| It is reported that some men are born with a hairy heart, and that no others are of stronger energy, such as Aristomenes the Messenian, who killed three hundred Lacedaemonians. Himself wounded all over and captured once, he escaped through a cave of the stone quarries by the narrow ways, following the passage of foxes. Captured a second time, while the guards were asleep he rolled himself to the fire and burned through the thongs along with his body. When he was captured a third time, the Lacedaemonians cut open the chest of the living man, and the heart was found hairy.
186| At the top of the heart there is a certain fatness in favorable entrails. It was not always, however, counted among the parts of the entrails. In the time of Lucius Postumius Albinus, son of Lucius, the rex sacrorum, after the 126th Olympiad, once King Pyrrhus had left Italy, the haruspices began to inspect the heart in the entrails. For Caesar the dictator, on the day when he first went forth in a purple robe and sat on a golden chair, the heart was missing from the entrails when he sacrificed. Hence a great question about divination among those arguing whether the victim was able to live without that viscus or had lost it only for the time.
187| It is said that it cannot be burned in those who have died of heart disease, and also not in those killed by poison. At any rate there survives a speech of Vitellius in which he charges Gnaeus Piso with that crime, using this argument and openly testifying that the heart of Germanicus Caesar could not be burned on account of poison. Piso, on the other hand, was defended by the kind of disease.
188| Beneath the heart is the lung, the workshop of breathing, drawing in and giving back the breath, and therefore spongy and hollow with empty pipes. Few water creatures have it, as has been said; the others that lay eggs have a small one, frothy and bloodless. Therefore they do not thirst. This is also the reason why frogs and seals dive for long under water. The tortoise also, though it has a very large one under the whole covering, has it without blood. The smaller this is in bodies, the greater the speed. The chameleon has it largest in proportion and nothing else inside.
189| The liver lies on the right side, in what they call the head of the entrails, of great variety. For Marcus Marcellus, near his death, when he perished at the hands of Hannibal, it was missing in the entrails; on the next day a double one was found. It was missing for Gaius Marius when he sacrificed at Utica, likewise for the emperor Gaius on the Kalends of January when he entered on the consulship in the year he was killed, and for Claudius his successor in the month in which he was killed by poison.
190| For the deified Augustus, sacrificing at Spoletium on the first day of his power, the livers of six victims were found folded back inward from the lowest fibre, and the answer was given that he would double his empire within a year. A head of the entrails found cut is also a sad portent, except in times of anxiety and fear; for then it cuts away cares. Hares have two livers around Briletum and Tharne and in the Chersonese on the Propontis, and, a marvel, if carried elsewhere, one of them perishes.
191| In the same place is the gall, not given to all animals. At Chalcis in Euboea sheep have none; in Naxos it is very large and double, so that either is an omen to a stranger. Horses, mules, asses, stags, roe deer, boars, camels, dolphins do not have it. Some mice have it. In men few lack it, and those enjoy firm health and a longer life.
192| There are those who think that in the horse it is not in the liver but in the belly, and in the stag in the tail or in the intestines; and that these parts are therefore so bitter that dogs leave them untouched. It is nothing else than a refuse, and the worst of the blood, and for that reason in the matter of it. At any rate a liver belongs only to creatures that have blood. It receives this from the heart, to which it is joined, and pours it into the veins.
193| But in black gall lies the cause of madness in man, and death when all of it is brought up. Hence a charge against character too under the name of bile: so great is the venom in this part when it pours itself over the mind. Indeed, wandering through the whole body, it takes the color from the eyes as well, and indeed when it is brought up it does this even to bronze vessels, and things touched by it grow black, so that no one may wonder that it is the poison of serpents.
194| (Those that feed on absinthium in Pontus lack it.) But in birds it is attached by another part to the intestine in ravens, quails, pheasants; in some only to the intestine, as in doves, the hawk, the muraena; in few birds to the liver. In serpents it is most plentiful in proportion.
195| And in fish it is also along the whole intestine in most, as in the hawk and the kite; besides it is also in the liver, as in all cetaceans. In seals indeed it is famous for many uses. From the gall of bulls a golden color is obtained. The haruspices dedicated it to Neptune and the power of moisture, and it was double for the deified Augustus on the day he conquered at Actium.
196| In the little livers of mice, the fibres are said to agree with the number of the moon in the month, and as many are found as the moon's light is old, and besides to increase at midwinter. The entrails of rabbits in Baetica are often found double. In the frogs called rubetae, one lobe is not touched by ants, because of the poison, as they think. That the liver is the organ most able to bear age, lasting a hundred years each, the examples of sieges have recorded.
197| The entrails of serpents and lizards are long. It is related that to Caecina of Volaterrae snakes darted forth from the entrails, as a happy portent, and surely nothing will be incredible to those who consider that on the day King Pyrrhus died the severed heads of victims crawled, licking their own blood. In a human being the entrails are set apart from the lower viscera by a membrane which they call praecordia, because it is stretched in front of the heart, what the Greeks have called phrenes.
198| Nature, in her foresight, enclosed all the principal viscera in their own membranes, like sheaths; in this one there was a special reason as well, the neighborhood of the belly, lest the mind be oppressed by food. To this, at any rate, the subtlety of mind that we receive is ascribed; therefore it has no flesh, but a sinewy slenderness. In the same is the chief seat of cheerfulness, which is understood most from the tickling of the armpits, to which it rises, the human skin being thinner nowhere else and therefore the pleasure of scratching nearest there. For this reason in battles and gladiatorial shows pierced praecordia have brought death with laughter.
199| Below lies the belly in those that have a stomach; in the rest it is single, in ruminants double, in those lacking blood there is none. For in some the intestine beginning at the mouth is bent back to the same place, as in the cuttlefish and the polypus. In man it is joined to the lowest part of the stomach and is like the dog's. In these alone of animals it is narrower at the lower part; and so these alone vomit, because when it is full, food is held back by the narrowness, which cannot happen in those whose roomy looseness sends it on to the lower parts.
200| From this stomach come the lactes in the sheep and in man, through which the food glides, and in the others the hillae, from which the more capacious intestines lead to the belly, in man in the most winding coils. Therefore those are more greedy for food in which the distance from the belly is longer. Likewise those with the fattest belly are less clever. Some birds also have two pouches: one in which they swallow fresh food, like a throat, another into which they release it from the first when digestion is ripened, as hens, wood pigeons, doves, partridges.
201| Most of the others lack it but use a wider gullet, as jackdaws, ravens, crows. Some use neither, but have the belly close by, those with very long, narrow necks, as the porphyrio. The belly of solid-hoofed animals is rough and hard; in some land animals it has a toothed roughness, in others a latticed bite, in those that have teeth on neither side nor chew the cud. Here the food is finished, and from here it slips down into the lower belly.
202| The middle part of this, attached to the navel in all, in man like that of the pig in its lowest part, is called by the Greeks the colon, where there is a great cause of pains. It is narrowest in dogs, which is why they relieve it with violent effort and not without torture. Insatiable are the animals in which the food goes straight on from the stomach into a straight intestine, as the lupi cervarii, and among birds the diving birds.
203| The elephant has four stomachs, the rest like those of swine, the lung four times larger than an ox's. In birds the stomach is fleshy and callous. In the stomach of swallow chicks are found little stones of white or reddish color, which are called chelidonii, told of in the magical arts; and in the second stomach of heifers a blackish tuff of the roundness of a ball, without weight, a singular remedy, as they think, for women in difficult labor, if it has not touched the ground.
204| The stomach and the intestines are covered by a fatty and thin omentum, except in those that lay eggs. To this is attached the spleen on the left side, opposite the liver, with which it sometimes changes its place, but as a prodigy. Some think it is present in those that lay eggs, and likewise in serpents, quite small. So at any rate it is seen in the tortoise and crocodile and lizards and frogs. It is agreed that it is not found in the aegocephalus bird, nor in those that lack blood.
205| A peculiar hindrance to running is sometimes in it, for which reason it is reduced in racers who suffer from it. And they report that animals live even when it is taken out through a wound. There are those who think that laughter is taken away with it in man, and that his lack of restraint depends on the size of the spleen. A region of Asia is called Scepsis, in which they say flocks have the smallest, and that remedies for the spleen are brought from there.
206| But at Briletum and Tharne stags have four kidneys each; on the contrary, winged and scaly creatures have none. For the rest, they are attached to the uppermost part of the loins. The right in all is higher and less fatty and drier. In each the fat comes out from the middle, except in the seal. Animals are fattest about the kidneys; sheep in fact die when the fat gathers thickly around them. Sometimes little stones are found in them. All four-footed animals that bring forth live young have kidneys; of egg-layers the tortoise alone, which has all the other viscera too, but, like man, it has them similar to those of oxen, as though composed of many kidneys.
207| The breast, that is the bones, nature placed around the praecordia and vital parts, but took them from the belly, which had to grow: in no animal are there bones around the belly. Only man has a broad breast; in the rest it is keeled, more so in birds, and among them most in the water birds. Man has eight ribs on each side, swine ten, horned animals 13, serpents 30.
208| Below the belly, in the front part, is the bladder, which none of the egg-layers has except the tortoise, nor any that does not have a bloody lung, nor any lacking feet. Between it and the belly run vessels reaching to the groin, which are called ilia. In the wolf's bladder there is a small stone named syrites, but in some men there are stones continually born with dreadful torture, and hair-like threads of bristle. The bladder consists of a membrane which, when wounded, does not close with a scar, nor does that which wraps the brain or heart; for there are several kinds of membranes.
209| Females have all the same, and besides a little bag joined to the bladder, whence it is called uterus. This, which by another name they call loci, is called volva in the other animals; this in the viper, and in those that give birth within themselves, is double; in egg-layers it is attached to the praecordia, and in a woman it has twin pouches on each side of the flanks, deadly whenever it is turned and shuts in the breath.
210| They deny that cows carry a pregnancy except in the right pouch of the volva, even when they bear twins. The volva of a sow that has cast her litter is better than that of one that has given birth: the one is called eiecticia, the other porcaria. The best is of a sow with her first litter, the worst of those worn out. After farrowing, except on the same day, it is livid and lean when the sow is killed.
211| Nor is that of young sows approved, except those with a first litter, but rather of old ones, provided they are not worn out, nor two days before farrowing nor after farrowing nor on the day they have cast the litter. Nearest to the eiecticia is that of a sow killed one day after farrowing. Its udder too is best, provided the young have not drawn upon it; that of the eiecticia is the worst. The ancients called the abdomen so before it grew callous, not being accustomed to kill pregnant sows.
212| Horned animals, toothed on one side, and those that have ankle bones in the feet, grow fat with tallow; cloven-footed animals, or those with feet split into toes and not horned, with lard. This is hard and, when it has cooled, brittle, and always at the edge of the flesh; the fat between flesh and skin, on the other hand, is liquid with juice. Some do not grow fat, as the hare and partridge. All fat animals, both males and females, are more sterile; they also age faster when very fat. All animals have a certain fat in the eyes.
213| Lard is without feeling in all, because it has neither arteries nor veins. In most animals the fat too is without feeling; which is why they say swine were gnawed by mice while still breathing, and indeed that fat was removed from the son of Lucius Apronius, a man of consular rank, and his body relieved of an immovable burden.
214| Marrow seems to be of the same stuff, red in youth, whitening in old age. It is only in hollow bones, not in the shin bones of beasts of burden or dogs; which is why they are not welded when broken, because the marrow flows out. It is fatty in those that have lard, tallowy in horned animals, sinewy in the spine alone of the back in those that have no bones, such as the race of fishes; bears have none, and in the lion there is very little, in a few bones of the thighs and arms; the rest are of such hardness that fire is struck out of them as from flint.
215| And in those that do not grow fat they are hard; those of asses are tuneful for making pipes. Dolphins have bones, not spines, for they bring forth live young; serpents have spines. The soft water creatures have none, but a body bound with circles of flesh, as the cuttlefish and squid. And insects are said to have none either. The cartilaginous water creatures have marrow in the spine; seals have cartilage, not bones.
216| Likewise the ears and nostrils of all, which merely project, are of pliant softness, by the foresight of nature, that they should not be broken. Cartilage once broken does not become solid, nor do severed bones grow again, except in beasts of burden from the hoof to the pastern [….]. Man grows in length up to three times seven years, then afterwards to fullness. But especially at puberty a certain knot is felt to be loosened, and chiefly through sickness.
217| The sinews, beginning from the heart and even wound around the ox's, have a similar nature and cause, attached to all the slippery bones, and binding the knots of the body, which are called joints, in one place by intervening, in another by encircling, in another by passing through, here round, there broad, as each shape requires.
218| Nor do these become solid when cut, and, a marvel, the pain is greatest when they are wounded, none when they are severed. Some animals are without sinews, as fish, for they consist of arteries; but neither have the soft creatures of the race of fishes. Where there are sinews, the inner ones draw the limbs together, the outer ones pull them back.
219| Among these lie hidden the arteries, that is, the paths of breath; veins swim along them, that is, streams of blood. The beat of the arteries is most evident at the extremities of the limbs, almost an index of diseases, arranged by Herophilus, prophet of medicine, with wonderful skill into fixed measures and metrical laws according to age, steady or quick or slow; abandoned because of its excessive subtlety, yet by the observation of a frequent or languid stroke it steers the helm of life.
220| The arteries lack feeling, for they lack blood too. Nor do all contain the vital breath, and when severed only that part of the body grows numb. Birds have neither veins nor arteries, and likewise serpents, tortoises, lizards, and have very little blood. The veins, scattered under the whole skin in the end into very thin fringes, are drawn out into such narrow fineness that blood cannot penetrate, but only a moisture driven out from it, which at the innumerable tips is called sweat. At the navel is the knot and meeting of the veins.
221| Those in whom the blood is plentiful and thick are quick to anger. In males it is darker than in females, and in youth than in age, and thicker in the lower part. A great part of vitality is in it. When let out it draws breath with it, yet it does not feel touch. Among animals the stronger are those with thicker blood, the wiser those with thinner, the more timid those with the least or none.
222| The blood of bulls coagulates most quickly and hardens, and for that reason is deadly to drink; next that of boars, but in stags, roe deer and buffaloes it is not thickened at all. It is thickest in asses, thinnest in man. In those with more than four feet there is none. In fat animals it is less abundant, since it is consumed by the fat.
223| A flow of it occurs in men alone among males, in others from one nostril or both, in some through the lower parts, in many through the mouth at a fixed time, as lately with Macrinus Viscus, a man of praetorian rank, and every year with Volusius Saturninus, prefect of the city, who passed even his ninetieth year. This alone in the body feels a temporary increase, if indeed victims pour out more abundantly if they have drunk first.
224| The animals which we said lie hidden at fixed times have no blood then, except very small drops around the heart, by a wonderful work of nature, just as in man its force is changed at the smallest moments, not only by sleep, when it is suffused with less material, but according to each state of mind, in shame, anger, fear, with pallor in several ways, and likewise with redness: for one is the redness of anger and another of modesty.
225| For in fear it is certain that it retreats and is nowhere, and in many pierced through it does not flow, which happens only to man. For those which we said change color receive an alien one by a kind of reflection; man alone changes in himself. All diseases and death consume the blood.
226| There are those who think that the subtlety of mind depends not on thinness of blood but that creatures are more or less dull according to the skin and coverings of their bodies, like oysters and tortoises; that the hides of oxen and the bristles of swine stand in the way of the fineness of the breath that passes in, so that it does not pass through pure and clear; so also in man, when a thicker or more callous skin shuts it out: as if indeed the crocodile were not credited with both hardness of back and cleverness.
227| The hide of the hippopotamus is of such thickness that spear-shafts are turned on the lathe from it, and yet it has a certain medical diligence by its own wit. The hides of elephants also are impenetrable shields, though the subtlety of mind in them is reported as the foremost of all four-footed animals. Therefore the skin itself lacks feeling, most of all on the head. Wherever it is by itself and without flesh, when wounded it does not close, as in the cheek and the eyelid.
228| Creatures that bring forth live young have hair; those that lay eggs have feathers or scales or a shell, like tortoises, or a bare skin, like serpents. The quills of all feathers are hollow. Cut off they do not grow, torn out they are born again. Insects fly with fragile membranes, swallows with moist ones over the sea, with dry ones among houses. The wings of bats also have joints.
229| Hairs coming out of a thick skin are bristly, in females finer; in horses they are abundant in the mane, in the lion on the shoulders, in the dasypus both inside the cheeks and under the feet, both of which Trogus reported also in the hare, inferring from this example that hairy men too are more lustful. The hare is the most shaggy of animals.
230| Man alone comes to puberty, and if it does not occur he is sterile in begetting, whether male or female. Hairs in man are produced partly at once, partly later. These are not born in the castrated, and the congenital ones do not cease, as in women not greatly either; yet some are found weak through baldness of the head, as also the down on the face when the monthly courses have stopped. In some they are not born of their own accord after begetting. In four-footed animals the shedding and growing again of hair is annual.
231| In men they grow chiefly in the hair of the head, soon in the beard. When cut they do not grow from the cut, as plants and the rest do, but come out from the root. They grow also in certain diseases, especially consumption, and in old age, even in dead bodies. In the lustful the congenital ones fall out earlier, the added ones grow faster. In four-footed animals in old age they thicken and the wool thins. The backs of four-footed animals are hairy, the bellies smooth. (Glue is boiled out of the hides of oxen, and that of bulls is the best.)
232| Man alone among males has breasts; the other animals have only marks of breasts. But not even the females have them on the chest, except those who can raise their offspring. None of the egg-layers has any, nor milk, except an animal that gives birth. Of birds only the bat; for I think it fabulous about the screech owls, that they give their breasts to the lips of infants. That the strix was among curses already in antiquity is agreed, but which of the birds it is, I do not think established.
233| In asses the teats are sore after foaling, and so they drive off their young in the sixth month, whereas mares give suck almost the whole year. Those with a solid hoof, not above twin births, all have two teats, and not elsewhere than in the groin. In the same place those that are cloven-hoofed and horned, cows four, sheep and goats two. Those that are fruitful with a numerous litter and have toes on their feet have more, and on the whole belly in a double row, like swine, the well-bred twelve, the common two fewer; similarly dogs. Others have four in the middle of the belly, as panthers, others two, as lionesses. The elephant has only two, under the shoulders, not on the breast but further back, hidden in the armpits. None of those with toes has them in the groin.
234| In each litter the sows offer the first teats to the first born, those nearest the throat, and each one knows its own by the order of its birth, and is fed from it and from no other. If its nursling is taken away, that teat at once becomes barren and shrinks back; if one is left out of the whole crowd, only the teat which had been assigned to the one born hangs and gives.
235| Bears bear four teats, dolphins only two papillae in the lowest belly, not conspicuous, and extended a little sideways. No other animal is licked at the run. Whales also and seals nourish their young with their breasts.
236| In a woman the milk flowing before the seventh month is useless; from that month, when births are viable, it is wholesome. In most it flows from the whole breasts and even from the hollow of the armpits. Camels have milk until they are again with young. It is thought most sweet at one measure with three of water added. The cow has none before calving, and at the first after the birth it is always colostra, which, unless water is mixed in, comes together in a hardness like pumice. Pregnant asses become milky at once. For their foals, where the pasture is rich, to taste the mother's milk within two days of the birth is fatal.
237| This kind of evil is called colostration. Cheese is not made from animals toothed on both sides, since their milk does not curdle. The thinnest is that of camels, next of horses, the thickest of the ass, so that they use it in place of rennet.
238| It is thought to contribute something to the whiteness of women's skin. Poppaea, wife of Domitius Nero, at any rate, dragging along five hundred nursing she-asses everywhere with her, even in the bath tub macerated her whole body in that milk, believing that it also stretched the skin. All milk is thickened by fire, and seethes with moisture. Ox milk is more fertile for cheese than goat's, from the same measure almost twice as much. Those that have more than four teats are useless for cheese, and better those that have two.
239| The rennet of a fawn, a hare, a kid is praised, but that of the dasypus is outstanding, which also cures looseness of the bowels, being the only one of animals toothed on both sides. It is a wonder that barbarous peoples, who live on milk, for so many ages have not known or have scorned the gift of cheese, thickening it otherwise into a pleasant sourness and rich butter. It is the froth of milk, thicker and stickier than what is called whey. It must not be omitted that there is in it the force of oil, and that all barbarians and our own infants are anointed with it.
240| Cheese is praised at Rome, where the goods of all nations are judged at close quarters; among those from the provinces that of Nemausus is the best, from the districts of Lesura and Gabali, but its recommendation is brief and only while fresh. The Alps approve their pastures with two kinds: the Dalmatian sends the Docleatic, the Ceutronian the Vatusican. More numerous are those of the Apennine:
241| This sends the Cebanum from Liguria, made chiefly from the milk of sheep, the Sassinas from Umbria, and from the mixed boundary of Etruria and Liguria the Luniensis, conspicuous for its size, since it is pressed even to a thousand pounds each; nearest to the city is the Vestine, which, from the Caedician plain, is the most praised. Flocks of goats too have their praise, especially fresh, when smoke increases the favor, such as is made in the city itself, to be preferred to all; for the taste of the Gallic ones has the force of a drug. Across the seas the Bithynian is generally in glory.
242| That there is salt in the pastures, even where it is not given, is best understood in this way: all cheese in aging turns to salt, and it is certain that such cheeses return to a fresh taste when steeped in vinegar and thyme. They say that Zoroaster lived in the deserts on cheese for 20 years, so tempered that he did not feel age.
243| Among land animals man alone is two-footed. Man alone has jugula and shoulders; the others have armi; man alone has forearms. In those animals that have hands, they are fleshy only on the inside, outside they consist of sinews and skin.
244| Some have six fingers on their hands. We are told that two daughters of Marcus Coranus, of patrician stock, were for that reason called Sedigitae, as was Volcacius Sedigitus, famous in poetry. A man's fingers have three joints apiece, the thumb two; and it bends in opposition to all the fingers, and by itself extends sideways, thicker than the rest. The smallest is equal to it in measure, and the other two to each other, between which the middle one extends the farthest. Four-footed animals that live by plunder have five toes on the front feet, four on the rest.
245| Lions, wolves, dogs, the panther have five claws on the hind feet also, with one hanging near the joint of the leg; the rest, which are smaller, have also five toes. Arms are not equal to each other in all. It is known that Studiosus, a Thracian in the gladiatorial school of Gaius Caesar, had a longer right arm. Some animals use their forefeet as hands in service and sit bringing food to the mouth with them, as squirrels.
246| For the kinds of apes contain a perfect imitation of man in the face, nostrils, ears, eyelids, which they alone of four-footed animals have on the lower lid also, and then breasts on the chest and arms and legs bent in the opposite direction in the same way, nails on the hands, fingers and a longer middle one. In the feet they differ a little; for they are very long like hands, but make a track like a palm. They have a thumb and joints as man does, and besides the genitals, and these in males only, all the inner organs also after the pattern.
247| Nails are considered the final closings of the sinews. All have them that have fingers. But in apes they are overlapping, in men broad, and they grow even after death; in the rapacious hooked, in the rest straight, as in dogs, except the one that hangs from the leg in most.
248| All that have feet have toes, except the elephant; for his are shapeless, five in number indeed, but undivided and slightly separated and like hooves, not nails, and the front feet are larger, in the hind feet the joints short. He also bends the hams inward like a man, whereas the other animals bend the hind feet in the opposite direction to the front. For those that bring forth live young bend the knees forward and the joints of the pasterns backward.
249| In man the knees and elbows are opposed, likewise in bears and the race of apes, which are therefore the least swift. In egg-laying four-footed animals, the crocodile and the lizards, the front knees bend backward, the hind ones forward. And their legs are oblique, like the human thumb. So also in many-footed creatures, except that the last leap. Birds, like four-footed animals, bend the wings forward, the pastern backward.
250| In man's knees there is also something of religious awe, by the observance of nations. These suppliants touch, to these they stretch their hands, these they adore like altars, perhaps because vitality is in them. For in the very joint of the knee, on right and left, at the front there is a certain twin hollowness of cheeks, by piercing which the breath flows out as from a throat. There is some religious awe in other parts as well, as in the right hand: its back is sought for kisses, and it is held out in pledge of good faith.
251| For the ancients of Greece it was the custom, when supplicating, to touch the chin. There is a seat of memory at the bottom of the ear, which we touch as we call witnesses; behind the right ear, likewise, is the place of Nemesis, a goddess who has found no Latin name even on the Capitol; to it we carry the finger next to the smallest after touching it to the mouth, depositing there with the gods the pardon for what we have said.
252| Varicose veins in the legs belong to men only, rarely to a woman. Oppius is the authority that Gaius Marius, who was consul seven times, was the only man who allowed one to be drawn out while he stood.
253| All animals advance on the right parts and lie on the left. The rest walk as they please; the lion alone and the camel go foot by foot, that is, so that the left foot does not pass the right but follows it. Man has the largest feet, and in every kind the female has thinner ones. Calves and legs are fleshy in man only. It is found in authors that a certain man in Egypt had no calves. The hollow of the sole is man's alone, with some exceptions.
254| For from this too the surnames Plancus, Plautus, Pansa, Scaurus have been found, as from the legs Varus, Vatia, Vatinus, faults which occur in four-footed animals also. Those that are not horned have solid hooves; therefore the blow of the hoof is their weapon in place of horns. The same have no ankle bones, but those that are cloven-hoofed have them. Those with toes have none, nor does any at all in the front feet. The camel's ankle bones are like those of oxen, but a little smaller; for it is cloven by a small division; the foot in its track is fleshy, like a bear's, for which reason on a longer journey without shoes they grow weary.
255| Hooves grow again only in the race of beasts of burden. Swine in certain places in Illyricum have solid hooves. Horned animals are generally cloven-hoofed; none has a solid hoof and two horns; the Indian ass alone has one horn; the oryx has one horn and is cloven-hoofed. The Indian ass alone of solid-hoofed animals has ankle bones, for swine are held to belong to both kinds, and for that reason their ankle bones are foul. Those who believed that man has them were easily refuted. The lynx alone of those with toes has something like an ankle bone; the lion has it even more twisted. The ankle bone is straight in the joint of the foot, projecting with a hollow belly, bound to the vertebra.
256| Of birds some are digitate, some web-footed, some between the two, with the toes divided and a breadth added. But all have four toes, three in front, one behind at the heel. Some long-legged birds lack this one. The iynx alone has two on each side; the same stretches out a tongue like a serpent's to a great length; it turns its neck round toward its back; its claws are large, like jackdaws'.
257| In some of the heavier birds spurs are added on the legs; none of those with hooked claws has them. Long-legged birds fly with the legs stretched out to the tail; those with short ones, drawn up to the middle. Those who deny that any bird is without feet affirm that the apodes have them, and show also the drepanis, which of these appears very rarely. (Serpents have also been seen with goose feet.)
258| The first feet of insects are longer in those having hard eyes, so that they repeatedly wipe them with their feet, as we note in flies. Those among them that have the last feet long leap, as locusts. All of these have six feet. In some spiders two very long ones are added. Each has three joints. We have said that sea creatures also have eight: polypi, cuttlefish, squid, crabs, which move their arms in the opposite direction, their feet in a circle or sideways; these are the only animals that are round.
259| The rest have two feet leading, crabs alone four. Those that are worms have not fewer than twelve, and some a hundred each. No animal has an odd number of feet.
260| The legs of solid-hoofed animals are born at once of full measure, afterwards extending themselves rather than growing. And so in infancy they scratch their ears with the hind feet, which with added age they cannot, because length enlarges only the surface of the bodies. For this reason at the beginning they cannot graze except with the knees bent, nor until the neck reaches its proper growth. A race of dwarfs exists in all animals, and even among birds.
261| The genitals of males, in those in which they are directed backward, we have mentioned. They are bony in wolves, foxes, weasels, ferrets, whence also the chief remedies for human stone. In the bear too, they say, as soon as it has expired, it becomes horn. That of a camel is the most trustworthy for stringing bows among the peoples of the East. There are also differences of nations in this matter and even of rites, the Galli of the Mother of the Gods cutting off without harm.
262| On the contrary, in a few women there is a portentous resemblance, as in hermaphrodites of both sexes, which I think happened first in the reign of Nero even to the race of four-footed animals. At any rate, he displayed mares which were hermaphrodites, harnessed to his carriage, found in the Treveran country of Gaul: as if it were clearly a thing worth seeing, that the prince of the world should sit upon portents.
263| In sheep and cattle the testicles hang down to the legs, in swine they are attached. The dolphin has very long ones, hidden in the lowest belly; in the elephant also hidden. In egg-layers they adhere inside to the loins, such as are quickest in Venus. In fish and serpents there are none, but in their place two veins run from the kidneys to the genitals. Buzzards have three. In man alone they are broken by injury or spontaneously by nature, and this is the third kind, after hermaphrodites and eunuchs, the half-men. (Males in every kind are stronger except in panthers and bears.)
264| Tails belong to nearly all except man and apes, among those that bring forth live young and those that lay eggs, according to the need of the bodies: bare in the hairy, as in boars, small in the shaggy, as in bears, very long in the bristly, as in horses. Cut off, they grow again in lizards and serpents. In fishes they guide the course like a rudder, and moved right and left they drive on as by a kind of oarage. In lizards double ones are found too.
265| The tails of cattle have a very long stem and bristly at the bottom; the same in asses is longer than in horses, but bristly in beasts of burden. The lion's is bristly at the beginning, as are the ox's and the shrew's, not so the panther's; in foxes and wolves it is shaggy, as in sheep, where it is longer. Swine twist theirs; degenerate dogs bend theirs back under the belly.
266| Aristotle thinks that none has a voice except those that have a lung and arteries, that is, those that breathe. For this reason insects too have a sound, not a voice, the breath passing in and sounding when shut up; some give a hum, as bees, others a contracted shrill, as cicadas, for the breath received into two cavities under the chest, with a movable membrane meeting it inside, sounds by its rubbing. Flies, bees and the like begin and cease to be heard with their flight, for the sound is made by friction and the air within, not by breath; locusts sound by the rubbing of wings and thighs.
267| Let it be granted that likewise the scallops among water creatures whirr when they fly; soft creatures and those covered with a shell have neither voice nor any sound. But the other fishes, though they lack lung and artery, are not wholly without any sound, they quibble that this whirr is made by the teeth, and the one called the goat in the river Achelous has a grunt, and others of which we have spoken. In egg-layers the sound is a hiss, in serpents long, in the tortoise abrupt. In frogs it is of its own kind, as has been said, unless even about these the doubt is to be tolerated, because the voice is formed in the mouth, not in the chest. Yet the nature of places matters much in these: they are said to be mute in Macedonia, and mute are the boars.
268| Of birds the smaller are more talkative, and chiefly around mating: some have a voice in the fight, as quails, some before the fight, as partridges, some when they have conquered, as cocks. The males have their own, in others the same belongs also to the females, as in the kind of nightingales. Some sing the whole year, some at fixed times, as has been said under each.
269| The elephant, short of the nostrils, produces with the mouth itself a sound like a sneeze, through the nostrils one like the hoarseness of trumpets. In cattle only the voice of females is deeper, in every other kind it is shriller than in males, in man even in the castrated.
270| No voice of an infant is heard in birth before it has wholly emerged from the womb. The first speech is at a year; but the son of Croesus spoke at six months, even in his rattles, as a portent by which that whole kingdom fell. Those who begin to speak sooner begin to walk later. The voice is strengthened from the age of 14; the same in old age is thinner, and in no other animal is it changed more often. There are also wonders about the voice worth telling: in the orchestras of theaters it is swallowed up if sawdust or sand is thrown over, likewise by rough surrounding walls, even by empty jars. It runs along a straight or curved stretch of walls, carrying words spoken in however light a sound to the other end, if no unevenness impedes.
271| The voice in man has a great part of the countenance. We recognize it before we see, no otherwise than by the eyes, and there are as many voices as there are mortals in the nature of things, and each has his own as he has his face. Hence that diversity of nations and of so many tongues over the whole world, hence so many songs and measures and inflections, but before all else the expression of the mind, which has set us apart from wild beasts and has made another distinction among men themselves, no less than from brutes.
272| Members born with animals are useless, as the sixth finger in man is always. It pleased the Egyptians to rear a portent, a man with two eyes also in the back part of the head, but not seeing with them.
273| I wonder indeed that Aristotle not only believed but also set down that there are in the bodies themselves some foreknowledge of life. Although I regard these as vain and not to be put forward without hesitation, lest each person anxiously look for such omens in himself, I shall touch on them nevertheless, because so great a man did not scorn them in his teachings.
274| He therefore gives as signs of a short life sparse teeth, very long fingers, a leaden color, and several creases in the hand and not continuous. On the other hand, those of long life are the round-shouldered, and those with one or two long creases in the hand, and more than 32 teeth, and large ears. Nor does he observe all these together, as I think, but one by one, trivial, as I suppose, and yet commonly told. Trogus likewise among us, himself an author of the most severe, added also the study of character, which I shall subjoin in his words:
275| A forehead, for those who have it large, signifies that [….] lies beneath; for those who have it small, a fickle man; for those who have it round, an irascible one, as if from this trace a swelling appears. Eyebrows that extend in a straight line signify the soft; those that bend near the nose, the austere; those that bend near the temples, mockers; those that are lowered throughout, the malevolent and envious.
276| Eyes that are long on both sides indicate those who are of mischievous character; those who have fleshy corners next to the nostrils give a mark of malice: the white part extended has a mark of shamelessness; those who are accustomed repeatedly to close them, of inconstancy. The size of the ears is a mark of talkativeness and folly. So far Trogus.
277| The breath of the lion has a heavy poison, of the bear a pestilential one. No wild beast touches anything touched by its breath, and things breathed on rot more quickly. Of the rest, nature willed that man alone be tainted in several ways, by faults of food and of teeth, but most of all by old age. It could not feel pain, it lacked all touch and sense, without which nothing is felt; the same went in and out freshly and continually, about to depart at the last and be the only part of man to survive; finally this was drawn from the sky:
278| Yet a punishment has been found for this too, so that not even the very thing by which we live should give us pleasure in life. This affliction falls chiefly on the peoples of Parthia, and from their youth, because of their indiscriminate diet; for their mouths also reek from too much wine. But their nobles treat themselves with a seed of the Assyrian apple, whose sweetness is also outstanding, added to their food.
279| The breath of elephants draws snakes out of their holes; the breath of deer burns them. We have spoken of the races of men who drew the venom of snakes out of bodies by sucking. Indeed, snakes are even part of the fodder of pigs, while to other animals they are poison. The creatures we have called insects are all killed by a sprinkling of oil; vultures by perfume — they seek out the smell that drives others away; beetles by the rose. Some snakes are killed by the scorpion. The Scythians dip their arrows in vipers' venom and human blood; it is a crime beyond remedy: it brings death on the spot at the slightest touch.
280| We have said which animals feed on poison. Some, harmless in other respects, become harmful themselves when they have fed on poisonous things. In Pamphylia and the mountainous parts of Cilicia, those who have eaten wild boars that have devoured a salamander die, for there is no way of detecting it by smell or taste. Water and wine too are made deadly by a salamander that has died in them, or even if it has merely drunk from the place the drink is taken from; and the same is true of the frog they call the rubeta. So many are the snares laid for life!
281| Wasps feed greedily on snakes, and from this food they make their stings deadly. And so great is the difference in diet that Theophrastus reports that in a region where people live on fish the cattle too eat fish — but only when it is alive.
282| For man the most useful food is simple; heaping flavours together is pestilent, and seasoning makes it more pernicious still. All foods that are sharp, harsh, unfamiliar, varied, excessive or greedily gulped are hard to digest, and harder in summer than in winter, and more so in old age than in youth. The vomitings that men have devised as a remedy for these make the body colder, and are especially harmful to the eyes and teeth.
283| Digesting in sleep is more useful for bulk than for strength; that is why it is preferred that athletes complete their digestion by walking. Indeed, it is above all by staying awake that food is mastered. Bodies grow on sweet and fatty things and on drink; they waste on dry, parched and cold things and on thirst. Certain animals, and the flocks too in Africa, drink on the fourth day. For a man, going without food is not necessarily fatal on the seventh day; it is certain that many have lasted even beyond the eleventh. The disease of hunger, with an appetite that can never be filled, belongs to man alone among the animals.
284| Some things, on the other hand, allay hunger and thirst with a small taste and preserve the strength, such as butter, hippace and glycyrrhiza. But in every part of life the most pernicious thing is excess, and above all for the body; and it is better to reduce whatever burdens it, by any means at all. But let us pass on to the rest of nature.

======== Natural History — Book XII ========

1| Such are the natures, class by class and part by part, of all the animals that could be known. It remains to speak of the things that are not themselves without a soul either — since nothing lives without one — the things the earth brings forth and those dug out of it, so that no work of nature may be passed over in silence. For a long time her benefits lay hidden, and trees and forests were understood to be the supreme gift bestowed on man. From them came his first food; their foliage made his cave softer, their bark made his clothing. Even now there are nations that live in this way.
2| This makes it all the more wonderful that, starting from such beginnings, we cut mountains into marbles, go to the Seres for clothing, and seek the pearl in the deep waters of the Red Sea and the smaragdus at the bottom of the earth. For this purpose the wounding of the ears was devised — evidently because it was not enough to carry these things on the neck, the hair and the hands unless they were also sunk into the body. It is right, therefore, to follow the order of life, to speak of trees before anything else, and to confront our manners with their first beginnings.
3| Trees were the temples of the gods, and even now simple country places, keeping the ancient rite, dedicate an outstanding tree to a god. Nor do we worship images gleaming with gold and ivory more than we worship groves and the very silences within them. Kinds of tree are kept perpetually dedicated to their own deities: to Jupiter the aesculus, to Apollo the laurel, to Minerva the olive, to Venus the myrtle, to Hercules the poplar. Indeed, we even believe that Silvani and Fauns, and kinds of goddesses, are assigned to the forests, each with its own divinity, as though from heaven.
4| Later the trees gentled man with fruit whose juices were sweeter than grain. From them come the oil that refreshes the limbs and the wine that restores strength, and indeed so many flavours that arrive of their own accord with the year, and the second course of our tables — still the second course even now, although for the sake of our tables men fight it out with wild beasts, and fish that have fed on the bodies of the shipwrecked are eagerly sought.
5| Besides, they have a thousand uses without which life could not be lived. With a tree we plough the seas and bring lands closer; with a tree we build our houses. The images of the gods too were of wood, before a price had been thought up for the carcass of a beast, and before, as the law of luxury took its birth from the gods, the faces of the deities and the feet of our tables came to be seen in the same ivory. It is reported that the Gauls, shut off by the Alps, then an insurmountable rampart, had this as their first reason for pouring over into Italy: that Helico, a citizen of theirs from the Helvetii, who had stayed in Rome to practise his craft as a smith, took back with him on his return a dried fig and a grape and a promise of oil and wine. For this reason they may be forgiven for having sought these things even by war.
6| But who would not rightly marvel that a tree has been fetched from another world merely for its shade? This is the plane, first brought across the Ionian sea as far as the island of Diomedes for the sake of his tomb, then passing over into Sicily, and among the first to be bestowed on Italy; it has now been carried as far as the Morini, and even occupies tributary soil, so that nations pay a tax even for shade.
7| Dionysius the elder, tyrant of Sicily, brought plane trees over to the city of Regium as the marvel of his house, where a gymnasium was later made; and it is found in the authorities that they could not grow to any size, and that there were no others in Italy, nor, it is expressly said, in Spain.
8| This happened around the era of the City's capture; and afterwards so much honour accrued to the tree that plane trees are nourished by having neat wine poured over them. It has been found that this does their roots the greatest good, and we have shown that trees too drink wine.
9| They first became famous in the walk of the Academy at Athens, with a root of 33 cubits reaching out beyond the branches. Now there is a celebrated one in Lycia, joined to the charm of a cold spring and standing beside the road, hollowed out like a dwelling into a cave of eighty-one feet, leafy at its crown and sheltering itself with vast branches like a grove of trees, covering the fields with long shadows; and, so that nothing should be lacking to the likeness of a grotto, inside it a stone ledge runs round in a ring enclosing mossy pumice stones. It is so worthy of wonder that Licinius Mucianus, three times consul and lately legate of that province, thought it should be handed down even to posterity that he had dined inside it with company to the number of eighteen, the tree itself generously providing couches of leaves, safe from every gust of wind, wishing for the patter of rain through the leaves, and that he had lain in it more happily than amid the gleam of marbles, the variety of paintings and the gold of coffered ceilings.
10| Another example is that of the emperor Gaius, who on his estate at Velitrae admired the storeys of a single tree, with spreading benches laid loosely on the beams of its branches, and dined in it — he himself being part of its shade — in a dining room that held fifteen guests and the attendants; he called that dinner the nest.
11| At Gortyn on the island of Crete, beside a spring, there is a single plane tree, famous in the records of both languages, that never sheds its leaves; and at once the Greek love of fable fastened on it the tale that Jupiter lay with Europa beneath it — as if there were not another of the same kind in Cyprus. But from it plane trees were first planted in Crete itself, and — such is human nature, greedy for novelty — they reproduced its defect, since the chief recommendation of this tree is precisely that it keeps off the sun in summer and lets it in in winter.
12| From there, in the reign of Claudius, a freedman of Marcellus Aeserninus — but one who for the sake of power had had himself adopted among the freedmen of Caesar — a very rich Thessalian eunuch, so that he too might deservedly be called a Dionysius, carried this kind over to Italy as well, to his estates near the city. And so in Italy too these prodigies of other lands live on — besides, of course, those which Italy has devised for itself.
13| For there are also trees called chamaeplatani, of forced shortness, since we find even miscarriages among trees. So this too will be called an ill-fortune in the kind of dwarfs. It is produced by the manner of planting and of cutting back. The first to devise clipped groves was Gaius Matius, of the equestrian order, a friend of the deified Augustus, within the last 80 years.
14| The foreign trees, the cherries and the Persian peaches and all those whose names are Greek or foreign but which have come to be counted among the natives, will be dealt with among the fruit-bearing trees. For the present we shall go through the foreign ones, beginning chiefly with the one that heals.
15| The Assyrian apple tree, which others call the Median, is a cure against poisons. Its leaf is that of the unedo, with thorns running between. The fruit itself is not otherwise eaten; it excels in scent, and the leaves also, which passes into clothes when stored with them and keeps off harmful creatures. The tree itself bears fruit at every season, some fruit falling, some ripening, some just beginning to grow.
16| Peoples have tried to transfer it to their own lands for the sake of its excellence as a remedy, in earthenware vessels, with air given to the roots through holes; it will be fitting to remember that everything which is to be carried farther is most suitably sown and transplanted in this way, so that each thing may be said once. But it was unwilling to grow except among the Medes and in Persia. This is the tree whose seeds we have said the chiefs of the Parthians boil into their food to commend their breath. Nor is any other tree praised among the Medes.
17| The wool-bearing trees of the Seres we described in mentioning that people, and likewise the size of the trees of India. Virgil celebrated one of the peculiar trees of India, the ebony, declaring that it grows nowhere else. Herodotus preferred to understand it as belonging to Ethiopia, saying that in place of tribute the Ethiopians paid to the kings of Persia a hundred logs of its wood every third year, along with gold and ivory.
18| This too must not be omitted, that the Ethiopians were accustomed to pay for that purpose twenty large tusks of elephants each, since he so indicated. So great was the authority of ivory in the 310th year of our city; for then that author of histories composed his work at Thurii in Italy, so that it is the more wonderful that we believe the same man, who had seen the river Po, that no one up to that time had been seen from Asia or Greece.
19| The form of Ethiopia was learned, as we have said, lately brought to the emperor Nero, and it taught that from Syene, the end of the empire, as far as Meroe, through 996,000 paces, the tree is rare and that there is none except of the kind of palms. Perhaps for that reason ebony would be the third thing in the standing of the tribute.
20| Pompey the Great displayed it at Rome in his triumph over Mithridates. Fabianus denies that it can be kindled, yet it is burned with a pleasant scent. There are two kinds of it: the rare, which is better, tree-like, of pure and knotless wood, with a black sheen and pleasant at once even without art; the other shrubby, like the cytisus, and scattered through the whole of India.
21| There is there also a thorn like it, but detected even by lamps, as the fire leaps across it at once. Now we shall set out those which the victory of Alexander the Great marveled at, when that part of the world was opened up.
22| There is a fig there, exceptional in fruit, always sowing itself. It spreads out with vast branches, the lowest of which bend so far to the ground that in the space of a year they take root and make a new offspring for themselves around the parent in a circle, as if by topiary work. Within that hedge, shady and at the same time fortified by the tree's palisade, the shepherds spend the summer; it is a handsome sight to one looking up from beneath or from afar, with its vaulted circuit.
23| The upper branches of the same shoot up on high in a forest-like multitude from the vast body of the mother, so that most of them gather 60 paces in circuit, and with their shade cover two stadia each. The breadth of the leaves has the shape of an Amazon's shield; for that reason, covering the fruit, it prevents it from growing. The fruit is rare [….] and does not exceed the size of a bean, but, cooked by the sun through the leaves, it is very sweet in taste and worthy of the marvel of the tree. It grows chiefly about the river Acesines.
24| There is another, larger, and surpassing in fruit and sweetness, on which the sages of the Indians live. The leaf imitates the wings of birds, three cubits in length, two in breadth. It puts out from its bark a fruit, wonderful in the sweetness of its juice, so that one satisfies four. The tree's name is pala, the fruit's ariera. It is most abundant among the Sydraci, the end of Alexander's expeditions. There is also another like it, sweeter in fruit, but hostile to the health of the intestines. Alexander had given an order that no one in his column should touch that fruit.
25| The Macedonians described the kinds of trees for the most part without names. There is also one like the terebinth in the rest, with a fruit like almonds, only of smaller size, of exceptional sweetness, at any rate in Bactria. Some have thought this to be a terebinth of its own kind rather than like it. But the one from which they make linen garments is like the mulberry in its leaves, and in the calyx of its fruit like the cynorrhodon. They plant it in the fields, and there is no more pleasing prospect of vineyards.
26| The olive of India is barren except for the fruit of the wild olive. But everywhere the trees which produce pepper are like our junipers, although some have reported that they grow only on the front of the Caucasus, facing the sun. The seeds differ from the juniper by small pods, such as we see in beans. These, plucked before they split and roasted by the sun, make what is called long pepper, but gradually splitting as they ripen they show white pepper, which then, roasted in the sun, changes in color and wrinkles.
27| But these too have their own injury, and through the unseasonable weather they become blighted and the seeds are empty and hollow, which they call bregma, the Indian language so signifying dead. This of every kind is the harshest and lightest and pale; black is more pleasing, and white milder than either.
28| This tree's root is not, as some have supposed, the thing they call zingiberi, others zimpiberi, although it has a similar taste. For that grows in Arabia and the Trogodytic country on farms, a small plant with a white root. It quickly feels decay, though of such bitterness. Its price is 6 denarii the pound. Long pepper is adulterated with the greatest ease by means of Alexandrian mustard. It is bought at 15 denarii the pound, white at 7, black at 3.
29| It is wonderful that its use has so pleased; in other things sweetness has captured, in others appearance has invited: but here there is no recommendation of fruit or berry at all. It pleases only by its bitterness, and for this it is sought as far as India! Who was it that first wished to try it in food, or to whom was it not enough to be hungry in his craving? Each is wild among their own peoples, and yet it is bought by weight like gold or silver. Italy now also has a pepper tree, larger than the myrtle and not unlike it. The bitterness in its grain is believed to be the same as in fresh pepper: that roasted ripeness is lacking, and so the likeness of wrinkles and color. It is adulterated with juniper berries, which draw out the strength remarkably; and in weight, indeed, in many ways.
30| There is still in India something like grains of pepper, called caryophyllon, larger and more brittle. They say it is produced in the Indian lotus. It is imported for the sake of its scent. A thorn also bears a likeness to pepper with a special bitterness, with small dense leaves like the cyprus, branches of three cubits, a pale bark, a wide woody root of the color of box. When this is boiled in water with the seed in a bronze vessel, a medicine is made which is called lycion.
31| This thorn grows also on Mount Pelion and adulterates the medicine, as do the root of asphodel or ox gall or absinthium or rhus or amurca. The most suitable for medicine is the frothy kind. The Indians put it in the skins of camels or rhinoceroses. The thorn itself some in Greece call the pyxacanthus of Chiron.
32| And macir is brought from India, the reddish bark of a great root, named after its tree. What sort of tree it is I have not found out. The use of the bark boiled in honey is held to be chief in medicine for dysentery. Saccharon is borne also by Arabia, but that of India is more praised. It is honey collected in reeds, white like gum, brittle to the teeth, at most the size of a hazelnut, for medicinal use only.
33| A people bordering on the Indians is called Ariana, among whom a thorn yields a precious tear like myrrh, hard to approach because of the thorns attached. There also is a pestilential shrub, [….] of radish, with a laurel leaf, whose scent invites horses, which almost deprived Alexander of his cavalry on his first entry. This happened also among the Gedrosi, likewise with a laurel leaf.
34| And there a thorn is reported whose liquid, sprinkled on the eyes, would bring blindness to all animals, and also a plant of exceptional scent, full of tiny serpents, by whose sting one would die at once. Onesicritus reports that in the valleys of Hyrcania there are trees like the fig, called occhi, from which honey flows down during two hours of the morning.
35| Near is Bactriana, in which bdellium is most praised. The tree is black, of the size of an olive, with an oak leaf and the fruit of the wild fig. Its own nature is that of gum. Some call it brochon, others malacham, others maldacon, and the black kind rolled into lumps hadrobolon. It ought to be like translucent wax, fragrant and, when rubbed, fat, bitter to the taste without sourness. In sacrifices, sprinkled with wine, it is more fragrant. It grows also in Arabia and India and Media and Babylon. Some call peraticum that brought from Media.
36| This is more brittle and more crusty and more bitter, but the Indian is moister and gummy. It is adulterated with almond nut, its other kinds with bark and with scordastus, which is the name of a tree rivaling gum, but they are detected, as it is enough to have said once about the other perfumes, by smell, color, weight, taste, fire. The Bactrian has a dry sheen and many white claws, and besides its own weight, by which it ought to be neither heavier nor lighter. The price of the pure is 3 denarii the pound.
37| The Persians adjoin the peoples mentioned above. In the Red Sea, which there we have called Persian, the tide driving far inland, there is a marvelous nature of trees. For eaten away by salt, like things carried in and abandoned, with bare roots on a dry shore, like polypi, they are seen embracing the barren sands. When the sea comes in, the same, beaten by the waves, stand unmoved; indeed at full tide they are wholly covered, and it appears by the evidence of things that they are nourished by the harshness of the waters. Their size is wonderful, their appearance like the unedo, the fruit like almonds outside, with twisted kernels within.
38| The island Tylos is in the same gulf, full of woods on the side that looks east and where it is itself bathed by the tide of the sea. Each tree is the size of a fig, the flower of indescribable sweetness, the fruit like a lupin, untouched by all animals because of its harshness; on the higher ground of the same island are wool-bearing trees, in another manner than those of the Seres: their leaves are barren, and, were they not smaller, could be taken for vine leaves. They bear gourds the size of a quince, which when ripe burst and show balls of down, from which they make clothes of precious linen.
39| They call the tree gossypinus; it is even more productive on the smaller Tylos, which is 10,000 paces away. Juba reports that there are downy fibres around a shrub, and that these linens surpass the Indian ones, but that the tree of Arabia from which they make clothes is called cynas, with a leaf like the palm's. Thus the Indians are clothed by their own trees. In the Tyli, moreover, another tree flowers with the look of a white violet, but fourfold in size, without scent, which we may wonder at in that region.
40| There is another like it, leafier however, and with a rose-colored flower, which it closes at night and begins to open at sunrise, spreading it at midday; the inhabitants say it sleeps. The same island bears palms and olives and vines, and, with the rest of the kinds of fruit, figs. The leaves of no trees there fall, and it is watered by cold springs and receives rains.
41| Neighboring Arabia demands a certain distinction of kinds, since its produce consists of root, shrub, bark, juice, tear, wood, shoot, flower, leaf, fruit. Root and leaf are in the highest price among the Indians. The root of costus is hot to the taste, outstanding in scent, the shrub otherwise useless. At the very first entrance of the river Indus, in the island Patale, there are two kinds of it: black and, the better, whitish. The price is 5½ denarii the pound.
42| It is fitting to say more of the leaf of nard, as the first of unguents. The plant is a shrub with a heavy and thick root, but short and black and brittle, although fatty, smelling of mustiness, like cypiros, of a harsh taste, with a small, dense leaf. The tops spread out into ears; therefore they celebrate nard for its double gift, ears and leaves. A second kind of it, growing by the Ganges, is wholly condemned, under the name of ozaenitis, smelling of rank stench.
43| It is also adulterated with pseudonardus, a herb which grows everywhere, with a thicker and broader leaf and a faint color verging on white, likewise with its own root mixed in for the sake of weight, and with gum and froth of silver or stibi and with cypiros or the bark of cypiros. The pure is detected by its lightness and its reddish color and the sweetness of its scent and its taste, which dries the mouth most, with a pleasant flavor. The price of the spike is 100 denarii the pound. They have divided the price of the leaf by size. The kind with larger pellets is called hadrosphaerum, 40 denarii.
44| That which has a smaller leaf is called mesosphaerum; it is bought at 60 denarii. Most praised is the microsphaerum from the smallest leaves; its price is 75 denarii. For scent all are pleasing, larger when fresh. In nard the color, if it has grown old, is better when blacker.
45| In our own part of the world, Syrian is the next most praised, then the Gallic, in third place the Cretan, which some call agrion, others phu, with a leaf like olusatrum, a stalk a cubit long, jointed, whitish toward purple, a root oblique and hairy and imitating the feet of birds. Baccaris is called rustic nard, of which we shall speak among the flowers. All these, however, are herbs, except the Indian. Of these the Gallic is pulled up with its root and washed with wine. It is dried in the shade, tied in bundles in paper, not much different from the Indian, though lighter than the Syrian. The price is 3 denarii.
46| In these there is one test: that the leaves not be brittle and withered rather than dry. With Gallic nard there always grows a herb called hirculus from the weight of its smell and its likeness, with which it is most often adulterated. It differs in being without a little stalk, in having smaller leaves, and in having a root neither bitter nor fragrant.
47| Asarum also has the power of nard, which some themselves call wild nard. It has leaves of ivy, only rounder and softer, a purple flower, the root of Gallic nard, a seed like a berry, a taste warm and winy, flowering twice a year on shady mountains. The best is in Pontus, next in Phrygia, third in Illyricum. It is dug when it begins to lose its leaves, and dried in the sun, quickly gathering mustiness and aging. A herb has lately been found also in Thrace whose leaves differ in nothing from Indian nard.
48| The cluster of amomum is in use, from the wild vine of India, as others have thought, a shrub of tortuous growth, a palm's height; it is picked with its root, gently arranged in handfuls, at once brittle. It is most praised when it is like the leaves of the pomegranate, not wrinkled, of reddish color. The second quality is the pale; the grassy is worse, and worst the white, which also comes with age.
49| The price of the cluster is 60 denarii the pound, of rubbed amomum 48 denarii. It grows also in the part of Armenia called Otene, and in Media and in Pontus. It is adulterated with leaves of the pomegranate and liquid gum, so that it holds together and rolls itself up in the manner of a cluster. There is also one called amomis, less veined and harder and less fragrant, whence it appears that it is either another kind or gathered unripe.
50| Like these in name and shrub is cardamomum, with an oblong seed. It is reaped in the same way in Arabia. There are four kinds of it: the greenest and fat, with sharp angles, stubborn to the rubbing, which is most praised; next whitish out of red; third shorter and blacker; worse, however, is the variegated, easily crushed and of little scent, though it ought to be near costus. This grows also among the Medes. The price of the best is 3 denarii the pound.
51| Cinnamomum would be next in kinship, were it not fitting to indicate first the riches of Arabia and the causes that gave it the surname of Happy and Blessed. The chief things in it, then, are frankincense and myrrh, the latter shared also with the Trogodytae; frankincense belongs to none outside Arabia, and not even to the whole of Arabia.
52| About the middle of it are the Atramitae, a district of the Sabaei, whose kingdom's capital Sabota lies on a lofty mountain, from which, at a distance of eight stages, lies their frankincense-bearing region called Sariba; this, the Greeks say, signifies a mystery. It faces the rising of the summer sun, impassable on every side with rocks and inaccessible on the right by sea reefs. That soil alone is reported to be milk-white tinged with red.
53| The length of the forests is 20 schoeni, the breadth half of that. The schoenus extends, by the reckoning of Eratosthenes, 40 stadia, that is, V paces; some have given 32 stadia to each schoenus. High hills rise, and trees, growing of their own accord, run down also into the plains. It is agreed that the soil is clayey, with scanty springs and those nitrous.
54| The Minaei also reach it, another district, through whom it is carried out by a single narrow path. These first made a trade in frankincense and pursue it most, and from them Minaean is also named. No other Arabs besides these see the frankincense tree, and not even all of these, and it is said that there are no more than 3,000 families who claim the right to it by succession; that they are called sacred for this reason, and that, when they cut or harvest those trees, they are not polluted by any meeting with women or by funerals, and so the sanctity of the merchandise is increased. Some report that frankincense in the woods is common to those peoples, others that it is divided by turns of years.
55| Nor is it agreed what the appearance of the tree itself is. We have conducted affairs in Arabia, and Roman arms have penetrated a great part of it, and Gaius Caesar, son of Augustus, even sought glory from there, and yet by no Latin writer, so far as I know, has the appearance of those trees been handed down.
56| The Greek accounts vary: some have given it a leaf like the pear's, only smaller and of a grassy color, others like the lentisk with a somewhat reddish leaf, some say it is a terebinth, and that this was seen by King Antigonus when a shrub was brought. King Juba, in those volumes which he wrote for Gaius Caesar, son of Augustus, burning with the fame of Arabia, reports that it has a twisted trunk, with branches most like the maple of Pontus, that it sends out a juice like the almond, and that such trees appear in Carmania and in Egypt, planted by the zeal of the reigning Ptolemies.
57| It is agreed that it has the bark of the laurel; some have also said the leaf is similar: such at least was the tree at Sardis, for the kings of Asia too took care to plant it. The envoys who came from Arabia in my time made everything more uncertain, which we may rightly wonder at, as even twigs of frankincense come to us, from which it can be believed that the mother tree too is a shrub with a smooth trunk free of knots.
58| It used to be harvested once a year, with less occasion for selling; now gain brings a second harvest. The first and natural harvest comes with the Dog Star's rising, in the fiercest heat, by cutting where the tree seems most full, and where the bark is stretched thinnest. The cut is widened, not removed; from it a fat froth leaps out. This, congealed, is thickened, where the nature of the place requires, a palm mat receiving it, elsewhere a paved floor around. The first way is purer, but this is heavier. What has stuck to the tree is combed off with iron, and therefore is full of bark.
59| The forest, divided into fixed portions, is safe by mutual honesty: no one guards the wounded trees, no one steals from another. But, by Hercules, at Alexandria, where frankincense is adulterated, no diligence guards the workshops enough. Aprons are sealed on the workman; a mask is put over his head or a close net; they are sent out naked: so much less trust does punishment command among us than the forests do among them!
60| In autumn the summer yield is gathered; this is the purest, white. The second harvest is in spring, for which the barks are cut in winter. This comes out reddish and is not to be compared with the former. The first they call carfiathum, the second dathiathum. It is believed that the young tree's is whiter, but the old tree's more fragrant. Some think that it grows better on islands; Juba denies that it grows on islands.
61| What of it has hung down in the roundness of a drop we call male, although elsewhere nothing is called male where there is no female; this is ascribed to religious scruple, that the other sex not be used. Some think the male is so called from the shape of testicles. The special favor, however, is for the mammosum, when another tear, following, has mixed itself with the first that was still sticking. I find that each of these used to fill the hand, when, with less eagerness for tearing off, it was allowed to grow more slowly.
62| The Greeks call it in this way stagonia and atomum, and the smaller orobia. Crumbs shaken off by a blow we call manna. Even now, however, drops are found which equal the third part of a mina, that is the weight of 28 denarii. When Alexander the Great, in boyhood, was putting frankincense on the altars without sparing, his tutor Leonides told him that he should sacrifice in that way when he had conquered the frankincense-bearing peoples. But he, having gained Arabia, sent a ship laden with frankincense and urged him to worship the gods lavishly.
63| The frankincense when collected is carried to Sabota by camels, one gate being open for this. The kings made it a capital offense to turn aside from the road. There the priests take tithes for the god whom they call Sabis, by measure, not by weight, and until that it is not lawful to trade: from this the public expenses are borne; for in fact the god generously feeds guests for a fixed number of days. It cannot be exported except through the Gebbanitae, and so a tax is also paid to their king.
64| Their capital Thomna is distant from Gaza, a town of Judaea on our coast, 2,537,500 paces, which is divided into 65 stages of camels. There are also fixed portions given to the priests and the king's scribes. But besides these the guards and attendants and doorkeepers and servants plunder.
65| Then, wherever the road runs, they pay here for water, there for fodder, or for lodgings and various tolls, so that the expense per camel up to our shore comes to 688 denarii, and then payment is made again to the tax-farmers of our empire. And so the best frankincense has a price of 6 denarii a pound, the second grade 5, the third 3. With us it is adulterated with a gem of white resin very like it, but it is detected by the methods already mentioned. It is tested by whiteness, size and brittleness, and by a coal, to see that it catches fire at once, and again by whether it takes a tooth-mark or is rather crumbled into crumbs.
66| Some have recorded that myrrh grows in the same forests mixed in with the frankincense tree, but most say it grows separately, since indeed it is produced in many places in Arabia, as will appear in the kinds. A highly praised myrrh is also brought in from the islands, and the Sabaeans seek it even among the Trogodytae by crossing the sea. There is also a cultivated myrrh, much preferred to the wild. It delights in hoes and in trenching around the roots, and is better when the root is kept cool.
67| The tree has a height of up to five cubits and is not without thorns, with a hard, twisted trunk, thicker than that of the frankincense tree, and thicker at the root than in the rest of itself. Some have said the bark is smooth and like that of the arbutus; others that it is rough and thorny; the leaf is that of the olive, but more curled and prickly, and Juba says it is that of olusatrum. Some compare it to the juniper, only rougher and bristling with thorns, with a rounder leaf, but with the taste of juniper. There were also those who falsely claimed that both grow from the frankincense tree.
68| The trees themselves are cut twice, and at the same seasons, but those that are strong are cut from the root all the way to the branches. Before they are cut, however, they sweat of their own accord the juice called stacte, to which none is preferred. After this comes the cultivated, and among the wild kind too the summer myrrh is better. They give no portions of the myrrh to the god, since it grows among other peoples as well; yet they pay one quarter of it to the Gebbanitae's king. For the rest, it is bought up everywhere from the common people and stuffed into skins, and our perfumers sort it without difficulty by indications of scent and richness.
69| There are several kinds: the Trogodytic is first among the wild ones; next the Minaean, in which are included the Atramitic, the Gebbanitic, and the Ausaritic from the kingdom of the Gebbanitae; third the Dianitic; fourth the collaticia; fifth the Sambracene, from a city of the kingdom of the Sabaeans very near the sea; sixth the one they call Dusaritis. There is also a white one, in one place only, which is brought together at the town of Mesalum. The Trogodytic is approved for its richness, and because it is drier in appearance and dirty and foreign-looking, but sharper than the others. The Sambracene mentioned above is more cheerful than the rest, but weak in strength.
70| As a complete test, however, it should be in small lumps, not round, with a whitish juice in the clot that melts away, and when broken it should show white marks like fingernails, and be mildly bitter to the taste. The second grade of goodness is variegated inside; the worst is black inside, and worse if black outside too. Prices vary with the occasion of the buyers: stacte from 3 denarii to 50, cultivated at most 11, Erythraean 16 (they want this understood as the Arabian), Trogodytic with the kernel 16½, and the one they call odoraria 12.
71| It is adulterated with lumps of lentisk and with gum, and likewise with the juice of cucumber for the sake of bitterness, and with silver foam for weight. The other faults are detected by taste, and gum by the tooth, since it grows tough. But the most deceptive adulteration is with Indian myrrh, which is gathered there from a certain thorn. This is the one thing in which India brings worse, with an easy distinction: it is so much inferior.
72| So the discussion passes to mastich, which in India is made from another thorn, and likewise in Arabia; they call it laina. But mastich too is of two kinds, since in Asia and Greece there is found a plant sending leaves up from the root, and a thistle like the apple, full of seed and of a tear that bursts out when the top is cut, so that it can scarcely be told apart from true mastich. There is also a third kind in Pontus, more like bitumen; but most praised is the white Chian, whose price is 10 denarii per pound, while the black is 2. Chian is said to be produced from the lentisk, in the manner of gum. It is adulterated, like frankincense, with resin.
73| Arabia still glories also in ladanum. Several have recorded that this comes about by chance and accident, and to the harm of the perfumes: that goats, an animal harmful to foliage in other respects but all the more eager for fragrant shrubs, as though they understood the prices, crop the stalks of the buds swollen with a very sweet liquid, and that the juice dripping from them, in a chance mixture, is wiped off by the wretched shaggy hair of their beards. This, they say, is rolled into balls with the dust and baked by the sun, and for that reason there are goats' hairs in ladanum. But this happens nowhere else than among the Nabataeans, who are the Arabians bordering on Syria.
74| More recent authors call this storbon, and record that the forests of the Arabs are broken down by the grazing of the goats and that the juice thus clings to their hair; but they say the true ladanum belongs to the island of Cyprus, so that in passing the kinds of perfumes may be mentioned, though not in the order of lands. They say it is made there in a similar way, and that it is oesypum clinging to the shaggy beards and knees of the he-goats, but with the flower of the ivy nibbled away, in the morning grazing, when Cyprus is wet with dew. Then, when the mist has been dispersed by the sun, dust adheres to the dripping hair, and so the ladanum is combed out.
75| There are those who call the plant in Cyprus from which it is made leda; for they call ladanum ledanum. They say its fat deposits settle on it; and so, cords are drawn over that plant and wound round it, and in this way lumps are made. So in both peoples there are two kinds, the earthy and the manufactured. What is earthy is crumbly, the manufactured is pliant.
76| They also say that it is a shrub in Carmania, and above Egypt, where plants were carried over under the Ptolemies, or, as others say, where the frankincense tree degenerated into it; and that it is gathered like gum by cutting the bark and received on goatskins. The prices of the most praised are 40 asses per pound. It is adulterated with myrtle berries and with other filth from animals. In the genuine, the smell ought to be wild and in a way redolent of solitude; the thing itself should look dry but soften at once to the touch, and when kindled shine with a pleasant smell; that adulterated with myrtle is detected by its heavy smell and crackles in the fire. Moreover, in the genuine, small stones rather than powder cling to it from the rocks.
77| In Arabia the olive too is endowed with a tear, from which a medicament is made, called cnhaemon by the Greeks, of singular effect in drawing together the scars of wounds. On the coasts these trees are covered by waves and tide, and the berry is not harmed, though it is agreed that salt is left on the leaves.
78| These are the peculiar products of Arabia, and a few others besides, found elsewhere too, which must be described in their place, since in those she is surpassed. She herself seeks foreign scents, wonderfully, and from outside peoples: so great is mortals' weariness of their own things and greed for those of others. They seek, then, among the Elymaei, the tree bratus, like a spreading cypress, with whitish branches, of pleasant scent when burned, and proclaimed with wonder in the histories of Claudius Caesar. He records that the Parthians sprinkle its leaves into their drinks; that its smell is nearest to cedar, and its smoke a remedy against other woods. It grows beyond the Pasitigris, on Mount Scanchrus, within the bounds of the town of Sostrata.
79| They seek also among the Carmani the tree stobrus, for fumigations, setting it alight when drenched with palm wine. Its smell comes back down from the vaulted roof to the ground, pleasant, but weighing on the head, though without pain; this is what they seek for the sleep of the sick.
80| By these trades they opened the town of Carra, which is a market town there. From there everyone used to make for Gabba by a journey of twenty days, and for Palestinian Syria. Afterwards Charax began to be sought, and the kingdoms of the Parthians, for that reason, as Juba is our authority. To me it seems that they carried these goods to the Persians even before they carried them to Syria or Egypt, with Herodotus as witness, who records that the Arabs paid the kings of the Persians a yearly tribute of a thousand talents of frankincense.
81| From Syria they bring back storax, driving away with its sharp smell on their hearths the disgust they feel for their own. For the rest, no kinds of wood are in use among them except the fragrant, and the Sabaeans cook their food with frankincense wood, others with myrrh, the towns and villages having no other smoke and reek than from altars. To cure this, then, they seek storax in goatskin bags and fumigate their roofs: so true is it that there is no pleasure which constant use does not turn to disgust. The same they burn to drive away the serpents, which are very numerous in the scent-bearing forests.
82| Cinnamon and cassia are not theirs, and yet Arabia is called the Happy, a false and ungrateful title, since she would credit this to the gods above, though she owes more of it to those below. What made her blessed was the luxury of men even in death, who burn on the dead what they had understood to be produced for the gods.
83| Those expert in such matters declare that she does not bear in a yearly yield as much as the emperor Nero burned on the last day of his Poppaea. Reckon after that the funerals of every single year across the entire earth, and the heaps piled up in honor of corpses, which are given to the gods by single crumbs. Nor were the gods less favorable to those who petitioned them with salted meal; indeed, as is plain, they were more appeased. But Arabia is still more blessed in her sea;
84| for from it she sends pearls. And by the lowest computation India, the Seres and that peninsula take from our empire a hundred million sesterces every year: so much do our luxuries and our women cost us. For what portion of this, I ask, goes to the gods, or even to those below?
85| Antiquity told fables of cinnamon and cassia, Herodotus first, saying that cinnamon is in the nests of birds, and particularly of the phoenix, in the region where father Liber was brought up, and is knocked down from inaccessible rocks and trees by the weight of the flesh that the birds themselves bring in, or by lead-weighted arrows; and likewise cassia around marshes, defended by a fearsome kind of bat with its claws and by winged serpents, by these inventions swelling the prices of things.
86| Moreover, a fable accompanied this: that at the reflection of the midday sun an inexpressible exhalation of the whole arises from the entire peninsula, with the breath of so many kinds of scents blowing in concert, and that to the fleets of Alexander the Great Arabia was first announced to the open sea by its perfumes. All false, since cinnamon, which is also cinnamum, grows in Ethiopia, which is mingled by intermarriage with the Trogodytae.
87| These men, trading, carry it from their neighbors over vast seas on rafts which no rudders steer, no oars draw, no sails drive or impel, and no skill assists: man alone and daring stand there in place of everything. Moreover, they require the winter sea around midwinter, when the east winds are blowing most.
88| These men drive in a straight course through the gulfs, and from the circuit of the promontory the north-westerlies carry them down to the port of the Gebbanitae which is called Ocilia. For this reason they seek it most of all, and it is reported that the traders scarcely return in the fifth year, and that many perish. In return they bring back glassware and bronze, clothing, brooches with bracelets and necklaces. So that trade depends chiefly on the fidelity of women.
89| The shrub itself is at most two cubits in height and at least a palm, four fingers in thickness, throwing up shoots from 6 fingers above the ground, like a dry stick when green, without scent, with a leaf of origanum, delighting in dryness, less productive after rain, of a nature to be cut back. It grows in level places indeed, but in the densest brambles and thickets, hard to gather. It is not harvested unless the god has permitted. Some understand this god to be Jupiter; they call him Assabinus. Leave to cut is obtained by the entrails of 44 oxen, goats and rams, yet not so that it is lawful before sunrise or after sunset. The branches are divided with a spear by the priest,
90| who sets aside a part for the god, and the merchant stores the remainder in lumps. There is also another report, that it is shared with the Sun and made into three portions, and then decided by a double casting of lots, and what falls to the Sun is left behind and bursts into flame of its own accord.
91| The chief goodness is in the thinnest parts of the shoots, to the length of a palm; the second in those next, of shorter measure, and so in order. The cheapest is what is nearest the roots, since there is the least bark, in which lies the highest value, and for this reason the tips are preferred, where it lies thickest. The wood itself, however, is despised because of the sharpness of origanum, and is called xylocinnamomum. Its price is 10 denarii a pound.
92| Some have recorded two kinds of cinnamum, whiter and blacker, and the white used once to be preferred, now on the contrary the black is praised, and they even prefer the variegated to the white. The surest estimate, however, is that it be not rough and that, when rubbed together, it crumbles slowly; soft cinnamon is condemned above all, or one whose bark is loose.
93| The right to it proceeds from the king of the Gebbanitae alone; he sells it at a market proclaimed by edict. Prices were once a thousand denarii a pound. This was raised by half when, as they report, the forests were set on fire by the anger of the barbarians. Whether this happened through the injustice of the powerful, or by chance, is not sufficiently agreed. That the south winds blow there so hot that in summers they set the forests alight, we find
94| among the authors that crowns of cinnamon enclosed in embossed gold were dedicated, first of all, in the temples of the Capitol and of Peace by the Emperor Vespasian Augustus. A root of it of great weight we saw in the temple on the Palatine, which his wife Augusta had made for the deified Augustus, placed on a golden bowl, from which the drops it gave out every year hardened into grains, until that shrine was consumed by fire.
95| Cassia too is a shrub and grows beside the plains of cinnamon, but on mountains, with a thicker shoot, and with a thin skin rather than bark, which, contrary to what we said of cinnamon, it is a mark of value to have loose and emptied. The shrub has a height of three cubits and a threefold color: when it first shoots up, it is white for the measure of a foot, then reddens with a half-foot added, beyond that blackish.
96| This part is the most praised, and then the next; the white is condemned. They cut up the shoots into lengths of two fingers, then sew them into fresh hides of four-footed animals killed for the purpose, so that as the hides rot, little worms may gnaw out the wood and hollow the bark, which is safe because of its bitterness.
97| It is tested chiefly when fresh, and if its smell carries very far, if to the taste it is as little hot as possible and rather bites gently with a slow warmth, if it is of purple color, and if it makes the greatest quantity of the least weight, with a short pipe of tunics, not brittle. Such they call lada, by a barbarian name. Another kind is balsamodes, named from its similar smell, but bitter and therefore more useful to physicians, just as the black is to perfumers. No prices differ more: the best at 40 denarii a pound, the others 5.
98| To these dealers have added the one they call Daphnis's, named isocinnamon, and they set its price at 300 denarii. It is adulterated with storax and, because of the likeness of the barks, with the thinnest twigs of laurel. Indeed it is also sown in our own world, and at the farthest edge of the empire, where the Rhine washes it, I have seen it sown in beehives. That color scorched by the sun is lacking, and for that reason, equally, that smell. From the border of cassia and cinnamon, cancamum and tarum too are imported, but through the Nabataean Trogodytae, who settled there from the Nabataeans.
99| Thither are also brought together serichatum and gabalium, which the Arabs consume among themselves, known to our world only by name, though growing alongside cinnamon and cassia. Serichatum, however, has sometimes arrived and is added to unguents by some. It is exchanged at 6 denarii a pound.
100| Myrobalanum is common to the Trogodytae, to the Thebaid, and to that part of Arabia which divides Judaea from Egypt, growing for unguent, as the very name shows, and the name likewise indicates that it is an acorn. The tree has a leaf like the heliotrope, which we shall describe among the herbs, and a fruit the size of a hazelnut.
101| Of these, that growing in Arabia is called Syrian and is white, while in the Thebaid it is dark. The former is preferred for the goodness of the oil that is pressed from it, the Theban for its abundance. Among these the Trogodytic is the cheapest. There are some who prefer to these the Ethiopian, a black acorn and not fat, with a slender kernel, but with a more fragrant liquid that is pressed out, growing in level places. The Egyptian
102| is richer, they say, and red with a thicker bark, and, although it grows in marshy places, is shorter and drier; on the other hand the Arabian is green and thinner and, because it is mountainous, denser; by far the best is the Petraean, from the town we mentioned, with a black bark and a white kernel. Perfumers, however, press only the husks, physicians the kernels too, pounding them while warm water is poured over bit by bit.
103| Like myrobalanum in unguents, and of nearly the same use, is a palm in Egypt called adipsos, green, with the smell of the quince, and no wood inside. It is gathered in autumn, a little before it begins to ripen. If it is left, it is called phoenicobalanus and turns black and makes those who eat it drunk. The price of myrobalanum is 2 denarii a pound. Hawkers also give this name to the dregs of unguent.
104| Scented calamus too, which grows in Arabia, is shared with the Indians and with Syria, where it surpasses all. At 150 stadia from our sea, between Mount Libanus and another, an obscure one (not, as some have supposed, Antilibanus), in a modest valley beside a lake whose marshy parts dry up in summer, scented calamus and rush grow at thirty stadia from it. Let us in fact speak of the rush as well, although another volume is devoted to herbs, since the material of unguents is being treated here.
105| In appearance, then, they differ in no respect from the rest of their kind, but the calamus invites at once from far off by its outstanding smell, softer to the touch, and the better is the one that is less brittle and that breaks in splinters rather than as a radish does.
106| Within the pipe is a cobweb, which they call the flower; the richer the more of it. The remaining test is that it be black, white ones being condemned; it is better the shorter and thicker it is, and pliant when broken. The price of calamus is 1 denarius a pound, of rush 5. And they record that scented rush is found in Campania as well.
107| We have left the lands that look toward the ocean for those that curve toward our seas. So Africa, lying below Ethiopia, drips the tear of hammoniacum in its sands; hence also the name of the oracle of Hammon, beside which it grows from a tree they call metopon, in the manner of resin or gum. Its kinds are two: thrauston, like male frankincense, which is most approved; the other fat and resinous, which they call phyrama. It is adulterated with sand, as though taken up in growing; so it is tested by being in the smallest possible lumps and as pure as possible. The price of the best is 40 asses a pound.
108| Sphagnos, found below these in the province of Cyrenaica, is most approved; others call it bryon. The Cyprian holds second place, the Phoenician third. It is reported to grow in Egypt too, and indeed in Gaul; and I would not doubt it: for by this name are called the grey shaggy growths of trees, such as we see chiefly on the oak, but outstanding in smell. First praise goes to the whitest and the broadest, second to the reddish, none to the black. Those born on islands and rocks are rejected, as are all that have a smell of palms and not their own.
109| Cypros in Egypt is a tree, with the leaves of the ziziphus and the seed of coriander, white and scented. This is boiled in oil and afterwards pressed, and what comes of it is called cypros. Its price is 5 denarii a pound. The best is from Canopus, grown on the banks of the Nile, the second from Ascalon in Judaea, the third on the island of Cyprus. It has a certain sweetness of smell. They say this is the tree that is called ligustrum in Italy.
110| In the same region grows aspalathos, a white thorn of the size of a modest tree, with the flower of a rose. The root is sought for unguents. They record that on whatever shrub the rainbow is bent, the same sweetness of smell arises as that of aspalathos; but if on aspalathos, a certain inexpressible one. Some call it erysisceptrum, others sceptrum. Its test is in a red or fiery color, a dense feel, and the smell of castoreum.
111| It is exchanged at 5 denarii a pound. In Egypt maron too grows, poorer than the Lydian, with larger and varied leaves; those of the Lydian are short and small and scented. But above all scents balsam is preferred, conceded to Judaea alone among lands, once in only two gardens, both royal, one of not more than twenty iugera, the other of fewer. The Vespasian emperors displayed the tree to the city, and, remarkable to say, ever since Pompey the Great we have led trees too in triumph.
112| It now serves and pays tribute along with its people, in an entirely different nature from what our own writers and foreign ones had reported. For it is more like a vine than a myrtle. It has lately been taught to be planted from cuttings, bound up like a vine, and fills the hills as vineyards do. Holding itself up without props, it is pruned in the same way when it bushes out, and gleams under the hoe, and hastens to grow, bearing fruit within the third year. The leaf is nearest to that of the tuber, the foliage perpetual.
113| The Jews raged against it as they did against their own life; the Romans defended it against them, and there was fighting over a shrub; and now the treasury plants it, and it has never been more abundant. Its height stops within two cubits.
114| The tree has three kinds: the thin one with hair-like foliage, called eutheriston; another of rough appearance, curved, bushy, more fragrant, which they call trachy; and the third eumeces, because it is taller than the rest, with smooth bark. To this the second place for goodness is given, the last to eutheriston.
115| Its seed is nearest to wine in taste, red in color, and not without fat. The worse is in the grain which is lighter and greener. The branch is thicker than in the myrtle. It is cut with glass, with stone, or with knives of bone; it hates to have its vital parts hurt by iron, and dies at once, though it allows useless parts to be cut off by the same. The hand of the cutter is balanced with an artist's moderation, so that it injures nothing beyond the bark.
116| From the wound flows a juice which they call opobalsamum, of exceptional sweetness. But it weeps in a thin drop: with wool a small amount is collected into horns, and from these it is stored in a new earthen vessel; it is like a thicker oil, and white when fresh; then it reddens and at the same time hardens from translucent.
117| When Alexander the Great was campaigning there, it was reckoned a fair yield that one shell should be filled in the whole of a summer day, and at the fullest fertility six congii from the larger garden, one from the smaller, when it was also paid for at double its weight in silver; now even single trees have a more generous vein. It is struck three times every summer, and after that it is pruned back.
118| The branches too are an article of trade. The pruning itself and the shoot were sold for 800,000 sesterces within the fifth year after Judaea was conquered; it is called xylobalsamum and is boiled down in unguents. The workshops substitute it for the juice itself. The bark too has a price for medicines. The chief value, however, lies in the tear, the second in the seed, the third in the bark, the least in the wood.
119| Of this, the buxosum is best, which is also the most fragrant; but that from the seed is the largest and heaviest, biting in taste and burning in the mouth. It is adulterated with Petraean hypericum, which is exposed by its size, its emptiness, its length, the sluggishness of its smell, and a taste of pepper.
120| The test of the tear is that it be thin out of fatness, moderately reddish, and fragrant when rubbed. The second is of white color; worse is green and thick, worst black, for it ages like oil. Of every cut, that is most approved which has flowed before the seed. It is also adulterated in other ways, with the sap of the seed, and the fraud is scarcely detected by the more bitter taste; for it ought to be mild, not slightly sour, but only harsh in smell.
121| It is also corrupted with oil of rose, of cypros, of lentisk, of balanus, of terebinth, of myrtle, with resin, galbanum, Cyprian wax, according to what was to hand, and worst of all with gum: since it dries, in an inverted hand and in water it settles, which is a twofold test of it.
122| Even the genuine ought to dry, but this happens, with gum added, in a brittle crust. It is detected also by taste, and by the coal, since what is adulterated with wax and resin gives a blacker flame. For that changed with honey at once draws flies in the hand.
123| Moreover, a drop of the genuine thickens in warm water and settles to the bottom of the vessel; the adulterated floats like oil, and if it has been spoiled with metopium, it is ringed round with a white circle. The final test is that it curdles milk and makes no stains on clothing. Nor is fraud more evident anywhere else, since sextarii sell at a thousand denarii, having been bought from the treasury when it sells at 300 denarii each: so profitable is it to increase the liquid. The price of xylobalsamum is 6 denarii a pound.
124| Syria, next to Judaea above Phoenicia, produces styrax around Gabala and Marathus and Mount Casius of Seleucia. The tree has the same name and is like the quince tree, with tears of a pleasant, rather harsh smell; inside there is a resemblance to a reed, heavy with juice. Around the rising of the Dog Star, winged little worms fly to it, gnawing it, and for that reason it is soiled with sawdust.
125| Styrax, after those mentioned above, is praised from Pisidia [Side], Cyprus, Cilicia, Crete, and least from Amanus in Syria by physicians, but more by perfumers. In whatever nation, the color preferred is red and richly tough; the worse is bran-like and covered with grey mould. It is adulterated with resin of cedar or gum, or otherwise with honey or bitter almonds. All these are detected by taste. The price of the best is 17 denarii. It is produced also in Pamphylia, but drier and less juicy.
126| Syria gives galbanum too, on the same Mount Amanus, from a ferula of the same name, in the manner of resin; they call it stagonitis. That which they most praise is gristly, pure, like hammoniacum, and least woody. Even so it is adulterated with bean or with sacopenium. The genuine, if burned, drives away serpents with its reek. It is exchanged at 5 denarii a pound.
127| This is for medicine only; the same country produces panax for unguents as well; it grows also at Psophis in Arcadia and around the spring of Erymanthus, and in Africa and in Macedonia, a ferula of its own kind, of five cubits, with leaves first four, soon six, lying on the ground, large in size, round, but at the top like the olive, with seed hanging down like that of the ferula, in clusters. The juice is received by cutting the stalk at harvest time, and from the root in autumn. Its whiteness when curdled is praised; next in the scale comes the pale; the black color is rejected. The price of the best is 2 denarii a pound.
128| Different from this ferula is the one called spondylion, in the leaves only, because they are smaller and divided like the plane. It grows only in shady places. The seed, of the same name, has the appearance of sili, and is useful only for medicine.
129| Syria gives malobathrum too, a tree with a rolled leaf, of the color of a dry leaf, from which oil is pressed for unguents, Egypt being more fertile in the same. A more praised kind, however, comes from India. They record that it grows there in marshes in the manner of lentils, more fragrant than saffron, blackish and rough, with a certain taste of salt. The white is less approved. It very quickly feels mould with age. Its flavor ought to be like nard under the tongue. Its smell, when warmed in wine, surpasses the others. In price it is indeed like a marvel, that it goes from single denarii to 300 denarii a pound, while the leaf itself is 60 denarii a pound.
130| Oil also includes omphacium. It is made in two kinds and in as many ways, from the olive and from the vine; from the olive, pressed while it is still white, worse from the druppa. This is what it is called before it is ripe for food, though already changing color; the difference is that this is green, that white. From the vine it is made from psithia or aminnea.
131| When the grapes are the size of a chickpea, before the rising of the Dog Star, the bunch is cut at its first down, together with its melligo. The rest of the substance is cooked in the sun — it is stored in earthenware to guard it against the night dews —; the melligo is collected from time to time and kept in Cyprian copper. The best is reddish, sharper and drier. The price of omphacium is 6 denarii a pound. It is also made another way, when the unripe grape is pounded in mortars, dried in the sun, and then shaped into lozenges.
132| Bryon too belongs to the same class: it is the cluster of the white poplar. The best is found around Cnidus or in Caria, in thirsty, or dry and rugged, places; the second best on the cedar of Lycia. Oenanthe too belongs to the same class; it is the grape of the labrusca vine. It is picked when in flower, that is, when it smells best, dried in the shade on a linen cloth spread beneath it, and then stored in jars.
133| The finest comes from Parapotamia, the second from Antioch and Laodicea in Syria, the third from the mountains of Media; this last is the more useful for medicine. Some prefer to all of these the kind that grows on the island of Cyprus. For the kind produced in Africa is of use only to physicians and is called massaris. All of it, however, is better from the white labrusca than from the black.
134| There is, besides, a tree belonging to these same perfumes, which some call elate — what we call the fir — others palma, others spatha. The most praised is the Hammoniac, then the Egyptian, then the Syrian. It is fragrant only in thirsty places, and has a rich gum which is added to perfumes to tame the oil.
135| In Syria there also grows the cinnamum they call comacum. This is a juice pressed from a nut, very different from the juice of the true cinnamum, yet close to it in charm. Its price is 40 asses a pound.

======== Natural History — Book XIII ========

1| Up to this point the forests have their value in scents, and each of these was wonderful in itself; and luxury took delight in mixing them all together and making a single scent out of them all: in this way perfumes were discovered.
2| Who first invented them is not recorded. In the times of Troy they did not exist, nor were the gods supplicated with frankincense: people knew only cedar and citrus, which were shrubs of their own lands, and in sacrifices the smell — more truly a reek than a scent — rolling up in the smoke; though the juice of the rose had already been discovered, for this too is named in praise of oil.
3| Perfume must be credited to the Persian race. They soak themselves in it, and with this borrowed recommendation quench the stench born of dirt. The first instance that I, at least, can find is that when the camp of King Darius was stormed, Alexander took among the rest of his equipment a case of perfumes. Afterwards the pleasure of it was admitted by our own people too among the most elegant, and even the most honourable, good things of life, and the honour of it began to extend to the dead as well. For this reason we shall say more about it. Those ingredients of perfumes that do not come from shrubs will for the present be indicated by name only; their nature will be given in its proper places.
4| Perfumes have taken their names, some from their homelands, some from their juices, some from trees, some from other causes; and the first thing to know is that their standing has changed and their glory has often passed from one to another. In ancient times the most praised was that of the island of Delos, later the Mendesian. Nor has this happened only through mixture and composition: the same juices have prevailed or degenerated variously at different times and in different places.
5| Irinum was long most esteemed at Corinth, later at Cyzicus; likewise rhodinum at Phaselis, a glory that Naples, Capua and Praeneste took from it. Crocinum was long most praised [at] Soli in Cilicia, then at Rhodes; oenanthinum in Cyprus, later at Adramytteum; amaracinum in Cos, and later in that same place melinum was preferred to it; cyprinum in Cyprus, then in Egypt, where the Mendesian and metopium suddenly came into greater favour.
6| Soon Phoenicia took these away, and left Egypt the praise for cyprinum. Athens has steadfastly kept its own Panathenaicum. There was also pardalium at Tarsus, whose very composition and mixture have been forgotten. Narcissinum too, from the narcissus flower, is no longer made.
7| The method of making them has two parts, the juice and the body: the former consists mostly of kinds of oil, the latter of scents; these they call stymmata, those hedysmata. Between them there is a third element, colour, which many neglect; for its sake cinnabaris and anchusa are added. Salt sprinkled in checks the nature of the oil. Where anchusa has been put in, salt is not added. Resin or gum is added to hold the scent in the body; it vanishes and drains away very quickly if these are not added.
8| The simplest of perfumes, and the first, as is likely, was made from bryon and balaninum oil, of which we have spoken above; next the Mendesian grew up, from balaninum, resin and murra, and, more elaborate still, the metopium. This is an oil pressed from bitter almonds in Egypt, to which they added omphacium, cardamomum, iuncus, calamus, honey, wine, murra, seed of balsamum, galbanum and terebinth resin.
9| Among the cheapest even today — and for that reason it is believed to be one of the oldest too — is the one that consists of myrtle oil, calamus, cypress, cyprus, lentiscus and pomegranate rind. But I should think that the most widespread perfumes are those made from the rose, which grows in the greatest abundance everywhere. So for a long time the mixture of rhodinum was the simplest, with omphacium added, rose flower, crocinum, cinnabaris, calamus, honey, iuncus, flower of salt or anchusa, and wine.
10| The method is similar in crocinum too, with cinnabaris, anchusa and wine added; and similar in sampsuchinum, with omphacium and calamus mixed in. The best of this is in Cyprus and at Mytilene, where sampsuchus is most plentiful. Cheaper kinds of oil, from myrtle and laurel, are also mixed, to which are added sampsuchum, lily, faenum Graecum, murra, casia, nardum, iuncus and cinnamomum.
11| From quinces and struthea apples too an oil is made, melinum, as we shall describe, which passes into perfumes when omphacium, cyprinum, sesame oil, balsamum, iuncus, casia and habrotonum are mixed in. Susinum is the finest of all; it consists of lilies, balaninum, calamus, honey, cinnamum, crocus and murra;
12| and next cyprinum, made from cyprus and omphacium and cardamomum, calamus, aspalathus and habrotonum; some also add cyperus, murra and panax. This is best at Sidon, next in Egypt. If sesame oil is not added it lasts as long as four years; it is enlivened with cinnamomum.
13| Telinum is made from fresh oil, cypirus, calamus, melilotus, faenum Graecum, honey, marum and amaracus. This was by far the most celebrated in the age of Menander the comic poet; later it was succeeded by the one called megalium for its renown, made from balaninum oil, calamus, iuncus, xylobalsamum, casia and resin. Its peculiarity is that it is fanned while it cooks until it stops smelling; when it has cooled again it recovers its scent.
14| Single juices also make famous perfumes: first of all malobathrum, then the Illyrian iris and the amaracus of Cyzicus, both of them herbs. Some mix a few other things with these, and others different ones; those who add the most add to one or the other honey, flower of salt, omphacium, the leaves of the agnus, and panax. In cinnamominum everything is foreign, and its prices are prodigious:
15| to cinnamum are added balaninum oil, xylobalsamum, calamus, iuncus, seeds of balsamum, murra and scented honey. This is the thickest of perfumes. Its prices run from 35 denarii to 300 denarii. Nardinum, or foliatum, consists of omphacium or balaninum, iuncus, costus, nardum, amomum, murra and balsamum.
16| In this connection it will be fitting to remember that we have named 9 kinds of herbs that imitate Indian nard: so great is the material for adulteration. All are made sharper with costus and amomum, which strike the nostrils most; heavier and sweeter with myrrh; more useful for medicine with saffron; and by itself the sharpest is amomum, which also causes headaches. Some think it enough to sprinkle on the most precious, with the others boiled down, sparing the expense, but the force is not the same unless they are boiled down together.
17| Myrrh makes an unguent by itself without oil, stacte at least, otherwise it brings too much bitterness. With cyprinum it becomes green, with susinum greasy, with Mendesian black, with rhodinum white, with myrrh pale. These are the kinds of ancient invention and the later thefts of the workshops. Now will be told the very heap of delicacies and the supreme authority of the matter.
18| So the royal unguent, so called because it is compounded in this way for the kings of the Parthians, consists of myrobalanum, costus, amomum, comacum cinnamum, cardamomum, spike of nard, maron, myrrh, cassia, styrax, ladanum, opobalsamum, Syrian calamus and rush, oenanthe, malobathrum, serichatum, cypros, aspalathos, panax, saffron, cypirus, amaracus, lotus, honey, wine. And nothing for this purpose is produced in Italy, victor over all lands, nor indeed in the whole of Europe, apart from the Illyrian iris and the Gallic nard. For wine and rose and myrtle leaves and oil are understood to be common to almost all lands.
19| What are called diapasmata consist of dry scents. For the dregs of unguent they call magma. Among all, the most powerful smell is whichever is added last. Unguents are best kept in alabaster boxes, scents in oil, which is the more useful for their long keeping the fatter it is, as from almonds. And unguents themselves are better with age. The sun is their enemy, for which reason they are stored in the shade in lead vessels. A test of them is taken with the hand turned over, so that the heat of the fleshy part may not spoil it.
20| This is the material of a luxury the most superfluous of all. For pearls and gems at least pass to an heir, clothes extend their time: unguents expire on the spot and die in their own hours. Their highest recommendation is that the scent should invite a woman passing, even one intent on something else. And they exceed four hundred denarii a pound: at such a price is another's pleasure bought; for he who wears the scent
21| does not himself perceive it. If, however, even in these some difference is to be marked, it is found in the writings of Marcus Cicero that unguents tasting of earth are more pleasing than those tasting of saffron, since even in the most corrupt kind there is yet a certain severity in the fault itself that gives pleasure. But thickness delights some most of all; they call it dense, and delight now in being smeared, not merely drenched.
22| We have even seen the soles of the feet anointed, which they said Marcus Otho had shown to the emperor Nero. I ask, how could it be perceived or give pleasure from that part of the body? Nor have we failed to hear that one of the private citizens ordered the walls of baths to be sprinkled with unguent, and that the emperor Gaius had his bathtubs blended with it, and, lest this extravagance seem imperial, afterwards also one of the slaves of Nero.
23| Most remarkable of all, however, is that this fashion has penetrated even into the camps; the eagles at least, and the standards, dusty and bristling with spearpoints as they are, are anointed on feast days, and would that we could say who first instituted it! So it surely is: with this reward the corrupted eagles conquered the world. We seek such patronage for our vices, so that by this right unguents may be taken even under the helmet.
24| When this first penetrated to the Romans, I could not easily say. It is certain that, after King Antiochus and Asia were conquered, in the year of the City 565, the censors Publius Licinius Crassus and Lucius Julius Caesar issued an edict that no one should sell foreign unguents; for so they called them.
25| But by Hercules, some now add them even to drinks, and the bitterness is worth it to them, so that they enjoy a lavish smell from both ends of the body. Lucius Plotius, brother of Lucius Plancus, twice consul and censor, proscribed by the triumvirs, is agreed to have been betrayed in his hiding place at Salurnum by the smell of unguent, and by this disgrace the whole proscription was cleared: for who would not rightly judge that such men deserved to perish?
26| For the rest, of all lands Egypt is the best suited to unguents, and after it Campania has an abundance of rose. Judaea, however, is renowned still more for its palms, whose nature will now be told. There are indeed palms in Europe too and commonly in Italy, but sterile. On the coasts of Spain they bear fruit, but unripe; sweet in Africa, but at once fading away.
27| In the east, by contrast, wines come from them, and for some peoples bread, and for very many even food for four-footed animals; for which reason they will rightly be called foreign. There is none born of itself in Italy, nor in any other part of the world except in the hot, and fruit-bearing nowhere but in the burning.
28| It grows in light and sandy soil, for the most part nitrous as well. It delights in watered ground and in drinking throughout the whole year, though it loves thirsty places. Some even think it harmed by dung, a part of the Assyrians, unless it be mixed with streams. Its kinds are several, and first those not exceeding a shrub, sterile (elsewhere this too fertile), and leafy in the circle of a short branch. This in most places serves walls as plaster against splashing.
29| There is also a forest kind in the taller ones, from the tree itself, bristling with a spiny leaf all around them in the manner of a comb. These must be understood as wild, yet by an uncertain impulse they mingle even with the milder. The rest, rounded and tall, with dense and graded thumbs or rings of bark, offer themselves easy to climb to the peoples of the east, when they have put a pliant loop round themselves and the tree, a loop that climbs up with the man at wonderful speed.
30| The whole foliage is at the top, and so is the fruit, not among the leaves, as in the rest, but hanging in clusters on its own fronds among the branches, with the nature of both grape and fruit. The leaves, split in two along the sides in themselves with a knife-like point, first provided the two-leaved writing tablets, and are now split for ropes and the knotted work of wickerwork and light shades for the head.
31| Those most careful about nature report that in trees, or rather in everything the earth brings forth, and in herbs too, there are both sexes, which it is enough to have said once here for the full account, though in no trees is it more evident. The male flowers on the frond; the female buds without a flower, merely in the manner of an ear of grain. In both, the flesh of the fruit is formed first, and afterwards the stone within, which is its seed. The proof is that small fruits without this are found on the same frond.
32| It is oblong, not rounded like the olive, and moreover cut on the back by a cushioned cleft and, in most, with a navel in the middle of the underside. From there the root first spreads. It is planted face down, with two seeds set side by side and as many above; since the plant from single seeds is weak, they grow together in fours.
33| This stone is separated from the flesh by many white coats, some of them adhering to the flesh, and standing loosely apart it clings only by a thread at the tip. The flesh ripens in a year. In certain places, however, as in Cyprus, although it does not come to ripeness, it is sweet with a pleasing flavor. The leaf there is broader, the fruit rounder than in the rest, and the flesh not to be swallowed but, once the juice has been pressed out, spat out.
34| Palms in Arabia too are said to be faintly sweet, although Juba among the Scenitic Arabs puts above all flavors the one they call dablan. For the rest, they affirm that the females do not bear without the males, in a grove growing of its own accord, and that around each single one several bend, leaning toward him with pleasing foliage.
35| He, with his bristling foliage upright, marries the others by his breath and by the very sight and even by dust; if his tree is cut down, the females go barren in widowhood. And so far does the understanding of love go that coupling has even been devised by man, with the flower and down of the males, or sometimes only the dust, sprinkled over the females.
36| Palms are also planted by a trunk of two cubits in length, divided by splits from the very brain of the tree and buried. A planting torn from the root is also alive, as are the most tender of the branches. In Assyria the tree itself too, laid down in damp soil, takes root along its whole length, but into shrubs, not into a tree.
37| So they set up nurseries, and transplant them at a year old and again at two. For they delight in change of place, in spring elsewhere, but in Assyria around the rising of the Dog Star. There they do not touch the young ones with iron, but tie up the foliage so that they grow upward. The strong they thin for the sake of thickness, leaving half-foot stumps of the branches, which when cut off elsewhere kill the mother.
38| We have said that they love only a salty soil. So where there is none of that kind, they sprinkle salt, not on the roots, but a little farther off. Some in Syria and Egypt divide themselves into two trunks, in Crete into three, and some even into five. They bear at once at three years; in Cyprus, Syria and Egypt at four, others at five, at the height of a man, with no stone of the fruit within so long as they are young; for that reason they have received the name of eunuchs.
39| Their kinds are many. The sterile ones Assyria uses for timber and the finer works, and all Persia. There are also coppice woods of palms, sprouting again from the root when cut down. Their sweet pith is at the top, which they call the brain, and they live when it is taken out, which others do not. They are called chamaerops, with a broader, soft leaf very useful for wickerwork, plentiful in Crete, but more in Sicily. From palms come long-lasting embers and a slow fire.
40| Of the fruit-bearing, some have a shorter stone in the fruit, some longer, in these softer, in those harder, in some bony, polished with the tooth of files, against sorcerers, in religious practice. Another is clothed with more or fewer coats, another with thicker or thinner. In this way forty-nine kinds are made, if anyone wishes to go through the names of all, barbarian ones too, and the differences of the wines from them.
41| The most famous of all, which they called royal in honor, since they were reserved for the kings of Persia alone, were born at Babylon in one garden of Bagoas; thus they call eunuchs, who even reigned among them. That garden was never anywhere but in the court of the ruler.
42| In the southern region, however, the syagri hold the foremost fame, and the margarides next. These are short, white, round, more like berries than acorns, which is why they took their name from pearls. One tree of them is said to be in Chora, and one too of the syagri, and we have received a wonder about it, that it dies and is born again of itself along with the phoenix, the bird that is thought to have taken its name from the sign of this palm, and it was fertile when I was publishing.
43| The fruit itself is large, hard, rough, and differs from other kinds by a certain flavor of wild beast, most evident in boars, which is the cause of the name. The fourth in repute are the sandalides, called from a likeness, now at the border of Ethiopia, of which those who report most record five trees, wonderful no more for their rarity than for their sweetness.
44| After these the caryotae are most celebrated, both as food and, richest of all, in juice, from which come the principal wines of the east, hostile to the hair, whence the fruit's name. But as there is abundance and fertility there, so the renown is in Judaea, and not in all of it, but chiefly at Jericho, although they are also praised at Archelais and Phaselis and Livias, in valleys of the same people. Their chief endowment is a rich, milky juice and a certain taste of wine in a very sweet honey.
45| Drier of this kind are the nicolai, but of exceptional size: four of them laid end to end make the length of a cubit. Less handsome, but sisters of the caryotae in flavor, and for that reason called adelphides, are those that have the nearest sweetness, yet not the same. A third kind among these is the patetae: they abound in excessive liquid, and the drunkenness of the fruit itself bursts it, even on its mother, like grapes that have been trodden.
46| It has its own kind from the drier crowd, the dactyli, very long and slender, curved at times; for those of them which we give in honor of the gods the Jewish people, notorious for contempt of divinities, has called chydaei.
47| In general they are dry in the Thebaid and Arabia and thin with a lean body, and in the constant scorching heat they put on a crust rather than a skin. In Ethiopia itself this is crumbled—so great is the dryness—and, thickened like meal, is made into bread. It grows on a shrub with cubit-long branches, with a broader leaf and a round fruit, but larger than the size of an apple; they call them coecas. They ripen in three years, and the shrub always has fruit, another growing up beneath.
48| The fruit of the Thebaid is stored at once in jars with the breath of its own heat. If this is not done, it quickly dies and withers unless it is roasted again in ovens. Of the remaining kind, the Syrian ones seem plebeian, and those they call tragemata. For in another part of Phoenicia and Cilicia they are called by us, by a popular name, balani. Of these too there are several kinds.
49| They differ in shape, of roundness or tallness, and they differ in color, blacker and reddening. Nor are fewer colors reported than in the fig, though the white please most. They differ also in size, as many have made a cubit, while some are no larger than a bean. Only those which grow in salty and sandy places are kept, as in Judaea and in Cyrenaican Africa, not so in Egypt, Cyprus, Syria, or Seleucia in Assyria, for which reason pigs and other animals are fattened on them.
50| The sign of this fruit being spoiled or old is that the white wart by which it clung to the cluster has dropped off. Alexander's soldiers were choked by green palm fruit; this happened among the Gedrosi with one kind of fruit, though in other places it comes about from plenty: for there is such sweetness in the fresh ones that an end of chewing is made only through danger.
51| Syria has, besides this, trees peculiar to itself: in the kind of nuts the well-known pistacia—reported to be of benefit against the bites of serpents, both in drink and in food—and among figs the caricae and the smaller ones of the same kind which they call cottana, likewise plums grown on Mount Damascus, and myxae, both now familiar to Italy. From myxae wines are made in Egypt too.
52| Phoenicia has a cedar, smaller, like the juniper. Its kinds are two, the Lycian and the Phoenician, differing in leaf; for that which has a hard, sharp, thorny leaf is called oxycedros, while the other is branching and troubled with knots, outstanding in smell. They bear fruit of the size of a myrtle berry,
53| sweet in flavor. And of the greater cedar there are two kinds. The one that flowers bears no fruit, the one that bears fruit does not flower, and in it the new fruit seizes on what precedes it; its seed is like the cypress. Some call it cedrelate. From this comes the most praised resin. The wood itself is everlasting, and so they used to make statues of the gods from it. Of cedar is the Apollo in the shrine at Rome, the Sosian, brought from Seleucia. A tree like the cedar is in Arcadia; in Phrygia a shrub is called cedris.
54| Syria has also the terebinth. Of these the male is without fruit; of the females there are two kinds. In one the fruit is red, of the size of a lentil; in the other it is pale, ripening with the vine, no larger than a bean, pleasant in smell, resinous to the touch. Around Ida in the Troad and in Macedonia the tree is short and bushy; at Damascus in Syria it is large. Its wood is very tough and trustworthy for age, of a black gloss; the flower is in clusters like that of the olive, but reddish, the leaves dense. It bears also little pods giving out certain creatures like gnats, and a resinous toughness, which also bursts out of the bark.
55| And the rhus of Syria has a male that is sterile and a female that bears, with a leaf of the elm slightly longer and hairy, the leaf-stalks always opposed to one another, on a slender and short branch. White hides are prepared with them. The seed, like a lentil, reddens with the grape; it is called rhus and is necessary for medicines.
56| Egypt too has many kinds not found elsewhere, before all the fig, which is named Egyptian for this reason. The tree is like the mulberry in leaf, size and appearance; it bears fruit not on its branches but on the trunk itself, and this is a very sweet fig without inner seeds, in a very abundant yield, only by being scratched with iron claws; otherwise it does not ripen.
57| But when this has been done, on the fourth day it is harvested while another grows up beneath, so productive that it bears seven times each summer, abounding in much milk. A new crop springs up beneath, even if it is not scratched, four times in a summer, and drives out the earlier unripe one. The timber of its own kind is among the most useful. Cut, it is at once sunk in pools—this is its drying—and at first sinks, afterwards begins to float, and, strangely, the moisture that soaks all other timber surely sucks this dry. When it has begun to float, it has the sign of being seasoned.
58| Somewhat like this is what is called the Cyprian fig in Crete. For it too bears fruit on the trunk itself and on the branches, once they have grown to thickness, but it sends out a shoot without any leaves, like a root. The trunk of the tree resembles the poplar, the leaf like the elm. It bears four crops, and sprouts as many times, but its unripe fig does not ripen unless milk is let out by a cut. In sweetness and inner parts it is a fig; in size, a service-berry.
59| Similar also is the one the Ionians call ceraunia, itself also fruitful on the trunk—the fruit a pod; for this reason some have called it the Egyptian fig, by an evident mistake: for it is not produced in Egypt, but in Syria and Ionia and around Cnidus and in Rhodes, always with leafy foliage, a white flower with a strong smell, putting out shoots in its lowest parts and therefore yellowing on the surface, as the offspring takes away the sap. When the fruit of the preceding year has been removed about the rising of the Dog Star, it at once bears another, and afterwards flowers about Arcturus, the winter nourishing its fruit.
60| Egypt also has a persea tree of its own kind, like the pear, keeping its leaves. Its fertility is constant, the next day's fruit growing up beneath, and its ripeness comes with the blowing of the Etesian winds. The fruit is longer than the pear, enclosed in a shell and skin like the almond's, of a grassy color, but where that has a nut, this has a plum, differing in its shortness and softness, and, although a very sweet pleasantness flatters, it is harmless.
61| The wood in goodness, firmness and blackness too is no different from lotus. Statues have also been made of it. Not the same favor attaches, though it is reliable, to the wood from the tree we called balanus, for the most part twisted; so it is only for ships.
62| On the other hand the cuci are in great honor, like the palm, as its leaves too are used for textiles. It differs in that it spreads into arms of branches. The fruit is of a size to fill the hand, tawny in color, with a recommendable juice, sweet from harshness. The stone inside is large and of firm hardness, from which they turn curtain rings. In it the kernel is sweet while fresh; dried, it hardens without limit, so that it cannot be chewed unless soaked for several days. The wood is of a more curly elegance and for that reason most pleasing to the Persians.
63| No less celebrated is the thorn in the same people, only the black, since it lasts uncorrupted even in water, and for that reason is most useful for the ribs of ships. The white rot easily. There are prickles of thorns also on the leaves, and the seed in pods, with which they finish hides in place of gall. The flower is pleasing for garlands and useful in medicines. A gum also flows from it. But its chief usefulness is that when cut it rises again in the third year. Around Thebes this tree is found, where also the oak and persea and olive grow, 300 stadia from the Nile, in a wooded tract watered by its own springs.
64| There too is the Egyptian plum, not unlike the thorn mentioned just before, with the fruit of the medlar, ripening in midwinter and not dropping its leaves. The stone in the fruit is large, but the flesh itself, by its nature and the abundance of its harvests, is like grain to the inhabitants; for they pound it when cleaned and keep its cakes.
65| There was also a wild region around Memphis with trees so vast that three men could not embrace them, one of them a marvel of its own, not for its fruit or any use, but for what happens to it. It has the look of the thorn; it has leaves like feathers, which fall at once when the branches have been touched by a man and afterwards are born again.
66| It is agreed that the best gum is from the Egyptian thorn, worm-eaten in appearance, of grey-green color, pure, without bark, sticking to the teeth. Its price is X III a pound. Worse is that from bitter almonds and from the cherry, worst from plums.
67| It is also made from vines, most suitable for the sores of infants, and sometimes from the olive for toothache; also from the elm on Mount Corycus in Cilicia and from the juniper, useless for anything; from the gum of the elm, indeed, gnats are born there. It is made also from sarcocolla—so the tree and its gum are called—most useful to painters and physicians, like the fine flour of frankincense and therefore better white than red. Its price is as above.
68| We have not yet touched on marsh plants or the shrubs of rivers; before we part from Egypt, however, the nature of papyrus will be told, since the civilization of life depends most on the use of paper, and certainly its memory.
69| And this, Marcus Varro is our authority, was discovered through the victory of Alexander the Great, when Alexandria was founded in Egypt. Before that, he says, paper was not in use: at first people wrote on the leaves of palms, then on the books of certain trees. Afterwards public records began to be made on rolls of lead, and soon private ones on linen or on wax; for we find in Homer that writing tablets were in use even before the Trojan times, though by his own report not even the land that is now Egypt was known, since all paper grows in the Sebennytic and Saite nome of it,
70| and that it was afterwards built up by the Nile's deposits, since he reported that from the island of Pharos, which is now joined to Alexandria by a bridge, the land lay a night and a day's sail with a ship under canvas. Soon, in rivalry over the libraries of kings, Ptolemy and Eumenes, with Ptolemy suppressing paper, the same Varro reports that parchment was invented at Pergamum. Afterwards the use of the thing by which the immortality of men is secured spread widely without distinction.
71| Papyrus, then, grows in Egypt's marshes or in the still waters of the Nile, where they spread and stand, with a depth of the pools not exceeding two cubits, with a root of oblique growth as thick as an arm, with triangular sides, tapering to slenderness at a length of not more than ten cubits, like a thyrsus enclosing its top, with no seed and no other use than the flower for crowning the gods.
72| The inhabitants use the roots for wood, not only for the sake of fire, but also for other utensils of vessels. From the papyrus itself they weave boats, and from the rind sails and mats, and also clothing, even coverlets and ropes. They chew it too, raw and boiled, swallowing only the juice.
73| It grows also in Syria around that lake where the scented calamus grows, and King Antigonus used no other than that for ropes in naval matters, esparto not yet being in general use. Lately papyrus growing on the Euphrates around Babylon has been found to have the same use as paper; and yet the Parthians still prefer to weave letters into their garments.
74| Paper is prepared from it by dividing it with a needle into extremely thin strips, but as broad as possible. The first rank is the middle, and from there the strips follow in order of cutting. In antiquity there was called hieratica that dedicated only to religious rolls, which by flattery took the name of Augustus, as the second took Livia's from his wife: so the hieratica sank to the third name.
75| The next had been given the name amphitheatritica from the place of its making; the shrewd workshop of Fannius at Rome took this over and, refining it with careful reworking, made the common sort into the foremost and gave it his name; the kind that was not so reworked remained in its own name, amphitheatritica.
76| After this comes the Saitic, from the town where the greatest fertility is, made from the cheaper scraps, and still nearer the bark the Taeneotic, from a neighboring place, sold now by weight, not by quality. For the emporitic is useless for writing and serves as wrapping for paper and as covers for merchandise, and is named for that reason by the merchants. After this comes the papyrus itself, and its last part is like a rush and not useful even for ropes unless in moisture.
77| All of it is woven on a board wetted with Nile water. The muddy liquid provides the glue. First, lying flat on the board, a strip is laid out lengthwise with as long a length of the papyrus as could be had, the ragged edges cut off on both sides, and afterwards a crosswise layer completes the lattice. So it is pressed with presses, and the sheets are dried in the sun and joined to one another, always with a lessening of quality from the nearest to the worst. Never more than twenty to a roll.
78| There is great difference in their breadth: 13 fingers in the best, from which two are taken off for the hieratica; the Fannian has ten, and the amphitheatritica one less, the Saitic fewer, and it does not suffice for the mallet; for the shortness of the emporitic does not exceed six fingers. Besides, in papers are looked for thinness, density, whiteness, smoothness.
79| Claudius Caesar changed the first place: for the excessive thinness of the Augustan did not suffice for withstanding the pens; besides, letters showing through caused fear of blotting from the reverse, and in other ways it was transparent to an unseemly sight. So of the second layer the warp threads were made, of the first the weft. He also increased the breadth to the measure of a foot.
80| There was also a cubit-wide macrocollum, but experience detected a fault, since by tearing off one strip it damaged several pages. For these reasons the Claudian was preferred to all, and the authority of the Augustan was left to letters; the Livian kept its own, for which nothing came from the first layer, but all from the second.
81| Roughness is smoothed with a tooth or shell, but the letters then become apt to fall off. Paper absorbs less when polished, and gleams more. Moisture carelessly applied at first often resists, and is discovered by the mallet or even by smell, when the care has been rather negligent. A blemish is detected also by the eyes, but when strips of absorbent papyrus-fungus are inserted between the layers with glue, it is hardly detected unless the letter spreads: so much fraud is in it. Another task, therefore, is weaving again.
82| The common glue is made from the flower of fine flour with boiling water, with a very slight sprinkling of vinegar, for the carpenters' kind and gums are brittle. A more careful treatment strains the soft part of leavened bread with boiling water; in this way there is the least of any rough surface, and even the smoothness of the Nile is surpassed. Every glue, however, should be neither older than one day nor newer.— (afterwards it is thinned with the mallet and run over with glue, and once more, pressed together, it is smoothed of wrinkles and stretched with the mallet)
83| — So may the records last into the distance. I have seen the handwriting of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus in the house of Pomponius Secundus, the poet and most distinguished citizen, almost two hundred years after; and those of Cicero and the deified Augustus and Virgil we see very often.
84| Huge examples are found against the opinion of Marcus Varro concerning paper. For Cassius Hemina, a most ancient author of annals, reported in the fourth book of them that Gnaeus Terentius, a scribe, while digging over his field on the Janiculum, dug out a chest in which Numa, who reigned at Rome, had been laid.
85| In the same were found his books, in the consulship of Publius Cornelius Cethegus, son of Lucius, and Marcus Baebius Tamphilus, son of Quintus, to which from the reign of Numa 535 years are counted. That these were of paper is a still greater marvel, that buried they endured—wherefore on so great a matter I shall set down the words of Hemina himself:
86| Others wondered how those books could last; he gave this account: that there had been a square stone, bound about in the middle of the chamber on every side with cords. On that stone, on top, 3 books had been set; therefore, he thought, they had not rotted. And the books had been treated with citrus oil; therefore, he thought, the moths had not touched them. In those books were written the things of the Pythagorean philosophy—and they were burned by the praetor Quintus Petilius, because they were writings of philosophy.
87| The same is reported by Piso, the ex-censor, in the opening book of his commentaries, but he says that there were seven books of pontifical law and as many Pythagorean; Tuditanus, in his thirteenth book, says that they were books of Numa's decrees, 12 pontifical books in Latin and as many in Greek containing precepts of philosophy; the same writer, in his third book, also sets down the decree of the senate by which it was resolved that they be burned.
88| Among all, however, it is agreed that the Sibyl brought to Tarquinius Superbus three books, two of which were burned by herself, and the third with the Capitol in the times of Sulla. Moreover Mucianus, thrice consul, reported that he had lately read, when he was governor of Lycia, in a certain temple, a sheet of paper bearing a letter of Sarpedon from Troy; at which I wonder the more, if even in Homer's time of composition Egypt did not yet exist. Or why, if this use already existed, is it agreed that people wrote on rolls of lead and linen, or why did Homer, in that very Lycia, report that tablets were given to Bellerophon, not letters,
89| have handed down? Papyrus too is liable to failed crops, and already under the emperor Tiberius, through a shortage of paper, arbiters were given by the senate to apportion it; otherwise life was in turmoil.
90| Ethiopia, bordering Egypt, has hardly any notable trees apart from the linen-bearing, such as was described of the Indians and Arabia. Nearer to this, however, is the nature of wool, and a larger pod like the pomegranate, and the trees themselves are similar to one another. Besides this, there are palms, such as we have recounted. The trees of the islands around Ethiopia and the scented groves have been described in mentioning them.
91| Mount Atlas is reported to have a forest of its own, of which we have spoken. Bordering it are the Mauri, among whom is the greatest number of the citrus tree and the madness for tables, which women hold up against their husbands in return for pearls.
92| There survives today one bought for Marcus Cicero in his poverty and (what is more wonderful) in that age for 500 sesterces, and one of Gallus Asinius is recorded at 1,000,000 sesterces. Two were also sold that hung from King Juba, of which one had a price of 1,200,000 sesterces, the other a little less. One lately perished in a fire, descending from the Cethegi, exchanged for 1,300,000 sesterces, by the valuation of a large estate, if anyone preferred to buy lands at such a price.
93| The greatest size so far was that of one put together from two half-circles by King Ptolemy of Mauretania: four feet and a half across the middle of the circumference, with a quarter-foot of thickness—and there is more marvel in it for the art of the hidden joint than there could have been for nature—and of a solid one, which derives its name from Nomius, a freedman of Caesar, three sicilici short of four feet, and as many short of a foot in thickness.
94| In this matter it seems not to be omitted that the emperor Tiberius had a table exceeding four feet by a sextans and a sicilicus, with its whole thickness of an uncia and a half, covered with a veneer of thin plate, though so rich a one belonged to his freedman Nomius.
95| This is a tuber, that is of the root, and the most praised is that which was wholly under the ground, and it is rarer than those which grow above even on the branches, and properly what is bought at such a price is a defect of the trees, whose breadth and roots can be estimated from the circles. The trees resemble the female cypress, however, and the wild cypress too, in leaf, smell and trunk. Ancorarius is the name of a mountain of nearer Mauretania, which gave the most praised citrus, now exhausted.
96| The chief endowment of tables is in veins that are curled, or in little whorls. The one comes from an oblong course and is therefore called tiger-striped; the other from a twisted one, and tables of that kind are therefore called panther-striped. There are also those curled in waves, of greater charm if they imitate the eyes in peacocks' tails.
97| Great, however, though after these, is the charm, outside those mentioned, in those curled with a dense mass as if of grain, which on this account they call apiate from the likeness. The highest of all, however, is in color: this pleases most that of honeyed wine, gleaming in its own veins. After this comes size: then whole trunks please, and several in one.
98| The faults of a table are wood—so is called the dull and unarranged simplicity of the material, or arranged like the leaves of a plane—likewise a resemblance of vein to holm oak or in color, and, to which heat and winds have made them most liable, cracks or hairlines imitating cracks; afterward a lamprey-like line running across with a black boundary, and various spots of bark taken on like poppies, and a color wholly nearer black, or discolored blotches.
99| — The barbarians bury the green ones in the earth and smear them with wax, but the craftsmen lay them on heaps of grain for seven days, with as many intervals, and it is marvelous how much weight is taken off in this way. Shipwrecks have lately taught that this timber too, when dried by the sea, its hardness uncorrupted, is condensed in no way more vigorously. They are best nourished and shine by the rubbing of a dry hand, especially after the baths, and are not harmed by wines, as though born for them.
100| Among the few instruments of a more elegant life is this tree, and so it seems we should dwell on it a little too. It was known also to Homer. In Greek it is called thyon, by others thya. He accordingly reports it burned among scents in the delights of Circe, whom he wished to be understood as a goddess, a great error of those who take scented things in that word, since in the same verse he reports cedar and larch burned together with it, from which it is plain that he spoke only of trees.
101| Theophrastus, who wrote this next after the age of Alexander the Great, around the year 440 of the City of Rome, attributes already great honor to this tree, reporting that the beams of ancient temples were made from it, and a certain immortality of the timber in roofs, uncorrupted against all faults.
102| Nothing is more curled than the root, nor anywhere are works more precious. This tree is chiefly about the shrine of Hammon, and grows also in the inner part of Cyrenaica. Of tables, however, he is silent, and otherwise no older record exists than the Ciceronian, by which they appear recent.
103| — There is another tree of the same name, bearing a fruit execrated by some for its smell and bitterness, desired by others, which even adorns houses, and is not to be spoken of at greater length.
104| The same Africa, where it slopes toward us, produces a notable tree, the lotus, which it calls celthis, itself familiar to Italy, but changed by the soil. The finest is around the Syrtes and the Nasamones. Its size is that of the pear, although Cornelius Nepos reports it short. The incisions of the leaf are more frequent; otherwise it would look like the holm oak. The differences are several, and they arise chiefly in the fruits.
105| Its size is that of a bean, its color saffron, but before ripeness it is now one color, now another, as with grapes. It grows densely on the branches in the manner of myrtle, not as cherries do in Italy, and is so sweet to eat there that it gave its name even to a people and a land, too hospitable, making strangers forget their native country. They say that those who chew it feel no diseases of the stomach.
106| The better is without the inner stone, which in the other kind appears bony. A wine too is pressed from it, like mead, which the same Nepos says does not last beyond ten days, and that the berries, cut up with groats, are stored in jars for food. Indeed we have heard that armies fed on it passed to and fro through Africa. The color of the wood is black; it is sought for the playing of pipes. From the root they devise handles for small knives and other short uses.
107| Such is the nature of the tree there. There is also an herb of the same name, and in Egypt a stalk in the class of marsh plants. For it comes up in the channels as the waters of the Nile recede, like a bean in stalk and leaves, crowded in a dense mass, only shorter and more slender. The fruit on the head is like a poppy, in its cuttings and in every other way; inside are grains like millet.
108| The inhabitants let the heads rot in heaps, soon separate them by washing, and pound them when dried and use that for bread. Marvelous is what is reported besides, that as the sun sets these poppies are pressed shut and covered with leaves, and at sunrise opened, until they ripen and the white flower drops.
109| More than this they report of the Euphrates: that both the head itself and the flower are submerged in the evening, until the middle of the night, and go entirely into the deep, so that they cannot be found even by sending down a hand; then they return and gradually rise, and at sunrise emerge from the water and open the flower and still go on rising, so that it is plainly high above the water.
110| The lotus has a root of the size of a quince, covered with black bark, such as covers chestnuts too. Inside is a white flesh, pleasing as food raw, more pleasing boiled either in water or in embers. Nor do pigs grow fat on anything more than on its refuse.
111| The region of Cyrenaica ranks the lotus below the paliurus. This is more shrubby and redder in fruit, whose kernel is not chewed with it; it is pleasant of itself and sweeter from wine, and indeed commends wines by its own juice. Inner Africa, reaching to the Garamantes and the deserts, is known for the size and sweetness of palms,
112| most noble about the shrine of Hammon, but around Carthage the Punic apple claims the name for itself; some call it granatum. It has been divided into kinds too, calling apyrenum that from which the woody kernel is absent; its nature is whiter, its seeds more pleasing, and they are separated by less bitter membranes.
113| In other cases their structure is like that in honeycombs, with the kernels in common. Of these there are five kinds: sweet, sharp, mixed, sour, winy. The Samian and the Egyptian are distinguished as erythrocomis and leucocomis. The rind has greater use, from the sour ones, in finishing hides. The flower is called balaustium, and is suited to physicians and to dyeing clothes, of which the color took its name from it.
114| In Asia and Greece grow the shrubs epicactis, which others call emboline, with small leaves, which when drunk are good against poisons as heath is against serpents; and the shrub on which grows the Cnidian grain, which some call linum, while the shrub itself is thymelaea, others chamelaea, others pyros achne, some cnestor, others cneorum. It is like the wild olive, with narrower leaves, gummy if bitten, of the size of myrtle. The seed has the color and look of spelt, for the use of medicine only.
115| The island of Crete alone produces the shrub tragion, like the terebinth also in its seed, which they report to be most effective against the blows of arrows. The same produces tragacantha, with the root of a white thorn, much preferred to that growing among the Medes or in Achaia. Its price is 3 denarii a pound.
116| Asia also bears tragos or scorpio, a thorn-bush without leaves, with reddish clusters, for medical use. Italy also has myrice, which it calls tamarice, and Achaia calls it wild brya. A remarkable thing in it is that only the cultivated bears a fruit like gall. In Syria and Egypt this is abundant, and we call its wood unlucky; yet the trees of Greece are more unlucky still.
117| For it produces the tree ostrys, which they also call ostrya, growing alone around watery rocks, like the ash in bark and branches, with a leaf like the pear's, yet a little longer and thicker and with wrinkled incisions that run across the whole, with a seed like barley in appearance and color. Its timber is hard and firm, and if it is brought into a house they report that difficult births occur and wretched deaths.
118| Nor more auspicious on the island of Lesbos is the tree called euonymos, not unlike the Punic tree—between it and the laurel the leaves are in size, but in shape and softness those of the Punic—announcing pestilence at once by the smell of its white flower. It bears pods like those of sesame, with inside a grain of four-angled shape, dense, deadly to animals; the leaf has the same force. Sometimes a sudden emptying of the bowels comes to the rescue.
119| Alexander Cornelius called a tree "lion," from which the Argo was said to have been made, like an oak bearing mistletoe, which could be destroyed neither by water nor by fire, as mistletoe cannot, and known to no one else, so far as I know.
120| Almost all interpret andrachle for the Greeks by the name porcillaca, though that is an herb and is called andrachne, differing by one letter. Andrachle, however, is a wild tree, not growing in plains, like the arbutus, only with a smaller leaf that never falls, with bark not rough indeed, but such as might seem frozen all round: so gloomy is its look.
121| Similar also is the coccygia, in leaf, but smaller in size. It has the peculiarity of losing its fruit in down (they call it pappus), which happens to no other tree. Similar also is the apharce, bearing twice as the andrachle does. The first fruit they finish as the grape begins to turn downy; the second at the beginning of winter; what sort they are is not reported.
122| It is fitting that I have mentioned the ferula among foreign plants and ascribed it to the class of trees, since in the nature of certain ones, as we shall distinguish, the whole wood is on the outside in the place of bark, and in the place of wood they have a spongy pith within, as in the elder, while some have a hollowness, like reeds.
123| The ferula grows in warm places and across the seas, with knotted, jointed stalks. Of it there are two kinds: the Greeks call nartheca that which rises in height, and narthecia that always low. From the joints the leaves come out, the largest being those nearest the earth. The rest of its nature is the same as that of dill, and the fruit similar. In none of the shrubs is there greater lightness; for that reason it is easy to carry and affords the use of staffs to old age.
124| The seed of ferula some have called thapsia, deceived, since the ferula is without doubt thapsia, but of its own kind, with the leaves of fennel, a hollow stalk not exceeding the length of a staff. The seed is like that of ferula, the root white. Cut, it flows with milk, and crushed, with juice; and they do not give up the bark. All these are poisons: indeed it harms even those digging, if the slightest breeze blows on them; the body swells, and the "sacred fires" attack the face; for that reason they first smear it with wax ointment.
125| Physicians nevertheless say that, mixed with others, it helps in certain diseases, and likewise alopecia and bruises and livid marks, as if indeed remedies were lacking, that they should not handle crimes. But they put these forward as a pretext for a harmful tool, and there is so much shamelessness that they persuade men that poison is a part of the art. Thapsia is most violent in Africa. Some cut the stalk at harvest time and hollow out the root itself, so that the juice may flow together, and take it up when dried.
126| Others crush the leaves, the stalk and the root in a mortar and divide the juice, set in the sun, into lozenges. Nero Caesar gave it fame at the beginning of his reign, smearing it on with frankincense and wax when his face had been beaten in nightly prowlings and, on the next day, against the rumor, going about with unblemished skin. It is certain that fire is best preserved in ferulae and that those of Egypt are foremost.
127| Where also the caper grows, a shrub of firmer wood, and its seed and shoots common as food, the stalk too usually plucked along with them. Its foreign kinds are to be avoided, since the Arabian is pestilential, the African hostile to the gums, the Marmaric to the womb and to all flatulence. The Apulian causes vomiting, loosens the stomach and bowels. Some call it cynosbaton, others ophiostaphyle.
128| Of the shrubby kind also is saripha, growing around the Nile, of about two cubits in height, as thick as a thumb, with the foliage of papyrus, and eaten in a similar way, its root preeminent in the smiths' workshops for use as charcoal because of its hardness.
129| Not to be omitted is that which at Babylon is planted in thorns, since it does not live anywhere else, as mistletoe does on trees, but that only on the thorn which is called royal. It is wonderful that it sprouts on the very day it is thrown on—it is thrown on just as the Dog Star rises—and most quickly takes hold of the tree. They flavor wines with it, and for that reason sow it. That thorn grows also at Athens on the Long Walls.
130| Cytisus too is a shrub, proclaimed by Amphilochus of Athens with wonderful praises as fodder for all animals, and dried even for pigs, and he guarantees a yearly return from an iugerum of it, even on average soil, of 2,000 sesterces. Its usefulness is that of the bitter vetch, but the satiety is quicker, a very small quantity fattening a four-footed beast, so that pack animals spurn barley. No other fodder gives a greater or better supply of milk, and above all it affords flocks strong health against all diseases.
131| Indeed he orders that to nurses when milk fails it be given dried and boiled in water, as a drink with wine—the infants will be stronger and taller—and green also to hens, or, if it has dried, soaked. Bees too, Democritus and Aristomachus promise, will never fail when cytisus is available for pasture.
132| Nor is anything of less expense. It is sown at the time of barley, or in spring by seed like leeks, or by a stalk in autumn before midwinter; if by seed, soaked, or, if rains are lacking, it is sown and sprinkled. Plants a cubit high are transplanted into a pit a foot deep. It is planted around the equinoxes with a tender shoot, is complete in three years, and is cut at the spring equinox, when it has ceased to flower, a very cheap task for boys or old women.
133| It is grey in appearance, and, briefly, if anyone wishes to express the likeness, it is a shrub of a narrower trefoil. It is given to animals always after two days, but in winter what has dried, soaked. Ten pounds satisfy horses, and for the smaller animals in proportion, and incidentally between the rows it is productive to plant garlic and onions.
134| This shrub was found on the island of Cythnus, and from there transplanted to all the Cyclades, and soon to the cities of Greece, with a great increase in the yield of cheese. Besides — which makes me wonder all the more that it is rare in Italy — it fears no injury from heat or cold, from hail or snow. Hyginus adds that it does not fear even the cossus, since its wood has no attraction for it.
135| Shrubs and trees are born in the sea too — smaller ones in our own sea —; for the Red Sea and the whole ocean of the east are crowded with forests. The Latin language has no name for what the Greeks call phycos, since alga is understood as the word for the grasses of the sea, whereas this is a shrub. With a broad leaf and a green colour, it produces what some call prason and others zostera.
136| A second kind of the same, with a hair-like leaf resembling fennel, grows on rocks, the former in the shallows not far from the shore; both grow in spring and die in autumn. With the kind that grows on the rocks around the island of Crete they even dye purples, the most praised being from the north side, as with sponges. The third kind resembles grass, with a jointed root and a stem like that of a reed.
137| Another kind of shrub is called bryon, with the leaf of lettuce, only more wrinkled; this one grows lower down, while in deep water there are the fir and the oak, a cubit high; shells cling to their branches. They report that wool is dyed with the oak, and that certain of these even carry acorns in deep water. These were discovered by ship-
138| wrecked sailors and divers; and other very large ones are reported around Scione. For the vine grows everywhere, but the fig grows without leaves and with a red bark. There is also a palm of the shrub kind. Beyond the Pillars of Hercules there grows a shrub with the leaf of the leek, and another with the leaf of the laurel and of thyme; both, when they are cast ashore, are transformed into pumice.
139| But in the east it is remarkable that from Coptos onward, through the deserts, nothing grows except the thorn called the thirsty thorn, and even that very rarely, whereas in the Red Sea forests flourish, chiefly of laurel and olive bearing berries, and, when it rains, fungi, which turn into pumice when the sun touches them. The shrubs themselves are three cubits in size. The seas are full of caniculae, so that it is scarcely safe to look out from the ship, since they very often attack the very oars.
140| The soldiers of Alexander who sailed from the Indus reported that the foliage of the sea trees was green in the water, but when taken out dried at once into salt in the sun; also that along the shores there were rushes of stone extremely like real ones, and in deep water certain little trees with the colour of ox horn, branching and reddening at their tips, which when handled were brittle like glass but glowed in fire like iron, and when quenched their own colour returned.
141| In the same region the tide covers forests on the islands, though they are taller than the tallest planes and poplars. Their leaves are like the laurel's, their flower like the violet in scent and colour, their berries like olives and these too of a pleasant scent; they appear in autumn and fall in spring, while the leaves are never shed. The smaller of these trees the sea covers entirely; the tops of the largest stand out, and ships are moored to them, and to their roots when the tide has gone out. From the same people we have also learned of other trees seen in deep water in the same sea, which always keep their leaves, with fruit like the lupine.
142| Juba reports that around the islands of the Trogodytae there is a shrub in deep water called the Hair of Isis, like curalium but without leaves, which, when cut off, changes its colour to black and hardens, and breaks when it falls. Also another, which is called chariton blepharon, effective in love charms; women make spatalia and necklaces from it; it feels itself being caught, hardens like horn and blunts the edge of iron; and if the snare fails it is transformed into stone.

======== Natural History — Book XIV ========

1| We have now dealt, more or less, with the foreign trees, which will not grow anywhere but where they began and do not migrate into other lands; and it is time to speak of the common ones, of all of which Italy may be regarded as the particular parent. Only let those who are learning about them remember that for the present we are describing their natures, not their cultivation, although the greatest share in cultivation too belongs to nature.
2| I cannot wonder enough that the memory of some of them has perished, and even the knowledge of the names that the authorities have handed down. For who would not suppose that, now that the world has been joined together by the majesty of the Roman empire, life has made progress through the exchange of goods and the fellowship of a festive peace, and that everything, even what was hidden before, has been brought into common use?
3| But, by Hercules, no one is to be found who knows much of what the ancients handed down. So much more fruitful was the diligence of the men of old, or more fortunate their industry, when thousands of years ago, at the beginnings of literature, Hesiod set out to lay down precepts for farmers, and not a few followed him in this pursuit. From this our own labour has grown, since we have to search out not only what was discovered later, but also what the ancients had discovered, because idleness has decreed the extermination of the memory of things.
4| What causes could anyone find for this vice other than the public causes of the world? Plainly other customs have come in, men's minds are held fast by other things, and only the arts of avarice are cultivated. Formerly, when the empires of nations were enclosed within themselves, and so too were their talents, a kind of barrenness of fortune made it necessary to exercise the goods of the mind; countless kings were revered for honouring the arts, and in their display they put these forward as their wealth, believing that through them immortality was extended to them; and so both the rewards and the works of life abounded. For later generations the broadening of the world and the great extent of things have been a loss.
5| Once the senator came to be chosen by his property rating, the judge to be appointed by property rating, and nothing to adorn the magistrate and the general more than property; once childlessness came to hold the highest authority and power, legacy-hunting to be the most profitable of trades, and the only joys to lie in possessing — then the true prizes of life went to ruin; all the arts called liberal from the greatest good fell into their opposite, and men began to advance by servility alone.
6| This servility men worship, one in one way and another in another, and in different things, yet the prayer of all tends to the same goal, the hope of having. Everywhere, indeed, even eminent men prefer to cultivate the vices of others rather than their own good qualities. And so, by Hercules, pleasure has begun to live, and life itself has ceased.
7| But we shall search out even what has been forgotten, and the lowliness of some subjects will not deter us, any more than it did with the animals — although we see that Virgil, the most excellent of poets, for that very reason shunned the merits of gardens, and in what he did relate plucked only the flowers of things: blessed and happy in his charm, he named only fifteen kinds of grapes in all, three of olive, as many of pear, and of the apple only the Assyrian, neglecting all the rest.
8| And where should we begin, if not with the vines? Their pre-eminence belongs so peculiarly to Italy that by this one good alone she may be thought to have surpassed all the goods of other nations, even those that are fragrant — although wherever vines are in bloom no scent is preferred to theirs for sweetness.
9| Among the ancients vines were rightly counted among the trees on account of their size as well. At Populonium, in the city, we see a figure of Jupiter made from one vine, uncorrupted through so many ages, and likewise a libation bowl at Massilia. At Metapontum the temple of Juno stood on columns of vine wood. Even now the Ephesian Diana's temple roof is climbed by stairs made of a single Cyprian vine, as they say, since vines there grow to an exceptional size. Nor has any wood a more enduring nature. But
10| I should think these were made from wild vines. Our vines are kept in check by yearly pruning, and all their strength is drawn out into the shoots or pressed down into the layers, and they are grown only for their juice, in many ways according to the habits of the climate and the character of the soil. In the Campanian countryside they are wedded to poplars, and, embracing their brides and climbing through their branches with wanton arms in a jointed course, they match their tops, rising so high that the vintager
11| when he is hired stipulates for a pyre and a tomb; there is no limit to their growth. I have seen porticoes, villas and houses wrapped round by the shoots and trailing strands of single vines. And something that Cornelius Valerianus too thought worthy of record among the foremost things: a single vine at Rome, in the Porticoes of Livia, shades the open-air walks with its shady arbours, and the same vine yields twelve amphorae of must.
12| They overtop the elms everywhere, indeed; and they say that Cineas, the envoy of King Pyrrhus, marvelling at their height at Aricia, made a witty jest about the rather harsh taste of the wine, that its mother deserved to hang on so tall a cross. In Italy beyond the Po there is a tree called rumpotinus, and by another name opulus, whose storeys, spreading in a ring, the vines fill; carried up on a bare stem, the dragon, to the tree's palm, they then spread their lashes out beneath the upright fingers of the branches.
13| Again, the same vines are propped up to the height of a man of middling stature and bristle with stakes; others make a vineyard by their unruly creeping and the running of their leafy shoots through every empty space, filling the middle of courtyards. So many differences does Italy alone admit. In some provinces the vine stands by itself without any prop, drawing its arches in upon itself and feeding its thickness with its shortness.
14| Elsewhere the winds forbid this, as in Africa and in parts of the province of Narbonensis, where the vines, prevented from growing beyond their own thumbs and always looking like freshly set cuttings, wander like grasses over the fields and everywhere drink the juice of the earth into their grapes, which for this reason, in the interior of Africa, exceed the size of infant children. Nowhere are the wines harsher, but nowhere is the grape more pleasing for the firmness of its flesh, from which the name durus acinus, 'hard berry', may have arisen.
15| For the kinds of grape, in size, color and flavor, are still innumerable, and are multiplied by wine. Here they shine with a purple color, there they glow rose-red and gleam green; the whitish and the black are the common ones. The bumasti swell like breasts, and date grapes stretch out in very long berries. There is also that wantonness of nature, that small companions cling to very large ones, rivaling them in sweetness; these they call leptorrhages.
16| Others last through the winters, vaulted over on a hanging knot. Others are preserved only in their own breath, shut in earthenware pots and, above that, jars, packed tight in the pressed skins sweating round them. For others smoke, which does so for wines too, brings favor, and the authority of Tiberius Caesar made the smith's furnaces of Africa the chief glory in this; before him the first place at table went to the Raetic grapes from the territory of Verona. Indeed it is their endurance that gives the name to the dried berries.
17| Grapes are also stored away in must and themselves are made drunk with their own wine. Others grow sweet in boiled-down must, while others, translucent, await a new offspring on the mother itself, in glass; and the harshness of pitch poured over the stalk gives the berries the same strengthening firmness that is found in jars or amphorae.
18| Now there has been found a vine that of itself tastes of pitch in its wine, ennobling the territory of Vienne with the kinds Taburnus and Sotanus and Helvicus, only lately made famous and unknown in the age of the poet Virgil, from whose death ninety years go by.
19| What of the fact that the vine, set among camps, holds the sum of affairs and the command in the hand of the centurions, and with a rich reward leads the slow ranks to the sluggish eagles, and even in offenses honors the punishment itself? Nor have vineyards failed to give the method of assaults. For in medicines they hold so great a place that wine itself is by itself a remedy.
20| Democritus alone thought that the kinds of vines could be comprised in number, claiming that all in Greece were known to him; the rest have reported them innumerable and infinite, which will appear more truly from wine. Nor will all be told, but chiefly the notable, for they are almost as many as fields, and so it will be enough to have shown the most celebrated of the vines, or those in which there is some marvel through a peculiarity.
21| First place is given to the Aminnean, for their firmness and for the life of their wine, which at least improves with age. Of them there are five kinds. Of these the true kind with the smaller berry sheds its blossom better, and bears rains and storms, not so the larger, but on a tree it is less exposed than on a trellis.
22| Of the twin kind, to which the grapes, always in pairs, gave this name, the flavor is very harsh, but its strength outstanding. Of these the smaller is harmed by the south wind and fed by the other winds, as on Mount Vesuvius and the hills of Surrentum; in the remaining parts of Italy it is suited only to a tree. The fifth kind is the woolly. So thickly does down clothe it that we need not marvel at the Seres or the Indians. It is the first of the Aminneans to ripen, and rots most quickly.
23| Next in rank are the Nomentan, with reddish wood, for which reason some have called them the reddish vines. These are less fertile, excessive in pressed skins and lees, strongest against frosts, harassed more by dryness than rain, by heat than cold. For which reason in cold and damp places they take first place. The more fertile is the one smaller in berry and less cut in leaf.
24| The Apian vines were given their name by bees, which are especially greedy for them. Of these two kinds themselves grow downy. They differ in that one ripens sooner, though the other too hastens. Cold sites are not refused by them, and yet none rots sooner with rain. The wines are sweet at first and take on harshness over the years. Etruria delights in no vine more.
25| And thus far the foremost renown is given to the peculiar and native vines of Italy; the others are immigrants. From Chios and Thasos the Graecula is not inferior to the Aminneans in goodness, very tender in berry and with a grape so small that it does not pay to cultivate it except in the richest soil. The hills of Tauromenium sent out the eugenia, with the surname of noble birth, only to the Alban territory, since once transplanted it is at once changed. For there is some such love of places that they leave all their glory in them and nowhere pass over entire.
26| This happens also with the Raetic and the Allobrogic, which we called pitch-flavored above, noble at home and not to be recognized elsewhere. Being fertile, however, they make up in quantity for what they lack in quality: the eugenia in hot places, the Raetic in temperate, the Allobrogic in cold, ripening in the frost and black in color.
27| Of those we have mentioned so far, even the black ones, the wines turn with age to a white color. The rest are ignoble, yet sometimes by the work of climate or soil they do not belie age, as the Faecenia, and with it the Biturigiaca flowering, sparser in berry, never at risk at flowering, since they come early and resist winds and rains, though better in chilly places than warm, in damp than in thirsty.
28| The visulla is of a large rather than dense bearing of grapes, impatient of changing weather, but constant against one steady course of cold or heat. The smaller of that kind is the better. In choosing soil it is fussy: in rich it rots, in thin it does not come up at all; it delicately seeks a middle temperature, and for this reason is familiar on the Sabine hills. Its grape is unlovely to look at, pleasant in flavor. Unless it is picked at once when ripe, it falls even without rotting. Against hail the breadth and toughness of its leaves protect it.
29| Now notable in color, between the purple and the black, are the helvolae, which often vary and for that reason are called variana by some. The blacker is preferred among them; each is fertile in alternate years, but better for wine when it bears more sparingly. The praeciae, too, are two kinds, distinguished by the size of the berry, with abundant wood and a grape most useful for pots; the leaf is like parsley. The Dyrrachians celebrate the balisca; in Spain they call it coccolobis. The cluster is rather loose; it bears heat and southern winds, it is hostile to the head, and bountiful in supply.
30| Spain makes two kinds of it, one with an oblong berry, the other with a round one; they gather them last. The sweeter the coccolobis, the better. But even the harsh one turns with age into sweet, and the one that was sweet into harshness; then they rival Alban wine. They report that a drink from them is most useful for diseases of the bladder. The albuelis is more fertile on the tops of trees, the visulla at the bottom;
31| for which reason, planted around the same trees, they enrich by the difference of their nature. Among the black grapes, they named one inerticula, though they would more justly have called it sobria, recommended especially in aged wine, but harmless in strength, since it alone does not cause drunkenness.
32| Fertility recommends the others, and the foremost helvennaca. Of it there are two kinds: the larger, which some call the long, the smaller the marc, not so fruitful, but more pleasing to drink. It is distinguished by a rounded leaf, though each is slender. It is necessary to put forked props under them: otherwise they do not bear their own abundance.
33| They delight in the sea breeze, and hate dew-wet places. No vine loves Italy less; it is rare, small, rotting there, and in the wine it begot not surpassing summer; nor is another more at home in lean soil. Graecinus, who otherwise copied out Cornelius Celsus, thinks it is not its nature that is at odds with Italy, but the cultivation of those who greedily draw out the shoots. On that account it is exhausted by its own fertility, unless the richness of a very fat soil supports it as it flags. It is said not to suffer from carbuncle, a great endowment, if it is true that over any vine the weather has no power.
34| The spionia bears heat, which some call spinea, and it grows fat in the autumn rains; indeed it is fed by mists as well, and for that reason belongs especially to the Ravenna district. The vennuncula, among those that shed their blossom best, most suitable for pots, the Campanians prefer to call surcula, others scapula, Tarracina Numisiana, having no strength of its own, but wholly as strong as the soil, yet most effective at Surrentum, witness as far as Vesuvius.
35| For there the Murgentina from Sicily is most powerful, which some call Pompeiana, fruitful only in rich ground, as the horconia is only in Campania. On the other hand the arceraca, called argitis by Virgil, of itself makes the soil richer, being itself strongest against rain and old age, its wine indeed scarcely keeps a year and is as cheap as common rations, but of outstanding abundance. The mettica also endures years, strongest against every star, with a black berry, its wines turning ruddy with age.
36| And thus far the kinds are common; the rest belong to regions and places or are mixed from these grafted together: since the Tudernis is peculiar to the Etruscans, and at Florentia they even have one named sopina; at Arretium the talpona and etesiaca and conseminia. The black talpona makes a white must. The etesiaca is deceptive: the more it has borne, the more praiseworthy the yield, and, a wonder, it falls short at once in fertility and in quality. The conseminia is black, its wine lasting least, its grape most; it is harvested 15 days later than any other, fertile, but for the table.
37| The leaves of this, like those of the wild vine, change to a blood-red color before they fall. This happens in certain others also, as a proof of the worst kind. The itriola is peculiar to Umbria, to Mevania and the Picene territory; the pumula to Amiternum. In the same places the bananica is deceptive, yet they love it.
38| They call one of their own by the name of the municipality, Pompeii, though it is more abundant among the Clusini; the people of Tibur also called it municipal, although they lately found the oleaginea from its likeness to the olive. This is the newest of grapes discovered up to this time. The vinaciola is known only to the Sabines, the calventina to the Gaurani. I know that those transplanted from the Falernian territory are called Falernian, and degenerate very quickly everywhere. Some too have made a Surrentine kind with a very sweet grape.
39| The capnios and the buconiates and the tharrupia on the hills of Thurii are not harvested before frost has come. Pisa delights in the Parian, Mutina in the Perusinia, with a black berry, whose wine turns white within four years. It is a wonder that there a grape turns around with the sun, and for that reason is called streptis, and that in Italy the Gallic pleases, but across the Alps the Picene. Virgil mentioned the Thasian and Mareotic and Lagean and several foreign ones that are not found in Italy.
40| But there are still some notable for their grape, not for their wine: the ambrosia of the duracina, which can be kept on the vine without any vessels—so great is its firmness against cold, heat and storms, nor does [orthampelos] need a tree or stakes, holding itself up, as does not the dactylis with its finger-like slenderness—the columbina from the racemose, and more purple, with the surname bimammia, because they bear not clusters,
41| but other grapes, likewise the tripedanea, whose name is from its measure, likewise the scripula with a dried berry and the Raetica called in the Maritime Alps, unlike that praised one. For this is short, with berries crowded, degenerate in wine, but with the thinnest skin of all, with a single, very small stone (which they call chium), having one very large berry or another. There is also the black Aminnea, to which they give the name Syriaca, and the Spanish, the most approved of the ignoble.
42| On arbors, however, are planted the table grapes, called escariae, from the duracinae, white, black, and the bumasti in as many colors, and those not yet mentioned, the Aegia and the Rhodia and the unciale, so called as if from the weight of the berry, likewise the picina, the blackest of all, and the stephanitis, by a sport of nature for garlands, with leaves running between the berries, and those called forenses, quick in yield, saleable in look, easy to carry. On the other hand the cinerea and the rabuscula and the asinusca are condemned even for their look, though less so the alopecis, which imitates foxes' tails.
43| The vine called Alexandrina around Phalacra is short, with branches a cubit long, a black berry of the size of a bean, a soft and very small stone, oblique clusters of great sweetness, a small, round leaf without divisions. In these last seven years there has been found in Alba Helvia in the province of Narbonensis a vine that sheds its blossom in a single day, and for that reason is the safest; they call it carbunica, and the whole province now plants it.
44| The first of the Catos, that great man, distinguished beyond the rest by triumph and censorship, yet still more by the fame of his writings and the precepts given to the Roman race on all things worth seeking, and among the first on cultivating the land, the best farmer by the confession of his age and without a rival, touched on few kinds of vines, some of which have already lost even their names.
45| His opinion must be set out separately in a whole discussion, so that in every kind we may know what were most celebrated in the year 600 of the City, about the capture of Carthage and Corinth, when he died, and how much life has advanced since in 230 years.
46| So, concerning vines and grapes, he thus reported: A place that will be called best for wine and exposed to the sun, plant with the smaller Aminnean and the twin eugenia, the smaller helvia. A place that is richer or foggier, sow the larger Aminnean or the Murgentine, the Apician, the Lucanian. The other mixed vines suit any field at all. In a pot the smaller and larger Aminnean and the Apician are stored in pressed skins; the same are rightly stored in boiled-down must and in must, and in the lora. Those you hang up, the duracinae, the larger Aminneans, these are rightly kept as raisins, or at the blacksmith's forge.
47| Nor are there older precepts in the Latin language on that subject. So near are we to the origin of things. The Aminnean mentioned just now, Varro calls Scantiana. In our own age there have been few examples of this art brought to completion, but the less to be omitted for that reason, that the rewards also be known, which are most looked to in every matter.
48| The highest glory, then, was gained by Acilius Sthenelus, of freedman stock, with not more than 60 iugera of cultivated vines in the Nomentan territory, sold for 400,000 sesterces.
49| Great fame, too, attached to Vetulenus Aegialus, likewise a freedman, in the Campanian country estate at Liternum, and the greater for the favor of men, because he cultivated the very place of Africanus's exile; but the greatest, the work of the same Sthenelus, went to Remmius Palaemon, otherwise celebrated for the art of grammar, who in these last twenty years bought a country estate for 600,000 sesterces in the same Nomentan territory, at a byway of the tenth milestone from the city.
50| The cheapness of the commodity is known everywhere through all the suburbs, but there most of all, since he had acquired estates neglected through lack of care and not even of the more elegant soil among the worst. Undertaking to improve these not by virtue of mind but at first by vanity, which was wonderfully marked in him, after the vines had been dug over afresh under the care of Sthenelus, while he imitated the farmer, he brought them to an almost incredible marvel, within the eighth year selling them, with the vintage still hanging, to a buyer for 400,000 sesterces.
51| And more than one person ran to see the heaps of grapes in those vineyards, while the sluggish neighbors excused themselves by pointing to his superior learning; last of all Annaeus Seneca, then the leading man of the learned and in power, which in the end, grown excessive, came crashing down on him, and in no way an admirer of empty things, was captivated by such love of this property that he was not ashamed to hand over that palm to a man otherwise disliked and about to make a show of it, having bought those vineyards at fourfold within almost the tenth year of the care.
52| Work worthy to succeed in the Caecuban and Setine territories, since afterwards too they have often given seven culei, that is 140 amphorae, of must to each iugerum! And lest anyone suppose antiquity beaten in this, the same Cato wrote that ten culei came back from iugera, effective examples that seas more often braved bring the merchant no more, nor wares sought on the Red Sea shore or the Indian, than the diligent household god of the countryside.
53| Wine has its oldest fame in the Maronean, born in the maritime part of Thrace, as Homer is our authority. For we do not pursue the fabulous or the various reports of its origin, except that Aristaeus first of all in the same nation mixed honey with wine, the sweetness of both natures arising of themselves being outstanding. Homer reported that Maronean was to be mixed with twenty times as much water added.
54| Even now the force remains in that same land to this kind, and an untamed strength, since Mucianus, thrice consul, among those who have most recently reported, learned, being present in that region, that single sextarii are mixed with eight of water, and that it is black in color, fragrant, and grows rich with age. And to the Pramnian, which the same Homer celebrated, honor still lasts to this day. It grows in the region of Smyrna beside the sanctuary of the gods' Mother.
55| In the rest, no kind had distinction: there was one year of outstanding goodness in all kinds, in the consulship of Lucius Opimius, when Gaius Gracchus, the tribune, was killed while stirring up the plebs with sedition. Such was the temperate sky that shone (they call it coctura, 'the cooking') by the work of the sun, in the year of the City 633, and those wines still last, after almost two hundred years, now reduced to the likeness of harsh honey—for this is the nature of wines in old age—and cannot be drunk by themselves or overcome with water, their decay untamed to the point of bitterness; but in commending other wines they are medicines in a very slight mixture.
56| Suppose that, by the valuation of that time, a hundred sesterces were set for single amphorae; the interest on this alone, multiplied at half-percents, which is civil and moderate, in the principate of Gaius Caesar, son of Germanicus, in the 160th year made single ounces of wine stand at that cost, as we showed by a famous instance when relating the career of Pomponius Secundus, the poet, together with the dinner he gave that emperor. So much money do the storehouses hold back!
57| Nor does any other thing feel a greater increase up to the twentieth year, or a greater loss after it, with the price not advancing; for rarely so far, and only in extravagance, have thousands of sesterces been paid for single jars. The people of Vienne alone are believed to exchange their pitch-flavored wines, whose kinds we have described, at a higher price, but only among themselves, from love of their country; and that wine is reckoned colder than the rest in a cold drink.
58| Wine has the nature, when drunk, of kindling a heat inside the vitals, and of cooling when poured on outside. Nor will it be out of place to recall in this place what Androcydes, famous for wisdom, wrote to Alexander the Great, restraining his intemperance: Whenever you are going to drink wine, O king, remember that what you drink is the earth's blood. Hemlock is a poison to man, but wine is a poison to hemlock. If he had obeyed these precepts, he would surely not have killed his friends in drunkenness, so that it may rightly be said that nothing is more useful to the strength of the body, nor more ruinous to pleasures, if measure is lacking.
59| Who could doubt that certain kinds of wine are pleasanter to some people than to others, or that, from the same vat, one is more outstanding than another, and that kinship is surpassed, whether by the jar or by chance? For this reason each will set himself up as judge of the first place.
60| Julia Augusta credited 86 years of her life to Pucine wine, using no other. It is produced in the gulf of the Adriatic Sea not far from the spring Timavus, on a rocky hill, where the sea breeze ripens few amphorae; nor is any other indicated as better suited to medicines. I would believe this to be what the Greeks, celebrating it with wonderful praises,
61| called Praetetian, from the Adriatic gulf. The deified Augustus preferred Setine to all, and the emperors for the most part followed, confirmed by experience, since that liquor seldom causes harmful indigestion. It grows above Forum Appi. Before this, the Caecuban had the most celebrated nobility, in the marshy poplar groves in the gulf of Amyclae, which has now vanished through the carelessness of the farmer and the narrowness of the place, still more ruined by the canal of Nero, which he had begun, navigable from the Baian lake to Ostia.
62| Second in renown was the Falernian territory, and from it chiefly the Faustinian; care and cultivation had gathered this. This too is fading away, as growers study abundance rather than quality. The Falernian territory begins at the Campanian bridge, on the left for those making for the colony Urbana of Sulla, lately attached to Capua; the Faustinian about 4 miles from the village of Caedicius, which village is distant from Sinuessa 6 miles. Now to no wine is there greater authority. It is the only wine that is set alight by flame.
63| Of it there are three kinds: harsh, sweet, light. Some distinguish thus: that Caucine is grown on the highest hills, Faustinian on the middle, Falernian on the lowest. It must not be omitted, however, that in none of those which are celebrated is the taste of the grape pleasant.
64| But the third palm has been variously contested: the Alban, near the city, very sweet and rare in the harsh, likewise the Surrentine, which grows only in vineyards, most approved for convalescents because of its thinness and wholesomeness. Tiberius Caesar used to say that the physicians had agreed to give nobility to the Surrentine; otherwise it was generous vinegar; Gaius Caesar, who succeeded him, called it noble flat wine. The Massic contends, and that from Mount Gaurus, looking out toward Puteoli and Baiae.
65| For the Statanian, bordering on the Falernian, came to the first place beyond doubt and made it plain that every land has its own times, its own risings and settings of things. Joined to these, the Calenian used to be put first, and the Fundan which grows in vines and orchards, and others from the neighborhood of the city, Velitern and Privernate. For that which grows at Signia, because of excessive harshness, useful for restraining the bowels, is counted among medicines.
66| The fourth course at public banquets was obtained, from the deified Julius—for he first gave them authority, as appears from his letters—by the Mamertine, produced around Messana in Sicily; among these the Potulan, called by that surname after its originator, are chiefly praised as nearest to Italy. In the same Sicily there is also the honor of the people of Tauromenium, their flasks usually substituted for Mamertine.
67| Of the rest, however, from the upper sea: the Praetutian and those growing at Ancona, and those called Palmensian from one palm by chance sprung up; in the interior, the Caesenatian and Maecenatian; in the Veronese likewise the Raetic, ranked after the Falernian only by Virgil; then from the innermost gulf of the sea the Hadrian; and from the lower the Latiniensian, Graviscan, Statonian.
68| In Etruria, Luna takes the palm; in Liguria, Genua; between the Pyrenees and the Alps, Massilia, with a double flavor, since it also produces a richer wine for seasoning others, which it calls the juicy. The authority of Baeterrae stands within the Gauls. Of the rest produced in Narbonensis it is not possible to give assurance, since they have made a factory of the business, coloring the wine with smoke, and would that it were not with herbs and harmful drugs as well! For the dealer adulterates even the flavor and color with aloe.
69| But the remoter parts of Italy, along the Ausonian sea, are not without glory either: the Tarentine and Servitian, and those produced at Consentia and Tempsa, in Calabria and Lucania, with the Thurian ahead. Of all these, the Lagarine, growing not far from Grumentum, was made most famous by the recovery of Messala Potitus. Campania has recently roused authority with new names, whether by care or by chance: at the fourth milestone from Naples the Trebellican, near Capua the Caulinian, and in its own territory the Trebulan, though otherwise it had always boasted even of the Trifoline among the common wines.
70| For the Pompeian, the greatest improvement is of ten years, old age contributing nothing. They are even found harmful, with headaches, until the sixth hour of the following day. By these examples, unless I am mistaken, it is plain that the homeland and the soil determine the result, not the grape, and that the pursuit of kinds by number is superfluous, since the same vine thrives in one way in some places, another in others.
71| Of the Spains, the Laeetan are ennobled by abundance, while the Tarraconensian and Lauronensian are of real elegance, and the Balearic from the islands are compared to the first of Italy. Nor am I unaware that most will think many things omitted, since each man likes his own and, wherever one goes, the same tale is found,
72| that a freedman of the deified Augustus, most skilled in his judgments and palate, who made the censorship of wine for his banquets, said to a host about the local wine that it was indeed a new taste to him and not one of the noble ones, but that Caesar would drink no other; nor would I deny that others also are worthy of fame, but those on which the agreement of the age has judged are these.
73| Now in the same way we shall speak of the overseas wines. In the highest glory after those Homeric ones, which we mentioned above, were the Thasian and Chian, and from Chios the one they call Ariusian. To these the authority of Erasistratus, the greatest of physicians, added the Lesbian, in about the 450th year of the City of Rome. Now the favor is before all for the Clazomenian, since they season more sparingly with sea water.
74| The Lesbian tastes of the sea by the spontaneous nature of its own. Nor has Tmolite its favor as a wine by itself, but because, with its sweetness mixed in, the harshness of the rest takes on sweetness and age together, since they seem at once older. After these, regard is for the Sicyonian, Cyprian, Telmessic, Tripolitic, Berytian, Tyrian, Sebennytic.
75| In Egypt this is grown from three kinds of grape, the most noble there: the Thasian, the aethalus, the peuce. After these authority belongs to the Hippodamantian, the Mystic, the cantharites, the Cnidian protropum, the Catacecaumenites, the Petrites, the Myconian. For the Mesogites has been found to cause headaches, and the Ephesian is not wholesome, since it is seasoned with sea water and boiled-down must. The Apamenian is said to be particularly suited to mead, as is the Praetutian in Italy. For this too is a peculiarity of kinds; sweet ones, at any rate, do not agree among themselves.
76| The protagion also has gone out of fashion, which the schools of Asclepiades had made nearest to the Italian. The physician Apollodorus, in the volume in which he advised King Ptolemy what wines he should drink, with the Italian still unknown, praised in Pontus the Nasperconites, then the Oretic, Oeneates, Leucadian, Ambraciotes, and, what he preferred to all, the Peparethian, but said it was of less fame, since it did not please before six years.
77| So far, the goodness of wine is owed to nations. Among the Greeks the most famous name was given to a product of care, which they called bion, devised for very many uses in illnesses, as we shall show in the part on medicine. It is made in this way: grapes picked a little before ripeness are dried in a sharp sun, turned three times a day for three days, pressed on the fourth, then aged in casks in the sun.
78| The people of Cos mix in a rather large measure of sea water, an origin arising from a slave's theft, who in this way filled up the measure; this was transferred to white must and is called leucocoum. In other nations, however, what is made in a similar way they call tethalassomenon, and thalassites when jars of must are sunk in the sea, a kind by which old age is made precocious.
79| Nor have we failed to have among us a method of making Coan wine from Italian, which Cato showed, prescribing, above all else, that it be matured in the sun for four years. The Rhodian is like the Coan, the Phorinean saltier than the Coan. All overseas wines are thought to reach middle age in seven years.
80| All sweet wine is less fragrant; the thinner it is, the more fragrant. There are four colors of wine: white, tawny, blood-red, black. Psithium and melampsithium are kinds of raisin wine with a flavor of their own, not wine; but Scybelites is of mead, grown in Galatia, and the Haluntium in Sicily. For siraeum, which others call hepsema and our people sapa, is the work of ingenuity, not nature, must boiled down to a third of the measure. When it has been reduced to half, it is called defrutum. All were devised to adulterate honey, but the former consist of grape and earth. After the Cretan raisin wine, the Cilician and the African are approved.
81| It is certain that it is also made in Italy and the neighboring provinces from the grape which the Greeks call psithia and we apiana, likewise the scripula, the grapes being scorched longer in the sun on the vine or in boiling oil. Some make it from any sweet grape, provided it is white and precooked, drying them in the sun until a little more than half the weight remains, and gently pressing them after they have been pounded.
82| Then they add well water, as much as they have pressed out, to the pressed skins, so as to make also a second raisin wine. The more careful, with the grapes dried in the same way, take out the berries and, without the stalks, soak them in excellent wine until they swell, and press them—and this kind they praise above the rest—and in a similar way, with water added, make a second wine.
83| Midway between sweet wines and wine is what the Greeks call aigleucos, that is, always must. This comes about by care, since it is prevented from fermenting—so they call the passing of must into wine; so they sink the jars in water straight from the vat, until winter has passed and the habit of cooling is established. There is still another kind by itself, which the province of Narbonensis calls sweet, and in it chiefly the Vocontii. For its sake the grape is kept longer on the vine with the stalk twisted.
84| By some the shoot itself is cut to the pith, by others the grape is roasted on tiles, all from the helvennaca vine. To these some add what they call diachyton, with grapes dried in the sun in a closed place for seven days on racks as many feet high from the ground, protected at night from damp, and trodden on the eighth day: it is said that in this way the best smell and flavor are produced.
85| Of the sweet kind is also melitites; it differs from mead in that it is made from must, five congii of harsh must being warmed with a congius of honey and a cyathus of salt. Harsh, but one that ought to be placed among these kinds, is protropum; that is what some call must flowing of itself before the grapes are trodden. This, poured off at once into its flasks and allowed to ferment, is afterwards roasted in the sun for 40 days, just at the rising of the Dog Star itself in the following summer.
86| Those which the Greeks call deuteria, and Cato and we lora, made from pressed skins soaked in water, cannot rightly be called wines, but are still counted among laborers' wines. Of them there are three kinds: with a tenth part of water added to the amount of must pressed out, and so the skins soaked a night and a day and again put under the press; the second, in the way the Greeks have made it, with a third part of what was pressed out added of water and the boiled-down juice reduced to thirds; the third is pressed from the lees of wine, which Cato calls faecatum. None of these is for use beyond a year.
87| But among these a thought comes to mind: that while the noble kinds which can properly be understood as wine are about 80 in the whole world, two thirds of this number belong to Italy, and in addition by far beyond all lands. And from this care creeps higher still: that this favor did not exist from the beginning, and that authority began after the year 600 of the City.
88| That Romulus made libations with milk, not wine, is shown by the rites he established, which keep that custom today. There is a Postumian law of King Numa: Do not sprinkle the funeral pyre with wine. That he enacted this because of the scarcity of the thing no one would doubt. By the same law he established that it is a sin to pour wine to the gods from an unpruned vine, a plan devised so that plowmen, otherwise lazy and afraid of the dangers of the orchard, should be forced to prune. Marcus Varro is our authority that Mezentius, king of Etruria, brought aid to the Rutuli against the Latins at the price of the wine that was then in the Latin territory.
89| It was not lawful for women at Rome to drink it. We find among the examples the wife of Egnatius Maetennus, who, because she had drunk wine from the cask, was killed with a cudgel by her husband, and he was acquitted of the killing by Romulus. Fabius Pictor wrote in his annals that a matron, because she had unsealed the little boxes in which were the keys of the wine cellar,
90| was forced by her family to die of starvation; Cato says that relatives give women a kiss so that they may know whether they smell of temetum. That was then the name for wine, whence drunkenness (temulentia) is also named. Gnaeus Domitius, as judge, pronounced that a woman seemed to have drunk more wine than for the sake of her health, without her husband's knowledge, and fined her her dowry. And for a long time there was great thrift in that matter.
91| Lucius Papirius, the commander, about to fight against the Samnites, made a vow, if he won, of a little cup of wine to Jupiter. Lastly, among gifts we find sextarii of milk given, nowhere of wine. The same Cato, when he had sailed to Spain, from which he returned with a triumph: I drank, he says, no other wine than the rowers, so unlike those who serve even their dinner guests differently from themselves, or substitute other wine as the dinner goes on.
92| The most splendid wines among the ancients were those seasoned with the scent of myrrh, as appears in the plays of Plautus, although in the one entitled Persa he orders that calamus too be added. Therefore some believe that they were chiefly delighted with spiced wine. But Fabius Dossennus decides it by these verses: I was sending fine wine, myrrh-wine, and in Acharistio: Bread and barley meal, myrrh-wine.
93| I see that Scaevola also, and Lucius Aelius and Ateius Capito, held the same opinion, because it is in the Pseudolus: But if there is need that he bring out something sweet from the same place, does he have anything?—You ask? Myrrh-wine, raisin wine, boiled-down must, honey; from which it appears that myrrh-wine is named not only among wines but also among sweet things.
94| That there were storehouses and that wines were accustomed to be racked off in the year 633 of the City is evident from the undoubted proof of the Opimian wine. Italy was by then understanding its own good; yet those kinds were not yet in fame; and so all those then produced have one name, the consul's.
95| So, too, afterwards the overseas wines stayed long in authority, even to our grandfathers, indeed after the Falernian had already been found, as appears from that comic verse: I will bring out five of Thasian wine, two of Falernian. The censors Publius Licinius Crassus and Lucius Julius Caesar, in the year 665 from the founding of the City, issued an edict that no one should sell Greek wine, or Aminnean, at eight asses per quadrantal each. For these are the words. So great, however, was the favor for Greek wine that single drinks were given at a banquet.
96| Marcus Varro reports in these words what authority wines had in his youth: Lucius Lucullus as a boy never saw at his father's a splendid banquet at which Greek wine was given more than once; on his own return from Asia he distributed more than a hundred thousand jars as a congiary. Gaius Sentius, whom we saw as praetor, used to say that Chian wine was first brought into his house when the physician had given it to him for a stomach complaint. Hortensius left his heir more than
97| 10,000 jars. So far Varro. What of this? Did not Caesar the dictator, at the banquet of his triumph, distribute amphorae of Falernian wine and jars of Chian at the feasts? The same, at his Spanish triumph, gave Chian and Falernian, and at the banquet in his third consulship Falernian, Chian, Lesbian, Mamertine, at which time it is agreed that four kinds of wine were first set out. Afterwards, then, all the rest came into repute, and about the year 700 of the City.
98| And so I do not wonder at the almost innumerable kinds of artificial wine found many ages ago, which we shall now describe, all pertaining to medical use. How omphacium is made we have told for the sake of unguents in the previous book. Made from the labrusca, that is, the wild vine, is what is called oenanthinum, two pounds of its flower being steeped in a jar of must. After 30 days they use it. Besides this, the root of the labrusca and the skins of the berry finish hides.
99| These, a little after they have shed their flower, have a singular remedy for cooling the burning heat of the body in diseases, being of the coldest nature, as they report. Part of them dies in the heat before the rest, which are called the solstitial. They never ripen entire, and if, before the whole grape has dried up, it is given half-cooked as food to the chicken kind, it breeds a distaste for seeking grapes.
100| Of the artificial wines the first is made from wine itself (what they call adynamon) in this way: 20 sextarii of white must and half as much water are boiled until the measure of the water is boiled away. Others take 10 sextarii of sea water and as much rain water and roast them in the sun for 40 days. They give it to the sick for whom they fear the harm of wine.
101| The next is made from the seed of ripe millet with its stalk, a pound and a quarter to two congii of must, steeped and drawn off after the seventh month. Of the lotus tree, shrub and herb, we have said where each were made.
102| They are made also from fruits, which we shall describe, adding interpretations only where necessary; and first from palms, which the Parthians, the Indians and the whole east use, from the milder kinds they call chydaeae, a modius being steeped in three congii of water and pressed out. Thus sycites is made from the fig, which some call pharnuprium, others trochis, or, if one does not wish it sweet, the same amount of pressed skins is added instead of water. From the Cyprian fig a vinegar is also made, excelling and better even than the Alexandrian.
103| Wine is also made from the Syrian pod and from pears and all kinds of apples—but that from the Punic they call rhoites—and from cornels, medlars, service-berries, dried mulberries, pine kernels. These, steeped in must, are pressed; the ones named before are mild by themselves.
104| How Cato taught that myrtites is made we shall indicate a little later; the Greeks also in another way: tender branches with their own leaves are boiled in salted must and pounded, and a pound is brought to boil in three congii of must until two remain. What is made in this way from the berries of the wild myrtle is called myrtidanum. This stains the hands.
105| From the things that grow in gardens, wine is made from the root of asparagus, cunila, origanum, parsley seed, habrotonum, mentastrum, rue, nepeta, serpyllum, marruvium. They put two handfuls in a jar of must, with a sextarius of sapa and a hemina of sea water.
106| From turnips it is made, with two denarii in weight added to two sextarii of must, likewise from the root of squill; among flowers, from rose petals pounded in a little linen cloth put into the must with a small weight, that it may sink, 50 denarii in weight to twenty sextarii of must—they forbid the vessel to be opened before three months—likewise from Gallic nard and another from the wild.
107| I find aromatites also made, almost with the composition of unguents: at first from myrrh, as we said, then from Celtic nard, calamus, bitumen, cakes being thrown into must or sweet wine; elsewhere with calamus, rush, costus, nard of Syria, amomum, cassia, cinnamon, saffron, palm, asarum, similarly in a cake.
108| Among others, half-pounds of nard and malobathrum too are added to two congii of must, such as are now also made with pepper and honey added, which some call condita, others piperata. There is found also nectarites, from the herb which some call Helenion, others Medica, others symphyton, others Idaea, others Orestion, others nectaria, with a root of 50 denarii in weight added to six sextarii of must, similarly in a cloth.
109| Among the other herbs, absinthites is made in 40 sextarii of must by boiling down a pound of Pontic wormwood to a third part, or by putting sprigs of wormwood into the wine. In the same way hyssopites is made from Cilician hyssop, three ounces thrown into two congii of must, or crushed and put into wine. Both are also made in another way, by planting the herb around the roots of the vines.
110| Cato teaches that helleborites too is made in this way, from black hellebore. So is scammonites made, owing to the marvellous nature of the vine in drawing an alien flavor into itself; this is why the vintages of the Patavini in their marshy ground smell of willow. In the same way hellebore is planted in Thasos, or wild cucumber, or scammony, and the wine is called phthorium, because it causes abortion.
111| Wine is also made from herbs, whose natures will be told in their own place: from stoechas, the root of Gentiana, tragoriganum, dittany, asarum, daucus, elelisphacus, panax, acorus, thyme, mandrake, and rush. They have also named scyzinum, itaeomelis and lectisphagites, the method of which is by now forgotten.
112| From the class of shrubs, the berries or fresh wood of both kinds of cedar, of cypress, laurel, juniper, terebinth, reed and lentisk are boiled in must; likewise the wood of chamelaea, chamaepitys and chamaedrys. In the same way it is done from the flower, ten denarii in weight being added to a congius of must.
113| Wine is also made from water and honey alone. For this they direct that rainwater be kept for five years. Others, more prudent, boil it down at once to a third part and add a third part of old honey, then keep it for 40 days in the sun at the rising of the Dog Star. Others pour it into jars and stop them up on the tenth day. This is called hydromeli, and with age it comes to the flavor of wine; nowhere is it more praised than in Phrygia.
114| Indeed vinegar too was blended with honey; so little has been left untried in life. They called this oxymeli: ten pounds of honey, five heminae of aged vinegar, one pound of sea salt, with five sextarii of rainwater, brought to the boil ten times, then strained and so left to age. All of these were condemned by Themison, a very high authority.
115| And, by Hercules, their use may well seem forced, unless someone believes that aromatites, and wines compounded from unguents, are a work of nature, or that shrubs have produced them so that they might be drunk. These things are pleasant to know, on behalf of human ingenuity, which searches out everything. There will be no doubt that none of them lasts a year, except those which we have said are made by age itself, and that most do not last even thirty days.
116| There are also marvels in wine. It is said that in Arcadia a wine is made that brings fertility to women and madness to men, but in Achaia, especially around Ceryneia, wine drives off the unborn child, and even if pregnant women eat the grape, though there is no difference in taste.
117| Those who drink Troezenian wine are said not to beget. It is reported that the Thasians make two different kinds of wine, one by which sleep is induced, the other by which it is driven away. Among the same people there is a vine called theriaca, whose wine and grape are a remedy against the strikes of serpents; and a vine called libanodes, with the smell of frankincense, from which they pour libations to the gods. On the other hand the aspendios is condemned for the altars; they say that no bird touches it. Egypt calls a very sweet grape in its country the Thasian, which loosens the bowels; on the other hand there is the Lycian, which checks a loose bowel. Egypt also has the ecbolas, which causes abortion.
118| Some wines in the storehouses change when the Dog Star rises, and afterward return to themselves. So too with wine carried by sea, whose tossing is perceived to add to those that survive it as much age as they already had.
119| And since life rests on religious scruple, it is held unlawful to pour libations to the gods with wines — besides those of an unpruned vine — from a vine struck by lightning, or beside which a man has hung dead by a noose, or that has been trodden by wounded feet, and what has flowed from cut grape skins, or has been polluted by something unclean falling from above, and likewise Greek wines, because they contain water. The vine itself is also eaten, the topmost shoots being boiled, and these are also preserved in vinegar and brine.
120| But it is also fitting to speak of the dressing of wine, since the Greeks have set down their precepts on it privately and made an art of it, such as Euphronius and Aristomachus and Commiades and Hicesius. Africa softens harshness with gypsum, and with lime in some parts of it. Greece brings out smoothness with clay, or marble, or salt, or sea water; some part of Italy uses crapulana pitch, and to season musts with resin is the common practice there and in the neighboring provinces. In some places they season with the lees of earlier wine or with vinegar. Medicines are also made from the must itself.
121| It is boiled down so as to become sweet at the cost of part of its strength, and such wine is reported not to last beyond the space of a year. In some places they boil musts down to sapa and, by pouring it in, break the wildness of the wine. And yet in this kind and in every other the jars themselves are furnished with seasonings of pitch, the method of making which will be told in the next volume.
122| Of the trees that flow with sap, some that grow in the east, others in Europe, yield pitch and resin. Asia, which lies between, has some of both. In the east the terebinth yields the best and finest, then the lentisk, which they also call mastiche, afterward the cypress, the sharpest in flavor; all of these yield only liquid resin, but the cedar yields a thicker kind, suited to making pitch. Arabian resin is white, with a sharp smell, hard for the boiler; the Judaean is firmer and more fragrant even than the terebinthine; the Syrian has the likeness of Attic honey.
123| The Cyprian surpasses all, being likewise honey-colored and fleshy. The Colophonian is tawny beyond the rest, but if rubbed it turns white, and has a heavier smell; for that reason the perfumers do not use it. In Asia the kind made from the spruce, quite white, is called psagdas. All resin is dissolved by oil; some think that potters' clay also does this; and it is shameful to confess that its greatest esteem now lies in plucking the hairs from men's bodies.
124| The method of seasoning musts is, in the first fermentation, which at most lasts nine days, by a sprinkling of pitch, so that the wine takes on its smell and certain sharp points of flavor. They think this is done more strongly with the raw flower of the resin, and that smoothness is stirred up by it; on the other hand that crapula checks excessive wildness and breaks the rankness, or that where a sluggish smoothness lies torpid, rankness is added, especially in the musts of Liguria and those about the Po.
125| The use is distinguished in this way: more crapula is put into quarrelsome musts, less into mild ones. There are those who wish to season with both. There is also a pitchy nature in must, and in some places it is the fault of must to ferment a second time of its own accord, a calamity by which its flavor perishes; it takes the name vappa, which is a term of reproach even for men, when the spirit has degenerated. For in the worthlessness of vinegar there is a virtue for great uses, and without it life could not be passed more gently.
126| For the rest, such is the care for the medicating of wines that among some they are restored with ash, as with gypsum elsewhere and the means we have mentioned; but they prefer ash from vine cuttings or from oak. They even direct that sea water for this purpose be fetched from the deep and kept from the spring equinox, or at any rate drawn on the night of the solstice when the north wind is blowing, or, if it is drawn about the vintage, boiled down.
127| For pitch for sealing vessels of wine, in Italy the Bruttian is most approved. It is made from the resin of the spruce; in Spain, however, from wild pines, and is least praised. For their resin is bitter and dry and heavy in smell. We shall show the difference and the method of making in the next volume, among the wild trees. The faults, besides those mentioned above, are sourness or a smoky rankness, and burning of the pitch; the test is whether the fragments are translucent and grow tough under the tooth with a pleasant sharpness.
128| Asia most approves Idaean pitch, Greece the Pierian, Virgil the Narycian. The more careful mix in black mastiche, which grows in Pontus like bitumen, and the root of iris and oil. For it has been found that wines turn sour in vessels that take wax. But it is more useful to transfer wine into vessels in which there has been vinegar than into those in which there has been sweet wine or mead.
129| Cato directs that wines be blended, for that is the word he uses, with a fortieth part of lye ash boiled with defrutum to the culleus, or a pound and a half of salt, and sometimes with crushed marble. He also mentions sulphur, and resin only among the last.
130| Above all he directs that, when the wine is already ripening, must be added, which he calls tortivum, and which we understand to mean what was pressed out last. And we know that colors are added for dyeing, as a kind of pigment for the wine, and that so it is made richer. By so many poisons is it forced to please, and we wonder that it is harmful! A test of wine tending to spoil is the change of color in it on a plate of lead.
131| It is peculiar to wine among liquids to grow moldy or to turn into vinegar, and volumes of remedies for this exist. The dried lees of wine take fire and burn of themselves without fuel. Its ash has the nature of nitre and the same powers, with this addition, that it is felt to be richer.
132| There is also a great difference in climate once the wine is gathered. Around the Alps they store it in wooden vessels and surround them with roofs, and even in freezing winter keep off the stiffness with fires. It is rare to tell, but it has sometimes been seen: when the vessels were burst, masses of ice stood there, like a portent, since the nature of wine does not freeze; at other times it merely goes numb with cold.
133| The milder regions store it in jars and bury them in the ground, wholly or in proportion to the site. So they keep out the weather; elsewhere they ward it off by setting roofs above, and they pass on these precepts as well: that the side of the wine cellar, or at least its windows, ought to face north, or in any case the equinoctial sunrise; that dung heaps and the roots of trees should be far away, and everything with an odor to be avoided, since it passes into wines most easily, fig trees above all and wild fig trees;
134| that spaces be left between the jars, lest faults creep among them by contagion, wine's always swiftest; moreover that their shapes matter, bellied and wide ones being less serviceable. That they ought to be pitched at once from the rising of the Dog Star, afterward washed over with sea water or salt water, then sprinkled with ash from vine cuttings or with clay, and, once wiped clean, fumigated with myrrh, as should the cellars themselves, and often. Weak wines should be kept in jars sunk in the earth,
135| strong ones in jars set above ground. They should never be filled to the top, and what remains should be smeared over with passum or defrutum mixed with saffron, or with pounded iris in sapa. So the lids of the jars are to be treated, with mastiche added or Bruttian pitch. They forbid opening them except on a clear day, and forbid it when the south wind is blowing or the moon is full.
136| The flower of wine is approved when white; a reddish one is said to be a sad sign, unless that is the color of the wine; likewise jars growing hot or lids sweating. A wine that quickly begins to flower and to draw an odor will not be lasting. Defrutum and sapa themselves they direct to be boiled when the sky is without a moon, that is, at the conjunction of that star, and not on any other day, moreover in lead vessels, not bronze, and with walnuts added, for they say these take up the smoke. For the most famous wines of Campania it seems most suitable to set them out in the open air in casks, to be beaten by sun, moon, rain and winds.
137| And if one reckons it up more carefully, there is no area in which human life takes more pains, as though nature had not provided us with water, the most wholesome of liquids, for drinking, the drink that all other living creatures use. Yet we force even our beasts of burden to drink wine. And with all this work, all this toil and expense, we procure something that alters the human mind and breeds madness, something for whose sake thousands of crimes have been committed, and yet so delightful that a great part of mankind recognizes no other reward in life.
138| Indeed, so that we can take in more, we break its strength by straining it through a bag; and other stimulants are devised, and even poisons are swallowed for the sake of drinking. Some take hemlock beforehand, so that death may force them to drink; others take powdered pumice, and things that I am ashamed to describe.
139| We see the most cautious of them stewing themselves in the baths and being carried out unconscious; and others, again, who cannot wait for their dining couch, no, not even for their tunic, but there and then, naked and panting, seize huge vessels as if to show off their strength, and pour them down full, only to vomit them up at once and drain them again, and do it a second and a third time, as though they had been born to waste wine, and as though it could not be poured away except through a human body!
140| To this belong the exercises imported from abroad, the rolling in mud, and the display of a broad chest with the neck thrown back. Through all of this, they announce, a thirst is being sought. And then the drinking contests! And the cups engraved with scenes of adultery, as though drunkenness did not teach lust well enough on its own! So wine is drained to stir up lust, and drunkenness is even invited with a prize and, heaven help us, bought. One man takes as the fee for his drinking, by agreement, as much to eat as he has drunk; another drinks as much as he has won at dice.
141| Then greedy eyes put a price on a married woman, and heavy eyes betray the husband; then the secrets of the heart are brought out. Some declare their wills aloud; others utter deadly words and cannot hold back speech that will return upon their own throats. How many have been killed in this way! And it is now commonly said that truth belongs to wine. Meanwhile, even when things turn out at their best, they never see the sun rise, and they live shorter lives. From this come pallor and drooping cheeks,
142| sores in the eyes, trembling hands that spill full cups (this would be the punishment that comes at once), sleep haunted by furies and restlessness by night, and, the highest reward of drunkenness, monstrous lust and pleasure in wickedness. The next day the breath smells of the wine jar, and there is forgetfulness of everything, the death of memory. Yet this, they say, is how they seize life, when every day they lose the day before, and they lose the coming day as well.
143| In the reign of the emperor Tiberius Claudius, 40 years ago, it became the fashion to drink on an empty stomach and to have wine before food. This too came from foreign practices and from the doctrines of physicians, who are always recommending themselves by some novelty.
144| It is by this prowess that the Parthians seek glory; among the Greeks Alcibiades earned fame by it; and among us Novellius Torquatus of Mediolanum even won a surname. He held the honours of a praetorship and rose as far as a proconsulship, and he drained three congii (which is where his surname came from) at a single draught, while the emperor Tiberius looked on to see the marvel, a man already stern in his old age and in other matters even cruel.
145| Tiberius himself had been rather given to neat wine in his youth, and it was believed that Lucius Piso was chosen by him to take charge of the city on that recommendation: he had kept up a drinking bout at Tiberius' house, when Tiberius was already emperor, for two days and two nights. And in nothing else, it was said, did Drusus Caesar more closely reproduce his father Tiberius.
146| Torquatus' glory was rare, since this art too has its own laws. He did not falter in his speech; he did not relieve himself by vomiting or by any other part of the body while drinking; he went through the morning watches without harm; he drank the largest quantity at a single draught, and in addition he added the largest quantity in other, smaller draughts; in perfect good faith he did not take breath while drinking or spit, and he left no wine behind to make a splash on the floor, in careful observance of the rules against cheating at drinking.
147| Tergilla reproaches Cicero, the son of Marcus, with having been in the habit of draining two congii at a time, and with having thrown a cup at Marcus Agrippa while drunk. These, after all, are the works of drunkenness. But no doubt Cicero wanted to take this glory away from Mark Antony, the murderer of his father.
148| For Antony had seized this prize most greedily before him, and had even published a book about his own drunkenness. By daring to defend himself in it he clearly proved, in my judgement at least, how many evils he had brought upon the world through his drinking. He spewed out that book shortly before the battle of Actium, so that one may easily understand that he was already drunk with the blood of his fellow citizens and thirsting for it all the more. For this inevitable consequence also goes with the vice: the habit of drinking increases the craving. And the saying of the Scythian envoy is well known, that the more the Parthians drink, the thirstier they become.
149| The peoples of the West too have their own intoxicant, made from soaked grain, in several ways throughout the Gauls and the Spains, under other names but on the same principle. The Spains have even shown by now that these kinds will stand keeping. Egypt too has devised similar drinks for itself from grain, and nowhere in the world does drunkenness rest; for they drink such juices neat and do not soften them by diluting them as they do wine. And yet, by Hercules, the earth there was thought to bear grain. Alas, the marvellous ingenuity of our vices! A way has been found to make even water intoxicating.
150| Two liquids are most pleasing to human bodies, wine within and oil without. Both are the foremost products of the tree kind, but oil is the necessary one, and life has not been idle in working at it. Yet how much more inventive it has been in the matter of drink will be clear from this: one hundred and eighty-five kinds of drink have been devised, or nearly twice that number if the varieties are counted, and so many fewer kinds of oil, of which we shall speak in the following book.

======== Natural History — Book XV ========

1| Theophrastus, one of the most celebrated Greek authorities, stated around the year 440 of the city of Rome that the olive did not grow except within 40,000 paces of the sea; and Fenestella says that it did not exist at all in Italy, Spain or Africa in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus, 173 years after the founding of the Roman people. Yet now it has spread even across the Alps and into the heart of the Gauls and the Spains.
2| In the year of the city 505, when Appius Claudius, grandson of Appius the Blind, and Lucius Junius were consuls, twelve pounds of oil sold for ten asses; and soon afterwards, in the year 680, Marcus Seius, son of Lucius, as curule aedile, supplied oil to the Roman people at ten pounds for one as throughout the whole year.
3| This will surprise less anyone who knows that 22 years later, in the third consulship of Gnaeus Pompey, Italy exported oil to the provinces. Hesiod too, who thought that instruction in farming was of the first importance for life, said that no one who planted an olive ever gathered fruit from it, so slow a business was it then. But now olives even bear in the nurseries, and the berries are picked from transplanted trees in their second year. Fabianus says that the olive does not grow in the coldest places, nor in the hottest.
4| Virgil named three kinds of them, the orchites, the radius and the posia; he said that they need neither rakes nor pruning hooks nor any care at all. No doubt with olives too it is the soil and the climate that matter most. Nevertheless they are also pruned, at the same time as vines, and they also like to have the soil scraped around them.
5| The olive harvest follows, and an even greater skill, that of tempering the must of oil. For different juices come from the same olive. The first oil of all comes from the raw olive, before it has even begun to ripen; this is the best in flavour. Moreover, from this the first flow of the press is the finest, and then the quality declines step by step, whether the olives are pressed in baskets or, as has lately been invented, with the pulp enclosed between slender laths.
6| The riper the berry, the fattier the juice and the less pleasant. The best time for picking, balancing quantity against quality, is when the berry begins to turn black; they then call them druppae, and the Greeks call them drypetides. Beyond that, it makes a difference whether that ripening takes place in the pressing rooms or on the branches, and whether the tree has been watered or the berry has drunk only its own juice and nothing but the dews of heaven.
7| Age brings distaste to oil, unlike wine, and a year is the greatest age it should have. Nature is provident here, if one cares to understand it: there is no necessity to use new wines for getting drunk, and indeed the agreeable mellowness of the aged wine invites one to keep it; but nature did not want oil to be hoarded, and by this necessity she made it common and available to all.
8| In this good too Italy has won first place in the whole world, above all in the territory of Venafrum and the part of it that produces Licinian oil, which is why the Licinian olive has particular renown. Unguents have given it this prize, because its scent suits them, and the palate has given it too, by a more delicate verdict; besides, no bird goes for the berries of the Licinian olive. The rest of the contest, between the land of Histria and that of Baetica, is even. Otherwise the quality is nearly the same in the provinces, except for the grain-bearing soil of Africa: nature has given it wholly to Ceres, and has not so much begrudged it oil and wine as given it glory enough in its harvests. Everything else is full of mistakes, and we shall show that in no area of life are they more numerous.
9| The olive consists of a stone, oil, flesh and amurca. This amurca is its bitter watery fluid; it is formed from water, and so it is least in times of drought and plentiful when the tree is watered. The olive's own juice is oil, and this is understood especially from unripe olives, as we have shown in the case of omphacium. The oil increases from the rising of Arcturus, on the 16th day before the Kalends of October; after that the stone and the flesh grow. Then, if heavy rains come as well, the oil is spoiled and turns into amurca. It is the colour of the amurca that makes the olive turn black; so when the blackness is just beginning there is very little amurca, and before it there is none.
10| People make a mistake in thinking that the beginning of ripeness is what is in fact the next thing to decay, and a second one in thinking that the oil grows with the flesh of the olive, when the juice all passes into the body and the woody stone grows larger inside. So it is then that the trees are watered most; and when this happens, through tending or through heavy rains, the oil is used up, unless fine weather follows to thin the body. For, as Theophrastus holds, heat is in every way the cause of oil, which is why it is sought even in the pressing rooms and storerooms by means of large fires.
11| The third fault lies in thrift: because of the cost of picking, people wait for the olives to fall. Those who keep a middle course in this beat them down with poles, to the injury of the trees and the loss of the following year's crop. Indeed the most ancient rule for olive gatherers was: "Do not strip the olive, and do not beat it."
12| Those who go about it most carefully strike with a cane, with a light blow, and not against the branches. Even so, the tree is forced to bear in alternate years, because the buds are knocked off; and no less so if one waits for the olives to fall, for by hanging on beyond their proper time they use up the nourishment of the coming crop and keep it from taking its place. The proof is that unless they are gathered before Favonius, they recover new strength and fall with more difficulty.
13| So the first olives to be gathered, after autumn begins, are (through a fault of the work, not of nature) the posia, which has the most flesh, then the orchites, which has the most oil, and after it the radius. For these, being the most tender, are very quickly taken over by the amurca, which forces them to fall. But the hard-skinned kinds, which fight against moisture and are therefore very small, are put off even into the month of March: the Licinia, the Cominia, the Contia, and the Sergia, which the Sabines call the royal olive. These do not turn black before the first breath of Favonius, that is, the 6th day before the Ides of February.
14| Then they judge the olives to be ripening, and because the best oil is made from them, reasoning seems to be added to the error; and they say that harshness arises from cold, as abundance does from ripeness, whereas that goodness belongs not to the season but to the kind, which is slow to rot into amurca. There is a similar error in keeping the gathered fruit on shelves and not pressing it before it sweats, though with every delay the oil decreases and the amurca grows. And so they commonly say that no more than six pounds are pressed from each modius. No one measures the amurca, how much more of it is found in the same kind as days are added.
15| Altogether unconquerable, and universal, is the error of thinking that oil increases with the swelling of the olive, especially since the quantity of oil is shown not to depend on size by the olives called regiae, by others maiorinae, by others babbiae, which are in other respects very large, with the least juice. In Egypt the fleshiest olives yield a meager amount of oil, and in the Decapolis of Syria they are exceedingly small, no larger than capers, yet are recommended for their flesh.
16| For this reason overseas olives are preferred to Italian ones as food, though they are outdone by them in oil, and in Italy itself the Picene and the Sidicine are preferred to the rest. Those are preserved especially in salt, and the others in amurca or sapa, while some, the colymbades, float pure in their own oil, needing no recommendation from outside. The same are broken and preserved with the flavor of green herbs. Early ones are also made by pouring boiling water over them, however unripe; and it is a marvel that olives drink in a sweet juice and are infected by a foreign flavor.
17| Among these also there are purple ones, as among grapes, the posiae passing into a black color. There are also superbae, besides the kinds already named. There are also very sweet ones, simply dried by themselves and sweeter than raisins, quite rare in Africa and around Emerita in Lusitania.
18| Oil itself is protected by salt from the fault of greasiness. It takes on an odor from cut olive bark. Treatment is otherwise as for wine; there is no concern for the palate, nor is the difference so numerous: it differs in three goodnesses at most. The odor is keener in the thin oil, and yet even in the best it is short-lived.
19| It is the nature of oil to warm the body and fortify it against chills, and to cool the heat of the head. The Greeks, the begetters of all vices, turned its use to luxury by making it public in the gymnasia; it is well known that the magistrates holding that office sold the scrapings of oil for eighty sesterces. The majesty of Rome paid great honor to the olive, by crowning the squadrons of the knights with it on the Ides of July, and likewise those who celebrated lesser triumphs. Athens also crowns its victors with olive, and Greece at Olympia with wild olive.
20| Now the teachings of Cato about olives will be given. In warm and rich soil he orders the greater radius, Sallentina, orchites, posia, Sergiana, Cominiana and albicera to be planted, and he adds with singular prudence: whichever of them they say is best in those places; but in cold, lean soil, the Licinia. For its oil is spoiled by rich or hot soil, and the tree is exhausted by its own fertility, and moreover is attacked by moss and blight.
21| He judges that olive groves should face the west wind, in a place exposed to the sun, and he praises no other way. Olives are best preserved as orchites and posiae, either green in brine or broken with lentisk. Oil is best made from the most bitter olive. For the rest, it should be gathered from the ground as soon as possible, washed if soiled; three days of drying are enough. If frosts freeze, it should be pressed on the fourth day; this also should be sprinkled with salt. Oil on a shelf diminishes and becomes worse, likewise in amurca and the fraces (these are the flesh, and from them the dregs);
22| therefore it should be dipped out more than once a day, and with a shell, into lead vats; it is spoiled by bronze. All this is done in a heated, closed press, as little ventilated as possible, and for that reason wood should not be cut there (for which reason the stones of the olives themselves make the most suitable fire); from the vats it should be poured into basins, so that the fraces and amurca are left behind. For this reason the vessels should be changed rather often, and the baskets wiped with a sponge, so that the greatest possible purity and clearness may remain.
23| Later it was discovered that the olives should in any case be washed in boiling water and put under the press whole at once (for in this way the amurca is pressed out), and soon, broken in the mills, pressed a second time. They do not approve of pressing more than a hundred modii at a time; the result is called a pressing; but what is first pressed out after the mill is called the flower. It is right for three pressings to be made through a double opening by four men each, night and day.
24| In that age there was no artificial oil, and therefore, I think, nothing was said of it by Cato. Now there are several kinds of it, and first we shall take those which are made from trees, and among them, before all, that from the wild olive. It is thin, and far more bitter than that of the olive, and useful only for medicines. Very like it is that from chamelaea, a rocky shrub no higher than a palm, with the leaves and berries of the wild olive.
25| The next is made from cici, a tree abundant in Egypt (some call it croton, others sibi, others wild sesamon), and there, and not long ago in Spain also, it springs up suddenly to the height of an olive, with a stalk like a ferula's, a leaf like the vine's, and the seed of slender, pale grapes. Our people call it ricinus, from the likeness of the seed. The seed is cooked in water, and the oil floating on top is skimmed off. But in Egypt, where it abounds, it is pressed out without fire and water, sprinkled with salt; it is foul for food and meager for lamps.
26| Almond oil, which some call neopus, is pressed from bitter nuts, dried and pounded into a mass, sprinkled with water and pounded again. Oil is also made from laurel, with the oil of drupes mixed in, and some press it from the berries only, others from the leaves alone, some from the leaf and the bark of the berries, and they also add styrax and other odors; the best laurel for this is the broad-leaved wild one,
27| with black berries. A similar oil is made from the black myrtle, and here too the broad-leaved is better. The berries are pounded, sprinkled with hot water, and then boiled down. Others boil down the softest of the leaves in oil and press them, others first ripen them in the sun after throwing them into oil. The method is the same for the cultivated myrtle, but the wild is preferred, with the smaller seed, which some call oxymyrsine, others chamaemyrsine, some acoron from the likeness; for it is low and shrubby.
28| Oil is also made from the citrus, the cypress, the walnut, which they call caryinum, from apples, from the cedar (pisselaeon), and also from the Cnidian grain, the seed cleaned and pounded, and from the lentisk. For how cyprinum, and oil from the Egyptian acorn, are made for scents has already been told. The Indians are said to make it from chestnuts and sesima and rice, the Ichthyophagi from fish.
29| Want sometimes compels oil to be made for lamps even from plane-tree berries, steeped in water and salt. Oenanthinum is also made; of the oenanthe itself I have spoken among the unguents. Must is boiled into gleucinum over a slow steam, by others without fire, with grape skins placed around it, mixed twice for each of 21 days, and the must is consumed in the oil. Some mix in not only sampsuchum but even more costly perfumes, as in the gymnasia oil is also scented with odors, but the cheapest.
30| It is made from aspalathus, calamus, balsam, iris, cardamomum, melilot, Gallic nard, panax, sampsuchum, helenium, and the root of cinnamomum, the juices of all being steeped in oil and pressed out. So too rhodinum from roses, iuncinum from rush, which is also very like the rose oil, likewise from henbane and lupines, and narcissus. Most of all in Egypt it is made from the seed of the radish, or from the grass-herb they call chortinon, likewise from sesima and from nettle, which they call cnidinum.
31| Oil from the lily is made elsewhere also, steeped in the open air, in sun, moon and frost. Between Cappadocia and Galatia they compound from their own herbs what they call Selgiticum, very useful for the sinews, as the Iguvini do in Italy. From pitch is made what they call pissinum, when it is boiled, fleeces being spread above its vapor and then pressed out. The best approved is from Bruttia; for it is the fattest and most resinous.
32| The color of this oil is tawny. What they call elaeomeli grows of itself on the coasts of Syria; it flows from trees, rich, thicker than honey, thinner than resin, sweet in taste, and this is for physicians. Old oil also has been used for certain kinds of disease; and it is thought useful too for protecting ivory from decay: certainly at Rome the statue of Saturn has been filled inside with oil.
33| But above all Cato lavished praises on amurca. He says that oil jars and casks are soaked in it, so that they do not drink up the oil; that threshing floors are worked over with amurca for the threshing of the harvest, so that ants and cracks may be kept away; that the clay of walls and plaster and the floors of granaries for grain, and also clothing against moths and harmful animals, are sprinkled with amurca, and seed of crops soaked in it. With it, he says, the diseases of quadrupeds and also of trees are to be treated, and it is effective for internal ulcers, also of the human mouth.
34| Straps too and all hides and shoes and axles are anointed with it boiled down, and bronzes against verdigris and for the sake of a finer color, and all wooden furniture and earthen vessels in which one wishes to keep dried figs, or leaves and berries on twigs of myrtle or some other similar kind. Finally, wood steeped in amurca burns without the annoyance of smoke. If a goat's tongue touches an olive tree by licking and has grazed it at its first budding, Marcus Varro states that it becomes barren. And so far about the olive and oil.
35| The remaining fruits of trees can scarcely be enumerated by appearance or shape, still less by flavors and juices, so often mixed together and grafted. The largest is the pine nut, hung from the highest place. Inside, it encloses slender kernels in coffered ridges, clothed in another coat of rust color, a marvelous care of nature in softly placing the seeds. Of these, one kind is the Tarentine, with a shell that breaks in the fingers, and stolen by birds on the tree.
36| And a third is the sappinus, from the cultivated spruce, the covering of the kernels being rather a skin than a shell, so soft that it is chewed along with them. A fourth they call pitydia, from the wild pines, of singular remedy against cough, the kernels being boiled down in honey. The Taurini call them ravicelos. With a crown of pine, victors at the Isthmus are crowned.
37| Next to these in size are the apples that we call cotonea and in Greek cydonea, brought from the island of Crete. They bend down the branches they bear and hinder the parent tree from growing. There are several kinds of them: the chrysomela, marked with incisions, its color inclined to gold; the whiter, which they call 'native,' is of the most excellent odor.
38| The Neapolitans too have their own honor. Smaller ones of the same kind are the struthea, which give off a stronger scent, with a late crop; the early ones, however, are the mustea. Cotonea grafted on struthea made their own kind, the Mulvian, which alone of them are even eaten raw, and now are shut up in the bedchambers where men receive their morning visitors, and placed on statues that are privy to the nights. There are also small wild ones, of the struthea kind, very fragrant, growing in hedges.
39| We call by the name of apples, although they are of a different kind, the Persian and the pomegranate, which among the Punic trees have been spoken of as being of nine kinds. In the latter the seed lies under the rind inside, in the former there is wood in the body. Also certain pears, called libralia, claim for themselves a size by the name of weight. But the palm among Persian fruits goes to the duracina. The Gallic and Asiatic bear the names of nations.
40| After autumn the Asiatic ripen; the early summer ones were discovered within 30 years and at first were sold at a denarius apiece. The supernatia come from the Sabines, the common ones from everywhere. The fruit is harmless and is sought by the sick, and the price was by now thirty coins apiece, higher for none, which we may marvel at, because nothing is more fleeting. For after being plucked it lasts at most two days and forces itself to be sold.
41| Afterward there is a huge crowd of plums: the versicoloriae, whitening out of black; the hordearia, so called from the company of that grain; others of the same color, later and larger, called asinina from their cheapness. There are smaller ones, but more praised, the cerina and purpurea, and also the Armenian, named for a foreign people, which alone are commended for their smell. A peculiar impudence is found in those grafted upon nut trees, which show the face of the parent and the juice of the adoption, and are called nucipruna from both.
42| Both these and the Persian and the cerina and the wild ones, preserved in casks like grapes, prolong their life until others are born, while the speed of the rest, which soften quickly, flies past. Lately in Baetica there began to be called malina those grafted on apple trees, and others, amygdalina, on almond trees. In these the stone inside the wood is that of an almond; no other fruit has been doubled more ingeniously.
43| Among foreign trees the Damascena have been mentioned, named after Damascus of Syria, long since growing in Italy, though with a larger stone and thinner flesh, and never dried into wrinkles, since their own suns are lacking. At the same time may be mentioned their countrymen the myxae, which also themselves have now begun to grow at Rome, grafted on service trees.
44| That the Persian trees, on the whole, are foreign, even to Asia and Greece, is plain from the very name, and that they were brought from Persia. But it is certain that wild plums grow everywhere, so that I wonder the more that no mention of this fruit was made by Cato, especially when he showed how certain things, even wild ones, should be preserved.
45| For the Persian trees crossed late and with difficulty, such as bear nothing in Rhodes, which was their first lodging from Egypt. It is false that in Persia they grow poisonous, causing agony, and were carried over by the kings to Egypt as a punishment, the soil having softened them. For the more careful writers tell this of the persea, which is wholly different, like red myxae, and would not grow outside the east.
46| The more learned have also denied that this was carried over from Persia on account of punishments, but say it was planted at Memphis by Perseus, and that on this account Alexander established that victors there be crowned with it, in honor of his forefather. It always has leaves and fruit, others growing up beneath. But it will be plain that all the plums too began after Cato.
47| Of apples there are several kinds. Of the citrea I have spoken with their own tree, but the Greeks call the Medica by the name of its native country. Equally foreign are the zizipha and the tubures, which also themselves came to Italy not long ago, the tubures from Africa, the zizipha from Syria. It was Sextus Papinius, a consul in our own day, who first brought both, in the last times of the deified Augustus, planted in the camp, more like berries than apples, but especially ornamental for terraces, since woods now climb even onto roofs. There are two kinds of tubures: the white, and that called syricum after its color.
48| Almost foreign are the ones that grow in a single district of Italy, the Veronese, called lanata; a down covers them, most of all on the struthea and Persian ones, but it gave the name particularly to these, which are distinguished by no other recommendation.
49| Why should it irk me to name the rest individually, when they have propagated an eternal memory for their founders, as though for some outstanding deed in life? Unless I am mistaken, it will appear from this how great is the talent of grafting, and that nothing is so small that it cannot beget glory. So they have their origin from Matius and Cestius and Mallius, and likewise Scaudius; from whom, a cotoneum being grafted by Appius of the Claudian house, the Appian were named.
50| They have the smell of cotonea, the size of the Scaudian, a reddish color. And lest anyone think that the glory of a family so prevailed by ambition, there are also the Sceptiana from a freedman discoverer, notable for roundness. Cato adds the Quiriniana and the Scantiana, which he says are preserved in jars. But most recently of all were adopted the small ones of most pleasing flavor, which are called Petisia. The Amerina and the Graecula ennobled their native lands. The rest drew their
51| name from causes: gemella, from brotherhood in clinging together, never single in bearing; syrica from color; melapia from kinship; mustea from the speed of ripening, which are now called melimela from their honeyed flavor; orbiculata from the shape of a circle drawn round into roundness (the Greeks are the evidence that these first grew in Epirus, for they call them Epirotica); orthomastia from the likeness of breasts; and from the condition of a castrated seed, those the Belgae call spadonia.
52| In the melofolia a single leaf, sometimes a double one, bursts out from the middle of the side. The pannucea quickly wither into wrinkles. The pulmonea swell stupidly. Some have a blood-red color, drawn from their origin in a grafting on the mulberry. In all of them, however, the parts that faced the sun are red. There are also small wild ones of slight pleasantness of taste and even sharper in odor. Peculiar to these is the reproach of an outrageous sourness, and a force so great that it dulls the edge of a sword. Meal gives others a very cheap name, though they are the first to arrive and are in a hurry to be plucked.
53| For the same reason a name of arrogance is charged against certain pears, the superbae; these are small, but very early. Of all, however, the Crustumian is the most pleasing, and next to it the Falernian for drinking, since so great a quantity of juice abounds in it (it is called lactere), and among them is another of black color, a gift of Syria. The names of the rest are given differently in different places.
54| But, with their names acknowledged in the City, the Decimiana have ennobled their authors, and what is derived from it which they call Pseudodecimianum, the Dolabelliana with the longest stalk, the Pomponiana, called mammosa, the Liceriana, the Seviana and those born from them, the Turraniana, differing in the length of the stalk, the Favoniana, red, a little larger than the superbae, the Lateriana, the Aniciana, ripening after autumn, pleasing in a slightly sour taste. Those are called Tiberiana which pleased the emperor Tiberius most. They are colored more by the sun and grow larger; otherwise they would be the same as the Liceriana.
55| The latest of all, with names from their native places, are the Amerina, Picentina, Numantina, Alexandrina, Numidiana, Graeca, and among them the Tarentina and Signina, which others call testacea from the color, as onychina, purpurea; myrapia from the smell; laurea, nardina; hordearia from the season; ampullacea from the neck; and the Coriolana; the Bruttia, from a family name; the cucurbitina,
56| sour in juice. The cause of the names is uncertain in the barbarica, the Veneria, which they say are colored, the regia, which sit on the smallest stalk, the patricia, the vocima, the viridia and oblonga. Besides, Virgil mentioned the volema, taken from Cato, who also names the sementiva and the mustea.
57| This part of life reached its summit long ago, men having tried everything, since Virgil says the arbutus is grafted on the nut tree, the plane on the apple, the elm on the cherry. Nothing further can be devised; certainly no new fruit has been found for a long time. Nor is it lawful to mix everything in grafting, any more than to graft thorns, since lightnings cannot easily be expiated, and it is declared that as many kinds as have been grafted, so many lightning-bolts result from a single stroke.
58| Pears have a more top-shaped figure. Among them the late kinds hang on the mother tree until winter, ripening in the frost: the Greek, the ampullacea, the laurea, just as among apples the Amerina and Scaudiana. Pears are preserved like grapes and in as many ways, and nothing is put into casks except plums. Of fruits, pears have a property like that of wine, and physicians likewise beware of them in the sick. They are cooked in wine and water and serve as a relish, which no other fruit does except the cotonea and the struthea.
59| In general, regarding the keeping of fruits, it is prescribed that orchard storerooms be floored in a cold and dry place, open on a clear day with windows to the north, shut against the south winds with panes, since the blast of the north wind also disfigures fruit with wrinkles. Apples are to be gathered after the autumn equinox, neither before the 16th day of the moon nor beyond the twenty-eighth, neither on a rainy day nor before the first hour; the windfalls are to be set apart; they are laid on solid straw or chaff, and arranged sparsely, so that the passages between may be open and receive an even breath of air. The Amerina last longest, the melimela least.
60| Cotonea, in a closed place, must be deprived of all breathing space, or boiled in honey or sunk in it. Pomegranates are hardened in boiling sea water, then dried for three days in the sun, hung so that the night dew does not touch them, and when one wishes to use them, washed in fresh water. Marcus Varro also orders them to be kept in jars of sand; and unripe ones to be buried in earth in pots with the bottom broken out, but the air shut out and the twig smeared with pitch: so they even grow larger than they could on the tree. The other apples, except the windfalls, are wrapped singly in fig leaves and stored in wicker baskets, or smeared over with potters' clay.
61| Pears are buried in a trench in pitched earthen vessels turned upside down. The Tarentina are gathered as late as possible; the Aniciana are also kept in passum; service-berries too, and in trenches with a plastered lid, two feet of earth thrown over, in a sunny place, in upturned vessels; and they are hung in jars like grapes and among grapes with their branches.
62| Some of the more recent authorities go back to the care at a deeper level and prescribe that fruits and vines be set aside at once for this use when the moon is waning, after the third hour of the day, in clear weather or with dry winds. Likewise grapes are to be chosen from dry places and before perfect ripeness, with the addition that the moon is below the earth, with a hard cutting of the shoot, the spoiling berries removed with shears, and hung in a fresh pitched jar, all air shut out by a lid and plaster. So too service-berries and pears, with the twigs of all smeared with pitch.
63| The jars are to be far from water. Some store them thus with the vine shoot itself, squills fixed in both ends of it; others even in jars that contain wine, provided the grapes do not touch it; some, apples floating in earthen dishes, by which method they think the wine too acquires a scent. Some prefer to keep all these in millet, but most in a trench two feet deep, with sand laid beneath and an earthen lid, then covered with earth.
64| Some smear even grapes with potters' clay and hang them up after they have dried in the sun, washing off the clay when they are to be used. The same they work in with wine for fruits. The most noble apples they coat in the same way with plaster or wax, which, unless they have ripened, burst the lime by their growth. They always set them on their stalks. Others pluck them with twigs and bury them, fitted into the pith of elder, as written above.
65| Others assign a separate earthen vessel to each apple and pear and shut it again in a jar with a pitched lid; some also in flocks of wool and boxes which they smear with clay mixed with chaff; others do the same in earthen dishes, some in a trench with sand laid beneath: they cover them dry and then with earth. There are those who sink cotonea smeared with Pontic wax in honey.
66| Columella states that grapes are sunk in wells or cisterns in earthen vessels smeared with pitch with careful attention. The maritime part of Liguria nearest the Alps wraps grapes dried in the sun in bundles of rush and shuts them up in casks with plaster. The Greeks do the same with leaves of plane or of the vine itself or of fig, dried in one day in the shade and placed in a cask with grape skins between. By this method the Coan grape and the Berytian are kept, to be put after none in sweetness.
67| Some, to make these, dip them in lye ash as soon as they have drawn them from the vines, then dry them in the sun, plunge the raisins into hot water and dry them again in the sun, then wrapped in leaves, as said above, pack them with grape skins. There are those who prefer to keep grapes in sawdust or shavings of fir, poplar, ash. There are those who order that they be hung up far from apples and at once in granaries, since the dust of grain dries them best. For hanging ones, the remedy against wasps is to sprinkle them with oil from the mouth. Of palms we have spoken.
68| Of the remaining class of fruits the fig is the largest, and certain figs rival even pears in size. Of the marvels of the Egyptian and the Cyprian I have told among foreign things. The Idaean is red, of the size of an olive, only rounder, with the flavor of the medlar. They call it Alexandrian there, a cubit in thickness, branching, strong in wood, tough, without milk, with green bark and a leaf like the linden's, but soft. Onesicritus reports that in Hyrcania figs are much sweeter and more fertile than ours, so that single trees bear 270 modii.
69| To us they have passed over from other peoples, from Chalcis and Chios, of which there are several kinds. For indeed the Lydian, which are purple, and the mamillana have a likeness to them, and the callistruthia are superior in the flavor of stuffing, the coldest of all figs. As for the African, since many prefer them to all, there is a great question, since that kind crossed into Africa only very recently.
70| The Alexandrinae, too, keep their native name, among the black ones, with a whitening cleft, with the surname delicatae. The Rhodian is also black, and the Tiburtine among the early ones. They also have the names of authors, Liviae and Pompei. These are most suitable for drying in the sun for a year's use, with the mariscae, and those that a mark of a reed leaf variegates. There is also the Herculanea, and the albicerata, and the white aratia, with the smallest stalk,
71| the broadest. First, however, appears the porphyritis, with the longest stalk. It is accompanied by one of the smallest and cheapest, called popularis. On the other hand the latest, the chelidonia, ripens in winter. There are besides the same kinds that are both late and early, the biferae, white and black, ripening with harvest and vintage. The late ones are also called after their hard skin, some of the Chalcidic bearing three crops.
72| Only at Tarentum grow the very sweet ones, which they call onae. Cato speaks thus of figs: "Plant the mariscan figs in chalky or open ground, but in richer or manured ground the African and the Herculanean, the Sacontine, the winter, the Tellan, black with a long stalk." Afterward so many names and kinds came in that from this alone, to those who weigh it, it appears that life has been changed. There are winter figs also in certain provinces, as in Moesia, but of art, not of nature. They cover a kind of small trees with dung after autumn,
73| and the unripe figs caught in them in winter, which, dug up in a milder climate with the tree and sent back into the light, eagerly receive new suns and others than those under which they lived, as though born a second time, and ripen with the bloom of those that are coming, early in another year's season, in even the coldest region.
74| But the African fig, already so named by Cato, reminds us of Africa, for a great proof was drawn from the use of this fruit. For, burning with a deadly hatred of Carthage and anxious for the security of his descendants, while he cried out before the whole senate that Carthage must be destroyed, one day he brought into the senate house an early fig from that province, and showing it to the Fathers said: "I ask you, when do you think this fruit was taken from the tree?" When it was agreed among all that it was fresh,
75| "And yet," he said, "know that it was plucked at Carthage three days before. So near to the walls we have the enemy!" And immediately the third Punic war was undertaken, in which Carthage was destroyed, although Cato was carried off in the following year. What should we first admire in it, the care of his intellect or the chance occasion, the speed of the voyage or the vehemence of the man?
76| Above all there is this, than which I certainly think nothing more marvelous: that so great a city, and the rival of the world for 120 years, was overthrown by the evidence of a single fruit, which the Trebia and Trasimene and Cannae, the funeral pyre of the Roman name, could not accomplish, nor the Punic camp fortified at the third milestone, nor Hannibal himself riding up to the Colline Gate. By so much did Cato bring Carthage nearer by a fruit!
77| The fig tree is worshipped which grew in the Forum itself and in the Comitium at Rome, sacred because lightning-strikes were buried there, and still more in memory of the one which, the nurse of Romulus and Remus, first sheltered the founders of the empire in the Lupercal, and was called the ruminalis, since under it was found the she-wolf offering the infants her rumis (so they called the breast), a marvel dedicated beside it in bronze, as though it had crossed of its own accord into the Comitium, Attus Navius being the augur. Nor does it wither without some presage, and it is planted again by the care of the priests. There was also one before the temple of Saturn, removed in the year of the City [….] after a sacrifice by the Vestals, since it was overturning the statue of Silvanus.
78| The same lives in the middle of the Forum by chance planting, where Curtius, by the greatest of goods, that is, by virtue and piety and a glorious death, had filled up the foundations of the empire as they sank, by a fated portent. Equally by chance in the same place are a vine and an olive, planted by the diligence of the plebs for the sake of shade, the altar being removed from there at the gladiatorial show of the deified Julius, which was the last fought in the Forum.
79| Admirable is the haste of this fruit, which alone among all hastens to ripeness by the art of nature. The wild fig, a kind of fig from the wild stock that never ripens, is called caprificus, but it gives to others what it does not itself have, since there is a natural passage of causes, and it happens that something is born from things decaying.
80| So it breeds gnats; these, cheated of nourishment in their mother, by her putrid decay, fly out to their kindred, and with their frequent biting of the figs, that is, a greedier feeding, opening their mouths, penetrate inside and bring the sun in with them at first and let in the airs of Ceres through the opened doors. Soon they consume the milky moisture, that is, the infancy of the fruit (which also happens of itself); and therefore the caprificus is allowed in fig plantations according to the wind, so that the breeze may carry the flying gnats to the figs.
81| Hence it was discovered that branches brought in from elsewhere and tied together should also be thrown upon the fig, which in a lean and north-facing soil they do not need, since the figs dry of themselves from the situation of the place and from cracks, the same cause achieving what the gnats achieve by their work; nor where there is much dust, which happens most on a frequented road alongside. For dust too has the power of drying and absorbing the juice of milk. This method, by dust and caprification, also ensures that the figs do not fall, the tender moisture having been used up and the fruit being heavy with a certain fragility.
82| All figs are soft to the touch; when ripe, they have grain inside, the ripening ones a juice of milk, the fully cooked ones of honey. They grow old on the tree and in old age drip tears of gum. Esteem dries the prized ones and keeps them in boxes, the best and largest in the island of Ebusus, then among the Marrucini; but where there is abundance, in Asia jars are filled, and in Ruspina, a city of Africa, casks, and dried figs serve at once as bread and as relish, inasmuch as Cato, fixing the allowances of food for farm laborers by a kind of lawful rule, orders them reduced at the time of the fig's ripening. To eat cheese with fresh fig, in place of salt, was devised recently.
83| Of this kind, as we have said, are the cottana and the caricae, and those which gave an omen to Marcus Crassus as he boarded ship against the Parthians, when the seller cried Cavneae. All these Lucius Vitellius, who was afterward censor, brought from Syria to his Alban estate while legate in that province, in the last times of Tiberius Caesar.
84| To the class of apples and pears the medlar and the service-berry may rightly be reckoned. Of the medlar there are three kinds: the anthedon, the setania; the third degenerates, yet is more like the anthedon, and is called Gallic. The fruit of the setania is larger and whiter, the stone of softer wood; the others have a smaller fruit, but more excellent in odor and such as is kept longer. The tree itself is of the largest. The leaves redden before they fall; the roots are many and deep and therefore cannot be pulled out. This tree was not in Italy in Cato's age.
85| Service-berries are fourfold in difference. For some of them have the roundness of an apple, others the top shape of a pear, others an egg-like form, like one of the apples; these are liable to sourness. The round ones excel in smell and sweetness, the rest have the taste of wine. The most noble are those which have tender leaves about the stalks. A fourth kind they call torminale, approved only for remedy, constant in yield, with the smallest fruit, and a different tree, with leaves almost of a plane. They do not bear before the third year in any kind. Cato says that service-berries are also preserved in sapa.
86| Next after these the walnuts may claim a place by their size, though they yield in prestige, although these too are companions of nuptial Fescennine verses; much smaller than pine nuts in the whole, yet larger in proportion in the kernel. They also have a peculiar honor of nature, being protected by a double covering, first of a cushioned calyx, then of a woody shell. This is what made them sacred in marriages, the offspring being fortified in so many ways, which is more likely than that they make a favorable omen in falling.
87| And that these were carried over from Persia by the kings, the Greek names are the evidence: for the finest kind of them they name Persicum and basilicon, and these were the first names; caryon, from heaviness of the head, was fittingly said on account of the heaviness of the smell. Wools are dyed with their husk, and hair is reddened by the first nuts as they come forth; this is found by hands stained with handling. They grow rich with age.
88| The only difference among the kinds lies in the shell, hard or brittle, thin or thick, divided into chambers or simple. Of all fruit, this alone has nature shut up inside a jointed covering. For the keels of the shells are split in two, and the kernels have another fourfold division, a woody membrane running between. In the rest, whatever there is, is solid, as in hazelnuts, and in that very kind of nut which they formerly called Abellinae from their native place. They came to Asia and Greece from Pontus, and for that reason are also called Pontic nuts.
89| These too a soft beard protects, but the shell and kernels have a solid roundness. These are also roasted. They have a navel inside at the middle of the belly. The almond has a third nature among them, with an outermost covering thinner than the walnut's but like it, and likewise a second covering, the shell; the kernel is unlike in breadth and has a sharper callus.
90| Whether this tree existed in Italy in Cato's time is doubted, since he names Greek ones, which some also keep within the kind of walnuts. He adds besides the hazelnuts and the galbae, the Praenestine, which he praises most, and he reports that they are kept green, stored in pots in the ground. Now the Thasian and the Alban are celebrated, and two kinds of Tarentine, with a brittle shell and a hard one, which are also the largest and least round; besides the molluscae, which break their shell.
91| There are those who interpret the name as an honor and say that it is the acorn of Jupiter. I heard lately of a man of consular rank who declared that he had walnut trees too that bore twice. Of pistachios, which are themselves a kind of nut, we have spoken in their place. These too the same Vitellius was the first to bring into Italy, at the same time, and at once into Spain Flaccus Pompeius, a Roman knight who served with him.
92| We call chestnuts also nuts, although they are closer to the kind of acorns. A fence is set round them with a prickly calyx, which was begun with acorns, and it is marvelous that the cheapest things are those which nature has hidden with so great care. Some have three offspring from a single calyx; the rind is tough, and the membrane nearest the body, both in these and in nuts, spoils the flavor unless it is removed. It is more pleasant to roast them for food, or else they are ground, and in fasting they give women a certain image of bread.
93| These first came from Sardis, and therefore among the Greeks they call them Sardian acorns, for the name Dios balanou was afterward put upon those made more excellent by planting. Now there are several kinds of them. The Tarentine are easy and not troublesome for food, flat in shape. The rounder is called balanitis, most easily cleaned, and leaping out of itself clean.
94| The Salariana is also flat, the Tarentine less tractable, the Corelliana more praised, and, made from it in the way we shall tell among grafts, the Tereiana, which a reddish rind sets above the triangular and common black ones, which are called coctivae. The most praised have their native land at Tarentum, and in Campania Naples. The others are grown as fodder for pigs, with a scrupulous chewing of the rind even within the kernels.
95| Not far from these may be seen the very sweet pods, except that in them the rind itself is chewed. All of them are a finger in length, sometimes sickle-shaped, a thumb's width in breadth. Acorns cannot be counted among fruits, for which reason they will be spoken of in their own nature.
96| The rest are of the fleshy kind, and they differ in berries and flesh. In some the flesh is on grape-stones, in others on mulberries, in others on arbutus berries, and in others on seeds between skin and juice, in others on myxae, in others on berries like olives.
97| The juice in the flesh of mulberries is wine-like, and they have three colors, white at first, then reddening, black when ripe. They flower among the last, and ripen among the first. When ripe they stain the hands with their juice; when unripe they wash it out. In this tree talents have advanced least, in names or in grafts; nor do they differ in any other way than in size of fruit, the Ostian and Tusculan mulberries at Rome. They also grow on brambles, with a much different callus.
98| The substance of the strawberries of the earth is one thing, that of their relative the arbutus another, which alone is a fruit that grows at once from a shrub and from the earth. The tree itself is shrubby. The fruit ripens in a year, and the one growing up beneath flowers at the same time as the earlier one is ripening. Whether the male or the female is sterile is not agreed among the authorities. The fruit is without honor,
99| since its name is derived from the argument that only one may be eaten. Yet the Greeks call it by these two names, comaron and memaecylon, from which it appears that there are as many kinds; and among us it is called by another name, arbutus. Juba states that in Arabia they are fifty cubits in height.
100| There is also a great difference among grape-stones, first among the grapes themselves, in callus, tenderness, thickness, in the interior wood, small in some and even double in others, which are the least productive of must. But the berries of ivy and elder differ most, and the shape also of the pomegranate, which indeed has an angular seed. Nor is there any skin on single ones besides the common one, which is white. And all have juice and flesh, especially those in which there is a very small amount of wood. There is also great difference in berries:
101| for some are those of olives, laurels, and in another way lotus, cornel; in another, myrtles, lentisk. The holly and the thorn have no juice, and there is still a middle kind between berries and grape-stones, the cherries. The fruit of these is at first white, as in almost all berries; soon in some it turns green, as in olives and laurels, but reddens in mulberries, cherries, cornels. Then it blackens in mulberries, cherries, olives.
102| There were no cherries in Italy before the victory of Lucius Lucullus over Mithridates, up to the year 680 of the City. He first brought them from Pontus, and in 120 years they reached beyond the ocean as far as Britain; the same [as we have said] could not be made to grow in Egypt by any care. Of cherries, the Aproniana are reddest, the Lutatia the blackest, and the Caeciliana are round.
103| The Junian cherries have a pleasing flavor, but almost only beneath their own tree, so tender that they do not endure being carried. The first place goes to the duracina, which Campania calls Plinian, but in Belgica the Lusitanian, even on the banks of the Rhine. These have a third color, mixed of black and red and green, always like those ripening. Not yet five years have passed since those appeared which they call laurea,
104| of a not unpleasant bitterness, grafted on the laurel. There are also the Macedonian, of a small tree and rarely exceeding three cubits, and, of an even smaller shrub, the chamaecerasi. Among the first of fruits this one returns a yearly favor to the farmer. It rejoices in the north and in the cold, is even dried in the sun, and is stored in casks like the olive.
105| The same care is applied to cornels and even to lentisk. Lest anything seem not to have been born for the belly of man, flavors are mixed and one is forced to please by another; and the regions of earth and sky are mixed also: in one kind of food India is summoned, in another Egypt, Crete, Cyrene, and each land. Nor does life cease in poisonings, so long as it devours everything. This will be made plainer in the nature of herbs.
106| Meanwhile, the kinds of flavors common to fruits and all juices are found to be 13: sweet, pleasant, rich, bitter, harsh, sharp, pungent, unripe-sour, acid, salt. Besides these there are three kinds of a most marvelous nature: one in which several flavors are perceived together, as in wines; for in them is both harsh and pungent and sweet and pleasant, all foreign.
107| The second is a kind in which there is a foreign flavor indeed, but also a certain one of its own and peculiar, as in milk; for it contains what nevertheless cannot rightly be called sweet and rich and pleasant, a mildness prevailing, which itself takes the place of flavor.
108| In waters there is none of this, nor any juice, so that yet by that very thing it becomes something and makes a kind of its own. To perceive any flavor or juice in water is a fault. In all these, odor has great weight and a great kinship; and this itself is none in waters or, if it is perceived at all, is a fault. It is a marvel that the three chief elements of nature are without flavor, without odor, without juice: waters, air, fire.
109| Therefore, of juices, the wine-like belong to the pear, mulberry, myrtle, and least, which we may wonder at, to grapes; rich ones to the olive, laurel, walnut, almonds; sweet ones to grapes, figs, palms; watery to plums. There is also great difference in the color of the juice: blood-colored in mulberries, cherries, cornels, black grapes; the same white in white ones; milky in the head of figs, but not so in the body; foamy in apples, none in Persian fruits, though especially the duracina abound in juice. But who could name any color of it?
110| Odor has its own marvels: sharp in apples, diluted in Persian fruits, none in the sweet ones. For wine of that kind is without odor, the thin has more; and such things come into use much more quickly than rich ones. Those that have odor are not tender in taste likewise, because odor and flavor are not alike. For this reason citrea have a most pungent odor and a most rough flavor, to some extent also cotonea, and figs have no odor.
111| And so far let there be the species and kinds of fruits: it is fitting that their natures be gathered more closely. Some are distinguished by pods, sweet in themselves, but enclosing a bitter seed, though in many seeds please and in a pod are condemned; others by berries, inside which is wood and outside flesh, as in olives, cherries; of some the berries are inside and the wood outside, as in those which we said grow in Egypt.
112| What is the nature of berries is the same in fruits. Of some the body is inside and the wood outside, as in nuts; in others the body is outside and wood inside, as in Persian fruits and plums, and the fault is surrounded by fruit, while elsewhere the fruit is fortified by the fault. Nuts are shut in by a shell, chestnuts by a rind; this is removed from them, but in medlars it is chewed. Acorns are covered by a crust, grapes by skin, the pomegranate by rind and membrane. Mulberries consist of flesh and juice, cherries of skin and juice.
113| Some at once draw away from the wood, as nuts and palms; some cling, as olives and laurel. Some kinds have both natures, as in Persian fruits; for in the duracina the body clings and cannot be torn from the wood, while in the others it is easily separated. Some have wood neither inside nor outside, as in the kind of palms.
114| In some the wood itself is in use and in place of fruit, as we said of certain kinds with kernels in Egypt. In some the faults are doubled outside, as in chestnuts and almonds and walnuts. In some the nature is threefold: the body, then the wood, and again the seed in the wood, as in Persian fruits. Some are dense among themselves, like grapes, and service-berries, which surround the branches from every side and weigh them down in the manner of grapes; others sparse, as in Persian fruits; some are held in a belly, like the pomegranate.
115| Some hang by stalks, like pears, others by clusters, like grapes and palms, others by both stalks and clusters, like ivy and elder; others cling to the branch, as in the laurel; some in both ways, as olives. For the stalks are both short and long. Some consist of little vessels, like the pomegranate and the medlar and the lotus in Egypt and on the Euphrates.
116| Now indeed the attraction and recommendation are different: palms please by their flesh, the Theban by its crust, grapes and caryotae by juice, pears and apples by callus, mulberries by body, kernels by cartilage, certain things in Egypt by grain, figs by skin. This is stripped from green figs like a shell, and in dried ones it pleases most. In papyri and ferulae and the white thorn the stalk itself is the fruit,
117| like the stalks of the fig tree, and in the shrubby kind with the stalk of the caper; but in pods, what is chewed except wood? The peculiarity of their seed must not be passed over: for it can be called neither body nor wood nor cartilage, nor can another name be found.
118| The nature of juices has its chief marvel in the myrtle, since from the one tree two kinds each of oil and of wine are made, and likewise myrtidanum, as we have said. The berry also had another use among the ancients, before pepper was discovered, taking its place, and in a certain kind of relish a name drawn from it, which even now is called myrtatum. And from the same source the flavor of boars is commended, myrtle berries being generally added to the dips.
119| The tree itself, in the climate of nearer Europe, which begins at the Ceraunian mountains, is reported first to have been seen at Circeii on the tomb of Elpenor, and its Greek name remains, by which it appears to be foreign. It was where Rome now is, already when it was founded; for it is so reported that the Romans and Sabines, when they had wished to fight on account of the stolen maidens, laid down their arms and were purified with a myrtle branch in that place which now has the images of Venus Cluacina; for the ancients said cluere for to purify.
120| And in this tree also there is a kind of incense, chosen then for this reason because Venus presides over union and over this tree. I do not know whether it was not also the first of all planted in public places at Rome, with a prophetic and memorable augury. For among the most ancient shrines is that of Quirinus, that is, of Romulus himself. In it there were two sacred myrtles before the temple for a long time, one called patrician, the other plebeian. The patrician for many years prevailed, luxuriant and fresh;
121| as long as the senate also flourished, that one was huge, the plebeian withered and squalid. After the plebeian grew strong, as the patrician turned yellow, from the Marsic war the authority of the Fathers became languid, and by degrees the majesty withered into sterility. There was also an old altar to Venus Myrtea, whom they now call Murcia.
122| Cato recorded three kinds of myrtle, the black, the white, the coniugula, perhaps from marriages, from that kind of the Cluacina. Now there is another distinction, of the cultivated or the wild, and in each the broad-leaved, in the wild the oxymyrsine proper. Of the cultivated kinds the ornamental gardeners distinguish the Tarentine with a small leaf, our native with a spreading one, the hexasticha with the densest, with six rows of leaves. This is not in use, being branching and not tall. I think the coniugalis is now called ours. The myrtle is most fragrant in Egypt.
123| Cato taught that wine is made from the black, dried to dryness in the shade and so put into must. If the berries are not dried, oil is produced. Later it was found that from the white also a white wine is made, two sextarii of crushed myrtle being steeped in three heminae of wine and pressed out. The leaves too are dried by themselves to a meal, for remedies of ulcers on the human body, a gently biting powder, and for cooling sweats.
124| Indeed, in the oil too, marvelous to tell, there is a certain flavor of wine and at the same time a rich liquid, of special power for correcting wines when the straining bags are first soaked with it. For it holds back the lees and does not allow anything but pure liquid to pass, and gives itself as a companion to the strained, of special recommendation. Its twigs also, merely carried, benefit the traveler on foot in a long journey; and rings of its twigs, free of iron, cure swelling of the groin.
125| It has inserted itself in warlike affairs also: Publius Postumius Tubertus, triumphing over the Sabines in his consulship, who first of all entered the city in an ovation, since he had carried out the business gently without blood, advanced wreathed in the myrtle of Venus Victrix, and made the tree desirable even to enemies. This afterward was the crown of those celebrating an ovation, except Marcus Crassus, who, over fugitives and Spartacus, advanced crowned with laurel.
126| Masurius states that triumphing generals also used a myrtle crown on the chariot. Lucius Piso reports that Papirius Maso, who first triumphed on the Alban mount over the Corsicans, used to watch the games of the Circus crowned with myrtle; he was the next Africanus's grandfather on his mother's side. Marcus Valerius used two crowns, laurel and myrtle, who had vowed this too.
127| The laurel may be said to be dedicated especially to triumphs, or most welcome to houses, the doorkeeper of the Caesars and pontiffs. Alone it adorns houses and keeps watch before the thresholds. Cato handed down two kinds of it, the Delphic and the Cyprian. Pompeius Lenaeus added one which he called mustax, because it was put under mustacei: this, he said, has the largest leaf, flaccid and whitish; the Delphic is of equal color but greener, with the largest berries, reddening from green, and crowns victors at Delphi as it does those triumphing at Rome; the Cyprian has a short leaf, black, curled with an overlapping along the margins.
128| Afterward further kinds were added: the tinus (some understand this to be a wild laurel, some a tree of its own kind) differs in color; for its berry is dark blue.
129| There is also the royal laurel, which has begun to be called the Augusta, very large in both tree and leaf, and with berries that are not harsh to the taste either. Some deny that it is the same, and make the royal laurel a kind of its own, with longer and broader leaves. The same people, in another kind, give the name bacalia to the one that is the commonest and the most productive of berries, while the barren one among them,
130| which surprises me most, they call the triumphal laurel, and say that it is the one used by those celebrating triumphs; unless that practice began with the deified Augustus, as we shall show, from the laurel that was sent to him from heaven, very low in height, with a crinkled, short leaf, and rarely found. In ornamental gardening there is also the Thasian laurel, which has a tiny outgrowth, like a little fringe of leaf, coming out in the middle of the leaf; and the spadonina, without this fringe, which tolerates shade remarkably, and so fills the ground under any amount of shade.
131| There is also the chamaedaphne, a wild shrub, and the Alexandrina, which some call the Idaea, others hypoglottion, others danae, others carpophyllon, others hypelates. It sends out branches three-quarters of a foot long from the root and is used in garland-making; its leaf is more pointed than the myrtle's, softer, whiter and larger, and its seed, between the leaves, is red. It is most plentiful on Ida and around Heraclea in Pontus, and grows only in mountainous places.
132| The kind called daphnoides is also surrounded by a crowd of names; some call it Pelasgum, others eupetalon, others stephanos Alexandri. This too is a branching shrub, with a leaf thicker and softer than the laurel's, which sets the mouth on fire when tasted, and with berries of a reddish black. The ancients noted that there was no kind of laurel in Corsica; it has now been planted there and grows well.
133| The laurel itself is a bearer of peace, so that holding it out even between armed enemies is a sign of a truce. Among the Romans especially it is the messenger of rejoicing and victories: it is attached to dispatches and to the soldiers' lances and javelins, and it adorns the fasces of generals.
134| A branch from these is laid in the lap of Jupiter Best and Greatest whenever a new victory has brought rejoicing. The reason is not that it is always green, nor that it is a bearer of peace, for in both respects the olive should be preferred to it, but because it is most conspicuous on Mount Parnassus and was therefore thought to be dear to Apollo as well. Even the kings of Rome had become accustomed to sending gifts there and seeking oracles from there, as Lucius Brutus bears witness; and perhaps also as a token, since it was there that he earned the public liberty, when, following the oracle's response, he kissed that laurel-bearing earth; and because, of all the trees planted by hand and taken into our houses, it alone is not struck by lightning.
135| For these reasons I for my part would believe that this honour was given to it in triumphs, rather than because it is a means of fumigation and purification after the slaughter of enemies, as Masurius records. And it is so wrong to defile the laurel and the olive in common uses that not even for propitiating the divine powers should fires be kindled on altars or hearths from them. The laurel indeed plainly rejects fire with its crackling and a kind of protest, its wood even writhing as though with disorders of the bowels and sinews. They say that the emperor Tiberius used to wear a laurel wreath when it thundered, against the fear of lightning.
136| There are also events connected with the laurel in the life of the deified Augustus that are worth recording. When Livia Drusilla, who afterwards received the name Augusta upon her marriage, had been betrothed to Caesar, an eagle dropped from a height into her lap, as she sat, a hen of remarkable whiteness, unhurt; and as she looked at it in wonder without fear, a further marvel was added: it held in its beak a laurel branch laden with its berries. The haruspices ordered that the bird and its offspring be preserved, and that the branch be planted and duly guarded.
137| This was done at the villa of the Caesars that stands above the river Tiber near the ninth milestone of the Flaminian Way, which for this reason is called Ad Gallinas, and a grove grew up there wonderfully. Later Caesar, when he celebrated his triumph, held laurel from it in his hand, and on his head wore a wreath of it, and afterwards so did all the Caesars who were emperors. And the custom was handed down of planting the branches they had held, and groves survive distinguished by their names, perhaps for that reason changing the laurels used in triumphs.
138| This alone of all trees gives in the Latin language a name to men; this alone has a distinct name for its leaves, for we call them laurea. The name also lasts in the city, given to a place, since the spot on the Aventine where there was a grove of laurel is called Loretum. The laurel is also used in purifications. And let it be attested in passing that it is grown from a cutting as well, since Democritus and Theophrastus doubted this. We shall now speak of the natures of the forest trees.

======== Natural History — Book XVI ========

1| The fruit-bearing trees, and those which with their milder juices first brought pleasure to our food and taught us to mix delicacies with necessary nourishment (whether they reached those agreeable flavours of their own accord or learned them from man through grafting and union, a gift that we have bestowed even on wild beasts and birds), are all comprised in what has been said above. The next thing would have been to describe the acorn-bearing trees, which first fed the sustenance of mortals, the nurses of their needy and savage lot, were I not compelled to turn aside first by the wonder, learned from experience, at what sort of life it is, and of what kind, for those who live without any tree or any shrub.
2| We have said that in the East, beside the Ocean, a number of peoples live under this necessity. But in the north too we have seen the Chauci, who are called the Greater and the Lesser. There, in a vast movement, twice in each period of a day and a night, the Ocean pours out and is driven over an immense expanse, covering up nature's eternal dispute and leaving it doubtful whether the place [is] part of the land or of the sea.
3| There this wretched people occupy high mounds, or platforms built by hand to the height of the highest tide known by experience. With their huts set on these, they are like sailors when the waters cover the land around them, and like shipwrecked men when the waters have withdrawn, and around their hovels they hunt the fish that are escaping with the sea. It is not their lot to keep cattle or to live on milk, as their neighbours do, nor even to fight with wild beasts, since every shrub is banished far away.
4| They weave ropes of sedge and marsh rush to make nets for the fish, and they gather mud with their hands and dry it more by the wind than by the sun, and with this earth they heat their food and their own bodies, stiffened by the north wind. Their only drink is rainwater kept in pits in the forecourt of the house. And these are the peoples who, if they are conquered today by the Roman people, say that they are being enslaved! That is indeed how it is: fortune spares many as a punishment.
5| Another marvel comes from the forests. They overspread the whole remainder of Germany and add shade to its cold, and the tallest of them are not far from the Chauci mentioned above, especially around two lakes. The very shores are occupied by oaks with an extraordinary eagerness to grow; and when they are undermined by the waves or pushed over by the winds, they carry away with them vast islands held in the embrace of their roots, and so, balanced, they sail along standing upright. With the rigging of their huge branches they have often terrified our fleets, when they were driven by the waves, as if on purpose, against the prows of ships riding at anchor at night, and the ships, with no remedy at hand, had to fight a naval battle against trees.
6| In the same northern region, the vast robur trees of the Hercynian forest, untouched by the ages and born together with the world, surpass all marvels by their almost immortal lot. To leave aside other things that would lack credit, it is established that hills are raised by the thrust of the roots as they meet one another, or, where the earth has not followed them, that arches rise as high as the branches, and the branches themselves, struggling with one another, are bent into the shape of open gates, so that they let whole troops of cavalry pass through. Almost all of them are of the acorn-bearing kind, which has always been held in honour among the Romans.
7| From this come the civic crowns, the most glorious mark of a soldier's valour, but for a long time now also of the clemency of emperors, ever since, in the impiety of the civil wars, not killing a citizen came to be regarded as a merit. To these give way the mural crowns, the rampart crowns and the gold crowns, although they are ahead of them in value; to these give way also the beaked crowns, although these have been most famous down to our time in the case of two men: Marcus Varro, to whom Pompey the Great gave it for the wars against the pirates, and likewise Marcus Agrippa, to whom Caesar awarded it for the Sicilian wars, which were themselves also wars against pirates.
8| Formerly the beaks of ships fixed to the tribunal were the glory of the Forum, as though a crown had been set upon the Roman people itself. But after they began to be trampled and defiled by tribunes' seditions, after power began to be diverted from the public into private hands and to be sought by individual citizens, and the sacrosanct tribunes to make everything profane, then the beaks passed from under their feet onto the heads of citizens. Augustus gave this crown to Agrippa, but he himself received the civic crown from the human race.
9| In ancient times, indeed, a crown was given to no one but a god (which is why Homer grants one only to heaven and to a whole battle, but to no individual man, not even in a contest), and they say that it was Father Liber who first of all put one on his own head, made of ivy. Later, those sacrificing in honour of the gods took them up, the victims being crowned at the same time.
10| Most recently they have been adopted in the sacred contests too, in which even today they are not given to the victor, but it is proclaimed that his country is crowned by him. From this arose the custom of conferring them on those about to celebrate a triumph, to be dedicated in the temples, and soon of giving them at the games as well. It would be a long business, and no part of the work I have undertaken, to discuss which of the Romans first received each kind; for they knew no others than those of war. What is certain is that this nation alone has more kinds of crowns than all the others put together.
11| Romulus crowned Hostus Hostilius with a crown of leaves, because he had been the first to break into Fidenae. This man was the grandfather of King Tullus Hostilius. Publius Decius, the father, a military tribune, received a crown of leaves from the army saved by him, when Cornelius Cossus was its general as consul, in the war against the Samnites. The civic crown was at first of ilex; later one of aesculus, which is sacred to Jupiter, was preferred, and it was also varied with oak, and the tree that was available in each place was used, only the honour of the acorn being preserved.
12| Strict conditions were added, and therefore proud ones, which one may well compare with that highest crown of the Greeks, the one given under Jupiter himself, for which the victor's native city, rejoicing, breaks open its walls: the recipient must have saved a citizen and killed an enemy; the enemy must hold the place where this was done on that day; the man saved must acknowledge it (otherwise witnesses are of no use); and he must have been a citizen.
13| Saving auxiliaries confers no such distinction, even if a king is the one saved, nor does the same honor grow when a commander is preserved, since the founders wished the highest honor to be in any citizen whatever. It is permitted to use it perpetually. At the games, to rise for him as he enters, even by the senate, is the custom; the right of sitting is in the place nearest the senate, with exemption from all public duties for himself and his father and paternal grandfather.
14| Siccius Dentatus received 13 of these, as we have related in its place, Capitolinus 6, and that indeed also for the commander Servilius. Africanus was unwilling to receive one for his father at the Trebia. O manners eternal, which honored such great deeds with honor alone and, while they recommended the other crowns in gold, would not have the safety of a citizen held at a price, openly declaring that it is not right for a man to be saved even for the sake of gain!
15| On the acorn the wealth of many nations even now depends, rejoicing in peace as well. And in lack of grain, they dry them, mill them into meal and thicken it for use as bread; indeed, even today, through the Spains, acorn is served at the second course. The same is sweeter roasted in ashes. It was provided besides by a law of the Twelve Tables that it should be lawful to gather an acorn falling onto another's land.
16| The kinds of them are many. They differ in fruit, situation, sex, flavor. For the acorn of the fagus has one shape, the quercus's a different one, and the ilex's, and among the single kinds there are also differences between them. Besides, some are wild, others gentler, which hold the cultivated places. They also differ as to mountain or plain, as in sex, male and female, likewise in flavor: sweetest of all is that of the fagus, so that Cornelius Alexander reports that men besieged in the town of Chios even held out on it.
17| It is not possible to distinguish the kinds by their names, which are different in different places, since indeed we see robur and quercus commonly growing, the aesculus not everywhere, but the fourth of the same kind, which is called cerrus, is not known even over the greater part of Italy. We shall therefore distinguish by property and nature and, where the matter compels, even by Greek names.
18| The acorn of the fagus is like kernels and is enclosed in a three-cornered skin. The leaf is thin and among the smoothest, like the poplar's, turning yellow very quickly, and generally producing in the middle part, above, a tiny green berry, prickly at the tip. The fagus is most welcome to mice, and so that animal's numbers rise together with its crop; it also fattens dormice, and is sought by thrushes. The fertility of almost all trees alternates, but most of all that of the fagus.
19| The acorn, in the proper sense, is borne by the robur, quercus, aesculus, cerrus, ilex, suber. They are held in a bristly calyx that embraces them more or less according to the kinds. The leaves, except in the ilex, are heavy, fleshy, tall, with sinuous sides, and do not turn yellow when they fall, as the fagus's do, shorter or longer according to the difference of the kinds. Of the ilex there are two kinds. Of these, in Italy those not much different in leaf from olives are called milaces by some Greeks; in the provinces the ilices are aquifoliae. The acorn of either is shorter and more slender, which Homer calls aculon, and with that name sets it apart from the acorn. They say the male ilices do not bear.
20| The best and largest acorn is on the quercus, next the aesculus. For the robur has a small one, the cerrus a bitter, bristly one with a prickly calyx like the chestnut's. But on the quercus also, one is sweeter, softer in the female, denser in the male. The broad-leaved are most approved, named from this evidence. They differ among themselves in size and the thinness of the skin, and also in that under some there is a coat rough with rust, under others at once a white body.
21| That is approved too in whose acorn on both sides the extreme end along its length turns stony hard, better if this is in the bark than in the body, either only in the male. Besides, in some the shape is egg-like, in others round, in others sharper, as also the color is blacker or whiter, the latter being preferred. The bitterness is in the extremities, the middle parts sweet. The shortness or length of the stalk also makes a difference.
22| Among the trees themselves, the tree bearing the largest is called hemeris, shorter, leafy in a circle and often hollowed in the armpits of its branches. The quercus has stronger wood and more incorruptible, branching itself, yet taller and thicker in the trunk; but the tallest is the aegilops, fond of uncultivated ground.
23| Next to this is the broad-leaved in height, but less useful for building and charcoal: when hewn it is liable to faults, for which reason it is used whole; the charcoal is useful only in the workshops of the bronzesmiths, for economy, since, dying at once when the blast ceases, it is more often rekindled, and for the rest it is very full of sparks. The same is better from young trees. Heaps are covered with clay, the fresh billets set together; when the pile is kindled, the hardening calyx is pricked with poles and so lets out its sweat.
24| The worst for both charcoal and timber is that called haliphloeos, which has a very thick bark and trunk, usually hollow and spongy. No other of this kind rots, even while alive. Moreover it is very often struck by lightning, though it does not excel in height. For that reason it is held unlawful to use its wood even for sacrifices. The same has a rare acorn and, when it has borne, a bitter one, which no animal would touch except swine, and not even these if they have other fodder. This too is among the remaining matters of neglected religion, that sacrifice is made with dead charcoal.
25| The acorn of the fagus makes a pig cheerful, its flesh easily cooked and light and useful to the stomach; that of the ilex makes a pig narrow, glossy, lean; that of the quercus makes it heavy, spread out, it being itself the heaviest and the sweetest of the acorns. Next to this Nigidius reports the cerrea, and says that no other makes firmer flesh, but it is hard. Pigs are upset by the ilex acorn unless it is given by degrees. This one falls last. The flesh becomes spongy from the aesculus, the robur, the suber.
26| All that bear acorns bear also the gall, and the acorn in alternate years, but the hemeris gives the best gall and the most suitable for finishing hides; the broad-leaved one is like this, but lighter and much less approved. It also bears a black one (for there are two kinds); this is more useful for dyeing wools.
27| The gall is born, moreover, as the sun is leaving the Twins, always bursting out entire by night. The whiter kind grows in a single day, and if the heat catches it, it dries up at once and does not reach its proper growth, that is, to have a kernel of the size of a bean. The black remains green longer and grows so that it sometimes fills the size of an apple. The best is the Commagene, the worst from the robur. The sign of the latter is that the cavities show through.
28| The robur besides fruit produces many other things. For it bears both kinds of gall and certain things like mulberries, were they not different in dry hardness, often imitating the head of a bull, which contain a fruit like the kernels of an olive. There grow on it also little balls not unlike nuts, having inside soft tufts, suitable for the wicks of lamps. For they burn even without oil, as does the black gall. It bears also another useless little ball with hair, yet in spring time of a honeyed juice.
29| The armpits of its branches also produce little balls adhering by the body, not by a stalk, whitening at the navels, for the rest scattered with black variegation; the middle ones have the color of kermes, and when opened there is a black emptiness. Sometimes it produces pumice-like growths also, and little balls rolled up from the leaves, and in the veins of the leaves watery kernels, whitening and translucent as long as they are soft, in which gnats also are born. They ripen in the manner of [….]
30| The robora bear also the cachrys; so the little ball is called in medicine, having a burning power. It is produced also on the abies, larix, picea, linden, nut, plane, after the leaves have fallen, lasting through winter. It contains a kernel like the pine nuts'. This grows in winter and opens in spring. The whole little ball falls when the leaves begin to grow.
31| So multifarious are they, so many things besides the acorn do the robora bring forth; but also boleti and suilli (the latest provocations of the gullet), which grow about the roots, those of the quercus most approved, those of the robur and the cypress and the pine harmful. The robora bear also mistletoe and honey, as Hesiod states, and it is agreed that honeyed dews falling from the sky, as we have said, settle on no other foliage more. And it is certain that the ash of burnt robur is nitrous.
32| Yet the ilex challenges all these gifts of it with the coccus alone. This is a grain, and at first like a scab of the shrub, of the small holly ilex. They call it cusculium. It gives the poor of Spain a second payment of tribute. We have given its use and method where we mentioned the conchylium. It is also produced in Galatia, Africa, Pisidia, Cilicia, and the worst in Sardinia.
33| The acorn-bearing trees of the Gauls bear agaricum especially. It is a fungus, white, fragrant, effective in antidotes, growing on the tops of trees, shining at night. This is its sign, by which it is plucked in the dark. Of the acorn-bearing trees only the one called aegilops bears dry rags, gray with a mossy fleece, not only on the bark but hanging from the branches in a cubit's size, fragrant, as we said among the unguents.
34| The suber is a very small tree, with a very poor and sparse acorn, the bark alone being its fruit, very thick and growing again, and even spread out up to ten feet on every side. Its use is chiefly for the anchor-ropes of ships and the drag-nets of fishermen and for the stoppers of casks, besides for women's winter footwear. For which reason the Greeks not inelegantly call it the tree of bark. There are some who call it the female ilex and, where the ilex does not grow, use the suber instead of it, especially in wagon-makers' workshops, as around Elis and Lacedaemon. It does not grow in all Italy, nor at all in Gaul.
35| The bark also of the fagus, linden, abies, picea is of great use among country people. They make from it vessels and baskets and certain wider things for carrying harvests and vintages, and the roofs of huts. A scout writes to the generals on fresh bark, cutting the letters on its sappy side. And in a certain use of sacred rites the bark of the fagus is held sacred. But the tree itself does not last.
36| Shingle is most suitable from the robur, next from other acorn-bearing trees and the fagus, easiest of all from those that bear resin, but it lasts least except that from pine. Cornelius Nepos states that Rome was roofed with shingle up to the war of Pyrrhus, for 470 years.
37| Certainly it was distinguished by the marks of the woods: the Jupiter of the Fagutal, even now where there was a grove of fagus, the Querquetulan gate, the hill from which osiers were sought, and so many groves, some of them twin. Quintus Hortensius the dictator, when the plebs had seceded to the Janiculum, carried a law in an aesculetum, that what they had ordered should bind all the Quirites.
38| Foreign then seemed, since they were not suburban, the pinus and abies and all that produce pitch. Of these we shall now speak, at the same time that the whole origin of seasoning wines may be known, those that bear in Asia or the east having been spoken of before. Pitch in Europe is borne by six kinds of related trees. Of these the pinus and the pinaster have a leaf in the manner of a hair, very fine and long, pointed with a sharp tip. The pinus bears the least resin, and sometimes the very nuts of which we have spoken, and scarcely deserves to be ascribed to the kind.
39| The pinaster is nothing other than a wild pinus, lower in height and branching from the middle, whereas the pinus does so at the top. It gives more abundant resin, in the way we shall tell. It grows also on plains. Most think that along the coast of Italy these same trees are those which they call tibuli by another name, but slender and more compact and without knots, for the use of Liburnian ships, with almost no resin.
40| The picea loves mountains and cold, a funereal tree, set at doors as a sign of mourning and green on pyres, yet now also taken into houses for the ease of its clipping. It pours out the most resin, with white beads forming among it, so like frankincense that when mixed they cannot be told apart by sight; hence the fraud of the Seplasia. In all these kinds the leaves are short,
41| but thicker and hard, as in cypresses. The branches of the picea, moderate, cling to the sides almost from the root like arms. Similarly the abies, sought for ships, has its place on the heights of the mountains, as though it had fled the seas, and no other shape.
42| Its timber, however, is chief for beams and very many works of life. Resin in it is a fault, though it is what the picea yields, and it sweats a little at times by the sun's touch. On the other hand the timber, which is most beautiful in the abies, in the picea serves for split shingles and casks and a few other sawn works.
43| The fifth kind has the same situation, the same appearance. It is called larix. Its timber is far superior, incorrupt through ages, stubborn against moisture, reddish besides, and sharper in odor. A somewhat larger quantity of liquor bursts from it, of honey color and stickiness, never hardening.
44| The sixth kind is the taeda, properly so called, more abundant in sap than the rest, sparser and more liquid than the picea, welcome for the flames and light of sacred rites also. These, the male ones at least, bear also that which the Greeks call syce, of a very heavy odor. It is a disease of the larix that it becomes taeda.
45| All these kinds, however, when kindled, with immoderate soot suddenly spit out charcoal with a crackling of eruption and fling it far, except the larix, which neither burns nor makes charcoal nor is consumed by the force of fire in any other way than stones are. All these are always green and are not easily distinguished in the foliage even by experts; so great is the mixture of their births. But the picea is less tall than the larix;
46| the latter is thicker and lighter in bark, more hairy in leaf, richer and denser, more softly bent; but the leaves of the picea are sparser and drier and thinner and chillier, and the whole is rougher and drenched with resin, the wood more like the abies. The larix does not sprout again when its roots are burned, the picea does, as happened on Lesbos when the Pyrrhaean wood was burned. There are still other differences in sex within the kinds themselves:
47| the male is shorter and harder, the female taller, with richer leaves, simple and not stiff. The wood in males is hard and twisted in the carpenter's work, in females softer, a public distinction in axes. These in whatever kind detect the male, since they are rejected and settle more roughly, and are pulled out with more difficulty. The timber itself is shriveled and blacker in males.
48| Of the larix around Ida in the Troad there is another difference too, mountain and maritime. For in Macedonia and Arcadia and around Elis they exchange the names, and the authors do not agree what they ascribe to each kind. We distinguish these things by the Roman judgment. The abies is the largest of all, and the female even more extended, softer and more useful in timber, rounder as a tree, dense with a feathery leaf, so that it lets no showers through, and more cheerful on the whole.
49| From the branches of these kinds, nuts like little panicles hang, compacted in scales, except in the larix. These in the male abies have kernels at the foremost part, but not in the female. In the picea, however, the whole panicles, smaller and more slender, have kernels, very small and black, for which reason the Greeks call it phthiropoeon. In the same, the nuts in males are more compressed and less dewy with resin.
50| Like these still in appearance, lest anything be omitted, is the taxus, least green and slender, gloomy and dire, without sap, alone of all of them bearing berries. The male has a harmful fruit; indeed a deadly poison lies in the berries, especially in Spain, and it has been found that traveling vessels for wine made of it in Gaul were deadly.
51| Sextius says that this is called milax by the Greeks and that in Arcadia it is so instantly poisonous that those who fall asleep under it or take food there die. There are some who say that the poisons from it were called taxica, which we now call toxica, with which arrows are dipped. It has been found to become harmless if a bronze nail is driven into the tree itself.
52| Liquid pitch in Europe is boiled from taeda, for fortifying ships and for many other uses. Its wood, cut up, is heated in furnaces with fire placed around outside on every side. The first sweat flows like water in a channel. This in Syria is called cedrium, which has such force that in Egypt the bodies of dead men, drenched with it, are preserved.
53| The next liquor, already thicker, pours out pitch. This again, thrown into bronze vats and thickened with vinegar as with rennet, received the name Bruttian, useful only for jars and other vessels, differing from other pitch in stickiness, likewise in ruddy color and in that it is richer than all the rest. That other is made from the resin of the picea, collected with boiling stones in troughs of strong robur, or, if there are no troughs, in a heap of piled wood, as in the use of charcoal.
54| This is added to wine, pounded in the manner of meal, blacker in color. The same resin, if it is boiled down more gently with water and strained, becomes sticky and reddish in color and is called stillaticia. For this purpose the faults of the resin and the bark are generally set aside. The tempering for crapula is different. For the raw flower of the resin, torn off with much splinter, thin and short, is cut small on a sieve. Then boiling water is poured over it until it is boiled down.
55| The rich pressing of this becomes the choice resin, and it is rare, and found only in a few places of subalpine Italy, suited to physicians. Of white resin they boil a congius in 2 of rainwater. Others think it more useful to boil it without water on a slow fire for a whole day, at any rate in a vessel of white bronze; likewise the terebinthina in a pan on hot ash, preferring this to the rest. Next is that from the lentisk.
56| It must not be omitted that among the same people the pitch scraped from sea-going ships with its wax is called zopissa, life leaving nothing untried, and it is much more effective for all things for which pitches and resins are of benefit, evidently with the callus of salt added.
57| The picea is opened on the sunny side, not by a gash but by the wound of removed bark, at most with a gap of two feet, so that it stands at least a cubit from the ground. Nor is the body itself spared, as in the rest, since the splinter is in the yield. But this nearest part is praised; higher up, it brings bitterness. Afterward all the moisture from the whole tree flows together into the sore.
58| So also in the taeda. When this has ceased to flow, it is opened in a similar way on another side, and then on another. Afterward the whole tree is cut down and its pith burned. So also in Syria they strip the bark from the terebinth, there indeed from branches and roots also, since the resin from those parts is condemned. In Macedonia they burn the male larix, but of the female only the roots.
59| Theopompus wrote that in the land of the Apolloniatae a fossil pitch is found, not worse than the Macedonian. The best pitch everywhere comes from sunny places with a northern aspect; from shaded places it is rougher and carries a rank smell; in a cold winter it is worse and less abundant and discolored.
60| Some think that in mountainous places it becomes better in abundance and color and sweeter, more pleasant also in odor, while it is resin, but when boiled down yields less pitch, since it goes off into whey, and that the trees themselves are slighter than on the plains, but both these and those are less fruitful in fair weather. Some give their yield in the year next after the cutting, others in the second, some in the third. The wound, moreover, is filled with resin, not with bark or a scar, which in this tree does not close.
61| Among these kinds some have made the sappinus a separate one, since it is grown from the kinship of these, such as was spoken of in the kernels, and they call the lowest parts of the same tree taedae, though that tree is nothing other than the picea, its wildness a little softened by planting, while the sappinus becomes timber by a kind of felling, as we shall teach.
62| For the sake of timber nature produced the remaining trees, and most abundantly the fraxinus. It is tall and round, and itself feathery in leaf, and greatly ennobled by the proclamation of Homer and the spear of Achilles. Its wood is useful for very many things; that indeed which is made on Ida in the Troad is so like the cedar that it deceives buyers when the bark is removed.
63| The Greeks made two kinds of it: a long one without knots, and another short, harder and darker, with laurel leaves. They call the bumelia in Macedonia the largest and toughest. Others have divided them by situation, for the one of the plain is curly, they say, the mountain one dense.
64| The Greeks reported that their leaves are deadly to beasts of burden, harmless to the rest of the ruminants; in Italy they do not harm even beasts of burden. Against serpents, however, the juice pressed out for drinking, and laid on the sore, is found to be a help as nothing else is, and so great is the force that a serpent will not touch even the morning or evening shadows of that tree, when they are longest, so does it flee from it afar. We report from experience that if fire and a serpent are enclosed by its foliage, the serpent flees into the fire rather than to the fraxinus. A marvelous kindness of nature: the fraxinus flowers before the serpents come out, and does not drop its leaves until they have gone into hiding.
65| In the tilia the male and female differ in every way. For the timber of the male is hard and reddish and knotty and more fragrant, its bark too thicker and, when stripped, inflexible. It bears neither seed nor flower as the female does, which is thicker in the tree and surpasses it in white timber. It is a marvel in this tree that the fruit is touched by no animal, and that the sap of the leaves and bark is sweet. Between bark and wood are thin coats of manifold membrane, from which are called the bonds of the tilia, and the thinnest of them philyra, famous for the ribbons of crowns, in honor among the ancients. The timber feels no shipworm, of quite moderate height, but useful.
66| The acer is of almost the same size, second to citrus in the elegance and fineness of its works. There are several kinds of it: the white, of special whiteness, is called Gallic, growing in Italy beyond the Po and beyond the Alps. Another kind has a curly spread of spots, which when it was outstanding took its name from the likeness to the tails of peacocks, chiefly in Histria and Raetia. From the cheaper kind it is called crassivenium.
67| The Greeks distinguish by situation, for the one of the plain, they say, is white and not curly (which they call glinon), but the mountain one is curlier and harder, and yet from the male is curlier for more elegant works; a third kind, the zygia, is reddish, with splitting wood and a livid, rough bark. Some prefer that this be of a kind of its own, and call it in Latin carpinus.
68| The most beautiful, however, is the bruscum, and the molluscum is by far more excellent still. Both are a burl of that tree, the bruscum more twisted and curly, the molluscum more simply scattered, and if it could attain the size of tables it would doubtless be preferred to citrus; as it is, it is seen within the compass of writing tablets and the frames or plates of couches, in rare use. From the bruscum are made also tables that blacken.
69| A burl is also found on the alder, so much the worse as the alder itself is distant from the acer. The males of the acer flower first. Moreover those born in dry places are preferred to those in wet, as with the fraxinus. Beyond the Alps there is a tree most like the white acer in its timber, which is called staphylodendron. It bears pods and in them kernels with the flavor of a hazelnut.
70| Of timber, indeed, the first in honor is that of the box, which rarely curls and only from the root, of the [….] and is of smooth timber, but commendable for a certain toughness and hardness and paleness, and the tree itself also for topiary work. It has three kinds: the Gallic, which is allowed to run up into cones and a taller extent. The oleastrum, condemned in every use, gives out a heavy odor. The third kind they call ours, softened, as I believe, from the wild by planting, more spreading and with the thickness of walls, always green and clippable.
71| The box is most abundant on the Pyrenean and Cytorian mountains and in the Berecyntian tract, thickest in Corsica, with a flower not to be scorned, which is the cause of bitterness in honey. The seed is hateful to all living creatures. Nor on Olympus of Macedonia is it more slender, but short. It loves cold and sunny places. In fire too it has a hardness like iron's, being useful neither for flame nor for charcoal.
72| Between these and the fruit-bearing trees, in timber and in friendship with vines, the elm is taken. The Greeks knew two kinds of it: the mountain one, which is the larger, and the plain one, which is shrubby. Italy calls the tallest Atiniae and of these prefers the dry ones, those not irrigated; the second kind is the Gallic; the third ours, with denser leaf and more numerous leaves from the same stalk; the fourth wild. The Atiniae do not bear samara (so the seed of the elm is called), and all spring up from shoots of the roots, the others from seed.
73| Now that the most celebrated trees have been spoken of, some things must be indicated about them all in general. Mountains are loved by the cedar, larix, taeda and the rest from which resin is produced, likewise aquifolia, box, ilex, juniper, terebinth, poplar, ornus, carpinus. There is on the Apennine also a shrub called cotinus, notable for linen dyeing in the color of the conchylium.
74| Mountains and valleys are cherished by the abies, robur, chestnuts, tilia, ilex, cornel. Watery mountains are enjoyed by the acer, fraxinus, sorb, tilia, cherry. Plum, pomegranates, wild olives, walnut, mulberries and elder are seldom seen on mountains. Cornel, hazel, quercus, ornus, acer, fraxinus, fagus, carpinus also come down to the plains. And into mountainous ground go the elm, apple, pear, laurel, myrtle, the blood-red shrubs, ilex, and the brooms that grow for dyeing garments. The sorb rejoices in cold, but still more the betulla.
75| This is a Gallic tree of marvelous whiteness and slenderness, terrible in the rods of magistrates, flexible too for hoops and for the ribs of baskets. The Gauls boil bitumen from it. To the same places the thorn also is a companion, most auspicious for wedding torches, since the shepherds who carried off the Sabine women made them from it, as Masurius states. Now the carpinus and hazel are most familiar for torches.
76| Waters are hated by cypresses, walnuts, chestnuts, laburnum. This too is an Alpine tree, not commonly known, with hard and white timber, whose flower, a cubit in length, bees do not touch. It also hates what is called Jupiter's beard, which in topiary work is clippable and thick into roundness, with a silver leaf.
77| Only in watery places grow willows, alders, poplars, siler, privets, most useful for dice, likewise the vaccinia sown in Italy for bird-catching, but in Gaul even for dyeing purple, for the garments of slaves. All that are common to mountains and plains are larger and more beautiful to see in the plains, but better in fruit, and curlier in timber on the mountains, except apples and pears.
78| Besides, in some trees the leaves fall, others are green with a perpetual head of foliage, a difference which the earlier subject must precede. For there are some trees wholly wild, some more civilized, since it pleases to distinguish them by these names, and those which, mild, help humanity more by fruit or some gift and the service of shade may not improperly be called urban.
79| Of this kind the leaves do not fall in the olive, laurel, palm, myrtle, cypress, pines, ivy, rhododendron, and, although it is called a herb, sabina. The rhododendron, as the name shows, comes from the Greeks. Others called it nerium, others rhododaphne, evergreen in its foliage, like the rose in likeness, shrubby in its stalks. It is poison to beasts of burden and goats and sheep, the same being a remedy to man against the venoms of serpents.
80| Of the wild kind the leaves do not fall in the abies, larix, pinaster, juniper, cedar, terebinth, box, ilex, aquifolium, suber, taxus, tamarisk. Between the two kinds are the andrachle in Greece and everywhere the unedo; for their other leaves fall except on the tops. They do not fall also, in the kind of shrubs, in a certain cedar, in the bramble, the reed. In the territory of Thurii,
81| where Sybaris was, there was seen from the city itself a single quercus that never dropped its leaves nor budded before midsummer; and this is marvelous, handed down by Greek authors, afterward passed over in silence among us. For so great is the power of places that around Memphis in Egypt and at Elephantine in the Thebaid the leaves of no trees fall, not even of vines.
82| All the others, besides those mentioned (for to enumerate them is long), shed their leaves, and it has been noticed that only the thin and broad and soft ones wither, while those that do not fall are thick with callus and narrow. The definition is false that the leaves do not fall from those whose sap is richer. For who can understand that in the ilex? Timaeus the mathematician thinks they fall when the sun passes through Scorpio, by the force of the star and a certain poison of the air. Why then the same cause does not prevail against all, we may rightly wonder.
83| In most the leaves fall in autumn, some lose them later and prolong the delay into the winters, and it makes no difference whether they budded earlier, inasmuch as some bud first and are stripped among the last, like almonds, fraxini, elders, whereas the mulberry buds last and drops its leaves with the first.
84| Great also in this is the power of the soil. They fall earlier in dry, lean ground, and earlier in an old tree, in many even before the fruit ripens, as in the late fig and in the winter pear and apple, and the pomegranate is a fruit seen on the mother tree only in that state. Nor in those that always keep their foliage do the same leaves last, new ones growing up in the armpits; then the old ones wither, which happens most about the solstices.
85| The uniformity of leaves remains in each kind, except in the poplar, the ivy, the croton, which we said is also called cici. Of the poplar there are three kinds: white and black, and the one called Libyan, smallest in leaf and blackest, and most praised for the fungi that spring up on it.
86| The white one is two-colored in leaf, whitening above, green on the lower side. In youth this and the black and the croton are of rounded circumference, the older ones run out into angles. On the contrary, the angled leaves of the ivy are rounded. From the leaves of poplars a very great down flies off, white and radiating; they whiten with the more numerous leaves like fleece. The leaves of pomegranates and almonds are reddish.
87| Marvelous above all is what happens to the elm and linden and olive and white poplar and willow. For their leaves are turned around after the solstice, nor is the completed course of the star understood by any surer proof.
88| There is also a general difference in all leaves themselves. For the lower part from the earth is green with a grassy color, and on that side they are smoother; they have their veins and callus and joints on the upper side, with incisions below, like a human hand. Those of the olive are whiter above and less smooth, likewise those of ivy. But the leaves of all gape daily toward the sun, wishing the lower parts to be warmed. The upper part of all has some down, however small, which in other countries is wool.
89| In the east it has been said that strong ropes are made from palm leaves, and that they are more useful in moisture. And among us too leaves are plucked from palms at harvest. Of these the better are those that have not divided themselves. They are dried under cover for four days each, then spread in the sun and left out at night until they dry to whiteness, afterward split for work.
90| Broadest in the fig, vine, plane; narrow in the myrtle, pomegranate, olive; hairlike in pine, cedar; prickly in the aquifolium and the kind of ilices (for in junipers a thorn takes the place of a leaf); fleshy in the cypress, tamarisk; thickest in the alder; long in the reed, willow, palm, and double ones too; circular in the pear, pointed in the apple, angled in the ivy, divided in the plane, notched in the manner of combs in picea and abies, sinuous around the whole circumference in the robur, spiny in skin in the bramble.
91| Biting in some, as in nettles, pricking in pine, picea, abies, larix, cedar, aquifolia; with a short stalk in the olive, ilex, long in vines, trembling in poplars, and these alone among them rattling. Even in the fruit itself, in a certain kind of apple, small leaves spring out from the middle, sometimes even in pairs; besides, in some around the branches, in others also at the tip of the branches, in the robur even on the trunk itself.
92| Then they are dense or sparse, and the broad always sparser. Arranged in the myrtle, hollow in the box, disordered in fruit trees, several coming out of the same stalk in apples and pears, branchy in the elm and cytisus. To which Cato adds the fallen leaves of poplar and quercus, ordering them to be given to animals not too dry, to oxen indeed also those of fig and ilex and ivy. They are given also from reed and laurel. In the sorb all fall together, in the rest gradually. And so far on leaves.
93| The yearly order of nature, however, stands thus: the first is conception, when the west wind begins to blow, from about the sixth day ahead of the Ides of February. Through this the things that live are wedded from the earth, since even the mares in Spain, as we have said. This is the generative breath of the world, so called from fostering, as some have thought.
94| It blows from the equinoctial west, beginning the spring. The countrymen call it catlitio, nature being eager to receive seeds and the breath bearing life to all crops. They conceive on various days and, each according to its own nature, some at once, like animals, others more slowly and bear their offspring heavy for longer, which is therefore called germination. They give birth, however, when they flower, and that flower consists of ruptured little sacs; the rearing is in the fruit.
95| This is also the germination, the toil of trees; the flower is the sign of full spring and of the reborn year; the flower is the joy of trees. Then they show themselves new and other than they are, then in varied paintings of colors they run riot even to rivalry. But this is denied to most; for not all flower, and some are sad and have no feeling of the joys of the years. For neither ilex, picea, larix nor pinus is gladdened by any flower or promises the yearly birthdays of fruits by a many-colored messenger, nor do figs and wild figs; for they produce fruit at once instead of flower. In figs there are also marvelous abortions that never ripen.
96| Nor do junipers flower. Some report two kinds of them: one that flowers and does not bear, while the one that does not flower bears at once, with berries just born, which cling for two years. But that is false, and in all of these the look is always hard. So too for many men fortune is without a flower.
97| All, however, put out buds, even those that do not flower, and there is great difference of places, since of the same kind those in marshy ground bud earlier, then those of the plain, last of all those in the woods, while of themselves the wild pears are slower than the rest. At the first west wind the cornel, next the laurel, and a little before the equinox the tilia and acer; among the first, however, the poplar, elm, willow, alder, nuts.
98| The plane also hurries. The rest, when spring is about to begin: aquifolium, terebinth, paliurus, chestnut, acorn-bearers; the apple with a late bud, the suber the slowest. In some the budding is doubled, from too great richness of soil or the allurement of an inviting sky, which happens more in the herbs of the cornfields. In trees, however, excessive budding loses its milk.
99| There are other natural seasons for some besides the spring one, which depend on their own stars (the account of which will be given more fittingly in the third volume from this): the winter one when the Eagle rises, the summer one at the rising of the Dog Star, the third at that of Arcturus. Some think these two are common to every tree, but that they are felt most in the fig, vine, pomegranates, giving as the cause that in Thessaly and Macedonia the greatest number of figs comes out then. This reasoning, however, is most apparent in Egypt.
100| And the remaining trees, as soon as they have begun, continue their budding; the robur and abies and larix interrupt it in three parts and put out three buds. For this reason they also scatter the scales of their bark three times, which happens to all trees in budding, since the bark of the pregnant is burst. The first of these is at the beginning of spring, for about 15 days. They bud again as the sun is passing through the Twins. So it comes about that the first tips appear pushed forward by those that follow, in a jointed growth.
101| The third of the same is from the solstice, very short, not longer than seven days each, and then too the jointing of the growing tips is clearly seen. The vine alone brings forth twice, first when it puts out the grape, again when it sets it in order. In those that do not flower, there is only the bearing and the ripening.
102| Some flower immediately in the budding and hasten in it, but ripen slowly, like the vine. Some in a late budding flower and ripen quickly, like the mulberry, which buds last of the cultivated trees and not until the cold is over, and on that account is called the wisest of trees. But when it has begun, the whole budding bursts out so much that it is completed in a single night, even with a noise.
103| Of those that conceive in winter when the Eagle rises, as we have said, the almond is first of all to flower, in the month of January, and in March ripens its fruit. Next to it flower the Armenian, then the tubures and the early ones, the former foreign, the latter forced; in the order of nature, among the wild ones the first is the elder, which has much pith, and the male cornel, which has none; of the cultivated, the apple, and a little afterward, so that it can be seen at the same time, the pear and cherry and plum.
104| The laurel follows, after it the cypress, then the pomegranate, the figs. Both vines and olives bud when these are already flowering, and conceive at the rising of the Pleiades. This star is theirs. The vine flowers at the solstice, and the olive, which begins a little later. All lose their flower in seven days, not sooner, some later, but none in more than twice seven, and all within the eighth day before the Ides of July, before the coming of the etesian winds.
105| Nor does the fruit follow at once in some. For the cornel about the solstices gives first a white fruit, afterward a blood-red. Of that kind the female bears after autumn berries that are sour and untastable to all living creatures, and is spongy in its wood and useless, whereas the male is among the strongest and hardest. So great a difference arises from sex in the same kind.
106| And the terebinth gives its seed at harvests, and so do the acer and fraxinus; nuts and apples and pears do so in autumn, except the winter or early ones; the acorn-bearers still later, at the setting of the Pleiades; the aesculus only in autumn; and at the beginning of winter some kinds of apple and pear, and the suber. The abies flowers with the color of saffron about the solstice and gives its seed after the setting of the Pleiades. The pinus and picea anticipate it in budding by about 15 days, but give their seed likewise after the Pleiades.
107| The citreae and juniper and ilex are held to bear all the year round, and new fruit hangs on them with last year's. In greatest admiration, however, is the pinus: it has fruit ripening, it has fruit that will come to ripeness in the next year, and then a third. Nor does any tree promise itself more eagerly; in whatever month a nut is plucked from it, in that same one another ripens; so it is dispensed that there is no month in which they do not ripen. Those that have separated themselves on the tree itself are called azaniae and harm the rest unless they are pulled off.
108| Alone of trees these bear no fruit, that is, not even seed: the tamarisk (which grows only for brooms), and also the poplar, the alder, the Atinian elm, the alaternus, whose leaves are between those of the ilex and the olive. Those are considered unlucky and condemned by religion which are never sown and bear no fruit. Cremutius states that a tree from which Phyllis hanged herself never grows green. Those that produce gum open after budding; gum thickens only when the fruit is taken off.
109| Young trees lack fruit while they grow. The trees that most easily lose their fruit before it ripens are the palm, fig, almond, apple, pear, and also the pomegranate, which loses its flower even from excessive dews and frosts. For this reason they bend its branches, lest, standing upright, they receive and hold the harmful moisture. The pear and almond, even if it does not rain but the sky becomes southerly or cloudy, lose their flower and first fruits if such days occur after they have flowered. The willow, however, loses its seed most quickly,
110| before it feels ripeness at all, and for this reason was called by Homer fruit-destroying. A later age with its own wickedness interpreted this saying, since it is agreed that the seed of the willow is a drug of sterility for a woman. But in this also nature, providing for it, gave a seed rather carelessly to a tree that grows easily and from a planted cutting. One kind, however, is reported to bring its seed to ripeness, in the island of Crete, at the very descent of the cave of Jupiter, hard and woody, of the size of a chickpea.
111| Some are made unfruitful by a fault of place, as in Paros the wood Cende, which bears nothing. Persian trees on Rhodes only flower. This difference arises also from sex, as in those where the males do not bear; some reverse this and report that those which bear are the males. Density also causes sterility.
112| Of those that bear, some bear both on the sides of the branches and on the tops, as the pear, pomegranate, fig, myrtle. For the rest the nature is the same as in cereals. For in these the ear is born at the top, pulses on the sides. The palm alone, as has been said, has its fruit in spathes, hanging in clusters.
113| In the rest the fruit lies under the leaf, to be protected, except in the fig, whose leaf is the largest and shadiest and therefore lies above the fruit. In it alone the leaf is born later than the fruit. A notable thing is reported in a certain kind of Cilicia, Cyprus, Hellas: that figs are born under the leaf, the unripe ones after the leaf. The fig has early ones too, which at Athens they call prodromoi, especially in the Laconian kind.
114| There are also two-bearing ones among the same; in the island of Ceos the wild figs are three-bearing; the following crop is called out by the first fruit, the third by the next. In this way figs are caprificated. And wild figs are born from opposite leaves. Some apples and pears are two-bearing, as are the early ones. The wild apple is two-bearing. Its second fruit comes after Arcturus, most in sunny places.
115| There are even vines that are three-bearing, which on this account they call mad, since on them some fruit ripens, some swells, some flowers. Marcus Varro states that there was a three-bearing vine at Smyrna by the Matroon and an apple tree in the territory of Consentia. This happens continually in the territory of Venesum in Africa, of which more elsewhere. Such is the richness of the soil. The cypress too is three-bearing. Its berries are picked in January, May and September, and it bears three sizes of them.
116| There is, moreover, a peculiar difference in the very trees, even when loaded. The arbutus, quercus are more fertile in their top part; walnuts, the mariscan figs in the lower. All, the more they age, the earlier they bear, and in sunny places and in earth not rich. All wild ones are slower. Some of these do not ripen at all. Likewise those that are ploughed around or trenched round ripen faster than the neglected. These are also more fertile.
117| There is still a difference of age. For the almond and pear are most fertile in old age, as are the acorn-bearers and a certain kind of figs, while the rest in youth, ripening more slowly, which is most remarked in vines. For in the older ones the wine is better, in the young more abundant. The apple, however, ages most quickly and in old age bears worse fruit. For both smaller fruits come, and are liable to worms; indeed they are born on the tree itself.
118| The fig alone of all trees is treated medically for the sake of ripening in its fruit, and now indeed even by portents, since out-of-season fruit fetches higher prices. All, however, age sooner when over-fertile. Some also die at once, when the weather has coaxed out all their fertility, which happens most to vines.
119| On the contrary the mulberry ages most slowly, laboring least in its fruit, and slowly also those whose timber is curly, such as the palm, acer, poplar. And those that are ploughed around age sooner, the wild ones most slowly. And in general every care adds fertility, fertility adds old age. For that reason such trees also flower early and bud early, and in general become precocious, since all weakness obeys the sky more.
120| Many produce more things, as we said of the acorn-bearers, among which the laurel its grapes, and most of all the sterile one, which bears nothing else; for that reason it is thought by some to be male. The hazels also bear catkins with a compact callus, useful for nothing; but the ilices bear most, for both their own seed and a grain, which they call crataegum, and from the north mistletoe, from the south hyphear (of which more shortly), and sometimes they have four things together. Some trees are simple, having one trunk from the root and frequent branches, as olives, fig, vine. Some are of the shrubby kind, as paliurus, myrtle, likewise the hazelnut, which indeed is better and more copious in fruit when dispersed into several branches. In some there are no branches at all, as in the cultivated kind of box, and the lotus from overseas. Some are forked and even spread into five parts, some divided but not branching, as elders, some undivided but branching, as piceae. In some the order of branches is regular, as in the picea, abies, in others unarranged, as in the robur, apple, pear. And in the abies the division is upright and the branches tend toward the sky, not bent to the sides. It is marvelous that when their tops are cut off it dies, but when wholly lopped it endures. And if it is cut below where the branches were, what remains lives, but if only the top is removed, the whole dies. Others have arms from the root, as the elm, others are branching at the top, as the pinus, the Greek bean, which at Rome, from the sweetness of its fruit, they call the lotus, wild indeed, but almost of the nature of cherries. It is especially sought for houses for the wantonness of its branches, which with a short trunk spread out the widest shade and often leap across into neighboring houses. No shade is shorter, nor do its branches take the sun away in winter when the leaves fall. In none is the bark more pleasant or more softly attractive to the eyes, in none are the branches longer and stronger or more numerous, so that one may say that they are as many trees. With the bark they dye hides, with the root wools. Apples have a peculiar kind. For they present the muzzles of wild beasts, with the smaller ones clinging to one very large. Some branches are blind, which do not bud, which happens by nature if they have not grown strong, or by punishment, when a scar has dulled the pruned ones. What is the nature of the divided ones on a branch is that of the vine in the eye, of the reed in the joint. The thicker parts of all are nearest the ground.
125| In length grow the abies, larix, palm, cypress, elm and any single-stemmed tree. Of the branching ones the cherry is found even in beams of 40 cubits, of equal thickness of two cubits throughout. Some at once scatter into branches, as apples. The bark in some is thin, as in the laurel, tilia, in others thick, as in the robur, in others smooth, as in the apple, fig; the same is rough in the robur, palm; in all in old age more wrinkled. In some it bursts of itself, as in the vine, in some it even falls, as in the apple, the arbutus; it is fleshy in the suber, poplar; membranous in the vine, the reed; like bast in the cherry; manifold in coats in vines, the tilia, abies; in some simple, as in the fig, the reed. There is also great difference of roots: copious in the fig, robur, plane; short and narrow in the apple; single in the abies, larix; for they rest on single ones, though small ones are scattered to the sides; thicker in the laurel and unequal, likewise in the olive, which also has branching ones. In the robur they are fleshy. Robora drive theirs into the depth; if indeed we believe Virgil, the aesculus descends in root as much as it rises in body. In the olive and apples and cypresses they run along the surface of the turf; in some by a straight course, as in the laurel, olive, in others winding, as in the fig. These are bristling with small hairlike fibers, and so is the abies and many of the wild trees, from which mountain people, plucking the very fine threads, weave handsome flasks and other vessels. Some have said that roots descend no deeper than the heat of the sun warms, and that this depends on the nature of the place, thinner or thicker, which I think false. Among authors, at least, it is found that the sapling of an abies, when it was transplanted, was of eight cubits in depth and was not dug up whole, but broken off. The greatest in extent and fullness is the root of the citrus, next to it of the plane, of the robur and the acorn-bearers. In some the root is longer-lived than the part above ground, as in the laurel. Therefore when it has withered with the trunk, cut down it even sprouts more luxuriantly. Some think that trees age faster from shortness of roots, which the fig refutes, whose roots are the longest and its old age the swiftest.
130| I judge it false, too, what some have reported, that the roots of trees shrink with age. For an aged oak was seen overturned by the force of a storm, covering an area of one iugerum. It is common knowledge that trees thrown down are very often set upright again and come back to life after a kind of scarring of the ground. This is most familiar in plane trees, which catch a great deal of wind because of the density of their branches; when these are lopped off and the load lightened, the trees are put back in their own pit. This has now been done with walnuts and olives and many others as well. There are examples, too, of many trees that have fallen without a storm or any other cause than a portent, and have risen again of their own accord. This was done as a portent for the Roman people, the Quirites, in the Cimbrian wars, at Nuceria, in the grove of Juno: an elm, after even its crown had been cut off, since it was falling forward onto the very altar, was restored of its own accord, so that it flowered at once; from that time the majesty of the Roman people, which had before been laid waste by disasters, rose again. The same is recorded at Philippi of a willow that had fallen forward and been cut down, and at Stagira, in the Muses' shrine, of a white poplar, all of them omens of good fortune. But most marvellous of all, at Antandrus a plane tree, even though its sides had been hewn round about, was set up again of its own accord and restored to life, with a height of 15 cubits and a thickness of four ulnae. The trees that we owe to nature are born in three ways: of their own accord, from seed, or from a root. Cultivation has proved more varied, and of it we shall speak in its own volume. For now our whole discourse concerns nature, which is memorable in many and marvellous ways. For we have shown that not everything is born in every place, nor lives when carried across. This happens sometimes from fastidiousness, sometimes from stubbornness, more often from the weakness of what is transferred, sometimes because the climate begrudges it, sometimes because the soil resists. Balsam is fastidious about being born elsewhere; the Assyrian apple, when born elsewhere, will not bear; nor does the palm come up everywhere, or, when it has come up, bear fruit, or even, when it has promised and shown fruit, bring it to maturity, as though it had borne unwillingly.
135| The shrub of cinnamon has no strength to pass into neighbouring Syria. The delights of amomum and nard do not bear it, not even in Arabia, when brought from India on a foreign ship [….]; for King Seleucus tried it. This is the most marvellous thing, that the trees themselves are very often prevailed upon by entreaty to live and to migrate, that sometimes the soil too is prevailed upon to feed what is foreign to it and nourish incomers, while the climate can in no way be bent. The pepper tree lives in Italy, and the cassia even in the northern region; the frankincense tree lived in Lydia; but where would the suns be, to drink up all their sap from them, or to cook the tear? The next most marvellous thing is that the nature of the very same trees is changed and holds good without being divided. It had given the cedar to the hot regions, yet it is born on the mountains of Lycia and Phrygia. It had made cold the enemy of the laurel, yet no place has more of it than Olympus. Around the Cimmerian Bosporus, in the city of Panticapaeum, King Mithridates and the other inhabitants strove in every way to have laurel and myrtle, at least for the sake of sacred rites; it did not succeed, although mild-climate trees abound there, pomegranates and figs, and apples and pears, most highly praised. In the same region it has not produced the cold-loving trees, the pine, the fir, the picea. And what point is there in going off to Pontus? Near Rome itself chestnuts and cherries come on with difficulty, peaches in the Tusculan country, and Greek nuts are grafted with reluctance at Tarracina, which teems with woods of them. The cypress was a newcomer and one of the most difficult to raise, so that Cato has written of it at greater length and more often than of all the others: sullen in sowing, useless in fruit, grim in its berries, bitter in leaf, violent in smell, not even pleasing in its shade, rare in timber, so that it is almost of the shrub kind, sacred to Dis and therefore set at houses as a sign of mourning. The female [….] sterile.
140| For a long time it was not rejected, but only for the sight of its cone-shape, to mark off the rows of pines; but now it has been made fit for clipping, trained into the density of walls, and, its slenderness kept in check, it is drawn out in a continuous round, even into the pictures of topiary work, clothing hunts and fleets and images of things in fine, short, ever-green leaf. There are two kinds of them: the cone, wound up to a peak, which is also called the female; the male spreads its branches outward, and is cut back and takes the vine. Both are sent up into poles or rafters by the lopping of branches, which in the 13th year are sold at one denarius each; it is the most profitable woodland in the system of sowing, and the ancients commonly called those plantations a daughter's dowry. Its native island is Crete, although Cato calls it the Tarentine, I believe because it first came there. At Aenaria too it sprouts again when cut down; but in Crete, in whatever place anyone has turned the earth, this tree is produced by natural effort and shoots up at once, and the other kind even on ground not worked and of its own accord, and especially on the Idaean mountains and those they call the White Mountains, and on their summits, where the snows are never absent, in great numbers, which is something to marvel at, since elsewhere it comes up only in warmth and is very fussy about its nursing. Nor does the nature of the earth alone matter in these things, nor the constant character of the sky, but also a certain temporary force. Rains often bring certain seeds and flow in a fixed manner, sometimes even an unknown one, which happened to the region of Cyrene when laserpicium was first born there, as we shall tell in the nature of herbs. A wood was also born nearest to that city by a thick rain of pitch. Ivy is now said to be born in Asia.
144| About the 440th year of the city of Rome Theophrastus had denied that it grew, and not in India except on Mount Meros; indeed Harpalus strove in every way to plant it in Media, without success, and Alexander, on account of its rarity, returned a conqueror from India with his army crowned with it, following the pattern of Father Liber. Of that god it still adorns the thyrsi, and even the helmets and shields among the peoples of Thrace at their solemn rites; it is hostile to trees and to all crops, it breaks tombs and walls, and is most welcome to the chill of serpents, so that it is a wonder that any honour was paid it. There are two kinds first, as in the rest: male and female. The male is reported to be larger both in body and in leaf, the leaf also harder and richer, and the flower approaching purple; but both are like the wild rose, except that it lacks scent. The species of these kinds are three: for there is a white ivy or a black, and the third is called helix. Moreover these species are divided into others, since one is white in its fruit only, another in its leaf also. Of those that bear white fruit, some have a dense, larger berry, with clusters wound round in a circle, which are called corymbi; the same are called Silenic when the berry is smaller and the cluster more scattered, in the same manner as in the black. Some have also a black seed, another a saffron-coloured one, with whose garlands the poets are crowned, the leaves less black, which some call Nysian, others Bacchic, with the largest corymbi among the black. Some among the Greeks, moreover, make two kinds of this from the colour of the berries, the erythranos and the chrysocarpos. But the helix has very many differences, since it differs most in its leaf. The leaves are small and angular and neater, whereas those of the other kinds are simple. It differs also in the length of its internodes, but especially in sterility, since it bears no fruit. Some think this a matter of age, not of kind, and that it is first a helix and becomes ivy with age.
149| The error of these is plainly understood, since several kinds of helix are found, but three especially remarkable: one grassy and green, which is the most abundant; a second with white leaf; the third of changing colours, which is called the Thracian. Furthermore the grassy has thinner leaves arranged in order and denser; in the other kind all these are different. In the variegated, one has thinner leaves similarly arranged and denser; in the other kind all this is neglected; the leaves are also larger or smaller and differ in the pattern of their spots. And among the white ones some are whiter. The grassy grows chiefly in length. But the white kills trees, and by taking away all their sap it increases to such a thickness that it becomes a tree itself. Its signs are leaves the largest and broadest, stiff teats, which in the others are bent, and clusters that stand upright. And although every kind of ivy has rooting arms, in this one they are most branching and strong, and next after it in the black. But it is peculiar to the white that between the middle leaves it sends out arms, always embracing on both sides; it does this on walls too, though it cannot go round them. And so, even when cut through in several places, it still lives and endures, and has as many beginnings of roots as it has arms, with which, unhurt and firm, it sucks and strangles trees. There is also a difference in the fruit of white and black ivy, since in some the berry has so great a bitterness that birds do not touch it. There is also a stiff ivy, which alone of all kinds stands without a support, and for that reason is called orthocissos; on the other hand, the one that never creeps except on the ground is chamaecissos. Similar to ivy is the plant that came first from Cilicia, but is commoner in Greece, which they call smilax, jointed with close stems, bushy with thorny branches, with an ivy-like leaf, small, not angular, sending out tendrils from the leaf-stalk, with a white flower, smelling of lily.
154| It bears clusters in the manner of the wild vine, not of ivy, red in colour, enclosing in the larger berries three stones, in the smaller one, black and hard; it is ill-omened for all sacred rites and garlands, since it is mournful: a maiden of that name was changed into this shrub through love of the young man Crocus. The common people, ignorant of this, very often defile their festivals by thinking it ivy; just as among the poets, with what are Liber or Silenus crowned? Writing tablets are made of smilax, and it is peculiar to the wood that, when brought to the ears, it gives out a soft sound. The ivy is reported to have a marvellous nature for testing wines: if a vessel is made of its wood, the wine passes through and the water remains, if any has been mixed in. Among the plants that delight in cold it is fitting also to speak of the water-loving shrubs. The reeds will hold first place among these, necessary for the trials of war and peace and welcome also for luxuries. With their covering the northern peoples roof their houses, and such roofs last for ages; and in the rest of the world, too, they hang vaulted ceilings very lightly from them. Reeds also serve for paper, the Egyptian especially, by a certain kinship with papyrus. The Cnidian are more approved, and those that grow in Asia around the Anaetic lake. Those of our own country have a spongier nature beneath, with a drinking-in gristle, hollow in body within, drying on the outside into thin wood, splitting easily, always with a very sharp edge. For the rest, the slender stalk is jointed and marked off by knots, and with a gentle slope tapers into the tips, with a thicker head of panicle, which is not useless either. For it either stuffs the beds of innkeepers in place of feathers or, where it has hardened into a woodier callus, as in the Belgic country, beaten and set between the joints of ships it cements the fabric, holding faster than glue and more reliable than pitch for filling the cracks. With reeds the peoples of the east finish their wars, with reeds they hasten death by adding a feather, with reeds they add arrowheads harmful with a barb not to be drawn back, and another weapon is made from the reed itself, broken off in wounds. With these arms they shade the very sun.
159| For this reason above all they wish for clear days, and hate winds and rains, which compel peace between them. And if anyone counts up more carefully the Ethiopians, Egypt, the Arabs, the Indians, the Scythians, the Bactrians, so many peoples of the Sarmatians and of the east, and all the kingdoms of the Parthians, about an equal part of mankind in the whole world lives overcome by reeds. This use above all made their warriors famous in Crete. But in this too, as in other matters, Italy has won, since no reed is better suited to arrows than the one on the Rhenus, the river of Bononia, which has abundant pith and a light, swift weight, and a balance stubborn even against gusts. For the Belgic and the Cretan do not have the same recommendation, though the Cretan are held in higher repute. Yet the Indian are preferred to them, of which some seem to certain people to be of another nature, since they also serve in place of spears when points are added. The Indian reed indeed has the size of a tree, such as we commonly see in temples. The Indians report that in these also there are differences of male and female: the male has a denser body, the female a more capacious one. Even single internodes serve in place of boats, if we believe it. It grows chiefly around the river Acesines. Every reed is numerous from one stock, and even when cut back rises again more fruitfully. The root is by nature long-lived, and itself jointed. The leaves, short only in the Indian ones, in all of them begin from a node and by an embrace put thin sheaths round the circumference, and from the middle of the internode, at the most, they cease to clothe it and fall away. Reed and stalk have two sides each in their roundness, over the knots always with an alternate joining, so that one is formed from the right, the next, at the joint above, from the left in turn. From there branches sometimes come out, which are thin stalks. There are, moreover, several kinds. One is thicker and denser in its joints, with short internodes; another is looser, with longer ones, and itself thinner. And there is another stalk, wholly hollow, which they call syringias, most useful for pipes, since it has nothing of gristle or flesh.
164| In the Orchomenian even the joints are open with a continuous bore; this they call auleticon. This is more useful for flutes, the other for pipes. Another has thicker wood and a thin bore; a spongy pith fills the whole of it. One is shorter, another taller, slenderer or thicker. The bushiest is that called donax, born only in watery places, since this too is a difference, the reed that grows in dry places being much preferred. The arrow-reed, as we have said, has its own kind, but the Cretan one has the longest internodes and a compliance by which it can be bent as one likes when warmed. The leaves also make differences, not in number and length only, but in colour. The Laconian have variegated leaves, denser from the bottom, such as they think are in general born around pools, unlike the river ones, and are clothed with long leaves climbing more spaciously from the node in an embrace. There is also a slanting reed, not growing to a height, but spreading near the ground in the manner of a shrub, very pleasant to animals when tender. It is called by some eletia. There is also in Italy a marsh plant growing only from the bark just under the very tuft, adarea by name, very useful for the teeth, since its force is the same as that of mustard. Of the reed-beds of the Orchomenian lake ancient admiration compels us to speak more carefully. They called the thicker and firmer kind characias, the finer plocimos; this was born on floating islands, that on the banks of the lake as it spread. The third is the flute reed, of the stalk they called auleticon. It was born in the ninth year. For the lake too kept its increases to this space of time, a portent if ever it extended its breadth for two years, which was noted at Chaeronea in the unlucky battle of the Athenians [….] often [….] Lebadia [….] is called, the Cephisus flowing in. When therefore the flood remained for a year, they advance even to the size of bird-catching reeds. They were called zeugitae; on the other hand the bombyciae, earlier in the ebb; slender; the females with a broader and whiter leaf, with a modest down; but altogether none of those distinguished by the name of eunuchs.
169| From these came the equipment for celebrated songs, and the rest of the care spent on them was a marvel not to be passed over in silence, so that one may pardon the preference now for playing on silver. They used to be cut at their season, until Antigenides the flute-player, while they still used simple music, under Arcturus. Thus prepared, after some years they began to be useful, and even then they had to be tamed by much exercise, and the flutes themselves taught to sing, their tongues pressing together, which was more useful to them for the customs of the theatres. After variety came in, and luxury in song too, they began to be cut before the solstices and to become useful in the third year, their little tongues more open for bending the sounds, which are those of today. But then it was held that each fitted only with its own reed, and that the one which had preceded the root suited the left-hand flute, the one the tip the right, those being preferred beyond measure which the Cephisus itself had washed. Now the sacrificial flutes of the Etruscans are made of box, the ones for entertainment of lotus and asses' bones and silver. The bird-catching reed from Panhormus is most praised, the fishing reed from Africa, the Abaritan. The use of the reed of Italy is chiefly for vineyards. Cato bids it be planted in damp fields with the ground first broken by the two-pronged mattock, the eyes set at an interval of three feet each, and at the same time that corruda, from which asparagus comes, agree in friendship, and willow around them. No watery plant is more useful than this, although poplars please the vines and rear the Caecuban, although alders fortify with hedges and keep watch against the onrush of breaking rivers as a wall of the banks for the protection of the countryside, planted more densely in water and cut, they profit with countless heirs. There are also several kinds of willow.
174| For some send up great poles of height for the yokes of vineyards and bring forth bands of bark for ties, and others yield rods of pliant toughness for binding, others are very slender for weaving wickerwork with remarkable fineness, others again are firmer for baskets and for most of the farmers' furniture; the whiter, with the bark removed and with smooth handling, are better for larger vessels than those that are made of hide, and are even most suitable for the luxuries of reclining chairs. The willow has a cuttable fertility and a denser trimming, from a short fist rather than a branch, not, as we think, to be tended in the last of the trees. For the return of none is safer, or of smaller outlay, or more secure from storms. Cato assigns it the third place in the estimation of the land, and before olive-yards, grain or meadows, and not because other ties are lacking. For broom and poplars and elms and cornel shrubs and birches and split reed and the leaves of reeds, as in Liguria, and the vine itself and brambles with their thorns cut off, and twisted hazel, all bind—and it is marvellous that with some the wood, when bruised, has greater strength for ties—yet the willow has the chief endowment. The Greek is split, reddish; the Amerine is whiter, but a little more brittle, and therefore binds with a solid knot. In Asia they observe three kinds: the black, more useful for osier-work, the white for the uses of farmers, and the third, which is the shortest, they call helix. Among us too many give names to just as many kinds: they call one viminalis, the same also purple, the second nitelina from its colour, which is thinner, the third the Gallic, which is thinnest. Nor among shrubs nor brambles nor stalks nor herbs, nor in any other than its own kind, should the brittle marsh rushes be counted by right, from which [and] a covering and mats; with the bark stripped off, candles serve for lights and funerals. In some places their stiffness is firmer.
178| For with these not only sailors on the Po make sail, but on the sea too the African fisherman, in a reversed manner hanging the sail inside the masts, and the Moors roof their huts; and, estimating most closely, these would seem to be what papyrus is in the inner part of the world. Of their own kind but of a shrubby nature among the water plants are also brambles and elders, of a spongy kind, yet otherwise than the ferulae, since there is more wood, especially in the elder, from which the shepherd believes the horn and trumpet more tuneful, if cut where that shrub cannot hear the crowing of cocks. Brambles bear blackberries and in another kind a resemblance to the rose, which is called cynosbatos. A third kind the Greeks call Idaean, from the place, more tender than the rest and with smaller and less hooked thorns. Its flower is smeared on, with honey, against inflammation of the eyes and against erysipelas; it is also drunk in water against disorders of the stomach. Elders have black and small berries, of a sticky juice, chiefly for dyeing the hair. These too, boiled in water, are chewed. Trees also have a moisture in their body, which should be understood as their blood, not the same in all: in figs it is milky—this has the force of rennet for shaping cheeses—in cherries gummy, in elms slimy, sticky and fat, in apples, vines and pears watery. Those live longer in which it is stickier. And in sum the body of trees, as of other living things, has skin, blood, flesh, sinews, veins, bones, marrow. For skin there is the bark. It is a marvel that in the mulberry, for physicians seeking the juice, in spring at the second hour of the day it flows when cut with a stone; broken more deeply, it looks dry. Next to it in most trees are the fats. These are called alburnum from their colour, the soft and worst part of the wood, easily rotting even in oak, liable to the shipworm, so that it is always cut away. Beneath this is the flesh, beneath the flesh the bones, that is, the best of the timber.
183| Those with drier wood bear in alternate years, such as the olive, more than those with fleshy wood, such as the cherry. Nor have all fats or ample flesh, just as the keenest of animals have not. Neither is found in box, cornel, olive, nor marrow, and they have very little blood too, just as service trees have no bones and elders no flesh—but both have very much marrow—nor have reeds for the greater part. In the flesh of some trees there are pulps and veins. The distinction between them is easy; the veins are broader and whiter. Pulps are in those that split. For this reason it happens that when the ear is put to the end of a beam, however very long, blows from the other end, or even from a stylus, are heard, the sound passing in straight channels, from which one detects whether the timber is twisted and cut by knots. Those which have knobs, as there are glands in flesh, have in these neither vein nor pulp, the flesh being rolled up into itself in a kind of callus. This is most precious in the citrus and the maple. Other kinds of tables are cut round in a circle from split trees into the pulp; otherwise the vein would be brittle if cut in a ring round the tree. In beeches the combs lie crosswise in the pulp. Among the ancients vessels too had honour from this. Manius Curius swore that he had touched nothing of the booty except a beechwood cruet, with which to sacrifice. Wood floats lengthwise, and whichever part was from the root sinks more strongly. In some the pulp, without veins, consists of pure and thin warp. These split most readily. Others are quicker to break than to split, those that have no pulp, such as olives and vines. But on the contrary the whole body is flesh in the fig, wholly bone in the holm oak, the ornus, the oak, cytisus, mulberry, ebony and lotus, and those we have said are without marrow. In the rest the colour is blackish; the cornel gleams tawny in hunting spears, knotted at the incisions for beauty. Cedar and larch and juniper are red. The female larch has what the Greeks call aegis, of honey colour. This wood is next to the marrow.
187| In the fir, what the Greeks call lusson. A discovery for the panels of painters, immortal and split by no cracks. Of the cedar too the hardest part is that nearest the marrow, like the bones in a body, once only the slime has been scraped off. And the inner parts of the elder are reported to be wonderfully firm, and some prefer hunting spears of it to all others, for it consists of skin and bones. The time to cut those which are to be stripped of bark and made round for temples and other uses requiring roundness is when they are budding, otherwise the bark cannot be unravelled and decay springs up beneath it and the timber turns black; beams, and those from which the axe takes off the bark, are cut from midwinter to the west wind, or, if we are forced to anticipate it, at the setting of Arcturus, and before it the Fidicula, by the latest reckoning at the solstice. The days of these stars will be given in their own place. Commonly they think it enough to take care that no tree to be hewn is felled before it has produced its fruits. Oak cut in spring suffers from the shipworm, but in midwinter it is neither spoiled nor warped, though otherwise liable even to twist itself and split, which happens in cork even when cut in season. The reckoning of the moon also makes an endless difference, and they will have trees cut only from the 20th to the 30th. But among all it is agreed that it is most useful to fell it at the moon's conjunction, a day which some call the interlunium, others the silent moon. So at any rate Tiberius Caesar, when the naumachia bridge was burned, ordered larches to be cut in Raetia for its restoration. Some say that the moon should be at conjunction and under the earth, which cannot happen except at night. If the conjunction coincides with the last day of midwinter, that timber becomes everlasting; next best, when it falls with the stars mentioned above. Some add the rising of the Dog Star too, and timbers so cut go into the Forum of Augustus. But neither young trees are most useful for timber, nor old. Some also leave them, cut round to the marrow, not without use, so that all the moisture may drain off while they stand.
192| It is a marvel among the ancients that the fleet of the commander Duilius, in the first Punic war, sailed on the 60th day from the tree, whereas Lucius Piso reports that King Hiero had 220 ships made in 45 days. In the second Punic war also the fleet of Scipio sailed on the 40th day from the axe. So much does seasonableness avail even in rapid speed. Cato, the greatest of men in every kind of practical knowledge, adds this about timbers: Make a press of black sappinus especially. Elm, pine, nut, this and any other timber when you dig it out, take it out when the moon is waning, after midday, with no south wind. It will then be in season when its seed is ripe. And take care not to drag or hew it through the dew. And the same man soon after: Do not touch timber except at the new moon and with the moon half full. Timber which you dig up or cut off at the ground is best taken out in the 7 days next after the moon has been full. Above all take care not to hew or cut or touch any timber unless it is dry, and neither frozen nor dewy. Tiberius likewise observed the new moons in cutting his hair. Marcus Varro advises, against falling hair, that this be observed from the full moons. In larch and still more in fir, when cut down, the moisture flows long. These are the tallest and straightest of all trees. Fir is preferred for ships' masts and yards on account of its lightness. Common to these and to pine is that they have the course of their veins fourfold, or in two, or altogether simple. For the cabinet-makers' inner work the marrow, cut, is best in the fourfold, [….] the timber is also softer than the rest. The experienced understand it at once from the bark. The part of the fir that was nearest the ground is without knots. This, by the method we have described, floated down the river and stripped, is called sappinus, the upper part, knotty and harder, fusterna. And in the trees themselves the northern parts are stronger, and in general those from damp and shady places are worse, those from sunny ones denser and long-lasting. Therefore at Rome the lower fir is preferred to the upper.
197| There is also of itself a difference between nations in these. They are most praised on the Alps and Apennine, in Gaul on the Jura and Mount Vosegus, in Corsica, Bithynia, Pontus, Macedonia. The Aenianian and Arcadian is worse, the Parnassian and Euboean worst, since there they are branchy and twisted and rot easily. But the cedar is most praised in Crete, Africa, Syria. Timber anointed with oil of cedar feels neither moth nor decay. Juniper has the same virtue as cedar. It is huge in Spain, and especially among the Vaccaei. Its marrow, wherever it grows, is even more solid than in cedars. They call spirals the common fault of all, where the veins and knots twist themselves round. There are found in some, as in marble, centres, that is, a hardness like a nail, hostile to saws. And some things happen by chance, as when a stone is enclosed or taken into the body, or a branch of another tree. At Megara a wild olive stood long in the forum, on which brave men had fixed arms, which a long age had hidden with the enveloping bark, and that tree was fatal to the destruction of the city, forewarned by an oracle when the tree had produced arms, which happened when it was cut down, greaves and helmets being found inside. They say that stones so found are a remedy for keeping pregnancies. The largest of trees up to this age is thought to have been that seen at Rome, which Tiberius Caesar, on account of the marvel, had exhibited on that same naumachia bridge, brought with the rest of the timber, and it lasted down to the amphitheatre of the emperor Nero. That beam was of larch, 120 feet long, equal in thickness of two feet, from which the height of the rest, hardly credible, could be judged by those reckoning its taper up to the tip. There was in our own memory also, in the porticoes of the Saepta, one left by Marcus Agrippa, likewise for the sake of the marvel, which had survived the diribitorium, 20 feet shorter, a foot and a half in thickness.
201| A fir was seen to be of special wonder in the ship that, on the emperor Gaius' orders, conveyed from Egypt the obelisk set up in the Vatican circus, and four blocks of the same stone to support it. It is certain that nothing more wonderful was ever seen on the sea than that ship. 120,000 modii of lentils served it as ballast. Its length took up, for the most part, the space on the left side of the harbour of Ostia. For there it was sunk under the emperor Claudius, together with three moles built up on it to the height of towers, brought along with Puteolan sand. The thickness of that tree filled the arms of four men embracing it, and it is commonly heard that masts are sold for these uses at 80,000 nummi and more, and that rafts, joined together, mostly at 40,000 sesterces. But in Egypt and Syria the kings, for lack of fir, are said to have used cedar for their fleets. The largest [of them] is recorded in Cyprus, cut for the eleven-banked ship of Demetrius, 130 feet, and in thickness enough for the embrace of three men. The pirates of Germany sail in single hollowed trees, some of which carry even 30 men. The densest of all timber, and therefore judged the heaviest, are ebony and box, which are slender by nature. Neither floats in water, nor cork if the bark is taken off, nor larch. Of the rest the densest is lotus, as it is called at Rome, then oak with its alburnum removed. This too has a blackish colour, and still more the cytisus, which seems to come nearest to ebony, although there are not wanting those who assert that Syrian terebinths are blacker. Thericles also made a name by it, being accustomed to make cups of terebinth on the lathe; the timber is highly approved. Of all, this alone likes to be anointed, and becomes better with oil. The colour is wonderfully counterfeited with walnut and wild pear, stained and boiled in a dye. All that we have mentioned have a dense firmness.
206| Next after these is the cornel, although it cannot be regarded as timber because of its slenderness, but as wood useful for almost nothing but the spokes of wheels, or if anything has to be wedged in wood or fixed with pegs as if of iron. So too the holm oak and wild olive and olive and chestnut, hornbeam, poplar. These are also curled like the maple, if any timber were suitable, with branches often lopped. That is a castration, and takes away their strength. For the rest, in most of these, but at all events in oak, there is such hardness that it cannot be bored unless wetted, and even so a nail driven in cannot be pulled out. On the other hand cedar does not hold a nail. The softest is the lime. The same seems also the warmest. They bring as proof that it blunts adzes most quickly. Warm also are the mulberry, laurel, ivies and all the woods from which fire-sticks are made. The use of scouts in camps and of shepherds discovered this, since for striking out fire there is not always a chance of a stone. So wood is rubbed against wood and conceives fire by friction, the timber taking up dry tinder, fungus or leaves, which catch very easily. But nothing is better than ivy to be rubbed, laurel to rub. Of the wild ones the vine is also approved—another than the labrusca—and itself, like ivy, climbing a tree. The coldest is whatever is aquatic, but the toughest, and for that reason most suitable for making shields, are those whose wound at once contracts and closes itself and for that reason lets iron through more stubbornly; in this class are the vine, vitex, willow, lime, birch, elder, both poplars. Lightest of these are vitex and willow, and therefore most useful; all are suited for chests and for what is made of flexible wickerwork. They have whiteness, stiffness, and ease in carving. The plane has toughness, but moist, as the alder does. Drier in the elm, ash, mulberry, cherry, but heavier.
210| The elm keeps its stiffness most strongly, and for that reason is most useful for hinges and the planking of doors, since it twists least, but it must be exchanged in this way, that the top is by the lower hinge, the root above. The palm is [….]. Similar also is the timber of cork; dense too are apple and pear, and the maple as well, but brittle, and whatever is curled. In all of them the wild and the male increase the difference of each kind. And the barren are firmer than the fertile, except in the kinds in which the males bear, as the cypress and cornel. Cypress, cedar, ebony, lotus, box, yew, juniper, wild olive, olive do not feel decay and age; of the rest, most slowly larch, oak, cork, chestnut, walnut. A crack and split cedar, cypress, olive, box do not take of their own accord. They think ebony and cypress and cedar most everlasting, with a famous judgment among all timbers in the temple of Ephesian Diana, since, with all Asia building, it was completed in 120 years. It is agreed that its roof is of cedar beams. About the image of the goddess itself there is doubt. Others report it to be of ebony; Mucianus, three times consul, one of those who wrote after seeing it most recently, says it is of vine-wood and never changed though the temple was restored seven times, and that Endoeus chose this material, even naming the artist, at which I am indeed surprised, since he attributes to it an antiquity greater than Minerva's, not merely than father Liber's. He adds that it is watered with nard through many openings, so that the medicated liquid may nourish it and hold the joints together—which I am surprised to find at all in so very modest a statue—that the doors are of cypress and that for almost 400 years now all the timber has lasted like new. This too should be noted, that the doors lay four years in the joining with glue. Cypress was chosen for them, since beyond all else in one kind of timber the gloss is most strongly everlasting. Does not the image of Veiovis on the citadel, of cypress, also last, dedicated in the 561st year from the founding of the city?
216| Memorable also is the temple of Apollo at Utica, where the beams of Numidian cedar endure just as they were laid at the first origin of that city, 1178 years ago; and in Spain at Saguntum the temple of Diana, brought from Zacynthus with the founders 200 years before the destruction of Troy, as Bocchus is authority; below the town itself they have it—Hannibal spared it, led by religious feeling—the beams of juniper lasting even now. Above all is to be recalled the temple at Aulis of the same goddess, built ages before the Trojan war, of what kind of timber is unknown, the knowledge having been blotted out. It can be said without reserve that those which excel in scent also excel in everlastingness. After those named the mulberry is next praised, which even blackens with age. And yet some woods are longer-lasting in certain uses than others: elm in a draught, oak buried in the ground, and oak sunk in waters. The same above ground makes cracked work by twisting itself. Larch is outstanding in damp, and so is black alder. Oak is spoiled by sea water. Beech in water is not disapproved of, nor walnut, and these are even first rate among things buried in the ground, and likewise juniper, which is also very suitable for open-air use. Beech and the cerrus rot quickly. The aesculus too cannot endure moisture. On the other hand alder driven into the ground in marshes is everlasting and bears any load. Cherry is firm, elm and ash tough, but they bend easily, though they are pliant, and when standing and dried by a ring-cutting they are more reliable. They report that larch in sea-going ships is liable to the shipworm, and all woods except wild olive and olive. For some are more exposed to damage in the sea, some on land. Of the pests there are four kinds: the teredines, with a head very large in proportion, gnaw with their teeth. These are felt only in the sea, and they think no other is properly called teredo. The land ones they call tiniae, those like gnats thripes.
220| The fourth is also of the kind of little worms, and of these some are produced in the timber itself as the sap putrefies, others, as in trees, from the creature that is called cerastes. When it has gnawed so far that it can turn itself round, it breeds another. In some woods bitterness prevents these from being born, as in cypress, in others hardness, as in box. They report also that fir, barked about the time of budding, in the moon we have described, is not spoiled by waters. The companions of Alexander the Great reported that on Tylos, an island of the Red Sea, there are trees from which ships were made; these were found to have lasted two hundred years, and, even if sunk, to be uncorrupted. On the same island, they said, is a shrub of a thickness suited only to walking sticks, variegated with tiger-like spots, heavy and, when it falls on something denser, brittle like glass. Among us some timbers split of themselves, and for that reason architects order them to be smeared with dung and dried, so that draughts may not harm them. Fir and larch are strong to bear weight, even laid crosswise. Oak and olive bend and yield to the weight. The others resist and do not break rashly, and fail through decay before they fail in strength. The palm tree is also strong; for it bends the opposite way, [and the poplar] all the rest sag downward, the palm on the contrary in the form of an arch. Pine and cypress are the firmest against decay and moths. Walnut bends easily, for beams are made from it too. It announces its breaking with a crackling, which happened also at Antandrus, when people, frightened by the sound, ran out from the baths. Pines, piceae and alders are hollowed into pipes for conducting water; buried in the earth they will last very many years, but if not covered, they soon grow old, and are wonderfully stronger if moisture also remains on the outside.
225| The firmest in a straight line is the fir, which is also most suitable for the leaves of doors and for any inner work one likes, whether in the Greek, the Campanian or the Sicilian style of the craft, remarkable for the locks of its shavings, always rolling in a tendrilled ring at the swift strokes of the plane, and of all the most capable of being joined with glue, to such a degree that it splits first where it is solid. Gluing is also of great importance for those things that are covered with veneers or in some other way. For this use they approve a thread-like vein, and call it ferulaceous by the argument of likeness, since veins that are pitted and curled in every kind reject glue. Some woods are unsociable to glue both with each other and with others, as oak, and they scarcely hold together unless similar in nature, as if someone should join stone and wood. The cornel is hated most by the service tree, hornbeam, box, and afterwards lime. For any work all the pliant kinds are easy, which we have called tough, and in addition the mulberry and wild fig. Those can be bored and sawn which are moderately moist. For dry ones give way more broadly than you rub, green ones, except oak and box, resist more stubbornly and fill the teeth of saws with an inert sticky mass. For this reason they have cleared the sawdust by alternate slanting. The most obedient in any work is ash, which is also better for spears than hazel, lighter than cornel, tougher than service tree, and the Gallic even for chariots, with a flexible lightness. The elm would rival it, were weight not at fault. Beech is easy too, although brittle and tender. It is also pliable in thin veneers and alone useful for boxes and cases. The holm oak is also sawn into very thin sheets, not unpleasing in colour either, but most trustworthy in things that are rubbed, as in the axles of wheels, for which ash is chosen for toughness, holm oak for hardness, and the elm for both.
230| There are indeed also notable small uses in the workshop's tools, and so it is reported that sheaths for borers are most usefully made of wild olive, box, holm oak, elm, ash, and mallets of the same, and larger ones of pine and holm oak. And for these the reason for firmness is greater from cutting in season than out of season, since doorposts made of olive, the hardest wood, left unmoved in doors for a long time, have sprouted like a cutting. Cato orders crowbars to be made of holly, laurel, elm; Hyginus orders handles for countrymen of hornbeam, holm oak, cerrus. The woods that are sawn into sheets, and with which other timber is clothed over, are chiefly citrus, terebinth, the kinds of maple, box, palm, holly, holm oak, the root of elder, poplar. Alder too, as has been said, gives a sawable burl, as do citrus and maple. The burl of other trees is no longer in esteem. The middle part of trees is more curled, and the nearer to the root the smaller and more twisting the markings. This was the first origin of luxury in trees, that one wood was covered with another, and a skin for a cheaper wood made out of a more precious one. So that one tree might sell more often, thin leaves of wood were devised. Nor was it enough; they began to dye the horns of animals, to saw teeth, to inlay wood with ivory, and soon to cover it. Then it was found pleasing to seek material in the sea also. The tortoise-shell was cut for this, and lately, by prodigious ingenuity under the principate of Nero, it was invented that it should lose itself by pigments and sell the dearer by imitating wood. So prices are sought for couches, so it is a pleasure to surpass terebinth, so citrus is made more precious, so maple is deceived. A while ago luxury had not been content with wood, and now makes wood even out of tortoise-shell. The life of some trees can be believed immense, if one thinks of the depths of the world and the inaccessible forests.
234| But of those which the memory of men preserves, there endures at Liternum an olive planted by the hand of the elder Africanus, likewise a myrtle in the same place of conspicuous size—beneath is a cave in which a serpent is said to guard his shade—and at Rome a lotus in the precinct of Lucina, whose temple was founded in the year that was without magistrates, which was the 379th year of the city. It is uncertain how much older it is itself; that it is older is not doubtful, since Lucina is named from that grove. It has now about 500 years. Older, but of uncertain age, is the one called the capillata, because the hair of the Vestal virgins is carried to it. But another lotus, in the Volcanal, which Romulus established out of the victory by the tithes, is understood to be of the same age as the city, as Masurius is authority. Its roots penetrate as far as the forum of Caesar through the offices of the municipalities. With it was a cypress of equal age, which fell and was neglected about the last days of the emperor Nero. Older than the city, however, is the holm oak on the Vatican, on which an inscription in Etruscan bronze letters shows that the tree was already then worthy of reverence. The people of Tibur also have their origin long before the city of Rome. Among them are three holm oaks even older than Tiburnus, their founder, beside which he is said to have taken the auspices. They report that he was the son of Amphiaraus, who perished at Thebes one generation before the Trojan war. There are authorities also for a plane at Delphi planted by the hand of Agamemnon, and another at Caphya, a place in Arcadia. There are today, opposite the city of the Ilians near the Hellespont, on the tomb of Protesilaus, trees which in all ages since then, when they have grown so far that they look on Ilium, dry up and grow again. Near the city, however, oaks on the mound of Ilus are said to have been planted when it began to be called Ilium. At Argos an olive is said still to endure, to which Argus tied her who had been changed into a cow.
239| In Pontus on this side of Heraclea there are altars of Jupiter surnamed Stratios; there are two oaks planted by Hercules. In the same region is the harbour of Amycus, famous for the killing of King Bebryx. His mound is covered from his last day by a laurel which they call the mad, because if anything plucked from it is brought on board ships, quarrels arise until it is thrown away. We have mentioned the region Aulocrene, through which one goes from Apamea to Phrygia. There a plane is shown from which Marsyas, beaten by Apollo, hung, which was even then chosen for its size. Nor less is a palm seen at Delos from the age of the same god, at Olympia the wild olive from which Hercules was first crowned, and the sanctity is still guarded. At Athens too an olive is reported to endure, brought forth by Minerva in the contest. On the other hand the shortest life is that of pomegranates, fig, apples, and of these the early are shorter-lived than the late, sweet than sour, and the sweeter among pomegranates, likewise in vines, and especially the more fertile. Graecinus is authority that vines have lasted sixty years each. Water-loving ones seem also to perish more quickly. They grow old quickly, but from the roots laurels and apples and pomegranates sprout again. The olives, then, are the firmest for living, since it is agreed among authorities that they last 200 years. There is in the suburban region of the Tusculan country, on a hill called Corne, a grove consecrated by ancient religion to Diana by the Latins, with a clipped foliage as though by art in the beech wood. In this, in our time, Passienus Crispus, twice consul, orator, more famous afterwards for his marriage to Agrippina and for Nero as stepson, loved an outstanding tree, used to kiss it and embrace it, and not only to lie beneath it and pour wine over it. Near the grove is a holm oak, itself also noble, with a girth of trunk of 34 feet, sending out ten trees each of a size worth seeing, and alone making a wood. It is certain that trees are killed by ivy.
243| Some think that mistletoe too does them a similar injury, though a slower one. For this too grows on trees besides their fruit, and it is not the least of their marvels. Some things cannot be produced in the ground and are born on trees; for since they have no home of their own, they live in another's, like mistletoe, and the plant in Syria called cadytas, which twines itself not only around trees but even around thorn bushes; likewise, around Tempe in Thessaly, the one called polypodion, and those called dolichos and serpyllum. What grows on a wild olive when it has been pruned they call phaunos; and what grows on the fuller's thorn is hippophaeston, with hollow stalks, small leaves and a white root, whose juice is considered most useful for purging in epilepsy. There are three kinds of mistletoe. Euboea says that the one called stelis grows on the fir and the larch, Arcadia the hyphear, while most say that viscum grows on the oak, the robur, the ilex, the wild pear and the terebinth, and on other trees as well. The one they call hyphear is most plentiful on the oak. On every tree except the ilex and the oak, smell and rankness make a difference, and the leaf is of an unpleasant smell, both kinds of mistletoe being bitter and sticky. The hyphear is the more useful for fattening cattle.
246| It first merely purges them of their ailments, and then fattens those that have survived the purging; those that have some wasting inside, they say, do not last. This method of treatment takes 40 days of summer. They add a distinction: the mistletoe on trees that lose their leaves loses its own as well, whereas that which grows on evergreen foliage keeps them.
247| In general, if sown, it does not grow at all, nor does it grow unless it has been passed through the belly of birds, especially of the wood pigeon and the thrush. Its nature is such that it does not come up unless it has been ripened in the belly of birds. Its height does not exceed a cubit; it is always bushy and green. The male is fertile, the female barren, except that even the fertile one sometimes does not bear.
248| Birdlime is made from the berries, which are gathered unripe at the time of the harvest; for if rains have come, they grow larger in size, but the lime in them goes off. They are then dried, and when dry they are pounded, and they are steeped in water and left to rot for about 12 days; and this is the one thing in the world that gains in value by rotting. Then they are pounded again with a mallet in running water, and when they have lost their skins, the inner flesh becomes sticky. This is the birdlime that, worked up with oil, catches the wings of birds at a touch, when one wishes to set traps.
249| In this connection the veneration of the Gauls must not be left out either. The Druids (that is what they call their magi) hold nothing more sacred than mistletoe and the tree on which it grows, provided that it is a robur. They choose groves of robur for their own sake, and perform no sacred rites without its foliage, so that they may even seem to have been named Druids from it, by interpretation of the Greek. Indeed, whatever grows on these trees they regard as sent from heaven and as a sign that the tree has been chosen by the god himself.
250| It is, however, very rarely found, and when found it is gathered with great ceremony, and above all on the sixth day of the moon, which for them marks the beginnings of their months and years and of an age after the thirtieth year, because by then the moon has strength enough and is not yet at its half. In their own language they call it "the all-healing". When the sacrifice and the feast have been duly prepared under the tree, they bring up two bulls of white colour, whose horns are then bound for the first time.
251| A priest dressed in white climbs the tree and cuts it with a golden sickle, and it is caught in a white cloak. Then they sacrifice the victims, praying that the god will make his gift propitious to those to whom he has given it. They believe that a drink of it gives fertility to any barren animal, and that it is a remedy against all poisons. So great is the religious awe that peoples have for the most part for trivial things.

======== Natural History — Book XVII ========

1| The nature of the trees that grow of their own accord on land and sea has been described; there remain those that are produced by art and human ingenuity, rather than truly born. But first it occurs to me to wonder that the trees we have reported as held, in their scarcity, in common ownership with wild beasts (man fighting it out with the beasts over the fallen fruit, and with the birds as well over the fruit still hanging), should have come to command such high prices as luxuries. The most famous example, as I at least judge, is that of Lucius
2| Crassus and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus. Crassus was among the foremost orators of the Roman name. He had a magnificent house, but that of Quintus Catulus on the same Palatine, the man who routed the Cimbri together with Gaius Marius, was considerably finer; and by far the most beautiful in that age, by everyone's agreement, was the house of Gaius Aquilius on the Viminal hill, a Roman knight more famous for it even than for his knowledge of civil law. Yet it was Crassus' own house that was thrown in his face.
3| Both men, of the most noble families, held the censorship together after their consulships in the year 662 from the founding of the city, a censorship full of quarrels because of the dissimilarity of their characters. At that time Gnaeus Domitius, vehement as he was by nature and further inflamed by hatred, which is most voracious when it springs from rivalry, rebuked him severely for living in such costly style while he was censor, and kept offering 6,000,000 sesterces for his house.
4| And Crassus, always ready-witted and adroit with a nimble humour, answered that he would sell it to him, with six trees excepted. When Domitius declared that he would not buy it for even a single denarius if they were taken away, Crassus said: "So which of us, I ask you, Domitius, sets a grave example and deserves to be marked down by his own censorship: I, who live in a civil manner in a house that came to me by inheritance, or you, who value six trees at 6,000,000?"
5| These were lotus trees, luxuriant in the wide shade of their branches; Caecina Largus, one of the leading men, used often to show them off in his house when I was young, and (since we have spoken of the longest life span of trees too) they lasted, kept green and youthful by tending, until the fires of the emperor Nero, had not that emperor hastened the death even of trees.
6| And lest anyone should think that Crassus' house was otherwise cheap, and that there was nothing in it for Domitius to bid for in the quarrel except the trees, Crassus had already set up in the atrium of that house 6 columns of Hymettian marble, brought in to decorate the stage during his aedileship, at a time when there were not yet any marble columns in public buildings. So recent is our opulence; and so much more distinction did trees then bring to houses that without them Domitius would not even have kept to the price set by his enmity.
7| The ancients took surnames from trees as well: Frondicius was the name of that soldier who performed brilliant exploits against Hannibal by swimming across the Volturnus with foliage set on his head; and the Licinian family took the name Stolo. Stolo is the name for a useless shoot on the trees themselves, and so the stripping of such shoots, when it was invented, gave the first Stolo his name. The care of trees was also a concern of the ancient laws, and it was provided in the Twelve Tables that anyone who had wrongfully cut down another man's trees should pay 25 in bronze for each one. What do we suppose? Did those men, who had valued even fruit-bearing trees at so much, believe that trees would come to the valuation mentioned above?
8| No less a marvel lies in fruit, now that around the outskirts of the city the annual crop of many trees is sold for 2,000 sesterces each, a greater return from a single tree than the ancients had from their estates. For this reason grafting was devised, and adulteries even among trees, so that not even fruit should grow for the poor.
9| So now we shall say in what way chiefly so large a revenue may be drawn from them, intending to set out the true and complete method of cultivation; and for that reason we shall not deal with commonplace matters, nor with what we have noted to be agreed, but with what is uncertain and doubtful, where people most often go wrong. For it is not our way to affect exactness in superfluous matters. But first of all we shall speak [in general and] in common of the things that concern all kinds of trees, with regard to climate and soil.
10| Trees delight most of all in the Aquilo; its breath makes them denser and more luxuriant and firmer in their timber. Most people make a mistake in this, since in vineyards the props should not be set against this wind, and this precaution should be kept only against the north. Indeed, cold at the right season contributes very much to the firmness of trees, and that is how they bud best; otherwise, if the south winds caress them, they grow weary, and even more so when they are in flower.
11| For if rains follow immediately after they have finished flowering, the fruit is lost altogether, so much so that almonds and pears lose their young fruit even if the weather has simply been cloudy or a south wind has blown. Rain around the time of the Pleiades is most hostile to the vine and the olive, since that is when they conceive. This is that four-day period which is decisive for olives, this the critical moment of foul cloudy weather from the south of which we have spoken. Crops too ripen worse in days of south wind, but more quickly.
12| Those colds are harmful that come with north winds or at the wrong times. A winter of Aquilo winds is indeed most useful to all crops. And the reason why rain is to be wished for at that time is obvious: it is natural that trees, emptied by bearing their fruit and weakened as well by the loss of their leaves, should be greedily hungry, and their food is rain.
13| For this reason a mild winter, which leads the trees to conceive immediately after giving up their fruit, that is, to bud, and then to be exhausted by flowering a second time, is believed from experience to be very harmful. Indeed, if several years go on like this in succession, the trees themselves even die, since no one doubts the penalty that falls on those who labour under hunger. So whoever said that clear winters should be prayed for was not making his prayers on behalf of the trees;
14| Nor do rains at the solstices profit vines; the saying that harvests grow more abundant with winter dust was spoken out of the fertility of an exuberant wit. Otherwise the prayers common to trees and crops are that snows should lie a long time. The cause is not only that they shut in and press down the breath of the earth that would vanish by exhalation, and drive it back into the strength of the crops and the roots, but also that they supply moisture gradually, pure besides and very light, since snow is the foam of heavenly waters.
15| So the moisture from them, not all at once gorging and washing away, but dripping as it is thirsted for, as if from an udder, nourishes everything, because it does not flood. The earth too ferments in that way, and full of itself, not exhausted by the sowings that give milk, when the season opens, smiles with the warm hours. Thus grain above all grows fat, except where the air is always warm, as in Egypt. For continuity and habit itself bring about what moderation does elsewhere, and it profits most wherever there is nothing to harm.
16| In the greater part of the world, when early buds run out, called forth by the indulgence of the sky, they are burned up by the cold that follows. For this reason late winters are harmful, to wild trees too, which suffer even more, being oppressed by their own shade and without the help of any remedy, since in wild trees it is not possible to clothe the tender shoots with twisted straw.
17| So the waters are in season, first in the winter rains, then those before the budding; the third time is when they are bringing the fruit on, and not straightway, but when the offspring is already strong. Trees that hold their fruits longer and need longer nourishment, for these the late waters are useful too, as for the vine, the olive, the pomegranates. These rains, however, are desired by trees of each kind in a different way, as they ripen at different times. Therefore you may see some harmed by the same rains, some helped, even within the same kind, just as in pears the winter ones ask for rain on one day, the early ones on another, though all alike desire the winter season, but before the budding.
18| The reasoning that makes the north wind more useful than the south also prefers inland places to maritime ones—for they are for the most part colder—and mountainous to level, and night rains to day rains. Crops enjoy the waters more when the sun does not at once carry them off.
19| Connected with this is the reasoning about the situation of vineyards and tree-supported vines, to what quarters they ought to look. Virgil condemned planting toward the setting, and some have preferred it so rather than toward the rising. I observe that the south is approved by most, and I do not think that any fixed rule can be laid down in this. Skill must be guided by the nature of the soil, by the character of the place, by the habits of each climate.
20| In Africa for vineyards to look to the south is both useless to the vine and unhealthy for the farmer, since the country itself lies under the southern region; so there he who plants toward the west or north will best mix the soil with the climate. Since Virgil disapproves the west, there seems to be no doubt left about the north. And yet in Italy this side of the Alps it has been found that, where vineyards are for the most part so placed, none are more fertile.
21| Winds too count for much in the reckoning. In the province of Narbonensis, in Liguria, and in part of Etruria, to plant facing the circius is thought ignorance, and to take it aslant is thought foresight. For it tempers the summers there, but with such violence for the most part that it carries off roofs.
22| Some compel the sky to obey the earth, so that what is planted in dry soils looks to the east and the north, what in moist to the south. Nor do they fail to borrow reasons from the vines themselves: in cold places by planting early ones, so that ripeness may precede the frost; the fruits and vines that hate dew, opposite the east, so that the sun at once carries it off; those that love it, toward the west or even the north, so that they may enjoy it longer.
23| Nearly all the rest, following the reasoning of nature, have advised placing vines and trees turned to the north. Democritus thinks that fruit so grown becomes more fragrant too. We have spoken of the situation of the north wind and the other winds in the second volume, and shall say more of the heavenly matters in the next. Meanwhile a plain proof of healthiness appears, since in those that even look to the south the leaves always fall earlier. There is a similar cause in maritime places.
24| In some places the breath of the sea is harmful, in very many the same nourishes. For some crops it is pleasant to look on the seas from far off, but for the breath of salt to be brought nearer is useless. The reasoning about rivers and pools is similar. By their mists they either scorch or cool the burning heat. The plants we have mentioned delight in shade and even in cold. Therefore experiments are best trusted.
25| After the sky the next thing is to speak of the reasoning about the earth, in no easier handling, since the same does not suit trees and crops for the most part, nor is dark soil, such as Campania has, everywhere best for vines, or that which breathes out thin mists, nor red ochre, praised by many. Chalk in the land of the Pompeian Albenses and clay they put before all kinds for vineyards, although very rich, which is an exception in that kind. In turn white sand in the Ticinian country, and in many places black, and likewise red, even mixed with rich earth, is unfruitful.
26| The proofs of those who judge also often deceive. Soil is not necessarily rich in which tall trees flourish, except for those trees. For what is taller than the fir? Yet what other could have lived in the same place? Nor have luxuriant pastures always the mark of rich soil. For what is more praised than the pastures of Germany? Yet immediately beneath lies sand, under the thinnest skin of turf.
27| Nor is the earth always watery in which the herbs are tall, nor, by Hercules, more than that which is rich and clings to the fingers, which is shown in clays. No earth thrown back into the pits fills them, so that in this way dense and loose soil can be detected, and all of it covers iron with rust. Nor is it detected as heavier or lighter than the proper weight. For what weight of earth can be understood as proper? Nor is that brought down by rivers always to be praised, since some crops grow old with water.
28| But neither is the soil that is praised felt to be useful for long, except to the willow. Among the proofs is the thickness of the stubble, so great otherwise in the Leborine, the famous plain of Campania, that they use it in place of wood. But that soil, wherever it is hard to work and difficult to till, afflicts the farmer almost more sharply by its good qualities than it could by its faults.
29| And the carbunculus, as the earth is called, seems to be improved by intense care. For tufa, of a crumbling nature, is sought even by authors. Virgil too does not disapprove for vines the kind that bears fern. Salty lands are believed better for many things, and safer from the faults of animals born in them. Nor are hills stripped by work if one digs skilfully, nor do all plains receive less sun and breeze than the work requires, and we have said that some vines feed on frosts and mists. In all things there are certain secrets in the depth, and each must be seen through with its own heart.
30| What of the fact that even what has been judged and long proved is often changed? In Thessaly around Larisa, when the lake was let out, that region became colder, and the olives which had been there before ceased, and likewise the vines are scorched, which was not so before [….] Aenos felt it when the Hebrus was brought up, and around Philippi the region, dried by cultivation, changed its climate. But in the Syracusan country an immigrant farmer, the ground stripped of stones, lost his crops in the mud, until he threw the stones back. In Syria they press a light plough in a thin furrow, because rock lies beneath, scorching the seed in summer.
31| Already in some places there are similar immoderate effects of heat and of cold. Thrace is fertile in crops through cold, Africa and Egypt through heats. In Chalcia, an island of the Rhodians, there is a certain place so fruitful that they reap barley sown in its season and, when it is gathered, sow it straight away and reap it with the other crops. Gravelly soil is most suited to olives at Venafrum, the richest in Baetica. Pucine wines are ripened on rock, Caecuban vines stand wet in the Pomptine marshes. So great is the variety and difference of the proofs and of the soil.
32| Caesar Vopiscus, pleading a case before the censors, said that the plains of Rosia were the udder of Italy, in which poles left the day before were covered by the grass, but they are approved only for pasture. Nature, however, did not will us to be untaught, and made faults confessed even where she had not made good qualities certain. Wherefore we shall first speak of the faults.
33| Bitter earth [I would approve] is shown by its black and degenerate herbs, cold earth by what grows shrivelled, marshy earth likewise by things mournful, red ochre by the eye, and clay, very difficult to work, and whatever loads hoes or ploughshares with huge clods, although what is adverse to the work is not also adverse to the crop; likewise on the contrary ashy soil and white sand. For barren land is easily detected by its dense callus even with one stroke of a spade.
34| Cato defines the faults briefly and in his own manner: Beware of carious earth, and do not drive wagon or cattle over it. What do we think is so greatly dreaded by him under this name, that he almost forbids even footsteps? Let us refer it to the decay of wood, and we shall find the faults he so much abominates: of the dry, the hollow, the rough, the greying, the eaten-away, the pumice-like.
35| He said more by one expression than any abundance of speech could set out. For by the interpretation of faults there is a certain earth that is an old woman, not by age (which can be understood to be none in it), but by its own nature, and therefore barren for everything and weak.
36| The same man judges the best land to be a plain running from the foot of the mountains toward the south, which is the situation of all Italy, and the earth tender, which is called dark. This, then, will be the best both for work and for sowing. Let one but grasp that tender is said with a marvellous meaning, and whatever ought to be wished for will be found in that word. That earth is of moderate richness,
37| soft and easy to cultivate, neither wet nor thirsty. That which gleams after the plough, such as Homer, the fountainhead of all genius, said was wrought by the god on the shield, and added the marvel of its blackening, although it was made of gold. That which the greedy birds seek fresh, following the plough, and the crows gnawing the very footprints of the ploughman. Let the opinion of luxury also be given in this place, and at any rate some of it to the purpose.
38| Cicero, the other light of learning, says: Those perfumes are better which taste of earth than those which taste of saffron. For he preferred to say this rather than smell. It is so indeed, that earth will be best which tastes of perfumes.
39| But if we must be reminded what that smell of earth is that is sought, it happens often even when it is at rest toward sunset, in a place where the rainbows have let down their heads, and when after continuous dryness it has been soaked by rain. Then it sends out that breath of its own, divine, conceived from the sun, to which no sweetness can be compared. It must come from earth that is stirred up, and once found will deceive no one, and will judge best of the smell of the earth. Such is nearly the smell in new fields where an old wood has been cut, which is praised by consent.
40| And in bearing crops, indeed, the same land is understood to be more useful whenever it has rested with cultivation suspended, which is not done in vineyards, and it must be chosen the more carefully, lest the opinion be shown true of those who have already judged the land of Italy to be worn out.
41| Ease of working is a matter, in some kinds, of the climate as well, and some land cannot be ploughed after rains, growing sticky through the fault of its richness. On the contrary, in Byzacium in Africa we have seen that plain, fertile a hundred and fifty-fold, which in dry weather no bulls can plough, split after rains by a cheap little ass, with an old woman on the other side of the yoke drawing the share. For to mend earth with earth, as some prescribe, by throwing rich earth over thin, or thin and drinking-in earth over moist and over-rich, is the work of madness. What can he hope who tills such land?
42| There is another way, which Britain and Gaul have found, of feeding the earth with itself, a kind they call marga. A denser fertility is understood in it, and certain fats of the earth, like the glands in bodies, the kernel of richness there thickening itself. The Greeks have not omitted this either—for what is untried by them?—they call it leucargillon, a white clay, which they use in the Megarian country, but only in damp and cold earth.
43| That which enriches the Gauls and Britains it is fitting to describe with care. There had been two kinds; more have lately begun to be worked, as ingenuity advances. For there is white, red, dove-coloured, clayey, tufa-like, sandy. By nature it is twofold, rough or rich; the trials of each are in the hand. Its use is likewise twofold: either it nourishes crops only, or the same also pasture.
44| It nourishes crops, the tufa-like and the white, if found among springs, fertile without limit, but rough to handle; if too much is thrown on, it burns the soil. Next is the red, which is called acaunumarga, with a stone mixed through earth that is fine and sandy. The stone is broken up in the field itself, and in the first years the stubble is cut with difficulty because of the stones; yet, being so light, it is carried in at half the expense of the others. It is sprinkled thinly; they think salt is mixed with it. Either of these kinds, once thrown on, is good for 50 years in the abundance of crops and of pasture.
45| Of those that are felt to be rich, the chief is the white. It has several kinds: the most biting we have mentioned above. The second kind of white is silver chalk. It is sought from deep down, pits being driven for the most part to a hundred feet, with a narrow mouth, the vein spreading within, as in mines. Britain uses this most. It lasts 80 years, and there is no example of anyone who in his life threw it twice on the same land.
46| The third kind, white, they call glisomarga. It is fuller's chalk mixed with rich earth, more fertile for pasture than for crops, so that when the harvest has been taken off, before the second sowing, a most luxuriant crop is cut. While it bears crops, it sends up no other grass. It lasts 30 years. Denser than is right, like Signine cement, it strangles the soil. The dove-coloured the Gauls call by their own name eglecopala. It is raised in clods like stones, and is loosened by sun and frost so that it makes the thinnest flakes.
47| This is equally fertile. They use the sandy if there is no other; in marshy ground even if there is another. We know the Ubii alone of the nations who, farming a most fertile field, enrich it with any earth dug up from below three feet and thrown on in a layer a foot thick. But it does good no longer than 10 years. The Aedui and Pictones have made their fields very rich with lime, which indeed is found very useful for olives and vines. All marga, however, must be thrown on before ploughing.
48| So that the remedy may be seized, it also requires some manure, however little, at first more if rough and not spread out for herbs; otherwise, whatever it be, by its newness it will hurt the soil, which even so is not fertile in the first year. It matters also in what soil it is sought. For the dry kind is better for moist soil, the rich kind for arid. For temperate soil either, chalk or dove-coloured, is suitable.
49| The people beyond the Po so like the use of ash that they put it before dung, and burn the dung of beasts of burden, which is lightest, for this purpose. Yet they do not use both alike in the same field, nor ash in tree-plantations nor for certain crops, as we shall say. There are those who judge that grapes too are fed by dust, and they dust them as they grow ripe and scatter it on the roots of vines and trees. What is certain is that in the province of Narbonensis the circius even ripens the vintages in this way, and dust contributes more there than sun.
50| Of dung there are several differences, and the thing itself is ancient. Already in Homer a royal old man is found enriching his field so with his own hands. King Augeas in Greece is reported to have devised it, but Hercules to have spread it in Italy, which for this discovery granted immortality to its king Stercutus, son of Faunus. Marcus Varro gives first place to the dung of thrushes from the aviaries, which he also magnifies as fodder for oxen and swine and asserts that nothing fattens more quickly on any other food. We may have good hope of our own ways, if among our forefathers there were aviaries so great that fields were manured from them.
51| Columella makes it first from dovecotes, then from poultry-yards, condemning that of swimming birds. The other authorities by consent call upon human fare for this in the first place. Some of these prefer the drinks of men in the workshops of tanners, with hair steeped in them, others the same by itself with water added a second time and even more abundantly than when it is drunk. For there more mischief must be tamed, when a man has come to the rank smell of wine. These are the contests, and in turn men are fed in order to feed the earth too.
52| Next they praise the filth of swine, which Columella alone condemns. Others prefer that of any four-footed animal fed on cytisus, some the dovecote kind. Next then is that of goats, after this of sheep, then of oxen, last of beasts of burden.
53| These were the differences among the ancients, and at the same time I do not find precepts for using it fresh, since here too age is more useful; and it has now been seen among some of the provincials that, with a genial abundance of cattle, dung which has grown old is spread over the ground through sieves like meal, its stench and look changed by the strength of time into a certain charm. (It was lately found that olives rejoice most in ash from lime-kilns.)
54| Varro adds to the precepts that the horse's, since it is lightest, is for feeding cornfields, but for meadows a heavier kind, and that which is made from barley and breeds many herbs. Some even prefer that of oxen to that of beasts of burden, and sheep's to goats', but the ass's to all, since they chew most slowly. On the contrary use pronounces against both. Among all it is agreed that nothing is more useful than a crop of lupine, turned in before it forms pods by the plough or by the mattocks, or cut off in handfuls and buried around the roots of trees and vines. And where there is no cattle, they judge that one may manure with the straw itself or even with fern.
55| Cato: From what you make dung: straw, lupine, chaff, bean-stalks, and the holm-oak and oak foliage. Pull out of the cornfield ebulum, hemlock, and around the willow-beds the tall grass and ulva. Spread that under sheep, and rotten foliage under oxen. If the vineyard is lean, burn its own vine-shoots and plough them in on the spot. And the same: Where you are going to sow grain, put the sheep there.
56| He says also that the earth is fed by certain crops themselves: the cornfield is manured by crops: lupine, bean, vetch; as on the contrary: chickpea, because it is pulled up and because it is salt, barley, fenugreek, bitter vetch, all these scorch the cornfield, and all that are pulled up. Do not put kernels into the cornfield. Virgil thinks the cornfield is scorched also by flax and oats and poppy.
57| They order dung-heaps to be made in the open, in a hollow place that collects moisture, covered with straw so that they do not dry out in the sun, with a stake of oak driven in. So, they say, serpents will not breed in them. To spread dung on the land matters most when the west wind is blowing and the moon is thirsty. Most people misunderstand this as to be done from the rising of the west wind and only in the month of February, when most crops demand it in other months. Whatever time one may choose to do it, care must be taken that it is done with the wind blowing from the equinoctial west and with the moon waning and dry. Fertility and its effects are increased in a wonderful way by such observation.
58| And now that the reasoning about sky and earth has been abundantly set out, we shall speak of those trees which arise by the care and art of men. Their kinds are almost no fewer; so kindly have we repaid the favour of nature. For they come either from seed, or from plants of root, or from layer, or from tearing off, or from a shoot, or from grafting, or from a cut trunk of the tree. For I wonder that Trogus believed that the leaves of palms are sown among the Babylonians and that the tree comes up so. Some, moreover, are sown in several ways, some in all.
59| And most of these nature herself taught, and first of all to sow seed, when it fell and, taken up by the earth, came to life. But some do not come up otherwise, such as chestnuts and walnuts, coppice growth alone excepted; and by seed, though a different one, also those which are sown in other ways, such as vines and apples and pears. For in these the kernel stands in place of seed, not, as in those named above, the fruit itself. And medlars can be born from seed. All these are slow in coming on and degenerate, and must be restored by grafting, and sometimes chestnuts too.
60| In some, on the contrary, it is the nature not to degenerate at all, however they are sown, as in cypresses, palm, laurels. For the laurel too is sown in several ways. We have spoken of its kinds. Of these the Augustan and the bacalis and the tinus are sown in a similar way. In January the berries are gathered, dried by a blast of the north wind, and spread out thinly so that they do not grow hot in a heap. Afterwards some, preparing them for sowing with dung, soak them in urine,
61| others trample them in a basket, in running water, with their feet, until the skin is removed, which otherwise harms through dampness and does not let them sprout. In a furrow dug over again, to the depth of a palm, about twenty in a heap are sown, in the month of March. The same are also grown from layer; the triumphal only from a cutting.
62| All kinds of myrtle in Campania are sown from berries, at Rome from layer. The Tarentine, Democritus teaches, is sown in another way too: the largest of the berries are lightly bruised, so that the grains are not broken, [….] and that this, rubbed in, is smeared round a rope and so sown. The wall will be [….] of density, from which the little rods are spaced out. In this way they sow thorns too for hedges, a rope smeared round with the thorn-mulberries. Balls of laurel, and of myrtle for want of the others, it is time to transplant from the third year.
63| Among those sown from seed, Mago is painstaking about nuts. He orders the almond to be sown in soft clay looking to the south; it likes also hard and warm earth, dies or turns barren in rich or damp; those to be sown should be as sickle-shaped as possible and from a new tree, soaked for three days in diluted dung or the day before they are sown in honeyed water; they are to be fixed point downward, with the edge of the side looking to the north; three are to be sown together, in a triangle, a palm distant from one another; to be watered every ten days until they grow large.
64| Walnuts are sown stretched out, with the joinings lying flat; pine nuts, about seven kernels each, are put into perforated pots or sown like the laurel, which is sown from berries. The citron comes from a grain and from layer; service trees come from seed and from a plant of the root and from tearing off, but the former in warm places, service trees in cold and damp.
65| Nature has also shown the plant-nurseries, in many trees, with offspring sprouting thickly from the roots and the mother bearing what she may kill: for the unordered crowd is pressed under her shade, as in laurels, pomegranates, planes, cherries, plums. In a few of this kind the branches spare their offspring, as in elms and palms. But no such shoots come up except in those whose roots spread near the top of the ground through love of sun and rain.
66| All these it is not the custom to place at once in their own place, but first to give to a nurse and let them grow in nurseries and then move again, which transit wonderfully softens even wild ones, whether the nature of trees too, like that of men, is greedy of novelty and travel, or in leaving they leave their poison behind and become tame by handling, as wild beasts do, while the plant is torn from the root.
67| And she has shown another similar kind, and runners torn from trees have lived, in which kind they are torn off with their own heel and carry with them some part also of the mother's body, with a fringed body. In this way are planted pomegranates, hazels, apples, service trees, medlars, ashes, figs and above all vines. The quince so sown degenerates. From the same it was found out to sow cut-off shoots.
68| This was done first for the sake of hedges, elders, quince and brambles being driven in, soon for cultivation too, as with poplars, alders, willow, which is even sown with the shoot inverted. These are now set out in the places where one wishes them to be. Although it is fitting to speak first of the care of the nursery before passing to other kinds.
69| For to this it matters to choose the soil especially, since it is often agreed that the nurse is more indulgent than the mother. Let it therefore be dry and juicy, worked by the two-pronged mattock, hospitable to incomers and as like as possible to the earth into which they are to be transferred, above all cleared of stones and guarded from the inroads even of the poultry kind, as little cracked as possible, so that the sun does not enter and scorch the fibres.
70| They should be sown with a space of a foot and a half between—for if they touch one another, besides other faults they become wormy as well—it is fitting to hoe more often and to pull out the herbs, and besides to prune the seedlings themselves as they put forth shoots and accustom them to bear the hook.
71| Cato orders hurdles also to be placed on forked stakes, at the height of a man, to take in the sun and to be covered over with straw, which keeps the cold away. So the seedlings of pears and apples are nursed, so pine nuts, so cypresses sown from seed themselves.
72| This consists of the smallest grains, so that some can hardly be made out, a marvel of nature not to be passed over, that trees are born from so small a thing, when the grain of wheat and barley is so much larger, to say nothing of the bean. What likeness to their origin have the seeds of apples and pears? That from these beginnings timber is born which refuses the axe, presses unmastered by immense weights, trees for sails, towers, rams for driving walls! This is the force of nature, this her power. Above all it will be that something is born from a tear, as we shall say in its place.
73| So from the female cypress—for, as we have said, the male bears none—the little balls, gathered in the months I have taught, are dried in the sun, and when broken send out seed wonderfully sought by ants, the marvel being enlarged by the fact that the birth of such great trees is consumed by the food of so tiny an animal. It is sown in the month of April, in a bed levelled with rollers or little wheels, thickly, and earth is sifted over it through sieves to the thickness of a thumb.
74| Against a greater weight it cannot raise itself and is twisted under the earth. For this reason it is also trodden down with the feet. It is watered gently from sunset every third day, so that it drinks evenly, until the seedlings burst through. After a year they are moved apart on a line of three-quarters of a foot, the temperature being kept, so that they are planted in mild weather and without breeze. And wonderful to say, the danger is only on the day when any little rain has dewed, or a wind has blown on them. For the rest they are safe in perpetual security and afterwards hate waters.
75| The zizipha too are sown from a grain in the month of April. The tubures are better grafted on the wild plum and the quince and on the calabrice. That is a wild thorn; whichever receives best also the myxae; and usefully the service trees. To transfer plants from the nursery into another before they are placed in their own place, I think is given as a precept with needless labour, although they promise that the leaves become broader by the transfer.
76| The samara of elms, before they clothe themselves with leaves, must be gathered about the Kalends of March, when it begins to turn yellow. Then, dried for two days in the shade, it is to be sown thickly in ground broken up, with fine earth sifted over it to the thickness used for cypresses. If rain does not help, it must be watered. After a year they are to be moved from the veins of the beds into elm-plots at a foot's interval on every side.
77| It is more useful to sow Atinian elms in autumn, since, lacking seed, they are sown from plants. At five years old they are moved to the tree-plantation near the city, or, as some prefer, when they have begun to be twenty feet. In a trench which is called a nine-footer, 3 feet in depth, of equal breadth, and in addition, around them when placed, earth of three feet is heaped up from the solid on every side. They call this arulae in Campania. The intervals are taken from the nature of the place.
78| In level ground they should be sown more sparsely. Poplars and ashes, because they bud more hastily, should also be set out earlier, that is, from the Ides of February, themselves also born from plants. In setting out trees and tree-plantations and vineyards the quincunx arrangement of rows is the common and necessary one, useful not only for the draught of wind but pleasing to the sight, in whatever way you look, the line stretching out in a row. The method of sowing poplars from seed is the same as for elms, and of transferring them from nurseries and from woods the same.
79| First of all, then, they must be transferred into similar earth or better, and not from warm or early places into cold or late ones, nor from these into those; the pits should be dug beforehand, if it can be done, for so long that they are covered with rich turf.
80| Mago orders a year before, so that they drink in the sun and the rains, or, if the circumstances have not allowed this, that fires be made in the middle two months before, and that they be sown in them only after rains, their depth in clayey or hard ground to be three cubits in every direction, in sloping ground a palm more, and he orders the digging to be chimney-like, narrower at the mouth, but in black earth two cubits and a palm, with square corners of the same measure. The Greek authors agree that they ought to be not deeper than five half-feet nor wider than 2 feet, but nowhere less deep than a foot and a half. Since in damp soil one reaches the neighbourhood of water, Cato, if the place is watery,
81| pits three feet wide at the mouth and a palm and a foot at the bottom, 4 feet in depth, paved with stone or, if there is none, with green willow poles, and if there are not these, with vine-shoots, in such a way that a half-foot of depth is taken off. We think it should be added, from the nature of trees mentioned above, that those which delight in the top of the ground, like the ash and olive, should be let down deeper. These and the like ought to be let down four feet. For the others three feet of depth will suffice. It is harmless to scrape away the parts that have bared themselves. “Cut out that root,” said the commander Papirius Cursor, when he ordered it to be lopped off with the axe to terrify the praetor of the Praenestines.
82| Potsherds, or, some prefer, round stones are to be put underneath, which both hold the moisture and let it through, thinking that flat ones do not do the same and keep the root from the earth. Gravel laid beneath would be between the two opinions.
83| Some prescribe to transfer a tree neither smaller than two years nor larger than three, others when it fills the hand, Cato thicker than 5 digits. The same man would not have omitted, if it mattered, to mark the southern part of the sky on the bark, so that when transferred they might be set in the same and accustomed quarters, lest those of the north, set against the midday suns, should split, and those of the south freeze from the north winds.
84| Which some on the contrary even affect in vine and fig, changing them to the opposite. For they say they become thicker in leaf thus and protect the fruit better and lose less, and the fig so becomes even climbable. Most take care only that the wound of the lopped top looks to the south, ignorant that they are exposing it to splitting by excessive heat.
85| I should rather prefer it to look toward the fifth or the eighth hour of the day. Equally hidden is a thing not to be neglected, that the roots should not dry up by delay, and that trees should not be dug up when a wind is blowing from the north or from that quarter of the sky as far as the winter sunrise, or at least that the roots should not be presented facing these winds, because of which they die without the farmers knowing the cause.
86| Cato condemns all winds and rain too throughout the whole transfer. And besides it will profit that as much earth as possible, in which they have lived, cling to the roots, and that they be bound round entire with the turf, since for that reason Cato orders them to be transferred in baskets, doubtless most usefully. He is indeed content that the top earth be put underneath. Some say that in pomegranates, with a stone laid underneath, the fruit does not burst on the trees. It is better that the roots be set bent; that the tree itself be so placed that it is in the middle of the whole pit is necessary.
87| A fig, if it is sown in squill—this is a kind of bulb—is reported to bear fruit most quickly and not to be liable to worming, a fault from which the other fruits, similarly sown, are free. Great care must be applied to the threads of the roots, so that they appear taken out, not torn up, who can doubt it? On which principle we omit the rest as admitted, such as that the earth about the roots should be packed with a rammer, which Cato judges first in that business, and he prescribes also that the wound be smeared from the trunk with dung and bound over with leaves.
88| Part of this topic relates to intervals: some have ordered pomegranates and myrtles and laurels to be sown more thickly, at nine feet each however, apples a little more, or still more pears and more again almonds and figs. Yet the reasoning from the spread of the branches and of the places will judge best; and from the shade of each tree, since this too must be observed. They are short, however large the trees, when the branches describe a circle, as in apples and pears; the same are enormous in cherries and laurels.
89| Now a certain peculiarity of shades: that of walnuts is heavy and harmful, even to the human head and to all crops near. It kills grasses, and so does the pine, but both resist winds, since they also need protection in the plan of vineyards. Of the drippings those of pine, oak and holm oak are the heaviest, the cypress has none, its shade being least and rolled up on itself. That of figs is light, though spreading, and therefore they are not forbidden to be sown among vines.
90| The shade of elms is mild, and even nourishing, wherever it overshadows. To Atticus this shade too seems among the heaviest, and I do not doubt it, if it is let out into branches; but when it is held in, I do not think its shade harmful. The plane's too is pleasant, although thick. One may trust the grass, which under no other tree more luxuriantly covers its beds. The poplar has none, its leaves playing; the alder's is rich, but feeds the crops. The vine suffices for itself,
91| with a moving leaf and frequent tossing tempering the sun by its shade, the same protecting in a heavy rain. The shade is light of almost all trees whose leaf-stalks are long. This knowledge too is not to be despised nor placed among the last, since for every plant shade is either a nurse or a stepmother. Of walnuts, pines, piceae and fir, whatever they touch is undoubtedly poisoned.
92| The definition of dripping is short: of all trees that are so defended by the projection of their foliage that the rains do not flow through them, the drop is savage. So in this inquiry it will matter most how far the earth in which we are going to sow feeds each tree. Hills by themselves already seek smaller intervals.
93| In windy places it is advantageous to sow them more thickly, the olive however at the greatest interval, about which Cato's Italian opinion is that it be sown at 25 feet, at most 30. But this varies with the nature of the places. No other tree is larger in Baetica, and in Africa—the credit will rest with the authorities—they say that many are called milliary from the weight of oil which they bear in a year's produce. Therefore Mago gave an interval of 75 feet on every side or, in poor, hard and windy soil, at the least, 45.
94| Baetica indeed reaps its richest harvests among olives. It will be agreed that it is a shameful ignorance to thin out grown trees more than is right and hurry them to old age or, as often happens, with the planters themselves proving their own inexperience, to cut them down entirely. Nothing is more disgraceful to farmers than regret for a thing done, so that it is already far better to err in wide spacing.
95| Some, however, grow slowly by nature, and in the first place those born only from seed and lasting for a long age. But those which perish quickly are swift, like the fig, the pomegranate, the plum, the apple, the pear, the myrtle and the willow, and yet they are ahead in wealth. For in the third year they begin to bear, showing even before. Of these the slowest is the pear, the quickest of all the cypirus and the shrub pseudocypirus. For it flowers at once and carries seed. All grow up more quickly when the runners are removed and the nourishment is brought down to one stock.
96| The same nature taught layers also. For brambles, bent by their slenderness and at the same time their excessive length, fix their tips again in the ground and are born once more from themselves, ready to fill everything, unless cultivation resists, so that men might seem born for the earth's sake. So a thing most evil and accursed has yet taught the layer and the living root. The same nature belongs to ivies as well. Cato reports that besides the vine are propagated the fig, olive, pomegranate, all kinds of apples, laurels, plums, myrtle, hazel nuts and Praenestine nuts, the plane.
97| There are two kinds of layers: a branch is pressed down from the tree into a pit of 4 feet in every direction and cut off after two years in the bend, and the plant moved after three years; if one wishes to carry these farther, it is most suitable to bury the layers at once in baskets or earthen pots, so that they are transferred in these.
98| The other kind is more luxurious: by enticing roots on the tree itself, with branches passed through earthen vessels or baskets and stuffed round with earth, and with this blandishment obtained roots among the fruit itself and the topmost tips—for even the topmost tips are sought in this way, with a daring ingenuity of making another tree far from the ground—the layer is cut off after the same two years' space as above and sown with its little baskets. The herb sabina is sown by layer and by tearing off; they say it is wonderfully nourished by wine lees or by brick from walls, pounded. By the same means rosemary is sown, also by a branch, since neither has seed; rhododendron by layer and seed.
99| Nature taught grafting by seed also, when seed has been hastily swallowed by birds in hunger and, whole and moistened by the warmth of the belly, with the fertile aid of dung, is dropped on the soft beds of trees and often carried by winds into some cracks of the bark, whence we have seen a cherry on a willow, a plane on a laurel, a laurel on a cherry and berries of different colours together. They report also that the jackdaw, hiding seeds in the treasuries of caverns, gives causes for the same thing.
100| From this was born inoculation, opening with a pipe like a cobbler's the eye in a tree by cutting out the bark, and enclosing, taken from another, the seed with the same pipe. In figs and apples this was the ancient inoculation. The Virgilian seeks a hollow in a knot at the bud of the bark thrust out and encloses a bud from another tree.
101| Thus far nature herself taught, but grafting chance, another teacher and almost more numerous, in this manner: a careful farmer, surrounding his hut with the protection of a hedge, so that the stakes might not rot, put a threshold of ivy beneath. But they, seized by its living bite, made their own life out of another's, and it appeared that the trunk stood in place of earth. So the surface is removed evenly with a saw, and the trunk smoothed with a pruning knife.
102| The method afterwards was twofold, and the first was grafting between bark and wood. The ancients were afraid to split the trunk; soon they dared to bore into the middle, and themselves pressed into it a shoot to the pith, inserting one, for the pith did not take more. A subtler method afterwards added even six, to match their mortality and number, the trunk being gently split through the middle and a thin wedge keeping the split open until the shoot, cut to a point, descends into the crack.
103| Many things must be observed in this: first of all, what tree can bear such a union, and of what tree. The sap also lies in different places, and not in the same parts in all. In vines and figs the middle is drier and the conception is from the top part; therefore the shoots are sought from there. In olives the sap is around the middle, and from there the shoots too; the tips are thirsty.
104| Most easily they grow together when they have the same nature of bark and flower at the same time, having kinship of the same hour and a partnership of saps. It is a slow matter whenever dry things fight against moist, and hard against the soft of barks. The rest of the observance: that the split not be made at a knot—for an inhospitable hardness rejects the newcomer—but at the brightest part, not much longer than three digits, not slanting, not transparent.
105| Virgil forbids to graft from the tip, and it is established that shoots are to be sought from the shoulders of trees, facing the summer sunrise, and from fruitful ones and from a new bud, unless they are being grafted on an old tree: for these must be stronger. Besides, they must be pregnant, that is, swelling with budding and such as hope to bear in that year, two years old at least and not thinner than the little finger.
106| They are also grafted inverted, when the aim is that a lesser height should spread into breadth. Before all things the budding ones should be shining; nothing anywhere ulcerous or shrivelled favours hope. Let the pith of the shoot be joined to the junction of wood and bark in the mother, for this is better than to equalize the bark outside. The sharpening of the shoot should not bare the pith, yet should uncover it with a thin pipe. Let the taper come down in a light wedge no wider than three digits, which is easiest when it is moistened with water as it is scraped.
107| It must not be sharpened in a wind, nor the bark depart from the wood in either. The shoot is to be pressed down as far as its own bark. Lest it be dislocated while it is pressed, or the bark folded into wrinkles. For this reason weeping shoots ought not to be grafted, no more, by Hercules, than dry ones, because in the one case the bark slips from too much moisture, in the other from lack of life it does not swell nor become one body.
108| They keep this too as a religious observance, that with the moon waxing the shoot be pressed down with both hands. And otherwise in this work two hands together press less, from a necessary moderation. Those let down more strongly bear later and endure more firmly, the opposite in the contrary. Lest the cleft gape too much and take loosely, or take too little and squeeze out, or compress and kill; this is especially to be guarded against in the trunk of an over-strong receiver.
109| So that the middle cleft may be left, some, making with a pruning knife a trace of the split in the trunks, bind the very margin with willow, and afterwards split with a wedge, the band holding in the freedom to gape. (Some grafted in the nursery are moved on the same day.) If a thicker trunk is grafted, it is better to graft between bark and wood, best with a bone wedge, loosened so that the bark does not burst.
110| Cherries are split after the inner bark is removed. These alone are also grafted after midwinter. With the inner bark removed they have a kind of down, which if it seizes the graft, rots it. A band is most usefully drawn tight when the wedge is driven. It is most suitable to graft as near the ground as the reckoning of knots and trunk allows.
111| The shoots ought to project no more than 6 digits in length. Cato mixes with clay or chalk sand and ox dung and orders them kneaded so to a toughness, and this to be placed between and smeared round. From what he has written it is easily apparent that in that age they were accustomed to graft between wood and bark, and in no other way, or to let in shoots beyond a breadth of 2 digits. He prescribes that pears and apples be grafted in spring and 50 days after the solstice and after the vintage,
112| but olives and figs in spring only, with the moon thirsty, [that is, dry], and besides after midday and with no south wind. It is a marvel that, not content with having protected the graft, as has been said, and covered it with turf against rain and cold and with soft bands of twin osiers, he orders it to be covered over besides with oxtongue—that is a kind of herb—and tied on, covered with straw. Now they think it enough abundantly to patch it with straw-mixed mud, the bark standing out 2 digits above the graft.
113| For those grafting in spring the season presses, the buds hastening themselves, except in the olive, whose eyes are very long in bringing forth, and which has least sap under the bark, which in excess harms grafts. But to put off pomegranates and figs and whatever others are dry is by no means useful.
114| The pear may be grafted even in flower, and grafts may be extended also into the month of May. But if the shoots of fruit trees are brought from farther off, they think that fixed in a turnip they best keep their sap, and that they are kept between two roof-tiles beside streams or fish-ponds, stopped up with earth at both ends, but those of vines in dry pits covered with straw and then buried in earth so that the tips stand out.
115| Cato grafts the vine in three ways: he orders it, cut off, to be split through the pith, shoots sharpened as has been said to be added to it, and the piths to be joined. In the second, if vines touch each other, each is shaved on the opposite side slantwise, and they are tied with the piths joined. The third kind is to bore the vine slantwise to the pith and add shoots two feet long, and so, bound and smeared with the kneaded mixture, to cover the graft with earth, the shoots standing upright.
116| Our age corrected it, so that the Gallic auger be used, which hollows and does not burn—since all burning blunts—and that the shoot be chosen when it begins to bud, and project no more than two eyes from the graft, [….] of elm [….] with an osier bound [….] two were put round [….] the edge on two sides, so that from there rather the mucus might drip, which most infests vines; then, when the shoots had grown two feet, the band of the graft was cut, leave being given to fertility by the thickness.
117| For grafting vines they gave a time from the autumn equinox to the beginnings of budding. Cultivated plants are grafted on the roots of wild ones, which are drier by nature; if cultivated ones are grafted on wild ones, they degenerate into wildness. The rest depends on the weather. Dryness is most suitable for grafts; for the remedy for this is that, with earthen vessels set beside, a modest moisture drips down through ash. Inoculation loves gentle dews.
118| Plastering too can be thought to be born of inoculation, and suits especially a thick bark, such as is in figs. So, all the branches having been cut off lest they draw away the sap, in the brightest part of each, where the special gaiety is seen, a little shield is taken out, so that the iron does not go down below the bark, and a bark equal, with the teat of its own bud, is pressed in from another, the joining so closely made that there is no place for a scar and unity comes at once, taking in neither moisture nor breath; nonetheless it is better to protect it with mud and a band.
119| Those who favour new ways would have this kind discovered not long ago, but it is already found among the old Greeks and in Cato, who ordered olive and fig to be grafted in this way, the measure also laid down beforehand in accordance with the rest of his diligence: the barks are to be cut out with a chisel to a length of four digits and a breadth of three, and so fitted together and smeared with their own mixture, on the same principle as in the apple. Some have mixed with this kind the splitting in vines, a little tessera being taken from the bark by driving it in with the flat side.
120| A tree grafted in so many ways we saw near the cascades of Tibur, laden with every kind of fruit, on one branch nuts, on another berries, elsewhere vine, pears, figs, pomegranates and kinds of apples. But its life was short. Nor can we attain everything by experiments in nature. For some cannot be born in any way except of their own accord, and those come up only in wild and deserted places.
121| The plane is held the most capacious of all grafts, afterwards the oak, but both spoil the flavours. Some are grafted in every kind, as the fig, as pomegranates. The vine does not take plastering, nor do those whose bark is thin or falling away or cracked, nor does inoculation take in dry ones or those of little moisture. Inoculation is the most fertile of all, plastering next, but both are very weak; and those that rely on the bark only are uprooted very quickly even by a light breeze. Grafting is the firmest and more fruitful than sowing.
122| The rarity of one example is not to be omitted. Corellius, a Roman knight born at Ateste, grafted a chestnut with a shoot of its own in the country near Naples. So was made the chestnut which took its name from him among the praised. Afterwards Tereus, his freedman, grafted the Corellian again. This is the difference among them: the former is more abundant, the Tereian better.
123| The remaining kinds chance contrived by her own ingenuity, and taught to sow broken-off branches, when stakes driven in took root. Many are so sown, and above all the fig, which is born in all other ways except the cutting, best if a rather large branch is driven deep, sharpened like a stake, a small head left above the ground and that itself covered with sand. The pomegranate too is sown from a branch, the passage first being loosened with stakes, likewise the myrtle, all these 3 feet in length, thinner than an arm, the bark carefully preserved, the trunk sharpened.
124| Myrtle is also sown from cuttings, the mulberry only from a cutting, since religious feeling about lightning forbids grafting it on the elm. Wherefore the sowing of cuttings must now be spoken of. In this it must be observed above all that cuttings be made from fruitful trees, not curved or rough or forked, not thinner than to fill the hand, not shorter than a foot, with the bark untouched, and that the lower cut always be put down, the part that was from the root, and that the budding be heaped over with earth until the plant takes strength.
125| What Cato judged must be guarded in the care of olives we shall best prescribe in his own words: Make the olive cuttings, which you are going to plant in a pit, three feet long, and handle them carefully, that the inner bark may not suffer when you hew or cut. Those you intend to plant in the nursery, make a foot long. Plant them thus: let the place be worked with the two-pronged mattock and well gone over. When you let in the cutting, press the cutting down with the foot. If it descends too little, drive it with a mallet or a rammer, and take care not to split the inner bark when you drive it. Do not make a place first with a stake for the cutting you are letting in; thus it will live better. When cuttings are three years old, then at last they are ripe, when the inner bark turns.
126| If you sow in pits or in furrows, put three cuttings and spread them apart. Let them project above the ground no more than four digits across, or sow the eyes. One ought to take out the olive carefully and carry as many roots as possible with the earth; when you have covered the roots well, tread it down well, so that nothing may harm. If anyone asks what time is for sowing the olive: in dry land at seedtime, in rich land in spring.
127| Begin to prune the olive-yard 15 days before the spring equinox. From that day you will prune rightly for 40 days. Prune it in this way: where the place is rightly fruitful, remove from it everything that is dry and anything the wind has broken. Where the place is not fruitful, cut more, and plough well and trim off knots and make the stumps smooth. Around olives in autumn dig round the roots and add dung. He who mixes the olive-yard most often and deepest will plough out the thinnest roots. If he ploughs badly, the roots will go upward, become thicker, and the strength of the olive will go into the roots.
128| What kinds of olives, and in what kind of earth, he would order them to be sown, and in which direction olive-yards should look, we have said in the account of oil. Mago ordered them sown on a hill and in dry ground and clay between autumn and midwinter, in rich or damp or watered soil from harvest to midwinter. It is understood that he gave this precept for Africa. Italy indeed now sows chiefly in spring. But if one wishes to sow also in autumn, 40 days after the equinox, up to the setting of the Pleiades, there are 3 days only on which it is harmful to sow. It is peculiar to Africa
129| that it grafts them on the wild olive, in a sort of everlastingness, when they grow old, a rod being sent out by the nearest adoption and so another tree growing young from the same, again and as often as is needed, so that the same olive-yards last for ages. The wild olive is grafted with a shoot and by inoculation.
130| An olive is badly planted where an oak has been dug up, since worms, which are called raucae, are born in the root of the oak and pass over. It has been found more useful not to smoke the cuttings or dry them before they are sown. An old olive-yard has been found better scraped between the spring equinox and the rising of the Pleiades in alternate years, likewise the moss scraped off, and dug round every year from the solstice in a trench of 2 cubits, a foot in depth, and manured in the third year.
131| Mago orders almonds likewise to be sown from the setting of Arcturus to midwinter, pears not all at the same time, because they do not flower at the same time, oblong or round ones from the setting of the Pleiades to midwinter, the other kinds in mid-winter from the setting of the Arrow, looking toward the east wind or the north, laurel from the setting of the Eagle to the setting of the Arrow. For the reasoning about the time of sowing and grafting is connected.
132| They have decided that this is done for the most part in spring and autumn. There is also another hour, about the rising of the Dog Star, known to few, since it is understood not to be equally useful in all places, but it is not to be omitted by us, who are inquiring not into the reasoning of any one region, but of the whole of nature.
133| In the region of Cyrene they sow under the blast of the etesian winds, and in Greece also, the olive especially in Laconia. The island of Cos sows even vines then; the rest among the Greeks do not hesitate to inoculate and to graft, but do not sow trees. And the nature of places has very great power in this; for in Egypt they sow in every month, and wherever the rains are in summer, as in India and Ethiopia, trees are necessarily sown after these in autumn.
134| So the times of budding are three, the same: spring and the rising of the Dog Star and of Arcturus. For not only in animals is there eagerness for mating, but much greater is the desire of the earth and of all things sown, which it matters most to use at the right time, a peculiarity especially in grafts, since there is a mutual desire on both sides of coming together.
135| Those who approve spring admit it straight from the equinox, declaring that the buds are in travail, and therefore the embraces of the barks are easy. Those who prefer autumn, from the rising of Arcturus, because they at once take a sort of root and come prepared for spring, and the budding does not carry off the strength at once. Some, however, have a fixed time of year everywhere, as cherries and almonds, to be sown or grafted about midwinter. The situation of places will judge best for most. For cold and watery places ought to be planted in spring, dry and warm in autumn.
136| The general rule of Italy distributes the times in this manner: for the mulberry from the Ides of February to the equinox, for the pear autumn, so that they precede midwinter by 15 days, not less, for summer apples and quinces, likewise service trees and plums, after mid-winter up to the Ides of February, for the Greek carob and peaches before midwinter through autumn, for nuts, walnut and pine and hazel and Greek and chestnut, from the Kalends of March to the same Ides, for willow and broom about the Kalends of March; this, we have said, is sown from seed in dry places, that from a rod in damp.
137| There is yet a new method of grafting, that I may not knowingly pass over anything I have found anywhere, devised by Columella, as he himself affirms, by which even diverse and unsociable natures of trees are coupled, such as fig and olive. Beside this he orders the fig to be sown at no greater interval than that it can be touched freely by a branch of the olive as pliant and obedient as possible, and that it be tamed meanwhile at all times by the practice of bending.
138| Afterwards, when the fig has gained strength, which happens at three years or at any rate five, the upper part being cut off, the pruned branch itself, with its tip scraped off, as has been said, is fixed in the leg of the fig, kept by bands lest the curvature escape. So by a kind of tempering of layers and grafts, in three years there grows together a common one between the two mothers, and in the fourth year, cut off, the whole belongs to the adopter, a method not yet commonly known, or at least not sufficiently ascertained by me.
139| For the rest, the same reasoning stated above about hot and cold, damp and dry places has also shown how to dig pits. In watery places it will be expedient to make them neither wide nor deep, otherwise in hot and dry places, so that they may receive water as much as possible and hold it. This is the method of tending old trees too. For in burning places they heap up the roots in summer and cover them, so that the heat of the sun may not scorch them.
140| Elsewhere they bare the roots and let in the draught. The same people in winter defend them from frost with heaps. Those others, on the contrary, open them in winter and seek moisture for the thirsty. Wherever the method of digging round [the trees] is used, the circuit [round them] is three feet in a ring, and not that in meadows, since through love of sun and moisture they wander in the top of the earth. And concerning trees to be sown and grafted for the sake of fruit let this much be said in general:
141| There remains the account of those that are sown for the sake of others, and of vineyards above all, as coppice wood. The first place among these is held by willows, which they sow in a damp place, dug over again to 2 and a half feet, with a cutting a foot and a half long or a pole, which is more useful the fuller it is.
142| They ought to be at an interval of six feet each. At three years old they are restrained by pruning at two feet from the ground, so that they spread in breadth and can be trimmed without ladders. For the willow is more fruitful the nearer to the ground. These too they order to be dug round every year in the month of April.
143| This is the cultivation of osier-willows. The pole-willow is sown as both rod and cutting, the digging the same. It is right to cut poles from it in about the fourth year. And these repair the place of the ageing by a layer cut off after a year. A single iugerum of osier-willow will suffice for 25 iugera of vineyard. For the same purpose the white poplar is sown in ground dug two feet deep, with a cutting a foot and a half long, dried for two days, at an interval of a foot and a palm, earth thrown over it to a thickness of 2 cubits.
144| The reed delights in soil even more watery than these. It is sown from the bulb of the root, which some call the eye, in a pit three-quarters of a foot deep, at an interval of 2 and a half feet, and is renewed from itself when the old reed-bed is rooted up, which has been found more useful than trimming, as was done before. For the roots creep among one another and are killed by the mutual running over.
145| The time for sowing is before the eyes of the reeds swell, before the Kalends of March. It grows up to midwinter and stops when it begins to harden. This is the sign that it has the season for cutting. And this they think must be dug round, as often as the vineyard. It is also sown crosswise, not buried deep in the earth, and from each eye as many plants burst out.
146| It is also sown as a detached plant in a furrow a foot deep, two buds being buried so that the third knot touches the earth, the tip sloping, that it may not catch dew. It is cut with the moon waning. For vineyards one year dried is more useful than green.
147| The chestnut is preferred to all stakes for ease of handling and stubborn durability; in regrowth it is more luxuriant for coppicing even than the willow. It seeks an easy soil, yet not sandy, and especially damp sand or carbunculus or even the meal of tufa, in any situation however shaded, northern and very cold, or even sloping. It refuses gravel, red ochre, chalk, and all fertility of earth.
148| We have said that it is sown from a nut, but it does not come up unless from the largest, nor unless sown five together in a heap. The ground must be broken up beneath from the month of November to February, when they fall loosed of their own accord from the tree and spring up beneath. The intervals should be a foot, with a furrow three-quarters of a foot deep all round. From this nursery they are moved after two years into another at a two-foot interval.
149| There are layers also, none indeed easier. For the root being bared, the whole is laid in a furrow; it is born again from the top left above the ground, and another from the root. But once moved it does not know how to be a guest, and fears novelty for about two years; afterwards it leaps forward. Therefore coppice plantations are filled with nuts rather than with living roots.
150| The cultivation is no other than those mentioned above, by digging and pruning for the two years following. For the rest it tends itself, its shade killing superfluous runners. It is cut within the seventh year. Stakes of one iugerum suffice for twenty iugera of vineyard, since they are made also from a forked stock, and last beyond the second cutting of its wood.
151| The aesculus comes up in the same way, the cutting three years later, less slow to be born in whatever earth it is sown in spring from an acorn, but only of the aesculus, in a pit three-quarters of a foot deep, at intervals of 2 feet. It is hoed lightly four times a year. This stake rots least and when cut sprouts most. Besides those we have mentioned, the ash, laurel, peach, hazel, apple are coppice trees, but they are born more slowly and scarcely bear the earth, driven in as stakes, let alone moisture. The elder, on the contrary, makes the firmest stake, sown from cuttings, like the poplar. For of the cypress we have said enough.
152| And, the supports of vineyards being so provided, there remains for us to give with special care the nature of the vines themselves. In the shoots of vines and of certain trees whose nature within is spongier, the jointed knots of the stalks shut off the pith by partitions. The ferulae themselves are short, and toward the top the joints are shorter, enclosing their internodes on either side.
153| The pith, whether it is the vital breath, stretches before itself, filling the length, as long as the knots lie open as a channel. But when, grown solid, they have taken away the passage, it breaks out, driven back, from the lower part of itself near the previous knot, always at alternate sides of the groin, as has been said in the reed and the ferula, of which the right is understood from the lowest joint, the left in the next, and so by turns. This in the vine is called the bud, when it has made a tuft there; but before it makes it, there is an eye in the hollow and the germ at the very tip. So are born shoots, grandshoots, grapes, leaves, tendrils, and it is wonderful that those born on the right side are stronger.
154| These, then, in the case of cuttings, must be cut through at the middle of the knots when they are planted, in such a way that the pith does not flow out. And in the fig, cuttings three-quarters of a foot long are planted after the ground has been opened with dibbles, in such a way that the parts nearest the tree go down and 2 eyes stand out above the ground. The eyes, in the cuttings of trees, are properly what we call the points from which shoots sprout.
155| For this reason in nurseries too the trees sometimes bear in the same year in which they would have borne fruit on the tree itself, when, planted in good season, they bring forth elsewhere the conceptions begun while they were still gravid. Figs planted in this way are easily transplanted in the third year. This has been granted to this tree in return for its quickness in ageing: that it should come on very fast.
156| The planting of vines is more varied. First of all, nothing is planted of these but what is useless and has been pruned off as sarmenta. Whatever has borne fruit in the last season is pruned off. It used to be the custom to plant a cutting with a head on either side, taken from the hard wood, and for that reason it is still called a malleolus. Afterwards it began to be torn off with its heel, as in the fig, and nothing is longer-lived. A third kind has been added, still quicker, without the heel, which are called sagittae when they are twisted before being driven in; the same, when cut off and not twisted, are called trigemmes. More are made from the same cutting in this way.
157| To plant from the pampinaria is barren, and one ought to plant only from the fruitful wood. A shoot that has few knots is judged unfruitful; closeness of buds is the sign of fertility. Some forbid planting any shoots except those that have flowered. To plant sagittae is less useful, since what has been twisted is easily broken in transplanting. They are planted a foot long, not shorter, with five or six knots. Fewer than three buds cannot be found in this measure.
158| It is most useful to plant on the same day on which they are cut off; if it is necessary to plant much later those that have been kept, as we have directed, care should be taken above all that they do not dry out in the sun when laid outside the ground, or become dulled by wind or cold. Those that have been longer in the dry, before they are planted, should be revived in water for several days.
159| A sunny soil, and as wide as possible, in the nursery or in the vineyard, ought to be trenched with a two-pronged mattock, three feet deep with the double spade, and the earth thrown back with the hoe at the rate of four feet of fermentum, so that the trench advances by two feet at a time; the dug ground should be cleaned and levelled, so that nothing is left raw, but the whole is brought to measure. Uneven ridges betray poor trenching. The part also that lies between, the pulvinus, must be measured.
160| Cuttings are planted both in a pit and in a longer furrow; the earth thrown over them should be as fine as possible, but in a thin soil to no purpose unless a richer layer is spread beneath [….] than two ought to be covered and the nearest touched, and the earth pressed down and packed with the same stake; in the nursery there should be a space of a foot and a half between pairs of plants in breadth, half a foot in length; the malleoli so planted are cut back in the 24th month to the lowest joint, unless the plant itself is to be spared. From this a growth of eyes shoots out, with which in the 36th month it is transplanted as a rooted plant.
161| There is also a luxurious method of planting vines, in which four malleoli are tied together at the lower end [luxuriously] with a strong binding, and so are passed either through the bones of an ox's leg or through earthenware necks and buried with two buds left standing out. In this way they are united, and when cut back they put out a shoot. Afterwards the pipe is broken and the root takes up its strength freely, and the grape bears the berries of all its bodies.
162| In another kind, newly devised, the malleolus is split, and the pith scraped out, and the stems themselves are drawn together into one, so that the buds are spared in every way. Then the malleolus is planted in earth mixed with dung, and when it begins to spread its stems, it is cut back and dug round rather often. Columella promises that the berries of such a grape will have nothing of wood inside, though it is very wonderful that the plants themselves live when the pith has been taken from them.
163| It seems not to be omitted that trees are also born from cuttings which have no joint. For box trees come up when five or six of the very thinnest sprigs are bound together and driven in. At one time it was a matter of observance that they should be broken off from unpruned box, since otherwise they were not believed to live. Experiments have taken this away.
164| After the care of the nursery comes the system of vineyards. These are of five kinds: with the shoots spread over the ground; or with the vine standing upright by itself; or with a prop but without a yoke; or trained on feet with a single yoke; or conpluviate with a fourfold yoke.
165| What the system of the pedata is, the same will be understood for that also in which the vine will stand by itself without a prop. For this is not done except for lack of stakes. The single yoke consists of a row laid lengthwise, which they call a canterium. This is the better for wine, because it does not shade itself, and is ripened by constant sun, and feels the breeze more, and sheds its dew more quickly, and is easier for stripping of leaves and for harrowing and every work. Above all else it comes out of flower to better advantage.
166| The yoke is made of a pole or reed or hair or cord, as in Spain and at Brundisium. The conpluviate vine is more abundant in wine, and is named from the hollows of houses, the compluvia. It is divided into four parts with as many yokes. The method of planting it will be told, and will hold good for every kind, though in this one it is merely more varied. It is planted in 3 ways: best in trenched ground, next in a furrow, last in a pit.
167| Of trenching I have spoken; for a furrow the breadth of a spade is enough, for pits three feet in each direction. The depth in any kind is three feet, and therefore a vine ought not to be transplanted that is shorter than this, since it must still stand out above the ground by two buds.
168| It is necessary that the earth be softened with fine furrows at the bottom of the pit and mixed with dung. Sloping ground calls for deeper pits, and besides this for rims raised into a cushion on the side of the slope. Those of them that are made longer, so as to receive two vines from opposite directions, will be called alvei. The root of the vine ought to be in the middle of the pit, but the vine itself, resting on solid ground, ought to face the equinoctial east, and to take its first props from a reed;
169| vineyards are to be laid out with a decumanus 18 feet wide, for the passing of vehicles in opposite directions, and are to be divided by other cross paths of ten feet each through the middle of the iugera or, if the extent is greater, laid out with a cardo of as many feet as the decumanus, and always to be furnished with quintani as footpaths, that is, so that at every fifth post single plots are enclosed by a yoke; in close soil nothing is planted unless the ground is trenched again, and nothing but the rooted plant, while in tender and loose soil the malleolus may be planted either in a furrow or in a pit.
170| On hills to run furrows across the slope is better than trenching, so that the washings may be held by their crossbars; in rainy weather or on dry soil malleoli are to be planted in autumn, unless the character of the district changes this. For a dry and hot district will demand autumn, a damp and cold one even the end of spring. In arid soil even the rooted plant is planted in vain, and the malleolus badly in dry ground, except after rain, but in watered ground even the leafy vine may be rightly planted, and right up to the solstice, as in Spain. It is most useful for the winds to be still on the day of planting. Most people wish for southerly winds; Cato rejects them.
171| Between two vines there ought to be a space, by a middle reckoning, of five feet each, at the least four feet in rich soil, in thin soil eight at the most; the Umbrians and Marsians leave gaps of up to twenty feet for the sake of ploughing in those plantations which they call porculeta; in a rainy and misty district they are set more thinly, in a dry one more thickly.
172| Careful thrift has found savings, in that when a vineyard is planted in trenched ground, a nursery is made on the way, so that the rooted plant is planted in its own place, and the malleolus that is to be transplanted is planted between the vines and the rows, a method which yields about 16,000 rooted plants to the iugerum. There is, however, a difference of two years of fruit, by which a plant grows more slowly when planted in place than when transplanted.
173| A rooted plant set in a vineyard is cut back after a year to the ground, so that only one eye stands out, with a prop fixed beside it and dung added. In like manner in the second year too it is cut back, and takes strength and feeds within itself what will be equal to the burden. Otherwise, in its haste to bear, slender and thin as a rush, unless it is held back by such chastening, it goes wholly into fruit. Nothing is born more greedy, and unless its strength is kept for bearing, it becomes wholly fruit.
174| The best stakes are those we have spoken of, either of ridica in oak and olive wood, or, if these are lacking, posts of juniper, cypress, laburnum, elder. Stakes of the remaining kinds are cut again every year. Most wholesome on the yoke is reed bound in bundles, which lasts five years. When shorter shoots are joined to one another by a sarmentum in the manner of ropes, the arcs made from this are called funeta.
175| In the third year of the vineyard the vine sends out a quick, strong shoot, and one which age will make a vine. This leaps up on to the yoke. Some then blind it by taking off the eyes with an upturned sickle, to draw it out further, a harmful injury. For it is more useful to establish the habit of bearing, and better to strip away the leaves from the vine once it is joined to the yoke until one is pleased that it is strengthened.
176| There are those who forbid it to be touched in the year next after it was transplanted, and not to be tended with the sickle before the 60th month, and then to be cut back to 3 buds. Others even cut back in the very next year, but so as to add three or four joints each year, and bring it to the yoke only in the fourth. This is slow in fruit on both sides, and moreover withered and knotty, with the growth of dwarfs. It is best that the mother be strong, and afterwards the offspring bold. Nor is that safe which is scarred, a great error of inexperience;
177| whatever is of that sort is born of wounds, not of the mother. Let her have all her strength while she is being strengthened, and she will receive the whole year's fruit when she has been allowed to bear. Nature brings nothing forth in portions. The vine that has grown out sufficiently firm ought to be placed at once on the yoke; if she is still rather weak, she is to be cut back and lodged just beneath the yoke itself.
178| It is decided by strength, not by age. It is rash to command a vine before it has the thickness of a thumb. In the following year the shoots will be brought out, one or two according to the strength of the mother. The same may be nourished also in the year after, if weakness compels, and in the third year at last 2 may be added. Nor are more than four ever to be allowed, and in short fruitfulness is never to be indulged and always to be held in check. Its nature is such that it prefers to bear than to live. Whatever is taken from the wood is added to the fruit. The vine would rather seed be produced than fruit, since fruit is a perishable thing. So it runs riot to its own ruin, and does not enlarge itself, but empties itself out.
179| The nature of the soil too will give counsel. In a lean soil, even if the vine has strength, let it be cut back and kept within the yoke, so that all its bearing may come out under it. That interval ought to be the least, so that it reaches the yoke and hopes for it, but does not hold it, so far from lying back upon it or spreading itself delicately. Let this measure be so tempered that it prefers still to grow rather than to bear.
180| The shoot ought to have two or three buds under the yoke, from which the wood may be born; then it is plunged along the yoke and tied, so that it is held up by the yoke and does not hang, and presently is tied more tightly from the third bud by a binding, since in this way too the rush of the wood is checked and the leaves on this side leap up more thickly. They forbid the tip to be tied back. This is the nature of the thing: the part that is bent down or tied before gives fruit, and most of all the curve itself. What is on this side sends out wood, since the breath of air, I believe, is in the way, and also that pith we have spoken of. The wood which has thus sprung forth will give fruit in the following year.
181| So there are two kinds of shoots: one that comes out of the hard wood and promises wood for the next year is called pampinarium, or, where it is above the scar, fructuarium; the other, from a shoot of one year, is always fructuarium. There is left under the yoke also what is called the custos, the guardian; this is a young shoot, not longer than three buds, which is to give wood the next year, if the vine has spent itself in luxuriance, and another beside it, of the size of a wart, which is called the furunculus, in case the custos should fail.
182| A vine, before it completes its seventh year from the cutting, if it is called out to fruit, grows thin as a rush and dies. Nor is it approved to let an old shoot be sent out at length as far as the fourth prop, which some call dracones, others funiculi, to make what they call masculeta. When the vine has hardened, it is worst to lead it across in the vineyard.
183| In the fifth year the shoots themselves are twisted, and single wood is sent out for single shoots, and then for the next, and the earlier ones are cut off. It is always better to leave a guardian, but this ought to be nearest the vine, and not longer than has been said, and, if the shoots run to luxuriance, they are twisted, so that the vine sends out 4 woods, or 2, if the vineyard is of a single yoke.
184| If a vine is to be ordered by itself without a stake, it will at first require some prop or other, until it learns to stand and to rise upright; the rest is the same from the beginning, but the thumb-lengths are to be divided by pruning in equal balance on every side, so that the fruit does not weigh down on any one part. In passing, the same pressing down will keep it from shooting up on high. For this vineyard any height above three feet totters; for the others the height begins from the fifth foot, provided it does not exceed a man's proper stature.
185| Even for those that are spread on the ground, they put round small cages to mark them out, with pits made around the edge, lest the straying shoots fight with one another as they meet, and the greater part of the earth gathers its vintage so, lying on the ground, since in Africa and in Egypt and Syria and the whole of Asia and in many places of Europe this custom prevails.
186| There, then, the vine must be held down close against the ground, nourished at the root in the same manner and time as in the yoked vineyard, so that always only thumb-lengths are left, in fertile soil with three buds, in thinner with two, and it is better to have many than long ones. What we have said of the nature of the soil will be felt the more strongly the nearer the grape is to the earth.
187| It is most useful for the kinds to be kept apart and for each district to be planted with its own kinds; for a mixture of kinds is discordant even in wine, not only in must; or, if they are mixed, it is necessary to join none but those which ripen together. Yokes should be higher the richer the field and the more level, likewise in a dewy, misty and less windy place; on the contrary lower in a thin, dry, hot soil exposed to winds. The yokes ought to be tied to the stake with the tightest possible knot, the vine held by a light one. Which kinds of vines, and in what soil and sky, ought to be planted, we have taught when we enumerated their natures and those of the wines.
188| About the rest of the cultivation there is violent dispute. Most order the vineyard to be dug over through the whole summer after each dew; others forbid it while the vine is budding, for the eyes are shaken off and rubbed away by the passage of those who enter, and for this reason all cattle ought to be kept far off, but most of all the woolly kind, since they most easily carry off the buds. Rakes also are hostile when the grape is coming to maturity, and it is enough for the vineyard to be dug over three times a year: from the spring equinox to the rising of the Vergiliae, and when the Dog Star rises, and when the berry is turning dark.
189| Some fix it thus: an old vineyard once, after the vintage before the winter solstice, while others think it enough to bare the roots and manure, a second time from the Ides of April, before it conceives, that is, on the 6th day before the Ides of May; then before it begins to flower, and when it has finished flowering, and when the grape is changing colour. The more experienced affirm that if it is dug over oftener than is right, the berries become so tender that they burst. Things that are to be dug should be dug before the hot hours of the day, just as one should neither plough nor dig mud, and the dust raised by digging is of use against the sun and the mists.
190| The spring stripping of leaves is agreed to be from the Ides of May, within 10 days, at any rate before it begins to flower, and it ought to be done below the yoke. About the next stripping opinions differ. Some think the vine should be stripped when it has finished flowering, others just at ripeness. But on these the precepts of Cato will decide. For the method of pruning also has to be handed on.
191| They set about this straight after the vintage, where the warmth of the sky allows. But in this too it ought never to be done, on the reckoning of nature, before the rising of the Aquila, as we shall teach in the causes of the stars in the next volume, nay rather not before the west wind, since the fault of over-hasty haste is doubtful. If some relapse of winter should bite the vines while they are wounded by the fresh treatment, it is certain that their buds are dulled by the cold and the wounds split, and that the eyes are burnt by the fault of the sky as the tear trickles down. For frost
192| who does not know they become brittle? That reckoning belongs to the labourers on great estates, not to nature's lawful haste. The earlier they are pruned, on suitable days, the more wood they pour out; the later, the richer the fruit. Therefore it will be fitting to prune lean vines first, strong ones last, to make every cut slanting, so that rain may easily run off, and turned toward the ground with as slight a scar as possible, the edge of the knife sharpened and the wound smoothed; and the cutting back is always to be between 2 buds, so that there is no wound to the eyes in the part cut off.
193| They judge that part to be black, and that it must be cut back until sound wood is reached, since useful wood does not come out of what is diseased. If a lean vine has no suitable shoots, it is most useful to cut it back to the ground and draw out new ones; in stripping the leaves not to take off those leaves that go with a grape, for that undermines the grapes too, except in a young vineyard. Those born on the side, not from an eye, are judged useless, since even the grape that is born from the hard wood stiffens, so that it cannot be removed except with iron.
194| Some think it more useful for a stake to be set between 2 vines, and they are thus more easily bared at the root, and it is better for a vineyard of a single yoke, provided the yoke itself has strength and the district is not hostile with blasts. In the fourfold vineyard the prop ought to be as near as possible to the load, yet, so that the baring of the roots does not feel it as a hindrance, not more than a cubit away; they direct the roots to be bared before pruning.
195| Cato lays down the following precepts on the whole cultivation of vines: Make the vineyard as high as possible and tie it properly, provided you do not bind it too tightly. Tend it in this way: bare the heads of the vines at sowing time. Dig round the vineyard when pruned, begin to plough, draw continuous furrows to and fro. Layer the tender vines as soon as possible, and harrow in this way: prune the old ones as little as possible; rather, if need be, throw them down and cut them off two years after. It will be time to cut back a young vine when it is strong.
196| If the vineyard has been made bald of vine, put furrows in between and plant there a living root. Remove shade from the furrows, and dig often. In an old vineyard, if it is lean, sow ocinum—do not sow any that bears grain—and put dung, chaff, grape-husks, something of these, round the heads.
197| When the vineyard begins to put out leaves, strip them. Tie young vineyards often, so that the stem is not broken; and for the one that is already going on to a pole, tie its tender leaves lightly and stretch them out, so that they stand properly. When the grape begins to turn colour,
198| tie up the vines [….]. A vine is grafted in one way in spring, in another when the grape is in flower; the latter is best.—If you wish to move an old vineyard to another place, you may do so, provided it is no thicker than an arm. First prune it; leave not more than two buds. Dig it well out from the roots, and take care not to wound the roots. Place it as it is in a pit or in a furrow and cover it and tread it well down, and in the same way set up the vineyard, tie it and bend it as it was, and dig often.—The ocinum which he orders to be sown in the vineyard, the ancients called a fodder that endures shade, which comes up very fast.
199| There follows the system of the arbustum, wonderfully condemned by Saserna father and son, celebrated by Scrofa, the oldest and most expert after Cato, and not even by Scrofa conceded except to Italy, though it is judged, over so long a time, that noble wines are born only in arbusta and in these too the higher are the more praised, as the lower are the more abundant. So much is gained by height.
200| On this principle the trees also are chosen. First of all the elm, excepting the Atinian for its excessive foliage. Then the black poplar, for the same reason, being less dense in leaf. Most do not scorn the ash and the fig, and even the olive, if it is not shady in its branches. The planting and care of these have been fully treated. Before the 36th month they are forbidden to be touched with the knife. The arms are kept alternately, pruned in alternate years, and in the sixth year they are married to the vine.
201| Transpadane Italy, besides the trees mentioned above, furnishes its fields with arbusta of cornel, opulus, lime, maple, ornus, hornbeam, oak, and Venetia with willow because of the wetness of the soil. And the elm, cut off in the middle, is arranged in three benches of branches, hardly any tree being higher than 20 feet. Their storeys spread out from the eighth foot of height on hills and dry fields, from the twelfth in plains and damp places.
202| The palms ought to face the midday sun, the branches to be trained up from the projection in the manner of fingers, with the fine growth of even thin twigs trimmed on them, so that they do not cast shade. The right interval of trees, if the ground is ploughed, is forty feet back and front, twenty on the sides; if it is not ploughed, the same in all directions. Often they nourish ten vines to each tree, the farmer being blamed who has fewer than three.
203| To marry any but strong trees is harmful, since the vines' quick growth kills them. It is necessary to plant in a pit three feet deep, the vines standing a foot apart from one another and from the tree. There is no malleolus there and no trenching, no expense of digging, inasmuch as the system of the arbustum excels by this peculiar endowment, that crops borne from the same ground are good for the vines as well, and the height, asserting itself, is not compelled, as in a vineyard, to be fenced against injuries from animals by a wall or a hedge or at the very least at the expense of ditches.
204| In the arbustum, of the aforesaid methods there is only that of rooted plants, and likewise of layers, and this is twofold, as we have said: that by baskets from the storey itself, which is most approved because it is safest from cattle; the other, with the vine or shoot bent down beside its own tree or round the nearest unmarried one. What is above ground of the mother is ordered to be scraped, that it may not sprout. In the earth not fewer than 4 buds are buried to take root, and outside two are left at the head.
205| The vine in an arbustum stands [entire] in a furrow 4 feet long, three wide, and two and a half deep. A year later the layer is cut through to the pith, so that it may gradually grow used to its own roots; the stem is cut back from the head to two buds; in the third year the whole mergus is cut off and sought again deeper in the earth, that it may not put out leaves from the cut. The rooted plant ought to be taken up straight after the vintage.
206| Recently it was found to plant the draco beside the tree; so we call a shoot that has served its time and hardened over several years. This, cut off at as great a size as possible, with the bark scraped from three parts of its length, as far as it is to be buried—whence they also call it rasilis—, is pressed down in a furrow, the remaining part being set upright against the tree; it is very quick in a vine. If the vine or the soil be thin, it is usual to cut it down as near the ground as possible until the root is firm, just as it is not to be planted when dewy or in a blast of the north wind. The vines themselves ought to look to the north, but their shoots to the south.
207| There is no hurry to prune the young vine, but first the wood is to be gathered into circles, and pruning applied only to a strong one; a vine on an arbustum generally comes to fruit a year later than one on a yoke. There are some who forbid pruning at all before it has equalled the tree in length. At the first cut let it be cut back 6 feet from the ground, a whip being left below and forced to grow by the bending of the wood. When it has been pruned, let 3 buds remain on it, not more.
208| Of these, the shoots let go are in the next year to be spread out on the lowest benches and year by year to climb to the higher ones, a hardwood being always left on each storey and one outlet, which climbs up as far as is pleasing. For the rest, in pruning, all the whips that have just borne are cut back, and new ones are scattered over the storeys, the tendrils cut round on every side. The native pruning, with the locks of the vines thrown down over the branches, clothes the tree, and the locks themselves with grapes; the Gallic is extended on traduces; that of the Aemilian Way on ridicae round the circuit of the Atinian elms, avoiding their foliage.
209| There is the inexperience of some in hanging a vine beneath a branch with a binding, a suffocating injury. It ought to be held by a withy, not squeezed; nay more, those who have willows to spare prefer to do it with this softer binding, and the Sicilians with the grass they call ampelodesmos, and all Greece with rush, cyperus and ulva. Even when freed from the binding, for some days it should wander and spread unarranged and lie back on the ground, which it has looked on throughout the whole year;
210| for as beasts of burden are helped by rolling after the yoke, and dogs after running, so then also the loins of vines are helped by being stretched out. The tree too itself rejoices, relieved from constant burden, like one drawing breath, and there is nothing in the work of nature that does not want some turns of holiday after the example of days and nights. For this reason pruning straight after the vintage is disapproved, while the vines are still tired from bearing fruit. When pruned, let them again be tied in another place, for they feel the track of the binding with undoubted distress.
211| The traduces of the Gallic cultivation, two on each side from the flanks, if the trees stand at an equal distance of forty feet, four, if at twenty, are mingled with one another coming to meet, and tied together made one, stiffened on the way by the company of twigs, where they fail, or, if their shortness does not allow it, stretched out with a hook tied on to the widowed tree. They used to cut off a traduces two years old—for it is burdened by age—; it is better to give time, that they may make a rasilis if the thickness permits. In other cases it is useful that the bolsters of the future draco be fed.
212| There is still one kind, midway between this and the layer, of burying whole vines in the ground and splitting them with wedges and propagating into several furrows at once from one, the slenderness of the single plants being strengthened by shafts bound round and by leaves not cut off, which run out from the sides. The Novarian farmer, not content with a crowd of traduces or with a supply of branches, puts forks besides and winds the shoots round them; and so, besides the faults of the soil, the wines too become harsh through the cultivation.
213| Another fault is near the City among the people of Aricia, whose vines are pruned in alternate years, not because that profits the vine, but because, through cheapness, the expenses exceed the return. The Carsulan people follow a middle course, pruning only the decayed parts of the vines and those beginning to dry up, and leaving the rest to the grape. When the superfluous load is taken away, the fewness of the wounds serves in place of all nourishment; but unless in a rich soil such cultivation degenerates into the wild vine.
214| Arbusta need to be ploughed as deep as possible, although the care of grain does not demand it. It is not the custom to strip their leaves; and this is a saving of labour. They are pruned along with the vine, the density of branches being thinned, those which are superfluous and consume nourishment. We have forbidden the cuts to face north or south; better if neither towards sunset. Such ulcers too hurt long and heal with difficulty, from too much cold or heat. There is not the same freedom as in the vine, since the sides are fixed, but it is easier to hide the wounds and turn them aside where you wish. In the trimming of trees on the upturned side, cups as it were are to be made, so that moisture does not stand.
215| Props are to be added to the vine, which it may climb by taking hold of them, if they are of the larger sort. The pergulas of noble vines, they hand down, should be pruned at the Quinquatrus, and those whose grapes one wishes to keep, at the waning of the moon; and those pruned at the new moon, they say, are exposed to no animals. On another reasoning, they hold that vines are to be trimmed by night at the full moon, when it is in Leo, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Taurus, and that in general planting should be done at the full or at any rate the waxing moon. In Italy ten cultivators suffice for each hundred iugera of vineyards.
216| And now that the planting and care of trees have been fully treated, since we have spoken amply of palms and cytisus among foreign trees, the rest of their nature must be shown, so that nothing may be wanting, a matter of great concern for all these. For trees too are attacked by diseases. What indeed that is born is free of these evils? Wild trees, they say, have no deadly diseases, and are troubled only by hail in budding or in flower, and are also scorched by heat or a rather cold blast on an untimely day, for in their own season frosts even do good, as we have said.
217| What then? Do not vines also perish with cold? This is indeed the means by which a fault of the soil is detected, since it does not happen except in a cold one. And so by winters we test the hardness of the sky, not of the soil. Nor are the weakest trees endangered by frost, but the greatest, and when they are thus troubled their topmost shoots dry up, since the moisture, checked, could not reach there.
218| Some diseases of trees are common, some peculiar to kinds. Common are worm-eating and sideratio and pain of the limbs, whence weakness of the parts, with even a sharing of names with the miseries of man. We certainly say mutilated bodies, and eyes of buds burnt up, and much of a like lot.
219| And so they suffer both hunger and indigestion, which come from the quantity of moisture, and some even from obesity, as all that bear resin are turned by excess of fat into pitch-wood, and when the roots too begin to grow fat they perish, like animals from too much fat, sometimes also by a plague among kinds, as among men now the slave households, now the plebs of town or country.
220| Some are worm-eaten more, some less, but nearly all are so, and birds find it out by the sound of the hollow bark. Now even this has begun to be a luxury, and the very big grubs of oaks are a rather dainty food—they call them cossi—and these too are fattened on meal, like birds for the table.
221| Pears, apples and figs feel this most of trees, less those that are bitter and fragrant. Of the worms that appear in figs, some are born from the figs themselves, others are produced by the one called cerastes; all however take the shape of the cerastes, and give out a sound of small shrill noise. The sorb tree too is infested by red and hairy worms and so dies; the medlar also in old age is subject to this disease.
222| Sideratio comes wholly from the sky. For this reason hail also is to be understood among these causes, and carbunculation, and what happens through the injury of hoarfrosts. For this, settling on the tender crops that are lured out by the warmth of spring and dare to burst forth, burns the milky eyes of the buds, which in the flower they call carbunculus. The nature of hoarfrost is more destructive, since falling it settles and freezes, and is not driven off even by any breeze, because it comes only when the air is still and clear. Yet the special mark of sideratio is the heat of droughts under the rising of the Dog Star, when grafted and young trees die, especially the fig and the vine.
223| The olive, besides worm-eating, which it feels equally with the fig, suffers also from the clavus, or, if one prefers to call it, fungus or patella. This is a burning by the sun. Cato hands down that red moss also does harm. Excessive fertility too does harm in most cases to vines and olives. Scab is common to all. Impetigo and cochleae, which are wont to grow on, are peculiar faults of figs, and not everywhere. For there are also some sicknesses of places.
224| But as man has torment of the sinews, so has the tree, and in two ways alike. For either the force of the disease breaks into the feet, that is, the roots, or into the joints, that is, the fingers of the tips, which go out farthest from the whole body. So they turn black, and among the Greeks each fault has its own name.
225| At first pain on every side, soon also a brittle leanness of these parts, finally wasting and death, the sap not entering or not arriving, and figs feel this most. The caprificus is exempt from all the things we have so far spoken of. Scab is produced by tenacious dews after the Vergiliae; for if they were more plentiful, they drench the tree, and do not scratch with scab, and the unripe figs fall; or if the rains were excessive, the fig suffers in another way, with soaked roots.
226| For vines, besides worm-eating and sideratio, a peculiar disease is articulatio, from three causes: one, the violence of storms when the buds are carried off; another, as Theophrastus noted, when they are cut out on the upturned side; the third, when they are hurt by ignorance of cultivation. For all their injuries are felt at the joints. A kind of sideratio also is the roratio on them as they finish flowering, or when the berries, before they grow, are cooked to a hardness. They sicken also when they have been chilled, the eyes of the trimmed vines being hurt by blight. And this comes of heat out of season, since all things depend on measure and a fixed balance.
227| Faults arise also from the fault of the cultivators, when the vines are bound too tightly, as has been said, or the digger has struck them with a hurtful blow, or even the underploughman unwittingly has dislocated the roots or scaled the body. There is also a certain bruising from a blunter knife. By all these causes they bear cold or heat with more difficulty, since every injury from outside passes into the sore. Weakest of all is the apple, and most of all the sweet one.
228| In some, debility brings barrenness, not death, as if one should take the top from a pine or a palm. For they become sterile and do not die. The fruits themselves, too, sometimes sicken without the tree, if at the necessary times rains or warmth or breezes have failed or, on the other hand, been in excess. For they fall or become worse. Worst of all is when a shower strikes the vine or the olive while it is finishing flowering, since the fruit falls away at once.
229| From the same cause are born also the urucae, a dire animal, and they eat off the foliage, and in some cases the flower also, of olives, as at Miletus, and leave the tree grazed over in an ugly state. This evil is born of moist and lingering warmth. Another comes from the same, if a sharper sun follows and scorches the very fault and so changes it. There is still another peculiar to olives and vines—they call it araneus—when, as with webs, they wrap the fruit round and consume it.
230| Certain blasts also burn these most, but other fruits too. For in certain [years] even the fruits themselves feel worm-eating of their own, apples, pears, medlars, pomegranates. In the olive the issue is doubtful, since those born beneath the skin take away the fruit, or increase it, if they have been in the very stone gnawing it. Rains that come after Arcturus prevent their being generated. The same, if they were southern, breed them in the druppae too, which then, as they ripen, are especially liable to fall. This happens more with irrigated trees, even if they have not fallen, and they must be rejected.
231| There are also kinds of gnats troublesome to some, as to acorns, to the fig; these appear to be born of moisture, especially of sweet moisture lying beneath the bark. And sickness for the most part is in these.
232| Certain causes of seasons or of places are not properly called diseases, since they kill at once, as wasting when it has attacked a tree, or blight, or a blast peculiar to some region, as in Apulia the atabulus, in Euboea the Olympias. For this, if it has blown about the winter solstice, scorches with cold and dries them so that no suns afterwards can restore them. Valleys and the land adjoining rivers suffer in this kind, and especially the vine, the olive, the fig.
233| When this has happened, it is at once detected in budding, in the olive more slowly. But in all it is a sign of reviving if they have lost their leaves. Otherwise those which you would think had got the better die. Sometimes the leaves dry up and the same revive. Other trees in northern lands, as Pontus, Thrace, suffer from cold or frost, if after the winter solstice it has continued for 40 days. And there and in the other parts, if a great freezing follows straight upon the bearing of fruit, it kills even in a few days.
234| Things that depend on the injury of men have their causes according to [….]. Pitch, oil, fat are hostile especially to young trees. With the bark stripped off in a ring they are killed, except the cork tree, which is even helped thereby; for as it thickens it chokes and strangles. Nor is the andrachle harmed, if the body is not cut at the same time. Otherwise also the cherry and the lime and the vine throw off a bark, but not the vital one nor that nearest the body, but the one that is driven out when another grows up beneath.
235| In some the bark is by nature cracked, as in plane trees. In the lime it grows again, all but a little. So for those whose scar it draws, they apply mud and dung as cure, and sometimes they do good, if no more violent force of cold or heat has followed. Some die more slowly in this way, as the robur and the quercus. The time of year also matters. For if one strips fir or pine while the sun is passing Taurus or Gemini, when they are budding, they die at once; the same injury suffered in winter they bear longer.
236| Likewise the ilex, the robur and the quercus. If the stripping was narrow, nothing is harmed in those mentioned above; but in the weaker, and in a thin soil, the stripping on one side only kills. Decapitation has a like effect on the picea, the cedar, the cypress—for these perish when the top is taken off or burnt with fire—and likewise grazing by animals.
237| The olive too, if a goat licks it, becomes sterile, Varro is our authority, as we have said. Some die of this injury, some only become worse, as almonds—for from sweet they are changed into bitter—and some even better, as among the Chians a pear which they call phocis.
238| For we have said for which trees cutting off the trunk is of benefit. Most perish also with the stock split, except the vine, apple, fig, pomegranates, and some even from a mere wound. The pine despises this injury, and all that produce resin. That they die when the roots are cut off is least surprising; many die also not with all cut, but with the largest cut off, or those among them which are vital.
239| They kill one another by shade or density and by robbery of nourishment. Ivy also kills by binding—mistletoe does no good—and cytisus, and it is killed by that which the Greeks call halimon. The nature of some does not indeed kill but harms by odour or a mixture of juice, as the radish and the laurel do the vine. For the vine is understood to be a smeller and to be tinged with odour in a wonderful way, and therefore, when it is near, to turn away and recede and flee the hostile flavour.
240| From this Androcydes took a remedy against drunkenness, directing the radish to be chewed. The vine hates also cabbage and every vegetable, hates also the hazel, unless they are far off, and is sad and sick. Natron and alum, hot sea water, and bean hulls or those of the ervum are the last of poisons.
241| Among the faults of trees there is room also for prodigies. We find figs born beneath the leaves, a vine and a pomegranate that bore fruit from the stock, not from shoot or branches, a vine bearing grapes without leaves, olives also that lost their leaves with the berries clinging. There are chance marvels too. For an olive wholly burnt has come to life again, and in Boeotia figs gnawed down by locusts have sprouted again.
242| Trees change even in colour, and from black become white, not always as a prodigy, but those most which are born from seed. The white poplar too passes into the black. Some think that the sorb, if it comes into warmer places, becomes sterile. As prodigies, however, sweet fruits become sour, or sweet from sour, figs from the caprificus or the contrary, a grave portent when they are changed for the worse, from olive to wild olive, from white grape and fig to black, or, as at Laodicea on the coming of Xerxes, a plane changed into an olive.
243| With portents of this kind the volume of Aristander among the Greeks teems, that we may not go on without end, and among us the commentaries of Gaius Epidius, in which trees are even found speaking. In the Cumaean territory a tree sank down as a grave portent a little before the civil wars of Pompey the Great, with a few branches projecting; it was found in the Sibylline books that there would be a destruction of men, and so much the greater the nearer to the City [afterwards] it was done.
244| There are prodigies too when trees spring up in strange places, as on the heads of statues or on altars, and when strange ones spring on trees themselves. A fig grew on a laurel at Cyzicus before the siege. In like manner at Tralles a palm on the base of Caesar the dictator about the time of his civil wars. And at Rome on the Capitol, on the altar of Jupiter, in the war of Perseus a palm that sprang up foretold victory and triumphs. When this was thrown down by storms, a fig sprang up in the same place in the lustrum of the censors Marcus Messala and Gaius Cassius, from which time Piso, a weighty authority, has handed down that chastity was overthrown.
245| Above all that has ever been heard of, there will be a prodigy in our own age, which happened in the ruin of the emperor Nero, in the Marrucine territory, in the olive grove of Vettius Marcellus, one of the first of the equestrian order, when the whole olive grove crossed the public road and the cornfields from the opposite side passed over into the place of the olive grove.
246| Now that the diseases of trees have been set out, it is fitting to speak of the remedies also. Of these some are common to all, some peculiar to certain ones. Common are baring the roots, heaping earth, letting the roots be blown on or covered, giving irrigation as drink or withholding it, dung for those exhausted of sap, pruning to relieve of burden, likewise, with the sap let out, a kind of drawing of blood, scraping round the bark, thinning of vines and subduing of shoots, and for the buds, if cold has made them withered and rough, a re-pumicing and a kind of polishing.
247| Of these some trees delight in more, some in fewer, as the cypress both disdains waters and dung and digging round and lopping, and hates all remedies, nay is even killed by irrigation; the vine and the pomegranates are especially nourished by them. The fig tree itself is nourished by irrigation, but its fruit withers. Almonds, if they are tended by digging, lose their flower.
248| Nor ought grafted trees to be dug round before they are strong enough to bear fruit. Most want what is burdensome and superfluous lopped from them, as we our nails and hair. Old ones are cut back entire and rise again from some sucker, but not all, only those whose nature we have said bears it.
249| Irrigation is useful in the heats of summer, hostile in winter, in autumn varying also with the nature of the soil, since the vintager of the Spains gathers grapes on standing water. For the rest, in the greater part of the world it is fitting to divert even the autumn rains. About the rising of the Dog Star irrigation is most beneficial, and not even then excessive, since it harms by making the roots drunk. And age tempers the measure, for young ones thirst less. Those that are used to it most need watering; on the contrary, those born in dry places do not seek moisture except what is necessary.
250| Rougher wines at all events desire watering in the Sulmo territory of Italy, in the Fabian district, where they water the fields too. And it is wonderful: grasses are killed by the water, crops are nourished, and the watering is in place of the hoe. In the same territory in winter—so much the more if snows lie or frost—lest the cold burn the vines, they pour around it from the irrigation, which there they call warming, a memorable nature in a river of the sun, the same of a chill hardly to be borne in summer.
251| The remedies for carbunculi and robigines we shall show in the next volume. Meanwhile there is also a kind of scarification among remedies, when, because the bark is lean from sickness and draws itself tight and presses the vital parts of trees more than is right, they press the sharpened edge of the knife with both hands and open it with continuous cuts and as it were loosen the skin. That this was wholesome is proved by the scars, which widen and are filled up by the body growing within,
252| and in great part the medicine of men and of trees is alike, since in them also the bones are bored. Almonds are made sweet from bitter, if, the stock being dug round and bored through round the lowest part, the phlegm that flows is wiped away. And from elms the useless sap is drawn off, by boring above ground to the pith, in old age, or when they are felt to be overflowing with too much nourishment.
253| The same is done also for figs with a swollen bark, by light slanting cuts. So it comes about that the fruit does not fall. For fruit trees which bud and do not bear, a stone is put in a split root, and they become fertile; the same is done in almonds with a wedge of oak driven in, in pears and sorbs with pine-wood and ash and earth covering it.
254| It is also beneficial to trim round the roots of vines and fig trees that are growing too luxuriantly, and to put ashes on the trimmed roots. Figs are made to ripen late if the first unripe figs are pulled off when they have grown larger than a bean; for others grow up underneath which ripen later. Fig trees also become sturdier and more fruitful if, when they begin to come into leaf, the tips of every branch are pulled off; for caprification ripens the fruit.
255| In caprification it is clear that gnats are born from the unripe wild figs, since when they have flown out no seeds are found inside, and it is evident that the seeds have turned into the gnats. So great is their eagerness to get out that most of them break out leaving a foot or part of a wing behind. There is also another kind of gnat, which they call centrinae, like the drones of bees in their idleness and malice, to the ruin of the true and useful ones;
256| for they kill them and die along with them. Moths too attack the seeds of figs; the remedy against them is to bury a cutting of lentiscus in the same trench, upside down, with the end that was the top downward. Rubrica mixed with amurca and poured on the roots together with dung, when the trees begin to come into leaf, makes fig trees most productive. Of wild figs, the black ones and the ones growing in rocky places are most highly praised, since they have the most seeds. Caprification itself is done after rain.
257| Above all, care must be taken that faults do not arise from the remedies, as happens when treatment is excessive or ill-timed. Thinning out is good for trees, but cutting them back every year is most harmful. Only the vine requires pruning every year; the myrtle, the pomegranate and the olive need it every other year, because they quickly put out shoots. The rest should be pruned less often, none in autumn, and they should not even be scraped except in spring. In pruning, the wound to the vital parts [….] everything is, whatever is not superfluous.
258| The same principle holds for dung. Trees delight in it, but care must be taken not to apply it in the heat of the sun, not to apply it unseasoned, and not stronger than is needed. Pig dung burns vines unless five years have been allowed to pass, except when it is diluted by watering; and so does the refuse of tanners unless mixed with water, and likewise if it is put on too freely. The right amount is thought to be 3 modii for every 10 square feet. But the nature of the soil will decide this.
259| With pigeon dung and pig dung they also treat the wounds of trees. If pomegranates grow sour, they recommend that the roots be laid bare and pig dung put on them; in that year the fruit will be winy, and in the next sweet. Others think the trees should be watered with human urine mixed with water four times a year, an amphora each time, or that the tops should be sprinkled with wine in which laser has been dissolved; if the pomegranates split on the tree, the stalk should be twisted; for figs in any case, amurca should be poured on, and for other sickly trees the lees of wine, or else lupine should be sown around their roots.
260| Water in which lupine has been boiled, poured round the trees, is also good for the fruit. Figs drop when it has thundered at the Volcanalia; the remedy is to strew the threshing floors with barley straw beforehand. Lime applied to the roots makes cherries early and forces them to ripen. With these too, as with all fruit, it is better to thin them out, so that those left may grow larger.
261| Some trees are improved by punishment or roused by a sharp bite, like palms and the lentiscus; for they are nourished with salt water. Ashes have the force of salt, but a milder one; so they are sprinkled on figs and on rue, so that they may not become wormy and their roots may not rot. Moreover, they recommend pouring salt water on the roots of vines too, if they are inclined to weep; but if their fruit falls, ashes should be sprinkled with vinegar, and the vines themselves smeared with it, or with sandaraca if the grapes rot; and if they are not fertile, they should be watered and smeared with ashes worked up with sharp vinegar;
262| and if they do not ripen their fruit, which withers first, the vines should be cut back to the roots, and the wound and the root fibres soaked in sharp vinegar and stale urine, then covered over with this mud, and dug about often. In the case of olives, if they have promised too little fruit, people lay their roots bare to the winter cold, and they profit from this chastisement. All these things depend on the year's weather, and are sometimes needed later, sometimes sooner. Fire too is beneficial in some cases, as with the reed; for when it has been burned it comes up thicker and softer.
263| Cato also compounds certain medicines, distinguishing the quantities as well: he directs that an amphora be poured on the roots of the larger trees and an urna on those of the smaller, of amurca and water in equal parts, the roots having first been gradually laid bare; for the olive, in addition, straw is first to be placed round it, and likewise for the fig; and for the fig especially, earth is to be heaped up round the roots in spring. In this way, he says, the unripe figs will not fall, the yield will be greater, and the tree will not become scabby.
264| In the same way, so that the convolvolus may not appear in a vineyard, he directs that 2 congii of amurca be boiled down to the thickness of honey, and then boiled again with a third part of bitumen and a quarter part of sulphur, in the open air, since it catches fire under a roof. The vines are to be smeared with this around their heads and under their arms, and so there will be no convolvolus. Some are content to fumigate the vineyards with the smoke of this mixture, with the wind behind it, for three days running.
265| Most people think there is no less help and nourishment in urine than Cato thought there was in amurca, provided only that an equal part of water is added, since by itself it does harm. Some give the name volucre to a creature that gnaws the young grapes as they come on. To prevent this, they wipe their pruning hooks, after they have been sharpened, with a beaver's skin, and prune with them so; or they smear the same hooks with bear's blood after pruning.
266| Ants too are pests of trees. People drive them away by smearing the trunks with rubrica and liquid pitch; they also collect them in one place by hanging a fish nearby, or smear the roots with crushed lupine mixed with oil. Many kill both these and moles with amurca; and against caterpillars, and to keep apples from rotting, they recommend touching the tops of the trees with the gall of a green lizard; but against caterpillars in particular, that a woman at the onset of her monthly period should walk round each tree barefoot and with her girdle loosened.
267| Likewise, so that no animal may crop the foliage with harmful grazing, the leaves should be sprinkled with diluted cow dung each time rain falls, since the potency of the remedy is washed off by it. Human ingenuity devises some remarkable things, seeing that most people believe hailstorms can be turned aside by a charm, the words of which I for my part would not venture to include in earnest, although Cato published words to be joined to split reeds against dislocated limbs. The same Cato allowed sacred trees and groves to be felled, a sacrifice having first been made, and he gave the method and the prayer for it in the same book.

======== Natural History — Book XVIII ========

1| Next comes the nature of grain crops, of gardens and of flowers, and of everything else besides trees and shrubs that the bountiful earth produces, a vast subject for study even in the plants alone, if one considers their variety, their number, their flowers, scents and colours, and their juices and powers, which the earth brings forth for the health or the pleasure of mankind. In this part, first
2| of all, it pleases me to defend the cause of the earth and to stand by the parent of all things, although I defended her at the beginning of this work. Since, however, the subject itself brings us to consider that she also brings forth harmful things, we load her with our own crimes and charge our guilt to her. She has produced poisons. But who has discovered them except man? For birds and beasts it is enough to beware of them and avoid them. And though elephants and uri sharpen and file their horns on a tree, rhinoceroses on a rock, and boars the daggers of their tusks on both, and though animals know how to prepare themselves to do harm, which of them except man dips its weapons in poison as well?
3| We dip our arrows too, and we give iron itself something more harmful than itself; we pollute even the rivers and the elements of nature, and turn the very thing by which we live into a means of destruction. Nor should we suppose that these things are unknown to the animals: we have shown what they prepare for their battles against serpents and what they devise for healing after the fight. Yet none except man fights with poison not its own.
4| Let us therefore admit our guilt, we who are not content even with what grows naturally; for how many more kinds of poison are made by human hands! What? Are not some human beings, too, born like poisons? Their black tongue flickers like a serpent's, and the corruption of their mind scorches whatever it touches as they find fault with everything; and like birds of ill omen they begrudge even the darkness that is their own and the quiet of the very nights with their groaning, which is their only voice, so that, like ill-omened creatures, even meeting them forbids one to act or to be of use to life. And they know no other reward for their abominable spirit than to hate everything.
5| But in this too the majesty of nature is the same. How many more good people she has produced, as she has produced grain! How much more fertile she is in the things that help and nourish! In valuing them and rejoicing in them, we too shall leave those human brambles to their own burning and go on with our work of improving life, all the more steadfastly because we seek our reward in the work more than in fame. For our discourse concerns the countryside and the practices of farming, but these are what life rests on, and among the ancients they received the highest honour.
6| Romulus first of all instituted the priests of the fields, and called himself the twelfth brother among them, the sons of his nurse Acca Larentia. He gave this priesthood, as its most sacred emblem, a crown of ears of grain bound with a white fillet; this was the first crown among the Romans, and the honour ends only with life and goes with its holders even into exile and captivity. In those days 2 iugera were enough for each of the Roman people,
7| and he assigned no one a larger measure. Which of the slaves of the emperor Nero, a short while ago, would have been content with pleasure gardens of this size? They like to have fishponds larger than that, and one may be thankful if some do not have kitchens larger. Numa instituted the worship of the gods with grain and supplication with salted meal, and, as Hemina records, the roasting of far, since roasted far was more wholesome as food; he achieved this in the only possible way, by ruling that nothing was pure for divine worship unless it had been roasted.
8| He also instituted the Fornacalia, a festival for roasting far, and one equally sacred to the Termini of the fields. For these were the gods they knew best in those days; and they named Seia from sowing and Segesta from the crops, whose statues we see in the Circus (it is forbidden by religion to name the third of these under a roof). And they would not even taste the new grain or wine before the priests had offered the first fruits.
9| A iugum was the name for the area that could be ploughed in a day by a single yoke of oxen; an actus, the distance the oxen were driven with the plough in one proper stretch. This was 120 feet, and doubled in length it made a iugerum. The most generous gifts to generals and brave citizens were as much land as each could plough round in a single day at most, and also quartarii of far or heminae, contributed by the people.
10| The first surnames too came from this: Pilumnus, for the man who had invented the pestle for the mills; Piso, from pounding; and then those of the Fabii, the Lentuli and the Cicerones, according as each sowed some particular crop best. In the family of the Junii they gave the name Bubulcus to the man who handled oxen best. Indeed, in sacred matters nothing was more binding than the bond of confarreatio, and newly married brides carried a cake of far before them.
11| To farm one's land badly was judged a disgrace worthy of the censor's mark; and, as Cato tells us, when men praising a good man called him a good farmer and a good tenant, they were thought to have praised him in the highest terms. From this too they called men locupletes, "rich", as being full of loci, that is, of land. Pecunia, "money", itself was named from pecus, "livestock". Even now everything from which the people receive revenue is called "pastures" in the censors' records, because for a long time this was the only public revenue. Fines too were reckoned only in sheep and oxen, and the kindliness of the ancient laws should not be passed over: it was laid down that whoever imposed a fine should name a sheep before he named an ox.
12| They called those who celebrated games in honour of oxen Bubetii. King Servius was the first to stamp bronze with the image of sheep and oxen. Under the Twelve Tables it was a capital offence for an adult to have pastured his animals by stealth at night on crops obtained by ploughing, or to have cut them, and they ordered him to be hanged and put to death as an offering to Ceres, a heavier punishment than for one convicted of homicide; a person under age was to be flogged at the praetor's discretion, or a judgement given for the damage or for double the damage.
13| Then the distinction and honour of the citizenship itself came from nowhere else. The rustic tribes were the most praised, those of men who held lands in the country, while the urban tribes, into which to be transferred was a disgrace, were a reproach of idleness. And so there were only four, named from the parts of the City in which they lived: Suburana, Palatina, Collina, Esquilina. On market days they revisited the City, and for that reason it was not lawful to hold the assemblies on market days, so that the rural plebs might not be called away.
14| Rest and sleep were on straw. The very glory, finally, they named adoria from the honour of far. For myself I admire even the words of ancient meaning; for so it stands in the commentaries of the pontiffs: For the performing of the dog-augury the days are to be fixed before the grain comes out of the sheaths and not before it comes to the sheaths.
15| Therefore with these habits not only did the crops suffice, no province feeding Italy, but the cheapness of the corn supply too was incredible. Manius Marcius, aedile of the plebs, first gave grain to the people at an as a modius. Lucius Minucius Augurinus, who had convicted Spurius Maelius, reduced the price of far to an as at three market days running, as eleventh tribune of the plebs, for which reason a statue was set up to him outside the Porta Trigemina by the people, the money being collected.
16| Seius in his aedileship furnished grain to the people at an as, for which reason statues were also dedicated to him on the Capitol and the Palatine, and he himself on his last day was carried on the shoulders of the people to the pyre. In the year when the Mother of the gods was conveyed to Rome, they relate that in that summer a greater harvest was made than in the ten preceding years.
17| Marcus Varro is our authority that when Lucius Metellus led very many elephants in his triumph, the modii of far were at an as each, likewise congii of wine, and 30 pounds of dried fig, 10 pounds of oil, 12 pounds of meat. Nor did this come from the great estates of individuals who kept off their neighbours, since even by the law of Licinius Stolo, with a limit of only five hundred iugera enclosed, he himself was condemned under his own law, when he held more by putting his son in his place.
18| That measure belonged to a commonwealth already running to luxury. Indeed the address of Manius Curius, after his triumphs and the immeasurable extent of lands added to the empire, is well known: that the citizen was understood to be dangerous for whom seven iugera were not enough. This was the measure assigned to the plebs after the kings were driven out.
19| What then was the cause of so great fertility? The fields were then tilled by the very hands of the generals, as it is right to believe, the earth rejoicing in a laurelled ploughshare and a ploughman who had triumphed, whether they handled the seed with the same care as wars, and laid out the fields with the same diligence as camps, or because all things come forth more joyfully under honourable hands, since they are done more carefully.
20| Serranus was found sowing when the honours were given him, whence also his surname. To Cincinnatus, ploughing his four iugera on the Vatican, which are called the Quintian meadows, the messenger brought the dictatorship, and, as is handed down, while he was naked, and the messenger full of delays said: Cover your body, so that I may deliver the commands of the senate and people of Rome.
21| Such then were even the viatores, a name given in turn to those who summoned the senate and generals from the fields. But now those same lands are worked by fettered feet, condemned hands and branded faces, and yet the earth, which is called parent and is said to be tended, is not so deaf, even with that very honour taken from her by these men, that we should not believe this is done against her will and to her indignation. And we wonder that the estates of slave prisons do not yield the same returns that those of the generals did!
22| Therefore to give precepts on the cultivation of the field was a chief concern even among foreigners, since kings did so, Hiero, Philometor, Attalus, Archelaus, and generals, Xenophon and the Carthaginian Mago, to whom indeed our senate paid so great an honour when Carthage was captured that, when it gave the libraries to the petty kings of Africa, it decreed that the twenty-eight volumes of him alone should be translated into the Latin language, although Marcus Cato had already composed his precepts,
23| and that the task should be given to men skilled in Punic, in which Decimus Silanus, a man of a most famous family, surpassed all. As for the authorities on wisdom, and those excellent in verse, and the other famous men who have composed, whom we should follow, we have prefixed them in this volume, naming Marcus Varro not in the crowd, who in the 81st year of his life thought the matter should be handed on.
24| With the Romans, vine cultivation began much later, and at first, as was necessary, they tilled only the arable fields, the system of which will now be treated by us, not in the common way only, but, as we have done so far, with every care searched out in both the ancient and the later discoveries, the cause and reason of things being dug out at once. We shall speak also of the stars and give the indubitable earthly signs of the stars themselves, since those who have so far treated them with more diligence can seem to have written for anyone rather than for farmers.
25| And first of all we shall deal for the most part with oracles, which in no other kind of life are more numerous or more certain. For why should they not seem oracles, proceeding from a most certain and most truthful god, through experience?
26| We shall take our beginning from Cato: The bravest men and the most vigorous soldiers are born of farmers, and those who think least ill.—Do not buy an estate greedily. In farm business do not spare labour, least of all in buying land. What is badly bought one always regrets. Those who are going to acquire land ought to look before all things at water, road, neighbour. Each has great interpretations and not doubtful ones.
27| Cato orders that in the case of adjoining farms this too be assessed, in what condition they are flourishing. For in a good region, he says, they flourish well. Atilius Regulus, that famous man, twice consul during the Punic war, used to say that an unhealthy farm is not to be acquired even in the most fertile places, nor a most healthy one in worn-out ones. The healthiness of a place is not always revealed by the complexion of the inhabitants, since people accustomed to it hold out even in plague-ridden places. Besides, there are some places healthy in parts of the year, but nothing is wholesome unless it is healthy the whole year. A farm is bad with which the owner has to wrestle.
28| Cato orders it to be looked at among the first things, that the soil should be strong by its own virtue, then by position as has been said, that there should be a supply of labourers near and a strong town, a means of exit for ships or roads, that it should be well built and cultivated. In this I see most people deceived; for they take the sloth of the former owner as being in the buyer's favour. Nothing is more ruinous than a deserted farm. And so Cato says it is better bought from a good owner, and another's system is not to be rashly despised, and that for a farm as for a man, however profitable it is, if it is also costly, not much remains over.
29| He judges the vine the most profitable thing on a farm, not without reason, since before all things he took care for the reckoning of expense; next, watered gardens, and that not falsely, if they are under a town; and the ancients called meadows parata, and the same Cato, being asked which profit was the most certain, answered: if you pasture well; which the next: if you pasture fairly well.
30| The sum of all in looking at this was that that produce was most approved which would cost as little as possible in outlay. This is decided differently in different places according to the opportunity of the locality. And to the same end belongs
31| what he said, that the farmer ought to be a seller, that a farm should be planted in youth without delay, that building should be done only on a planted field, and then too hesitantly, and the best thing, as they commonly said, is to enjoy another man's folly, but so that the guarding of the villas is not a burden. Yet he who lives well should visit the farm oftener, and they do not lie when they say the master's face does more good than the back of his head.
32| This measure is approved, that neither the farm should seek the villa nor the villa the farm, not as Lucius Lucullus and Quintus Scaevola did, by contrasting examples in the same age, when Scaevola's villa could not take in his crops, and Lucullus's field could not take in his villa; in which kind the censors' reproof was that the man ploughed less than he swept. Nor is this without a certain art. Most recently Gaius Marius, 7 times consul, placed a villa in the territory of Misenum, but with such skill in marking out a camp that Sulla Felix said even the others compared with him were blind.
33| It is agreed that it should not be placed beside marshes nor facing a river, although Homer has most truly handed down that the breezes before dawn from a river are always unwholesome. In hot places it ought to look to the north, in cold places to the south, in temperate ones to the equinoctial east.
34| By what proofs the goodness of the land itself is to be judged, although in discussing the best kind of earth we may seem to have said enough, still we shall subjoin the signs handed down, chiefly in Cato's words: ebulum, or wild plum, or bramble, small bulb, trefoil, meadow grass, oak, the wild pear and apple are signs of grain-bearing soil, likewise earth that is black and of ash colour. All chalk will bake, unless very lean, and sand, unless this too is very thin, and the same answer much better in level places than on hills.
35| The ancients thought that the measure of land should be observed above all, for they judged it better to sow less and plough better; in which opinion I see Virgil too stood. And, if we confess the truth, great estates have ruined Italy, and now the provinces too—six owners possessed half of Africa when the emperor Nero put them to death—, not cheating Gnaeus Pompey of this, his own greatness too, who never bought a field adjoining. Mago ruled that when a farm was bought the house should be sold, harshly and not for the advantage of the public condition, beginning to unfold his precepts with this opening, so that it may nevertheless appear that constant attendance was what he desired.
36| Next the skill of bailiffs is to be taken care of, and Cato laid down much about them. Let it be enough for us to have said that he ought to be as near as possible to the master in heart and yet not seem so to himself. To have the country worked by slave prisons is worst, as whatever is done by men in despair. It may seem rash to have set down a single saying of the ancients, and perhaps incredible, unless it is thoroughly weighed, that nothing is less profitable than to cultivate land in the best way.
37| Lucius Tarius Rufus, of the lowest humility of birth, who deserved a consulship by soldierly industry, in other respects a man of old-fashioned thrift, drained a sum of about 100,000,000 sesterces, heaped together by the generosity of the deified Augustus, until his heir refused it, by buying up and cultivating lands in Picenum for glory. Do we then approve ruin and famine? No, by Hercules, but measure, the most useful judge of all things.
38| To cultivate well is necessary, to cultivate in the best way is ruinous, except where the colonus works with his own offspring or with people he must feed in any case. For the master to gather some harvests does not pay, if the outlay of labour is reckoned, nor rashly to cultivate the olive, nor certain lands carefully, as they relate in Sicily, and so strangers are deceived.
39| In what manner, then, are fields most profitably cultivated? By the oracle, of course: by bad ones, with good ones. But it is fair to defend our great-great-grandfathers, who looked to life in their precepts. For when they said bad ones, they meant the cheapest, and the height of their foresight was that the outlay should be as small as possible. Those taught these things who made it a charge against men who had triumphed that they had ten pounds of silver apiece in their furniture, who demanded, when a bailiff died, to leave their victories and return to their own fields, whose small holdings the commonwealth undertook to have cultivated, and who led armies while the senate acted as bailiff for them.
40| Hence those other oracles: that he is a worthless farmer who buys what his farm could provide him; that he is a bad head of a household who does by day what he could do at night, except in bad weather; worse the man who does on working days what he owed to holidays; worst the man who, on a clear day, works under a roof rather than in the field.
41| I cannot restrain myself from bringing forward one example of antiquity, from which it can be understood that there was a custom of pleading before the people even about cultivation, and how those men were wont to be defended. Gaius Furius Cresimus, freed from slavery, when on a quite small plot he took much richer crops than the neighbourhood from its very large ones, was in great ill will, as though he lured other men's crops away by poisonings.
42| Wherefore, a day having been appointed against him by Spurius Albinus, curule aedile, and fearing condemnation, when the tribes had to go to the vote, he brought all his farm equipment into the forum and led in his household, strong and, as Piso says, well cared for and clothed, tools excellently made, heavy mattocks, weighty ploughshares, well-fed oxen.
43| Afterwards he said: These, Quirites, are my poisonings, nor can I show you or bring into the forum my night labours and my watchings and my sweat. So he was acquitted by the votes of all. Cultivation indeed consists in work, not outlay, and therefore our forefathers said that the most fertilizing thing in a field is the master's eye.
44| The remaining precepts will be given in their places, those which will be proper to single kinds. Meanwhile we shall not omit the common ones that occur to us, and first of all Cato's most humane and most useful: that one must act so that the neighbours may be fond of one. He gives the reasons; we think they are doubtful to no one.—Among the first things he takes care likewise that the household be not ill off.—All hold that nothing in agriculture is to be done late, and that each thing is to be done in its own season, and that by the third precept things neglected are called back in vain.—The curse of Cato on rotten land has been abundantly shown, although he never ceases to forewarn of it.—Whatever can be done by a donkey is done at the cheapest cost.—Fern dies in two years,
45| if you do not allow it to put out foliage. This is achieved most effectively by knocking down the budding branches with a stick; for the juice flowing from it itself kills the roots. They say too that those pulled out about the solstice do not grow again, nor those cut with a reed or ploughed up with a reed laid on the share. Likewise they direct that a reed be ploughed up with fern laid on the share.
46| —A rushy field ought to be turned with a spade or, in a stony one, with mattocks.
47| Thickets are best removed by fire. It is most useful for a damper field to be cut up with ditches and dried, and for the ditches in chalky places to be left open, in looser earth to be strengthened with hedges or to lie sloping on inclined and upturned sides; some are blinded and led into others larger and wider and, if there is opportunity, are paved with flint or gravel, and their mouths are propped on either side with two stones and covered over with another. The method of extirpating a wood Democritus handed down, by soaking the flower of lupine in hemlock juice for a single day and sprinkling it on the roots.
48| And since the field has been prepared, now the nature of the crops will be shown. There are two chief kinds of them: grains, as wheat, barley, and pulses, as bean, chickpea. The difference is too well known for it to be fitting to point it out.
49| Of grain itself there are as many kinds, divided by the times of sowing: winter ones, which are sown about the setting of the Vergiliae and fed in the earth through the winter, as wheat, barley; summer ones, which are sown in summer before the Vergiliae rise, as millet, panic, sesame, horminum, irio, by the practice of Italy at least. Otherwise in Greece and in Asia everything is sown from the setting of the Vergiliae, but some in Italy at both times, and of these some also at a third, in spring.
50| Some call millet, panic, lentil, chickpea, alica spring crops, and wheat, barley, bean, turnip sowing crops. And in the kind of wheat some part is sown for fodder for four-footed beasts, as farrago, and among pulses, as vetch; for the common use of four-footed beasts and men, lupin.
51| All pulses have single roots except the bean, and these full of shoots, because they are not divided into many, and the chickpea has the deepest. Grains are rooted with many fibres, without branches. Barley bursts forth from the first sowing on the seventh day, a pulse on the fourth or, when slowest, the seventh, the bean from the 15th to the 20th, pulses in Egypt on the third day. From the barley one head of the grain goes out into the root, the other into the herb, which also flowers first. The thicker part of the grain sends forth the root, the thinner the flower; in the other seeds the same part sends forth both root and flower.
52| Grains in winter are in the blade, in the spring those of the winter kind rise to a point into the stalk, but millet and panic into a jointed and hollow culm, sesame into a reed-like stem.
53| The fruit of all sown crops is either contained in ears, as of wheat and barley, and fortified with a rampart of awns against birds and small quadrupeds, or is enclosed in pods, as of pulses, or in little vessels, as of sesame and poppy. Millet and panic alone are left exposed, undivided, to the small birds; for they are undefended and held only in membranes. Panic is named from its panicles, the top nodding languidly, the stalk gradually thinning almost into a twig, and heaped with very dense grains, the longest phoba being a foot long. In millet the tufts, enclosing the grain, are bent over with a fringed hair. There are also kinds of panic that are breast-shaped,
54| from the pano, clustered with small panicles, and with a double top; they are distinguished also by colour, white, black, red, even purple. Bread is made in many ways from millet, rarely from panic; but no grain is heavier or swells more in the cooking. From a modius they yield 60 pounds of bread, and a modius of porridge from three sextarii of the soaked grain.
55| Within the last 10 years a millet has been brought from India into Italy, black in colour, large in grain, reed-like in stalk. It grows up to a height of 7 feet, with very large tufts—they call them manes—the most fertile of all crops. From one grain three sextarii are produced. It ought to be sown in damp ground.
56| Some grains begin to conceive the ear at the third joint, some at the fourth, but still hidden. The joints, however, are four in wheat, six in far, eight in barley. But the conception of the ear does not take place before the above-mentioned number of joints; when it has given hope of itself, they begin to flower in 4 or 5 days at the slowest, and finish flowering in as many or a few more, barley, however, at the slowest, in 7 days. Varro relates that crops are brought to completion in four times nine days and are reaped in the ninth month.
57| Beans go out into leaves and then send up a stalk marked by no internodes. The remaining pulses are full of shoots. Of these chickpea, ervum and lentil are branching. The stalks of some spread over the ground if they have no support; peas climb, if they have had it, or become worse. Of the pulses the bean alone has a single stalk, and the lupin has one, but [….], the others are branching with a very thin shoot, and all are hollow.
58| Some put out the leaf from the root, some from the top, as wheat and barley. Both, and whatever is on a stalk, have one leaf at the top—but in barley they are rough, in the others smooth—, on the contrary the bean, chickpea and pea have many leaves. Wheats have a reed-like leaf, beans round ones, and so a great part of the pulses, the ervilia and pea longer ones, the phasioli veined ones, sesame and irio blood-red ones.
59| The leaves fall only in the lupin and the poppy. Pulses flower longer, and of these the ervum and chickpea, but longest the bean, for 40 days, though not each single stalk so long, since when one ceases another begins, nor the whole crop together, as of grain. All, however, form pods on different days and first at the lowest part, the flower gradually coming up.
60| Grains, when they have finished flowering, thicken and ripen, at the most in 40 days, so also the bean, in the fewest the chickpea. For this is completed in 40 days from sowing. Millet and panic and sesame and all summer crops ripen in 40 days from the flower, a great difference of land and sky. In Egypt barley is reaped in the sixth month from sowing, grains in the seventh, in Hellas barley in the 7th, in the Peloponnese in the eighth, and grains still later. The grains in the stalk form ears with a hair-like weave. In the bean and pulses they form pods on alternate sides. Grains are stronger against winters, pulses are for food.
61| Grain has several coats. Barley is mostly naked, and arinca, but especially oats. The stalk is taller in grain than in barley, the awn sharper in barley. On the threshing floor wheat and siligo and barley are threshed out. So they are also sown clean, just as they are ground, because they are not parched. On the other hand far, millet, panic cannot be cleaned unless parched. And so these are sown raw with their own husks. And far they keep in its own little sheaths for sowing and do not roast it.
62| The lightest of these, barley, seldom exceeds 15 pounds, and bean 22. Far is heavier and wheat still more. Far in Egypt is made from olyra. This is there the third kind of ear. The Gauls also have given their own kind of far, which they call brace there, among us scandala, of the brightest grain. There is also another difference, that it yields about four pounds more bread than other far. Verrius relates that the Roman people used far alone of grain for 300 years.
63| Of wheat there are several kinds, which the nations have made. With the Italian I for my part would compare none in whiteness and weight, by which it is chiefly judged. Foreign wheat may be compared only with that of the mountain fields of Italy, in which Boeotia held the first place, then Sicily, soon Africa. The third weight was the Thracian, the Syrian, then also the Egyptian, by the decree of the athletes [when], whose capacity, like that of beasts of burden, had made the order we have mentioned. Greece praised the Pontic also, which did not come to Italy.
64| Of every kind of grain, however, he preferred the dracontias and the strangias and the Selinusian, on the proof of its very thick stalk. And so he assigned these kinds to rich soil. The lightest and most empty, the speudias, of the thinnest stalk, he ordered to be sown in damp places, since it needed much nourishment.
65| These were the opinions when Alexander the Great was reigning, when Greece was most famous and most powerful in the whole world, yet in such a way that about 145 years before his death the poet Sophocles in the play Triptolemus praised Italian wheat above all, the sense being translated word for word: and to sow fortunate Italy with white grain. This praise is peculiar to the Italian even today; wherefore I the more wonder that the successors of the Greeks made no mention of this grain.
66| Now of these kinds that are brought to Rome, the lightest is the Gallic and that carried from the Chersonese, since the modii do not exceed twenty pounds each, if one weighs the grain itself. The Sardinian adds half a pound, the Alexandrian a third as well—this is the Sicilian weight also—, the Baetic adds a whole pound, the African also three-quarters. In Transpadane Italy I know that modii of far weigh twenty-five pounds each, around Clusium even twenty-six.
67| It is a fixed law of nature that in any kind a third part is added to the weight of the grain in army bread, as also that the best grain is that which takes in a congius of water for kneading. In some kinds the weight is in themselves, as in the Balearic: from a modius of wheat it yields 35 pounds of bread; in some two kinds mixed, as the Cyprian and the Alexandrian, which do not exceed nearly 20 pounds.
68| The Cyprian is dark and makes black bread, and so the white Alexandrian is mixed with it, and they come back to 25 pounds. The Theban adds a pound. To knead with sea water, which most people do in maritime places for the chance of gaining salt, is most unprofitable. For no other reason do bodies become more open to diseases. In Gaul and Spain the grain is dissolved into a drink, of the kinds we have mentioned, and the foam so thickened they use in place of leaven, for which reason their bread is lighter than others'.
69| There is a difference also in the stalk, a thicker one being of a better kind. Thracian wheat is clothed in very many coats, a wheat sought out for that region on account of its excessive cold. The same cause found also the three-month wheat, as the snows keep the lands, which is reaped about the third month from sowing, when it is reaped in the rest of the world too. This is known throughout the Alps, and in the wintry provinces there is none more welcome than this grain, one-stalked besides and nowhere ample, and it is sown only in thin earth.
70| There is also a two-month wheat around Aenus in Thrace, which ripens on the 40th day from that on which it was sown, and it is wonderful that no grain has more weight and that it has no bran. Both Sicily and Achaia use it, each in its mountainous parts, Euboea also around Carystus. Columella is so far mistaken that he did not think even the three-month a proper kind, though it is the most ancient. The Greeks call it setanion. They relate that in Bactria grains grow of such size that single ones equal our ears.
71| Barley is sown first of all the grains. We shall give also the days for sowing each kind, the nature of each having been set out. Among the Indians there is cultivated and wild barley, of which with them bread is chief, and alica. They delight most of all in oryza, of which they make tisana, as all other mortals do from barley. The leaves of oryza are fleshy, like the leek, but broader, the height a cubit, the flower purple, the root of the roundness of a gem.
72| Barley is the most ancient among foods, as appears from the custom of the Athenians on the authority of Menander and from the nickname of gladiators, who were called hordearii. The Greeks also prefer polenta from no other source. It is made in many ways. The Greeks dry barley soaked in water for one night and roast it the next day, then break it in mills.
73| There are those who sprinkle with a little water again that which has been more strongly roasted and dry it before they grind. Others take barley beaten from green ears, clean it fresh, and when moist pound it in a mortar and wash it in baskets, and when dried in the sun pound it again, and grind it when cleaned. Whatever way it is prepared, to every twenty pounds of barley they mix three pounds of linseed and half a pound of coriander and an acetabulum of salt, roasting everything first, in the mill.
74| Those who wish to keep it longer store it with its own flour and bran in new earthenware. Italy grinds it roasted without soaking into fine meal, with the same additions and millet as well. Bread from barley, which was in use among the ancients, life has condemned, and it is mostly the food of four-footed beasts, though the use of tisana made from it is approved so greatly as very strong and wholesome.
75| Hippocrates, one of the most famous in medical knowledge, devoted a single volume to its praises. The excellence of tisana is chiefly that of Utica. In Egypt, however, there is a kind made from barley which has two corners. In Baetica and Africa Turranius calls the barley from which it is made the smooth kind. The same man thinks olyra and oryza are the same. The common method of making tisana is known.
76| In like manner from the seed of wheat tragum is made, in Campania only and Egypt, amylum however from all wheat and siligo, but best from the three-month wheat. The invention of it is due to the island of Chios; and today the most praised comes from there. It is named from the fact that it is made without a mill. Next to the three-month is that from the least heavy wheat. It is soaked in fresh water in wooden vessels, so that it is covered, the water changed five times a day; better if at night also, so that it is mixed together.
77| Softened before it turns sour, it is strained through linen or baskets and poured on to a tile smeared with leaven, and so is thickened in the sun. After the Chian, the Cretan is most praised, soon the Egyptian—it is approved by smoothness and lightness and by being fresh—, and among us it was already mentioned by Cato.
78| Barley meal is used also for healing, and it is wonderful that in the use of beasts of burden, when hardened with fire and afterwards ground, and morsels let down into the belly by human hand, greater strength and muscles of the body result. Some ears have two rows, some more up to six. In the grain itself there are several differences: longer and lighter, or shorter and rounder, whiter or blacker, the one with a purple tinge being rich for polenta. Against storms the white has the greatest weakness. Barley is the softest of all crops.
79| It does not wish to be sown except in dry and loose earth and only if rich. The chaff is among the best, but with straw none is compared. Barley is of all grain the least liable to disaster, because it is taken in before rust seizes wheat—and so wise farmers sow wheat only for provisions, and say that barley is sown for the purse—, and for that reason it comes back soonest,
80| and the most fertile is that which at Carthage in Spain is gathered in the month of April. It is sown in the same month in Celtiberia, and is born twice in the same year. All of it is snatched up from the first moment of ripeness, more hurriedly than the rest. For the grain is held in a brittle stalk and the thinnest chaff. They relate that polenta is made better too, if it is taken in before it is cooked through by ripeness.
81| The kinds of grain are not the same everywhere, nor, where they are the same, under the same names. The commonest and most powerful of them is far, which the ancients called adoreum, siligo, wheat. These are common to very many lands. Arinca is proper to the Gauls, and is plentiful in Italy also; peculiar to Egypt, Syria and Cilicia, and Asia and Greece are zea, oryza, tiphe.
82| Egypt makes similago from its own wheat, by no means equal to the Italian. Those who use zea have no far. This too is found in Italy, in Campania most, and is called semen. This name belongs to a thing of great fame, as we shall soon teach, on account of which Homer said zeidoros arura, not, as some suppose, because it gave life. Amylum too is made from it, thicker than the former;
83| this is the only difference. Of every kind far is the hardest and strongest against winters. It endures the coldest places and those less worked, or hot and thirsty ones. It was the first food of the ancients of Latium, a great proof in the gifts of the adoria, as we have said. That the Romans lived for a long time on porridge, not bread, is clear,
84| since relishes are even today called pulmentaria and Ennius, the oldest of poets, expressing the hunger of a siege, records that fathers snatched a morsel from their weeping children. And today the ancient rites and those of birthdays are made with fitilla porridge, and it seems that porridge was as unknown to Greece as polenta was to Italy.
85| No seed is more greedy than that of wheat, nor draws more nourishment. Siligo I would call properly the delicacy of wheat in whiteness, or in strength, or in weight. It suits damp tracts, such as those of Italy and of Gallia Comata, but across the Alps it persists only in the land of the Allobroges and of the Remi, in the other parts there it turns into wheat in two years. The remedy is that all its heaviest grains be sown.
86| From siligo comes the most elegant bread and the most praised work of the bakeries. It excels in Italy, if the Campanian is mixed with that born at Pisae. The Campanian is redder, but the Pisan is whiter and the chalky heavier. It is fair for a modius of the Campanian grain, which they call castrata, to return 4 sextarii of siligo, or of the common one without castration 5 sextarii,
87| besides half a modius of flower and 4 sextarii of cibarium, which they call secundarium, as many sextarii of bran, but from the Pisan 5 sextarii of siligo, the rest are alike. The Clusian and Arretine moreover add sextarii of siligo, in the rest they are equal. But if one wishes to make pollen, 16 pounds of bread come back, and 3 of cibarium and half a modius of bran. This is determined by the difference of the mill. For what is ground dry yields more meal, what is sprinkled with salt water a whiter pith, but they keep more in the bran. Farina is named from far, as the name itself shows.
88| A modius of siligo meal of Gaul yields 20 pounds of bread, of the Italian two or three more in artopticius bread. For to oven loaves they add two pounds in whatever kind.
89| Similago is made from wheat, the most praised from the African. It is fair for a modius to return half a modius and 5 sextarii of pollen—so they call in wheat what flower is in siligo; this the coppersmiths' workshops and the paper-makers use—, besides 4 sextarii of secundarium and as much bran, and bread from a modius of similago 22 pounds,
90| from a modius of flower 16 pounds. The price of this, at a middling price of corn, is 40 asses the modius of meal, for similago eight asses more each, for castrated siligo double. There is also another distinction, once [….] pollinated yields 17 pounds of bread, twice 18, thrice 19 and a third, and of secundarium bread five half-pounds each, as many of cibarium and 6 sextarii of bran.
91| Siligo never ripens all together, nor does any of the crops endure delay less because of its tenderness, those that have ripened letting their grain fall at once. But it runs less risk in the stalk than other grains, since it always has an upright ear and does not hold the dew that makes rust.
92| From arinca comes the sweetest bread. It is itself thicker than far, and the ear larger, and the same also heavier. Seldom does a modius of grain fail to fill 16 pounds. It is threshed out with difficulty in Greece, for which reason Homer is said to give it to beasts of burden. For this is what he calls olyra. The same in Egypt is easy and fertile.
93| Far is without awn, likewise siligo, except that which is called Laconian. To these are added the kinds bromos and tragos, all foreign, like the oryza brought from the east. Tiphe too is itself of the same kind, from which oryza is made in our part of the world. Among the Greeks there is also zea, and they hand down that it and tiphe, when degenerate, return to grain if they are pounded and sown, not at once, but in the third year.
94| Nothing is more fertile than wheat—nature gave it this, since by it she chiefly fed man—, inasmuch as from a modius, if the soil is suitable, such as in the Byzacian plain of Africa, a hundred and fifty modii are returned. From that place the procurator of the deified Augustus sent him from a single grain, hardly credible to say, 400 shoots less a few, and letters on the matter exist.
95| He sent also to Nero likewise 360 stalks from one grain. At a hundredfold indeed the plains of Leontini in Sicily also yield, and others too; the whole of Baetica and in the first place Egypt. The most fertile kinds of wheat are the branching one and that which they call centigranium. A single stalk has now been found loaded with a hundred beans.
96| Summer grains we have said to be sesame, millet, panic. Sesame comes from the Indians. From it they make oil also; its colour is white. Like this in Asia and Greece is erysimum, and it would be the same, were it not fatter, as that which among us they call irio, to be counted rather among medicines than among crops. Of the same nature is the horminum called by the Greeks, but like cumin; it is sown with sesame. On this and on irio no animal feeds while green.
97| Pounding is not easy for all, since Etruria pounds the ear of roasted far with a pestle shod with iron, with a notched tube and a toothed star inside, so that, if they pound with attention, the grains are cut up and the iron is broken. The greater part of Italy uses the bare pestle, and also wheels which water turns, and by the way the mill. On the method of pounding itself I shall set forth the opinion of Mago:
98| he orders wheat to be drenched first with plenty of water, afterwards husked, then dried in the sun and pounded again in the mortar, barley in like manner. Of this 20 sextarii are to be sprinkled with 2 sextarii of water. Lentil is to be roasted first, then pounded lightly with its bran, or with a piece of raw brick added for every 20 sextarii and half a modius of sand. Ervilia in the same ways as lentil. Sesame is to be soaked in hot water and spread out, then rubbed and plunged in cold, so that the chaff floats, and spread out again in the sun over linen cloths, which if it is not done in haste, it grows mouldy with a livid colour.
99| And the things that are husked themselves have various methods of the bakeries. It is called acus when the ear alone is pounded by itself, for the uses of goldsmiths; if, however, it is threshed on the floor with the stalk, it is chaff, for the greater part of the world for fodder for beasts of burden. The sweepings of millet and panic and sesame they call adpluda, and elsewhere by other names.
100| Campania takes especial delight in millet and makes from it a white porridge. A very sweet bread is made too. The Sarmatian nations also are fed chiefly on this porridge and on raw meal besides, with mare's milk or blood from the veins of the leg mixed in. The Ethiopians have known no other crop than millet and barley,
101| Panic is used by the Gauls too, especially Aquitania, but also Italy round the Po, with bean added, without which [….]. The nations of Pontus prefer no food to panic.—The other summer grains delight even more in irrigation than in rains, millet and panic least in waters, when they are going out into leaves. They forbid them to be sown among vines or fruit-bearing trees, supposing that the earth is wasted by this sowing.
102| The chief use of millet is for leaven, kneaded with must for a year's time. A similar one is made from the fine bran of wheat itself, the best, steeped three days in white must, kneaded and dried in the sun. From this they make little cakes, which in making bread they dilute with similago of seed, bring to the boil, and so mix with the meal, thinking that in this way the best bread is made. The Greeks laid it down that two-thirds of a pound of leaven is enough for every two semodii of meal.
103| And these kinds indeed are made only at the vintage; but at whatever time one pleases, two-pound cakes of water and barley are roasted on a hot hearth or an earthenware dish in ash and charcoal until they redden. Afterwards they are covered up in vessels until they turn sour. From this leaven is diluted. When barley bread was made, however, it was itself leavened with meal of ervum or chickpea; the proper amount was 2 pounds to 5 semodii.
104| Now leaven is made from the meal itself, which is kneaded before the salt is added, boiled down in the manner of porridge and left until it sours. Commonly, however, they do not even boil it up, but only use material kept from the day before, and it is plain that nature is leavened by sourness, as also that bodies are stronger which are fed on leavened bread, inasmuch as among the ancients special healthfulness was ascribed to the heaviest wheat of any.
105| To go through the various kinds of bread itself seems superfluous, some named from relishes, as ostrearii, some from delicacies, as artolagani, some from haste, as speustici, and also from the method of baking, as furnacei or artopticii or those baked in clibani, and not long since also one brought from the Parthians, which they call aquaticus, because it is drawn out with water to a thin and spongy emptiness, others call it Parthicus. The highest praise rests on the goodness of the siligo and the fineness of the sieve. Some knead with eggs or milk, and with butter even nations that are at peace, the care passing on to the kinds of the baker's art.
106| Picenum keeps its own credit in the invention of bread, made from the material of alica. This, steeped for nine days, they knead on the tenth with the juice of raisins until it looks like tracta, afterwards put it in pots in the ovens, which are broken there, and bake it. Nor is it eaten except when moistened, which is done most of all with milk mixed with honey.
107| Rome had no bakers before the war with Perseus, for more than 580 years from the foundation of the City. The Quirites themselves made their bread, and it was chiefly the work of women, as it still is among very many nations. Plautus already calls them artoptae in the play which he entitled Aulularia, with great contention of the learned on that account, whether that verse is that poet's,
108| and it is made certain by the opinion of Ateius Capito that cooks then used to bake bread for the more refined, and that only those who pounded far were called bakers. Nor did they in fact have cooks among their slaves, and they hired them from the market. Kinds of sieves the Gauls invented with horses' hair, the Spains for shaking out and for flour with flax, Egypt with papyrus and rush.
109| But among the first let the system of alica be told, the most excellent and wholesome, which falls to Italy as the undoubted palm of crops. It is made without doubt in Egypt also, but quite contemptible, in Italy in several places, as in the territory of Verona and Pisae, in Campania however the most praised. It is a plain lying below rainy mountains, a level of 40,000 paces in all.
110| Its earth, to state the nature of the soil at once, is dusty on the surface, below absorbent and, like pumice, porous too. The fault of the mountains turns to good. For it strains through the frequent rains and passes them on, and has not wished to be dissolved or soaked, because of the ease of cultivation, and the same, having received the moisture, gives it back to no springs, but cooking it temperately within itself holds it in the place of sap.
111| It is sown throughout the year, once with panic, twice with far. And yet in spring the crops that have rested pour out a rose more fragrant than the cultivated. So far does the earth not cease to bear, whence the common saying that more perfume is made among the Campanians than oil among others. And as much as the Campanian plain surpasses all lands, so much does that part of it surpass itself which is called the Leboriae, which the Greeks call Phlegraean. The Leboriae are bounded on either side by the consular road, which leads from Puteoli and from Cumae to Capua.
112| Alica is made from zea, which we have called semen. Its grain is pounded in a wooden mortar, lest the hardness of stone grind it down, with a movable pestle, as is known, by the penal labour of prisoners. In the head of the pestle there is an iron box. When the coats have been shaken out from this, the pith, stripped, is cut up again with the same equipment. So three kinds of alica are made: the smallest and secundarium, but the largest they call aphaerema.
113| They do not yet have their whiteness, in which they excel, yet they are already preferred to the Alexandrian. Afterwards, wonderful to say, chalk is mixed in, which passes into the body and brings colour and tenderness.
114| This is found between Puteoli and Naples on the hill called Leucogaeus, and there is extant a decree of the deified Augustus, in which he ordered two hundred thousand a year to be counted out to the Neapolitans for it from his own treasury, when he was leading a colony to Capua, and he added the reason for the claim, since the Campanians had denied that alica could be made without that mineral. — (In the same place sulphur is found too, and springs of Araxes burst forth, for clearness of the eyes and for the healing of wounds and the firmness of teeth.) —
115| Adulterated alica is made chiefly from zea, which in Africa degenerates. Its ears are broader and blacker, with a short stalk. They pound it with sand and even so remove the husks with difficulty, and it becomes half the measure of the bare grain, and afterwards a fourth part of gypsum is sprinkled in, and, when it has held together, they sift it beneath through a flour sieve. What has remained in that is called excepticia and is the largest. Again, what passes through is sifted in a narrower one and called secundaria, likewise cribraria, which in the same way remained in the third sieve, the narrowest, which lets through only sands.
116| There is another method of adulterating everywhere, from wheat: they select the whitest and biggest grains and, half-boiled in pots, afterwards dry them in the sun to half, and sprinkled lightly again break them in the mills. From zea tragum is made more beautifully than from wheat, although that is a fault of alica. Whiteness, however, a mixture of boiled milk gives it in place of chalk.
117| There follows the nature of the pulses, among which the bean has the greatest honour, since even bread has been tried from it. Meal made from it is called lomentum, and with that and with every pulse, and even with fodder, the weight is increased in bread for sale. The use of the bean is manifold for every kind of four-footed animal, especially for man. It is mixed even with grain among very many nations, and most of all with panic, whole and more delicately broken.
118| Nay, in the ancient rite bean porridge is in the sacred rites of the gods of their own religion. Prevailing as a relish, but thought to dull the senses and also to cause dreams, for these reasons it was condemned by the Pythagorean doctrine, as others have related, since the souls of the dead are in it, for which reason it is certainly taken at funeral offerings.
119| Varro says that for these reasons the flamen does not eat it, and because on its flower mournful letters are found. In the same there is a peculiar religious observance, for it is the custom to bring back the bean from among the crops for the sake of the auspices, which is therefore called referiva. And they think it lucrative to use it at auctions. Alone of crops, certainly, it is filled up even when eaten out, as the moon waxes. In sea water or other salt water it is not cooked through.
120| The first of the pulses is sown before the setting of the Vergiliae, so as to go ahead of winter. Virgil orders it to be sown in spring, in the manner of Italy round the Po, but the greater part prefer bean crops of early sowing to a three-month yield. For its pods and stalks are most welcome fodder for cattle. It desires waters most of all in flower, but when it has finished flowering it needs little. The soil in which it is sown it enriches like dung. Therefore around Macedonia and Thessaly, when it has begun to flower, they turn over the fields.
121| It grows also of its own accord in very many places, as in the islands of the northern ocean, which for this reason our people call the Bean Islands, likewise in Mauretania wild everywhere, but very hard and such that it cannot be cooked through. It grows too in Egypt, with a thorny stalk, for which reason crocodiles, fearing for their eyes, shrink away.
122| The length of the stem at its greatest is four cubits, the thickness a finger's. If the joints were wanting, it would be like a soft reed; the head is like a poppy, rose-coloured, with beans in it not above thirty each; the leaves ample, the fruit itself bitter, also in smell, but the root very pleasing in the food of the inhabitants, raw and cooked in every way, like the roots of reeds. It grows also in Syria and Cilicia and at the lake of Torone in Chalcidice.
123| Of pulses, lentil is sown in autumn or spring, and in Greece the pea. The lentil loves a thin soil rather than a rich one, and a sky at all events dry. Egypt has two kinds of it, one rounder and blacker, the other of its own shape, whence the name lenticulae has been transferred to varied use. I find in authors that an evenness of temper results in those who eat it. The pea ought to be sown in sunny places, being most intolerant of cold. Therefore in Italy and under a harsher sky it is sown only in spring-time, in easy, loose earth.
124| It is the nature of the chickpea to be produced with saltiness, therefore it burns the soil and ought to be sown only when soaked the day before. There are several differences, in size, colour, shape, taste. For there is one like a ram's head, whence it is so called, white and black; there is also the dove-coloured, which others call Venerium, white, round, smooth, less than the ram's, which religion employs in vigils. There is also the cicercula, of a small chickpea, uneven, angular, like a pea, but the sweetest is that which is most like ervum, and the black and red are firmer than the white.
125| The pods are round in the chickpea, in the other pulses long and in the shape of the seed, broad; in the pea cylindrical. Those of the passioli are eaten with the grains themselves. It is permitted to sow them in whatever land you will from the Ides of October to the Kalends of November. Pulses, when they begin to ripen, must be snatched up, since they quickly spring out and lie hidden when they have fallen, as the lupin too. Although it would be fitting first to speak of turnips—our people have touched on them in passing, the Greeks a little more carefully, and themselves nevertheless among garden plants—if due order were observed,
126| to be spoken of straight after grain or at least the bean, since there is no other use more excellent than from them. For before all things they are produced for all animals, and, not least, they feed the kinds of farmyard birds as well, and more if they are boiled down in water.
127| Four-footed beasts delight also in their leaf, and for man the pleasure of the rapicia in their seasons is not less than that of cymae, and of the yellowish ones too, killed in the granaries, even greater than of the green. They themselves last, kept in their own earth and afterwards dried, almost to another crop, and prevent hunger from being felt. After vine and harvest this is the third yield of the Transpadanes.
128| It does not choose its ground fussily, almost where nothing else can be sown. They are nourished by mists and hoarfrosts and cold besides, to a wonderful size; I have seen some exceeding 40 pounds. In our food they are recommended in several ways, and last for other uses when subdued by the sharpness of mustard, painted even with colours besides their own, with six others, the purple too.
129| Nor is anything else in food fitting to be tinted. The Greeks have made two chief kinds of them, male and female, and these arise from the same seed by the manner of sowing: for with denser sowing they become male, likewise in difficult ground. The seed is better the finer it is.
130| There are three forms of all. For they either spread out in breadth or are rounded into a ball. A third form they have called wild, with the root running out lengthwise, like the radish, and with an angular and rough leaf, an acrid juice, which taken about harvest clears the eyes and cures dimness of sight mixed with women's milk. They are thought to become sweeter and larger by cold. In warmth they run out into leaves. The palm goes to those born in the Nursine territory—the valuation at a single sesterce a pound and in scarcity two—, next to those born on Algidus, and for napi to those of Amiternum.
131| Of these the nature is nearly the same: they delight alike in cold. They are sown also before the Kalends of March, at 4 sextarii to the iugerum. The more careful order the napus to be sown at the fifth furrow, turnips at the fourth, both manured, and turnips become richer if the seed is ploughed in with chaff. They wish the sower to sow naked, praying for himself and his neighbours that he sows.
132| The proper sowing for both kinds is between the festival days of two divinities, Neptune and Vulcan, and they say, by subtle observation, that if they are sown, within the aforesaid space of time, on the day of the moon bearing the same number as the day of the moon on which the first snow fell in the preceding winter, they come up wonderfully. They are sown also in spring in warm and damp places.
133| Next in use comes the lupin, since it is common to man and to the kind of four-footed animals that have hoofs. The remedy for it, that it may not escape the reapers by springing out, is that it be gathered after rain. Nor is the nature of any of the things that are sown more wonderful with regard to perception [….] and of the earth. First of all, every day it turns round with the sun and shows the hours to farmers even in cloud. It flowers, besides, three times. It loves the earth and does not wish to be covered with earth.
134| And this alone is sown without ploughing. It seeks most of all sandy and dry and even gravelly ground. It does not wish to be cultivated at all. It so loves the soil that, though thrown on shrubby ground among leaves and brambles, it still reaches the earth with its root. We have said that fields and vineyards grow fat with this sowing; and so far does it need no dung that it stands in the place of the best, and nothing else is had so wholly without outlay, since it is not even necessary to bring it to the field for sowing:
135| it is sown straight from the threshing floor, and does not even require to be scattered, falling of its own accord. It is sown first of all and taken up last, both about the month of September, because, if it has not gone before winter, it is liable to the cold. Besides, it lies with impunity, even if abandoned, unless rains follow at once and bury it, safe from all animals through its bitterness, though most people cover it with a light furrow. Of denser earths it loves red ochre most. To nourish it, it ought to be turned in after the third flowering, in gravel after the second. It hates only chalky and muddy soil, and in these does not come up.
136| Soaked in hot water it is also food for man. For single modii satisfy an ox and keep it strong, since even laid on the bellies of children it is a remedy. It is best stored in smoke, since in damp little worms castrate its navel to barrenness. If it has been grazed down in leaf, the ground must be ploughed in at once.
137| Fields are fattened also by vetch, which is itself not laborious to farmers. Sown with one furrow, it is not hoed, not manured, and nothing else done but harrowing. It has three times of sowing: about the setting of Arcturus, so that it may feed in the month of December. Then it is best sown for seed. For it bears equally when grazed down. The second sowing is in the month of January, the last in March, and then it is most useful for foliage.
138| Of all that are sown it loves dryness most. It does not scorn even shady places. From its seed, if gathered ripe, the chaff is preferred to the rest. It snatches the sap from vines, and they languish if it is sown in an arbustum.
139| Nor is the care of ervum laborious. It is weeded more than vetch, and itself holds the power of a drug, inasmuch as it is on record in the deified Augustus's own letters that he was cured. For single yokes of oxen five modii sown suffice. They say that when it is sown in March it is harmful to oxen, and likewise in autumn it brings a head cold, but is harmless when sown in early spring.
140| And silicia, that is, Greek hay, is sown by scarification, in a furrow not deeper than four fingers, and the more badly it is handled, the better it comes up. It is rare to say that there is anything to which neglect does good. That, however, which is called secale and farrago needs only harrowing.
141| Secale the Taurini beneath the Alps call asia, a very poor thing and only to keep off hunger, fruitful, but with a slender stalk, gloomy with blackness, remarkable for weight. Far is mixed with it to soften its bitterness, and yet even so it is most disagreeable to the stomach. It grows in any soil whatever with a hundredfold grain, and is itself in place of manure.
142| Farrago is sown very thick from the refuse of far, with vetch sometimes mixed in. The same in Africa is made from barley. All these are fodder, and the degenerate one among pulses which is called cracca is so pleasing to pigeons that they deny that those fed on it become runaways from that place.
143| Among the ancients there was a kind of fodder, which Cato calls ocinum, with which they stopped the bowels of oxen. This was cut green from a crop of fodder before it bore seed. Sura Mamilius interprets it otherwise and relates that 10 modii of bean, 2 of vetch, and as much of ervilia were wont to be mixed and sown in autumn to the iugerum, better still with Greek oats, whose seed does not fall, mixed in. This was called ocinum and was used to be sown for the sake of oxen. Varro says it was named from the speed of coming up, from the Greek, which they say okeos.
144| Medica is foreign even to Greece, as brought by the Medes during the Persian wars which Darius waged, but is to be spoken of among the very first, so great is its endowment, since from a single sowing it lasts more than thirty years. It is like trefoil in stalk and leaves, and jointed. Whatever rises on the stalk, the leaves draw together. Amphilochus composed a single volume on it and cytisus.
145| The ground in which it is to be sown is cleared of stones and cleaned and worked in autumn, soon ploughed and harrowed and covered with a hurdle a second and a third time, five days being left between and dung added. It requires, however, a soil dry and juicy or irrigated. Thus prepared, it is sown in the month of May, being otherwise liable to frosts.
146| It is necessary for everything to be occupied by the density of the seed and for herbs that spring up between to be shut out—3 modii to the iugerum secure this—and care must be taken that the sun does not scorch it, and the ground ought to be covered at once. If the soil is damp or grassy, it is overcome and falls away into meadow. Therefore at once, at a height of a twelfth of a foot, it must be freed of all herbs, by hand rather than with the hoe. It is cut when beginning to flower and as often as it has flowered again. This happens six times a year, at the least four. It must be prevented from ripening into seed, because as fodder it is more useful until the third year. In spring it ought to be hoed and freed of other herbs, up to the third year to be scraped to the ground with mattocks. In this way the remaining herbs perish without harm to it itself, owing to how far down its roots lie. If the herbs have prevailed, the one remedy is in the plough, turning it over often, until all other roots perish. It ought not to be given to the point of satiety, lest it be necessary to deplete the blood. And green it is more useful. It dries up in twigs and finally wastes away into useless dust. Of cytisus, to which too the first place among fodders is given, we have spoken abundantly among the shrubs. And now the nature of all crops must be completed, in the course of which diseases also are to be spoken of. First of all the fault of grain is oats, and barley degenerates into it, so that it is itself like a grain, since the peoples of Germany sow it and live on no other porridge. This fault occurs chiefly from the moisture of the soil and the sky. The next cause is weakness of the seed, if it was kept longer in the earth before it burst forth. The same reasoning applies if it was decayed when it was sown. It is recognized, however, at the very first breaking out, from which it appears that the cause is in the root. There is another fault too, neighbouring on oats, when the grain, begun to some size but not yet ripe, before it has gained firmness of body, vanishes in the ear, empty and void through a harmful blast, by a kind of abortion. Winds, however, harm grain and barley at three times: in flower, or straight after they have finished flowering, or when they are beginning to ripen. For then they empty the grains, and in the earlier cases prevent their being born. The sun too, frequent from a cloud, does harm. Little worms also are born in the root, when a sudden heat has shut in the moisture after the sowing has been followed by rains. They are produced also in the grain, when the ear grows hot from the rains by heat. There is also the small beetle called cantharis, which gnaws grain. All these animals fail when the food fails. Oil, pitch, fat are hostile to seeds, and care must be taken that they are not sown after being touched by them. Rain on the herb is useful from the time of its bearing, but harms wheat and barley in flower, and is harmless to pulses except the chickpea. Grains in ripening are hurt by rain, and barley more. There is also a white herb, like panic, that takes possession of fields, deadly even to cattle. For darnel and caltrops and thistles and burrs I would not number any more than brambles among the diseases of crops rather than among the plagues of the earth itself. A heavenly evil of crops and vines, no less harmful than any, is rust. This is most frequent in a dewy tract and in valleys that have no breeze; on the other hand windy and high places are free from it. Among the faults of crops there is also luxuriance, when, overloaded with fertility, they fall over. The common fault of all that is sown is uricae, even of the chickpea, when rain, washing away its saltiness, makes it sweeter.
155| There is a herb which kills the chickpea and ervum by winding itself around them; it is called orobanche. In like manner aera kills wheat, festuca barley, which is called aegilops, and for the lentil the herb securiclata, which the Greeks from the likeness call pelecinum; and these kill by embrace. Around Philippi they name ateramum in rich soil the herb by which the bean is killed, teramum that by which it is killed in lean soil, when a certain wind has blown on it while wet.
156| The grain of aera is very small, in a prickly husk. When it is in bread it very quickly causes giddiness, and they say that in Asia and Greece bath attendants, when they wish to drive off a crowd, throw this seed on the coals. There grows also the phalangion in the ervum, a little creature of the spider kind, if the winter is watery. Slugs are born in vetch and sometimes from the earth, tiny snails, gnawing it in a wonderful way. And these are for the most part the diseases.
157| Their remedies, so far as they concern herbs, lie in the hoe and, when the seed is sown, in ash. Those that lie in the seed and round the root are guarded against by previous care. Seeds sprinkled with wine beforehand they think are less liable to sickness. Virgil orders the bean to be sprinkled with natron and amurca; so he promises that it also grows large.
158| Some, however, think that if it is steeped for three days before sowing in urine and water, it grows up especially well; that when hoed three times a modius of the broken yields a modius of the whole. The other seeds, if mixed with pounded cypress leaves, are not liable to worms, nor if they are sown at the dark of the moon. Many, for the remedies of millet, order a toad to be carried round the field at night, before it is hoed, and buried in the middle, shut up in an earthenware pot. So neither sparrow nor worms do harm, but it must be dug up before reaping; otherwise it becomes bitter. Nay, seeds touched with the shoulder of a mole are more fruitful.
159| Democritus orders all seeds to be sown after being treated with the juice of the herb called aizoum, growing on tiles, and by others aesum, in Latin sedum or digitillum. Commonly, however, if sweetness does harm and worms cling to the roots, the remedy is to sprinkle pure amurca without salt, then to hoe, and, if the crop has begun to go to the joint, to weed so that the herbs do not win.
160| The plague from millet and panic, the flocks of starlings or sparrows, I know is driven off by a herb, whose name is unknown, buried in the four corners of the crop, wonderful to say, so that no bird at all enters. Mice are driven off by the ash of a weasel or a cat, diluted and sprinkled on the seed, or by the water in which these animals have been boiled. But the rank smell of those animals lingers even in the bread. For this reason they think it more useful for the seeds to be touched with ox gall.
161| Rust, indeed, the greatest plague of crops, passes from the fields into the leaves of laurel branches fixed in the field. The luxuriance of crops is chastened by the tooth of cattle, in the herb only, and if grazed down, even rather often, they will feel no injury in the ear. Of those cut back even once it is quite certain that the grain becomes longer, and empty and void, and when sown does not come up. At Babylon, however, they cut twice and graze down a third time; otherwise there would be only leaves.
162| Even so the exceptional fertility of the soil yields harvests with fiftyfold increase, with the more careful even a hundredfold. Nor is the care difficult of watering with water as long as possible, so that the over-rich and dense fertility is diluted. The Euphrates and Tigris, however, do not bring down mud as the Nile does in Egypt, nor does the earth itself produce herbs. Yet the fertility is so great that in the following year the crop becomes renewable of its own accord, the seeds having been pressed in by the footprint. This great difference of soil warns us to describe the kinds of earth for crops.
163| This, then, is the opinion of Cato: in rich, fertile land to sow grain, but if it is misty the same land turnips, radishes, millet, panic. In cold, watery land to sow first, afterwards in warm land, in red ochre or dark or sandy soil, if it is not watery, lupin; in chalk and red ochre and a rather watery field adoreum; in dry land, not grassy nor shady, wheat;
164| in strong soil the bean; vetch, however, in the least watery and grassy; siligo and wheat in an open place, raised up, which is baked by the sun as long as possible; lentil in rudectum and red ochre which is not grassy; barley in fallow and in a field that can be made renewable; the three-month grain where you cannot make the sowing early and whose richness is renewable.
165| That opinion also is subtle: that the crops that need not much sap are to be sown in thinner earth, as cytisus and, the chickpea excepted, the pulses which are plucked from the earth, not cut below—whence they are called legumina, because they are gathered—, in rich earth those that are of greater nourishment, as the vegetable, wheat, siligo, flax. So thin soil will be given to barley—for its root asks less nourishment—, richer and denser earth to wheat.
166| In damper places adoreum far rather than wheat will be sown, in a temperate place both wheat and barley. Hills yield wheat more strongly, but less of it. Far, siligo can endure both chalky and marshy soil. Of crops there happened a portent once, so far as I have found, in the consulship of Publius Aelius and Gnaeus Cornelius, the year in which Hannibal was overcome. For in trees at that time grains were reported.
167| And since we have spoken abundantly of the kinds of crops and of earth, we shall now speak of the method of ploughing, first recalling the ease of Egypt. The Nile there, performing the part of a farmer, begins to overflow, as we have said, from the solstice and the new moon, at first slowly, then more violently, as long as the sun is in Leo. Soon it slackens, the sun having passed into Virgo, and subsides in Libra.
168| If it has not exceeded 12 cubits, famine is certain; nor less if it has risen above 16. For it recedes the more slowly the more abundantly it has risen, and keeps off the sowing. It was commonly believed that they used to sow from its receding, and soon drive pigs in, pressing the seeds down with their tracks in the wet ground, and I believe it was done so in ancient times,
169| now too with not much heavier labour; but it is certain that the seed is ploughed in, having first been thrown into the mud of the retreated river. This is done at the beginning of the month of November, afterwards a few weed—they call it botanismos—, the remaining part visits the fields only with the sickle a little before the Kalends of April. The harvest is finished in the month of May, the stalk never a cubit high, since sand lies beneath and the grain is held only in mud.
170| The grain of the region of the Thebaid is more excellent, since Egypt is marshy. A similar system, but greater fertility, belongs to Babylonian Seleucia, the Euphrates and Tigris flooding back, since the manner of irrigation there is regulated by hand. Syria also ploughs with a thin furrow, while in many parts of Italy eight oxen pant to each plough. In every part of cultivation, but in this most of all, that oracle holds: what each region can bear.
171| Of ploughshares there are several kinds: the culter, as it is called, is bent, cutting the very dense earth before it is broken up and marking out beforehand for the furrows to be the lines of the incisions that the ploughshare, leaning back, may bite in ploughing. Another kind is the common beaked lever. A third in easy soil, not extended along the whole share-beam, but with a small point on the beak.
172| Broader than this is the fourth kind and sharper, tapering to a point, with the same blade cutting the soil and with the edge of its sides cutting the roots of herbs. Not long ago it was invented in Raetia in Gaul to add two little wheels to such a one, a kind they call plaumorati. The point has the form of a spade.
173| They sow in this way only in land under cultivation, and generally new land. The breadth of the plowshare turns the sods. They throw in the seed at once and drag toothed hurdles over it. Crops sown this way need no hoeing; instead they plow with two or three teams of oxen in tandem. The settled reckoning is that one yoke of oxen can be counted on for forty iugera of easy soil in a year, thirty of difficult.
174| 1 In plowing, the oracle of Cato must be most carefully observed: "What is it to farm well? To plow well. What is second? To plow. What is third? To manure." "Do not plow with a crooked furrow." "Plow in season." In warmer places the fields should be broken up from midwinter, in colder ones from the spring equinox, and sooner in dry country than in damp, sooner in dense soil than in loose, sooner in rich than in lean.
175| Where summers are dry and heavy, and the soil chalky or thin, it is more useful to plow between the solstice and the autumn equinox; where the heat is mild, the rains frequent, and the ground rich and grassy, it is done in the midst of the hot weather. Deep, heavy soil it is good to turn even in winter; very thin and dry soil, a little before sowing.
176| 2 Even this has its own rules: "Do not touch muddy ground." "Plow with all your strength." "Break the ground before you plow it." This has the advantage that, with the sod turned over, the roots of the herbs are destroyed. Some insist that the breaking-up be done from the spring equinox in any case. Land plowed once in spring is called vervactum, from the evidence of the season; this is equally necessary in fallow land.
177| Fallow land is that which is sown in alternate years. Oxen about to plow must be yoked as tightly as possible, so that they plow with heads held high; in this way they bruise their necks least. If the plowing is among trees and vines, they should be muzzled with little baskets, so that they do not crop the tender shoots; a small hatchet should hang from the plow-handle, with which roots may be cut through, which is better than their being torn up by the plow and the oxen struggling; the furrow should be carried through to its end, and the team not be halted in the middle of the work for breath.
178| The proper measure is for one iugerum to be broken up in a day with a furrow three-quarters of a foot deep, and for one and a half iugera to be plowed a second time, if the soil is easy; if not, for half a iugerum to be broken up and one iugerum to be plowed again, since nature has laid down limits even for the labor of animals. Every field ought to be worked in straight furrows, and afterward in slanting ones as well. On hillsides the plowing is done only across the slope, with the share biting now toward the upper side and now toward the lower, and the labor for the man is so great that he takes the place of the oxen as well. Certainly mountain peoples plow with mattocks, without this animal.
179| A plowman who does not bend over the plow strays from the straight line; from this the charge of "prevarication" was carried over into the courts. It should be guarded against there above all, where it was invented. The share should be cleared from time to time with a goad tipped with a scraper. Raw ridges must not be left between two furrows, and clods must not jump up. Land is badly plowed if it has to be harrowed after the crops are sown. It will be rightly worked only when it cannot be told on which side the share went. It is the practice also, where the place requires it, to put in drains with a wider furrow, which carry the water off into the ditches.
180| 3 After plowing is repeated across the field, harrowing follows, where the work requires it, with a hurdle or a rake; and after the seed is sown this too is repeated, where custom allows, with a hurdle or a board attached to the plow, which they call "lirare" (making ridges), covering the seed; if the seed is not covered, what was first named is "deliratio" (going out of the furrow).
181| Virgil is thought to have meant that sowing should be done after the fourth furrow, when he said that the best crop is the one that has felt the sun twice and the cold twice. In denser soil, as is mostly the case in Italy, it is better to sow after the fifth furrow, and in Tuscany after the ninth. But beans and vetch can be sown without breaking up the ground first, with a saving of labor and no loss.
182| 4 We shall not omit one further method of plowing, devised in Italy north of the Po through the injury of wars. When the Salassi were laying waste the fields lying below the Alps, they tried the panic and millet that were already growing tall. When the nature of the crop refused it, they plowed them under. But those harvests, multiplied, taught what they now call artrare, that is, aratrare, I believe, as it was then called. This is done even as the stalk is beginning, when it has already put out two or three leaves.
183| Nor shall we withhold a recent example, found in the territory of the Treveri in the third year before this one. For when the crops had been caught by an extremely hard winter, they sowed the fields again even in the month of March and had very rich harvests. Now the remaining cultivation will be set out crop by crop.
184| Winter wheat, spelt, wheat, seed-wheat and barley are to be harrowed, hoed and weeded on the days that will be specified. A single day's labor for each kind is enough per iugerum. Hoeing loosens the sullenness of soil hardened by winter's frost in the spring season and lets in the new sun. Whoever hoes should take care not to dig under the roots of the grain. It is better to hoe wheat, seed-wheat, barley and beans twice.
185| Weeding, when the crop has come up to the joint, by pulling out the useless plants, sets the roots of the crops free and separates the crop from the turf. Of the pulses, chickpea needs the same as spelt. Beans do not like to be weeded. Since lupine overcomes weeds, it is only harrowed. Millet and panic are harrowed and hoed, but not repeated, and not weeded. Silicia and phasioli are only harrowed.
186| There are kinds of ground whose fertility forces the crop to be combed while still in the blade (hurdles of this kind are toothed with iron spikes), and these same crops are none the less grazed down as well. What has been grazed down must be roused up again with the hoe. But in Bactria, Africa and Cyrene the indulgence of the climate has made all this unnecessary, and from the sowing they return to the fields only for the harvests, since drought holds the weeds in check, nourishing the crops with the night dew alone.
187| Virgil advises that fields lie idle in alternate years. If the extent of the farm allows it, this is without doubt most useful. But if circumstances forbid, spelt should be sown where lupine or vetch or beans have been taken off, and crops that make the soil richer. And above all this should be noted, that some crops are sown for the sake of others, in passing, if they have come up poorly, as we said in the previous volume, so that the same things are not said too often; for the nature of each soil matters a great deal.
188| There is a community in Africa in the middle of the sands, on the way to the Syrtes and Leptis Magna, called Tacape, with a soil irrigated beyond all marvel in its fertility. For about three miles in every direction a spring flows abundantly, copious indeed, but it is shared out among the inhabitants at fixed intervals of hours. There an olive is set beneath a very large palm, under the olive a fig, under the fig a pomegranate, under that a vine; beneath the vine grain is sown, then a pulse, then a vegetable, all in the same year, and all are nourished by another's shade.
189| Four cubits of that soil square, measured not with the fingers stretched out but with the hand closed into a fist, are sold for 4 denarii. Above all, the vine bears twice, so that the vintage is gathered twice a year. And unless its fertility were drained by manifold bearing, each single fruit would perish of its own luxuriance. As it is, something is reaped throughout the whole year, and it is agreed that men cannot keep pace with its fertility. There is also great difference in the waters for irrigated land.
190| There is in the province of Narbonensis a famous spring named Orga. Herbs grow in it so much sought after by cattle that they plunge their whole heads under to look for them. But it is certain that those growing in the water are nourished only by rains. Let each man therefore know his own land and water.
191| If the ground is what we have called tender, then after barley is taken off, millet can be sown, and when that is stored, turnips, and when these are taken off, barley again or wheat, as in Campania; and such ground is plowed enough by being hoed. Another order is that where there has been adoreum, the field should rest for the four winter months and take a spring bean. Before a winter bean it should not lie idle. Ground that is too rich can be alternated in this way, that after the grain is taken off a pulse is sown in the third. Thinner ground should lie idle also for a third year. Some forbid sowing grain except in ground that has rested the year before.
192| The greatest part of this topic is held by the doctrine of manuring, of which we spoke also in the previous volume. This much is unknown to no one, that nothing ought to be sown unless the ground has been manured, although this too has its own rules. Millet, panic, turnips and navew are not to be sown except in manured ground. In unmanured ground sow grain rather than barley. Likewise in fallow fields, although they want beans sown in these, wherever it is, the same crop is to be sown in soil manured as freshly as possible.
193| Anyone about to sow something in autumn should heap up dung on the field in the month of September, in any case after rain. If he is going to sow in spring, he should spread the dung out through the winter. The proper amount is 18 cartloads to the iugerum; take care not to scatter it before you plow. But if this manuring has been omitted and the seed is already thrown, there is a following remedy: before you hoe, scatter the dung from the poultry-yards, like seed, before the dust comes.
194| So that we may fix limits to this care also, the proper rule is that each month one cartload of dung should come back for each smaller animal, and ten for the larger. Unless this happens, it is plain that the farmer has bedded his stock badly. There are those who think that the best manuring is done in the open air, with the penning of the flocks enclosed by nets. A field that is not manured is cold; if it is manured too much, it is scorched, and it is better to do this often than beyond measure. The hotter the soil, the less the reason for adding dung.
195| The best seed is a year old, that of two years is worse, that of three the worst, and beyond that it is barren; for the generation of all things has its fixed limit. What has settled to the bottom of the threshing-floor is to be kept for seed; for that is the best, since it is the heaviest, and in no other way is the choice more usefully made. The ear that has seeds set at intervals will be thrown out. The best grain is that which is red and, broken by the teeth, keeps the same color; the worse is that which has more white inside.
196| It is certain that some lands take more seed and others less, and from this comes the first and religious omen for farmers: when the land takes it more greedily, it is believed to be hungry and to have eaten the seed. The rule is that sowing be done sooner in damp places, so that the seed does not rot in the rain; later in dry places, so that rains may follow and the seed not lie long, fail to conceive, and vanish; and likewise that when the sowing is hurried the seed be scattered thickly, because it conceives slowly, and when it is late, thinly, because it would be choked by too great thickness.
197| To scatter evenly is also a matter of a certain art. The hand ought to move in unison with the pace, and always with the right foot. It also happens, by some hidden reason, in the case of certain men, that their lot is fortunate and fruitful. Seed is not to be carried from cold places to hot ones, nor from early-bearing ground to late, nor anything in the contrary direction, as certain men have prescribed with a false diligence.
198| The proper quantity to sow to the iugerum in temperate soil is: of wheat or winter wheat, 5 modii; of spelt or seed-wheat (the kind of grain we call by that name), 10; of barley, 6; of beans, a fifth more than of wheat; of vetch, 7; of chickpeas, chickling and pease, 3; of lupine, 10; of lentils, 3 (these they want sown with dry dung); of ervum, 6; of silicia, 6; of phasioli, 4; of fodder, 20; of millet and panic, 4 sextarii; in rich soil more, in thin less.
199| There is another distinction as well: in dense, chalky or marshy ground, 6 modii of wheat or winter wheat; in loose ground that is dry and fertile, 4. For lean soil, unless it has a thin stand of stalk, makes the ear small and empty; rich fields send up from a single seed a numerous growth of shoots and put forth a dense crop from thinly sown seed.
200| So between four and six modii, they prescribe sowing a fifth less or more according to the nature of the soil; likewise in ground planted with trees or sloping, as in lean ground. To this belongs that oracle which is to be most carefully kept: "Do not defraud the crop." Attius added to these, in his Praxidica, that sowing should be done with the moon in Aries, Gemini, Leo, Libra or Aquarius; Zoroaster, when the sun has passed twelve parts of Scorpio, with the moon in Taurus.
201| There follows here the question, put off until now and requiring the greatest care, of the time for sowing crops, which is in large part bound up with the reckoning of the stars; for which reason we shall set out first the opinions of all that bear on it. Hesiod, who first of men gave instruction about farming, handed down one time for sowing, from the setting of the Pleiades. For he was writing in Boeotia in Hellas, where we have said that sowing is done at that time.
202| It is agreed among the most careful that, as in the begetting of winged creatures and four-footed beasts, so the earth too has certain urges toward conception. The Greeks define this as when it is warm and moist. Virgil orders wheat and spelt to be sown from the setting of the Pleiades, barley between the autumn equinox and midwinter, and vetch and phasioli and lentil at the setting of Bootes. From this it follows that the risings and settings of these stars and of others must be set out day by day.
203| There are those who order sowing even before the setting of the Pleiades, but only in dry ground and in warm provinces; for the seed is kept safe, they say, since moisture would spoil it, and from the next rain it bursts forth in one day; others, immediately from the setting of the Pleiades, since rains follow about the seventh day; some, in cold places from the autumn equinox, in warm ones later, so that the crops do not run to luxuriance before winter.
204| But all agree that sowing should not be done around midwinter, and the great proof is that winter seeds, when sown before midwinter, burst forth on the seventh day, but if after midwinter, scarcely on the fortieth. There are those who hurry on, and so declare that hasty sowing often deceives, late sowing always. On the contrary, others hold that one should sow even in spring rather than in a bad autumn and, where it is necessary, between the west wind and the spring equinox.
205| Some, leaving aside the subtlety of the heavens, define by calendar dates: in spring, flax and oats and poppy, and, as the peoples north of the Po still observe, up to the Quinquatrus, beans; winter wheat in the month of November; spelt from the close of September to the Ides of October, others after that day, to the Kalends of November. So these men have no care for nature, and those others too much, and thus their subtlety is blind, since the business is carried on among country people, lacking in letters, let alone in the stars.
206| And it must be confessed that these matters depend chiefly on the sky, since Virgil orders that the winds be learned beforehand above all, and the habits of the stars, and observed no otherwise than by those who sail. It is a steep and immense hope that the divinity of the heavens can be mingled with rustic ignorance, but it must now be attempted for the great advantage to life. First, however, the difficulty of the stars, which even the skilled have felt, must be set before our contemplation, so that the mind may then depart from the heavens the more cheerfully and recognize as accomplished facts what cannot be known beforehand as future.
207| First of all, the reckoning of the days themselves, of the years and of the sun's motion, is almost inexplicable, since the intercalary year adds to 365 the quarters of day and night. The result is that no certain times of the stars can be handed down. There is added the admitted obscurity of things, as the signs of storms sometimes run ahead, and not by a few days (which the Greeks call procheimazein), and sometimes come after (which they call epicheimazein), and for the most part the effect of the sky descends to the earth now sooner, now later: commonly, when fair weather has returned, we hear that the star is finished.
208| Besides, although all this depends on fixed stars fastened to the sky, there intervene the movements of the planets, of hailstorms and of rains, themselves of no slight effect, as we have taught, and they disturb the order of the hope conceived. And lest we think this befalls only us, it deceives the other animals too, which are more sagacious in this matter, since their life depends on it; and out-of-season or over-hasty cold kills the summer birds, and heat the winter ones.
209| Therefore Virgil prescribes that the reckoning of the wandering stars also be learned thoroughly, warning that the passage of the cold star of Saturn must be watched. There are those who regard butterflies as the most certain indication of spring, given the weakness of the creature. But in the very year when we were composing these notes, it was observed that their emergence was killed off by cold returning three times, and that the migrant birds who on the sixth day before the Kalends of February brought hope of spring were soon battered by a most savage winter.
210| It is a doubtful matter, first of all, that the rule should be sought from the sky, and then that it must be sought by evidence. Above all there is the difference of the convexity of the heavens and of the globe of the earth, the same star showing itself to different peoples at different times, so that the cause of it does not hold on the same days everywhere. The authorities have added to the difficulty by making their observations in different places, and then even in the same places handing down different results. There have been three schools: the Chaldean, the Egyptian and the Greek.
211| To these our dictator Caesar added a fourth school, bringing the years one by one into line with the sun's course, with Sosigenes, a man skilled in that science, called in; and that very reckoning was afterward corrected when an error was discovered, in such a way that for twelve years in succession there was no intercalation, because the year, which had previously run ahead, had begun to lag behind the stars.
212| Sosigenes himself, in three treatises (though more careful than the rest, he did not cease to be in doubt, correcting himself), and the authorities whom we have set at the head of this volume, have handed down these matters, and rarely does any one man's opinion agree with another's. This is less remarkable in the rest, whom different regions excuse.
213| Of those who have disagreed in the same region we shall give one discord by way of example: the morning setting of the Pleiades Hesiod (for an astrology also survives under his name) says occurs when the autumn equinox is completed; Thales, on the 25th day from the equinox; Anaximander, on the 31st; Euctemon, on the XLIIIII; Eudoxus, on the 48th.
214| We follow the observation of Caesar above all; this will be the reckoning for Italy. But we shall also give the opinions of others, since we are interpreters not of one land but of the whole of nature, setting down not the authorities (for that is wordy) but the regions. Let readers only remember, for the sake of brevity, that when Attica is named, the Cyclades islands are understood with it;
215| with Macedonia, Magnesia and Thrace; with Egypt, Phoenicia, Cyprus and Cilicia; with Boeotia, Locris, Phocis and the neighboring districts always; with the Hellespont, the Chersonese and the mainland as far as Mount Athos; with Ionia, Asia and the islands of Asia; with the Peloponnese, Achaea and the lands lying toward the west.
216| The Chaldeans will point to Assyria and Babylonia. That Africa, the Spains and the Gauls are passed over in silence will be no wonder; for no one in those lands has made observations to hand down the risings of the stars. Yet they can be discerned, by no difficult method, in those lands also, by the arrangement of the circles which we made in the sixth volume, by which the kinship of the sky is understood not only for peoples but for single cities also.
217| Therefore, taking from those lands that we have named the convexity of the circle that applies to the lands anyone may be inquiring about, the risings of the stars will be the same along all circles with equal shadows. This too must be pointed out, that the storms themselves have their turning points in periods of four years, and return by the reckoning of the sun with no great difference, and in eight-year periods are increased, when the hundredth moon revolves.
218| All the reckoning, however, has been observed in three ways: by the rising of the stars, by their setting, and by the turning points of the seasons themselves. Risings and settings are understood in two ways. For either the stars are hidden by the sun's approach and cease to be seen, or they show themselves again at its departure, so that custom would better have called this an emerging rather than a rising, and the other a hiding rather than a setting.
219| In the other way, on whatever day they begin to appear or cease to appear at sunrise or sunset, they are called morning or evening stars, according as one or the other of these happens at dawn or at twilight. They need intervals of three-quarters of an hour, at the least, before sunrise or after sunset, in order to be seen. Besides, some rise and set twice, and all this discussion concerns those stars which we have said are fixed to the sky.
220| The turning points of the seasons rest on the fourfold division of the year by the increase of the light. This increases from midwinter and is made equal with the nights at the spring equinox, after 90 days 3 hours; then it exceeds the nights up to the solstice, over 94 days 12 hours; [….] up to the autumn equinox, and then, the day being equalized, the night advances from that point to midwinter, in 88 days 3 hours (the hours in every increase here being equinoctial hours,
221| not those of any day one chooses, being what is meant), and all these differences fall in the eighth parts of the signs: midwinter in Capricorn about the seventh day before the Kalends of January, the spring equinox in Aries, the solstice in Cancer, and the other equinox in Libra; and these very days seldom lack some indications of storms.
222| Again, these turning points are still divided by single articulations of the seasons, all of them through the middle of the intervals of days: for between the solstice and the autumn equinox the setting of the Lyre begins autumn on the 46th day; from that equinox to midwinter the morning setting of the Pleiades begins winter on the 44th day; between midwinter and the equinox, on the 45th day, the blowing of the west wind begins the spring season; from the spring equinox, on the 48th day, the morning rising of the Pleiades begins summer.
223| We shall begin with the sowings of grain, that is, with the morning setting of the Pleiades. Nor should the method then be cut to pieces by mention of small stars and the difficulty of the matter increased, since the violent star of Orion withdraws on the same days over a long stretch.
224| Many fix times beforehand for sowings, and sow their crops from the 11th day of the autumn equinox, nine days on end from the rising of the Crown, with an almost sure promise of rains; Xenophon, not before a god has given the sign. This our Cicero interpreted as meaning rain, though the true rule is not to sow before the leaves have begun to fall.
225| Some think that this happens at this same setting of the Pleiades, on the third day ahead of the Ides of November, as we have said, and this star is watched even by the sellers of clothing, and it is very easily noted in the sky. So from its setting those whose concern is lying in wait, avaricious dealers, make their prophecies about winter. Thus if the setting is cloudy, it announces a rainy winter, and they at once raise the price of cloaks; if clear, a harsh one, and they inflame the price of the rest of the clothing as well.
226| But let that farmer, untaught in the heavens, have this sign among his own brambles, looking at his own ground: when he sees the leaves falling. By this let the temperature of the year be judged, later in one place, sooner in another. For it is perceived according as the nature of the sky and of the place affects it, and in this method it excels in that the same sign is shared by the entire world and yet belongs peculiarly to each place.
227| Let him wonder at this who does not remember that on midwinter day itself pennyroyal flowers in the meat-safes. So little did nature wish anything to be hidden. And so she has given this as a sign for sowing too. This is the true interpretation, bringing the evidences of nature with it, since it advises that the earth be approached in this way, and promises a kind of substitute for dung, and announces that the earth and the sown crops are being covered by it against the cold, and warns us to hurry.
228| Varro prescribed that this observation be kept at least for the sowing of beans. Others say that the sowing should be done at full moon, but lentil from the twenty-fifth day of the moon to the thirtieth, and vetch also on the same days of the moon; that in this way, at last, it will be free of slugs. Some order it to be sown thus for fodder, but for seed in spring. There is also another rule, more manifest, by a more marvelous providence of nature, in which we shall set down the opinion of Cicero in his own words: "Now the lentisk, ever green and ever heavy with its load, is wont to grow great with a threefold bearing; pouring out its fruits three times, it shows the three times for plowing."
229| Of these, this one sign will be the same also for sowing flax and poppy. Cato hands down about poppy as follows: "The twigs and prunings that you have left over beyond your use, burn in the crop field. Where you have burned them, there sow poppy." The wild poppy is in wonderful use, boiled down with honey, for remedies of the throat, and the sleep-bringing power is in the cultivated one as well. And so far on the winter sowing.
230| But so that a kind of summary of all cultivation may be run through together, it will be fitting at the same time to manure the trees, likewise to heap earth around the vines (a day's work per iugerum is enough), and, where the nature of the place permits, to prune the tree-supported vines and the vines, to prepare the ground for the nurseries by digging two spades deep, to open the channels, to drive the water from the field, and to wash and put away the winepress.
231| From the Kalends of November do not set eggs under hens until midwinter is completed. Up to that day put under them thirteen throughout the whole summer, in winter fewer, yet never below nine. Democritus thinks the winter will be such as the day of midwinter was and the three days around it; likewise the summer by the solstice. Around midwinter, in most years, the fourteen days of the halcyons' breeding soften the sky with a calm of the winds. But in these and in all other cases the stars should be understood from the outcome of the signs, and the promises of storms must not be awaited for days fixed in advance.
232| Do not tend the vine at midwinter. Hyginus advises that wines then be racked off the lees or even poured out into other vessels from the seventh day after midwinter is completed, at least if the seventh day of the moon coincides; that cherries be sown around midwinter. It is fitting then to scatter acorn for the oxen, [….] modii for each yoke. A larger amount endangers health, and at whatever time it is given, if it has not been given for 30 days continuously, they say that in the spring the oxen regret it with the scab. We have given this as the time for cutting timber.
233| Let the remaining work be done chiefly in the night watches, when the nights are so much longer: weaving baskets, hurdles and wicker pannier; cutting torches; preparing, by day, 30 vine-props and 60 stakes; and in the evening work by lamplight 5 props and 10 stakes, and the same number before dawn.
234| From midwinter to the west wind, the signs notable to Caesar are: on the third day before the Kalends of January, the setting of the Dog in the morning, on which day the Eagle is reported to set at dusk in Attica and the neighboring regions. On the day before the Nones of January, according to Caesar, the Dolphin rises at dawn, and the Lyre on the following day, on which day the Arrow sets in the evening in Egypt.
235| Likewise, on the sixth day before the January Ides, with the evening setting of this same Dolphin, days of continuous winter weather follow in Italy, as also when the sun is perceived to pass into Aquarius, which occurs about the sixteenth day before the Kalends of February. On the eighth day before the Kalends, the star in the breast of the Lion, called the royal star by Tubero, sets in the morning, and on the eve of the Nones of February, the Lyre in the evening.
236| In the last days of this time, wherever the nature of the climate permits, the ground for rose beds and the planting of a vineyard ought to be turned by digging two spades deep (70 days' work per iugerum is enough), ditches cleaned or new ones made, before dawn iron tools sharpened, handles fitted, cracked jars mended, the coverings of the sheep put in order, and their wool cleaned by scraping.
237| 1 From the west wind to the spring equinox, Caesar indicates: on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of March, three days of varying weather; and on the eighth day, the sight of the swallow, and on the next day the evening rising of Arcturus; likewise on the third day before the Nones of March (Caesar observed that this occurs at the rising of Cancer, the greater part of the authorities at the emerging of the Vindemitor), on the eighth day before the Ides the rising of the northern fish, and on the next day of Orion. In Attica the appearance of the kites is observed. Caesar also marked the Ides of March as deadly for himself, by the setting of Scorpio, and on the fifteenth day before the Kalends of April the kite is shown in Italy, and on the twelfth day before the Kalends the Horse sets in the morning.
238| 2 This interval of time is the most vigorous for farmers and the most laborious, and in it they are especially deceived. For they are not called to their tasks on the day when the west wind ought to blow, but on which it has begun. This must be watched with sharp attention; in that month the day has a sign by an observation least deceptive or doubtful, if one pays heed.
239| From what quarter this wind blows, and from what direction it comes, we said in the second volume, and shall say a little more laboriously shortly. Meanwhile, from the day, whatever it be, on which it has begun to blow (not necessarily the sixth day before the February Ides, but either before, when it is early spring, or afterward, when winter lingers beyond that day), countless cares should occupy the country people, and the first tasks be carried through, those that cannot be put off.
240| Three-month crops are to be sown, vines pruned in the manner we have described, olives tended, fruit trees planted and grafted, vineyards trenched, nurseries laid out, other things renewed, reeds, willows and broom planted and cut, and elms, poplars and plane trees certainly planted, as has been said.
241| Then too it is fitting to clean the crops, and to hoe the winter grains, and most of all spelt. A fixed rule in this: when it has begun to have four rootlets; beans not before they have three leaves, and even then to clean with a light hoe rather than dig, and in any case not to touch them while in flower during the first 15 days. Barley is not to be hoed unless it is dry. Have your pruning finished by the equinox. For a iugerum of vineyard 4 days' work suffice for pruning; for tying up in the tree-supported vines, a day's work is 15 trees.
242| At this same time there is the care of gardens and rose beds, which will be treated separately in the next volumes, and at the same time of the ornamental gardeners. Then trenches are best made. Land is broken up for the future, with Virgil as chief authority, so that the sun may bake the clods. More useful is the opinion which orders only temperate ground to be plowed in mid-spring, since in rich ground weeds at once occupy the furrows, and in thin ground the heats that follow dry it out and carry off all the juice from the seeds to come. It is certain that such ground is better plowed in autumn.
243| 3 Cato defines the spring work thus: trenches to be made, nurseries [….] to be propagated, in rich and damp places elms, figs, fruit trees and olives to be planted, meadows manured while the moon is thirsty; those that are not to be irrigated, to be protected from the blowing of the west wind and cleaned, bad weeds to be torn up by the roots, figs to be pruned between, nurseries to be made and old ones mended: this before you begin to dig the vineyard. And the same author: "When the pear is in flower, begin to plow lean and sandy ground. Afterward, as each is heaviest and wettest, so plow it last."
244| This plowing, therefore, will have these marks: first the fruit of the lentisk appearing, and the pear in flower. There will be a third in the planting of the bulbs of the squill, likewise in that of the narcissus for garlands, for these too flower three times, and by the first flower show the first plowing, by the middle one the second, by the third the last, since some things offer signs to others among themselves.
245| And not least is the precaution that ivy not be touched while the beans are in flower; for that is a harmful and deadly time for it. Some things have their own signs too, as the fig. When a few leaves sprout at the top, like a little cup, then figs are best planted.
246| 1 The spring equinox seems to be completed on the seventh day before the Kalends of April. From it to the morning rising of the Pleiades, the days indicate, in Caesar's account: the Kalends of April; on the third day before the Nones of April the Pleiades are hidden in the evening in Attica, and the same on the next day in Boeotia, and on the Nones in the account of Caesar and the Chaldeans; in Egypt Orion and his sword begin to be hidden.
247| On the sixth day before the Ides rain is indicated for Caesar by the setting of Libra. On the fourteenth day before the Kalends of May the Little Sows set in the evening in Egypt, a violent star, stormy by land and sea. On the sixteenth in Attica, on the fifteenth for Caesar, it signifies four days in a row, and in Assyria on the twelfth day before the Kalends; this is commonly called the Parilian star, since the eleventh day before the Kalends of May, the birthday of the city of Rome, on which fair weather usually returns, gave clearness to the observation, the Greeks calling [those stars] hyades from the evidence of rain, which our people, from the likeness of the Greek name, thinking it was given on account of swine, called through ignorance suculae.
248| The day is marked by Caesar also on the eighth day before the Kalends. On the seventh, in Egypt, the Kids rise; on the sixth, in Boeotia and Attica, the Dog is hidden in the evening, and the Lyre rises at dawn. On the fifth day before the Kalends in Assyria all Orion is hidden, and on the fourth the Dog. On the sixth day before the May Nones, for Caesar, the Little Sows rise in the morning, and on the seventh before the Ides the rainy Goat, while in Egypt on the same day the Dog is hidden in the evening. So at about the sixth day before the May Ides, the rising of the Pleiades, the stars run their course.
249| 2 In this interval of time, in the first 15 days, farmers must snatch up the tasks that they did not manage to finish before the equinox, provided they know that from this was born the foul reproach on those who prune vines, by imitation of the song of the seasonal bird which they call the cuckoo. For it is held a disgrace and a deserved reproach for the pruning hook to be caught in the vine by that bird, and for this reason the wit of saucy jests, even in early spring, is applauded, though by the omen they seem detestable. So even the smallest things in the country are drawn along by natural evidences.
250| At the end of this time comes the sowing of panic and millet. These are properly sown when the barley is ripening. And even in the same field there is a sign common to the ripening of the one and the sowing of the others: the glow-worms shining in the evening over the fields (this is what country people call the starry flights, the Greeks lampyrides), in the incredible kindness of nature.
251| 1 Already she had made the Pleiades notable in the heavens, a crowd of stars; yet not content with these she made other stars on earth, as though crying out: "Why do you gaze at the sky, farmer? Why do you seek the stars, countryman? Already the nights press upon you, weary, with shorter sleep. See, I scatter among your own grasses special stars of yours, and I show them to you as you part from your work in the evening, and, so that you cannot pass them by, I stir you with a marvel.
252| "Do you see how a gleam like fire is covered by the closing of the wings, and has its light with it even at night? I have given you herbs as indicators of the hours, and so that not even the sun may call your eyes away from the earth, the heliotrope and the lupine turn around with it. Why do you look still higher and search the very sky?
253| See, you have the Pleiades before your feet." These come forth on uncertain days and last, but it is certain that they are the offspring of this star. Accordingly, whoever sows summer crops before them will cheat himself. In this interval the bee, coming forth, shows that the bean is in flower, and the flowering bean calls it forth. Another indication that the cold is ended will be given: when you see the mulberry begin to bud, do not fear injury from cold afterward.
254| 2 So the tasks are these: to set cuttings of olives and to scrape around the olive trees themselves, to irrigate meadows in the first days of the equinox, when the grass has grown into stalk, to shut off the waters; to strip the shoots from the vine (and this has its own rule: when the shoots have filled [….] fingers in length; one day's work strips a iugerum), to hoe the crops a second time. Hoeing is done in 20 days. Hoeing from the equinox is thought to harm both vineyard and crop. And this same time is the time for washing sheep.
255| 3 From the rising of the Pleiades, the signs for Caesar are: on the next day, the morning setting of Arcturus; on the third day before the May Ides, the rising of the Lyre; on the twelfth day before the Kalends of June, the Goat setting in the evening, and the Dog in Attica. On the eleventh day before the Kalends, the sword of Orion begins to set for Caesar; on the fourth day before the June Nones, for Caesar and Assyria the Eagle rises in the evening; on the seventh day before the Ides, Arcturus sets in the morning in Italy; on the fourth, the Dolphin rises in the evening.
256| On the seventeenth day before the Kalends of July the sword of Orion rises, which in Egypt is four days later. On the eleventh day before the Kalends, the sword of this same Orion begins to set for Caesar. On the eighth day before the Kalends of July, the longest day of the whole year and the shortest night make the solstice.
257| 4 In this interval of time the vineyards have their shoots stripped; care is taken that an old vineyard be dug once, a young one twice; sheep are shorn; lupine is turned under for manure; the ground is broken up; vetch is cut for fodder; beans are reaped, then threshed.
258| Meadows are mown about the Kalends of June; the care of them, the easiest for farmers and of the least expense, requires that something be said of it. They should be left in rich ground, either damp or irrigated, and watered by rainwater or the public supply. It is most useful, if the herbs are bad, to plow, then to harrow with hurdles, to hoe, to scatter the flower that has fallen from hay-lofts and mangers, before they are harrowed, and not to irrigate in the first year, nor to pasture before the second hay-cuttings, lest the plants be plucked up and blunted by trampling.
259| Meadows grow old and ought to be restored, with beans sown in them, or turnips or millet, then grain in the following year, and in the third year to be left unplowed again; besides, as often as they have been cut, to be gone over with the sickle (siciliri), that is, to cut what the haymakers have passed by. For it is especially useless for plants to come up that will seed themselves. The best plant in a meadow is trefoil, next grass, the worst is nummulus, which bears even a dreadful pod. Equisaetum, named from its likeness to a horse's bristle, is also hateful.
260| The time for mowing is when the ear has begun to lose its flower and grow strong. It must be cut before it dries out. Cato: "Do not cut hay late: before the seed is ripe." Some irrigate the day before. Where meadows are not irrigated, it is better to mow on dewy nights. Certain parts of Italy mow after the harvest.
261| 5 This too was a matter of greater expense among our predecessors, who knew only Cretan and overseas whetstones, which raise the edge of the scythe only with oil; so the haymaker went about with a horn tied to his leg for the oil. Italy has furnished water-whetstones, which take the place of the file in commanding iron, but the water-whetstones at once grow green. Of the scythes themselves there are two kinds: the Italian, shorter and manageable even among brambles; the great estates of the Gauls, with larger [….] savings, since they cut the grasses in the middle and pass over the shorter. The Italian haymaker cuts with his right hand alone.
262| The proper measure is for one iugerum to be mown in a day by one man's work, and 1,200 bundles of four pounds each to be tied. The cut grass ought to be turned to the sun, and not stacked unless it is dry. If this is not carefully observed, it is certain that the stacks breathe out a kind of vapor in the morning, and soon are kindled by the sun and burst into flame.
263| Again, the mown ground ought to be irrigated, so that the autumn hay, which they call cordum, may be cut. At Interamna in Umbria they are mown four times a year, even without irrigation; irrigated ones, in most places, three times, and afterward in the pasturage itself there is no less profit than from the hay. The care of herds, and the breeding of draft animals, will give each man his own plan, with the richest profit chiefly from chariot teams.
264| 1 We have said that the solstice is completed in the eighth part of Cancer, and on the eighth day before the Kalends of July. This is the great hinge of the year, a great matter of the world. In this, up to now from midwinter, the days grow [they have grown for six months], and the sun itself, climbing toward the north and striving up the steep, begins from that goal to turn and descend toward the south, about to increase the nights for another six months and to take away the measure of the day.
265| From this point, then, begins the time for snatching up and bringing in one fruit after another, and for preparing oneself against savage and wild winter, and it was fitting that nature should mark this turning with unmistakable signs. For this reason she placed them in the very hands of the farmers, and ordered the leaves to be turned on the day itself and to be a sign that the star is completed, and not those of wild trees and remote ones, so that one would have to go into trackless woodland and mountains seeking signs, nor again those of town-dwelling trees, which are cultivated only by the ornamental gardener, although these too are to be seen at the farmhouse.
266| The leaves turn of the olive planted before your feet, they turn of the linden, sought for a thousand uses, they turn of the white poplar, which is even wedded to vines. Still this is too little. "You have the elm," she says, "dowered with the vine: and of this one I will turn the leaves. You strip its leaves for fodder or you prune them: look, and you hold the star. They look toward the sky from a different side than that from which they looked the day before.
267| With the willow you bind everything, lowest of trees, yourself taller by a whole head: of this too I will turn the leaves. Why do you complain that you are a rustic? It is not by my doing that you do not understand the sky and know the heavenly things. I will give a sign to your ears also: at any rate hear the moaning of the wood-pigeon. Take care not to suppose that the solstice has passed unless you have seen the wood-pigeon sitting on her eggs."
268| 2 From the solstice to the Lyre's setting, on the sixth day before the Kalends of July, Orion rises for Caesar, and his belt on the fourth day before the Nones in Assyria, while in Egypt Procyon rises in the morning, a scorching star, which among the Romans has no name, unless we choose to understand by it the little dog-star, that is the lesser dog, as it is pictured among the stars, bearing greatly on the heat, as we shall teach a little later. On the fourth day before the Nones,
269| for the Chaldeans the Crown sets in the morning, and in Attica all of Orion rises on that day. On the eve of the Ides of July, for the Egyptians Orion ceases to rise; on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of August Procyon rises in Assyria; then after three days, almost everywhere, a huge star acknowledged by all, which we call the rising of the Dog, when the sun has entered the first part of Leo.
270| This occurs on the twenty-third day after the solstice. The seas and the lands feel it, and many wild creatures too, as we have said in their places. Nor is there less reverence for it than for the stars assigned to gods, and it inflames the sun and holds a great cause of the heat. On the thirteenth day before the Kalends, in Egypt, the Eagle sets in the morning and the forerunning blasts of the etesian winds begin, which Caesar thought was felt in Italy on the tenth day before the Kalends.
271| The Eagle sets in Attica in the morning; on the third day before the Kalends the royal star in the breast of the Lion emerges in the morning for Caesar. On the eighth day before the Ides of August Arcturus sets midway; on the third day before the Ides, the Lyre begins autumn by its setting, as he noted, but the true reckoning finds this occurs on the sixth day before the same Ides.
272| 3 In this interval of time the main business of the vines is transacted, the grapes being under the decisive sway of that star which we have called the little dog, whence they are said to be "carbuncled," as if scorched by a kind of coal of blight. Hailstorms, tempests, and whatever has ever brought dearness to the grain-supply are not to be compared with this evil. Those are evils of single fields, but the carbuncle is of regions far and wide, with a remedy not difficult, if men did not prefer to slander the nature of things rather than benefit themselves. They report that Democritus,
273| who first understood and showed the partnership of the sky with the earth, when the wealthiest of the citizens scorned this concern of his, having foreseen a coming dearness of oil from the rising of the Pleiades, by the method we have described (and we shall presently show it more plainly), bought up at that time, for a great cheapness because of the hope of the olive, all the oil in the whole district, to the astonishment of those who knew that poverty and the quiet of learning were above all dear to his heart,
274| and, when the cause became apparent and a huge flow of riches ran in, he restored the price to the anxious and greedy repentance of the owners, content to have proved that wealth would be easy for him whenever he wished. Later Sextius, among Romans a follower of wisdom, did the same at Athens by the same method. So great is the opportunity afforded by letters. These I shall blend with the business of the countryside, as lucidly and clearly as I can.
275| Very many have said that dew scorched by a hot sun is the cause of rust in crops and of the carbuncle in vines, which I judge partly false, and that all blight comes from cold alone, with the sun doing no harm. This will become plain to those who give heed. For first of all it is found that this happens only at night and before the heat of the sun, and it depends wholly on the reckoning of the moon, since such injury does not occur except at the moon's conjunction or at full moon, that is, when it prevails. For in both conditions it is full, as we have said more than once, but at the conjunction it is sending back to the sky all the light it has received from the sun. The difference between the two conditions is great, but plain.
276| For at the conjunction in summer it is hottest, in winter icy. On the other hand, at full moon in summer it makes the nights cold, in winter mild. The cause is evident, but different from that given by Fabianus and the Greek authorities.
277| For in summer, at the conjunction, it must run with the sun in the circle nearest to us, glowing with its fire received at close quarters, and be absent at the same conjunction in winter, since the sun also withdraws; likewise at the summer full moon it would be far away, opposite the sun, while in winter it approaches us through the summer circle. Therefore, being dewy of itself, whenever it is cold, it freezes the frosts falling at that time to an unlimited extent.
278| 1 Before all, however, we ought to remember that there are two kinds of injury from the sky: one which we call storms, in which hail, tempests and the like are understood, which, when they have happened, are called acts of greater force. These proceed from rough stars, as we have said more than once, such as Arcturus, Orion and the Kids.
279| Others are those which occur when the sky is silent and the nights clear, with no one aware of them until they are done. These are general, and greatly different from the former, some calling them rust, some blight, some carbuncle, and all of them barrenness. Of these we shall now speak, which no one before us has set forth, and first we shall give the causes.
280| 2 There are two besides the lunar one, and they depend on few places in the sky. For the Pleiades pertain especially to the fruits, since at their rising summer begins and at their setting winter, embracing within themselves, in a space of six months, the harvests, the vintages and the ripening of all things. There is, besides, in the sky what is called the milky circle,
281| easy to see as well [by the flowing down of this, as if from some udder, all that is sown turns to milk], and watched by the observation of two stars: the Eagle in the northern part and in the southern the Dog-star, which we mentioned in its place. The circle itself is carried through Sagittarius and the Twins, cutting the equinoctial circle twice at the center of the sun, the Eagle holding their junctions on one side and the Dog on the other.
282| Therefore the effects of both reach all the fruit-bearing lands, since only in these places do the centers of the sun and of the earth coincide. So if on the days of these stars the air, pure and mild, has transmitted that generative, milky juice to the earth, the crops grow up luxuriantly; if the moon, by the method that has been described, has sprinkled dewy cold, bitterness mixed in kills the offspring, as with milk.
283| The extent of this injury on earth is fixed by the attendance of both causes on any particular convexity, and so it is not felt equally over the whole world, any more than the day is. We have noted that the Eagle comes up in Italy on the thirteenth day counting back from the Kalends of January, and the order of nature does not allow anything in the crops to be of certain hope before that day. But if the conjunction falls then, all the winter and early crops must be damaged.
284| 3 The life of the ancients was rude and without letters. Yet it will be evident that observation among them was no less ingenious than the method is now. For they feared three times for their crops, on account of which they instituted holidays and feast days: the Robigalia, the Floralia, the Vinalia.
285| The Robigalia Numa established in the 11th year of his reign; they are now held on the seventh day before the Kalends of May, since about then rust attacks the crops. Varro fixed this time for when the sun holds the 10th part of Taurus, as the reckoning stood then. But the true cause is that, nineteen days after the spring equinox, within that four-day period, according to the varying observation of peoples, on the fourth day before the Kalends of May the Dog sets, a star violent in itself and one which the little dog-star must precede in setting.
286| And so the same people instituted the Floralia on the fourth day before the same Kalends, in the 516th year of the city, from the oracles of the Sibyl, so that all things might flower well. Varro fixes this day for when the sun holds the 14th part of Taurus. Therefore, if a full moon falls within this four-day period, the crops and all that will flower must be damaged.
287| The earlier Vinalia, which come before these days on the ninth day before the Kalends of May, instituted for the tasting of wines, have nothing to do with the fruits, nor have those we have described so far with vines and olives, since their conception begins with the rising of the Pleiades on day I before the Ides of May, as we have taught. This four-day period is another matter, in which I would not wish the vines and olives to be fouled by dew (for the cold star of Arcturus, setting on the next day, burns things up), and still less a full moon to fall.
288| 4 The fourth day before the Nones of June brings the second rising of the Eagle, in the evening, a decisive day for olives and vines in flower, if a full moon falls on it. For my part I would reckon the solstice also, on the eighth day before the Kalends of July, as being in a similar case, and the rising of the Dog 23 days after the solstice, but with a conjunction falling, since the harm comes from heat and the grapes are hardened early into a callus. Again, a full moon does harm on the fourth day ahead of the Nones of July, when the Dog-star rises in Egypt, or at any rate on the sixteenth day before the Kalends of August, when it rises in Italy, and likewise on the twelfth day before the Kalends of August, when the Eagle sets, up to the tenth day before
289| the same Kalends. Apart from these causes are the second Vinalia, which are held on the thirteenth day before the Kalends of September. Varro fixes them by the Lyre beginning to set in the morning, because he wants this to be the beginning of autumn, and this feast day to have been instituted for the soothing of storms. Now it is held that the Lyre sets on the sixth day before the August Ides.
290| 5 Within these limits lies the barrenness that comes from the sky, nor would I deny that they may be altered by the nature of cold places and of hot ones. But it is enough that the method has been shown by us; the rest will be settled by each man's observation. That one or the other, either full moon or conjunction, will be the cause, will not be in doubt.
291| And in this it occurs to marvel at the kindness of nature: first, that this injury cannot happen in every year because of the fixed courses of the stars, nor except on a few nights of the year, and that it is easily known when it will be, and that, so that it should not be feared through all the months, nature has divided it by the law of these same stars: in summer the conjunctions, except for two days, are safe, in winter the full moons, and it is to be feared only on summer nights, the shortest, while on the days the same does not hold;
292| besides, that it is so easy to understand: the ant, the smallest animal, rests at the conjunction and works at full moon even by night; the bird called parra does not appear on the very day when Sirius rises, nor until it sets, while on the contrary the chlorion comes forth on the very day of the solstice; neither state of the moon is harmful, not even on nights unless they are clear and every breath of air is still, since dews fall neither in cloud nor in wind, and even so not without remedy.
293| Burn brushwood or heaps of chaff and uprooted weeds and shrubs through the vineyards and fields, when you fear it: this smoke will cure; smoke from chaff also helps against fogs, where fogs do harm. Some order three live crabs to be burned among the trees, so that the carbuncle may not harm them;
294| others, the flesh of the silurus gently burned with the wind behind it, so that the smoke is spread through the whole vineyard. Varro is the authority that storms do less harm if, as the Lyre sets (the start of autumn), a painted grape is consecrated among the vines. Archibius wrote to Antiochus the king of Syria that, should a rubeta frog be buried under a new earthen pot in the middle of a crop, the storms are not harmful.
295| The country tasks of this interval: to plow again, to dig around the trees or, where a hot region requires it, to heap earth up around them (young shoots are not to be dug except in luxuriant soil), to clean the nurseries with the hoe, to bring in the barley harvest, to prepare the threshing floor for the harvest, tempered, in Cato's opinion, with amurca, with chalk more elaborately in Virgil. For the most part they only level it and smear it with rather thin cow dung. This seems enough as a remedy for dust.
296| The method of the harvest itself varies. On the great estates of the Gauls huge frames with teeth set in their edge are pushed through the crop on two wheels, with a beast yoked behind in the opposite direction; so the ears torn off fall into the frame. In some places the stalks are cut in the middle with a sickle, and the ear is stripped between two forked sticks. In others they are cut at the root, in others pulled up with the root, and those who do this reckon that they are plowing the field as they go, since they draw out its sap.
297| The difference is this: where they roof their houses with straw, they keep it as long as possible; where there is a lack of hay, they look for chaff from the straw. Of panic they do not make thatch from the stalk; the stalk of millet they generally burn; barley straw, most welcome to oxen, they keep. Panic and millet the Gauls pick one at a time with a hand comb.
298| The harvest itself is threshed out in some places with a threshing-sledge on the floor, in others by the tread of mares, in others beaten with poles. The later wheat is reaped, the more abundantly it is found; the sooner, the handsomer and sturdier. The most fitting rule: before the grain hardens, and when it has already taken on its color; and the oracle: rather to make the harvest two days early than two days late. For winter wheat and wheat the method is the same on the floor and in the granary. Spelt, because it is shaken out with difficulty, suits being stored with its own chaff, and is freed only of the straw and the awns. Many peoples use chaff in place of hay.
299| That chaff is better which is finer and smaller and closer to dust; therefore the best is from millet, next from barley, the worst from wheat, except for draft animals that are laboring. In stony places they break the stalk, when it has dried, with a stick, to use as bedding for the animals. If chaff has run short, the stalk too is crushed. The method is this:
300| cut early, sprinkled with strong brine, then dried, it is rolled up in bundles, and so given to oxen in place of hay. There are those who set fire in the field to the stubble also, to the great praise of Virgil. The chief reason of it is to burn up the seed of weeds. Different customs are produced by the size of the harvests and the dearness of laborers.
301| Connected with this is the method of keeping grain. Some order granaries to be built with great labor with brick walls three feet thick, and moreover to be filled from above, and to admit no draft nor have any windows; others, open only to the summer sunrise or to the north, and built without lime, because it is a great enemy of grain; for what is prescribed about amurca we have already indicated.
302| Elsewhere, on the contrary, they hang wooden granaries on columns and prefer them to be aired on all sides, even from below. Others think that the grain is thinned out by a hanging floor altogether, and, if it lies under tiles, heats up. Many forbid winnowing too; for the weevil, they say, does not go down below four fingers, and no further is the danger.
303| Columella also foretells that the west wind blows on finished grain, which I wonder at, since it is otherwise very dry. There are those who order a rubeta frog, hung from a longer foot, to be carried in over the threshold of the granary. To me the timeliness of storing will seem to matter most. For if the grain is gathered not sufficiently dried and sturdy, or stored warm, faults must grow in it.
304| The causes of lasting are several: either in the skin of the grain itself, when it is quite abundant, as in millet, or in the fatness of the juice, which suffices in place of moisture, as in sesame, or in bitterness, as in lupine and chickling. In wheat chiefly living creatures are bred, since by its density it warms up and is clothed in thick bran. In barley the husk is thinner, and in pulse it is slight; therefore they do not breed them. The bean is covered with thicker coats; on that account it ferments.
305| Some sprinkle the wheat itself with amurca for the sake of lasting, a quadrantal to a thousand modii; others with Chalcidian or Carian chalk, or even with wormwood. There is also an earth of Olynthus and of Cerinthus in Euboea which does not allow it to be spoiled.
306| And grain stored in the ear is hardly ever damaged, yet it is most usefully preserved in pits, which they call siri, as in Cappadocia and Thrace and Spain and Africa, and above all care is taken that they be made in dry ground, and then that they be lined with chaff; besides, grain is stored in this way with its own ear. If no air penetrates, it is certain that nothing harmful is bred.
307| Varro is the authority that wheat stored so lasts 50 years, millet 100, and that beans and pulses smeared with ashes in oil-jars are preserved for a long time. The same writer says that beans lasted from the age of King Pyrrhus, in a certain cave at Ambracia, until the pirate war of Pompey the Great, about cCXX years.
308| Only in the chickpea are no little creatures bred in the granaries. There are those who, with jars lined and smeared with ashes, containing vinegar, heap the piles of pulses above them, believing that harmful things are not then bred; others smear them with gypsum in pickling-jars; others sprinkle lentil with vinegar flavored with laserpicium and, when dried, anoint it with oil. But the shortest observance is, whatever you wish to be free of faults, to gather it at the conjunction of the moon. Therefore it matters greatly whether one prefers to store or to sell. For with the waxing moon grain grows large.
309| There follows, from the division of the seasons, autumn, from the Lyre's setting to the equinox and then to the setting of the Pleiades and the onset of winter. In these intervals the indications are: on the day before the Ides of August the Horse rising in the evening in Attica, the Dolphin setting for Egypt and Caesar. On the eleventh day before the Kalends of September, for Caesar and Assyria, the star called the Vindemitor begins to rise in the morning, promising the ripeness of the vintage. Its evidence will be the grapes changed in color. In Assyria on the fifth day before the Kalends the Arrow sets and the etesian winds cease.
310| The Vindemitor rises in Egypt on the Nones, Arcturus in the morning in Attica, and the Arrow sets in the morning. On the fifth day before the Ides of September the Goat rises in the evening for Caesar, and Arcturus midway on the day before the Ides, with a most violent indication by land and sea for five days.
311| The reasoning of this is handed down thus: if rains have occurred while the Dolphin sets, none will come through Arcturus. As the sign of this star's rising, let the departure of the swallows be observed; for those caught perish. On the sixteenth day before the Kalends of October in Egypt the Spike, which the Virgin holds, rises in the morning and the etesians cease. The same is indicated for Caesar on the fourteenth day before the Kalends, in Assyria on the twelfth, and on the eleventh day before the Kalends for Caesar the junction of the Fishes setting, and the star of the equinox itself on the eighth day before the Kalends of October.
312| Then they agree, which is rare — Philip, Callippus, Dositheus, Parmeniscus, Conon, Criton, Democritus, Eudoxus — that on the fourth day before the Kalends of October the Goat rises in the morning, and on the third day before, the Kids. On the sixth day ahead of the Nones of October, in Attica, the Crown rises in the morning; in Asia and for Caesar, on the fifth, the Charioteer sets in the morning. On the fourth the Crown begins to rise for Caesar, and on the next day the Kids set in the evening.
313| On the eighth day before the Ides of October the bright star in the Crown rises for Caesar, and on the sixth day before the Ides the Pleiades in the evening, on the Ides the whole Crown. On the seventeenth day before the Kalends of November the Little Sows rise in the evening. On the day before the Kalends Arcturus sets for Caesar and the Little Sows rise with the sun. On the fourth day before the Nones Arcturus sets in the evening. On the fifth day before the Ides of November the sword of Orion begins to set. Then on the third day before the Ides the Pleiades set.
314| In these intervals of time the country work is: to sow turnips and navews on the days we have specified. The country folk think that turnips sown after the departure of the stork are badly sown; we say, by all means after the Vulcanalia, and the early ones with panic; and from the setting of the Lyre, vetch, phasioli and fodder. They order this to be sown while the moon is silent. And this is the time for preparing leaf-fodder. One leaf-gatherer is held to fill four leaf-baskets in a day. If it is prepared with the moon waning, it does not rot. Dry leaf should not be gathered.
315| The ancients never considered the vintage ripe before the equinox; now I see it snatched up everywhere. Therefore its times also should be marked by signs and evidences. The rules are these: "Do not gather hot grapes," that is, after excessive drought and unless a rain has intervened. "Do not gather dewy grapes," that is, if there has been night dew, nor before it has been dispersed by the sun.
316| Begin to gather the grapes when the vine-leaf has begun to bend down toward the shoot, or when, a berry being removed, the gap is seen not to be filled up by the crowding, and the berries no longer grow. It matters a great deal, if it so happens, to gather during the waxing moon.
317| One pressing should fill 20 culei. This is the proper foot. For as many culei, and vats, one press suffices for 20 iugera. Some press with a single beam, more usefully with two, however great the size of the single beams. Length matters in them, not thickness. Roomy ones press better. The ancients drew them down with ropes and leather straps and with levers. Within 100 years the Greek-style press was devised, with the ridges of the post traveling through a screw; by some, a star fixed to the beam; by others, chests of stones lifted along with the beam, which is the most approved. Within these last 22 years it has been devised, with small presses and a smaller pressing-house, with a shorter post set upright in the middle, to put drums on the grape-skins from above to bear down with their whole weight, and to build a heap on top of the presses.
318| This is also the time for gathering fruit, noting what has fallen from ripeness, not from storm; this also for pressing out the lees, this also for boiling down defrutum, with the moon silent, by night, or, if by day, at full moon, on other days either before the rising of the moon or after its setting, and not from a young vine or a marsh one, nor except from ripe grapes. If the vessel is touched by wood, they think it becomes scorched and smoky.
319| The proper time of the vintage is 44 days from the equinox to the setting of the Pleiades. From that day a cold oracle meets those who set no value on pitching the jars. But I have seen vintagers even at the Kalends of January, for want of vessels, and must stored in fish tanks, or the earlier wines poured out so that the doubtful ones could be received.
320| This does not happen so often from excessive yield as from sluggishness or the greed of those who lie in wait for dearness. A citizen's, a fair householder's measure is to use each year's supply as it is. This is equally also the most profitable. The rest about wines has been said abundantly; likewise, once the vintage is done, the olive must be snatched and what belongs to oil and what ought to be done from the setting of the Pleiades.
321| To these things that are necessary will be added something about the moon and winds and forecasts, so that the whole reckoning by the stars may be complete. For Virgil thought that certain things should even be arranged according to the days of the moon, following the display of Democritus; as for us, the usefulness of rules, which moves us in the whole work, moves us in this part too. All things that are cut, plucked or shorn are done with less harm when the moon is waning than when it is waxing.
322| Do not touch dung except in the waning moon, and manure especially in the interlunar and half-moon periods; castrate boars, bullocks, rams and kids in the waning moon. Set eggs under hens at the new moon. Make trenches at night at full moon. Cover the roots of trees at full moon. In damp places sow at the conjunction and for four days around the conjunction. They also order grain and pulses to be winnowed and stored about the last moon; nurseries to be made when the moon is above the earth; must to be trodden when the moon is under the earth; likewise timber to be cut, and the other things we have mentioned in their places.
323| Nor is the observation easier, as already stated by us in the second volume, than that which even country people can understand: whenever it is seen from the setting of the sun and shines in the earlier hours of the night, it will be waxing and will be judged by the eyes to be half; when, however, at sunset it rises from the opposite side, so that both are seen together, then it will be full moon. Whenever it rises from the sunrise and takes away light from the earlier hours of the night and extends it into the day hours, it will be waning, and again half; at the meeting, which they call the conjunction, when it has ceased to appear.
324| It will be above the earth, as long as the sun is, at the conjunction and on the first day, the whole day; on the second, for a dextans and a sicilicus of one hour of the night, and then the third, and so on up to the fifteenth, with the same portions of hours multiplied. On the fifteenth it will be above the earth the whole night, and the same below the earth the whole day.
325| On the sixteenth it will spend below the earth until a dextans and a sicilicus of the first hour of the night, and will add the same portions of hours each day up to the conjunction, and as much as it has taken from the first parts of the night, which it spends below the earth, so much it will add at the end of the day above the earth. In alternate months it will fill out 30 days, in the others it will take off one each. This will be the method of the moon; that of the winds is a little more painstaking.
326| Having observed the sunrise on any day you please, for those standing at the sixth hour of the day in such a way that they have that sunrise at the left shoulder, the south will be opposite the middle of the face and from the crown of the head, the north. The boundary that runs through the field in this way will be called the cardo. It is then better to turn around, so that each person sees his own shadow;
327| otherwise it will be behind the man. So, the sides exchanged, so that the sunrise of that day is at the right shoulder and the sunset at the left, then it will be the sixth hour when the least shadow falls opposite the middle of the man. Through the middle of its length let a furrow be drawn with a hoe, or a line with a knife, say 20 feet long, and the middle of the measure, that is at the tenth foot, be circled with a small circle, which is called the navel.
328| The part which lies toward the head of the shadow will belong to the north wind. Toward it, pruner, let the cuts of trees not look, nor the tree-supported vines or vineyards, except in Africa, Cyrene and Egypt. When it blows from there do not plow, nor the other things which we shall prescribe. The part of the line which lies toward the feet of the shadow, facing south, will give the south wind, which we have said is called notus by the Greeks.
329| When the blast comes from there, farmer, do not handle timber or wine. It is damp or hot for Italy, but for Africa it brings fires along with clear weather. Toward it let the vine-shoots of Italy look, but not the cuts of the trees or vines. Let olives fear it during the four days of the Pleiades, and let the grafter beware of it with cuttings, and the budder with buds.
330| It is fitting to give advance warning about the hour itself of that quarter. Do not cut leaf-fodder at midday, tree-man. When you perceive midday at hand, shepherd, [in summer], with the shadow drawing in on itself, drive the flocks from the sun into the shade. When you pasture in summer, let them face west before noon, east after noon; otherwise it is harmful, as it is in winter and spring to lead them out into dewy ground: [nor should you pasture them facing the north, as was said above] they are shut up thus and become blear-eyed from the blast, and die of quick flux of the belly. If you wish females to conceive, take care that they are covered facing this wind.
331| We have said that the navel is to be marked in the middle of the line. Through this middle let another run across. This will run from the equinoctial sunrise to the equinoctial sunset, and the boundary that cuts the field this way will be called the decumanus. Then two other lines are drawn crosswise, on the slant, so that they descend from the right and left of the north to the right and left of the south.
332| Let all run through the same navel, let all be equal to one another, and the intervals of all equal. This reckoning is to be undertaken once in each field or, if one wishes to use it more often, made of wood, with equal rods driven into a small drum, but marked off with a compass. By the method by which I teach that the wits even of the unskilled must be met,
333| midday is chosen to be fixed, since it is always the same, while the sun rises daily at a different point of the sky than the day before, lest anyone suppose the line is to be taken from the sunrise. Thus, once that part of the sky is determined, whatever is the end of the line nearest the north on the side of the sunrise will have the solstitial sunrise, that is, of the longest day, and the north-east wind, called boreas by the Greeks.
334| Plant trees and vines facing this. But do not plow when it blows, do not sow grain, do not cast seed. It chills the breath and freezes the roots of the trees that you are about to plant. Be forewarned: some things benefit the sturdy, others the tender.
335| (I have not forgotten that in this quarter the Greeks place a wind, which they call caecias. But Aristotle himself, a man of immense subtlety, who made this very assignment, explains from the convexity of the world how the aquilo blows contrary to the Africus.) Yet do not fear it, farmer, throughout the year for the tasks mentioned above. It is softened by a star in the middle of summer and changes its name, being called the etesian; so when you perceive it cold, beware of it for all the tasks for which the aquilo was named in the warnings: it is so much the more pernicious than the north wind.
336| Toward it let the tree-supported vines and vineyards of Asia, Greece, Spain, coastal Italy, Campania and Apulia look. If you wish males to be conceived, pasture them facing it, so that they cover in this way. Opposite the aquilo, from the winter sunset, the Africus will blow, which the Greeks call libs. When the flock has turned itself toward it for mating, know that the females have conceived.
337| 2 The third line counting from the north, the one we drew across the breadth of the shadow and called the decumanus, will have the equinoctial sunrise and the subsolanus wind, called apheliotes by the Greeks. Toward it let farmhouses and vineyards in healthy places look. It is itself gently rainy; drier is the favonius, opposite to it, from the equinoctial sunset, named zephyrus by the Greeks. Cato ordered olive groves to face this. It begins the spring and opens the lands, healthy with a slight chill; it will give the right of pruning vines and tending crops, of planting trees, grafting fruit trees and handling olives, and by its blast will exercise nurture.
338| The fourth line from the north, nearest the south on the side of the sunrise, will have the winter sunrise and the wind volturnus, called eurus by the Greeks, itself rather drier and warmer. Toward it the beehives and vineyards of Italy and the Gauls ought to look. Opposite the volturnus will blow the corus, from the solstitial sunset and the setting on the north side, called argestes by the Greeks, itself among the coldest, like all that blow from the north quarter.
339| This also brings hail, and is to be avoided no less than the north wind. If the volturnus begins to blow from a clear part of the sky, it will not last into the night, but the subsolanus stretches over most of the night. Whatever wind it may be, if it is felt to be fiery, it will remain for several days. The earth drying suddenly foretells the aquilo; moistening with hidden dew, the south.
340| Now that the doctrine of the winds has been set out, so that the same things are not said too often, it is fitting to pass to the remaining forecasts of storms, since I see that this too pleased Virgil greatly, inasmuch as he reports that battles of the winds, ruinous to the unskilled, often clash in the very harvest.
341| They report that the same Democritus, when his brother Damasus was reaping in the greatest heat, begged him to spare the rest of the crop and to snatch the cut part under cover, and that a few hours later, with savage rain, the prophecy was proved. Nay, more, they order that reed be sown only when rain is imminent, and crops when rain is about to follow. For which reason we shall touch on these also briefly, having searched most for what pertains, and shall first take the forecasts from the sun.
342| A clear sunrise that is not fiery announces a fair day, a pale one hail in winter. If it also set clear the day before [and rises], the surer the confidence in fair weather. A hollow-looking sunrise foretells rains; the same, winds, when clouds redden before its rising; and if black ones come among the red, rains as well; when the rays of the setting or rising sun are seen to come together, rains.
343| If clouds redden about the setting, they promise fair weather also for the coming day. If at its rising they are scattered, part toward the south, part toward the north, though there is clear weather about it, they will nevertheless signify rain and winds; if at rising or setting the rays are seen contracted, rain. If it rains at its setting, or the rays draw cloud into themselves, they will signify rough weather for the next day.
344| When at its rising the rays stand out dim, though no clouds surround it, they will portend rain. If clouds gather in a mass before sunrise, they will announce a harsh winter; if they are driven back from the rising and pass to the setting, fair weather. If clouds shut in the sun, the less light they leave, the more troubled the storm will be; if there is even a double ring, so much the more terrible.
345| And if this happens at rising or setting, so that the clouds redden, the greatest storm will be shown. If they do not surround it but lie upon it, from whatever wind they come, they will portend that one; if from the south, rain also. If the rising sun is girdled with a ring, from whatever part it breaks itself, a wind is to be expected. If it flows away wholly and equally, it will give fair weather.
346| If at its rising it extends its rays far through the clouds and the middle is empty, it will signify rain; if rays show themselves before the rising, water and wind; if about the setting there is a bright circle, a mild storm in the night; if fog, a more violent one; if with the sun glowing, wind; if the circle is black, from whatever region it breaks itself, a great wind.
347| Next in order come, by right, the forecasts of the moon. The fourth day of it Egypt observes most. If it rises bright and shines with a clear brilliance, it is believed to portend fair weather; if reddish, winds; if black, rains, up to the fifteenth day. Its horns, if blunted, always signify rain; if upright and menacing, winds, but the fourth day most of all. If the upper horn is sharpened and stiff, it forecasts the north wind; the lower, the south; if both are upright, a windy night. If a reddish ring girdles the moon on the fourth day, it will give warning of both winds and rains.
348| In Varro it stands thus: "If on the fourth day the moon is upright, it will forecast a great storm at sea, unless it has a ring around it and that one clear, since in that case it shows there will be no storm before the full moon. If at full moon it is clear through the middle, it will signify fair days; if reddish, winds; if darkening, rains."
349| If fog or a ring of clouds encloses it, winds, from where it breaks; if twin rings gird it, a greater storm, and more so if there are three, or black, broken and torn apart. If the new moon rises with its upper horn blackened, it will give rains as it wanes; if with the lower, before the full moon; if that blackness is in the middle, rain at full moon. If the full moon has a ring around it, from the side where this shines most, it will show the wind; if at its rising the horns are thicker, a rough storm. If it has not appeared before the fourth day, with the west wind blowing, the whole month will be wintry. If on the sixteenth day it appears rather fiery, it will forecast rough storms.
350| There are also 8 junctures of the moon itself, whenever it falls on the angles of the sun, most observers watching its forecasts only between these, that is, the 3rd, 7th, 11th, 15th, 17th, 23rd, 27th, and the conjunction.
351| In the third place the observation of the stars ought to be made. These seem sometimes to dart about, and winds at once follow, in whose quarter they have thus forecast. When the whole sky is evenly bright at the junctures of the seasons that we have set out, it will promise a clear and cold autumn. If spring and summer have gone by with a measure of coolness, they will make the autumn clear, dense and less windy. A clear autumn makes a windy winter.
352| When the brilliance of the stars is suddenly dimmed, and that neither by cloud nor fog, rain or heavy storms are announced. If several stars are seen to fly about, whither they are carried, growing white, they will announce winds from those quarters [or]. If they twinkle, steady ones; if this happens in several quarters, shifting winds and from every side. If a ring has enclosed any of the wandering stars, rain.
353| In the sign of Cancer there are two small stars called the Asses, with a small cloud between them occupying a slight space, which they call the Manger. When this ceases to appear in a clear sky, a fierce winter follows. But if fog has taken away one of them, the northern, the south wind rages; if the southern, the aquilo. When there are double rainbows they announce rains; after rains, fair weather, not so surely; a circle of cloud around some stars, rain.
354| When in summer it has thundered more violently than it has flashed, it announces winds from that quarter; on the other hand, if it has thundered less, rain. When there are flashes of lightning and thunder in a clear sky, there will be winter, and most savage when the lightning comes from all four of the sky's quarters; when from the aquilo only, it will portend water for the next day; when from the north, that wind. If lightning flashes from the south, the corus or the favonius, on a cloudless night, it will show wind and rain from the same regions. Thunder in the morning signifies wind, at midday rain.
355| When clouds are carried up in a clear sky, from whatever quarter that happens, winds are to be expected. If they gather in a mass in the same place and are scattered as the sun approaches, and this happens from the aquilo, they will portend winds; if from the south, rains. If at sunset they seek the sky on both sides of it, they will signify a storm. Black ones threaten more violently from the east water in the night, from the west on the next day.
356| If many clouds are scattered from the east like fleeces of wool, they forecast water within three days. When clouds settle on the tops of mountains, there will be winter. If the summits become clear, it will clear up. When a heavy cloud turns white, which they call a white storm, hail will threaten. In a sky however clear, a little cloud however small will give a stormy blast.
357| Mists descending from mountains, or falling from the sky, or settling in the valleys, will promise fair weather. Next to these, earthly fires give indications. For they are felt as pale and murmuring messengers of storms, and also of rains, if mushrooms form on lamps, or if the flame flies about in twisting fashion.
358| Lights announce wind when they dash out flames from themselves or are scarcely kindled; likewise when sparks are heaped together in a bronze pot hanging, or when coal clings to those lifting pots, or when a covered fire throws off ash from itself or sends out a spark, or when ashes cake together on the hearth and when the coal glows brightly through.
359| There are also indications from waters: if the sea runs quietly in a harbor or murmurs within itself, it forecasts wind; if this is in winter, rain too; if the shores and banks resound in calm weather, a rough storm, likewise sounds of the sea itself in calm, or scattered foam, or bubbling waters. Sea lungs in the open sea portend a winter of several days. Often also it swells in silence, and swollen higher than usual it already admits that winds are within it.
360| Some people also take as warnings the roaring of mountains and the bellowing of forests, leaves dancing when there is no breeze that can be felt, the down of the poplar or of thistles flying about, and feathers floating on water; and even, in level country, the peculiar crash that runs ahead of a coming storm. A murmuring in the sky, certainly, is a sign about which there is no doubt.
361| Animals too give forewarnings. Dolphins frolicking in a calm sea foretell wind from the quarter they come from, and likewise when they splash water about; and the same creatures foretell calm when the sea is rough. A lolligo flying out of the water, shellfish clinging fast, sea urchins fixing themselves down or ballasting themselves with sand, are signs of a storm. So too are frogs croaking more than usual, and coots with their clamour in the morning;
362| likewise divers and ducks cleaning their feathers with their beaks foretell wind, as do the other water birds when they flock together, cranes hurrying inland, and divers and gulls when they abandon the sea or the pools. Cranes flying high up in silence foretell fair weather, as does an owl hooting in rain (but in fair weather its hooting means a storm); and ravens making a sort of barking hiccup and shaking themselves foretell a fine day if they keep it up, but if they swallow their cry back in fits and starts, windy rain.
363| Jackdaws coming home late from feeding foretell wintry weather; so do white birds when they gather in flocks, and land birds when they cry out facing the water and drench themselves, but above all the crow; so does the swallow flying so close to the water that it often strikes it with its wing, and the birds that live in trees when they keep flying off to their nests; and geese with a continual cackling at the wrong time, and a heron standing gloomy in the middle of the sands.
364| Nor is it any wonder that water birds, or birds in general, feel the presages of the air. Flocks leaping about and frisking in unseemly play give the same signs; so do oxen sniffing the sky and licking themselves against the lie of their hair, filthy pigs tearing apart bundles of hay that are not meant for them, bees working sluggishly or, against their usual industry, staying hidden, ants running about together or carrying out their eggs, and likewise earthworms breaking out of the ground.
365| It is also well established that trefoil bristles and raises its leaves when a storm is coming. And even at our meals and on our tables, when the dishes in which food is served leave a sweat on the trays they stand on, they foretell terrible storms.

======== Natural History — Book XIX ========

1| The theory of the stars and of the weather has now also been set out, in a way that is easy and beyond doubt even for the unskilled; and for those who really understand, the countryside contributes no less to grasping the sky than the science of the stars does to tilling the field. Many writers have made the care of gardens their next subject;
2| but to us it does not seem the right moment to pass straight on to that, and we are surprised that some who sought from these subjects the credit of science or the glory of learning should have passed over so much, making no mention of so many things that come up of their own accord or by cultivation, especially since for most of them a greater importance, in value and in usefulness to life, is claimed than even for the field crops. And, to begin with a usefulness that everyone admits, and with things that have filled not only all lands but the seas as well: flax is sown, and yet it cannot be called either a field crop or a garden plant,
3| but in what part of life do we not meet it? Or what greater marvel is there than that a plant should exist which brings Egypt so close to Italy that Galerius reached Alexandria from the Strait of Sicily on the seventh day, and Balbillus on the sixth, both of them prefects; and that 15 years later, in summer, Valerius Marianus, a senator of praetorian rank, reached it from Puteoli on the ninth day with a very gentle breeze?
4| That a plant should exist which brings Gades, at the Pillars of Hercules, to Ostia on the seventh day, Nearer Spain on the fourth, the province of Narbonensis on the third, and Africa on the second, as happened, with a very light breeze at that, to Gaius Flavius, legate of the proconsul Vibius Crispus? Reckless life, full of crimes! That something should be sown to catch the winds and the storms,
5| and that it is too little to be carried by the waves alone; that now even sails larger than the ships are not enough, but although single trees are barely sufficient for the size of the yards, yet still more sails are added above the sails, and others are spread at the bows and others at the sterns, and death is challenged in so many ways; in short, that from so small a seed should spring the thing that carries the world to and fro, from so slender a stalk, rising so little above the ground; and that it is not woven with its own strength, but broken and pounded and forced by ill-treatment into the softness of wool, and then with the utmost daring carried across the sea!
6| No curse is enough against its inventor (we have spoken of him in his place), for whom it was not enough that man should die on land unless he also perished unburied. In the previous book we were giving warning of rains and winds to be guarded against for the sake of the crops and our food: and here is a thing sown by man's hand and harvested by the same man's wits that would have winds at sea! Moreover, so that we may know the Powers of Vengeance have favoured it, nothing grows more easily; and so that we may feel that nature is unwilling for it to be sown, it scorches the field and makes even the soil poorer.
7| It is sown chiefly in sandy ground, with a single ploughing, and nothing grows faster. What is sown in the spring is torn up in summer, and this too is an injury it does to the land. Still, one might forgive Egypt for sowing it, so as to import the wares of Arabia and India. But are the Gallic provinces too to be rated by this source of income? Is it not enough that mountains have been set against the sea, and that on the side of the Ocean the very thing they call the void stands in the way?
8| The Cadurci, Caleti, Ruteni, Bituriges, and the Morini, who are thought the remotest of men, and indeed the whole of Gaul, weave sailcloth; and now even our enemies across the Rhine do so, and their women know no lovelier dress. This reminds me of what Marcus Varro records: that in the family of the Serrani it is a family tradition for the women not to wear linen clothing.
9| In Germany, moreover, the women do this work dug in underground. It is done in the same way in the region of Italy called Aliana, between the rivers Po and Ticinus, where flax takes third prize in Europe after that of Saetabis; for second place is taken by the Retovine flax, in the neighbourhood of the Aliana, and by the Faventine on the Aemilian Way. For whiteness the Faventine is preferred to the Aliana, which is always unbleached; the Retovine has the greatest fineness and closeness, and the whiteness of the Faventine, but no nap, which some find a charm and others a fault. Its thread is strong and almost more even than a spider's, and it rings when you choose to test it with your teeth. That is why it fetches twice the price of the others.
10| After these, Nearer Spain has a flax of outstanding brilliance, owing to the nature of the torrent in which it is polished, the one that washes Tarraco; and its fineness is wonderful, and it was there that carbasus was first discovered. Not long ago the Zoelican flax came into Italy from the same Spain, most useful for hunting nets; that community belongs to Gallaecia and lies near the Ocean. The Cumaean flax in Campania also has a glory of its own, for nets to catch fish and birds.
11| It is also the material for hunting nets (for with flax we lay snares for all the animals no smaller than those we lay for ourselves); but Cumaean nets cut through a boar's bristles and get the better even of the edge of iron. We have seen nets of such fineness that they would pass, ropes and all, through a man's ring, a single man carrying a mass of netting with which whole forest glades could be encircled. Nor is it the greatest wonder that each of their strands consists of a hundred and fifty threads, as in the nets belonging lately to Julius Lupus, who died in office as prefect of Egypt.
12| Those who do not know of it may well marvel that in the corselet of a former king of Egypt, whom they call Amasis, in the temple of Minerva at Lindus on the island of Rhodes, each thread consists of 365 threads; Mucianus, three times consul, recently stated that he had tested this himself, and that only small remnants of it now survive because of the damage done by people testing it.
13| Italy too still holds the flax of the Paeligni in honour, but only for the use of fullers. None is whiter or more like wool, just as the Cadurci hold the chief glory for mattresses. Mattresses, and stuffing as well, are an invention of the Gallic provinces. In Italy, at any rate, the old custom survives even now in the word for bedding, stramentum, 'straw'.
14| 3 Egyptian flax has the least strength, the most profit. There are four kinds there: the Tanitic, the Pelusiac, the Butic, the Tentyritic, named for the regions in which they grow. The upper part of Egypt, inclining toward Arabia, produces a shrub which some call gossypion, more call xylon, and therefore the linens made from it are called xylina. It is small and bears a fruit like a bearded nut, from whose inner bombyx the down is spun. No fabrics are softer or more downy, and none so white. Garments of it are most welcome to the priests of Egypt.
15| A fourth kind they also call othoninum. It is made from a reed-like marsh plant, but only from its panicle. Asia makes from broom linen for nets which are particularly durable in fishing, the shrub being steeped for 10 days; the Ethiopians and Indians make it from apples, the Arabs from gourds growing on trees, as we have said.
16| Among us its ripeness is recognized by two proofs: by the swelling of the seed, or by yellowing in color. Then, pulled up and tied in handfuls in bundles, it is dried in the sun, hanging with the roots turned uppermost for one day, then for 5 other days with the tops of the bundles turned toward one another, so that the seed falls into the middle. The seed has medicinal power, and was also used in a certain rustic and very sweet food of Italy north of the Po, but now for a long time only for the sake of sacred rites.
17| Then, after the wheat harvest, the stalks themselves are sunk in water warmed by the sun, pressed down by some weight; for nothing has greater lightness. That they are macerated is shown when the skin comes looser, and again turned over, as before, they are dried in the sun, and when dried they are pounded on a stone with a tow-mallet. What was nearest the bark is called tow, of inferior flax, more suited generally to the wicks of lamps; yet even this is combed with iron teeth until all the skin is stripped off,
18| and the husks shaken off serve for ovens and furnaces. The pith has more numerous distinctions in whiteness and softness. Spinning flax is becoming even for men. There is an art of combing and arranging: the proper yield is that fifteen pounds be carded from every fifty pounds of bundles. Then again on the thread it is polished, beaten frequently against a flint out of water, and the cloth woven is again pounded with clubs, always the better for ill-treatment.
19| There has been found by now even a kind that is not consumed by fire. They call it living flax, and we have seen napkins of it blazing on the hearths at banquets, their stains burned away, shining more from fire than they could from water. From it the funeral tunics of kings keep the ashes of the body apart from the rest of the ash. It is found in the deserts of India, burnt by the sun's heat, where no rains fall, among dreadful serpents, and it becomes accustomed to living by burning, rare to find, difficult to weave because of its shortness. For the rest, its red color gleams in the fire.
20| When it is found, it equals the price of the finest pearls. It is called by the Greeks asbestinon from the evidence of its nature. Anaxilaus is the authority that a tree wrapped around with this linen can be cut down with muffled blows that cannot be heard. Therefore to this flax belongs the first place in the whole world. Next comes byssus, chiefly for the luxury of women, produced around Elis in Achaea; scruples of it were once exchanged at 4 denarii each, as I find, like gold.
21| The lint of linen cloths, especially from the sails of seagoing ships, is of great use in medicine, and its ash has the power of spodium. There is also among the poppies a certain kind from which linens draw a special whiteness.
22| Flax was also tried with dyes, so as to take on the madness of clothing, first in the fleets of Alexander the Great, sailing on the river Indus, when his commanders and prefects had varied the insignia of the ships in a kind of contest, and the shores were amazed at the many-colored sails driven by the wind. At Actium Cleopatra came with Mark Antony in a purple one, and in the same she fled. This was the mark of the commander's ship.
23| Afterward they made it into shade in theaters only, which Quintus Catulus was the first of all to devise, when he dedicated the Capitol. Then Lentulus Spinther is reported to have been the first to draw linen awnings in the theater, at the Apolline games. Soon Caesar the dictator covered the whole Roman Forum, and the Sacred Way from his house and the slope up to the Capitol, which they report was seen as more marvelous than the gladiatorial show itself.
24| Then, even without games, Marcellus, born of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, in his aedileship, in the 11th consulship of his uncle, from the Kalends of August shaded the Forum with sails, so that litigants might stand in greater comfort. How much changed from the ways of Cato the censor, who had decreed that the Forum should even be strewn with murices! Sails recently, colored like the sky and studded with stars, have been drawn on ropes even in the amphitheaters of the emperor Nero. They are reddened in the open courts of houses and shield the moss from the sun. For the rest, a persistent favor has remained for the white.
25| There was honor for it already in the Trojan war too. For why should it not take part in battles as in shipwrecks? That a few nevertheless fought in linen breastplates Homer is witness. From this, the more learned interpret, even the ship's tackle in him was of it, since when he said sparta he signified sown things.
26| The use of spartum, indeed, began many centuries later, and not before the Punic arms, which first carried it into Spain. It too is a plant, growing of its own accord and one that cannot be sown, and a rush belonging properly to dry ground, given to one land by a defect. For this is an evil of the land, and nothing else can be sown or grow there. In Africa a small and useless amount is produced. The Carthaginian portion of Nearer Spain, and not all of that, but as far as it bears, covers even the mountains with spartum.
27| From it country people make their bedding, from it their fires and torches, their shoes and the clothing of shepherds. It is harmful to animals except in the tenderness of its tips. For other uses it is pulled up laboriously, with the legs in greaves and the hand in woven sleeves, wrapped up, with bone or holm-oak instruments for the effort, now even close to winter, but most easily from the Ides of May into June. This is the time of ripeness.
28| Pulled up, it is bound in bundles in a heap for two days; on the third it is untied, spread in the sun and dried, and again goes back in bundles under cover. Afterward it is steeped, best in sea water, but also in fresh, if sea water is lacking, and dried in the sun it is wetted again. If need suddenly presses, soaked in hot water in a tub and dried standing, it shows a saving of labor.
29| It is then beaten in order to become useful, especially unconquered in waters and at sea. On dry land they prefer ropes of hemp, but spartum is nourished even when sunk under water, as if making up for the thirst of its birth. Its nature is indeed one that can be patched, and the old is mixed with the new as one likes.
30| Yet let him who wishes to appraise the marvel take in with his mind how great is its use in all lands, in the rigging of ships, in machines for building, and in other needs of life. What suffices for all these uses will be found to extend less than 30,000 paces in breadth from the shore of New Carthage and less than 100 in length. Costs prevent its being carried farther.
31| We may believe from the name by which they call that plant that the Greeks used rush for ropes, afterward the leaves of palms and philyra. It is very probable that the use of spartum was carried over from this by the Carthaginians.
32| Theophrastus is the authority that there is a kind of bulb growing about the banks of rivers, in which between the outermost rind and the part that is eaten there is a woolly substance, from which felt slippers and certain garments are made. But he gives neither the region in which this is done, nor anything more carefully than that in the copies which I for my part have found it is called eriophoron, and he makes no mention at all of spartum, though he investigated everything with great care 390 years before us, as we have already said in another place, from which it appears that spartum came into use after that lapse of time.
33| And since we have begun from the marvels of things, we shall follow their order, among which the very greatest is that something is born and lives without any root. These are called tubers, surrounded on all sides by earth and supported by no fibers or even by hair-roots, nor indeed does the place in which they grow bulge out or show cracks. They do not themselves cohere with the earth, but are even enclosed in a rind, so that we can say plainly that they are neither earth nor anything other than a callus of the earth.
34| These generally grow in dry and sandy and shrubby places. They often exceed the size of a quince, even to the weight of a pound. Of these there are two kinds: the sandy kind, hostile to the teeth, and in the other kind clean. They are distinguished also by color, red and black and white within, the most praised being those of Africa. Whether they grow, or whether this is a defect of the earth (for nothing else can be understood), whether it is at once rounded off at the size at which it will be, and whether it lives or not, I do not think can easily be understood. For the process of rotting is common to it with wood.
35| We know that it happened a few years ago to Lartius Licinius, a man of praetorian rank, administering justice in Spain at Carthage, when biting into a tuber, that a denarius found inside bent his front teeth, whereby it will be evident that the nature of the earth is rounded into itself. What is certain is that they will be among the things which are born and cannot be sown.
36| Similar is what they call misy in the province of Cyrenaica, outstanding for sweetness of smell and taste, but fleshier, and what in Thrace they call iton, and what in Greece geranion.
37| About tubers these things are handed down in particular: that when there have been autumn rains and frequent thunder, then they are born, and most of all with thunder, and do not last beyond a year, and are most tender in spring. In some places they are brought forth only when irrigation has been received; so at Mytilene they say they are not born unless the seed is brought by the overflowing of the rivers from the Tiaris. That is the place in which the most are born. In Asia the most famous are around Lampsacus and Alopeconnesus, in Greece around Elis.
38| There are also in the family of the fungi those called by the Greeks pezicae, which are born without root or stalk. Next after these will be mentioned laserpicium, most famous in repute, which the Greeks call silphion, found in the province of Cyrenaica, whose juice is called laser, splendid in use and in medicines and repaid by weight in silver denarii.
39| For many years now it has not been found in that land, since the tax-farmers who rent the pastures, perceiving greater profit in this way, lay it waste with the grazing of flocks. Only one stalk in our memory has been found and was sent to the emperor Nero. If at any time a beast comes upon the hope of it growing, this is detected by this sign: the sheep, when it has eaten, at once falls asleep, the goat sneezes repeatedly.
40| And for a long time now no other laser is imported to us than what grows plentifully in Persis or Media and Armenia, but far inferior to the Cyrenaic, and that too adulterated with gum or sacopenium or crushed bean; so much the less should it be omitted that in the consulship of Gaius Valerius and Marcus Herennius 30 pounds of laserpicium was brought from Cyrene to Rome at public expense, and that Caesar the dictator, at the beginning of the civil war, brought out of the treasury, among the gold and silver, 1,500 pounds of laserpicium.
41| We find among the most trustworthy authorities of Greece that it was born by a rain of pitch, the ground suddenly drenched about the Hesperides' gardens and the Greater Syrtis, seven years before the town of Cyrene, which was founded in the 143rd year of our city, and that that force prevailed over 4,000 stadia of Africa.
42| In that region laserpicium used to grow, a wild and stubborn thing which, if cultivated, fled into the wilderness, with a root abundant and thick, and a stalk like that of a ferula and of similar thickness. Its leaves they called maspetum, most like celery. The seed was leaf-like, and the leaf itself fell in spring.
43| Flocks were accustomed to feed on it and were first purged, then grew fat, the flesh wonderfully pleasant. After the leaves were lost, people also fed on the stalk itself in every way, boiled, stewed and roasted, and by it their bodies too were purged during the first 40 days. The juice was taken in two ways, from the root and from the stalk, and these were two names, rhizias and caulias, the latter cheaper and apt to rot.
44| The root has a black bark. For adulteration of the merchandise they brought the juice itself to ripeness by throwing it into vessels with bran mixed in and shaking it from time to time; if they had not done so, it would rot. The sign of ripeness was the color and dryness once the sweating had ended.
45| Others report that the root of laserpicium was larger than a cubit, and that a tuber stood on it above ground. When this was cut, a juice used to flow as of milk, the stalk growing above, which they called magydaris. Leaves of golden color served in place of seed, falling after the rising of the Dog when the south wind blows. From these laserpicium used to be born, the root and stalk completing themselves in the space of a year. These authors also related that it was dug around, and that the flocks were not purged, but the sick were healed or died at once, which happened in few. The earlier opinion agrees with Persian silphium.
46| A second kind of it is what is called magydaris, more tender and less vehement, without juice, which grows around Syria and does not come up in the region of Cyrenaica. It grows copiously also on Mount Parnassus, and some call it laserpicium, by all of which the authority of a most health-giving and useful thing is adulterated. The first test of the genuine is in a color moderately red, and white inside when it is broken, then a shining drop, and that which dissolves most quickly in saliva. Its use is in many medicines.
47| There are still two kinds known only to the common sort of the lowly, though they are strong in profit, first of all rubia, necessary for dyeing wool and hides. The Italian is most praised and especially that near the city, and almost all the provinces abound in it. It comes up of its own accord and is sown, like ervilia, but with thorny leaves and stalk. It is jointed, with five leaves around the joints in a circle. Its seed is red, finally black, the root is red. What uses it has in medicine we shall say in its place.
48| But what is called radicula has a juice only for washing wools, wonderful in how much it contributes to whiteness and softness. It is grown from seed everywhere, but wild it is best in Asia and Syria, in stony and rough places, though the most praised is beyond the Euphrates, with a stalk like a ferula, itself thin, sought after in the foods of the natives and in ointments, whatever it is boiled down with; its leaf is that of the olive. The Greeks call it struthion. It flowers in summer, pleasing to look at but without scent, with a stalk of thorny down. It has no seed, the root is large, which is cut up for the use already mentioned.
49| 1 After these it remains to turn back to the care of gardens, memorable by its own nature, and because antiquity admired nothing before the gardens of the Hesperides and the kings Adonis and Alcinous, and likewise the hanging ones, whether Semiramis made them or the Syrian king of Assyria, of whose construction we shall speak in another volume.
50| The Roman kings indeed cultivated them themselves; for even the Proud sent back that savage and bloodthirsty messenger to his son out of a garden. In the Twelve Tables of our laws a farmhouse is nowhere named, always in that meaning a garden, and for a garden the word heredium; for which reason a certain religious awe has attended it, and we see that only to the garden and the forum are satyric figures dedicated as a remedy against the bewitchments of the envious, although Plautus assigns gardens to the protection of Venus. Now indeed, under the name of gardens, they possess within the city itself pleasure grounds, fields and country houses.
51| The first to institute this at Athens was Epicurus, master of leisure; until him it was not the custom to live in the fields while in the towns. At Rome, indeed, a garden was by itself the field of a poor man.
52| 2 From the garden of the common people came the market, with how much more innocent a diet! For it is better, I suppose, to plunge into the depths and seek kinds of oysters at the risk of shipwreck, to hunt birds beyond the river Phasis, not safe even for the terror of fable, indeed all the more precious for it, others in Numidia and the tombs of Ethiopia, or to fight with wild beasts and to be eaten oneself while capturing what another will eat. But by Hercules, how cheap are these things, how ready for pleasure and satiety, were not the same indignation that meets us everywhere to confront them!
53| It would doubtless be bearable that choice fruits are born, some for flavor, some for size, some forbidden to the poor by their monstrousness; that wines are aged and have their strength removed with sacks; that to no one is life so long that he does not drink what was made before him; that from grain also luxury has long ago devised for itself alica, and lives on only their marrow and on the labors of bakeries and the carvings of chasers, with one bread for the nobles, another for the crowd, the food supply descending in so many kinds down to the lowest plebeian.
54| Has a distinction been found even among herbs, and does wealth make a difference even in a food sold for a single as? In these too they deny that some grow for the many, the stalk fattened to such a degree that a poor man's table cannot hold it. Nature had made wild asparagus so that anyone might cut it everywhere. Behold, fattened asparagus is on show, and Ravenna sells them at three to the pound. Alas, the prodigies of the belly! It would be a marvel if cattle were not allowed to eat thistles: the commons are not allowed!
55| Waters too are separated, and the very elements of nature are sorted by the power of money. Some drink snow, others ice, and turn the penalties of the mountains into the pleasure of the gullet. Cold is stored against the heats, and means are devised so that snow may freeze in months not its own. Others boil down waters, and soon make them winter as well. Nothing at all pleases man as it pleases the nature of things.
56| Is some herb pastured even for the rich alone? Will no one look around at the Sacred Mount and the Aventine, and the secessions of the angry commons? Surely the market will equalize those whom money has separated. And so, by Hercules, no tax at Rome was greater than that of the market, amid the clamor of the commons complaining before all the emperors, until the duty on this merchandise was remitted, and it was discovered that no other source of income is held more profitable or safer, or with less hazard to one's fortune: although this rent is entrusted to the very poorest, the guarantor is in the soil itself, the return falls on a fixed day, and the surface rejoices under any sky.
57| 3 Of garden crops Cato praises cabbages. From these, first, the farmers of old judged, and so they made their verdict at once, that the mistress of the household was worthless where the garden was neglected, since the household must then live from the meat-safe or the market (for this was called the woman's care). Nor did they approve cabbages, as is now most the case, condemning relishes that needed another relish: this was to spare oil, for the desire for garum was even a reproach.
58| Garden crops pleased most which needed no fire and spared wood, a ready thing, always prepared, whence they are also called acetaria, easy to digest and not burdening the senses with food and least likely to kindle a desire for bread. The part of them that belongs to seasonings confesses that borrowing at home used to be the custom, and that no Indian pepper was sought, nor what we seek across the seas.
59| The city commons even used to present the countryside daily to the eyes in their windows through the image of gardens, before the savage banditry of an innumerable multitude forced all views to be shut off. Wherefore let some honor be given to these also, and let lowness not take authority from things, especially since we see even the surnames of the nobles born from them, and the Valerian family was not ashamed to be called Lactucini, and let some thanks fall to our work and care, Virgil too having confessed how hard it is to give honor in words to things so small.
60| There is no doubt that gardens should be joined to the farmhouse and, if possible, kept chiefly irrigated, by a flowing river; if not, from a well, watered by a wheel or pneumatic engines or by the drawing of swing-beams. The ground is to be broken up from the time of the west wind by those preparing for autumn, and gone over again after 14 days and before midwinter. It is proper to spade it at 8 days' work to the iugerum, to mix dung 3 feet deep with the earth, to divide it into plots, and to surround each with channels of paths, with the cushion beds laid back, where access can be given to a man and runoff for the overflowing waters. Of the things that grow in gardens, some are commended by the bulb, some by the head, some by the stalk, some by the leaf, some by both, some by the seed, some by the cartilage, some by the flesh or both, some by the rind or skin and cartilage, some by fleshy coats.
61| The fruit of some is in the earth, of others both in it and outside, of others only outside. Some lie and grow along the ground, as gourds and the cucumber; the same hang, although they are much heavier even than those which grow on trees. But the cucumber consists of cartilage and flesh, the gourd of rind and cartilage; the rind of this one alone passes with ripeness into wood.
62| Radishes and navews and turnips are stored in the earth, and in another way inula, siser and parsnips. Some we shall call ferulaceous, as dill and mallows. For the authorities report [in Arabia] that mallows in the seventh month grow into trees and provide the use of staves.
63| An example is the mallow tree in Mauretania at the estuary of the town of Lixus, where the Hesperides' gardens are said to have been, 200 paces from the ocean, near a shrine of Hercules older, they say, than that at Gades. The tree itself is 20 feet in height, of a thickness that no one could embrace. In a similar class will be reckoned hemp also. Nor shall we fail to name some fleshy kinds, as sponges born in the moisture of meadows. For the callus of fungi we spoke of in the nature of wood and trees, and in another class of tubers a little before.
64| Of the cartilage class, and outside the earth, is the cucumber, sought by the emperor Tiberius with wonderful pleasure. For there was no day on which he lacked them, the gardeners moving their hanging gardens into the sun on wheels and in winter days calling them back again within the protection of specularia. Indeed it is written by the ancient authorities of Greece that they should be sown with the seed soaked two days in honeyed milk, so that they become sweeter.
65| They grow in the shape to which they are forced. In Italy the green and the very smallest please, in the provinces the very largest and waxen-colored or black. The most abundant are those of Africa, the largest those of Moesia. When they have exceeded in size they are called pepones. Swallowed, they remain in the stomach until the next day and cannot be digested in meals, yet are not very unhealthy. By nature they wonderfully hate oil and no less love water, even when cut.
66| If water is placed a little distance from them, they creep toward it; from oil they shrink back, or, if something stands in the way, or if they are hanging, they are curved and twisted. This is detected in a single night, if a vessel with water is set beneath them at an interval of four fingers, for they descend before the next day, whereas if oil is placed the same way, they are bent into hooks. The same, when the flower has dropped, grow into a tube of wonderful length.
67| See, just now a new form of them has come up in Campania in the likeness of a quince. By chance, I hear, one was first born so, and soon from its seed a kind was made, which they call melopeponas. These do not hang, but are rounded on the ground, of golden color. What is wonderful in them, besides shape, color and scent, is that, having attained ripeness, although not hanging, they at once part from the stalk.
68| Columella hands down his own device, so that they may be had all year: to transfer a very large bramble shrub to a sunny place and cut it back, leaving a stump of two fingers, about the spring equinox. Then, the seed of the cucumber being inserted in the pith of the bramble, with fine earth and dung heaped around, the roots withstand the cold. Of cucumbers the Greeks made three kinds, the Laconian, the Scytalic, the Boeotian; of these only the Laconian delights in water. There are those who order that their seed, steeped in a pounded herb whose name is culix, be sown, so that they come up without seed.
69| Gourds have a similar nature, at least in coming up. They equally hate winter, love irrigated ground and dung. Both are sown from seed, in ground dug to a depth of a foot and a half, between the spring equinox and the solstice, most suitably at the Parilia; some prefer to sow gourds from the Kalends of March, and on the Nones, and the cucumber through the Quinquatrus. In a similar way, with creeping tendrils, climbing the rough walls up to the roof, it is by nature greedy for height. Its strength is not enough to stand without support, but its speed is brisk, covering vaults and arbors with a light shade.
70| Hence these first two kinds, the vaulted and the common, which grows on the ground; in the former the weight is wonderfully balanced, motionless, on a thin stalk in the breeze. The gourd too is raised to a peak in every way, chiefly in wicker sheaths, being put into them after it has flowered, and it grows in the form to which it is forced, often [and] in the shape of a coiled serpent. When freedom is granted to hang, it has been seen at 9 feet in length. The cucumber flowers in parts, flowering over itself, and endures drier places, covered with a white down, and more so while it grows.
71| The uses of gourds are more numerous. And first the stalk is used in food, and from it the nature is wholly different. Lately they have come into use in baths in place of jugs, and for a long time even of casks for storing wines. When green the rind is tender, yet it is scraped away in food. The food is wholesome and mild in several ways, yet among those that cannot be digested by the human belly, though they do not swell.
72| The seeds that were nearest the neck produce long ones, likewise from the bottom, but not to be compared with those above mentioned; those in the middle produce round ones; those in the sides, thick and shorter ones. They are dried in the shade and, when you wish to sow, soaked in water.
73| For food, the longer and thinner they are, the more agreeable, and for that reason those that have grown hanging are more wholesome, and such have the least seed, the hardness of this ending their agreeableness in food. Those that are kept for seed are not customarily cut before winter; afterward they are dried in smoke, for storing the seeds of garden plants,
74| as rustic utensils. A method has been found by which they are kept also for food (and the cucumber in the same way) nearly to other crops; and that is done with brine. But they also report that they are kept green in a pit in a shady place, with sand spread beneath and dry hay laid over and then earth. There are wild ones too in both kinds and in almost all garden plants. But these have only a medical nature, for which reason they will be deferred to their own volumes.
75| All the rest of the cartilaginous nature is hidden in the earth. Among these we could seem to have spoken enough about turnips, were it not that physicians make the round ones of the male sex, and the broader and hollow ones of the female, superior in sweetness and easier to pickle; sown more often, they pass into the male. The same authors made five kinds of navews: the Corinthian and the Cleonaean, then the Liothasian and the Boeotian, and one they called green of itself.
76| Of these the Corinthian grows up to a great size, with a nearly bare root. For this kind alone extends upward and not, like the rest, into the earth. The Liothasian some call Thracian, very patient of cold. After it the Boeotian is sweet, remarkable even for its short roundness, and not, like the Cleonaean, very long. In general, those whose leaves are smooth are themselves sweeter; those whose leaves are rough and angular and bristly, more bitter.
77| There is besides a wild kind, whose leaves are like those of rocket. The palm at Rome is given to those of Amiternum, then to those of Nursia, third to our own. The rest about their sowing has been said in the case of turnips.
78| 1 Radishes consist of rind and cartilage, and in many of them the rind is thicker even than in some trees. They have the greatest bitterness relative to the rind's thickness (the rest also sometimes woody) and a wonderful power of drawing in breath and of loosening belching.
79| For this reason it is an ungenteel food, at least if a vegetable is eaten right after it; but if eaten by itself with ripe olives, belching is rarer and less foul. In Egypt it is wonderfully celebrated because of the fertility of the oil which they make from its seed. This they are most eager to sow, if permitted, since the profit is more than from grain and there is less tribute, and no oil is more plentiful there.
80| 2 The Greeks made three kinds of radish by the difference of the leaves: the crinkled, the smooth, and a third, wild. This last has leaves that are smooth, but shorter and round, and plentiful and bushy, while the taste is sharp and, like a medicine, apt for drawing out the bowels. And in the former kinds, too, there is a difference in the seed, since some bear worse and some a very small amount. These faults occur only in the crinkled leaves.
81| 3 Our people made other kinds: the Algidus kind, from the place, long and translucent; another, in the shape of a turnip, which they call the Syrian, generally very sweet and very tender and especially patient of winter. Yet it appears to have been brought from Syria not long ago, since it is not found in the authorities; it lasts the whole winter.
82| Still one more wild kind the Greeks call cerain, the people of Pontus armon, others leuce, our people armoracia, with more foliage than body. In judging all, the stalks are chiefly looked at, for in the harsh ones they are rounder and thicker and with long channels; the leaves themselves are more somber and bristly with angles.
83| 4 The radish wants to be sown in loose, damp ground. It hates dung, content with chaff. It so delights in cold that in Germany it equals the size of infant children. It is sown after the Ides of February, so as to be a spring crop, and again about the Vulcanalia, which is the better sowing. Many sow also in March and April and September. When growth begins it helps to bury the alternate leaves, and heap earth up around the roots themselves; for the one that has come up out of the ground becomes hard and spongy.
84| Aristomachus orders the leaves to be pulled off through the winter and earth heaped up so that the hollows do not hold water; thus they grow large by summer. Some have reported that if a stake is driven in and the hole is lined with chaff to the depth of six fingers, then seed and dung and earth are piled in, it grows to the size of the pit. Chiefly, however, they are nourished by salty things; and so they are even watered with such waters, and in Egypt sprinkled with nitrum, where they are outstanding in sweetness.
85| In general also their bitterness is removed by salt, and they become like boiled ones. For even when boiled they grow sweet and pass into the place of navews. Physicians recommend that they be eaten raw with salt, by those fasting, to gather the sharp humors of the viscera, and so they prepare the passage for vomiting.
86| They report also that this juice is necessary to the midriff, since it has been found that phtheiriasis clinging inside the heart could not be driven out otherwise in Egypt, where the kings had the bodies of the dead cut open to examine diseases. And, as is Greek vanity, it is said that at Delphi, in Apollo's temple, the radish was so preferred to other foods that it was dedicated in gold, the beet in silver, the turnip in lead.
87| You would know that Manius Curius, the commander, was not born there, who, when envoys of the hosts brought him gold and he was about to refuse it, was found roasting a turnip on the hearth, as our annals have handed down. Moschion the Greek also wrote a single volume on the radish. They are thought most useful in food in the winter time, and they are always the enemy of teeth, since they wear them down; ivory, at any rate, they polish. They have the greatest hatred for the vine, and the vine shrinks back from radishes sown beside it.
88| The rest which we have placed in the cartilage class are more woody, and it is a marvel that all have a vehemence of flavor. Of these, one kind of parsnip comes up wild of its own accord, the other, the Greek, is sown by root or seed in early spring or autumn, as Hyginus prefers, in February, August, September, October, the ground being dug over as deep as possible.
89| At a year old it begins to be useful, at two years more useful, more pleasing in autumn and especially for dishes, and even so there is an intractable rankness in it. Hibiscus differs from the parsnip in slenderness, condemned in food, but useful for medicine. There is also a fourth kind, in the same likeness of the parsnip, which our people call Gallic, the Greeks daucos, of which they made even four kinds, to be spoken of among the medicines.
90| Siser also the emperor Tiberius made famous, demanding it every year from Germany. There is a fort called Gelduba, set on the Rhine, where its quality is especially fine, from which it appears that it suits cold places. In its length there is a fiber, which is drawn out when it is boiled, though a great part of the bitterness is left, which, tempered in food with honeyed wine, is even turned to pleasantness. The same fiber is in the greater parsnip, at least when a year old. Siser is sown in February, March, April, August, September and October.
91| Shorter than these, and more muscular and more bitter, is inula, by itself most hostile to the stomach, but when mixed with sweet things most wholesome. In several ways, its harshness overcome, it finds favor. For it is pounded when dry into flour and tempered with a sweet liquid, and boiled in posca, or kept, or steeped, in several ways, and then mixed with defrutum or worked into honey or raisins or fat caryotae.
92| In another way again, varied with quinces or service-berries or plums, sometimes with pepper or thyme, it chiefly rouses the failing stomach, made famous especially by the daily diet of Julia Augusta. Its seed is unnecessary, since it is planted from the root, with the eyes cut out, like the reed; and this and siser and parsnip are all planted at both seasons, spring and autumn, with wide intervals between the seeds; inula not less than three feet apart, since it bushes out widely. Siser is better transplanted.
93| Next to this is the nature of bulbs, which Cato directs to be sown first of all, celebrating the Megarian. But the most renowned is the squill, although it was born for medicine and for sharpening vinegar. None has greater size, as none has a sharper power. There are two medicinal kinds, the male with white leaves, the female with black. But there is a third kind, pleasing in food, called Epimenidus, narrower in leaf and less sharp.
94| All of them have a great deal of seed; but they come up more quickly when planted from the bulbs that form around the sides, and to make them grow, their leaves, which are broad in these plants, are bent over and buried around them; in this way the heads draw all the sap into themselves. They grow wild in great abundance in the Balearic Islands and Ebusus and throughout the Spains. The philosopher Pythagoras composed one volume about them, collecting their medicinal powers, which we shall give in the next book.
95| The remaining kinds of bulbs differ in colour, size and sweetness, since some are eaten raw, as in the Tauric Chersonese. After these, those born in Africa are most praised, then the Apulian. The Greeks have made these kinds: bolbine, setanion, opition, cyica, aegilops, sisyrinchion. In this plant it is a marvel that its lowest roots grow in winter, but in spring, when the violet has appeared, they shrink and contract, and then the bulb grows fat.
96| Among the kinds is also what they call aron in Egypt, nearest to the squill in size, with leaves like those of the lapathum, a straight stem of two cubits, the thickness of a staff, and a root of softer nature, which is eaten even raw.
97| Bulbs are dug up before spring or they quickly become worse. The sign of ripeness is leaves withering from the bottom up, and the older ones are rejected, and likewise long and small ones; by contrast the reddish and rounder ones are praised, and the very large. Most have bitterness at the top, and their middles are sweet. Earlier writers have handed down that bulbs are not born except from seed, but in the plains of Praeneste they grow wild, and without limit even in the fields of the Remi.
98| Nearly all garden plants have a single root each, as the radish, beet, celery and mallow, but the largest is that of the lapathum, which goes down as far as three cubits (the wild kind is smaller), and when dug up it lives a long time, if moist. Some, however, have hair-like roots, as celery and mallow; some have shoot-like roots, as basil; others fleshy, as beet, and even more so saffron; some consist of bark and flesh, as the radish and turnips; the roots of some are jointed, as of grass.
99| Plants that do not have a straight root rely at once on very many small fibres, as atriplex and blitum. The squill, however, and bulbs and onions and garlic send out roots only straight down. Among those that grow wild, some are more numerous in root than in leaf, as spalax, perdicium and saffron.
100| Serpullum, habrotonum, napus, radishes, mint and rue flower in dense masses, and the rest, once they have begun, finish flowering; basil, however, flowers in parts and begins at the bottom, for which reason it flowers longest. This happens also in the herb heliotropium. The flower is white in some, yellow in others, purple in others. The leaves fall from the tops in origanum and inula, and sometimes in rue when it has been injured. Onions and getium are the most hollow.
101| Garlic and onions Egypt holds among the gods in swearing oaths. The kinds of onion among the Greeks are the Sardian, Samothracian, Alsidene, setania, schista, and the Ascalonian, named after a town of Judaea. All have a smell that brings tears, especially the Cyprian, least the Cnidian. All have a body made wholly of a fat cartilage of coats.
102| Of them all the setania is the smallest, except the Tusculan, but it is sweet. The schista and the Ascalonian, however, are preserved in seasoning. They leave the schista in the ground through winter with its leafy top, and in spring pull off the leaves, and others grow up beneath along the same divisions, whence its name too. By this example they order the leaves to be pulled off the other kinds as well, so that they grow into heads rather than into seed. The Ascalonians have a nature of their own.
103| For they are, as it were, sterile from the root, and for that reason the Greeks ordered them to be sown from seed, not set out, and rather late, about spring, but when they sprout, to be transplanted; thus they thicken and hurry on, making up for the time that has gone by. One must hurry with them, however, since when ripe they quickly rot. If they are set out, they send up a stalk and seed and themselves vanish.
104| There is also a difference of colours; for at Issus and Sardis very white ones are produced. The Cretan are also in esteem, about which they are in doubt whether they are the same as the Ascalonian, since when sown their heads swell, and when set out they produce stalk and seed. They differ only in a sweet flavour.
105| Among us there are two principal kinds: one for seasoning, which they call getion and our people pallacana, sown in the months of March, April and May; the other the headed kind, sown from the autumn equinox or from the west wind. The kinds in order of sharpness: the African, Gallic, Tusculan, Ascalonian, Amiternine; the best, however, is the roundest. Likewise the red is sharper than the white, the dry than the green, the raw than the cooked, as also than the preserved.
106| The Amiternine is sown in cold and moist places, and alone is planted by the head, in the manner of garlic; the others are sown from seed, and in the following summer they send out no seed but only a head, which swells. In the next year, however, the order is changed: seed is produced, and the head itself is spoiled. Therefore every year seed is sown separately for the sake of the onion, and separately an onion for the sake of the seed. They are best kept in chaff.
107| Getium is almost without a head, having only a long neck, and therefore is all in its foliage, and is cut back rather often, like the leek. For that reason they sow it too, and do not set it out. Otherwise they direct that onions be sown in ground dug three times, with the roots of the herbs pulled out, ten pounds to the iugerum, that savory be mixed in, since they come on better, and that they be weeded besides and hoed, if not more often, four times. Our people sow the Ascalonian in February. The seed of onions they reap when it begins to turn black, before it dries out.
108| It is fitting to speak of the leek in this same family, especially since the emperor Nero lately gave authority to the cutting leek, by eating it for the sake of his voice, in oil, on fixed days of every month, and nothing else, not even bread. It is sown from seed from the autumn equinox, more thickly if one wishes to make cutting leek. It is cut in the same bed until it fails, and is always manured,
109| if it is being raised into heads, before it is cut. When it has grown, it is moved to another bed, the topmost leaves lightly trimmed before the pith, and the heads drawn back, or the outer coats. The ancients spread out the heads by putting a flint or a potsherd beneath them (this too is done with bulbs); now the roots are lightly loosened with a hoe, so that, weakened, they feed the plant and do not pull it apart.
110| It is remarkable that, though it delights in dung and rich soil, it hates watered ground. And yet some leeks depend on the particular quality of the soil: the most praised is that of Egypt, next Ostia and Aricia. There are two kinds of cutting leek: one with a grass-green leaf, its incisions plainly marked, which the druggists use; the other kind has a yellower and rounder leaf, with smoother incisions. The story is that Mela, of the equestrian order, summoned by the emperor Tiberius on a charge arising from a procuratorship, in utter despair drank the juice of leek to the weight of three silver denarii and at once died, without torment. They say a larger dose is not harmful.
111| Garlic is believed to be beneficial for many remedies, especially of the countryside. The whole is clothed in the thinnest membranes, which are despised, then it is put together out of several kernels, and these are separately clothed, with a harsh flavour; the more kernels there are, the harsher it is. This also causes disgust by its breath, as onions do, though none when cooked.
112| The difference of kinds lies in time (the early kind ripens in 60 days), then in size. Of this class also is ulpicum, which the Greeks have called Cyprian garlic, and others antiskorodon; it is especially celebrated in Africa among the country relishes, and is larger than garlic. Pounded in oil and vinegar, it swells up in foam to a marvellous degree. Some forbid ulpicum and garlic to be sown on level ground, and say it should be put in little mounds, in turret fashion, set three feet apart from each other. Between the cloves there should be a gap of 4 fingers; as soon as three leaves have broken out, they should be hoed. They grow larger the more often they are hoed.
113| The stalks of those that are ripening are pressed down and buried in the earth; in this way they are kept from running to foliage. In cold places it is more useful to sow in spring than in autumn. For the rest, to make them lack the smell, all these are directed to be sown when the moon is under the earth, and gathered when she is in conjunction. Without these means, Menander, among the Greeks, is the authority that for those who eat garlic, if they eat afterward a beet root roasted in embers, the smell is extinguished.
114| There are those who think that both garlic and ulpicum are most suitably sown between the Compitalia and the Saturnalia. Garlic also comes from seed, but slowly. For in the first year it makes a head of the thickness of a leek, in the next it is divided, in the third it is completed, and some think it finer in that state. It ought not to go to seed, but the stalk is twisted round for the sake of the crop, so that the head may become stronger.
115| But if one wishes to keep garlic and onion long into age, the heads must be rubbed with warm salt water; in this way they will become longer-lasting and better for use, and sterile in sowing. Others are content to have hung them first over embers and think they thereby do enough to keep them from sprouting, which it is certain garlic and onion do even out of the earth, and when the little stalk is driven out they vanish. Some think garlic is best preserved in chaff as well.
116| There is also a garlic that grows wild in the fields (they call it alum), which, against the wickedness of birds that graze on the seeds, is cooked and thrown out so that it cannot grow again, and at once the birds that have devoured it are caught by hand, stupefied, and, if you delay a little, are sound asleep. There is also a wild kind, which they call ursinum, of a similar smell, with a very slender head and large leaves.
117| Of things sown in the garden, the quickest to come up are basil, blitum, napus and rocket. For they break out on the third day; dill on the fourth, lettuce on the fifth, radish on the sixth, cucumber and gourd on the seventh (the cucumber sooner), cress and mustard on the fifth, beet in summer on the sixth, in winter on the 10th, atriplex on the eighth, onions on the 19th or 20th, gethyum on the 10th or the twelfth, coriander more stubbornly, cunila indeed and origanum after the 30th day, and hardest of all celery. For on the 40th day at the quickest, and for the most part on the 50th, it comes up.
118| The age of the seeds also contributes something, since fresh seeds produce earlier in leek, gethyum, cucumber and gourd, but from old seed celery, beet, cardamum, cunila, origanum and coriander come up more quickly. A marvel concerns beet seed: it does not all produce in the same year, but some in the next, some even in the third; and so it grows up only moderately from a plentiful supply of seed. Some bear only in their own year, some more than once, as celery, leek and gethyum; for these, sown once, come up with a recurring fertility over several years.
119| The seeds of most are round, of some oblong, of a few leaf-like and broad, as in atriplex, of some narrow and grooved, as in cumin. They differ also in colour, black or whiter, and in the hardness of a twig-like nature. In radishes, mustard and turnip they are in a little pod. The seed of coriander, dill, fennel and cumin is bare; that of blitum, beet, atriplex and basil is covered with a husk; but in lettuces it is in down.
120| Nothing is more fruitful than basil. They teach that it should be sown with curses and abuse, so that it may come up more luxuriantly; when it has been sown, the earth is beaten down. Those who sow cumin also pray that it may not come up. Plants that are in a husk dry out with the greatest difficulty, basil most of all, and for that reason all are dried and are fruitful. In any case, they grow better with seed sown in a heap than with seed scattered. Thus at least leek and celery are sown bound in the corners of a cloth, celery even with a stake, a hollow being made and dung heaped in.
121| All plants, however, are born either from seed or by being torn away; some from seed and from a shoot, as rue, origanum and basil (for they cut this one back too, when it has reached a palm in height); some from both seed and root, as onion, garlic, bulbs, and any perennial plants whose roots are left in the ground. Of those, however, that are born from the root, the root is long-lived and bushy, as in bulbs, gethyum and squills. Others put out shoots without forming a head, as celery and beet.
122| When the stalk is cut off, almost all grow again, except those that do not have a rough stalk, and for use, basil, radish and lettuce; they think lettuce is even sweeter from growing again. The radish at any rate is pleasanter when the leaves are stripped off, before it runs to stalk. The same is true of turnips. For these too, when their leaves are stripped and they are covered with earth, grow and last into the summer.
123| There is a single kind each of basil, lapathum, blitum, cress, rocket, atriplex, coriander and dill. For these are everywhere the same, and one is nowhere better than another. Rue that grows stolen is thought to come up more fruitfully, just as stolen bees do worst. Some grow even unsown: mentastrum, nepeta, intubum, pulegium. On the other hand, of those we have spoken of and shall speak of, there are several kinds, and first of all of celery.
124| For that which grows of its own accord in moist places is called helioselinum, with a single leaf and not hairy; again, in dry places, hipposelinum, with several leaves, like helioselinum. The third is oreoselinum, with leaves of hemlock, a thin root, and the seed of dill, only smaller. The cultivated kinds also differ in the leaf, dense, curled, or sparser and smoother, likewise in the stalk, thinner or thicker, and the stalk of some is white, of others purple, of others variegated.
125| Of lettuce the Greeks made three kinds: one with a broad stalk, so much so that they have handed down that little garden doors were often made out of them (the leaf in these is a little larger than a herb's and very narrow, as if the growth had been used up elsewhere); a second with a round stalk; the third sessile, which they call Laconian. Others have distinguished the kinds by colour and by time of sowing; for there are black ones, the seed of which is sown in the month of January, white ones, in March, and reddish ones, in April, and the plants of all of them are transplanted after two months each.
126| The more careful make more kinds: purple, curled, Cappadocian, Greek (these with a longer leaf and broad stalk), and in addition a long and narrow one, similar to intubum. The worst kind they have called pikris, with a reproach for its bitterness. There is still another distinction of the white one, which is called mekonis from the abundance of its sleep-bringing milk, although all are believed to bring sleep. Among the ancients of Italy this was the only kind of them, and for that reason lettuces have their name from milk.
127| The purple one with the largest root they call the Caecilian, but the round one with the smallest root and broad leaves, astytis, and some eunucheion, because this one most resists Venus. By nature all are cooling, and for that reason pleasing in summer. They take away disgust from the stomach and create an appetite for food.
128| The deified Augustus, at any rate, is said to have been preserved by lettuce in an illness, through the good sense of the physician Musa, when the excessive scruple of his earlier physician, Gaius Aemilius, had forbidden it, and the recommendation was so accepted that it was then discovered how to preserve them even into months not their own with oxymel. They are believed also to increase the blood. There is also what is called the goat lettuce, of which we shall speak among the medicinal plants, and see, just lately, a kind much approved has begun to creep in among cultivated ones, which is called the Cilician, with the leaf of the Cappadocian, if it were not curled and broader.
129| Intubi cannot be said to be either of the same kind or of another; they endure winter better and show a bitter taste, but are no less welcome for their stalk. They are sown from the spring equinox, and their plants are transplanted at the end of spring. There is also a wild intubum, which in Egypt they call cichorium, about which more elsewhere. It has been found to prolong the life of all the thyrsi or leaves of lettuces by storing them in jars, and to cook them fresh in dishes.
130| Lettuces are sown in the whole year, in rich, watered and manured ground, two months between seed and plant and ripeness. It is the rule, however, to cast the seed from midwinter, to transplant the plant with the west wind, or the seed with the west wind and the plant at the spring equinox. The white ones endure winter best.
131| All garden plants delight in moisture and dung, especially lettuces and more so intubi. It matters also that the roots be set smeared with dung and filled in with earth after the trench has been dug around. Some also increase the size otherwise, by cutting them back when they have grown to half a foot and smearing them fresh with pig dung. Whiteness they think is attained only by those which are of white seed, if sand from the shore is heaped from the first growth into their middles and the growing leaves are tied up against them.
132| Beet is the smoothest of garden plants. Of it also the Greeks make two kinds by colour, the black and the whiter, which they prefer (it has very little seed), and they call it the Sicilian, preferring it, to be sure, for the difference of whiteness, as they do lettuce. Our people make kinds of beet, the spring and the autumn, from the times of sowing. Although it is sown in June too; the plant is transplanted in autumn.
133| These also love to have their roots smeared with dung and a place similarly wet. They are used with lentils and beans, and as the other greens are, and especially so that the mildness may be roused by the sharpness of mustard. Physicians have judged it more harmful than other greens, on which account to taste it even when set before one is a scruple to some, so that they may rather be in food for the strong.
134| They have a twofold nature, that of a green vegetable and that of the head itself of a bulb springing up, and their finest appearance lies in breadth. This is achieved, as with lettuces, when they have begun to take on colour, by laying a light weight on them. In no other garden plant is the breadth greater; they sometimes spread to two feet each, the nature of the soil contributing much too, since the largest grow in the territory of Circeii.
135| There are those who think beets are best sown when the pomegranate is in flower, and transplanted when they have begun to have 5 leaves. A marvellous difference, if it is true: the white ones loosen the bowels, the black ones check them, and when the flavour of wine in a cask is spoiled by cabbage, it is restored by sinking beet leaves in the same.
136| The cabbage and its stalks, which now hold first place among garden plants, I do not find were in honour among the Greeks, but Cato sings marvellous praises of cabbage, which we shall repeat in the place for healing. He makes kinds of it: one with outspread leaves and a large stalk; a second with a curled leaf, which they call apiaca; a third with small stalks, mild, tender, and he approves it least.
137| Cabbage is sown in the whole year, since it is cut in the whole year, but most usefully from the autumn equinox, and it is transplanted when it has 5 leaves. From the first sowing it supplies the cyma in the next spring. This is a certain more delicate and tender little stalk of the stalks themselves, scorned in the luxury of Apicius and through him by Drusus Caesar, not without a rebuke from his father Tiberius.
138| After the cyma, from the same cabbage come summer and autumn little stalks, then winter ones, and cymas again, no kind being so equally productive, until it is used up by its own fertility. The second sowing is from the spring equinox, the plant of which is planted at the end of spring, so that it may not bear cyma before stalk. The third is around the solstice, from which, if the place is moister, it is planted in summer, if drier, in autumn. If moisture and dung are lacking, there is more pleasure of flavour; if they abound, a richer fertility. Ass's dung is most suitable.
139| This too is among the works of the glutton, wherefore it will not irk us to follow it up at greater length. The stalk becomes outstanding in flavour and size, first of all if you sow in ground dug over a second time, then if you follow the little stalks as they flee the earth, and as they raise themselves in luxuriant height you heap up other earth by piling, so that no more than the top stands out. This kind is called Tritan, at a twofold reckonable expense and trouble.
140| The other kinds are numerous: the Cumaean, with a sessile leaf, spreading in head; the Aricine, not taller in height, more numerous in leaf than tender; this is reckoned most useful, because beneath nearly all the leaves it sprouts peculiar little stalks. The Pompeian is taller, with a stalk thin from the root, thickening inside the leaves; these are sparser and narrower, but tenderness is in its dowry. It does not tolerate cold, on which the Bruttian are nonetheless nourished, very large in leaves, thin in stalk, sharp in flavour.
141| The Sabellian has leaves curled to the point of wonder, the thickness of which makes the stalk itself thin, but they are reported the sweetest of all. Lately the Lacuturnian from the valley of Aricia have come in, very large in head, numberless in leaf, some gathered into a ball, others swollen in breadth; and none has more head after the Tritian, whose head is sometimes seen a foot across, and the cyma of none is later.
142| To every kind, however, frosts bring the greatest sweetness, but unless the pith is protected by a slanting cut, they do the most harm. Those destined for seed are not cut. There is also a kind with its own charm that never goes beyond the habit of the plant; they call them halmyridia, because they do not come up except in places by the sea. They say that even on a long voyage they are kept green, if when cut at once, so that they do not touch the ground, they are stored in jars of oil dried out as closely as possible and stopped, every breath being shut out.
143| There are those who think a plant, in transplanting, with sea-wrack laid under the little foot, or as much pounded nitre as is taken up in three fingers, becomes ripe sooner. There are those who sprinkle the seed of trefoil and nitre pounded together on the leaves. Nitre in cooking also preserves greenness, as does the Apician cooking, the plants being steeped in oil and salt before cooking.
144| Among herbs there is a kind of grafting, by cutting off the buds of the stalk and adding seed from others into the pith. This is done also in the wild cucumber. And there is also a wild vegetable, celebrated at the triumph of the deified Julius especially in songs and soldiers' jests; for in alternating verses they reproached that they had lived on lapsana at Dyrrachium, mocking the meagreness of the rewards. This is, moreover, wild cyma.
145| Of all things in gardens the most elegant care is for asparagus. Of their origin from wild corruda enough has been said, and how Cato ordered them to be sown in reed-beds. There is another kind, ruder than asparagus, milder than corruda, growing everywhere even in the mountains, the fields of Upper Germany being full of it, in a not unwitty saying of Tiberius Caesar, that a certain herb grows there very like asparagus.
146| For what grows of its own accord on Nesis, an island of Campania, is reckoned by far the best. The garden kind is sown from sponges. For it has a very great root and sprouts very deep. It is green when the thyrsus first shoots out, which, drawing out the stalk, at the very time tapers to a point in ridged knobs. It can also be sown from seed.
147| Cato set down nothing more carefully, and it is the last thing of his book, so that it appears the matter was a sudden novelty. He orders the place to be worked, moist or rich, and the sowing made with a half-foot interval all around, so that it may not be trodden, and in addition that two or three seeds to a line be dropped in with a stake (evidently they were then sown only from seed),
148| This is to be done around the spring equinox; the bed is to be fed full with dung and cleaned often, and care taken that the asparagus is not pulled up with the weeds; in the first year it is to be protected from winter with litter, uncovered in spring, hoed, weeded, and in the third year burned in spring. The earlier it is burned, the better it comes up. For that reason it suits reed-beds best, which hasten to be burned. The same writer orders it to be hoed only after the asparagus has come up, so that the roots are not harmed in hoeing.
149| From it the asparagus is to be pulled from the root, for if it is broken off it runs into stumps and dies; to be pulled until it goes to seed (this ripens toward spring), and to be burned, and again, when the asparagus has appeared, hoed and manured, and after 8 years, when it is now old, to be broken up, the ground being worked and manured, then sown from sponges at an interval of one foot each. He even names sheep's dung to be used, since another kind produces weeds.
150| Nor has anything more useful been tried since, except that around the Ides of February they sow seed buried in heaps in very small pits, much soaked in dung. Then after two years, the roots being tied together, they set out the sponges thus made after the autumn equinox at intervals of a foot, the fertility lasting for ten years each.
151| No soil is more welcome to these than that of the gardens of Ravenna, as we have indicated. Corruda (for so I understand wild asparagus, which the Greeks call horminon or myacanthon and by other names) I find also comes up from rams' horns, pounded and buried.
152| All things that are in esteem might seem to have been told, were there not left a thing of the greatest profit which must be told not without shame. It is certain, indeed, that cardoons, at Great Carthage and Corduba especially, return six thousand sesterces each from small beds, since we turn even the monstrosities of the earth to gluttony and sow even what all four-footed beasts shun.
153| Cardoons, then, in two ways: in autumn by plant, and by seed before the Nones of March, and the plants from it are set out before the Ides of November, or in cold places about the time of the west wind. They are manured too, if you please, and come up more richly. They are preserved also in vinegar diluted with honey, with a root of laser and cumin added, so that no day may be without cardoon.
154| The rest can be told in passing. Basil, they say, is best sown at the Parilia, some even in autumn, and they direct that when it is sown for winter the seed be drenched in vinegar. Rocket also and cress come up most easily either in summer or winter. Rocket, a despiser of cold above all, is of a nature opposite to lettuce and rouses Venus.
155| For that reason it is joined to it almost always in meals, so that a heat mixed in may balance an excessive chill. Cress (nasturtium) took its name from the torment of the nostrils, and from that, by proverb, the word has come to be used as a sign of vigour, as of something rousing torpor. In Arabia it is said to grow to a marvellous size.
156| Rue also is sown with the west wind and from the autumn equinox. It hates winter, moisture and dung, delights in sunny and dry places and in soil as much like brick-earth as possible, and wants to be fed with ashes. This also is mixed with the seed, so that it may be free of caterpillars. A special authority belonged to it among the ancients. I find that a mead flavoured with rue was given to the people by Cornelius Cethegus, colleague of Quintus Flamininus in the consulship, when the elections were over. Its friendship with the fig is so great that it comes up nowhere more luxuriantly than beneath this tree. It is sown also from a cutting,
157| better placed in a bored bean, which nourishes the cutting with its juice by gripping it. It sows itself too, for when the tip of some branch is bent over and has touched the earth, it at once takes root. Basil has the same nature, except that its seed dries up with more difficulty. Rue is weeded not without difficulty, because of itching sores, unless this is done with hands protected or defended with oil. Its leaves, however, are also preserved and kept in bundles.
158| From the spring equinox celery is sown, the seed lightly pounded in a mortar. They think it becomes more curled this way or if, once sown, it is trodden down with a roller or with the feet. It is peculiar to it that it changes colour. Its honour in Achaia is to crown the victors of the sacred contest at Nemea.
159| At the same time mint is sown by plant or, if it is not yet sprouting, by sponge. It delights in moisture no less. It stays green in summer and goes yellow in winter. Its wild kind is mentastrum; from this it is propagated as the vine is, or if branches are planted inverted. The sweetness of its smell changed the name of mint among the Greeks, when otherwise it was called mintha, from which our ancestors declined the name; now, however, it has begun to be called hedyosmon. Welcome by its fleece, it passes over the tables with its smell in rustic feasts.
160| Once sown it lasts a long time. It goes with pulegium, whose nature of flowering again in meat-stores has been spoken of more than once. These also are preserved in a similar manner, I mean mint, pulegium and nepeta. Of all seasonings, however, that [….] to the fastidious, cumin is the friendliest.
161| It grows at the very top of the ground, hardly clinging and stretching upward, especially in rotten and warm places, and is to be sown in mid-spring. Another kind of it is wild, which they call rustic, others Theban, which, pounded and drunk in water, helps in pain of the stomach. In Carpetania, in our world, it is most praised; otherwise the palm goes to the Ethiopian and the African; some prefer the Egyptian in this.
162| But olusatrum above all is of marvellous nature. The Greeks call it hipposelinum, others zmyrnium. It is born from the tear of its own stalk. It is sown also from the root. Those who collect its juice say it has the flavour of myrrh, and Theophrastus is the authority that it was born of sown myrrh.
163| The ancients instructed that hipposelinum be sown in uncultivated, stony places near a wall (now it is sown also in ground dug over a second time, and from the west wind after the autumn equinox), since the caper too is sown in this way, in the driest places especially, the bed therefore being enclosed by a ditch and with banks built up all around with stone; otherwise it strays over the fields and makes the soil barren. It flowers in summer and is green until the setting of the Vergiliae, and is most at home in sandy ground. Its faults, in the kind that is born overseas, we have told among the foreign shrubs.
164| Foreign also is careum, called by the name of its own people, the chief of kitchens. It wants to be sown in any soil, on the same principle as olusatrum, but the most praised is in Caria, the next in Phrygia.
165| Ligusticum is wild in the mountains of its own Liguria; it is sown also everywhere. The cultivated kind is sweeter but without strength. Some call it panax. Crateuas among the Greeks calls the cunila bubula by that name, but the rest call it conyza, that is cunilago, and thymbra is what cunila is. This among us has another name too, called satureia in the seasoning class. It is sown in the month of February. It and its rival origanum are never both added, since their effect is alike. But to cunila only Egyptian origanum is preferred.
166| Lepidium too was a foreign plant. It is sown from the west wind, then, when it has put out shoots, it is cut off close to the ground, then weeded and manured. For two years after this they use the same shrubs, if the savagery of winter does not come down on them, since it is least able to bear cold. It grows also to a cubit in height, with leaves of the bay, but softer. Its use is not without milk.
167| Git is for bakeries, anise and dill come up for kitchens and for physicians; sacopenium, with which laser is adulterated, is itself in gardens too, but only for medicine. There are certain companions in the sowing of others; for poppy is sown with cabbage and purslane, and rocket with lettuce.
168| The cultivated poppy has three kinds: the white, the seed of which, roasted, was given in the second course with honey among the ancients; this is sprinkled also on the crust of country bread, sticking when egg is poured on, where celery and git season the lower crust with a flavour of grain. The second kind of poppy is the black, from the cut stalk of which a milky juice is collected.
169| The third kind the Greeks call rhoea, ours the wild poppy; it comes up of its own accord, but especially in fields with barley, similar to rocket, a cubit in height, with a red flower, quickly falling, whence it also took its name from the Greeks. Of the remaining kinds of poppy growing wild we shall speak in the place for medicine. That it was always in honour among the Romans is shown by Tarquinius Superbus, who, to the envoys sent by his son, by striking off the tallest poppies in his garden, gave that bloody answer by this roundabout act.
170| Again, in another company, at the autumn equinox are sown coriander, dill, atriplex, mallow, lapathum, caerefolium, which the Greeks call paederota, and the most pungent in flavour, fiery in effect and most wholesome for the body, mustard, which needs no cultivation, but is better when the plant is transplanted. On the contrary, once it has been sown it is hardly possible to free the place of it, since the seed, as it falls, at once turns green.
171| Its use is even in place of a relish, boiled in little dishes, without sense of its sharpness. The leaves are cooked too, like those of the other greens. There are three kinds: one slender, another similar to the leaves of turnip, a third to those of rocket. The best seed is the Egyptian. The Athenians called it napy, others thlaspi, others saurion.
172| With serpyllum and sisymbrium most mountains abound, as those of Thrace. Therefore they bring down branches torn from them and sow them, likewise at Sicyon from their mountains and at Athens from Hymettus. In a like manner they sow sisymbrium too. It grows most luxuriantly on the walls of wells and around fish-ponds and pools.
173| The remainder are of the ferula kind, as fennel, which, as we have said, snakes find most welcome, for seasoning very many things when it has dried, and very like it thapsia, of which we have spoken among the foreign shrubs; then hemp, most useful for ropes. It is sown from the west wind; the denser it is, the more tender. Its seed, when ripe, is stripped from the autumn equinox and dried in sun or wind or smoke. The hemp itself is pulled after the vintage and peeled and cleaned by lamplight.
174| The best is the Alabandic, especially for the uses of nets. There are three kinds of it there: that nearest the bark or the pith is disapproved; the most praised is from the middle, which is called mesa. Second is the Mylasean. As to height, the Rosean of the Sabine territory equals the height of trees.
175| Two kinds of ferula we have told among the foreign shrubs. Its seed is food in Italy; it is stored, in fact, and keeps in jars even for the space of a year. Two kinds come from it, stalks and clusters. This they call corymbia, and corymbi those that they preserve.
176| Garden plants too feel diseases, as the rest of what is sown in the earth. For basil degenerates with age into serpyllum, and sisymbrium into zmintha, and from old seed of cabbage turnips are made, and the reverse. And cumin is killed by haimodoron, unless it is cleared away; it has, moreover, a single stalk and a root like a bulb, and grows only in thin soil. Another disease peculiar to cumin is scab. And basil turns pale under the rising of the Dog Star. All, indeed, turn yellow at the approach of a woman during her monthly courses.
177| Kinds of little animals are born in them too: fleas in the napus, caterpillars and little worms in radish, likewise in lettuces and greens, and in both of these in addition slugs and snails, but the leek has creatures of its own, which are most easily caught by throwing dung on it, as they bury themselves in it. That it does not pay to touch rue, cunila, mint, basil with iron is the authority of Sabinus Tiro in the book kepourika, which he dedicated to Maecenas.
178| The same writer also showed a remedy against ants, not the least of the plagues of gardens when they are not well watered: sea mud or ash to stop up their holes. But they are killed most effectively with the plant heliotropium. Some also think that water in which unbaked brick has been dissolved is deadly to them.
179| The remedy for napus is to sow a little ervum along with it, as chickpea is sown with greens; for it keeps off caterpillars. If this has been neglected and the caterpillars have hatched, the remedy is to sprinkle on the juice of absinthium boiled down, or of sedum;
180| we have spoken of this kind of plant, which others call aeizoon. They say that if the seed of greens is soaked in its juice before it is sown, the greens will be at the mercy of no creature; and that caterpillars are killed off altogether if the bones of the head of an animal of the horse kind, a female only, are set up on a stake in the garden. They say that a river crab suspended in the middle of the garden also helps against caterpillars. There are some who touch with rods of sanguineus the plants they do not want to be at the mercy of caterpillars. Gnats also infest watered gardens, especially if there are some small trees in them; they are driven off by burning galbanum.
181| Now, as to the replacing of seed: some seeds have greater durability, such as coriander, beet, leek, cress, mustard, rocket, cunila and, in general, the pungent ones; while those of orach, ocimum, gourd and cucumber are weaker, and all summer plants weaker than winter ones; and gethyum lasts least of all. But even of the strongest, none is useful beyond four years old, for sowing, that is; for the kitchen they are fit even beyond that.
182| Radish, beet, rue and cunila have a remedy of their own in salt water, which in any case contributes a great deal to their flavour and their yield. For the rest, irrigation with fresh water is beneficial. The most useful of such waters are the coldest and the sweetest to drink. Less useful are water from a pond and the water that is brought in by channels, since they carry in the seeds of weeds. Rain, however, nourishes them best of all, for it also kills the little creatures that breed on them.
183| The hours for watering them are morning and evening, so that the water is not heated up by the sun; only ocimum is watered at midday as well, for it is even thought that ocimum, once sown, breaks through very quickly if it is sprinkled with hot water at the beginning. All plants become better and larger when they are transplanted, especially leeks and napus. There is a remedy too in transplanting, and plants stop feeling injuries, as gethyum, leek, radishes, apium, lettuces, turnips and cucumber do.
184| Nearly all the wild kinds are smaller in leaf and stalk and sharper in juice, such as cunila, origanum and rue. Of them all, lapathum alone is better wild. The cultivated kind of this is called rumex, the hardiest of all plants that are sown or grow; at any rate they say that once sown it lasts and is never beaten by the soil, especially near water.
185| As food it is used only with ptisan, to which it gives a milder and pleasanter flavour. The wild kind is useful for many medicines. (So far has diligence left nothing out that I find it set down even in verse that if the seeds of leek, rocket, lettuce, apium, intubus and cress are enclosed in pellets of goat dung, each hollowed out, and so sown, they come up wonderfully well. Those plants that also grow wild are understood to be drier and sharper than the same plants in cultivated form.)
186| We must also speak of the differences in juices and flavours, which are even greater among these plants than among fruits. Pungent are the juices of cunila, origanum, cress and mustard; bitter those of absinthium and centaureum; watery those of cucumber, gourd and lettuce; sharp those of thyme and cunila; sharp and fragrant those of apium, anetum and fennel. Of the flavours, salt alone does not grow in plants; it sometimes settles on the outside like dust, and only on cicercula.
187| And so that it may be understood how empty belief is, as for the most part in life: panax gives back the taste of pepper, and siliquastrum even more so, having for that reason been given the name piperitis; libanotis gives the smell of frankincense, and zmyrnium that of myrrh. Of panax enough has been said. Libanotis is sown from seed in crumbly, poor and dewy places. It has the root of olusatrum, which differs not at all from frankincense. Used after a year it is very healthful for the stomach. Some call it by another name, rosmarinus. Zmyrnium, a vegetable, is sown in the same places, and its root tastes of myrrh.
188| Siliquastrum is sown in the same way. The rest differ from the others in both smell and taste, as anetum does; and so great is the difference and the potency that one flavour is not only altered by another but even taken away altogether. With apium cooks remove the vinegar from dishes, and with the same plant, put in bags, cellarers remove a heavy smell from wine.
189| Let this be all we say on garden plants, so far as food is concerned. The greatest of nature's work in them, indeed, still remains, since so far we have dealt only with their yields and some main headings, whereas the true nature of each can be fully known only from its effect as medicine, a vast and hidden work of the divine, than which nothing greater could be found. Sound reasoning kept us from weaving this into the individual items, since the needs of healing concern other readers, and there would have been long delays for both sorts if we had mixed them together. Now each subject will stand in its own section, and those who wish can join them.

======== Natural History — Book XX ========

1| From here we shall begin the greatest work of nature: we shall tell man about his own foods and force him to admit that the things by which he lives are unknown to him. Let no one think this a small or slight matter, misled by the cheapness of the names. In these things will be told the peace or war of nature with herself, the hatreds and friendships of things that are deaf and without sensation, and, to make us wonder all the more, all of them for the sake of man. This is what the Greeks have called sympathy and antipathy, on which everything rests: fire being put out by water, water devoured by the sun and brought forth by the moon, one heavenly body failing through the injury done it by the other, and,
2| to come down from loftier things, the magnes stone drawing iron to itself and another stone in turn driving it away; adamas, the rare joy of wealth, unbreakable and unconquered by every other force, being shattered by goat's blood; and other wonders, equal or greater, which we shall tell of in their places. Only let pardon be granted to one who begins with the smallest things, but with healthful ones, and first with the garden plants.
3| We have said that there is a wild cucumber, much smaller in size than the cultivated one. From it is made the medicine called elaterium, from the juice pressed out of the seed; and unless the fruit is cut open for this rather early, the seed bursts out, even endangering the eyes. Once picked, it is kept for one night, and the next day it is cut open with a reed, and the seed is packed in ash to check the excess of juice; the juice, when pressed out, is received in rainwater and settles, and is then thickened in the sun into lozenges, for great uses among mortals: for dimness and defects of the eyes, and for ulcers of the eyelids.
4| They say that if the roots of vines are touched with this juice, the grapes are not touched by birds. The root, boiled in vinegar, is applied to gout, and its juice cures toothache; dried and mixed with resin it heals impetigo and scab and the complaints called psora and lichens, parotid swellings and panus, and restores colour to scars; and the juice of the leaves is dropped with vinegar into deaf ears.
5| The right season for elaterium is autumn, and no medicine keeps longer. It begins to be good at three years old. If anyone wants to use it fresher, he should soften the lozenges in vinegar in a new earthenware pot over a slow fire. The older it is the better, and it has been kept for 200 years, according to Theophrastus; and up to its fiftieth year it puts out the flames of lamps. For this is the test of the genuine article: when brought near a flame it makes it sparkle up and down before putting it out.
6| The pale, smooth kind is better than the grass-green, rough kind, as is the mildly bitter. They think that conception is helped by the seed worn as an amulet, so long as it has not touched the ground; and childbirth if it is tied in ram's wool to the woman's loins without her knowledge, on condition that it is snatched out of the house immediately after the delivery.
7| Those who extol the cucumber itself say that the best grows in Arabia, and the next best in Arcadia; others report that at Cyrene a cucumber like heliotropium grows among the leaves and branches, the size of a walnut, but that its seed is curved back like a scorpion's tail, though white.
8| Some even call it the scorpion cucumber, after the scorpion, since both the seed and the elaterium are very effective against scorpion stings. To purge the bowels in both directions the dose, in proportion to the patient's strength, is from half an obol to a whole one; a larger amount kills. Taken in the same way it is also drunk against phthiriasis, and by people with dropsy. Applied with honey or old oil it cures quinsy and complaints of the windpipe.
9| Many think that this is the plant which among us is called anguinus, and by others erraticus; if a decoction of it is sprinkled about, mice do not touch things. The same people apply it, boiled in vinegar, to gout and diseases of the joints as an instant remedy, and they cure pains of the loins with the seed dried in the sun, then pounded, and given to the weight of X XX in a hemina of water, and sudden swellings by applying it with women's milk. Elaterium purges women, but makes pregnant women miscarry. It is good for asthmatics, and for jaundice when put into the nostrils. Smeared on in the sun, it takes freckles and spots from the face.
10| Many attribute all the same properties to the cultivated kinds, which are of great importance even without them. For their seed too, as much as three fingers can pick up, pounded with cumin and drunk in wine, helps those with a cough; given in a woman's milk it helps those with phrenitis; in the amount of an acetabulum, those with dysentery; with an equal weight of cumin, those who spit up pus; and in honey-water, faults of the liver. It promotes urine when taken in sweet wine, and for pain of the kidneys it is injected in clysters together with cumin.
11| The kind called pepones are very cooling as food and loosen the bowels. Their flesh is applied for fluxes of the eyes or for pains in them. The root heals ulcers that crust over like a honeycomb, which are called ceria. It also provokes vomiting: it is dried, pounded into flour and given at four obols in honey-water, on condition that whoever has drunk it walks five hundred paces afterwards.
12| This flour is also added to cleansing pastes. The rind too provokes vomiting, and it cleans the face; the leaves of any cultivated kind, applied, do this as well. With honey they also heal epinyctides, and with wine, dog bites, and likewise the bite of the multipeda, which the Greeks call seps, a long creature with hairy feet, especially harmful to cattle; a swelling follows the bite, and the place festers. The cucumber itself, by its smell, revives a person who has fainted. (It is certain that cucumbers peeled and cooked are pleasanter served with oil, vinegar and honey.)
13| A wild gourd is also found, called somphos by the Greeks, which is hollow inside, hence its name, a finger thick, and growing only in rocky places. The juice of it, when it is chewed, is very good for the stomach.
14| Another is called colocynthis, itself full of seed, but smaller than the cultivated. The pale is more useful than the green. Dried by itself it empties the bowels. Infused also in clysters it cures all faults of the intestines, and of the kidneys and loins, and paralysis. With the seed removed, it is boiled down in honeyed water to half; in this way, most safely, four obols are infused.
15| It benefits the stomach, and also in pills of dry meal taken with a decoction of honey. In the royal disease 7 of its seeds are taken, and at once honeyed water. Its flesh with absinthium and salt removes toothache, but the juice warmed with vinegar steadies loose teeth. Likewise pains of the spine, loins and hips, if it is rubbed in with oil. Besides, marvellous to say, its seeds, if they are an even number, tied up in a linen cloth, are said to free from the fevers which the Greeks call periodic.
16| Of the cultivated kind, too, the scraped-off juice, warmed, cures the ears; its inner flesh without seed cures corns of the feet and suppurations, which the Greeks call apostemata. The juice of the whole boiled steadies the movement of teeth and checks pain; wine boiled with it checks even attacks on the eyes. Its leaves, pounded with fresh leaves of cypress and applied, and themselves also roasted in a pot of clay and ground with goose fat, heal wounds.
17| Besides, with shavings of fresh bark it cools gout and burning of the head, of infants especially, and sacred fires, either with the same scrapings applied or with the seeds. Juice from the scrapings, smeared on with oil of roses and vinegar, cools the burning of fevers. The ash of the dried, applied, marvellously heals burns. The physician Chrysippus condemned them as food, but by the consent of all they are judged most useful to the stomach, and against ulcerations of the inner parts and bladders.
18| There is medicinal power in the turnip too. Applied hot, it heals chilblains, and likewise drives cold from the feet. The water of its decoction, hot, cures gout even when cold, and the raw, pounded with salt, any fault of the feet. The seed, smeared on and drunk in wine, is handed down as salutary against serpents and poisons, but by many as having the power of an antidote in wine and oil.
19| Democritus altogether banned them in food because of the swellings they cause; Diocles raised them with great praise, declaring that even Venus is stimulated by them, and Dionysius likewise, and more if they were seasoned with rocket; roasted too, with fat, they benefit pain of the joints.
20| The wild turnip grows especially in the fields, bushy, with white seed, twice as large as the poppy's. This they use to smooth the skin in the face and the whole body, mixed with meal in equal measure of ervum, barley, wheat and lupine. The root is useless for everything.
21| Two differences among the napi the Greeks keep in medicine too. The one with angular stalks of the leaves and the flower of dill, which they call bunion; its decoction is useful for the purgings of women and for the bladder and urine, drunk in honeyed water, or a drachma of its juice; the seed, roasted and pounded in four cyathi of hot water, for those with dysentery. But it checks urine, if seed of flax is not drunk with it. The other kind they call buniada, similar both to radish and to turnip, with seed distinguished against poisons. On that account they use it also in antidotes.
22| The radish too, we have said, is also wild. The most praised is in Arcadia, although it grows elsewhere too, more useful only for moving the urine, otherwise heating. In Italy they call it armoracia also.
23| And the cultivated radishes, besides what has been said about them, purge the stomach, thin phlegm, move urine, draw off bile. Besides, their barks, boiled in wine and drunk in the morning, to three cyathi each, crush stones and expel them. The same, boiled in posca, are smeared on against the bites of serpents.
24| For cough also it helps to eat radishes with honey in the morning on an empty stomach, and their seed roasted and chewed itself; with a radish tied on, to drink water in which its leaves have been boiled, or its juice itself in two cyathi, against lice-disease; to smear them pounded on tumours; on a fresh bruise, the bark with honey; for the lethargic, to chew them as sharp as possible, and the seed roasted, then ground with honey, for asthmatics.
25| The same are of use against poisons, are hostile to horned vipers and scorpions (with hands rubbed with the radish itself or its seed you may handle them safely, and scorpions die when a radish is put on them), are salutary also against the poisons of mushrooms or henbane and, as Nicander relates, against the blood of a bull. Against mistletoe too, the two Apollodori direct them to be given, but the one of Citium the seed pounded in water, the one of Tarentum the juice. They likewise thin the spleen, benefit the liver and pains of the loins, and for dropsy taken in vinegar or mustard, and for lethargics and epileptics and melancholics.
26| Praxagoras thinks they should be given to those with ileus, Plistonicus also to those with coeliac trouble. They also heal ulcers of the intestines and the purulent conditions of the praecordia, if they are eaten with honey. Some for these prefer to cook them smeared with clay; thus women too are purged. Taken in vinegar and honey they draw out the animals of the intestines; the same, with a decoction of them boiled down to a third, drunk with wine, help those with rupture of the intestines; thus they draw out useless blood also.
27| Medius directs them, cooked, to be given for these purposes and to those spitting blood, and to women in childbirth for increasing the abundance of milk; Hippocrates says that falling of hair on the heads of women should be rubbed with radishes, and that they should be laid above the navel against torments of the womb. They bring scars back to the colour. The seed also, laid on in water, checks the ulcers which they call phagedaenae.
28| Democritus thinks that Venus is stimulated by this food, and for that reason some have handed down that perhaps it harms the voice. The leaves, those only that grow on the oblong ones, are said to rouse the keenness of the eyes. Where, however, a sharper remedy from radish has been applied, they order hyssop to be given at once; this is an antipathy. And they instil the juice of radish for heaviness of the ears. For to those about to vomit it is most useful as the last of the meal.
29| Similar to the parsnip is hibiscum, which they call molochen agrian and some pleistolocheia, which heals ulcers, cartilage and broken bones. Its leaves drunk in water loosen the bowels; they drive away serpents, and smeared on they heal the stings of bees, wasps and hornets. Its root, dug up before sunrise, they wrap in wool of the colour they call natural, and besides in that of a ewe which has borne a female lamb, and bind it on scrofulous swellings or suppurated ones. Some for this use think it should be dug up with gold, and care taken that it does not touch the ground. Celsus directs also for gouty pains that are without swelling that its root boiled in wine be applied.
30| The second kind is staphylinus, which they call the wild parsnip. Its seed, ground and drunk in wine, soothes a swollen belly and the suffocations of women and pains, to such a degree that it sets the wombs right. Smeared on with raisin wine, it would also benefit their belly; and for men too, ground with an equal portion of bread and drunk in wine, it would benefit against pains of the belly. It drives urine, and checks the phagedaenae of ulcers, laid on fresh with honey or sprinkled on as dry meal.
31| Its root Dieuches directs to be given in honeyed water against faults of the liver or spleen and loins and kidneys, Cleophantus also to those with long-standing dysentery. Philistio boils it in milk and gives four ounces of the root for strangury, in water for the dropsical, and similarly for those with opisthotonos and pleurisy and epilepsy. Those who have it are said not to be struck by serpents, or those who have tasted it beforehand not to be hurt; for the struck it is applied with lard. The leaves are chewed against indigestions.
32| Orpheus said there was a love-charm in staphylinus, perhaps since it is certain that Venus is stimulated by this food. For that reason some have handed down that conception is helped. For the rest the cultivated also is powerful, but the wild is more effective, and more so if born in stony places. The seed of the cultivated, too, against the stings of scorpions, in wine or posca, is salutary. Teeth scraped round with its root are freed from pain.
33| Syria, most laborious in gardens (at least in the proverb the Greeks have of the many greens of the Syrians), sows a herb very like staphylinus, which others call gingidion, only thinner and more bitter and of the same effect. It is eaten cooked and raw to the great benefit of the stomach; for it dries all its humours from deep within.
34| Wild siser is like the cultivated and in effect: it rouses the stomach, wipes away disgust when taken in vinegar flavoured with laserpicium, or in pepper and mead or in garum. It moves urine, as Ophion believes, and Venus. Diocles is of the same opinion; and besides, it suits the heart of convalescents or after many vomitings is exceedingly useful.
35| Heraclides gave it against quicksilver and against Venus repeatedly giving offence and to the sick recovering themselves. Hicesius said that for that reason it seemed useless to the stomach, since no one could keep on eating three siseres, but that it was nonetheless useful to convalescents passing to wine. The juice of the cultivated, specially, drunk with goat's milk, checks the bowels.
36| And since the likeness of Greek names confuses most people, we add also about sil [but this is common knowledge]. The best is the Massilian, for it has a broad and tawny grain; second the Ethiopian, darker; the Cretan is most sweetly scented of all. The root has a pleasant smell. Vultures too are said to eat the seed. It benefits a person for old cough, for ruptures and convulsions, drunk in white wine, likewise for those with opisthotonos and faults of the livers and griping and strangury, by the measure of two or three lingulae.
37| The leaves too are useful, for they help the births even of four-footed animals; on this hinds about to give birth are said to feed above all. They are also smeared on for sacred fire. And at the end of a meal it contributes much to digestion, whether in leaf or seed. It also checks the bowels of four-footed animals, whether ground and infused into a drink or given for chewing, recommended with salt. For diseases of oxen it is infused ground in this way.
38| Inula, too, chewed by those fasting, makes the teeth firm. If, as soon as it is dug up, it does not touch the ground, stored it mends cough; the juice of the boiled root drives out tapeworms, and the meal of it, dried in the shade, heals cough, convulsions, swellings and the windpipes. It drives away the bites of venomous creatures. The leaves in wine are smeared on for pain of the loins.
39| There are no wild onions. The cultivated cure dimness by smell itself and by the shedding of tears, but more by anointing with the juice. They are also reported to bring sleep and to heal ulcers of the mouth, chewed with bread, and dog bites, applied green with vinegar or dry with honey [….] and wine, so that they are loosened after the third day. So they heal chafings too. Many have laid it, cooked in ashes with barley meal, on discharges of the eyes and on ulcers of the genitals.
40| With the juice they have anointed both scars of the eyes and white spots and argema, and bites of serpents and all wounds with honey; likewise of the ears [….] with woman's milk, and in the same, correcting ringing or heaviness, they have dropped it in with goose fat or with honey. And they have given it to be drunk in water to those who suddenly lose their voice.
41| For pain too they have dropped it in for rinsing the teeth, and on the blows of all beasts, especially of scorpions. They have rubbed bald patches and itch-scabs with pounded onions. Cooked, they have given them to be eaten by those with dysentery and against pains of the loins; and the refuse of them, burned to ash, they smear on with vinegar for the bites of serpents, and the onions themselves in vinegar for the multipeda.
42| For the rest there is a wonderful diversity among physicians. The most recent said they were useless to the praecordia and to digestion and cause swelling and thirst. The school of Asclepiades said that a strong colour also is gained by this food and that, if people eat them daily on an empty stomach, firmness of health is preserved,
43| that they are useful to the stomach, soften the belly by agitation of the breath, open haemorrhoids when put in place of suppositories; that the juice with the juice of fennel works wonders against incipient dropsy, likewise against quinsies with that of rue and honey; that lethargics are roused by the same. (Varro is the authority that an onion pounded with salt and vinegar and dried is not attacked by little worms.)
44| Cutting leek checks flows of blood from the nostrils, when it is ground and the nostrils are stopped with it, or mixed with gall-nut or mint; likewise flows after miscarriage, the juice drunk. With woman's milk it cures even old cough and faults of the chest and lung. With the leaves smeared on are healed pimples and burns and epinyctides (so the ulcer is called which, and also syce, runs with constant moisture in the corner of the eye; some call by the same name pustules
45| that are livid and disturb the nights) and other ulcers, when pounded with honey, or the bites of beasts, with vinegar, likewise of serpents and other venomous creatures, and faults of the ears with goat's gall or an equal measure of mead, ringings with woman's milk, headaches, if it is poured into the nostrils of those about to sleep, or into the ears, two spoonfuls of juice, one of honey.
46| The juice is also drunk with unmixed wine against serpent and scorpion stings, and for pains of the loins, drunk with a hemina of wine. To those spitting blood and the consumptive and those with long catarrhs either the juice or food made of it itself is of benefit, likewise for the royal disease or the dropsical and for pains of the kidneys, with the juice of ptisan, by the measure of an acetabulum. The same measure with honey purges the wombs. It is eaten also against the poisons of mushrooms,
47| is laid on wounds, stimulates Venus, quenches thirst, dispels drunkenness, but is handed down as dulling the keenness of the eyes, and also as causing swellings, which however do not harm the stomach and soften the belly. It gives brightness to the voice.
48| The headed leek is stronger for the same effects. For those throwing up blood, its juice is given with gall-nut or meal of frankincense or acacia. Hippocrates directs it to be given without any other mixture too, and thinks that it opens contracted wombs, and that the fertility of women is even increased by this food. Pounded with honey it cleans ulcers.
49| It heals cough and catarrhs of the chest, and faults of the lung and windpipe, given in a sip of ptisan or raw, apart from the heads, without bread, so that it is taken on alternate days, or if pus is coughed up. So too it contributes much to voice and to Venus and to sleep. The heads, boiled twice with the water changed, soften the bowels [….] checks old fluxes; the bark boiled and smeared on dyes grey hairs.
50| Garlic has great power, great uses against changes of waters and places. It drives away serpents and scorpions by its smell and, as some have handed down, all beasts. It cures stings, by drink or food or smearing, especially against the haemorrhois, taken with wine and brought up by vomiting. And, lest we be surprised that it prevails against the venomous bites of shrew-mice, it overcomes aconite, which by another name is called pardalianches, likewise hyoscyamus, and bites of dogs, on which wounds it is laid with honey.
51| Against the stings of serpents, indeed, roasted with its own stems it is smeared on most effectively with oil, and on rubbed parts of the body, or if they have swollen into blisters. Hippocrates holds that, by fumigation with it, the afterbirth is drawn out; with its ash and oil he restores running ulcers of the head to health. For asthmatics some have given it cooked, some raw;
52| Diocles gave it to the dropsical with centaury or in a double fig to empty the bowels, which it does more effectively green, with coriander drunk in unmixed wine; to asthmatics some have given it also pounded in milk. Praxagoras mixed it with wine against the royal disease and against ileus in oil and porridge, smearing it thus on scrofulous swellings too. The ancients gave it raw even to the insane, Diocles boiled to the frenzied. Against quinsies, pounded in posca, to gargle is of benefit.
53| Toothache it lessens, three heads pounded in vinegar, or if the teeth are rinsed with the water they were boiled in and the garlic itself is put in the hollows of the teeth. The juice with goose fat is dropped also into the ears. Lice-disease and scurf it restrains, drunk, and likewise infused with vinegar and nitre; catarrhs, cooked with milk or pounded or mixed with soft cheese, in which way it also lessens hoarseness, or in a sip of pea or bean.
54| On the whole, however, cooked is more useful than raw, and boiled than roasted; so it contributes more to the voice. Tapeworms and the other animals of the inner parts it drives out, cooked in vinegar and honey; for tenesmus it heals in porridge; for pains of the temples it is smeared on boiled, and on pustules cooked, then pounded with honey; for cough, boiled with old fat or with milk or, if blood is also coughed up or pus, roasted under embers and taken with an equal measure of honey; for convulsions and ruptures with salt and oil. Likewise with fat it heals suspected tumours.
55| It draws out the faults of fistulas with sulphur and resin, and reeds with pitch; leprous sores, lichens and freckles it ulcerates and heals with origanum, or its ash smeared on with oil and garum; so too sacred fires; bruises or livid marks it brings back to colour, burned, with honey.
56| They believe also that the falling sickness is healed, if one uses it in food and drink; that it drives out quartan fevers too, one head drunk with an obol of laserpicium in austere wine, (cough, and in another way whatever suppurations of the chest, it heals, boiled in with split beans and so taken in food until it restores health. It also induces sleep, and
57| in general gives redder bodies) that it also stimulates Venus, pounded with green coriander and drunk in unmixed wine. Its faults are that it dulls the eyes, causes swellings, harms the stomach if taken in quantity, and produces thirst. For the rest, mixed with spelt in food, it benefits even poultry against phlegm. They hand down that beasts of burden pass urine and are not tormented if the genital part is touched with it pounded.
58| The first kind of lettuce growing wild is the one they call goat lettuce, by which fish are killed at once if it is thrown into the sea, those that are nearby. Its milk, thickened and then put in vinegar to the weight of two obols, with one cyathus of water added, is given to the dropsical. With stalk and leaves pounded, salt sprinkled on, cut sinews are healed. The same, pounded in vinegar and used as a rinse in the mornings twice a month, prevents toothache.
59| The second kind is what the Greeks call caesapon. Its leaves, pounded and smeared on with polenta, cure ulcers. These grow in the fields; the third kind, growing in woods, they call isatis. Its leaves, pounded with polenta, benefit wounds. The fourth the dyers of wool use. It was like the wild lapathum in leaves, except that it had more and darker. It checks blood, heals phagedaenae and putrefying ulcers or those that creep, likewise swellings before suppuration, and sacred fire, by the root or the leaves. It is of benefit also for the spleen, drunk. These are the properties of each.
60| Common to the wild-growing kinds, however, are whiteness, a stalk sometimes the length of a cubit, and roughness in the thyrsus and leaves. Of these the one having round and short leaves some call hieracion, since hawks, by scratching it and bathing their eyes with its juice, dispel dimness when they have felt it.
61| The juice in all is white, and in powers too like the poppy; it is gathered at harvest time by cutting the stalk, stored in a new earthen vessel, excellent for many things. It heals all faults of the eyes with woman's milk, argema, little clouds, scars and all burnings, especially dimness. It is laid also on the eyes in wool against discharges.
62| The same juice purges the bowels, drunk in posca to two obols. It cures the stings of serpents drunk in wine. And the leaves and thyrsi, pounded, are drunk in vinegar, smeared on a wound, most against the stings of scorpions, but against phalangia mixed with wine and vinegar.
63| They resist other poisons too, except those which kill by strangling or those that harm the bladder, and also except psimithium. They are laid on the belly with honey and vinegar to draw out faults of the bowels. The juice mends difficulties of urine. Crateuas directs it to be given also to the dropsical, two obols in vinegar and a cyathus of wine.
64| Some collect a juice also from the cultivated kinds, less effective. The peculiar effects of these (besides those already told, of causing sleep and checking Venus, cooling heat, purging the stomach, increasing blood) are not few that remain, since they both disperse swellings and make belching gentle, help digestion, and themselves never cause indigestion. And nothing in food both rouses and checks appetite more; in either case the cause is quantity: so in greater amounts they loosen the bowels, in moderate they check them.
65| They break up sluggishness of phlegm and, as some have handed down, clear the senses, and are most useful to relaxed stomachs. They are helped for these uses by oxyporum in obols, tempering the harshness by sweetness added to a dip of vinegar, if the phlegm is thicker, with scillites or wine of absinthium, and if cough is also felt, with hyssopites mixed in. They are given to those with coeliac trouble with wild intubum and for hardness of the praecordia.
66| The white are given in greater quantity also to melancholics and for faults of the bladder. Praxagoras gave them also to those with dysentery. They help burns too when fresh, before blisters form, smeared on with salt. They also restrain ulcers that creep, at the start with aphronitrum, then in wine. Pounded, they are smeared on sacred fire. Their stalks, pounded with polenta in cold water, soothe convulsions and dislocations, and eruptions of pimples with wine and polenta.
67| In cholera, too, they gave them cooked in dishes, for which those with the largest stalk and the bitter are most useful. Some infuse them with milk too. These stalks, boiled up, are handed down as very useful also for the stomach, as for sleep the summer lettuce especially, and the bitter and the milky one, which we have called meconis. It is prescribed that this milk, with woman's milk, is most useful for clearness of the eyes, provided the eyes are anointed when the head is ripe, and for faults produced in them by cold. I find other wonderful praises too:
68| that it benefits faults of the chest no less than habrotonum with Attic honey; that women also are purged by this food; that the seed of the cultivated kinds is given against scorpions; that by the seed pounded and drunk in wine even the imaginings of desires in sleep are restrained; that waters that upset the system do no harm to those who eat lettuce. Some, however, have handed down that eating it more frequently impairs the clearness of the eyes.
69| Nor is either beet without remedies: whether white or black, the root, fresh and moistened and hung from a cord, is said to be effective against the bites of serpents; white beet cooked and taken with raw garlic, against tapeworms; roots of the black boiled in water remove scurf, and on the whole the black is handed down as the more effective. Its juice soothes old headaches and dizziness, and likewise ringing of the ears when infused into them.
70| It moves urine, cures dysentery when injected, and the royal disease, and soothes pains of the teeth. The juice smeared on avails also against the stings of serpents, but this only when pressed out of the root. The boiled beet itself meets chilblains. The white soothes discharges of the eyes, smeared on the brow; with a little alum mixed in, pounded without oil, it soothes sacred fire.
71| So too it cures burns. And against eruptions of pimples, and the same cooked, it is smeared on ulcers that creep, and raw on bald patches and on ulcers which run on the head. Its juice with honey put into the nostrils purges the head. It is cooked also with lentil, vinegar being added, to soften the belly. Cooked more strongly, it checks fluxes of the stomach and belly.
72| There is also a wild beet which they call limonium, others neuroides, with much smaller leaves, thinner and denser; often eleven to a single stalk. Its leaves, useful for burns, draw together the mouth of those who taste them. The seed, by the measure of an acetabulum, benefits those with dysentery. The water in which a beet root has been boiled, they say, takes out stains from garments, and likewise from parchments.
73| Intubi too are not outside remedies. Their juice with oil of roses and vinegar soothes headaches, and the same drunk with wine, those of the liver and bladder; and it is laid on discharges of the eyes. The wild kind some among us have called ambubaia. In Egypt they call cichorium the wild, but the cultivated serim, which is smaller and more veined.
74| Cichorium cools, taken in food or smeared on collections of matter; the juice of it boiled loosens the belly, benefits the liver and kidneys and stomach. Likewise, if it is boiled in vinegar, it dispels gripings of the urine, and the royal disease in mead, if without fever. It helps the bladder. For the purgings of women a decoction in water is of so much benefit that it draws out dead births. The Magi add that those anointed with the juice of the whole plant with oil become more favoured and obtain more easily what they wish. Because of its singular wholesomeness some even call the same plant chreston, others pancration.
75| There is also a second wild kind (they call it hedypnois), of broader leaf. It draws together a relaxed stomach when cooked, and raw checks the bowels. It benefits also those with dysentery, more so with lentil. Ruptures and convulsions are helped by either kind, likewise those from whom seed flows away through disease of health. Seris too itself,
76| very like lettuce, is of two wild kinds: the better is the black and summer, the worse the winter and whiter. Both are bitter, most useful for the stomach; in food with vinegar they cool especially one whom moisture troubles, or smeared on, and they disperse other ailments than those of the stomach.
77| With polenta the roots of the wild kinds are sipped for the stomach's sake, and are smeared on the cardiacs over the left breast, with vinegar. All of these are useful to those with gout and to those spitting blood, likewise to those from whom seed flows away, drunk on alternate days. Petronius Diodotus, who wrote the anthologoumena, condemned seris altogether, arguing against it in many ways, but the opinion of all others stands against him.
78| The praises of cabbage are long to follow out, since both the physician Chrysippus has dedicated a volume to it specially, arranged by the single members of the human body, and Dieuches, and before all Pythagoras, and Cato has celebrated it no more sparingly; it is fitting to follow his opinion all the more carefully, that it may be known what medicine the Roman people used for 600 years.
79| The Greeks of the oldest time divided it into three species: the curled, which they called selinas from the likeness to the leaves of celery, useful to the stomach, softening the bowels moderately; the second helia, with broad leaves coming out from the stalk, whence some have called it caulodes, of no weight in medicine. The third is properly called crambe, with thinner leaves, simple and very dense, more bitter, but most effective.
80| Cato approves the curled most, then the smooth with large leaves and a large stalk. He relates that it benefits headaches, dimness of the eyes and sparkling before them, the stomach and the praecordia, raw with vinegar and honey, with coriander, rue, mint and a little root of laser, taken in two acetabula in the morning, and that the power is so great that one who pounds these feels himself become stronger.
81| So either pounded with these to be sipped or taken as a dip from this; for gout, however, and diseases of the joints to be smeared on with rue and coriander and a grain of salt and barley meal; the water of its boiling also, he says, helps sinews and joints wonderfully, if they are bathed in it. Wounds both fresh and old, even cancers which can be healed by no other medicines, he orders to be first bathed in hot water and the cabbage, pounded, laid on twice a day.
82| So too fistulas and dislocations and swellings, which it is needful either to draw out or to disperse. It removes sleeplessness and wakefulness also, boiled, if those fasting eat as much as possible with oil and salt; griping, if the boiled cabbage is boiled again, with oil, salt, cumin and polenta added. If it is taken thus without bread, it will do more good. Among the rest, bile is drawn off, drunk through black wine.
83| Nay, he even orders the urine of one who has eaten cabbage regularly to be kept, and says that, warmed, it is a remedy for the sinews. I shall add his own words to express his meaning: little boys, if you wash them in that urine, never become weak. For the ears also he advises that cabbage juice in wine be dropped in lukewarm, and he asserts that this benefits even slowness of hearing, and that impetigo is healed by the same without ulcer.
84| The opinions of the Greeks too it is fitting now to set down, for Cato's sake, only in those matters which he passed over. They think that when not thoroughly cooked it draws off bile, and likewise loosens the bowels, and the same cooked twice checks them. That it is hostile to wine as an enemy of the vine, drunkenness being guarded against if it is eaten beforehand, and a hangover dispelled if taken afterward.
85| That this food contributes much to clearness of the eyes, and the juice of the raw, even if only the corners are touched, with Attic honey very much. That it is digested most easily, and the senses are cleared by this food. The school of Erasistratus proclaims that nothing is more useful to the stomach and sinews, and therefore directs it to be given to the paralytic and the tremulous and to those spitting blood.
86| Hippocrates gives it to coeliacs and those with dysentery cooked twice with salt, likewise for tenesmus and on account of the kidneys, judging also that an abundance of milk comes to women in childbirth from this food, and purgation to women. A raw stalk, if chewed, drives out even dead births. Apollodorus holds that against the poisons of mushrooms the seed or the juice is to be drunk, Philistion for those with opisthotonos the juice with goat's milk, salt and honey.
87| I find also that people were freed from gout by eating it and by drinking the broth of the boiled; this given also to cardiacs and for epileptic diseases with salt added, likewise to splenics in white wine for 40 days, and to the jaundiced, and also to the frenzied. For the hoarse he shows that the juice of the raw is to be gargled and drunk, but against hiccups it is with coriander and dill and honey and pepper in vinegar.
88| Smeared on, it benefits swellings of the stomach too, likewise the stings of serpents and foul ulcers and old ones, or the water itself with barley meal, the juice with vinegar or with Greek hay. So some lay it also on joints and gouty feet. It relieves epinyctides and whatever else creeps over the body, laid on, likewise sudden dimness of sight, and this also if it is chewed with vinegar; bruises and other livid marks it heals smeared on pure, leprous sores and itch-scabs with round alum in vinegar.
89| So it also holds fast falling hair. Epicharmus says it is most usefully laid on for the ailments of the testicles and genitals, more effectively the same with bean, pounded, likewise on convulsions, with rue against the burnings of fevers and faults of the stomach, with seed of rue against the afterbirth and the bites of the shrew-mouse. The meal of the dried leaves empties from either part.
90| Of all kinds of cabbage the sweetest is the cyma, but it is held useless, hard in cooking and contrary to the kidneys. This also is not to be omitted, that the water of the boiled, praised for so many uses, stinks when poured out on the ground. The ash of the dried stalks of cabbage is counted among caustics, for pains of the hips, with old fat, and with laser and vinegar among the psilotra: smeared on after hairs have been plucked, it prevents others from growing.
91| It is drunk also with oil, lightly heated, or boiled by itself for convulsions and ruptures within and for one who has fallen from a height. Are there then no charges against cabbage? Nay, among the same people it is said to cause heaviness of breath and to harm teeth and gums. And in Egypt, on account of its bitterness, it is not eaten.
92| Cato praises the wild or straying kind as of immensely more effect, so much so that he affirms that when its dried meal is collected in a little scent-bottle, or even when the smell alone is drawn into the nostrils, faults of the nostrils and a bad smell are healed. Others call this petraea, most hostile to wine, which the vine especially flees from or, if it cannot flee, dies.
93| It has thin leaves, round, small, smooth, more like the plants of the vegetable, the cultivated being whiter and more hairy. Chrysippus is the authority that this heals swellings, and melancholics too, and fresh wounds with honey, so that it is not loosened before the seventh day, and scrofulous swellings and fistulas, ground in water. Others say it restrains ailments of the body that creep (they call them nomae), and removes excrescences,
94| reduces scars to a level, takes away ulcers of the mouth and tonsils, chewed and boiled, the juice gargled with honey, likewise itch-scabs and old leprous sores, with three parts of itself and two of alum smeared on in sharp vinegar. Epicharmus says it is enough for it to be laid on against the bite of a rabid dog; better if with laser and sharp vinegar; that dogs too are killed by it if it is given in meat. Its seed, roasted, helps against serpents, mushrooms, the blood of a bull.
95| The leaves, cooked and given to splenics in food, and raw smeared on with sulphur and nitre, benefit, likewise hardness of the breasts. The ash of the roots cures the uvula swelling in the throat by touch, and smeared on with honey checks the parotid swellings, and heals the bites of serpents. Of the powers of cabbage we shall add one great and marvellous proof: crusts take hold inside all vessels in which water boils, so that it is impossible to tear them off; if cabbage is boiled in them, they come away.
96| Among the wild cabbages there is also lapsana, a foot in height, with hairy leaves, like mustard, were it not whiter in flower. It is cooked in food, and softens the bowels gently. Sea cabbage moves the bowels most violently of all. It is cooked, on account of its sharpness, with fat meat, and is most hostile to the stomach.
97| Of squills, in medicine the white, and the female black; the whitest will be the most useful. From this, when the dry coats have been torn away, what remains of the living part is cut up and hung on a line at moderate intervals. Afterward the dried pieces are sunk in a jar of the sharpest vinegar, hanging so as not to touch the vessel at any part.
98| Then the jar, smeared with gypsum, is placed under tiles that receive the sun for the whole day. This is done before the solstice, for 48 days. After that number of days the vessel is taken up, the squill is removed, the vinegar is poured off. This makes the keenness of the eyes clearer; it is salutary for the stomach, and for pains of the sides, taken fasting. But so great is its power that, drunk too eagerly, it presents the appearance of one whose breath is extinguished for some moment.
99| It benefits gums and teeth too, even chewed by itself. It drives out tapeworms and the other animals of the belly, taken in vinegar and honey. Placed fresh under the tongue it also secures that the dropsical do not thirst. It is cooked in many ways: in a pot which is thrown into an oven or furnace, either smeared with fat or clay, or in pieces in dishes.
100| And raw it is dried, then cut up and cooked in vinegar, when it is laid on the stings of serpents. Roasted too it is cleaned and its middle boiled again in water. The use of it so cooked is for the dropsical, for moving urine, drunk to three obols with honey and vinegar, likewise for splenics and for the stomachic, if they feel no ulcer, in whom food floats, for griping, for the royal diseases, for old cough with panting.
101| It disperses scrofulous swellings with its leaves, loosened on every fourth day; scurf of the head and running ulcers it heals, smeared on, cooked in oil. It is cooked also in honey for the sake of food, chiefly to bring about digestion. So too it purges the inner parts. It heals cracks of the feet, cooked in oil and mixed with resin. Its seed is laid with honey on pain of the loins. Pythagoras relates that a squill hung even on the threshold of the door has power against the entrance of evil drugs.
102| The other bulbs in vinegar and sulphur heal ulcers in the face, but pounded by themselves, contraction of sinews, and with wine scurf, with honey the bites of dogs; Erasistratus is pleased with pitch. The same writer relates that, smeared on with honey, they check blood. Others, if it flows from the nostrils, add coriander and meal.
103| Theodorus also cures lichens with bulbs in vinegar, eruptions on the head with austere wine or egg. And the same smears bulbs on discharges of the eyes, and the middle of them on dry soreness of the eyes. The red bulbs especially, smeared on in the sun with honey and nitre, mend faults in the face, and freckles with wine or with vinegar. They benefit wounds too, wonderfully, by themselves or, as Damion says, in mead, if they are loosened on the fifth day.
104| With the same he cures also broken ears and the phlegm of the testicles; for pains of the joints he mixes meal too. Boiled in wine and smeared on the belly, they soften hardness of the praecordia. To those with dysentery they are given tempered in wine with rain water, for convulsions within with silphium in pills of the size of a bean. For sweating, pounded, they are smeared on. Useful to the sinews, and therefore given also to the paralytic.
105| Dislocations in the feet they heal very quickly, of these the red ones, with honey and salt. The Megarian most stimulate Venus; the garden kind, taken with boiled must or raisin wine, help birth; the wild soothe blows and faults of the inner parts, swallowed in pills with silphium. The seed of those is drunk in wine against phalangia.
106| The bulbs themselves are smeared on in vinegar against the stings of serpents. The seed the ancients gave to be drunk by the insane. The flower of bulbs, pounded, mends spots and variegations of the legs made by fire. Diocles thinks the eyes are dulled by them. He adds that boiled ones are less useful than roasted, and that they are hard to digest, from the force of the nature of each.
107| Bolbine the Greeks call a herb with leek-like leaves and a reddish bulb. It is handed down as wonderfully useful for wounds, only fresh ones. The bulb which they call vomitorium from its effect has black leaves, longer than the rest.
108| Among foods most useful to the stomach, asparagus is handed down. With cumin indeed added they disperse swellings of the stomach and colon, the same bring clearness to the eyes, soften the belly gently, benefit pains of the chest and spine and faults of the intestines, wine being added when they are cooked. For pains of the loins and kidneys the seed is drunk in the weight of three obols, with an equal amount of cumin. They stimulate Venus, and move urine very usefully,
109| except in an ulcerated bladder; the root also, by the declaration of very many. Pounded and drunk in white wine it also drives out stones, and soothes pains of the loins and kidneys. Some give the root also with sweet wine for pain of the womb. The same boiled in vinegar profits against elephantiasis. Anointed with asparagus pounded in oil, one is said not to be stung by bees.
110| Wild asparagus some call Libyan, the Attic writers horminon. Its power is more effective for all the above, and greater in the whiter. They reduce the royal disease. For the sake of Venus they direct the water of their boiling to be drunk to a hemina. The seed is equally powerful with dill, three obols of each. The boiled juice is also administered for serpent stings; the root is mixed with the root of marathrum among the most effective helps.
111| If blood is passed through the urine, Chrysippus directs the seed of both asparagus and celery and cumin to be given, three obols each, in two cyathi of wine. But he teaches that this is contrary to the dropsical, though it moves urine, and likewise to Venus, and to the bladder too unless boiled; and that if this water is given to dogs, they are killed. The juice of the root when it has been boiled down in wine cures the teeth, if it is held in the mouth.
112| Celery is popular. For its sprigs float in drinks of milk throughout the countryside and have a peculiar charm in seasonings. Besides, smeared on the eyes with honey, so that they are bathed repeatedly with the hot juice of its boiling, and for discharges of the other parts, pounded by itself or laid on with bread or polenta, it helps wonderfully. Fish too, if they sicken in fishponds, are revived with green celery.
113| But among the learned no other thing dug out of the earth is subject to greater variety of opinions. It is distinguished by sex. Chrysippus says that the female has more curled and hard leaves, a thick stalk, a sharp and fiery flavour; Dionysius [….] blacker, short, of root [….], producing little worms; both say that neither is to be admitted to meals, nay that it is altogether forbidden, for it is dedicated to the funeral feasts of the dead (it is also hostile to clearness of sight) [that little worms are produced in the stalk of the female] and that those
114| who have eaten it become sterile, males or females; that in childbed, however, from this food those who suck the breasts become epileptic; the male is nevertheless the more harmless. And this is the reason that the shrub is not to be condemned among the unlawful things. It softens hardness of the breasts when the leaves are laid on.
115| Boiled in a drink it gives sweeter waters. With the juice especially of the root in wine it eases pains of the loins, and dropped in by the same method, heaviness of the ears. With the seed it moves urine, the monthly courses and the afterbirth, and if the parts are bathed in the seed boiled. Bruises it restores to colour smeared on with egg white. Boiled in water and drunk it cures the kidneys; pounded in cold water, ulcers of the mouth. The seed with wine or the root with old wine breaks stones of the bladder. The seed is given also to the jaundiced in white wine.
116| Apiastrum Hyginus calls melissophyllum, but it is under admitted condemnation as poisonous in Sardinia. For all the things that hang from the same name among the Greeks must be woven together.
117| Olusatrum, which they call hipposelinum, is hostile to scorpions. Its seed, drunk, cures griping and the inner parts; likewise for difficulties of urine its seed boiled and drunk in mead. The root boiled in wine drives out stones and pains of the loins and side. Drunk and smeared on, it cures the bites of a rabid dog. Its juice drunk warms those who are cold. A fourth kind from the same some make oreoselinum, a palm high, a straight shrub, with seed like cumin, effective for urine and the monthly courses. Heleoselinum has a peculiar power against spiders; with it and oreoselinum women are purged in wine.
118| In another kind some give the name petroselinum to that born on rocks, outstanding for abscesses, two spoonfuls of the juice being added to a cyathus of the juice of marrubium and then to three cyathi of hot water. Some have added buselinum, differing in the shortness of its stalk from the cultivated and in the red colour of its root, of the same effect, to prevail against serpents drunk and smeared on.
119| Basil also Chrysippus sharply attacked as useless to the stomach, to urine, to clearness of the eyes too, and besides as causing madness and lethargies and faults of the liver, and for that reason that goats refuse it, judging that men also should avoid it. Some add that pounded, if covered with a stone, it generates a scorpion, and chewed and placed in the sun, worms;
120| the Africans indeed say that if anyone is struck by a scorpion on the day he has eaten basil, he cannot be saved. Nay more, some relate that if a handful of basil is pounded with 10 sea or river crabs, all the scorpions from near by gather to it. Diodorus in the empirics says that basil as food even produces lice.
121| The following age keenly defended it, for it is the goats' food, and no one's mind was disturbed, and it heals the stings of land scorpions and the poisons of sea ones in wine with a little vinegar added. It has also been found by use that the smell, with vinegar, is salutary to those who faint, likewise to lethargics and the inflamed by cooling, and smeared on for headaches with oil of roses or myrtle and vinegar, and likewise laid on discharges of the eyes in wine.
122| It is useful also for the stomach, taken in vinegar to dissolve swellings by belching, laid on to check the bowels, to move urine; thus it benefits the royal disease and the dropsical, and in cholera too catarrhs of the stomach are restrained. Hence Philistio also gave it to coeliacs and cooked to those with dysentery, and against [….] Plistonicus, some also in tenesmus and to those spitting blood in wine, and for hardness of the praecordia. It is smeared on the breasts and empties the coming of milk.
123| Most useful for the ears of infants, especially with goose fat. The seed, pounded and drawn into the nostrils, restrains sneezing and also catarrhs of the head when smeared on; it purges the wombs in food with vinegar. Warts it removes, mixed with shoemakers' black. It stimulates Venus, and therefore is even given to horses and asses at the time of covering.
124| The wild basil has more effective power for all the same things, peculiar for faults contracted by frequent vomiting, and abscesses of the womb; against the bites of beasts, in wine, the root is most effective.
125| The seed of rocket cures the poisons of scorpions and of the shrew-mouse, keeps off all little animals that are born on the body, mends faults of the skin in the face smeared on with honey, freckles with vinegar, and brings black scars back to whiteness with ox gall. They say that, drunk in wine, it puts into those about to undergo flogging a certain hardness of feeling against it.
126| In seasoning dishes its pleasantness is so great that the Greeks called it euzomon. They think that, if the eyes are bathed with rocket ground fine, clearness is restored, [….] cough of infants is soothed. Its root boiled in water draws out broken bones [….] (for we have spoken of stimulating Venus) three leaves of wild rocket picked by the left hand and pounded in honeyed water, if they are drunk.
127| On the contrary, cress checks Venus and sharpens the mind, as we have said. There are two kinds of it. It purges the bowels, draws off bile, drunk to the weight of X in 7 of water; for scrofulous swellings, smeared on with lomentum and covered with cabbage, it cures admirably. The second is blacker, which purges faults of the head [and clears the sight], calms disturbed minds taken in vinegar, and the spleen drunk in wine or taken with a fig, and cough, in honey, if they take it daily fasting.
128| The seed in wine drives out all the animals of the intestines, more effectively with mentastrum added. It benefits also against panting and cough, with origanum and sweet wine, and for pains of the chest boiled in goat's milk. It disperses pani with pitch, and draws out stings and spots from the body smeared on in vinegar; against cancers the white of eggs is added.
129| And it is smeared on the spleen in vinegar, and on infants most usefully in honey. Sextius adds that burned it puts serpents to flight, resists scorpions, ground relieves headaches, bald patches are mended when mustard is added, heaviness of the ears with it ground and laid in the ears with a fig, toothaches with the juice poured into the ears, scurf and ulcers of the head with goose fat. It ripens boils with leaven.
130| It brings carbuncles to suppuration and breaks them, cleans the phagedaenae of ulcers with honey. It is smeared on hips and loins with polenta in vinegar, likewise on lichen, on rough nails, since its nature is caustic. The best is the Babylonian; the wild has greater effect for all these.
131| Rue is among the foremost medicines. The cultivated has broader leaves, bushier branches; the wild is rough and for effect is sharper in all respects. The juice is pressed from the pounded plant with a little water sprinkled on and is kept in a Cyprian box. This, given in larger quantity, has the harmfulness of poison, in Macedonia especially near the river Haliacmon; and it is marvellous that it is extinguished by the juice of hemlock: so much are there even poisons of poisons.
132| The juice of hemlock benefits also the hands of those gathering rue. Otherwise it is mixed among the first of antidotes, especially the Galatian; but any rue even by itself serves as an antidote, the leaves pounded and taken in wine, against aconite especially and mistletoe, likewise mushrooms, whether it is given in drink or in food; in a like manner against the stings of serpents, since weasels about to fight them fortify themselves beforehand by eating rue.
133| They are strong also against the stings of scorpions and spiders, bees, hornets, wasps, and cantharides and salamanders, or the bites of a rabid dog. The juice is drunk in wine by the measure of an acetabulum, and the leaves, pounded or chewed, are applied with honey and salt, or with vinegar and pitch after boiling. They say that people anointed with the juice, and even those who have it, are not struck by these maleficent creatures, and that serpents flee the smell if rue is burned.
134| Most effective, however, is the root of the wild, taken in wine; they add that the same is more effective drunk in the open air. Pythagoras distinguished in this too the male, with smaller leaves of herb colour, from the female, which has more luxuriant leaves and colour. He thought it also harmful to the eyes; false, since engravers and painters use it as food for the sake of the eyes, with bread or cress, and wild goats too for sight, as they say.
135| Many, anointed with its juice with Attic honey, have dispersed dimness, or with the milk of a woman who has borne a male child, or with pure juice touching the corners of the eyes. Smeared on with polenta it soothes discharges; likewise headaches, drunk with wine or with vinegar and smeared on with oil of roses; if it is truly a cephalaea, with barley meal and vinegar. The same disperses indigestions, soon also swellings and old pains of the stomach.
136| It opens wombs and sets right those turned over, smeared in honey over the whole belly and chest; for the dropsical with fig, and boiled to the half parts and drunk in wine. It is drunk thus also for pains of the chest and of the sides and loins, coughs, panting, faults of the lungs, liver and kidneys, cold shiverings, heaviness from a hangover. The leaves are boiled for those about to drink; and in food, whether raw or boiled or preserved, it is beneficial; likewise for griping boiled in hyssop and drunk with wine.
137| So it also checks blood within, and put into the nostrils for it; so too it benefits when the teeth are rinsed. Into the ears also in pain the juice is poured, care being taken, as we have said, over the dose in the case of the wild kind, but against slowness of hearing and ringing, with oil of roses or with laurel oil or with wine and honey.
138| The juice of the pounded plant in vinegar is dropped also on the temples and brain of the frenzied. Some have added serpyllum and laurel, smearing heads and necks. They gave it to lethargics in vinegar to smell, and to epileptics to drink, the juice of the boiled in 4 cyathi; before attacks of which the chill is intolerable, and to those sensitive to cold also raw in food.
139| It drives urine also, even bloody, and the purgings of women and the afterbirths and already dead births, as Hippocrates thinks, drunk in sweet black wine. Therefore he orders it smeared on and also fumigated for the sake of the wombs. Diocles lays it on cardiacs too in vinegar and honey with barley meal, and against ileus the meal boiled in oil and gathered up in fleeces. Many indeed think that against purulent expectorations two drachmas of the dried plant should be taken, and one and a half of sulphur, and against bloody ones 3 sprigs boiled in wine.
140| It is given also to those with dysentery, ground with cheese in wine. They have given it too, crushed with bitumen, in a drink for shortness of breath, to those who have fallen from a height: 3 ounces of the seed, a pound of oil and a sextarius of wine. It is smeared on, with the leaves boiled in oil, on parts which cold has scorched. If it moves urine, as Hippocrates thinks, it is strange that some give it in a drink as checking it, against incontinence of urine.
141| Itch-scabs and leprous sores it mends smeared on with honey and alum, likewise vitiligines, warts, scrofulous swellings and the like, with trychnos and pig's fat and bull's suet; sacred fire, with vinegar and oil or psimithium; a carbuncle, with vinegar; some direct laserpicium to be smeared on along with it, without which they cure epinyctides and pustules. They lay it on swollen breasts, boiled, and on eruptions of phlegm with wax, and on discharges of the testicles with tender sprigs of laurel,
142| with so peculiar an effect on these organs that they report that, with wild rue and old lard, ruptures are healed when smeared on, and broken limbs when the seed, pounded with wax, is laid on. The root of rue, smeared on, mends blood suffused in the eyes and scars or spots over the whole body. Of the other things that are handed down, it is strange, since it is agreed that the nature of rue is hot, that a bundle of it boiled in oil of roses, with an ounce of aloes added, checks sweat in those anointed with it, and that generation too is hindered by this food.
143| For that reason it is given in a flow of seed, and to those who often imagine Venus in dreams. Pregnant women must be warned to abstain from this food, for I find that births are killed. The same, of all cultivated plants, is also in the greatest use for the diseases of four-footed animals, whether for those breathing with difficulty or against the stings of maleficent animals, infused through the nostrils in wine or, if they have swallowed a leech, in vinegar, and in any similar kind of disease, tempered as in man.
144| Mentastrum is a wild mint, differing in the appearance of its leaves, which are in the shape of basil, with the smell of pulegium, because of which some call it wild pulegium. By chewing these and laying them on, elephantiasis was found to be healed, in the age of Pompey the Great, by the chance experiment of a certain man, who smeared his face for shame.
145| The same are smeared on and drunk against the stings of serpents, two drachmas in two cyathi of wine, against those of scorpions with salt, oil and vinegar, likewise against scolopendras the broth of the boiled plant. Against all poisons the dried leaves are kept like meal. Strewn beneath or burned, it puts even scorpions to flight.
146| Drunk, it purges women, but kills births. It is most effective for ruptures, convulsions, orthopnoea, griping, cholera, likewise laid on the loins and in gout. The juice is dropped into ears that have worms. In the royal disease it is drunk, on scrofulous swellings it is smeared, it checks dreams of Venus, drives out tapeworms drunk in vinegar, and against scurf it is poured on the head in vinegar in the sun.
147| The smell of mint itself rouses the mind and its flavour appetite in food, and therefore it is familiar in the mixtures of embammata. It does not allow milk to turn sour or to curdle or be thickened; therefore it is added to drinks of milk, and given in water or mead to those who are being choked by a drink of coagulated milk. By the same power it is believed to resist generation too, by preventing the genitals from thickening.
148| Equally in males and females it checks blood, and checks the purgings of women, and drunk in water with starch, the attacks of coeliacs. Smeared on, it cures ulceration and abscesses of the womb, faults of the liver in three obols given in mead, likewise for those spitting blood in a sip of broth. Ulcers on the head of infants it heals wonderfully,
149| dries moist windpipes, draws together dry ones, purges corrupted phlegm in mead and water. Useful to the voice by its juice, only in a contest, and the juice is also gargled when the uvula is swollen, with rue and coriander added in milk; useful also against the tonsils with alum, for a rough tongue with honey, and by itself for convulsions within and faults of the lung. It checks hiccups and vomitings with the juice of pomegranate, as Democritus shows.
150| The juice of the fresh plant, drawn up by the breath, mends faults of the nostrils; the plant itself pounded, drunk in vinegar, checks cholera, fluxes of blood within, and ileus also when laid on with polenta, and if the breasts are tense. It is smeared on the temples in headache, and is taken against scolopendras and sea scorpions and for serpents. It is smeared on discharges of the eyes and on all eruptions on the head, likewise on faults of the seat.
151| It prevents chafing too, or if only held in the hand. It is dropped into the ears with mead. They say also that it cures the spleen when tasted in the garden, in such a way that it is not plucked, if the person who bites it says that he is curing the spleen, for 8 days; and the meal of the dried, taken up in three fingers, soothes pain of the stomach in water and, sprinkled in the same way in a drink, drives out the animals of the belly.
152| Great is the fellowship with it of pulegium for reviving those faint at heart, both with their sprigs thrown into glass flasks of vinegar. For which reason Varro declared a crown of pulegium more worthy of our bedrooms than one of roses; for even laid on it is said to relieve headaches, and moreover by its smell to protect the head against the injury of cold and heat and, it is handed down, from thirst, and those who in the sun have two sprigs of pulegium laid on their ears are not overheated.
153| It is smeared on also in pains with polenta and vinegar, the female more effectively. This one has a purple flower; the male has a white. Likewise nausea it checks, drunk with salt and polenta in cold water; so too pain of the chest, and of the stomach in water. It checks gnawings and vomitings likewise with vinegar and polenta, and loosens the bowels with salt and vinegar and polenta. Faults of the intestines it heals boiled with honey and nitre, it drives urine in wine and, if the wine is Aminean, stones and all inward pains.
154| In honey and vinegar it calms the monthly courses and the afterbirths, sets right wombs that are turned, expels dead births. The seed is held to the nose by smell for those who have lost their voice. To epileptics it is given in vinegar by the measure of a cyathus. If unwholesome waters must be drunk, it is sprinkled in, pounded. It lessens weariness of the body, if it is handled at all; for the sinews and in contraction it is rubbed in with salt and vinegar, in opisthotonos with honey.
155| The decoction is drunk for the stings of serpents, pounded in wine for those of scorpions, especially that which grows in dry places. For ulcerations of the mouth, for cough, it is held effective. The flower of the fresh plant, burned, kills fleas by its smell. Xenocrates relates that a sprig of pulegium wrapped in wool is given to be smelled in tertian fevers before the attack, or is put under the coverlets and the patient so placed, among remedies.
156| The wild has more effective power for the same ends. It is like origanum, with smaller leaves than the cultivated, and by some is called dictamnus. Tasted by cattle and goats, it brings on bleating, whence some Greeks, a letter changed, have called it blechon. Its nature is so fiery that it ulcerates the parts smeared with it. Pounded, it is fitting to rub it on for chill before baths and before the shivering of attacks.
157| For convulsions and griping, for gout, it is wonderfully beneficial; to spastics it is given to be drunk with honey and salt; it makes the faults of the lungs easy to cough up. For the spleen it is useful with salt, and for the bladder and for panting and swellings; the decoction with the juice equally sets right the wombs and is strong against the scolopendra, land or sea, likewise scorpions, and especially against a human bite. The root, fresh, is most potent against spreading ulcers, and dried it brings comeliness to scars.
158| Pulegium also has a partnership with nepeta. Boiled in water to a third, they disperse chills [and are of benefit for the monthly courses of women] and in summer calm heats. Nepeta too has powers against serpents; they flee its smoke and smell, and indeed to strew it beneath is useful to those about to sleep in fear of them. Pounded, it is laid on aegilops, and for headaches it is smeared on fresh, tempered with a third part of bread in vinegar. Its juice dropped into the nostrils of a person lying on his back checks a flow of blood; likewise the root, which gargled with the seed of myrtle in lukewarm raisin wine cures quinsies.
159| Cumin is also wild, very slender, with four or five leaves each, as if serrated, but like the cultivated it is of great use, especially in remedies for the stomach. It disperses phlegm and swellings, pounded and taken with bread or drunk in water and wine, griping too and pains of the intestines. All of it, nevertheless, produces pallor in those who drink it.
160| So at any rate they say that the followers of Porcius Latro, famous among teachers of speaking, imitated the likeness of colour contracted by study, and a little earlier Julius Vindex, that champion of liberty against Nero, thus made a pretence for the hunting of a legacy. Put into pastilles, or fresh in vinegar, it checks bleeding of the nose, and laid on by itself it benefits discharges of the eyes, and when swollen, with honey.
161| It is enough for infants to have it laid on the belly. For the royal disease it is given in white wine after the baths; [….] the Ethiopian especially in posca and in a linctus with honey. The African, they think, especially checks incontinence of urine. The cultivated is given for faults of the liver, roasted and ground in vinegar, likewise for dizziness; to those whom sharper urine bites, ground in sweet wine; for faults of the womb in wine, and also with leaves laid on in a fleece; for swellings of the testicles, roasted and ground with honey or oil of roses and wax.
162| The wild is more effective for all the same ends, and besides for serpents with oil, for scorpions, scolopendras. It checks vomiting and nausea too in wine, as much as three fingers take up. For the colon also it is drunk and smeared on hot with a brush, and is pressed on with bandages. It opens strangulations of the womb, drunk in wine, three drachmas in three cyathi of wine. It is dropped into the ears for ringing and buzzing with calf suet or honey. On bruises it is smeared with honey and raisin and vinegar, on black freckles with vinegar.
163| There is a plant very like cumin which the Greeks call ami. Some, however, think it is the Ethiopian cumin. Hippocrates called it royal, evidently because he judged it more effective than the Egyptian. Most think it altogether of another nature, since it is slenderer and whiter. Its use, nevertheless, is similar. For it is put under Alexandrian loaves too and is interposed in seasonings.
164| It disperses swellings and griping, moves urine and the monthly courses, mitigates bruises of the eyes and discharges, with seed of flax drunk in wine two drachmas for the stings of scorpions, and especially for those of horned vipers with an equal portion of myrrh. It likewise changes the colour of those who drink it into pallor. Fumigated with raisin or resin it purges the womb. They relate that those women conceive more easily who smell it during intercourse.
165| Of the caper we have said enough among the foreign shrubs. The transmarine is not to be used; the Italian is more harmless. They say that those who eat it daily are not in danger of paralysis nor of pains of the spleen. Its root removes white vitiligines, if pounded and rubbed on in the sun.
166| It benefits splenics, the bark of the root drunk in wine, two drachmas, the use of baths being withheld; and they say that in 35 days the whole spleen is discharged through urine and bowels. It is drunk for pains of the loins and for paralysis. It soothes toothaches, pounded in vinegar, or the seed boiled, or the root chewed.
167| The decoction in oil is poured also into the ear in pain. The ulcers they call phagedaenae, the leaves and fresh root heal with honey. So too the root disperses scrofulous swellings, and boiled in water, parotid swellings and worm-infestations. For pains of the liver it is laid on pounded with barley meal. It cures ills of the bladder as well. They give it also for tapeworms in vinegar and honey. Boiled in vinegar it removes ulcerations of the mouth. That it is useless to the stomach is agreed among the authorities.
168| Ligusticum (some call it panaces) is useful to the stomach, likewise for convulsions and swellings. There are some who have called it cunila bubula as well, as we have said, wrongly.
169| Of cunila, besides the cultivated, there are several kinds in medicine. That which is called bubula has the seed of pulegium, useful for wounds, chewed and laid on, so that it is loosened on the fifth day after. And against serpents it is drunk in wine and, pounded, laid on the blow. They rub it on the wounds made by them, as do tortoises about to fight serpents; and some in this use call it panacea. It calms swellings and ills of the male parts, dry or with the leaves ground, in every use wonderfully suiting wine.
170| There is another cunila, called gallinacea by our people, by the Greeks origanum Heracleoticum. It benefits the eyes pounded with salt added; it also mends cough and faults of the liver, and pains of the sides with meal, tempered in a sip of oil and vinegar, but especially the bites of serpents.
171| The third kind is of that which is called mascula by the Greeks, cunilago by our people, of foul smell, woody root, rough leaf. They relate that its powers are the most violent among all its kinds; that when a handful of it is thrown down, all the cockroaches of the whole house gather to it; that especially against scorpions it is strong in posca; that with three leaves in oil, a man anointed puts serpents to flight.
172| On the contrary, that which is called soft, with hairier and prickly branches, pounded has the smell of honey, the fingers sticking together at its touch; the other has the smell of frankincense, which we have called libanotis. Each avails against serpents, in wine or vinegar; fleas also, pounded and sprinkled with water, it kills.
173| The cultivated also has its uses. Its juice with oil of roses helps the ears, and the plant itself is drunk for stings. From it is made the mountain kind, like serpyllum, effective against serpents. It moves urine, purges women after childbirth. It wonderfully helps digestion and appetite for food, each sprinkled in a drink even for those fasting from indigestion; useful also for dislocations, and against stings of wasps and the like, with barley meal and posca, most useful. The other kinds of libanotis will be told in their places.
174| Piperitis, which we have also called siliquastrum, is drunk against epileptic diseases. Castor described it otherwise: with a red and long stalk, dense joints, leaves of the bay, a white seed, thin, with the taste of pepper, useful to gums, teeth, sweetness of the mouth and belching.
175| Origanum, which rivals the flavour of cunila in strength, as we have said, has several kinds in medicine. Onitis, others call prasion, not unlike hyssop. Its use is especially against gnawings of the stomach in lukewarm water and against indigestions, spiders and scorpions in white wine, dislocations and bruises in vinegar and oil and wool.
176| Tragoriganum is more like the wild serpyllum. It moves urine, disperses swellings, against mistletoe drunk and the sting of a viper it is most effective, for a stomach belching sour and for the praecordia. It is given also to those who cough with honey, and to those with pleurisy and with peripneumonia.
177| Heraclium also has three kinds: the darker with broader leaves, sticky; another with thinner leaves, softer, not unlike sampsuchum, which some prefer to call prasion. The third is between these, but less effective than the rest. The best, however, is the Cretan, for it also smells pleasantly; next the Smyrnaean, harder; the Heracleotic is more useful in drink, which they call onitis.
178| Its common use is to put serpents to flight, to be given to the stricken for eating and the decoction for drinking, to move urine, to cure ruptures and convulsions with the root of panax, for the dropsical with fig or with hyssop, in measures of an acetabulum boiled down to a sixth; likewise for scab, itching, itch-scabs on going down from the baths. The juice is poured into the ears with woman's milk. It cures the tonsils and uvula too, and ulcers of the head. The decoction extinguishes the poisons of opium and gypsum, if it is drunk with ash in wine.
179| It softens the bowels by the measure of an acetabulum, is smeared on bruises, and likewise for toothache, to which it also gives whiteness, with honey and nitre. It checks blood of the nostrils. For parotid swellings it is boiled with barley meal, for rough windpipes it is ground with gall-nut and honey, for the spleen the leaves with honey and salt.
180| Thicker and black phlegms it thins, boiled with vinegar and salt and taken little by little. For the royal disease it is poured pounded with oil into the nostrils. The weary are anointed with it, so that the belly is not touched. It heals epinyctides with pitch, opens boils with roasted fig, scrofulous swellings with oil and vinegar and barley meal, pains of the side smeared on with fig, fluxes of blood in the genitals pounded and smeared on with vinegar, and the remains of the purgings after childbirth.
181| Lepidium is counted among the burning plants. So too it mends the skin on the face by ulcerating it, so that nevertheless it is easily healed with wax and oil of roses. So too it always easily removes leprous sores and itch-scabs, and the ulcers of scars. They relate that, tied to the arm on the side where the tooth aches, it turns the pain away in toothache.
182| Git, some of the Greeks call melanthium, others melaspermon. The best is that of the most pungent smell and the blackest. It cures blows of serpents and of scorpions; I find it is smeared on with vinegar and honey and that, burned, it puts serpents to flight. It is drunk, one drachma, against spiders also.
183| It disperses catarrh of the nostrils, pounded in a little linen cloth and smelled; headaches, smeared on in vinegar; infused into the nostrils with oil of iris, discharges of the eyes and swellings; toothaches, boiled with vinegar; ulcers of the mouth, pounded or chewed; likewise leprous sores and freckles in vinegar; difficulties of breathing, drunk with nitre added; hardnesses and old swellings and suppurations, smeared on. It increases the milk of women, taken for several successive days.
184| Its juice is gathered like that of henbane and, taken in larger amount, is a poison, which we may wonder at, since the seed seasons even loaves most agreeably. It clears the eyes also, and moves urine and the monthly courses. Nay more, I find that 30 grains only, tied in a little linen cloth, draw out the afterbirth. They say it also cures corns on the feet, pounded in urine, and kills gnats by fumigation, and flies likewise.
185| And anise is held against scorpions in wine, praised by Pythagoras among few things, whether raw or boiled; likewise green or dried it is desired in everything that is seasoned and everything that is dipped, even put under the lower crusts of bread. Added to sacks with bitter nuts, it recommends wines.
186| Nay more, it makes the very breath of the mouth sweeter and removes foulness, chewed in the mornings with zmyrnium and a little honey, then rinsed with wine. It gives a younger countenance. It relieves sleeplessness, hung on a pillow, so that sleepers smell it. It gives appetite for foods, since luxury has made this too among the arts, from which labour stopped demanding food. For these reasons some have called it anicetum.
187| The most praised is the Cretan, the next the Egyptian. This does the service of ligusticum in seasonings. It relieves headaches, fumigated into the nostrils. For discharges of the eyes Euenor lays on its root, pounded; Iollas the plant itself with saffron in equal measure and wine, and by itself with polenta for great fluxes and for drawing out anything that has fallen into the eyes. Smeared on in water it also consumes the carcinodes of the nostrils.
188| It calms quinsies, gargled with hyssop and honey in vinegar, is poured into the ears with oil of roses, purges phlegms of the chest, roasted and taken with honey. Better, for cough, to grind with an acetabulum of anise 50 bitter nuts, cleaned, in honey; most easily, however, three drachmas of anise, two of poppy are mixed with honey to the size of a bean and taken three a day.
189| It is outstanding for belching; therefore it cures swellings of the stomach and griping of the intestines and coeliacs. Hiccups the smell and the drink of the decoction check. With the leaves boiled it disperses indigestions. The juice of the decoction with celery, smelled, checks sneezing. Drunk it procures sleep, drives out stones, restrains vomitings and swellings of the praecordia, and is most useful for faults of the chest, and for the sinews also, by which the body is girt.
190| It is of benefit for headaches that the juice of the decoction be dropped in with oil. They think nothing more useful to the belly and intestines; therefore it is given roasted to those with dysentery and in tenesmus. Some add opium also, in pills of the size of a lupine, three a day, dissolved in a cyathus of wine.
191| Dieuches used the juice even for pains of the loins, gave the seed pounded with mint to the dropsical and coeliacs, Euenor the root for the kidneys also. Dalion the herb-gatherer laid a poultice of it with celery on women in labour, likewise for pain of the womb, and gave it to be drunk with dill to women in labour. For the frenzied too they smear it on, even fresh with polenta; so also on infants who show the epileptic fault or contractions.
192| Pythagoras indeed denies that those holding it in the hand are seized by the epileptic fault, and therefore as much as possible should be sown at home; that women smelling it give birth more easily, and that immediately after birth it should be given in a drink, sprinkled with polenta. Sosimenes used it in vinegar against all hardnesses and against weariness, boiling it in oil with nitre added. He guaranteed help for weariness to travellers by drinking its seed.
193| Heraclides for swellings of the stomach gave the seed, three fingers, with two obols of castoreum in mead, similarly for swellings of the belly or intestines, and for those with orthopnoea as much of the seed as three fingers can take up, and as much again of henbane, with ass's milk. Many advise those about to vomit to drink acetabula of it and ten leaves of laurel, pounded in water, during dinner.
194| Strangulations of the womb it calms, if it is chewed and smeared on warm or if it is drunk with castoreum in vinegar and honey; dizziness after childbirth it disperses with the seed of cucumber and flax in equal measure of three fingers' amount, with three cyathi of white wine. Tlepolemus for quartan fevers used three fingers of seed of anise and of fennel in vinegar and one cyathus of honey.
195| It soothes diseases of the joints, smeared on with bitter nuts. There are those who think that its nature is hostile also to the poisons of asps. It moves urine, restrains thirst, stimulates Venus, with wine gently provides sweating, and defends clothes from moths. It is always more effective fresh, and the blacker the better; it is useless to the stomach, however, except when swollen.
196| Dill also provokes belching and calms griping, checks the bowels. For discharges of the eyes the roots are smeared on in water or wine. The seed, hot, restrains hiccups by smell; taken in water it calms indigestions. Its ash relieves the uvula in the throat, and dulls the eyes and the seed of generation.
197| Sacopenium, which is produced among us, is altogether different from the transmarine. For that, like a tear of ammoniacum, is called sagapenon. It benefits pains of the sides and chest, convulsions, old coughs and expectorations, swellings of the praecordia. It heals also dizziness, tremors, opisthotonos, the spleen, the loins, chills. It is given to be smelled in vinegar in strangulation of the womb; in other cases it is both given in a drink and rubbed in with oil. It benefits also against evil drugs.
198| Of the cultivated poppy we have told three kinds, and of that growing wild we have promised others. Of the cultivated, the cup itself of the white is ground and drunk in wine to cause sleep. The seed cures elephantiasis. From the black poppy sleep-inducing juice is produced by cutting the stalk, as Diagoras advises, when it swells, as Iollas, when it has finished flowering, at the third hour of a clear day, that is when the dew on it has dried. They direct the incision to be made beneath the head and the cup, nor in any other kind is the head itself cut.
199| The juice, both this and that of any herb, is taken up on wool or, if there is little, with the nail of the thumb, as with lettuces, and on the next day more, what has dried, [but of the poppy abundant] thickened and ground into pastilles is dried in the shade, not only of soporific force but, if drunk in larger amount, deadly even through sleep. They call it opium. Thus we know that the father of Publius Licinius Caecina, a man of praetorian rank, was destroyed in Spain, at Bavili, when an intolerable illness had made him hate life; likewise very many others.
200| On account of which a great dispute arose. Diagoras and Erasistratus condemned it altogether as deadly, forbidding it to be infused besides, since it harmed the sight. Andreas added that people were not at once blinded by it because it was adulterated at Alexandria. But afterward its use was not disapproved in a famous medicine which they call dia kodyon.
201| Its seed also, ground into pastilles with milk, they use for sleep, likewise for headaches with oil of roses; with this it is dropped also into the ear in pain. It is smeared on gout with the milk of women (they use the leaves themselves so too), likewise for sacred fires and wounds in vinegar. I should, however, condemn its being added to eye salves, and much more to those they call lexipyretoi and to the peptic and coeliac kinds.
202| The black, however, is given to coeliacs in wine. The cultivated is all larger. Its heads are round, but the wild one's long and small, though more powerful for all effects. It is boiled and drunk against sleeplessness, and with the same water they bathe the mouth. The best is in dry places and where it rains seldom. When the heads themselves and the leaves are boiled, the juice is called meconium, much feebler than opium.
203| The test of opium is first in the smell (for the pure cannot be endured), next in lamps, that the flame burn clear and that, when put out, it finally smell, which does not happen with the adulterated. It is also kindled with more difficulty and often goes out. There is a test of the pure in water, since it floats like a little cloud, while the counterfeit gathers into blisters. But it is most wonderful that it is detected by the summer sun; for the pure sweats and dissolves itself until it becomes like fresh juice. Mnesides thinks it is best kept with seed of henbane added, others in a bean.
204| Between the cultivated and wild there is a middle kind, since it grows in fields, but of its own accord, which we have called rhoea and the wild poppy. Some, plucking it, chew it at once with the whole cup. It empties the bowels. Five heads boiled and drunk in three heminae of wine also cause sleep.
205| One kind of the wild they call ceratitis, black, a cubit high, with a thick and barky root, with a little cup curved like a little horn. The leaves are smaller and thinner than in the other wild kinds. The seed is slight and ripe at harvest; it purges the bowels in half an acetabulum in mead.
206| The leaves, pounded with oil, heal argema in beasts of burden. The root, boiled by the measure of an acetabulum in two sextarii down to the half, is given for faults of the loins and liver. The leaves with honey cure carbuncles. Some call this kind glaucion, others paralion. For it grows where the sea blows on it or in a nitrous place.
207| A second of the wild kinds is called heraclium, by others aphrodes, with leaves which, if you look from a distance, present the appearance of sparrows, a root in the very surface of the earth, a foamy seed. From this linens draw their brightness. In summer it is pounded in a mortar. For epileptic diseases it is most useful, an acetabulum of seed in white wine (for it causes vomiting), likewise in the medicine called dia kodyon and arteriace.
208| This is made, however, of this poppy or of any wild one, from 120 heads soaked for two days in rain water, three sextarii of it, and boiled down in the same, then the juice dried and again boiled down with honey to half the parts, over a gentle steam. Later they added six drachmas each of saffron, hypocisthis, frankincense, acacia, and a sextarius of Cretan raisin wine. These are for show; the simple and ancient wholesomeness, indeed, consists of poppy and honey.
209| The third kind is tithymalon (some call it mecon, others paralion), with a leaf like flax, a white flower, and a head of bean size. It is picked while the vine is flowering, and dried in the shade. The seed, drunk in half an acetabulum of honey wine, purges the bowels. The head of any poppy, green or dry, applied as a salve soothes inflammations of the eyes. Opium, if given at once in neat wine, resists the stings of scorpions. Some assign this only to the black poppy, if its heads or leaves are pounded.
210| There is also porcillaca, which they call peplis, not much more effective than the cultivated kind, and remarkable uses are reported of it: that the poisons of arrows, and of the haemorrhoid and prester snakes, are quenched when it is taken as food, and are drawn out when it is laid on the wounds; likewise those of hyoscyamus, when the juice is pressed out and drunk in raisin wine. When the plant itself is not at hand, its seed helps with a like effect. It resists also faults of the waters, and, pounded in wine and applied, headache and ulcers; other ulcers it heals when chewed with honey.
211| So too it is applied to the brain of infants and to a protruding navel, and for inflammations of the eyes in everyone to the forehead and temples with pearl barley, but on the eyes themselves in milk and honey; the same, if the eyes protrude, with leaves pounded with the husks of beans, and for pustules with pearl barley, salt and vinegar. Sores of the mouth and swelling of the gums it relieves when chewed raw, as it does toothache; the juice of the boiled plant relieves ulcers of the tonsils;
212| some have added a little myrrh. For it steadies loose teeth when chewed [raw it soothes] and strengthens the voice and wards off thirst. Pains of the neck it relieves with gall, flaxseed and honey in equal measure, and troubles of the breasts with honey or Cimolian chalk; the seed drunk with honey is wholesome also for those who struggle for breath.
213| Taken in salads it strengthens the stomach. It is applied with pearl barley to one burning with fevers, and otherwise, eaten, it cools even the intestines. It stops vomiting. For dysentery and abscesses of the lungs it is eaten in vinegar or drunk with cumin, and for tenesmus it is eaten boiled. It helps epileptics, as food or drink, and for the monthly purgations a measure of an acetabulum in boiled-down must; applied with salt it helps hot gout and erysipelas.
214| Its juice, drunk, benefits the kidneys and bladder, and drives out the animals of the belly. For the pains of wounds it is applied in oil with pearl barley. It softens hardness of the sinews. Metrodorus, who wrote the Epitome of Root-Cutting, held that it should be given for the purgations after childbirth. It checks sexual desire and the dreams of desire.
215| There is a leading man of Spain, the father of a man of praetorian rank, whom I know to wear its root hung from his neck on a thread, except in the baths, because of the incurable diseases of the uvula, and so to be freed from every trouble. Indeed I have found in the authors that a head anointed with it feels no catarrh for a whole year. It is thought, however, to dull the eyes.
216| Coriander is not found among wild plants. The Egyptian is agreed to be the best. It is of power against one kind of serpent, which they call amphisbaenae, drunk and applied. It heals other wounds as well, and, pounded, the pustules called epinyctides; so also all swellings and gatherings with honey or raisins, and, pounded in vinegar, boils. Some direct that three grains of the seed be swallowed in tertian fevers before the onset, or more of them be smeared on the forehead.
217| There are those who think it effective also to put it under the pillows before sunrise. The green plant has great power for cooling burning heats. It heals also spreading sores, with honey or raisins, as well as the testicles, burns, carbuncles and the ears; with a woman's milk, inflammations of the eyes; and the seed drunk in water, fluxes of the belly and intestines. It is drunk also in cholera with rue.
218| The seed drunk with the juice of a pomegranate and oil drives out the animals of the intestines. Xenocrates reports a marvel, if it is true: that the menses are held back for one day if women drink one grain, for two days if two, and for as many days as the grains they have taken. Marcus Varro thinks that all meat is kept uncorrupted in summer by coriander, cumin and vinegar pounded fine.
219| There is also a wild atriplex. It was accused by Pythagoras of causing dropsy, jaundice and pallor, and of being digested with the greatest difficulty; he blamed it also because nothing next to it, even in gardens, grows except feebly. Dionysius and Diocles added that very many diseases arise from it, that it must not be cooked except after the water has been changed often, that it is hostile to the stomach, and that it produces freckles and pimples.
220| I wonder why Solon of Smyrna reported that it grows with difficulty in Italy. Hippocrates pours it with beet into the faults of the womb. Lycus of Naples gave it to be drunk against cantharides, and held that, applied boiled or raw, it is useful for boils, incipient furuncles and all hardnesses, and likewise, with honey, vinegar and natron, for erysipelas, and similarly for gout. It is said to take off rough nails without a sore.
221| There are those who give its seed with honey for jaundice, who rub the windpipe and tonsils with it, natron added, and who move the bowels with it boiled, either by itself or with mallow or lentil. They also provoke vomiting. With the wild kind they dye the hair, and use it for the things written above.
222| By contrast, in great praise stand both kinds of mallow, the cultivated and the wild. Two kinds of them are distinguished by the breadth of the leaf. The larger the Greeks call malope among the cultivated, and the other, they think, is named malache from softening the belly. But of the wild kinds, the one with a large leaf and white roots is called althaea, and by some plistolochia, from the excellence of its effect.
223| All the soil in which they are sown they make richer. They are effective against all stinging blows, especially those of scorpions, wasps and the like, and of the shrew. Indeed, those who have been rubbed beforehand with any of them pounded in oil, or who carry them, are not struck. A leaf laid on scorpions brings them to numbness. They are of force also against the poisons of psimithium. Applied raw with aphronitrum they draw out all stings; drunk boiled with their own root they quench the poison of the sea hare, as some say, if it is vomited up.
224| Other marvels too are reported of these same plants, but chiefly this: that if anyone swallows each day half a cyathus of the juice from any one of them, he will be free of all diseases. Weeping ulcers on the head they heal when the plants have been rotted in urine, and lichens and sores of the mouth with honey; the root boiled heals scurf on the head and teeth that are loose. With the root of the kind that has a single stalk they prick around an aching tooth, until the pain stops;
225| the same root, with human saliva added, clears scrofulous swellings, swellings of the parotid glands, and boils without a wound. The seed, drunk in dark wine, frees from phlegm and nausea. The root, tied on in black wool, counters faults of the breasts; boiled in milk and taken in the manner of a gruel for five days at a time, it corrects a cough.
226| Sextius Niger says they are unsuited to the stomach; Olympias of Thebes says that with goose fat they cause abortion; some say that women are purged by a handful of their leaves taken in oil and wine. At any rate it is agreed that women in labor are delivered more quickly if the leaves are spread beneath them; but immediately after the birth the leaves must be taken away, lest the womb follow.
227| They give also a hemina of the juice of the plant boiled in wine, to be drunk by women in labor fasting. They tie the seed to the arm of those who cannot retain their seed, and the plants are so much made for Venus that Xenocrates reports that the seed of the single-stalked kind, sprinkled on a remedy for women, increases their appetites without limit, and likewise three roots tied on side by side. For tenesmus and for dysentery it is of the greatest use as an injection, and likewise for faults of the seat, or if the part is bathed with it. To the melancholic the juice is given warm, three cyathi at a time, to the insane four, and to epileptics a hemina of the juice of the boiled plant.
228| This juice is applied warm also to those with stone, with flatulence and colic, or with opisthotonos. For erysipelas and burns the leaves boiled in oil are applied, and for the onsets of wounds, raw with bread. The juice of the boiled plant benefits the sinews and the bladder and gnawings of the intestines, and softens the womb both in food and in an injection. The juice of the boiled plant, passed through the bowels, makes the stools soft.
229| In all the cases named above, the root of althaea is more effective, especially for those with convulsions and ruptures. Boiled in water it stops the bowels; in white wine it deals with scrofulous swellings, parotid swellings, and inflammations in the breasts; and the leaves boiled in wine and applied take away boils; the same leaves dried and boiled in milk cure with the greatest speed a cough however destructive.
230| Hippocrates gave the juice of the boiled root to be drunk by the wounded and by those parched from loss of blood, and applied the root itself to wounds with honey and resin, and likewise to bruises, dislocations and swellings; and to the muscles, sinews and joints he applied it as above; to those with spasms and dysentery he gave it to be drunk in wine. It is marvelous that water, with this root added to it, thickens in the open air and turns to ice. It is the more effective the fresher it is.
231| Nor does lapathum have unlike effects. There is also a wild kind. This others call oxalis, our own people rumex, and others canterine lapathum; it is nearest in taste to the cultivated kind, with sharp leaves, the color of white beet, and a very small root, and with lard it is most effective for scrofulous swellings. Another kind they usually call oxylapathum, more like the cultivated [likewise] and with a sharper and redder leaf, growing only in marshy ground. There are those who report also hydrolapathum, born in water, and another, hippolapathum, larger than the cultivated, and whiter and denser.
232| The wild kinds cure the stings of scorpions and, to those who carry them, prevent being struck. The root boiled in vinegar helps the teeth if the juice is used as a rinse, and, if it is drunk, jaundice. The seed heals the inextricable faults of the stomach. The root of hippolapathum also, in particular, takes off rough nails;
233| its seed, drunk in wine in a dose of two drachmas, frees dysenteric patients. Oxylapathum seed, washed in rain water, with acacia added to the size of a lentil, benefits those who spit blood. They make the finest lozenges from the leaves and root, with natron added and a little frankincense. For use they dilute them in vinegar.
234| But the cultivated kind they apply to the forehead for inflammations of the eyes. With the root they treat lichens and leprosies, and, boiled in wine, scrofulous swellings and swellings of the parotid glands; drunk in wine, it treats stones, and applied, the spleen; likewise coeliac troubles, dysentery and tenesmus; and a broth made from it, more effective for all these, causes belching, stirs the urine, and disperses dimness of the eyes, as well as itching of the body when added to the bathtubs of the baths or when applied first by itself without oil.
235| The root, when chewed, strengthens the teeth as well; the same boiled with wine stops the bowels, while the leaves loosen them. Solon added, lest we omit anything, bulapathum, differing only in the depth of its root, and of excellent effect for dysenteric patients when drunk in wine.
236| Mustard, of whose three cultivated kinds we have spoken, Pythagoras judged to hold the first place among those plants whose power is borne upward, since nothing else penetrates more into the nostrils and the brain. For the bites of serpents and the stings of scorpions it is pounded with vinegar and applied; it disperses the poisons of mushrooms. Against phlegm it is held in the mouth until it melts, or gargled with honeyed water.
237| For toothache it is chewed; for the uvula it is gargled with vinegar and honey. It is most useful to the stomach against all its faults; taken with food, it makes the coughing-up of phlegm from the lungs easy. It is given to those who struggle for breath, and to epileptics three times a day with the juice of cucumbers. It clears the senses, and by making one sneeze it clears the head, softens the bowels, and stirs the menses and the urine. It is also applied to dropsical patients, pounded with fig and cumin, three parts of each.
238| Its smell, mixed with vinegar, rouses those who are overcome by epilepsy or by the turning of the womb; likewise the lethargic. Tordylon is added to it (this is a seed from seseli), and if a more violent lethargy oppresses, it is applied with fig in vinegar to the legs or even to the head. Old pains of the chest, loins, hips and shoulders, and in any part of the body where faults must be drawn from deep within, it corrects when applied, by its caustic force, making blisters; but where there is great hardness it is laid on without fig, or, if a more violent burning is feared, through a double thickness of cloth.
239| They use it for alopecia, with red ochre, for itch, leprosies, lice, tetanic patients and those with opisthotonos. They also anoint rough eyelids or dimmed eyes with its juice and honey, and the juice is pressed out in three ways in an earthen vessel and warmed in it a little in the sun. A milky juice comes out of the little stalk as well; a drop of it, when it has hardened, cures toothache.
240| The seed and root, when they have been soaked in must, are ground up, and a handful measure is sipped to make firm the throat and stomach, the eyes, the head, and every sense, and the weariness of women as well, as a most wholesome kind of medicine. It disperses stones also, drunk in vinegar. It is applied to bruises and black-and-blue marks with honey and goose fat or Cyprian wax. An oil is also made from this seed, soaked in oil and pressed out, which they use for stiffness of the sinews, loins and hips, and for chills.
241| Adarca, which is counted among the wild plants and grows in the bark of reeds just beneath the tuft, is reported to have the nature and the same effects as mustard. Horehound many have recommended among the foremost herbs; the Greeks call it prasion, others linostrophon, and some philopais or philochares, a plant better known than needs explaining. Its leaves and seed, crushed, are good against serpents, for pains in the chest and the side, and for chronic cough. For those who have spat blood it is exceptionally useful, when its twigs are boiled in water with millet so that the harshness of the juice is softened. With fat it is applied to scrofulous swellings.
242| There are those who direct that the green seed, as much as they can take in two fingers, boiled with a pinch of emmer, with a little oil and salt added, be sipped fasting for a cough. Others think nothing comparable, for the same complaint, to the juices of horehound and fennel, pressed out to three sextarii and boiled down to two sextarii, then a sextarius of honey added, boiled down again to two sextarii, and a spoonful measure sipped each day in a cyathus of water.
243| Pounded with honey it is wonderfully good for faults of the male parts. With vinegar it clears lichens; it is wholesome for ruptures, convulsions, spasms and the sinews. Drunk with salt and vinegar it loosens the bowels, and likewise the menses and the afterbirth of women. The dry meal with honey is most effective for a dry cough, as well as for gangrene and pterygia. The juice benefits the ears, and, given through the nostrils, jaundice, and, with honey, the reduction of bile; it is also powerful against poisons, among few.
244| The herb itself, with iris and honey, clears the stomach and the coughing-up from the chest, and stirs the urine; it should be avoided, however, in an ulcerated bladder and faults of the kidneys. The juice is said to help clearness of the eyes. Castor reports two kinds of horehound, the black and, the one he prefers, the white. He puts the juice into an emptied egg-shell and pours in the egg itself with honey, in equal portions, promising that this, warmed, it bursts, clears and thoroughly heals abscesses. He applies it also to wounds made by a dog, pounded with old lard.
245| Serpyllum is thought to be named from creeping, because it happens so in the wild kind, most of all on rocks; for the cultivated kind does not creep, but grows to a palm in height. The self-sown is richer, with whiter leaves and branches. It is effective against serpents, above all cenchris and the scolopendras of land and sea, and against scorpions, with the branches and leaves boiled in wine. By its smell also it drives off all of them, if it is burned, and it is especially strong against the poisons of sea creatures.
246| For headaches it is boiled in vinegar and applied with rose oil to the forehead and temples, and likewise for the frenzied and the lethargic. Against colic, difficulties of the urine, quinsy and vomiting it is drunk in water, in a dose of four drachmas; for cravings of the liver the leaves are given, four obols; for the spleen, in vinegar. For spitting of blood it is pounded in two cyathi of vinegar and honey.
247| Wild sisymbrium, called by some thymbraeum, is no more than a foot in height. The kind that grows in watered places is like nasturtium, and pounded it is effective against stinging creatures such as hornets and the like; the kind that grows in dry ground is fragrant and is put into garlands, with a narrower leaf. Both ease headache, and likewise inflammations of the eyes, as Philinus reports.
248| Some add bread; others boil it by itself in wine. It heals epinyctides and faults of the skin on the faces of women, if applied at night and removed by day within four days. It checks vomiting, hiccups, colic and looseness of the stomach, whether taken in food or as the juice drunk. It should not be eaten by pregnant women unless the conception is dead, since even when applied it expels it. Drunk with wine it moves the urine, and the wild kind the stones as well. Those who must stay awake it rouses, poured over the head with vinegar.
249| Flaxseed is used with other things, but by itself too it corrects faults of the skin on women's faces, and its juice sharpens the sight. With frankincense and water, or with myrrh and wine, it soothes inflammations of the eyes; with honey, fat or wax, swellings of the parotid glands; for looseness of the stomach it is sprinkled on in the manner of pearl barley meal; for quinsy it is boiled in water and oil and applied with anise.
250| It is toasted to stop the bowels. For coeliac troubles and dysentery it is applied in vinegar. For pains of the liver it is eaten with raisins; for consumption, electuaries made from the seed are most useful. The meal of the seed, with natron, salt or ashes added, softens hardness of the muscles, sinews, joints and neck, and of the membranes of the brain. The same with fig [….], and likewise it brings to a head and ripens; with the root of wild cucumber it draws out whatever is lodged in the body, and so too broken bones.
251| Boiled in wine it prevents an ulcer from spreading, and with honey it checks eruptions of phlegm. It corrects rough nails, with an equal measure of nasturtium; faults of the testicles and ruptures, with resin and myrrh; gangrene, in water; pains of the stomach, with fenugreek, a sextarius of each boiled in honeyed water; and destructive faults of the intestines and chest, by an enema in oil or honey.
252| Blitum seems dull and without any flavor or sharpness, whence husbands in Menander make it a reproach to their wives. It is unsuited to the stomach. It upsets the belly so much that someone may get cholera from it. It is said, however, to help against scorpions when drunk in wine, to be applied to corns of the feet, and likewise to the spleen, and, in oil, to pain of the temples. Hippocrates thinks the menses are stopped by this food.
253| Meum is not sown in Italy except by physicians, and by very few of them. There are two kinds of it: the nobler they call Athamanticum or Athamanicum, those as if invented by Athamas, these because the most praised is found in Athamania; it is like dill in leaf and stalk, sometimes two feet high, with many slanting black roots, some of them deep, and less red than the other kind. It stirs the urine, drunk in water with the root pounded or boiled, wonderfully disperses flatulence of the stomach, and likewise colic and faults of the bladder and womb. For the joints, with honey [….]; for infants, applied with celery to the lower belly, it moves the urine.
254| Fennel was made famous by serpents, which, as we have said, taste it to cast off old age and to restore the sharpness of their sight with its juice, from which it was understood that dimness of sight in men also is relieved by it above all. It is gathered when the stalk is swelling, dried in the sun, and used as an ointment with honey. [This is found everywhere.] The most praised is made in Iberia, from the tears. It is made also from fresh seed and from roots cut at their first sprouting.
255| There is also a wild kind in this genus, which they call hippomarathum, others myrsineum, with larger leaves, a sharper taste, taller, as thick as a staff, with a white root. It grows in warm and stony places. Diocles has reported another kind of hippomarathum, with a long, narrow leaf and the seed of coriander.
256| Its medicinal use in the cultivated kind is against the stings of scorpions and serpents, the seed being drunk in wine. The juice is also dropped into the ears and kills the little worms in them. The plant itself is put into nearly all seasonings, and most suitably into oxyporum. It is even laid under the crusts of bread. The seed binds a stomach that is slack, even when taken in fevers; pounded in water it settles nausea, and it is most praised for the lungs and the liver. It stops the belly when taken in moderation, and stirs the urine, and for colic is given as a drink. The decoction, drunk when milk fails, fills the breasts.
257| The root taken with barley gruel cleans the kidneys, or else taken with juice from the root when it is boiled in wine. The root drunk in wine helps the dropsical, and likewise those with convulsions. The leaves are applied in vinegar to burning swellings; they drive out stones of the bladder and stimulate desire. In whatever way it is taken, it brings abundance of seed, and it is very friendly to the private parts, whether for fomenting, with the root boiled in wine, or crushed in oil and applied. Many apply the root with wax [and] to bruises. They use the juice of the seed, or the root with honey, against the bite of a dog, and in wine against the multipede.
258| Hippomarathum is stronger for everything, and drives out stones in particular; with mild wine it benefits the bladder, and the menses of women when they are held back. Its seed is more effective than its root. The measure in either is what can be taken in two fingers, ground, and added to a drink. Petrichus, who wrote the Ophiaca, and Micion, who wrote the Rhizotomumena, thought that nothing was more effective against serpents than hippomarathum; and Nicander also placed it not among the last.
259| Cannabis first grew in the woods, darker in its leaves and rougher. Its seed is said to extinguish the generative power of men. The juice from it drives out the little worms of the ears and any creature that has entered them, but with headache, and such is its force that, poured into water, it is said to curdle it; and for that reason, drunk in water, it relieves the bowels of beasts of burden. The root boiled in water softens contracted joints, and likewise gout and similar attacks. Raw, it is smeared on burns, but is replaced often, before it dries.
260| Ferula has a seed like dill. The kind that divides at the top from a single stalk is thought to be female. The stalks are eaten boiled and are recommended with brine and honey, useful to the stomach. If more are taken, they cause headache. The root, in the weight of a denarius in two cyathi of wine, is drunk against serpents, and the root itself is applied. So too it cures colic, and in oil and vinegar it is of use against excessive sweating, even in fevers.
261| The juice of ferula, swallowed in the amount of a bean, loosens the bowels. Taken from the green pith it is useful for the womb, and for all those same disorders. To stop bleeding, ten grains of the seed are drunk pounded in wine, or the pith is. There are some who think it should be given to epileptics from the 4th to the 7th day of the moon, in the measure of a small spoonful. The nature of ferulae is extremely hostile to morays, for if they are touched with one they die. Castor thought that the juice of the root also contributes much to clearness of sight.
262| We have also spoken of the sowing of cardui among the garden plants, so let us not put off their medicinal uses either. Of the wild cardui there are two kinds: one bushier, branching straight from the ground, the other with a single stem and thicker. Both have few leaves, which are prickly with pointed tips; but one of them sends out among the spines a purple flower that quickly turns white and goes off on the breeze. The Greeks call it skolymos.
263| This one, crushed and pressed out before it flowers, restores the hair in alopecia when the juice is applied. The root of either kind, boiled down in water, is said to make drinkers thirsty. It strengthens the stomach, and for the womb [….]; if we believe it, it is also said to contribute something towards the begetting of males. So at any rate wrote Glaucias, who seems to have been most painstaking on the subject of cardui. Among the cardui, mastiche makes the breath pleasant.
264| And as we are about to leave the garden plants, we append one very famous compound made from them, against venomous animals, which is carved in verse on a stone in the temple of Aesculapius at Cos: of serpyllum, the weight of two denarii; of opopanax and of meum, the same amount of each; of trefoil seed, the weight of one denarius; of the seed of anise, of fennel, of ammi and of apium, six denarii of each kind; of ervum meal, 12 denarii. These are pounded and sifted and made up with the finest wine obtainable into lozenges, each of the weight of a victoriatus. One of them is given at a time, in three cyathi of diluted wine. King Antiochus the Great is said to have used this theriace against all venomous creatures except the asp.

======== Natural History — Book XXI ========

1| Cato also directed that plants for garlands should be grown in gardens, flowers whose delicacy above all is beyond telling, since no one can find speaking as easy as nature finds painting, especially when she is in a playful mood and sporting so variously in the great joy of her fertility.
2| For the other things she has produced for use and for food, and so she has granted them centuries and years; but flowers and scents she brings forth for a day, a great warning to mankind, as is plain, that what blooms most conspicuously withers most quickly. But not even painting will be adequate to reproduce the likeness of the colours and the variety of their combinations, whether the flowers are woven together in alternation and in many patterns, or whether, with a separate string for each kind, some garlands run through other garlands, in a circle, slantwise, or round about.
3| The ancients used slighter ones, which they called stroppi, from which came the word strophiola. Indeed the word itself, corona, came into general use only late, since garlands claimed their name only in sacred rites and as military honours. When they were made of flowers they were called serta, from serere, to plait, or from series, a fashion that among the Greeks too was not of very great antiquity.
4| For at first it was the practice to be crowned with branches of trees in the sacred contests. Later people began to vary them with a mixture of flowers of different colours, which would heighten one another's scents and colours. This began at Sicyon, through the talent of the painter Pausias and of the garland-maker Glycera, whom he loved deeply: when he imitated her work in painting, she would challenge him by varying it, and there was a contest between art and nature. Panels of that kind by that artist still survive even now, above all the one called the Stephaneplokos, 'the Garland-Weaver', in which he painted Glycera herself.
5| And this took place after the 100th Olympiad. So, once garlands of flowers had been adopted, there soon followed those called Egyptian, and then winter garlands, made of shavings of dyed horn for the season when the earth refuses flowers. And little by little the name crept in at Rome too: at first they were called corollae, because of their slenderness, and then corollaria, after they began to be given made of thin copper foil, gilded or silvered.
6| Crassus Dives was the first to give garlands at his games with leaves imitated in silver and gold; and ribbons, lemnisci, were added too, the addition of which was an honour belonging to the garlands themselves, on account of the Etruscan garlands, to which only golden ribbons were supposed to be attached. These ribbons were plain for a long time; Publius Claudius Pulcher was the first to have them embossed, and he also put gold foil on the ribbons of philyra.
7| Yet garlands, even those won in the games, always carried prestige. For men used to go down into the Circus themselves to compete at the games, and to send their slaves and horses. Hence that law of the Twelve Tables: 'If a man wins a garland himself, or by his property, let it be given him for his valour.' No one doubted that a garland earned by his slaves or horses was what the law called won by his property. What, then, was the honour? That it might be placed, without penalty, on the man himself when dead and on his parents, while he lay inside the house and while he was carried out. Otherwise, for ordinary use, not even garlands won in the games were allowed; and here too the strictness was great.
8| Lucius Fulvius, a banker, during the Second Punic War, was said to have looked out from his balcony onto the forum in the daytime wearing a garland of roses; he was taken off to prison by authority of the senate and not released until the war was over. Publius Munatius had taken a garland of flowers from the statue of Marsyas and put it on his own head, and for this the triumvirs had ordered him to be taken to prison;
9| he appealed to the tribunes of the plebs, and they did not intervene. It was otherwise at Athens, where young men in the middle of a revel would attend, before midday, even the meetings held for the teaching of the philosophers. With us there is no other example of such licence than the daughter of the deified Augustus, whose debauchery in garlanding Marsyas by night is lamented in the letters of that god.
10| The Roman people, indeed, gave the honour of flowers to Scipio alone. He was surnamed Serapio because of his likeness to a certain dealer in pigs. He had died during his tribunate of the plebs, very popular and worthy of the family of the Africani, and his estate did not cover the cost of a funeral. So the people contributed asses and contracted for his funeral, and wherever the procession passed they scattered flowers from every vantage point.
11| Even at that time garlands were an honour paid to the gods, to the Lares both public and private, to tombs and to the spirits of the dead; and the highest prestige belonged to the plaited garland, as we find in the rites of the Salii at their solemn banquets. Then they passed over to garlands of roses, and luxury went so far that there was no charm except in garlands sewn of petals alone, and soon in garlands sent for from India or from beyond the Indians. For it is thought the height of elegance for them to be given made of nard leaf, or of many-coloured Seric fabric soaked in perfumes. This is the latest point that women's luxury has reached.
12| Among the Greeks, indeed, the physicians Mnesitheus and Callimachus wrote specially about which garlands were harmful to the head, since health too has some part in this matter, especially in drinking and merriment, when the power of scents creeps up deceptively. Wicked was the cleverness of Cleopatra. During the preparations for the war of Actium, Antony was afraid even of the queen's own kindnesses and would take no food unless it had first been tasted; and she is said to have played on his fear by smearing the tips of the flowers of her garland with poison and putting it on her own head. Then, as the merriment went on, she invited Antony to drink their garlands. Who would fear a trap in that? So when he had plucked the flowers into his cup and was beginning to drink, she put out her hand to stop him. 'Look, Mark Antony,' she said, 'I am the woman you guard against with your new zeal for tasters. So little do I lack the opportunity or the means, if I could live without you!' She had a prisoner brought in and ordered him to drink it; he died on the spot.
13| On the flowers [….] mentioned above, Theophrastus wrote among the Greeks; and of our own writers some have given their books the title Anthologicon, but no one, so far as I can find, has treated flowers themselves. Nor shall we now, of course, be weaving garlands, for that would be frivolous; but we shall record whatever seems worth recording about flowers.
14| Our countrymen have known very few kinds of garland-flowers among garden plants, and almost only violets and roses. The rose grows from a thorn rather than a shrub, coming up also in the bramble, where its scent is pleasant too, though slight. Every rose first sprouts enclosed in a grainy husk; when this soon swells and rises to a point in green buds, the flower gradually reddens, splits open and spreads itself, embracing in the middle of the calyx the yellow tips of its stamens. Its use in garlands is almost the smallest.
15| It is steeped in oil, and this already from the Trojan times, with Homer as witness. Besides, it passes into perfumes, as we have said. By itself it furnishes medicinal arts. It is put into plasters and eye-salves for its biting fineness, and also to anoint the delicacies of the table, where it does the least harm by rotting.
16| Our countrymen have made the most celebrated kinds of it the Praenestine and the Campanian; others have added the Milesian, whose color is the most glowing, and which does not exceed twelve leaves; the one nearest to it is the Trachinian, less red; then the Alabandic, cheaper, with whitish leaves; and cheapest of all the spiniola, which has the most leaves but very small ones. For they differ in the number of leaves, in roughness, smoothness, color and scent.
17| The fewest have five leaves each, and then come those with more, since there is a kind of it which they call centifolia, found in Campania in Italy, and in Greece around Philippi, but there not as the produce of its own soil: Mount Pangaeus nearby bears roses with many small leaves, and the neighbors transfer and plant them, and thrive by the very planting. But that is not the sweetest-scented, nor is it the one with the broadest or largest leaf, and the sign of scent, in short, is the roughness of the husk.
18| Caepio, in the principate of Tiberius Caesar, said that centifolia should not be added to garlands, except at the ends, as at the hinges, for it is commendable neither in scent nor in appearance. There is also one called by our people Greek, and by the Greeks lychnis, which grows only in damp places and never exceeds five leaves, of the size of a violet, with no scent. There is another also called Graecula, with the tufts of its leaves rolled together, which does not open unless forced by hand and is always like one just born, with very broad leaves;
19| another is poured out from a mallow-like stalk, with the leaves of an olive (they call it mucetum), and among these the autumn rose, of middle size, which they call coroniola; all are without scent except the coroniola and the one born in the bramble. In so many ways is it counterfeited. And besides, even the true rose is much determined by the soil. At Cyrene it is the most fragrant, and for that reason the finest perfume is there; at Carthage in Spain it is early-flowering through the whole winter. The temperature of the sky matters too, for in some years it comes up less fragrant; and besides, every rose is more fragrant in dry places than in damp.
20| It likes to be sown neither in rich ground nor in clay nor in watered ground, being content with dews, and it especially loves land dressed with rubble. The Campanian is early, the Milesian late, but the Praenestine is the last to end. The plants are dug about more deeply than grain and more lightly than vines. They come up very slowly from seed, which lies in the husk itself, just beneath the flower, covered with down. For that reason they are rather grafted from a cut stalk. And one kind, pale, thorny, with very long shoots and five-leaved, which among the Greeks is a second kind, is grafted by the little eyes of the root, as with a reed.
21| Every rose thrives by cutting back and by burning; it also does best and most quickly by transplanting, as vines do, from slips four fingers long or longer, set after the setting of the Pleiades, then transplanted in the west wind season at intervals of a foot and dug round frequently. Those who make an early rose pour hot water into a trench a foot deep around the root when the calyx begins to sprout.
22| The lily comes nearest to the rose in nobility, and by a certain kinship with the perfume and oil called lilinum. Set among them, it adorns roses most, beginning at the middle of their flowering.
23| No flower has a greater height, sometimes three cubits, always with a drooping neck, not equal to the burden of the head. Its whiteness is exceptional, in a flower grooved on the outside and gradually opening from a narrow base to breadth, in the shape of a basket, with the lips turned back around the rim, and a fine hair, and the saffron-colored stamens standing in the middle. So scent and color are twofold, one of the calyx, another of the stamens, the difference being slight. In the use of perfume and oil even the leaves are not despised. There is a flower not unlike it in a herb they call convolvulus, growing among the thickets, with no scent and no saffron-colored threads inside, showing only the whiteness, and as if it were the first lesson of nature learning to make lilies.
24| White lilies are sown in all the same ways as the rose, and with this addition, by their own tear, as hipposelinum is; and nothing is more fertile, for a single root often sends out up to fifty bulbs. There is also a reddish lily, which the Greeks call crinon, and others call its flower cynorrhodon. It is most praised at Antioch and Laodicea in Syria, then at Phaselis. That which grows in Italy holds fourth place.
25| There are also purple lilies, sometimes with a double stalk, differing only in a fleshier root and a larger bulb, but a single one; they call it narcissus. Of this there is a second kind with a white flower and a purple calyx. It differs from lilies also in this, that narcissi have leaves on the root; the most approved grow in the mountains of Lycia. In the third kind everything else is the same, but the calyx is grassy. All are late, for they flower after Arcturus and through the equinox into autumn.
26| A method of grafting has been found among these also, by the monstrous ingenuity of men. For in the month of July the stems of a lily that is drying are gathered and hung in smoke; then, as the little knots show themselves, in March they are steeped in the lees of dark or Greek wine to take up the color, and so are planted in little trenches with hemina measures of the lees poured around. Thus purple lilies are made, and it is a marvel that anything is dyed so as to be born already dyed.
27| Honor next goes to violets, of which there are several kinds, purple, yellow and white, all set from slips, like a vegetable. Of those which come up of their own accord in sunny and lean places, the purple ones with the broader leaf, coming out straight from the root and fleshy, alone are set apart from the others by a Greek name, being called ia, and from them comes the violet-colored garment, ianthina. Among the cultivated, the greatest authority belongs to the yellow; there are also the Tusculan kind and the one called marine, with a somewhat broader leaf but less fragrant; the Calatine is wholly without scent and has a small leaf, and is the gift of autumn, the rest of spring.
28| Next to it is the caltha, of the same color and [….] size. It exceeds the marine violet in the number of its leaves, which do not go beyond five; but it is surpassed by it in scent. For the caltha has a heavy smell, and no lighter is that of the plant they call scopa regia, although in that plant it is the leaves that smell, not the flowers.
29| Baccar too is only of a fragrant root, called by some rustic nard. That perfumes used to be made from this root among the ancients, Aristophanes, a poet of the old comedy, is witness; whence some by a false error called it barbarian. Its scent is nearest to cinnamon. It grows in thin soil, and not a damp one.
30| A plant very like it is called combretum, thinned in the slenderness of its leaves down to threads, and taller than baccar. These are used only for stringing. The error of those also must be corrected who called baccar rustic nard. For there is another herb with that surname, which the Greeks call asaron, whose appearance and form we described among the kinds of nard. Indeed I find that asaron is so called because it is not added to garlands.
31| Wild crocus is the best. It is not at all expedient to sow it in Italy, as the beds yield only a scruple each when boiled down. It is sown from the bulb of the root. The cultivated is broader, larger and more glossy, but far milder, degenerating everywhere and not fruitful even at Cyrene, where the flowers are always most praised. The first rank is the Cilician, and there that of Mount Corycus, then the Lycian from Mount Olympus, and next the Centuripine of Sicily. Some have given second place to the Theraean.
32| Nothing is adulterated so much. The test of the pure is that, laid in the hand, it crackles as if brittle; for it feels the dampness that comes from adulteration. A second test is that, carried from the hand to the face, it gently stings the face and eyes.
33| There is by itself a kind of cultivated, very pleasing to the common people, though it is middling, which they call dialeucon. By contrast the Cyrenaic has a fault, that it is blacker than all other crocus and withers very quickly. The best everywhere is that which is the fattest and has a short hair, the worst that which smells of mold. Mucianus is authority that in Lycia in the seventh or eighth year it is moved to a worked place and so renewed when it degenerates. Its use in garlands is nowhere; for it is a herb with a narrow leaf almost in the manner of a hair. But it goes wonderfully with wine, especially sweet, ground up to fill theatres.
34| It flowers at the setting of the Pleiades for a few days, and drives out the flower with the leaf. It is green at midwinter and is gathered; it is dried in the shade, better still in winter. Its root also is fleshy and longer-lived than the others. It delights to be trodden and bruised, and flourishes better for perishing; therefore it thrives most beside footpaths and springs. In the Trojan times it already had honor; at any rate Homer praises these three flowers, lotus, crocus, hyacinth.
35| Of all sweet-smelling things, and of herbs too, the difference lies in color, scent and juice. Seldom has a fragrant plant a taste that is not bitter, and conversely sweet things are seldom fragrant; and so wines are more fragrant than musts, and all wild plants more than cultivated. The scent of some is sweeter from afar and is dulled when brought closer, like violets.
36| A fresh rose smells from afar, a dry one closer. All scent is sharper in spring and in the morning hours; whatever the day inclines toward the hours of noon is dulled. The young are also less fragrant than the old; yet the keenest scent of all is in middle age. The rose and the crocus are more fragrant when gathered on clear days, and all things more in warm places than in cold; in Egypt, however, the flowers are least fragrant, because the air is misty and dewy from the great river. In the sweetness of some there is a heaviness.
37| Some, while they are green, have no smell, because of too much moisture, as buceras, which is fenugreek. Watery plants have a scent not wholly without juice, like violets, roses, crocus; but of the watery plants those which lack juice all have a heavy scent, as in the lily of both kinds. Habrotonum and amaracus have sharp scents. In some only the flower is pleasant, the other parts dull, as in violets and roses.
38| Among garden plants the most fragrant are those that are dry, like rue, mint, celery, and those that grow in dry places. Some are more fragrant with age, like quinces, and the same plucked more than on their roots. Some smell only when broken or from rubbing, others only when the bark is stripped, and some only when burned, as frankincense and myrrh. All flowers when crushed are more bitter than untouched.
39| Some dry things keep their scent longer, like melilot. Some make the very place more fragrant, like iris, and even the whole tree whose roots it touches. Hesperis smells more at night, whence the name was found. No animal is fragrant, unless we believe what has been said of panthers.
40| This difference too must not be passed over, that many fragrant plants have nothing to do with garlands, such as iris and saliunca, although both are of the noblest scent. But iris is recommended by its root alone, which grows for perfumes and for medicine. The most praised is in Illyricum, and even there not in the coastal parts but in the wooded country of the Drino and the Naro; the next in Macedonia, which is the longest, whitish and slender.
41| The third place belongs to the African, the largest of all and the most bitter to the taste. The Illyrian also is of two kinds: the raphanitis, from its likeness to a radish, which is also the better, and the rhizotomos. The reddish is best, and moves sneezing when handled. It has a stalk a cubit high, upright; it flowers with a many-colored appearance, like the rainbow, whence also its name. The Pisidian is not disapproved of.
42| Those who are about to dig it, three months beforehand pour honeyed water around it and so coax the earth with this sort of appeasement; when they have gathered it, having drawn a threefold circle round it with the point of a sword, they at once lift it up toward the sky. Its nature is hot, and handled it raises blisters like a burn. The first precept is that they must gather it in a state of purity. It is quickly sensitive to worms, not only when dry but even in the ground. The best irine oil was formerly said to be from Leucas and Elis (for it has long been sown also); now it is from Pamphylia, but the Cilician is most praised, and that from the northern lands.
43| Saliunca, with a rather short leaf that cannot be woven, clings to a root of many strands; it is a herb rather than a flower, dense as if pressed by a hand, and in short a turf of its own kind. Pannonia produces it, and the sunny parts of Noricum and of the Alps, and, of cities, Eporedia, of such sweetness that it has begun to be a commodity of trade.
44| It is most pleasing to lay it among clothes, as among the Greeks the herb polium, made famous by the praises of Musaeus and Hesiod, who proclaim it useful for everything, and above the rest for fame and even for rank, and altogether marvelous, if, as they report, its leaves appear white at dawn, purple at midday, and blue at sunset. There are two kinds of it: the field kind, larger; and the woodland, which is smaller, which some call teuthrion. The leaves are like gray hair, springing straight from the root, never higher than a palm.
45| Of fragrant flowers enough has been said. In regard to these, luxury, rejoicing to have conquered nature in perfume, has challenged in clothing also those flowers which are recommended by color. I observe that these are three in the chief rank: the reddish one in scarlet, which derives from the grace of the dark rose with a glossy look, and passes into Tyrian purples, the twice-dipped and the Laconian; the amethyst one, which likewise from the violet passes into purple, and which we have called ianthine. For we are dealing with kinds that spread themselves out into many sorts.
46| The third is the one which is properly understood as that of the shellfish, in many forms: one in the heliotrope and in some a thin one, mostly deeper in color; another in the mallow, inclining to purple; another in the late violet, the most vigorous of the shellfish colors. Now they are set in pairs, and nature and luxury fight it out. I see that the honor of yellow is the most ancient, wholly conceded to women in bridal veils, and perhaps for that reason is not counted among the chief colors, that is, those common to men and women, since partnership gave them first place.
47| To the amaranth we undoubtedly yield. It is a purple spike rather than a flower of any kind, and itself without scent. It is marvelous in it that it delights in being plucked and renews itself the more gladly. It comes up in the month of August and lasts into autumn. The Alexandrian takes the palm, which is kept when plucked; and wonderfully, after all flowers have failed, moistened with water it revives and makes winter garlands. Its whole nature is in its name, so called because it does not wither. In the name also is the color of the cyanus, and likewise of the holochrysus.
48| None of these flowers was used in the age of Alexander the Great, since the authors nearest to his death are silent about them; whence it is clear that they came into favor later. That they were found by the Greeks, however, who could doubt, when Italy uses their names in no other way?
49| But, by Hercules, Italy herself gave its name to the petellio, which grows in autumn and around brambles. Only its color is commended, the color of the wild rose; the leaves are small, five in number; and it is wonderful in this flower that the tip bends over and twisted leaves arise from the nodes with a tiny many-colored calyx enclosing a yellow seed. So too did she name the yellow bellio, whose fifty-five little beards form a little lozenge. These are meadow flowers for garlands; most others are without use, and therefore without names, and even for these very ones different people give different words.
50| Chrysocome, or chrysitis, has no Latin name. It is a palm in height, with clusters shining with the radiance of gold, a black root, sweet after a harsh taste, and grows in rocky and shady places.
51| And now that the most celebrated colors too have been nearly completed, the account passes to those garlands which please by variety alone. There are two kinds of them, since some consist of flower, others of leaf. I would say that broom is a flower, for from it too a yellow is gathered; likewise rhododendron, and zizipha, which are called Cappadocian; these have a scent like the flowers of olives. Cyclamen grows in thorns, of which more elsewhere. Its Colossine flower is admitted to garlands.
52| Among those who garland with a leaf, smilax and ivy and their clusters hold the first place, of which in the section on shrubs we have spoken at length. There are other kinds also which must be indicated by Greek names, because our countrymen for the most part have not taken care for this nomenclature; and most of them grow in foreign lands, but must nevertheless be followed up by us, since the discourse is on nature, not on Italy.
53| Thus for garlands, by their leaf, there have come into favor melotrum, spiraea, origanum, cneorum (which Hyginus calls casia), and conyza (which he calls cunilago), melissophyllum (which is apiastrum), and melilot, which we call the Campanian wreath. For in Campania in Italy it is most praised, among the Greeks at Sunium, then the Chalcidic and the Cretan, and wherever it grows in rough and wooded ground. That garlands were made of it from ancient times, the name sertula, which has taken hold, is the proof. Its scent is near to saffron, as is its flower, while the plant itself is gray; it pleases most for its very short, very rich leaves.
54| Trefoil also garlands by its leaf. Of it there are three kinds: the Greeks call it minyanthes, others asphaltion, with a larger leaf, which garland-makers use; a second, with a pointed leaf, oxytriphyllon; the third the smallest of all. Among these some have sinewy little stalks, as marathum, hippomarathum, myophonum;
55| they use also ferulae and clusters of ivy with their purple flower, and in another kind of them one like wild roses. But in these too only the color pleases, and the scent is lacking. Of cneorum there are two kinds, black and white; the latter is also fragrant; both are branching. They flower after the autumn equinox. Of origanum also there are as many kinds in garlands, for the one has no seed; that which has a scent is called Cretan.
56| Of thyme too there are as many, the white and the blackish. It flowers around the solstices; then the bees also pluck it, so that it is a sign of honey; for beekeepers hope for a yield when it flowers richly. It is harmed by rains and loses its flower. The seed of thyme cannot be detected, whereas that of origanum, though exceedingly small, does not escape notice. But what does it matter that nature has hidden it? It is recognized in the flower itself, and it grows when that is sown.
57| What have men not tried? The honey of Attica is held in the highest praise in the whole world; so the thyme was brought over from Attica and, as we are told, sown with difficulty from its flower. But another principle of nature stood in the way, since the Attic thyme does not last except in the breath of the sea. This opinion was indeed old for all thyme, and so that it does not grow in Arcadia, since they thought that the olive was not produced except within 300 stadia of the sea. In the province of Narbonensis, however, we know that even now the stony plains are stuffed with thyme, this being almost their only revenue, as thousands of flocks come together from distant regions to feed on the thyme.
58| Of conyza too there are two kinds in garlands, male and female. The difference is in the leaf: that of the female is thinner, closer-set and narrower, lying like tiles. The male is more branching. Its flower also shines more; in both it comes late, after Arcturus. The male is heavier in scent, the female sharper and therefore better suited against the bites of beasts. The leaves of the female have the smell of honey; the root of the male is called by some libanotis, of which we have spoken.
59| Still more garland by the leaf: Jove's flower, amaracum, hemerocalles, habrotonum, Helenium, sisymbrium, serpullum, all shooting like the rose. Jove's flower pleases by color alone, the scent being absent, as in that which is called in Greek phlox. Both by branch and leaf, however, the rest are fragrant, serpullum excepted. Helenium is said to have been born from the tears of Helen, and therefore is most praised in the island of Helene; it is a shrub spreading along the ground with twigs of three-quarters of a foot, and a leaf like serpullum.
60| Habrotonum flowers in summer with a pleasantly heavy scent; the flower is of a golden color. Where the ground is empty it comes up of its own accord, and propagates itself by its tip. It is better sown from seed than from root or slip, and even from seed not without trouble; the seedlings are transplanted (so too Adonium), both in summer. For they are very susceptible to cold, yet are harmed by too much sun. But when they have gained strength, they become bushy in the manner of rue. Like habrotonum in scent is leucanthemum, with a white flower, leafy.
61| Amaracum is the name used by the physician Diocles and the Sicilian people, what Egypt and Syria call sampsuchum. It is sown in both ways, from seed and from a branch, longer-lived than the plants named above and softer in scent. Amaracum is as plentiful in seed as habrotonum, but habrotonum has a single root going deep, while the others cling lightly in the topmost earth. The sowing of the rest is generally at the beginning of autumn, and in some places also in spring; they delight in shade, water and dung.
62| Nyctegreton was marveled at by Democritus among few plants, of the color of hysginum, with a leaf like a thorn, not lifting itself from the ground, especially in Gedrosia. He relates that it is dug up by the root after the spring equinox and dried for 30 days by the moon, and so shines at night; that the Magi and the kings of the Parthians use this herb for undertaking vows. The same, he says, is called chenamyche, because geese are terrified at the first sight of it, and by others nyctalops, because it gleams from far off at night.
63| Melilot grows everywhere, but is most praised in Attica; wherever it is, the best is fresh, not whitish, and as like saffron as possible, although in Italy the white is more fragrant.
64| Of flowers, the white violet is the first to herald spring, and in warmer places it even shines out in winter; after it comes the purple one called ion, and next the flame-colored one called phlox, the wild kind only. Cyclamen flowers twice a year, in spring and autumn; it shuns summers and winters. Later than those named above by a good deal are narcissus and lily across the seas, though in Italy, as we have said, they come after the rose. But in Greece the anemone is later still; this is the flower of wild bulbs, other than the one that will be spoken of among the medicinal plants.
65| Next follow oenanthe and melanium, and of the wild flowers heliochrysos; then the second kind of anemone, which is called limonia; after this the gladiolus, accompanied by the hyacinth. The rose is last, and the first to fail, except the cultivated; of the rest, the hyacinth lasts longest, and the white violet, and oenanthe, but this only if, being often plucked off, it is prevented from going to seed. It grows in warm places; its scent is the same as that of vines in bud, and hence its name.
66| A twofold story attends the hyacinth, either that it displays the mourning for the youth whom Apollo had loved, or that it sprang from the blood of Ajax, the veins running so that the figure of the Greek letters AI can be read written upon it. Heliochrysus has a flower like gold, a thin leaf, and a little stalk also slender but hard. The Magi believe that to garland oneself with this, if perfumes too are taken from the gold they call apyron, makes also for favor and glory in life.
67| And these are the flowers of spring; the summer flowers follow them: lychnis and Jove's flower and the second kind of lily, likewise tiphyon and the amaracus they surname Phrygian. But the most remarkable is the pothos. Of this there are two kinds: one, whose flower is that of the hyacinth; the other white, which usually grows on tombs, since it lasts the better. The iris also flowers in summer. These too go off and wither. Others in turn follow in autumn: the third kind of lily and the crocus and both kinds of orsinum, one dull, the other fragrant, all of them shining out with the first rains.
68| Garland-makers use even the flower of the thorn, since the little stalks of the white thorn are even pickled among the delights of the palate. This is the order of flowers across the seas. In Italy the rose follows the violets, the lily comes between, the cyanus succeeds the rose, and the amaranth the cyanus. For the vicapervica is always green, set about with leaves joint by joint in the manner of a thread, a plant for ornamental hedges, yet sometimes it supplies the want of flowers. The Greeks call it chamaedaphne.
69| The longest life of the white violet is three years. After that time it degenerates. The rose endures five years if it is neither cut back nor burned. For in that way it grows young again. We have said also that the soil makes the greatest difference. For in Egypt all these are without scent, and only the myrtles have a special fragrance; and otherwise the sprouting of all is two months earlier. Rose-beds should be dug when the west wind blows and again at the solstice, and care taken that within that time they are cleaned and clear.
70| But for gardens and garlands beehives and bees are most fitting, a thing of especial profit and gain, when it prospers. For their sake, therefore, it is right to sow thyme, apiastrum, rose, violets, lily, cytisus, bean, ervilia, cunila, poppy, conyza, casia, melilot, melissophyllum, cerinthe. This last has a white, curved leaf, is a cubit high, and has a hollow head holding the juice of honey. Bees are most greedy for the flower of these, and also of mustard,
71| which may surprise us, since it is agreed that the flower of the olive is not touched by them; so it would be better for that tree to be far away, while it is fitting that some of the others be sown as near as possible, which will both invite the swarms flying out and not let them go farther afield.
72| The cornel tree too should be guarded against. Those who taste its flower die of a flux of the belly. The remedy is to give them service-berries pounded with honey, or the urine of man or of oxen, or grains of pomegranate sprinkled with Aminean wine. But to plant broom around the hives is most pleasing to the bees.
73| What I have learned about feeding is a marvel and worth recording. The village of Hostilia is washed by the Po. Its inhabitants, when the pasture around fails, put the hives on boats and carry them up the river against the current, by night, as far as five miles. The bees, going out at daylight and feeding, return to the boats each day, changing the place, until the hives are seen to be full, the boats pressed down by the very weight, and they are carried back and the honey taken out.
74| In Spain also they carry them on mules for a like reason. And so much does the pasture matter that the honey is even made poisonous. At Heraclea in Pontus in certain years the most deadly honey comes from the same bees, and the authors have not said from which flowers it is made! We shall set down what we have learned. There is a plant, deadly to beasts of burden too but especially to goats, called aegolethron. From its flower, when it withers in a wet spring, they take in a noxious poison. So it happens that the harm is not felt every year.
75| The signs of the poisoned honey are that it does not thicken at all, that its color is redder, its smell strange, immediately provoking sneezing, and that it is heavier than the harmless. Those who have eaten it throw themselves on the ground seeking coolness, for they also pour with sweat.
76| There are many remedies, which we shall give in their places; but since some must be at hand at once in such dangers, old honeyed wine made from the best honey, with rue, and also salted fish, if they are brought up, taken frequently. It is certain that this evil reaches even dogs through the excrement, and they are tormented in the same way. Honeyed wine made from it and aged, however, is agreed to be harmless, and the skin of women is corrected by nothing better, with costus, and bruises with aloe.
77| There is another kind of honey in the same region of Pontus, among the tribe of the Sanni, which from the madness it produces they call maenomenon. It is thought to be drawn from the flower of the rhododendron, with which the woods teem. And that tribe, though it furnishes wax in tribute to the Romans, does not sell honey, because it is deadly. In Persis also, and in the Gaetulia of Mauretania Caesariensis, bordering the Massaesyli, poisoned honeycombs are produced, and some of them in part, than which nothing can be more deceptive, except that they are detected by a livid color.
78| What are we to suppose nature meant by these snares, that from the same bees the honey should be made poisonous, not every year, or not in whole combs? Was it too little to have produced a thing in which poison is most easily given? Has she given even this to so many creatures in honey itself? What can she have meant, except to make man more cautious and less greedy? For had she not already given the bees themselves stings, and poisoned ones at that, with a remedy against them that must certainly not be delayed? Thus it is wholesome to be anointed with juice of mallow or of ivy leaves, or for those who are stung to drink it. It is a marvel, however, that the bees, who carry poisons in their mouths and shape them, do not die of them, unless that mistress of all things has given this resistance to bees, as against serpents to the Psylli and Marsi among men.
79| There is another marvel of honey in Crete: there is a mountain, Carina, 9,000 paces in circuit, within which space flies are not found, and they never touch the honey produced there. By this test it is chosen as unique for medicines.
80| It is fitting that beehives face the east at the equinox. Let them avoid the north wind, and the west wind no less. The best hive is of bark, the second of ferula, the third of wickerwork; many have made them of transparent stone, so as to watch the workers inside. It is most useful to plaster the hives round with cow dung; the lid at the back should be movable, so that it can be pushed forward inside if the hive is large or the work unproductive, lest in despair they give up their care; it is gradually pushed back, the growth of the work escaping notice. In winter the hives are to be covered with straw and fumigated frequently, most of all with cow dung.
81| This, being akin to them, kills the little creatures that breed in them, spiders, moths and worms, and rouses the bees themselves. The destruction of spiders is easier; the moth, the greater plague, is destroyed in spring, when the mallow ripens, by lamps lit before the hives at night, in the dark of the moon, with a clear sky. They throw themselves into that flame.
82| If it is noticed that the bees lack food, it is fitting to place raisins or pounded dried figs at their doors, and likewise wool drawn out and soaked in raisin wine, or boiled-down must, or honeyed water, and even raw flesh of hens. In some summers too the same food must be supplied, when continuous drought has taken away the nourishment of flowers. When honey is taken from the hives, the entrances should be smeared with melissophyllum or broom pounded, or the middle of the hive be girt about with white vine, lest the bees scatter. They direct that honey-vessels and combs be washed with water; this, boiled down, makes the most wholesome vinegar.
83| Wax is made by pressing out the combs, which have first been cleansed with water and dried for three days in the dark; on the fourth day they are melted over fire in a new earthen pot, with water covering the combs, and then strained through a basket. The wax is boiled again in the same pot with the same water, and received into another vessel of cold water, the vessels being smeared round with honey. The best is that called Punic; next, that which is as tawny as possible, of the smell of honey, and pure; by origin the Pontic, which I wonder to see well established among poisoned honeys; then the Cretan, for it has the most propolis, of which we spoke in the nature of bees. After these the Corsican, because it is made from box, is thought to have a certain medicinal force.
84| Punic wax is made in this way: tawny wax is fanned more often in the open air, then boiled in sea water fetched from the deep, with natron added. From it they take the flower with spoons, that is, whatever is whitest, and pour it into a vessel which holds a little cold water, and boil it again separately in sea water, then cool the vessel or the water. And when they have done this three times, they dry it on a rush hurdle in the open, in sun and moon. For the moon makes the whiteness, the sun dries, and to keep it from melting they cover it with a thin cloth. It becomes whitest when, after the sunning, it is boiled yet again. Punic wax is the most useful in medicines.
85| Wax turns black when the ash of papers is added, as it reddens with anchusa mixed in, and is drawn by pigments into various colors to render likenesses, and into the countless uses of mortals, and even the protection of walls and arms. The rest about honey and bees has been said in their own natural history. And the account of gardens is now almost complete;
86| there follow herbs growing of their own accord, which most nations use for food, and Egypt most of all, which is very fertile in grain, yet could almost alone do without it. So great is the abundance of food from herbs. In Italy we know very few: strawberries, tamnus, ruscus, the sea bata, the garden bata, which some call Gallic asparagus; besides these, the meadow parsnip and the willow-bed lupus; and these are rather delights than food.
87| In Egypt the most famous is colocasia, which some call cyamon. They reap it from the Nile; its stalk, when boiled, is cobwebby in the chewing, but the thyrsus that shoots out among the leaves is a sight, and the leaves are very broad, even if compared with those of trees, like those we call personata in our rivers; and they so rejoice in the gifts of their Nile that, by interlacing colocasia leaves into a variety of vessel shapes, they hold it most pleasing to drink from them. It is now sown in Italy.
88| In Egypt the next in esteem is cichorium, which we have called wandering endive. It grows after the Pleiades and flowers in parts. Its root is tough, so they use it also for bonds. Anthalium grows farther from the river, of the size and roundness of a medlar, without stone, without rind, with a leaf like cyperus. They chew it prepared over fire. They chew also oetus, which has few and very small leaves, but a large root.
89| Arachidne and aracos, though they have branching, manifold roots, have neither leaf nor any herb nor anything else above ground. The other names of herbs commonly eaten among them are: chondrylla, hypochoeris, caucalis, enthryscum, scandix, come (which others call tragopogon, with leaves very like the crocus), parthenium, trychnum, corchorus, and, springing up from the equinox, aphace and achynops. They call epipetron that which never flowers. Aphace, on the contrary, as its flower keeps withering, sends out another all winter and all spring up to summer.
90| They have many others besides, of no note, but they make most of cnecos, unknown to Italy, and to them welcome for oil, not for food. They make this from its seed. The first difference is that one is wild and the other milder. Of the wild there are two species. One is like the milder, but with a stiff stalk; so the women of old used it as a slender distaff, whence some call it atractylis. Its seed is white and large, bitter. The other is hairier, with a more muscular stalk that almost creeps along the ground, and a small seed. It belongs to the prickly class, since the classes also must be distinguished.
91| So some herbs are thorny, some without thorns. Of the thorny there are many species. In general asparagus and scorpio are wholly thorn, for they have no leaf. Some thorny plants have leaves, like thistle, erynge, glycyrrhiza and nettle; for in all these there is a stinging bite in the leaves. Some have a leaf along with the thorn, like tribulus and anonis. Some have no thorns on the leaf but have them on the stalk, like pheos, which some have called stoebe. Hippophaes has thorns at the joints. A peculiarity of tribulus is that it has a thorny fruit too.
92| Of all these kinds the nettle is best known, with little cups in the flower pouring out a purple down, often taller than two cubits. Its differences are several: the wild, which they also call female, and milder; and, more sharp than the wild, the one called canina, with a biting stalk also and fringed leaves; and the one which also gives off a scent is called Herculanea. The seed in all is plentiful and black.
93| It is a marvel that, without any thorny stings, the down itself is harmful, and by the lightest touch alone an itch and blisters like those of a burn arise at once. The remedy [too] of oil is well known. But the sting does not arise with the plant from the first, and is not there unless the plant is strengthened by the sun. When it is just beginning to grow in spring it is not unpleasant as food, and for many it is even a religious food, to drive off the diseases of the whole year. The root of the wild kinds also makes all meat more tender if cooked with it. The kind that is harmless, lacking a bite, is called lamium. Of scorpio we shall speak among the medicinal plants.
94| The thistle has thorny down on both leaves and stalks, and so have acorna, leucacanthos, chalceos, cnecos, polyacanthos, onopyxos, helxine, scolymos. Chamaeleon has no stings in its leaves. There is this difference, too, that some of these are many-stalked and branching, like the thistle, while cnecos has a single stalk and is not branching. Some are thorny only at the top, like erynge. Some flower in summer, like tetralix and helxine.
95| Scolymos also flowers late and for long. Acorna is distinguished from cnecos only by a reddish color and a fatter juice. Atractylis also would be the same, were it not whiter and did it not pour out a blood-colored juice, for which reason it is called phonos by some, and heavy in smell too, its seed ripening late and not before autumn, though that can be said of all thorny plants. But all of these can grow both from seed and from root.
96| Scolymus differs from these in the thistle class in that its root is boiled for eating. It is a marvel that without interval through the whole summer, in that genus, one part flowers, another conceives, another brings forth. The stings stop pricking when the leaf dries. Helxine is rare to see and not in all lands, leafy from the root, from the middle of which something like an apple swells out, covered with its own foliage. The very top of it holds a tear of pleasant taste, called acanthice mastiche.
97| The cactos too grows only in Sicily, a thing of its own peculiarity. Its stalks, put out from the root, creep on the ground, with a broad and thorny leaf. They call the stalks cactos, and do not scorn them in food even when kept. It has also one upright stalk, which they call pternix, of the same sweetness but not enduring age. Its seed is of the down they call pappus; and when this is removed, and the rind, the tenderness is like the brain of the palm. They call it ascalia.
98| Tribulus grows only in marshy ground. A hard thing elsewhere, beside the rivers Nile and Strymon it is taken into food, sloping down into the shallows, with a broad leaf and the shape of an elm, and a long stalk. But in the rest of the world there are 2 kinds: one with the leaves of the chickpea, the other with prickly ones. This one flowers later and more often besets the hedges of country houses. Its seed is rounder, black, in a pod; the other's is sandy. Of the thorny plants still another kind is anonis. For it has thorns on the branches, with a leaf set on like that of rue, the whole stalk leafed in the manner of a garland. Next comes arata, an enemy to crops and especially long-lived.
99| The stalks of some prickly plants creep along the ground, like that which they call coronopus. In contrast stands anchusa, fit for staining wood and wax, with its root; among the milder stand anthemis and phyllanthes and anemone and aphace. Crepis and lotos have a leafy stalk.
100| The differences in leaves here are the same as in trees: shortness or length of the stalk, narrowness or breadth of the leaf itself, and then angles, indentations, scent, flower. Here the flowering lasts longer in some that flower in parts, such as ocimum, heliotropium, aphace, onochilus. Many among these have everlasting leaves, as some of the trees do, above all heliotropium, adiantum and polium.
101| There is again another kind, of those that bear spikes, to which belong achynops, alopecuros, stelephuros, (which some call ortyx, others plantago, of which we shall say more among the medicinal plants), thryallis. Of these alopecuros has a soft spike and a dense down, not unlike the tails of foxes, whence also its name. Next to it is stelephuros, except that it flowers in parts. Cichorion and the like have their leaves close to the ground; they sprout from the root after the Pleiades.
102| Perdicium too is eaten by other peoples than the Egyptians. The name was given by the bird that digs it up most. It has thick and very many roots. So also ornithogale, with a tender stalk, white, half a foot high, soft, with three or four others joined to it, and a bulbous root; it is cooked in porridge.
103| It is a marvel that the herb lotos and aegilops are born only after a year from their own seed. Marvelous too is the nature of anthemis, that it begins to flower from the top, whereas all others that flower in parts begin from their lowest part.
104| Notable also in the burdock, which clings, is that the flower in it is born not visible but hidden within, and it buds inside itself like those creatures that bring forth within themselves. Around Opus there is a herb sweet even to man, and it is a marvel that its root is made from its leaf and so it grows.
105| Iasine has one leaf, but so folded that it seems to be many. Chondrylla is bitter and sharp in the juice of its root. Bitter also are aphace and the one called picris, itself flowering all year; bitterness gave it its name.
106| Notable also is the nature of the squill and the crocus, that, whereas all herbs first put out a leaf and soon round into a stalk, in these the stalk is perceived before the leaf. In the crocus a flower is driven out by the stalk, in the squill the stalk comes out, and then the flower emerges from it, and the same plant flowers three times, as we have said, showing the three seasons of plowing.
107| Some count among the class of bulbs the root of cypirus, that is, of the gladiolus. It is sweet and, when boiled, makes bread both more pleasing and heavier, if kneaded in at the same time. Not unlike it is the one called thesium, harsh to the taste.
108| The rest of the same class differ in the leaf: asphodel has an oblong and narrow one, the squill a broad and pliable one, the gladiolus one like its name. Asphodel is eaten, both the roasted seed and the bulb, but the latter roasted in ashes, then with salt and oil added, and besides pounded with figs, for the greatest pleasure, as seems to Hesiod. They report also that, sown before the gates of country houses, it is a remedy against the harm of sorcery. Homer too made mention of asphodel.
109| Its root is like moderate turnips, and none is more numerous, often 80 bulbs heaped together. Theophrastus and the Greeks generally, and Pythagoras first, called its stalk, a cubit and often two cubits high, with leaves of wild leek, anthericum, but the root, that is the bulbs, asphodelus. Our countrymen call the former albucum and asphodelus hastula regia, with a stalk bearing grape-like berries, and they make two kinds.
110| The albucum has a flower-stem a cubit high, thick, clean and smooth, which Mago directs to be reaped at the close of March and the start of April, when it has flowered, its seed not yet swollen; the stems are to be split, brought out into the sun on the fourth day, and, thus dried, made into bundles.
111| The same adds that oiston is the Greek name for that which among the ulvae we call sagitta. He directs that this be stripped of its rind from the Ides of May to the end of the month of October and dried in gentle sun; the same, and the other gladiolus, which they call cypiron, itself a marsh plant, he directs to be cut at the root through the whole month of July and dried in the sun on the third day, until it becomes white, and each day before sunset to be carried back under cover, since when marsh plants are cut the night dews harm them.
112| He gives like precepts also about the rush they call mariscus, for weaving mats, directing it too to be taken up in the month of June until the middle of July, with the rest of the drying the same as we described under ulva in its place. He makes another kind of rushes, which I find is called marine, and by the Greeks oxyschoenos. Of it there are three kinds: the sharp, barren one, which the Greeks call male and oxys; the rest are female, bearing a black seed: which they call melancranis,
113| thicker and bushier, and still more the third, which is called holoschoenus. Of these melancranis grows without the other kinds, but oxys and holoschoenus from the same turf. Holoschoenus is the most useful for wickerwork, because it is soft and fleshy; it bears a fruit like eggs joined together. The one we called male is born also from itself, its tip fixed in the earth, but melancranis from its own seed.
114| Otherwise the roots of all die back every year. The use is for sea fishing-baskets, the elegance of wickerwork, the wicks of lamps; the pith is the chief part, so large near the Maritime Alps that when the body is cut it fills nearly a breadth of unciae, and in Egypt a length of cubits, and nowhere is it more useful.
115| Some make still one more kind of rush, the triangular (they call it cyperon), but many do not distinguish it from cypirus, because the names are close. We shall distinguish the two. Cypirus is the gladiolus, as we have said, with a bulbous root, most praised in the islands, in Crete, then in Naxos and afterwards in Phoenicia. The Cretan has a whiteness and a scent near to nard, the Naxian is sharper, the Phoenician breathes little, the Egyptian none, for it grows there too.
116| It disperses hardnesses of the body; for we shall come to the remedies, since the class of flowers and perfumes has great use in medicine; as to cypiron, I shall follow Apollodorus, who says it should not be drunk, though he declares it most effective against stones. He bathes the mouth with it. He does not doubt that it causes abortion in women; and, marvelously, he reports that barbarians who take the fumigation of this herb in the mouth waste away their spleens, and do not leave their houses except after this fumigation, for by it they become more lively and stronger even in the day; and that, applied with oil, it undoubtedly cures chafing, faults of the armpits, and chills.
117| Cyperos is a rush, as we have said, angular, white near the ground, black and fat at the top. The lowest leaves are slenderer than those of leeks, at the top small, and between them is the seed. The root is like a black olive, and when it is oblong they call it cyperis, of great use in medicine. The first praise for cyperus goes to the Hammoniac, the second to the Rhodian, the third to the Theraean, the last to the Egyptian. It has also confused the understanding, because cypirus too grows there. But cypirus has a very hard root and scarcely breathes, while cyperis has a scent that itself imitates nard. There is also by itself an Indian herb, which is called cypira, in the form of ginger; chewed, it renders the force of saffron.
118| Cyperus has in medicine the force of a depilatory. It is applied to pterygia and to ulcers of the genitals and all those that are in moisture, as to sores of the mouth. The root is a prompt remedy against the stings of serpents and scorpions. It opens the womb when drunk; in a larger dose its force is such that it even expels it. It stirs the urine and the stones, and for that reason is most useful to the dropsical. It is also applied to ulcers that spread, but especially to those in the stomach, applied in wine or vinegar.
119| The root of the rush, boiled in three heminae of water down to a third, cures cough. The seed, roasted and drunk in water, stops the bowels and the menses of women. It causes headache. That which is called holoschoenus [….]; the parts nearest the root are chewed against the bites of spiders. I find still one more kind of rush, which they call Euripice; by its seed sleep is said to be coaxed, but a measure must be kept, lest it become torpor.
120| Incidentally the medicines of the scented rush will also be told, since it grows in [….] Coele Syria, as we have set down in its place. The most praised, from Nabataea, with the surname teuchitis; next the Babylonian; the worst from Africa and without scent. It is round, with a winey sharpness on the tongue; when it is pure it gives out, in rubbing, the scent of the rose, in reddish fragments. It disperses flatulence, and for that reason is useful to the stomach and to those who bring up bile. It calms hiccups, moves belching, stirs the urine, cures the bladder. For women's uses it is boiled down. For those with opisthotonos it is applied with dry resin, with a heating force.
121| The rose is astringent and cooling. Its use is divided into the leaves and the flowers, the heads. The parts of the leaves that are white are called nails. In the flower one part is the seed, another the hair, in the head another the husk, another the calyx. The leaf is dried or pressed out in three ways: by itself, when the nails are not removed (for there the moisture is greatest), or, when the nails have been removed, the remaining part is steeped either in oil or in wine in glass vessels in the sun.
122| Some mix in salt as well, some also anchusa, or aspalathus, or the scented rush, because such an oil is of most use to the womb and to dysenteric patients. The same leaves, with the nails removed, are pounded and pressed through a thick cloth into a bronze vessel, and the juice is boiled over a gentle fire until it reaches the thickness of honey. For this purpose one must choose all the most fragrant leaves.
123| How wine is made from the rose, we have told among the kinds of wine. The use of the juice is for the ears, sores of the mouth, gums, tonsils (gargled), stomach, womb, faults of the seat, headaches (in fever by itself or with vinegar), sleep, nausea. The leaves are burned for an eyelid cosmetic, and, dried, they are sprinkled on the thighs. Dry, they also soothe inflammations of the eyes. The flower makes sleep, checks the fluxes of women, especially the white, drunk in sour wine, and spitting of blood, and pains of the stomach, as much as [….] in three cyathi of wine.
124| The best of the seed is the saffron-colored, not older than a year, and dried in the shade; the black is useless. It is applied to toothache, stirs the urine, is laid on the stomach, and likewise on erysipelas that is not old. Drawn up the nostrils, it clears the head. The heads, drunk, stop the belly and the blood. The nails of the rose are wholesome for inflammations of the eyes; for ulcers of the eyes become foul with rose, except at the beginning of the inflammation, so that the dried rose is applied with bread.
125| The leaves are indeed most useful inside for gnawings of the stomach and [inside] of the belly or intestines, and for the midriff, even applied. They are also seasoned for food in the manner of lapathum. Mold, which quickly settles on them, must be guarded against. Dried or pressed too they have some use. From them are made diapasmata for restraining sweats, so that they dry on the body after the baths, which is then washed off cold. Pills of the wild rose with bear's fat correct alopecia.
126| The roots of the lily ennoble their flower in many ways: drunk in wine, against the stings of serpents and the poisons of mushrooms. For corns of the feet they are boiled in wine, and for three days are not taken off. Boiled with fat or oil they restore hair to the burned. Drunk in honeyed wine they draw off useless blood with the bowels, and are of benefit to the spleen, to ruptures and sprains, and to the menses of women; boiled in wine and laid on with honey they help severed sinews.
127| They are used as remedies against lichens and leprosies, and correct dandruff on the face; they smooth the body and the skin. The leaves, boiled in vinegar, are applied to wounds, if of the testicles, better with hyoscyamus and wheat flour. The seed is applied to erysipelas, the flower and leaves to old ulcers; the juice pressed from the flower (called honey by some, syrium by others) is used to soften the womb, to cause sweating and to bring suppurations to ripeness.
128| Of narcissus two kinds are received into medical use, one kind with a purple flower, the other grassy; the latter is unsuited to the stomach and therefore an emetic and loosener of the bowels, hostile to the sinews, heavy to the head, and named narcissus from narce, not from the fabled boy. The root of both is of a taste like honeyed wine. It helps burns, with a little honey,
129| and so wounds and dislocations; for boils it is applied with honey and aerine meal, and so too it draws out things lodged in the body. Pounded in pearl barley and oil it cures bruises and injuries from stones. Mixed with meal it cleans wounds, and removes black spots on the skin. From this flower narcissine oil is made for softening hardnesses and warming parts that have chilled; it is most useful for the ears, but it also causes headache.
130| Violets are wild and cultivated. The purple are cooling. Against inflammations they are applied to the stomach; they are laid on one who is burning, and on the head at the forehead, and especially for inflammations of the eyes and for prolapse of the seat or womb, and against suppurations. They disperse the sickness of overeating and heaviness of the head, when garlands are laid on and the scent inhaled; for quinsy they are drunk in water. The purple one among them cures epileptics, especially boys, drunk in water. The seed of the violet is hostile to scorpions.
131| In contrast, the white's flower opens suppurations, while the plant itself disperses them. The white and the yellow alike lessen the menses and stir the urine. The force is less in fresh ones, and so dried ones are to be used after a year. The yellow, half a cyathus in three of water, draws the menses. Its roots, applied with vinegar, calm the spleen, and likewise gout; for inflammations of the eyes, with myrrh and saffron. The leaves with honey clean sores of the head, with cerate the fissures of the seat and those in damp parts, and with vinegar they heal gatherings.
132| Baccar in medicinal use some of our countrymen call perpressa. It helps against serpents, headaches and fevers of the head, and also inflammations of the eyes. It is applied to breasts swollen after childbirth and to incipient aegilops and erysipelas. Its scent produces sleep. To drink the root boiled is wholesome for those with spasms or upsets,
133| for those with convulsions and shortness of breath, and in an old cough. Three or four of its branches are boiled down to a third; this potion purges women after miscarriage. It removes stitches in the sides and stones of the bladder. It is also usefully pounded for diapasmata. For the sake of scent it is put among clothes. Combretum, which we said is similar to it, pounded with lard, heals wounds wonderfully.
134| Asarum is reported to be wholesome for faults of the liver, taken in an uncia in a hemina of mixed honeyed wine. It purges the bowels like hellebore, and benefits the dropsical and the midriff and womb and jaundice. If it is added to must, it makes the wine stir the urine. It is dug when it puts out leaves, dried and stored. In the shade it very quickly gets moldy.
135| And since some, as we said, have named the root of baccar rustic nard, we shall add the remedies of Gallic nard too, deferred to this place among the foreign trees. Against serpents, then, it helps in a dose of two drachmas in wine; for flatulence of the colon, either in water or in wine; likewise for the liver and kidneys and for those with an overflow of bile and the dropsical, by itself or with wormwood. It checks the rushes of the women's purgations.
136| Of that which we called phu in the same place, the root is given for drinking, pounded or boiled, for strangulations or pains of the chest or the sides too. It stirs the menses. It is drunk with wine.
137| Saffron is not dissolved by honey, nor by anything sweet, but most easily by wine or water. It is most useful in medicine, and is kept in a horn box. It disperses all inflammations, but those of the eyes most, with egg; likewise strangulations of the womb, ulcerations of the stomach, chest and kidneys, liver, lungs and bladder, and it is particularly and strongly useful for their inflammation, as for cough and for pleurisy.
138| It removes itches and stirs the urine. Those who have first drunk saffron will not feel overeating, and will resist drunkenness. Garlands too made of it soothe drunkenness. It makes sleep, moves the head gently, stimulates desire. Its flower is applied to erysipelas with Cimolian chalk. It is mixed in very many medicines, and has given its name to one eye-salve.
139| The dregs, too, of the pressed saffron ointment, which they call crocomagma, have their uses against cataracts of the eyes and for the urine. It heats more than saffron itself. The best is that which, tasted, stains the saliva and teeth most.
140| Reddish iris is better than white. It is wholesome to tie it round infants, especially those teething, and to instill it into those coughing or suffering from the fault of tapeworms. Its other effects do not differ much from those of honey. It clears sores of the head, especially old suppurations. In a dose of two drachmas with honey it loosens the bowels; drunk, it helps cough, colic and flatulence, and, in vinegar, the spleen.
141| Against the bites of serpents and spiders it is of force in sour wine; against scorpions it is taken in the weight of two drachmas, in bread or water; against the bites of dogs it is applied in oil, and against chills. So too for pains of the sinews, and for the loins and hips it is applied with resin. It has a heating force. Drawn up the nostrils it moves sneezing and clears the head.
142| For headache it is applied with quinces or struthia. It disperses also the sickness of overeating and orthopnoea. It stirs vomiting, taken in a dose of two obols. Applied with honey it draws out broken bones. For paronychia its meal is used; in wine, for corns and warts, and it is not taken off for three days. Chewed, it removes bad breath and faults of the armpits. By its juice it softens all hardnesses, procures sleep, but wastes the generative power. It heals fissures of the seat and condylomata and all excrescences on the body. There are those who call the wild kind xyris.
143| This disperses scrofulous swellings, boils and swellings of the groin. It is prescribed that for these uses it be dug up with the left hand, and that those who gather it say for what man and for what ailment they are taking it. The wickedness of the herb-gatherers will be laid open in this very mention:
144| they keep back a part of it and of certain other herbs, such as plantago, and if they think they have received too little pay and seek work again, they bury the part they kept back in the same place, I believe so that they may make the ailments they have cured break out again. The root of saliunca, boiled in wine, stops vomiting and strengthens the stomach.
145| Musaeus and Hesiod direct that those eager for rank and glory anoint themselves with polium, that polium be handled [….] be tended, that polium be held against poisons, be spread beneath against serpents, be burned, be boiled in wine fresh or dry and applied or drunk. Physicians give it to those with spleen disease in vinegar, to those with jaundice in wine, and to the incipiently dropsical boiled in wine; they apply it also to wounds so.
146| It expels the afterbirth of women and dead births, and likewise pains of the body. It empties the bladder, and is applied for inflammations of the eyes. No other herb is better suited to the medicine they call alexipharmacon. Yet I think it is unsuited to the stomach, and that the head is filled by it and abortion caused.
147| Some deny this and add a religious rule, that when it is found it must at once be tied on against cataracts of the eyes, and care taken that it does not touch the ground. These also report that its leaves are like thyme, except that they are softer and of a woollier hoariness. With wild rue, and if it is pounded in rain water, it is said to soothe asps, and no otherwise than cytinus it constrains and checks wounds and prevents them from spreading.
148| Holochrysos cures strangury in wine, and by application inflammations of the eyes; burned with the lees of wine and pearl barley it corrects lichens. The root of chrysocome heats and constricts. It is given as a drink for faults of the liver, and likewise of the lungs; boiled in honeyed water, for pains of the womb. It stirs the menses, and, if given raw, the water of the dropsical.
149| If the hives are smeared with melissophyllum or melittaena, the bees will not flee; for in no flower do they delight more. Swarms are most easily kept together by brooms made of it. The same is the readiest remedy against their stings and those of wasps and the like, as against spiders, and scorpions, and against strangulations of the wombs, with natron added, and against colic in wine.
150| Its leaves are applied to scrofulous swellings, and with salt to faults of the seat. The juice of the boiled plant purges women and disperses inflammations and heals sores. It calms diseases of the joints and the bite of a dog. It benefits those with old dysentery and coeliac troubles, orthopnoea, the spleen, and ulcers of the chest. To anoint dimness of the eyes with the juice and honey is held exceptional.
151| Melilot also cures the eyes, with the yolk of an egg or flaxseed. It soothes also pains of the jaws and of the head, with rose oil, and likewise of the ears in raisin wine, and whatever swells or breaks out on the hands; pains of the stomach, boiled in wine or raw and pounded. The same effect is found for the womb; but for the testicles and for a prolapsed seat and whatever other faults are there [….] fresh, boiled in water or in raisin wine. With rose oil added it is applied to cancers. It cools in sweet wine. It is peculiarly effective against meliceris tumors also.
152| I know that trefoil is believed to prevail against the stings of serpents and scorpions, in wine or sour wine, 20 grains of the seed being drunk, or the leaves, and the whole herb boiled; and that serpents are never seen in trefoil; moreover, that by celebrated authors it is reported that 25 grains of the kind we have called minyanthes are enough as an antidote against all poisons, and many other things besides are written down among its remedies.
153| But against their opinions I am moved by the authority of a most weighty man: the poet Sophocles says that it is poisonous, and Simos also among the physicians, that the juice of it boiled or crushed, poured into the body, causes the same burnings as when it is applied to those struck by a serpent. Therefore I would judge that it should be used not otherwise than against poisons. For perhaps the nature of these poisons is contrary among themselves, as in many others. I observe likewise that its seed, of the kind whose leaves are the smallest, is useful, applied to the face, for preserving the grace of the skin of women.
154| Thyme must be picked while in flower and dried in shade. It has two kinds: the white, with a woody root, growing on hills, which is also preferred; the other darker and of a dark flower. Both are thought to contribute much to clearness of the eyes, in food and in medicines;
155| likewise, in an electuary with vinegar and salt, they make the coughing-up easy in a lingering cough; with honey they do not let blood clot; applied from outside with mustard they reduce long catarrhs of the throat, and likewise faults of the stomach and belly. They must be used moderately, however, since they heat; by which force they stop the bowels, and if these are ulcerated, a denarius in weight should be added to a sextarius of vinegar and honey, likewise if there is pain in the side, or between the shoulder blades or in the chest. They cure the midriff in vinegar with honey, and this potion is given also in alienation of mind and to the melancholic.
156| It is given also to epileptics, whom thyme rouses, seized as they are, by its scent. They say that they should sleep on soft thyme. It benefits also those who struggle for breath and pant, and women whose menses are delayed or if the births have died in the womb, boiled in water down to a third; and men also against flatulence, with honey and vinegar, and if the belly is swollen or the testicles, or if pain of the bladder requires it.
157| In wine, applied, it takes away swellings and attacks, and with vinegar a callus and warts. It is applied to the hips with wine; for joint diseases and dislocations it is pounded and sprinkled on wool with oil, for burns with pig's fat. They give also a drink for joint diseases, in a weight of three obols in three cyathi of vinegar and honey; for loathing of food, pounded with salt.
158| Hemerocalles has a leaf pale-green and soft, with a large, fragrant, bulbous root. Laid on the belly with honey it drives out water, and useless blood as well. The leaves are applied for inflammations of the eyes and for the breasts after childbirth.
159| Helenium, born from Helen, as we said, is believed to favor beauty, and to nourish the skin of women, on the face and the rest of the body, uncorrupted. Besides, they think that by its use a certain charm of life and love is procured for them. They attribute to it, drunk in wine, an effect of cheerfulness, and the same that the nepenthes praised by Homer had, by which all sadness was abolished. It is of a very sweet juice. Its root also, drunk in water fasting, benefits those who struggle for breath. It is white within and sweet. It is drunk also against the stings of serpents in wine. Crushed, it is said to kill mice as well.
160| Habrotonum is reported to be of two kinds, the field and the mountain. They would have the one understood as female, the other as male. The bitterness of wormwood is in both. The Sicilian is most praised, then the Galatian. The leaves too are used, but more the seed, for heating, and so it is useful for sinews, cough, orthopnoea, ruptures, convulsions, the loins, narrowness of the urine. It is given to drink in handfuls boiled down to a third; of this four cyathi are drunk.
161| The seed is also given pounded in water, in the weight of a drachma. It benefits the womb as well. With barley meal it ripens boils, and for inflammation of the eyes it is applied with a boiled quince.
162| It drives away serpents; against their stings it is drunk with wine and applied, and is most effective against those creatures by whose venom trembling and cold come on, such as scorpions and phalangia; drunk against other poisons it benefits, and in any way those who are cold. It has also the force of drawing out whatever clings in the body. It drives out the ills of the intestines. By a branch of it, if put under the pillow, they say desire is stimulated, and that it is the most effective herb against all sorcery by which intercourse is hindered.
163| Leucanthemum cures those who struggle for breath, mixed with two parts of vinegar. Sampsuchum, or amaracum, in Cyprus most praised and most fragrant, is hostile to scorpions, applied with vinegar and salt. It also contributes much to the menses, applied. Its force drunk is less. With pearl barley it checks inflammations of the eyes. The juice of the boiled plant disperses colic. It is useful for the urine and for the dropsical. Dry, it moves sneezing. An oil is also made from it, which is called sampsuchine or amaracine, for heating and softening the sinews; it warms the womb too. The leaves, with honey, benefit bruises and, with wax, dislocations.
164| We have spoken of the anemones only as garland-flowers; now we shall give the medicinal as well. Some call it phrenion. Of it there are two kinds: the first wild, the other growing in cultivated ground, and both in sandy places. Of this there are several species: it has either a scarlet flower, which is also the most plentiful, or a purple or a milk-white one. The leaves of these three are like celery and do not readily exceed half a foot in height, with a tip like asparagus. The flower never opens unless the wind is blowing,
165| whence they took their name. The wild one is larger, with broader and harder leaves, and a scarlet flower. Led by mistake, many think this argemone, others again the poppy which we called rhoeas. But there is a great distinction, that both of these flower later, and the anemones neither give their juice nor have calyces nor anything but the asparagus-like tip. Anemones benefit headaches and inflammations, and the wombs of women. They also bring on milk and the menses, taken with barley gruel or applied on wool.
166| The root, chewed, draws phlegm, cures the teeth; boiled, inflammations of the eyes and scars. The Magi have attributed to them something secret, directing that the first one seen in the year be taken up, and that it be said that it is picked as a cure for tertian and quartan fevers, and afterwards that the flower be tied in a reddish cloth and kept in the shade, so that, when needed, it may be tied on. The one of them that has a scarlet flower, with its root crushed and put on any animal, makes an ulcer by an astringent force; and for this reason it is used for cleaning out ulcers.
167| The herb oenanthe grows on rocks, with a leaf like the parsnip's and a large, many-stranded root. Its stalk and leaves, drunk with honey and dark wine, give ease in childbirth and clear the afterbirth; with honey they remove cough, and they stir the urine. The root cures faults of the bladder.
168| Heliochrysum some call chrysanthemon; it has whitish twigs and leaves, whitish too, like habrotonum, and at the reflection of the sun a golden light, in the round, as it were in clusters hanging down, which never wither; for which reason they garland the gods with it, a practice most carefully observed by Ptolemy, king of Egypt. It grows in thickets. Drunk in wine it stirs the urine and the menses.
169| It disperses hardnesses and inflammations, and is applied to burns with honey. It is drunk against the stings of serpents and for faults of the loins. With honeyed wine it consumes clotted blood of the belly or bladder. Its leaves, crushed, in a weight of three obols in white wine, check the fluxes of women. It protects clothes with a not inelegant scent.
170| The hyacinth comes up most in Gaul. There they dye hysginum with it as a dye. The root is bulbous, well known to the slave-dealers in their merchandise, which, applied in sweet wine, keeps back puberty and does not let it break out. It resists colic and the bites of spiders. It drives the urine. Against serpents and scorpions and jaundice its seed is given with habrotonum.
171| Lychnis too, that flame-colored one, is drunk in wine, the seed pounded, against serpents and scorpions and hornets and the like. The same, wild, is unsuited to the stomach. It loosens the bowels, and is most effective for drawing off bile in a dose of two drachmas, so hostile to scorpions that at the mere sight of it they grow numb. Its root the people of Asia call bolites; tied on the eye, it is said to take away the white spots.
172| And vicapervica, or chamaedaphne, dry and pounded, is given in water to the dropsical in a spoon measure, and they very quickly pass water. The same, boiled, sprinkled in ashes with wine, dries swellings. It cures the ears by its juice. Applied to faults of the belly it is said to be of the greatest benefit.
173| The root of ruscus, boiled, is drunk on alternate days in the weakness of stones and in a more twisting or bloody urine. The root should be dug up the day before, boiled the next morning, and of it two cyathi mixed into a sextarius of wine. There are those who drink the raw root also, pounded in water, and who altogether think nothing more useful for the male parts than its little stalks pounded in vinegar.
174| Bata too softens the bowels. It is applied raw and bruised to the gouty. Acinos is sown by the Egyptians both for garlands and for food, and it was the same as ocimum, except that it was hairier in its branches and leaves and very fragrant. It stirs the menses and the urine. Glaucias thought that colocasia soothes acrid conditions of the body and helps the stomach.
175| Of anthalium, which the Egyptians eat, I have found no other use. But there is a herb anthyllium, which others call anthyllum, of two kinds: one like lentil in leaves and branches, a palm high, growing in sandy, sunny places, slightly salty to the one who tastes it; the other like chamaepitys, shorter and hairier, with a purple flower, heavy in smell, growing in rocky places. The former is most suitable for the womb, applied in rose oil and milk, and for wounds. It is drunk for strangury and the gravel of the kidneys in a dose of three drachmas. The other is drunk for hardness of the womb and for colic and in epilepsy, with honey and vinegar, in a dose of four drachmas.
176| Parthenium some call leucanthes, others amaracum, and Celsus among us perdicium and muralis. It grows in garden hedges, with a white flower, the scent of an apple, and a bitter taste. Boiled for sitting baths it is used in hardness of the womb and in inflammations [….]; dry, applied with honey and vinegar, it draws off black bile; on this account it is useful against vertigo and for those with stone. It is applied to erysipelas, and also, with old lard, to scrofulous swellings. The Magi direct that for tertian fevers it be plucked with the left hand, and that it be said for whom it is plucked, without looking back, and then that its leaf be put under the tongue of the sick man, to be swallowed soon after in a cyathus of water.
177| Trychnus, which some have written strychnon, would that the garland-makers in Egypt did not use it, whom the likeness of ivy leaves invites in two of its kinds, one of which, with scarlet berries, grainy, in little pods, they call halicacabon, others callion, and our people vesicaria, because it benefits the bladder and stones. It is a shrub with shoots rather than a herb, with large, broad, top-shaped pods, and inside a large berry, which ripens in the month of November.
178| The third has the leaves of ocimum, a plant least of all to be described with care by those who treat of remedies, not poisons, since it causes madness even in a small amount of juice. Yet the Greek authors turned it into a jest. For they said that in a weight of a drachma a play of frenzy is begotten, showing that empty appearances and conspicuous images come before the eyes; that this dose doubled makes a lawful madness; but that whatever is added to the weight, death is brought on at once.
179| This is the poison that the most innocent authors simply called dorycnion, from the fact that spearheads in battles were dipped in it, growing everywhere. Those who pursued it more sparingly named it manicon; those who hid it wickedly called it erythron or neuras or, as some do, perisson, not to be spoken of more curiously even for the sake of caution.
180| Indeed the other kind too, which they call halicacabon, is soporific and even swifter to death than opium, called by some morion, by others moly, but praised by Diocles and Euenor, and by Timaristus even in a poem. With a marvelous forgetfulness of its harmlessness (for it is an instant remedy for steadying loose teeth, if they are rinsed with halicacabon in wine) they added an exception, that it not be done longer; for delirium is produced. Remedies are not to be shown whose medicine
181| would bring the risk of a greater evil. Let the third kind be recommended as food, then, granted, and preferred to the flavours of the garden, and let there be no ailment of the body for which Xenocrates does not proclaim the trychnos plants beneficial; still, their aid is not worth so much that I should think it right to record more about them on that account, especially when there is so great a supply of harmless remedies.
182| People who wish to prophesy, and to be seen raving in true earnest like the Galli so as to lend support to superstitions, drink the root of halicacabum. The remedy (for this I would rather report) is to drink plenty of warm honey-water. Nor shall I pass over this: that halicacabum is so hostile to the nature of asps that when its root is brought close to them their deadly power is lulled into a stupor. So, pounded in oil, it helps those who have been bitten.
183| Corchorus is a plant eaten as food at Alexandria, with leaves rolled up like those of the mulberry, useful, they say, for the praecordia, and for alopecia and freckles. I also find that mange in cattle is very quickly cured with it, and in Nicander, indeed, snakebites as well, if it is used before it flowers.
184| Nor would it be right to speak at greater length of cnecos, or atractylis, an Egyptian plant, unless that it gives great help against venomous animals, and likewise against fungi. It is agreed that people stung by a scorpion do not feel the torment as long as they hold this plant. Egypt also sows pesoluta in its gardens, for the sake of garlands. There are two kinds of it, female and male; they say that both, placed underneath, check sexual desire, especially that of men.
185| And since in measures and weights too we must often use Greek names, we shall set out their meaning once and for all at this point. The Attic drachma (for physicians generally follow the Attic reckoning) has the weight of a silver denarius, and the same drachma makes 6 obols in weight; the obol is 10 chalci. The cyathus weighs by itself 10 drachmas; if the acetabulum is named as a measure, it means a quarter of a hemina, that is, 15 drachmas. The mna, which our people call the mina, weighs 100 Attic drachmas.

======== Natural History — Book XXII ========

1| Nature and the earth could have filled us with wonder at them, if we considered only the endowments described in the previous volume and so many kinds of plants brought forth for the uses or the pleasures of mankind. But how many more remain, and how much more wonderful to discover! For with those plants, the appeal of food, or of scent or beauty, led for the most part to numerous experiments; the potency of the rest proves that nothing is produced by nature without some more hidden reason.
2| For my part, I also observe that some foreign peoples use certain plants on their bodies for the sake of beauty and by a custom handed down for ever. Among the barbarian peoples, at any rate, the women smear their faces, some with one plant and some with another; and among the Dacians and Sarmatians even the men tattoo their bodies. With a plant like plantago, which in Gaul is called glastum, the wives and daughters-in-law of the Britons smear their whole bodies and go naked in certain rites, imitating the colour of the Ethiopians.
3| We know too that garments are dyed with a wonderful colouring; and, to say nothing of the coccum grain of Galatia, Africa and Lusitania, reserved for the cloaks of commanders, Transalpine Gaul dyes Tyrian purple and conchylium and all the other colours with plants. It does not seek murex in the depths, nor, offering itself as bait to the monsters of the sea while it snatches its prey from them, search shallows untouched even by anchors, to find the means by which a matron may please her lover more easily and a seducer lay snares for a married woman:
4| standing on dry ground, it gathers its dye as it gathers grain. But people complain that it washes out with use; otherwise luxury could have been furnished more brilliantly, and certainly more innocently. It is not our purpose now to pursue these matters, nor shall we be guilty of hemming in luxury with usefulness by suggesting cheaper substitutes, though we shall also say elsewhere that walls are coloured with plants rather than painted with stone. Nor, however, should we have left out the method of dyeing, had it ever been counted among the liberal arts.
5| Meanwhile we shall proceed with greater vigour, and the authority they deserve will be accorded even to the 'deaf', that is, undistinguished, plants. For the founders and builders of the Roman empire too drew something immeasurable from this source, since it was from nowhere else that the sagmina came for public remedies, and the verbenae for sacred rites and embassies. Certainly the same thing is meant by both names, namely grass torn up with its earth from the Citadel; and of the envoys, whenever they were sent to the enemy to make a formal demand, that is, to demand the return of things seized, one was always called the verbenarius.
6| Indeed, no crown was more glorious than the grass crown in the majesty of the people that ruled the world, and among its rewards of glory. Jewelled and golden crowns, crowns of the rampart, of the wall and of the ship's beaks, civic crowns and triumphal crowns ranked after this one, and they all stand far below it, with a great difference.
7| All the others were given by individuals, even by generals and commanders themselves, to soldiers or sometimes to colleagues; the senate, free from the cares of war, and the people at their ease decreed them at triumphs; but the grass crown has never been bestowed except in the utmost desperation, and has never been decreed except by a whole army that has been saved. The other crowns commanders gave; this one alone the soldiers gave to their commander. It is also called the siege crown, when a whole camp has been delivered from a siege and from a dreadful end.
8| And if the honour of the civic crown is held glorious and sacred for saving some single citizen, even the humblest, what then ought we to think of a whole army saved by the valour of one man? This crown was given made of green grass plucked from the spot where someone had saved the besieged. For among the ancients the supreme sign of victory was for the vanquished to hold out grass, that is, to yield up their land, the very soil that nourished them, and even burial in it; a custom which I know still survives among the Germans.
9| Lucius Siccius Dentatus was presented with it once, though he had won fourteen civic crowns and had fought a hundred and twenty times, always victorious. That is how much rarer it is for one saviour to be presented with it by those he has saved. Some commanders were even presented with it more than once, such as Publius Decius Mus, military tribune, once by the army and a second time by those who had been besieged in the outpost. He acknowledged how great the prestige of that honour was by an act of religion: on being presented with it he sacrificed a white ox to Mars, and also the hundred tawny oxen that had been given him at the same time by the besieged for his valour. This Decius later, as consul with Imperiosus as his colleague, devoted himself to death for victory.
10| It was also given by the senate and the Roman people, and I consider no distinction in human affairs loftier than this, to that Fabius who restored the whole Roman state by not fighting. It was not given when he had rescued the master of the horse together with the latter's army (it was then thought better that he should be crowned under a new title, being called 'father' by those he had saved), but he was honoured with it by the consensus I have described when Hannibal had been driven out of Italy. This is the only crown so far placed on a man's head by the hands of the empire itself, and, a thing peculiar to it, the only one given by the whole of Italy.
11| Besides these men, the honour of this crown fell to Marcus Calpurnius Flamma, a military tribune in Sicily, and to only one centurion up to the present time, Gnaeus Petreius of Atina, in the Cimbrian War. Holding the post of chief centurion under Catulus, when his legion had been cut off by the enemy he rallied it, killed his tribune, who was hesitating to break out through the enemy's camp, and led the legion out. I find in the authorities that this same man, besides receiving this honour, offered sacrifice wearing the purple-bordered toga, to the music of a piper at a small brazier set up for the purpose, in the presence of the consuls Marius and Catulus.
12| The dictator Sulla also wrote that he too was presented with it by the army, at Nola, when he was a legate in the Marsic War, and he even had this painted in his villa at Tusculum, which later belonged to Cicero. If that is true, I should call him all the more accursed for it, since by his proscription he tore it from his own head with his own hand, having saved so many fewer citizens than he afterwards killed. Let him add to this glory, too, his arrogant surname Felix; yet he himself, when the proscribed were besieged all over the world, had to yield to Sertorius in respect of this crown.
13| Scipio Aemilianus too, Varro is authority, was given the siege crown in Africa, when Manilius was consul, for having saved 3 cohorts and led out as many again to save them, a thing which the deified Augustus inscribed upon his statues in his own forum. Augustus himself, in the consulship of Marcus Cicero the son, on the Ides of September, the senate presented with the siege crown; so far was the civic crown thought not enough. And apart from these we find no one so honored.
14| There were therefore no fixed herbs for this honor, but whatever had been in the place of the danger, however obscure and unknown, made the honor famous; and that this lies hidden among us I do not so much wonder, seeing that even those things are neglected which concern preserving health, driving off the torments of the body and warding off death. But who would not rightly chastise our manners? Pleasures and luxury have added to the price of living; never was desire of life greater, nor care for it less.
15| We believe that this is the business of others, and that others do it even without our commission, and that physicians have made provision for us against diseases. We ourselves enjoy our pleasures and, than which I judge nothing more shameful, live on the trust of others. Nay more, to most people we are even a laughingstock when we make these investigations, and are charged with trifling work, though it is a great consolation for immense labor to be scorned along with the nature of things, which we shall show certainly did not fail us and has set remedies even in hated herbs, since she has given medicines even to the prickly.
16| For these are what remain nearest of those we named in the preceding book, in which there is no end to admiring and embracing the providence of nature. She had given the soft kinds we have described, pleasing in food; she had painted remedies in the flowers and invited the spirit by the very sight, mixing aid with delights:
17| behold, she devised some bristling in appearance and fierce to the touch, so that we seem almost to hear her very voice as she forms them and gives her reason, lest the greedy four-footed creature graze them away, lest bold hands snatch them, lest neglected feet trample them, lest a bird settling on them break them, protecting them with prickles and arming them with barbs, so that they may be safe and sound for remedies. So even this, which we hate in them, was devised for the sake of men.
18| Foremost among the prickly plants in fame is erynge, or eryngion, which grows against serpents and all poisons. Against stings and bites its root is drunk, in the weight of a drachma, in wine, or, if a fever commonly accompanies such injuries, in water. It is applied to wounds, and is particularly effective against chersydri and frogs. The physician Heraclides thinks that, boiled in goose broth, it is more effective than all other remedies against toxica and aconites.
19| Apollodorus boils it with a frog against toxic poisons, the rest in water. The plant itself is hard, bushy, with thorny leaves and a jointed stalk, a cubit high and sometimes more, one kind whitish, another black, with a fragrant root. It is both cultivated and grows of itself in rough, rocky places, but on the sea shores it is harder and blacker, with the leaf of celery.
20| Of these our countrymen call the white one centum capita. All have the same effect, the stalk and root being taken into the food of the Greeks in either way, whether one likes to cook or to eat it raw. What is reported of it is portentous: that its root bears the likeness of one sex or the other, rarely found, but that if a male one falls to men, they become lovable; on this account Phaon of Lesbos was loved by Sappho, with much about this from the vanity not only of the Magi but also of the Pythagoreans.
21| But in medical use, besides what has been said above, it helps flatulence, colic, faults of the heart, the stomach, the liver, the midriff in honeyed water, the spleen in sour wine, and likewise, in honeyed wine, the kidneys, strangury, opisthotonos, spasms, the loins, the dropsical, epileptics, the menses of women, whether they are held back or abundant, and all faults of the womb. With honey it draws out things stuck in the body. It heals scrofulous swellings, swellings of the parotid glands, boils, and flesh withdrawing from the bones, with salted lard and cerate, and fractures also. Taken beforehand it wards off the sickness of overeating; it stops the bowels. Some of our countrymen have directed that it be gathered at the solstice and applied with rain water to all faults of the neck. Some have reported that, tied on, it heals the white spots of the eyes.
23| There are those who add acanus to eryngion, a thorny, short, broad herb with broader thorns. This, applied, wonderfully stops blood.
24| Others have falsely thought eryngen and glycyrrhiza to be the same, for which reason it is relevant to add it at once. It too is undoubtedly among the prickly plants, with spiny leaves, rich and gummy to the touch, bushy, two cubits high, with a flower like the hyacinth's and fruit of the size of the little balls of the plane. The best is in Cilicia, second in Pontus, with a sweet root, and this alone in use.
25| It is taken at the setting of the Pleiades, long, juicy like lycium, of a box-wood color; the better is the black, and that which is tough rather than that which is brittle. It is used, boiled down to a third, in the things put under the tongue, and the rest to the thickness of honey; sometimes also pounded, in which manner it is applied to wounds and all faults of the throat, and is most useful for the voice, its juice so thickened being put under the tongue, and likewise for the chest and liver. By this, we have said, thirst and hunger are allayed;
26| on that account some have called it adipson and have given it to the dropsical so that they may not thirst. Therefore, chewed, it is a mouth remedy for sores of the mouth; sprinkled on, it is often good for pterygia too. It heals scab of the bladder, pains of the kidneys, condylomata, sores of the genitals. Some have given it to drink in quartan fevers in the weight of two drachmas, with pepper, in a hemina of water. Chewed, it stops blood from a wound. There are those who have reported that stones are driven out by it.
27| Of tribulus one kind grows in gardens, another only in rivers. A juice is collected from them for eye medicines; for it is of a cooling nature and therefore useful against inflammations and gatherings. Ulcers breaking out of themselves, especially in the mouth, it heals with honey, and the tonsils likewise. Drunk, it breaks stones. The Thracians who live by the Strymon fatten horses on the leaves of tribulus, and themselves live on the kernel, making a very sweet bread, which constrains the belly. The root, gathered in chastity and purity, disperses scrofulous swellings; the seed, tied on, relieves the pains of varicose veins; pounded and sprinkled in water, it kills fleas.
28| Stoebe, which some call pheon, boiled in wine, cures especially suppurating ears, as well as eyes bloodied by a blow; poured in, it also helps hemorrhage and dysentery.
29| Hippophaes in sandy places by the sea has white thorns, is clustered in the manner of ivy, with whitish berries, in part reddening. The root is moist with a juice, which is stored either by itself or in lozenges of ervum meal. It draws off bile in the weight of an obol, most wholesomely with honeyed wine. There is another hippophaes, without stalk, without flower, with only small leaves. Its juice too is wonderfully good for the dropsical.
30| They ought to be suited also to the nature of horses, and not to have taken their name for any other reason. For some are born for the remedies of animals, with a divinity rich in producing defenses, so that there is no end to admiring the genius of her who arranges aids by kinds, by causes, by times, so that one thing helps in some hours and another in others, and almost no day is found without protections.
31| What can be more hated than the nettle? Yet it, apart from the oil which we said is made from it in Egypt, teems with very many remedies. Nicander affirms its seed to be contrary to hemlock, and to mushrooms, and to quicksilver; Apollodorus, that, cooked with tortoise broth, it is contrary to salamanders, and likewise to hyoscyamus and to serpents and scorpions. Indeed that very biting bitterness, by touch, forces the prolapsed uvula in the mouth, and the womb, and the seat of infants, to spring back, and the lethargic to wake when their legs, and more their forehead, are touched with it.
32| The same, with salt added, cures the bites of dogs; pounded and put into the nostrils it stops blood, and more so the root. With salt mixed in, it heals cancers and foul ulcers, and likewise dislocations and boils, swellings of the parotid glands, and flesh withdrawing from the bones. The seed, drunk with boiled-down must, opens the womb in those suffering suffocation. Applied, it stops fluxes of the nostrils. Taken after dinner in honeyed water it makes vomiting easy, in a dose of two obols, but one drunk in wine restores weariness.
33| For faults of the womb it is given roasted, in a measure of an acetabulum; drunk in boiled-down must, it resists flatulence of the stomach. It benefits those who struggle for breath, with honey, and clears the chest with the same electuary, and cures the side, with flaxseed. They add hyssop and a little pepper. It is applied to the spleen; roasted, it softens a difficult belly when taken in food.
34| Hippocrates declares that the womb is cleaned by drinking it, that pain is relieved by the roasted seed in a measure of an acetabulum, drunk in sweet wine and applied with juice of mallow, that the animals of the intestines are driven out with hydromel and salt, and that falling of the hair is made handsome again by the seed applied. For joint diseases and for the gouty very many apply it with old oil, or the leaves pounded with bear's fat. For the same purposes the root, pounded with vinegar, is no less useful, likewise for the spleen; boiled in wine it disperses boils, with old salted lard. The same, dry, is a depilatory.
35| Its praises were set down by the natural philosopher Phanias, who declared it most useful boiled or seasoned as food for the windpipe, cough, catarrh of the belly, stomach, boils, swellings of the parotid glands, chilblains; with oil it brings sweat, boiled with shellfish it moves the bowels, with barley gruel it clears the chest and the menses of women, and with salt it checks ulcers that spread.
36| Its juice too is in use. Pressed out and applied to the forehead, it stops bleeding of the nose; drunk, it stirs the urine, breaks stones, and when gargled restrains the uvula. The seed should be gathered at harvest. The Alexandrian is most praised. For all of these the milder and tender kinds are effective, but above all that wild one, and in addition it removes leprosies from the face when drunk in wine. If a four-footed female will not conceive, they show that nettle should be rubbed on the private parts.
37| That also which we called lamium among their kinds, very mild and with leaves that do not sting, cures, with a grain of salt, bruises and blows, burns, scrofulous swellings, tumors, gout, wounds. It has a white spot in the middle of the leaf, which cures erysipelas.
38| Some of our people have distinguished the kinds by season, and have reported that the root of the autumn nettle, tied on in tertian fevers in such a way that the sick are named when the root is dug up, and it is said for whom, and for the son of which parents, it is taken out, frees them of the disease; and that this same is effective also against quartans. The same say that, with salt added, the root of nettle draws out things stuck in the body, and that the leaves with lard disperse scrofulous swellings or, if they have suppurated, eat them out and fill them.
39| The herb scorpio took its name from its appearance. For it has a seed like the tail of a scorpion, and few leaves. It is of force against the creature of its name. There is another of the same name and effects, without leaves, with a stalk like asparagus, having a sting at the tip, and from that its name.
40| Leucacantha some call phyllon, others ischas, others polygonaton, with a root like cypirus, which, chewed, calms pains of the teeth, likewise of the sides and loins, as Hicesius reports, the seed being drunk in a dose of eight drachmas, or the juice. The same cures ruptures and convulsions.
41| Helxine some call perdicium, because partridges feed on it especially; others call it sideritis, some parthenium. It has leaves of a mixed likeness to plantago and horehound, dense stalks, slightly reddening, and seeds in burr-like heads clinging to clothes, from which they would have it called helxine. But what the true helxine is we have said in the previous book.
42| This one dyes wool, and heals erysipelas, tumors and all gatherings, and burns, and boils. Its juice with psimithium treats erysipelas and throats beginning to swell, and, drunk in a cyathus, old cough and all moist ailments, such as the tonsils and the ears, with rose oil. It is applied to the gouty with goat suet and Cyprian wax.
43| Perdicium, or parthenium, or sideritis too, is another; our countrymen call it herba urceolaris, others astercum; it is like ocimum in leaf, only darker, growing on tiles and old walls. With a grain of salt, pounded, it cures all the things that lamium does, and in the same manner; likewise abscesses of the lungs, the juice being warmed and drunk; but it is unique against sprains, ruptures, falls and headlong tumbles, such as upsets of carriages.
44| A house-born slave dear to Pericles, first citizen of the Athenians, when he was building the temple on the citadel and had crept up over the height of the pediment and fallen from there, is said to have been healed with this herb, shown to Pericles in a dream by Minerva; wherefore it began to be called parthenium and is assigned to that goddess. This is the house-slave whose likeness was cast in bronze, and that famous splanchnoptes.
45| Some call chamaeleon ixia. Of it there are two kinds: the whiter has rougher leaves, creeps on the ground raising its thorns like a hedgehog, with a sweet root and a heavy scent. In certain places it produces a white viscum under the armpits of the leaves, chiefly around the time the Dog Star rises, in the way frankincense is said to be born, whence also it is called ixia. Women use this as mastic. That it is called chamaeleon comes from the variety of its leaves; for it changes colors with the ground, here black, there green, elsewhere blue, elsewhere saffron and other colors.
46| Of these the white heals the dropsical by the juice of the boiled root; a drachma is drunk in raisin wine. It expels also the animals of the intestines, a measure of an acetabulum of the same juice in sharp wine with brooms of origanum. It is good for difficulty of urination. This juice kills dogs and pigs, put in pearl barley with water and oil added; it draws mice to it and kills them, unless they at once drink water. Some direct that its root be cut up and kept hanging on cords, and boiled in food against the fluxes the Greeks call rheumatisms.
47| Of the black, some have called the one with a purple flower male, and the one with a violet flower female; but they grow with one stalk a cubit long, the thickness of a finger. By their roots lichens are cured, boiled together with sulphur and bitumen, and loose teeth when chewed or boiled in vinegar. By the juice they heal scab, also of four-footed beasts. It kills also the ticks of dogs, and young oxen as in quinsy, whence some call it ulophyton, and also cynozolon for the heaviness of its smell. They report this too to bear a viscum most useful for ulcers. The roots of all its kinds are hostile to scorpions.
48| Coronopus is an oblong herb with clefts. It is sometimes sown, since its root, roasted in ashes, does excellent service for coeliac troubles. The root of anchusa also is in use, the thickness of a finger. It splits like papyrus and stains the hands with a blood-red color; it prepares wool for costly colors. It heals ulcers in cerate, especially those of the old, and burns likewise. It cannot be dissolved in water, but dissolves in oil, and this is the test of the pure.
49| A drachma of it in drink is also given for pains of the kidneys, in wine, or, should fever be present, in a decoction of balanus; likewise for faults of the liver and spleen and those suffused with bile. It is applied with vinegar to leprosies and freckles. The leaves, pounded with honey and meal, are applied to sprains, and drunk in honeyed wine in a dose of two drachmas they stop the bowels. The root boiled in water is reported to kill fleas.
50| There is another like it, called for that reason pseudoanchusa, but by some echis or doris and many other names, woollier and less fat, with thinner leaves, more drooping. Its root in oil does not pour out a reddening juice, and by this it is distinguished from anchusa. It is most effective against serpents, in a drink of the leaves or seed. The leaves are applied to stings. The smell drives away serpents. It is drunk also for a thorn. The Magi direct that its leaf be plucked with the left hand, and that it be said for whom it is taken, and tied on in tertian fevers.
51| There is another herb also with the proper name onochilon, which some call anchusa, others archebion, others onochelis, some rhexia, many enchrysa, a small shrub with a purple flower, rough leaves and branches, a root bloodred at harvest and otherwise black, growing in sandy places, effective against serpents and most of all vipers, with root and leaves, alike in food and drink. It has its strength at harvest. The leaves, pounded, give the smell of cucumber. It is given in three cyathi for a prolapsed womb.
52| It drives out tapeworms also, with hyssop, and for pain of the kidneys or liver it is drunk in honeyed water, if there is fever, but if not, in wine. The root is applied to freckles and leprosies. Those who have it are said not to be struck by serpents. There is also another like it, with a red flower, smaller, and itself for the same uses, and they say that if it is chewed and spat upon a serpent, the serpent dies.
53| Anthemis is celebrated with great praises by Asclepiades. Some call it leucanthemis, others leucanthemum, others eranthemis, because it flowers in spring; others chamaemelon, because it has the smell of an apple. Some call it melanthion. Its three kinds differ only in the leaf; not going beyond a palm's height, and with small leaves [….] of rue, white or apple-coloured or purple. It is gathered in spring on lean soil or beside footpaths and stored away for garlands. At the same season physicians also pound the leaves into lozenges, and likewise the flower and the root. All of them mixed together are given in a dose of one drachma against the stings of all serpents. They expel dead foetuses, and in a drink bring on the menses, urine and stones; applied, they relieve swellings, disorders of the liver, and bile spread beneath the skin and aegilopia; chewed, they heal weeping ulcerous eruptions. Of all these kinds the most effective for stones is the one that has a purple flower, in which the leaves and the shrub are rather large. Some call this one in particular eranthemis.
55| Those who think that the lotos is only a tree can be refuted even on the authority of Homer. For among the herbs growing up for the delight of the gods he named the lotos first. Its leaves with honey disperse scars of the eyes, argema and small clouds.
56| There is also the lotometra, which comes from the sown lotos, from whose seed, like crumbling millet, shepherds in Egypt make loaves, kneaded especially with water or milk. It is said that nothing is more wholesome or lighter than that bread, so long as it is warm. When cooled it is digested with more difficulty and becomes heavy. It is agreed that those who live on it are troubled neither by dysentery nor by tenesmus nor by other diseases of the belly. For that reason it is counted among their remedies.
57| The marvel of the heliotropium, which turns itself around with the sun even on a cloudy day, we have often mentioned; so great is its love of the star. At night, as if from longing, it draws in its blue flower. It has two kinds, the tricoccum and the helioscopium.
58| The latter is taller, although neither exceeds half a foot in height, and is branched from the lowest root. The seed is gathered in a little pod at harvest time. It grows only in rich soil, and above all cultivated soil; the tricoccum grows everywhere. I find that if it is boiled it is pleasing in food, and that in milk it loosens the bowels more agreeably, and that if the juice of the boiled plant is drunk it purges most effectively. The juice of the larger kind is taken in summer at the sixth hour and mixed with wine, which makes it stronger.
59| Mixed with rosaceum, it calms headaches. The juice of the leaf with salt removes warts, whence our people called it the wart herb, though it deserves to be named from other effects. For it also resists serpents and scorpions, taken in wine or honeyed water, as Apollophanes and Apollodorus report. The leaves applied relieve catarrhs of infants, which they call siriasis, and likewise contractions, even when this happens in the manner of the falling sickness. It is also very wholesome to bathe the mouth with the decoction. Drunk, it expels tapeworms and the gravel of the kidneys. If cumin is added, it breaks stones. It should be boiled with the root, which with the leaves and goat's tallow is smeared on gouty limbs.
60| The other kind, which we have called tricoccum and which is called by another name scorpiuron, has leaves that are smaller, and that also bend down toward the ground. Its seed has the shape of a scorpion's tail, whence the name. Its power is against all venomous creatures and phalangia, but especially against scorpions when applied. Those who carry it are not struck, and if someone draws a circle on the ground with a sprig of heliotropium, they say the scorpion does not go out of it; and if the herb is laid on it, or if it is so much as sprinkled with the wet herb, it dies at once. Four grains of the seed drunk are said to help in quartan fevers, and three in tertian, or if the herb itself, carried around three times, is placed under the head.
61| The seed also stimulates sexual desire, and with honey disperses panos. This heliotropium in particular pulls out warts by the root, and growths in the seat. The seed, applied and drunk, boiled in cock's broth or with beet and lentil, also draws out the corrupted blood of the spine and loins. The husk of the seed restores colour to bruised places. The Magi order that in quartan fevers heliotropium be tied on four times, in tertian three times, by the sick man himself, and that he pray to it that he will untie the knots once freed, and that he lie down without removing the herb.
62| Another marvel belongs to the adiantum: it is green in summer, does not wither in winter, repels water, and when sprinkled or dipped is like something dry (so great a separation is detected), whence its name, given by the Greeks to what is otherwise an ornamental shrub. Some call it callitrichon, others polytrichon, both from its effect. For it dyes the hair, and for this it is boiled in wine with celery seed added and a good deal of oil, to make the hair curly and thick; it also prevents it from falling out.
63| It has two kinds: the paler, and the black and shorter. The one that is larger, the polytrichon, some call trichomanes. The twigs of both shine with a black colour, and have leaves like fern, of which the lower are rough and dark, and all of them on opposite stalks, crowded facing one another; there is no root. It seeks shady rocks, the spray on walls, above all the caves of springs, and dripping stones, which is a wonder, since it does not feel water.
64| It expels stones from the body, and breaks them, wonderfully, especially the black one; for that reason, rather than because it grew on rocks, I should believe it was called saxifragum by our people. It is drunk in wine, as much as three fingers can pluck. They provoke urine, resist the poisons of serpents and spiders, and boiled in wine stop the bowels. A garland of them calms headaches. Against the bites of the scolopendra they are applied, to be removed often so that they do not burn; the same is done for alopecias. They disperse scrofulous swellings, scurf on the face, and weeping ulcers of the head.
65| A decoction of these is good for asthmatics, and for the liver and spleen, and for those with bile spread beneath the skin, and for dropsy. They are applied for strangury, and for the kidneys with wormwood. They bring on the afterbirth and the menses. Drunk in vinegar or in bramble juice they stop blood. Infants who have sores are also anointed with them together with rosaceum and wine. (The rank juice of the leaf, ground up in the urine of a boy not yet grown and applied with aphronitrum to the belly of women, is said to ensure that it does not become wrinkled.) They think that partridges and cocks become more pugnacious if these are added to their food, and that they are most useful to cattle.
66| Picris is named from its remarkable bitterness, as we have said; it has a round leaf. It removes warts excellently. Thesium also has a not dissimilar bitterness, but it purges the bowels, and for that use it is ground up in water.
67| Asphodelum is among the most famous of herbs, so that some have called it heroion; Hesiod said that it also grows in woods, and Dionysius that there is a male and a female. For wasted bodies and consumptives it is agreed that its bulbs boiled with tisana are most suitably given, and that bread made from them kneaded with flour is very wholesome. Nicander also prescribed, against serpents and scorpions, the stalk (which we have called anthericum), or else the seed or the bulbs, in wine, at three drachmas, and spread it beneath sleepers as a safeguard against these fears.
68| It is given also against marine venomous creatures and against land scolopendras. Snails in Campania pursue that stalk wonderfully and dry it up by sucking. The leaves too are applied in wine to the wounds made by venomous creatures. The bulbs, pounded with polenta, are applied to sinews and joints. It is also good to rub lichens with them cut up in vinegar, and likewise to lay them in water on putrefying ulcers, and on inflammations of the breasts and testicles.
69| Boiled in wine lees, they treat the epiphorae of the eyes, a small linen cloth being placed beneath. In almost any disease they use them boiled rather than raw; likewise for foul ulcers of the shins and for cracks of the body in any part, as a meal of the dried bulbs. They are gathered in autumn, when they are at their strongest. The juice too, pressed out of the pounded or boiled bulbs, with honey is useful for bodily pain, and the same with dry iris and a little salt for those who aim at a pleasant body odour.
70| The leaves, boiled in wine, treat both the conditions mentioned above and scrofulous swellings, panos, and ulcers on the face. The ash of the root corrects alopecias and cracks of the feet and the seat; the juice of the root boiled in oil treats chilblains and burns and heaviness of the ears, and is poured in from the opposite ear for toothache. The root drunk in moderation is good also for urine and the menses and pains of the side, and likewise for ruptures, convulsions and coughs, drunk in wine at the weight of a drachma. The same, chewed, also helps vomiting.
71| If the seed is taken, the belly is disturbed. Chrysermus cured parotid swellings with the root boiled in wine, and scrofulous swellings with it mixed with cachrys in wine. Some say that if the root is applied and part of it hung in smoke, and is taken down on the fourth day, the scrofulous swelling dries up together with the root. Diocles used it for gout in both ways, cooked and raw, and for chilblains boiled in oil; he gave it also to those with bile spread beneath the skin, in wine, and to dropsy sufferers. They have reported also that sexual desire is stirred in those who are anointed with it, or drink it, with wine and honey.
72| Xenocrates says that lichens, psorae and leprae are removed by the root boiled in vinegar, and likewise by the juice with hyoscyamus and liquid pitch, and also the ailments of the armpits and thighs; and that the hair becomes curlier, the head having first been shaved, if it is rubbed with that root; Simos says that the stones of the kidneys are expelled by the root boiled and drunk in wine. Hippocrates thinks that the seed should be given for attacks of the spleen. The root applied, or the juice of the boiled root, also restores hair to the sores and mange of beasts of burden. By the same, mice are driven away, and if their burrow is stopped up they die.
73| Some have supposed that asphodelum was called halimon by Hesiod, which I think false; for halimon has its own name, and it is itself the subject of no small confusion among authors. For some say that it is a dense shrub, white, without thorns, with leaves of the olive but softer; that these are cooked for the sake of food, and that by the root, drunk in honeyed water at the weight of a drachma, gripings are dispersed, and likewise ruptures and convulsions.
74| Others have said that it is a salty sea vegetable, whence the name, with leaves long in roundness, praised as food. Moreover, there are two kinds, wild and gentler, and either is good for dysenterics, even ulcerated ones, with bread, and for the stomach with vinegar. They say that it is applied raw to old ulcers, and soothes the violent pain of fresh wounds and the pains of sprained feet and of the bladder. The wild kind has thinner leaves, but in the same remedies its effects are greater, as also in curing the mange of men and cattle.
75| Besides, a gloss comes to the body and whiteness to the teeth if they are rubbed with that root, and thirst is not felt if the seed is put under the tongue. It is also eaten, and both kinds are even pickled. Crateuas has reported a third kind too, with longer and hairier leaves, with the smell of cypress, growing chiefly under ivy, good for opisthotonos and contractions of the sinews, at three obols to a sextarius of water.
76| Of acanthus, an ornamental and city herb with a broad long leaf that clothes the edges of borders and the swellings of rising cushions of ground, there are two kinds: the prickly and the curly, which is shorter; the other is smooth, which some call paederos, others melamphyllum. Its roots are wonderfully good for burns and sprains, likewise for ruptures and convulsions, and for those who fear consumption, taken as food boiled, especially with tisana. They are also applied to gouty limbs, pounded and warmed, hot with salt.
77| Bupleuron the Greeks count among the vegetables that grow wild; it has a stalk a cubit high, many long leaves, and a head like dill. It is praised as food by Hippocrates, and in medicine by Glaucon and Nicander. The seed is effective against serpents. The leaves, or the juice in wine, they apply to bring on the afterbirth in women, and for scrofulous swellings the leaves with salt and wine. The root is given against serpents in wine, and to provoke urine.
78| Buprestis, with great inconsistency, the Greeks have counted among the praises of foods, and the same people have handed down remedies for it as if against poison. The very name is evidence that it is certainly poison for oxen, which they admit burst open when they have tasted it. For that reason I shall say no more about this either. As if there were any reason to point out poisons among the garlands of grass! Unless to someone it seems worth seeking for the sake of lust, which they think is not otherwise kindled more than by drinking it.
79| Elaphoboscon is like a giant fennel, jointed, the thickness of a finger, with seed in hanging clusters like that of sili, but not bitter, and the leaves of olusatrum. This too is praised as food (it is even kept longer when pickled), for provoking urine, for calming pains of the side, for healing ruptures and convulsions, for dispersing swellings and colic gripings, and against the stings of serpents and of all creatures that sting, since the report is that stags with this fodder resist serpents. The root, with nitrum added, applied also heals fistulas, but for this use it must first be dried so that it is not moist with its own juice, which does not make it worse against the stings of serpents.
80| Scandix also the Greeks place among wild vegetables, as Ophion and Erasistratus report. Likewise, boiled, it stops the bowels, and the seed immediately calms hiccups, with vinegar. It is applied to burns, and provokes urine. The juice of the boiled plant is good for the stomach, liver, kidneys and bladder. This is what Aristophanes jokingly throws at the poet Euripides: that his mother sold not even a lawful vegetable, but scandix.
81| The same was enthryscum, if it had more tender and sweeter-smelling leaves. Its particular praise is that it comes to the aid of a body wearied by sexual intercourse, and rouses to intercourse men already languishing with age. It stops the white discharges of women.
82| Iasine too is counted a wild vegetable, creeping on the ground, with much milk, bearing a white flower; they call it conchylium. And its recommendation is the same, for stimulating intercourse. Raw, in vinegar, in food, it provides women with abundance of milk. It is beneficial to those who feel the onset of consumption. Applied to the heads of infants, it nourishes the hair and makes the skin of the head firmer.
83| Caucalis is also eaten, like fennel, with a short stalk and white flower, good for the heart. Its juice too is drunk, highly recommended for the stomach and for expelling urine, stones and gravel, and for itching of the bladder. It reduces the phlegm of the spleen, the liver and the kidneys. The seed helps the menses of women and dries up the bile after childbirth. It is given also to men against discharges of the seed. Chrysippus thinks it contributes much to conception. It is drunk in wine by those fasting. It is also applied against the poisons of marine creatures, as Petrichus indicates in his poem.
84| To these they add sium also, broader than celery, growing in water, richer and darker, abundant in seed, with the taste of nasturtium. It is good for urine, kidneys, spleen and the menses of women, whether taken itself as food, or the broth of it boiled, or the seed in wine at two drachmas. It breaks stones and resists the waters that produce them. Poured in, it is good for dysenterics; applied, for freckles, and for the ailments of women's faces, applied at night; and with lomentum it improves the skin and soothes ramices, and the mange of horses too.
85| Sillybum, like the white chamaeleon, equally thorny, is not thought worth cooking even in Cilicia or Syria or Phoenicia, where it grows. So laborious, it is reported, is its cookery. In medicine it has no use.
86| Scolymus also the East takes into its foods, and by another name calls it limonia. It is a shrub never higher than a cubit, forbidding with the spines of its leaves, with a black but sweet root, praised even by Eratosthenes in a poor man's dinner. It is reported especially to provoke urine, to heal lichens and leprae in vinegar, and to stimulate sexual desire in wine, with Hesiod and Alcaeus as witnesses, who wrote that when it is in flower the cicadas have their shrillest song, and women are most greedy of lust and men most sluggish for intercourse, as if by the foresight of nature this help were then most potent.
87| Likewise, the foul smell of the armpits is corrected by an ounce of the root with its pith removed, boiled down to one third in three heminae of Falernian wine and drunk one cyathus at a time by the fasting person after the bath, and likewise after food. It is a marvel, what Xenocrates promises from experience, that this fault flows away from the armpits through the urine.
88| Sonchos is also eaten (as that which Hecale in Callimachus sets before Theseus), both the white and the black. Both are like lettuces, except that they are thorny, with a stalk a cubit high, angular, hollow inside, but which when broken stays full of abundant milk. The white, whose gloss comes from the milk, is useful for those with orthopnoea, in the manner of lettuces, from the embamma. Erasistratus shows that stones are expelled through the urine by it, and that foul breath is corrected when it is chewed.
89| The juice, in a measure of three cyathi, warmed in white wine and oil, helps childbirth so that pregnant women walk after drinking it. It is given also in a gruel. The stalk itself, boiled, produces abundance of milk in nurses and a better colour in infants, and is most useful to those who feel their milk curdling. The juice is dropped into the ears, and warm it is drunk in strangury in the measure of a cyathus, and, where the stomach is gnawed by pain, with cucumber seed and pine kernels.
90| It is applied also to collections in the seat. It is drunk against serpents and scorpions, and the root is applied. The same, boiled in oil with the calyx of the pomegranate, is a safeguard in diseases of the ears. All this is said of the white. Cleemporus forbids eating the black, as causing diseases, agreeing about the white. Agathocles also shows its juice against the blood of the bull, though it is agreed that the black has a cooling power, and for this reason is to be applied with polenta. Zenon recommends the root of the white in strangury.
91| Condrion, or condrille, has the leaves of endive, like gnawed ones, a stalk less than a foot, wet with a bitter juice, and a root like a bean, sometimes numerous. Next to the ground it has a mastiche with a little knob like a bean, which, applied, is said to draw down the menses of women. The whole, pounded with the roots, is divided into lozenges against serpents, on a probable argument, since field mice that have been hurt by these are said to eat this plant. The juice of it boiled in wine stops the bowels. The same, in place of gum, most effectively sets in order the most disordered hairs of the eyelids. Dorotheus in his poems pronounced it useful to the stomach and to digestion. Otherwise they have thought it hostile to women, to the eyes, and to the generation of men.
92| Among the things that are eaten heedlessly I should rightly place boleti too, a rich food indeed, but brought into disrepute by an immense example, poison having been given by this means to the emperor Tiberius Claudius by his wife Agrippina, by which deed she gave to the world another poison, and to herself above all her Nero. The poisons of some of them are easily recognized by a diluted redness, a rancid look, a livid colour within, a cracked streak, and a pale rim around the edge.
93| These signs are not present in some, and these, dry and looking like the genuine kind, carry, as it were, white drops on the top from their own covering. For the earth first produces a volva for this purpose, and the boletus itself afterwards within the volva, as the yolk is in an egg. Nor is the covering less welcome in the food of the infant boletus. This is broken when it first comes up, and soon, as it grows, is consumed into the body of the stalk; and it is rare for a twin to grow from one foot.
94| The first origin and cause is from the mud and sourish juice of moist earth, or from a root, usually of an acorn-bearing tree; at the beginning there is a rather sticky foam, then a body like a membrane, soon the offspring, as we have said. How many different signs there are for proving those deadly ones! If the nail of a shoemaker's boot, or some rust of iron, or the mouldiness of cloth was present at its birth, who but countrymen, and the gatherers themselves, can have found that every alien juice and flavour is immediately concocted into poison?
95| Other faults not even these can detect, if the lair of a serpent has been nearby, if it has breathed on the boletus as it first opens, since its kinship with poisons makes it apt to take up the venom. It would therefore be advisable to be on guard before the serpents hide themselves. The signs will be so many herbs, so many trees and shrubs, from their emerging up to the hiding place, remaining green, and even the leaves of the ash alone neither growing afterwards nor falling before. And boleti indeed have their whole rising and setting within seven days.
96| The nature of fungi is slower and the kinds numerous, but their origin is only from the phlegm of trees. The safest are those that are red with a thick skin, with a less diluted redness than boleti; next the white, with a stalk marked like the cap of a flamen; the third kind is the suilli, most suited to poisons. Recently they have killed households and whole banquets, Annaeus Serenus, prefect of Nero's watch, and tribunes and centurions.
97| What pleasure is there in so doubtful a food? Some have distinguished them by the kinds of trees, approving those from the fig, the giant fennel and gum-bearing trees, but not likewise those from the yew, the oak or the cypress, as we have said. But who vouches for these things in the market? The colour of all is livid; this will have its evidence of poison, the more it resembles the bark of trees. Against these we have spoken of remedies and shall speak;
98| meanwhile there are some remedies in them too. Glaucias thinks boleti useful to the stomach. Suilli are dried hung up, pierced through with a rush, such as come from Bithynia. These treat flowings of the belly, which they call rheumatismoi, and fleshy growths in the seat; for they diminish them and in time consume them, likewise freckles and the ailments of women's faces. They are even washed, like lead, for use in medicines for the eyes. For foul ulcers and eruptions of the head and the bites of dogs they are applied in water.
99| It is a pleasure also to give some observations common to all this kind in cooking, since the gourmets themselves prepare this food alone with their own hands and feast beforehand on the thought of it, with amber knives or silver equipment accompanying. Harmful will be the fungi that become harder in cooking; more harmless those cooked with nitrum added, at any rate if they are cooked thoroughly. They become safer cooked with meat or with the stalk of a pear tree; pears also help if eaten at once. And the nature of vinegar, contrary to them, overcomes them.
100| All these come with rains; with rain too silphium first came, as has been said. From Syria it is now chiefly imported, inferior to the Parthian, but better than the Median, all the Cyrenaic having been destroyed, as we said. The use of silphium in medicine is of the leaves, for purging the womb and expelling dead foetuses; they are boiled in white, fragrant wine, to be drunk in the measure of an acetabulum after the baths. The root is good for roughened windpipes, and is applied to collections of blood. But in foods it is digested with difficulty, causes swellings and belching. It is harmful also to urine; it is a great friend, with wine and oil, to bruises, and with wax to scrofulous swellings. Warts of the seat fall off from frequent fumigation with it.
101| Laser, flowing from silphium in the way we described, counted among the choice gifts of nature, is put into very many compounds; by itself, however, it warms chills, and drunk it thins disorders of the sinews. It is given to women in wine, and applied to the womb on soft wool to bring on the menses. Mixed with wax, it draws out corns of the feet that have been cut around with iron. Dissolved in a quantity the size of a chickpea, it provokes urine.
102| Andreas promises that when taken in fairly large amount it does not cause swellings and contributes very greatly to digestion in old men and women, and likewise that it is more useful in winter than in summer, and then for those who drink water. One must take care that there is no ulceration within. For recovery from sickness it is effective in food; for given in good time it has the force of cautery, more useful even to those accustomed to it than to those without experience of it.
103| Its effects on the exterior of the body have undoubted testimony: drunk, it extinguishes the poisons of missiles and serpents; with water it is smeared around these wounds, but only on the blows of scorpions with oil; on ulcers that do not ripen, with barley meal or dried fig; on carbuncles, spread over them with rue or with honey or by itself with birdlime so that it sticks; so too for the bites of a dog; for growths around the seat, boiled with the rind of a pomegranate in vinegar; for the corns commonly called morticina, mixed with nitrum.
104| It fills alopecias that have first been worked over with nitrum, using wine and saffron or pepper and mouse dung and vinegar. It treats chilblains in wine, and boiled in oil; so applied it is put also on a callus, the corns of the feet having been pared down. It is of especial use against bad waters and pestilential regions or days; in cough, and for the uvula; for old suffusion of bile, for the dropsical, for hoarseness; for it purges the throat at once and restores the voice.
105| Gout it relieves, dissolved in vinegar-water on a sponge. To pleurisy patients who are about to drink wine, it is given in a gruel; to those with contractions and opisthotonos, smeared around with wax, to the size of a chickpea. In angina it is used as a gargle. To those who pant, and in an old cough, it is given with leek in vinegar; with vinegar also to those who have swallowed curdled milk, for wasting disorders of the midriff, with wine for epileptics, in honeyed water for paralysis of the tongue. For sciatica and pains of the loins it is applied with boiled honey.
106| I should not recommend what the authorities advise, that it be put in the hollows of teeth in pain and sealed in with wax, given the great experience of a man who for this reason threw himself down from a height. For it inflames bulls when smeared on their nostrils, and mixed with wine it bursts serpents, which are most greedy for wine; therefore I should not advise anointing with it either, though they prescribe it with Attic honey. What uses it has mixed with others is immense to relate, and we treat simples, since in these nature is evident, while in the others there is conjecture, more often deceptive, no one having kept sufficiently the harmony and the conflict of nature in mixtures. More on this matter shortly.
107| The authority of honey would be no lower in price than that of laser, were it not produced everywhere. Nature herself made the latter, but for producing honey, as we have said, an animal; its uses are countless, if we count how often it is mixed. First, the propolis of the hives, of which we have spoken, draws out stings and everything lodged in the body, disperses tumours, ripens hard swellings, soothes pains of the sinews, and closes into a scar ulcers already despaired of.
108| The nature of honey itself is such that it does not allow bodies to putrefy. With a pleasant taste, not harsh, unlike the nature of salt, it is most useful for the throat, the tonsils, angina and all desires of the mouth, and for the tongue drying in fevers; further, boiled, for sufferers from peripneumonia and pleurisy, and likewise for wounds, for those struck by a serpent and against poisons and fungi, and for paralytics in mulsum, although the endowments of mulsum are established in their own right. Honey is dropped into the ears with rosaceum, and kills nits and the foul vermin of the head.
109| The use of honey that has been skimmed is always more suitable, yet it inflates the stomach, increases bile, and creates disgust. Some think it of no use for the eyes by itself; again some advise that ulcerated corners of the eyes be touched with honey. The causes, differences and kinds of honey, and its indication, we have given in dealing with bees and then with the nature of flowers, when the plan of the work compelled us to divide the subject; those who wish to know the nature of things thoroughly must in turn mix them.
110| Among the works of honey honeyed water too must be treated. It has two kinds, one made suddenly and fresh, the other aged. The sudden kind, with skimmed honey, has an excellent use in the light food of the sick, that is, washed alica, for restoring strength, soothing the mouth and stomach, and cooling burning heat. For it is more useful given cold for softening the belly. I find in the authorities that the decoction is to be drunk by those sensitive to cold, and likewise by those of low and over-thrifty spirit, whom they called micropsychoi.
111| There is a reasoning of immense subtlety, descending from Plato, in the small bodies of things, smooth and rough, angular and round, which approach the nature of others more or less, and that therefore the same things are not bitter or sweet to all; so too, in weariness and in thirst people are more inclined to anger. Therefore this roughness of mind, or rather of the soul, is softened by a sweeter juice, the passage of the breath being eased and the channel made softer, so that it does not tear the breath as it goes and returns. Each has the experiments in himself: the anger and grief of everyone, sadness, and every impulse of the mind are softened by food, and therefore those things must be observed which have a medicine not only for bodies but for characters.
112| Honeyed water is reported useful also to those who cough; warmed, it invites vomiting; it is a safeguard against the poison of psimithium with oil added, likewise against that of hyoscyamus, especially with asses' milk, and against halicacabum, as we have said. It is poured also into the ears and into fistulas of the genitals. It is applied to the womb with soft bread, and for sudden swellings, for dislocations, and for soothing everything. The use of the aged kind later authors condemned, as less harmless than water and less strong than wine; yet with long age it passes into wine, as is agreed among all, most useless to the stomach and contrary to the sinews.
113| Mulsum made with old wine is always the most useful, and it blends most easily with honey, which never happens with sweet wine. Made from austere wine it does not inflate the stomach, nor does that made from boiled honey, and it fills less, which usually happens; it also recalls the eagerness for appetite for food. It softens the belly when drunk cold, and for many stops it when drunk hot; it increases the body.
114| Many have borne a long old age on mulsum alone, in a gruel, and no other food, by the famous example of Pollio Romilius. When he was past his hundredth year, the deified Augustus, his guest, asked him by what regimen above all he had preserved that vigour of mind and body. And he answered: mulsum within, oil without. Varro reports that the jaundiced disease is called regius, because it is cured by mulsum.
115| How melitites is made from must and honey we explained in our account of wine. I do not think that in these times this kind is made, being prone to cause swellings. Yet when aged it used to be given for the sake of the belly in fever, and likewise to those suffering from joint disease and weakness of the sinews, and to women who abstain from wine.
116| Joined to the nature of honey is wax, of whose origin, goodness and kinds we have spoken in their places. All wax softens, warms and fills bodies. The fresh is better. It is given in a gruel to dysenterics, and the honeycombs themselves in a porridge of alica first toasted. It opposes the nature of milk, and ten grains of wax, the size of millet, swallowed do not allow milk to curdle in the stomach. If the groin swells, it is a remedy to fix white wax on the pubes.
117| Nor could medicine enumerate the uses of this, which it provides mixed with others, any more than of the other things that are good with others. These, as we have said, depend on human ingenuity. Wax salve, malagmata, plasters, eye salves and antidotes were not made by that parent, the divine artificer of things; they are the inventions of the workshops, or rather, more truly, of avarice. The works of nature, indeed, are born complete and perfect, a few things being taken from reason, not from conjecture, as when dry things are tempered with some juice for the passages, or moist things with another body for the joints.
118| To collect and mix powers scruple by scruple is not the work of human conjecture, but of shamelessness. We do not touch the medicines of Indian and Arabian merchandise or of the outer world. Remedies born so far away do not please us; they are not produced for us, nay, not even for those who sell them; otherwise they would not sell them. Let them be bought for the sake of perfumes and ointments and luxuries, if you like, even for the sake of superstition, since we make supplication with incense and costus. That health can stand without those things we shall prove, if only for this, that men may be the more ashamed of their luxuries.
119| But having followed medicines from flowers and garlands and garden plants and the herbs that are eaten, in what way do we omit the grains? Surely it is fitting to point these out also. First, it is agreed that the wisest of animals are those that feed on grain. Grains of siligo, burnt and ground in Aminnean wine and smeared on the eyes, calm epiphorae, and those of wheat burnt with iron are an immediate remedy for places that cold has burnt.
120| Wheat flour cooked in vinegar helps with contractions of the sinews; and with rosaceum and dried fig and boiled myxa plums, the bran is good as a gargle for the tonsils and throat. Sextus Pomponius, father of a man of praetorian rank, a leading man of Hispania Citerior, when he was overseeing the winnowing of his granaries, was seized by pain of gout and plunged himself above the knees into the wheat, and, his feet dried out, he was relieved in a wonderful manner and afterwards used this remedy.
121| Its power is so great that it dries up full jars. Straw too, of wheat or barley, hot, those who have tried it order to be applied for the troubles of ramices, and to foment them with the water it was boiled in. In spelt there is a little worm like a woodworm, which, when shut with wax into hollows of the teeth, is said to make the diseased teeth fall out, even if they are only rubbed. Olyra we have said is called arinca. From this, boiled, is made a medicine which the Egyptians call athera, very useful to infants, but they smear adults with it too.
122| Barley meal, both raw and boiled, disperses collections and violent inflammations, soothes and ripens. It is boiled sometimes in honeyed water or dried fig; but for pains of the liver, when the pus needs to be ripened, in wine; when the aim lies between ripening and dispersing, then it is better in vinegar or in the dregs of vinegar or with boiled quinces or pears; for the bites of the multipeda with honey, for those of serpents in vinegar, and against suppurating things; for drawing out suppurations, in vinegar-water with Gallic resin added;
123| for ripening, and for old ulcers, with resin; for hardnesses, with pigeon dung or dried fig or ash; for inflammations of the sinews or pains of the intestines or sides, with poppy or melilot, and whenever the flesh recedes from the bones; for scrofulous swellings, with pitch and the urine of a boy not yet grown, with oil; with fenugreek against swellings of the midriff, or in fevers with honey or old fat. For suppurations, wheat meal is much gentler.
124| It is applied to the sinews with the juice of hyoscyamus, and with vinegar and honey to freckles. Meal of zea, from which we said alica is made, seems even more effective than barley meal; that of three-month wheat is softer; it is used lukewarm in red wine for the blows of scorpions and for those who spit blood, and likewise for the windpipe, in cough, with goat's tallow or butter.
125| The kind from fenugreek, the softest of all, heals weeping ulcers and scurf of the body, pains of the stomach, and the feet and breasts, boiled with wine and nitrum. The aerina cleans old ulcers and gangrenes more than the others, with radish and salt; with vinegar it treats lichens, with live sulphur leprae, and with goose fat applied to the forehead it treats headaches. It ripens scrofulous swellings and panos, boiled with pigeon dung and linseed in wine.
126| Of the kinds of polenta we have said enough in the place of the grains. In the reckoning of physicians it differs from barley meal in that it is toasted, and for this reason is useful to the stomach. It stops the bowels and the attacks of red swelling; it is applied to the eyes and to headache with mint or another cooling herb, likewise to chilblains and the blows of serpents, likewise to burns in wine, and it holds back pustules.
127| Meal worked down to fine flour has the power of drawing out moisture, so that for those suffused with blood it brings the blood out as far as the bandages, more effectively in sapa. It is applied also to a callus of the feet and to corns. For with old oil and pitch, the fine flour boiled, condylomata and all other ailments of the seat are cured in a wonderful way, applied as hot as possible. By porridge the body is increased. The meal with which papers are glued is given lukewarm to those who spit blood, to be sipped, with good effect.
128| Alica is a Roman thing and not long ago devised; otherwise the Greeks would not have written the praises of tisana rather than of it. I think it was not yet in use in the age of Pompey the Great, and for that reason scarcely anything about it was written by the school of Asclepiades. That it is exceptionally useful no one doubts, whether it is given washed in honeyed water, or boiled in a gruel, or in a porridge.
129| The same, for stopping the bowels, is toasted and then cooked with the wax of honeycombs, as we said above. It comes to the aid in particular of those reduced to wasting by a long illness, three cyathi of it being boiled slowly in a sextarius of water until all the water is used up, afterwards a sextarius of sheep's or goat's milk being added, for continuous days [….], then honey added. By this kind of gruel wasting is corrected.
130| With millet the belly is stopped and gripings dispersed, and for this use it is toasted first. For pains of the sinews and others it is applied boiling in a bag, and nothing is more useful, since it is the lightest and softest and holds heat best. Thus its use is of this kind for everything for which heat will be of benefit. Its meal with liquid pitch is applied to the blows of serpents and of the multipeda.
131| Panicum the physician Diocles called the honey of the grains. It has the effects of millet. Drunk in wine it is good for dysenterics. Similarly it is applied warmed to things that need steaming. Boiled in goat's milk and drunk twice daily, it stops the belly. So it is good also for gripings.
132| Sesame, ground and taken in wine, holds back vomiting. It is applied to inflammation of the ears and to burns. It has the same effect while still green in the blade. Further, boiled in wine it is applied to the eyes. In foods it is useless to the stomach and makes the breath heavy. It resists the bites of stellions, and ulcers which they call cacoethe, and we have said that the oil made from it is good for the ears.
133| Sesamoides has received its name from the resemblance, with a bitter grain and smaller leaf. It grows in gravelly places. The seed drunk in water draws off bile; it is applied to erysipelas and disperses panos. There is still another sesamoides, growing at Anticyra, which some therefore call Anticyricon, in other respects like the herb erigeron, of which we shall speak in its place, with a sesame grain. It is given in sweet wine for purgings, as much as is taken in three fingers. They mix in it there one and a half obols of white hellebore, using that purgation especially for melancholic madness, for epileptics, and for gout. And by itself at the weight of a drachma it empties the body.
134| The best barley is the whitest. The juice of it boiled in rain water is made into lozenges, to be poured into ulcerated intestines and wombs. Its ash is applied to burns, and to flesh that withdraws from the bones, and to eruptions of phlegm, and to the bites of the shrew-mouse. The same, with salt and honey sprinkled on, produces whiteness in the teeth and sweetness of the mouth.
135| They say that those who use barley bread are not attacked by disease of the feet. If someone passes round a boil with nine grains, three times with each grain, with the left hand, and throws them all into the fire, they say it is cured at once. There is also an herb called phoenice by the Greeks, by our people mouse barley; this ground and drunk in wine is excellent for bringing on the menses.
136| The praises of tisana, which is made from barley, Hippocrates set down in one volume, which now all pass to alica. How much more harmless alica is! Hippocrates nevertheless praised it for the sake of the gruel, since being slippery it was easily swallowed, since it kept off thirst, since it did not swell in the belly, since it was easily passed. For those accustomed to it, this food alone could be given twice a day in fever, being so far removed from those who practise medicine by hunger. Yet he forbade giving the whole of the gruel, or anything else than the juice of the tisana; likewise he forbade, as long as the feet were cold, that even a drink should then be given. A stickier kind is also made from wheat, more useful for an ulcerated windpipe.
137| Amylum dulls the eyes, and is bad for the gullet, contrary to what is believed. Likewise it stops the belly, holds back epiphorae of the eyes and heals ulcers, likewise pustules and flows of blood. It softens hardened eyelids. It is given with egg to those who have spat blood, but for pain of the bladder half an ounce of amylum with an egg and three eggs of passum, lightly warmed after the bath. Further, oat meal boiled in vinegar removes moles.
138| This bread itself, by which we live, contains almost countless medicines. With water and oil or rosaceum it softens collections; with honeyed water it greatly relieves hardnesses; with wine it disperses, or checks what needs to be checked, and if still more is needed, with vinegar, against sharp flows of phlegm, which the Greeks call rheumatismoi, likewise for blows and dislocations; for all these, however, the fermented bread, which is called autopyrus, is more useful. It is applied also to paronychiae and to a callus of the feet, in vinegar. Old or ship's bread, pounded and baked again, stops the belly.
139| For those zealous for the voice, and against catarrhs, it is most useful to have it dry as the first food. Sitanius, that is, bread made of three-month wheat, applied to the face when it is beaten or scaly, with honey, cures it most suitably. White bread soaked in hot or cold water gives the sick the lightest food. It is applied to a swelling of the eyes in wine; so too to pustules of the head, or with dry myrtle added. For those who tremble they show that bread should be eaten in water, fasting, immediately after the baths. Moreover, burnt it corrects the heaviness of smells in bedrooms, and added to the wine strainers it corrects wine.
140| The bean too gives help. For whole, parched and boiling hot, thrown into sharp vinegar, it cures gripings. In food, crushed and cooked with something else, it is taken as daily food against hopeless coughs and suppurations of the chest, and chewed with the mouth fasting, it is applied also to ripen or disperse boils, and boiled in wine for swellings of the testicles and the genitals.
141| With lomentum boiled in vinegar it also ripens and opens swellings, and cures bruises and burns. That it is good for the voice, Marcus Varro is the authority. The ash too of bean stalks and pods is good for the hips, and for old pains of the sinews, with old pig's fat. By themselves the husks boiled down to a third stop the belly.
142| The best lentil is the one that cooks most easily and that which absorbs most water. It dulls the sharpness of the eyes and inflates the stomach, but stops the belly in food, and more when thoroughly boiled in rain water; the same, less thoroughly cooked, loosens it. It bursts pustules of ulcers; it cleanses and draws together the things within the mouth. Applied, it calms all collections, and especially ulcerated and cracked places; for epiphorae of the eyes, with melilot or quince. With polenta it is applied against suppurating sores.
143| The juice of the boiled lentil is applied to ulcerations of the mouth and the genitals, for the seat with rosaceum or quince, and in cases that demand a sharper remedy, with the rind of the pomegranate and a little honey added. To prevent it quickly drying out, they add beet leaves as well. It is applied also to scrofulous swellings, panos, whether ripe or ripening, boiled in vinegar, to cracks in honeyed water and to gangrenes with the rind of the pomegranate; likewise to gout with polenta, and to the womb and kidneys, chilblains, and ulcers slow to form a scar.
144| For looseness of the stomach 30 grains of lentil are swallowed. In cholera also and dysentery it is more effective boiled in three waters, and in this use it is always better to toast it first and pound it so that it is given as fine as possible, either by itself or with quince or pears or myrtle or wild endive or black beet or plantain. It is bad for the lung and for headache and for all the sinewy parts and for the gall, nor is it easy for sleep, but boiled in sea water it is useful for pustules and erysipelas and the breasts, and in vinegar it disperses hardnesses and scrofulous swellings.
145| For the sake of the stomach it is sprinkled into drinks in the way of polenta. For burnt places they use it half-cooked in water, afterwards ground and the bran poured out through a sieve, then, as the treatment advances, with honey added. It is boiled in vinegar-water for the throat. There is also a marsh lentil, growing by itself in standing water, of a cooling nature, and for that reason it is applied to collections and above all to gout, both by itself and with polenta. It glues together also intestines that have prolapsed.
146| There is a wild elelisphacos, so called by the Greeks, called by others sphacos, lighter than the sown lentil, with a smaller leaf, drier and more fragrant. There is also another kind of it, wilder, with a heavy smell; this gentler one has leaves in the form of the quince, but smaller and white, which are boiled with the twigs. It provokes the menses and urine, and heals the stings of the sea pastinaca, but spreads numbness over the place struck. It is drunk with wormwood also for dysentery.
147| With wine the same draws down delayed menses, and checks excessive ones by a drink of its decoction. The herb applied by itself restrains the blood of wounds. It cleanses also the bites of serpents and, if it is boiled in wine, calms itching of the testicles. The herbalists of our time call it elelisphacum in Greek, salvia in Latin; it is like mint, hoary, fragrant. By applying it they draw out dead foetuses, and likewise worms from ulcers and ears.
148| Cicer exists also wild, similar in the leaves, with a heavy smell. If taken more freely, the belly is loosened and flatulence and gripings are brought on. Toasted it is held to be more wholesome. Cicercula is still more effective for the belly. The meal of either heals weeping ulcers of the head, the wild more effectively, likewise epileptics and swellings of the liver and the stings of serpents.
149| It provokes the menses and urine, especially the grain. It corrects also lichens and inflammations of the testicles, the regius morbus, and dropsy. All these kinds harm an ulcerated bladder and kidneys. They are more useful for gangrenes, with honey, and for the ulcers called cacoethe. For warts of every kind, at the first moon they touch each wart with a single grain, and tie those grains in a small cloth and throw them behind them, thinking that the fault is thus put to flight.
150| Our people prescribe that the arietinum be boiled down in water with salt, and from it two cyathi be drunk at a time in difficulties of urine; so too stones are expelled, and the regius morbus. The leaves and twigs of the same, boiled in water as hot as possible, relieve diseases of the feet, and so does the chickpea itself, hot and ground, applied. The water of the boiled columbinum is believed to lessen the shivering of tertian and quartan fever. The black kind, ground with half a gall-nut, treats ulcers of the eyes, in passum.
151| Of ervum we have said certain things in mentioning it, and the ancients attributed to it no less power than to cabbage against the stings of serpents, in vinegar, and for the bite of crocodiles and of men. If someone eats ervum daily, fasting, the most reliable authorities affirm that his spleen is consumed. Its meal corrects pimples, and also blemishes of the skin over the whole body. It does not allow ulcers to creep, and is most effective on the breasts.
152| It bursts carbuncles, in wine. Difficulties of urine, swelling, ailments of the liver, tenesmus, and those conditions in which people take no nourishment from food, called atrophia, it corrects, toasted and gathered with honey to the size of a hazelnut and swallowed; likewise impetigines, boiled in vinegar and loosed on the fourth day. Laid on panos in honey, it prevents them from suppurating.
153| The water of its decoction cures chilblains and itching by bathing. Further, they think that the colour of the whole body becomes better if someone drinks it daily, fasting. As food it is likewise unsuited to man. It moves vomiting, disturbs the belly, is burdensome to the head and stomach, and weighs down the knees too. But steeped for several days it grows mild, and it is most useful to cattle and beasts of burden. Its pods, green before they harden, ground with their own stalk and leaves, dye the hair a black colour.
154| Lupines also are wild, smaller in every way except in bitterness. Of all that are eaten dry, none has less weight nor more usefulness. They grow mild with hot ash or water. Eaten frequently they brighten a man's colour; the bitter ones are effective against asps. Dry, hulled and ground, with a cloth placed beneath, they bring black ulcers back to living flesh. Boiled in vinegar they disperse scrofulous swellings and parotid swellings.
155| The juice of those boiled, with rue and pepper, even in fever, is given to drive out the creatures of the belly in persons under 30 years; to boys, even applied to the belly while fasting, they are good, and toasted in another manner or drunk in defrutum or taken in honey. The same produce an appetite for food and remove disgust. Their meal worked up with vinegar and applied in the baths holds back papules and itching and by itself dries ulcers. It corrects bruises, and with polenta calms inflammations.
156| The wild kind has the greater power against weakness of the hips and loins. Boiled, they correct freckles and the skin of those who bathe in the decoction, and if boiled down to the thickness of honey, or [sown] ones, they correct black vitiligines and leprae. The sown kind too, applied, burst carbuncles; boiled in vinegar they lessen or ripen panos and scrofulous swellings, and restore a white colour to scars; and if they are boiled thoroughly in rain water, that juice becomes a smegma, with which it is useful to bathe gangrenes, eruptions of phlegm, and the weepings of ulcers; to drink for the spleen, and with honey for delayed menses.
157| Raw ones ground with dried fig in vinegar are applied to the spleen. The root also, boiled in water, expels urine. They treat cattle when boiled with the herb chamaeleon, the water strained for drinking. They cure also the mange of all quadrupeds, boiled in amurca, or with both liquids afterwards mixed. The smoke of them burnt kills gnats.
158| Irio, among the grains, we have said, is like sesame and is called by the Greeks erysimon; the Gauls call it vela. It is a shrubby plant, with the leaves of rocket, a little narrower, and the seed of nasturtium, most useful to those who cough, with honey, and in purulent spitting from the chest. It is given also for the regius morbus and ailments of the loins, to pleurisy patients, for gripings, and to coeliacs. It is applied for the evils of parotid swellings and carcinomas, and for burnings of the testicles in water, otherwise with honey; most useful also to infants; likewise for ailments of the seat and joint diseases with honey and fig; it is also effective against poisons when drunk. It treats asthmatics, and also fistulas with old axle-grease, in such a way that it is not added inside.
159| Horminum in seed, as we have said, is like cumin, otherwise like leek, three-quarters of a foot high, of two kinds: one has a darker and oblong seed (this for stimulating desire and for argema and albugines of the eyes), the other a whiter and rounder seed. Either pounded draws thorns out of the body, applied by itself or in water; the leaves applied in vinegar disperse panos, by themselves or with honey, likewise boils before they come to a head, and all sharp humours.
160| Indeed, even the very pests of the crops are of some use. Darnel was called "unlucky" by Virgil; yet, ground, boiled in vinegar and applied, it heals impetigo, and the faster the more often it is changed. With oxymel it also treats gout and other pains. The method is this: two ounces of honey are diluted in one sextarius of vinegar. The right proportion is, to three sextarii so mixed, [….] sextarii of darnel flour, boiled down until thick and applied hot to the aching limbs. The same flour draws out splinters of broken bone.
161| The herb that kills millet is called miliaria. Pounded and poured in through a horn with wine, it is said to cure gout in draught animals. Bromos is the seed of a plant that bears an ear. It grows among the weeds of the cornfield, of the oat kind; in leaf and stalk it imitates wheat; at its tips it has tiny hanging things like locusts. The seed is useful for poultices, for the same uses as barley and the like. Its juice is good for those with a cough.
162| We have named orobanche as the plant that kills ervum and the legumes; others call it cynomorion, from its likeness to a dog's genitals. It is a small stalk without leaves, fleshy and red. It is eaten both by itself and in stews, boiled, while it is tender.
163| In legumes too there breed small venomous creatures, of the solipuga kind, which sting the hands and put life in danger. Against these all the same remedies serve that are set out against spiders and phalangia. And these are the medicinal uses of the crops.
164| From the same crops drinks are also made: zythum in Egypt, caelia and cerea in Spain, cervesia and several other kinds in Gaul and other provinces. The froth of all of these nourishes the skin of women's faces. As for the drink itself, it is better to pass on to the mention of wine and to begin the medicines of the trees with the vine.

======== Natural History — Book XXIII ========

1| We have now completed the nature of the cereals, in healing too, and of everything that springs from the upturned face of the earth for the sake of food, flowers or scents. Pomona did not yield to them, but gave healing properties to the things that hang as well. She was not content to shelter with the shade of trees and to nourish the plants we have described; rather, as if indignant that there should be more help in things that stood farther from the sky and had come into being later, she claimed that man's first food had come from her, that this was how he had been led to look up at the sky, and that even now he could feed on her without crops.
2| And so, by Hercules, she gave her skills above all to the vines, not content to have furnished delights as well, and scents and perfumes, splendidly, through omphacium, oenanthe and massaris, which we have described in their places. "The greatest part of man's pleasure," she says, "comes from me. I produce the juice of wine and the liquid of oil; I produce dates and fruits and all their varieties; and not, like Tellus, everything through toil, to be ploughed with bulls, threshed on floors, then ground with stones, so that one must ask when food is to be had, and at the cost of how much work. From me everything comes ready, with no care to be laboured over; it offers itself of its own accord, and if one is too idle to reach for it, it even falls." She competed with herself, and brought forth even more for use than for pleasure.
3| The leaves and shoots of vines, with polenta, soothe headaches and inflammations of the body; the leaves alone, in cold water, soothe burning of the stomach, and with barley meal, diseases of the joints. The shoots, pounded and applied, dry up every swelling; their juice, injected, cures dysentery. The tear of the vine, which is like a gum, heals lepra, lichen and psora, when these have first been prepared with nitrum. Smeared on the hair with oil several times, the same tear acts as a depilatory, especially the tear that green vines exude when set on fire; this also removes warts.
4| The shoots, steeped and drunk, help those who spit blood and women who faint after conceiving. The bark of vines and the dry leaves stanch the blood of wounds and close the wound itself. The juice of the white vine, pounded green, removes impetigo. The ash of vine cuttings and of grape-skins, in vinegar, treats condylomata and ailments of the anus; with rose oil, rue and vinegar, also dislocations, burns and swelling of the spleen. Again, for the sacred fire it is sprinkled on in wine without oil, and on chafing.
5| It also removes hair. They also give the ash of vine cuttings to drink as a remedy for the spleen, sprinkled with vinegar, in such a way that two cyathi are drunk in warm water and the drinker lies on the side of the spleen. The tendrils themselves, by which vines creep, pounded and drunk in water, stop habitual vomiting.
6| Ash of vines with old axle-grease helps against swellings, cleans fistulas and then heals them completely; it also helps pains of the sinews caused by cold, and cramps; bruised parts, even with oil; flesh growing out over bones, with vinegar and nitrum; and the stings of scorpions and bites of dogs, with oil. The ash of the bark alone restores hair to burned places.
7| How omphacium is made from the grape at the beginning of its ripening we have explained in the section on perfumes. Now we shall set out what concerns it in medicine. It heals ulcers in moist parts, such as those of the mouth, tonsils and genitals. It contributes a great deal to clearness of the eyes, and helps roughness of the eyelids, ulcers in the corners of the eyes, cloudy spots, running ulcers in any part, flabby scars, and bones foul with pus. Its harshness is softened with honey or raisin wine. It also helps dysentery, those who spit blood, and quinsy.
8| Close to omphacium comes oenanthe, which wild vines bear; we have spoken of it in our account of perfumes. The most highly praised is in Syria, especially around the mountains of Antioch and Laodicea, and from the white vine. It cools and binds; it is sprinkled on wounds, smeared on the stomach; it is useful for the urine and the liver, for headaches, dysentery, coeliac and cholera patients, and, drunk at the weight of an obol in vinegar, against loss of appetite. It dries running eruptions of the head and is most effective for ailments in moist parts, and therefore for ulcers of the mouth, of the private parts and of the anus, with honey and saffron.
9| It stops the bowels and corrects roughness of the eyelids and watering of the eyes; in wine it corrects a disordered stomach, and drunk in cold water, the spitting of blood. Its ash is approved for eye-salves, for cleaning ulcers, and for whitlows and pterygia. It is burned in an oven until the bread is baked through. Massaris is produced for scents only; and the greed of human ingenuity has made all these things famous by its haste to snatch them.
10| As grapes ripen, the black are the more powerful, which is why the wine from them is less pleasant; the white are sweeter, because air is more easily taken in through what is translucent. Fresh grapes upset the stomach and the breath, and the bowels with flatulence. So they are condemned in fever, especially in quantity, for they cause heaviness of the head and the disease lethargy. More harmless are those that have hung a long time after being picked, and this airing even makes them useful for the stomach and for the sick, for they cool slightly and take away loss of appetite.
11| Next after the hanging grapes come those kept in chaff; for those kept in grape-skins are harmful to the head, bladder and stomach, though they do stop the bowels and are very useful for those who spit blood. Those that have been preserved in wine or in sweet wine affect the head; those that have been in must have an even worse effect than those kept in grape-skins. Sapa too makes them bad for the stomach.
12| Physicians think the most wholesome are those kept in rain water, even if least pleasant, but that their pleasure is felt in burning of the stomach, in the bitterness of the liver and the vomitings of bile and in cholera, and for dropsical patients sick with burning fevers. But those kept in jars rouse the mouth and the stomach and the appetite, though they are thought to become a little heavier from the breath of the grape-skins. If cocks eat the bloom of the grape in their food, they do not touch the grapes.
13| The stalks of the grape clusters, on which the berries hung, have an astringent power, more effective those from jars. The kernels of the grapes have the same power. These are what cause headache in wine. Toasted and ground they are useful to the stomach. Their meal is sprinkled into drinks in the manner of polenta for dysenterics and coeliacs and for looseness of the stomach. Their decoction is also useful for bathing psorae and itching.
14| Grape-skins by themselves harm the head or bladder less than the kernels; ground with salt they are useful for inflammation of the breasts. A decoction of them helps chronic dysenterics and coeliacs, both by drinking and by bathing. The theriac grape, of which we have spoken in its place, is eaten against the stings of serpents. They also advise that its leaves be eaten and applied. Both wine and vinegar made from them have a helping power against the same things.
15| The raisin, which they call astaphis, would affect the stomach, belly and intestines, were it not that, as a remedy, there are kernels in the berries themselves. With these removed it is held useful to the bladder and for cough (the white more useful), useful also for the windpipe and the kidneys, just as passum made from them is especially potent, among serpents, against the haemorrhois.
16| They are applied to inflammation of the testicles with meal of cumin or coriander, likewise to carbuncles, and to joint diseases, ground without kernels with rue. The ulcers should first be bathed with wine. They cure epinyctides and cerion and dysentery, with their own kernels. And boiled in oil they are applied to gangrenes with radish rind and honey, to gout and to loose nails with panax. And by themselves, chewed with pepper, they cleanse the mouth and head.
17| Astaphis agria, or staphis, which some falsely call the uva taminia (for it has its own kind), with black, upright stalks and the leaves of the wild vine, bears pods rather than berries, green, like a chickpea, and within them a three-cornered kernel. It ripens with the vintage and grows black, whereas we know the berries of the taminia to be reddish, and we know that the former grows in sunny places, the latter only in shaded ones. I should not advise using these kernels for purging, because of the dangerous choking, nor for drying phlegm of the mouth, because they injure the throat.
18| Ground, they free the head and the rest of the body from lice, more easily with sandaraca mixed in, and likewise from itching and psorae. For toothache they are boiled in vinegar, for ailments of the ears, for rheumatismoi of scars, for weeping ulcers. The flower ground in wine is drunk against serpents; the seed I should reject, because of its excessive burning force. Some call it pituitaria. They apply it, in any case, to the blows of serpents.
19| The wild vine also bears the oenanthe, sufficiently spoken of. This plant, called ampelos agria by the Greeks, has thick and whitish leaves, is jointed, has a cracked bark, and bears grapes reddish like coccum; they clear the skin of women's faces, and pimples, and ground with the leaves and juice are good for ailments of the hips and loins. The root, boiled in water, drunk in 2 cyathi of Coan wine, moves the moisture of the belly, and is therefore given to the dropsical. This I should rather believe to be what the common people call uva taminia.
20| They use it as an amulet and also employ it for spitting of blood, no further than gargling and so that nothing is swallowed, with salt, thyme and honeyed vinegar added. For this reason they think it dangerous also for purgings. There is one like it, but growing among willows; it is therefore distinguished by name, though it has the same uses, and is called salicastrum. It removes the mange and itching of men and four-footed animals, ground in honeyed vinegar, more effectively.
21| The white vine is what the Greeks call ampelos leuke, others staphyle, others melothron, others psilotrum, others archezostis, others cedrostis, others madon. Its twigs, jointed with long and slender internodes, climb. The leaves, vine-like, are divided to the size of ivy as those of vines are. The root is white, large, like a radish at first. From it stalks come out resembling asparagus. These boiled in food provoke the belly and urine.
22| The leaves and stalks make the body ulcerate; they are applied with salt, in any case, to phagedaenic ulcers and gangrenes and to the weariness of the shins. The seed hangs in a grape with sparse berries, with a reddish juice, afterwards saffron-coloured. Those who finish hides know it; for they use it. It is applied to psorae and leprae; boiled with wheat and drunk it causes abundance of milk.
23| The root, famous for its numerous uses, ground, is drunk against the stings of serpents at 2 drachmas. It corrects blemishes of the skin on the face and pimples and freckles and bruises and scars, and does the same boiled in oil. It is given also to epileptics, drunk, likewise to those disturbed in mind or suffering from vertigo, at the weight of a drachma daily for a whole year. But the plant itself in larger amount sometimes disturbs the senses.
24| That power is remarkable, that it draws out broken bones, applied in water, like bryonia; for which reason some call this the white bryonia, and the other the black. It is more effective in the same use with honey and frankincense. It disperses incipient suppurations, and ripens and cleanses old ones. It provokes the menses and urine.
25| An ecligma is made from it for asthmatics, and against pains of the side, ruptures and convulsions. Drunk at three obols, it consumes the spleen in 30 days. The same with fig is applied also to pterygia of the fingers. Applied in wine it draws down the afterbirth in women, and phlegm at a drachma drunk in honeyed water.
26| The juice of the root ought to be collected before the ripening of the seed. This, applied by itself and with ervum, dresses up bodies with a somewhat more cheerful colour and tenderness of skin, and puts serpents to flight. The root itself is pounded with rich fig and smooths the wrinkles from the body, if two stadia are walked at once; otherwise it burns, unless it is washed off with cold water. The black vine does the same more pleasantly, since the white brings itching. There is also the black, which they properly call bryonia, others Chironia, others gynaecanthe or apronia, like the former except in colour; for the colour of this we have said is black. Its asparagi Diocles preferred to true asparagus in food, for provoking urine and reducing the spleen.
28| It grows chiefly in thickets and reedbeds. The root is black outside, of boxwood colour within. It draws out broken bones, even more effectively than the plants mentioned above, and the rest is the same. A particular property is that it uniquely cures the necks of beasts of burden. They say that if someone girds a farmhouse with it, hawks flee and the farmyard birds become safe. The same, bound around them, heals swellings of the legs, or blood that has settled down to the ankles, in a beast or a man. And so far of the kinds of vines.
29| Musts have these natural differences, that they are white or black or between the two, some from which wine is made, others from which passum. Treatment makes the differences innumerable; it will therefore be fitting to have said this in full: all must is bad for the stomach, pleasant to the veins. Drunk hastily and without drawing breath after the baths, it kills. It is hostile to the nature of cantharides, likewise to serpents, above all the haemorrhois and the salamander.
30| It causes headaches and is bad for the throat; it benefits the kidneys, liver and intestines, bladder; for it lightens them. It is particularly effective against buprestis, meconium, the curdling of milk, hemlock, toxica, dorycnium, drunk with oil and brought up again in vomiting. For all these the white is weaker; the must of passum is more pleasant and brings less headache.
31| The kinds of wine and their very many differences we have set out, and almost the properties of each. And no part is harder to treat or more numerous, since it is hard to say whether it helps or harms more people. Besides, how doubtful in its outcome is a drink that is at once either help or poison! For we are now speaking only of the nature that bears on remedies.
32| Asclepiades composed one volume on the giving of it, and those named after him afterwards discoursed endlessly on that one volume. We, with Roman gravity and an appetite for the liberal arts, shall distinguish those matters carefully, not as physicians but as judges of human health. To discuss the single kinds is immense and inexplicable, the opinions of physicians being discordant.
33| The ancients most approved the Surrentine, the following age the Alban or Falernian, and then different men others, in a most unfair kind of decree, pronouncing against all the others whatever was most pleasing to each. Even if opinions were agreed, what fraction of mortals could use these kinds? Nay, even the leading men nowhere have wines unmixed. Things have come to such a pass that only the names of cellars are sold, and vintages are adulterated at once in the vats.
34| And so, by Hercules, marvellous to tell, whatever is humbler and less known is now more harmless. Yet these seem to be the most steady opinions, those of which we have made mention. If someone will demand this distinction too, Falernian is not wholesome to the body either in its newness or in excessive age; its middle age begins from 15 years.
35| Drunk cold it is useful to the stomach, not so in the warm. For a lingering cough, it is usefully sipped unmixed by those fasting, likewise in quartan fevers. By nothing are the veins so roused. It stops the belly, nourishes the body. It has been believed to cause dimness of sight and to be of no benefit to the sinews or bladder. Alban wines are more useful to the sinews; sweet ones less so to the stomach; austere ones, even more than Falernian, are more useful. They help digestion less, fill the stomach moderately; but the Surrentine do so in no way, nor do they attack the head, and they hold back rheumatismoi of the stomach and intestines.
36| Caecuban wines are no longer produced. And those that survive, the Setine, force foods to be digested; they have more strength than the Surrentine, more austerity than the Alban, less vehemence than the Falernian. After these the Statanian would be at no long interval. For those with quick bowels it is beyond doubt that Signine is most beneficial. The rest will be spoken of in common.
37| By wine the strength, the blood and the colour of men are nourished. In this the middle of the world and the milder zone differ from the surrounding regions. As much strength as fierceness gives to those peoples, so much does this juice give to us. Drinking milk nourishes the bones, grain the sinews, water the flesh; therefore there is less ruddiness in those bodies, and less strength and endurance against labours.
38| By moderate wine the sinews are helped, by more copious they are harmed; so too the eyes. The stomach is restored and the appetite for foods invited; sadness and care are dulled, urine and chill are expelled, sleep is induced. It also stops vomiting, and soothes collections externally when applied on moist wool. Asclepiades pronounced that the usefulness of wine can scarcely be equalled by the power of the gods. Old wine is mixed with more water; the more it expels urine, the less it resists thirst. The sweet intoxicates less, but floats on the stomach; the austere is digested more easily.
39| The lightest is the one that ages fastest. That which grows sweet with age troubles the sinews less. A rich, dark wine is less useful to the stomach, but nourishes the body more. A thin and austere wine nourishes less, feeds the stomach more, passes more quickly through the urine; it attacks the head all the more; let this be said once for every other juice as well.
40| Wine aged by long smoke is most unwholesome. The dealers in their storerooms devised this, and now even heads of households, to add age. And yet by themselves they drew rot. By which word, certainly, the ancients gave sufficient counsel, since smoke eats away rot even in timber; but we, on the contrary, hold it as persuaded that antiquity is put on by the bitterness of smoke. Wines that are quite whitish become unwholesome with age. The more noble the wine, the more it thickens with age and curdles into a bitterness least useful to the body. To season another, less aged wine with it is unwholesome; to each wine its own savour is most harmless, to each its own age most pleasing, that is, the middle one.
41| For those wishing to increase the body or soften the belly, it is advantageous to drink among the foods; for those, on the contrary, who are reducing and who hold back the belly, to thirst while eating and afterwards to drink little. To drink wine fasting is, by a recent invention, most harmful for the careful and for those who strain the vigour of the mind for action; but for sleep and security it has long been what the Homeric Helen served before the meal. So too it has passed into a proverb that wisdom is overshadowed by wine.
42| We men owe it to wine that we alone of animals drink when not thirsty. To interpose a drink of water is most useful, and likewise to drink spring water after it. Drunkenness, indeed, the drinking of cold water immediately disperses.
43| Hesiod advises using unmixed drinks for 20 days before the Dog Star rises, and for as many after. Unmixed wine is a remedy against hemlock, coriander, aconite, mistletoe, meconium, quicksilver, bees, wasps, hornets, phalangia, the stings of serpents and scorpions, and against everything that harms by chilling, particularly against haemorrhois, prester serpents, fungi, likewise against swellings and gnawings of the midriff, and in those whose stomach pours out into vomiting, and if the belly or intestines feel a rheumatismos, for dysenterics, for those who sweat from a long cough, and in epiphorae unmixed.
44| For those with heart disease it helps to place unmixed wine in a sponge on the left breast, and for all these especially white wine that is growing old. Manhood too is usefully bathed with warm wine. Poured in through a horn for beasts of burden, it takes away weariness. Apes and four-footed animals that have toes, they say, do not grow if accustomed to drinking unmixed wine.
45| Now our talk of wines will concern illnesses. For the gently born the most wholesome is whatever Campanian wine is thinnest; for the common people, whatever strong wine has helped each most. Most useful to all is wine whose strength has been broken by the strainer. Let us remember that it is a juice which by boiling has made strength for itself from the must. To mix several kinds is useless for everybody. Most wholesome is the one to which nothing has been added in the must, and better if pitch has not been on the vessel. For who, even if strong, would not have shuddered at wine seasoned with marble and gypsum or lime?
46| First, then, wine made with sea water is bad for the stomach, sinews and bladder. Wines seasoned with resin are thought useful to cold stomachs, but not advantageous in vomiting, just as neither must nor sapa nor passum. New resinated wine suits no one; it causes headache and vertigo. From this is named crapula. The named ones are good for those who cough and in rheumatismos, likewise for coeliacs and dysenterics, and for the menses of women. In this kind the red or the black constrains more and warms more. Wine seasoned with pitch alone is more harmless. But we must remember that pitch is nothing other than the flux of burnt resin.
47| This kind of wine warms, digests, purges. It is useful to the chest and belly, likewise to pain of the womb, if without fever, to an old rheumatismos, to ulceration, ruptures, convulsions, abscesses, weakness of the sinews, swellings, cough, panting, and to dislocations, applied in greasy wool. For all these the more useful is the kind that by the nature of itself has the taste of pitch and is called pitched, in the district of Helvicum, though it is agreed that the head is attacked by too much of it.
48| As regards the conditions of fevers, it is certain that it is not to be given in fever, except to old patients and not except when the disease is declining; in acute dangers, to none except those who have manifest remissions, and these rather at night (half the danger at night, that is, for those drinking in hope of sleep), and not after childbirth or miscarriage or to those sick from lust, nor in headaches, nor to those whose attacks come with chill of the extremities, nor to those coughing in fever, nor in trembling or pains of the sinews or of the throat, or if the force of the disease is perceived about the flanks, nor in hardness of the midriff, violence of the veins, nor in opisthotonos or tetanus, nor to those with hiccups, nor if there is difficulty of breathing with fever;
49| and least of all to those whose eyes are stiff, with eyelids standing out or failing, heavy, nor those whose eyes show through when they blink, or whose eyelids do not close, or if the same happens when they sleep, or if the eyes are suffused with blood, or if there is rheum in the eyes; least of all with a spongy or heavy tongue, and to those who speak and then break off; nor if urine is passed with difficulty, nor to those who suddenly take fright, nor to the spasmodic or, again, the numbed, nor if the seed is discharged in sleep.
50| In the disease of the cardiaci, it is certain that this alone is the hope, from wine. But they hold that it must be given only at the onset, others in the remission; the former, to check the sweat, the latter because they think it safer when the disease is lessening, which I see is the opinion of the greater number. In any case it ought to be given only with food, and not after sleep, nor after any other drink having gone before,
51| that is, to one who is thirsty, and not except in the last despair, and more readily to a man than a woman, to an old man than a young, to a young man than a boy, in winter than summer, to those accustomed rather than the inexperienced. The measure of giving is according to the strength of the wine, and likewise the mixture of water. Commonly they think it enough that one cyathus be mixed with 2 of water; if there is looseness of the stomach, it is to be given; if food does not go down, again.
52| The kinds of wine which we taught to be compounded, I do not think are even made now, and their use is superfluous, since we teach the use of the very things from which they are compounded. At other times the ostentation of physicians in these matters had exceeded all measure, as that a wine made from turnips is useful for weariness from arms or riding, as they prescribe, and, to omit the rest, even one from juniper. And who would think it better to use wine of wormwood rather than wormwood itself? Among the rest let palm wine be omitted, harmful to the head and of no use except for softening the belly and for those who spit blood.
53| That which we have called bion cannot be thought artificial, since in it there is only haste in place of art. It is good for a loose stomach or one that does not complete the digestion of food, for pregnant women who are failing, for paralytics, for those who tremble, for vertigo, gripings, and sciatica. In pestilence too and on journeys it is said to have great power of helping.
54| The fault of wine, too, passes into remedies in vinegar. Its chief power is in cooling, yet no less in dispersing; so it happens that poured on the ground it foams. It has been said more often, and will be said, as many times as it is of use with other things. Taken by itself it disperses disgust, holds back hiccups, and smelt, sneezing. In the baths it keeps off heat, if it is held in the mouth. Further, drunk with water it is useful to the stomach of many, and with the same it is used as a gargle for convalescents, and in that way a bathing of the eyes against the burning of the sun is also most wholesome.
55| Drunk, it is a cure when a leech has been swallowed; likewise leprae, scurf, weeping ulcers, the bites of dogs, the stings of scorpions, of scolopendras, of the shrew-mouse, and against the poisons of all creatures that sting, and itchings; likewise against the bite of the multipeda, warm on a sponge, with a sextans of sulphur added to 3 sextarii, or a bunch of hyssop. It cures also ailments of the seat, in a flux of blood after the cutting of stones, and in every other case externally, applied on a sponge; internally, drunk, at two cyathi, as sharp as possible.
56| At any rate it disperses blood that has clotted. Against lichen it is both drunk and applied. It stops the belly and rheumatismos of the intestines when poured in, likewise prolapses of the seat and womb. It restrains an old cough and rheumatismos of the throat, orthopnoea, and loosening of the teeth. It harms the bladder and weaknesses of the sinews. The physicians did not know how much it avails against asps. Recently a man struck by an asp he had trodden on, carrying a skin of vinegar, felt the blow whenever he put it down, and at other times seemed unhurt. The remedy was understood there and relief given by drinking.
57| And not otherwise do those who suck out poisons rinse their mouths. In general this power is a subduer, not of foods only but of very many things. Poured on, it breaks rocks which fire applied beforehand has not broken. Of foods and flavours, indeed, no other juice commends or rouses more; in this use it is softened with burnt bread or cumin, or sharpened with pepper and laser, and in any case restrained by salt.
58| A huge example of it must not be passed over, since Marcus Agrippa, in his last years, afflicted with a grave disease of the feet, when he could not endure that pain, on the portentous knowledge of one of his physicians, without the knowledge of the deified Augustus, thought it worth the price to be without the use of his feet and all sensation, provided he were also without that pain, his legs being plunged into hot vinegar in the sharpest onset of the disease.
59| Vinegar of squill, aged, is more approved. Beyond what we have said, it is good for foods that turn sour, for on tasting it disperses that distress; likewise for those who vomit when fasting, for it makes a callus of the throat and stomach. It removes the smell of the mouth, draws together the gums, firms the teeth, gives a better colour. It also clears dullness of hearing by gargling and opens the passage of hearing. It incidentally sharpens the keenness of the eyes. For epileptics, melancholics, vertigo, strangulations of the womb, those struck or thrown down and therefore with clotted blood, weak sinews, and ailments of the kidneys, it is exceedingly useful; it must be avoided by the ulcerated.
60| Oxymeli the ancients, as Dieuches reports, mixed in this way: of honey 10 minae, of old vinegar 5 heminae, of sea salt a pound and a quarter by weight, of water 5 sextarii; they boiled them together in a cauldron, ten times boiling down, and so they poured it out and aged it.
61| Asclepiades did away with all that and refuted it (for they even gave it in fevers), yet he admits that it was beneficial against the serpents they call sepae, and against meconium and mistletoe, and, warm, as a gargle for anginas, and for the ears, and for desires of the mouth and throat. All of which are now achieved more effectively by oxyalme, that is, salt and fresh vinegar.
62| Akin to wine is sapa, made of must boiled down until a third part remains. This is better from white. Its use is against cantharides, buprestis, the caterpillars of pines, which they call pityocampae, salamanders, against venomous biting creatures. It draws down the afterbirth and dead foetuses, drunk with bulbs. Fabianus is the authority that it is a poison if someone drinks it fasting after the bath.
63| Next to these is the lees, of its own kind in each. The lees of wine, therefore, have such power that they kill those who go down into the vats. An experiment is offered by a lamp let down, which gives warning of the danger as long as it is extinguished. Unwashed, it is mixed into medicaments; with iris in equal weight it is applied to eruptions of phlegm, and dry or moist against phalangia and for inflammation of the testicles and breasts or in whatever part of the body, likewise boiled in wine with barley meal and the fine flour of frankincense.
64| It is also burnt when dried. The test of one properly burnt is that, when cooled, it seems to burn the tongue on touch. It is very quickly spent if stored uncovered. Burning adds much strength to it; boiled with fig, it is most useful for restraining lichens and scurf. So too it is applied to leprae and weeping ulcers.
65| It is contrary to the nature of fungi when drunk, but more so raw. Boiled and washed it is mixed into medicines for the eyes. Applied, it cures the testicles and genitals too, and in wine it is drunk against strangury. When it has lost its breath, it is also useful for washing bodies and clothes, and then it has the use of acacia.
66| The lees of vinegar, in proportion to its substance, must be sharper and ulcerate much more. It resists the growth of suppurations; applied, it helps the stomach, intestines and belly. It stops rheumatismos of those parts and the menses of women. It disperses panos not yet ulcerated and anginas, and erysipelas with wax.
67| The same dries up breasts that cannot bear their own milk, and takes away rough nails. Of serpents, against cerastes it is most effective with polenta, against the bite of the crocodile and of the dog with melanthium. And this burnt increases in strength. Then, with mastic oil added, applied for one night, it reddens the hair. The same, in water on a small cloth, applied, purges the womb.
68| Burns are healed by the lees of sapa, better with the down of the reed added; the same lees boiled and drunk cures old coughs. It is cooked in pans with salt and fat also for swelling of the jaws and neck.
69| Of the olive tree the next standing is understood. Its leaves are very strongly astringent, cleansing, and checking. Therefore chewed and applied they cure ulcers, and applied with oil, headaches; their decoction with honey is used for those parts which physicians have burnt, for inflammations of the gums, paronychiae and foul and putrefying ulcers. With honey it restrains the flow of blood from sinewy parts.
70| Their juice is effective for ulcers around the eyes that turn to carbuncles, and for pustules and a prolapsing pupil, for which reason it is added to eye salves. For it cures old watering of the eyes and erosions of the eyelids. The juice is pressed from the leaves when pounded, with wine and rain water poured on, and when dried is divided into lozenges. It stops the menses, applied to the womb in wool; it is useful also for those weeping a discharge, likewise for condylomata, erysipelas, creeping ulcers, and epinyctis.
71| The flower of them has the same effects. The little stalks in blossom are burnt, so that the ash serves in place of spodium, and with wine poured on are burnt again. Suppurations and panos they smear with that ash or with the leaves pounded with honey, and the eyes with polenta. The juice of the fresh shrub, set alight and dripping, cures lichens, scurf and weeping ulcers. For the tear which drips from the tree itself,
72| chiefly of the Ethiopian olive, it is not enough to wonder that men have been found who advised applying it to toothache, though proclaiming that it is a poison and should even be sought in the wild olive. The bark of the root of the olive, as young as possible, scraped into honey, cures by frequent tasting those who bring up blood and those who cough up purulent matter. The ash of the olive itself, with axle-grease, heals swellings and draws out the defects from fistulas and heals the fistulas themselves.
73| White olives are more useful to the stomach, less to the belly. They have an excellent use, before they are pickled, fresh by themselves, swallowed like food. For they cure gravelly urine, and teeth worn down or loosened by chewing meat. The black olive is less useful to the stomach, easier on the belly; it does not suit the head or eyes. Either is good for burns, the white ground and applied, but the black is chewed and, applied straight from the mouth, prevents pustules from forming. Colymbades cleanse foul ulcers, and are useless for difficulties of urine.
74| On amurca we might seem to have said enough, following Cato, but it must be rendered to medicine too. It helps most effectively the gums and ulcers of the mouth and the steadiness of the teeth, likewise poured on erysipelas and on creeping ulcers. For chilblains the amurca of black olives is more useful, likewise for bathing infants, but that of white ones is applied to a woman's womb in wool. Much more effective is all amurca when boiled. It is cooked in a Cyprian vessel to the thickness of honey. Its use, with vinegar or old wine or honeyed wine, as each case requires, is in the treatment of the mouth, teeth, ears, weeping ulcers, genitals, and rhagades.
75| It is applied to wounds on small cloths, to dislocations in wool. Here the use is huge, in any case as a medicine that has been aged; for such heals fistulas. It is poured into ulceration of the seat, the genitals, and the womb, and applied to incipient gout, likewise to joint diseases. If it is boiled again with omphacium to the thickness of honey, it draws out decayed teeth; likewise it wonderfully heals the mange of beasts of burden, with a decoction of lupines and the herb chamaeleon. Raw amurca is most useful for bathing gouty limbs.
76| The leaves of the wild olive have the same nature. Spodium from the little stalks holds back rheumatismos more strongly. It also calms inflammations of the eyes, cleanses and fills mortified ulcers, gently eats away and dries growths and brings them to a scar. The rest as in the cultivated olives, but a peculiarity is that the leaves are boiled in honey and given in 3 spoonfuls against spitting of blood.
77| The oil only is sharper and more effective, and for that reason the mouth too is rinsed with it for firmness of the teeth. The leaves are applied to paronychiae and carbuncles and, with wine, against every collection, and with honey to those that need cleansing. A decoction of the leaves and the juice of the wild olive are mixed into medicines for the eyes. It is usefully dropped into the ears with honey, even if pus flows out.
78| The flower of the wild olive is applied to condylomata and epinyctides, and with barley meal to the belly in rheumatismos, with oil to headaches. The little stalks, boiled and applied with honey, press down the skin on the head when it separates from the bones. Of the wild olive, the ripe fruits taken as food stop the belly, and toasted and ground with honey they cleanse nomae and burst carbuncles.
79| The nature and causes of oil we have set out at length. For medicine, from the kinds of oil these things are relevant: that the most useful is omphacium, next the green, besides that which is as fresh as possible (except when the oldest is sought), thin, fragrant and one that does not bite, the opposite of what is chosen for food. Omphacium is good for the gums if it is held in the mouth, and keeps the colour of the teeth and steadies their movement. It checks sweats.
80| Oenanthinum has the same effect as rosaceum. By every oil the body is softened and takes on vigour and strength. It is contrary to the stomach, and increases the growth of ulcers. It roughens the throat and dulls all poisons, especially those of psimithium and gypsum, drunk in honeyed water or a decoction of dried figs against meconium, in water against cantharides, buprestis, salamanders, pityocampae, and drunk by itself and brought up in vomiting against all the above-mentioned. It is a restorer after weariness and chills.
81| Gripings it drives out, drunk warm in 6 cyathi, and more with rue boiled in at the same time, likewise the creatures of the belly. It loosens the belly, drunk in the measure of a hemina with wine and hot water or with the juice of tisana; useful in wound plasters, it cleanses the face. Poured through the nostrils of oxen until they belch, it calms swelling.
82| Old oil, however, warms bodies more and disperses sweats more, spreads hardnesses more, and is a help to lethargics, even when the disease is declining. It contributes something to clearness of the eyes with an equal portion of smokeless honey. It is a remedy for headaches, likewise for burning heats in fever with water. If there is no opportunity for the old, it is boiled to present the appearance of age.
83| Cicinum oil is drunk for purges of the belly with an equal measure of hot water. In particular it is said to purge the midriff. It is good also for diseases of the joints, all hardnesses, the womb, the ears, burns, and with the ash of murex shells for inflammations of the seat, likewise for psora. It commends the colour of the skin and calls forth the hair by its fertile nature. No living creature touches the seed from which it is made.
84| Lamp wicks are made from its cluster, of outstanding brightness; from oil the light is dim, because of its excessive fatness. The leaves are applied to erysipelas in vinegar, and fresh by themselves to the breasts and epiphorae; the same boiled in wine are applied to inflammations with polenta and saffron; by themselves, laid on for three days, they cleanse the face.
85| Almond oil purges, softens the body, smooths wrinkles from the skin, commends brightness, and with honey removes pimples from the face. It is good also for the ears boiled with rosaceum or honey and the rind of the pomegranate, and kills little worms in them, and disperses heaviness of hearing, uncertain sounds and ringing, and incidentally headaches and those of the eyes. It cures boils, and with wax the burns of the sun. It cleans out weeping ulcers and scurf with wine, and condylomata with melilot; by itself, smeared on the head, it entices sleep.
86| Laurel oil is more useful the fresher it is and the greener in colour. Its power is warming, and therefore it is applied warmed in the calyx of a pomegranate for paralytics, spasmodics, sufferers from sciatica, for bruises, headaches, old catarrhs, and the ears.
87| Similar is the account of myrtle oil. It draws together and hardens. It cures the gums, toothache, dysentery, ulcerated womb, bladders, old or weeping ulcers with copper scale and wax, likewise eruptions and burns. Rubbed in, it heals scurf too, rhagades, condylomata, dislocated joints, and heavy odour of the body. It is hostile to cantharides, buprestis and other bad drugs that harm by causing ulcers.
88| Of chamaemyrsine or oxymyrsine the nature is the same. Cypress oil has the same effects as myrtle, and so does citrus. That from the walnut, which we have called caryinum, is useful for alopecias, and poured into the ears for dullness of hearing, and applied for headache, otherwise inert and of heavy flavour. Indeed if there is anything rotten in the kernel, the whole modius is lost.
89| That made from the Cnidian grain has the same power as cicinum. That made from mastic is most useful for acopon, and would achieve the same as rosaceum, if it were not perceived to be a little harder. They use it also against excessive sweats and sweat-pimples. It heals the mange of beasts of burden most effectively. Balaninum oil cleans pimples, boils, freckles, and the gums.
90| What the cyprus is like and how oil is made from it we have taught. Its nature warms and softens the sinews. The leaves are applied to the stomach and to a disordered womb, and their juice too is applied. Fresh leaves chewed cure weeping ulcers on the head, likewise those of the mouth and collections, condylomata. A decoction of the leaves is good for burns and dislocations.
91| The leaves themselves, pounded with the juice of the struthium quince added, redden the hair. The flower calms headaches, applied with vinegar, and likewise burnt in an unbaked pot it cures nomae and putrefying ulcers, by itself or with honey. The odour of the flower and of the oil induces sleep. Gleucinum draws together and cools by the same reasoning as oenanthinum.
92| Balsaminum is by far the most precious of all, as we said in dealing with perfumes; effective against all serpents, it contributes most to clearness of the eyes, disperses dimness, and likewise difficulties of breathing, and soothes all collections and hardnesses. It prevents blood from thickening, cleanses ulcers, and is exceedingly useful for the ears, headaches, those who tremble, spasmodics and ruptures. Drunk in milk it is hostile to aconite, and it makes fevers that come with shivering lighter for those anointed with it. It must however be used moderately, since it burns and increases the faults when proportion is not kept.
93| Of malobathrum too we have set out the nature and kinds. It provokes urine; pressed out in wine it is very usefully applied to epiphorae of the eyes, likewise to the foreheads of those who wish to sleep, more effectively if the nostrils are also smeared with it or if it is drunk in water. A leaf placed under the tongue commends the sweetness of the mouth and breath, as placed among clothes it does their odour.
94| Hyoscyaminum is useful for softening, useless for the sinews. Drunk, indeed, it causes movements of the brain. Therminum from lupines softens, with an effect next to rosaceum. Narcissinum has been spoken of with its flower. Raphaninum removes lice contracted from long illness, and corrects roughnesses of the skin on the face.
95| Sesaminum heals pains of the ears and ulcers that creep, and those they call cacoethe. Lilinum, which we also called Syrian, is most useful for the kidneys and for drawing out sweats, for softening the womb and for digesting internally. Selgiticum we have said is useful to the sinews, as is also the herbal oil, which the people of Iguvium sell around the Via Flaminia.
96| Elaeomeli, which we have said flows in Syria from the olives themselves, with a flavour of honey, loosens the belly not without nausea; it draws off bile especially when given at 2 cyathi in a hemina of water; those who drink it grow numb and are repeatedly roused. Drinkers about to compete take beforehand one cyathus of it. Pissinum oil is used for cough and the mange of four-footed animals.
97| After vines and olives the next distinction belongs to palms. Fresh dates intoxicate; the less dry bring headache, and are not, so far as appears, useful to the stomach. They roughen a cough, they nourish the body. The juice of those boiled the ancients gave to the sick in place of hydromel to restore strength and to quench thirst, in which use they preferred the Theban; useful also to those who spit blood, chiefly in food. Caryotae are applied to the stomach, bladder, belly, and intestines with quinces and wax and saffron. They correct bruises. The kernels of palms, burnt in a new earthen pot, the ash washed, serve in place of spodium and are mixed into eye salves and make beautiful eyelids, with nard added.
98| The palm which bears myrobalanum, most approved in Egypt, has no stones in its fruits, as the others have. It provokes the belly and the menses, in austere wine, and glues wounds together.
99| The palm elate, or spathe, contributes to medicine its shoots, leaves and bark. The leaves are applied to the midriff, stomach, liver, to creeping ulcers that resist a scar. Its tender bark with resin and wax cures psorae in 20 days. It is also boiled for ailments of the testicles. It blackens the hair. By fumigation it draws out the afterbirth. It is given to drink for ailments of the kidneys and bladder and midriff, being hostile to the head and sinews. A decoction of it stops flows of the womb and belly; likewise the ash, and gripings, drunk in white wine, most effective for ailments of the womb.
100| Next, apples have varieties of kinds and of medicines. Of these the spring ones are sour and useless to the stomach, they turn the belly and bladder, and harm the sinews. Boiled they are better. Quinces boiled are sweeter, yet raw, provided they are ripe, they are good for those who spit blood and for dysenterics, cholera patients, coeliacs. Boiled they cannot do the same, since they lose that astringent power of the juice, and yet they are boiled in rain water for the same purposes as were written above.
101| They are applied also to the chest in the burning heats of fevers, and for pains of the stomach they are applied raw or boiled in the manner of a cerate. Their down heals carbuncles. They restore hair in alopecias when boiled in wine and applied with wax.
102| Those of them that are stored raw in honey move the belly; they add much to the sweetness of honey and make it more useful to the stomach. Those that are stored cooked in honey, some give for ailments of the stomach, ground with boiled rose leaves, in place of food. The juice of raw ones is good for the spleen, for orthopnoea, for the dropsical, likewise for the breasts, condylomata, varices; the flower, both green and dry, for eye inflammations, spitting of blood, the menses of women.
103| A mild juice is also made from them, pounded with sweet wine, useful for coeliacs and the liver. With their decoction too the womb and the intestines are bathed, if they prolapse. Oil is also made from them, which we called melinum, whenever [….] they have not grown in damp places. Therefore the most useful are those that come from Sicily, less useful the struthia, though akin. The root of them, the earth having been drawn round it, is taken with the left hand, in such a way that he who does it says why he takes it and for whose sake. So tied on, it cures scrofulous swellings.
104| Melimela and the other sweet ones loosen the stomach and belly, causing thirst and heat, but they do not harm the sinews. The orbiculata stop the belly and vomiting, and provoke urine. Wild apples are like the sour spring ones and stop the belly; certainly for this use they must be unripe.
105| Citrus fruits are drunk in wine against poison, either the fruit itself or the seed. They give sweetness to the mouth, rinsed with their decoction or with the juice pressed out. Of these the seed they advise to be eaten by pregnant women in nausea, and the fruit itself against weakness of the stomach, but they are not easily chewed except in vinegar.
106| Of the pomegranate, to repeat the nine kinds now is superfluous. Of these the sweet ones, which we called by another name apyrena, are held useless to the stomach; they produce swellings and harm the teeth and gums. But those next to them in flavour, which we called winy, having a small kernel, are understood to be somewhat more useful; they stop the belly and stomach, but only a few, and even these must not be given beyond satiety, although in fever none at all, neither the flesh of the seeds being useful nor the juice. They are to be avoided equally by those prone to vomiting and by those who bring up bile.
107| In these nature has shown the grape, and not even must but at once wine. Both have a rather rough rind; that of the sour kind is much used. The common people know that hides are chiefly finished with it; for this reason physicians call it malicorium. They show that urine is provoked by the same, and that, boiled in vinegar with a gall-nut mixed in, it steadies loose teeth. It is sought for the nausea of pregnant women, since on tasting it moves the child. The fruit is divided and steeped in rain water for about three days each; this is drunk cold by coeliacs and those who spit blood.
108| From the sour kind is made a medicine called stomatice, most useful for ailments of the mouth, nostrils, ears, for dimness of the eyes, pterygia, the genitals, and for those called nomae and for growths in ulcers, and against the sea hare in this way: the seeds with the rind removed are pounded and the juice boiled down to a third, with half a pound of saffron and of split alum, of myrrh, and of Attic honey.
109| Others also make it in this way: the sour pomegranates, many of them, are pounded, the juice cooked in a new pot to the thickness of honey, for ailments of manhood and of the seat and everything that is cured with lycium, for purulent ears, incipient epiphorae, red spots on the hands. The branches of pomegranates put serpents to flight. The rinds of the pomegranate, cooked in wine and applied, cure chilblains. A pomegranate crushed, boiled down from 3 heminae of wine to one hemina, expels gripings and tapeworms. A pomegranate in a new pot, the lid sealed, burnt in an oven and ground and drunk in wine, stops the belly and disperses gripings.
110| The first offspring of this fruit, when it begins to flower, is called cytinus by the Greeks, of marvellous observance by the experience of many. If someone, freed from every bond of belt and shoe and even of ring, plucks one of them with 2 fingers, the thumb and the fourth, of the left hand, and then, the eyes having been purified with a light touch, puts it in his mouth and swallows it, taking care not to touch it with the tooth, it is affirmed that he will suffer no weakness of the eyes in that same year.
111| The same cytini, dried and ground, restrain growths of flesh, and cure the gums and teeth, even when they are loose, with the juice boiled. The little bodies themselves, ground, are applied to ulcers that creep or putrefy, likewise to inflammation of the eyes and of the intestines and generally for everything for which the rinds of the fruits serve. They are hostile to scorpions.
112| It is not enough to wonder at the care and diligence of the ancients, who, searching everything, left nothing untried. In this very cytinus are little flowers, bursting out of course before the fruit itself appears, which we have said are called balaustium. These too, then, they tried and found hostile to scorpions. Drunk, they stop the menses of women, they cure ulcers of the mouth, tonsils, the uvula, spitting of blood, looseness of the belly and stomach, the genitals, and weeping ulcers in any part.
113| They dried them as well, so that in this way too they might test them, and found that the meal of them pounded recalls dysenterics from death. They stop looseness. Further, they did not shrink from testing the very kernels of the seeds. Toasted and pounded, they help the stomach in food or in drinks. By themselves they are drunk in rain water to stop the belly. The root, boiled, gives off a juice which kills tapeworms, at the weight of a victoriatus. The same, boiled thoroughly in water, provides the uses of lycium.
114| There is also a wild pomegranate, so called from the likeness. Its roots, with red bark, at the weight of a denarius drunk in wine, bring sleep. When the seed is drunk, the water that has crept under the skin is dried up. By the smoke of pomegranate rind gnats are put to flight.
115| The eating of all pears, even for the healthy, is burdensome, and for the sick is denied as wine is. The same boiled are wonderfully wholesome and pleasant, especially the Crustumine; and all that are boiled with honey help the stomach. Poultices are made from pears to disperse ailments of the body, and with their decoction they treat hardnesses. They are themselves hostile to boleti and fungi, and drive them out by their weight and by the conflict of their juice. The wild pear ripens most slowly.
116| It is cut up and dried hung up, to stop the belly, which its decoction also does when drunk. The leaves too are boiled with the fruit for the same uses. The ash of pear wood is still more effective against fungi. Apples and pears are wonderfully heavy for beasts of burden to carry, even a few. A remedy, they say, is to give them something to eat first, or at least to show it to them.
117| The milky juice of the fig has the nature of vinegar, and therefore curdles milk in the manner of rennet. It is taken before the ripeness of the fruit and dried in the shade, for opening ulcers and bringing on the menses applied as a pessary with the yolk of an egg or drunk with starch. It is applied to gout with fenugreek meal and vinegar. It also removes hairs and corrects scabbiness of the eyelids, likewise lichens and psorae.
118| It loosens the belly. The nature of fig milk is hostile to the poisons of hornets and wasps and the like, especially of scorpions. The same with axle-grease removes warts. The leaves and the figs that have not ripened are applied to scrofulous swellings and to everything that needs softening or dispersing; the leaves also do this by themselves. Another use of them is in rubbing lichen and alopecias and wherever it is necessary to make an ulcer.
119| And against dog bites the tender stalks of the branches are applied to the skin. The same with honey are applied to the ulcers called cerion. With the leaves of wild poppy they draw out broken bones; the bites of mad dogs they quench with the leaf ground in vinegar. From the black fig the white stalks are applied to boils, and with wax to the bites of the shrew-mouse. The ash of them, from the leaves, is for gangrenes and for consuming growths.
120| Ripe figs provoke urine, loosen the belly, and stir sweat and papules, and for this reason are unhealthy in autumn, since bodies sweating under the effect of this food chill. They are not useful to the stomach, except for a short time, and are understood to be contrary to the voice. The last are more wholesome than the first, but medicated ones never. They increase the strength of the young, make the health of the old better and give fewer wrinkles. They quench thirst and cool heat, and for this reason are not to be denied in contracted fevers, which they call stegnai.
121| Dried figs harm the stomach, but are magnificently useful to the throat and gullet. Their nature is to warm. They bring thirst, soften the belly, are contrary to rheumatismos of it and to the stomach, are always useful to the bladder and to the short-winded and asthmatic, likewise for ailments of the liver, kidneys, spleen. They build up the body and strength; for this reason athletes formerly were fed on this food (Pythagoras the trainer was the first to move them to meat);
122| most usefully for those recovering from a long illness. They are applied also to epileptics and the dropsical and to everything that needs ripening or dispersing, more effectively with lime or nitrum or iris mixed in. Cooked with hyssop they clear the chest, phlegm, an old cough, and with wine the seat and swellings of the jaws. For boils, panos, parotid swellings, they are applied boiled. It is also useful to bathe with their decoction, and women with the same decoction with fenugreek.
123| They are useful to pleurisy and peripneumonia patients; cooked with rue, for gripings. They are good for ulcers of the shins with flower of copper, and for parotid swelling, for pterygia with pomegranate, for burns, for chilblains with wax, for the dropsical cooked in wine and with wormwood and barley meal. With nitrum added, chewed, they loosen the belly. For the stings of scorpions they are applied ground with salt. They draw out carbuncles, cooked in wine and applied. For a carcinoma, if it is without ulcer, to apply the fattest possible fig is almost a unique remedy, likewise for phagedaena.
124| The ash of no other tree is sharper. It cleanses, glues together, fills, and draws together. It is drunk also to disperse clotted blood, likewise for those struck, thrown down, ruptured, convulsed, a cyathus of the ash in a cyathus each of water and oil. It is given to those with tetanus and spasms, likewise drunk or poured in for coeliacs and dysenterics. And if someone is anointed with it with oil, it warms. The same, worked with wax and rosaceum, draws a very thin scar over burns. Applied with oil, it corrects the purblind, and faults of the teeth by frequent rubbing. They also report that,
125| if someone, the tree being bent over, with face upturned, takes off one of its knots with his bite, with no one seeing, and, bound in a piece of soft leather, hangs it from his neck on a thread, scrofulous swellings and parotid swellings are dispersed. The bark ground with oil heals ulcers of the belly. Unripe figs remove warts, thymi with nitrum and meal added. The ash of the shoots coming from the root serves in place of spodium. Washed twice, with psimithium added, it is divided into lozenges for ulcers of the eyes and roughness.
126| The caprifig is still much more effective than the fig; with a twig of it milk is curdled into cheese. It has less milk; this taken and curdled to hardness gives sweetness to meats by rubbing. Diluted with vinegar it is mixed into ulcerating medicines. It loosens the belly, opens the womb with starch, brings on the menses with the yolk of an egg. It is applied to the gouty with fenugreek meal. It clears leprae, psorae, lichens, freckles, likewise the stings of venomous creatures and dog bites.
127| This juice too, applied on wool, is good for toothache, or put into the hollow of the teeth. The stalks and leaves, with ervum mixed in, are good against the poisons of marine creatures; wine is also added. The stalks, added, cook beef thoroughly with a great saving of wood. Unripe figs applied soften and disperse scrofulous swellings and every collection; to some extent the leaves too. The softest of them, with vinegar, cure weeping ulcers and epinyctides and scurf.
128| With honey the leaves cure cerion and fresh dog bites, with wine phagedaenas; with the leaves of poppy they draw out bones. The unripe figs of the caprifig disperse inflammations by fumigation (they resist bull's blood when drunk, and psimithium, and curdled milk when drunk), and, boiled in water and applied, parotid swellings. The stalks or unripe figs of it, the smallest possible, are drunk in wine for the stings of scorpions.
129| The milk too is dropped on the wound and the leaves are applied, likewise against the shrew-mouse. The ash of the stalks calms the uvula of the throat, the ash of the tree itself with honey rhagades, the root boiled in wine toothache. The winter caprifig, cooked in vinegar and ground, removes impetigines. Shavings from a branch without bark, as fine as possible, in the manner of sawdust, are applied.
130| A marvel of one medicine is added to the caprifig too: if a boy not yet grown, having broken off a branch, strips with his teeth its swelling bark, the pith itself, tied on before sunrise, prevents scrofulous swellings. The caprifig, put round their necks, restrains bulls however fierce, with so marvellous a nature that it renders them motionless.
131| The Greeks also call a herb erinos, to be given at this place on account of its kinship. It is a palm high, with usually five little stalks, like basil; the flower is white, the seed black and small. Ground with Attic honey it cures epiphorae of the eyes. The dropping in of its juice (for the herb, when plucked, flows with abundant sweet milk) is exceedingly useful for pain of the ears, with a little nitrum added. The leaves resist poisons.
132| The leaves of the plum tree, boiled, are good for the tonsils, gums and uvula, boiled in wine more strongly, used as a rinse repeatedly. The plums themselves loosen the belly, not very useful to the stomach, but only for a short moment. More useful are peaches and their juice, even pressed out in wine or in vinegar. Nor is there any food more harmless than these fruits; nowhere is there less scent, and more juice, which nevertheless stimulates thirst [….] their leaves, ground and applied, stop haemorrhage. The kernels of peaches are applied to headaches with oil and vinegar.
133| The berries of wild plums, or the bark from the root, if they are boiled in austere wine so that [….] out of a hemina remains, stop the belly and gripings. It is enough to take single cyathi of the decoction. In these and in the cultivated plums there is a slime of trees, which the Greeks call lichen, wonderfully useful for rhagades and condylomata.
134| Mulberries, in Egypt and Cyprus of their own kind, as we have said, abound in plentiful juice when the uppermost bark is stripped off; the deeper wound is dry, by a wonderful nature. The juice is hostile to the poisons of serpents, is good for dysenterics, disperses panos and all collections, glues wounds together, calms headaches, likewise those of the ears. It is drunk and applied by sufferers from the spleen and against chills.
135| It very quickly feels the woodworm. Nor in our country is the use of the juice less: drunk in wine it is hostile to aconite and spiders; it loosens the belly and draws out phlegm and tapeworms and the like creatures of the belly. The same is done by the bark, ground. The leaves dye the hair, cooked in rain water with the black fig and the bark of the vine. The juice of the fruit itself loosens the belly at once. The fruits themselves are for the moment useful to the stomach, they cool, they cause thirst; if no other food follows, they swell up. From unripe ones the juice stops the belly, as though from some living creature in this tree, the marvels to be observed which we have told in its nature.
136| From the fruit is made panchrestos stomatice, also called arteriace, in this way: 3 sextarii of juice from the fruit are reduced over a gentle steam to the thickness of honey; afterward is added a weight of dry omphacium of 2 denarii, or of myrrh 1 denarius, of saffron 1 denarius; these ground together are mixed into the decoction. And there is no remedy more agreeable for the mouth, windpipe, uvula and stomach. It is made also in another way: 2 sextarii of juice and a sextarius of Attic honey are boiled as we said above.
137| Marvellous besides are the things that are reported: that at the first budding, before they come out into leaves, the fruits that are to be are plucked with the left hand. The Greeks call them ricini. If these have not touched the ground, tied on they stop blood, whether it flows from a wound or from the mouth or the nostrils or from haemorrhoids. For this purpose they are kept stored.
138| The same is said to be done by a branch broken off at full moon as it begins to bear fruit, if it has not touched the ground, tied on the arm of women particularly against abundance of the menses. They think that this is done also at any time when it is plucked from the trees themselves so that it does not touch the ground, and tied on. The leaves of the mulberry, ground or boiled dry, are applied to the stings of serpents; the same effect is had by drinking. Against scorpions the juice of the bark of the root, drunk in wine or vinegar-water, is hostile. The compound of the ancients must be given too.
139| They boiled the expressed juice of the ripe fruit mixed with that of the unripe in a bronze vessel to the thickness of honey. Some, with myrrh added and cypress, hardened it first in a vessel, roasting it in the sun and stirring with a spatula three times a day. This was stomatice, with which they also brought wounds to a scar. Another preparation of the juice: they pressed it from the dried fruit, contributing much to the flavour of relishes, in medicine against nomae and phlegm of the chest and wherever it was needed to bind the viscera. They rinsed the teeth with it too.
140| A third kind of juice is from the leaves and root boiled, to be applied with oil to burns. The leaves are applied by themselves as well. The root, cut at harvest time, gives a juice most suitable for toothache and collections and suppurations. It purges the belly. Mulberry leaves steeped in urine take the hair off hides.
141| Cherries loosen the belly and are useless to the stomach; the same dried stop the belly and provoke urine. I find in the authorities that if someone swallows them dewy in the morning with their kernels, the belly is so far relieved that the feet are freed from disease. Medlars, except the setanian, which have a force nearer to the apple, the rest draw together the stomach and stop the belly. Likewise dried sorb apples, for fresh ones are good for the stomach and for those with quick bowels.
142| Pine nuts, which have resin, lightly crushed, with a sextarius of water added to each, boiled down to a half, cure spitting of blood, in such a way that two cyathi of it are drunk at a time. A decoction of the bark of the pine in wine is given against gripings. The kernels of the pine nut quench thirst and the sharpness and gnawings of the stomach and contrary humours settled there. And they strengthen weakness of the powers, being useful to the kidneys and bladder.
143| They seem to roughen the throat and cause cough. They drive out bile, drunk in water or wine or passum or a decoction of acorns. Cucumber seed and the juice of purslane are mixed with them against the more violent gnawings of the stomach, likewise for ulcers of the bladder and for the kidneys, since they also provoke urine.
144| A decoction of the roots of the bitter almond corrects the skin of the face and makes the colour more cheerful. The nuts themselves induce sleep and appetite, and provoke urine and the menses. They are applied to headache, most of all in fever; if it comes from drunkenness, in vinegar and rosaceum and a sextarius of water. They stop blood with starch and mint, are good for lethargics and epileptics when the head is anointed, heal epinyctides in old wine, putrefying ulcers, dog bites with honey, and scurf on the face when it has been prepared beforehand by bathing; likewise pains of the liver and kidneys, drunk in water, but often also as an ecligma with terebinth resin.
145| For those with stones and difficulty of urine they are effective ground in passum, and for clearing the skin in honeyed water. They are good as an ecligma with milk for the liver, for cough and for the colon, with elelisphacos added in moderation, in honey; the amount taken is the size of a hazelnut. They say that drinkers who have taken five or so beforehand do not feel drunkenness, and that foxes, if they have eaten them and cannot get at water nearby to lap, die. The sweet ones have less strength in remedies. These nevertheless purge and provoke urine. Fresh ones fill the stomach.
146| With Greek nuts, taken with wormwood seed in vinegar, the regius morbus is said to be cured, and the same applied by themselves cure ailments of the seat and especially condylomata, likewise cough and spitting of blood.
147| Walnuts the Greeks named from heaviness of the head. For indeed the rank smell of the trees themselves and their leaves penetrates the brain. The kernels do this with less torment, but in foods. Fresh ones are more pleasant; dry ones are oilier and useless to the stomach, hard to digest, bringing headache, hostile to those who cough, suited to those about to vomit fasting in tenesmus alone, for they draw phlegm. The same, taken beforehand, dull poisons, and are likewise hostile to onions and soften their flavour.
148| They are applied to inflammation of the ears; with a small quantity of honey and rue they are applied to the breasts and to dislocations, for angina with rue and oil, with onion and salt and honey to the bite of a dog or a man. A hollow tooth is cauterized with the shell of a walnut. The shell, burnt and ground, applied in oil or wine to the head of infants, nourishes the hair; therefore they use it so for alopecias. The more nuts someone eats, the more easily he drives out tapeworms. Walnuts that are very old cure gangrenes and carbuncles, likewise bruises; the husk of walnuts cures the fault of lichens and dysenterics; the leaves ground with vinegar, pain of the ears.
149| In the sanctuaries of Mithridates, the greatest of kings, after he had been conquered, Pompey found in a private notebook in his own hand a composition of an antidote from 2 dried nuts, likewise as many figs and 20 leaves of rue, ground together, with a grain of salt added: that for him who takes this fasting no poison will do harm on that day. Against the bite of a mad dog also, kernels that a fasting man has chewed and applied are said to be an immediate remedy.
150| Hazelnuts cause headache and swelling of the stomach, and contribute more to the body and to fatness than is likely. But toasted they cure catarrh too, and a chronic cough, ground and drunk in honeyed water; some add grains of pepper, others drink them in passum. Pistachios have the same uses as pine kernels, and besides for the stings of serpents, whether eaten or drunk. Chestnuts strongly stop flows of the stomach and belly, move the bowels, are good for those who spit blood, and nourish the flesh.
151| Carob pods, fresh, are useless to the stomach and loosen the belly. The same dried stop it and become more useful to the stomach, and provoke urine. The Syrian ones, in pain of the stomach, some boil down, three of them to each sextarius of water, to a half, and drink that juice. The sweat of a branch of the cornel tree, caught on a red-hot iron plate without touching the wood, and the rust formed from it applied, cures lichens in their beginning. The arbutus, also called unedo, bears fruit hard to digest and useless to the stomach.
152| The laurel has a warming nature in leaves and bark and berries; therefore a decoction of these, and especially of the leaves, is agreed to be good for wombs and bladders. Applied, they resist the poisons of wasps and hornets and bees, likewise of serpents, above all the sepes, dipsas and viper. They are good also for the menses of women, cooked with oil, and with polenta, the tender ones ground, against inflammations of the eyes, and with rue against those of the testicles, with rosaceum or with iris oil for headaches. Moreover, chewed and swallowed, three each for three days, they free from cough, and ground with honey the same for shortness of breath.
153| The bark of the root must be avoided by pregnant women. The root itself breaks stones, and is good for the liver, drunk in fragrant wine at 3 obols. The leaves drunk move vomiting. The berries draw the menses, applied ground or drunk. An old cough and orthopnoea are cured by berries, two with the bark removed, drunk in wine; if there is also fever, boiled in water or in an ecligma made with passum or honeyed water.
154| They are good for consumptives in the same way and for all rheumatismoi of the chest; for they both digest phlegm and draw it out. Against scorpions four each are drunk in wine. The juice of the berries corrects epinyctides, applied with oil, and freckles and weeping ulcers and ulcers of the mouth and scurf, scaly eruption of the skin, and lice; for pain or heaviness of the ears it is dropped in with old wine and rosaceum.
155| All venomous creatures flee from those anointed with it; drunk it is good against stings. But the most effective is the laurel that has the thinnest leaves. The berries with wine resist serpents and scorpions and spiders; with oil and vinegar they are applied to the spleen and the liver, and with honey to gangrenes. And in weariness or chill it is good to be anointed with that juice, with nitrum added.
156| There are some who think that the root, drunk in water to the measure of an acetabulum, does much to speed childbirth, the fresh root more effectively than the dried. Some prescribe 10 berries to be given in drink against the stings of scorpions; likewise, as a remedy for a relaxed uvula, that berries or leaves, a quarter of a pound by weight, be boiled down in 3 sextarii of water to a third and gargled hot; and, for headache, that an odd number of berries be pounded with oil and warmed.
157| The leaves of the Delphic laurel, pounded and smelled from time to time, keep off the contagion of pestilence, all the more if they are also burned. Oil from the Delphic laurel is useful for cerates and acopum, for dispelling chills, relaxing the sinews, pains in the side and cold fevers; likewise, warmed in the rind of a pomegranate, for earache. The leaves, boiled down in water to a third, check the uvula when gargled and, when drunk, pains of the bowels and intestines; the most tender of them, pounded in wine and applied at night, check pimples and itching.
158| The other kinds of laurel have nearly the same powers. The Alexandrian or Idaean laurel speeds childbirth, its root drunk at a weight of 3 denarii in 3 cyathi of sweet wine; it also expels the afterbirth and the menses. Daphnoides, or the wild laurel under the names we have given, drunk in the same way, is beneficial; it loosens the bowels, either the fresh leaf or the dried, at 3 drachmas, with salt in hydromel. Chewed, it draws out phlegm, and the leaf also brings on vomiting; it is bad for the stomach. In the same way the berries too are taken, fifteen at a time, to purge.
159| The white cultivated myrtle is less useful in medicine than the black. Its seed cures those who spit blood, and, drunk in wine, it acts against mushrooms. It sweetens the breath even if chewed the day before; so in Menander the women of the Synaristosae eat it. The same is given for dysentery at the weight of a denarius in wine. Gently heated with wine, it heals stubborn ulcers at the extremities of the body.
160| It is applied with polenta to inflamed eyes, and for heart patients on the left breast, and in neat wine against the sting of the scorpion, and for ailments of the bladder, headaches, and aegilops before it suppurates, and likewise to swellings; with the kernels taken out and pounded in old wine, to eruptions of phlegm. The juice of the seed stops the bowels and promotes urine. It is smeared on with cerate for eruptions of pustules and of phlegm, and against phalangia; it blackens the hair.
161| Milder than the juice is the oil from the same myrtle, and milder too the wine, on which people never get drunk. When aged it stops the bowels and the stomach, cures colic and drives away loss of appetite. The meal of the dried leaves, sprinkled on, checks sweating, even in fever; it is useful also for coeliac patients, for prolapse of the womb, ailments of the anus, running ulcers, the sacred fire as a fomentation, falling hair, dandruff, and other eruptions as well, and burns.
162| It is added to the medicaments they call liparae, for the same reason as the oil made from the leaves; it is most effective for ailments in moist parts, as in the mouth and the womb. The leaves themselves, pounded in wine, counteract mushrooms, and with wax, diseases of the joints and gatherings. The same, boiled in wine, are given to drink for dysentery and dropsy. They are dried into a meal, which is sprinkled on ulcers or on a haemorrhage.
163| They also clear freckles, pterygia, whitlows, epinyctides, condylomata, the testicles and foul ulcers, and likewise burns, with cerate. For running ears they use the leaves burned, and the juice, and the decoction. They are also burned for antidotes; so too the young stalks, picked in flower, burned in an oven in a new covered earthenware pot and then pounded in wine. Ash of the leaves also treats burns. To keep the groin from swelling as the result of an ulcer, it is enough just to carry a twig of myrtle that has touched neither iron nor earth.
164| We have told how myrtidanum is made. It helps the womb as a pessary, a fomentation and a liniment, and is more effective than myrtle, whether bark, leaf or seed. A juice is also pressed from the leaves: the softest are pounded in a mortar while dry wine is poured on little by little, or else rainwater; and they use the pressed juice for ulcers of the mouth, anus, womb and belly, for blackening the hair, for bathing the armpits, for clearing freckles, and wherever something needs to be bound.
165| The wild myrtle, or oxymyrsine, or chamaemyrsine, differs from the cultivated by its reddish berries and its shortness. Its root is held in esteem: boiled in wine and drunk, for pains of the kidneys and for difficult urine, especially when it is thick and foul-smelling; pounded with wine, for jaundice and for purging the womb. The young stalks too are taken as food in the manner of asparagus, and cooked in the ashes.
166| The seed, drunk with wine, or with oil and vinegar, breaks up stones; likewise, pounded in vinegar and rose oil, it relieves headaches, and drunk, jaundice. Castor called oxymyrsine, with the [….] of myrtle and pointed leaves, from which brooms are made in the country, ruscum, and used it for the same purposes. So far, then, the medicines of the trees of the town; let us pass on to the wild ones.

======== Natural History — Book XXIV ========

1| Not even the woods and the rougher face of nature lack medicines, for that holy parent of all things has everywhere set out remedies for man, so that even the wilderness itself should become a medicine; and at every turn the marvels of her discord and concord come to meet us. The oak and the olive are divided by so stubborn a hatred that either, planted in the other's pit, dies; and the oak dies when planted next to the walnut, too. Deadly also are the hatreds between the cabbage and the vine; the vegetable itself, which puts the vine to flight,
2| withers when set against cyclaminus and origanum. They even report that trees already aged and due to be felled are harder to cut, and wither faster, if they are touched by the hand before the iron. They say that loads of fruit are felt at once by draught animals, and that unless the fruit is first shown to them they break out in a sweat on the spot, however little they carry. Ferula is a most welcome fodder to asses, but an instant poison to other draught animals; and for this reason that animal is assigned to Father Liber, to whom the ferula also belongs.
3| Even insensible things each have their own poisons, and the very smallest too. Cooks take excess salt out of food with philyra and fine flour; salt tempers the cloying taste of over-sweet things; nitrous or bitter waters are softened by adding polenta, so that they can be drunk within two hours, and for this reason polenta is put into wine strainers. Rhodian chalk and our own clay have a similar power. Things act by concord when pitch is taken off with oil, since both are of an oily nature. Oil alone mixes with lime, since both hate water. Gum is washed out more easily with vinegar, ink with water, and countless other things besides, which will be told continually in their places.
4| From this medicine was born. Nature had wished these alone to be our remedies: ready everywhere, easy to find and costing nothing, the very things we live on. Afterwards the frauds of men and the snares of their ingenuity invented those workshops in which each man is promised his own life for sale. At once compounds and inexplicable mixtures are trumpeted,
5| Arabia and India are prized for remedies, and a medicine for a small ulcer is charged to the Red Sea, while every poorest man dines every day on the true remedies. For if remedies were fetched from the garden, or a herb or shrub were sought, no art would be cheaper. So it surely is: through its greatness the Roman people has lost its ways, and by conquering we have been conquered. We obey foreigners, and through one art they have given orders even to our commanders. But of this more elsewhere.
6| We have spoken in their places of the lotos herb, and likewise of the Egyptian plant of the same name, and also of the Syrtic tree. This lotos, which our people call the Greek bean, stops the bowels with its berries. Shavings of the wood boiled in wine help dysentery, the menses, vertigo and epilepsy, and also stop the hair from falling. It is a marvel that nothing is more bitter than these shavings and nothing sweeter than the fruit. A medicament is also made from its sawdust, boiled in myrtle water, kneaded and divided into lozenges; it is most useful for dysentery at the weight of a victoriatus with 3 cyathi of water.
7| Acorns, pounded with salted axle-grease, heal the hardenings they call cacoethe. Those of the ilex are more powerful, and in all kinds the bark itself and the skin lying under the bark. This, boiled, helps coeliac patients. For dysentery the acorn itself is also applied. The same resists the bites of serpents, fluxes and suppurations. The leaves and acorns, or the bark, or their juice, boiled, help against poisons. The bark boiled in cow's milk is applied to a snakebite; it is also given in wine for dysentery. The ilex too has the same power.
8| The coccum of the ilex is applied in vinegar to fresh wounds and in water to fluxes of the eyes, and is dropped into eyes suffused with blood. There is moreover a kind of it, growing mostly in Africa and Asia, that very quickly changes into a little worm; for this reason they call it scolecium and reject it. We have described its principal kinds.
9| No fewer are the kinds of galls we have set out: solid and perforated, likewise white and black, larger and smaller. The power of all is similar; the best is the Commagenian. They remove growths on the body and help the gums, the uvula and ulceration of the mouth. Burned and quenched in wine [….]; they are applied for coeliac patients and dysentery; with honey, to whitlows and rough nails, pterygia, running ulcers, condylomata and the ulcers called phagedaenic. Boiled in wine, they are dropped into the ears and smeared on the eyes, and, with vinegar, used against eruptions and panus.
10| The kernel, chewed, relieves toothache, and likewise chafing and burns. Unripe galls drunk in vinegar reduce the spleen; the same, burned and quenched in salted vinegar, check the menses and, as a fomentation, prolapse of the womb. Every kind blackens the hair.
11| We have said that mistletoe from the robur is held the best, and how it is prepared. Some pound it and boil it in water until nothing floats; some chew the berries and spit out the skins. The best is that which is without skin and lightest, tawny outside and leek-green inside. Nothing is more glutinous. It softens, disperses swellings and dries up strumae; with resin and wax it soothes panus of every kind.
12| Some add galbanum as well, an equal weight of each, and in this way they use it for wounds too. It smooths rough nails if it is smeared on for seven days at a time and washed off with nitrum. Some think, from religious belief, that it works more effectively if gathered from the robur at the new moon without iron, provided it has not touched the earth; that it cures epilepsy, and helps women to conceive if they simply carry it about with them; and that ulcers are healed most effectively when it is chewed and applied.
13| The little balls of the robur oak, with bear's fat, fill bald patches with hair. The leaves, bark and acorn of the cerrus oak dry up gatherings and suppurations and check fluxes. A decoction of it, as a fomentation, strengthens numbed parts of the limbs; it is also good to sit in, for drying and contracting the parts. The root of the cerrus is hostile to scorpions. Bark of the cork oak, pounded and drunk in hot water, stops blood flowing from either part. Its ash in hot wine is greatly praised for those who spit blood.
14| Beech leaves are chewed for ailments of the gums and lips. Ash of the beech mast is smeared on for stones; likewise with honey for bald patches.
15| Cypress leaves, pounded, are applied to creeping ulcers, and to the head with pearl barley when it aches from the sun; likewise to hernia, for which reason they are also drunk. They are also smeared on with wax for swelling of the testicles, and with vinegar they blacken the hair. The same leaves pounded, kneaded with twice their quantity of soft bread in Aminean wine, ease pains of the feet and sinews. The little balls are drunk against the bites of serpents, or if blood is brought up; they are smeared on gatherings. Tender ones, pounded with axungia and bean meal, are also good for hernia; they are drunk for the same reason. With meal they are applied to the parotid gland and to scrofula.
16| The juice is pressed out when the leaves are pounded together with the seed. Mixed with oil, it removes dimness of the eyes; likewise, drunk in wine or smeared on, in the weight of a victoriatus, with a rich dried fig from which the seeds have been taken out, it cures ailments of the testicles; it disperses swellings, and with leaven, scrofula. The root pounded with the leaves and drunk is a remedy for the bladder and for strangury, and against phalangia. The shavings, drunk, bring on the periods and counter the stings of scorpions.
17| The great cedar, which they call cedrelate, yields a pitch called cedria, most useful for toothache; for it breaks the teeth and draws them out, and eases the pain. We have said how the juice of the cedar is made from it. Its use for books would be great, were it not that it brings pain to the head; it keeps dead bodies uncorrupted for ages, but corrupts living ones, a marvellous difference, since it takes away life from those who breathe and stands in place of life for the dead.
18| It also corrupts clothing and kills animals. For these reasons I would not think this remedy should be used for quinsies, nor, as some have urged, by tasting it for indigestion. I should also fear to rinse the teeth with it in vinegar when they ache, or to drop it into the ears for heaviness or for worms. It is a monstrous thing that they report, that it acts as an abortive in intercourse if the man's member has first been drenched with it. I should not hesitate to anoint with it for lice-disease, and likewise for scurf. They also advise drinking it in raisin wine against the poison of the sea hare. They would do better to smear it on in elephantiasis.
19| Certain authorities have also used it to anoint foul ulcers and the growths in them, and the white spots and dimness of the eyes, and have directed a cyathus of it to be sipped against ulcers of the lung, likewise against tapeworms. From it is also made an oil which they call pisselaeon, of more violent use for all the same purposes. It is certain that serpents are driven off by cedar sawdust, and likewise if people are anointed with the berries pounded with oil.
20| Cedrides, that is, the fruit of the cedar, cure cough, promote urine, check the bowels; they are useful for ruptures, convulsions, spasms, strangury, the womb, against aconite and sea hares, and for the same things as above, for gatherings and inflammations.
21| On galbanum we have spoken. Neither the moist nor the dry kind is approved, only such as we described. By itself it is drunk for old cough, for shortness of breath, ruptures and convulsions; it is applied to sufferers from sciatica, to pains of the side, to panus, boils, to a body drawing away from the bones, to scrofula, to knots of the joints, and to toothaches as well. It is also smeared on with honey for ulcers of the head. For suppurating ears it is poured in with rose oil or nard. By its smell it relieves epileptics, and when the womb is choking, or in failure of the stomach.
22| Applied as a pessary or by fumigation, it draws out aborted foetuses that will not come away, and likewise when smeared round a branch of hellebore and placed beneath. We have said that serpents are driven off by the reek of burning galbanum. They also flee from those anointed with it. It heals also those struck by a scorpion. It is drunk too in difficult labour, the size of a bean in a cyathus of wine, and it sets right wombs that have turned over; with myrrh and wine, however, it draws out dead offspring. It is hostile also to poisons, especially arrow poisons, with myrrh and wine. Mixed with oil and spondylium it kills serpents by touch. It is thought to be harmful to the urine.
23| Its nature is similar to that of ammoniacum, and so is its tear, to be approved as we said. It softens, warms, disperses, dissolves. In eye-salves it suits clearness of sight, and removes itching, scars and white spots of the eyes; it eases toothaches, more effectively if lit. Drunk, it benefits sufferers from difficult breathing, pleurisy, the lungs, the bladder, bloody urine, the spleen and sciatica (so too it loosens the bowels); for the joints and gout it is boiled with an equal weight of pitch or wax and rose oil. It ripens panus and draws out corns with honey; so too it softens hardnesses; for the spleen it is applied most effectively with vinegar and Cyprian wax or rose oil. To be anointed with it with vinegar and oil and a little natron is useful for weariness.
24| And the nature of storax among foreign trees we have set out. Besides what we have said, the kind that is preferred is the richest, clean, in whitish fragments. It treats cough, the throat, ailments of the chest, a womb that is closed or suffering from hardness; it brings on the periods drunk or applied as a pessary, and softens the bowels. I find that in a moderate draught it relieves sadness of mind, in a larger one it contracts it. Poured in, it mends ringing in the ears; smeared on, it treats scrofula and knots of the sinews. It is hostile to poisons that kill by cold, and therefore to hemlock.
25| Spondylium, shown together with the rest, is poured on the heads of the frenzied and the lethargic, likewise for long-standing headaches with old oil; it is drunk too in ailments of the liver, jaundice, epilepsy, orthopnoea, and choking of the womb, for which it also helps by fumigation. It loosens the bowels. With rue it is smeared on ulcers that creep.
26| The flower is effectively poured into suppurating ears, but the juice, when it is pressed out, must be kept covered, since flies and the like are wonderfully drawn to it. The root, scraped and put into fistulas, eats away their callus. It is also dropped into the ears with the juice. It is itself given too for jaundice and for disorders of the liver and the womb. It makes the hair curly when the head is anointed with it.
27| Sphagnos, or sphacos, or bryon, which also grows in Gaul, as we have indicated, is useful to women sitting over it for the womb, and likewise, mixed with nasturtium and pounded in salt water, for swellings of the knees and thighs. Drunk with wine and dry resin, it drives out urine most quickly. Pounded with wine and juniper berries and drunk, it empties dropsy patients. Terebinth leaves and root are applied to gatherings. A decoction of them strengthens the stomach. The seed is drunk in wine for headache and against difficulty of urination; it gently softens the belly and rouses desire.
28| Leaves of the pitch pine and the larch, pounded [….] and boiled in vinegar, for toothache. The ash of the barks is good for chafing and burns; drunk, it checks the bowels and moves urine, and by fumigation it sets the womb right. The leaves of the pitch pine are particularly useful for the liver, drunk in mead in the weight of a drachma. It is well established that those forests at least which are tapped for pitch and resin are most beneficial for consumptives and for those who do not regain their strength sufficiently after a long illness, and that the air of that sky does more good than a voyage to Egypt, more than drinking milk among the grassy summer pastures of the mountains.
29| Chamaepitys is called abiga in Latin on account of abortions, and by others the incense of the earth; it has branches a cubit long, and is like a pine in flower and in smell. A second kind is shorter and curved, [….] like it. A third has the same smell and therefore the same name, a very small plant with a stalk a finger long, rough, thin, white leaves, growing on rocks; all are herbs, but because of the kinship of the name they are not to be put off. They are good against the stings of scorpions, and likewise, applied to the liver with dates or quinces; for the kidneys and bladder, a decoction of them with barley meal.
30| For jaundice also and for difficulties of urine they are drunk boiled in water. The last is effective against serpents with honey; so too, as a pessary, it cleanses the womb. Drunk, it draws out clotted blood. It produces sweats when people are anointed with it, and is especially useful to the kidneys. From it too are made pills for dropsy patients, with fig, which draw the bowels. In the weight of a victoriatus in wine it ends pain of the loins and a recent cough. Boiled in vinegar and drunk, it is said to expel dead offspring at once.
31| With due honour pityusa will also be treated, for a similar reason; some count it in the genus of tithymalus. It is a shrub like the pitch pine, with a small purple flower. The root of its decoction, a hemina, or of the seed a spoonful in acorn-shaped suppositories, draws bile and phlegm off through the bowels. The leaves boiled in vinegar mend scurf of the skin, and the breasts too, mixed with a decoction of rue, and gripings and the bites of serpents, and in general gatherings in their beginning.
32| We have shown that resin is produced by the trees mentioned above, and its kinds and the countries it comes from, in the account of wine and afterwards in the account of trees. There are two chief kinds, dry and liquid. The dry comes from the pine and the pitch pine, the liquid from terebinth, larch, the mastic tree and cypress; for these also bear it in Asia and Syria.
33| Those are mistaken who think that from the pitch pine and from the larch is the same; for the pitch pine pours a rich resin, juicy in the manner of frankincense, while the larch pours a thin one of honey colour, smelling of a rank odour. Physicians seldom use the liquid, and then generally in an egg; that from the larch they use for cough and ulcers of the viscera (the pine resin is not much in use), the others only when boiled. And we have shown sufficiently the kinds of boiling.
34| Among the differences of the trees, the terebinth resin is preferred, being the most fragrant and the smoothest; of the countries, the Cyprian and the Syrian, both of the colour of Attic honey, but the Cyprian fleshier and thicker. In the dry kind they look for white, pure and translucent; in every kind they look for that from the mountains rather than from the plain, and likewise that from the north rather than from another wind. Resin is dissolved for use on wounds and in poultices with oil, in potions with bitter almonds.
35| Its nature in healing is to draw wounds together, to cleanse, and to disperse gatherings. Terebinth resin soothes ailments of the chest; the same, warm, is smeared on for pains of the limbs and for spasms (it is washed off in the sun), and over whole bodies, chiefly in the care of slave-dealers, to correct thinness, by loosening the skin in this way limb by limb, and making the bodies capable of taking more food.
36| The next place is held by that from the mastic tree. It has a power of contracting, and it moves urine before the others. The rest soften the belly, digest crude humours, quiet an old cough, and draw out burdens of the womb even when used as fumigation. They are especially hostile to mistletoe-birdlime; with bull's tallow and honey they heal panus and the like. Mastic resin turns back the eyelids most conveniently; it is most useful too for broken bones and for suppurating ears, and likewise for itching of the genitals. Pine resin is the best remedy for wounds of the head.
37| Pitch also, from what and in what ways it is made, we have indicated, and its two kinds, thick and liquid. Of the thick kinds the most useful for medicine is the Bruttian, since being the richest and the most resinous it affords the uses of both, and for that reason it is also redder than the others. As for what they add here, that it is better from a male tree, I do not think it can be understood.
38| The nature of pitch is to warm and to fill. It is particularly opposed to the bites of the cerastes, with pearl barley; likewise to quinsy, with honey; to catarrhs and sneezings, from phlegm. It is poured into the ears with rose oil, and smeared on with wax. It heals lichens, looses the bowels, and helps the coughing up of the chest, as an electuary or smeared with honey on the tonsils; so too it cleanses ulcers and fills them. With raisins and axungia it cleanses carbuncles and rotting ulcers; those that creep, with pine bark or sulphur.
39| Some have given it to consumptives by the measure of a cyathus, and against an old cough. It mends fissures of the seat and feet, and panus, and rough nails, hardnesses and turnings of the womb, and by its smell the lethargic. Boiled with the urine of a boy not yet adult and with barley meal, it brings scrofula to suppuration. For bald patches too they use dry pitch; for women's breasts, Bruttian pitch warmed gently in wine, with fine spelt flour, the cloths laid on as hot as possible.
40| Liquid pitch and the oil which they call pisselaeon, how it is made we have said. Some boil it a second time and call it palimpissa. With liquid pitch the inside of the throat is anointed for quinsy, and the uvula, [….] pains of the ears, clearness of the eyes, smearings round the mouth, shortness of breath, the womb, old cough and frequent spitting from the chest, spasms, tremors, opisthotonos, paralysis, pains of the sinews; it is the finest remedy for the mange of dogs and beasts of burden.
41| There is also pissasphaltos, pitch mixed naturally with bitumen in the territory of the Apolloniates (some mix it themselves); it is a special remedy for the mange of flocks, or if a newborn has injured the teats. The best natural kind is that from the substance which floats on top when it boils. Zopissa, we have said, is scraped from ships, wax steeped in sea salt. The best of this is from a ship's first voyage. It is added to poultices for dispersing gatherings. Torches [….] and boiled in vinegar are an effective rinse for toothaches.
42| Of the mastic tree, the seed, the bark and the tear all promote urine and check the bowels; a decoction of them, as a fomentation, is for ulcers that creep. It is smeared on moist sores and on erysipelas, and rinses the gums. The leaves are rubbed on the teeth when they ache; loose teeth are rinsed with the decoction; they dye the hair. The tear is good for ailments of the seat, when something needs drying or warming. A decoction [of the tear] is also useful to the stomach, moving belching and urine. It is also smeared on with pearl barley for headaches.
43| Tender leaves are smeared on inflamed eyes. Mastic, from the mastic tree, is used for turning back the eyelids and for stretching the skin of the face, and in cleansing preparations, and for those who bring up blood, for old cough, and for all that the power of acacia serves. It also heals chafed parts, either with oil made from its seed and mixed with wax, or with leaves boiled in oil, or with water the parts are so fomented. I know that the physician Democrates, in the illness of Considia, daughter of Marcus Servilius, a man of consular rank, who refused every austere treatment, for a long time used with success the milk of goats which he fed on mastic.
44| Plane trees are hostile to bats; their balls, drunk in wine in the weight of 4 denarii are effective against all the poisons of serpents and scorpions, and likewise against burns. Pounded with sharp vinegar, and better with squill vinegar, they stop all bleeding, and with honey added they mend freckles, cancers and old malanders.
45| The leaves and bark are smeared on gatherings and suppurations, and their decoction too for these; the bark in vinegar is a remedy for toothache, and the youngest leaves, boiled down in white wine, a remedy for the eyes. The down of the leaves is harmful to ears and eyes. The ash of the balls heals burns from fire or from cold. The bark, in wine, quenches the stings of scorpions.
46| What power the ash tree has against serpents we have indicated. Its leaves contain a seed, with which they treat the liver and pains of the sides, in wine, and draw out the water that rises under the skin. They lighten an obese body, bringing it gradually to leanness of its burden, when the same leaves are pounded with wine in proportion to the strength, so that for a boy 5 leaves are shared among 3 cyathi, for the sturdier 7 leaves in five cyathi of wine. It must not be omitted that some declare its shavings and sawdust are to be avoided. The root of the maple, bruised in wine, is applied most effectively to pains of the liver.
47| The use of white poplar clusters in unguents we have set out. The bark, drunk, helps sciatica and strangury, the hot juice of the leaves helps earache. Those who hold a poplar rod in the hand do not fear chafing. The black poplar is held most effective, the kind that grows in Crete; for epileptics the seed in vinegar is useful. It also yields a little resin, which they use for poultices. The leaves, boiled in vinegar, are applied to gouty sufferers. The sap that runs out of hollows in the black poplar takes away warts and pimples (it is fragrant when rubbed). Poplars also bear a drop on their leaves, from which bees make propolis. The drop too is effective for the things for which propolis is, with water.
48| Of the elm the leaves, bark and branches have the power of thickening and drawing wounds together. The inner layer of the bark, certainly, the tilia, soothes leprous eruptions, and so do the leaves smeared on with vinegar. The weight of a denarius of the bark, drunk in a hemina of cold water, purges the bowels and especially draws phlegm and waters. The tear is applied to gatherings and to wounds and burns, which it is good to foment with the decoction.
49| The moisture that forms in the little sacs of this tree gives the skin a gloss and makes the face more pleasing. The first stalks of the leaves, boiled in wine, cure swellings and draw them out through fistulas. The inner layers of the bark, the tiliae, do the same. Many think the bark, chewed, very useful for wounds, and the leaves, pounded and sprinkled with water, for swelling of the feet. The moisture too that flows from the pith of a lopped tree, as we have said, smeared on the head restores the hair and holds it when falling.
50| The linden is a gentler tree, useful for nearly the same purposes as the wild olive. Only the leaves are in use, both for the ulcers of infants and in the mouth, chewed and boiled. They promote urine; smeared on, they stop the periods; drunk, they draw off blood.
51| The elder has another kind, more of the woods, which the Greeks call chamaeacte and others helion, much shorter. A decoction of either, of the leaves or the seed or the root, in old wine, drunk at two cyathi, is bad for the stomach, but draws water off through the bowels. It also cools inflammation, above all fresh burns and dog bites, the softest leaves being smeared on with pearl barley. The juice, poured in, soothes gatherings in the brain and in particular the membrane that is around the brain.
52| Its berries are weaker than the rest; they dye the hair, and drunk by the measure of an acetabulum they move urine. The most tender leaves are eaten, dressed with oil and salt, to draw off phlegm and bile. For everything the smaller is the more effective. Two cyathi drunk of its root boiled in wine empty dropsy patients, and soften the womb; so too does a decoction of the leaves for women sitting over it. The tender stalks of the milder elder, cooked in dishes, loosen the bowels. The leaves, drunk in wine, also resist the stings of serpents.
53| The little stalks, smeared on with goat's tallow, are vigorously helpful to the gouty. The same are steeped in water, so that when it is sprinkled fleas are killed; if a place is sprinkled with a decoction of the leaves, flies are killed. Boa is the name of a disease of pimples, when the body reddens; it is whipped with an elder branch. The inner bark, pounded and drunk in white wine, loosens the bowels.
54| Juniper warms before all the rest, and thins; in other respects it is like the cedar. Of this too there are two kinds, one smaller. Either, set alight, drives off serpents. The seed is useful for pains of the stomach, chest and side. It disperses swellings and chills, and coughs; it digests hardnesses.
55| Smeared on, it checks swellings; likewise the berries drunk in dark wine check the bowels, and smeared on they check swellings of the belly. It is mixed also with antidotes and with oxypora. It promotes urine. It is smeared on the eyes in running. It is given for convulsions, ruptures, gripings, wombs and sciatica, drunk with white wine, four berries at a time, or 20 boiled in wine. There are those who also anoint the body with juice from its seed, for fear of serpents.
56| The fruit of the willow, before it ripens, turns into a spider, but if it is gathered earlier, it is good for those who bring up blood. The ash of the bark from the first branches, mixed with water, cures corns and callus. It mends blemishes of the skin on the face, the more when its own juice is added.
57| This juice is of three kinds: in one the tree itself sweats it out in the manner of gum; in another it flows at a cut, when the tree is in flower, the bark being cut away to the size of 3 fingers. It has power to clear what obstructs the eyes, likewise to thicken what needs it, and to promote urine and to draw out all gatherings within. The third juice drips from the lopping of branches by the pruning hook. Of these, then, one is warmed with rose oil in the shell of a pomegranate and poured into the ears, or the leaves, cooked and pounded with wax, are applied.
58| For the gouty, likewise, to foment the sinews with bark and leaves boiled in wine is most useful. The flower, pounded with the leaves, clears scurf from the face. Leaves ground up and drunk restrain unruly lust and, taken more often, remove the use of it altogether. The seed of the black Amerine willow with the foam of silver, in equal weight, smeared on after the bath, is a psilotrum.
59| The vitex is not much different from the willow in its use for withies, and in the look of its leaves, except that it has a more pleasing smell. The Greeks call it lygos, in other places agnos, because at the Thesmophoria of the Athenians the married women, keeping chastity, strew their couches with these leaves. There are two kinds of it: the larger rises into a tree in the manner of the willow, the smaller is branching, with whiter, downy leaves. The first puts out a white flower with a purple; it is also called the white, and the black is the one that has only the purple. They grow in marshy plains.
60| The seed, drunk, has a certain taste of wine, and is said to dissolve fevers and, when people are anointed with it mixed with oil, to cause sweat, as also to relieve weariness. They promote urine and the periods. They attack the head in the manner of wine (for the smell too is similar), but drive flatulence into the lower parts, check the bowels, and are exceedingly useful for dropsy and the spleen. They produce abundance of milk.
61| They are hostile to the poisons [of serpents], especially those which bring cold; the smaller is more effective against serpents: a drachma of the seed is drunk in wine or posca, or 2 of the most tender leaves. Both are also smeared on against the bites of spiders; or, applied only by anointing, or by fumigation or as a bed spread underneath, they drive off venomous creatures.
62| They restrain the impulse to sexual desire, and for that reason are especially hostile to phalangia, whose bite rouses the genitals. For headache from drunkenness, the flower and the tender little stalks with rose oil ease it. A decoction of the seed dissolves a more violent headache by fomentation, and cleanses the womb also by fumigation or as a pessary; with pennyroyal and honey drunk it cleanses the bowels. It softens abscesses and panus, though hard to digest, with barley meal.
63| The seed, with aphronitrum and vinegar, cures lichens and freckles, and ulcers of the mouth and of eruptions, with honey; for the testicles, with butter and vine leaves; for fissures of the seat, smeared on with water. For dislocations, with salt, natron and wax, the seed and the leaf are most useful. The seed is added to poultices for ailments of the sinews and for gout; it is dropped, boiled in oil, on the head in lethargy and frenzy. Those who hold a rod of it in the hand or in the girdle are said not to feel chafing.
64| The Greeks call erice a shrub not much different from the vitex, with the colour of rosemary and almost its leaf. They report that it is hostile to serpents.
65| The genista also serves for binding, and its flower is most welcome to bees. I doubt whether this is what the Greek authors have called sparton, since I have shown that fishing lines are commonly made of it among them, and whether Homer meant it when he said the ropes of the ships were loosed. It is certain that Spanish or African esparto was not yet in use, and that when ships were built sewn together, they were sewn with flax, never with esparto. Its seed, which the Greeks call by the same name, growing in pods in the manner of little beans, purges in the place of hellebore, drunk in a dose of a drachma and a half in 4 cyathi of mead, on an empty stomach.
66| The branches, and likewise the foliage, steeped in vinegar for several days and pounded, give a juice useful to sufferers from sciatica, drunk at one cyathus. Some prefer to steep them in seawater and inject it by means of a clyster. Sciatic patients are also anointed with the same juice, oil being added. Some use the seed too for strangury. Genista pounded with axungia heals aching knees.
67| Lenaeus calls myrice erica, like the brooms of Ameria; he says that cancers are healed by it, boiled in wine and pounded and smeared on with honey. Some think the tamarisk is the same, and that it is outstanding for the spleen, if its juice, pressed out, is drunk in wine; and they make its antipathy against this one organ so marvellous that, as they assert, if swine drink from troughs made of it, they are found without a spleen.
68| And for that reason they give food and drink to a man with a diseased spleen in vessels made of it. A weighty authority in medicine has declared that a rod broken from it, so that it touched neither earth nor iron, eases pains of the belly when laid on in such a way that it is pressed against the body by the tunic and girdle. The common people call it an unlucky tree, as we have said, since it bears nothing and is never sown.
69| Corinth, and the Greece around it, call it brya, and make two kinds of it, the wild one plainly barren, the other milder. This bears, in Egypt and Syria, abundantly a woody fruit, larger than a gall, rough to the taste, which physicians use in place of gall in the compositions they call antherae. The wood, moreover, and the flower and leaves and bark are used for the same purposes, though less strongly.
70| The bark, pounded, is given to those who bring up blood, and against the flows of women, and to those with coeliac trouble too; the same, bruised and applied, restrains all gatherings. From the leaves a juice is pressed for these same purposes and is boiled in wine; the leaves themselves, with honey added, are smeared on gangrene. A decoction of them drunk in wine [….] applied with rose oil and wax, they ease; so too they heal night-sores.
71| For toothache and for the ears their decoction is salutary. The root likewise for the same. The leaves, further, are applied with pearl barley to sores that creep. The seed in the weight of a drachma is drunk against phalangia and spiders, and with the fat of fattened fowls is applied to boils, and is effective also against the stings of serpents except those of asps.
72| Also for jaundice, lice-disease and nits, a decoction poured in is beneficial, and it checks excess in women. The ash of the tree serves for all the same things. They say that if it is mixed with the urine of a gelded ox, either in drink or in food, desire is ended. Charcoal of this kind, quenched in that urine, is stored in the shade; the same, when one wishes to kindle it, is restored. The Magi have reported that this is done also with the urine of a eunuch.
73| Nor is the sanguinea rod held luckier. Its inner bark opens scars that have already healed over. The leaves of sileris, smeared on the forehead, ease headaches. Its seed, ground in oil, checks lice-disease. Serpents also flee this shrub, and countrymen for that reason carry a staff made of it.
74| Ligustrum, if this is the same tree as the cypros of the East, has its own uses in Europe. The juice is a dispersant for the sinews, joints and chills; the leaves, everywhere, are good for an old ulcer, with a grain of salt, and for ulceration of the mouth; the berries against lice-disease, and the leaves likewise against chafing. The berries also cure the phlegm of poultry. The leaves of the alder, from boiling water, are a remedy for swelling.
75| Of ivy we have shown twenty kinds. The nature of all is doubtful in medicine. It disturbs the mind and, drunk rather freely, purges the head; inwardly it harms the sinews, and applied outwardly it benefits those same sinews. Like vinegar, all its kinds cool. They promote urine when drunk, ease headache, particularly useful for the brain and the membrane that holds the brain when soft leaves are laid on, pounded with vinegar and rose oil and boiled, rose oil being added afterwards; they are smeared on the forehead.
76| With their decoction the mouth is fomented and the head anointed. For the spleen they are good both drunk and smeared on. They are boiled against the shivering of fevers and eruptions of phlegm, or pounded in wine. The clusters too, drunk or smeared on, cure the spleen, and the liver when smeared on. As pessaries they draw the periods. The juice of ivy mends loathing of the nostrils and foul smell, especially that of the white cultivated kind.
77| The same, poured into the nostrils, purges the head, more effectively with natron added. It is poured also into suppurating or aching ears with oil. It gives comeliness to scars too. For the spleen the white kind is more effective, warmed with iron. It is enough to take 6 berries in 2 cyathi of wine. Berries of the same white ivy, three at a time, drunk in honeyed vinegar, drive out tapeworms, and in this treatment it is useful to lay them also on the belly. The ivy which we have called chrysocarpon, with 20 berries of golden colour pounded in a sextarius of wine, so that three cyathi are drunk, draws off by urine the water that has got under the skin; Erasistratus instilled 5 berries of the same, pounded in rose oil and warmed in the shell of a pomegranate, into the ear on the opposite side for toothache.
78| The berries which have the juice of saffron, taken beforehand in drink, make people safe from hangover; so too those of the black ivy, for people spitting blood or suffering from gripings. The clusters of the whiter kind, drunk, make even men barren. Whatever is boiled in wine is smeared on every kind of ulcer, even if they are malignant.
79| The tear of ivy is a psilotrum and removes lice-disease. The flower, of whatever kind, taken in a pinch of 3 fingers and drunk twice a day in austere wine, mends dysentery and quickness of the bowels. It is also usefully smeared on burns with wax. The clusters blacken the hair. The juice of the root drunk in vinegar is good against phalangia. I find also that splenic patients are cured by drinking from a vessel of this wood.
80| And they grind the berries, then burn them, and so smear them on burns that have first been washed with hot water. There are some who also cut the tree for the sake of the juice and use it for eaten-away teeth, and report that it breaks them, the neighbouring teeth being protected with wax so that they are not hurt. They look also for a gum on ivy, which in vinegar they promise to be most useful for teeth.
81| The Greeks, by a neighbouring word, call cisthon a shrub larger than thyme, with the leaves of basil. It has two kinds: in the male the flower is rose-coloured, in the female white. Both help dysentery and loosenesses of the belly, the flower taken in a pinch of three fingers in austere wine and drunk likewise twice a day; for old ulcers and burns, with wax; and by itself for ulcers of the mouth. Under these hypocisthis chiefly grows, which we shall treat among the herbs.
82| Cissos erythranos is the name the same people give to one like ivy, useful for the hips drunk in wine, likewise for the loins, so great is the power of its berries that it draws blood off through the urine. They call also chamaecissos an ivy that does not lift itself from the ground. This too, bruised in wine, by the measure of an acetabulum, cures the spleen; the leaves cure burns, with axungia. Milax also, which has the surname anthophoros, has a likeness to ivy, with thinner leaves. A garland made of it, with an odd number of leaves, they say cures headaches.
83| Some have spoken of two kinds of milax: one nearest to immortality, in shady valleys, climbing trees, with long-haired clusters of berries, helping most effectively against all venomous things by the juice of the berries: when this has often been instilled into infants, no poisons will afterwards harm them. The other kind loves cultivated ground and is produced there, of no effect. That, they say, is the earlier milax, whose wood, we have said, sounds in the ears.
84| Some have called clematis one like this, creeping through trees, jointed itself. Its leaves purge leprous eruptions; the seed loosens the bowels in the measure of an acetabulum in a hemina of water or of mead. A decoction of it is given for the same reason.
85| Of the reed we have shown 28 kinds, and nowhere is that power of nature which we are treating in these successive volumes more evident, since a reed's root, pounded and applied, draws out the stalk of the fern from the body, and likewise the root of the fern a reed. And, the more kinds we make, the one that grows in Judaea and Syria for the sake of scents and unguents moves urine, boiled with grass or the seed of celery;
86| it brings on the periods too when applied; it cures convulsions, drunk at 2 obols, and the liver, kidneys, dropsy, and cough even by fumigation, and the more with resin; for scurf and for running ulcers it is boiled with myrrh. Its juice is also taken up, and becomes like elaterium. In every reed the part nearest the root is most effective, and the joints more effective. The Cyprian reed, which is called donax, mends bald patches with the ash of its bark, and likewise rotting ulcers.
87| Its leaves are used to draw out thorns, and are effective also against erysipelas and all gatherings. The common reed has a drawing power even when fresh and pounded, not only in the root; in honey wine, they report, the reed itself does so. The root smeared on in vinegar cures dislocations and pains of the spine; the same, fresh, pounded and drunk in wine, rouses desire. The down of reeds, brought into the ears, dulls hearing.
88| Akin to the reed in Egypt is papyrus, of special use, when it has dried, for opening and drying fistulas, and, by swelling, for opening the way in for medicines. Paper, which is made from it, when burnt is among the caustics. Its ash drunk in wine brings sleep; the paper itself, applied with water, heals callus.
89| Ebony does not grow even in Egypt, as we have taught, and we are not treating in medicine foreign lands, but it will not be omitted on account of the marvel. They say its sawdust is uniquely a cure for the eyes, and that with wood ground on a whetstone dimness is dispersed with raisin wine; and with the root in water, white spots of the eyes; likewise cough, in the same way, with the root of dracunculus added, with honey. Physicians count ebony also among the eroding substances.
90| Rhododendros has not found even a Latin name among us; they call it rhododaphne or nerium. It is marvellous that its leaves are a poison to four-footed creatures, yet to man they are a protection against serpents, rue being added, drunk in wine. Cattle too and goats, it is said, die if they have drunk water in which these leaves have steeped.
91| Nor has rhus a Latin name, though it comes into use in several ways. For there is a wild herb, with the leaves of myrtle and short little stalks, which drives out tapeworms, and a shrub called the tanners' rhus, reddish, a cubit high, a finger thick, with whose dried leaves, as with pomegranate rind, hides are finished.
92| Physicians, however, use the rhoic for bruises, likewise for coeliac patients and for ulcers of the seat, or those they call phagedaenas; [….] pounded with honey and smeared on with vinegar. A decoction of them is poured into suppurating ears. A mouth-wash too is made from the branches, boiled, for the same purposes as that from mulberries, but more effective with alum added. The same is smeared on the swelling of dropsy patients.
93| Rhus which is called erythros is the seed of this shrub. It has the power of contracting and cooling. It is sprinkled instead of salt on dishes when the bowels are loose, and with silphium it makes all meats pleasanter. It cures running ulcers; with honey, roughness of the tongue, bruises, livid places, peeled skin; in the same way it brings wounds of the head to a scar most quickly. Taken as food, it checks excess in women.
94| A different thing is erythrodanum, which some call ereuthodanum, and we rubia, with which wools are dyed and skins finished. In medicine it moves urine, cures jaundice in honeyed water (and, smeared on in vinegar, lichens), and sciatica and paralysis, in such a way that those who drink it are bathed every day. The root and seed draw the periods, check the bowels, and disperse gatherings. Against serpents the branches with the leaves are applied. The leaves also stain the hair. I find in certain authors that jaundice is cured by this shrub, even if it is only looked at when tied on.
95| Different from it is what is called alysson, in its leaves only, and in having smaller branches. It received its name because, drunk in vinegar and tied on, it does not allow those bitten by a dog to feel the madness. It is marvellous, what is added, that matter dries up entirely at the sight of this shrub.
96| For dyers a small root too prepares wool, which we have said the Greeks call struthion. Both it and a decoction of it, drunk, cure jaundice, and likewise ailments of the chest. It moves urine, loosens the bowels. It cleanses the womb also, for which reason physicians call the pessary made from it the golden pesson. With honey it is splendidly good for cough, and for orthopnoea by the measure of a spoonful; with pearl barley and vinegar it removes leprous eruptions.
97| The same, with panax and the root of the caper, breaks stones and drives them out, and disperses panus, boiled with barley meal and wine. It is mixed also in poultices and eye-salves for the sake of clear sight, and is useful, among few things, as a sternutatory, for the spleen too and the liver. The same, drunk in the weight of one denarius in honeyed water, cures those with shortness of breath, and so pleurisy and all pains of the side.
98| The seed of apocynum in water (it is a shrub with the leaf of ivy, though softer, and with shorter little shoots, its seed pointed, split, downy, of heavy smell) kills dogs and all four-footed creatures when given in food.
99| Rosemary has been spoken of. There are two kinds of it: one barren, the other whose stalk and seed are resinous, which is called cachrys. Its leaves have the smell of frankincense. The root, green and applied, heals wounds, and prolapse of the seat, condylomata and haemorrhoids; the juice of both shrub and root cures jaundice and what needs to be cleansed away. It sharpens the keenness of the eyes.
100| The seed is given as a drink for old ailments of the chest, and for the womb, with wine and pepper; it helps the periods; it is smeared on the gouty with aera meal; it clears freckles also, and, smeared on where warming is needed or sweat is sought, it serves, and likewise for convulsions. Drunk in wine it increases milk, and so does the root. The herb itself is smeared on scrofula with vinegar; for cough it is good with honey.
101| Cachrys has many kinds, as we have said. But this one, which grows from the rosemary mentioned above, is resinous if rubbed. It is hostile to poisons and venomous creatures, except snakes. It moves sweat, disperses gripings, and produces abundance of milk.
102| The herb Sabina, called brathy by the Greeks, is of two kinds, one like tamarisk in leaf, the other like cypress; which is why some have called it the Cretan cypress. By many it is taken for fumigations in place of frankincense, and in medicines it is reported, in double weight, to have the same effects as cinnamon. It reduces gatherings and checks spreading ulcers, smeared on cleanses ulcers, and applied as a pessary or by fumigation draws out dead offspring. It is smeared on erysipelas and carbuncles with honey; drunk in wine it cures jaundice. They report that the phlegm of the fowl kind is cured by the smoke of this herb.
103| Like this herb Sabina is that called selago. It is gathered without iron, the right hand covered through the tunic, the left drawing it up as if by one stealing, the gatherer dressed in a white garment, with feet washed clean and bare, a sacrifice of bread and wine having been made before it is gathered; it is carried in a new napkin. The Druids of the Gauls handed down that it should be kept against every harm, and that its smoke is good against all ailments of the eyes.
104| The same named the herb samolus, which grows in damp places, and said that this too is gathered with the left hand by people fasting, against diseases of swine and cattle; that the gatherer must not look back, nor lay it down anywhere but in the water-trough, and there crush it for those about to drink.
105| The kinds of gum we have described. In these the better each is, the greater its effects will be. They are bad for the teeth; they coagulate blood and so benefit those who bring up blood, and likewise burns; they are bad for ailments of the windpipe, they move urine, they blunt bitterness. Among the other astringents, the one from the bitter almond is more effective for thickening the viscera and has warming powers.
106| Those of plums, and of cherries, and of vines are also put forward. Smeared on, they dry and contract, and with vinegar they cure the lichens of infants; they are good too for old cough, drunk at 4 obols in a mixture. They are believed also to give a pleasanter colour and an appetite for food, and to benefit sufferers from stone, drunk with raisin wine. They are best suited to uses for the eyes and wounds.
107| The Arabian thorn (we have spoken of the praises of the Egyptian thorn in the place on perfumes) also contracts and thickens all catarrhs, spittings of blood, and excess of the periods, and is stronger still in its root.
108| The seed of the white thorn gives help against scorpions. A garland of it laid on the head lessens headaches. Like this is the one the Greeks call acanthion, with much smaller leaves, prickly at the extremities and covered with a spider-web down, which, when gathered, makes in the East even certain garments like silken ones. The leaves themselves or the roots are drunk as remedies for opisthotonos.
109| Acacia also is made from a thorn in Egypt, from a tree both white and black, and likewise a green, but far better than the first. It is made too in Galatia, the worst, from a more thorny tree. The seed of all is like a lentil, only smaller both in grain and in pod. It is gathered in autumn; before it is gathered it contracts far more strongly. The juice from the pods, drenched with rain water, then pounded in a mortar, is pressed out by machines, and then thickened in the sun in mortars into lozenges. A less effective kind is made from the leaves. For finishing hides they use the seed instead of gall.
110| The juice of the leaves, and that of the Galatian acacia if very black, is disapproved, likewise that which is very red. The purple or whitish one, and the kind that dissolves most easily (its power for contracting and cooling is greatest), is useful before all others in medicines for the eyes. The lozenges are washed for these uses, by some roasted, by others thoroughly burnt. They dye the hair; they cure erysipelas, ulcers that creep and moist ailments of the body, gatherings, bruised joints, chilblains and pterygia. They check excess of the periods in women, and prolapse of the womb and seat, likewise of the eyes, and ulcers of the mouth and genitals.
111| This common thorn also, with which fullers' cauldrons are filled, has a use of its root. Throughout the Spains, indeed, many use that one both among perfumes and for unguents, calling it aspalathus. There is without doubt under this name a wild thorn in the East, as we have said, white, of the size of a proper tree,
112| but also a lower shrub, equally thorny, on Nisyros and in the islands of the Rhodians, which some call erysisceptrum, some phasganon, the Syrians diaxylon. The best is that which is least ferula-like, reddish, or verging on purple once the bark is stripped off.
113| It grows in several places, but is not fragrant everywhere. What power it had, when the rainbow rested upon it, we have said. It heals foul ulcers of the mouth and ozaena, ulcerated or carbuncular genitals, likewise fissures; drunk, it disperses flatulence and strangury. The bark cures those who pass blood. A decoction of it checks the bowels. The wild kind also is thought to do similar things.
114| There is also a thorn called appendix, since the berries of crimson colour on it are called appendices. These, raw by themselves and dried, boiled in wine, check looseness of the bowels and gripings. The berries of pyracantha are drunk against the stings of serpents.
115| Paliurus also is a kind of thorn. Its seed the Africans call zura, most effective against scorpions, likewise for sufferers from stone and for cough. The leaves have a contracting power. The root disperses panus, gatherings and abscesses; drunk, it draws urine. A decoction of it in wine checks the bowels, and is hostile to serpents. The root especially is given in wine.
116| Leaves of aquifolia, bruised with salt added, are good for diseases of the joints; the berries for the purging of women, for coeliac patients, dysentery and cholera. Drunk in wine they check the bowels. The root, boiled and smeared on, draws out what is fixed in the body, and is most useful for dislocations and swellings. The aquifolia tree planted in a house or farm keeps off poisonings. Pythagoras reports that water freezes with its flower; likewise that a staff made from it, thrown at any animal, even if it falls short through a failing of the thrower, glides of itself a cubit nearer; so remarkable a nature is in the tree. The smoke of the taxus tree kills mice.
117| Nor did nature beget brambles only for harm, and therefore gave them also berries, that is, food even for men. They have the power of drying and contracting, and are most suitable for the gums, tonsils and genitals. They are hostile to the most villainous of serpents, to haemorrhoid and to prester, the flower or the berries to scorpions. They join wounds without danger of gatherings. They move urine.
118| Their tender stalks are pounded and the juice pressed out, then thickened in the sun to the thickness of honey; it is understood to be a singular remedy, drunk or smeared on, against ills of the mouth and eyes, those who spit blood, quinsies, the womb, the seat, and coeliac patients. For ailments of the mouth the leaves also, chewed, are good, and they are smeared on running ulcers, or on any on the head. For sufferers at the heart they are laid on, so or by themselves, at the left breast, likewise on the stomach in pains and on eyes that protrude.
119| Their juice is also dropped into the ears. It cures condylomata with rose-oil cerate. A decoction of the little stalks in wine is a ready remedy for the uvula. The same, taken by themselves as food in the manner of a sprout, or boiled in austere wine, steady loose teeth. They check the bowels and flows of blood; they are good for dysentery. They are dried in the shade, so that the ash of those burnt checks the uvula. The leaves too, dried and bruised, are reported useful for ulcers of beasts of burden.
120| The berries which grow on these brambles furnish a mouth-wash even more effective than the cultivated mulberry. In the same composition, or merely with hypocisthis and honey, they are drunk in cholera and by sufferers at the heart and against spiders. Among the medicines they call styptics there is nothing more effective than the root of the berry-bearing bramble boiled in wine down to a third, so that ulcers of the mouth are rinsed with it and the seat fomented, a power so great that sponges themselves turn to stone.
121| The other kind of bramble, on which the rose grows, produces a ball like a chestnut, a special remedy for sufferers from stone (the cynorrhoda is another thing, which we shall speak of in the next volume); they call it cynosbaton, others cynapanxis, others neurospaston. It has a leaf like a man's footprint. It bears also a black cluster, in whose berry it has a sinew, whence the whole is called neurospastos, another thing from the caper, which physicians have called cynosbaton. Its thyrsus, preserved in vinegar, is eaten as a remedy for the spleen and for flatulence. Its sinew chewed with Chian mastic cleanses the mouth.
122| The rose of brambles mends bald patches with axungia. The berries dye the hair with omphacine oil. The flower of the bramble is gathered at harvest; the white, drunk in wine, is outstanding for pleurisy, and for coeliac patients. The root boiled down to a third checks the bowels and bleeding, and teeth rinsed with the decoction. With the same liquid ulcers of the seat and genitals are fomented. Ash from the root checks the uvula.
123| The Idaean bramble is so called because on Ida no other grows. It is more tender and smaller, with sparser and harmless stalks, growing in the shade of trees. Its flower is smeared with honey on running of the eyes and on erysipelas, and is given to sufferers of the stomach to be drunk in water. For the rest it does the same things as were said above.
124| Among the kinds of bramble is what the Greeks call rhamnos, whiter, more shrubby, spreading branches with straight prickles, not hooked as in the others, with larger leaves. A second kind of it is wild, blacker and somewhat reddish; it bears as it were little pods. From its root, boiled in water, a medicine is made which is called Lycium. The seed draws away the afterbirth. The other, the whiter, contracts more, cools, and is better suited to gatherings and wounds. The leaves of each, raw and boiled, are smeared on with oil.
125| They report that Lycium is made better from a thorn, which they also call Chiron's pyxacanthus, of the sort we described among the trees of India, since the Indian is judged by far the best. The pounded branches and roots, of the greatest bitterness, are boiled in a bronze vessel for three days, and the wood taken out a second time, until the thickness of honey results. It is adulterated with bitter juices, with amurca too, and with ox gall. Its froth and a certain flower of it is added to medicines for the eyes.
126| With the remaining juice it clears the face and cures itch-sores, eaten-away corners of the eyes and old running of the eyes, suppurating ears, tonsils, gums, cough, spitting of blood, swallowed to the size of a bean or, if it flows from wounds, smeared on; fissures, ulcers of the genitals, chafings, fresh ulcers and creeping and rotting ones, corns in the nostrils, suppurations. It is drunk also by women in milk against flows.
127| The Indian is distinguished by lumps black outside, red within, which when you break them quickly blacken. It contracts vehemently, with bitterness. It is useful for all the same things, but especially for the genitals.
128| There are those who say also that sarcocolla is the tear of a thorn, like the fine meal of frankincense, sweet with a certain sharpness, gummy. It checks fluxes, and is smeared chiefly on infants. With age this also turns black; it is better the whiter it is.
129| One thing more is owed to the medicines of trees, a notable medicine which they call oporice. It is made for dysentery and ailments of the stomach, in a congius of white must, 5 quinces boiled with their seeds over a slow heat, as many pomegranates, a sextarius of sorb apples and an equal measure of what they call Syrian rhus, and a half-ounce of saffron. It is cooked down to the thickness of honey. To these we shall subjoin the things that the Greeks, by sharing of names, have made doubtful, whether they are of trees.
130| Chamaedrys is an herb which is called trixago in Latin. Some have called it chamaerops, others Teucria. It has leaves the size of mint, in colour and in cutting like oak (others have said they are serrate, and that from it the saw was invented), with an almost purple flower. It is gathered full of juice among rocks, and is most effective, drunk and smeared on, against the poisons of serpents, likewise for the stomach, old cough, phlegm clinging in the throat, ruptures, convulsions, pains of the side.
131| It consumes the spleen, moves urine and the periods, and for that reason is effective in beginning dropsy, a handful of its brooms being boiled in 2 heminae of water down to a third. They make lozenges too by pounding it in water, for the purposes above. It heals abscesses and old ulcers, or foul ones, with honey. A wine is also made from it, for chest ailments. The juice of the leaves, with oil, disperses dimness of the eyes; for the spleen it is taken in vinegar. It warms when rubbed on.
132| Chamaedaphne has a single little branch, nearly a cubit high; its leaves are thinner than laurel; the seed is reddish, attached to the leaves. Fresh, it is smeared on headaches, it cools burnings, and for gripings it is drunk in wine. Its juice moves the periods and urine, drunk, and, applied in wool, difficult births.
133| Chamelaea has a likeness to olive leaves (these are bitter, however, and fragrant), on rocky ground, not exceeding a palm in height. It purges the bowels and draws off phlegm and bile, with the leaves boiled in 2 parts of wormwood, the juice drunk with honey. By the leaves laid on, ulcers also are cleansed. They say that if anyone picks it before sunrise and says that he is picking it for white spots of the eyes, then tied on it disperses that complaint, and that gathered in whatever way it is salutary to the eyes of draught animals and of cattle.
134| Chamaesyce has the leaves of a lentil, which do not lift themselves up, in dry, rocky places, and is useful for clearness of the eyes and against cataract, the juice being used as an ointment for scars, dimness and little clouds. It eases pains of the womb, applied in a bit of linen. Smeared on, it takes away warts of all kinds. It is good also for sufferers from orthopnoea.
135| Chamaecissos is eared like wheat, with usually five little branches, leafy (when it flowers it can be taken for a white violet), with a slender root. Sciatica sufferers drink its leaves, 3 obols in 2 cyathi of wine, for seven days, a very bitter draught. Chamaeleuce is called by us farfarum or farfugium. It grows beside rivers, with the leaf of a poplar, but larger. Its root is laid on cypress coals, and that fume is drunk through a funnel for an inveterate cough.
136| Chamaepeuce, similar to the larch in leaf, is proper for pains of the loins and spine. Chamaecyparissos, an herb drunk in wine, is powerful against the poisons of all serpents and scorpions. Ampeloprason grows in vineyards, with the leaves of a leek, heavy with its belching smell, effective against the stings of serpents. It moves urine and the periods, and drunk and applied checks eruptions of blood from the genital. It is given also to women after childbirth and against the bites of dogs. That also which is called stachys has a likeness to a leek, with longer and more numerous leaves, and a pleasant smell and a colour inclining to yellow. It drives the periods.
137| Clinopodium, which some call cleopiceton, others zopyrontion, others ocimoides, is like wild thyme, bushy, a palm high, among rocks, with a rounded circuit of leaves giving the look of the feet of a couch. It is drunk for convulsions, ruptures, strangury, the stings of serpents; likewise the juice of its decoction.
138| Now we shall subjoin herbs that are marvellous indeed but less famous, the famous ones being deferred to the following volumes. Centunculum is what our people call one with leaves resembling the hood of a cloak, lying on the fields; the Greeks call it clematis, of excellent effect for checking the bowels in austere wine. The same, pounded in oxymel or in 5 cyathi of hot water, in the weight of one denarius, checks blood, and so is effective also for the afterbirth of women.
139| But the Greeks have other clematids also, one which some call aetites, others lagine, some thin scammony. It has branches a foot long, leafy, not unlike scammony, except that the leaves are blacker and smaller. It is found in vineyards and fields. It is eaten like a vegetable, with oil and salt; it moves the bowels. The same is swallowed by dysentery patients with linseed in austere wine.
140| The leaves are applied to running of the eyes with pearl barley, a damp bit of linen being put beneath. Applied to scrofula they bring it to suppuration; then with axungia added they complete the cure; likewise for haemorrhoids, with green oil; they help consumptives with honey. They produce an abundance of milk also in food, and smeared on infants they nourish the hair; eaten in vinegar they stimulate desire.
141| There is another clematis, surnamed Egyptian, which by some is called daphnoides, by others polygonoides, with the leaf of laurel, long and slender, effective against serpents and particularly asps, drunk in vinegar.
142| Egypt produces this chiefly, and also aron, of which we spoke among the bulbs, which has a great dispute with dracontium; for some have said it is the same. Glaucias distinguished them by planting, pronouncing dracontium the wild aron. Some have called the root aron, but the stalk dracontium, altogether a different thing, if indeed this is what is called among us dracunculus. For the aros has a black root, rounded in breadth, and much larger, such as fills the hand; the dracunculus a reddish one, and coiled like a dragon, whence also its name.
143| Indeed the Greeks themselves set up an immense difference: by describing the seed of dracunculus as hot and biting, and with so much poison that its smell causes abortion in pregnant women, they carried aron to marvellous praises, preferring first in foods the female, since the male was harder and slower in cooking;
144| saying that it purges ailments of the chest; dried and sprinkled in a drink, or as an electuary, it moves urine and the periods; so too drunk in oxymel. For an ulcerated stomach and bowels it is to be drunk with ewe's milk; for cough they gave it cooked in ashes with oil. Others boiled it in milk so that the decoction was drunk. For running of the eyes they applied it boiled, likewise for bruises and tonsils.
145| Glaucias poured it in with oil for the complaint of haemorrhoids, smearing freckles with honey. He praised it also as an antidote against poisons, for pleurisy and peripneumonia in the same way as for coughers. The seed, ground with oil or rose oil, he poured in for earache. Dieuches gave it to coughers or those short of breath and orthopnoeic and those spitting pure matter, mixed with meal in baked bread; Diodotus gave it to consumptives as an electuary with honey, and for ailments of the lung, and applied it even to broken bones.
146| Smeared round the genitals, it draws out the offspring of all animals. The juice of the root with Attic honey disperses dimness of the eyes and ailments of the stomach; the broth of the decoction with honey, cough. Ulcers of all kinds, whether they are phagedaenae or cancers or creeping, or polypi in the nostrils, the juice cures marvellously.
147| The leaves are good for burns, cooked in wine and oil. Taken with salt and vinegar they empty the bowels, and cooked with honey they are good for dislocations; likewise for gouty joints with salt, fresh or dry. Hippocrates applied either to gatherings with honey. To draw the periods, 2 drachmae of the seed or root in 2 cyathi of wine suffice. The same drink, if women are not cleansed after childbirth, also draws out the afterbirth. Hippocrates applied the root itself as a pessary.
148| They say also that in a pestilence it is salutary in food. It disperses drunkenness. Serpents, and particularly asps, it drives off by its smell when it is burned, or intoxicates so that they are found stupefied. They also flee from people anointed with aron and laurel oil. Therefore they think it useful also against bites, given to drink in dark wine. Cheese is reported to keep best in the leaves of aros.
149| Dracunculus, which I have mentioned, is dug up when the barley is ripening, with the moon waxing. Serpents entirely flee anyone who has it. They say it is so good for the bitten, drunk; and that the power is greater if it is not touched with iron. Its juice is good for earache too.
150| That, however, which the Greeks call dracontion was shown to me in a threefold form: with the leaves of beet, not without a thyrsus, with a purple flower; this is like aron. Others showed one with a long root, as if marked and jointed, with three little stalks altogether, and leaves, ordering it to be boiled in vinegar against the stings of serpents. The third showing was with a leaf larger than the cornel's, with a reed-like root jointed, as they affirmed, with as many knots as it had years, and as many leaves; these gave it in wine or water against serpents.
151| There is also aris, which is born in the same Egypt, like aron, only smaller and with smaller leaves and above all in root, which yet fills the size of a large olive, the white one sending out a double stalk, the other only one. Each cures running ulcers, likewise burns and fistulas, a collyrium being inserted. They check spreading ulcers when smeared on, boiled in water and afterwards pounded with rose oil added. But there is one huge marvel: if the genitals of any female are touched, the animal is driven to destruction.
152| Myriophyllon, which our people call milifolium, is of a tender stalk, like fennel, with very many leaves, whence it received its name. It grows in marshes, of magnificent use for wounds with vinegar. It is drunk for difficulties of urine and of the bladder, or for shortness of breath, and for people thrown from a height. The same is most effective for toothache. Etruria gives this name to a herb that is slender in the meadows, leafy on its sides like a hair, of outstanding use for wounds, affirming that the sinews of oxen cut by the ploughshare are made firm by it and rejoined, with axungia added.
153| Pseudobunion has the leaves of a turnip, shrubby, a palm high, most praised in Crete. Against gripings, strangury, and pains of the sides and midriff, its branches are drunk, five or six at a time.
154| Myrris, which some call myrrhiza, others myrra, is most like hemlock in stalk and leaves and flower, only smaller and slighter, not unpleasant as food. It brings on the periods and expels offspring, with wine. They say that the same, drunk, is salutary in a pestilence. It helps consumptives too when given in a sup. It produces eagerness for food, and quenches the bites of phalangia. Its juice, when the plant has been steeped for three days in water, also cures ulcers on the face or head.
155| Oenobreches has the leaves of a lentil, a little longer, a reddish flower, a small and slender root. It grows round springs. Dried to the manner of meal and sprinkled in white wine, it ends strangury and checks the bowels. Its juice, with oil, moves sweats in those anointed.
156| In the promised account of marvellous herbs it occurs to me to say something also about the magical ones. For which are more marvellous? The first to make them famous in our world were Pythagoras and Democritus, who followed the Magi. By the coracesia and calicia, Pythagoras reports, water is frozen; I find no mention of them in others, nor anything else about them in him.
157| The same calls minyas, and by another name Corinthia, one by whose decoction in water, the juice, he says, the stings of serpents are cured at once, if they are fomented. He says that the same, poured out on the grass, brings incurable death on those who touch it with the foot or are chance-sprinkled, the nature of the poison being utterly monstrous except against poisons.
158| By the same Pythagoras a herb is called aproxis, whose root conceives fire from far off, like naphtha, of which we spoke among the marvels of the earth. The same reports that if any diseases befall the human body while cabbage is in flower, even when cured they feel a reminder of them whenever it flowers; and that if they befall when wheat, or hemlock, or violet is flowering, the condition is similar.
159| Nor does it escape me that this volume is ascribed by some to the physician Cleemporus, but persistent fame and antiquity claim it for Pythagoras, and this very fact brings authority to the volumes, if anyone else judged a work of his care worthy of that man, which who would believe Cleemporus did, when he published other works under his own name?
160| It is certain that the Chirocmeta are Democritus's. But in these he, after Pythagoras the most devoted to the Magi, reports how much more portentous things! For instance, the herb aglaophotis, which received its name from men's wonder at its exceptional colour, growing on the marbles of Arabia on the Persian side, for which reason it is also called marmaritis; the Magi use it when they wish to summon the gods.
161| The achaemenis, of the colour of electrum, growing without a leaf among the Taradastili of India, by drinking which in wine the guilty confess everything under torments through various imaginings of divinities; the same he calls hippophobas, since mares especially avoid it.
162| Theombrotion, he says, grows 30 schoeni from the Choaspes, resembling the painting on a peacock, of exceptional smell; this is drunk by the kings of the Persians against all the discomforts of the body; and from its steadiness [of mind and justice], the same is called semnion, from the majesty of power. Then another, adamantis, nursling of Armenia and Cappadocia; when this is brought near, lions are thrown on their backs with weary gaping jaws. The reason for the name is that it cannot be ground down. Arianis, he says, is born among the Arians, fiery in colour; it is gathered while the sun is in Leo. By its touch, wood anointed with oil is set alight.
163| Therionarca, growing in Cappadocia and Mysia, stupefies all wild beasts, and they are not revived except by being sprinkled with the urine of a hyena. Aethiopis, he says, grows in Meroe, and on that account is also called Merois, with the leaf of lettuce, most useful to dropsy patients drunk in honey wine; ophiusa, in Elephantine of the same Ethiopia, livid and hard to look at, by drinking which the terror and threats of serpents appear before the eyes so that people take their own lives from the fear; on that account sacrilegious persons are forced to drink it. Palm wine is hostile to it.
164| Thalassaegle, he says, is found about the river Indus, and on that account is called by another name potamaugis; people who drink it rave, with marvels before their eyes. Theangelis grows on Libanus in Syria, on the mountains Dicte of Crete, and at Babylon, and at Susa of Persia, and by drinking it the Magi divine; gelotophyllis in Bactria and round the Borysthenes. If this is drunk with myrrh and wine, various appearances come before the eyes and the laughing is not ended except by drinking pine-nut kernels with pepper and honey, in palm wine.
165| Hestiateris, he says, is so named in Persia from the banquet, because people are made merry by it, the same being also protomedia, by which they hold first rank with kings; casignete, because it is born by itself and not with any other herbs; the same dionysonymphas, because it combines wonderfully with wine. He names helianthes in the region of Themiscyra and on the maritime mountains of Cilicia, with the leaf of myrtle. With this boiled with lion's fat, saffron and palm wine added, the Magi and the kings of the Persians anoint themselves so that the body becomes pleasing to look at; therefore the same is called heliocallis.
166| Hermesias, he says, for begetting beautiful and good children, is not an herb but a composition of ground kernels of the pine nut with honey, myrrh, saffron, palm wine, afterwards with theombrotion and milk mixed in. He orders those about to beget to drink it, and from conception onward women in childbed nursing their offspring; so, he says, children come to excel in goodness of mind and form. And of all these he gives also the magical names.
167| To these Apollodorus, his follower, added the herb aeschynomene, because when a hand approaches its leaves draw together; another, crocis, by whose touch phalangia die; Crateuas, onothuris, by sprinkling which in wine the savagery of all animals is softened; and a man famous a little before our time in the art of grammar added anacampseros, by whose touch, entirely, loves return, even those laid aside with hatred. And let it be enough to have touched thus far on the remarkable things of the Magi in herbs, others about them to be told in a more fitting place.
168| Many have given an account of eriphia. This has a beetle in its stalk running up and down with the sound of a kid, whence it received its name. They report that nothing is better for the voice. The wool herb, given to fasting sheep, produces abundance of milk. Equally well known to the common people is lactoris, full of milk, which on being tasted rouses vomiting. Some say this is the same, others that it is like the one they call militaris, because it cures every wound made by iron within 5 days, applied with oil.
169| Stratiotes is also celebrated by the Greeks, but it grows only in Egypt and with the flooding of the Nile, like aizoon, except that it has larger leaves. It cools marvellously and heals wounds, smeared on with vinegar, likewise erysipelas and suppurations. Blood also that flows from the kidneys it marvellously checks, drunk with male frankincense.
170| An herb that has grown on a statue's head, gathered into a piece of some garment and bound with red thread, is reported to ease headache at once. An herb of any kind gathered from streams or rivers before sunrise, in such a way that no one sees the gatherer, tied on the left arm so that the patient does not know what it is, is reported to keep off tertian fevers. The herb lingua grows round springs. Its root, burnt and pounded with pig's fat (they add that it must be black and barren), mends bald patches, as an ointment in the sun.
171| A sieve being thrown down at a boundary, the herbs standing out within it, plucked and tied on pregnant women, hasten birth. An herb that grows over the dung heaps of the country is most effectively powerful against quinsies, drunk in water. An herb beside which dogs pass urine, pulled up without being touched by iron, cures dislocations very quickly.
172| The rumpotinus tree we have shown among the shrubs. Near this tree, when it is widowed of its vine, there grows an herb which the Gauls call rodarum. It has a stalk jointed like a fig twig, leaves of nettle whitish in the middle, the same turning wholly red in time, a silver flower, outstanding against swellings and heats and gatherings, pounded with old axungia in such a way that it is not touched with iron. The person anointed spits on his right three times. They say the remedy is more effective if three men of three nations anoint to the right.
173| An herb is called impia, hoary, with the look of rosemary, clothed and headed in the manner of a thyrsus. From it other little shoots rise, bearing their own little heads; on that account they called it impia, because the children rise above the parent. Others have preferred to think it was named thus because no animal touches it.
174| This plant, pounded between two stones, froths with a juice that is outstanding against quinsy when milk and wine are mixed in. A marvel is reported: that those who have tasted it are never attacked by that disease; and so it is given to pigs as well, and those that refuse to swallow the medicament die of that disease. There are some who think that if some of it is put into birds' nests, the chicks are then not choked when they gulp their food too greedily.
175| They call a plant "Venus' comb" from its likeness to combs; its root, pounded with mallow, draws out everything lodged in the body. The herb called exedum frees from torpor. The herb notia is familiar in the tanners' workshops under one name or another; I find that, drunk in wine or posca, it is most effective against the scorpion.
176| The Greeks wittily call a herb philanthropos, because it clings to clothes. A wreath of it placed on the head relieves headaches. As for the burr called canaria, pounded in wine with plantain and milifolium it heals carcinomas, being taken off every three days. It also cures pigs, if it is dug up without iron and added to the swill they are to drink, or given in milk and wine. Some add that the man digging it up should say: "This is the herb argemon, which Minerva found as a remedy for the pigs that taste of it."
177| Some have said that tordylon is the seed of sil, others that it is a herb in its own right, which they have also called syreon. And I find nothing else recorded about it except that it grows in the mountains; that, burned and drunk, it promotes the menses and the bringing up of phlegm from the chest, the root being more effective still; that the kidneys are healed by drinking its juice at three obols at a time; and that its root is also added to malagmata.
178| Grass itself, the commonest of herbs, creeps along with jointed internodes and often sends out new roots from these and from its tip. Everywhere else in the world its leaves taper to a slender point; only on Parnassus do they grow, ivy-like in appearance, more thickly than anywhere, with a fragrant white flower. No other plant is more welcome to draught animals, whether green or dried in hay and, when it is given to them, sprinkled with water.
179| They report that on Parnassus its juice too is collected, because it is so abundant; it is sweet. In its place, in the rest of the world, a decoction serves for closing wounds, which the herb itself also does when pounded, and it protects wounds from inflammation. Wine and honey are added to the decoction, and by some a third part each of frankincense, pepper and murra, and it is boiled once more in a copper vessel for toothache
180| and fluxes of the eyes. The root boiled in wine treats colic, difficulty of urine and ulcers of the bladder, and breaks up stones. The seed drives out urine more powerfully and stops the bowels and vomiting. It is a particular help for the bites of dragons. There are some who prescribe that 9 joints, either of one plant or from two or three plants up to this number of joints, be wrapped in black unwashed wool, as remedies for struma or panus.
181| They say the man who gathers it must be fasting; he must go in that state to the house of the absent patient he is treating, and when the patient comes in, say three times that he is giving a fasting medicine to a fasting man, and so tie it on, and do this for three days. The kind of grass that has 7 internodes is tied to the head most effectively against headaches. Some prescribe, for torments of the bladder, that grass boiled down in wine to half be drunk after the bath.
182| There are some who also speak of a "pointed grass" of three kinds. When there are points on the tip, five at most, they call it dactylon. These they roll together, put into the nostrils and pull out again, to make the blood flow. The second, which is like aizoum, they use with axle-grease for whitlows and pterygia of the nails, and when flesh has grown over the nails, and they call it dactylon because it heals the fingers.
183| The third kind is also a dactylon, but slender, and grows on ruined walls or on tiles. It has a caustic power. It stops spreading ulcers. Grass tied round the head stops flows of blood from the nostrils. It is reported that in the region of Babylon the grass that grows beside the roads kills camels.
184| Nor is the authority of fenugreek any less; they call it telis, others carphos, some buceras, others aegoceras, because the seed is like little horns; we call it silicia. How it is sown we have shown in its place. Its power is to dry, soften and dissolve. The juice of the decoction relieves many of women's ills, whether there is a hardness or a swelling or a contraction of the womb: they are fomented with it and sit in it; injected, it also helps.
185| It thins scurf on the face. Boiled with nitrum added and applied, it treats the spleen, and likewise in vinegar. So too, boiled, it treats the liver. Diocles gave its seed to women in difficult labour, pounded, to the measure of an acetabulum, in 9 cyathi of sapa, so that they drank a third of it and then were bathed in hot water; while they were sweating in the bath he gave them half of what remained, and then the rest after the bath, as the supreme remedy.
186| The same man applied fenugreek meal boiled with barley or linseed in honey-water from below against torments of the womb, and also laid it on the lower belly. He treated lepra and freckles with sulphur mixed in an equal proportion with the meal, the skin first being prepared with nitrum, smearing it on several times a day and forbidding anointing. Theodorus mixed with fenugreek a fourth part of cleaned nasturtium in very sharp vinegar for lepra.
187| Timon gave fenugreek seed to drink, to the measure of half an acetabulum, with 9 cyathi of sapa and water, to promote the menses. Nor is there any doubt that its decoction is most useful for ulcerated wombs and intestines, as the seed is for the joints and the precordia; and if it is boiled with mallow, with honey wine added afterwards, the drink is praised above all others for the womb and intestines, since even the steam of the decoction does a great deal of good. Fenugreek seed, boiled, also corrects the foul smell of the armpits. The meal, with wine and nitrum, quickly removes porrigo and scurf of the head.
188| Boiled in hydromel with axle-grease added, it treats the genitals, and likewise panus, parotid swellings, gout of the feet and of the hands, the joints, and flesh coming away from the bones; kneaded with vinegar, dislocations. It is also applied to the spleen boiled in nothing but vinegar and honey. Kneaded with wine it cleans carcinomas, and then, with honey added, heals them completely. A gruel made from the meal is also taken for an ulcerated chest and a long-standing cough. It is boiled until the bitterness is gone; then honey is added. Now the very fame of herbs will be told.

======== Natural History — Book XXV ========

1| The very fame of herbs, which will now be told, since Tellus brings them forth for medicine alone, moves the mind to admiration of the care and diligence of the ancients. Nothing, then, was left untried or untested by them, and nothing afterwards kept hidden that they did not wish to be of use to posterity. But we long to hide and suppress what they laboured to work out, and to cheat life even of goods that are not ours.
2| Certainly those who know a few things hide them away in this fashion, grudging them to others, and to teach no one is thought to add to the authority of knowledge. So far is our way of life from devising new things and helping life; and for a long time now the supreme work of men's talents has been to let the achievements of the ancients perish within each one of us. Yet, by Hercules, single discoveries have placed some men among the gods; and they have certainly made the life of all more glorious by giving their names to herbs, memory so generously repaying the favour.
3| This care of theirs is not equally remarkable in the plants that charm us when sown or invite us as food: they also searched the pathless summits of mountains, hidden wildernesses and all the fibres of the earth, and discovered what power each root had and to what uses the threads of the herbs belonged, turning to the uses of health even plants that four-footed beasts leave untouched as fodder.
4| Our own people, greedy as they are for every utility and virtue, have celebrated this less than was fitting; and that same Marcus Cato, master of all good arts, was first, and for long the sole one, to touch on it, and then only briefly, though he did not leave out the medicine of oxen. After him only one of our distinguished men attempted it, Gaius Valgius, admired for his learning, in an unfinished volume addressed to the deified Augustus; he had even begun it with a pious preface, praying that the majesty of that emperor above all might always heal all human ills.
5| Before that, the only one among us to have written on it, as far as I can find, was Pompeius Lenaeus, the freedman of Pompey the Great; and it was at that time, I observe, that this science first reached our people. For Mithridates, the greatest king of his age, whom Pompey defeated, is shown by proofs, and not by his fame alone, to have been a more diligent student of life than all who were born before him.
6| He alone devised the plan of drinking poison every day, after first taking remedies, so that by habit itself it became harmless; he first discovered kinds of antidote, one of which even keeps his name; it was his discovery to mix the blood of Pontic ducks into antidotes, because they lived on poison; there survive volumes addressed to him by Asclepiades, famous in the art of healing, who, when invited, sent instructions from the city of Rome in place of himself; it is certain that he alone of mortals spoke 22 languages, and that in the 56 years of his reign he addressed no man of the peoples subject to him through an interpreter.
7| He, then, with the rest of his great intellect, was especially curious about medicine, and, seeking out every single item from all his subjects, who were a large part of the world, he left among his secret possessions a casket of these notes, with specimens and their effects. Pompey, when he had taken possession of all the royal booty, ordered his freedman Lenaeus, a grammarian, to translate them into our language; and so that victory did as much good to life as to the state.
8| Besides these, the Greek authors whom we have named in their places have written on the subject; among them Crateuas, Dionysius and Metrodorus, by a most attractive method, but one from which almost nothing is learned except the difficulty of the matter. For they painted pictures of the herbs and wrote their effects beneath them. But a picture is deceptive, with so many colours, especially when it tries to rival nature, and it degenerates greatly through the carelessness of the copyists. Besides, it is not enough for each plant to be painted at a single stage of its life, since they change their appearance with the four seasons of the year.
9| For this reason the rest have described them in words, some without even indicating their appearance, and mostly content with bare names, since it seemed enough to point out their properties and power to those who wished to look for them. Nor is the knowledge difficult: I at any rate, with very few exceptions, have had the good fortune to examine the rest through the science of Antonius Castor, who had the highest authority in that art in our time, by visiting his little garden, in which he grew a great many of them; he was past his hundredth year, had never experienced any illness of the body, and neither his memory nor his vigour had been shaken even by his age. Nor will antiquity be found to have marvelled at anything more.
10| A method was discovered long ago that foretells the hours, not merely the days and nights, of eclipses of the sun and moon; yet a belief handed down persists among a large part of the common people that these are compelled by sorcery and herbs, and that this one science, a science of women, holds sway. Certainly, what have Medea of Colchis and the others not filled with fables, above all the Italian Circe, who was even enrolled among the gods?
11| From this, I think, it came about that Aeschylus, among the very oldest of the poets, declared Italy to be full of the power of herbs, and many said the same of Circeii, where she lived; strong proof of this still survives among the Marsi, a people sprung from her son, since it is established that they are tamers of serpents. Homer indeed, the first parent of learning and of antiquity, though elsewhere he is lavish in his admiration of Circe, assigns the glory of herbs to Egypt, even though at that time the irrigated Egypt we know did not yet exist, being afterwards brought down by the silt of the river.
12| He certainly tells of a great many Egyptian herbs given to his Helen by the king's wife, and of that famous nepenthes, which brings forgetfulness of sorrow and forgiveness, and which Helen was to pour for all mortals to drink. The first of all whom memory knows to have written with some care about herbs was Orpheus. After him, we have told how greatly Musaeus and Hesiod admired the herb polium. Orpheus and Hesiod recommended fumigations.
13| Homer also celebrates other herbs by name, which we shall describe in their places. After him Pythagoras, famous for wisdom, was the first to compose a volume on their effect, assigning their discovery and origin to Apollo, Aesculapius and, altogether, the immortal gods; Democritus too composed one, both having travelled to visit the Magi of Persia, Arabia, Ethiopia and Egypt, and so astonished was antiquity at these things that it has affirmed even things incredible to tell.
14| Xanthus, a writer of histories, relates in the first of them that the young of a dragon, when killed, was recalled to life by its parent with a herb which he names balis, and that the same herb restored to health Tylon, whom the dragon had killed. And Juba relates that in Arabia a man was recalled to life by a herb. Democritus said, and Theophrastus believed, that there is a herb by whose touch, when brought by the bird we have described, the wedge driven by shepherds into a tree springs out. Even if these things lack credit, they nevertheless fill us with wonder and compel us to admit that there is much left over that is true.
15| From this I see that most people also think that there is nothing that cannot be effected by the power of herbs, but that the powers of very many are unknown, in whose number was Herophilus, famous in medicine, by whom it is said that some, perhaps, even when trodden on are beneficial. It has certainly been observed that wounds and diseases are inflamed by the coming of those who have completed a journey on foot.
16| This was the ancient medicine, which migrated wholly into the languages of Greece. But the reason why more are not known is that they are tried by rustics ignorant of letters, as those who live alone among them; besides, there is a carelessness in seeking, with a crowd of physicians ready to hand. Many even of those discovered lack names, such as the one we described in the care of crops, which we know, buried in the corners of a cornfield, prevents any bird from entering. The most shameful cause of rarity is that even those who know do not wish to show, as if what they have handed on to others would be lost to themselves. There is the further matter that the manner of discovery is uncertain, since even among those found, chance discovers some, and others, as I may truly say, a god.
17| Until these years the bite of a mad dog was incurable, bringing dread of water and loathing of all drink. Recently the mother of a man serving in the praetorium saw in a dream that she should send to her son, to drink, the root of the wild rose which they call cynorrhodon, which had caught her fancy by its look the day before in a thicket. The affair was being carried on in Laeetania, the nearest part of Spain, and by chance, when the soldier, from a dog's bite, was beginning to be afraid of water, a letter arrived begging him to obey the divine admonition, and he was saved beyond hope, and so was everyone afterwards who tried a similar remedy.
18| Otherwise, among the authors, the one medicine of the cynorrhodon was the little sponge-like growth which is born in the midst of its thorns, whose ash with honey fills bald patches of the head. In the same province I learned of a stalk recently found there on the farm of my host, called dracunculus, of a thumb's thickness, with the many-coloured spots of vipers, which they said was a remedy against the bites of all, another from those we described in the earlier volume under the same name. It has another form,
19| another marvel too, thrusting itself out of the earth at the first spring emergence of serpents to a height of about two feet, and again going into the earth with the same, and once it has hidden itself, no serpent appears at all, a service of nature sufficiently kind in itself, if only it gave warning beforehand and showed the time of danger.
20| Nor are there crimes for doing harm among beasts only, but sometimes among waters and places also. In Germany beyond the Rhine, when the camp had been advanced by Germanicus Caesar, there was in the maritime tract a single spring of sweet water, by drinking which, within two years the teeth fell out and the joints in the knees were loosened. Physicians called these ills stomacace and scelotyrbe. A help was found in the herb called Britannica, salutary not only for the sinews and ills of the mouth but also against quinsies and against serpents. It has long, dark leaves, a dark root.
21| Its juice is pressed out, and from the root. The flower they call vibones; it is gathered before thunder is heard, and swallowed, and makes people safe from fear of quinsy for the whole year. The Frisii, a loyal people then, among whom the camp was, showed it. I wonder at the cause of the name, unless perhaps the peoples bordering on the ocean dedicated it to Britain as to a neighbour. For it is certain that it was not called so because it grew there most plentifully, Britain being even then free.
22| Indeed there was once also here an ambition to adopt herbs under their own names, as we shall show kings did. So great a matter did it seem to find an herb, to help life; now perhaps someone will think even this care of ours frivolous; so much does what pertains to health grow cheap in luxury. Yet it is fitting that the authors by whom they are found be celebrated first, their effects arranged by kinds of disease.
23| In which reflection it comes to me to pity the lot of man, that besides accidents and chances and what every hour devises anew, thousands of diseases are to be feared by individual mortals. Which of them are the gravest, it might almost seem folly to distinguish, since to each his own and the present seems the most atrocious. Yet even on this the experience of the age has pronounced: the harshest torment is that of stones from the dripping of the bladder, next that of the stomach, third that of those which pain in the head, and it is almost for no others that death is self-inflicted.
24| That harmful herbs also were shown by the Greeks I do indeed wonder, and not poisons only, since such is the condition of life that death is generally a harbour even for the best; and Marcus Varro relates that Servius Clodius, a Roman knight, driven by the greatness of the pain in gout, anointed his legs with poison and afterwards lacked all sensation, no less than pain, in that part of his body.
25| But what excuse was there for showing how minds may be unhinged, how births may be crushed, and many similar things? I speak neither of abortives nor even of love-potions, mindful that the general Lucullus, the most distinguished, perished by a love-potion, nor of the other magical portents, except where they are to be guarded against or refuted, their credibility above all being condemned. It will have been work enough, and abundantly furnished, to have spoken of those salutary to life, [….] and discovered afterwards.
26| The most famous of herbs, with Homer as witness, is moly, which he thinks is so called by the gods, and he assigns its discovery to Mercury and its showing against the greatest poisonings. They report that it grows today around Pheneus and on Cyllene in Arcadia, in that Homeric form, with a round black root, the size of an onion, with the leaf of a squill, and that it is dug up without difficulty.
27| The Greek authors have painted its flower as yellow, though Homer wrote white. I have found among physicians skilled in herbs one who said that it grows in Italy too and is brought from Campania on some days of autumn, dug up amid difficulties of rock, with a root 30 feet long, and not even so solid, but broken off.
28| From it the greatest authority belongs to the herb which they call dodecatheon, commending it with the majesty of all the gods. They report that drunk in water it cures all diseases. It has seven leaves, very like lettuces, coming out of a yellow root.
29| The oldest by discovery is the paeonia, which keeps the name of its discoverer, and which some call pentorobon, others glycyside. For this too is a difficulty, that the same herb is called otherwise in another place. It grows on shady mountains, with a stalk among the leaves of 4 fingers, bearing at the top, as it were, 2 or 5 Greek nuts. In these is an abundant seed, red and black. It cures also the mockeries of the Fauns in sleep. They prescribe digging it up by night, since, if a woodpecker of Mars sees, by gazing it may make an attack on the eyes.
30| Panaces by its very name promises remedies for all diseases, and it is numerous and ascribed to gods as discoverers. One is surnamed Asclepion, from which he called his daughter Panacia. It is the thickened juice of a ferula such as we described, with a root of much bark and salty. When this is torn up it is a religious duty to fill the pit with fruits of various kinds, as an expiation to the earth.
31| Where and in what way it is made, or which kind is chiefly approved, we have taught among foreign things. That which is brought from Macedonia they call bucolicon, the herdsmen collecting the juice that bursts out of itself; this vanishes very quickly. In other kinds, too, the black and soft is most disapproved; this is a proof of adulteration with wax.
32| A second kind they call Heracleon, and report that it was discovered by Hercules; others call it Heracleotic origanum or wild origanum, since it is like origanum, with a useless root; of this origanum we have spoken. A third panaces is surnamed Chironium, from its discoverer. Its leaf is like the lapathum, but larger and hairier, the flower golden, the root small. It grows in rich places. Its flower is most effective, and it is more beneficial than those mentioned above.
33| A fourth [kind] of panaces, discovered by the same Chiron, is surnamed centaurion, but also Pharnaceon, derived, in a dispute over the discovery, from King Pharnaces. It is sown, with longer leaves than the rest, and serrated. The root is fragrant and is dried in the shade and adds charm to wine. Some have made two other kinds of it, with a smooth leaf, the one more slender.
34| Heracleon siderion was itself also discovered by Hercules, with a slender stalk, 4 fingers high, a crimson flower, the leaves of coriander. It is found beside lakes and rivers and cures all wounds inflicted by iron most effectively. Chiron's discovery is the vine called Chironia, of which we spoke among the vines, as of the herb whose discovery is assigned to Minerva.
35| To Hercules they ascribe that one also which is called Apollinaris, or from madness, by others altercum, and among the Greeks hyoscyamos. It has several kinds: one with black seed, almost purple flowers, thorny in the calyx, grows in Galatia; the common one is whiter and more shrubby, taller than the poppy; the seed of the third is like the seed of irion; all produce madness and giddiness of the head.
36| The fourth kind is soft, downy, richer than the others, with white seed, growing by the sea. Physicians have admitted this, and likewise the kind of red seed; sometimes, however, the white turns reddish if it has not fully ripened, and is disapproved. And in any case none is gathered except when it has dried. Its nature is that of wine, and therefore it attacks the mind and head. The use of the seed is both by itself and as pressed-out juice. A juice is pressed separately from the stalks and leaves. They use the root also, a medicine altogether rash, as I judge.
37| Indeed it is agreed that even by the leaves the mind is corrupted, if they drink more than 4; [….] even the ancients in wine, thinking that fever is driven off. An oil is made from the seed, as we have said, which itself, poured into the ears, assails the mind, and, as against poison, they have handed down marvellous remedies for those who have drunk it, and itself as a remedy, so that there is no end of trying everything, as to force even poisons to be beneficial.
38| Linozostis, or parthenium, was discovered by Mercury. For this reason among the Greeks many call it Hermu poan, and among us all call it Mercurialis. It has two kinds, male and female, the female more effective, with a stalk of a cubit, sometimes branching at the top, with leaves narrower than basil, with joints [….], with many dense hollows in the axils, the seed hanging in the joints, copious in the female, in the male standing near the joints and sparser and short and twisted, in the female loose and white. The leaves are darker in the males, whiter in the females;
39| the root is superfluous, very slender. They grow in cultivated plains. What is related of each of the two kinds is marvellous: that the male makes males be begotten, the female, females; and that this happens if, immediately after conception, the juice is drunk in raisin wine, or the leaves are eaten after boiling in oil and salt, or uncooked with vinegar. Some boil it in a new earthen pot with heliotrope and 2 or 3 ears of grain, until it thickens.
40| They order the decoction to be given, and the herb itself in food, on the second day of the purging of women, for three days, and on the fourth day, after the bath, that they should have intercourse. Hippocrates proclaimed these herbs with marvellous praises for the use of women, but this manner no physician knew. He applied them to the womb with honey or rose oil or iris oil or lily oil, likewise to bring on the periods and the afterbirth. The same, he said, they accomplish by drink and fomentation. He dropped the juice into foul-smelling ears, and anointed the belly with old wine.
41| He applied the leaves to running of the eyes; for strangury and the bladder he gave its decoction with myrrh and frankincense. To loosen the bowels, even in fever, as much as a hand can hold is boiled in 2 sextarii of water down to half; it is drunk with salt and honey added, and more wholesomely when boiled with a pig's hoof or a fowl. For the sake of purging, some thought that both should be given, or boiled with mallow. They purge the chest, draw off bile, but injure the stomach. The remaining uses we shall describe in their places.
42| Achilles, the pupil of Chiron, is said to have discovered also a herb with which to heal wounds (called on that account Achilleos), and to have healed Telephus. Others say he first discovered verdigris, most useful for plasters (and therefore he is painted scraping it with his sword from the spear-point into Telephus's wound); others hold that he used both as medicine. Some also call this panaces Heraclia, others sideritis, and among us milifolia, with a stalk a cubit high, branching, clothed from the bottom with leaves finer than those of fennel.
43| Others admit that that is useful for wounds, but say the true Achilleos has a bluish stalk a foot high, without branches, elegantly clothed on every side with single round leaves; others, a square stalk, heads like marrubium, leaves like oak; and by this even severed sinews are glued together. Others make sideritis also what grows on garden walls, of foul smell when rubbed;
44| and yet another like this, but with whiter and richer leaves, more tender in its little stalks, growing in vineyards, and some indeed of two cubits each, with slender, three-angled twigs, with the leaf of fern on a long stalk, with the seed of beet, all outstanding for wounds. Our people call the one with the broadest leaf royal brooms. It cures quinsies of swine.
45| In the same age Teucer also discovered Teucrion, which some call hemionion, spreading slender rushes, small leaves, in rough places, of austere taste. It never produces flower or seed. It cures spleens, and it is agreed that it was found thus: when entrails had been thrown over it, it clung to the spleen and emptied it.
46| For this reason it is called by some splenion. They tell that swine that eat its root are found without a spleen. Some call by the same name a bushy one with the branches of hyssop and the leaf of a bean, and order it to be gathered when it flowers (so they do not doubt that it flowers), and praise it most from the mountains of Cilicia and Pisidia.
47| The fame of Melampus is known for the arts of divination. From him one kind of hellebore is called Melampodion. Some report that a shepherd of the same name discovered it, observing that goats were purged by pasturing on that plant, and that, by giving their milk, he cured the daughters of Proetus in their frenzy [….] for which reason it is fitting to speak of all its kinds together.
48| The first two are the white and the black. This is understood by the roots alone, most report; others that the leaves of the black are like the plane, but smaller and blacker and cut by more divisions, those of the white like beet beginning to grow, these also darker and reddish on the back of the channels, both with a stalk of a palm, ferula-like, wrapped in the coats of bulbs, with a fringed root in the manner of onions. By the black, horses, oxen and swine are killed, and so they avoid it, when they feed on the white. They report that it is in season at harvest time.
49| It grows most abundantly on Mount Oeta, and best, in one place of it about Pyra. The black comes up everywhere, but better on Helicon, a mountain which is praised for other herbs also. The white is approved: after the Oetaean, the Pontic; in third place the Eleatic, which they say grows on vines; in fourth the Parnassian, which is adulterated with the Aetolian from the neighbourhood. Of these the black they call Melampodium, with which they fumigate and purge houses, sprinkling cattle too, with a solemn prayer.
50| It is also gathered with more ritual, for first a circle is drawn round it with a sword, then the one who is about to cut it faces the east and prays that it be permitted him to do this with the consent of the gods, and watches for the flight of an eagle; for generally one is present at the cutters, and if it has flown near, it is an augury that the cutter will die that year. Nor is the white easily gathered, especially weighing on the head, unless garlic is taken beforehand and wine is sipped at intervals and it is dug quickly.
51| The black some call encymon, others polyrrhizon. It purges below, the white by vomiting, and draws out the causes of diseases; once dreaded, it later became so common that many, for the sake of their studies, to see more keenly into what they were pondering, took it repeatedly. Carneades, when about to answer the books of Zeno
52| [….] and Drusus among us, the most distinguished of the tribunes of the people, to whom the whole plebs standing before him gave applause, though the aristocrats charged the Marsic war to him, is agreed to have been freed by this medicine from epilepsy on the island of Anticyra. For there it is taken most safely, since, as we have said, they mix in sesamoides. Italy calls it veratrum. The meal of them, by itself and mixed with the little root with which we have said wools are washed, produces sneezing, and both produce sleep.
53| The roots are gathered when very slender and short, and as it were cut off short, the lowest ones. For the top, which is thickest, like an onion, is given only to dogs for purging. The ancients chose the root with the fleshiest possible bark, so that the thinner pith might be taken out; this, covered with damp sponges and swelling, they split lengthwise with a needle, then dried the threads in the shade, using them. Now they give the little branches themselves from the root with the thickest possible bark. The best is that which is sharp to the taste and, when broken, sends out a hot powder. They say its power lasts 30 years.
54| The black cures paralytics, the insane, dropsy patients, provided without fever, old gout, diseases of the joints. It draws from the belly bile, phlegm, waters. It is given to soften the bowels gently, at most one drachma, moderately 4 obols. Some mixed scammony with it, but salt more safely. Given in sweet things more copiously it brings danger. By fomentation it disperses dimness of the eyes;
55| for this some have also anointed with it pounded. It digests and purges scrofula, suppurations, hardnesses, likewise fistulas, taken out on the third day. It removes warts with scale of copper and sandaraca. It is applied to the belly of dropsy patients with barley meal and wine. It cures the phlegm of cattle and beasts of burden, a twig being passed through the ear and taken out the next day at the same hour; the mange of four-footed animals, with frankincense, wax and pitch or with pisselaeum.
56| The white is best which most quickly moves sneezing, but it is much more terrible than the black, especially if one reads among the ancients the preparation of those about to drink it: against shuddering, strangulations, untimely powers of sleep, endless hiccups or sneezings, loosenings of the stomach, vomiting too slow or too long, too slight or too much. For they were accustomed to give other things which would rouse vomiting, and to draw out the hellebore itself with medicines or clysters, quite often with blood let from the veins as well.
57| Indeed, even when it turns out well, it is the more terrible for the various colours of the vomitings and for the watching of the bowels after the vomitings, the regulation of the baths, the care of the whole body, all this being preceded by great terror of rumour; for they say that flesh is consumed if it is cooked with it. But the fault of the ancients was that, for these fears, they gave it too sparingly, whereas it bursts out the more quickly the more freely it is taken.
58| Themison gave two drachmae, no more; his successors gave even four, with the famous proclamation of Herophilus, who likened hellebore to the most valiant of generals; for when everything within has been roused, it itself goes out among the first. Moreover a marvellous device was found, which, cut with scissors, as we have said, they sift: the bark remains, and this empties; the pith falls, and this, given in excessive purging, stops vomiting.
59| Care must be taken, in a favourable treatment too, that it not be given on a cloudy day, for unbearable torments arise. For it is beyond doubt that it should be given in summer rather than in winter. The body is to be prepared 7 days beforehand with sharp foods, abstinence from wine, on the fourth and third day with vomitings, and on the day before, abstinence from dinner. The white is given in sweet drink, but most suitably in lentils or porridge. Recently they have found out to cut radishes open and insert hellebore, and press the radishes together again, so that the power may pass through, and to give it as a softener. It begins to be returned after about 4 hours; the whole business is completed in seven hours.
60| It cures thus epileptic diseases, as we have said, vertigo, melancholics, the insane, the frantic, white elephantiasis, leprous eruptions, tetanus, the tremulous, the gouty, dropsy patients and those beginning to have tympany, sufferers of the stomach, those with cynic spasm, sciatica, quartan fevers which otherwise would not cease, old cough, flatulence, recurring gripings.
61| They forbid it to be given to the old, to boys, likewise to those of soft and womanish body or mind, to the weak or tender, and to women less than to men, likewise to the timid, or if the midriff is ulcerated or swollen, least of all to those who spit blood or are sick in the side. For the throat, applied externally to the body, it cures; smeared on with salted axungia it cures eruptions of phlegm, likewise an old suppuration. Mixed with pearl barley it kills mice. The Gauls tinge arrows with hellebore in hunting, and affirm that when the wound is cut round the flesh is felt to be more tender. Flies too are killed by white hellebore pounded and sprinkled with milk. By the same, lice-disease is also mended.
62| To Mithridates himself Crateuas ascribed one, called Mithridatia. It has 2 leaves from the root, like acanthus, with a stalk between the two holding up a rose-coloured flower.
63| Lenaeus ascribes to him another, scordotis or scordion, written down in the king's own hand; it is of the height of a cubit, with a four-angled stalk, branching, with downy leaves in the likeness of oak. It is found in Pontus in rich, damp plains, of bitter taste. There is also a kind of another sort, with broader leaves, similar to wild mint, and each is of very many uses, by itself and among others in antidotes.
64| Polemonia some call Philetaeria from the contest of kings over its discovery, but the Cappadocians chiliodynamia. It has a thick root, slender branches at whose tips hang clusters with black seed, otherwise like rue; it grows on mountainous ground.
65| Eupatoria also has royal authority, with a woody stalk, blackish, hairy, a cubit high and sometimes more, with leaves at intervals like cinquefoil or hemp, cut at the extremities into five parts, dark themselves and feathery, the root superfluous. The seed, drunk in wine, uniquely helps dysentery patients.
66| Chiron is said to have been cured by centaurion, when, received in the hospitality of Hercules and handling his arms, an arrow had fallen on his foot, wherefore some call it Chironion. The leaves are broad and oblong, with a serrated edge, the stalks dense from the root, of three cubits each, jointed (in these are heads like those of poppies), the root huge, reddish, tender and brittle, up to two cubits, moist with juice, bitter with a certain sweetness.
67| It grows on hills in rich soil, most praised in Arcadia, Elis, Messenia, on Pholoe and Lycaeus, and in the Alps too and in very many other places. In Lycia they also make Lycium from it. Its power on wounds is so great that, they say, even pieces of flesh grow together if it is cooked with them. The root is what is used, to be drunk in no more than 2 drachmae by those for whom it will be prescribed, if there is fever, pounded in water, by the rest in wine. The juice of its decoction cures also diseases of fevers.
68| There is another centaurion surnamed lepton, with tiny leaves, which some call libadion because it grows beside springs, like origanum, with narrower and longer leaves, an angular stalk, a palm high, shrubby, with the flower of lychnis, a slender and superfluous root, effective in its juice. The herb itself is gathered in autumn; the juice comes from the foliage. Some steep the cut stalks for 18 days and so press them out. This centaurion our people call the gall of the earth, on account of its extreme bitterness, the Gauls exacum, because, drunk, it drives all harmful drugs from the body through the bowels.
69| The third is the centaury surnamed triorchis. Whoever cuts it seldom fails to wound himself. It gives out a bloody juice. Theophrastus reports that it is defended, and that those gathering it are attacked, by the triorches, a kind of hawk, whence it took its name. The unskilled confuse all these and assign them to the first kind.
70| Clymenus is a herb named from a king, with the leaves of ivy, branching, its stalk hollow and girt with joints, of heavy smell and the seed of ivy, growing in woods and on mountains. For what diseases it is a remedy when drunk we shall say, but here it must be noted that while it cures, sterility also occurs in men who drink it. The Greeks have said it is like the plantain, with a square stalk, pods with seed interwoven among themselves like the tentacles of polypi. Its juice too is in use, of the greatest power in cooling.
71| Gentian was found by Gentius, king of the Illyrians, growing everywhere, but best in Illyricum, with the leaf of an ash, but the size of lettuce, a tender stalk, the thickness of a thumb, hollow and empty, leafy at intervals, sometimes of 3 cubits, a tough root, blackish, without smell, most abundant on the watery subalpine mountains. The use is in the root and the juice. The nature of the root is warming, but it is not to be drunk by pregnant women.
72| Lysimachus also found one which keeps its name from him, celebrated by Erasistratus. It has green leaves of willow, a purple flower, shrubby with upright twigs, of sharp smell. It grows in watery places. Its power is so great that, laid upon the yoke of beasts that quarrel, it restrains their roughness.
73| Women also have aspired to this glory, among whom Artemisia, wife of Mausolus, adopted a herb which was formerly called parthenis. There are some who think it surnamed from Artemis Ilithyia, because it is a particular remedy for women's ills. It is shrubby in the manner of wormwood, with larger and fatter leaves.
74| Of itself there are two kinds: the taller with broader leaves, the other tender with thinner leaves and growing only in maritime places. There are those who give the same name to a plant inland, with a single stalk, the tiniest leaves, abundant in flower, bursting out when the grape ripens, of a not unpleasant smell. This kind, which some call botrys, others ambrosia, grows in Cappadocia.
75| The nymphaea is reported to have been born from a nymph who died of jealousy toward Hercules (wherefore some call it Heracleon, others rhopalon from its root, like a club), and so those who have drunk it for 12 days are deprived of intercourse and generation. It is most praised in the Orchomenian territory and at Marathon. The Boeotians call it mallon and eat the seed.
76| It grows in watery places, with large leaves on the surface of the water and others from the root, the flower like a lily and, when it has finished flowering, the head of a poppy, a smooth stalk. The root is cut in autumn, black, and dried in the sun. In this way it is hostile to the spleen. There is another nymphaea also in Thessaly, by the river Peneus, with a white root, a yellow head, the size of a rose.
77| In the age of our fathers King Juba too discovered one which he named Euphorbea, from the name of his physician. He was the brother of Musa, by whom we have indicated that the deified Augustus was preserved. These same brothers began the practice of bracing the body with cold water after the baths; before, it was not the custom to wash except in hot water only, as we also find in Homer.
78| But Juba's volume also exists about that herb, and a famous proclamation. He found it on Mount Atlas, in the form of a thyrsus, with the leaves of acanthus. Its power is so great that the juice is received from a distance, the plant being cut with a pole; skins of kid are placed underneath as receptacles. The fluid is seen flowing down like milk; dried when it has set, it has the appearance of frankincense. Those who collect it see more clearly. It cures against serpents, on whatever part the person has been struck, the crown of the head being cut and the medicine applied there.
79| The Gaetulians, who gather it, adulterate it with [….] milk, but it is distinguished by fire; for what is not pure has an offensive smell. Far below this is the juice made in Gaul from the herb chamelaea, which bears a grain of coccus. Broken, it is like ammoniacum, even at a light taste keeping the mouth on fire for a long time, and more so after an interval, until it dries the throat too.
80| The physician Themison also made famous the common herb plantago, as its discoverer, in a volume published about it. It has two kinds: the smaller, with narrower and darker leaves, like the tongues of cattle, with an angular stalk inclined to the ground, growing in meadows; the other larger, with leaves enclosed in the manner of sides, which, because they are seven each, some have called heptapleuron. Its stalk too is a cubit high. It also grows in damp places, and is much more effective. It has a marvellous power in drying and thickening the body, taking the place of cautery. Nothing so surely checks fluxes, which the Greeks call rheumatismoi.
81| Joined to this is buglossos, like the tongues of oxen, whose special feature is that, cast into wine, it increases the pleasures of the mind, and it is called euphrosynum. Joined also is cynoglossos, imitating a dog's tongue, most agreeable for topiary works. They say that the plant which sends out 3 thyrsi of seed has a root that, drunk in water, is good for tertian fevers, and that which sends out 4, for quartans. There is also another like it, which bears tiny burrs. Its root, drunk in water, is hostile to frogs and serpents.
82| There is also buphthalmus, like the eyes of oxen, with the leaf of fennel, growing around towns, shrubby in its stalks, which are even eaten boiled. Some call it chalce. With wax it disperses steatomata. Whole nations too have found herbs, Scythia first the one which is called scythice, growing round Maeotis, exceedingly sweet and, among other things, most useful for what they call asthmata. There is also this great recommendation, that those who hold it in the mouth feel neither thirst nor hunger.
83| The same is done among the same people by hippace, distinguished in that it has the same effect on horses also, and they report that by these two herbs the Scythians can hold out even twelve days at a time in hunger and thirst. Thrace discovered ischaemon, by which they say blood is checked not only from an opened vein but even one cut through. It creeps on the ground, like millet, with rough and downy leaves. That which grows in Italy is stuffed into the nostrils and brings blood; the same, tied on, checks it.
84| The Vettones in Spain found the herb which is called Vettonica in Gaul, in Italy serratula, by the Greeks cestros or psychrotrophon, the most praised of all. It comes up with an angular stalk of 2 cubits, spreading from the root leaves almost like lapathum, serrated, with purple seed. The leaves are dried to meal for very many uses. Wine is made from it, and vinegar, for the stomach and clearness of the eyes, and it has so much fame that a house in which it has been planted is thought safe from all ills that call for expiation.
85| In the same Spain the Cantabrica was found, discovered by the Cantabrians in the times of the deified Augustus. It grows everywhere with a rush-like stalk, a foot high, on which are oblong little flowers like baskets, and in these the seed, exceedingly small. Nor were the Spains otherwise lacking in searching out herbs, since among them even today it is a custom, in the merrier dinner-party, to believe that a drink made from a hundred herbs, with honey wine added, is most wholesome and most delightful. Nor does anyone now know their kinds or their multitude, yet the number stands in the name.
86| Our own age recalls a herb found among the Marsi. It grows also among the Aequicoli, round the village of Nervesia; it is called consiligo. It helps, as we shall show in its place, those given up in consumption.
87| Servilius Democrates also, one of the first of physicians, recently found one which he named Hiberis, although its discovery is assigned to a feigned name in a poem. It grows chiefly around old monuments and ruins and untilled borders of roads; it flowers always, with the leaf of nasturtium, a stalk a cubit high, seed scarcely able to be seen. The root has the smell of nasturtium. The use is more effective in summer and only when fresh; it is pounded with difficulty.
88| For the hips and all joints it is most useful with a moderate quantity of axungia, tied on for men four hours at most each time, for women less by half, so that afterwards one descends in the baths into the hot water, and afterwards the body is anointed with oil and wine, and at twenty-day intervals the same is done, if any reminder of pain remains. In this way it cures all hidden rheumatismoi. It is applied not at the very inflammation, but when it has lessened.
89| Animals also have found herbs, and first of all chelidonia. For with this swallows [….] the eyes of their young in the nest and restore sight, as some will have it, even when the eyes have been dug out. It has two kinds: the larger shrubby, with the leaf of wild parsnip, but broader, itself 2 cubits in height, whitish in colour, a yellow flower; the smaller has rounder, less white leaves like ivy.
90| The juice is saffron-like, biting, the seed of a poppy. They flower at the arrival of the swallows, and wither at their departure. The juice is pressed from the flowering plants and boiled gently in a bronze vessel with Attic honey over hot ashes, a singular remedy against dimness of the eyes. They use it both by itself, as juice, and in the eye-salves that are named chelidonia after it.
91| Dogs too find one by which they overcome loathing, and they chew it in our sight, but in such a way that it is never understood which it is; for it is seen only after it has been grazed. This ill will of that animal has been noted more in another herb. For a dog struck by a serpent is said to cure itself with a certain one, but it will not pluck it while a man is watching.
92| More simply, the hinds showed elaphoboscon, of which we have spoken, and likewise helxine, said to be named from birth; they showed, as we have indicated, dictamnum, by the grazing of which, when they are wounded, the weapons at once fall out. It is nowhere but in Crete, with very slender branches, like pennyroyal, hot and sharp to the taste. Only the leaves are used; there is no flower or seed or stalk, the root slender and superfluous. And even in Crete it does not grow widely, and it is marvellously sought after by goats.
93| In place of it there is pseudodictamnum, growing in many lands, similar in leaf, with smaller twigs, called by some chondris. Its smaller effect is understood at once; for dictamnum sets the mouth on fire with the least draught. Those who gather them put them in a ferula or reed and tie them up, so that their potency does not evaporate. There are those who say that each grows in many places, but the inferior ones in rich fields, the true dictamnum not except in rough ground.
94| There is also a third kind called dictamnum, but like neither in look nor effect, with the leaf of sisymbrium and larger branches, the persuasion going before that whatever grows in Crete is immeasurably better than others of the same kind born elsewhere, next to which comes that on Parnassus. Otherwise they report that Mount Pelion in Thessaly is herb-bearing, and Telethrium in Euboea, and the whole of Arcadia and Laconia, the Arcadians indeed using no medicines but milk about spring, since then the herbs swell most with juices and the udders are medicated with the pastures. They drink cow's milk, because cattle feed on almost every herb. The potency of these herbs is made manifest still by two famous examples through four-footed creatures. Around Abdera and the boundary which is called that of Diomedes, horses grazed there are inflamed with madness, and around Potniae asses too.
95| Among the most famous, aristolochia seems to have been named by pregnant women, because it was aristē lechousais, best for women in childbed. Our people call it the apple of the earth and maintain four kinds of it: one with round tubers of root, with leaves between mallow and ivy, darker and softer; a second, the male, with a long root, 4 fingers in length, the thickness of a staff; a third, the longest, as thin as a young vine, whose power is outstanding, which is also called clematitis, by others Cretica. All are of box colour, with small stalks and a purple flower.
96| They bear small rods, like the caper. They are effective in the root only. There is also the one called plistolochia, of the fourth kind, more slender than the one just mentioned, with dense hair-like fibres of the root, of the thickness of a rather full rush.
97| This one they surname polyrrhizon. The smell of all is medicinal, but pleasanter in the oblong and slenderer root; for it is of fleshy bark, and suitable also to nard unguents. They grow in rich places and plains. It is seasonable to dig them up at harvest; they are kept with their earth not scraped off. Yet the Pontic is most praised, and in any kind the heaviest, the round being more suitable for medicines, the oblong against serpents; its highest glory, however, is this, if, applied to the womb from conception in beef, it shapes males, as is reported.
98| The fishermen of Campania call that root which is round the poison of the earth, and in front of us they scattered it, pounded and mixed with lime, into the sea. Fish fly to it with marvellous eagerness and at once float lifeless. That which is surnamed polyrrhizos is reported to be most useful, the root drunk in water, for those with convulsions, bruises, or thrown from a height; the seed for pleurisy and the sinews, to strengthen, to warm; and the same is satyrion.
99| But the effects and uses must be told, and I must begin with the worst of all evils, the sting of serpents. They are cured, then, by the Britannic herb, the root of every kind of panaces in wine, both the flower and the seed of Chironium, drunk or smeared on in wine and oil, in particular that which is called cunila bubula, Polemonia or Philetaeris, 4 drachmae of the root in unmixed wine, Teucria,
100| sideritis, scordotis in wine, particularly for snakes, drunk and smeared on, whether as juice or leaf or decoction; the root of greater centaurion, a drachma in 3 cyathi of white wine; Gentian especially against snakes, 2 drachmae with pepper and rue in 6 cyathi of wine, whether green or dry. And they flee the smell of Lysimachia.
101| Chelidonia is given in wine to those struck; Vettonica is applied to bites above all, to which so great a power is attributed that serpents shut in a circle of it destroy themselves by lashing. Its seed is given for stings at the weight of a denarius with 3 cyathi of wine, or its meal at 3 drachmae in a sextarius of water (the meal is also applied); Cantabrica, dictamnum, a drachma of aristolochia root in a hemina of wine, but it must be drunk more often. It helps smeared on in vinegar; plistolochia similarly, and indeed hung over the hearth it drives serpents out of houses;
102| also argemonia, its root at the weight of a denarius in 3 cyathi of wine, drunk. It is proper to say more about it and the rest where they are first named, but in that kind of cure to name each first in the one in which it will be most effective. It has leaves like anemone, divided in the manner of celery, a head on a little stalk like a wild poppy, and a root too, a juice of saffron colour, sharp and acrid. It grows in fields. Among us they make three kinds of it, and approve only that whose root smells of frankincense.
103| Agaricum grows as a fungus on trees round the Bosporus, white in colour; 3 obols pounded with two cyathi of honeyed vinegar are given. That which grows in Gaul is held weaker. Moreover the male is denser and more bitter (it also causes headaches), the female looser. At first the taste is sweet, soon passing into bitterness.
104| Echios of both kinds, like pennyroyal, crowns itself with leaves; it is given at 2 drachmae from 4 cyathi of wine. Likewise the other, which is distinguished by down, thorny, whose little heads too are like those of a viper; this is given in wine and vinegar. Some call echion personata, a plant than whose leaf none is broader, bearing great burrs; its root, boiled in vinegar, they give as a drink. Hyoscyamus, bruised with its leaves, is given in wine, particularly against asps.
105| Yet none has more of Roman nobility than hiera botane. Some call it aristereon, our people verbenaca. This is what we have indicated that envoys carry to enemies; with it the table of Jupiter is swept, and houses are purged and lustrated. It has two kinds: the leafy, which they think female, the male with sparser leaves.
106| The twigs of each are numerous, slender, a cubit high, angular, the leaves smaller than oak and narrower, with larger cuts, the flower grey-blue, the root long and slender. It grows everywhere on watery plains. Some do not distinguish them and make altogether one kind, since each has the same effects. The Gauls draw lots with each and chant oracles, but the Magi above all rave about this one: that those anointed with it obtain what they wish, drive away fevers, win friendships and cure every disease.
107| It ought to be gathered around the time the Dog Star rises, so that neither moon nor sun sees it, honeycombs and honey having been given first to the earth as an expiation; a circle is traced round it with iron, and it is dug up with the left hand and raised on high; the leaves, stalk and root are dried separately in the shade. They say that if water in which it has soaked is scattered over the dining-room, dinner-parties become merrier. Against serpents it is pounded in wine.
108| There is a herb similar to verbascum, which often deceives when picked in its place, with less white leaves, several little stalks, a yellow flower. Thrown down, this draws cockroaches to itself and is therefore called blattaria at Rome. Molemonium gives out a milky juice that thickens like gum, in damp places. The weight of a denarius is given in wine.
109| Cinquefoil is unknown to none, since it is recommended even by producing strawberries; the Greeks call it pentapetes or pentaphyllon or chamaezelon. When dug up, it has a red root; this, drying, blackens and becomes angular. The name is from the number of leaves. The herb itself begins and ends with the vine. It is also used for purging houses. Against serpents its root, which is called sparganion, is drunk in white wine.
110| Petronius Diodotus made four kinds of daucus, which there is no point in pursuing, since there are two differences: the most approved is in Crete, then in Achaia and wherever it is born in dry places, like fennel, with whiter, smaller and hairy leaves, a straight stalk a foot high, a root of most pleasant taste and smell.
111| This grows on stony southern ground; the other kinds grow everywhere on earthy hills and borders, and only in rich soil [….] with the leaves of coriander, a stalk a cubit high, round heads, often more than three, a woody root and, when it has dried, superfluous. The seed of this is like cumin, that of the former like millet, white, sharp, fragrant in all and hot. The second is stronger than the first, and so it should be taken sparingly.
112| If one is now minded to make a third kind, it is like staphylinus, which they call wild parsnip, having an oblong seed and a sweet root. All these, both in winter and in summer, are untouched by four-footed creatures except after miscarriages. Of the others the use is of the seed; of the Cretan, of the root, and more against serpents. One drachma is drunk in wine; it is given also to four-footed animals when struck.
113| Therionarca is another besides the magical one and grows in our world too, shrubby, with somewhat green leaves and a rosy flower. It kills serpents. This too, brought near to any wild beast, brings torpor. Persollata, which no one fails to know, the Greeks call arcion; it has leaves even larger than gourds, and hairier and darker and thicker, a white and large root. It is drunk in wine at the weight of 2 denarii;
114| likewise the root of cyclamen against all serpents. It has leaves smaller than ivy, and darker and thinner, without angles, on which white spots show, a slight hollow stalk, purple flowers, a broad root, so that it can be seen as a turnip, with a black bark. It grows in shady places.
115| By our people it is called the tuber of the earth, and should be sown in all houses, if it is true that where it has been sown bad drugs do no harm; they call it an amulet. They tell also that drunkenness is produced when it is added to wine. The root, even dried, is cut up in the manner of the squill and stored; it is boiled down to the thickness of honey. It has, however, a poison of its own, and they report that if a pregnant woman steps across that root, a miscarriage occurs.
116| There is another cyclamen also, surnamed cissanthemos, differing from the former by its jointed, superfluous stalks, winding itself about trees, with the berries of ivy, but soft, a white, showy flower, a superfluous root. Only the berries are in use, sharp in taste and tough. They are dried in the shade and, pounded, are divided into lozenges. To me a third cyclamen was also shown, surnamed chamaecissos, with one leaf altogether, a branching root, by which fish were killed.
117| But among the first is celebrated peucedanum, most praised in Arcadia, then in Samothrace. Its stalk is slender, long, like fennel, leafy near the ground, with a black, thick root, of heavy smell, juicy. It grows on shady mountains and is dug at the end of autumn. The most tender and tallest roots are preferred. These are cut into pieces of four fingers each with bone knives and pour out their juice in the shade, the head and nostrils having first been anointed with rose oil, that giddiness may not be felt.
118| Another juice is found clinging to the stalks, and when they are cut it flows out. It is judged good if it is thick as honey, red in color, pleasantly heavy in smell, and fiery to the taste. Both the root and a decoction of it are used in very many remedies, but the juice is the most effective; it is dissolved in bitter almonds or in rue as a defense against snakes and is drunk, and it also protects people who have been anointed with it in oil.
119| — Snakes are also driven off by the smoke of ebulum, which no one fails to know. In particular against scorpions the root of polemonia is effective, even merely worn tied on, and likewise against the phalangium and other lesser venomous creatures; against scorpions also aristolochia, and agaricum in doses of 4 obols in as many cyathi of mixed wine; verbenaca is used against the phalangium with wine or posca, and so likewise are quinquefolium and daucum.
120| The Greeks call verbascum phlomos. It has two principal kinds: the white, in which the male is understood, and the other black, in which the female is understood. A third kind is found only in woodland. The leaves are broader than those of cabbage and hairy; the stem is upright, more than a cubit tall. The seed is black and useless; there is a single root, as thick as a finger. They grow in level country. The wild kind has leaves like those of elelisphacus, tall, and woody branches.
121| There are also two phlomides, shaggy, with round leaves, low-growing. A third is called lychnitis, and by some thryallis, with leaves in threes or at most fours, thick and fat, suited to the wicks of lamps. They say that figs placed among the leaves of the one we called the female do not rot at all. To distinguish these kinds is almost superfluous, since all have the same effect. Against scorpions the root is drunk with rue in water; it is very bitter, but the effect is the same.
122| The plant thelyphonon is called scorpion by some because of the likeness of its root. Scorpions die at its touch; therefore it is drunk against their stings. They say that if someone smears a dead scorpion with white hellebore it comes back to life. Thelyphonon kills any four-footed animal if the root is applied to its genitals, and the leaf too within the same day. The leaf is like that of cyclaminus; the plant itself is jointed. It grows in shady places.—Against scorpions the juice of Vettonica and of plantago is also effective.
123| Frogs too have poisons, toads above all, and we have seen Psylli let them loose into a contest from red-hot dishes, with a destruction even swifter than that of asps. Phrynion, drunk in wine, gives help. Some call it neuras, others poterion; it has small flowers and many roots, sinewy and sweet-smelling.
124| Likewise alcima, which some call damasonion and others lyron. Its leaves would be those of plantago, were they not narrower and more deeply cut and curving toward the ground, and elsewhere also veined in the same way; the stem is single and slender, a cubit high, the top like a thyrsus; the roots are dense and thin like those of black veratrum, sharp, fragrant and fat. It grows in watery places.
125| There is another kind of it in woodland, darker, with larger leaves. The roots of both are used against frogs and sea hares, in a dose of a drachma by weight, drunk in wine. Cyclaminos also is effective against the sea hare. The bite of a rabid dog also has the force of a poison, and against it cynorrhodum, of which we have spoken, will serve; plantago, drunk and applied, serves against all bites of beasts, and Vettonica in old unmixed wine.
126| Peristereos is the name of a plant with a tall, leafy stem, spreading at the top into other stems; it is very familiar to doves, whence the name too. Those who keep it say that dogs do not bark at them.
127| Next after these evils come the poisons that men devise for one another. Against all of these, and against magic arts, there will be first the famous Homeric moly, then Mithridatia and scordotis. Centaurium too, drunk, drives all evil drugs out through the bowels; so does the seed of Vettonica in honey wine or raisin wine, or the meal of it, a drachma in 4 cyathi of old wine; the patients must be made to vomit and to drink again.
128| They hand down that for those who taste it every day, no evil drugs will do harm. When poison has been drunk, aristolochia gives relief in the same measure as against snakes, and the juice of quinquefolium, and agaricum, after they have vomited, a denarius by weight in 3 cyathi of honeyed water.
129| Antirrinum is the name, or anarrinon, lychnis agria; it is like flax, with no root, with a flower like the hyacinth and a seed like a calf's nostrils. The Magi believe that people anointed with this become more attractive and cannot be harmed by any evil drug, even if someone keeps it in an armlet.
130| Likewise the plant they call euplia, and they hand down that those anointed with it have a more recommended reputation. They also say that those who carry artemisia with them are harmed by no evil drugs, nor any beast, not even the sun; this too is drunk in wine.—Against opium alcima is handed down as particularly powerful, drunk as against frogs.
131| Pericarpum is a kind of bulb. It has two species: one with a red rind, the other black, resembling the poppy, but its power is greater than that of the former; in both it lies in heating. Therefore it is given against hemlock, against which frankincense also and panaces, especially the Chironian, are given; this is also used against mushrooms.
132| But we shall go on to add remedies by classes and limb by limb for the diseases of the several parts of the body, beginning from the head. Baldness is cured by the root of the Heraclian nymphaea, even alone; [….] ground up are applied. Polythrix differs from callitriche in that it has white rushes and more and larger leaves, and is larger in its shrub. They strengthen and thicken falling hair.
133| Likewise lingulaca, growing around springs, whose root [admixed] is burned and ground with the fat of a black sow; this too is specified, that it be of a sow that has never farrowed; then the sun is of great help to the part anointed. The root of cyclaminus is used in a similar way.—Scurf is removed by the root of veratrum boiled in oil or in water.
134| —Headache is treated by the root of panaces of every kind pounded in oil; by aristolochia; by hiberis, tied on for an hour or longer, if the patient can bear it, with the use of the bath alongside. Daucum also treats it. Cyclaminos clears the head when inserted in the nostrils with honey, and applied it heals sores of the head. Peristereos also treats it.
135| Cacalia, or leontice, is the name of a plant whose seed is like tiny pearls, hanging among large leaves, generally on mountains. Fifteen grains of this are steeped in oil, and the head is then anointed with it, the hair brushed against its lie. A sneezing-powder is also made from callitriche. Its leaves are those of the lentil, its stalks very slender rushes, its root very small. It grows in shady and damp places and is fiery to the taste.
136| Hyssop pounded in oil resists lice and itching in the head. The best is the Cilician from Mount Taurus, then the Pamphylian and the Smyrnaean. It is harmful to the stomach; taken with a fig it purges downward, with honey it provokes vomiting. They think it also counters the stings of serpents, pounded with honey, salt and cumin.
137| Lonchitis is not, as most have supposed, the same as xiphion or phasganion, although it resembles a spearhead in its seed; for it has the leaves of the leek, reddish toward the root and more numerous than on the stalk, and small heads like comic masks, putting forth a little tongue; its roots are very long. It grows in dry places,
138| whereas xiphion and phasganion grow in damp ones. When first it comes up it presents the appearance of a sword, with a stalk of 2 cubits and a root fringed in the shape of a hazelnut, which should be dug up before the harvests and dried in shade. Its upper part, ground with frankincense, wine being mixed in in equal weight, draws broken bones out of the head, or anything that is festering in the body, or if someone has trodden on a snake's bones; the same is effective against poisons.
139| —A head in pain suits being anointed with veratrum boiled and pounded in oil or rose oil, or with peucedanum in oil or rose oil and vinegar. Applied warm, this is also helpful for the pains that are mostly felt in half of the head, and for vertigo. They also rub on the root of it to draw out sweat, since it has a caustic force.
140| Psyllion is called by some cynoides, by others crystallion, by others Sicelicon, by others cynomyia; it has a thin, useless root and is trailing, with bean-like grains at the tips, leaves not unlike a dog's head, and a seed like a flea, whence also the name. This is found among berries, the plant itself in vineyards. Its power to cool and to disperse is enormous. The seed is what is used; it is applied to the forehead in pain, and to the temples, with vinegar and rose oil or posca;
141| for other conditions it is smeared on. A measure of an acetabulum thickens and binds a sextarius of water; then it should be ground and spread thickly on any pain, or gathering, or inflammation.—Aristolochia treats wounds of the head, drawing out broken bones, indeed in any other part of the body, but chiefly in the head; plistolochia likewise.—Thryselinum is not unlike celery; its root, chewed, clears the phlegm of the head.
142| The sharpness of the eyes they think is helped by the greater centaurium, if, with water added, they are bathed with it; with the juice of the lesser, together with honey, gnats, small clouds and obscurities are dispersed and scars thinned, and white spots even in beasts of burden by sideritis. For chelidonia treats all the above-named conditions wonderfully. They apply the root of panaces with barley meal to running of the eyes. They also drink the seed of hyoscyamus in a dose of an obol, adding as much meconium and wine, to check running. They also anoint with the juice of Gentiana, which they mix in sharper eye-salves in place of meconium. Euphorbeum makes the sight clear for those anointed with it.
143| The juice of plantago is dropped in for eye inflammation. Aristolochia disperses dimness of sight; so does hiberis tied on the head, and quinquefolium. Verbascum corrects running of the eyes and any other defects in the eyes. Peristereos in rose oil or vinegar is applied for running. For cataract and dimness, they dissolve lozenges of cyclaminus, and the juice of peucedanum as we said, for clearness of sight and for dimness with meconium and rose oil. Psyllion smeared on the forehead holds back running of the eyes.
144| Some call anagallis acorus. It has two kinds: the male with a flower of purple, the female with a blue one, no taller than a palm, with a tender shrub and tiny round leaves lying on the ground. They grow in gardens and watery places. The blue one flowers first. The juice of both, with honey, disperses dimness of the eyes, and blood from a blow, and red ulceration of the eye, more so with Attic honey for those anointed. It dilates the pupils, and for that reason they are anointed with it before a paracentesis is performed. It treats the eyes of beasts of burden too. The juice, poured into the nostrils, clears the head, so that it is afterward rinsed with wine. A drachma of the juice is also drunk in wine against snakes.
145| It is a marvel that cattle avoid the female, or if, deceived by the likeness—for they differ only in the flower—they have tasted it, at once look for the plant called asylum as a remedy. Our people call it felis oculus, the cat's eye. Some instruct those about to dig it up to greet it before sunrise, before they say anything else, and to press it out when lifted; the strength is then especially great. Enough has been said about the juice of Euphorbea. For eye inflammation, if there is swelling, wormwood pounded with honey, and likewise with [….] meal of Vettonica, will be suitable.
146| Aegilops is cured by the herb of that name, which grows in barley and has a wheat leaf, the seed being ground and mixed with meal and applied, or the juice. This is pressed from the stalk and the leaves while pregnant, the ear having been taken off, and is worked in meal of three-month wheat into lozenges.
147| The ancients used mandragora too, but it was later abandoned in this treatment. It is certain that the root, crushed with rose oil and wine, treats running of the eyes and pain of the eyes. For the juice is mixed into many eye medicines. Some call mandragora Circaeon. It has two kinds: the white, which is held to be the male, and the black, which is held to be the female, with leaves narrower than those of lettuce, hairy, and stalks likewise, and roots in twos or threes, reddish, white within, fleshy and tender, almost a cubit long.
148| They say it bears apples the size of hazelnuts, and within them a seed like that of pears. The white kind some call arsen, others morion, others hippophlomos. Its leaves are white, broader than the leaves of the other, like those of the cultivated lapathum. Those about to dig it guard against a contrary wind and first trace 3 circles around it with a sword, then dig facing the west. The juice is made both from the apples and from the stalk with the top cut off, and from the root, opened by punctures or boiled down. This too is useful, even a shoot of it; cut into little disks it is also kept in wine.
149| The juice is not found everywhere, but where it can be, it is sought around the vintage. It has a heavy smell, as do the root and the apple, heavier in the white. The ripe apples are dried in the shade. The juice from them is thickened in the sun, and likewise that of the crushed root, or boiled down to a third in dark wine. The leaves are kept more effectively in brine; the juice, salted only with dew, is a pest; even so, its harmful powers bring on a heavy cold in the head even by smell.
150| Although the apples are eaten in some lands, the unwary nonetheless lose their voice from the excessive smell, and from a larger draught they even die. The sleep-inducing power is in proportion to the strength of the drinkers; the middle dose is one cyathus. It is drunk also against serpents, and before cuttings and puncturings, that they not be felt; for these purposes it is enough for some to seek sleep through the smell. It is drunk also in place of hellebore, 2 obols in honey wine—hellebore is more effective—to induce vomiting and to draw off black bile.
151| Cicuta too is a poison, hated as the public penalty of the Athenians, yet in many matters its use is not to be passed over. The seed is harmful; the stalk, however, even green, is eaten by many and in dishes. This is smooth and jointed like reeds, dark, often taller than two cubits, branching at the tops; the leaves are more delicate than coriander and heavy in smell, the seed thicker than anise, the root hollow and of no use. The seed and the leaves have a cooling power; thus too it kills: the victims begin to grow cold from the extremities of the body.
152| The remedy, before it reaches the vital parts, is the heating nature of wine. But drunk in wine it proves beyond remedy. The juice is pressed from the leaves and flowers, for then it is at its most seasonable; better is that pressed from ground seed and thickened in the sun into lozenges. It kills by thickening the blood—this is its second power—and so the bodies of those killed in this way show spots.
153| To dissolve drugs they use it in place of water. A malagma for cooling the stomach is also made from it. It is especially valuable, however, for checking summer running of the eyes and for soothing pains of the eyes when smeared around them; it is mixed in eye-salves. It also checks all other rheums. The leaves too soothe every swelling and pain and running of the eyes.
154| Anaxilaus states that the breasts of girls, if smeared with it, will always stay firm. What is certain is that applied to the breasts of women who have borne children it dries up the milk, and applied to the testicles around puberty it extinguishes desire. As for remedies in which it is prescribed to be drunk, I would not myself recommend them. Its strength is greatest when it grows at Susa of the Parthians, then in the Laconian, Cretan and Asiatic, and in Greece in the Megarian, then the Attic.
155| Cremnos agrios, applied, removes gremiae of the eyes, and swelling too with barley meal added. Molybdaena, that is plumbago, grows commonly even in the plowed field, with the leaf of lapathum, thick and bristly. If this is chewed and the eye is licked with it from time to time, the lead, which is a kind of defect, is removed from the eye. Stumpy capnos, which they call pedes gallinacii (hen's feet), growing on ruined walls and hedges, with very slender, scattered branches and a purple flower, in its green juice disperses dimness of sight; therefore it is added to medicines for the eyes.
156| Like it both in name and in effect, but a different plant, is the bushy capnos, very tender, with the leaves of coriander, ash-coloured, and with a flower of purple. It grows in gardens and in fields of barley. It gives clear sight to eyes anointed with it and causes tears like smoke, whence the name. The same prevents plucked-out eyelashes from growing back.
157| Acorus has the leaves of the iris, only narrower, with a longer stalk, and black roots, less veined, in other respects too like those of the iris, sharp to the taste, not unpleasant in smell, and easily belched. The best are the Daspetian from Galatia, then the Cretan, but the most abundant in Colchis beside the river Phasis and wherever in watery places. In fresh roots the pungency is greater than in old; the Cretan are whiter than the Pontic.
158| They are dried, like iris, in the shade in finger-length pieces. There are also those who call the root of oxymyrsine acorus, and so some prefer to call this one acorion. Its power is to heat and to thin; it is effective against cataracts and dimness of the eyes, and its juice drunk against serpents.
159| Cotyledon is a small plant on a tender little stalk, with a tiny fat leaf, hollowed like the hip sockets. It grows in places by the sea and in damp rocky ground, with a round root in the manner of an olive. It treats the eyes by its juice. There is another kind of it, with dingy leaves, broader and denser, surrounding the root around like an eye, of very harsh taste, with a longer stalk, but very slender. Its use is for the same conditions as the cultivated aizoon.
160| There are two kinds of it. The larger is planted in little earthenware pots; some call it buphthalmon, others zoophthalmon, others stergethron because it suits love-potions, others hypogeson because it generally grows under the eaves; there are some who prefer to call it ambrosia, and some amerimnon; in Italy it is called sedum magnum, or oculus, or digitillum. The other is quite small; they call it erithales, others trithales because it flowers three times, others erysithales, some isoetes; in Italy it is sedum; but both alike are aizoum, because they are always green.
161| The larger even exceeds a cubit in height and is more than a thumb thick. The leaves at the top are like a tongue, fleshy, fat, full of juice and a thumb broad, some bending down to the ground, others standing upright, so that in their circle they imitate the shape of an eye. The smaller grows on walls, ruins and tiles; it is shrubby from the root and leafy up to the top, with narrow, pointed, juicy leaves and a stalk a palm high. The root is useless.
162| Like this is the plant the Greeks call andrachne agria and Italy inlecebra, with tiny but broader leaves and a shorter top. It grows on rocks and is gathered for food. All these have the same power, to cool and to bind.
163| The leaves, applied, cure fluxes of the eyes, or the juice, when the eyes are anointed with it; for it cleans ulcers of the eyes, fills them in and brings them to a scar, and unglues the eyelids. The same cure headaches, the juice or the leaf being smeared on the temples; they counteract the stings of phalangia, and the larger aizoum is especially good against aconitum. They also say that one who carries it is not stung by scorpions.
164| They also cure earache; so does a moderate amount of the juice of hyoscyamus, and likewise the juice of Achillea, of the lesser centaurium and of plantain; of peucedanum, with rose oil and meconium; the juice of acorum with rose (each of these is poured in after being warmed in a strigil); cotyledon too, for running ears, warmed with deer's marrow; the juice of the pounded root of ebulus, strained through linen, then thickened in the sun and, when needed, diluted with rose oil and warmed. Verbenaca heals parotid swellings, and so does plantain, and sideritis with old axle-grease.
165| Aristolochia with cyperus corrects ozaena of the nostrils. Remedies for the teeth are the root of panaces chewed, especially of the Chironian kind, and its juice used as a mouthwash; the root of hyoscyamus chewed in vinegar, and likewise that of polemonia. The root of plantain too is chewed, or the teeth are rinsed with the juice of the plant boiled in vinegar; and it is useful to eat the leaves, even if the gums are rotting with blood; [or] its seed heals abscesses and gatherings of the gums.
166| Aristolochia also strengthens the gums and teeth; so does verbenaca chewed with its root, and the juice of it boiled in wine or vinegar used as a mouthwash; and likewise the juice of the root of quinquefolium boiled down to a third in vinegar or wine. Before boiling, it is washed in sea water or salt water; the decoction must be held in the mouth for a long time. Some prefer to rub the teeth with the ash of quinquefolium. The root of verbascum too is boiled in wine for rinsing the teeth; and they are rinsed with hyssop, and with the juice of peucedanum with meconium, or the juice of the roots of anagallis, preferably the female, is poured into the nostril on the side opposite the pain.
167| Erigeron is called senecio by our people. If someone draws a line round it with iron, digs it up, touches a tooth with it, spits three times in turn and puts it back in the same place so that the herb lives, they say that tooth will never ache afterwards. It is a herb like trixago in appearance and softness, with reddish stalks. It grows on tiles and on walls. The Greeks gave it this name because it turns white in spring. Its head is divided into many parts by a down like that of the thorn, which comes out between the divisions;
168| for this reason Callimachus called it acanthis, others pappus. Beyond this the Greeks do not agree about it. Some have said it has the leaves of eruca, others those of the robur, but much smaller; some say the root is useless, others that it is useful for the sinews, others that in drink it chokes. On the other hand, some have given it in wine for jaundice and against all ailments of the bladder, and likewise of the heart and liver. They have said that it draws sand out of the kidneys.
169| For sciatica they have given a drachma of it to drink in oxymel after a walk; they have proclaimed it most useful for colic, in raisin wine too, and for the precordia even as a food in vinegar, and they sow it in gardens. Nor were there lacking those who made a second kind as well without showing what it was like, giving it to be drunk in water against serpents and to be eaten by epileptics. We shall set it out by its uses, from Roman experience. Its down, pounded together with saffron and a small amount of cold water, is applied to fluxes of the eyes, and, roasted with a grain of salt, to strumae.
170| Ephemeron has the leaves of the lily, but smaller, a stalk of the same size, a blue flower, a useless seed, and a single root a finger thick; this is excellent for the teeth, chopped and boiled in vinegar so that they are rinsed with it lukewarm. The root by itself also acts as a check; it is pressed into hollow, decayed teeth. The root of chelidonia, pounded in vinegar, is held in the mouth; black veratrum is pressed into eroded teeth; loose teeth are made firm by a decoction of either in vinegar.
171| They give the name "Venus' basin" to a plant that grows in rivers. It has a little worm, which is rubbed round the teeth or shut up with wax in the hollows of the teeth. Care must be taken that the herb, once pulled up, does not touch the ground.
172| We call ranunculus the plant the Greeks call batrachion. There are 4 kinds of it: one with leaves fatter than those of coriander and approaching the breadth of the mallow's, of a livid colour, with a tall, slender stalk and a white root. It grows on damp and shady field boundaries. The second is leafier, with more incisions in its leaves, and taller in its stalks. The third is very small, with a heavy smell and a golden flower.
173| The fourth is like this one, with a milk-white flower. All have a caustic power if the leaves are applied raw, and they raise blisters as fire does. So they use them for lepra and psoriasis and for removing brand-marks, and mix them into all caustics. They apply them to alopecia, taking them off quickly. The root, chewed for a long while in toothache, breaks the teeth; the same, dried and chopped, makes one sneeze.
174| Our herbalists call it strumus, because it heals strumae and panus if part of it is hung up in smoke; and they believe that if it is planted again the ailments it has cured break out again; in this wicked practice they use plantain too. The juice of plantain corrects ulcers inside the mouth, and so do its leaves and roots chewed, even if the mouth suffers from a flux; quinquefolium corrects ulcers and foul smell; psyllium, ulcers.
175| We shall also give compound remedies against foul smells, and especially against that most shameful defect. It is useful, then, to pound together myrtle leaves and leaves of lentiscus in equal weight with half that weight of Syrian galls, and to chew the mixture in the morning sprinkled with old wine; or ivy berries with casia and murra in equal weight, in wine. For the nostrils the seed of dracontium pounded in honey is most useful, even if there are carcinomas in them. Bruises are corrected with hyssop; mandragoras smeared on removes brand-marks on the face.

======== Natural History — Book XXVI ========

1| The face of mankind has also felt new diseases, unknown in every earlier age, and not to Italy alone but to nearly the entire continent of Europe; even then they did not spread to any great extent through the whole of Italy, nor through Illyricum, the Gauls or the Spains, nor anywhere other than at Rome and around it. They came without pain, it is true, and without danger to life, but with such hideousness that any death would have been preferable.
2| The most serious of them they called lichenes, by a Greek name; in Latin, because it generally began at the chin, it was called mentagra, at first in playful jest, so impudent is the nature of many people in the misfortunes of others, and soon as an accepted word. In many cases it spread widely over the whole face, sparing only the eyes, and it descended to the neck, chest and hands with a foul scurf of the skin.
3| This plague had not existed among our ancestors and fathers. It first crept into Italy in the middle of the principate of Tiberius Claudius Caesar, when a certain Roman knight from Perusia, a quaestor's clerk, brought the contagion of it home from Asia, where he had been serving as an attendant. Nor did women feel this ill, or slaves, or the common people of low or middle rank, but the nobles, chiefly through the quick passing of a kiss; and in many who had borne the treatment the scar was fouler than the disease. For it was treated with caustics, and unless the body was burned right down to the bones, the loathsome thing broke out again.
4| And there came from Egypt, the mother of such ailments, physicians who devoted themselves to this work alone, to their great profit, since it is certain that Manilius Cornutus, a man of praetorian rank and legate of the province of Aquitania, contracted to pay CC sesterces to be cured of that disease. It has also happened rather often, on the other hand, that new kinds of disease have been felt in droves. What more wonderful thing can be found? That certain ailments arise suddenly in a particular part of the world, and attack particular members of men, or particular ages, or even particular fortunes, as though the evil chose: these rage among children, those among adults; these the nobles feel, those the poor!
5| It is recorded in the annals that in the censorship of Lucius Paullus and Quintus Marcius carbuncle first occurred in Italy, a disease peculiar to the province of Narbonensis. Of it two men of consular rank died in the very year in which we were writing this, Julius Rufus and Laecanius Bassus, the former cut open through the ignorance of his physicians, the latter after he had himself pulled it out with a needle from the thumb of his left hand, though it was so small that it could hardly be seen.
6| It arises in the most hidden parts of the body, and mostly under the tongue: a red hardness like a pimple, but blackish at the head, in other cases livid, stretching into the body without swelling, without pain, without itching, with no sign other than sleep; overcome by this, people are carried off within three days. Sometimes it also brings shivering, and small pustules around it, more rarely fever; once it has invaded the stomach and throat, it kills very swiftly.
7| We have said that elephantiasis did not occur in Italy before the age of Pompey the Great, and that it too generally begins at the face, first in the nostril, like a little lentil, then spreading through the whole body, spotted with various colours and with uneven skin, thick in some places and thin in others, hard, and rough elsewhere as if with scab, and at last turning black and pressing the flesh against the bones, while the fingers and toes swell.
8| This disease is peculiar to Egypt, and when it fell upon the kings it was deadly for their peoples, since the tubs in the baths were tempered with human blood as a treatment for it. And this disease was quickly stamped out in Italy, as was the one the ancients called gemursa, which arose between the toes; even its name has been forgotten.
9| This in itself is remarkable, that some diseases die out among us while others persist, such as colum. That disease crept in under the principate of Tiberius Caesar, and no one felt it before the emperor himself, to the great bewilderment of the citizens when they read, in the edict in which he excused himself on grounds of health, a name unknown to them. What are we to say this is, or what anger of the gods? Were the established kinds of disease too few for man, when they numbered more than three hundred, unless new ones were also to be feared? Nor, for that matter, do men bring fewer upon themselves by their own doings.
10| These remedies that we are recording were those of the ancients, nature herself in a way making the medicine, and so they remained for a long time. Certainly we find the volumes of Hippocrates, who was the first to set down the precepts of healing, and most brilliantly, full of mention of herbs; no less those of Diocles of Carystus, who came second in time and fame; likewise those of Praxagoras and Chrysippus, and then of Erasistratus of Ceos;
11| with Herophilus, indeed, although he was the founder of a subtler school, this method was celebrated above all others. But by then, little by little, it was sinking into words and chatter, although practice is the most effective teacher of all things, and of medicine above all. For it was pleasanter to sit in the schools, busy listening, than to go through wildernesses and search for different herbs at different seasons of the year.
12| Yet antiquity held firm and kept its claim to the great remnants of an acknowledged practice, until Asclepiades, in the age of Pompey the Great, a teacher of rhetoric who was not making enough money from that art, though his shrewd talents fitted him for things other than the forum, suddenly turned to this. And, as was inevitable for a man who had neither practised it nor knew remedies that must be learned by eye and by use, he charmed everyone with torrents of eloquence prepared every day, renounced everything, and, by reducing the whole of medicine to causes, made it a matter of conjecture,
13| having professed five things above all as common aids: abstinence from food, at other times from wine, rubbing of the body, walking, and being carried about—things which each man understood he could provide for himself—and with everyone favoring him, so that what was easiest might be true, he swung almost the whole human race round to himself, no differently than if he had come down from heaven.
14| Besides this, he drew minds along by an empty artifice: now promising wine to the sick and giving it at the right moment, now cold water—and since Herophilus had earlier undertaken to examine the causes of diseases, and Cleophantus among the ancients had made clear the reckoning of wine, he himself preferred to take his surname from the giving of cold water, as Marcus Varro states. He devised other blandishments too, now hanging up little beds whose rocking would either lessen diseases or entice sleep, now introducing baths, to the keenest craving of mankind, and many other things pleasant and agreeable to tell, with great authority and no less fame,
15| when he had met an unknown funeral, and brought the man back from the pyre and saved him, lest anyone suppose so great a change was made by trifling influences. This alone we can resent: that one man, from a most frivolous people, starting without any resources, for the sake of his own income suddenly gave laws of health to the human race, which however many have since repealed.
16| Asclepiades was helped by much in the treatment of the ancients that was over-anxious and crude, such as burying the sick in clothing and bringing on sweats by every means, now roasting bodies at fires, or seeking the sun continually in a rainy city, indeed in all Italy, which brings rain, and the use of hanging baths, then new, which flattered without limit.
17| Besides this, in certain diseases he took away the torments of treatment, as in quinsies, which they treated by lowering an instrument into the throat. He condemned, rightly, the vomitings then frequent beyond measure. He also found fault with drinks of drugs that are hostile to the stomach, which is largely true. And so we take care above all to note which things are useful to the stomach.
18| Above all else he was helped by the vanities of the Magi, carried so far that they could destroy all faith in herbs: that by the herb aethiopis rivers and pools are dried up; that by the touch of onothuris all closed things are opened; that achaemenis, thrown into the enemy line, makes the ranks tremble and turn their backs; that latax was customarily given by the king of the Persians to ambassadors so that wherever they came they would abound in supplies of all things; and many similar claims.
19| Where indeed were these when the Cimbri and Teutones howled in terrible war, or when Lucullus laid low so many kings of the Magi with a few legions? Why did Roman generals always take first thought for supplies in their wars? Why did Caesar's soldier at Pharsalus feel hunger, if all abundance could come through the good fortune of a single herb? Would it not have been better for Aemilianus Scipio to open the gates of Carthage with a herb than to shake the barriers with engines for so many years? Let the Pomptine marshes be dried today by the herb meroïs, and so much land be restored to Italy at the city's doors! As for the preparation of a drug found in the same Democritus, by which handsome, good and fortunate children are begotten, to what king of the Persians did he ever give such a thing?
20| It would indeed be a marvel that the credulity of the ancients, arising from the most wholesome beginnings, was carried this far, if human minds had known measure in anything, and if we were not going to show, in its place, that this very medicine, invented by Asclepiades, was carried beyond even the Magi. This is the condition of minds in every matter: that everything, starting from necessities, comes in the end to excess. Therefore, of the herbs described in the previous book, we shall give the remaining effects, adding others as the plan dictates.
21| But for remedies for lichen, and so foul an ailment, we shall pile up more from every side, although not a few have already been shown. Plantago pounded, then, treats it; so does quinquefolium; the root of albucus in vinegar; the stalks of the fig tree boiled in vinegar; the root of hibiscus boiled down to a quarter with glue and sharp vinegar. They also rub with pumice, so that the root of rumex, pounded with vinegar, may be smeared on.
22| The flower of mistletoe worked with lime is also praised, and tithymallus boiled with resin. But the herb lichen is preferred to all of these, the name having been found from that. It grows on rocks, with a single broad leaf at the root, a single small stalk, and long leaves hanging down. This also removes brands. It is pounded with honey. There is another kind of lichen, clinging wholly to rocks like moss, and this too is applied. It also stops blood from wounds when dropped in, and gatherings when smeared on. It also cures jaundice with honey, smeared on the mouth and tongue. Those so treated are told to wash in salt water, to be anointed with almond oil, and to abstain from garden vegetables. For lichens they also use the root of thapsia, pounded with honey.
23| Quinsy is treated by argemonia taken in wine; by hyssop boiled with a fig and gargled; by peucedanum with the rennet of a sea calf in equal parts; by proserpinaca pounded with brine from maenae and oil, or held under the tongue; likewise the juice of quinquefolium drunk in doses of 3 cyathi. This also treats all defects of the throat when gargled; verbascum is especially for the tonsils, drunk in water,
24| for scrofula plantago, chelidonia with honey and axle-grease, quinquefolium, the root of persollata, likewise covered with its own leaf and applied with axle-grease, likewise artemisia, and the root of mandragora in water. Sideritis latifolia is dug around with a nail by the left hand and tied on; those cured must be watched, lest the plant be sown again [….] by the wickedness of the herbalists, as we said in certain cases, and the disease break out again; I find this predicted also for those whom artemisia has cured, and likewise for those whom plantago has.
25| Damasonium, which is also called alcima, gathered around the solstice, is applied with rainwater, the leaf pounded or the root crushed with axle-grease, in such a way that it is covered by its own leaf when applied. Thus also for all pains and swellings of the neck, in whatever part.
26| — Bellis grows in meadows, with a white flower, somewhat reddening. They report that applied with artemisia it is more effective.— Condurdum also, a herb of the solstice, with a red flower, is said, hung on the neck, to suppress scrofula, and likewise verbenaca with plantago.—For all defects of the fingers, and especially hangnails, quinquefolium is the remedy.
27| Among defects of the chest, cough is the very gravest. For this the cure is the root of panaces taken in sweet wine; the juice of hyoscyamus even for those spitting blood; the fumes too of it burned, for those who cough; likewise scordotis mixed with cress and resin, pounded dry with honey—it makes expectoration easy even by itself—; likewise the greater centaurium, even for those throwing up blood, a complaint that the juice of plantago also treats, and Vettonica in doses of 3 obols in water;
28| against purulent and against bloody expectorations the root of persollata, a drachma by weight with 11 pine kernels; the juice of peucedanum. Acorus helps pains of the chest; the same is mixed in antidotes; for cough, daucum, and likewise the Scythian herb, the same for all defects of the chest; for cough and for those spitting pus, 3 obols in as many of raisin wine, verbascum, whose flower is golden.
29| This has such power that even beasts of burden are helped by a drink of it, not only when coughing but also when drawing their flanks in labored breathing, which I find reported also of Gentiana. The root of cacalia, chewed and soaked in wine, is of use not only for cough but also for the throat. 5 sprigs of hyssop with 2 of rue and 3 figs, boiled, clear the chest and quiet cough.
30| Bechion is called tussilago. It has two kinds. Where the wild kind grows, they believe there are waters beneath, and water-finders take this as a sign. The leaves are somewhat larger than ivy, 5 or 7 of them, whitish from the ground, pale above, without stalk, without flower, without seed, with a thin root. Some think it is the same as arcion, and by another name chamaeleuce. The smoke of this when dry, with its root, drawn in through a reed and swallowed, is said to cure an old cough, but at each draught raisin wine must be tasted.
31| The other is called by some salvia, and is like verbascum. It is ground, strained, and warmed, and so drunk for cough and pains of the side; the same is effective against scorpions and sea dragons. Against serpents too it helps to be anointed with it in oil.—A bundle of hyssop is boiled with a quadrans of honey for cough and for pains of the side and chest; verbascum with rue in water; meal of Vettonica is drunk in hot water.
32| Scordotis strengthens the stomach, as does its juice; so do centaurium and Gentiana drunk in water; plantago, taken either by itself in food or with lentil or a gruel of spelt. Vettonica, otherwise heavy on the stomach, nevertheless heals its defects, drunk or chewed in the leaves; likewise aristolochia drunk; agaricum chewed dry, so that unmixed wine is sipped at intervals; nymphaea Heraclia applied; the juice of peucedanum. Psyllion is applied to burnings, or cotyledon pounded with barley meal, or aizoum.
33| Molon has a grooved stalk, soft leaves, small, and a root of 4 fingers, at whose end is a head like garlic. It is called by some syron. In wine, for the stomach [….]. Shortness of breath is treated by the greater centaurium as an electuary, by plantago in juice or food, by a pound by weight of pounded Vettonica with half an ounce of Attic honey in hot water, drunk daily; by aristolochia or agaricum in doses of three obols each, drunk in hot water or in ass's milk,
34| cissanthemos is drunk for orthopnoea, likewise hyssop also for asthmatics, and the juice of peucedanum for pains of the liver, chest and side, if there is no fever. Agaricum also helps those who spit blood, ground to the weight of a victoriatus and given in 5 cyathi of honey wine. Amomum does the same.
35| For the liver in particular Teucria is drunk fresh in doses of 4 drachmas in a hemina of posca; 1 drachma of Vettonica in 3 cyathi of hot water; for defects of the heart in 2 cyathi of cold. The juice of quinquefolium is for defects of the liver and lungs and for those throwing up blood and for any defect where blood appears within. Anagallides are wonderfully beneficial for the liver. Those who eat the herb capnos pass bile through the urine. Acorus treats the liver; daucum the chest and the midriff.
36| Ephedra, called by others anabasis, grows in generally windy ground, climbing a tree and hanging from the branches, with no leaf but many tendrils, which are like jointed rushes, with a pale root. It is given ground in dark, dry wine for cough, gasping and colic, and made into a gruel, to which it is suitable to add wine. Likewise Gentiana, soaked and ground the day before, a denarius by weight in 3 cyathi of wine.
37| Gaeum has thin little roots, black and sweet-smelling. It treats not only pains of the chest or side, but also dispels indigestion by its pleasant taste. Verbenaca, however, treats all the internal organs: the sides, lungs, liver, chest;
38| but particularly the lungs, and those whom consumption from them attacks, the root of the herb consiligo, which we said was recently discovered. For pigs and for all cattle it is a ready remedy for a defect of the lungs, even if only passed through the ear. It ought to be drunk in water and held continually in the mouth under the tongue. Whether the upper part of this herb is of any use is so far uncertain. For the kidneys the food of plantago is beneficial, a drink of Vettonica, and agaricum drunk as for cough.
39| Tripolion grows on rocks by the sea, where the wave plays, neither in the sea nor on dry land, with a leaf thicker than isatis, a stalk a palm high, divided at the tip, and a white root, fragrant, thick, of a hot taste. It is given to sufferers of the liver, cooked in spelt. This herb seems to some the same as polium, of which we spoke in its place.
40| Gromphaena, with leaves alternately green and rosy along the stalk, in posca treats those who bring up blood. For the liver there is the herb malundrum, which grows in grain fields and meadows, with a white flower, fragrant. Its little stalk is ground in old wine. Likewise the herb calcetum, ground from grape skins, is applied. The root of Vettonica produces easy vomiting, in the manner of hellebore, 4 drachmas in raisin wine or honey wine; hyssop pounded with honey, more usefully if cress or irio has been taken beforehand; molemonium, a denarius by weight. And the milky juice of sillybum, which thickens into gum, is taken with honey in the weight stated above and draws bile especially.
41| Conversely, wild cumin and meal of Vettonica stop vomiting; they are taken in water. Daucum, meal of Vettonica in honeyed water, and plantago boiled in the manner of cabbage stalks wipe away disgust and disperse indigestion.—Hemionium quiets hiccups, and so does aristolochia; clymenus, gasping.—For those with pleurisy and inflammation of the lung the greater centaurium is drunk, and hyssop likewise; for pleurisy, the juice of peucedanum.
42| Alus, as the Gauls call it, and the Veneti cotonea, treats the side, and also the kidneys, and sprains and ruptures. It is like cunila bubula, with tops like thyme, sweet and quenching thirst, the root white in some places, black in others. Chamaerops has the same effects in pains of the side, with myrtle-like leaves around its twin stalks and heads of a Greekish rose, drunk in wine.—Sciatic pains and those of the spine are relieved by agaricum drunk as for cough, and likewise by meal of stoechas or Vettonica in honeyed water.
43| The belly, however, gives man the most trouble, and it is on its account that the greater part of mortals live. For at times it does not pass on food, at times does not retain it, at times does not take it, at times does not digest it, and habits have come to such a pass that man perishes chiefly by food. This worst vessel of the body presses like a creditor and calls on us more than once a day. For its sake avarice above all strives, for it luxury lays in stores, for it men sail to the Phasis, for it the shallows of the deep are searched; and no one weighs its worthlessness against the foulness of its outcome. Therefore the works of medicine around it are the most numerous.
44| It is checked by scordotis, fresh, a drachma pounded with wine, or boiled, as a drink; by Polemonia, which is also given to those with dysentery in wine; by the root of verbascum, the size of 2 fingers, drunk in water; by the seed of nymphaea Heraclia drunk with wine; by the upper root of xiphion, a drachma by weight in vinegar; by the seed of plantago pounded in wine, or the plant itself boiled in vinegar, or spelt groats taken in its juice, likewise cooked with lentil, or its dried meal sprinkled into a drink with poppy, roasted and pounded, or the juice poured in or drunk; by Vettonica in wine heated with iron. The same is given in dry wine to sufferers from coeliac disease; for these hiberis is also applied, as was said.
45| —For tenesmus the root of nymphaea Heraclia is drunk in wine, psyllium in water, and a decoction of the root of acorus. The juice of aizoum checks the bowels and dysentery and drives out round tapeworms. The root of symphytum drunk in wine checks the bowels and dysentery, as does that of daucum. Aizoum, with the leaves crushed in wine, resists colic; the meal of dried alcima, drunk with wine, resists colic.
46| Astragalus has long leaves, with many slanting cuts, around the root III or III stalks, full of leaves, a flower of the hyacinth, roots shaggy, tangled, red and very hard. It grows in rocky places, sunny and likewise snowy, as at Pheneus in Arcadia. Its power is to thicken the tissues. The root drunk in wine checks the bowels, and as a result it moves urine, the liquid being driven back, as do most things that check the bowels. Crushed in red wine it cures those with dysentery; but it is hard to pound. The same is most useful as a fomentation for suppuration of the gums. It is gathered at the end of autumn, when it has lost its leaves; it is dried in the shade.
47| The bowels are checked also by either kind of ladanum—the one that grows in grain fields, crushed and sifted. It is drunk in honeyed water, or the noble kind in wine. The herb is called ledon, from which it is made in Cyprus, clinging to the beards of goats. A nobler kind is made in Arabia, and now also in Syria and Africa, what they call toxicum; for they draw out the strings wrapped about a bow with wools, the dewy down clinging to them. We have said more about it among the unguents. This is the heaviest in smell and the hardest to the touch.
48| For it gathers a great deal of earth, though it is best approved when most pure, fragrant, soft, green and resinous. Its nature is to soften, to dry, to digest, to entice sleep. It checks falling hair and preserves blackness, is poured into the ears with hydromel or rose oil, cures scurf of the skin and weeping sores with salt added, an old cough when taken with styrax, and is most effective for belching.
49| Chondris, or pseudodictamnum, also checks the bowels. —Hypocisthis, called by some orobethron, grows like an unripe pomegranate, as we said, under the cistus, whence the name. Dried in the shade it checks the bowels; both kinds, in dark dry wine. For it has two kinds, the white and the red. The use is in the juice: it thickens and dries. And the red is better for rheums of the stomach, drunk in doses of 3 obols; for bloody expectorations with starch; for dysentery, drunk and injected; likewise verbenaca, given in water, or, to those without fever, in Aminean wine, 5 spoonfuls being added to 3 cyathi of wine.
50| Laver also, growing in streams, preserved and cooked, treats colic; potamogiton, however, in wine, treats even dysentery and coeliac disease. It is like beet in its leaves, only smaller and hairier, always rising a little above the water. The use is in the leaves: they cool and thicken, are especially useful for diseased legs, and against the spreading of ulcers with honey or vinegar.
51| Castor knew this plant otherwise, as growing in watery places with a thin leaf like horse bristles and a long, smooth thyrsus. With the root he cured scrofula and hardnesses. Potamogiton is hostile to crocodiles; therefore those who hunt them carry it with them. Achillea also checks the bowels. Statice gives the same effects, holding up on 7 stalks something like the heads of roses.
52| Ceratia, with one leaf and a knotty, large root, treats coeliac and dysenteric sufferers when taken in food. Leontopodion is called by some leuceoron, by others doripetron, by others thorybethron; its root checks the bowels and purges bile, in honeyed water, with a weight of 2 denarii added. It grows on level and meager soil. Its seed, drunk, is said to bring frenzied dreams. Lagopus checks the bowels drunk in wine, or in fever in water.
53| The same is tied on the groin in a swelling. It grows in grain fields. Many above all others praise, for dysentery cases given up as hopeless, quinquefolium, the roots boiled in milk and drunk, and aristolochia, a victoriatus by weight in 3 cyathi of wine. Of the remedies named above, those that are taken hot will be better tempered with a glowing iron.
54| On the other side, the juice of the lesser centaurium purges the bowels, a drachma in a hemina of water with a small amount of salt and vinegar, and draws off bile; with the greater, colic is dispersed. Vettonica loosens the bowels in doses of 4 drachmas in 9 cyathi of hydromel; so does Euphorbeum or agaricum, 2 drachmas drunk with a little salt in water, or 3 obols in honey wine. Cyclaminos also loosens, drunk in water or applied as suppositories; so does a suppository of chamaecissus. A handful of hyssop boiled down to a third with salt draws phlegm, or pounded with oxymel and salt drives out the creatures of the belly. The root of peucedanum draws off phlegm and bile.
55| Anagallides purge the bowels in honeyed water, as does epithymum, which is the flower of a thyme like savory. The difference is that this one is green, while the other thyme is white; some call it hippopheon. Less useful to the stomach, it provokes vomiting, but disperses colic and flatulence. It is also taken as an electuary for defects of the chest with honey and sometimes iris.
56| It loosens the bowels in doses from 4 drachmas to 6 with honey and a small amount of salt and vinegar. Some hand down otherwise: that epithymum grows without a root, slender, like a little cloak, reddish, is dried in the shade, drunk in water in half an acetabulum, and draws off phlegm and bile with the bowels gently loosened.
57| Nymphaea in dry wine also loosens, and so does pycnocomon, with leaves thicker and sharper than eruca, a round root, yellow in color, smelling of earth, a four-angled stalk, moderate and slender, and the flower of basil. It is found in stony places. Its root, in honeyed water, in a weight of 2 denarii, empties both the bowels and bile and phlegm; the seed, a single drachma drunk in wine, causes tumultuous dreams. And stumpy capnos draws off bile.
58| Polypodion, which our people call felicula, is like fern; the root is what is used, hairy, of a green color inside, the thickness of the little finger, pitted with cups like the tentacles of the polypus, faintly sweet, growing on rocks or under old trees. The juice is pressed from it after soaking in water, and the root itself, cut small, is sprinkled over greens or beet or mallow or salted fish, or cooked with porridge to loosen the belly gently, or in fever. It draws off bile and phlegm and offends the stomach. Its dried meal put into the nostrils consumes a polypus. It bears neither flower nor seed.
59| Scamonium also draws off bile by dissolving the stomach, and loosens the bowels, except if 2 drachmas of aloe are added to 2 obols of it. It is the juice of a herb branching from the root, with fat leaves, triangular, white, a thick root, moist, nauseating. It grows in rich and white soil.
60| The root is hollowed around the rising of the Dog Star so that the juice flows together into it, and this, dried in the sun, is made into lozenges. The root itself, or its bark, is also dried. The Colophonian is praised by origin, the Mysian, the Prienean, and by appearance, bright and as like as possible to bull's glue, spongy with the finest pipes, quickly melting, smelling of rank odor, gummy, turning milky at the touch of the tongue, very smooth, whitening when diluted. This also happens with the adulterated sort, which is made from meal of ervum and the juice of sea tithymallus, chiefly in Judaea,
61| which even chokes when taken. It is detected by taste, for tithymallus heats the tongue. It is used at two years old; neither before nor after is it useful. They have given it also by itself in water or honey wine with salt, four obols each, but most usefully with aloe, so that honey wine is drunk when the purging begins. A decoction of the root is also made in vinegar to the thickness of honey, with which leprosies are smeared and the head is anointed in pain, with oil.
62| Our people call tithymallus the milk herb, others goat's lettuce, and they tell that if a body is written on with its milk, and ashes are sprinkled when it has dried, letters appear, and so some have preferred to address adulteresses in this way rather than by tablets. It has many kinds. The first is named characias, which is also thought to be the male, with branches the thickness of a finger, red, juicy, 5 or 6 in number, a cubit in length, with leaves from the root almost like the olive and at the tops a crest like a rush.
63| It grows in rough places by the sea. The seed is gathered in autumn with the crest, dried in the sun, pounded and stored. The juice, however, is taken when the down of the fruits is beginning, by breaking the branches, onto meal of ervum or onto figs, so that it dries with them. It is enough to take five drops on each,
64| and they report that dropsy patients are purged as many times as the number of drops of milk the fig has taken up, once eaten. When the juice is collected, care must be taken that it not touch the eyes. It is also made from the leaves pounded, less effective than the former. A decoction is also made from the branches. The seed too is used, boiled down with honey into pills for loosening the bowels. The seed is also enclosed in wax in the hollows of teeth. The mouth is rinsed with a root decoction in wine or oil. They also smear the juice on lichens and drink it, so that it purges by vomiting and by loosening the bowels, though otherwise useless to the stomach.
65| It draws phlegm with salt added in the drink, and bile with aphronitrum, if one wishes to be purged by the bowels, in posca, if by vomiting, in raisin wine or honeyed water. The middle dose is given at 3 obols. It is better to have taken figs after food. It burns the throat mildly; for it is of so fiery a nature that applied by itself to the outside of the body it raises blisters like fire and is used as a caustic.
66| — They call another kind of tithymallus myrtites, others caryites, with leaves of myrtle, sharp and pricking, but larger, itself also growing in rough ground. Its crests are gathered when barley is swelling and dried in the shade for 9 days; in the sun they wither. The fruit does not ripen evenly, but part in the following year, and it is called a nut. From this the Greeks gave the surname.
67| It is cut with the ripening of the harvests and washed, then dried and given with 2 parts of black poppy, so that the whole is the measure of an acetabulum. This one is less emetic than the former, as are the others. Some have given the leaf of it too in this way, but the nut itself in honey wine or raisin wine or sesame. It draws phlegm and bile through the bowels and heals sores of the mouth,
68| for spreading sores in the mouth, the leaf is taken with honey.— The third kind of tithymallus is called paralios or tithymallis, with a round leaf, a stalk a palm high, reddish branches, and a white seed, which is gathered when the grape begins, and when dried is ground and taken by the measure of an acetabulum for purgings.— The fourth kind they call helioscopion,
69| with the leaves of purslane, little branches standing from the root 4 or 5 in number, reddish, half a foot high, full of juice. This grows around towns, with white seed, most welcome to doves. It took its name because it turns its heads round with the sun. It draws bile downward in oxymel, half an acetabulum. Its other uses are those of characias.
70| — The fifth they call cyparissias on account of the likeness of its leaves, with a stalk double or triple, growing in level country. It has the same power as helioscopion or characias.— The sixth they call platyphyllos, others corymbites, others amygdalites from the likeness. No plant has broader leaves. It kills fish. It loosens the bowels by the root or the leaves or the juice in honey wine or honeyed water, 4 drachmas. It particularly draws off watery humors.
71| — The seventh they name dendroides, others cobion, others leptophyllos, growing on rocks, the most leafy-crested of all, with very large reddish stalks and the most abundant in seed, of the same effect as characias.
72| Apios ischas, or raphanos agria, spreads 2 or 3 reddish rushes over the ground, with leaves of rue. The root is that of an onion, but larger, wherefore some call it wild radish. Within it has a white nipple-like core, outside black rinds. It grows on rough, mountainous ground, sometimes also in grassy.
73| It is dug up in spring, and crushed and plunged into an earthen vessel, and the scum that floats having been removed, the remaining juice purges in both directions, a sesquiobolus in honeyed water. Thus the measure of an acetabulum is also given to dropsy patients. The meal of the dried root is also sprinkled into a drink. They say the upper part of it draws off bile by vomiting, the lower through the bowels in water.
74| Colic is dispersed by panaces of any kind, by Vettonica except where it comes from indigestion, by the juice of peucedanum, which also relieves flatulence, producing belching; by the root of acorus, by daucum, even if taken like lettuce. Cyprian ladanum, drunk, meets defects of the intestines; meal of Gentiana in tepid water, the size of a bean; plantago taken in the morning, 2 spoonfuls with a third part of poppy in 4 cyathi of wine, not old. It is given also to those going to sleep, with soda or barley meal added, if given long after a meal. A hemina of the juice is poured in for the colon, or in fever.
75| Agaricum, drunk in doses of 3 obols in one cyathus of old wine, treats the spleen; the root of panaces of every kind in honey wine; but Teucria above all, drunk dried and boiled, as much as a hand can hold, in 3 heminae of vinegar down to one hemina. The same is applied in vinegar or, if that cannot be borne, in fig or water. Polemonia is drunk in wine, Vettonica a drachma in 3 cyathi of oxymel, aristolochia as against serpents.
76| Argemonia, taken in food for 7 days, is said to consume the spleen; agaricum, 2 obols in vinegar with honey. The root of nymphaea Heraclia drunk in wine itself consumes it. Cissanthemus, a drachma taken twice a day in 2 cyathi of white wine for 40 days, is said to release the spleen little by little through the urine. Hyssop boiled with a fig is also beneficial, the root of lonchitis boiled before it lets its seed fall, and also the root of peucedanum, for both spleen and kidneys.
77| The spleen is consumed by the juice of acorus drunk; the roots are most useful for the midriff and the flanks; [….] the seed of clymenus, drunk for 30 days, a denarius by weight in white wine; meal of Vettonica drunk with honey and squill vinegar; the root of lonchitis in water. Teucrium is applied, likewise scordium with wax, agaricum with fenugreek meal.
78| For bad ailments of the bladder, and against stones, the gravest of torments, as we said, help is given by Polemonia drunk in wine, likewise agaricum; plantago, the leaves or the root drunk in raisin wine; Vettonica as we said under the liver; also drunk and applied for rupture, and the same is most effective for strangury. Some advise, for stones, drinking Vettonica and verbenaca and milifolium in equal portions in water as a unique remedy.
79| It is certain that strangury is also dispersed by dictamnus, and by quinquefolium boiled down to a third in wine. This is also most useful given and applied to those with intestinal rupture. The upper root of xiphion also moves urine, and is given in water to infants with rupture and applied. For defects of the bladder, the juice of peucedanum; for rupture in infants and protruding navels, psyllion is applied.
80| Anagallides move urine; a decoction of the root of acorus, or the root itself ground and drunk, also drives out all defects of the bladder; the herb and the root of cotyledon drive out stones, and likewise all inflammation of the genitals, in equal weights of the stalk and the seed and myrrh.
81| Ebulum pounded with its leaves while tender and drunk in wine drives out stones, and applied heals the testicles. Erigeron too, with meal of frankincense and sweet wine, cures inflammations of the testicles. The root of symphytum, applied, restrains intestinal ruptures; white hypocisthis restrains spreading sores of the genitals. Artemisia is also given against stones in sweet wine and for strangury; the root of nymphaea Heraclia in wine quiets pains of the bladder.
82| The same power belongs to crethmus, very much praised by Hippocrates. It is among those wild herbs that are eaten; this at any rate the rustic Hecale sets out in Callimachus. Its appearance is that of a tall garden herb. The stalk is single, a palm high; the seed is hot, fragrant like that of libanotis, round; when dried it splits. Inside it has a white kernel, which some call cachrys. The leaves are fat and whiten like the olive, thicker, and salty to the taste; the roots are the thickness of a finger, 3 or 4.
83| It grows in rocky places by the sea. It is eaten raw or cooked with vegetables, of fragrant and pleasant flavor. It is also preserved in brine. Its use is chiefly for strangury, the leaf or stalk or root in wine. It also makes the color of the body more pleasing, but too much of it brings flatulence. It loosens the bowels as a decoction, and draws urine and moisture from the kidneys, as does the meal of dried alcima, drunk in wine, more effectively for strangury with daucum added; it is useful for the spleen too. It is drunk against serpents. For beasts of burden also, sprinkled on barley, it helps in phlegm or strangury.
84| Anthyllion is very like the lentil, and drunk in wine frees the bladder from its defects and stops blood. The other, anthyllis, like chamaepitys, with a purple flower, heavy smell, and the root of endive, treats even more [….]. Cepaea, like purslane, with a darker root, but a useless one, growing on sandy shores, bitter to the taste, is of the greatest benefit to the bladder in wine with the root of asparagus.
85| Hypericon provides the same—some call it chamaepitys, others corissum—a vegetable-like shrub, slender, a cubit high, reddish, with the leaf of rue, a sharp smell, and a black seed in a pod, ripening with the barley. The nature of the seed is to thicken. It checks the bowels, moves urine, and is drunk with wine for the bladder.
86| There is another hypericon, which some call caron, with the leaf of tamarisk—and it grows under it—but with fatter leaves and tiny, reddish, fragrant, over a palm high, sweet, gently sharp. The seed has a heating power, and for that reason causes inflammation, but is not useless for the stomach, and is outstanding for strangury, if the bladder is not ulcerated. It also treats pleurisy, drunk in wine,
87| and for the bladder callithrix pounded together with cumin and given in white wine, and verbenaca boiled down to a third with the leaves, or its root in warm honey wine, expels stones; likewise perpressa, which grows at Arretium and in Illyricum, boiled in water from 3 heminae to one and drunk; trifolium taken in wine; and chrysanthemum first. Anthemis also expels stones, with small leaves in fives from the root, 2 long stalks, a rosy flower, the roots ground by themselves [….] cei, laver raw.
88| Silaus grows in gravelly and perennial streams, in the likeness of celery a cubit high. It is cooked as a sour vegetable, with great benefit to the bladder. If the bladder feels itching, it is cured by the root of panaces, which is otherwise useless for bladders.—Stones are driven out by the wandering apple, a pound of the root boiled down in a congius to half—then heminae are taken for three days, and the remainder with wine—and by sea nettle and daucum and the seed of plantago in wine and the herb Fulviana ground in wine. This too has the name of its discoverer, well known to those who handle it.
89| Scordion moves urine; hyoscyamum soothes swellings of the testicles; the juice of peucedanum treats the genitals, the seed with honey; for strangury agaricum, 3 obols in one cyathus of old wine; the root of trifolium, 2 drachmas in wine; of daucum, one drachma, or of the seed. Sufferers from sciatica are cured by the seed and leaves of erythrodanum pounded, by panaces drunk and rubbed in, by Polemonia, by a decoction of the leaf of aristolochia.
90| By agaricum, indeed, the sinew called platys and pain of the shoulders are cured, 3 obols drunk in one cyathus of old wine. Quinquefolium is both drunk and applied for sciatica, as is scamonia boiled, also with barley meal. The seed of either hypericon is drunk in wine. Plantago most quickly cures defects of the seat and chafing; quinquefolium, condylomata; but when these have already turned to callus, the root of cyclaminus in vinegar. The blue anagallis pushes back a prolapse of the seat; the red, by contrast, provokes it.
91| Cotyledon wonderfully cures condylomata and hemorrhoids; swellings of the testicles are cured by the root of acorus boiled in wine, pounded and applied. Cato says that chafing does not occur in those who carry Pontic wormwood with them. Others add pennyroyal also, which if someone has picked it fasting and ties it behind him, prevents pains of the groin or soothes them once begun.
92| The inguinalis, which some call argemonion, growing everywhere in brambles, in order to help is only to be held in the hand. Buboes are cured by panaces with honey, plantago with salt, quinquefolium, the root of persollata as in scrofula, likewise damasonium, and verbascum pounded with its root, sprinkled with wine and wrapped in its leaf and so warmed in ashes, to be applied warm.
93| Those who have tried it affirm that it matters greatly if a virgin applies it, naked and fasting, to a man fasting, touching with the hand turned upward and saying: Apollo says that a plague cannot grow which a naked virgin quenches; and then with the hand turned backward saying it three times, and both spit as many times. The root of mandragora in water also treats it, the decoction of the root of scamonia with honey, sideritis pounded with old fat, marrubium with old axle-grease, or Chrysippios with rich figs. This too has its name from its discoverer.
94| Nymphaea Heraclia removes sexual desire entirely, as we said, a single draught of it lasting for 40 days; also dreams of love, drunk by one fasting and taken in food. The root applied to the genitals restrains not only desire but also the flow of seed; for that reason it is said to nourish the body and the voice. The upper root of xiphion, given in a drink in wine, produces appetite for love, as does the one they call cremnon agrion, and orminos agrios pounded with barley meal.
95| But among the few marvelous is the herb orchis or serapias, with the leaves of a leek, a stalk a palm long, a purple flower, and a double root like testicles, so that the larger, or as some say the more slender, drunk in water, arouses lust, while the smaller or softer, in goat's milk, restrains it. Some say it has the leaf of squill, but lighter and smaller, and a thorny stalk. The roots heal sores of the mouth and phlegm of the chest, and drunk in wine they check the bowels.
96| Satyrion has a rousing power. It has two kinds: one with leaves longer than the olive, a stalk of 4 fingers, a purple flower, a double root in the form of a man's testicles, swelling and subsiding in alternate years. The other is named satyrios orchis and was believed to be the female. It is distinguished by its internodes and a more branching shrub and a root like a phallus. It grows generally near the sea. This soothes swellings and defects of those parts, applied with barley meal or ground by itself. The root of the former, given in the milk of a colonica ewe, tightens the sinews; the same in water relaxes them.
97| The Greeks relate of satyrion that it has red leaves like the lily, smaller, and not more than 3 coming out of the ground, a smooth stalk, a cubit high, bare, a double root, of which the lower and larger part begets males, the upper and smaller females. And another kind of satyrion they call erythraicon, with a seed larger than that of the vitex, smooth, hard, the bark of the root red; within is enclosed a white substance of faintly sweet taste; it is generally found in mountainous places.
98| Desire, they say, is stirred even if the root is held in the hand at all, and the more so if it is drunk in dry wine; it is also given in drink to rams and he-goats that are sluggish, and in Sarmatia to horses made slower in covering by constant labor, a defect they call prosedamum. Its force is quenched by honeyed water or lettuce taken.
99| Indeed the Greeks generally call satyrion whatever they want to signify this rousing, and so they surname crataegis and thelygonon and arrhenogonon, whose seed is like testicles. Those who have the pith of the branches of tithymallus are also said to become more inclined to love. Prodigious are the things that Theophrastus, otherwise a weighty authority, relates about this: that desire lasted through seventy acts of intercourse by the touch of a herb, whose name and kind he did not give.
100| — Sideritis tied on reduces varicose veins and does it without pain. The disease of gout used to be rarer, not only in the memory of our fathers and grandfathers but even in our own, itself a foreigner; for had it been in Italy in antiquity, it would have found a Latin name. It is not to be believed incurable, since in many it has stopped of itself and in more through treatment. Treating it are roots of panaces with raisins, juice of hyoscyamus with meal, or the seed; scordion in vinegar; hiberis, as was said; verbenaca pounded with axle-grease; the root of cyclaminus, whose decoction is also good for chilblains.
101| Gout is cooled by the root of xiphion, the seed of psyllium, cicuta with litharge or axle-grease, aizoum in the first onset of red gout, that is, hot. For either kind erigeron with axle-grease is suitable, leaves of plantago pounded with a little salt added, argemonia crushed with honey. Verbenaca also treats it, applied, or if the feet are soaked in water in which it has been boiled,
102| and lappago, like anagallis, except that it is more branching and has more leaves, and a heavy smell. The one that is so is called mollugo; the similar one with rougher leaves, asperugo. The juice of the former is taken daily, in a weight of 1 denarius in 2 cyathi of wine.
103| — But the chief deliverer from this disease is phycos thalassion, that is, sea weed, like lettuce, which is spread beneath shellfish, applied before it dries, not for gout only but for all diseases of the joints. It has three kinds: the broad, and another longer, somewhat reddish, and the third with curled leaves, with which they dye clothing in Crete; all have the same use. Nicander gave these in wine against serpents too.
104| The seed, too, of the herb we called psyllion is healthful, soaked in water, with 2 spoonfuls of Colophonian resin and one of frankincense added to a hemina of seed. The leaves of mandragora pounded with barley meal are also praised. For swollen ankles, pond mud worked with oil is wonderfully beneficial; for the joints, the juice of the lesser centaurium. The same is most useful for sinews, as is centauris.
105| For sinews running across the shoulder blades, shoulders, spine, loins, Vettonica is drunk as for the liver; for the joints quinquefolium is applied; the leaves of mandragora with barley meal, or the fresh root pounded with wild cucumber or decocted in water; for cracks of the toes on the feet, the root of polypodion; for the joints, the juice of hyoscyamus with axle-grease; amomum with the juice boiled down; likewise centunculus boiled, or fresh moss bound on with water until it dries; likewise the root of lappa boaria drunk in wine.
106| —Cyclaminos boiled in water cures chilblains and all other defects from cold; chilblains also cotyledon with axle-grease, leaves of batrachion, and the juice of epithymum. Ladanum with castoreum draws out corns of the feet; so does verbenaca in wine.
107| Now, having finished the ailments that are felt in the several limbs, we shall speak of those that range over the whole body. I find these remedies, common ones, to be drunk in the authors: dodecatheon, of which we have spoken; then roots of panaces of every kind, specially for long-lasting diseases, and the seed for defects of the intestines; but for all pains of the body the juice of scordion, and likewise of Vettonica, which drunk particularly corrects the leaden color of the body and restores a more pleasing one.
108| Geranion some call myrris, others myrtis. It is like cicuta, with finer leaves and a shorter stalk, round, of pleasant taste and smell. Our people report it so; the Greeks say it has leaves slightly whiter than mallow, slender hairy stalks, branching at intervals, of two palms; in these there are leaves, among which at the tops are little heads like cranes' heads.
109| Another kind has the leaves of anemone, with longer divisions, a round root in the manner of an apple, sweet, most useful to those recovering from weakness, and generally this is the true one. It is drunk against consumption, a drachma in 3 cyathi of wine twice a day, and against flatulence, and raw it does the same. The juice of the root treats the ears; the seed, 4 drachmas drunk with pepper and myrrh, treats opisthotonos.
110| The juice of plantago also cures consumption, if drunk, and the plant itself boiled in food; with salt and oil it cools after the morning sleep. The same is given to those they call atrophoi, on alternate days; Vettonica, however, to consumptives as an electuary with honey, the size of a bean; agaricum drunk in doses of 2 obols in raisin wine; or daucum with the greater centaurium in wine. For phagedaenae, a name for the ravening of the immoderate hungry and also of ulcers, tithymalli taken with sesame are the remedy.
111| Among ailments of the whole body is sleeplessness for most people. For this the remedy shown is panaces, clymenos, aristolochia by smell and with the head anointed; aizoum or sedum, if wrapped in a black cloth it is placed under the pillow of a person who does not know; and onotheras or onear, bringing cheerfulness in wine, with the leaf of an almond, a rosy flower, bushy, with a long root which, when dried, smells of wine. Given in a drink, it tames even wild beasts.
112| Indigestions that cause nausea are dispersed by Vettonica drunk; the same, after dinner, aids digestion in 3 cyathi of oxymel, a drachma by weight, and dispels drunkenness; so does agaricum drunk in hot water after food.—Vettonica is said to cure paralysis, as does hiberis, as was said. The same is also beneficial for numb limbs, as is argemonia, and, by dispersing, everything that is in danger of being cut.
113| Epileptics are cured by the root of the panaces we called Heraclion, drunk with the rennet of a sea calf, so that there are 3 parts of panaces; by plantago drunk; by a drachma of Vettonica in oxymel, or by agaricum in 3 obols; by leaves of quinquefolium in water. Archezostis cures too, but it must be drunk for a year. It cures also
114| the root of baccaris, dried and rubbed to powder, 3 cyathi with one of coriander in hot water; and centunculus pounded in vinegar or honey or hot water; verbenaca drunk in wine; three berries of hyssop, pounded, drunk in water for 16 days; peucedanum drunk with the rennet of a sea calf in equal portions; leaves of quinquefolium pounded in wine and taken for 30 days; meal of Vettonica, 3 denarii by weight, with a cyathus of vinegar of squill and an ounce of Attic honey; scamonium, 2 obols, with castoreum, 4 drachmas.
115| Cold fevers are made milder by agaricum drunk in hot water; tertian fevers by sideritis with oil, and likewise by ladanum, the kind that grows in grain fields, crushed; by plantago in honeyed water drunk 2 hours before the onset, two drachmas each time, or the juice of the root soaked or pounded, or the root itself ground in water heated with iron. Some gave three roots each in 3 cyathi of water. In quartan fevers the same people made it four each. With buglossus drying,
116| if someone takes out the pith from the stalk and says for whom he does it, to be freed from fever, and ties on him 7 leaves before the onset, they say he is freed from the fever; likewise Vettonica, [….] a drachma in 3 cyathi of honeyed water, or agaricum, above all in those fevers that come with shivering. Some gave leaves of quinquefolium, three for tertians, four for quartans, more for the others; others to all 3 obols with pepper in honeyed water.
117| Verbenaca also treats the fevers of beasts of burden, in wine, but in tertians cut from the third joint, in quartans from the fourth. The seed of either hypericon is drunk in quartans and shiverings; meal of Vettonica, which restrains all shiverings; likewise panaces, so heating in nature that they advise those about to go through snow to drink it and to be anointed with it. Aristolochia too resists chills.
118| Sleep cures the frenzied, which comes from peucedanum in vinegar poured on the head, or from the juice of anagallides. By contrast, to rouse the lethargic is a labor; this is done by Euphorbeum in vinegar, touched to the nostrils, and the juice of peucedanum. Against madness Vettonica is drunk. Panaces bursts carbuncles; meal of Vettonica in water cures them, or cabbage with frankincense, in frequent hot drinks, or the ash from a coal quenched in the patient's sight, lifted on a finger and applied, or plantago pounded, or tithymallus characias.
119| Dropsy patients are cured by panaces; by plantago in food, after they have first eaten dry bread without drink; by Vettonica, 2 drachmas in 2 cyathi of wine or honey wine; or agaricum, or the seed of lonchitis, 2 spoonfuls drunk in water; psyllion in wine; the juice of anagallides; the root of cotyledon in honey wine; the root of fresh ebulum, only shaken, not washed, as much as 2 fingers can grasp, in a hemina of hot old wine; the root of trifolium, 2 drachmas in wine; the tithymallus named platyphyllon; the seed of hypericon,
120| which is called caros; acte, which some think to be ebulum, the root pounded, in 3 cyathi of wine, if there is no fever, or the seed in dark wine; likewise verbenaca, a handful-size bundle boiled down in water to half. Yet above all the juice of chamaeacte is believed most suitable.— Eruptions of phlegm are corrected by plantago, the root of cyclaminus with honey, leaves of ebulum pounded in old wine; applied, they also cure the boa, that is, red pustules; the juice of strychnos, applied, cures itching.
121| Sacred fire is treated by aizoum, pounded leaves of cicuta, the root of mandragora, which is cut into small coins like a cucumber and first hung over must, then in smoke, then ground in wine or vinegar. It also helps to bathe with myrtle wine; a sextans of mint with an ounce of live sulphur ground together in vinegar; soot in vinegar. Of sacred fire there are several kinds, among which the one encircling a man at the middle, called zoster, even kills if it has gone all the way round. Plantago with Cimolian earth treats it, and peristereos by itself, the root of persollata; for the others, which creep, the root of cotyledon with honey wine, aizoum, the juice of linozostis in vinegar.
122| The root of polypodion, applied, treats sprains, and the seed of psyllium, leaves of plantago pounded, with a little salt added, the seed of verbascum boiled in wine and ground, and cicuta with axle-grease take away pain and swellings. Leaves of ephemerum are applied to lumps and swellings that can still be dispersed.
123| Jaundice is a marvel especially in the eyes, in the thinness and also thickening of the little coats, as the bile rises beneath them. Hippocrates says it is a mortal sign from the seventh day in a fever. We know that some have lived even after this despair. It also occurs apart from fevers and is overcome by the greater centaurium drunk as we said; by Vettonica; by 3 obols of agaricum in a cyathus of old wine; and by leaves of verbenaca, 3 obols in a hemina of hot wine for four days.
124| But most quickly the juice of quinquefolium treats it, drunk in 3 cyathi. The root of cyclaminus is drunk in doses of 3 drachmas in a warm place and safe from chills—for it brings on bilious sweats—; leaves of tussilago in water; the seed of either linozostis sprinkled into a drink or boiled with wormwood or chickpea; hyssop berries drunk with water; the herb lichen, if when it is taken one abstains from other greens; polythrix given in wine; struthion in honey wine.
125| Here and there, in any part, arise the most troublesome things of all, called furuncles, sometimes a deadly evil to cut bodies. A remedy is leaves of pycnocomon pounded with barley meal, if they have not yet come to a head. Leaves of ephedrus applied also disperse them.
126| Fistulas also spread in every part when bodies have been badly cut through the fault of physicians. Help is given by the lesser centaurium, boiled down with honey and put in as plugs; the juice of plantago poured in; quinquefolium with salt and honey; ladanum with castoreum; cotyledon warmed with deer marrow and applied; the pith of the root of verbascum, made as thin as a plug, is put into the fistula; so is the root of aristolochia, or the juice of tithymallus.
127| Gatherings and inflammations are cured by leaves of argemonia applied; hardnesses and all gatherings by verbenaca or quinquefolium boiled in vinegar, by leaves or root of verbascum, by hyssop in wine applied, by the root of acorus, bathing with its decoction, by aizoum; and so too bruises, hardnesses and cavities of the body by illecebra.
128| Leaves of tussilago draw out everything lodged in the body, as does daucum, and the seed of leontopodion pounded in water with barley meal. Leaves of pycnocomon pounded with barley meal, or the seed, are applied to suppurations, as is orchis. Defects in the bones are said to be most effectively cured by the root of satyrion applied; spreading sores and all gatherings by sea weed, before it dries. The root of alcima also disperses gatherings.
129| Burns are cured by plantago, by arction in such a way that the scar is not noticed—its leaves boiled in water and ground are applied—by the root of cyclaminus, by aizoum, and by the herb hypericon itself, which we called corissum.
130| For sinews and joints plantago pounded with salt is suitable, argemonia crushed with honey. Those with spasms and tetanus are anointed with the juice of peucedanum, and for hardness of the sinews with the juice of aegilops; for pains erigeron is applied in vinegar, and epithymum. For those with spasms and opisthotonos it helps to be anointed with the seed of hypericon, which is called caros, and the same helps when drunk. Phrynion is said even to heal severed sinews, if it is applied at once, pounded or chewed. For those with spasms, tremors, opisthotonos, the root of alcima is drunk in honeyed water. So also it warms stiffnesses.
131| Flows of blood are stopped by the red seed of the herb Paeonia—the same power is in the root—and by clymenus, whether blood is brought up by the mouth or flows from the nostrils or the bowels or the womb of women; likewise Lysimachia drunk, or applied, or put in the nostrils; likewise the seed of plantago; quinquefolium drunk and applied; the seed of cicuta in the nostrils, if it flows from there, ground in water and put in; aizoum; the root of astragalus. Ischaemon and Achillia also stop it.
132| Equisaetum, called hippuris by the Greeks and in meadows reviled by us—it is a hair of the earth like a horse's bristle—extinguishes the spleens of runners, boiled in a new earthen pot down to a third, however much the vessel holds, and drunk in heminae for three days; rich foods are forbidden from one day before. The Greeks hold various opinions about this:
133| some call a dark plant like the leaves of pine by the same name, reporting its power as wonderful, that flows of blood are stopped even if a person is merely touched with it; others call it hippuris, others ephedron, others anabasis, and they say that it grows beside trees and climbing them hangs down with many rushy, black tresses, as from a horse's tail, with jointed little branches; that it has few leaves, thin and small, a round seed like coriander, a woody root, and grows chiefly in thickets.
134| Its power is to thicken the tissues. The juice, shut in, stops blood flowing from the nostrils, and the bowels also. Drunk in sweet wine, 3 cyathi, it treats those with dysentery, moves urine, cures cough and orthopnoea, likewise ruptures and spreading sores. The leaves are drunk for the intestines and bladder, and restrain intestinal rupture. They also make another hippuris with shorter, softer and whiter tresses, very useful for sciatica, and applied in vinegar to wounds to stop blood.
135| —Nymphaea, ground, is also applied to blows. Peucedanum is drunk with the seed of cypress, if blood has been brought up by the mouth or has flowed from below. Sideritis has such power that, bound on even a fresh wound of a gladiator, it closes the blood, as does the ash of a ferula or its charcoal, and still more effectively the fungus that grows beside its root.
136| For one bleeding from the nose, the seed of cicuta, ground in water and inserted, is held effective, and likewise stephanomelis in water. Meal of Vettonica drunk in goat's milk stops a flow from the breast, and so does plantago pounded. Its juice is given to those vomiting blood. For the wandering sore the root of persollata applied with old axle-grease is approved;
137| for those ruptured and convulsed, thrown down from a height, the greater centaurium, the root of Gentiana pounded or boiled or its juice, Vettonica, and beyond this for strains of the voice or the side, panaces, scordium, aristolochia drunk, agaricum; the same, drunk in doses of 2 obols in 3 cyathi of honey wine, for the bruised and overturned or, if there is fever, in honeyed water; verbascum, whose flower is like gold; the root of acorus; every aizoum, but the juice of the greater most effectively; likewise broth of symphytum or a decoction of its root; daucum raw; erysithales—with a yellow flower and the leaves of acanthus—in wine; chamaerops; and in gruel irio or plantago in every way; likewise [….].
138| The dictator Sulla was consumed by lice, and animals are born in a man's very blood that will eat out the body. They are resisted by the juice of the taminian grape or of veratrum with oil, the bodies being anointed; taminia boiled in vinegar even frees clothes from this annoyance.
139| Ulcers are of many kinds and are cured in many ways. The root of panaces of every kind in warm wine is applied to weeping ones. The one we called Chironian is a special drier; pounded with honey it opens tumors, and for spreading ulcers given up as hopeless it is a help when tempered with flower of copper in wine in every way, whether seed, flower or root. The same with barley meal benefits old wounds, and also Heraclion siderion,
140| Apollinaris, psyllium, tragacantha. Scordotis with honey cleans; its meal, sprinkled on by itself, consumes excrescent flesh. Polemonia heals the ulcers they call cacoethe; the greater centaurium, sprinkled on or applied, and the crest of the lesser, boiled or ground, cleans old ulcers also and cures them thoroughly. The pods of clymenus are applied to fresh wounds. Gentiana is applied to spreading ulcers, the root pounded or boiled in water to the thickness of honey, or the juice; for wounds, Lycium made from it.
141| Lysimachia treats fresh wounds; plantago ulcers of every kind, particularly of the old and of infants. Softened at the fire it is better, and with cerate it cleans the thick lips of ulcers and stops spreading sores; once pounded, it must be covered with its own leaves. Suppurations, gatherings and the pockets of ulcers are dried by chelidonia too, and wounds so much that they even use it in place of spodium; the same is applied with axle-grease to those already given up.
142| Dictamnum, drunk, drives out arrows and, applied, draws out other missiles—it is drunk in a cyathus of water with an obol of the leaves—and next to it pseudodictamnum; both also disperse suppurations. Aristolochia also eats out putrid ulcers, cleans foul ones with honey, and draws out worms, and likewise nails born in an ulcer and everything lodged in the body, especially arrows and broken bones, with resin; and it fills hollow ulcers by itself and with iris, fresh wounds in vinegar;
143| old ulcers, verbenaca; quinquefolium with salt and honey. The roots of persollata are applied to fresh wounds made by iron, the leaves to old ones; damasonium is covered on both sides with axle-grease and with its own leaf, as in scrofula; leaves of verbascum in vinegar or wine.
144| Peristereos serves for all kinds of ulcers, even callous and festering ones. Weeping ulcers are cured by the root of nymphaea Heraclia, and by the root of cyclaminus, either by itself or in vinegar or with honey; the same is effective also against steatomata. So too for weeping ulcers, hyssop, and peucedanum; its power for fresh wounds is so great that it draws a scale from bones. Anagallides do this also and restrain the spreading sores they call nomae and rheums, and are useful for fresh wounds too,
145| but especially for the bodies of the old, with cerate: for abscesses and foul ulcers, fresh leaves of mandragora; the root for wounds, with honey or oil; cicuta mixed with fine wheat flour in unmixed wine; aizoum, herpetes also and nomae and festering sores, as erigeron does worm-infested ones; for fresh wounds, the root of astragalus, and for old ulcers, which both kinds of hypocisthis clean. The seed of leontopodion, ground in water and applied with barley meal, draws out arrowheads, and so does the seed of pycnocomon.
146| Tithymallus characias, by its juice, treats gangrenes, phagedaenae and putrid sores, or by a decoction of the branches with barley meal and oil; the roots of orchis do this and more, and cacoethe too, with honey, dried or fresh, by themselves for wounds; onothera heals ulcers that grow wild. The Scythians cure Scythian ulcers. Against cancers argemonia with honey is most effective.
147| For ulcers that have healed over prematurely, the root of asphodel, boiled as we said, pounded with barley meal and applied; for any whatever, Apollinaris; the root of astragalus ground to powder is beneficial for moist ulcers, as is callithrix boiled in water, and particularly for those caused by shoes, verbenaca, and Lysimachia crushed, and nymphaea dried and rubbed on. Polythrix is more useful for the same ones when they are of long standing.
148| — Polycnemon is like cunila bubula, with the seed of pennyroyal, twiggy, with many joints, with a cluster [fragrant], of a sharp and sweet smell; chewed, it is applied to wounds made by iron, and is removed on the fifth day. Symphyton brings a wound most quickly to a scar, as does sideritis; this is applied with honey.
149| With verbascum seed and leaves, boiled in wine and ground, everything lodged in the body is drawn out; likewise with leaves of mandragora with barley meal, and roots of cyclaminus with honey. Leaves of trixago ground in oil are applied above all to those ulcers that spread, as is alcima ground in honey; Vettonica for cancers and old malandriae, with salt added.
150| Warts are removed by argemonia in vinegar, or the root of batrachion, which also takes away rough nails; by the leaves of either linozostis or its juice applied. Tithymalli of every kind remove all kinds of warts, and also pterygia and pimples; ladanum restores scars gracefully to their color.— It is said that a traveler who has artemisia and elelisphacum tied on him feels no weariness.—
151| For women's diseases, as a whole, the black seed of the herb Paeonia in honeyed water is the best remedy; the same power is in the root. The seed of panaces with wormwood brings on the menses; scordotis, by drink and by application, brings on menses and sweats. Vettonica, a drachma in 3 cyathi of wine, is drunk against all defects of the womb or those that arise from childbirth. Achillia, applied as a pessary, stops excessive menses, and so does a decoction of it for women sitting in it.
152| The seed of hyoscyamus in wine is applied to the breasts, the root in a poultice to the parts below, and chelidonia to the breasts. Roots of panaces, applied as pessaries, draw out a delaying afterbirth or dead fetuses. Panaces itself drunk in wine purges the womb, and applied with honey. Polemonia drunk in wine expels the afterbirth, and by its smell corrects the womb.
153| The juice of the lesser centaurium, by drinking and fomentation, brings on the menses; the root of the greater benefits pains of the womb in the same ways, and scraped off and applied as a pessary draws out dead fetuses. Plantago is applied in wool for pain of the womb, and is drunk for suffocation. But the chief power belongs to dictamnum: it brings on the menses and expels dead or transverse fetuses—it is drunk in water, an obol of the leaves—so effective for these that it is not even brought into the bedroom of pregnant women, and it is potent not only by drinking but also by application and fumigation;
154| Next comes pseudodictamnum; but it promotes menstruation when boiled down in neat wine, a denarius by weight. Aristolochia, however, helps in the greatest number of ways: it promotes both menstruation and the afterbirth and draws out dead fetuses, drunk, or applied as a pessary, with myrrh and pepper added; it also checks prolapse of the womb, by fomentation, by fumigation or by application, the slender kind especially.
155| Suffocation of the womb arising from these causes, and difficult menstruation, are put right by agaricum, 3 oboli taken in a cyathus of old wine; by peristereos applied in fresh pig's lard; and by antirrhinon with rose oil and honey. Likewise the root of the Thessalian nymphaea, applied, relieves pain, and taken in dark wine checks excessive discharges; the root of cyclaminus, on the contrary, taken in drink and applied, promotes them, and a decoction of it heals the bladder of those who sit in it.
156| Cissanthemos taken in drink expels the afterbirth and heals the womb. Of xiphium, the upper root promotes menstruation, a drachma taken in vinegar. Peucedanum, burnt, revives with its smoke women suffering from suffocation of the womb; psyllion is especially good for white discharges, a drachma in 3 cyathi of water; the seed of mandragora taken in drink purges the womb, and its juice, applied as a pessary, promotes menstruation and brings out dead fetuses.
157| Excessive flows, on the other hand, are stopped by its seed with native sulphur; batrachium, on the contrary, promotes them, taken in drink or in food. It is burning in other respects when raw, as we have said, but when cooked it is made palatable with salt, oil and cumin. Daucum taken in drink expels both menstruation and the afterbirth very easily; ladanum corrects the womb by fumigation and is applied for pain and ulceration there. Scamonium, taken in drink or applied, expels dead fetuses.
158| Both kinds of hypericum promote menstruation when applied, but above all, in the opinion of Hippocrates, crethmos in wine, either the seed or the bark of the root; it also draws out the afterbirth, and taken in water it relieves suffocations. Likewise the root of geranium is peculiarly suited to the afterbirth and to flatulence of the womb. Hippuris, taken in drink and applied, purges the womb, and so does polygonus taken in drink. The root of alcima also promotes menstruation; the leaves of plantago expel it, and so does agaricum in honey-water.
159| Artemisia, pounded, cures the womb, applied in iris oil, or with a fig, or with myrrh; its root taken in drink purges so thoroughly that it brings out dead fetuses. A decoction of its branches promotes menstruation and the afterbirth when women sit in it, and so do the leaves taken in drink, a drachma. For all these same purposes they also help when laid on the lower belly with barley meal.
160| Acoron too is useful for women's internal diseases, and so are both kinds of conyza, and crethmos. The two anthyllides also, taken in wine, are most useful for the womb, for griping pains, and for retention of the afterbirth. Callithrix heals those parts by fomentation, removes white scurf on the head, and dyes the hair when pounded in oil. Geranion taken in white wine, and hypocisthis taken in red, stop a flux. Hysopum relieves suffocations. The root of verbenaca taken in water is the most excellent remedy for all the troubles that come in childbirth or after it.
161| Some mix with peucedanum crushed cypress seed in dark wine. Moreover, psyllion seed boiled in water, once it has cooled to lukewarm, soothes all fluxes of the uterus. Symphyton pounded in dark wine draws out menstruation. Scordotis hastens delivery, a drachma of the juice taken in 4 cyathi of honey-water. The leaves of dictamnum are given in water with excellent effect; it is established that at the weight of a single obolus, even if the infants are dead in the womb, they are delivered at once without distress to the mother. Pseudodictamnum helps in the same way, but more slowly; so do cyclaminos tied on as an amulet, cissanthemos drunk, and likewise the meal of Vettonica in honey-water.
162| Arsenogonon and thelygonon are plants with clusters like the flowers of the olive, but paler, and white seed such as the poppy has. By drinking thelygonon, they say, a female child is conceived; arsenogonon differs from it only in its seed, which is like the olive's, and by drinking it males are begotten, if we believe it. Others report that both resemble ocimum, but that arsenogonon's seed is double, like testicles.
163| For disorders of the breasts aizoum, which we have called digitillum, is a remedy without equal. Erigeron in raisin wine makes the breasts give more milk, and so does the broth of sonchus cooked with spelt. The plant called mastos, applied, removes the hairs that grow on the breasts at childbirth; spots on the face and other blemishes of the skin are removed by gentiana and by nymphaea Heraclia applied, and the root of cyclaminus removes all marks. The seeds of cacalia mixed with liquid wax stretch the skin of the face and smooth out its wrinkles. The root of acoron removes all blemishes.
164| The juice of lycium makes the hair blond; hypericum, which is also called corissum, blackens it, and so does the plant ophrys, which resembles a vegetable with toothed leaves and has 2 leaves. Polemonia boiled in oil also gives a black colour. Depilatories we, for our part, deal with among women's medicines, but they are now in use among men as well. Archezostis is held to be the most effective, and also the tithymalli, the juice applied repeatedly with oil in the sun, or after the hairs have been plucked out. — Hysopum in oil cures mange in quadrupeds, and sideritis especially the quinsy of pigs. — But let us now set out the remaining kinds of plants as well.

======== Natural History — Book XXVII ========

1| Truly, in my own case at least, admiration for antiquity grows through the very handling of the subject; and the greater the abundance of plants that remains to be described, the more I find myself moved to venerate the care of the men of old in discovering them and their generosity in handing them down. Nor is there any doubt that in this respect even the bounty of Nature herself might seem to have been surpassed, if the discovery had been the work of man.
2| As it is, it is plain that it was the work of the gods, or at least divine even when a man made it, and that the same parent of all things both brought these plants forth and revealed them — there is no greater marvel in life, if we are willing to own the truth. That the Scythian plant should be brought from the Maeotic marshes, and euphorbea from Mount Atlas and from beyond the Pillars of Hercules, from the very place where Nature fails, and in another quarter britannica from islands of Ocean set beyond the lands,
3| and likewise aethiopis from the pole scorched by the stars, and others besides from other places, to and fro, for the health of mankind over the whole world — the boundless majesty of the Roman peace showing to one another not only men from lands and nations remote from each other, but also mountains and ridges that rise above the clouds, and what they bring forth, and their plants too! May this gift of the gods, I pray, last for ever! So truly do they seem to have given the Romans to the affairs of men as a second light.
4| But who could revere enough the care and diligence of the ancients? It is established that of all poisons the swiftest is aconitum, and that if it merely touches the genitals of female animals it brings death that same day. This was the poison with which, as the prosecutor Marcus Caelius charged, Calpurnius Bestia killed his wives as they slept; hence that savage peroration of his against the finger. Legend has it that it sprang from the foam of Cerberus the dog when Hercules dragged him up from the underworld, and that this is why it grows near Heraclea Pontica, where that entrance to the underworld is shown.
5| Yet even this they turned to the uses of human health, discovering by experiment that, given in warm wine, it counters the stings of scorpions. Its nature is such that it kills a man unless it finds something in the man to destroy. With that alone it grapples, as with a more pressing foe it has come upon [this is its only battle, when it finds a poison in the vitals], and, marvellous to relate, though each is deadly in itself, the two poisons die together in the man, so that the man survives.
6| Indeed the ancients even handed down remedies for wild creatures, by showing how even venomous ones are themselves healed. Scorpions grow numb at the touch of aconitum, turn pale and stupefied, and confess themselves beaten. White hellebore comes to their aid, releasing them by its touch, and aconitum yields to two evils, its own and that of all. If anyone believes that any of these things could possibly have been devised by man,
7| he does not appreciate the gifts of the gods with gratitude. Men smear meat with aconitum and kill panthers by their eating it; if this were not done, they would overrun those regions. For this reason some have called it pardalianches. But it has been shown that the panthers are at once freed from death by eating human excrement. Who would doubt that this was discovered by chance, and that whenever it happens it is born anew even now, as something new, since among wild beasts reason and experience cannot be handed on from one to another?
8| This chance, then — this is that god who discovers most things in life; this is the name by which is understood the same power that is both parent and teacher of all things — and either conjecture is equally good, whether we judge that wild beasts discover these things every day or that they have always known them. And again it is shameful that all animals know what is good for their own health, except man.
9| But our forefathers declared that aconitum is mixed with great benefit even into medicines for the eyes, openly professing that there is no evil at all without some good. It will be right for us, then, who have described no poisons, to show what aconitum is like, if only so that it may be detected. It has leaves like those of cyclaminus or of the cucumber, not more than 4, growing from the root, slightly hairy; a moderate root, like a sea cammarus, which is why some have called it cammaron, and others thelyphonon, for the reason we have given. The tail of the root curves a little in the manner of a scorpion's, which is why some have also called it scorpion. Nor have there been lacking those who preferred to call it myoctonon, since it kills mice at a distance, from far off, by its smell.
10| It grows on bare crags, which they call aconae, and for that reason some have named it aconitum, nothing near it, not even dust, giving it nourishment. This some have offered as the reason for the name; others say it is because its force in bringing death is the same as that of whetstones in grinding down the edge of iron, and its speed is felt the moment it is applied.
11| Aethiopis has leaves like those of phlomos, large, numerous and hairy, growing from the root; a four-angled stem, rough, like arction, hollowed with many axils; seed like ervum, white and double; and numerous roots, long, full, soft and glutinous to the taste. When dry they turn black and harden, so that they could be taken for horns.
12| Besides Ethiopia, these plants grow also on Mount Ida in the Troad and in Messenia. They are gathered in autumn and dried in the sun for several days so that they do not go mouldy. Taken in white wine they cure the womb, and boiled down they are given to drink for sciatica, pleurisy and rough throats. But the kind that comes from Ethiopia helps outstandingly and at once.
13| — Ageraton is a plant of the ferula kind, two palms high, like origanum, with a flower of golden bosses. The smoke of it when burnt promotes urine and purges the womb, all the more so when women sit over it. The reason for its name is [not this, but] that it does not wither for a very long time.
14| — Aloe has the likeness of the squill, larger, with fatter leaves, striped obliquely. Its stalk is tender, reddish in the middle, not unlike that of anthericus, with a single root, as though a stake driven into the ground; the plant itself is heavy in smell, bitter in taste. The most praised is brought from India, but it also grows in Asia; they do not use it, however, except fresh leaves for wounds, for its juice glues them together wonderfully. For this reason they plant it in the hollows of jars, like the greater aizoum.
15| Some cut the stalk before the seed ripens for the sake of the juice, and some the leaves too. A tear is also found by itself, clinging; therefore they think that where it has been sown the ground should be paved, so that the tear is not soaked up. There were those who reported that in Judaea, above Jerusalem, its nature is mineral, but none is worse, nor is any other blacker or more moist.
16| The best, then, will be fat and shining, of a red color, friable and compact like liver, readily melting; to be rejected is the black and hard, the gritty, and that which is recognized by taste as adulterated with gum and acacia. Its nature is to thicken, to condense, and to warm gently; its uses are many, but the chief is to loosen the bowels, since, almost alone of the medicines that do this, it even strengthens the stomach, so far does it not harm by any contrary power.
17| It is drunk in a dose of a drachma; for looseness of the stomach, however, in 2 cyathi of lukewarm or cold water, in the measure of a spoonful, twice or three times a day at intervals, as the case requires; for purging, at most 3 drachmas, more effective if food is taken after it is drunk. It holds falling hair when the head is anointed against the lie of the hair with dry wine. It soothes pain of the head, applied to the temples and forehead in vinegar and rose oil, and poured in more dilute.
18| It is suitable for curing all defects of the eyes, in particular itching and roughness of the eyelids; likewise marks and bruises, applied with honey, above all Pontic; also tonsils, gums and all sores of the mouth, and bloody expectorations, if moderate, a drachma drunk in water, if not, in vinegar. It also stops the blood of wounds, flowing from wherever, by itself or in vinegar.
19| In other respects too it is most useful for wounds, bringing them to a scar. The same is sprinkled on ulcerated genitals of men, on condylomata and cracks of the seat, sometimes in wine, sometimes in raisin wine, sometimes dry by itself, as the treatment requires to be eased or checked. It also gently checks an abundance of hemorrhoids.
20| It is poured into dysentery, and if food is hard to digest it is drunk after dinner after a short interval, and in jaundice 3 obols in water; pills are also swallowed with boiled honey or terebinth resin to clean the interior. It removes hangnails of the fingers. For eye medicines it is washed so that whatever is grittiest settles, or it is roasted in a potsherd and turned from time to time with a feather so that it can be roasted evenly.—
21| Alcea has leaves like verbenaca, which is surnamed aristereon, 2 or 4 stalks, full of leaves, a flower of the rose, white roots, at most 6, a cubit long, slanting. It grows in rich soil and not dry. The use of the root, in wine or water, is for dysentery, for loose bowels, for ruptures and convulsions.—
22| Alypon is a little stalk with a soft head, not unlike beet, sharp in taste and tenacious and biting vehemently and inflaming. It loosens the bowels in honeyed water with a little salt added. The smallest dose is 2 drachmas, the middle 4, the greatest 6, with outstanding purging for those to whom it is given in chicken broth.
23| — Alsine, which some call myosoton, grows in groves, whence it is called alsine. It begins in midwinter and withers in midsummer. When it creeps forward it imitates the ears of mice in its leaves. But we shall show that there is another that is more properly called myosotis. This one would be the same as helxine, were it not smaller and less hairy. It grows in gardens and especially on walls. When rubbed it gives off the smell of a cucumber.
24| Its use is for gatherings and inflammations, and likewise all the same as helxine, but weaker. It is applied especially to running of the eyes, and to the private parts and ulcers, with barley meal. Its juice is poured into the ears.
25| — Androsaces is a white herb, bitter, without leaves, having little pods on its tendrils and in them the seed. It grows by the sea in Syria. It is given chiefly to dropsy patients in 2 drachmas, ground or boiled in water or vinegar or wine; for it moves urine vehemently. It is given also to gout sufferers and applied. The seed has the same effect.
26| — Androsaemon or, as others have called it, ascyron is not unlike hypericon, of which we spoke, with larger, denser and more reddish stalks. The leaves are white, in the shape of rue, the seed that of the black poppy. The crests, when ground, run with a bloody juice; the smell is resinous. It grows in vineyards, is generally dug up in mid-autumn, and hung up.
27| Its use is for purging the bowels, ground with the seed and drunk in the morning or after dinner, 2 drachmas in honeyed water or wine or pure water, a sextarius of the whole drink. It draws bile and is of most benefit for sciatica, but on the next day the root of the caper, mixed with resin, must be swallowed in a dose of a drachma by weight, and the same done again after an interval of four days; after the purging itself the stronger should drink wine, the weaker water. It is also applied to gout and burns, and to wounds, checking blood.
28| — Ambrosia, of vague name and wavering among other herbs, has one certain form: dense, branching, slender, about 3 palms high, with the root shorter by a third, and leaves like rue around the lowest part of the stalk. On the little branches is a seed hanging like grapes, with a smell of wine, for which reason it is called botrys by some, and by others artemisia. The Cappadocians crown themselves with it. Its use is for those things which need to be dispersed.—
29| Anonis some prefer to call ononis, branching, and like fenugreek, except that it is bushier and hairier. Pleasant in smell, thorny after spring. It is even eaten, preserved in brine; fresh, however, it eats away the edges of ulcers. The root is boiled in posca for toothache. The same, drunk with honey, drives out stones. It is given to epileptics boiled down to half in oxymel.
30| — Anagyros, which some call acopon, is bushy, heavy in smell, with the flower of a vegetable, and bears its seed in pods not short, like kidneys, which hardens around the harvests. The leaves are applied to gatherings, and tied on women in difficult childbirth, in such a way that they are removed immediately after the birth. But if a dead fetus is stuck and the afterbirth and the menses are delayed, the leaves are drunk, a drachma in raisin wine. So also they are given to asthmatics, and in old wine for bites of phalangia. The root is used to disperse and to ripen; the seed, chewed, causes vomiting.
31| — Anonymos by not finding a name found one. It is brought from Scythia, made famous by Hicesius, a physician of no small authority, and also by Aristogiton, outstanding for wounds, pounded in water and applied, and drunk for breasts or midriff that have been struck, and for those spitting blood. They thought it should be drunk by the wounded too. I consider fabulous what is added, that if it is burned fresh it is welded to iron or bronze.—
32| Some call aparine omphalocarpon, others philanthropon, branching, hairy, with leaves in fives or sixes in a circle around the branches at intervals. The seed is round, hard, hollow, faintly sweet. It grows in grain fields or in gardens or meadows, clinging even to clothes by its roughness. It is effective against serpents, the seed drunk in wine, a drachma, and against phalangia. Leaves applied hold back an abundance of blood from wounds; the juice is poured into the ears.
33| — Arction some prefer to call arcturus. It is like verbascum in the leaves, except that they are hairier, with a long, soft stalk and the seed of cumin. It grows in rocky places with a tender root, white and sweet, which is boiled in wine for toothache, so that it is held in the mouth. The decoction is drunk for sciatica and strangury. In wine it is applied to burns and chilblains; the same are bathed with the seed ground in wine, with the root.
34| — Asplenon, which some call hemionion, has many leaves a third of a foot long, a slimy root, hollow like fern's, whitish and hairy. It has neither stalk nor flower nor seed. It grows on rocks and shady, damp walls; most praised in Crete. They say that the spleen is wasted away by drinking the leaves boiled in vinegar for 30 days; and they are also applied. They quiet hiccups too. It is not to be given to women, since it causes sterility.
35| — Asclepias has the leaves of ivy, long branches, many slender roots, fragrant, a heavy odor of the flower, and a hatchet-shaped seed. It grows in the mountains. The roots treat colic and against the stings of serpents, not only by drinking but by applying.
36| — Aster is called by some bubonion, since it is a ready remedy for the groin. It has a little stalk with oblong leaves, 2 or 3, and at the top small heads radiating like a star. It is also drunk against serpents. But for the treatment of the groin they direct that it be picked with the left hand and tied near the girdle. Tied on, it helps pain of the hip as well.
37| — Ascyron and ascyroides are similar to each other and to hypericon, but the one called ascyroides has larger branches, like ferula, reddish at the crest, with small yellow heads. The seed in little cups is tiny, black, resinous. The crests, ground, seem to bleed, for which reason some have called this androsaemon. The use of the seed, for sciatica, is drunk in doses of 2 drachmas in a sextarius of hydromel. It loosens the bowels and draws off bile. It is also applied to burns.
38| — Aphaca has very fine, tiny leaves. Taller than the lentil, it bears larger pods, in which there are three or four seeds, blacker and smaller than the lentil. It grows in plowed fields. In nature it is more effective at thickening than the lentil; its other uses are the same. The seed, boiled, checks fluxes of the stomach and bowels.
39| — What sort of herb alcibium is I have not found in the authors, but they say its root and leaves, ground, are applied and drunk for the bite of a serpent, leaves as much as a hand can hold, ground with 3 cyathi of unmixed wine, or the root, by weight 3 drachmas, with the same measure of wine.
40| — Alectoros lophos, which among us is called crista, has several leaves like the cock's comb, a slender stalk, and a black seed in pods. Cooked with crushed bean, honey being added, it is useful for those who cough, and for dimness of the eyes. The whole seed is put into the eye and does not disturb it, but draws the dimness into itself; it changes color and begins to turn from black to white, and swells, and comes out of itself.
41| — We call it alus, the Greeks symphyton petraeum, like cunila bubula, with small leaves, 3 or 4 branches from the root, tops like thyme, twiggy, fragrant, sweet in taste, provoking saliva, with a long, reddish root. It grows on rocks, and therefore is surnamed petraeum; it is most useful for the sides, kidneys, colic, chest, lungs, those who spit blood, and rough throats. The root is drunk ground and boiled in wine, and sometimes also smeared on.
42| Indeed, chewed it quenches thirst and especially cools the lung. It is also applied to sprains and bruises, and soothes the intestines. It checks the bowels cooked in ashes and, the pods removed, ground with 9 grains of pepper and drunk in water. Its excellence for healing wounds is such that it even glues together pieces of meat while they are being cooked, if added, whence the Greeks gave it its name. It also treats broken bones; alga rufa, the stings of scorpions.— Actaea, with a heavy smell of the leaves,
43| rough, jointed stalks, a black seed like that of ivy, soft berries, grows in shady, rough and watery places. It is given in a full acetabulum for internal diseases of women.
44| — Ampelos agria is the name of a herb with hard leaves, of an ashen color, such as we described among cultivated plants, with long, callused, reddish tendrils like the flower we call Jupiter's flame. In clusters it bears a seed like the kernels of a pomegranate. Its root, boiled down in three cyathi of water, with 2 cyathi of Coan wine added, loosens the bowels gently and so is given to dropsy patients. The clusters correct defects of the skin on the faces of women. For sufferers from sciatica, too, it helps to use this herb pounded with its leaves and applied with its own juice.
45| Of absinthium there are several kinds: the Santonic is so called from a state of Gaul, the Pontic from Pontus, where cattle grow fat on it and for that reason are found without gall; and none is more excellent; the Italian is much more bitter, but the pith of the Pontic is sweet. About its use there is agreement, as it is the easiest of herbs and among the few most useful, and moreover celebrated in the rites of the Roman people in particular, since at the Latin festival the four-horse chariots race on the Capitol and the victor drinks absinthium—I believe because our ancestors thought it an honor that health be given as the prize.
46| It strengthens the stomach, and for this reason its flavor is transferred to wines, as we said. A decoction in water is also drunk, then cooled for a night and a day in the open air; 6 drachmas of leaves with their branches should be boiled in 3 sextarii of rainwater, and the adding of salt is a very ancient practice. A dilution of the soaked plant is also drunk; for the kind is so called. The method of the dilution is that, whatever the measure of water, it is covered for three days.
47| The ground plant is seldom used, as is the juice pressed out. It is pressed out, however, when the seed first swells, soaked in water for three days if fresh, or for 7 days if dry, then boiled in a bronze vessel down to a third, 10 heminae in 45 sextarii of water, and strained again, the herb being removed, and boiled to the thickness of honey, as the juice is sought from the lesser centaurium. But this juice [of absinthium] is useless to the stomach and head, whereas the decoction is very wholesome.
48| For it braces the stomach and draws off bile, moves urine, softens the bowels and heals them in pain, drives out the creatures of the belly, and disperses softness of the stomach and flatulence, with sile and Gallic nard and a little vinegar added; it wipes away disgust, aids digestion, and removes indigestion with rue and pepper and salt. The ancients gave it for purging, 6 drachmas of the seed with 3 of salt in a sextarius of old sea water and a cyathus of honey; with the salt doubled it purges more effectively.
49| It ought, however, to be carefully ground because of its toughness. Some have given the weight stated above in barley meal, with pennyroyal added; others gave [leaves] in dried figs to children, to cheat the bitterness. It clears the chest, taken with iris. In jaundice it is drunk raw with celery or adiantum. Against flatulence it is sipped hot, little by little, in water; for the liver, with Gallic nard; for the spleen it is taken with vinegar, or porridge, or a fig.
50| It counters mushrooms, in vinegar; likewise mistletoe; cicuta, in wine; the bites of the shrew; the sea dragon; scorpions. It contributes much to clearness of the eyes; it is applied with raisin wine for running, with honey for bruises. The steam of its decoction, by fumigation, cures the ears, or if they run with matter, it is ground with honey. Urine and menses are moved by 3 or 4 little sprigs with a single root of Gallic nard in 6 cyathi of water; menses particularly when taken with honey and placed as a pessary on wool.
51| It helps quinsy with honey and soda. It cures epinyctides in water, fresh wounds, applied before they are touched by water, and besides this ulcers of the head. It is applied to the flanks in particular with Cyprian wax or with a fig. It cures itching too. It is not to be given in fever.
52| Drunk, it wards off seasickness on voyages, and swelling of the groin when kept in a belt. It entices sleep by its smell, or placed under the head without the sleeper's knowledge. Inserted in clothing, it keeps off moths. It drives off gnats, for those anointed with it in oil, and with its smoke if it is burned. Scribes' ink mixed with a dilution of it protects letters from mice. The ash of absinthium, mixed with ointment and rose oil, blackens the hair.
53| — There is also sea absinthium, which some call seriphum, most approved in Taposiris of Egypt. The devotees of Isis have a custom of carrying a branch of this before them. It is narrower than the former and less bitter, hostile to the stomach; it softens the bowels and drives out the creatures of the intestines. It is drunk with oil and salt, or diluted in a gruel of the meal of three-month wheat. As much as a hand can hold is boiled in a sextarius of water to half.
54| Ballote, by another name porrum nigrum, as the Greeks call it, is a bushy herb with angular stalks, black and hairy, with leaves clothing it larger than those of the leek and blacker, heavy-smelling. Its power is effective against dog bites, the leaves ground with salt and applied, and likewise for condylomata, cooked in ashes in a cabbage leaf. It also cleans foul ulcers with honey. — Botrys is a bushy herb with yellow little branches.
55| the seed grows all around, the leaves like chicory. It is found on the banks of torrents. It treats those with orthopnoea. The Cappadocians call this ambrosia, others artemisia.— Brabilla has a thickening power, in the manner of the quince, and the authors report nothing more of it.
56| — Bryon marinum is without doubt a herb like lettuce in its leaves, wrinkled as if shrunken, without a stalk, the leaves coming out from a single root. It grows on rocks, and above all on potsherds held in the earth. Its power is chief in drying and thickening, and in checking gatherings and all inflammations, particularly gout and whatever needs to be cooled.
57| — I find that the seed of bupleurum is given for the stings of serpents, and that wounds are bathed with a decoction of that herb with leaves of mulberry or origanum added. The Thessalian herb catanance, what it is like, is superfluous for us to describe, since its use is for love charms alone. This is not out of place to say, to expose magical vanities: it was chosen for this use by inference, because as it dries it draws itself together into the form of a dead kite's claws. For the same reason cemos too will be passed over in silence by us.
58| — Calyx is of two kinds. One, like arum, grows in plowed fields and is gathered before it withers. It has the same uses as aris, but the root of this one is also drunk to empty the bowels and the menses of women; and the stalks with the leaves, boiled with pulses, cure tenesmus.
59| The other kind of it some call anchusa, others rhinoclia. The leaves are longer than lettuce, feathery, the root red, which cures sacred fires, applied with fine barley meal, and defects of the liver, drunk in white wine.
60| — Circaea is like the cultivated trychnos, with a black flower, tiny, with a small seed like millet growing in little horns, a root half a foot long, generally triple or quadruple, white, fragrant, of a hot taste. It grows on sunny rocks. It is dissolved in wine and drunk for pain of the womb and its defects—a quadrans of pounded root must be steeped in 3 sextarii for a night and a day—and the same drink draws the afterbirth; the seed [diminishes] milk, drunk in wine or honeyed water.
61| — Cirsion is a tender little stalk of 2 cubits, like a triangle, surrounded by thorny leaves. The thorns are soft; the leaves are like ox tongue, smaller, whitish, and at the top are purple heads that dissolve into down. They report that this herb, or its root tied on, cures the pains of varicose veins.
62| — Crataegonon is like an ear of wheat, with many reeds shooting from a single root and of many joints, in shady places, with the seed of millet, of a vehemently harsh taste. If a woman and a man drink it in wine before dinner, 3 obols in as many cyathi of water, for 40 days before conception, they say the child will be of the male sex.
63| And there is another crataegonos, which is called thelygonos; the difference is recognized by the mildness of the taste. There are those who report that women drinking the flower of crataegonon conceive within 40 days. The same cures old black ulcers with honey and fills the pockets of ulcers and makes wasting sores fleshier, and cleanses the purulent ones; it disperses buboes, eases gout and all gatherings, particularly of the breasts. Theophrastus meant a kind of tree to be understood by crataegon or crataegona, which the Italians call aquifolium.
64| — Crocodileon has the shape of the black herb chamaeleon, with a long root, equally thick, of harsh smell. It grows in sandy places. Drunk, it expels from the nose copious and thick blood; so too it is said to consume the spleens.
65| — Cynosorchis some call orchis, with the leaves of the olive, soft, in threes, lying on the ground over a half foot of length, with a bulbous, oblong root in a double row, the upper being harder, the lower softer. They are eaten like cooked bulbs, found generally in vineyards. If of these roots men eat the larger, they say males are begotten; if women eat the smaller, the other sex. In Thessaly men drink the softer in goat's milk to stimulate intercourse, but the harder to restrain it. The one counters the other.
66| — Chrysolachanum grows in a pine grove, like lettuce. It heals cut sinews, if applied at once. And elsewhere a kind of chrysolachanum is reported with a golden flower and the leaves of a vegetable. It is cooked and eaten as a soft vegetable. This herb, tied on those with jaundice so that they can see it, is reported to cure that ailment.
67| About chrysolachanum I know that not enough can be said, nor do I find more. For this fault has afflicted at any rate our nearest herbalists, that they have indicated plants known to themselves, as though common, hastily and by names only, such as that the bowels are checked by the earth's rennet, strangury is dissolved, if it is drunk in water or wine,
68| that leaves of cucullus ground with vinegar cure the stings of serpents and scorpions. Some call this by another name strumus, others in Greek strychnos. It has black berries; of these a cyathus of juice with 2 of honey wine treats the loins, and for headache it is poured in with rose oil; the plant itself is applied for scrofula.
69| — Peculiar to the rivers of the Alps above all is what is called conferva, from conferuminare, rather a sponge of fresh waters than moss or herb, shaggy in its density and hollow. I know that a pruner who fell from a high tree with almost all his bones broken was cured by it, wrapped around his whole body, those attending sprinkling it with its own water whenever it dried, and rarely, only when the herb failed, loosening it for the sake of change, and that he recovered with scarcely credible speed.
70| — The Cnidian coccus has the color of coccus, is larger than a grain of pepper, and has a burning power; so it is swallowed in bread, lest it burn the throat in passing. Its power is immediate against cicuta; it checks the bowels.
71| Dipsacos has the leaves of lettuce and thorny blisters in the middle of the back, a stalk of 2 cubits bristling with the same thorns, its joints embraced by pairs of leaves with a hollow armpit in which a salty dew collects. At the top are little heads bristling with spines. It grows in watery places. It cures cracks of the seat, and likewise fistulas, the root boiled in wine until it has the thickness of wax, so that it can be put into the fistulas as a plug; likewise warts of all kinds. Some also smear on these the juice of the armpits we mentioned above.
72| — Dryopteris, like fern, grows on trees, with a fine cutting of its faintly sweet leaves, and a hairy root. Its power is caustic, and for that reason the pounded root is a depilatory; it is applied until it brings out sweat, a second and third time, so long as the sweat is not washed off.—
73| Drabe is a herb like phonos, with slender stalks a cubit high, surrounded on either side with leaves of an inch's breadth, like those of oxymyrsine, but whiter and softer, with the white flower of the elder. They eat the stalks boiled, and use its seed in place of pepper.
74| Elatine has the leaves of casia, tiny, hairy, round, with little branches half a foot long, in fives and sixes, leafy from the root at once. It grows in grain fields, sour in taste, and therefore effective for fluxes of the eyes, the leaves ground with barley meal and applied, a small linen cloth being placed beneath. The same, cooked with linseed, in the use of a gruel, frees from dysentery.
75| — Empetros, which our people call calcifraga, grows on mountains by the sea, generally on rock. That which grew nearer the sea is salty and, drunk, draws bile and phlegm; that which grew farther away and is more earthy tastes more bitter. It draws water; it is taken in some broth or in hydromel. With age it loses strength; fresh, it moves urine, boiled in water or ground, and breaks stones. Those who seek credit for this claim say that small stones that are slightly heated are broken along with it.
76| — Epicactis is called by others elleborine, a small herb with tiny leaves, most useful for defects of the liver and drunk against poisons.— Epimedion is a stalk not large, with ivy leaves in tens and twelves, never flowering, with a thin, black root, of heavy smell and [….]; it grows in damp places. This too has the nature of thickening and cooling, and should be avoided by women. Leaves ground in wine restrain the breasts of girls.
77| — Enneaphyllon has long leaves, nine in number, of caustic nature. It is applied wrapped in wool, so that it does not burn more widely—it raises blisters at once—and is most useful for pains of the loins and hips.
78| Of fern there are two kinds, which have neither flower nor seed. The Greeks call one pteris, others blachnon; from a single root many ferns come up, exceeding two cubits in length, not heavy in smell; this they consider the male. The other kind the Greeks call thelypteris, others nymphaea pteris; it is single and not bushy, shorter and softer and denser, channeled with its leaves at the root.
79| Pigs grow fat on the root of either. The leaves of both are feathered on the sides, whence the Greeks gave the name. The roots of both are long, slanting, black, especially when they have dried; they ought to be dried in the sun. They grow everywhere, but chiefly in cold soil. They ought to be dug at the setting of the Pleiades. The use of the root is only at three years old, neither before nor after. They drive out the animals of the intestines, tapeworms with honey, the rest drunk in sweet wine for three days; both are most unsuitable for the stomach. It loosens the bowels, first drawing bile, then water, and better against tapeworms with an equal weight of scamonium.
80| Its root is drunk by the weight of 2 obols in water after a day's abstinence, with honey tasted first, against rheums. Neither should be given to women, since it causes abortion in the pregnant and sterility in the others. Their meal is sprinkled on foul ulcers, even of beasts of burden on the neck. The leaves kill bedbugs, and do not harbor serpents; therefore it is useful to spread them beneath in suspect places, and burnt they also drive serpents off by the smell. The physicians have made a distinction of this herb as well: the best is the Macedonian, second the Cassiopic.—
81| Femur bubulum is the name of a herb, itself useful for the sinews, fresh, ground in vinegar and salt. Galeopsis or, as others call it, galeobdolon or gallon has a stalk and leaves smoother than the nettle, which when crushed give off a heavy smell, with a purple flower. It grows around hedges and paths everywhere. The leaves and stalks, ground in vinegar and applied, disperse hardnesses and cancers, and also scrofula, buboes and swellings of the parotid. It is also practiced to bathe with the juice of the decoction. It cures festering sores and gangrenes too with salt.—
82| Glaux was anciently called eugalacton, like cytisus and the lentil in its leaves; the undersides are whiter. The branches creep along the ground, five or six, very slender, from the root. Little purple flowers come out. It is found by the sea. It is cooked in a gruel of fine wheat flour to rouse the abundance of milk; those who have drunk it should use baths.
83| Glaucion grows in Syria and Parthia, a low herb with dense leaves generally like the poppy's, smaller however and dirtier, of foul smell, of bitter taste with astringency. It has a grain of saffron color. This they heat in an earthen pot sealed round with clay in ovens, then, when it has been taken out, press from it a juice of the same name. The use both of the juice and of the leaves, if they are ground, is against running of the eyes that fall in a general rush. From it is compounded the eye-salve that physicians call dia glaucium.—(the abundance of milk, too, if it has ceased, is restored; for this purpose it is taken in water).
84| — Glycyside, which some call Paeonia or pentorobon, has a stalk of 2 palms, accompanied by 2 or 3, somewhat reddish, with the skin of laurel, leaves like those of isatis, fatter and rounder and smaller, and seed in pods, one with a red grain, another with a black.
85| There are two kinds: the female is reckoned to be the one to whose roots about 8 or 6 acorn-like growths, rather long, cling. The male has no more than one, resting on a single root, a palm in height, white, astringent to the taste. The leaves of the female smell of myrrh and are denser. They grow in woods. They say it must be dug by night, because by day it is dangerous with the woodpecker of Mars attacking the eyes; and that when the root is dug there is danger that the seat will prolapse—a great vanity, I think, invented to make a show of the matter. The use in these is different.
86| The red grains, drunk in dark wine, about 15, stop reddish menses. The black grains treat the womb, drunk in raisin wine or wine, as many. The root soothes all pains of the belly in wine and purges the bowels, cures opisthotonos, jaundice, the kidneys, the bladder, and the windpipe and stomach, boiled in wine, and checks the bowels. It is even eaten as food, but in treatment 4 drachmas are enough.
87| The black grains help also with nightmares, drunk in wine in the number stated, and for stomach sufferers and gnawing pains it is beneficial both to eat them and to smear them on. Suppurations too are dispersed, fresh ones by the black seed, old ones by the red. Both help those struck by a serpent, and children against stones when strangury is beginning.
88| — Gnaphalium some call chamaezelon; they use its white and soft leaves in place of stuffing; indeed they are also similar. It is given in dry wine for dysentery, and checks loosenesses of the belly and the menses of women. It is also poured in for tenesmus. It is applied to the festering parts of ulcers.
89| — Gallidraga is the name Xenocrates gives to a plant like leucacantha, marsh-dwelling and thorny, with a stalk like ferula, tall, on whose top clings something like an egg. In this, as it grows in summer, he says little worms are born, and that these, shut in a box and tied with bread on the arm on the side where the tooth aches, remove the pain at once and wonderfully. He says they are good no longer than a year, and then only if they have not touched the ground.
90| Holcus grows on dry rocks. It has awns at the top, with a slender stalk, such as barley that crops repeatedly. Tied around the head or around the upper arm, it draws awns out of the body. Some on that account call it aristis.— Hyoseris, like endive, but smaller and rougher to the touch, ground, treats wounds excellently.
91| — Holosteon is a herb without hardness, named by the Greeks by contraries, as sweet gall is; its root slender, almost to the likeness of a hair, 4 fingers long, like grass with narrow leaves, astringent in taste. It grows on earthy hills. Its use is for torn and ruptured parts, drunk in wine. It also glues wounds together, for it even does so with pieces of meat, if added while they are cooked.
92| — Hippophaeston grows among the thorns from which the fullers' [….] are made, without a little stalk, without flower, with only empty little heads and small leaves, many, of a grassy color. The little roots are white, soft. Their juice is pressed out in summer to loosen the bowels, by obols, above all in epileptic and tremulous disorders, in dropsy, against vertigo, orthopnoea, and beginning paralysis.
93| — Hypoglossa has leaves in the shape of wild myrtle, with a spiny crest, and on these, as it were, tongues coming out from the leaves with a small leaf. A garland of them applied lessens headache.— Hypecoon grows in grain fields, with the leaves of rue. Its nature is the same as the juice of the poppy. Of the herb of Ida the leaves are those of oxymyrsine. Clinging to them are things like tendrils, in which is the flower. It itself checks the bowels, menses, and every abundance of blood by its nature of thickening and restraining.
94| — Isopyron some call phaselion, because its leaf, which is like anise, is twisted into the tendrils of the bean. There are slender little heads at the top of the stalk, full of seed of melanthium, for cough and other defects of the chest with honey or honeyed water, and most useful for the liver.
95| Lathyris has many leaves like lettuce, finer, with many shoots, in which the seed is held in little coats, like the caper, and when they have dried, grains as big as a peppercorn are removed, white, sweet, easy to cleanse. These, drunk twenty at a time in pure water or honeyed water, cure dropsy patients; they also draw bile. Those who wish to be purged more vehemently take them with the little husks themselves, for they hurt the stomach; therefore it was devised to take them with fish or chicken broth.—
96| Leontopetalon some call rapadion, with the leaf of cabbage and a stalk half a foot long. The branches are numerous, the seed at the top in pods like those of the chickpea, the root like a turnip, large, black. It grows in fields. The root counters all kinds of serpents, drunk in wine, and nothing else works more quickly. It is given also to sufferers from sciatica.
97| — Lycapsos has leaves longer than lettuce and thicker, with a long stalk, many hairy growths attached, a cubit high, and a small purple flower; it grows in level country. It is applied with barley meal to sacred fire; it brings on sweats in fevers, its juice mixed with hot water.
98| — Among all herbs nothing is more marvelous than lithospermum. Some call it exonychon, others dios pyron, others heracleous. The herb is about a quincunx tall, with leaves twice as large as rue, little twiggy branches the thickness of a rush. Beside the leaves it bears single little beards, as it were, and on the tips of these small stones, with the whiteness and roundness of pearls, the size of a chickpea, but stony in hardness. Where they cling to their stalks they themselves have little cavities, and inside, the seed.
99| It grows in Italy too, but the most praised comes from Crete, and among herbs I have looked on nothing with greater wonder. Such is its beauty, as if with the goldsmiths' art pearls gleamed white in alternation among the leaves, so exquisitely rare is a stone that grows out of a herb. Authors report that it lies and creeps along the ground; I saw it plucked, not attached. It is agreed that a drachma's weight of these little stones, taken in white wine, breaks and expels stones in the bladder and relieves strangury. In no other herb is the assurance surer of the ailment it was born to cure, and its appearance is such that even without an authority it can be recognized at once by sight.
100| A common stone beside rivers bears a dry, grey moss. This is rubbed against a second stone with human spittle added; with that stone the impetigo is touched. The one who touches says: "Flee, cantharides, a wild wolf hunts blood."
101| Limeum is the name the Gauls give to a herb with which they dip their hunting arrows, a drug they call stag poison. Of this, as much as is usually put on a single arrow is added to 3 modii of salivatum; the mass is then pushed down the throats of cattle in diseases. Afterwards they must be tied to the mangers until they are purged, for they tend to go mad; if sweat follows, they are to be drenched with cold water.
102| Leuce, like Mercurialis, took its name from a feature: a white line runs across the middle of the leaf, which is why some call it mesoleucon. Its juice heals fistulas, and the herb itself, pounded, heals cancers. Perhaps it is the same as the one called leucas, effective against all poisons of the sea. The authors do not describe its appearance, nor say anything beyond that there is a wild kind with broader leaves, which is more effective because its seed is sharper.
103| What sort of plant leucographis is I have not found written, which I wonder at all the more because it is reported to be useful, in doses of 3 obols with saffron, for those who spit blood, likewise for those with coeliac complaints; pounded in water and applied, for a flow of the women's courses; also for eye medicines and for filling up ulcers that arise in tender parts.
104| Medion has the leaves of the cultivated iris, a stem three feet tall and on it a large, purple, round flower, with tiny seed and a root half a foot long. It grows on shaded rocks. The root, 2 drachmas with honey taken as a linctus over several days, stops the women's courses. The seed also is given in wine against excessive flow.
105| Myosota, or myosotis, is a smooth herb with several stems from a single root, somewhat reddish, hollow from the bottom, with narrow, oblong, black leaves with a sharp back, constantly set in pairs at intervals, with thin little stalks issuing from the axils, and a blue flower. The root is as thick as a finger, fringed with many hair-like fibres. Its force is caustic and ulcerating, and for that reason it heals aegilopes. They report that in Egypt, in the month they call Thoth, on the 28th day, which falls roughly in the month of August, if anyone is anointed in the morning with the juice of this herb before he speaks, he will not have bleary eyes that year.
106| Myagros is a herb of the giant-fennel kind, with leaves like madder, three feet tall. Its seed is oily, and oil is made from it. It cures sores of the mouth when they are anointed with this juice. The herb called nyma, with 3 long leaves like endive, applied, restores scars to their colour.
107| There is a herb called natrix, whose root, when pulled up, smells of the rank odour of a he-goat. In Picenum women use it to drive off those whom, by a marvellous persuasion, they call Fatui; I would believe that these are forms of minds seized by frenzy, which are helped by such a remedy.
108| Odontitis is among the kinds of hay, with dense little stalks from the same root, jointed, three-sided, black. At the joints it has small leaves, yet longer than those of polygonum, and in the axils a seed like barley, and a small purple flower. It grows in meadows. A decoction of its little stalks in harsh wine, as much as a hand can hold, cures toothache, provided it is kept in the mouth.
109| Othonna grows in Syria, like rocket, with leaves frequently perforated, and with the flower of saffron; for which reason some have called it anemone. Its juice is suited to eye medicines; for it bites gently and warms, and by drying it contracts, and clears scars and films and whatever obstructs. Some report that it is washed, and when dried in this way is divided into lozenges.
110| Onosma has long leaves, about 3 fingers, lying on the ground like anchusa, [….] similar in stem, flower and seed. A pregnant woman, if she eats it or steps over it, is said to cause miscarriage. Asses are said to break wind when they have eaten onopradon. It draws urine and the courses, stops the belly, and disperses suppurations and collections.
111| Osyris bears black, slender, pliant twigs, and on them black leaves like those of flax, and a seed, black on the twigs at first, then changing colour and turning red. Cosmetic salves are made from them for women. A decoction of the roots as a drink heals those with jaundice. The same roots, before the seed ripens, cut up and dried in the sun, stop the belly; but gathered after ripening and boiled in a gruel, they cure flux of the belly, and pounded by themselves they are drunk in rainwater.
112| Oxys has leaves in threes. It is given for a relaxed stomach. Those who have enterocele also eat it. Polyanthemum, which some call batrachion, ulcerates by caustic force, and restores scars to their colour, and the same herb unites vitiligines with the body.
113| Polygonum is the Greek name for what we call sanguinaria. It does not rise from the ground; with leaves like rue, it looks like grass. Its juice, poured into the nostrils, checks blood, and drunk with wine it restrains a flow from any part and bloody spitting. Those who make several kinds of polygonum wish this one understood as the male, and named from the multitude of its seed or the density of its shrub; others call it polygonaton from the frequency of its joints, others thalattias, others carcinothron, others clema, many myrtopetalum. And there are found those who say this is the female, while the male is larger and less black, with denser joints, and with the seed swelling under all the leaves.
114| However these things stand, their force is to thicken and to cool. By the seed they loosen the belly; taken more freely, they move urine; they restrain fluxes, which, if there are none, they do not help. The leaves are laid on for heat of the stomach, and smeared on for pain of the bladder and for sacred fires. The juice is also dropped into running ears and for pain of the eyes. By itself it is given in fevers before the onsets, 2 cyathi, especially in tertians and quartans, likewise to those with cholera and dysentery and in looseness of the stomach.
115| A third kind they call orion, growing on mountains, like a tender reed, with a single stem, with dense joints stuffed into one another, but with the leaves of the pitch-pine, and a root that is of no use; it is less effective than the kinds above, and a specific for sciatica.
116| A fourth kind is called silvestre, almost the shrub of a tree, with a woody root, the stock reddish like cedar, with branches like broom of two palms each, black, with the joints in threes and fours. This too has the nature of thickening; its taste is that of the quince. It is boiled down in water to a third, or the powder of it dried is sprinkled on sores of the mouth and on chafed parts. For faults of the gums it is chewed as it stands.
117| It checks nomae and everything that creeps or has a scar hard to form, and in particular it heals ulcers caused by snow. Herb-gatherers use it also for quinsies, and for headache they set a wreath of it on the head, and against fluxes of the eyes they put it around the neck; in tertians they tie it on, pulled up with the left hand, so effective is it against fluxes of blood; and there is no herb they keep dried more than polygonum.
118| Pancratium some prefer to call a small squill, with leaves longer and thicker than those of the white lily, a root with a large bulb, of reddish colour. It loosens the belly, the juice taken with meal of bitter vetch, and it cleans ulcers. To those with dropsy and spleen trouble it is given with honey. Others boil it until the water becomes sweet, and, pouring that off, they pound the root and divide it into lozenges dried in the sun, and afterwards use them for sores of the head and other things that need cleaning, likewise for cough, giving as much as they can grasp with 3 fingers in wine, and for pains of the side, or as a linctus for those with pneumonia. They also give it in wine to be drunk for sciatica, and for gripings and to bring on the courses.
119| Peplis, which some call syce, others meconion, others mecon aphrodes, grows into a shrub from a single slender root, with leaves a little broader than those of rue. The seed is under the leaves, round, not so large as the white poppy's. It is generally gathered among the vines at harvest, and dried with its fruit, things being set under it for it to fall into. Drunk, this loosens the belly and draws off bile and phlegm. The middle dose is the measure of an acetabulum in 3 heminae of honeyed water. It is also sprinkled on food and relishes to soften the belly.
120| Periclymenon also grows into a shrub, having 2 leaves at an interval, whitish, soft, but at the top a seed among the leaves, hard and hard to pluck. It grows in fields and hedges, winding itself around any supports. Its seed, dried in the shade, is pounded and divided into lozenges; these, dissolved, are given in 3 cyathi of white wine for thirty days for the spleen, and it consumes it, by bloody urine or through the bowels, which can be seen from the tenth day onward. The leaves, boiled, also move urine, and are helpful to those who cannot breathe unless upright. Taken as drinks in a similar way, they also help childbirth and expel the afterbirth.
121| Pelecinon, as we have said, grows in the cornfields, a shrubby plant with little stalks and the leaves of the chickpea. It bears seed in pods, hooked like little horns, three or four together, such as we know git, bitter, useful for the stomach. It is added to antidotes. Polygala fills a palm in height, with leaves at the top of the stem like lentil, of astringent taste. Drunk, it produces an abundance of milk.
122| Poterion, or, as others call it, phrynion or neuras, grows plentifully into a shrub, bristling with thorns, thick with down, with small, round leaves, long, soft, tough, slender twigs, a long flower of herbaceous colour. The seed has no use; it has a sharp taste and smell. It is found on watery hills.
123| It has 2 or 3 roots, two cubits in depth, sinewy, white, firm. It is dug around in autumn, and when a root is cut it gives a juice like gum. The root is reported to be marvellous for healing wounds, especially smeared on sinews, even cut ones. A decoction of it, drunk with honey, also helps loosenings of the sinews, and their weaknesses and cuts.
124| Phalangitis is called by some phalangion, by others leucanthemum or, as I find in some copies, leucacantha. Its twigs are never fewer than 2, pointing in different directions; the flower is white, like a red lily, the seed black, broad, in the shape of half a lentil but much thinner, with a slender root, of herbaceous colour. With its leaf or flower or seed they give aid against the stings of scorpions and phalangia and snakes, and likewise against gripings.
125| What sort of plant phyteuma is I think superfluous to describe, since its use is only for love potions. Phyllon is the name the Greeks give to a herb on rocky mountains. The female is more herbaceous in colour, with a slender stem and a small root. The seed is like that of the round poppy. This one produces offspring of its own sex, while the male produces males; they differ only in the seed, which is like that of an olive just beginning. Either is drunk in wine.
126| Phellandrion grows in marshy places, with the leaf of celery. Its seed is drunk for stones and troubles of the bladder. Phaleris has a long thyrsus, slender as a reed, bearing at its top a drooping flower, and seed like sesame. This too breaks stones, drunk in wine or vinegar or with honey and milk; the same heals faults of the bladder. Polyrrhizon has the leaves of myrtle and many roots. These, pounded, are given in wine against snakes; they also benefit four-footed animals.
127| Proserpinaca is a common herb, of outstanding remedy against scorpions. They report that the same herb, pounded, with brine of maenae and oil added, cures quinsy outstandingly, and that tired people are restored from any degree of weariness, even when they have lost their voice, if it is put under the tongue; if swallowed, a salutary vomiting follows.
128| Rhecoma is brought from the regions that lie above the Pontus. The root is like black costus, smaller and a little redder, without smell, warming and astringent to the taste. The same, pounded, gives wine a colour inclining to saffron. Smeared on, it quiets collections and inflammations, heals wounds, and quiets fluxes of the eyes in raisin wine; with honey it treats weals, and with vinegar other livid marks.
129| Its powder is sprinkled on against cacoethes, and for those who bring up blood, a drachma's weight in water; for those with dysentery and coeliac complaints, if free of fever, in wine, if otherwise, in water. When soaked the night before, it is pounded more easily. A decoction of it is also given to drink in double measure for ruptures, convulsions, bruises, and falls from a height.
130| If there are pains in the chest, some pepper and myrrh is added; if looseness of the stomach, it is taken in cold water; so also in an old cough and purulent spitting, likewise for the liver, the spleen, sciatica. But faults of the kidneys, gasping, difficulty in breathing unless upright, roughness of the windpipe, it cures when 3 obols, pounded, or a decoction of it, are drunk in raisin wine. Applied in vinegar it also cleanses lichens. It is drunk against flatulence and chills, cold fevers, hiccup, gripings, herpes, heaviness of the head, melancholic dizziness, pains of weariness, and convulsions.
131| Around Ariminum a herb is known that they call reseda. It disperses all collections and inflammations. Those who treat with it add these words: "Reseda, cure the diseases, reseda; do you know, do you know, what chick has dug up these roots? Let it have neither head nor feet." They say this three times and spit as often. Stoechas is produced only on the islands of the same name, a sweet-smelling herb, with the hair of hyssop, bitter to the taste. Drunk, it brings on the courses and relieves pains of the chest. It is also mixed into antidotes.
132| Solanum the Greeks call strychnon, as Cornelius Celsus reports. Its force is to repress and to cool.
133| Smyrnion has the stem of celery, broader leaves and especially around its many shoots, from whose hollow they spring, fat and bent down toward the ground, with a medicinal smell pleasant with a certain sharpness, a colour fading into yellow, the heads of the stalks round as in celery, and a round black seed; it dries up as summer begins. The root also is fragrant, bites with a sharp taste, juicy, soft. Its bark is black outside, pale within. Its smell has the quality of myrrh, whence also the name.
134| It grows both on rocky hills and in earthy places. Its use is to warm and to thin. The leaves and root and seed move urine and the courses. It stops the belly. The root, smeared on, disperses collections and suppurations not old, and hardnesses; it also helps against phalangia and snakes, mixed with cachrys or polium or melissophyllum and drunk in wine, but a little at a time, since taken all at once it provokes vomiting; for which reason it is sometimes given with rue.
135| The seed or root relieves cough and difficulty in breathing unless upright, likewise faults of the chest or spleen or kidneys or bladder, and the root those with ruptures and convulsions. It also helps childbirth and expels the afterbirth. It is given for sciatica with crethmus in wine. It brings on sweat and belching, and therefore disperses flatulence of the stomach. It brings wounds to a scar.
136| A juice is also pressed out from the root, useful to women and for complaints of the chest and midriff; for it warms and digests and purges. The seed is given as a drink particularly to those with dropsy, to whom the juice is also smeared on. They also use the dry bark in a poultice, and for relishes with honeyed wine and oil and garum, most of all in boiled meats. Sinon produces digestion, with a flavour very like pepper. The same is effective in pain of the stomach.
137| Telephion is like purslane both in stem and leaves. Seven or eight branches shoot from the root, bearing leaves that are thick and fleshy. It grows in tilled places and most of all among vines. It is smeared on freckles and, when it has dried, rubbed off. It is also smeared on vitiligo for about three months, for six hours of the night or day, and then barley meal is smeared on.
138| It also heals wounds and fistulas. — Trichomanes is like adiantum, only slenderer and blacker, with leaves like the lentil's, dense, small and set opposite one another. A decoction of it taken in white wine with wild cumin added cures strangury, and the spleen. Pounded in oil and applied, it stops the hair from falling out, or restores it if it has fallen out, and thickens the growth on bald patches. Tasted, it also provokes sneezing. — Thalictrum has the leaves of coriander, a little fleshier, and the stem of the poppy.
139| It grows everywhere, especially in level country. Its leaves with honey heal ulcers. — Thlaspi is of two kinds. One has narrow leaves, a finger in breadth and in length, turned towards the ground and divided at the tip, and a stalk half a foot high, not without branches, [….] the seed enclosed in what look like little shields, in the shape of a lentil, except that it is crushed in, whence the name. The flower is whitish. It grows by pathways and in hedges. The seed, harsh in taste, draws out bile and phlegm both upwards and downwards; the dose to be taken is the measure of an acetabulum. It is also good for sciatica, injected. In a draught it draws blood and also promotes menstruation, but it kills the unborn child.
140| The other thlaspi some call Persian napy; it has broad leaves and large roots, and it too is useful as an injection for sciatica. Both kinds are also good for the groin. The instruction is that the gatherer should say that he is taking it against the groin, against all abscesses and against wounds, and should pick it with one hand. — What kind of plant trachinia is, is not recorded.
141| I believe that the promise of Democritus is false and monstrous, that tied on as an amulet for three days it consumes the spleen. — Tragonis, or tragion, grows only on the coasts of the island of Crete, like the juniper in seed, leaf and branches. Its milky juice thickened into a gum, or the seed in a draught, [….] expels arrowheads from the body; it is pounded fresh and applied with wine, or the meal of the dried plant with honey. The same plant produces an abundance of milk and is a remedy without equal for the breasts.
142| — There is also another plant, tragos, which some call scorpion, half a foot high, shrubby, leafless, with tiny reddish clusters of grains like wheat, and a sharp tip; it too grows by the sea. Of its clusters, 10 or 12 tips, pounded and taken in wine, help coeliac patients, dysentery, those who spit blood, and excessive menstruation. — There is also tragopogon, which others call come, with a small stem, the leaves of the crocus, a long sweet root, and above the stem a broad black calyx. It grows in rough places and is eaten, but it has no medicinal use.
143| So much, then, have we received or discovered about plants that are worth recording. At their close we judge it not beside the point to give a reminder that different plants keep their potency for different spans of time. Elaterium lasts the longest, as we have said; black chamaeleon 40 years; centaurium not beyond 12; peucedanum and aristolochia up to 6; the wild vine a year — if they are kept in the shade. And of all other animals none touches the roots we have described except the sphondyle, which goes after every one of them. It is a kind of serpent.
144| Nor is this doubted either: that the potency and effect of all roots is lessened if the fruit ripens first, and likewise the potency of the seeds if the root has first been cut for the sake of its juice. Moreover, the potency of them all is undone by habit, and those that have been in daily use cease to help when they are needed, just as they cease to harm. All plants, however, are stronger in effect and potency in cold and northerly places, and likewise in dry ones.
145| There are also no small differences between peoples: thus we are told that tapeworms and intestinal worms occur in the peoples of Egypt, Arabia, Syria and Cilicia, while in those of Thrace and Phrygia they do not breed at all. That is less surprising than that on the border of Attica and Boeotia they breed in the Thebans, while the Athenians are free of them.
146| This reflection carries us on to the natures of the animals themselves, and to the cures for all diseases inborn in them, which are perhaps more certain still. For again, since the parent of things willed that no animal should be born merely to feed itself or to fill others, and implanted health-giving arts even in their vitals — implanting them, indeed, even in things without sense — she willed above all that those most excellent aids to life should come from another living creature: a reflection marvellous before all others.

======== Natural History — Book XXVIII ========

1| We had described the natures of all the things that grow between sky and earth, and there remained those that are dug out of the earth itself, had not the treatment of the remedies from plants and shrubs drawn us aside to the animals themselves, since a greater medicine has been found in the very creatures that are healed. What then? Having described plants and the forms of flowers and many things rare and hard to find, shall we keep silent about what in man himself is good for man, and about the other kinds of remedies that live among us — especially when, unless one is free of pains and diseases, life itself becomes a punishment?
2| By no means; we shall spend every effort on it, though the danger of disgusting the reader presses hard, since we have resolved to have less regard for pleasing than for the usefulness of life. Indeed, we shall track down foreign practices too, and even barbarous rites. Let the question of credibility be referred to the authorities alone, although we ourselves have taken pains to choose these things by something close to a consensus of judgment, and have applied ourselves to careful selection rather than to quantity.
3| It is very necessary to point this out: we have already described the natures of animals and the discoveries each has made — for they have helped no less by discovering medicines than they help by supplying them — and now we are setting out the aids that are found in the animals themselves; not that these were wholly passed over there. So these are indeed different matters, but connected with those.
4| We shall begin, then, with man seeking his remedies from himself, and at once an immense difficulty confronts us. Sufferers from the epileptic [disease] even drink the blood of gladiators, as from living cups — though it is a horror to watch even wild beasts doing the same in that same arena. But, by Hercules, they think it most effective to suck from the man himself the blood, warm and breathing, and the very life itself from the kiss of the wounds, when it is not human custom to put one's mouth even to the wounds of wild beasts. Others seek out the marrow in the bones of the legs, and infants' brains.
5| And not a few among the Greeks have even described the flavours of the individual organs and limbs, pursuing everything down to the parings of the nails — as though health could be thought to consist in turning from a man into a wild beast, and in deserving disease in the very cure; a fine disappointment, by Hercules, if it does not help. To look upon human entrails is held a sin: what then of chewing them? Who invented these things, Osthanes?
6| For it is with you that I have to deal, overthrower of human law and craftsman of monstrosities, who first established them — I suppose so that life should not forget you. Who discovered how to chew the individual limbs of a man? Led on by what conjecture? What origin can that medicine have had? Who made poisonings more innocent than remedies? Granted that barbarians and foreigners had invented the rites: did the Greeks too make these arts their own?
7| There are treatises of Democritus stating that for one purpose the bones from the head of a criminal are more beneficial, for others those of a friend and guest. Apollonius wrote that it is most effective to scarify the gums when they ache with the tooth of a man killed by violence; Meletos, that cataracts of the eyes are healed with human gall; Artemon gave water from a spring, drunk at night from the skull of a man who had been killed and not cremated, for epilepsy. From the skull of a man who had died by hanging, Antaeus made pills against the bites of a mad dog.
8| And they have even healed quadrupeds with man, inserting human bones through holes bored in the horns of oxen against flatulence, and giving pigs for their diseases siligo that had lain overnight in a place where a man had been killed or cremated. Far from us and from our writings be such things! We shall speak of aids, not of abominations: where the use of the milk of women who have just given birth can heal, where saliva or the touch of the body can, and other such things.
9| We do not, for our part, think life so much to be desired that it must be dragged out by any means at all. Whoever you are, you will die just the same, even if you have lived foully or wickedly. Let each man therefore hold this first among the remedies of his mind: that of all the good things nature has given to man, none is better than a timely death, and that the best thing in it is that each man can provide it for himself.
10| Of the remedies drawn from man, the first raises a very great question, one that is always unsettled: whether words and the incantations of charms have any power. If they do, it would be fitting that the credit for it be given to man; but taken one by one, the belief of all the wisest men rejects it, while taken as a whole, life believes it at every hour without noticing. Indeed, it is thought that sacrificing victims without a prayer is of no avail, and that without one the gods are not properly consulted.
11| Moreover, there is one form of words for obtaining favourable omens, another for averting ill, another for commendation; and we see that the highest magistrates have made their supplications with fixed prayers, and that, so that no word may be skipped or spoken out of order, someone dictates them first from a written text, another again is assigned as a guard to watch, and yet another is appointed to order holy silence, while a piper plays so that nothing else may be heard. Both kinds of occurrence are notably on record: how often ill-omened cries breaking in have done harm, and how often the prayer has gone wrong; and then suddenly the head or the heart has vanished from the entrails, or been doubled, while the victim was standing.
12| There endures, in the mighty example of the Decii, father and son, the formula with which they devoted themselves; there survives the plea of the Vestal Tuccia when she was accused of unchastity, with whose aid she carried water in a sieve, in the 519th year of the City. Even our own age has seen a Greek man and a Greek woman buried alive in the Forum Boarium, or people of other nations with whom we were then at war. If anyone reads the prayer for this rite, which the master of the college of the Fifteen is accustomed to dictate first, he will surely acknowledge the power of charms, since the events of 830 years confirm it all.
13| We believe today that our Vestals, by a prayer, root runaway slaves to the spot, provided they have not yet left the City; and yet, if that principle is once accepted, that the gods hear any prayers or are moved by any words, the whole conjecture must be conceded. Our ancestors, at any rate, always believed such things, and the most difficult of them, that even thunderbolts can be called down, as we have shown in its proper place.
14| Lucius Piso, in the first book of his annals, is the authority that King Tullus Hostilius, trying from the books of Numa to call down Jupiter from heaven by the same sacrifice as Numa had used, was struck by lightning because he had done certain things not in the proper rite; and many indeed believe that the fates and portents of great affairs are altered by words.
15| When men digging the foundations in the shrine on the Tarpeian hill had found a human head, and envoys of Etruria had been sent to him on that account, the most celebrated seer, Olenus Calenus, seeing that it was a splendid and fortunate thing, tried to transfer it to his own nation by a question, having first marked out with his staff the outline of the temple on the ground before him: "Is this what you mean, Romans? Here will be the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest, here we found the head?" The annals affirm most steadily that the fate would have passed over to Etruria, had not the envoys, forewarned by the seer's son, answered:
16| "We say the head was found not exactly here, but at Rome." They report that it happened a second time, when the clay four-horse chariot prepared for the pediment of the same shrine swelled in the kiln; and a second time, in a similar way, the omen was retained.
17| Let this suffice, so that it may be clear from examples that the powers of portents are even within our own control, and take effect according to how each has been received. In the discipline of the augurs, at any rate, it is agreed that neither curses nor any auspices concern those who, as they begin any matter, have declared that they do not observe them, than which gift of divine indulgence there is none greater. What? Are there not in the Twelve Tables themselves, in the words of the laws:
18| "whoever shall have charmed away crops," and elsewhere: "whoever shall have sung an evil charm"? Verrius Flaccus puts forward authorities whom he believes, that in sieges it was the custom of the Roman priests before all else to call out the god in whose protection that town stood, and to promise him the same or a greater worship among the Romans. And this rite endures in the discipline of the pontiffs, and it is agreed that for this reason the god in whose protection Rome stood was kept hidden, lest any of the enemy act in the same way.
19| There is no one who does not fear being bound fast by dire imprecations. To this belongs the rule that the shells of eggs, once anyone has sipped them out, and of snails, are at once broken or pierced with the same spoons. Hence Theocritus among the Greeks, Catullus among us, and most recently the imitation by Virgil of love incantations. Many believe the products of potteries are broken in this way, and not a few believe the same even of snakes, and that they themselves can chant back, and that this is the one thing they understand, and that they are drawn together by the song of the Marsi even in the quiet of night.
20| Already walls are inscribed with entreaties against fires. And it is not easy to say whether foreign and unutterable words destroy belief more powerfully, or Latin and unexpected ones, which the mind, always expecting something immense and worthy of moving a god, nay rather something to command the divine power, forces to seem ridiculous.
21| Homer said that Ulysses checked a flow of blood from a wounded thigh by a charm; Theophrastus, that sufferers from sciatica are cured; Cato handed down a charm to help dislocated limbs, Marcus Varro one for gout. They say the dictator Caesar, after one dangerous accident in a carriage, was always accustomed, as soon as he had sat down, to repeat a charm three times, which we know very many now do, to lay hold on safety on his journeys.
22| It pleases me to convict this part also by the conscience of individuals. For why do we on the first day of the beginning year wish one another good fortune with joyful prayers? Why at the public lustrations do we choose even auspicious names for those leading the victims? Why do we meet bewitchings with a peculiar adoration, some invoking the Greek Nemesis, whose statue for this reason is on the Capitol at Rome, although the name is not Latin?
23| Why at the mention of the dead do we call witness that their memory is not troubled by us? Why do we believe odd numbers more powerful for everything, and this is understood in the observation of days in fevers? Why at the first fruits of apples do we say that these are old, and wish for others new? Why do we greet those who sneeze, which they report even Tiberius Caesar, the gloomiest of men, as is agreed, insisted on in his carriage, and some think it more scrupulous also to greet by name?
24| Indeed, that absent persons sense in advance by a ringing of the ears conversations about themselves is an accepted belief. Attalus affirms that, if a scorpion is seen and one says "two," it is restrained and does not strike. And since the scorpion has reminded me: in Africa no one decides anything without first naming Africa, while among other nations they first call the gods to witness that they be willing. For if a table is present, we see that it is customary to put down a ring, since it is evident that even silent observances have power.
25| Another propitiates anxiety of mind by passing the finger with saliva behind the ear. When we show favour, we are even told by a proverb to press our thumbs. In adoring we bring the right hand to the lips and turn the whole body round, which the Gauls believe more scrupulous to do to the left. To adore lightning flashes with smacking of the lips is the consensus of nations.
26| Fires named during a banquet we ward off with water poured out beneath the table. When someone leaves a feast, to sweep the floor at the same time, or, while a guest is drinking, to have the table or sideboard removed, is judged most inauspicious. There is a discussion by Servius Sulpicius, a leading man, of why a table is not to be left; for at that time no more than the guests were being counted. For a dish or table to be called back by a sneeze, if something is not tasted afterwards, is counted among the evil omens [….] or altogether to be empty?
27| These practices were instituted by men who believed that the gods took part in every business and every hour, and who for that reason left them appeased even by our faults. Indeed it has also been noted when a banquet suddenly falls silent, but only when the number of those present is even, and this is a distress of rumour touching whichever of them it concerns. Food that slipped from the hand was in any case given back at the tables, and they forbade blowing on it for the sake of cleanliness; and auguries have been laid down from what one was saying or thinking when it happened; it is among the most accursed omens if it befalls a pontiff at a ceremonial feast. At any rate to put it back on the table and burn it to the Lar is an expiation.
28| Medicines, if they happen to have been set down on the table before being applied, they say do not help. To cut the nails on the Roman market days, in silence and starting from the index finger, is by the persuasion of many a matter of scruple; the hair, however, against falling out and pains of the head, on the 17th and 29th day of the moon. By a village law on very many estates of Italy it is provided that women walking along the roads must not twirl spindles, or carry them uncovered at all, since this is hostile to the hopes of all, above all of the crops.
29| Marcus Servilius Nonianus, a leading man of the state, not long ago, in fear of an eye inflammation, before he himself named it or anyone predicted it to him, used to fasten about his neck on a linen thread a paper inscribed with the two Greek letters PA; Mucianus, three times consul, used by the same observance a living fly in a white linen cloth, both declaring that they were themselves free of eye inflammation by these remedies. Charms certainly exist against hailstorms, against kinds of diseases and against burns, some even tried, but a great reluctance stands in the way of handing them down, in so great a variety of minds. Therefore about them let each think as he pleases.
30| The monstrous natures of men and their poisonous glances we have told of among the portents of nations, and many properties of animals, which it would be superfluous to repeat. The whole bodies of certain men are beneficial, as those of the families that are a terror to snakes: by touch alone, or by sucking, they relieve those who have been struck. To their kind belong the Psylli and the Marsi, and those called Ophiogenes in the island of Cyprus; of this family an envoy named Euagon, thrown by the consuls at Rome into a jar of snakes for the sake of a trial, gave a marvel, as the tongues licked about him.
31| The sign of that family, if it still endures, is a poisonous smell in the spring seasons. And their sweat also healed, not only their spittle. For those born on the island of Tentyra in the Nile are such a terror to crocodiles that the crocodiles flee even their voice. The inborn opposition of all these kinds is agreed to cure even by their presence, just as wounds are made worse by the entry of those who have ever been hurt by the tooth of a snake or a dog.
32| The same men spoil the broodings of hens and the offspring of cattle by miscarriage; so much poison remains from a harm once received that those who have suffered poisons become poisoners. The remedy is to wash their hands first and sprinkle with that water those whom you wish to cure. Again, those once struck by a scorpion are never afterwards stung by hornets, wasps or bees.
33| One will wonder less at this who knows that a garment that has been at a funeral is not touched by moths, and that snakes are hardly drawn out except with the left hand. From the discoveries of Pythagoras, which do not readily fail: an odd number of vowels in given names assigns lamenesses, loss of an eye and similar mishaps to the right side, an even number to the left. They say that difficult births are at once released when anyone has cast over the roof in which the pregnant woman lies a stone or missile belonging to those who have killed 3 creatures, each with a single blow: a man, a boar, a bear.
34| More credibly does a light-armed javelin do this, if it has been pulled out of a man's body and has not touched the ground; for brought in, it has the same effects. So too arrows drawn from a body, if they have not touched the ground, placed beneath those lying down, are a love charm, Orpheus and Archelaus write; and that the falling sickness is cured by food from the flesh of a wild beast killed with the same iron with which a man was slain. The parts of certain men are medicinal, as we said of the thumb of King Pyrrhus; and at Elis there used to be shown a bone of Pelops, and they asserted that the arm was ivory. (To shave moles on the face is still thought forbidden by many.)
35| But above all we have shown that fasting spittle is a protection against snakes, yet life recognizes other effective uses of it. We spit at epileptic fits, that is, we throw the contagion back. In a similar way we also beat back bewitchings and the encounter with a man lame in the right foot.
36| We also ask pardon from the gods for some bolder hope by spitting into the lap, and further, by the same reasoning, it is the custom in every kind of medicine to spit three times with a prayer and so assist the effects, and to mark beginning boils three times beforehand with fasting spittle. I say a wonder, but easy by experiment: if anyone regrets a blow dealt from a distance or at close quarters and spits at once into the middle of the hand with which he struck, the fault in the one struck is at once relieved. This is often proved in a lamed four-footed animal, the animal's gait being set right at once by such a remedy.
37| Some, however, make blows heavier before the attempt by throwing spittle into the hand in a similar way. Let us believe then that lichens and leprosies are warded off by the continual smearing of fasting spittle; likewise eye inflammations, by a daily morning smearing as it were; cancers, by a poultice of the earth-apple; pains of the neck, by fasting spittle carried with the right hand to the right hollow of the knee, with the left to the left; and if some creature has entered the ear and one spits in, it comes out.
38| Among amulets is to spit on one's own passed urine, likewise into the right foot's shoe before putting it on, likewise when one passes a place in which he has met some danger. Marcion of Smyrna, who wrote on simple remedies, reports that sea scolopendrae are burst by spittle, likewise toads and other frogs; Ofilius, snakes, if one spits into their gaping mouth; Salpe, that numbness is eased in whatever limb has gone to sleep, if one spits into the lap or touches the upper eyelids with saliva.
39| Why should we not believe that these things are rightly done: that at the approach of a stranger, or if an infant is looked at while asleep, the nurse spits three times into its mouth? Though indeed the fascinus also protects it with a religious force, the guardian not only of infants but of generals as well, a god who is worshipped among the Roman rites by the Vestals, and which, hanging beneath the chariots of those celebrating triumphs, defends them as a physician against envy, and a like medicine of the tongue bids the same men look back, so that Fortune, the executioner of glory, may be entreated from behind.
40| The bite of a man is counted among the harshest. Wax from the ears heals it, and, lest anyone wonder, also stings of scorpions and of snakes when applied at once, better when taken from the ears of the one struck. They report that hangnails are also healed in this way, and a snake's stroke by the powder of a crushed human tooth.
41| The hair of a boy that has first been cut off is said to relieve an attack of gout when tied around; and in general the hair of those not yet grown, and of men too, applied, heals bites of dogs with vinegar and wounds of the head with oil or wine; if we believe it, hair pulled from a cross is for quartans, and burnt hair certainly for cancer. The first tooth of a boy that has fallen, so long as it does not touch the earth, enclosed in a bracelet and constantly kept on the arm, prevents pains of the women's parts.
42| The big toe tied to the next toe quiets swellings of the groin; on the right hand the 2 middle fingers lightly bound with linen thread keep off catarrhs and eye inflammations. Further, a little stone passed out by someone with the stone, and tied above the pubes, is said to relieve others, and also pains of the liver, and to make childbirth quick; Granius adds that for this one extracted with iron is more effective. The male by whom a woman has conceived also speeds birth, if he loosens his girdle and girds the woman, then loosens it with a prayer added, that he has girded and will loosen, and goes away.
43| Orpheus and Archelaus report that quinsy is most effectively smeared with the patient's own blood, let from whatever part, likewise the faces of those fallen in the falling sickness, for they rise at once; some, if the thumbs of the feet are pricked and those drops are carried to the face, or if a virgin touches with the right thumb, judging by this conjecture that virgins' flesh should be eaten.
44| Aeschines of Athens cured quinsies and tonsils and uvulas and cancers with the ash of excrement. This medicine he called botryon. Many kinds of diseases are dissolved by the first intercourse and the first month of women, or, if this has not occurred, become long-lasting, above all the falling sickness. Further, they report that those struck by a snake or a scorpion are relieved by intercourse, but that women are harmed by that act. They say that faults of the eyes do not occur, and that those who touch their eyes three times with the water, when washing their feet, do not get inflamed eyes.
45| They affirm that by the hand of those snatched away by untimely death scrofulous swellings, swellings of the parotid glands and goitres are healed by touch, and some say by that of any dead person, at least of his own sex, with the left hand turned away. They also report that it is a remedy to bite off a piece of wood struck by lightning, with the hands held behind the back, and apply it to a tooth that aches. There are those who instruct that a tooth be fumigated with a tooth of a person of its own sex, and that the one called the canine be taken from an unburied body and tied on.
46| They report that earth from a skull is a depilatory for the eyelids, but that a herb, if any has been generated there, chewed makes teeth fall out, and that ulcers do not spread when circled with a human bone. Others mix waters from three wells in equal measure and pour a libation from a new earthen vessel, giving the rest to drink in tertians at the approach of the fevers. The same, in quartans, tie round the neck a piece of a nail taken from a cross, wrapped in wool, or a rope of esparto from a cross, and when the patient is freed they hide it in a hollow that the sun does not touch.
47| These are inventions of the Magi: that a whetstone on which iron tools have often been sharpened, placed unawares beneath the pillows of someone failing from poisoning, draws out a disclosure, so that he himself says what was given to him, and where, and at what time, though he does not name the culprit. A man struck by lightning, at any rate, turned toward the wound, is agreed to speak at once.
48| Some cure the groin by taking a thread from a web and tying it with nine or seven knots, naming at each some widow, and so binding it on the groin. They also order that a thread be worn, with a nail or anything else on which one has trodden tied on, so that the wound does not cause pain. Warts they remove from the twentieth day of the moon, lying on their backs on the boundary paths, looking at the moon itself with hands stretched beyond the head, and rubbing with whatever they have grasped.
49| A corn of the body, they say, if anyone scrapes it off when a star falls, is quickly healed; that with vinegar poured on the hinges of doors, mud smeared on the forehead quiets headache, and likewise the noose of a hanged man put around the temples. If a piece of fish has stuck in the throat, it falls out if the feet are lowered into cold water; if indeed of other bones, with little bones from the same vessel set on the head; if bread sticks, with bread from the same loaf put in each ear.
50| Indeed, the filth of man has also been made into great remedies by the gains of the Greek gymnasia, since those scrapings soften, warm, disperse and fill, the sweat and oil making the medicine. They are applied to inflamed and contracted wombs; so too they bring on the courses, soothe inflammations of the seat and condylomata, likewise pains of the sinews, dislocations, knots of the joints.
51| Scrapings from the baths are more effective for the same purposes, and for that reason they are mixed into suppurative medicines. For those which are made from the wax ointment mixed with mud only soften the joints, warm and disperse more effectively, but are less strong for the rest.
52| Beyond belief is the shameless care with which authorities cry out that the filth of the male member is a remedy, singular and most celebrated, against stings of scorpions; and again, in women, that what is produced from the bowels of infants, in the womb itself, is to be applied against sterility; they call it meconium. Indeed they have even scraped the walls of the gymnasia, and that filth too is said to have a heating force; it disperses boils, and is smeared on the ulcers of old men and boys and on scaly or burnt places. So much the less is it fitting to omit remedies that depend on the mind of man.
53| To abstain from all food or drink, at other times only from wine or meat, at other times from baths, as the state of health may demand, is counted among the most immediate remedies. To these are reckoned exercise, straining of the voice, anointing, rubbing with method; for vigorous rubbing thickens, gentle rubbing softens, much takes flesh away, moderate increases it.
54| Above all walking is beneficial, being carried and that in many ways, riding on horseback most useful for the stomach and hips, sailing for consumption, change of places for long diseases, likewise healing oneself by sleep or by the couch and by rare vomiting. Lying on the back suits the eyes, but on the face for coughs, on the sides against catarrhs. Aristotle and Fabianus report that most dreaming occurs around spring and autumn, and more when lying on the back, but none on the face; Theophrastus, that digestion is quicker when lying on the right side, harder from the back.
55| The sun also, greatest of remedies, can be provided by each man for himself, as can the vigour of linens and scrapers. To pour warm water over the head before the steaming of the baths and cold afterward is understood to be most healthful; likewise to take cold beforehand with food and to interpose it, and to precede sleep with a drink of it and, if one pleases, to interrupt it. It is to be noted that no other animal follows warm drinks, and for this reason they are not natural.
56| To rinse the mouth with unmixed wine before sleep on account of the breath, with cold water in the mornings, in an odd number, to guard against pains of the teeth, likewise the eyes with vinegar-water against inflammations, are sure experiments, just as, for the health of the whole body, is a varied diet that keeps no fixed rules. Hippocrates reports that the bowels of those who do not take a midday meal age sooner; but this he sang for remedies, not for feasts, since moderation in food is by far the most useful. Lucius Lucullus had given his slave this charge over himself, and as the last disgrace the hand of an old man who had celebrated a triumph was struck from food, even when feasting on the Capitol, the shameful thing being that he obeyed his slave more readily than himself.
57| Sneezes with a feather correct a heavy cold, and if anyone touches the nostrils of a mule with a kiss, as they report, sneezing and hiccup. For this Varro advises scratching the palm of one hand with the other in turn; most people move a ring from the left hand onto the right's longest finger, or plunge the hands into boiling water. Theophrastus says that old men sneeze with greater difficulty.
58| Democritus condemned sexual intercourse, as that in which one man leaps out of another man. And, by Hercules, rarity of it is more useful. Athletes, however, when sluggish, are restored by intercourse, and the voice is recalled when it declines from clear to dark. It also cures pain of the loins, dullness of the eyes, the mad and the melancholic.
59| To sit beside women who are pregnant, or when remedies are applied to anyone, with the fingers interlaced like a comb, is sorcery, and they report this was discovered when Alcmena was giving birth to Hercules; it is worse if around one or both knees; likewise to lay the hams of one leg on the other knee. Therefore our forebears forbade these things in the councils of generals or magistrates, as impeding every action, and forbade likewise to be present at sacrifices or vows in a similar posture;
60| and that heads be uncovered at the sight of magistrates they ordered not for the sake of veneration but, as Varro is the authority, for the sake of health, since the heads were made firmer by the custom. When something has fallen into the eye, it helps to press the other; with water in the right little ear, to hop on the left foot with the head tilted toward the right shoulder, and in turn from the opposite ear; if spittle excites cough, to be breathed on the forehead by another; if the uvula is slack, to have the crown of the head lifted by another's bite; in pain of the neck, to rub the hams, or the neck against the hams;
61| to set the feet on the ground, if the sinews are drawn in them or in the legs in bed, or, if this occurs on the left side, to grasp the thumb of the left sole with the right hand, and likewise the reverse; to bind the extremities of the body with fleeces against shudderings or excessive bleeding of the nose, [….] with linen or papyrus the beginnings of the genitals, the middle of the thigh to hold back flows of urine; in looseness of the stomach, to press the feet or to dip the hands into boiling water.
62| Further, to spare speech also is healthful for many reasons. We have received that for three years Maecenas Melissus imposed silence on himself, after blood was brought up from a rupture. For those thrown down, and those climbing, and those lying, if some danger threatens, and against blows, to hold the breath is of singular protection, which we have shown was discovered by an animal.
63| To drive an iron nail in the place where the head first struck, in one who falls down in the falling sickness, is said to be a release from that evil. Against torment of the kidneys or loins or bladder, to pass urine bent forward in the tubs of the baths is held to be a mitigation. To bind wounds with the knot of Hercules is wonderfully quicker as a remedy,
64| And even the everyday girdle, tied with such a knot, is said to have a certain useful force, since Demetrius, in a volume he composed, has declared the number four also to be Herculean, and explained why four cyathi or four sextarii should not be drunk at a time. Against eye inflammations it helps to rub behind the ears, and for watering eyes the forehead. An omen from the man himself of not fearing death in sickness is this: as long as the pupils of the eyes give back an image.
65| Great account, and not only account but scruple, is found among authors concerning urine, divided into kinds, even that of eunuchs for sorceries of fertility. But of those things which it is right to relate: that of boys before puberty against the spittle of asps, which they call ptyades, because they spit poisons into the eyes of men; against whites of the eyes, dimnesses, scars, the argema, the eyelids, and with meal of bitter vetch against burns; against the pus of the ears and little worms, if it is boiled down to half with a headed leek in a new earthen vessel. Steaming with it also brings on the courses of women.
66| Salpe bathes the eyes with it with [….] for firmness, and smears it on sunburn with the white of an egg (more effectively, an ostrich's), for two hours at a time. With this, stains of ink are also washed away. That of a man cures gout, the evidence being the fullers, who for that reason are said not to be attacked by that disease. Old urine is mixed with the ash of oysters against eruptions on the body of infants and all running ulcers. It is smeared on eaten-away places, burns, faults of the seat, cracks of the skin and stings of scorpions.
67| The renown of midwives has declared that itchings of the body are cured more effectively by no other juice, with natron added, ulcers of the head, scurf, nomae, especially of the genitals. One's own urine, so far as it is right to say, helps each person most: when poured over at once a dog's bite, and the spines of sea urchins that stick in, and applied on a sponge or wool; or against the bites of a mad dog, with the ash of it kneaded in; and against the strokes of snakes. For against scolopendrae it is reported to be wonderful that, the crown of the head touched with a drop of one's own urine, those hurt are freed at once.
68| Omens of health are given from it: if in the morning it is clear, then reddish; in the former way it is signified that digestion is going on, in the latter that it has been completed. Red kinds are bad signs, black worst, bubbling bad. Thick urine, in which what settles is white, signifies that pain threatens about the joints or the viscera; the same when green, a disease of the viscera; pale, of bile; reddish, of blood. Bad also is that in which something like bran and little clouds appear.
69| Diluted white urine too is faulty, and deadly is the thick with a heavy smell, and in boys the thin and diluted. The Magi forbid, because of it, being naked against the sun and moon, or that anyone's shadow be sprinkled by it. Hesiod advises that it be passed beside something that stands in the way, lest nakedness offend some god. Osthanes promised that each person's own urine, dropped on the foot in the morning, is an aid against all evil drugs.
70| What is reported from the bodies of women adds to the miracles of portents, to say nothing of the crimes of abortion broken up limb by limb, the expiations of the courses, and the other things which not only midwives but even the prostitutes themselves have disclosed: that if hair is burnt, snakes are put to flight by the smell; that by the same odour women strangled by disease of the womb breathe again;
71| that with its ash, if burnt in a potsherd or with the froth of silver, roughness and itchings of the eyes are corrected, likewise warts and ulcers of infants; with honey, wounds of the head also and the hollows of all ulcers; with honey and frankincense added, boils; gout; with swine's fat, the sacred fire; blood is stopped when it is smeared on; likewise creeping sensations of the body.
72| About the use of milk it is agreed that it is the sweetest and softest, and most useful in a long fever and for coeliac complaints, most of all that of a woman who has already weaned her infant. Also in softness of the stomach, in fevers, in gnawing pains they find it most effective; likewise for collections in the breasts with frankincense, and for an eye with blood suffused by a blow and in pain or in a flux, if it is milked into it, it helps greatly, more so with honey and juice of narcissus or the fine powder of frankincense, and above all, in every use, that of a woman who has borne a male is more effective, and by far the most effective that of one who has borne twin males, and if she herself abstains from wine and sharper foods.
73| Moreover, mixed with the liquid white of eggs and applied to the forehead on wool soaked in it, it checks flowings of the eyes. Even if a frog has sprinkled an eye with its spittle, it is a special remedy, and it is drunk and dropped in against its bite. They affirm that a person anointed with the milk of a mother and her daughter together is freed from every fear for the eyes for the whole of life. It also cures faults of the ears, with oil mixed in moderately, or warmed with goose fat if they pain from a blow. If the smell is rather heavy, as often happens in long-standing faults, it is shut in on wool with diluted honey.
74| And against jaundice left in the eyes it is dropped in with elaterium. It is especially strong when drunk against poisons given from the sea hare, buprestis, or even, as Aristotle reports, dorycnium, and against madness caused by a drink of hyoscyamus. They also order it smeared on for gout, with hemlock, others with oesypum and goose fat, in which manner it is also applied for pains of the womb. It even stops the belly when drunk, as Rabirius writes, and brings on the courses. But that of a woman
75| who has borne a girl is strong only for healing faults in the face. The ailments of the lungs are also cured by woman's milk; if to it are mixed the urine of a boy before puberty and Attic honey, all in the measure of a spoonful of each, I find that worms of the ears are also driven out. They say that dogs do not go mad after tasting milk from a woman who has borne a male.
76| The fasting spittle of a woman also they judge powerful for bloodshot eyes and against fluxes, if the corners of the eyes, when they are inflamed, are moistened with it again and again, more effectively if she has abstained the day before from food and wine. I find also that pains are lessened by tying the head with a woman's band.
77| After this there is no limit. First, that hailstorms and whirlwinds are driven off, and against lightning itself, when the woman's monthly flow is bared; thus the violence of the sky is turned aside, and in sailing storms indeed even without the menses. But concerning the menses themselves, which at other times are portentous, as we have indicated in its place, they prophesy dire and unspeakable things, of which it is no shame to have spoken: that if that force coincides with eclipses of the moon or sun it becomes beyond remedy, no less at the silent moon, and that intercourse is then deadly and pestilential to males,
78| and that purple cloth too is polluted by them at that time; so much greater is the force. But in any other flow, if women go around a cornfield naked, caterpillars and little worms and beetles and other noxious creatures fall off, Metrodorus of Scepsis reports it was discovered in Cappadocia on account of the multitude of cantharides; so they go through the midst of the fields, their garments lifted over the buttocks. Elsewhere it is observed that they go with bare feet, with hair and girdle loosened. They must take care not to do it at sunrise, for the seedlings then dry up, and new growths are injured for ever by the touch, and rue and ivy, the most medicinal of things, die at once.
79| We have said much about this violence, but besides those things it is certain that bees flee when their hives are touched; that linens turn black when they are boiled; that the edge of razors is blunted; that bronze takes on a heavy poisonous smell on contact, and verdigris, more if it happens while the moon is waning; that mares, if pregnant, suffer miscarriage when touched, and indeed by sight alone, however far off they are seen, if that purging is the first after virginity or continues in a virgin of its own accord at the proper age.
80| We have shown that bitumen, which is produced in Judaea, is overcome by this force alone, by the thread of a garment that has touched it. It is not conquered even by fire, which conquers everything, and even that ash, if anyone sprinkles it on clothes to be washed, changes purple, takes the bloom from colours, and not even the women themselves are immune from it among themselves, to their own harm: it causes abortion by smearing, or if a pregnant woman simply steps over it.
81| What Lais and Elephantis have handed down, contradicting each other, about an abortive charcoal from the root of cabbage or myrtle or tamarisk quenched in that blood, and likewise that she-asses do not conceive for as many years as the grains of barley they have eaten that were touched, and whatever else they have announced that is monstrous or at war with itself, since the same writers declared that fertility is made by the same means as they declared sterility, it is better not to believe.
82| Bithus of Dyrrhachium reports that mirrors dulled by the glance recover their brightness if the same women look at them again turned away, and that all such force is dissolved if they have a mullet fish with them; many indeed hold that there are even remedies in so great an evil: that gout is smeared with it, scrofulous swellings and swellings of the parotid and boils, sacred fires, furuncles and fluxes of the eyes are eased by the handling of those women; Lais and Salpe, the bites of mad dogs and tertian and quartan fevers, with menstrual blood in black ram's wool enclosed in a silver armlet,
83| Diotimus of Thebes, or even a small piece of a garment so stained, or a thread inserted into the armlet. Sotira, a midwife, said it is most effective for tertians and quartans to smear under the soles of the sick person, and much more effective by the woman herself and unknown to the patient; that so also epileptics are roused. The physician Icatidas promised that quartans are ended by intercourse, at least when the menses are beginning.
84| But among all it is agreed that if water and drink are dreaded because of the bite of a dog, merely a piece of such a cloth placed under the cup at once dispels that fear, evidently by the prevailing of that sympathy of the Greeks, since we have said that the madness of dogs begins from tasting this blood. It is certain that with that ash all ulcers of beasts of burden are healed, with the powder of furnaces and wax added, and that stains from a garment are washed out by nothing but the urine of the same woman,
85| that the ash alone, mixed with oil of roses, quiets above all women's pains of the head when smeared on the forehead, and that the harshest force of that flow is by itself in the years after virginity has been loosed. This too is agreed, than which nothing would I more gladly believe, that when the doorposts are touched at all with the menstrual blood, the arts of the Magi are made void, a race of the emptiest sort, as can be judged.
86| For I will set down even the most modest of their promises, namely that from a man the parings of the nails of feet and hands, mixed with wax in such a way that it is said a remedy is being sought for a tertian, quartan or daily fever, they order to be fastened before sunrise to someone else's door as remedies in these diseases, with how great folly, if it is false, how great harm, if they transfer the diseases! More harmless of these, they order the parings of the nails of all the fingers to be thrown to the holes of the ants, and the ant that first begins to drag one away to be seized and tied around the neck; so the disease is dispelled.
87| These are things which it may be right to have related, and most of them are not to be spoken except with a pardon asked; the rest are unspeakable, unutterable, so that my discourse hastens to flee from man. In the remaining matters we shall follow the famous animals or their works. The blood of the elephant, above all of the male, checks all flowings, which they call rheumatisms.
88| With shavings of ivory and Attic honey, as they say, films on the face are removed; with sawdust of it, whitlows. By the touch of the trunk, headache is relieved, more effectively if it also sneezes. The right part of the trunk, tied on with Lemnian red earth, rouses the impulses of desire. The blood is beneficial also to those in wasting decline, and the liver for the falling sicknesses.
89| The fat of a lion with oil of roses guards the skin of the face from blemishes and gives it whiteness; it also heals parts burnt by snow, and swellings of the joints. The emptiness of the Magi promises, for those anointed with that fat, more ready favour among peoples or kings, above all with that fat which lies between the eyebrows, where none can be.
90| Similar things are promised of the tooth, especially from the right side, and of the hairs from the lower muzzle. The gall, with water added, gives brightness to eyes anointed with it, and with the fat of the same it disperses the falling sicknesses, by a light taste, so that those who have taken it at once work it off by running. The heart taken as food cures quartans; the fat with oil of roses, daily fevers. Wild beasts flee those anointed with it; it seems also to resist ambushes.
91| The brain of a camel, dried and drunk in vinegar, they say cures falling sicknesses; likewise the gall drunk with honey, this also for quinsy; that the tail, dried, loosens the belly; that the ash of the dung makes hair curl, with oil. And the ash smeared on and drunk, as much as is taken with 3 fingers, helps those with dysentery, and also falling sicknesses. They report that the urine is most useful to fullers, and for running ulcers likewise; the barbarians keep it for five years, and in measures of a hemina, drunk, it moves the belly; that bristles from the tail, twisted and tied on the left arm, cure quartans.
92| The hyena the Magi have placed in greatest admiration of all animals, inasmuch as they have attributed to it magical arts and a force by which it draws men to itself, alienating their minds. The changes of sex in a yearly turn, and the other monstrous things of its nature, we have told; now we shall go through whatever is reported in medicines.
93| It is reported to be a special terror to panthers, so that they do not even attempt to resist, and that one who has something from its hide is not attacked, and, wonderful to say, if the pelts of both, opposed, are hung up, the hairs of the panther fall off. When hyenas flee the hunter, they turn to the right, so as to get onto the footprints of the man who has gone ahead; if this succeeds, the man's mind is deranged and the man even falls from his horse; but if it veers to the left, it is a proof of failing and of a quick capture, and it is caught more easily if the hunter has tied his girdles and the whip that urges his horse with seven knots each.
94| Next, as the vanity of the Magi is skilful in roundabout ways, they order it to be caught when the moon is passing the sign of the Twins, and almost every single hair to be kept; that the skin which was on its head, tied on, is beneficial for headache; for eye inflammation the gall smeared on the forehead, or, so that there be no inflammation at all, boiled down with 3 cyathi of Attic honey and an ounce of saffron and used as an ointment; so films and cataracts are also dispersed;
95| that brightness is aroused better by an aged preparation, which is kept in a Cyprian box; that with the same the argema is healed, roughnesses, excrescences in the eyes, likewise scars, and glaucomata, when the eyes are anointed with the juice of a fresh roasted liver and honey skimmed of its froth. Its teeth help toothache by touch, or tied on in numerical order, and pains of shoulders and arms; the teeth of the same, but from the left part of the muzzle, tied on with the skin of a sheep or goat, torments of the stomach;
96| the lungs taken as food, for coeliac complaints, or the ash of the stomach smeared on with oil; for sinews, the marrow from the back with old oil and gall; for quartan fevers, the liver tasted three times before the onsets; for gout, the ash of the spine with the tongue and the right foot of a seal, with bull's gall added, all cooked together and smeared on with hyena skin; in the same disease the gall also helps with Assian stone;
97| for the tremulous, spasmodic, those who start up, and those whose heart palpitates, some of the heart cooked, to be chewed, in such a way that the ash of the rest is smeared on with the hyena's brain; hairs also are removed by this compound smeared on, or by the gall by itself, once the hairs have been pulled out where it is not wished that they grow again; so also useless ones are taken off the eyelids; for pains of the loins, flesh from the loins to be eaten and smeared on with oil; sterility of women is corrected by the eye taken in food with liquorice and dill, conception being promised within three days.
98| Against night terrors and the fright of shades, one of the large teeth tied on with linen thread is told to help. They direct that madmen be fumigated with the same, and have it tied before their chest together with kidney fat or the liver or the hide. For a woman, white flesh from the hyena's breast and seven hairs and a stag's genitals, if tied on, hung from the neck in the skin of a roe,
99| are promised to keep her from miscarrying; that the genitals, taken in honey, each by its corresponding sex, stir desire, even if men hate intercourse with women; indeed that the harmony of a whole house stands, with the same genitals and a joint of the spine with the hide adhering preserved. Hence they skilfully call the joint of the spine the Atlantian knot; and it is the first. They also hold it among remedies for the falling sicknesses. They say serpents are put to flight when the fat is set alight;
100| that the jaw, crushed in anise and taken in food, quiets shudderings; that with the same fumigation the courses of women are brought on. And so great is the vanity that they deny that if the upper tooth of the right side of the muzzle is tied on the arm, the throws of javelin-casters will go astray. By the palate of the same, dried and warmed with Egyptian alum and changed three times in the mouth, foul smells and ulcers of the mouth are corrected; and that those who have the tongue in their shoe beneath the foot are not barked at by dogs;
101| that with the left part of the brain smeared on the nostrils, deadly diseases are mitigated, whether of men or of four-footed animals; that the skin of the forehead resists bewitchings; that the flesh of the neck, whether chewed or dried and drunk, is for pains of the loins; that pains of the sinews are to be fumigated with sinews from the back and shoulders; that hairs of the muzzle brought to women's lips are a love charm; that the liver, given in a drink, cures gripings and stones.
102| For the heart, taken in food or drink, helps all pains of the body; the spleen, spleens; the caul, with oil, inflammations of ulcers; the marrow, pains of the spine and weariness of the sinews; the sinews of the kidneys, drunk in wine with frankincense, restore fertility taken away by sorcery; the womb, given in a drink together with the rind of a sweet pomegranate, helps the womb of women; with the fat from the loins women who give birth with difficulty are fumigated and give birth at once; marrow from the back tied on helps against empty apparitions;
103| the male genitals by fumigation, for the spasmodic, likewise for those with inflamed eyes, ruptures, and against inflammations the opposite feet by touch, left feet on the right parts, right on the left; the left foot carried over a woman in labour is deadly, with the right carried in she delivers easily. The membrane that has held the gall, drunk in wine or taken in food, helps those with heart disease against [….]; the bladder drunk in wine, against incontinence of urine; and the urine found in the bladder,
104| drawn with oil and sesame and honey added, helps an old sharpness of the stomach. The first and eighth of the ribs, by fumigation, are salutary to those with ruptures; from the spine, bones for women in labour; the blood taken with barley meal, for gripings; with the same, the doorposts touched, wherever the arts of the Magi are plied, the gods are not drawn out and do not converse, whether it be tried with lamps or a basin or water or a ball or any other kind; the flesh, if eaten, is effective against the bites of a rabid dog, and the liver still more so.
105| The flesh or bones of a man which are found in the stomach of a hyena that has been killed help the gouty by fumigation; if nails are found in it, it signifies the death of one of those who caught it; excrement or bones passed up when it is killed are strong against magical ambushes; the dung found in its intestines, dried, is effective for dysentery, and drunk and smeared on with goose fat over the whole body it helps those hurt by an evil drug; for those bitten by a dog, the fat smeared on and the hide spread under them;
106| again, the ash of the left ankle bone boiled down with the blood of a weasel makes those anointed with it hated by all; the same is done by the eye, boiled down. Above all is this, that they point out the end of the pipe of the intestine against the injustices of leaders and men of power, and for success of petitions and the outcomes of trials and lawsuits, if one [only] has it with him at all; and the cavity of the same, tied on the left upper arm, if one looks at a woman, is a love charm so immediate that she follows at once; the ash of the hairs of the same place, smeared on with oil on men who are disgracefully soft, makes them take on severe, not merely chaste, manners.
107| Next is the fabulous crocodile, in nature also that one whose life is shared between water and land. For there are two kinds of them. Teeth from the right jaw of that one, tied on the right upper arm, stir desire, if we believe it; the canine teeth keep off regular fevers when filled with frankincense, for they are hollow, in such a way that for 5 days the one who has tied them on is not seen by the sick man. They report that little stones taken from its belly are strong against the shudderings of approaching fevers.
108| For the same reason the Egyptians anoint their sick with the fat. The other, like it, much smaller in size, lives only on land and among the most fragrant flowers; for that reason its intestines, filled with a pleasant smell, are carefully sought; they call it crocodilea, most useful for faults of the eyes, for those anointed with leek juice, and against cataracts or dimness.
109| Smeared on with cyprine oil, it also removes troubles arising on the face, and with water all diseases whose nature creeps over the face, and it restores brightness; it removes freckles and pimples and all blemishes. And against the falling sicknesses it is drunk in vinegar and honey, two obols at a time. Applied, it brings on the courses. The best is the whitest, and brittle, and least heavy, which when rubbed between the fingers ferments. It is washed like white lead.
110| They adulterate it with starch or Cimolian earth, but most of all with the dung of starlings which are caught and fed on rice only. For eyes anointed with the gall in honey, against cataracts, they declare nothing more useful. With the intestines and the rest of its body they say it is salutary to fumigate those suffering in the womb, likewise to wrap them round in fleeces soaked in the vapour of the same. The ash of the hide of either, smeared in vinegar on those parts that need cutting, or the smell of it burning, takes away all sensation of the scalpel.
111| The blood of either, to those anointed, rouses clearness of sight and corrects scars of the eyes. The body itself, except the head and feet, boiled, is eaten for sciatica and cures an old cough, above all in boys, and likewise pains of the loins. They also have a fat, by the touch of which hair falls off. This protects those anointed with it from crocodiles, and is dropped into bites. The heart, attached in the wool of a black sheep to which no other colour has run, and which was born of its mother's first lambing, is said to drive away quartans.
112| We shall join to these animals very like them and equally foreign, and first the chameleon, thought worthy by Democritus of a special volume and cursed limb by limb, the lies of Greek vanity being learned and set down not without great pleasure on our part. It is like the above-mentioned crocodile also in size, differing only by the sharper curve of the spine and the breadth of the tail.
113| No animal is thought more timid, and for that reason it has a changing of many colours. Its greatest force is against the kind of hawks. For it is reported to draw down to itself one flying over and to offer itself willingly to be torn by the other animals. Its head and throat, if burnt with oaken wood, make a gathering of rains and thunder, Democritus relates; likewise the liver burnt on tiles.
114| The rest that he says relating to sorceries, though we think it false, we shall omit, except where they will convict him by ridicule: that with the right eye, if it is torn out of the living animal, the whites of the eyes are removed, with goat's milk; that the tongue, tied on, averts the dangers of childbed; that the same animal is salutary to women in labour if it is in the house, but if it is brought in, most destructive. The tongue, if taken from the living animal, is strong for the outcomes of trials, the heart tied on in black wool of the first shearing against quartans.
115| That the right forefoot, bound to the left arm with a hyena's skin, is strong against robbers and night terrors, and likewise the right teat against frights and panics; that the left foot is roasted in an oven with a herb that is also called chameleon, and with ointment added these lozenges, stored in a wooden vessel, bring it about, if we believe it, that the one who has them is not seen by others.
116| That the right shoulder avails to conquer opponents or enemies, at any rate if the man has trodden on the sinews of the same cast away; the left, with what monstrous rites they consecrate it, and in what way dreams are sent, such as you wish and to whom you wish, I am ashamed to relate: all those things are undone by the right foot, as the lethargies that the right side has made are by the left side. But headaches are cured with wine sprinkled in which either side has been soaked; if swine's milk is mixed with the ash of a left thigh or foot, gouty persons are made so by smearing the feet.
117| With the gall cataracts and films are believed almost to be corrected by anointing for three days, snakes to be put to flight by it dropped on fires, weasels to be drawn together when it is thrown into water, and hairs to be pulled off when it is smeared on the body. He relates that the liver does the same smeared on with the lung of the bramble frog; moreover, that love charms are dissolved by the liver, and the melancholic cured if the juice of the herb Helenia is drunk from the hide of a chameleon; that the intestines and the stuffing of them, though that animal lives on no food, smeared on together with the urine of apes at the door of enemies, win for them the hatred of all men;
118| that by the tail rivers and rushes of waters are checked, snakes are put to sleep; that the same, treated with cedar and myrrh and bound to a double branch of palm, strikes the water and disperses it, so that all that lies within appears; and would that Democritus had been touched by that branch, since he promised that immoderate talkativeness is restrained in that way. And it is plain that a man in other ways shrewd and most useful to life slipped through too great a zeal for helping mortals.
119| Of the same likeness is the scincus, and some have said it is a land crocodile, though whiter and with a thinner skin. Its chief difference from the crocodile is recognized in the row of scales turned from tail to head. The largest is the Indian, then the Arabian. They are brought in salt. The snout and feet, drunk in white wine, kindle desires of love, particularly when satyrion and seed of rocket, one drachma each of all, and 2 of pepper, are mixed in, and lozenges of a drachma each are drunk.
120| By itself, the flesh of the flanks, two obols with myrrh and pepper in like manner, drunk, is believed more effective for the same. It helps also against the poisons of arrows, as Apelles reports, taken before and after. It is added also to famous antidotes. Sextius reports that more than a drachma's weight drunk in a hemina of wine brings destruction, and besides that the broth of the same boiled with honey, taken, checks desire.
121| The crocodile has a certain kinship with the hippopotamus, which shares its river and its twofold way of life; this animal is the discoverer, as we have said, of letting blood, and is most plentiful above the Saitic prefecture. The ash of its hide, smeared on with water, heals boils; the fat, cold fevers, likewise the dung by fumigation; the teeth from the left side, toothache, the gums being scarified. Its skin from the left part of the forehead, tied to the groin, checks desire; the ash of the same fills out bald places. A drachma of the testicle is drunk in water against snakes. Painters use the blood.
122| Foreign too are lynxes, which see most clearly of all four-footed animals. They report that all their claws with the hide are burnt most effectively on the island of Carpathus. With this ash drunk the shameful acts of men are checked, with the sprinkling of it the lusts of women, likewise itchings of the body; the urine, the dripping of the bladder. Therefore it is reported that the lynx buries it at once with earth heaped up by its feet. The same is also shown as a remedy for pain of the throat. So far, foreign animals.
123| Now we shall turn to our own world, and first we shall tell the remedies common to animals and the outstanding ones, as from the use of milk. Most useful to each is the mother's. For nurses to conceive is ruinous; for these are the infants who are called colostrati, the milk thickened to the likeness of cheese. Colostra is the first spongy thickening of milk after birth. Whatever is human nourishes most, then goat's, whence perhaps the fables said Jupiter was so nourished. Sweetest after man's is camel's, most effective that of asses. That of large animals and bodies is more easily given back.
124| Most suited to the stomach is goat's, since goats feed on foliage rather than grass; cow's is more medicinal, sheep's sweeter and more nourishing, less useful to the stomach, since it is fatter. All spring milk is more watery than summer's, and that from young animals. Best proved is that which clings to the nail and does not run off; boiled it is less harmful, above all with sea pebbles. The belly is loosened most by cow's milk, and any boiled milk inflates less.
125| The use of milk is for all internal ulcerations, most of all the kidneys, bladder, bowels, throat, lungs; externally, for itching of the skin, eruptions of phlegm, drunk after abstinence; for as in Arcadia consumptive people, those wasting away, and the ill-conditioned drank cow's milk, we have told in the account of herbs. Among examples are those who by drinking ass's milk have been freed from gout in the foot and the hand.
126| The physicians have added one kind to the kinds of milk, which they have called schiston. It is made in this way: it is boiled in a new earthen vessel, goat's milk above all, and stirred with fresh fig branches, with as many cyathi of honeyed wine added as there are heminae of milk. When it boils, to keep it from flowing over a silver cyathus lowered with cold water does the work, provided it pours nothing in. Then, taken off the fire, it is separated by cooling, and the whey parts from the milk.
127| Some boil down the whey itself, now by far the most potent, to a third and cool it in the open air. It is drunk most effectively in heminae at intervals, five a day being enough; it is better to be carried about after the drink. It is given to epileptics, the melancholic, paralytics, in leprosies, elephantiasis, diseases of the joints.
128| Milk is also poured in against gnawings caused by drugs, and, if dysentery burns, boiled with sea pebbles or with barley gruel. Likewise for gnawings of the intestines cow's or sheep's is more useful. Fresh milk is also poured in for those with dysentery, and unboiled for the colon, likewise for the womb, and for the stings of snakes, or after drinking pine caterpillars, buprestis, the poisons of cantharides or of the salamander,
129| cow's in particular for those who have drunk colchicum or hemlock or dorycnium or the sea hare, as ass's against gypsum and white lead and sulphur and quicksilver, also for a hard belly in fever. It is also used as a gargle for ulcerated throats. It is drunk most usefully by those regaining strength after weakness, whom they call atrophi, also in a fever free of headache. The ancients kept it among their secrets that boys should be given a hemina of ass's milk before food, or if they felt gnawings when passing their food, and goat's if ass's was not to be had.
130| The whey of cow's milk helps those who cannot breathe unless upright, above all else with cress added. The eyes are also anointed, in inflammation, with milk, 4 drachmas of pounded sesame being added to each hemina. With goat's milk spleens are cured, after two days' fasting, on the third day, the goats having been fed on ivy, taken for three days with no other food. The use of milk is otherwise harmful to headaches, the liver, spleen, fault of the sinews, those with fevers, dizziness except for the sake of purging, heavy colds, coughers, and the bleary-eyed. Sheep's is most useful for tenesmus, dysentery; and there have been those who said that this and woman's is most healthful for the consumptive.
131| Of the kinds of cheese we have spoken, when we spoke of the udders and the several parts of animals. Sextius reports the same effects for mare's as for cow's; this they call hippace. Useful to the stomach are those that are not salted, that is, fresh. Old ones stop the belly and reduce the body, more useless for the stomach; and on the whole salted ones reduce the body, soft ones nourish.
132| Fresh cheese with honey corrects bruises; soft cheese stops the belly and quiets gripings, in lozenges boiled in harsh wine and again toasted in a pan with honey. They call saprum that which, pounded with salt and dried service-berries in wine and drunk, heals coeliac complaints. Goat's cheese pounded and applied for carbuncles of the genitals; likewise sour cheese with oxymel, smeared on blemishes in the bath, is spread over with oil.
133| From milk butter is also made, the most refined food of barbarous nations, which sets the rich apart from the common people. Most is made from cow's milk, and hence the name; the fattest is made from sheep's and goat's, but in winter the milk is warmed, in summer only pressed out, by frequent shaking in long vessels that take in air through a narrow hole, and otherwise tied shut at the very mouth. A little water is added, so that it turns sour. What is most curdled floats on top;
134| this, taken out and salt added, they call oxygala. The rest they boil in pots; there what floats on top is butter, oily by nature. The more it tastes of its rank flavour, the better it is judged. Aged, it is mixed into many compounds. Its nature is to contract, soften, fill, purge.
135| Oxygala is made also in another way, sour milk being added to fresh that they wish to turn, very useful for the stomach. We shall tell the effects in their places. The next praise among common things is for fat, but most of all swine's, even more scrupulously among the ancients. At least brides entering even now keep it a rite to touch the doorposts with it. It is aged in two ways, with salt or pure; so much the more useful it becomes.
136| Axungia the Greeks also named, already in their own volumes. Nor is the cause of its powers hidden, since that animal feeds on the roots of herbs; so even its dung has countless uses. For which reason we shall speak of no other [sue]. Much more effective is that from a female which has not farrowed, but much better in wild boars it is said to be. The use of axungia is for softening, warming, dispersing and purging.
137| Some of the physicians, with goose fat and bull's tallow and oesypum mixed in, order it to be used for gout; if the pain persists, with wax, myrtle, resin, pitch. Pure axungia heals burns, even by snow, and chilblains, with the ash of barley and gall nut in equal measure. It helps also limbs that are rubbed, and relieves weariness and fatigue of journeys. For an old cough fresh is boiled down in the weight of a quadrans in 3 cyathi of wine, honey added.
138| Old also, taken in pills, it cures consumption, that which has been aged without salt. For on the whole salted is not admitted except for things that need purging or that are not ulcerated. Some boil quadrantes of axungia and honeyed wine in three cyathi of wine each, against consumption, and order liquid pitch in an egg to be taken every fourth day. It is also bound about the sides, chest and shoulder blades of those who feel consumption, and so great is the force that, tied on even the knees, the taste returns into the mouth, and they seem to spit it out.
139| The fat of a sow that has not farrowed is used most fittingly, by women for the skin; against scab anyone uses it with the tallow of beasts of burden mixed in as a third part and pitch, boiled up together. Pure, it sustains pregnancies inclining toward miscarriage, inserted in the manner of a suppository. It makes scars the colour of the surrounding skin, with white lead mixed in or silver froth, but with sulphur it corrects roughness of the nails. It also cures falling hair and ulcers on the heads of women, with a fourth part of gall nut, and, smoked, for the eyelashes. It is also given to the consumptive by the ounce, boiled down with a hemina of old wine until 3 ounces remain of the whole; some add a little honey.
140| It is smeared on boils with lime, likewise on furuncles and hardness of the breasts. It cures ruptures, convulsions, spasms, dislocations, corns and cracks and faults of callus, with white hellebore; parotid swellings, with meal of a salt-fish pot mixed in, in which kind it is also beneficial for scrofula. It removes itching and pimples in those anointed in the bath, and in another way besides it helps the gouty, mixed with old oil, rubbed up together with sarcophagus stone and quinquefolium pounded in wine, or with lime or with ash. A special plaster is also made by mixing 75 denarii by weight of it with 100 of silver froth, most usefully against the inflammations of ulcers with boar's fat. They think it useful also to anoint with it, and to smear on, with resin, things that spread.
141| The ancients used it chiefly for greasing the axles of vehicles, for an easier turning of the wheels, whence the name; so too as a useful medicine, with that rust of the wheels, for faults of the seat and of the male parts, and axungia by itself.
142| The physicians of old most approved that taken from the kidneys, and, once the veins were removed, they rubbed it often with rainwater and boiled it quite often in a new earthenware pot, and only then stored it. It is agreed that salted fat softens, warms and disperses more, and that it is more useful when washed in wine. Masurius reported that the ancients gave the palm to the fat of the wolf. Therefore new brides were accustomed to anoint the doorposts with it, so that no evil drug be brought in.
143| What holds for fat holds also for tallow in animals that chew the cud, in other ways, of no less power. All of it is prepared by removing the veins, washing in sea water or salt water, then pounding in a mortar with sea water repeatedly sprinkled; afterwards it is cooked until every smell is gone, then brought back to whiteness by constant sun.
144| That from the kidneys is the most praised of all. If, however, old fat is called back to use, they order it first to be melted, then washed oftener in cold water, then melted again with the most fragrant wine poured over. In the same way again and more often they cook it until the rank smell vanishes. Many order that in this way the fats of bulls and lions and panthers and camels are specially treated. The uses will be told in their places.
145| Marrows too are common. All soften, fill, dry, warm. Most praised is that of stags, next of calves, then of he-goats and goats. They are prepared before autumn. Fresh, washed and dried in the shade, then melted and pressed through a sieve through linen cloths, they are put away in an earthen vessel in cold places.
146| Among all things common to animals, gall is perhaps the most outstanding in effect. Its force is to warm, bite, split, draw out, disperse. That of smaller animals is understood to be subtler and for that reason is thought more useful for eye medicines. That of the bull has special potency, even in coating bronze and basins with a golden colour. All gall is prepared fresh, the mouth tied shut with thick thread, let down into boiling water for half an hour, then dried out of the sun and preserved in honey. Only that of the horse is condemned, among poisons. For this reason the flamen of the sacred rites may not touch a horse, although at Rome a horse is even sacrificed in the public rites.
147| Indeed their blood too has a septic force; likewise that of mares, except virgins', eats away and strips the edges of ulcers. Fresh bull's blood is among poisons, except at Aegira. For there the priestess of Earth, about to prophesy, drinks bull's blood before she descends into the cave. So great is that sympathy of which we speak that sometimes it is brought about by religion or place.
148| Drusus, tribune of the plebs, is reported to have drunk goat's blood, when he wished, by the resulting pallor, to accuse his enemy Quintus Caepio of having poisoned him and so bring odium upon him. The blood of he-goats has so great a force that the fine edge of iron tools is hardened more keenly by nothing else, and roughness is smoothed more vigorously than by a file. So the blood of animals cannot be spoken of among common things, and for this reason each will be told in its own effects.
149| For we shall arrange the uses by single ills, and first against snakes. That stags are destruction to these no one is unaware, for if there are any, the stags draw them from their holes and chew them. Nor are they hostile only living and breathing, but even in pieces. It has been said that snakes are put to flight by the smell of their horn if it is burnt; but by the burnt bones from the top of the throat they are said to be gathered together.
150| The hides of the same animal spread beneath give sleep free from that fear; the rennet, drunk in vinegar, against a stroke; and if it has been handled at all, on that day the snake does not strike. The testicles of it also, aged, or the old genitals of the male, are given to good effect in wine; likewise the stomach, which they call centipellio. Snakes also flee altogether those who have a tooth of a stag, or are anointed with the marrow or with the tallow of a stag or calf. But above the highest remedies is preferred the rennet of a fawn cut out of the mother's womb, as we have indicated.
151| With the blood of a stag, if dracontion and cunilago and anchusa are burnt together on mastic wood, snakes, they report, are drawn together, and then scattered if pyrethrum is added to the blood that has been drawn off. I find in Greek authors an animal smaller than a stag and like it only in its hair, called ophion, which Sardinia alone was accustomed to bear. This I suppose has perished, and for that reason I omit the medicines from it.
152| The brain of the boar too is praised against them, with the blood; the liver also, aged, drunk in wine with rue; likewise the fat with honey and resin; in a similar way the boar's liver and a fibre of the gall, 4 denarii in weight, or the brain drunk in wine. Snakes are said to be put to flight when the horn or hairs of goats are set alight, and the ash of the horn, drunk or smeared on, to be strong against strokes; likewise draughts of milk with the taminia grape, or of urine with squill vinegar; goat's cheese applied with origanum, or tallow with wax.
153| Thousands of remedies besides are shown from that animal, as will appear, which I indeed wonder at, since it is denied that it is free from fever. A greater potency belongs to the wild ones of the same kind, which we have said is very numerous, and others again to the he-goats. Democritus still increases the effects of the one that was born single. It is held that strokes of snakes are smeared with goat dung boiled in vinegar, and with the ash of fresh dung in wine, and on the whole those who recover themselves with more difficulty from a snake's stroke recover best in goat sheds.
154| Those who wish to cure more effectively tie on at once the belly of a goat that has been killed, cut open, with the dung found inside. Others fumigate with the fresh flesh of kids with the hair, and by the same smell put snakes to flight. They use also their fresh skin, for blows, and the flesh and the dung of a horse pastured in the field, the rennet of a hare in vinegar, and against the scorpion and the shrew; they say those anointed with hare's rennet are not struck.
155| For those struck by a scorpion, goat dung boiled in vinegar helps more effectively; lard and the broth of it boiled, drunk by those who have swallowed buprestis. Indeed, if anyone says into the ear of an ass that he has been struck by a scorpion, they report that the evil passes at once, and that all venomous creatures flee when its lung is set alight. It also helps those struck by a scorpion to be fumigated with calf's dung.
156| Wounds made by the bite of a mad dog some cut around down to the living parts, and apply calf's flesh and give the broth of the same flesh, boiled, as a drink, or axungia pounded with lime, or he-goat's liver, and they affirm that when this is applied the patient is not even attacked by the fear of water. They praise also goat dung smeared on in wine, and a decoction of badger and cuckoo and swallow, drunk. For the other bites of wild beasts they apply dry goat's cheese with origanum and order it to be drunk, for the bites of a man boiled beef, more effectively of veal, if they do not remove it before the fifth day.
157| The snout of a wolf, aged, they say resists sorceries, and for that reason they fix it on the gates of farms. The same is thought to be done by the skin from the neck, entire, like a sleeve, since so great is the force of the animal, beyond what we have related, that its tracks, trodden on by horses, bring on numbness.
158| For those who have drunk quicksilver, lard is the remedy. By ass's milk, drunk, poisons are quenched, particularly if hyoscyamus has been drunk, or mistletoe, or hemlock, or the sea hare, or opocarpatum, or white lead, or dorycnium, and if rennet has harmed someone, for that too is a poison in the first curdling of milk. Many other uses of it we shall tell, but it will be necessary to remember that it must be used fresh or not long after, warmed; for nothing goes off faster. The bones of the ass, broken and boiled down, are also given against the poison of the sea hare. All the same things are more effective in wild asses.
159| Of wild horses the Greeks did not write, since those lands did not produce them, but yet all the same properties must be understood to be stronger than in horses. By mare's milk the poisons of the sea hare and arrow poisons are overcome. Nor did the Greeks have uri or bisons in their experiments, though the forests of India are stocked with wild cattle; yet in proportion it is fair to believe all the same things more effective from these.
160| So also by cow's milk, they report, all poisons are overcome, most of all those mentioned above, and if ephemerum has been forced down or if cantharides have been given; all are expelled by vomiting, and so cantharides also with goat's broth. Against those, however, that kill by ulceration, calf's or beef tallow helps. For against leeches that have been swallowed butter is a remedy, with vinegar heated with iron, which by itself also helps against poisons, for if there is no oil, it takes its place. It heals the bite of the centipede with honey.
161| By broth of tripe, drunk, they think the poisons mentioned above are overcome, particularly aconites and hemlocks, and likewise by calf's tallow. Fresh goat's cheese is a remedy for those who have drunk mistletoe; milk against cantharides; against a drink of ephemerum, with the taminia grape. Goat's blood boiled with the marrow is taken against arrow poisons,
162| kid's against the rest; the rennet of a kid against mistletoe and white chameleon and bull's blood, against which there is also hare's rennet in vinegar; against the stingray and the strokes or bites of all marine creatures, the rennet of a hare or kid or lamb, a drachma in weight, in wine. Hare's rennet is added to antidotes against poisons as well. The moth too, flying to the lights of lamps, is counted among evil drugs; the opposite of it is goat's liver, as is the gall against sorceries made from the wild weasel. From here we shall turn next to the kinds of diseases.
163| Falling of the hair the fat of a bear restrains, with ladanum and maidenhair mixed in, and corrects bald places, and thinness of the eyebrows with the fungi of lamps and the soot that is in their nozzles; scurf, with wine. The ash of a stag's horn in wine helps for this, and so that no vermin of animals breed in the hair, likewise goat's gall with Cimolian earth and vinegar, in such a way that they dry on the head a little; likewise sow's gall, the urine of a bull. If it is old, it corrects scurf as well, with sulphur added.
164| By the ash of the genitals of an ass they think the hair is thickened and kept from greying, if it is smeared on shaved places, and pounded with lead in oil; it is also thickened by the urine of an ass's foal smeared on; they mix in nard to cover the disgust. Bald patches they smear over with bull's gall that has been warmed with Egyptian alum. Weeping ulcers of the scalp are effectively healed by the urine of a bull, likewise by man's, when old, if cyclamen and sulphur are added; yet more effective is calf's gall, with which, heated with vinegar, nits are also removed.
165| Calf's tallow pounded with salt is most useful for ulcers of the head. Fox fat is also praised, but above all the dung of cats smeared on with mustard in equal measure, the powder or ash of goat's horn, and more that of the he-goat, with natron and tamarisk seed and butter and oil added, the head having been first shaved; in this way they wonderfully hold falling hair, just as eyebrows turn black when smeared with the ash of flesh in oil.
166| By goat's milk nits are said to be removed, by dung with honey bald places are filled in, likewise by the ash of hoofs with pitch. The ash of a hare with myrtle oil holds falling hair. Headache is quieted by water that is left over from the drinking of an ox or ass, and, if we believe it, by the genitals of a male fox tied round, and by the ash of a stag's horn smeared on in vinegar or oil of roses or of iris.
167| Fluxes of the eyes they smear with beef tallow cooked with oil; roughness they anoint with the ash of stag's horn, and they think the tips themselves more effective. To be smeared around with the excrement of wolves helps cataracts, to be anointed with the ash of it with Attic honey, dimnesses, likewise with bear's gall, and epinyctides with boar's fat and oil of roses. The ash of an ass's hoof, anointed on with its own milk, removes scars and whites of the eyes.
168| Beef marrow from the right fore leg, pounded with soot, meets faults of the eyelashes and eyelids and corners of the eyes (the soot is tempered for this use in the manner of a calliblepharum, best from a papyrus wick and sesame oil, the soot wiped off with feathers into a new vessel), but most effectively it restrains hairs plucked out there. With bull's gall and the white of an egg eye salves are made, and dissolved in water they anoint with them for four days.
169| Calf's tallow with goose fat and juice of basil is most suitable for faults of the cheeks. The marrow of the same, with equal weight of wax and of oil, or of oil of roses, with an egg added, is smeared on hardnesses of the cheeks. With soft goat's cheese applied in hot water, fluxes of the eyes are quieted; if there is swelling, in honey; either is to be fomented with warm whey. Dry inflammation is removed by the loins of pigs, burnt and ground and put on.
170| They say goats do not suffer from inflamed eyes, since they eat certain herbs, and likewise roes; for this reason they order their dung, wrapped in wax, to be swallowed at the new moon. And since they see at night equally well, they think that the weak-sighted, called nyctalopes by the Greeks, are cured by he-goat's blood, and by the liver of a goat boiled in harsh wine. Some anoint with the juice of a roasted liver, or the gall of a goat, and they instruct that the flesh be eaten and the eyes steamed with it while it cooks; this too they judge to matter, that it should be of a reddish colour.
171| They wish the eyes also to be fumigated with the liver boiled in pots, some with it roasted. They take the gall of a goat in several ways: with honey against dimness, with a third part of white hellebore against glaucomata, with wine against scars and whites and dimness and pterygia and argema; for the eyelids, a hair having first been pulled out, with the juice of a pot-herb in such a way that the ointment dries; against ruptured coats, with a woman's milk.
172| For all they think aged gall more effective. Nor do they reject dung smeared on in honey for fluxes, and against pains marrow, likewise the lung of a hare, and for dimnesses gall with raisin wine or honey. They instruct also that the eyes be rubbed with wolf's fat or marrow against inflammations. For they say those who have a fox's tongue in a bracelet will not suffer inflamed eyes.
173| Pain and faults of the ears are cured by the urine of a boar kept in a glass vessel, the gall of a boar or sow or ox with cedar oil and oil of roses in equal portions, but especially that of a bull with leek juice, lukewarm, or with honey, if they suppurate, and against a heavy smell by itself, warmed in a pomegranate rind. For ruptures in that part it heals effectively with woman's milk.
174| Some think that the ears should also be washed out in this way in heaviness of hearing; others, rinsed beforehand with warm water, pour in the cast skin of snakes with vinegar (they enclose it in wool) or, if the heaviness is greater, boar's gall with myrrh and rue, warmed in a pomegranate rind, also fat lard; likewise fresh ass's dung is dropped in with oil of roses, all warmed. More useful is the froth of a horse or the ash of fresh horse dung with oil of roses, fresh butter, beef tallow with goose fat, the urine of a goat or bull or old fuller's urine, heated by the steam rising through the neck of a flask (they mix in a third part of vinegar and a little myrrh),
175| the dung of a calf that has not yet tasted grass, mixed with its gall and with the skin that snakes cast off, the ears having been warmed first; these medicines are enclosed in wool. Calf's tallow with goose fat and juice of basil also helps; the marrow of the same poured in with pounded cumin added; the seed of a boar, caught from the sow before it touches the ground, against pains;
176| for broken ears, glue made from the genitals of calves and dissolved in water; for other faults, the fat of foxes, likewise goat's gall with warm oil of roses or leek juice, or, if anything there is ruptured, with a woman's milk; if there is heaviness of hearing, ox gall with the urine of a goat or he-goat, or if there is pus. In whatever use, they think these more effective when fumigated in a goat's horn for 20 days.
177| They praise also the rennet of a hare, a third part of a denarius, and half of sacopenium, in Amminean wine. Parotid swellings are reduced by bear's fat, with equal weight of wax and bull's tallow (some add hypocistis), and by butter alone smeared on, if they are first fomented with the juice of boiled fenugreek, more effectively with strychnon. Foxes' testicles also help, and dried bull's blood pounded, the urine of a goat warmed and dropped into the ears, and its dung smeared on with axungia.
178| Loose teeth the ash of a stag's horn firms and soothes their pains, whether rubbed on or used as a rinse. Some think the powder of the raw horn more effective for all the same uses. Dentifrices are made both ways. A great remedy lies also in the ash of the head of wolves. It is certain that bones are generally found in their excrement; these tied on have the same effect, as do hares' rennets poured through the ear against pains. And the ash of their head is a dentifrice and, with nard added, soothes the foul smell of the mouth.
179| Some prefer to mix in the ash of mouse heads. In the side of a hare a bone like a needle is found; they advise scarifying the teeth with this when they pain. An ox's ankle bone, set alight and applied, steadies those that are loose and painful; the ash of the same, with myrrh, is a dentifrice. The bones also from the hoofs of swine, burnt, give the same use, likewise the bones from the sockets of the hams, around which the hip joints turn.
180| It is known that worms of beasts of burden are cured by these, put down into the throat, but also that teeth are steadied by their being burnt, and those troubled by a blow with ass's milk or the ash of the teeth of the same, likewise the lichen of a horse infused with oil through the ear. This is not the hippomanes, which in any case, being harmful, I omit, but is on the knees of horses and above the hoofs.
181| Besides, in the heart of horses a bone is found like the largest canine teeth; with this they show that toothache is scarified, or with a tooth taken from a dead horse's jaw in the number of the one that pains. Anaxilaus has handed down that the discharge of mares after mating, burnt in wicks, represents in monstrous fashion the powers of the lichen of horses' heads, and likewise from asses. For hippomanes has such force in sorcery that, poured upon a mixture of bronze into the likeness of the mare of Olympia, it drives stallions brought to it to the madness of mating.
182| Carpenter's glue also helps teeth, boiled in water and smeared on, and soon a little drawn off, so that they are rinsed at once with wine in which the rinds of a sweet pomegranate have been boiled. It is held effective also to rinse the teeth with goat's milk or with bull's gall. The ash of the ankle bones of fresh goats, and of nearly all farmyard four-footed animals, pleases as a dentifrice, so that the same things need not be said too often.
183| That the skin of the face is smoothed and made tender and white by ass's milk they think, and it is known that certain women foment their cheeks seven times a day, keeping the number. Poppaea, wife of the emperor Nero, set up this practice, mixing the tubs of her baths in this way, with herds of she-asses accompanying her for this purpose. Eruptions of phlegm on the face are removed by butter smeared on, more effectively with white lead; but pure butter, those faults that creep, with barley meal laid over; ulcers on the face, by the membrane of a calving cow, wet.
184| It may seem frivolous, yet is not to be omitted on account of women's desires, that the ankle bone of a white bullock, boiled for 40 days and nights until it dissolves into liquid, and smeared on with a bit of linen, produces whiteness and smoothing of the skin. With bull's dung, they say, the cheeks redden, so that it is not better to smear on crocodilea; they order cold fomentation both before and afterwards.
185| For spots and things that discolour the skin, calf's dung with oil and gum, kneaded by hand, corrects; for ulcers of the mouth and cracks, calf's or ox tallow with goose fat and juice of basil. There is another mixture also: calf's tallow with stag's marrow and leaves of the white thorn, pounded together. The marrow with resin does the same, or, if it is cow's, also broth of cow's flesh.
186| Lichens of the face are overcome most outstandingly by glue made from the genitals of calves, dissolved in vinegar with native sulphur, mixed with a fig branch, so that it is smeared on fresh twice a day; likewise leprosies by it boiled in honey and vinegar, which a he-goat's liver, warm, smeared on also removes, as goat's gall removes elephantiasis; moreover leprosies and scurf are removed by the gall of a bull with natron added, and by ass's urine around the time the Dog Star rises; blemishes on the face by the gall of either, broken down in water by itself, the sun and winds being avoided after the skin is stripped.
187| A similar effect is found in the gall of a bull or calf with seed of cunila, and with the ash of a stag's horn, if it is burnt when the Dog Star is rising. With ass's tallow the colour is restored to scars, above all from lichen and leprosies. The gall of a he-goat also removes freckles, with cheese mixed in, with native sulphur, and ash of sponge, to the thickness of honey.
188| Some have preferred to use aged gall, mixed with warm bran of one obol's weight, and 4 of honey, the blemishes having first been rubbed. Effective also is the tallow of the same with melanthium and sulphur and iris, for cracks of the lips, with goose fat and stag's marrow and resin and lime. I find in authors that for those who have freckles the use of sacrifices of the magic arts is denied.
189| By cow's or goat's milk tonsils and ulcerated windpipes are helped. It is used as a gargle, lukewarm, as is the practice, pressed out or warmed. Goat's is more useful boiled with mallow and a little salt. For ulceration of the tongue and windpipe the broth of tripe, gargled, helps; for the tonsils in particular the dried kidneys of foxes, pounded with honey and smeared on; for quinsy bull's or goat's gall with honey, the liver of a badger in water. Butter corrects heaviness and ulcers of the mouth.
190| A thorn or anything else lodged in the throat, when the outside is rubbed over with the dung of a cat, they report is either brought up or slips down. Scrofulous swellings are dispersed by the gall of a boar or of an ox, lukewarm, smeared on (for the rennet of a hare in wine on a bit of linen is applied only to ulcerated ones),
191| and they are dispersed by the ash of the hoof of an ass or horse smeared on in oil or water, and by warmed urine, and the ash of an ox's hoof in water, also boiling dung in vinegar, goat's tallow with lime or dung boiled in vinegar, the testicles of a fox. Soap helps too, an invention of the Gauls for reddening the hair. It is made from tallow and ash, the best from beech and goat, in two forms, thick and liquid, both more in use among the Germans by men than by women.
192| Pains of the neck are to be rubbed with butter or bear's fat, stiffnesses with beef tallow, which also helps scrofulous swellings with oil. The unbending pain they call opisthotonus is relieved by goat's urine poured into the ears or dung smeared on with bulbs; crushed nails, by gall of any animal bound around; hangnails of the fingers, by dried bull's gall dissolved in hot water. Some add sulphur and alum, of all in equal weight.
193| Cough a wolf's liver in lukewarm wine cures, bear's gall with honey mixed in, or the ash of the tips of an ox's horns, or the spittle of a horse, drunk for three days (they report the horse dies), the lung of a stag with its own gullet dried in smoke, then pounded and taken in honey as a daily linctus; more effective for this is the subulo, of the stag kind.
194| Those spitting blood are cured by the ash of a stag's horn, and by the rennet of a hare, a third part of a denarius, drunk with Samian earth and myrtle wine; the ash of its dung drunk in wine in the evening cures night coughs; the hairs of a hare, fumigated, draw difficult expectorations from the lungs. Purulent ulcerations of the chest and lung and the foul smell of the breath from the lung butter helps most effectively, boiled down with an equal measure of Attic honey until it turns reddish and taken in the morning to the measure of a spoon; some have preferred to add larch resin instead of honey.
195| If blood is brought up, they report ox blood effective, taken moderately and with vinegar. For to trust the bull's is rash; but bull glue, 3 obols, is drunk with hot water in an old spitting of blood.
196| An ulcerated stomach is restored by a drink of ass's milk, likewise of cow's; its gnawings by beef cooked with vinegar and wine mixed; flowings by the ash of a stag's horn; spitting of blood by fresh kid's blood, three cyathi, drunk boiling with sharp vinegar in equal measure, rennet in a third part drunk in vinegar;
197| pains of the liver by a wolf's dried liver in honeyed wine, an ass's dried liver pounded with 2 parts of parsley and 3 nuts in honey and taken in food, he-goat's blood fitted to food. For asthmatics most effective of all is a drink of the blood of wild horses, next that of ass's milk, lukewarm, of cow's milk boiled in such a way that the whey of it is drunk, a cyathus of white cress added to 2 heminae and soaked in water; then diluted with honey. The liver of a fox, or its lung in dark wine, or bear's gall in water, also loosens the passages of the breath.
198| Pains of the loins, and whatever else needs softening, are properly rubbed with bear's fat, and the ash of boar's or swine's dung, aged, is sprinkled into a drink of wine. (The Magi too bring their inventions: first of all, that the rage of he-goats is calmed if the beard is stroked, and that when it is cut off they do not go off into another flock.) For sciatica they apply ox dung warmed in leaves on hot ashes. To this they mix goat dung and, with an oiled cloth placed beneath, they order it to be held, boiling, in the hollow of the hand as long as it can be borne, so that if the left side pains, this treatment is done in the right hand, or the opposite, and they order the dung to be lifted for this use with the point of a bronze needle.
199| The measure of the treatment is until the warmth is felt to have reached the loins; afterwards they smear the hand with pounded leek, and the loins with the dung itself with honey. In that pain they also advise devouring the testicles of a hare. In pain of the kidneys they order the kidneys of a hare to be devoured raw, or at least cooked, so that they are not touched by the teeth. Pain of the belly, indeed, they say does not attack those who have the ankle bone of a hare.
200| The spleen is quieted by the gall of a boar or sow, drunk; by the ash of a stag's horn in vinegar; most effectively, however, by the aged spleen of an ass, so that the benefit is felt in three days. The dung of an ass's foal, the first it has passed (they call it polea), the Syrians give in honeyed vinegar. The tongue of a horse, aged, is also given in wine as an immediate remedy, as Caecilius Bion handed down that he learned from barbarians, and an ox's spleen in similar fashion, fresh, roasted or boiled in food. For pains of the spleen, 20 heads of garlic, pounded with a sextarius of vinegar, are also applied in an ox's bladder.
201| For the same cause the Magi order a calf's spleen to be bought, at whatever price is named, with no hesitation over the price, since this too pertains to the rite, and divided lengthwise, it is attached on both sides to a tunic, and the one who puts it on lets it fall to his feet; then, gathered up, it is dried in the shade. While this is done, the spleen of the sick man, it is said, subsides at the same time and he is freed from the disease. The lung of foxes also helps, dried to ash and drunk in water, likewise the spleen of kids applied.
202| The belly is stopped by the blood of a stag, likewise the ash of the horn; the boar's liver, drunk in wine without salt and fresh, likewise roasted, or the swine's, or the he-goat's boiled down to a fifth, a hemina in wine; the rennet of a hare in wine, the size of a chickpea, or, if there is fever, in water (some add gall nut, others are content with the hare's blood alone); boiled milk; the ash of horse dung in a drink of water; the ash of the lowest part of an old bull's horn sprinkled into a drink of water; he-goat's blood cooked with charcoal; goat hide boiled with its own hair, the juice drunk down;
203| the rennet of a horse and goat's blood or marrow or liver. The belly is loosened by wolf's gall with elaterium smeared on the navel, or a drink of mare's milk, likewise of goat's with salt and honey; goat's gall with juice of cyclamen and a pinch of alum (some prefer to add natron and water); bull's gall pounded with wormwood and put under as a suppository; butter taken freely.
204| Coeliac complaints and dysentery are cured by cow's liver, by the ash of a stag's horn taken with 3 fingers in a drink of water, by the rennet of a hare kneaded in bread, or, if they draw blood, in barley meal, by the ash of boar's or swine's or hare's dung sprinkled in a drink of lukewarm wine. Veal broth too, they report, is commonly given among the helps for coeliac and dysenteric patients. A drink of ass's milk is more useful with honey added, and no less effective for either fault is the ash of the dung in wine,
205| likewise the polea mentioned above; the rennet of a horse, which some call hippace, even if they draw blood; or the ash of dung and the powder of pounded teeth of the same; and a drink of boiled cow's milk is salutary. For dysentery they instruct that a little honey be added and, if there are gripings, the ash of a stag's horn or bull's gall mixed with cumin, and flesh of a gourd applied to the navel. Fresh cow's cheese is introduced for either fault, likewise butter, 4 heminae, with a sextans of turpentine resin, or with boiled mallow, or with oil of roses.
206| Calf's or ox tallow is also given, likewise marrow (and it is cooked with a little meal and wax and oil, so that it can be sipped; marrow is also worked into bread), goat's milk boiled down by half; if there are also gripings, protropum is added. Some think it sufficient remedy for gripings to drink hare's rennet in lukewarm wine, even once; the more cautious smear the belly also with goat's blood with barley meal and resin.
207| For all fluxes of the belly they advise smearing on soft cheese, and aged cheese, pounded into meal, to be given to coeliac and dysenteric patients, a cyathus of cheese in 3 cyathi of table wine. Goat's blood boiled with the marrow helps the dysenteric; goat's liver, roasted, those with coeliac complaints, and even more he-goat's, boiled in harsh wine and drunk, or placed on the navel in myrtle oil. Some boil down from 3 sextarii of water to a hemina, with rue added.
208| They use also the roasted spleen of a goat or he-goat, and the tallow of a he-goat in bread baked in ashes, the goat's from the kidneys especially, to be swallowed by itself and followed at once by a little cold water. Some bid tallow boiled in water be sipped, with barley meal and cumin and dill and vinegar mixed in. They also smear the belly of coeliac patients with dung boiled in honey.
209| For both faults they use also the rennet of a kid drunk in myrtle wine, the size of a bean, and the blood of the same formed into a food, which they call sanguiculus. For the dysenteric they also pour in bull glue dissolved in hot water. Calf's dung boiled in wine disperses flatulence. For faults of the intestines the rennet of stags is of great benefit, boiled with lentil and beet and so taken in food; the ash of hare's hair boiled with honey; a drink of goat's milk boiled with mallow, a little salt added; if rennet is also added, it works with greater benefit. The same force is found in goat's tallow in some gruel,
210| so that cold water is drunk straight afterwards. Likewise the ash of the thighs of a kid is marvellously reported to mend ruptured intestines, and hare's dung, boiled with honey and swallowed every day in a quantity of a bean, so that it has cured cases given up as hopeless. They praise also the juice of a goat's head boiled with its hairs.
211| Tenesmus, that is, a frequent and vain wish to rise, is removed by a drink of ass's milk, likewise cow's. The kinds of tapeworm are driven out by the ash of a stag's horn drunk. The bones which we said are found in the excrement of the wolf, if they have not touched the ground, cure colic tied to the arm. The polea mentioned above also helps greatly, boiled in must syrup; also the powder of swine's dung with cumin added, in water in which rue has been boiled; the ash of a tender stag's horn mixed with African snails pounded with their shell, in a drink of wine.
212| The torments of the bladder and of stones are helped by the urine of a boar and the bladder itself taken as food, more effectively if both are first steeped in smoke. The bladder is to be eaten boiled, and that of a sow by a woman. Little stones or hardnesses like little stones, white, are found in their livers, as in the common swine, and when these are pounded and drunk in wine they say stones are expelled. The boar's own urine is so heavy to him that, unless voided, he has not strength for flight and is overcome as if bound;
213| they report that they are burnt by it. The kidneys of a hare, aged and drunk in wine, expel stones. In the joint of the hams of swine we said there is a bone which, boiled, makes a broth useful for the urine. The kidneys of an ass, aged and pounded, given in neat wine, cure the bladder. The lichens of horses drunk in wine or honeyed wine for 40 days expel stones. The ash of the horse's hoof in wine or water also helps, likewise the dung of goats in honeyed wine, more effectively of wild ones, and the ash of goat's hair too; for carbuncles of the private parts, the brain of a boar or sow, and the blood.
214| Faults, however, which creep in the same part, their liver, burnt, above all on juniper wood, with papyrus paper and arrhenicum, cures; the ash of dung; bull's gall worked with Egyptian alum and myrrh to the thickness of honey, with beet cooked in wine laid on top; the flesh also. Running ulcers are treated by tallow with the marrow of a calf boiled in wine, goat's gall with honey and juice of bramble, or if they spread; they say dung also helps, with honey or with vinegar, and butter by itself.
215| Swelling of the testicles is held in check by calf's tallow with natron added, or by its dung boiled in vinegar. Incontinence of urine is checked by a boar's bladder, if it is eaten roasted; the ash of the hoofs of a boar or sow sprinkled in a drink; the bladder of a sow, burnt and drunk; likewise of a kid, or its lung; the brain of a hare in wine; its roasted testicles, or the rennet with goose fat in barley meal; the kidneys of an ass, pounded and drunk in neat wine. The Magi show that, with the ash of a boar's genitals drunk in sweet wine, the patient makes water in the bed of a dog and adds words, that he himself may not make water as a dog in his own bed. Again, a sow's bladder moves urine, if it has not touched the ground, laid on the pubic region.
216| For faults of the seat bear's gall with fat is outstandingly helpful; some add silver froth and frankincense. Butter with goose fat and oil of roses helps; the things themselves set the measure, so that they are easy to smear on. Bull's gall, on little pieces of torn linen, heals them excellently and brings fissures to a scar. For swellings in that part, calf's tallow, above all from the groin, with rue; other faults are cured by goat's blood with barley meal, likewise goat's gall for condylomata by itself, likewise wolf's gall in wine.
217| Boils and abscesses in any part bear's blood disperses, likewise bull's, dried and pounded. The chief remedy, however, is reported to be in the stone of the wild ass, which it is said to void in its urine when killed, more liquid at first, but thickening itself on the ground; tied to the thigh, this disperses all attacks and frees from all suppuration. It is rare to find, and not from every wild ass, but they celebrate it marvellously as a remedy. The urine of an ass with melanthium also helps, and the ash of a horse's hoof smeared on with oil and water, the blood of a horse, especially a stallion's, ox blood, likewise gall.
218| The flesh also has the same effects, laid on hot, and the ash of the hoof in water or honey, the urine of goats, the flesh of he-goats too boiled in water, or dung of theirs boiled with honey, boar's gall, the urine of swine on wool applied. It is known that the thighs are chafed and burned by riding; most useful for all causes from this is to smear the froth from a horse's mouth on the groin. The groin also swells from ulcers. A remedy is 3 horse hairs tied with as many knots within the ulcer.
219| Bear's fat and bull's tallow relieve gout, in equal weight, with wax in the same weight. Some add hypocistis and oak gall. Others prefer goat's tallow with goat dung and saffron and mustard, or ivy stalks pounded, and perdicium, or the flower of the wild cucumber.
220| Cow dung with the lees of vinegar is also much praised, and the dung of a calf that has not yet tasted grass, or the blood of a bull by itself; a fox boiled alive until only the bones are left; or a wolf boiled alive in oil in the manner of a cerate; goat's tallow with an equal part of helxine and a third of mustard; the ash of goat dung with axle-grease. They also report that sciatica is burned out with this dung applied boiling hot beneath the big toes, with the greatest benefit; that bear's gall is most useful for diseases of the joints, as are hares' feet tied on; and that gout is eased if a person constantly carries about with him the foot of a hare cut off while it is alive.
221| For chilblains, bear's fat heals them and all cracks of the feet, more effectively with alum added; so do goat's tallow, the meal of a horse's teeth, and the gall of a boar or pig with fat. A lung laid on helps even if the feet are merely rubbed raw or bruised by a knock; if they are truly scorched by cold, the ash of hare's fur; the lung of the same animal, cut up, for bruises, or the ash of the lung.
222| Sunburn is treated most suitably with ass's tallow, and likewise with ox tallow and oil of roses. For corns, cracks and defects of callus, fresh dung of a boar or pig applied and removed on the third day cures them; so do the ash of knucklebones, and the lung of a boar, pig or stag; for chafing from shoes, the urine of an ass applied with its own mud; for corns, ox tallow with fine meal of frankincense; for chilblains, burnt leather, better if from an old shoe; for hurts from footwear, the ash of goatskin in oil.
223| Pain from varicose veins is eased by the ash of calf dung boiled with lily bulbs, with a little honey added, and likewise all inflammations and swellings threatening to suppurate. The same remedy also helps gout and joint diseases, especially from male calves. For joints that are rubbed sore, the gall of boars or pigs laid on in a warmed linen cloth; the dung of a calf that has not yet tasted grass; likewise goat dung boiled in vinegar with honey. Rough nails are put right by calf tallow, and likewise goat tallow with sandaraca mixed in. Warts are removed by the ash of calf dung in vinegar, and by an ass's urine and its mud.
224| For the falling sickness it helps to have eaten bears' testicles, or to have drunk boars' in mare's milk or in water, or boar's urine in honeyed vinegar, more effectively that which has dried in its own bladder. The testicles of pigs are also given, aged and ground up in sow's milk, with abstinence from wine beforehand and afterwards for five days running. Hares' lungs preserved in salt are also given, with a third part of frankincense in white wine for 30 days, and likewise the rennet of the same animal;
225| an ass's brain in honeyed water, first smoked in leaves, half an ounce for 7 days; the ash of its hooves drunk, two spoonfuls, through the whole month; likewise testicles preserved in salt and sprinkled into a drink, best in the milk of she-asses or in water. The membrane of their afterbirth, especially if they have borne a male, smelled as the fit comes on, checks the falling sickness. There are those who prescribe that the heart of a black male be eaten with bread under the open sky on the first or second lunar day; others prescribe the flesh, and some the blood diluted with vinegar to be drunk for 40 days.
226| Some mix the urine with iron-water from the smithies, and with the same drink treat the frenzied as well. For those with the falling sickness the drinking of mare's milk is also given, and the lichen of a horse, to be drunk in honeyed vinegar; goat's flesh roasted on a man's funeral pyre is also given, as the Magi wish, and its tallow boiled with an equal weight of bull's gall and stored in a little bag made of the gall, so that it does not touch the ground, then drunk from water held aloft. The disease itself is detected by the smell of burnt goat's horn or stag's horn. For the stricken by a planet, the urine of a young ass, with nard mixed in, is said to help when rubbed on.
227| For jaundice: the ash of stag's horn; the blood of an ass in wine; likewise the dung of a young ass, the first it passed after birth, given the size of a bean in wine, cures within the third day. The same power exists in the foal of a horse, and in like manner. For broken bones the ash of the jawbones of a boar or pig is immediate in effect; likewise boiled lard bound around knits them with marvellous speed. For broken ribs, goat dung in old wine is uniquely praised: it opens, draws out, and heals thoroughly.
228| Fevers are kept off by the flesh of stags, as we have said; and those that return after a fixed number of days, by the eye of a wolf, the right one, salted and tied on, if we believe the Magi. There is a kind of fever which they call amphemerinon; they report that a person is freed of it if he takes 3 drops of blood from the vein of an ass's ear in 2 heminae of water. For quartan fevers the Magi bid that a cat's excrement be tied on with the toe of an owl, and, to prevent relapse, not be taken off for seven rounds.
229| Who, I ask, could have discovered this? What is this mixture? Why was the toe of an owl chosen above all? The more restrained have said that the liver of a cat killed when the moon is waning, aged in salt, should be drunk in wine before the onsets of the quartan. The same Magi smear the toes of the feet and hands with the ash of cow dung sprinkled with boys' urine. They tie on a hare's heart, and give its rennet to drink before the onsets. Fresh goat's cheese with honey, with the whey carefully pressed out, is also given.
230| For the melancholic, calf dung boiled in wine is a remedy. The lethargic are roused by the lichen of an ass applied to the nostrils with vinegar, by the smell of burning goat's horn or of hair, or by boar's liver; and so it is given also to the drowsy. Consumptives are treated with a wolf's liver in thin wine, with the bacon of a sow fed on herbs, or with ass's flesh taken in broth; this is the way they chiefly treat that disease in Achaia. They also report that it helps to draw in through a reed the smoke of dried dung, from an ox fed on green fodder, or the point of an ox's horn burnt, 2 spoonfuls by measure, with honey added, swallowed in pills.
231| Not a few report that consumption and cough are cured by goat tallow in porridge of alica, or fresh tallow melted with honeyed wine, so that an ounce is added to a cyathus and stirred in with a sprig of rue. A reliable authority affirms that a consumptive given up for lost recovered on a cyathus of chamois tallow with an equal measure of milk. There are those who have written that the ash of pig dung helped in raisin wine, and the lung of a stag, especially a young stag with first horns, dried in smoke and ground up in wine.
232| For dropsy, the urine from a boar's bladder is of help, given a little at a time in drink, more effective when it has dried with its own bladder; and likewise the dung of bulls above all, but also of oxen (I speak of the herd animals), called bolbiton, the ash of it, 3 spoonfuls in a hemina of honeyed wine; the dung of a cow for women, of the other sex for men, which the Magi have hidden away as though it were a mystery; the dung of a male calf applied; the ash of calf dung with the seed of staphylinus in equal portion in wine; goat's blood with the marrow. They think that of a he-goat is more effective, particularly if it is fed on mastic.
233| For erysipelas, bear's fat is smeared on, especially that which lies by the kidneys; fresh calf dung or ox dung; dry goat's cheese with leek; shavings of stag's hide scraped with pumice and pounded in vinegar. For redness with itching, the foam of a horse or the ash of a hoof; for eruptions of phlegm, the ash of ass's dung with butter; for black pimples, dry goat's cheese with honey and vinegar in the baths, with the oil put away; for pustules, the ash of pig dung smeared on with water, or the ash of stag's horn;
234| for sprains, fresh dung of boar or pig, and likewise of calf; the fresh foam of a boar with vinegar; goat dung with honey; beef laid on. For swellings, pig dung warmed under a tile and ground with oil. For hardnesses of the body of every kind, wolf fat applied softens them best. In things that need to be broken open, ox dung warmed in ashes does the most good, or goat dung boiled in wine or vinegar; for boils, ox tallow with salt, or, if there are pains, melted with oil and without salt, and goat tallow in the same way;
235| in burns, bear's fat with lily roots; boar or pig dung, aged; the ash of bristles from these animals, taken from plasterers' brushes, ground with fat; the ash of an ox knucklebone with wax and stag marrow; bull's gall; the dung of a hare, and the dung of goats. Glue is said to heal without a scar. The best is made from the ears and genitals of bulls,
236| and nothing helps burns more effectively, but nothing is so readily adulterated, any hides and even boiled shoes, if old, being used. The Rhodian is the most reliable, and painters and physicians use it; this too is thought better the whiter it is, while the black and woody kind is condemned.
237| For pains of the sinews, goat dung boiled in vinegar with honey is thought most useful, even for a sinew that is festering. Spasms and injuries from blows they treat with boar dung gathered in spring and dried; thus too they treat charioteers who have been dragged or wounded by a wheel, and in any case of bruised blood, even if it is applied fresh.
238| There are those who think it more useful to have boiled it in vinegar. Indeed they promise that this meal, taken as a drink in vinegar, is salutary for those with ruptures and convulsions, and those thrown down. The more fastidious drink its ash in water, and they say that the emperor Nero too was accustomed to be restored by this drink, when he wished in this way too to win approval at the Trigarium. They think pig dung to have the next greatest power.
239| Blood is stopped by the rennet of a stag in vinegar, and likewise of a hare, and of this the ash of the hairs also; likewise the ash of ass's dung applied (the power is greater from males, with vinegar mixed in and laid in wool on any flow); similarly from a horse, the ash of the head and thighs, or of calves' dung, applied in vinegar; likewise of goat's horn or of goat dung in vinegar.
240| The matter that comes from a he-goat's liver when cut open is more effective, and the ash of either drunk in wine or applied to the nostrils in vinegar; also the ash of a he-goat's skin bag, at least a wine-skin, with an equal weight of resin: in this way blood is stopped and a wound is glued together. The rennet of a kid in vinegar, and the ash of its thighs burnt, are reported to be similarly powerful.
241| Ulcers on the shins and legs are healed by bear's fat with red ochre mixed in. Those that creep are treated with the gall of a boar mixed with resin and white lead, the ash of the jaws of a boar or pig, dry pig dung applied, and likewise goat dung worked up and slightly warmed in vinegar. The others are cleansed and filled with butter, with the ash of stag's horn or stag marrow, with bull's gall and cyprine or iris oil. Fresh pig dung, or the meal of aged dung, is smeared on wounds made by iron. Into phagedaenic ulcers and fistulas is put bull's gall with leek juice or women's milk, or dried blood with the herb cotyledon.
242| Cancers are cured by a hare's rennet sprinkled in wine with an equal weight of caper; gangrenes by bear's gall applied with a feather; and the ash of ass's hooves, sprinkled on, treats ulcers that creep. Horse's blood eats away the flesh by a corrosive power, as does the ash of old horse dung; but for those which in the class of ulcers they call phagedaenae, the ash of ox hide with honey. Calf's flesh does not allow fresh wounds to swell, nor ox dung with honey.
243| The ash of calf dung, with woman's milk, heals foul ulcers and those they call cacoethe; fresh wounds inflicted by iron are treated with bull's glue melted, removed on the third day. Dry goat's cheese in vinegar and honey cleanses ulcers; and for those that creep, tallow with wax checks them, and the same with pitch and sulphur added completes the cure. The ash of a kid's thighs in woman's milk is similarly beneficial for cacoethe, and against carbuncles the brain of a sow, roasted and applied.
244| The itch of man is best abolished by the marrow of asses and by their urine applied with their own mud, and also by butter (which is beneficial in beasts of burden) with hot resin, by bull's glue melted in vinegar with lime added, and by goat's gall with the ash of alum; and boae are treated with ox dung, from which they took their name. The mange of dogs is cured with fresh ox blood, smeared on again when it dries and washed off the next day with lye ash.
245| Thorns and the like are drawn from the body by cat's excrement, and likewise by that of the goat in wine, and by any rennet, but chiefly a hare's, with fine meal of frankincense and oil, or with an equal weight of mistletoe or with propolis. Black scars are brought back to colour by ass's tallow; calf's gall, warmed, thins them. Physicians add myrrh and honey and saffron, and keep it in a bronze box; some also mix in flower of copper.
246| The monthly purgings of women are helped by bull's gall applied in greasy wool (Olympias of Thebes adds oesypum and natron), by the ash of stag's horn drunk, which likewise helps women suffering in the womb, applied as well; and bull's gall applied with opium, two obols each. It also helps to fumigate the womb with stag's hair. They say that hinds, when they perceive they are with young, swallow a little stone, which, found in their excrement or in the womb (for it is found there too), tied on, protects the offspring.
247| Small bones too are found in the heart and in the womb, extremely useful to women with child and in labour. For the pumice-like stone that is found in the same way in the womb of cows we have spoken in our account of the nature of cattle. Wolf fat, applied, softens the womb, and the liver relieves its pains; to have eaten wolf flesh helps women about to give birth, or if the one who has eaten is near them when they are beginning labour, so much so that it avails even against harms brought upon them. But for that same man to come in upon them after labour has begun is ruinous.
248| The hare too is of great use to women. The dried lung drunk helps the womb; the liver drunk with Samian earth in water, flows; the rennet, the afterbirth (baths on the day before are to be avoided), and applied also with saffron and leek juice; laid in a fleece it expels dead births. If the womb of hares is taken in food, they think males are conceived; the same is achieved by their testicles and rennet; a foetus taken from the womb of a hare is said to bring back renewable fertility to those who have stopped bearing.
249| In the same way the Magi give a man the matter of a hare's foetus to drink, and a maiden 9 grains of its dung, so that her breasts stay firm for ever. They smear the rennet on with honey for the same purpose, and the blood where they do not wish plucked hairs to grow again. For inflation of the womb it helps to smear on boar or pig dung with oil. The meal of the dried dung checks more effectively, if sprinkled into a drink, or if pregnant women or women in childbed are racked with pain.
250| Sow's milk drunk with honeyed wine helps the births of women; drunk by itself, it fills the failing breasts of women in childbed. The same breasts, smeared around with the blood of a sow, grow less. If they are in pain, they are soothed by a drink of ass's milk, which, taken with honey added, also helps their purgings. The aged tallow of the same animal heals ulcerations of the womb, and laid on in a fleece softens hardnesses of the womb. By itself, fresh or aged, smeared on with water, it has the power of a depilatory.
251| The spleen of the same animal, aged and smeared on with water, produces abundance in the breasts and corrects the womb by fumigation. The fumigation of an ass's hoof ripens birth, so that even a dead birth is called forth; it is used in no other way, since it kills a living birth. The dung of the same animal, if applied fresh, is said to check flows of blood marvellously, and likewise the ash of the same dung, which also benefits the womb when applied.
252| Horse foam smeared on for 40 days, before the hairs first appear, extinguishes them; likewise a decoction of stag's horn; better if the horns are fresh. Wombs washed out with mare's milk are helped. But if a dead birth is detected, the lichen of a mare drunk in sweet wine expels it, as does a hoof used for fumigation or dry dung. Prolapsed wombs are checked by butter poured in. A hardened womb is opened by ox gall mixed with oil of roses, with a fleece with turpentine resin laid on outwardly.
253| They say that by fumigation with the dung of a male ox prolapsed wombs are pressed back and births are helped, and conceptions by a drink of cow's milk. It is certain that sterility comes from the harassment of childbirth. Olympias of Thebes affirms that this is put right by bull's gall and the fat of serpents and verdigris and honey on the treated places before intercourse. Calf's gall also, sprinkled on at the time of intercourse during the purgings, softens even old hardnesses of the womb and lessens flow, when the navel has been anointed with it, and altogether benefits the womb.
254| They set the dose at a denarius' weight of gall and a third as much of opium, with as much almond oil mixed in as seems enough; this they apply on wool. The gall of a bull calf, pounded with half its quantity of honey, is kept for the womb. If women eat the flesh of a calf roasted with aristolochia around the time of conception, they are promised that they will bear a male. Calf's marrow boiled down in wine and water with suet is beneficial applied to ulcerations of the womb, and so are the fat of foxes and the dung of cats, the latter applied with resin and rose oil.
255| They think fumigating the womb with goat's horn most useful. The blood of wild goats with palma marina removes hair; the gall of the other goats, sprinkled on, softens callus of the womb and brings about conception after menstruation. In this way too the effect of a depilatory is obtained: after the hairs have been plucked out it is kept smeared on for three days. Midwives promise that a flux, however excessive, is checked by drinking goat's urine, and also if the dung is applied. The goat's membrane in which the kid is born, dried and taken in a drink of wine, expels the afterbirth.
256| They think fumigating the womb with kid's hair useful, and in a flux of blood that rennet should be drunk, or applied with the seed of hyoscyamus. If a woman's loins are smeared with the blood of a tick taken from a black wild ox, Osthanes says that she conceives a distaste for sex; and the same with love, he says, if she drinks a he-goat's urine, with nard mixed in because of the disgust.
257| For infants nothing is more useful than butter, by itself or with honey, especially in teething, both for the gums and for ulcers of the mouth. A wolf's tooth tied on as an amulet keeps away infants' frights and the ailments of teething, and a wolfskin does the same. Indeed, wolves' largest teeth tied on to horses too are said to give them tireless speed.
258| Hare's rennet smeared on the breast stops looseness of the bowels in infants. Ass's liver, with a little panaces mixed in, dropped into the mouth, protects infants from epilepsy and other diseases; they direct that this be done for 40 days. An ass's skin thrown over infants also makes them fearless. The teeth that horses shed first, tied on to infants, make teething easy; more effectively if they have not touched the ground.
259| Ox spleen in honey is both given and applied for pains of the spleen; calf's spleen with honey soothes running ulcers, and boiled down in wine, pounded and applied, it heals small ulcers of the mouth. The Magi drop into the mouths of infants, before they are given milk, a goat's brain drawn through a gold ring, against epilepsy and the other diseases of infants. Goat's dung tied on in a cloth calms restless infants, especially girls. Gums rubbed with goat's milk or with hare's brain make teething easy.
260| Cato believed that eating hare brought sleep, and the common people believe that it gives the body charm for 9 days — a frivolous jest, to be sure, yet one that must have some reason under it, given so strong a conviction. The Magi say that sleep is induced by the gall of a she-goat — provided she has been sacrificed — smeared on the eyes or put beneath the pillow. — Ash of goat's horn in myrtle oil, rubbed on, checks sweating.
261| Sexual desire is stimulated by boar's gall applied, also by pig's marrow swallowed, and by ass's tallow applied with the fat of a male goose mixed in; likewise by the discharge after a horse's coupling, which Virgil too describes, and by a stallion's testicles dried so that they can be ground into a drink, or by the right testicle of an ass drunk in wine or a portion of it tied on in a bracelet; and by the foam of the same animal after coupling, collected on a red cloth and shut up in silver, as Osthanes reports.
262| Salpe directs that this member be plunged seven times into boiling oil and the parts concerned be rubbed with it; Dalion, that the ash from it be drunk, or the urine of a bull after coupling, and that the pubes be smeared with the mud itself. But on the contrary, men's desire is checked by bull's dung applied. — Drunkenness is prevented by the roasted lung of a boar or of a pig, taken as food on an empty stomach that day, and likewise by that of a kid.
263| Marvels are reported besides about these same animals: that if anyone picks up the shoe that a horse casts from its hoof, as commonly happens, and puts it away, it is a remedy for hiccups to those who remember where they put it; that the liver of wolves is like a horse's hoof; that horses burst if they follow the tracks of wolves with a rider on their back; that there is a certain power of discord in the knucklebones of pigs; that in fires, if some of the dung is carried out of the stalls, sheep and cattle are more easily drawn out and do not run back in;
264| that the flesh of he-goats does not smell rank if on the day they are killed they have eaten barley bread or drunk diluted laser, and that no meats feel the teredo if they are hardened with salt while the moon is waning. Indeed, so far has nothing been left out that we find that a deaf hare fattens faster. And as for the remedies of animals:
265| if blood flows from draught animals, pig's dung in wine is to be poured in; for the diseases of cattle, suet, native sulphur, wild garlic and a raw egg, pounded, are to be given in wine, or fox fat; horse flesh boiled down cures the diseases of pigs when given as a drink, and for the diseases of all quadrupeds a whole she-goat with its hide and a rubeta frog boiled down; cocks are not touched by foxes if they have eaten that animal's liver, dried, or if they have mated wearing on their neck a strip of its skin; and the same is true of the gall of the weasel;
266| cattle in Cyprus cure themselves of griping pains with human excrement; the hooves of cattle are not worn down if the base of their horns is first smeared with liquid pitch; wolves do not come into a field if one is caught, its feet are broken and a knife driven into it, and its blood is sprinkled little by little round the boundaries of the field, and the wolf itself is buried at the spot from which it began to be dragged; or if the ploughshare
267| with which the first furrow of that year was drawn in the field is knocked off the plough and burnt on the hearth of the Lares where the household gathers, no wolf will harm any animal in that field as long as this is done. From here we shall next turn to the animals of their own kind, those that are either not gentle or are wild.

======== Natural History — Book XXIX ========

1| The nature of the remedies, and the great number of those still to come and already past, compel me to say more about the art of medicine itself, although I am well aware that no one has treated these matters in the Latin tongue before, and that the beginning of every new subject is uncertain and slippery, above all one so barren of charm and so difficult to set forth.
2| But it is likely that a question occurs to the mind of all who come to know these things: how it has come about that remedies which were already at hand and suited to their purpose have fallen out of use in medicine. And at once the strange and shameful thought arises that no art has been more inconstant, or is even now changed more often, although none is more profitable. At first it assigned its discoverers to the gods and consecrated them to heaven,
3| and even today medicine is in many ways sought from oracles. Then it increased its fame even by a crime, telling the tale that Aesculapius was struck by a thunderbolt because he had brought Tyndareus back to life — and yet it did not stop relating that others had come back to life through its work. It was famous in Trojan times, from which tradition is more certain, but only for its remedies for wounds.
4| Its subsequent history, wonderful to relate, lay hidden in the densest night right up to the Peloponnesian War. Then Hippocrates brought it back into the light, born on the island of Cos, an island especially famous and powerful and dedicated to Aesculapius. It had been the custom for those freed from diseases to write up in the temple of that god what had helped them, so that later a similar case might profit by it; Hippocrates is said to have copied these records out and, as our Varro believes, after the temple had been burnt, to have founded with them the kind of medicine called clinice. Nor was there afterwards any limit to the money-making, since Prodicus, a native of Selymbria and one of his pupils, founded what they call iatraliptice, and found a source of revenue even for the physicians' anointers and their lowliest drudges.
5| Their doctrines Chrysippus changed with enormous verbosity, and Chrysippus' own were changed in very great part by his pupil Erasistratus, who was the son of a daughter of Aristotle. For curing King Antiochus he was presented with a hundred talents by King Ptolemy, his son — so that we may begin to show the rewards of the art as well. Another faction, which named itself empirice from its reliance on experience, began in Sicily, with Acron of Acragas, who was commended by the authority of the natural philosopher Empedocles;
6| and these schools quarrelled, and Herophilus condemned them all, setting out the beat of the pulse in musical metres according to the stages of life. Then this sect too was abandoned, since in it one had to be able to read; changed too was the one which Asclepiades, as we have related, had later devised. His pupil was Themison, who at first enrolled himself as his follower, but soon, as his life went on, changed his own doctrines too; and those in turn Antonius Musa changed, on the authority of the deified Augustus, whom he had rescued from grave danger by the opposite treatment.
7| I pass over many physicians, and the most celebrated among them, the Cassii, the Carpetani, the Arruntii and the Rubrii. Their annual fees from the emperors were 250,000 sesterces. Quintus Stertinius made it a favour to the emperors that he was content with five hundred thousand sesterces a year, for he showed, by listing the houses, that his practice in the city had brought him six hundred thousand.
8| An equal fee was lavished on his brother by Claudius Caesar, and their fortunes, although drained by the public works with which they adorned Naples, left to their heir 300,000 sesterces, as much as Arruntius alone left in the same period. Then arose Vettius Valens, made notorious by his adultery with Messalina, wife of Claudius Caesar, and having gained followers as much of his eloquence as of his power, he founded a new sect.
9| The same age, under Nero's principate, leapt across to Thessalus, who swept away all doctrines and ranted against the physicians of every age with a sort of frenzy; with what wisdom and talent, can be judged amply from a single proof: on his monument, which is on the Appian Way, he had himself inscribed as iatronices, Conqueror of Physicians. No actor and no charioteer of the three-horse races went out in public with a larger retinue — until Crinas of Massilia, joining two arts together so as to seem more cautious and more devout, surpassed him in authority, giving food according to the movements of the stars from an astrological almanac and observing the hours; and he recently left C sesterces, after building the walls of his native city and other fortifications at an expense hardly smaller.
10| These men were ruling our destinies when suddenly Charmis, from the same Massilia, invaded the city, condemning not only the earlier physicians but hot baths as well, and he persuaded people to bathe in cold water even in the frosts of winter. He plunged the sick into pools. We used to see old men of consular rank stiff with cold, for show; on which subject there is even the corroborating testimony of Annaeus Seneca.
11| Nor is there any doubt that all these men, hunting for fame by some novelty or other, at once make a trade of our lives. Hence those wretched wrangles of opinion around the sick, with no one agreeing with another, lest he seem an appendage of someone else. Hence that inscription on an unlucky monument: that he died of a crowd of doctors. The art changes every day, refurbished so many times, and we are driven along by the wind of Greek cleverness; and it is plain that whichever of these men is powerful in talking becomes at once the commander of our life and death — as though thousands of nations did not live without physicians, though not without medicine, as the Roman people did for more than six hundred years, a people not itself slow to accept the arts, and indeed even greedy for medicine, until, having tried it, it condemned it.
12| Indeed, it is fitting to review the notable facts about our forefathers in these customs. Cassius Hemina, one of the most ancient authorities, states that the first physician to come to Rome was Archagathus son of Lysanias, from the Peloponnese, in the consulship of Lucius Aemilius and Marcus Livius, in the year of the City 535; that he was granted the rights of a citizen, and that a shop at the Acilian crossroads was bought for him at public expense for that purpose.
13| that he was an outstanding healer of wounds, and that his arrival was at first wonderfully welcome, but soon, from his savagery in cutting and cauterizing, his name changed to "executioner" and brought the art and all physicians into loathing. This can be understood most clearly from Marcus Cato, to whose authority a triumph and a censorship add least; so much more is in the man himself. For this reason we shall set down his own words:
14| I shall speak of those Greeks in their proper place, my son Marcus, and of what I have found out at Athens, and that it is good to look into their writings, not to learn them thoroughly. I shall prove their race to be utterly worthless and untaught, and take it that a prophet has said this: whenever that people gives us its writings, it will corrupt everything, and all the more if it sends its physicians here. They have sworn among themselves to kill all barbarians with medicine, but they do this very thing for a fee, so that they may be trusted and destroy us easily. They call us too barbarians, and defile us more foully than others with the name of "Opicans" (opikon). I have forbidden you the physicians.
15| And yet this Cato died in the six hundred and fifth year of our city, in his eighty-fifth, so that no one may suppose that he lacked either public occasions or private stretches of life for putting things to the test. What then? Do we believe that a most useful thing was condemned by him? By Hercules, not at all. For he adds by what medicine he brought himself and his wife to a long old age, namely with these very things which we are now handling, and he declares that he has a notebook with which he treats his son, his slaves and his household, which we are arranging by the kinds of its use.
16| The ancients condemned not the thing but the art, and above all they refused that a profit should be made by charging a fee for life. Hence it is reported that they built the temple of Aesculapius, even when that god was being received, outside the city, and again on an island, and that when they were driving the Greeks out of Italy, long even after Cato, they made an exception of physicians.
17| I shall add to their foresight. This is the only one of the Greek arts which Roman seriousness does not yet practise; despite such great profit very few of the Quirites have taken it up, and they themselves at once go over as deserters to the Greeks; indeed even among the unskilled and those without the language, authority belongs to no one who treats it otherwise than in Greek, and they trust less what pertains to their own health if they understand it. And so, by Hercules, in this art alone it happens that anyone who has declared himself a physician is believed at once, though in no falsehood is the danger greater.
18| Yet we do not look at that; so winning is the sweetness of hoping, for each man, on his own behalf. Besides, there is no law to punish deadly ignorance, no example of vengeance. They learn from our perils and conduct their experiments through our deaths, and only a physician may kill a man with complete impunity. Indeed, the reproach is shifted elsewhere and the blame is laid on intemperance, and those who have perished are even accused. But the panels of jurors are examined by the emperors' censorships as the custom is, inquiry is made through the very walls, and the man who is to judge about a coin is summoned from Gades and the Pillars of Hercules, while for a case of exile the voting tablet is given only to 45 chosen men:
19| yet in the case of the judge himself, what sort of men go into consultation, ready to kill him on the spot! Deservedly so, since none of us wishes to know what is needed for his own health. We walk on other men's feet, we recognize with other men's eyes, we greet by other men's memory, we live by other men's labour too, and the values of nature and the proofs of life have perished. We have nothing of our own but our luxuries.
20| I shall not abandon Cato, whom I have exposed to the ill will of so self-seeking an art, nor that senate which so decided, and this not on accusations seized against the art, as someone may have expected. For what is more fertile in poisons, or from what source more plots about wills? And then there are the adulteries, even in the houses of emperors, as of Eudemus with Livia, wife of Drusus Caesar, and of Valens likewise with the queen of whom we have spoken.
21| Let these be not faults of the art but of men: Cato feared these things for the city no more, as I at least believe, than he feared queens. I shall not even charge avarice, nor the grasping markets held while fates hang in the balance, the pricing of pain and the pledge of death, or the secrets of the precept, that a film in the eyes is better pushed aside than drawn out. By these means it has come about that nothing seemed more in keeping with the facts than the multitude of those who prowl about; for it is not shame but rivals that bring down the fees.
22| It is well known that by the same Charmis one sick man from the provinces was contracted for at 200,000 sesterces, and that the emperor Claudius took away from Alcon, a physician of wounds, condemned, 10,000,000 sesterces, and that the same man, going into exile in Gaul and then restored, acquired not less within a few years. Let these be charged to the persons.
23| Let us not even accuse the dregs of the art or its shameful ignorance, but the intemperance of the leading men themselves, with their immoderate byways of hot waters, their domineering fasting, and the food, more than once in a day, crammed into the same men when they are failing, besides a thousand ways of repentance, the very precepts of kitchens and mixtures of perfumes, since they have omitted no enticement of life.
24| I should indeed believe that the importing of foreign wares and the establishing of outlandish prices displeased our ancestors, yet Cato did not foresee this when he condemned the art. What is called theriace is a composition devised by luxury, fashioned from six hundred things, though nature has given so many remedies each of which alone would suffice. The Mithridatic antidote is composed of 54 ingredients, no two in equal weight, and of some of them one sixtieth of one denarius is prescribed. Which of the gods, by Faith, showed this!
25| For human subtlety could not have been so great; it is plainly a display of the art and a monstrous peddling of knowledge. And they themselves do not know those things; it has been found that commonly, in place of Indian cinnabaris, minium is added to medicines through ignorance of the name, which we shall show to be a poison among the pigments.
26| But these things concern the health of individuals; whereas what Cato feared and foresaw is far more innocent and slight in the thinking, things which the leaders of that art themselves confess about themselves; these things have ruined the customs of the empire: those which we, being sound, endure: wrestling bouts, ceromata set up as though for the sake of health, scorching baths in which they have persuaded people that food is cooked in the body, so that everyone comes out less strong, and the most obedient are carried out; then drinking on an empty stomach and vomitings, and drinking again, and the unmanning of the hair, introduced with their resins, and likewise the pubic parts of women, at any rate, laid open to public view.
27| So it is indeed: a plague of morals, and from no other source greater than medicine, makes Cato every day a prophet and an oracle outright: it is enough to look into the intellects of the Greeks, not to learn them thoroughly.
28| This had to be said on behalf of that senate and the six hundred years of the Roman people, against an art in which, in a most treacherous condition, good men give authority to the worst, and at the same time against the stunned persuasions of certain people who think nothing helps unless it is costly. And I should not doubt that someone will find the creatures about to be mentioned disgusting; yet it was no disgrace to Virgil to name ants without any necessity, and weevils, and the nests of the light-shunning cockroaches heaped together, nor to Homer to describe the impudence of a fly amid the battles of the gods, nor to nature to produce these things, since she produces man. Let each man therefore weigh the causes and effects, not the things.
29| We shall begin with the acknowledged remedies, that is with wool and sheep, so that to the chief things honour may be rendered first. Some things will necessarily be said even so in places not their own, though in passing. Nor would the material for display be lacking, if it were permitted to look to anything other than the credibility of the work, since among the first things, medicines are reported even from the ash and nest of the phoenix, as if that were certain and not fabulous. It is mockery to show to life remedies that will return after a thousandth year.
30| The ancient Romans held wool in an authority that was even religious, ordering that the doorposts be touched with it by brides; and besides clothing and protection against cold, greasy wool provides very many remedies, with oil and wine or vinegar, according as each thing needs to be soothed or to bite, to bind or to loosen, applied to dislocated limbs and aching sinews and often drenched. Some also mix salt in for dislocations; others apply with the wool pounded rue and fat, likewise to bruises and swellings.
31| It is also reported to make the breath of the mouth more pleasant, when it is rubbed on the teeth and gums with honey mixed in. It helps also the frenzied by fumigation. It stops blood in the nostrils when put in with oil of roses, and in another way, thicker, with the ears stopped. It is also laid with honey on old ulcers. It heals wounds, with wine or vinegar or cold water and oil pressed out of it.
32| Fleeces of a ram, washed in cold water and soaked in oil, quiet inflammations of the womb in women's ailments, and if it prolapses, repress it by fumigation. Greasy wool laid on and placed beneath calls out dead births; it also stops their flows. And bound over the bites of a mad dog, it is loosed after the seventh day. It heals hangnails with cold water. The same, dyed in natron, sulphur, oil, vinegar and boiling liquid pitch, laid on as hot as possible twice a day, quiets pains of the loins. And it stops bleeding when greasy wool from a ram is bound about the joints of the extremities.
33| All wool from the neck is the most highly praised, and by country the Galatian, Tarentine, Attic and Milesian. They lay on greasy wool for scaly and bruised parts, for livid places, blows, crushings, rubbings and falls, for headaches and other pains, and for inflammation of the stomach in vinegar and oil of roses. Its ash is smeared on chafed, wounded and burned places. It is also added to eye medicines, likewise to fistulas and to suppurating ears.
34| For this purpose some dry it after shearing, others after plucking, with the topmost parts cut off, and tease it and pack it in a raw earthen pot and pour honey over it and burn it. Others put splinters of pine-torch beneath, with oil sprinkled between from time to time, and set it alight, and rub the ash in small basins with water added, by hand, and let it settle, changing the water often, until it gently binds the tongue and does not bite; then they lay the ash away. Its power is corrosive, and it cleanses the eyelids most effectively.
35| Indeed the very filth of the flocks, and the sweat of the thighs and armpits that clings to the wool, which they call oesypum, has almost countless uses. The palm goes to that produced from Attic sheep. It is made in several ways, but the most approved is from wool freshly plucked from those parts, or from any greasy filth first collected, warmed gently over a slow fire in a bronze vessel and cooled, and the fat that floats on top gathered into an earthen vessel and boiled again with the former matter; each fat is washed in cold water and strained in a linen cloth and baked in the sun until it becomes white and translucent; then it is stored in a tin box.
36| The test is that it smells of the rank odour of the filth, and when rubbed by hand with water it does not dissolve but turns white like white lead. It is most useful for the eyes against inflammations and callus of the eyelids. Some bake it in a potsherd until it loses its fat, thinking such more useful for eroded and hardened eyelids, for scabby corners, and for watering eyes.
37| It heals ulcers not of the eyes only but of the mouth also and of the genitals, with goose fat. It treats inflammations of the womb, fissures of the seat, and condylomata, with melilot and butter. Its other uses we shall set out later. The filth of the tails, too, caked into little balls, dried, by itself, pounded to meal and rubbed on the teeth, is wonderfully beneficial, even to loose ones, and to the gums if a cancer is creeping in them;
38| and clean fleeces applied by themselves, or with sulphur taken up, are good for hidden pains, and their ash for defects of the genitals; and they are so powerful that they are even laid over medicines. They help above all the flock itself, if the sheep refuse to feed from disgust. For when the tail is tied as tightly as possible and the wool is plucked from it, they feed at once, and they say that the part of the tail beyond the knot dies off first.
39| Wool also has an affinity with eggs: laid together on the forehead they are used against rheums of the eyes. In this use it is not necessary for the wool to have been treated with radicula, nor for anything other than the white of an egg to be poured on, and fine meal of frankincense. Eggs by themselves, with the white poured in, check rheums of the eyes and cool burning ones (some prefer it with saffron), and they are mixed in place of water into eye-salves; for infants against running eyes they are, as hardly anything else is, a remedy, with fresh butter mixed in.
40| The same, ground with oil, soothe erysipelas with beet leaves bound over. With the white of eggs the lashes are bent back in the eyes, with Hammoniacum ground and mixed in, and pimples in the face with pine kernels and a little honey. The face itself, smeared, is not burned by the sun. Parts burned by hot water do not feel pustules if they are covered at once with egg (some mix in barley meal and a little salt); and for sores from burns, toasted barley with egg white and pig fat is wonderfully beneficial.
41| The same treatment is used for defects of the seat, and for infants even if anything prolapses there; for cracks of the feet, the white of eggs boiled with 2 denarii in weight of white lead, an equal weight of foam of silver, a little myrrh, then wine; for erysipelas, the white of three eggs with starch. They say too that wounds are glued by the white, and stones expelled.
42| The yolks of eggs, cooked until they harden, with a moderate amount of saffron mixed in, or honey, smeared on with woman's milk, mitigate pains of the eyes; or wool laid on the eyes with oil of roses and honeyed wine; or smeared on with ground celery seed and barley groats in honeyed wine. It helps also those who cough, the yolk swallowed liquid by itself in such a way that the teeth do not touch it, for rheums of the chest and roughness of the throat. Specially, against haemorrhois snakes, it is smeared on the bite and sipped raw.
43| It helps also the kidneys, and gnawings and ulcerations of the bladder. For those spitting blood, 5 yolks of eggs are sipped raw in a hemina of wine; for dysentery, with the ash of their own shell and poppy juice and wine. They are given to coeliacs with an equal weight of fat raisins and of pomegranate rind for three days in equal portions; and in another way, 3 yolks of eggs, a quadrans each of old lard and of honey, 3 cyathi of old wine, ground to the thickness of honey, and,
44| when it is needed, drunk in water the size of a hazelnut; likewise three fried in oil, the whole eggs having been steeped the day before in vinegar; so too for lientery, and for those bringing up blood, with 3 cyathi of must. The same are used for livid bruises, if they are of longer standing, with bulbs and honey. Cooked and drunk in wine they stop women's monthly flow; raw with oil and wine they treat inflations of the womb when smeared on.
45| They are useful also for pains of the neck, with goose fat and oil of roses, and for defects of the seat, hardened in the fire so that they help by heat as well, and for condylomata with oil of roses; likewise for burns, hardened in water, then in embers with the shells burned away, and then the yolks are smeared on with oil of roses. Whole yolks are also made, which they call sitista, when after three days of incubation they are taken out. Chicks in eggs strengthen a relaxed stomach, with half an oak gall, provided that no other food is taken for 2 hours. They give also to dysenteric patients chicks boiled in the very egg, with a hemina of harsh wine mixed in and the same measure of oil and barley groats.
46| The membrane stripped from the shell, whether the egg is raw or cooked, treats fissures of the lips; the ash of the shell drunk in wine treats eruptions of blood. It should be burned without the membrane. Tooth powder is made in this way too. The same ash, smeared on with myrrh, stops women's monthly flow. The firmness of shells is so great that, held upright, they are broken by no force or weight, unless they are bent a little out of their roundness.
47| Whole eggs help birth, drunk in wine with rue and dill and cumin. They remove itch and pruritus of the body when mixed with oil and cedria, and moist ulcers on the head when cyclaminus is mixed in. For spitting of pus and blood, a raw egg is swallowed, warmed, with the juice of cut leek and an equal measure of Greek honey. Eggs are also given to those who cough, cooked and ground with honey, or raw with raisin wine and an equal measure of oil. Single eggs are also poured in for defects of virility, each with half an ounce of starch and three cyathi of raisin wine, after the baths; against the strikes of serpents they are smeared on cooked and ground, with cress added.
48| In how many ways they help as food is well known, since they pass through swellings of the throat and as they go warm it by their heat. There is no other food that nourishes in sickness without burdening, and has at once the force of drink and of food.
49| We have said that the shell of eggs steeped in vinegar is softened; worked with flour into a loaf, such eggs restore coeliacs. Some think it more useful to roast them thus dissolved in pans, in which way they check not only the bowels but also the monthly flow of women; or, if the force of the flux is greater, they are swallowed raw with flour and water. By themselves, the yolks of these are boiled in vinegar until they harden, and again roasted with ground pepper to check the bowels.
50| A singular remedy is made also for dysenteric patients: an egg poured out into a new earthen vessel, and of the same egg's measure, so that all are equal, honey, then vinegar, and oil, poured together and often stirred; the better these are, the more immediate the remedy will be. Others add, in the same measure in place of the oil and vinegar, red resin and wine; and they mix in another way, an equal measure of oil only, with 2 sixtieths of a denarius of pine bark, with one of that which we called rhum, and 5 obols of honey boiled together, so that other food is taken after 4 hours. Many also treat gripings with two eggs, ground together with 4 heads of garlic, and a hemina of wine warmed, and so given as a drink.
51| And so that nothing may be wanting to the credit of eggs, the white of them mixed with quicklime glues together fragments of glass; and their power is so great that wood drenched with egg does not burn, nor even is a garment burned that has been touched with it. We have spoken only of the eggs of hens, though those of other birds remain, of great usefulness, as we shall say in their places.
52| There is, besides, a kind of egg in great repute in the Gauls, passed over by the Greeks. For snakes, coiled together in great numbers, gather it into a ball with the saliva of their throats and the foam of their bodies, in a skilful embrace; it is called the urinum. The Druids say it is tossed up into the air with hissings and must be caught in a cloak so that it does not touch the ground; that the one who seizes it flees on horseback, for the serpents pursue him until they are stopped by the intervening of some river; that the test of it is if it floats against the water, even when bound in gold;
53| and, as is the cleverness of the Magi in hiding their frauds, they judge it must be taken at a certain moon, as if it were for human decision that this operation of the serpents should coincide. I have myself seen that egg, the size of a moderate round apple, its shell cartilaginous and marked, as though with the sucker-cups of the arms of a polyp, with many pits.
54| It is wonderfully praised by the Druids for winning lawsuits and for access to kings, a vanity so great that, to my knowledge, a Roman knight from the Vocontii was put to death by the deified Claudius for no other reason than that he had it in his bosom during a lawsuit. Yet this embrace of snakes and their fruitful concord seems to be the reason why foreign peoples made the caduceus, with the figure of snakes wound about it, among the tokens of peace; for it is not the custom for them to be crested on the caduceus.
55| Of goose eggs, which are of great utility, and of the goose itself, we shall speak in this volume; and we owe honour to the Commagenum, a most famous preparation. It is made from goose fat (otherwise of the most celebrated use, but for this purpose in Commagene, a part of Syria) with cinnamum, casia, white pepper, and the herb called Commagene, the vessels buried in snow; it has a pleasant smell and is most useful for chills, convulsions, hidden or sudden pains, and everything that is treated with acopa; it is at once an ointment and a medicine.
56| It is also made in Syria in another way, with bird fat prepared as we shall say, with erysisceptrum, xylobalsamum and phoenix added, and ground calamus, of each the weight of the fat, warmed in wine two or three times. It is made in winter, since in summer it does not congeal unless wax is added. There are besides many remedies from the goose, which I wonder at as much as in the case of goats, for the goose and the raven are said to be afflicted by disease from summer into autumn.
57| Of the honour of geese, which they earned by detecting the Gauls' ascent to the Capitol, we have spoken. For the same reason dogs pay an annual penalty, fixed alive by the shoulder on a fork of elder wood, in the space between the shrine of Juventas and that of Summanus. But the customs of the ancients compel more to be said about this animal.
58| They considered suckling puppies so pure for food that they used them even in appeasing the divine powers in place of victims. A sacrifice is made to Genita Mana with a puppy, and puppy meat is even now placed at the dinners of the gods. That it was celebrated at inaugural banquets is shown by the plays of Plautus. They think nothing more outstanding than dog's blood against poisons; this animal seems also to have shown man vomiting, and other uses wonderfully praised from it we shall report in their places. Now we shall go on in the order undertaken.
59| Against the strikes of serpents the following are held effective: the fresh dung of a sheep boiled in wine and smeared on, and mice cut open and laid on. Their nature is not to be despised, especially in sympathy with the stars, as we have said, the number of their fibres growing and decreasing with the light of the moon. The Magi report that if a mouse's liver is given to pigs in a fig, the animal follows the one who gave it, and that it works likewise in man, but that the effect is undone by a cyathus of oil drunk.
60| Of weasels there are two kinds; one wild, differing in size, which the Greeks call ictides. The gall of these is said to be effective against asps, in other respects a poison. But that which wanders in our houses, and, as Cicero attests, every day carries its young across and changes its dwelling, pursues serpents. The weight of a denarius of it, preserved in salt, is given in 3 cyathi to those who have been struck; or its stomach stuffed with coriander and preserved and drunk in wine, and a weasel's young even more effectively.
61| Some things shameful to tell are recommended with such assurance by the authors that it is not right to pass them over, since the harmony or conflict of things gives rise to medicines; for example, the nature of bedbugs, a most foul creature, disgusting even to mention, is said to avail against the bites of serpents and especially of asps, and likewise against all poisons, the proof being that, they say, hens are not killed by an asp on the day when they have eaten them, and the flesh of these is of the greatest help to those who have been struck. Of the things they report,
62| the most humane is to smear them on bites with the blood of a tortoise, and likewise, by fumigation with them, to drive off leeches that cling, and to kill those that animals have swallowed, by giving the bugs to them in drink. Some, however, even anoint the eyes with them ground with salt and woman's milk, and the ears with honey and oil of roses mixed in. Those which are wild and born in mallow, burnt, with the ash mixed with oil of roses, they pour into the ears.
63| The rest that they report about them, remedies for vomitings and quartan fevers and other diseases, though they hold that they should be swallowed enclosed in egg or wax or a bean, I judge false and not to be repeated. For lethargy alone they use them as medicine, with a reason, since the soporific force of asps is overcome, giving seven in a cyathus of water, four for the years of boyhood.
64| And in strangury they have put them into a tube. So true is it that that parent of all things has produced nothing without vast reasons. They have also reported that two tied on the left arm in wool stolen from shepherds resist night fevers, and day fevers in a reddish cloth. Against these, however, the scolopendra is hostile, and kills them by fumigation.
65| Asps kill those they strike by torpor and sleep, the least curable of all serpents. But their venom, if it has touched blood or a fresh wound, kills at once; if an old ulcer, more slowly. For the rest, drunk in any amount it does no harm, for it has no wasting force; and so animals killed by their bite are harmless as food. I would hesitate to put forward a remedy from them, had not Marcus Varro, in the 83rd year of his life, reported that the strokes of asps are most effectively cured when the struck drink their own urine.
66| Of the basilisk, which even the serpents themselves flee, killing others by smell, and which is said to kill a man if it merely looks at him, the Magi celebrate the blood with wonderful praises: congealing, it is like pitch in manner and colour, and diluted it becomes brighter than cinnabaris. They attribute to it success in petitions to the powers, and even to the gods in prayers, remedies for diseases, and amulets against poisonings. Some even call it the blood of Saturn.
67| The dragon has no venoms. Its head, set beneath the threshold of doors, with the gods propitiated by adoration, is promised to make the house fortunate; its eyes, aged and ground with honey, to make those anointed with them not shrink in fear from night apparitions even if they are timid; the fat of its heart, in the skin of a gazelle, tied to the upper arm with the sinews of a stag, to confer very much victory in lawsuits; the vertebra, to soothe access to the powers; its teeth, tied in the skins of roe deer with stag sinews, to render masters mild and the powerful open to entreaty.
68| But above all there is the compound by which the lies of the Magi make people invincible: the tail and head of a dragon, hairs from a lion's forehead and the marrow of the same, the foam of a victorious horse, and a dog's claw, bound on with deer hide and the sinews of a stag and a gazelle alternately. It will matter as much to have refuted these as to have shown remedies against serpents, since these too are their poisonings. Poisonous creatures flee dragon fat, and also, if it is burned, that of ichneumons; they flee too those anointed with nettles ground in vinegar.
69| A viper's head laid on, even one other than that which has struck, helps without limit, as does it if someone holds the viper itself up on a staff in the steam (for they say it recants), likewise if someone smears on the ash of the same, burned. That the serpent returns to the one it struck, by necessity of nature, is attested by Nigidius. Some cut open the head skilfully between the ears to take out a little stone, which they say it swallows when frightened; others use the entire head.
70| From the viper are made pastilles, called theriaci by the Greeks: three finger-breadths are cut off at each end, the entrails are taken out together with the livid part adhering to the spine, the rest of the body is boiled thoroughly in a pan with water and dill, the spines are removed, fine flour is added, and the pastilles are dried in the shade; they use them in many medicines. It should be noted that this is made from the viper only. Some, when it has been cleaned as said above, boil down its fat with a sextarius of oil to the half; from this, when needed, three drops added to oil are used for anointing, so that all beasts flee those anointed.
71| It is established besides that against the stings of all, even incurable ones, the entrails of the serpents themselves, applied, help, and that those who have once swallowed a viper's liver, cooked, are never afterwards struck by a serpent. Nor is the snake venomous except through the month when stirred by the moon, and it helps when seized alive and crushed in water, if the bites are bathed in this way.
72| Indeed many remedies are believed to be in it, as we shall set out, and for that reason it is said to be dedicated to Aesculapius. Democritus even devises certain marvels from them, such that the speech of birds can be understood. The snake of Aesculapius was brought from Epidaurus to Rome and is commonly kept even in houses, and unless their seed were burned out by fires, there would be no resisting their fecundity in the world. The most beautiful kind of snake is that which lives also in water; they are called hydri, inferior to no serpent in venom. The liver of these, kept, is [against] a help to one struck by them.
73| A scorpion, ground up, is an antidote to the venom of stelliones. For from stelliones a bad drug is made; when one has died in wine, it covers the face of those who drink with freckles. For this reason those who plot against the beauty of their rivals kill it in an ointment. The remedy is the yolk of an egg, with honey and natron. The gall of stelliones, ground in water, is said to gather weasels together.
74| Among all venomous creatures the salamander's crime is the greatest. For the others strike individuals and do not kill several at once, to say nothing of the fact that they are said to perish from conscience when they have struck a man and to be received no more by the Earth; but the salamander can kill whole peoples together, unawares. For if it has crept up a tree, it taints all the fruit with venom and kills those who eat it by a chilling force, no different from aconitum;
75| indeed if a crust of bread is laid on wood or stone that it has touched, the poisoning is the same, or if it falls into a well, since if its saliva is sprinkled on any part of the body, even the lowest part of the foot, all the hair falls off over the whole body. Yet a venom of such kind and such magnitude is eaten by some animals, such as pigs, the same opposition of things prevailing.
76| It is likely that its venom is extinguished first of all by those that feed on it, and of the things that are reported, by a drink of cantharides or a lizard taken in food. Other antagonists we have named and shall name in their places. As for what the Magi report from it against fires, since it alone of animals extinguishes flames, if it were true Rome would have tried it by now. Sextius reports that love is kindled by eating them, if, with the entrails and feet and head removed, they are kept in honey, and denies that fire is put out by them.
77| Of birds the vulture is the first in aid against serpents, and it has been noted that the black ones have less power. They say that serpents are driven off by the smell of feathers from its wings, if they are burned, and that those who have the heart of that bird are safe from the attack not only of serpents but also of wild beasts and robbers and the anger of kings.
78| The venoms of serpents are overcome by the flesh of chickens laid on as soon as it is torn off, while still warm, and likewise by the brain drunk in wine. The Parthians prefer to lay the brain of a hen on the wounds. Broth of them drunk also treats excellently, and is wonderful in many other uses. Panthers and lions do not touch those anointed with it, especially if garlic has been boiled in.
79| It loosens the bowels more strongly if from an old cock, and helps also against long fevers and numb and trembling limbs and joint diseases and headaches, rheums, inflations, loss of appetite, beginning tenesmus, and is good for the liver, kidneys, bladder, against indigestions, and shortness of breath.
80| And so rules even exist for making it: it is more effective boiled with sea-cabbage or cybium or caper or celery or the herb Mercurialis, polypody or dill, but most usefully in 3 congii of water boiled down to 3 heminae with the above-named herbs, and given cooled in the open air, more suitably with vomiting beforehand. I shall not pass by a marvel, though it does not belong to medicine: if the limbs of hens are mixed into melting gold, they consume it into themselves; so this is the venom of gold. And cocks themselves do not crow if a ring of filings is put around the neck.
81| Against serpents the flesh of doves, freshly torn up, also helps, and that of swallows, and the feet of an owl burned with the herb plumbago. Nor shall I omit in this bird too an example of magical vanity; for besides the other portentous lies they report that its heart, laid on the left breast of a sleeping woman, makes her declare all her secrets; and that those who carry it into battle become braver.
82| They also show remedies from its egg for the hair. For who, I ask, could ever have seen an owl's egg, when to have seen the bird itself is a prodigy? Who, at all events, could have tried it, and especially on the hair? They even promise that the blood of an owl's chick curls the hair.
83| Of nearly the same kind may seem what they report also about the bat: if it is carried three times around a house alive and fastened above the window head downwards, it is an amulet, and specially for sheepfolds, carried around as many times and hung by the feet over the threshold. Its blood too, with thistle, they praise among the first remedies against the strikes of serpents.
84| The phalangium is unknown in Italy and has several kinds: one similar to an ant but much larger, with a red head, the rest of the body black, with white spots. Its sting is sharper than a wasp's. It lives chiefly around ovens and mills. It is a remedy if one shows the struck person another of the same kind, and for this purpose dead ones are kept. Their shells are also found, which, ground and drunk, cure; the young of a weasel as above.
85| The Greeks equally call phalangion one among the kinds of spiders, but distinguish it with the name of wolf. A third kind, with the same name of phalangium, is a downy spider with a very large head, in which, when it is cut open, two little worms are said to be found, and tied on women in deerskin before sunrise they prevent conception, as Caecilius left in his commentaries. This power lasts a year. This alone out of every atocion it is permissible to have mentioned, since the fecundity of some women, full of children, needs such an indulgence.
86| There is also one called rhox, like a black grape-berry, with a very small mouth under the belly and very short feet, as though incomplete. The pain from its bite is like that from a scorpion, and the urine is like spiders' webs. The asterion would be the same, were it not marked with white streaks; its bite makes the knees give way. Worse than either is the blue one, with black down, which brings on dimness of sight and cobwebby vomitings. Worse still is one that differs from a hornet only in its wing; this one also brings on wasting.
87| The myrmecion, like an ant in the head, with a black belly marked by white spots, torments with the pain of wasps. The tetragnathion has two kinds: the worse is marked in the middle of the head by a white line and by another crosswise; this one causes swelling of the mouth. But the grey one, whitish in its hinder part, is slower, and least harmful of all is that of the same colour which spreads its webs for flies very widely on walls.
88| Against the bites of all there is a remedy in the brain of a chicken drunk in posca with a little pepper, likewise 5 ants drunk, the ash of the dung of flocks smeared on in vinegar, and spiders themselves, any of them, rotted in oil. The bite of a shrew is cured by the rennet of a lamb drunk in wine, by the ash of a ram's hoof with honey, and by a weasel's young as was said under serpents. If it has bitten beasts of burden, a fresh mouse is applied with salt, or a bat's gall in vinegar.
89| And the shrew itself is a remedy against itself when torn apart and laid on. For if a pregnant one has bitten, it bursts apart at once. It is best if the very one that bit is laid on, but they keep others too for this use, coated in oil or clay. There is also a remedy against its bite in earth from a wheel-rut; for they say the rut is not crossed by it, through a certain torpor of its nature.
90| The stellio is said to be the most opposed to scorpions in turn, so that by its very sight it brings them terror and a torpor of cold sweat. And so they rot it in oil and anoint the wounds with it. Some boil down foam of silver in that oil to a kind of plaster and so smear it on. The Greeks call this animal colotes, ascalabotes and galeotes; in Italy it is not born. For it is full of spots, of a sharp squeak, and feeds on spiders, all of which is foreign to our stelliones.
91| It helps also to apply the ash of hens' dung, a dragon's liver, a lizard torn apart, a mouse torn apart, a scorpion itself laid on its own sting, or roasted and taken as food, or drunk in 2 cyathi of neat wine. It is peculiar to scorpions that they do not strike the palm of the hand, and that they do not touch the hairs when seen. A little stone of any kind, from the side that was on the ground, laid on the sting, relieves the pain; likewise a potsherd, which has been covered with earth on one part, is said to free it when laid on (those who apply it must not look back, and must take care that the sun does not see it); and earthworms, ground and laid on.
92| There are many other remedies from them as well, for which reason they are kept in honey. The owl is hostile to bees and wasps and hornets and leeches; those who have on them the beak of Mars's woodpecker are not stung by them. The smallest locusts without wings, which they call attelebi, are hostile too. There is also a venomous kind of ant, hardly found in Italy. Cicero calls them solipugae, Baetica salpugae. Against these a bat's heart is contrary, and against all ants. We have said that cantharides resist salamanders.
93| But in these there is a great question, since they are themselves poisons, blistering the bladder when drunk, with extreme torment. Cossinus, a Roman knight known for his friendship with the emperor Nero, when he was seized with lichen, was killed by a physician called from Egypt by Caesar for this complaint of his, when he had wished to prepare him with a drink of cantharides. But it is not doubtful that, applied, they do good, with the juice of the taminia grape and the tallow of a sheep or goat.
94| In which part of the cantharides themselves the venom lies is not agreed among the authors. Some think it is in the feet and head, others deny it. It is agreed only that their wings help, in whatever part the venom is. They are born from a little worm in the sponge of the dog-rose, which forms on the stem, but most fruitfully on the ash; the others on the white rose, less potent. The most powerful of all are those variegated with yellow lines which they have across the wings, and fat; much more inert are the small, broad, hairy ones; the most useless are the lean ones of one colour.
95| They are stored in an unpitched earthen jar tied up with linen, a ripe rose thrown in, and are hung above boiling vinegar with salt until they are steamed through the little linen cloth, and afterwards put away. Their power is to burn the body and to raise scabs. The same applies to pine caterpillars born on the pitch pine, and to the buprestis, and they are prepared similarly; all are most effective against leprous eruptions and lichens. They are said also to bring on the monthly flow and urine; for that reason Hippocrates gave them to dropsy patients too.
96| Cantharides were made a charge against Cato of Utica, as though he had sold poison at the royal auction, since he had knocked them down for 60 sesterces. And let it be said in passing that ostrich fat then sold for 30 sesterces, of more effective use for everything than goose fat.
97| We have also spoken of kinds of poisoned honey. Against it they use honey in which bees have died. The same, drunk in wine, is a remedy for the ills that arise from eating fish.
98| In the bite of a mad dog, the ash of a dog's head smeared on the wound protects against the dread of water. All such things must be burned in the same way, to say it once: in a new earthen vessel coated with clay, and so put into an oven. The same helps in a drink. Some have for that reason given it to be eaten. Others have tied on a worm from a dog's carcass, or placed the menses of a bitch in a cloth under the cup, or inserted burned hairs of the dog's tail into the wound itself.
99| Dogs flee one who has a dog's heart; they do not bark if a dog's tongue is put under the big toe in the shoe, or if people have a weasel's tail, cut off when the animal was let go. There is a slime of saliva under the tongue of a mad dog which, given in a drink, does not allow people to become hydrophobic; far more useful, however, is the liver of the one that bit in its madness, given, if it can be done, raw to be chewed; if not, cooked in any way, or the broth of the cooked flesh.
100| There is a little worm in the tongue of dogs, called lytta by the Greeks; when it is taken out of puppies, they neither become mad nor feel disgust. The same, carried three times around a fire, is given to those bitten by a mad dog, that they may not become mad. The brain of a chicken also meets it, but swallowed it helps for that year only. They say too that the comb of a cock, pounded, is effectively applied, and goose fat with honey. The flesh of those that were mad is also salted, to be given in food for the same remedies.
101| Indeed puppies are killed at once in water, according to the sex of the one that bit, so that the raw liver may be swallowed from them. Chicken dung helps, the red only, laid on in vinegar; so does the ash of the tail of a shrew, provided that the animal itself, from which it was cut off, is let go alive; a clod from a swallow's nest smeared on in vinegar, or the burned young of a swallow; the membrane, or old age, of snakes cast off at the spring sloughing, ground with a male crab in wine; this also, laid away by itself in chests and cupboards, kills moths.
102| The power of the evil is so great that even the trodden urine of a mad dog does harm, most of all to those with an ulcer. The remedy is horse dung sprinkled with vinegar and warmed, laid on in a fig. One would wonder less at this who considers that a stone a dog has bitten came to be a proverb for discord. Those who have relieved themselves into a dog's urine, they say, feel a torpor of the loins. (The lizard which they call seps, others chalcis, drunk in wine, heals its own bites.)
103| Against poisonings made from the wild weasel, the broth of an old chicken, drunk in quantity, is the contrary; specially against aconita a little salt should be added. The dung of hens, the white only, boiled in hyssop or in honeyed wine, serves against the poisons of mushrooms and boleti, and likewise against inflations and chokings, which we may wonder at, since, if another animal has tasted that dung, it is affected with gripings and inflations.
104| Goose blood avails against sea-hares with an equal portion of oil; the same acts against all bad drugs, with Lemnian red ochre and the juice of the white thorn, so that five drachmas of the pastilles are drunk in three cyathi of water. Likewise a weasel's young, prepared as we said above; the rennet of a lamb also is potent against all bad drugs; likewise the blood of Pontic ducks, and so it is kept thickened and diluted with wine; some think the blood of the female duck more effective.
105| In a similar way against all poisons the stomach of storks avails, the rennet of a sheep, the broth from the flesh of rams, specially against cantharides, as does the warm milk of sheep, and besides for those who have drunk buprestis or aconitum, the dung of wild pigeons, specially against a drink of quicksilver; against toxica, the common weasel, preserved, drunk in two drachmas.
106| Baldness is filled in by the ash of the dung of flocks with oil of cyprus and honey, and likewise by the hooves of a mule, male or female, with oil of myrtle; besides, as our Varro reports, mouse dung, which he calls muscerdae, or the heads of flies, fresh, first rubbed with a fig leaf. Others use the blood of flies, others for 10 days smear on their ash with the ash of papyrus or of nuts so that a third portion is of flies; others work the ash of flies with woman's milk and cabbage, some with honey only. No animal is thought less teachable or of lesser understanding; it is the more wonderful that at Olympia, in the sacred contest, when a bull is sacrificed to the god whom they call Myiodes, clouds of them depart beyond that territory.
107| Baldness is also remedied by the ash of the heads and tails of mice, and of a whole mouse, especially if this injury has come about by poisoning; likewise by the ash of a hedgehog with honey, or its hide burned with liquid pitch. Its head burned, by itself, even restores hairs to scars; but in that treatment the places of baldness must first be prepared with a razor; and some have preferred to use mustard in vinegar. All that will be said of the hedgehog will be so much the more effective in the porcupine.
108| Lizards also, burned as we have taught with the root of fresh reed (which, so that it may be burned together, must be split small), with the ash mixed with oil of myrtle, hold back the shedding of the hair. Green lizards do all the same things more effectively, still more usefully with salt and bear fat and crushed onion mixed in. Some boil down ten green ones in 10 sextarii of old oil, content to anoint once a month.
109| The ash of viper skins fills baldness most quickly, and so does fresh chicken dung smeared on. A raven's egg, mixed in a bronze vessel and smeared on a shaved head, brings blackness of the hair, but until it dries, oil must be held in the mouth, lest the teeth too turn black, and this must be done in the shade and not washed off before four days.
110| Others use its blood and brain with black wine; others boil down the bird itself and at dead of night put it away in a lead vessel. Some smear bald places with ground cantharis and liquid pitch, the skin prepared with natron (their power is caustic, and care must be taken that they do not ulcerate deeply); afterwards, on the ulcers so made, they bid the heads of mice and the gall of mice and dung to be smeared on, with hellebore and pepper.
111| Nits are removed by dog fat, or by snakes taken in food in the manner of eels, or by their spring slough, which they cast off, drunk; scurf by sheep's gall with Cimolian chalk smeared on the head until it dries.
112| For pains of the head a remedy is found in snails which are found naked, not yet completed, with the heads removed and the stony hardness taken out of them (it is of the breadth of a pebble, and these are tied on, but the small ones are smeared on the forehead ground up, and likewise oesypum), the bones from the head of a vulture tied on, or its brain with oil and cedria, the head anointed and the inside of the nostrils smeared;
113| a crow's brain cooked and taken in food, or an owl's; a cock, if shut up and kept without food day and night, with the same fasting for the one whose head aches, the feathers plucked from its neck and bound around, or the combs; the ash of a weasel smeared on; a twig from a kite's nest placed under the pillow; the skin of a mouse burned and the ash smeared on in vinegar; the little bone of a slug found between two cart-ruts, passed through gold, silver and ivory, and tied on in a dog-skin pouch, a remedy which helps many and always.
114| A spider's web laid on a broken head with oil and vinegar does not come away until the wound is healed. This also stops the blood from barbers' wounds, while for a flow from the brain, goose blood or duck blood is poured in, and the fat of the same birds with oil of roses. Having cut off the head of a snail feeding in the morning, with a reed, especially at full moon, they bind it on in a linen cloth for headaches, or smear it on the forehead with lycium or white wax added. And they bind dog hairs in a cloth.
115| A crow's brain taken in food is said to produce eyelashes, and oesypum with myrrh smeared on with a hot probe. The ash of flies and of mouse dung in equal portions, to the amount of half the weight of a denarius, is promised to do the same, with 2 sixths of a denarius of stibi added, so that all is smeared on with oesypum; and likewise the young of a mouse ground in old wine to the thickness of acopum.
116| Troublesome hairs in the eyelids, once plucked out, are not allowed to grow again by the gall of a hedgehog, the liquid of the eggs of a stellio, the ash of a salamander, or the gall of a green lizard in white wine hardened in the sun in a bronze vessel to the thickness of honey, the ash of young swallows with the milk of tithymallus, and the foam of snails.
117| The Magi say that glaucomata are put right by the brain of a seven-day-old puppy, a probe being let down into the right side if the right eye is being treated, into the left if the left; or by the fresh gall of the axio; this is a kind of owl, in which a feather quivers like ears. Apollonius of Pitane preferred that suffusion of the eyes be treated by dog's gall rather than hyena's, with honey, and likewise albugines.
118| They say that clearness of sight is restored to those anointed with the ash of the heads and tails of mice with honey, and much more with the ash of a dormouse or a wild mouse, or the brain or gall of an eagle with Attic honey. The ash from the head of a shrew, ground with stibi, helps watering eyes very much (what stibi is we shall say among the metals); the ash of a weasel for suffusions, and of a lizard, and a swallow's brain. Snails pounded and smeared on the forehead quiet rheums, whether by themselves or with fine meal or frankincense; so too they help the sun-struck, that is those seized by the sun. It is also most useful to burn them alive and to anoint dimness of sight with their ash and Cretan honey.
119| For the eyes of beasts of burden, the membrane of an asp, which it sheds in spring, with its fat, gives clearness to those anointed. It is most useful to burn a live viper in a new earthen pot, with the juice of fennel added up to one cyathus and one grain of frankincense, and to anoint with it for suffusions of the eyes and dimness; that medicine is called echeon.
120| A salve for the eyes is also made from a viper rotted in a pot, with the little worms born from it ground with saffron. And salt is burned in a pot, which by licking they gain clearness of the eyes, and seasonable health of the stomach and of the whole body; this salt is given also to flocks for the sake of health and is added to the antidote against serpents.
121| Some also use vipers in food for the eyes. First of all, immediately after it is killed, they bid salt to be put into its mouth until it melts, then, having cut off 4 finger-breadths at each end and taken out the entrails, they boil it down in water, oil, salt and dill, and either eat it at once or gather it up in bread so as to use it more often. The broth, besides what has been said above, drives lice from the whole body, and itches of the surface of the skin. The ash of a viper's head also shows its effect by itself (they anoint the eyes with it to the greatest advantage), and likewise viper fat.
122| As to the gall I would not boldly recommend what they prescribe, since, as we have taught in its place, there is no other venom of serpents. The fat of snakes mixed with verdigris heals ruptured parts of the eyes, and the membrane, or old age, cast off by them at the spring sloughing, if rubbed on, produces clearness. The gall of the boa also is advertised for albugines, suffusions and dimness, and the fat likewise for clearness.
123| With the gall of the eagle, which we have said tests its young by making them look at the sun, mixed with Attic honey, clouds, dimness and suffusions of the eyes are anointed. The same power is in vulture gall with leek juice and a little honey, and in the gall of a cock, diluted in water, for argema and albugines, and likewise for suffusions of the eyes, above all that of a white cock. They point out also that the dung of chickens, the red only, is smeared on for the purblind.
124| They praise also the gall of a hen, and especially the fat, against pustules in the pupils, and clearly they do not fatten them for the sake of this. It helps marvellously also ruptured coats of the eyes, with the stones schistus and haematites mixed in. Their dung too, the white only, they keep in old oil and in horn boxes for albugines of the pupils. In mentioning which it should be noted that peacocks are reported to swallow their own dung again, grudging it to human uses.
125| A hawk, boiled down in rose oil, is held to be most effective for anointing in all defects, and so is the ash of its dung with Attic honey. They praise also a kite's liver; pigeon dung in vinegar for aegilopia, and similarly for albugines and scars; goose gall; the blood of ducks for bruised eyes, so that afterwards they are anointed with oesypum and honey; the gall of partridges with an equal weight of honey, but by itself for clearness. They think this was added on the authority of Hippocrates, that they order it be kept in a silver box.
126| Partridge eggs boiled in a bronze vessel with honey treat ulcers of the eyes and glaucomata. The blood of pigeons, wood-pigeons, turtle-doves and partridges helps eyes suffused with blood outstandingly. In pigeons they think the male's more effective; a vein under the wing is cut for this purpose, since by its own heat it is more useful. Over it should be laid a plaster boiled in honey, and greasy wool in oil or wine.
127| The blood of the same birds heals night-blindness, and so does the liver of sheep, as we said of goats, more effectively that of the tawny. They advise also to wash the eyes with a decoction of it, and to smear on the marrow for pains and swellings. The ash of an owl's eyes, mixed in a salve, is promised to give clearness to the eyes. The dung of a turtle-dove thins albugines, as does the ash of snails and the dung of the cenchris;
128| the Greeks make this of the hawk kind. Argema is cured with honey by all the things written above. Honey in which bees have died is most useful to the eyes. Whoever eats a stork's chick is said not to suffer from running eyes for many years in succession, and likewise whoever has a dragon's head. With its fat and honey and old oil they report that beginning dimness is dispersed. They blind swallows' young at full moon, and when their sight is restored their heads are burned; the ash with honey is used for clearness, and for pains and running eyes and blows.
129| Lizards also are taken in several ways for remedies of the eyes. Some shut up a green one in a new earthen vessel, and seal with nine seals little stones called cinaedia, which are also commonly tied on for swellings of the groin, and take out one each day; on the ninth day they let the lizard go, and keep the little stones for pains of the eyes.
130| Others spread earth beneath a green lizard they have blinded, and shut up with it in a glass vessel rings of solid iron or gold. When through the glass the lizard appears to have recovered its sight, it is let go and the rings are used against running eyes; others use the ash of its head instead of stibi for roughnesses. Some burn a green one with a long neck, born in sandy places, and anoint the beginning of a rheum with it, and glaucomata too.
131| They say that the sight of weasels also returns when the eyes have been picked out, and they do with them the same as with lizards and rings; that the right eye of a snake, tied on, helps against rheums, if the snake is let go alive. For eyes that water without end, the ash of the head of stelliones with stibi cures outstandingly. The web of the fly-spider, and especially its very lair, laid across the forehead to both temples in some plaster, in such a way that it is both taken and laid on by a boy not yet grown, and he does not show himself for three days to the person who is being treated, and no one else touches the ground barefoot in those days, is said to cure rheums marvellously;
132| albugines too are removed by anointing with a white spider with very long and slender feet, ground up in old oil. Even that one whose web is thickest, commonly in the rafters, tied on in a cloth, is reported to cure rheums. The nature of the green scarab sharpens the sight of those who look at it; and so engravers of gems rest their eyes by looking at them.
133| The ears are cleansed by the gall of a sheep with honey; a dripping of dog's milk quiets pain; for heaviness, fat with wormwood and old oil, and likewise goose fat. Some add onion juice, others in equal measure. They use also the eggs of ants by themselves, for this animal too has its medicine, and it is established that sick bears are cured by this food.
134| The fat of geese and of all birds is prepared [….] and all the veins removed, a new earthen pan covered, set in the sun above boiling water, melted and strained through linen bags and put away in a new earthen vessel in a cold place; it rots less with honey added. The ash of mice, dripped in with honey, or boiled down in rose oil, quiets pains of the ears. If any animal has entered, the special remedy is mouse gall diluted in vinegar; if water has entered, goose fat with onion juice.
135| A dormouse, skinned and with its entrails taken out, is boiled down in honey in a new vessel. Physicians prefer it boiled down in nard until a third is left, and kept like that; then, when it is needed, they pour it in warmed in a strigil. It is established that ailments of the ears given up as hopeless are cured by this remedy, or if earthworms boiled down with goose grease are poured in; likewise the red worms found on trees, pounded with oil, are an excellent remedy for ulcerated and torn ears.
136| Lizards dried by being hung up, with salt put into their mouths, heal bruised ears and those made sore by a blow; most effective, however, are those that have rust-coloured spots and are also marked with lines along the tail. The milipeda, called by others centipeda or multipeda, is a creature of the earthworm kind, hairy, crawling in an arch on many feet, and contracting itself when touched; the Greeks call it oniscos, others iulos. They report that it is effective for pains of the ears boiled down in the rind of a pomegranate with leek juice. They also add rose oil and pour it into the other ear. The kind that does not arch itself, however, the Greeks call seps, others scolopendra; it is smaller and harmful.
137| Snails of the kind used as food, applied with myrrh or with powdered frankincense, and likewise the small flat ones, are smeared with honey on fractures of the ears. The slough of serpents, burnt on a hot potsherd and mixed with rose oil, is dropped in; it is effective, indeed, against every ailment, but especially against a foul smell, and if the ears are purulent it is given in vinegar, better still with the gall of a goat or an ox or of a sea turtle — this same membrane is of no use if it is more than a year old, nor if it has been soaked by rain, as some think —
138| also the juice of a spider with rose oil, or by itself on wool, or with saffron; and the gryllus dug up with its earth and applied. Nigidius ascribes great authority to this creature, and the Magi greater still, because it walks backwards, bores into the earth and chirps at night. They hunt it by tying an ant with a hair and dropping it into its hole, after first blowing away the dust so that the gryllus cannot hide itself; so it is drawn out clasping the ant.
139| The membrane of a chicken's gizzard, which is usually thrown away, dried and pounded in wine, is poured warm into purulent ears, and so is hen's fat. There is a certain fat in the blatta if its head is pulled off; this, pounded together with rose oil, they say is wonderfully good for the ears, but the wool with which they have plugged it in must be taken out after a short while, for that fat very quickly turns into an animal and becomes a little worm. Others write that two or three blattae boiled down in oil are a most effective cure for the ears, and that pounded they are applied in a linen cloth to bruises.
140| This creature too is among the shameful things, but because of the wonder of nature and the care of the ancients it must be explained fully in this place. They distinguished several kinds of them: the soft ones, which they found by experience to be effective against warts, boiled down in oil and smeared on.
141| A second kind they called myloecon, which generally breeds around mills; with these, the head removed and the body pounded, Musaeus the boxer, they have left on record among their examples, was cured of leprous sores. The third kind, hateful also for the offensiveness of its smell, has a pointed hind end; with pisselaeon it heals ulcers otherwise incurable, and scrofulous swellings and pani when applied for 21 days, and wounds, bruises and malignant sores, mange and boils, with the feet and wings removed.
142| We are disgusted even to hear of these things; and yet, by Hercules, Diodorus records that he gave them with resin and honey both for jaundice and to those with orthopnoea. Such is the power that art has of giving whatever it pleases as a medicine. The most humane of them held that the ash of burnt blattae should be kept for these purposes in a horn box, or that they should be pounded and injected by clysters for those with orthopnoea or with rheum. It is at any rate agreed that, smeared on, they draw out things lodged in the body.
143| Honey in which bees have died is also very useful for the ears. Parotid swellings are reduced by pigeon's dung, either alone or with barley meal or with oat meal; by the brain or the liver of an owl poured with oil into the ear [from a parotid swelling]; by a multipeda smeared on with a third part of resin; and by grylli, either smeared on or tied on as amulets. For the remaining kinds of diseases we shall give the medicine drawn from these same animals, or from those of the same kind, in the following volume.

======== Natural History — Book XXX ========

1| The vanities of magic we have often refuted in the preceding part of this work, wherever the subject and the place required it, and we shall go on exposing them still. Yet it is a subject worthy, as few are, of being discussed at greater length, if only because, the most fraudulent of all the arts, it has held the greatest sway over the whole world and through very many ages. Let no one wonder that its authority has been so very great, since it alone of the arts has embraced the three others that most command the human mind and drawn them together into itself.
2| No one will doubt that it was born first from medicine and crept in under a show of promoting health, as a higher and holier medicine; that so, to its most seductive and most longed-for promises, it added the powers of religion, about which even now the human race is most in the dark; and that, so that this too might come to its aid, it mixed in the arts of astrology, for everyone is greedy to know his own future and believes it is most truly sought from the sky. So, having taken possession of men's senses with a triple bond, it has grown to such a height that even today it prevails among a great part of the nations, and in the East commands the kings of kings.
3| Without doubt it arose there, in Persia, with Zoroaster, as the authorities agree. But whether there was only this one, or another later as well, is not sufficiently established. Eudoxus, who wished it to be regarded as the most famous and most useful of the schools of wisdom, recorded that this Zoroaster lived six thousand years before Plato died; so too did Aristotle.
4| Hermippus, who wrote most carefully about that whole art and expounded twenty times 100,000 lines of verse composed by Zoroaster, adding indexes of his volumes as well, recorded that the teacher by whom Zoroaster said he had been instructed was Agonaces, and that Zoroaster himself lived five thousand years before the Trojan War. What is wonderful above all is that the memory and the art should have lasted through so long an age with no written commentaries to carry them, and moreover without being preserved by any famous or continuous succession.
5| For how many people know, even by hearsay, those who alone are named — Apusorus and Zaratus the Medes, Marmarus and Arabantiphocus the Babylonians, or Tarmoendas the Assyrian — of whom no records survive? Most wonderful of all, however, is that Homer kept such silence about that art in the Trojan War, and yet built so much of his work on it in the wanderings of Ulysses, so much so that his whole work rests on nothing else,
6| since they will have it that Proteus and the song of the Sirens in his poem are to be understood in no other way, and that with Circe at any rate, and the calling up of the dead, this alone is the subject. Nor has anyone since told how it came to Telmesus, a most devout city, or when it passed over to the women of Thessaly, whose name long prevailed in our part of the world, though the art was foreign to that people, who at least in Trojan times were content with the medicines of Chiron and with Mars alone hurling his thunderbolts.
7| I wonder indeed that its reputation clung so closely to the peoples of Achilles that Menander too, born without a rival for refinement in letters, gave the name Thessalian to a maidservant versed in the trickery of women who draw down the moon. I would think that Orpheus first brought the art in from close at hand, having advanced as far as the bordering ground of superstition and medicine, had not his home, the whole of Thrace, been without magic.
8| The first to have written about it, so far as survives, as I at least find, was Osthanes, who accompanied Xerxes, king of the Persians, in the war that he brought upon Greece, and scattered, as it were, the seeds of the monstrous art along the way, infecting the world wherever he went. More careful writers place shortly before him another Zoroaster, of Proconnesus. What is certain is that it was this Osthanes above all who drove the peoples of the Greeks not merely to an eagerness but to a frenzy for that science. And yet I observe that in ancient times, and almost always, the highest distinction and glory in letters was sought from that science.
9| Certainly Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Plato sailed abroad to learn it, undertaking exiles rather than journeys; it was this they proclaimed on their return, this they held among their mysteries. Democritus made famous Apollobeches of Coptos and Dardanus of Phoenicia, seeking out the volumes of Dardanus in his tomb and publishing his own on the basis of their teaching. That these should have been accepted by any human beings at all, and passed on through memory, is as wonderful as anything in life;
10| so utterly do they lack all credibility and decency, so much so that those who approve the rest of the man's work deny that these writings are his. But in vain; for it is agreed that he above all fixed that charm in men's minds. And this too is full of wonder: that both arts flourished together — medicine, I mean, and magic — in the same age, the former made illustrious by Hippocrates, the latter by Democritus, around the Peloponnesian War of Greece, which was waged from the three hundredth year of our City.
11| There is also another faction of magic, deriving from Moses, Jannes and Lotapes and the Jews, but many thousands of years after Zoroaster. So much more recent still is the Cyprian faction. In the times of Alexander the Great, too, no slight authority was added to the profession by a second Osthanes, honoured with a place in his retinue, who plainly — no one would doubt it — travelled all over the world.
12| Certainly traces of it survive among the Italian peoples too, in our Twelve Tables and in other evidence, which I set out in the previous volume. Only in the 657th year of the City, in the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus, was a decree of the senate passed that no human being should be sacrificed; and it is evident that up to that time monstrous rites were performed.
13| It certainly took possession of the Gauls, and indeed down to our own memory. For the principate of Tiberius Caesar did away with their Druids and this whole class of seers and physicians. But why should I recall this, when the art has crossed even the ocean and been carried to the void of nature? Britain to this day practises it in awe, with such ceremonies that it might seem to have given it to the Persians. So far have these things been agreed upon in the whole world, though it is at odds and unknown to itself. Nor can it be sufficiently estimated how much is owed to the Romans, who did away with those monstrosities in which to kill a man was the most religious act, and to eat him was even most health-giving.
14| As Osthanes has related, there are several kinds of it. For it promises divine knowledge by water and globes and air and stars and lamps and basins and axes and many other ways, and besides, conversations with shades and the dead below. All of which in our age the emperor Nero discovered to be vain and false. For his passion for the lyre and for tragic song was no greater than this, the fortune of human affairs at its height exulting in the deep vices of his mind, and first of all he longed to command the gods, and wanted nothing more noble. No one ever favoured any art more strongly.
15| Moreover he lacked neither wealth nor strength nor a mind for learning, which the world would have allowed in no other case! It is an immense and undoubted example of a false art that Nero abandoned it; and would that he had consulted the dead and whatever gods he suspected, rather than entrust those inquiries to brothels and prostitutes! No rites, certainly, even though barbarous and savage, would have been less gentle than his thoughts. Thus more cruelly he has filled us with shades.
16| The Magi have certain refuges, as that divine powers do not obey, or appear to, those who have freckles. Did this perhaps stand in his way? Nothing was lacking in his limbs. For choosing fixed days was within his freedom, and as for victims that must be of black colour only, that was easy; and to sacrifice men was even most welcome. The Magus Tiridates had come to him, bringing an Armenian triumph over himself and therefore a burden to the provinces.
17| He had refused to sail, since they hold it a sin to spit into the sea or to violate that nature by the other necessities of mortals. He had brought Magi with him, and had initiated Nero in magical banquets; yet when he gave him a kingdom he was not able to receive this art from him. Let it therefore be firmly believed that it is abominable, ineffectual and empty, though it has certain shadows of truth, but in these it is the poisoner's arts that are strong, not the magical.
18| Let someone ask what lies the old Magi told, when Apion the grammarian, whom I saw in my youth, reported the herb cynocephalia, called in Egypt osiritis, divine and good against all poisonings, but if it were uprooted whole, the man who had dug it up died at once; and that he himself had called up shades to question Homer as to what country and what parents he was born of, though he did not dare to declare what answer he said Homer had given him.
19| A particular proof of vanity is that of all animals they most admire moles, condemned by nature in so many ways, with perpetual blindness, buried besides in darkness, like the interred. In no other entrails do they place equal trust, and they judge no animal more capable of religious meaning, so that, if one devours its heart, fresh and still throbbing, they promise divinations and the outcomes of things to be accomplished.
20| They affirm that toothaches are cured when a tooth is taken from a living mole and tied on. The other opinions of theirs about this animal we shall give in their places. Nothing more probable will be found than that moles are hostile to the bites of shrews, since the earth pressed down by wheel-ruts, as we said, is hostile too.
21| For the rest, toothaches, as the same people relate, are cured by the ash of the heads of dogs that died of madness, burned without the flesh, dripped through the ear, on the side where the pain is, in oil of cyprus; the largest left canine tooth, with scarification around the aching one; or a dragon's bone from the spine, and likewise of the enhydris; it is a male and white serpent. With its largest tooth they scarify around, or, for pain in the upper teeth, tie on two upper ones, and the lower ones for the contrary.
22| With its fat those who hunt the crocodile are anointed. They scarify the teeth also with bones of the lizard taken from the forehead at full moon, so that they do not touch the ground. They rinse with dogs' teeth boiled in wine down to half. The ash of them helps boys slow at teething, with honey. Tooth powder is made in the same way. Into hollow teeth is put the ash of mouse dung or the dried liver of lizards.
23| A snake's heart, if bitten or tied on, is held effective. Among them are those who bid a mouse be eaten twice a month and so guard against pains. Earthworms boiled in oil and poured into the little ear on the side where the pain is give relief. The ash of the same, thrown into decayed teeth, makes them fall easily; smeared on sound aching teeth it helps; but it must be burned in a potsherd. They help also boiled with mulberry root in vinegar of squill, so that the teeth are rinsed with it.
24| The small worm too that is found in the herb called Venus's basin, put into hollow teeth, is wonderfully beneficial. For caterpillars fall when touched by cabbage leaves, and bugs from mallow are poured into the ears with oil of roses. Tiny grains of sand which are found in the horns of snails, put into hollow teeth, free from pain at once. The ash of empty snails with myrrh helps the gums; so does the ash of a serpent burned in a pot with salt, poured with oil of roses into the opposite ear; and the membrane of a snake's spring slough with oil and pitch-pine
25| resin, warmed and poured into one ear or the other (some add frankincense and oil of roses); the same put into hollow teeth makes them fall without trouble. I think it idle that about the rising of the Dog Star white snakes cast that membrane, since it has been seen in Italy before the rising, and it is much less credible that in warm regions it is cast so late. They report, though, that even when aged it pulls out teeth very quickly with wax. And a snake's tooth, tied on, mitigates pains.
26| There are those who think that the spider itself, caught with the left hand and ground in oil of roses and poured into the ear on the side where the pain is, does good. They report that a little bone of a hen, kept in a wall with its hollow intact, touched to the tooth, or to the gum when scarified, and then thrown away, makes the pain depart at once; likewise raven's dung tied on in wool, or sparrows' dung warmed with oil and poured into the nearest ear. It does cause an unbearable itch, and so it is more useful to rub in the ash of young sparrows burned with the twigs, in vinegar.
27| They affirm that the savour of the mouth is improved if the teeth are rubbed with mouse ash and honey; some mix in fennel roots. If the teeth are scraped with a vulture's feather they cause a sour breath. That a porcupine's quill has done the same bears on firmness. Ulcers of the tongue and lips are healed by swallows boiled in honeyed wine, cracks by goose or hen fat, oesypum with oak gall, white spiders' webs, and those that are spun small on beams. If boiling things have scalded the inside of the mouth, it will be healed at once with dog's milk.
28| Spots on the face are thinned by oesypum with Corsican honey, which is held to be the roughest, and likewise by the scrapings of skin on the face laid on in a fleece with oil of roses (some add butter); and if there are vitiligines, by dog's gall, after the places have first been pricked with a needle; livid and bruised places, by the lungs of rams and of sheep cut into thin membranes and laid on warm, or pigeon dung.
29| The skin on the face is preserved by goose fat or hen fat. Lichens they also smear with mouse dung in vinegar and with the ash of a hedgehog in oil; in this treatment they prescribe that the face first be bathed with natron in vinegar. The ash of snails also, those broad and small ones found everywhere, with honey, removes blemishes from the face. The ash of all snails, indeed, thickens and warms, with a cleansing force, and is therefore mixed into caustics and smeared on for itch and leprous eruptions and freckles. I find that ants are also called Herculanean, and that when ground with a little salt added they cure such blemishes.
30| The buprestis is an animal rare in Italy, very like a long-legged scarab; it escapes notice among the herbs, especially of an ox, whence it also found its name, and swallowed, by touching the gall it so inflames it that it bursts. This, smeared on with goat tallow, removes lichens from the face by a corrosive power, as was said above. Vulture blood ground with the root of the white chamaeleon, an herb we have described, and cedria, and covered with cabbage, heals leprous eruptions; so do the feet of locusts ground with goat tallow, and hen fat worked up with onion for pimples. Honey in which bees have died is also most useful for the face, but swan fat above all cleanses the face and smooths wrinkles. Brands are removed by pigeon dung in vinegar.
31| I find that a head cold is ended if one kisses the nostrils of a mule. The uvula and pain of the throat are eased by the dung of lambs, before they have tasted grass, dried in the shade; the uvula, by the juice of a snail pierced with a needle and smeared on, the snail itself being hung in smoke; by the ash of swallows with honey; so too the tonsils are helped.
32| Tonsils and throat are helped by gargling sheep's milk, by multipeda ground up, by pigeon dung gargled with raisin wine, and even applied outside with dry fig and natron. Roughness of the throat and rheums are soothed by snails (they must be cooked unwashed, with only the earth removed, and pounded and given in raisin wine to drink; there are those who think the Astypalaean ones most effective, and the smallest of them), and by a gryllus rubbed on, or if a person touches the tonsils with the hands with which he has crushed it.
33| Quinsies are relieved very quickly by goose gall with elaterium and honey, by the brain of an owl, by swallow ash drunk in hot water. The author of this medicine is the poet Ovid. But more effective for everything that is shown from swallows are the young of the wild ones (the shape of the nests identifies them), and yet most effective of all are the young of the bank swallows; so they call those that nest in the hollows of banks. Many think that the young of any swallow should be eaten, so that this ill is not feared for the whole year.
34| They burn those that have been strangled, with the blood, in a vessel, and give the ash with bread or in a drink. Some also mix in the ash of a weasel in the same way; so they give it as a remedy for scrofula, and daily in a drink to those with the falling sickness. Swallows preserved in salt are also drunk, a drachma, for quinsy, an ill which their nest also is said to cure when drunk. They think the milipeda smeared on quinsies most effective;
35| others, 20 of them ground up, to be given in a hemina of honeyed water through a reed, since if they touch the teeth they do no good. They report also that a mouse boiled down with vervain, if that liquid is drunk, is a remedy, and a dog's lead wound three times around the neck, and pigeon dung blended with wine and oil. For the sinews of the neck, and for opisthotonus, a twig of vitex from a kite's nest, tied on, is said to help,
36| For ulcerated scrofula, the blood of a weasel, or the weasel itself boiled in wine; it is not, however, applied to scrofula that has been cut. They say that the same is achieved by taking it in food, or the ash of it burned with vine twigs mixed with axle-grease. A green lizard is tied on; after 30 days another must be tied on. Some keep its heart in a little silver vessel for scrofula, of women and of men.
37| Snails are smeared on, ground with their shells, especially those that cling to thickets; the ash of asps is likewise laid on with bull tallow, snake fat mixed with oil, and the ash of snakes smeared on in oil or with wax. It helps also to have eaten the middle of them, with the extremities cut off at both ends, against scrofula, or to have drunk the ash of those burned in a new earthen pot, much more effectively if killed between two cart-ruts.
38| They recommend also smearing on a gryllus dug up with its own earth, likewise pigeon dung by itself or with barley or oat meal in vinegar, and smearing on the ash of a mole in honey. Others rub the liver of the same, ground between the hands, and do not wash it off for three days. They affirm that its right foot also is a remedy for scrofula. Others cut off the head and, having ground it with the earth thrown up by moles, divide it into pastilles kept in a tin box, and use them for everything that swells, and what they call apostemata, and those in the neck; they forbid eating pork at that time.
39| Bulls is the name given to earth-dwelling scarabs like the tick (the name they were given is from their little horn); others call them lice of the earth. The earth thrown out by these too they smear on scrofula and similar defects, and on gout, and do not wash it off for three days. This medicine helps for a year, and they ascribe to them everything that we have reported about the grylli. Some use in this way the earth thrown out by ants too. Others tie on as many earthworms as there are scrofulous swellings, and the swellings dry up together with them.
40| Others cut a viper around at the rising of the Dog Star as we said, then burn the middle, and give that ash to be drunk, as much as is taken in three fingers, for three times seven days; thus they treat scrofula; some, however, wrap round the neck a thread with which the viper was bound below the head and hung until it died. And they use milipedae, with a fourth part of turpentine resin added, a medicine by which they bid all apostemata be cured.
41| Pains of the shoulder are treated by the ash of a weasel with wax. That the armpits may not be hairy, ants' eggs rubbed in on boys achieve it, and for dealers in slaves, to produce down in those coming to puberty, the blood from the testicles of lambs when they are castrated, which, smeared on after the hairs are plucked out, is good also against the rank smell.
42| We call the praecordia by one name, the inward parts in man; if, when there is pain in any of these, a suckling puppy is applied and pressed to those parts, the disease is said to pass into it, and this is detected when it has been disembowelled and wine poured over it, by the damaged organ, the one that pained the man; but it is a religious duty to bury such animals.
43| Those too that we call Maltese relieve pain of the stomach when applied often; that the diseases pass into them is understood from their sickness, and often from their death. Mice also, especially African ones, treat defects of the lungs, with the skin removed, boiled in oil and salt and taken in food. The same remedy treats spitting of pus or blood,
44| but above all a meal of snails is good for the stomach. They must be warmed in water with their body untouched, then roasted in embers with nothing added, and so taken with wine and garum, especially the African. This was lately found to help very many; they also observe that they should be taken in an odd number. Their rank smell, however, makes the breath heavy. When the shells have been removed and they are ground in water, they help also as a drink for those spitting blood.
45| The most highly praised are the African (among them the Iolitan), the Astypalaean, and also the Sicilian if moderate in size, because size makes them hard and without juice; the Balearic, which they call cave-dwellers because they are born in caverns; those from the islands, and of Capreae, are praised. None, however, are pleasing as food, whether old or fresh. River snails and white ones have a rank smell, and woodland ones are not useful to the stomach, they loosen the bowels, as do all the small ones. Sea snails, by contrast, are more useful to the stomach; the most effective in pain of the stomach, among those praised, are said to be any swallowed alive with vinegar.
46| There are besides those called akeratoi, broad, born in many places, whose use we shall describe in their places. The membrane of the stomach of chickens, if old, sprinkled on a drink, soothes rheums of the chest and moist cough, or fresh, roasted. Raw snails ground up and sipped with 3 cyathi of lukewarm water quiet a cough. A dog's skin put around any finger quiets rheums. The stomach is restored by broth of partridges.
47| Pains of the liver are treated by a wild weasel taken in food, or its liver, and by a ferret roasted like a piglet; for asthma, the multipeda, in such a way that three sevens of them are diluted in Attic honey and drunk through a reed (for every vessel turns black by contact). Some roast a sextarius in a pan until they turn white, then mix with honey [others call it centipeda] and bid it be given in hot water, in food.
48| To those whose spirit fails, or whose mind is alienated, or who have fits of dizziness, snails are given: one each, ground up with its own shell in 3 cyathi of raisin wine and warmed, in a drink for at most 9 days; some gave one on the first day, two the next, three on the third, 2 on the fourth, and 1 on the fifth; thus they correct also shortness of breath and abscesses.
49| Some think there is an animal like a locust without wings, called trixallis in Greek, having no Latin name, and not a few authors say that this is what are called grylli; of these they bid 20 be roasted and drunk in honeyed wine against orthopnoea. For those spitting blood, snails, if someone pours protropum over them unwashed, or boils them in sea water in this way and takes them in food, or if they are ground with their shells and taken with protropum; so too they cure a cough.
50| Honey in which bees have died specially heals abscesses. For those throwing up blood, a vulture's lung burned with vine wood, with the flower of the pomegranate added in half the quantity, and quince and lilies in the same proportions, drunk morning and evening in wine, if there are no fevers, if not, in water in which quinces have been boiled.
51| By the precepts of the Magi, the fresh spleen of a sheep is stretched over the aching spleen, the one who is treating saying that he is making a remedy for the spleen. After this they bid it be enclosed in the plaster of the wall of the patient's bedroom and sealed with a ring three times nine times, and the same words said. A dog's spleen, if taken out of the living animal and eaten, frees from that ailment. Some bind it on fresh.
52| Others give, without the patient knowing, the spleen of a two-day-old puppy in vinegar of squill, or the spleen of a hedgehog, and likewise the ash of snails with linseed and nettle, with honey added, until it is thoroughly cured. A live green lizard also frees, hung in a pot before the bedroom of the person who is being treated, so that going out and returning he touches it with his hand; likewise the ash from the head of an owl with ointment, honey in which bees have died, and a spider, especially the one called lycos.
53| The heart of the hoopoe is praised for pains of the side, and a meal of snails boiled in barley-water; they are also smeared on by themselves. The ash of the skull of a mad dog is sprinkled into a drink. For pain of the loins, a transmarine stellio, with the head removed and the intestines, boiled in wine, with half the weight of a denarius of black poppy, that liquid is drunk. Green lizards with feet and head cut off are taken in food; 3 snails ground up with their shells and boiled in wine with 15 grains of pepper.
54| They pull out the feet of an eagle backwards from the hock, in such a way that the right one is tied on for pains of the right side, the left for the left. The multipeda also, which we have called oniscus, helps, drunk in the weight of a denarius in 2 cyathi of wine. The Magi bid that an earthworm be put in a wooden cup previously split and bound with iron, the water collected poured over it and buried where you dug it up, and then the water drunk from the cup, affirming that this helps sciatica wonderfully.
55| Dysenteric patients are restored by the thighs of sheep boiled with linseed, that water being drunk, by old sheep's cheese, and by sheep's tallow boiled in harsh wine. This also treats ileus and old cough; for dysentery, a transmarine stellio with the intestines, head, feet and skin removed, boiled, equally also taken in food; 2 snails with an egg, both ground up with the shell and warmed in a new vessel with salt and 2 cyathi of raisin wine, or palm juice and 3 cyathi of water, and given as a drink.
56| They help also burned, so that their ash is drunk in wine, a pinch of resin added. The naked snails of which we have spoken are found chiefly in Africa, most useful to dysenteric patients, five burned with half a denarius's weight of acacia; of that ash two spoonfuls are given in wine of myrtle or any harsh wine with an equal amount of hot water.
57| Some use all African ones in this way, others pour in the same number of African snails, veiled, and if the flux is greater they add acacia the size of a bean. The slough of snakes is boiled for dysentery and tenesmus in a tin vessel with oil of roses, or, if in another, smeared on with tin. Broth from chickens treats the same, but the strongly salted broth of an old cock moves the bowels.
58| The membrane of hens, roasted and given in oil and salt, eases the pains of coeliacs (both the hen and the person should abstain from grain beforehand); so does pigeon dung, roasted and drunk. The flesh of the wood-pigeon boiled in vinegar treats dysenteric and coeliac patients; a thrush roasted with myrtle berries, dysenteric patients, and likewise blackbirds; honey in which bees have died, boiled.
59| The gravest defect of the belly is called ileus. They say it is resisted by the blood of a bat torn apart, and that help is also given by smearing the belly. The bowels are stopped by a snail, tempered as we said for the asthmatic, and by the ash of those burned alive, drunk in harsh wine; by the roasted liver of chickens, or the membrane of the stomach, which is usually thrown away, aged, with poppy juice mixed in (others roast it fresh, to be drunk in wine);
60| by partridge broth, and by the stomach itself ground in black wine; by a wild wood-pigeon boiled in posca, by a sheep's spleen roasted and ground in wine, by pigeon dung smeared on with honey, and by the dried and drunk belly of the ossifrage, most useful to those who do not digest food, or even if they merely hold it in the hand when taking food. Some tie it on for this reason, but they must not keep on, for it causes wasting.
61| The blood of male ducks also stops the bowels. Inflations are dispersed by a meal of snails; gripings, by a sheep's spleen roasted and drunk in wine, a wild wood-pigeon boiled in posca. The fat of the bustard in wine; the ash of an ibis burned without its feathers, drunk. What is reported besides for gripings is a marvel: a duck applied to the belly, the disease passes into it and the duck dies.
62| Gripings are cured also by honey in which bees have died, boiled. A defect of the colon is cured most effectively by the galerita bird, roasted and taken as food. Some bid it be burned in a new vessel with its feathers and ground to ash, and drunk in water, three spoonfuls, for four days; some bid its heart be tied on the thigh; to others it is swallowed fresh and still warm.
63| The house of the Asprenates is a consular one, in which one of the brothers was freed from colic by taking this bird in food, with its heart enclosed in a golden bracelet; the other, after a certain sacrifice was made in a shrine of unbaked bricks built in the shape of a furnace, and, as soon as the rite was completed, the shrine walled up. The ossifrage has one intestine, of a marvellous nature, which digests everything it has devoured; it is established that the end part of this, tied on, helps against colic.
64| There are hidden diseases of the inward parts, about which a marvel is reported. If puppies, before they can see, are applied for three days to the stomach especially and the chest, and take the suck of milk from the sick person's mouth, the force of the disease passes into them, and at last they die, and when cut open the causes of the sick person's trouble are plainly shown; they advise that they be buried, covered with earth. The Magi report that by touching the belly with the blood of a bat one is guarded for a whole year, or in pain, if someone, washing his feet, can bring himself to drink the water three times.
65| To smear the belly with mouse dung helps against stones. They say the flesh of a hedgehog is pleasant if it is killed with a single blow to the head, before it passes water on itself. This flesh, of one killed in this way, corrects dribbling of the bladder, as does fumigation from the same. But if it has passed water on itself, those who have eaten the flesh are reported to contract the disease of strangury.
66| They bid also that earthworms be drunk in wine or raisin wine to break up stones, or snails boiled as for the asthmatic, the same taken out of their shells, 3 ground up and drunk in a cyathus of wine, the next day 2, on the third day 1, to correct dribbling of urine; and the ash of empty shells to expel stones; likewise that the liver of the hydrus be drunk, or the ash of scorpions, or taken in bread [or if someone eats it like a locust],
67| that little stones found in the bladder of chickens or in the stomach of wood-pigeons be ground and sprinkled into a drink, likewise the dried membrane from the stomach of a chicken or, if fresh, roasted, and that pigeon dung be taken in a bean against stones and other difficulties of the bladder; similarly the ash of the feathers of wild wood-pigeons in honeyed vinegar, and the ash of their intestines, 3 spoonfuls; a clod from a swallows' nest diluted in hot water;
68| the dried stomach of the ossifrage; turtle-dove dung boiled down in honeyed wine, or the broth of the bird itself boiled down. To have eaten thrushes with myrtle berries is good for the urine, as are cicadas roasted in pans, the milipeda oniscus drunk, and, in pains of the bladder, a decoction of lambs' feet. The bowels are moved by the broth of chickens boiled down, which also softens sharp humours, and by swallows' dung put in below with honey added.
69| For defects of the seat the most effective are oesypum (some add pompholyx and oil of roses), the ash of a dog's head, the sloughed skin of a serpent in vinegar, if there are fissures, the ash of white dog dung with oil of roses (they say this was a discovery of Aesculapius, and that with the same warts too are removed most effectively), the ash of mouse dung, swan fat, and the fat of the boa. Prolapses there are repelled by the juice of snails, drawn out by pricks and smeared on.
70| Chafings are treated by the ash of a woodland mouse with honey; the gall of a hedgehog with the brain of a bat and dog's milk; goose fat with the brain, alum and oesypum; pigeon dung with honey; for condylomata specially a spider with head and feet removed, rubbed in, so that sharp things do not burn; goose fat with Punic wax, white lead, and rose oil; swan fat. This is said also to heal haemorrhoids.
71| For sciatica they say raw snails ground up in Aminean wine with pepper help when drunk, and a green lizard in food with the feet, entrails and head removed; so too the stellio, with 3 obols of black poppy added to it; for ruptures and convulsions, the gall of sheep with woman's milk.
72| Crawling sensations and warts of the private parts are treated by the juice of a ram's lung that has been roasted; other defects, by the ash of its fleeces or of soiled wool in water, by tallow from the caul of sheep, especially near the kidneys, with the ash of pumice and salt mixed in, by greasy wool in cold water, by the flesh of a sheep burned, in water, by the ash of a mule's hooves, by the meal of a crushed horse's tooth sprinkled on, and for the testicles by meal from the bones of a dog's head crushed without flesh. If one testicle drops, the foam of snails smeared on is reported to be a remedy.
73| For foul and running ulcers there the fresh ashes of a dog's head help, small broad snails ground in vinegar, the sloughed skin of snakes in vinegar or its ash, honey in which bees have died, with resin, the naked snails which we said are born in Africa, ground with fine meal of frankincense and the white of eggs; on the 30th day they undo it; some mix in a bulb in place of frankincense.
74| For those with hydrocele they report that the stellio is of wonderful benefit, the head, feet and entrails removed and the remaining body roasted (this is given more often in food), as for incontinence of urine dog fat with schistus alum the size of a bean, African snails burned with their flesh and shell and the ash drunk, and the tongues of 3 geese, roasted, in food. The authority for this is Anaxilaus. But swellings are opened by the tallow of sheep with roasted salt,
75| mouse dung with fine meal of frankincense and sandaraca mixed in disperses them; so do the ash of a lizard, and the lizard itself cut up and laid on, likewise the multipeda ground up with turpentine resin mixed in the proportion of a third (some also mix in sinopis), snails crushed by themselves, and the ash of empty snails mixed with wax. Pigeon dung has a dispersing power, smeared on by itself or with barley or oat meal. Cantharides mixed with lime take off swellings in place of a scalpel; small snails smeared on with honey ease swelling of the groin.
76| That varicose veins may not arise, the legs of boys are smeared with the blood of a lizard, fasting, by one fasting. Gout is eased by oesypum with woman's milk and white lead, by the dung of flocks which they pass liquid, by the lungs of sheep, by ram's gall with tallow, by mice cut open and laid on, by the blood of a weasel smeared on with plantago and the ash of one burned alive, in vinegar and oil of roses if it is applied with a feather, or if wax and oil of roses are mixed in; by dog's gall, in such a way that the hand does not touch it but it is smeared on with a feather, by chicken dung, and by the ash of earthworms with honey, so that they are loosed on the third day.
77| Some prefer to smear on in water, others the worms themselves, by the measure of an acetabulum with 3 cyathi of honey, the feet first anointed with oil of roses. Broad snails drunk are said to remove pains of the feet and joints; two are drunk, ground up in wine. The same are smeared on with the juice of the herb helxine; some are content to have rubbed them in with vinegar. They say that by taking more often the salt burned together with a viper in a new pot one is freed from gout, and that it is useful also to anoint the feet with viper fat.
78| And of the kite they affirm that, if it is dried and ground, as much as 3 fingers hold is drunk in water, or if the feet are anointed with its blood. They are also smeared with the blood of pigeons with nettle, or with their feathers, when they are first growing, ground up with nettle. Indeed their dung too is smeared on for pains of the joints, and likewise the ash of a weasel or of snails, also with starch or tragacanth. Spiders' webs most suitably treat bruised joints. There are those who would rather use the ash of the webs, as also the ash of pigeon dung with barley groats and white wine.
79| For dislocated joints, sheep's tallow with the ash of a woman's hair is immediate in effect. For chilblains too, sheep's tallow with alum is laid on, or the ash of a dog's head or of mouse dung. And if the ulcers are clean, they are brought to a scar with wax added, by the ash of shrews or dormice burned, in oil, likewise of a woodland mouse with honey, and of earthworms with old oil, and of the snail that is found naked.
80| The ash of those burned alive heals all ulcers of the feet; the ash of chicken dung, ulcerations; of pigeon dung in oil. For chafing from shoes, the ash of an old sole, a lamb's lung and a ram's heal; the meal of a crushed horse's tooth, subluvies in particular; the blood of a green lizard smeared on rubbed feet of men and of beasts of burden; for corns of the feet, the urine of a mule, male or female, smeared on with its own mud; sheep dung; the liver of a green lizard or its blood laid on in a tuft of wool; earthworms in oil; the head of a stellio ground in oil in the same way with leaves of vitex; pigeon dung boiled in vinegar;
81| for warts of every kind, fresh dog's urine smeared on with its own mud, the ash of dog dung with wax, sheep dung, fresh mouse blood smeared on or the mouse itself torn apart, the gall of a hedgehog, the head of a lizard, or the blood or ash of the whole animal, the membrane of the old age of snakes, chicken dung with oil and natron. Cantharides ground with the taminia grape eat them away, but those so eroded must be cured by the other things we have shown for completely healing ulcers.
82| Now we shall turn to the things that are to be feared for whole bodies. The gall of a black male dog the Magi say is an amulet for a whole house fumigated or purified with it, against all bad drugs; likewise the blood of a dog sprinkled on the walls, and its genitals buried beneath the threshold of the door. They will wonder less at this who know how highly they magnify the foulest of animals, the tick, since it alone has no outlet for its fattening nor end other than death, living the longer in hunger: they report that it lasts seven days in this way, while in satiety it bursts in fewer;
83| that this, taken from the left ear of a dog and tied on, quiets all pains. And they use it as a sign in augury of vital matters, for if the sick man at the beginning answers the one who has brought it, standing at his feet and asking about the disease, the hope of life is sure; he who is to die answers nothing. They add that it should be plucked from the left ear of a dog whose colour is wholly black.
84| Nigidius left written that dogs flee for a whole day the sight of the one who has plucked this animal from a pig. Again the Magi report that the frenzied recover their senses when a mole's blood is sprinkled on them, and that those who are hounded by nocturnal gods and by Fauns are freed by anointings in the morning and in the evening, using a dragon's tongue, eyes, gall and intestines, boiled in wine and oil and cooled overnight under the open sky.
85| For chills, Nicander reports that the amphisbaena serpent, dead, tied on, or only its skin, is a remedy; indeed, tied on a tree that is to be felled, it keeps the fellers from feeling cold, and the work goes more easily. It is the only serpent that trusts itself to the cold, coming out first of all, even before the cuckoo's song. There is another marvel of the cuckoo: in whatever place one first hears that bird, if the right foot is traced around and that footprint is dug out, fleas are not bred wherever it is scattered.
86| For those who fear paralysis, they report that the fat of dormice and shrews, boiled, is very useful, and milipedae drunk as we said under quinsy; for those who feel the onset of consumption, a green lizard boiled in 3 sextarii of wine down to one cyathus, taken a spoonful at a time through the days until they recover; the ash of snails drunk in wine;
87| for falling-sickness, oesypum with a pinch of myrrh and 2 cyathi of wine, diluted to the size of a hazelnut, drunk after the bath; and the testicles of rams, aged and ground, in half the weight of a denarius, in a hemina of water or ass's milk. Drinking of wine is forbidden for five days before and after.
88| The blood of sheep, drunk, is also magnificently praised, as is gall with honey, especially that of a lamb; a suckling puppy taken with the head and feet cut off, in wine and myrrh; the lichen of a mule drunk in oxymel, 3 cyathi; the ash of a transmarine stellio drunk in vinegar; the little skin of the stellio, which it casts off in the same way as a snake, in a drink. Some have given the stellio itself, disembowelled with a reed and aged, to be drunk, others roasted on wooden spits in food.
89| It is worth knowing how the winter membrane is snatched away, once it has cast it, from the animal that otherwise devours it, since they say that no creature grudges man more cunningly, whence the name of stellio has been transferred to abuse. They watch its lair in summers; it is in the frames of doors and windows or in vaults and tombs. There in early spring they set up traps woven of split reeds, like fish-baskets, in whose narrow space it even delights, shedding the more easily the torpor that surrounds it; but once left behind it cannot return.
90| Nothing is preferred to it as a remedy in falling-sickness. The brain of a weasel, aged and drunk, helps, and its liver; also the testicles, and the womb or stomach aged with coriander, as we said, and the ash likewise; and the wild one taken whole in food. The same are all asserted of the ferret. A green lizard with seasonings that wipe away disgust, feet and head removed, and the ash of snails with linseed and nettle added, with honey, heal by smearing.
91| More agreeable is the tail of a dragon, tied on in the skin of a gazelle with stag sinews, or little stones from the belly of young swallows, fastened to the left upper arm; for they are said to give a little stone when the chick has hatched. And if that chick is given in food, the first one the mother bird has borne, when one has first been attacked, he is freed from that ill; afterwards the blood of swallows with frankincense, or the heart, fresh, swallowed, is the cure. Indeed a little stone from their nest, laid on, is said to revive at once, and tied on to protect for ever.
92| A kite's liver, swallowed, is also advertised, and the old age of serpents; a vulture's liver, ground with its own blood, drunk for three times seven days; the heart of a young vulture tied on. But they bid the vulture itself be given in food, and indeed one glutted on a human corpse. Some judge its breast should be drunk in a cup of oak wood, or the testicles of a cock in water and milk, with abstinence from wine beforehand for 5 days; for this reason they age them. There were those also who would give 21 red flies, and from a dead man, in a drink, fewer for the weaker.
93| Jaundice is resisted by the earwax or teat-dirt of a sheep, in the weight of a denarius, with a pinch of myrrh and 2 cyathi of wine; by the ash of a dog's head in honeyed wine; by the multipeda in a hemina of wine; by earthworms in honeyed vinegar with myrrh; by a hen, if it has yellow feet, first purified with water,
94| then rinsed with wine, which is to be drunk; by the brain of a partridge, or an eagle's, in 3 cyathi of wine; by the ash of the feathers or entrails of a wood-pigeon in honeyed wine, up to 3 spoonfuls; by the ash of sparrows burned with the twigs, 2 spoonfuls in honeyed water. A bird is called icterus from its colour; they report that if it is looked at, the ill is cured and the bird dies. This I think is called in Latin the galgulus.
95| For the frenzied, a sheep's lung, warm, bound around the head seems to help. For who could give a mouse's brain in a drink in water, or the ash of a weasel, or even the aged flesh of a hedgehog, to a raving man, even if the medicine were certain? The ash of an owl's eyes I would accept among those things by which they portentously make sport of life, and the medicine of fevers especially renounces their rules.
96| For they have even distributed it among the twelve signs, with the sun passing through and again the moon, a whole which I shall show must be rejected, by taking a few from the many, since they bid the sick be anointed with the ash of crests, ears and claws of cocks burned and ground up with oil, when the sun passes through the Twins;
97| if the moon, with their rays and beards; if either one is in the Virgin, with grains of barley; if in the Archer, with bats' wings; if the moon in the Lion, with a leaf of tamarisk, and they add, of the cultivated; if in the Water-carrier, with charcoal of boxwood, ground. From these we shall set down what is admitted or at least probable, such as that lethargy is roused by things smelled, and among them perhaps by the aged testicles of a weasel or burnt liver. For these too they think it useful that a sheep's lung, warm, be tied around the head.
98| In quartan fevers, clinical medicine has almost no force. For which reason we shall set down more of their remedies, and first those which they bid be tied on: dust in which a hawk has rolled, in a reddish thread, in a little linen cloth; the longest tooth of a black dog. They call a wasp that flies alone a pseudosphex; this they seize with the left hand and tie on, others the first that one has seen that year; the head of a viper cut off, in a little linen cloth, or the heart taken from it while alive;
99| They tie on the tip of a mouse's snout and the very ends of its ears in a reddish cloth, and let the mouse itself go; and the right eye of a living lizard, gouged out, then the beetle that rolls balls, with its head cut off, in a little goatskin. Because of this beetle a great part of Egypt worships beetles among its deities, with a painstaking interpretation by Apion, by which he argues that this creature bears a likeness to the works of the Sun, to excuse the rites of his own people.
100| But the Magi tie on other kinds too: the one with curved little horns, picked up with the left hand; a third, called the fuller, with white spots, which they cut in two and tie one half on each arm, the rest on the left; the heart of snakes taken out with the left hand while they are alive; four joints of a scorpion's tail with the sting, in black cloth, in such a way that the sick man sees neither the scorpion let go nor the man who has tied it on for three days, and after the third round he puts it away.
101| They bind the uruca in a little linen cloth, wrapping it round three times with thread and tying as many knots, the man who is to cure the patient saying at each why he does it; a slug in a small skin, or four slugs' heads cut off with a reed; a multipeda wrapped in wool; the little worms from which gadflies come, before they sprout wings; others, hairy, from thorny shrubs. Some tie on four of these shut up in the husk of a walnut.
102| Snails found without their shells, a stelio shut in little boxes, they place under the head and release at the departure of the fever. They also order the heart of a sea-diver bird, taken out without iron, to be swallowed, or kept till old, pounded and drunk in warm water; swallows' hearts with honey; others give dung, one drachma in 3 cyathi of goat's or sheep's milk or of raisin wine before the attacks; and there are those who judge that the swallows should be swallowed whole.
103| The peoples of the Parthians drink the skin of an asp, in the weight of a sixth part of a denarius, with the same amount of pepper, as a remedy for quartan fever. The philosopher Chrysippus has handed down that a phryganion tied on is a remedy for quartans. What animal it was, neither he described nor have we found anyone who knew; yet it had to be set out, as said by so weighty an authority, in case anyone's diligence in inquiring might prove more effective. Eating the flesh of a crow and smearing on its nest they think most useful in long illnesses.
104| And for tertian fevers let there be an opportunity of making trial, since an abundance of hope delights the wretched, whether the web of the spider they call lycon, with the spider itself, laid in a little patch of resin and wax on both temples and the forehead, will help, or the spider itself tied on in a reed, as is also reported to help in other fevers; likewise a green lizard tied on alive in the vessel that will hold it, a method by which they affirm that relapses too are frequently driven off.
105| For dropsical patients oesypum in wine with myrrh added is given as a drink in small quantity, the size of a hazelnut. Some add goose fat in myrtle wine. The filth from the udders of sheep has the same effect, as does the flesh of a hedgehog, kept till old and taken. The vomit of dogs, applied to the belly, is promised to draw off the water.
106| The sacred fire is cured by oesypum with pompholyx and rose oil, by the blood of a ricinus, by earthworms applied in vinegar, by a cricket crushed in the hands, a method that ensures that whoever has done it, before the malady begins, will not have it all that year (it must be lifted with iron, with the earth of its burrow); by goose fat, by the dried head of a viper kept and burnt, then applied in vinegar, by the sloughed skin of serpents applied in water after the bath with bitumen and lamb's tallow.
107| A carbuncle is removed by pigeon dung applied by itself or with linseed in vinegar and honey, likewise by bees that have died in honey being applied, with polenta laid on top. If it is on the private parts, as with other ulcers there, oesypum with honey and scales of lead meets it, likewise the dung of cattle for carbuncles just beginning. Tumours and whatever needs softening are treated most effectively with goose fat; crane fat does the same.
108| A spider is said to cure boils, applied before it is named and removed on the third day; a shrew-mouse strangled while hanging, in such a way that it does not touch the ground afterwards, carried three times round the boil, the healer and the man to be healed spitting each time; also the red dung of the cock, best fresh, smeared on in vinegar; a stork's stomach boiled in wine; flies in an odd number rubbed in with the ring finger; the filth from the ears of cattle; old sheep's tallow with the ash of a woman's hair; ram's tallow with the ash of pumice and salt in equal weight.
109| Burns are cured by the ash of a dog's head, likewise of dormice with oil, sheep dung with wax, the ash of mice, and of snails too, so that not even a scar appears; viper's fat; the ash of pigeon dung applied in oil;
110| for knots in the sinews, the ash of a viper's head in cyprus oil, and earthworms applied with honey. For their pains [….] fat, an amphisbaena dead and tied on, vulture fat with [….], a belly dried and pounded with old pig's fat, the ash from the head of an owl drunk in honey wine with lily root, if we believe the Magi. In contraction of the sinews pigeon flesh in food is beneficial, and kept till old, hedgehog for those with spasms, likewise the ash of a weasel, the sloughed skin of serpents tied on in bull's hide. It prevents spasms and opisthotonos: the dried liver of a kite, 3 obols drunk in 3 cyathi of honey water.
111| Hangnails and the pterygia that grow on the fingers are removed by the ash of a dog's head, or a womb boiled down in oil with sheep's butter and honey applied over it, likewise the membrane of the gall of any animal; roughness of the nails by cantharides with pitch, removed on the third day, or by roasted locusts with goat's tallow, or cattle tallow. Some mix mistletoe and purslane, others copper flower and mistletoe, so that they remove it on the third day.
112| Bleeding from the nostrils is stopped by tallow from the omentum of cattle put in, likewise by rennet in water, lamb's best, drawn up or poured in, even if other things do not help; by goose fat with an equal weight of butter put in as pastilles; by the earthy part of snails, and the snails themselves with their shells extracted; for a flow from the nostrils, snails crushed and smeared on the forehead, and the web of a spider; the little brain of a cock or its blood for discharges from the brain, likewise that of a pigeon, kept and clotted for this purpose. If it flows excessively from a wound, the ash of horse dung burnt with eggshells, laid on, stops it wonderfully.
113| Ulcers are cured by oesypum with barley ash and verdigris in equal parts; it is also effective for carcinomata and spreading sores. It eats away the edges of ulcers, brings proud flesh down to a level, and also fills them and leads them to a scar. There is great power too in the ash of sheep dung for carcinomata, with natron added, or in the ash of the thigh-bones of lambs, especially in those ulcers that do not draw a scar. Great too is the power of lungs, especially of rams: they bring proud flesh in ulcers down to a level most effectively;
114| by the dung of sheep itself, heated under a tile and worked, the swelling of wounds is eased, fistulas are cleansed and healed, and so are epinyctides. The best of all is the ash of a dog's head: it eats away all excrescences in place of spodium and heals them thoroughly. They are also eaten away by mouse dung, and by the ash of weasel dung. Hardnesses deep in ulcers and carcinomata are pursued by the multipeda pounded and mixed with turpentine resin and sinopis. The same are most useful in those ulcers that are in danger from worms.
115| Indeed the kinds of worms themselves have wonderful uses. The cossi, which are born in wood, heal all ulcers, and burnt, applied with an equal weight of anesum in oil, they heal spreading sores. Earthworms glue fresh wounds together so well that there is a conviction that even severed sinews, when they are applied, are made whole within seven days; therefore they judge that they should be kept in honey. Their ash removes the harder edges of ulcers, with liquid pitch or symphytum and honey.
116| Some use them dried in the sun on wounds in vinegar and do not loosen them until two days have passed. By the same method the earthy part of snails is beneficial, and whole snails taken out, pounded and laid on, glue fresh wounds together and stop spreading sores. (A creature too is called herpes by the Greeks, by which especially whatever creeps is healed.) Snails are beneficial also pounded with their shells; with myrrh and frankincense they are said to heal even cut sinews.
117| The fat of dragons too, dried in the sun, is of great benefit, and so is the brain of a cock for fresh blows. They hand down that salt of viper taken in food makes ulcers more manageable and heals them more quickly. Indeed the physician Antonius, when he had come upon incurable ulcers, gave vipers to be eaten and healed them completely with wonderful speed. The ash of trixallides removes the hard edges of ulcers with honey, likewise that of pigeon dung with arrhenicum and honey, and these also are corrosive.
118| The brain of an owl with goose fat is said to glue wounds together wonderfully; for those called cacoethe, the ash of a ram's thigh-bones with a woman's milk, the linen cloths having first been carefully washed; the bird ulula boiled in oil, to which, once melted, sheep's butter and honey are mixed. Bees dead in honey soften the harder lips of ulcers, and the blood and ash of a weasel soften elephantiasis. Wounds from blows and weals are wiped out by fresh sheep skins laid on.
119| For fractures of the joints the ash of a sheep's thigh-bones with wax is especially curative (the same remedy is made more effective if jawbones are burnt together with it, and stag's horn, and the wax softened with rose oil); for broken bones, dog's brain smeared on a linen cloth, with wool laid over it that is poured over again and again with oil; it generally knits them in 14 days, and no more slowly does the ash of a wild mouse with honey, or of earthworms, which also draws out bones.
120| Scars are brought back to colour by the lung of cattle, especially from a ram, by tallow with natron, by the ash of a green lizard, by the sloughed skin of snakes boiled down in wine, by pigeon dung with honey; likewise white vitiligines in wine; vitiligo also by cantharides with 2 parts of rue leaves. The patient must endure the sun until the skin crawls; afterwards it is necessary to foment and anoint with oil and to smear on again, and to do this for several days, taking care to avoid deep ulceration.
121| For the same vitiligines they order flies to be smeared on with the root of Eupatoria, the white of hens' dung kept in old oil in a horn box, the blood of a bat, the gall of a hedgehog in water. For scabies, the brain of an owl with aphronitrum, but above all dog's blood relieves it; for itching, small, broad snails pounded and applied.
122| Reeds and whatever other missiles must be drawn out of the body are called out by a mouse cut open and laid on, but especially by a lizard cut open, or even only its head pounded with salt and laid on; by snails, of those kinds that go about in flocks on leaves, pounded and laid on with their shells, and also those that are eaten, taken from their shells, but most effectively with hare's rennet. The bones of snakes, together with any four-footed animal's rennet, prove the same effect within three days. Cantharides ground with barley meal are also praised.
123| In women's complaints the membranes from the birth of sheep are of use, as we have reported in discussing goats. The dung of cattle too has the same uses. By the fumigation of locusts strangury is relieved, most of all in women. If a woman eats cocks' testicles repeatedly after conception, males are said to be formed in the womb. The ash of porcupines, drunk, holds conceptions; that of a dog, drunk in milk, brings them to maturity; the membrane from the afterbirth of dogs calls them out, if it has not touched the ground, when the loins of women in labour are touched with it.
124| Mouse dung diluted in rainwater restores women's breasts swollen after childbirth. The ash of hedgehogs, with oil, rubbed on, guards births against miscarriage. Those women are delivered more easily who have sipped [….] goose [….] with 2 cyathi of water, or the waters flowing out through the genital from a weasel's little bladder.
125| Earthworms applied prevent the sinews of the neck and shoulder blades from aching. Drunk in raisin wine they expel a heavy afterbirth. Applied by themselves they bring abscesses of the breasts to a head, open them, draw them out and lead them to a scar. Drunk with honey wine they draw down milk. There are also little worms found in grass which, tied to the neck, hold back the birth; they are removed at the time of labour, otherwise they do not allow the child to be brought forth; care is also needed that they are not put on the ground. For the sake of conception also they are given in drink, five or seven at a time.
126| Snails taken in food hasten birth, and likewise conception when applied with saffron. The same, smeared on with starch and tragacanth, stop discharges. They are beneficial also taken in food for the purgations, and they set right a womb turned aside, with stag's marrow, in such a way that a denarius' weight of it, and of cyprus, is added to each snail. They also disperse inflations of the womb, taken from their shells and pounded with rose oil. For these purposes the Astypalaean ones are chosen above all.
127| In another way, two African ones pounded with what 3 fingers can hold of fenugreek, 4 spoonfuls of honey added, are smeared on the belly, which has first been anointed with iris juice. There are also small snails with white shells, wandering everywhere; these dried in the sun on tiles and pounded to a flour are mixed with an equal part of bean meal and bring whiteness and smoothness to the body. Small, broad ones with polenta remove the desire to scratch.
128| Should a pregnant woman step over a viper, she will miscarry, and likewise over an amphisbaena, but only a dead one, for those who keep a live one in a box step over it unharmed; even if dead and kept, it makes births easy. In the dead one it is a marvel that, if pregnant women step over it without its having been kept, it becomes harmless, if they step over a kept one at once. By the fumigation of an old snake the menses are helped.
129| The sloughed skin of snakes tied round the loins makes births easier, and must be removed straightaway after the delivery. They also give it to be drunk in wine with frankincense; taken otherwise it causes miscarriage. The staff with which a frog has been struck off a snake helps women in labour; the ash of trixallides smeared on with honey helps the purgations, as does a spider: one that lets down its thread from on high must be caught in the hollow of the hand, and pounded and applied; if it catches it as it comes back, the same will check the purgations.
130| The stone aetites, found in an eagle's nest, guards births against all the snares of miscarriage. A vulture's feather placed under the feet helps women in labour. The egg of a raven is agreed to be avoided by pregnant women, since for those who step over it it causes miscarriage through the mouth. The dung of a hawk drunk in honey wine is thought to make women fruitful. Hardnesses and gatherings of the womb are softened by goose or swan fat.
131| Goose fat with rose oil and a spider guards the breasts after childbirth. The Phrygians and Lycaones discovered that the fat of the bustard is useful for breasts troubled by childbirth. For women who are suffocated by the womb they also smear on cockroaches. The ash of partridge eggshells, mixed with cadmia and wax, keeps the breasts standing. They also think that breasts led three times round a partridge egg, or [….], do not sag; and that, if the eggs are sipped, they give the same fruitfulness and also an abundance of milk; that with goose fat, breasts anointed have their pains lessened; that they break moles of the womb, and soothe scabies of the vulva, if they are smeared on with a bug pounded.
132| The blood of bats has the power of psilotrum, but smeared on the armpits of boys it does not do enough unless verdigris or hemlock seed is afterwards applied; for so either the hairs are removed altogether or do not grow beyond down. They think the same is achieved by their brain; it is of two kinds, in any case red, and white. Some mix in the blood and liver of the same.
133| Some boil down a viper with the bones removed in 3 heminae of oil and use it in place of psilotrum, the hairs having first been plucked out which they do not want to grow again. The gall of a hedgehog is a psilotrum, at any rate mixed with the brain of a bat and goat's milk, and the ash by itself likewise. Parts anointed with the milk of a bitch that has borne once, the hairs having first been plucked out or not yet born, do not put forth others.
134| The same is reported to happen with the blood of a ricinus plucked from a dog, likewise with the blood or gall of swallows, with the eggs of ants. They report that the eyebrows are blackened by crushed flies; but if one wishes children to be born with dark eyes, a shrew-mouse is to be eaten by the pregnant woman; that hair may not turn grey, this is ensured by the ash of earthworms mixed with oil.
135| For infants troubled by curdled milk, lamb's rennet drunk in water is a protection, or, if it befalls from milk that has curdled, it is dispersed by rennet given in vinegar. For teething the brain of cattle is most useful. Bones found in dog dung, tied on, correct the burning of infants called siriasis; a rupture of infants is cured by a green lizard brought to the sleeping child to bite. Afterwards they tie it to a reed and hang it in smoke, and they report that the infant is healed together with the lizard as it expires.
136| Snails' slime smeared on infants' eyes straightens the eyelashes and makes them grow. For hernia, the ash of snails with frankincense, applied with a probe in white of egg for 30 days, is a cure. Sandy hard bits are found in the little horns of snails; tied on as an amulet, these make teething easy. The ash of empty snail shells mixed with wax prevents the ends of the intestines from prolapsing; but the matter let out by pricking must first be mixed with the ash.
137| A viper's brain tied on in a piece of skin helps teething. The largest teeth of serpents have the same power. Raven's dung tied on in wool cures infants' cough. Some things can hardly be treated seriously, and yet should not be left out, since they have been handed down. For hernia in infants they prescribe a lizard. It must be a male that is caught; it is recognized by having a single opening under the tail.
138| The thing to do is to make it bite the affected part through a clasp of gold or silver; then it is tied up in a new cup and set in the smoke. Children's urine is held back when boiled mice are given them as food. The large, toothed horns of beetles, tied on them, serve as an amulet.
139| They say there is a little stone in the head of the boa, which it spits out if it fears death; and that if its head is cut off while it is off its guard, the stone taken out and tied on is wonderfully good for teething. They also prescribe tying on the brain of the same creature for the same purpose, and the little stone, or small bone, of the slug; it is found in its back. A sheep's brain rubbed on the gums is also a splendid help, as goose grease with juice of ocimum, put on the ears, helps the ears. On thorny plants there are little worms, rough and woolly; they say that these, tied on, at once cure infants if anything from their food sticks in the throat.
140| Sleep is brought on by oesypum with a pinch of myrrh dissolved in 2 cyathi of wine, or with goose grease and myrtle wine; by a cuckoo tied on in a hare's skin; by the beak of a little heron tied on the forehead in an ass's skin. They think that the beak by itself, washed in wine, also has the same effect. Conversely, the dried head of a bat tied on keeps sleep away.
141| A lizard drowned in a man's urine checks the sexual desire of the man who did it; for the Magi say it is one of the love charms. Snails also check it, and pigeon's dung drunk with oil and wine. The right-hand parts of a vulture's lung, tied on in a crane's skin, arouse desire in men; so do the yolks of five pigeon's eggs mixed with the weight of a denarius of pork fat, if swallowed in honey; sparrows or their eggs in food; and the right testicle of a cock tied on in a ram's skin.
142| They report that if women are anointed with the ash of ibises mixed with goose grease and iris oil, the child conceived is retained; that, on the other hand, desire is checked by the testicles of a fighting cock smeared with goose grease and tied on in a ram's skin, and likewise by those of any cock if they are put under the bed with a cock's blood. Unwilling women are forced to conceive by hairs from a mule's tail, if they are pulled out while the mules are coupled and tied together during intercourse.
143| A man who urinates into a dog's urine is said to become more sluggish in desire. Remarkable too, if it is true, is what is said of the ash of the stellio: wrapped in a linen cloth and held in the left hand, it stimulates desire, and if it is moved to the right hand, it checks it; likewise that a bat's blood collected on a tuft of wool and placed under women's heads arouses their lust, or a goose's tongue taken in food or drink.
144| Phthiriasis, even over the whole body, is killed within three days by drinking the slough of snakes, or the whey left after the cheese is taken out, drunk with a little salt. They say that cheeses do not spoil with age or get touched by mice if a weasel's brain is added to the rennet; and that if the ash of the same weasel is given to chickens and pigeons in a morsel, they are safe from weasels. Gripes with retention of urine in draught animals are ended by tying on a bat; worms, by carrying a ring-dove three times round their middle. Wonderful to say, the ring-dove dies when it is let go, and the animal is freed at once.
145| Owls' eggs given to drunkards in wine for three days bring on a disgust for it. Drunkenness is warded off by the roasted lung of a sheep eaten beforehand. The ash of a swallow's beak, ground with myrrh and sprinkled into the wine that is to be drunk, will make one safe from intoxication. Orus, king of the Assyrians, discovered this.
146| Besides these, there are notable facts about animals belonging to this volume. The gromphena, a bird reported in Sardinia and like a crane, is, I think, now unknown even to the Sardinians. In the same province there is the ophion, like the deer only in its hair, and born nowhere else. The same authorities have told of the sirulugus without saying what kind of animal it was or where it was born. That it existed I do not doubt, since remedies from it have been set out. Marcus Cicero records that there are animals called biuri that gnaw the vines in Campania.
147| The remaining marvels, from among those we have spoken of: that a dog will not bark at a man who has the membrane from a bitch's afterbirth or who holds a hare's dung or hairs. That among the gnats the muliones [….] live no longer than one day; and that those who have the beak of a woodpecker and take out honey are not touched by the bees; that pigs follow anyone from whom they have received a raven's brain in a morsel.
148| That dust in which a she-mule has rolled, sprinkled on the body, cools the fires of love. That shrews run away if one of them is castrated and let go. That if a snake's skin, with salt and spelt and serpyllum, all ground together, is poured with wine down the throats of oxen when the grape is ripening, they stay healthy for the whole year; or if swallow chicks are given to them, three at a time in three morsels. That if dust gathered from a snake's track is scattered, the bees return to their hives. That if a ram's right testicle is tied off, only ewe lambs are born.
149| That those who have sinews taken from a crane's wings and legs never tire in any labor. That mules do not kick once they have drunk wine. That the hooves of mules alone were found, and no other material, that was not eaten through by the poison of the water of Styx, when Antipater sent it to be given to Alexander the Great: this deserves to be remembered; it was a plot devised to the great infamy of Aristotle. Now we shall turn to the creatures of the water.

======== Natural History — Book XXXI ========

1| Next come the benefits that the things of the water bring to medicine. For nature, the craftswoman, is not idle even in them: through waves and billows, through the ebb and flow of the tides and the swift courses of rivers, she wields her relentless powers, and nowhere, if we are willing to admit the truth, with greater might, since this element rules over all the others.
2| Waters devour lands, put out flames, climb on high and claim even the sky for themselves, and with the screen of their clouds choke the breath of life; and this is what strikes out thunderbolts, when the world is at war with itself. What can be more wonderful than waters standing in the sky? And yet, as if it were too little to reach so great a height, they sweep shoals of fish up there with them, often stones too, and climb carrying weights not their own.
3| Falling again, the same waters become the cause of everything that springs from the earth, by a thoroughly wonderful arrangement of nature, if one cares to reflect on it: that for crops to be produced and for trees and shrubs to live, waters move up into the sky and bring down from there the breath of life even to plants; so that we must in fairness confess that all the powers of the earth too are owed to the bounty of the waters. Therefore, before anything else, we will set out examples of their power. For which of mortals could list them all?
4| They burst forth generously and everywhere, in very many lands: in one place cold, in another hot, in another both together, as among the Tarbelli, an Aquitanian people, and in the Pyrenees, with only a small distance separating them; elsewhere warm or lukewarm. They promise help against diseases, and, bursting out for the sake of human beings alone of all living creatures, they swell the number of the gods under various names and they found cities, such as Puteoli in Campania, Statiellae in Liguria, Sextiae in the province of Narbonensis. Nowhere, however, are they more abundant than on the Bay of Baiae, nor with more kinds of help: some by the power of sulphur,
5| some of alum, some of salt, some of nitrum, some of bitumen, some even with an acid or salty mixture; some do good by their steam alone, and their force is so great that they heat baths and even make cold water boil in the tubs. The waters at Baiae called Posidianae, which took their name from a freedman of Claudius Caesar, even cook food. The waters that once belonged to Licinius Crassus give off steam in the sea itself, and in the middle of the waves something comes forth that is good for health.
6| Further, by kind, some benefit the sinews, or the feet, or the hips, others dislocations or fractures; they empty the bowels and heal wounds; some are a particular cure for the head or the ears, and the Ciceronian waters for the eyes. It is worth recording: there is a villa, set on the shore as you go from Lake Avernus toward Puteoli, famous for its colonnade and grove, which Marcus Cicero called the Academy, after the model of Athens, since he composed there the books of the same name; in it he had even set up memorials to himself, as though he had not done that throughout the whole world.
7| In the first part of it, shortly after his death, when Antistius Vetus owned it, hot springs burst out that are exceedingly good for the eyes. They were celebrated in a poem by Laurea Tullius, one of Cicero's freedmen, so that one may see at once how even his servants drank deep of that majestic genius. I shall give the poem itself, so that it may be read everywhere and not only there: Where your,
8| most illustrious champion of the Roman tongue, / grove, bidden to rise in a better place, grows green, / and the villa celebrated by the name of Academy / Vetus now restores with richer care, / here too appear streams never found before, / which relieve weary eyes with their sprinkled dew. / Surely the place itself gave this in honor of its Cicero, / when with this aid it laid the springs open, / so that, since he is read without end throughout the whole world, / there might be more waters to heal the eyes. / In the same region of Campania the waters of Sinuessa are reported to do away with barrenness in women and madness in men,
9| and on the island of Aenaria to cure those with stones; and so does the water called Acidula, 3,000 paces from Teanum Sidicinum (this one is cold), and likewise the water called Dimidia in the territory of Stabiae, and the one at Venafrum from the Acidulus spring. The same happens to those who drink at Lake Velinus, and likewise at a spring in Syria near Mount Taurus, as Marcus Varro reports, and at the river Gallus in Phrygia, as Callimachus reports. But there one must drink in moderation, so that it does not drive people out of their minds, which Ctesias writes happens in Ethiopia to those who have drunk from the Red Spring.
10| Near Rome the Albula waters heal wounds; these are lukewarm. But the waters of Cutiliae in the Sabine country, which are extremely cold, penetrate the body with a kind of sucking, so that it could almost seem a bite; they are very good for the stomach, the sinews, and the whole body. The spring of Thespiae makes women conceive at once, and so does the river Elatus in Arcadia; while the spring Linus, also in Arcadia, guards the unborn child and does not allow miscarriages. Conversely, at Pyrrha the river called Aphrodisium makes people barren.
11| Varro reports that vitiligo is removed at Lake Alphius, and that Titius, a former praetor, had a face like a marble statue because of that complaint. The Cydnus, a river of Cilicia, cures those with gout, as appears from a letter of Cassius of Parma to Mark Antony. On the other hand, at Troezen, through the fault of the waters, everyone suffers ailments in the feet.
12| The Tungri, a community of Gaul, have a remarkable spring that sparkles with a great many bubbles and has a taste of iron rust, which is noticed only at the end of the drink. It purges the body and dispels tertian fevers and the troubles of stones. The same water becomes turbid when fire is brought near it, and finally turns red. The Leucogaean springs between Puteoli and Naples cure the eyes and wounds. Cicero set down among his Marvels that only in the marshes of Reate do the hooves of draught animals harden.
13| Eudicus reports that in Hestiaeotis there are two springs, Cerona, from which sheep that drink become black, and Nelea, from which they become white, and from both, parti-coloured; Theophrastus, that at Thurii the Crathis makes white and the Sybaris blackness in cattle and flocks,
14| and that men too feel that difference; for those who drink from the Sybaris are darker and harder and have curly hair, while those who drink from the Crathis are fair and softer and have long straight hair. Likewise in Macedonia, those who wish white offspring to be born to them drive their flocks to the Haliacmon, those who wish black or dusky ones, to the Axius. The same writer says that in some places everything is born dusky, crops too, as among the Messapi, and that in the Lusi of Arcadia, at a certain spring, land mice live and move about. At Erythrae the river Aleos produces hairs on the body.
15| In Boeotia at the god Trophonius, beside the river Hercynna, of two springs one brings memory, the other forgetfulness, the names having been found from that. In Cilicia, near the town of Cescum, a stream called Nuus flows, from which Marcus Varro reports that the senses of those who drink become keener, while on the island of Cea there is a spring by which people are made dull, and at Zama in Africa one by which voices become tuneful.
16| Those who have drunk from the lake Clitorius come to loathe wine, says Eudoxus, but Theopompus that people are made drunk by those springs we have mentioned; Mucianus, that on Andros from the spring of father Liber on fixed days, seven in number, the wine of that god flows, and if it is carried out of sight of the temple, its taste passes into water,
17| Polyclitus, that people are anointed at Liparis, near Soli in Cilicia; Theophrastus the same in Ethiopia, in a spring of the same name; Lycos, that among the Orati in India there is a spring with whose water lamps burn; the same is reported at Ecbatana. Theopompus says that at Scotusa there is a lake that cures wounds,
18| Juba, that among the Trogodytae there is a lake called Insane from its harmful power, which three times a day becomes bitter and salt and then sweet, and as often by night, teeming with white serpents of twenty cubits each; the same writer, that in Arabia a spring leaps up with such force that it throws back every weight cast into it;
19| Theophrastus, that the spring of Marsyas in Phrygia, near the town of Celaenae, throws out stones. Not far from it are two springs, Claeon and Gelon, named from the effect, after Greek words. At Cyzicus there is a spring called the spring of Cupid, from which those who drink, Mucianus believes, lay aside love.
20| At Cranon there is a hot spring, below the highest boiling heat, which, with wine added, keeps the heat of the drink for three days in vessels. There are also the hot springs of the Mattiaci in Germany across the Rhine, whose draught stays hot for three days, while around the margins the waters make pumice.
21| But if anyone thinks some of these things lack credibility, let him learn that in no part of nature are there greater marvels, although at the beginning of the work we related plenty. Ctesias reports that there is a pool in India called Silas, in which nothing floats and everything sinks; Caelius, that at Avernus among us even leaves sink, and Varro, that birds which have flown to it die.
22| On the other hand in the lake Apuscidamus in Africa everything floats and nothing sinks, likewise in the spring Phinthia in Sicily, as Apion reports, and in the lake of the Medes and the well of Saturn. Likewise the source of the river Limyra is accustomed to pass into neighbouring places, portending something; it is also a marvel that it passes with its fish. The inhabitants seek replies from them with food, which the fish snatch, nodding assent, but if they deny the outcome, they drive it off with their tails.
23| The river Alcas in Bithynia washes Bryazum (this is the name both of the temple and of the god), whose whirlpool perjurers are said not to be able to endure, as if it were a burning flame. And in Cantabria the springs of the Tamarici are held to be portents. There are three, eight feet apart, which come together into one channel as a vast river.
24| Each of them is dried up for twelve days, sometimes for twenty, without any trace of water, though a spring that is lavish without interruption lies next to them. It is dreaded when they do not flow for those who wish to look at them, as happened most recently to Larcius Licinius, legate with praetorian power, after seven days. In Judaea a stream dries up on every Sabbath.
25| From the opposite side there are other dreadful marvels. Ctesias writes that in Armenia there is a spring from which black fish at once bring death in food. I have heard this too about the source of the Danube, until one comes to a spring set beside the channel, where this kind of fish ends, and therefore report understands the head of that river to be there. The same they report in Lydia in the pool of the Nymphs.
26| In Arcadia, near Pheneus, water flows from rocks called the Styx, which kills at once, as we have said, but Theophrastus reports that there are small fish in it, themselves deadly, which is not the case in any other kind of deadly spring.
27| Theopompus says that waters kill also in Thrace among the Cichri, Lycos that in the Leontini they kill on the third day after one has drunk, Varro, at Soracte in a spring four feet wide; that at sunrise it overflows like boiling water; that birds which have tasted it lie dead beside it. For this too is a treacherous condition, that some also allure by their appearance, as at Nonacris in Arcadia, with no deterring quality whatever. This one they think is harmful from excessive cold, seeing that it turns to stone as it flows.
28| Otherwise around Tempe in Thessaly, since its poison is a terror to all, and they report that even bronze and iron are eaten away by that water. It flows, as we have indicated, for a short distance, and, a marvel, a wild carob is said to embrace that spring with its roots, always flowering in purple. And a certain herb of its own kind is green on the lips of the spring. In Macedonia, close by the tomb of the poet Euripides, two streams flow together, one of most wholesome drinking, the other deadly.
29| At Perperena there is a spring that makes stone of whatever earth it waters, and likewise the hot waters at Aedepsus in Euboea. For the rocks which the stream reaches grow in height. At Eurymenae garlands thrown into a spring become stone. At Colossae there is a river from which bricks thrown in are drawn out as stone. In the Scyretic mine, trees, whatever are washed by the river, become stone with their branches.
30| Dripping drops also harden into stone in caves, which are therefore shell-like; for at Mieza in Macedonia they do so even hanging from the very vaults, but at Corycus only when they have fallen, in some caves in both ways, and they make columns, as in Phausia of the Chersonese opposite Rhodes, in a great cave, even of varied colour in appearance. And let us be content with examples so far.
31| It is asked among physicians which kind of waters are most useful. They rightly condemn standing and sluggish ones, thinking those that flow more useful, for by their course and the very beating they are refined and improve; and for that reason I wonder that cistern waters are especially approved by some. But these give as their reason that the lightest is that of rains, as it could rise and hang in the air.
32| Therefore they prefer snows also, and to snows even ice, as if its fineness had been driven to infinity; for these, they say, are lighter, and ice much lighter than water. It matters for life that their opinion be refuted. For first of all, that lightness can scarcely be detected otherwise than by sense, waters differing from each other by almost no moment of weight. Nor is it a proof of lightness in rainwater that it has risen into the sky, since stones also are evidently carried up, and as it falls it is stained by the breath of the earth, whence it comes about that rainwater is felt to contain a great deal of filth and therefore rainwater heats up very quickly.
33| I wonder indeed that snow and ice are thought the finest part of that element, when the proof of hailstones lies beside it, from which it is agreed that the drink is most pestilential. Nor are there few among them who on the contrary declare drinks from frost and snow the most unwholesome, since what was finest has been driven out from them. It is certainly found that all liquid is diminished by freezing, and that excessive dew causes scabies, hoar frost a burning, snow's causes being akin.
34| It is agreed indeed that rainwaters putrefy very quickly and last least on a voyage. Epigenes, however, says that water which has been purified after putrefying seven times does not putrefy any more. For even the physicians admit that cistern waters, through their hardness, are useless to the bowels and the throat, and that no other waters hold more mud, or more of the creatures that cause disgust.
35| Likewise they have to admit that rivers are not at once the most useful, as no torrent's is, and that very many lakes are wholesome. Which, then, and of what kind, are the most suitable? Different ones in different places. The kings of the Parthians drink only from the Choaspes and the Eulaeus; these accompany them even on distant journeys. But that these please them not because they are rivers is clear, since they drink neither from the Tigris nor the Euphrates nor from many others.
36| Mud is a fault of waters. If, however, the same river teems with eels, it is held as a sign of wholesomeness, just as it is a sign of coldness when taeniae breed in a spring. Before all, bitter waters are condemned, and those that fill one at once as one sips, as happens at Troezen. For nitrous and salmacid waters, for those crossing deserts to the Red Sea, polenta added makes useful within two hours, and they themselves eat the polenta. Condemned above all are those that make mud in the spring and those that give the drinkers a bad colour; it matters too if they stain bronze vessels or cook pulses slowly, if when strained they gently leave earth behind, and when boiled coat vessels with thick crusts.
37| There is still another fault, not only of a stinking water, but of one that tastes of anything at all, though it be pleasant and agreeable and, as often, approach the neighbourhood of milk. A wholesome water ought to be as like air as possible. One spring only in the whole world is reported of water with a pleasant smell, the Chabura in Mesopotamia; the fables give a reason, that Juno was bathed in it. For the rest, wholesome waters ought to have no taste or smell.
38| Some judge of wholesomeness by a balance, but their diligence is frustrated, since it is very rare for any water to be lighter. A surer fineness is that, among equals, the better is the one that is heated and cooled more quickly. They affirm too that when it is drawn in carried vessels, so as not to hang from the hand, and set on the ground, it turns lukewarm. From what kind, then, will the most approvable come? From wells, plainly, as I see is agreed in towns, but those in which the reason of exercise is secured by frequent drawing, and that fineness by the earth acting as a strainer.
39| So much for wholesomeness; for coldness shade also is necessary, and that they see the sky. Above all one observation, which relates also to permanence, that the vein should leap up from the bottom, not from the sides. For that the water should be cold to the touch is also achieved by art, if when forced up on high or thrown down from a height it seizes the air by striking it. Indeed in swimming the same water is felt colder by those who hold their breath.
40| It was the invention of the emperor Nero to boil water and, lowering it in glass into snow, to chill it; thus the pleasure of coldness is had without the faults of snow. All water at any rate is agreed to be more useful boiled, and when heated it is also cooled more, a most subtle discovery. For a faulty water the remedy is to boil it down to half. Cold water taken in stops bleeding. The heat in baths is warded off if one holds it in the mouth. That waters which are coldest to drink are not equally so to the touch, this good alternating, many gather from a familiar example.
41| The most famous of all waters in the whole world, for coldness and wholesomeness, by the proclamation of the city, wins the palm: the Marcia, among the other gifts of the gods bestowed on the city. This was once called the Aufeia, and the spring itself the Pitonia. It rises in the farthest mountains of the Paeligni, passes through the Marsi and the lake Fucinus, making for Rome beyond doubt. Soon plunged into caverns, it opens out again in the Tiburtine country, and so is brought on nine miles by arches built. The first to undertake to bring it into the city was Ancus Marcius, one of the kings, afterwards Quintus Marcius Rex in his praetorship, and Marcus Agrippa restored it again.
42| The same Agrippa also brought in the Virgo, from a turning at the eighth milestone, two miles along the Praenestine road. Near it is the Herculaneus stream, which it shuns, and from which it took the name of Virgo. By comparison of these rivers the difference spoken of above is detected, since as much as the Virgo excels in touch, so much the Marcia excels in drinking; although the pleasure of both has long since been lost to the city, as ambition and avarice turn the public health aside to villas and suburban estates.
43| It would not be beside the point to have joined to this a method of searching for waters. They are found chiefly in valleys and at some hinge of a curve, or at the roots of mountains. Many have thought the northern parts everywhere watery, a matter in which it is fitting to have disclosed the variety of nature. In the mountains of Hyrcania it does not rain on the southern side; therefore they are wooded only on the north. But Olympus, Ossa, Parnassus, the Apennine, the Alps are clothed and watered on every side, some on the south, as in Crete the White Mountains. So nothing of permanent observation will be judged in these.
44| The signs of waters are the rush and the herb of which we have spoken, and a frog brooding with its breast on a certain place. For the wandering willow, the alder, or the vitex, or the reed, or ivy spring up of their own accord, also from the draining together of rainwater running down from higher into a lower place, a deceptive omen; much surer is the misty exhalation before sunrise for those looking farther, which some watch for from a height, lying face down with the chin touching the earth.
45| There is also a peculiar estimate known only to the skilled, which they follow in the fiercest heat and in the hottest hours of the day: what sort of reflection shines back from each place. For if, with the earth thirsty, it is moister, an undoubted hope is promised.
46| But such intentness of the eyes is needed that they grow sore. Those who flee this run down to other trials. A place is dug to a depth of five feet, and raw pots of clay, or a bronze basin smeared with oil, are placed in it, covered with a fleece of wool, and a burning lamp is vaulted over with leafy branches, then with earth; if the clay is found damp or broken, or sweat on the bronze, or the lamp put out without any lack of oil, or even the fleece of wool soaked, they undoubtedly promise waters. Some also first bake the place with fire, the proof from the vessels being so much the more effective.
47| The earth itself promises when it has whitish patches or is wholly of a greenish-grey colour. For in black earth springs are not generally perennial. Potter's clay always takes away hope, nor do they dig a well further, observing the layers of earth, so that the order spoken of above descends from the black.
48| Water is always sweet in clayey earth, colder in tufa. For this too is approved, since it makes waters sweet and very light and by straining holds back the impurities. Sand promises thin and muddy waters, gravel uncertain veins, but of good taste; male sand and sandy carbunculus certain, stable and wholesome ones, red rocks the best and of most certain hope, the rocky roots of mountains and flint, this much more, cold. As they dig, however, the clods ought to answer constantly moister and the iron tools to descend more easily.
49| When wells are sunk, sulphurous or aluminous veins that are met with kill the well-diggers. The test of this danger is a burning lamp let down, if it goes out; then beside the well, to right and left, vents are dug to receive that heavier breath. Even without these faults the air becomes heavier by depth itself, and they correct it by constantly tossing linen cloths to fan it. When the water is reached, the work rises without sand-lining, lest the veins be stopped.
50| Some waters are colder as soon as spring begins, those whose origin is not deep (for they depend on the winter rains), some from the rising of the Dog Star, as at Pella in Macedonia both occur. For in front of the town, at the beginning of summer, the marsh water is cold, then in the greatest heat it is chilled in the higher parts of the town. This happens also in Chios by a like reasoning of harbour and town. At Athens the Enneacrunos is cooler in a rainy summer than the well in the garden of Jupiter, but that one is cold in droughts. Wells fail most around Arcturus, not in summer itself, and all sink within those four days, and indeed many throughout the whole winter, as around Olynthus, until spring when the waters return.
51| In Sicily, around Messana and Mylae, the springs dry up entirely in winter, and in summer overflow and make a river. At Apollonia in Pontus a spring beside the sea overflows only in summer, and most about the rising of the Dog Star, less if the summer is colder. Some lands become drier with rains, as in the territory of Narnia, which Marcus Cicero inserted among his marvels, reporting that in drought it becomes mud, in rain dust.
52| All water is sweeter in winter, less so in summer, least in autumn, and less in droughts. Nor is the taste of rivers generally even, there being great difference of channel. For waters are such as the earth through which they flow, or the juices of the herbs which they wash. So the same rivers are found unwholesome in some part. Streams flowing in also change the taste, as with the Borysthenes, and being overcome are diluted. Some are even changed by rain. Three times it has happened in the Bosporus that salt rains fell and killed the crops, and as often rains made the irrigation waters of the Nile bitter, to the great pestilence of Egypt.
53| Springs are produced, for the most part, when woods are felled which the nourishment of the trees used to consume, as on Haemus when Cassander was besieging the Gauls, when they had cut down the woods for the sake of a rampart. Often, however, damaging torrents are collected when the forest has been stripped from the hills, which was accustomed to hold the storm clouds and disperse them. It matters to the waters also that the earth be tilled and moved and the callus of the top skin be broken. It is reported at any rate that in Crete, when the town called Arcadia was taken, the springs and rivers, which were many in that place, ceased, and when it was founded again six years later they came out again, as each part began to be cultivated.
54| Earthquakes also pour out and swallow up waters, as it is agreed happened five times around Pheneus in Arcadia. So too on mount Corycus a river burst out, and afterwards the mountain began to be cultivated. That change is marvellous for which no evident cause appears, as in Magnesia a spring made cold from hot, the taste of salt not being changed, and in Caria, where there is a temple of Neptune, a river which had been sweet before was changed into salt.
55| And this is full of marvel, that the Arethusa at Syracuse smells of dung during the Olympic games, and it is probable, since the Alpheus passes under the sea to that island. A spring of the Rhodians in the Chersonese throws out its refuse in the ninth year.
56| The colours of waters also change, as at Babylon a lake has red waters for 11 days in summer, and the Borysthenes is reported blue at fixed times, although the finest of all waters, and therefore floating on top of the Hypanis, in which there is also this marvel, that when south winds blow the Hypanis becomes the upper. But there is another proof of fineness, that it gives off no breath, much less a mist. Those who wish to be seen as careful in these matters say that waters become heavier after the winter solstice.
57| For the rest, it is most useful to lead water from the spring in clay pipes of the thickness of two fingers, with the joints socketed so that the upper enters the lower, smeared with quicklime in oil. The fall of the water will be at the least a sicilicus in a hundred feet; if it comes by a tunnel, vents ought to be at every two actus. Where it must rise to a height, let it come by lead. It rises to the height of its own source. If it comes over a longer run, let it rise and descend repeatedly, lest the levels be lost.
58| It is the rule that pipes be ten feet in length, and, if they are quinariae, weigh sixty pounds each, if octonariae, a hundred, if denariae, a hundred and twenty, and so on in these proportions. That is called a denaria whose sheet is 10 fingers broad before it is bent, and half of that a quinaria. At every bend of a hill a quinaria must be made, where the force is to be tamed, and likewise reservoirs, as the matter demands.
59| I wonder that Homer made no mention of hot springs, though he otherwise often introduced bathing in hot water, doubtless because there was not then this medicine which now takes refuge in waters. Sulphurous water, however, is useful for the sinews, aluminous for paralytics or those loosened in a like way, bituminous or nitrous, such as the Cutiliae are, by drinking, and therefore for purgations.
60| Many count it a glory to endure their heat for very many hours, which is most harmful, for one ought to use them a little longer than baths, and afterwards cold fresh water, and not leave without oil, which the common people think foreign; and so nowhere are bodies more exposed, since the head is filled by the vastness of the vapour and, sweating, is attacked by the cold, while the rest of the body is immersed. A like error belongs to those who glory in drinking as much as possible, and I have seen men swollen by drinking to such a degree that their rings were covered by the skin, the multitude of water taken in being unable to be returned.
61| This too, then, ought not to be done without frequent tasting of salt. They also use the mud of the springs themselves usefully, but only if it dries in the sun when smeared on. Nor indeed is it to be believed that all waters which are hot are medicinal, as at Segesta in Sicily, Larisa in the Troad, Magnesia, Melos, Lipara. Nor is a discoloured appearance of bronze or silver, as many have thought, a proof of medicinal powers, since in the springs of Patavium nothing of the kind, nor any difference even of smell, will be detected.
62| The manner of healing will be the same also in sea waters, which are heated for pains of the sinews, for the soldering of broken bones, for bruises, likewise for drying bodies, for which reason they use cold sea water too. Besides there is another manifold use, the chief being sailing for those afflicted with consumption, as we have said, or for spitting of blood, as we remember Annaeus Gallio did most recently after his consulship.
63| For Egypt is not sought for its own sake, but for the length of the voyage. Indeed the vomitings themselves, stirred by the unsteady tossing, cure very many diseases of the head, the eyes, the chest, and all those for which hellebore is drunk. Sea water by itself the physicians think more effective for dispersing tumours, if barley meal is boiled down in it, for swellings by the ears. They also mix it into plasters, especially white ones, and into malagmata; it helps too when poured on with frequent strokes.
64| It is also drunk, though not without injury to the stomach, to purge bodies, and to bring up black bile or clotted blood by one way or the other. Some have given it to be drunk in quartan fevers too, and in tenesmus and joint diseases, kept for the purpose so that by age it lays aside its virulence; some boiled, all drawn from the deep and not spoiled by any mixture of sweet water. In this use they want vomiting to come first. Then also they mix vinegar or wine and water.
65| Those who have given it pure order radishes to be eaten after it in honeyed vinegar, in order to call back to vomiting. They also pour warmed sea water into clysters. For fomenting swellings of the testicles they prefer nothing else, likewise for the fault of chilblains before they ulcerate, in a similar way for itchings, and for the cure of psorae and lichens. Nits too and the foul vermin of the head are cured by it. And the same brings livid places back to their colour. In these treatments, after the sea water, to foment with hot vinegar is of the greatest benefit. It is understood also to be salutary for venomous strokes, as of phalangia and scorpions, and for those sprinkled by the ptyas asp; in these it is used hot.
66| The same is used as a fumigation with vinegar for pains of the head. Gripings and cholera also are relieved by hot sea water poured in by clysters. Heated sea water cools with more difficulty. Breasts that are budding, the praecordia and leanness of the body are set right by sea-water pools, heaviness of the ears and pains of the head by the vapour of boiling water with vinegar. Sea waters rub rust off iron very quickly; they also cure the scab of cattle and soften wool.
67| Nor am I unaware that these things may seem superfluous to those inland. But care has provided for this too, a method having been found by which anyone might make sea water for himself. What is marvellous in that method is that, if more than a sextarius of salt is immersed in 4 sextarii of water, the water is overcome and the salt is not dissolved. Otherwise a sextarius of salt with 3 sextarii of water fills the strength and nature of the saltiest sea. They think the most moderate is for the water measure spoken of above to be tempered with eight cyathi of salt, since so it both warms the sinews and does not roughen the body.
68| What they call thalassomeli is also kept till old, of equal portions of sea water, honey and rain water. They bring the sea water from the deep for this use also and store it in a pitched earthenware vessel. It is of benefit for purgations, above all without vexing the stomach, and with a pleasant taste and smell.
69| Hydromeli too was once mixed from pure rainwater with honey, to be given to sick people longing for wine as if it were a more harmless drink, but it has been condemned now for many years, having the same faults as wine and not the same uses.
70| Because sailors often suffer from a lack of fresh water, we shall point out these resources also. Fleeces spread about the ship grow wet from taking in the breath of the sea, and fresh moisture is squeezed from them; likewise hollow balls of wax lowered into the sea in nets, or empty vessels stopped up, collect fresh moisture within themselves. For on land, sea water strained through clay becomes sweet.
71| Dislocated limbs of both men and four-footed animals return most easily into their joints by swimming in water of whatever kind one likes. Travellers also fear that an unknown water may try their health. They guard against this by drinking the suspect cold water immediately on coming out of the baths.
72| Moss that has been in water, smeared on, benefits gout; the same with oil mixed in, pain and swelling of the ankles. The foam of water, rubbed on, removes warts, as does the sand of the sea shores, especially fine sand glittering in the sun; it is used in medicine for drying bodies, covering those of dropsical people or those who feel rheumatic flows. And so far on waters; now on aquatic things. We shall begin, as in the rest, from the principal ones among them, which are the salt and the sponge.
73| All salt is either made or produced, each in several ways, but with a twofold cause, moisture either condensed or dried. It is dried in the lake of Tarentum by summer suns, and the whole pool turns to salt, a modest one otherwise, not exceeding the knees in depth, likewise in Sicily in the lake called Cocanicus, and another beside Gela. Only the edges of these dry up, as in Phrygia, Cappadocia, Aspendus, where it is cooked more abundantly, even to the middle. Another marvel in it is that as much comes in by night as you take away by day. All salt from pools is fine and not in lumps.
74| Another kind is produced spontaneously from sea waters, foam left on the farthest shores and rocks. All this is condensed by dew, and that found on rocks is sharper. There are still three natural differences. For in Bactria two vast lakes, one towards the Scythians, the other towards the Arii, boil up with salt, as at Citium in Cyprus and around Memphis they draw it out of the lake, then dry it in the sun.
75| But the surfaces of rivers too are condensed into salt, the remaining stream flowing as if under ice, as at the Caspian Gates what are called the rivers of salt, likewise around the Mardi and the Armenians. Besides, among the Bactrians the rivers Ochus and Oxus carry down fragments of salt from the mountains near.
76| There are also lakes in Africa, and indeed muddy ones, which bear salt. Hot springs bear it too, as the Pagasaean. And so far for the kinds that come spontaneously from waters.
77| There are also mountains of native salt, as in India the Oromenus, in which it is cut like a quarry and grows again, and the revenue of the kings from it is greater than from gold and pearls. It is also dug from the earth, evidently from moisture condensed, in Cappadocia. There indeed it is cut like specular stones; the lumps are of great weight, which the common people call micae.
78| At Gerrae, a town of Arabia, they make walls and houses of blocks of salt, cementing them with water. King Ptolemy found it also near Pelusium, when he was making a camp. After this example it began later to be found between Egypt and Arabia, even in squalid places, when the sands were removed, as it also is through the parched regions of Africa all the way to the oracle of Hammon, and that one grows with the moon by night.
79| For the Cyrenaic tracts too are famous for Hammoniacum, so called also from being found under the sands. It is like alum in colour, the kind they call schiston, in long lumps, not translucent, unpleasant in taste but useful for medicine. The most approved is that which is as clear as possible, with straight cleavages. A remarkable thing is reported about it: that though very light within its caves, when brought out into the full light it grows heavy with a weight scarcely credible. The cause is evident, the damp breath of the tunnels so helping those who work it, as waters help. It is adulterated with the Sicilian, which we called Cocanican, and also with the Cyprian, which is wonderfully like.
80| In Hither Spain also at Egeleste it is cut in lumps almost translucent, and to this the palm has long been given by most physicians among all kinds of salt. Every place in which salt is found is barren and produces nothing. And altogether the spontaneously produced kind falls within these.
81| Manufactured salts are of various kinds. The common and most plentiful is in salt-works, sea water being poured on, not without irrigation by fresh waters, but chiefly with the help of rain and above all much sun [….], not otherwise drying. In Africa around Utica they build up heaps of salt to the appearance of hills, which, when they have hardened by sun and moon, are melted by no moisture and are scarcely even cut by iron. It is made also in Crete, without irrigation, by pouring sea water into salt-pans, and around Egypt by the sea itself flowing in on a soil, as I believe, made juicy by the Nile.
82| It is made also by wells emptied into the salt-pans. The first thickening at Babylon is gathered into a liquid bitumen like oil, which they also use in lamps. When this is drawn off, the salt lies beneath. And in Cappadocia they pour water from wells and a spring into the salt-pans. In Chaonia they boil down water from a spring and by cooling make a salt that is inert and not white.
83| The Gauls and Germans pour salt water on burning logs; in a certain part of Spain they draw it from wells, calling it muria. They think that the wood also makes a difference. Oak is best, as it yields the strength of salt by itself from a pure ash; elsewhere hazel is praised. So when the salt liquid is poured on, the tree itself is even turned into salt. Any salt made with wood is black. In Theophrastus I find that the Umbrians used to boil down the ash of reed and rush with water until little moisture remained. Moreover salt is boiled again from the brine of salted fish, and when the liquid is used up it returns to its own nature, being generally most pleasant when from the maenae.
84| Of the sea salts the Cyprian from Salamis is most praised, but of those from pools the Tarentine and the Phrygian, which is called Tattaean. These two are useful for the eyes. The Cappadocian, which is brought in little bricks, is said to give brightness to the skin. But the one we called Citian stretches the skin more, and so after childbirth they smear the belly with it together with melanthium.
85| The saltiest salt is the driest, the sweetest of all and the whitest is the Tarentine, but otherwise that which is whitest is the most brittle. All salt is sweetened by rain, though dews make it sweeter, but the blast of the north wind produces abundance. It is not produced with the south wind. The flower of salt is produced only with north winds. In the fire neither the Tragasaean crackles nor leaps, nor the Acanthian, named from the town, nor does the foam or finer fragment of any. The Agrigentine, which endures fire, leaps from water.
86| There are also differences of colour. It is red at Memphis, reddish around the Oxus, purple at Centuripae, around Gela in the same Sicily of such brightness that it takes back an image. In Cappadocia a saffron-coloured one is dug, translucent and most fragrant. For medical uses the ancients praised the Tarentine most, after it any from the sea, of that kind especially the foamy one; for the eyes of draught-animals and oxen the Tragasaean and the Baetican.
87| For relish and food whichever dissolves easily is more useful, and also the moister, for they have less bitterness, as the Attic and the Euboean. For keeping meats the sharp and dry is more suitable, as the Megarian. It is also seasoned with added odours and takes the place of a savoury, rousing appetite and inviting in all foods, so that among countless condiments a distinctive savour is recognized from it, and it is likewise sought for when garum is eaten.
88| Indeed flocks and herds and beasts of burden are most drawn to pasture by salt, with much more abundant milk and a much more pleasing quality even in cheese. Therefore, by Hercules, a more civilized life cannot be spent without salt, and so necessary an element it is that the word has passed over to the pleasures of the mind also, the outstanding ones. They are called sales; and all the charm of life, the highest cheerfulness, and the rest from labours are expressed by no other word more.
89| It is brought into honours also and into military service, in the salaries named from it, with great authority among the ancients, as is clear from the name of the Via Salaria, since it had been agreed that salt was carried by that road to the Sabines. King Ancus Marcius gave 6,000 modii of salt to the people as a gift, and was the earliest to set up salt-works. Varro also is authority that the ancients used it in place of a relish, and that they ate salt with bread is clear from the proverb. Its authority is understood most of all in sacred rites, since none is performed without salted meal.
90| The purity of salt-works made its chief difference by a certain ash of salt, which is the lightest of it and the whitest. There is also what is called the flower of salt, a wholly different thing, of a moister nature and a saffron or reddish colour, like a rust of salt, with an unpleasant smell too, like garum, differing from salt, and not only from foam. Egypt discovered it, and it seems to be carried down by the Nile.
91| Yet it floats on certain springs too. The best is that which gives back a certain fattiness of oil; for there is fattiness even in salt, which we may wonder at. It is adulterated, however, and tinted with red ochre, or most often with ground potsherd, a fraud which is detected by water dissolving the artificial colour, while the true one is dissolved only by oil, and perfumers use it chiefly because of its colour. The whiteness is at the top in the vessels, the middle part moister, as we have said.
92| The nature of the flower is harsh, heating, useless to the stomach; it stirs sweat, loosens the belly in wine and water, and is useful in acopa and zmectica. It also draws hairs from the eyelids. The lowest parts of the dregs are shaken up so that the colour of saffron returns. Besides these, there is still called in salt-works salsugo, by others salsilago, wholly liquid, differing from sea water in its saltier power.
93| There is still another kind of choice liquor, which they have called garum, made when the intestines of fish and the other parts that would be thrown away are steeped in salt, so that it is a kind of putrid matter. This was formerly made from a fish which the Greeks called garos, they report that the afterbirth is drawn out by the fumigation of its head burnt,
94| now from the mackerel, the most praised from the fisheries of Spartarian Carthage (it is called "the allies' garum"), each thousand sesterces buying about two congii. Hardly any liquid except unguents has come to be in higher price, ennobling even the nations. Mackerel are caught also in Mauretania and at Carteia in Baetica, entering from the ocean, useful for nothing else. Clazomenae is praised for garum, also Pompeii and Leptis, as for muria Antipolis and Thurii, and indeed now Dalmatia too.
95| The dregs of this is allex, and the unfinished, unstrained sediment. Yet it has begun to be made privately also from a useless and very small little fish. Our people call it apua, the Greeks aphye, since that little fish is born from rain. The people of Forum Julii call the fish from which they make it lupus. It then passed into luxury, and the kinds multiplied without limit, as garum diluted to the colour of old honey wine and to such sweetness that it can be drunk. Another kind, however, is devoted to the scruples of superstition and to Jewish rites, which is made from fish lacking scales. So allex has come to oysters, sea urchins, sea nettles, the livers of mullets, and in countless kinds salt has begun to dissolve for the savours of gluttony. Let these things be noted in passing for the desires of life.
96| Yet these too are of some use in healing. For the scab of cattle is healed by allex poured in through the cut skin, and it is of benefit against the bites of dogs or the sea dragon, and is laid on in torn linen cloths,
97| and with garum fresh burns are healed, if one pours it on and does not name garum. It is of benefit against the bites of dogs too, and most of all of the crocodile, and for ulcers that creep or are foul. For ulcers or pains of the mouth and ears it is wonderfully beneficial. Muria also, or that salsugo, thickens, bites, thins, dries, is useful for dysenteries, even if a spreading sore seizes the intestines, and is poured in for sciatica and old coeliac complaints. In fomentation it makes up among the inland people for the place of sea water.
98| The nature of salt by itself is fiery and hostile to fires, fleeing them, eating away everything, but binding bodies, drying, fastening, and protecting even the dead from the decay of putrefaction, so that they last through centuries, but in healing biting, burning, cleansing, thinning, dissolving, useless only to the stomach, except to rouse appetite. Against the bites of serpents it helps with origanum, honey, hyssop; against the cerastes with origanum and cedria or pitch or honey,
99| against scolopendras drunk in vinegar, against the strokes of scorpions smeared on with a fourth part of linseed and oil or vinegar, against hornets and wasps and the like in vinegar; for heterocrania and ulcers of the head, pustules or papules and beginning warts, with calf tallow, likewise in remedies for the eyes and for fleshy growths there, and pterygia of the whole body, but peculiarly in the eyes, and for this reason added to collyria and plasters (for these the Tattaean or the Caunite is most approved),
100| and for eyes filled with blood from a blow and bruised, with myrrh in equal weight and honey, or with hyssop in hot water, and so that they are fomented with salsugo (for this the Spanish is chosen); and against suffusions of the eyes it is ground with milk in little whetstone-mortars; especially for bruises, wrapped in a linen cloth and laid on repeatedly from boiling water; for running ulcers of the mouth in a torn linen cloth; for swelling of the gums rubbed in; and against roughness of the tongue broken and crushed small.
101| They say the teeth are not eaten away and do not rot, if every morning, fasting, one holds salt under the tongue until it dissolves. The same cures leprosies, boils, lichens and psorae, with raisins with their stones removed, and ox tallow, origanum, and leaven or bread; the Theban is chosen above all for these and for itching. For the tonsils and uvulae, with honey any kind is beneficial; for anginas, in addition, with oil and vinegar, at the same time smeared on the throat from outside with liquid pitch.
102| It softens the belly also when mixed with wine, and drunk in wine drives out, without harm, the kinds of tapeworm. The heat of baths, so that convalescents can endure it, it ensures when put under the tongue. Pains of the sinews, especially about the shoulders and kidneys, it relieves when heated white-hot repeatedly in sacks in boiling water; colic and gripings and pains of the hips, drunk, and laid on white-hot in the same sacks; gout, pounded with meal, honey and oil, with that observation to be used there above all, which said that for whole bodies nothing is more useful than salt and sun. At any rate we see the bodies of fishermen like horn, but this is judged outstanding in gout.
103| It removes also corns of the feet, and chilblains. For burns it is applied in oil, or chewed, and it checks pustules; for sacred fires and ulcers that creep, in vinegar or hyssop; for carcinomata, with the uva taminia; for phagedaenic ulcers, roasted with barley meal, with a linen cloth soaked in wine laid over. For those suffering from jaundice, held at the fire until they sweat, against the itchings they feel, rubbed in with oil and vinegar it helps; the weary, with oil.
104| Many have cured dropsical people also with salt, and anointed the burning heats of fevers with it and oil, and dispersed an old cough by licking it, and poured it into clysters for sciatics, laid it on the excrescent or putrefying parts of ulcers, and on bites of crocodiles in linen cloths with vinegar, in such a way that the ulcers are first beaten with them. It is drunk also against opium in honeyed vinegar, and laid on dislocations with meal and honey, likewise on swellings.
105| For toothache, fomented with vinegar and smeared on with resin, it benefits. For all these purposes, however, the foam of salt is more agreeable and more useful. But any salt is added to acopa for heating, likewise to zmegmata for stretching and smoothing the skin. It also removes the scab of cattle and oxen when smeared on, and given to be licked, and is spat into the eyes of beasts of burden. Let this be said of salt.
106| The nature of nitre is not to be put off, not much distant from salt and to be told the more carefully because it is plain that the physicians who have written of it were ignorant of its nature, and that no one has handed it down more carefully than Theophrastus. A little is made among the Medes, in valleys whitening with dryness, which they call halmyraga, even less in Thrace near Philippi, foul with earth, which they call agrium.
107| For by burning oak it was never made in quantity, and long ago was wholly given up. Nitrous waters are found in very many places, but without power of thickening. The best, and plentiful, is in the Clitae of Macedonia, which they call Chalestricum, white and pure, nearest to salt. There is a nitrous lake with a sweet little spring leaping up from the middle. There nitre is made around the rising of the Dog Star for nine days, and ceases for as many, and again floats on the surface, and then ceases.
108| From which it appears that it is the nature of the soil that produces it, since it is found that neither suns help at all when it ceases, nor rains. This too is marvellous, that though the little spring is always bubbling up, the lake neither increases nor overflows. On those days, however, on which it is produced, if there have been rains, they make the nitre saltier, and north winds make it worse because they stir the mud more strongly.
109| And this kind is born, but in Egypt it is manufactured, much more abundantly, but worse, for it is dusky and stony. It is made almost in the same way as salt, except that they pour sea water into the salt-pans, the Nile in autumn into the nitre-beds. With the Nile coming in, they are watered, and as it goes down they are soaked with the juice of nitre for 40 days continuously, not on fixed days as in Macedonia. If rains have also been present, they add less from the river, and as soon as it has begun to thicken it is seized, lest it be dissolved in the beds. Here too the nature of oil intervenes, useful for the scab of animals, but the nitre itself stored in heaps lasts.
110| It is marvellous that in the lake Ascanius and in certain springs around Chalcis the topmost waters are sweet and drinkable, the lower nitrous. In nitre the best is the finest, and therefore the foam is better, though for some purposes the impure, as for dyeing purples and all dyes. There is also great use of it for glass, which will be told in its place.
111| The nitre-beds of Egypt used to be only around Naucratis and Memphis, those around Memphis worse. For it turns to stone there in heaps, and there are many mounds of stone for that reason. They make vessels of these, and often also, melting it with sulphur and boiling. In meats too which they wish to keep long they use that nitre. There are nitre-beds there in which a reddish kind also comes out from the colour of the earth.
112| The foam of nitre, which is most praised, the ancients said did not form unless dew had fallen on the pregnant nitre-beds, but not yet bearing; and so it was not formed when they were already stimulated, even if it fell.
113| Others have thought that it is produced by the ferment of the heaps. The next age of physicians reported that aphronitrum is collected in Asia in caves, dripping from masses (they call those caves colligae), then dried in the sun. The Lydian is thought best; the test is that it be least heavy and most friable, of an almost purple colour. This is brought in pastilles, the Egyptian in pitched vessels, lest it dissolve; those vessels too are finished by drying in the sun.
114| The test of nitre is that it be very fine and as spongy and as full of channels as possible. In Egypt it is adulterated with lime, and detected by taste. For the pure dissolves at once; the adulterated stings with lime, and when sprinkled gives off a strong smell. It is burnt covered in a potsherd, lest it leap out. Otherwise nitre does not leap in the fire, and it produces or feeds nothing, whereas in salt-works herbs grow, and in the sea so many animals, so much seaweed.
115| But that the sharpness of nitre is greater appears not from this proof only, but from that other, that nitre-beds at once consume footwear, though otherwise wholesome and useful for clearness of the eyes. In the nitre-beds people do not have bleary eyes; ulcers brought there are healed most quickly, those received there slowly. It also stirs sweat when those anointed with it use oil, and softens the body. In bread they use the Chalestraean in place of salt, for radishes the Egyptian; it makes them more tender, but makes white relishes worse and greens greener. In medicine it heats, thins, bites, thickens, dries, ulcerates,
116| useful for those things that must be drawn out or dispersed, and for what is to be gently bitten and thinned, as in papules and pustules. Some in this use quench it, kindled, in harsh wine, and so use it ground, in baths, without oil. It checks excessive sweats with dry iris; with green oil added it thins both scars of the eyes and roughnesses of the eyelids, smeared on with fig or boiled in raisin wine down to half (likewise against argema),
117| for the nails of the eyes, boiled in raisin wine with the calyx of a pomegranate; it aids clearness of sight when smeared on with honey. It benefits toothache, if the mouth is rinsed with it in wine with pepper; likewise boiled with leek it brings darkening teeth back to colour, and burnt it serves as a dentifrice. It kills the vermin of the head and nits, smeared on in oil with Samian earth. For discharging ears it is dissolved in wine and poured in; it eats away the filth of the same part in vinegar, and dry, added, disperses noises and ringing.
118| White vitiligines it corrects, smeared on in the sun with Cimolian chalk in equal weight in vinegar. It draws out boils, mixed with resin; with the white raisin grape, pounded together with its pips, it meets inflammation of the testicles, likewise eruptions of phlegm over the whole body with axle-grease, and against the bites of dogs, with resin added to those smeared on. It is smeared on with vinegar likewise for the bites of serpents; for phagedaenic ulcers and ulcers which creep or rot, with lime in vinegar. For dropsical people it is pounded with fig, given and smeared on.
119| It disperses gripings if a decoction is drunk, in the weight of a drachma, with rue or dill or cumin. It restores weariness in those anointed with oil and vinegar, and against chills and shivering it is beneficial, the hands and feet being rubbed with oil. It checks the itchings of the suffused with gall, best instilled with vinegar. It succours against the poisons of mushrooms, drunk in posca, or, if a buprestis has been swallowed, in water, and calls out vomiting. For those who have drunk bull's blood it is given with laser.
120| On the face too it heals ulcerations with honey and cow's milk. For burns it is roasted until it blackens, and pounded and smeared on. It is poured into the bladder, and for pain of the kidneys, or for stiffness of the body or pains of the sinews. For paralysis it is laid on the tongue with bread.
121| For asthmatics it is taken in barley gruel. It cures an old cough with the flower mixed with galbanum and turpentine resin, equal in weight of all, so that a piece of the size of a bean is swallowed. It is boiled, and afterwards diluted and given with liquid pitch to be sipped in angina. Its flower with cyprus oil is also pleasant for pains of the joints in the sun. It also thins jaundice, taken in a drink of wine, disperses inflations, stops flow of blood from the nostrils when steam from boiling water is drawn up the nostrils, and removes scurf mixed with alum,
122| the stench of the armpits by daily fomentation in water, ulcers born of phlegm when mixed with wax, a method that benefits the sinews too. It is infused for coeliac patients; and many have prescribed anointing before the cold fits with nitre and oil, as against leprosies and freckles; to be used in baths for gout. Tubs of nitre are good for atrophy, opisthotonos and tetanus. Salt and nitre cooked with sulphur is turned into stone.
123| We have spoken of the kinds of sponges in the natures of sea creatures. Some distinguish thus: some of them are male, with a fine channel and denser, absorbing, which are also dyed for luxury, sometimes even with purple; others female, with larger channels and continuous; among the males others harder, which they call tragos, with the finest and most dense channels. Whitening is done with care: the freshest of the softest through the summer, stained with the foam of salt, are spread out upside down under the moon and frosts, that is on the side on which they adhered, that they may drink whiteness; that it is an animal we have shown, even with the blood still clinging.
124| Some relate that they are governed by hearing too and contract at a sound, squeezing out the abundance of moisture, and cannot be torn from the rocks, and so are cut off and discharge their gore; indeed [….] those which are born from the north wind they prefer to the rest, and physicians affirm that nowhere does the breath last longer. So also they benefit bodies, because they mix their own with ours, and therefore the fresher and moister are better, but less in hot water, and less if oiled or laid on oiled bodies, and the dense ones adhere less.
125| The softest kind of sponges are the penicilli. Applied with honey wine, they reduce swellings of the eyes; they are also used to wipe away lippitudo, most usefully moistened with water; they should be very fine and very soft. Sponges themselves are also applied for fluxes of the eyes with posca, and with hot vinegar for headaches. For the rest, fresh sponges disperse, soothe and soften; old ones do not close wounds. They are used for wiping, for fomenting, and for covering a place after fomentation until something else is applied.
126| Applied, they also dry moist sores and the sores of old people. Fractures and wounds are very usefully fomented with sponges. In surgery the blood is taken up with them, so that the treatment can be seen. They are also themselves applied to inflamed wounds, sometimes dry, sometimes sprinkled with vinegar, sometimes with wine, sometimes with cold water; and when applied soaked in rainwater, they do not let fresh incisions swell. They are also applied to parts where the skin is unbroken
127| but which suffer from a hidden flux that needs to be dispersed, and to what are called apostemata, after the place has been smeared with boiled honey; likewise to the joints, sometimes soaked in salted vinegar, sometimes in posca, or, if the attack is burning hot, in water; the same, in salt water, for calluses; but against the stings of scorpions, in vinegar. In the treatment of wounds they also take the place of unwashed wool, with this difference, that wool softens, while sponges hold in and draw off what is unhealthy in sores.
128| They are also bound round those with dropsy, dry or soaked in warm water or posca, whenever the skin needs to be soothed, covered or dried. They are also applied, soaked in boiling water and squeezed out between two boards, in those diseases that call for steaming. Used so, they also help the stomach, and in fever against excessive heat; but for the spleen, in posca, and for sacred fire, in vinegar, they are more effective than anything else; they should be applied so that they cover a wide area of the sound parts as well.
129| They stop a flow of blood in vinegar or cold water; a bruise fresh from a blow they remove in hot salt water, changed often; swelling and pain of the testicles, in posca. For dog bites they are usefully applied cut into pieces, in vinegar or cold water or honey, and moistened again plentifully from time to time. The ash of the African sponge, drunk with the juice of cut leek by those who are spitting blood, or by others in cold water, does good. The same ash, smeared on the forehead with oil or with vinegar, removes tertian fevers.
130| The African sponge in particular, in posca, disperses swellings; and the ash of any sponge burned with pitch stops the bleeding of wounds; some burn only the loose-textured ones with pitch for this. They are also burned for the eyes in an unfired pot of potter's clay, and that ash is of the greatest service against roughness of the eyelids and proud flesh, and whatever needs to be scraped down, thickened or filled in there.
131| For that use it is better to wash the ash. Sponges also serve in place of strigils and towels for the sick. And they protect the head well against the sun. The ignorance of doctors has reduced them to two names: African sponges, whose strength is firmer, and Rhodian sponges, softer for fomenting. Now, however, the softest are found around the walls of the city of Antiphellus. Trogus reports that around Lycia very soft penicilli grow in deep water at the places from which sponges have been taken; and Polybius, that if they are hung over a sick person they make his nights more restful. Now we shall turn to the animals of the sea.

======== Natural History — Book XXXII ========

1| In the order of things we have come to the summit of nature and of her examples, and there presents itself unbidden an immense proof of hidden power, such that nothing further ought to be sought at all, nor can anything equal or like it be found: nature outdoing herself, and in many ways at that. For what is more violent than the sea and the winds, whirlwinds and storms? In what part of herself has nature been aided by human ingenuity more than by sails and oars? Add to these the indescribable force of the ebb and flow of the tides, and the whole sea turned into a river.
2| Yet all these forces, even when they all drive together to the same end, one single fish, and quite a small one, called the echenais, holds back in itself. The winds may rush, the storms may rage: it commands their fury, restrains such great forces and makes ships stand still, which no cables can do, no anchors cast with a weight that cannot be drawn back. It bridles their onset and tames the madness of the world with no effort of its own, not by resisting, nor in any other way than by clinging.
3| This tiny creature is enough to stop ships from moving against so many forces. Yet armed fleets load themselves with towers as bulwarks, so that even at sea battle may be fought as if from walls. Alas for human vanity, when a fish half a foot long can check those beaks armed with bronze and iron for ramming, and hold them fast as if bound! It is said that at the battle of Actium it held back the flagship of Antony as he was hurrying to go round and encourage his men, until he crossed to another ship, and that for this reason Caesar's fleet at once came on with greater force.
4| Within our own memory too it held back the ship of the emperor Gaius as he was sailing back from Astura to Antium; as things turned out, it was a fish of omen as well, since that emperor, on that very occasion returning to Rome for the last time, was stabbed to death by his own soldiers' weapons. Nor was the wonder at that delay long-lived, for the cause was understood at once: when out of the whole fleet his quinquereme alone was making no headway, men immediately jumped overboard to search around the ship. They found the fish clinging to the rudder and showed it to Gaius, who was indignant that it was this that had held him back and had stood in the way of the obedience of four hundred oarsmen against him.
5| It was well known that he was especially amazed at how it had held the ship while clinging to it, and did not have the same power once it was taken aboard. Those who saw it then and afterwards say it is like a large slug. We have set out the opinions of a number of writers in our account of aquatic creatures, when we spoke of it, and we do not doubt that all those kinds have the same power, since there is a famous and even consecrated instance at the shrine of the Cnidian Venus, where we must believe that shells too have the same power.
6| Some of our writers have called it in Latin mora; and, remarkably, among the Greeks some have reported, as we have said, that tied on as an amulet it holds back slippery and prolapsing births until they are mature; others, that preserved in salt and tied on to pregnant women it brings on the birth, and that for this reason it is called by another name, odinolytes. However these matters stand, who, after this example of ships held fast, would doubt any power of nature, or the force and effect in remedies of the things that grow of their own accord?
7| Again: even without this example, would not the torpedo, from the same sea, be enough on its own? That even at a distance and from far off, even if it is touched with a spear or a rod, arms however strong go numb, and feet however swift in running are held fast? If this example forces us to admit that there is a power which affects the limbs merely by its scent and by a kind of emanation from its body, what may we not hope for from the potency of all remedies?
8| No less wonderful are the things reported of the sea hare. Given in drink or food it is a poison to some, to others even by sight: if pregnant women so much as look at a female of that kind, they at once feel sick, betray the disorder by vomiting, and then miscarry. The remedy for this is a male hardened in salt, which they keep in their bracelets. In the sea the same creature does no harm even to the touch. Only one animal feeds on it without dying, the mullus fish; it merely grows soft and becomes more sluggish and of lower worth.
9| People to whom it has been administered smell of fish; this is the first sign by which the poisoning is detected. For the rest, they die in as many days as the hare lived, and Licinius Macer says that this is a poison of uncertain timing. In India they assert that it is not caught alive, and that there, in turn, man is a poison to it, and that if merely touched with a finger in the sea it dies; and that it is much larger there, like the other animals.
10| Juba, in the volumes about Arabia that he wrote to Gaius Caesar, son of Augustus, reports that mussels hold three heminae apiece; that whales six hundred feet long and three hundred and sixty wide entered a river of Arabia, and that merchants traded in their fat; and that in that region camels are rubbed all over with the fat of every kind of fish, so that its smell drives the asili away from them.
11| To me, too, the cleverness of fish that Ovid reported in his volume entitled Halieuticon seems remarkable: that the scarus, when shut in a fish-trap, does not break out head first or thrust its head between the hostile osiers, but turns away and loosens the door with repeated blows of its tail, and so creeps out backwards; and if another scarus outside happens to see it struggling, it seizes the tail in its mouth and helps the efforts of the one breaking out; that the lupus, when surrounded by a net, ploughs up the sand with its tail and so hides itself until the net passes over;
12| The moray, conscious of its smooth, slippery back, seeks the very meshes, then loosens itself with many a twist until it escapes; the polypus seeks the hooks and embraces them with its arms, not with a bite, and does not let go before it has gnawed round the bait, or is lifted out of the water by a reed; the mullet knows that the hook is in the bait and is not ignorant of the snare, yet its greed is so great that it shakes off the food by lashing with its tail.
13| The lupus has less cleverness in foreseeing, but great strength in repenting. For when it has stuck on a hook, with a tumultuous dashing about it enlarges the wounds until the snare falls out. Morays swallow more than the hook, bring the lines to their teeth and so gnaw through. The anthias is reported to do the same, turning itself over when the hook is fixed, since on its back there is a knife-like spine, and it cuts the line through.
14| Licinius Macer reports that morays are of the female sex only and conceive from serpents, as we have said (for which reason they are called out by fishermen by hissing, as if serpents, and caught), and grow fat; that when a cudgel is thrown they are not killed, but at once by a rod. It is certain that they have life in the tail and die very quickly when struck there, with difficulty at a blow to the head. Those touched by the fish novacula smell of iron. The hardest of fishes is agreed to be the one called orbis; it is round, without scales, and consists wholly of head. (Whenever the lolligo is seen flying outside the water, storms are announced.) Trebius Niger says that the xiphias,
15| that is the sword-fish, has a pointed beak, and that ships pierced by it sink; that in the ocean at a place in Mauretania called Cotta, not far from the river Lixus, the same writer reports lolligines flying out of the water in such a multitude that they sink vessels.
16| Fish feed from the hand in several villas of Caesar, but (what the ancients handed down with wonder, in pools, not fishponds) in the fortress of Helorus in Sicily not far from Syracuse, likewise in the spring of Jupiter at Labranda, eels wear earrings put on them, and similarly in Chios beside the shrine of the Old Men, and in the spring Chabura in Mesopotamia, of which we have spoken, there are fish.
17| For in Lycia at Myra, in the spring of Apollo, which they call Curium, fish called three times by the pipe come for divination. For those consulting it is a joyful sign that they tear in pieces the flesh thrown to them, a dire one that they drive it away with their tails. At Hierapolis in Syria, in the lake of Venus, they obey the voices of the temple attendants, and when called come adorned with gold; fawning, they are stroked, and offer their gaping mouths for hands to be put in. In the Stabian territory of Campania, at the rock of Hercules, melanuri in the sea snatch bread thrown out, but approach no food in which there is a hook.
18| Nor is it least among marvels that fish are bitter at the island Pele and at Clazomenae, opposite the rock of Sicily, and at Leptis of Africa and Euboea and Durrachium, and again so salt that they could be thought salted fish, around Cephallania and Ampelos, Paros and the rocks of Delos, while in the harbour of that same island they are sweet. There is no doubt that this difference lies in their feeding.
19| Apion reports that the most marvellous of fishes is the porcus, which the Lacedaemonians call orthagoriscus; that it grunts when caught. But that nature has this accommodation (which we may wonder at the more) even in certain places will be met by an example adduced, since it is agreed that salted fish of all kinds are refreshed in Italy at Beneventum.
20| That sea fish were in use straight from the founding of Rome is vouched for by Cassius Hemina, whose words on the matter I shall add: Numa established that fish which were not scaly should not be offered, having devised it from thrift, so that public and private banquets and the dinners at the sacred couches might be provided more easily, lest those who bought for the offering should spare the price less and buy them up beforehand.
21| As great as is the price among us of Indian pearls, of which we have said enough in their place, so great among the Indians is that of coral; for these things rest on the conviction of nations. It grows in the Red Sea also, but darker, likewise in the Persian, where it is called lace; the most praised is in the Gallic gulf around the islands Stoechades and in the Sicilian around the Aeolian islands and Drepana. It grows also at Graviscae and before Naples in Campania, most of all red, but soft, and therefore cheapest at Erythrae.
22| Its form is that of a shrub, its colour green. Its berries are white under water and soft, and when taken out harden at once and turn red, in appearance and size like the cultivated cornel. They say it turns to stone on being touched, if it is alive, and therefore it is seized and torn up by nets or cut off with a sharp iron tool, for which reason they explain the name curalium. The most approved is the reddest possible and the most branching, not scabby or stony, nor again empty and hollow.
23| The authority of its berries is no less precious to the men of the Indians than Indian pearls are to our women. Their haruspices and seers think it above all a sacred thing to wear, for averting dangers. So they delight in it both for beauty and religion. Before this became known, the Gauls adorned swords, shields and helmets with it. Now, because it is so saleable a commodity, there is such a scarcity of it that it is very rarely seen in its own country.
24| Twigs tied on infants are believed to hold protection, and against the ills of gripings, the bladder and stones, reduced to powder by fire and drunk in water they help; in the same way drunk in wine or, if there is fever, in water, they bring sleep (it resists fire long), but they hand down that when the same medicine is drunk more often the spleen too is wasted. For those spitting or coughing up blood their ash is a cure; it is mixed into medicines for the eyes, for it thickens and cools, fills the hollows of ulcers, and thins scars.
25| As to the mutual opposition of things, which the Greeks call antipathy, there is nothing anywhere more venomous in the sea than the pastinaca, seeing that we have said that trees are killed by its spine. Yet the galeus hunts it, and other fishes too, but the pastinacae especially, as on land the weasel hunts serpents (so great is its appetite for the poison itself); those struck by it are cured by these here too, but also by the mullus and by laser,
26| a notable power of nature, in creatures too whose living is in the lands as well, as with the fibri, whom they call castores, and the castoreum, their testicles. That these are cut off by the animals themselves when they are caught, Sextius, the most careful in medicine, denies, saying on the contrary that they are small, drawn in and clinging to the spine, and cannot be taken away without the animal's life; that it is adulterated, however, with the kidneys of the same, which are large, whereas the true testicles are found quite small; that besides, there are not even bladders,
27| though they are twin, which is true of no other animal; that in those sacs a liquid is found and is preserved with salt; and so among the proofs of a false one are twin sacs hanging from one connection, and that this itself is corrupted by the fraud of those who put in gum with blood or Hammoniacum, since they ought to be of the colour of Hammoniacum when wrapped round, with a liquid like waxy honey, heavy in smell, bitter and sharp in taste, and friable. The most effective come from Pontus and Galatia, next Africa.
28| They move sneezing by their smell. They bring sleep, with rose oil and peucedanum, when the head is anointed, and by themselves, drunk in water, and for that reason are useful to the frenzied; the same rouse the lethargic by the fumigation of their smell, and faintings of the womb, even by application below, and they bring on the menses and the afterbirth, drunk, 2 drachmas, with pennyroyal in water.
29| They cure also vertigo, opisthotonos, tremors, spasms, disorders of the sinews, sciatica, stomach complaints, paralytics, all being anointed, or pounded to the thickness of honey with the seed of the vitex in vinegar and rose oil. So too taken against epileptics, and drunk against inflations, gripings and poisons.
30| The only difference against the kinds of poison is in the mixture, for against scorpions they are drunk in wine, against phalangia and spiders in honey wine, in such a way that they are brought up by vomiting or are retained, with rue; against chalcides with myrtites, against the cerastes and presteres with panax or rue in wine, against the other serpents with wine. Two drachmas are enough to give; of the things that are added, one drachma each.
31| They help especially against mistletoe, in vinegar, against aconite in milk or water, against white hellebore in honey water and nitre. They cure teeth too, poured with oil into the ear on the side from which they ache, pounded; better for pain of the ears if with meconium. They bring clearness of sight with Attic honey for those anointed. They check hiccups in vinegar. The urine of the fiber also resists poisons and for that reason is added to antidotes. It is best kept, however, in its own bladder, as some think.
32| There is a twin way of life in the waters and on land also in tortoises, and their effect is equal, and they are to be held in honour or on account of their outstanding price in use and the peculiarity of their shape. The kinds of tortoise, then, are land, sea, mud, and those that live in fresh water. These some of the Greeks call emydes.
33| The flesh of land tortoises, proper for fumigations and for refuting the magic arts, and salutary against poisons, is reported to be most plentiful in Africa. These there, with the head and feet cut off, are said to be given as an antidote, and taken in food from a broth they disperse scrofulous swellings and remove disorders of the spleen, likewise epileptic complaints; their blood makes clear sight and disperses suffusions of the eyes. And against the poisons of all serpents and of spiders and the like and of frogs it helps, the blood being kept in meal, made into pills and, when need is, given in wine. The gall of tortoises with Attic honey benefits glaucomata when anointed.
34| It is dropped in against the strokes of scorpions. The ash of the shell, worked with wine and oil, heals cracks of the feet and ulcers; the scales scraped off the top and given in drink restrain venery. This is the more wonderful because the meal of the whole shell is reported to kindle desire. Their urine I do not think can be found otherwise than by dissecting them in the bladder, and among those things is this too, which the Magi set out monstrously, singular against the strokes of asps, yet more effective, as they say, with bugs mixed in. The eggs, hardened, are smeared on scrofulous swellings and on ulcers made by cold or burning. They are sipped for pains of the stomach.
35| The flesh of sea tortoises, mixed with the flesh of frogs, helps excellently against salamanders, and there is nothing more hostile to the salamander than the tortoise. By the blood the baldness of alopecia and scurf and all ulcers of the head are cured; it must dry and be slowly washed off. It is also dropped into pain of the ears with women's milk. Against epileptic complaints it is chewed with fine wheat flour, and of the blood 3 heminae are mixed with a hemina of vinegar.
36| It is given also to asthmatics, but then a hemina of wine is added; for these also with barley meal, vinegar being mixed in too, so that there is a quantity of the size of a bean to be swallowed; and these single portions are given in the morning and the evening, then after some days two in the evening. To epileptics it is dropped in with the mouth held open; for those who are seized by spasm in a moderate degree, it is poured in with castoreum by clyster.
37| But if the teeth are rinsed three times a year with the blood of tortoises, they become free from pain. It also disperses shortness of breath and what they call orthopnoea; for these it is given in polenta. The gall of tortoises produces clearness of the eyes, thins scars, soothes tonsils and anginas and all faults of the mouth, in particular spreading sores there, and likewise of the testicles. Smeared on the nostrils it raises and rouses epileptics. The same with the sloughed skin of snakes, vinegar being mixed in, is uniquely beneficial to discharging ears; some mix ox gall with the broth of boiled tortoise flesh, with sloughed snake skin added equally;
38| but they boil the tortoise in wine. At any rate the gall, anointed with honey, corrects all faults of the eyes, and for suffusions the gall of the sea tortoise, with the blood of the river kind and milk. Women's hair is dyed with the gall. Against salamanders it is enough to have drunk even the broth of the boiled tortoise.
39| The third kind of tortoises is of those that live in mud and marshes. They have a breadth, on the back like the chest, not curved in a convex shell, unpleasant to see. Yet from this kind too some helps come. For three of them thrown on burning brushwood, their coverings splitting apart, are snatched out; then their flesh, pulled out, is cooked in a congius of water with a little salt added; the broth of those boiled down to a third part is drunk by those who feel paralysis and joint diseases. The gall draws off phlegms and corrupt blood. By that remedy the belly is checked, by a drink of cold water.
40| From the fourth kind of tortoise, those in rivers, the fats of those torn apart, pounded with the herb aizoon, with ointment and lily seed mixed in, if the sick are anointed with it before the attacks, except the head, and then, wrapped up, drink hot water, are said to be freed from quartans. This tortoise ought to be caught on the 15th day of the moon, so that more fat is found, but the sick man anointed on the 16th. From the same kind of tortoise, the blood dropped in the brain soothes pains of the head, and scrofulous swellings likewise.
41| There are those who order that the blood of tortoises be received in a new earthen vessel with a bronze knife, the heads of those lying on their backs being cut off; that sacred fire of whatever kind is smeared with the blood, likewise running ulcers of the head, warts. The same promise that the dung of all tortoises disperses boils; and, what is incredible to say, some report that vessels carrying the right foot of a tortoise go more slowly.
42| From here we shall then arrange aquatic creatures by disease, not because we do not know that the whole body of animals is more pleasing and of greater wonder, but this is more useful for life, to have remedies brought together, since one thing helps one man, and another is found more easily in one place.
43| Poisonous honey we have said where it is produced. A help is the fish aurata in food. Or if from pure honey loathing or indigestion, which is most grievous, should befall, a tortoise cut round, with the feet, head and tail removed, boiled down, is an antidote, as Pelops is authority; the scincus, Apelles—what the scincus is we have said—but we have more often said how much poison there is in women's menses.
44| Against all these helps, as we have said, the mullus, also against the pastinaca and scorpions of land and sea, and dragons, and phalangia, smeared on or taken in food; the ash of the head of the same fresh against all poisons, particularly against mushrooms. Evil drugs, they say, cannot be brought in, or at least cannot harm, if a sea-star smeared with fox blood is fastened to the upper threshold or to a bronze nail of the door.
45| The strokes of the sea dragon and of scorpions are healed by laying their flesh on, likewise the bites of spiders. In sum, against all poisons, whether harmful by drink or stroke or bite, their juice, boiled down from broth, is held most effective. There are also medicines in preserved fish, and the food of salted fish benefits those struck by a serpent, and against the strokes of beasts when neat wine is taken after it, so that to satiety the food is brought up again by vomiting,
46| particularly for those struck by the chalcis, the cerastes, or those they call sepes, or the elops, the dipsas. Against the scorpion salted fish benefit if more is taken but not vomited up, so that thirst is endured; and it is fitting to lay the same on the wounds. Against the bites of crocodiles indeed nothing else is held more immediate. Particularly against the bite of the prester the sarda helps. Salted fish are laid on also against a mad dog,
47| or if the wounds have not been burnt with iron and the bodies emptied by clysters, this by itself suffices. And against the sea dragon they are laid on in vinegar. The cybium has the same effect. The sea dragon indeed, laid on itself, or its brain drunk, is beneficial against the poison of its own spine with which it strikes.
48| The juice of sea frogs boiled down in wine and vinegar is drunk against poisons, and against the poison of the bramble frog and against salamanders, or of the river ones; if the flesh is eaten or the broth of those boiled down is sipped, they benefit also against the sea hare and against the serpents mentioned above, against scorpions in wine.
49| Democritus indeed reports that if anyone pulls out the tongue of a living frog, no other part of the body adhering, and, the frog itself being released into water, lays it on a sleeping woman over the beating of the heart, she will answer truly whatever she is asked. The Magi add still other things, which, if true, would make frogs be considered much more useful for life than laws; for if, in frogs transfixed with a reed from the genitals through the mouth, a twig is fixed by the husband in the menses, loathing of adulterers results.
50| It is certain that purpurae are attracted especially by their flesh, or when it is put on a hook. They say the liver of the frog is twofold and ought to be thrown to the ants; the part which they seek is an antidote against all poisons. There are those that live only in brambles, and therefore, as we have said, have the name of rubetae, which the Greeks call phrynoi, the largest of all, with twin horns as it were, full of poisonings. The authors vie in reporting marvels about them:
51| that when they are brought among a people, silence falls; that a little bone which lies in the right side, thrown into boiling water, cools the vessel, and the water does not boil afterwards unless it is taken out; that it is found by throwing the frog to the ants and the flesh being eaten away, each added to oil; that there is one in the left side and that when it is thrown in, the water seems to boil,
52| that it is called apocynon, that the attacks of dogs are checked by it, that love is stirred and quarrels when it is added to a drink, that desire is aroused when it is tied on; again that from the right side boiling things are cooled; that by this too quartans are healed, tied on in the fresh skin of a lamb, and other fevers, and love is inhibited. From these same frogs the spleen helps against poisons that come from the frogs themselves, and the liver even more effectively.
53| There is a snake that lives in water. Those who hunt crocodiles, having its fat and gall, are said to be wonderfully helped, the beast daring nothing against them, still more effectively if the herb potamogiton is mixed in. River crabs, pounded and drunk fresh in water, or from ash that has been kept, are beneficial against all poisons, particularly against the strokes of scorpions, with asses' milk, and if there is none, goat's milk or any; wine ought to be added too.
54| They kill scorpions when pounded and applied with basil. The same power is against the bites of all venomous creatures, especially the scytale and snakes, and against the sea hare and the bramble frog. Their ash, kept and drunk, benefits those in danger from terror after the bite of a mad dog. Some add gentian and give it in wine, and if terror has already seized, they direct pastilles worked up in wine to be swallowed.
55| But when ten crabs are tied up with a bunch of basil, the Magi say that all the scorpions that are there will gather to that place, and they lay the crabs themselves, with basil, or their ash, on those who have been struck. In all these the sea crabs are less beneficial. Thrasyllus is authority that nothing is so hostile to serpents as crabs; that swine struck by serpents cure themselves with this food; that when the sun is in Cancer, serpents are tormented.
56| Against the strokes of scorpions the flesh of river snails resists, raw or cooked. Some for that reason keep them salted too. They lay them on the wounds themselves. The coracini fish are peculiar to the Nile, but we set these things out for all lands. Their flesh laid on avails against scorpions. Among the poisons of fishes are the spines on the back of the sea pig, with great torment to the wounded. The remedy is mud from the remains of the body of those fishes.
57| For the bites of a mad dog, those terrified at drink have the face anointed with the fat of the sea calf, more effectively if the marrow of a hyena and mastic oil and wax are mixed. The bites of morays are healed by the ash of their own head.
58| And the pastinaca is a remedy against its own stroke, with its own ash smeared on in vinegar, or that of another. For the sake of food there must be pulled out from its back whatever is like saffron, and the whole head; and they rinse both this and all shellfish moderately before eating, because the savour perishes. Against poisoning by the sea hare, hippocampi drunk quench it. Against dorycnium, sea urchins are most helpful, and for those who have drunk the juice of carpathum, especially taken from a broth. The broth of sea crabs boiled down is held effective against dorycnium, and particularly against the poisons of the sea hare.
59| Oysters too are opposed to the same, and it cannot seem that enough has been said about them, since the palm of the tables has long been given to them. They delight in sweet waters and where very many rivers flow in; therefore the deep-sea ones are small and few. They are produced, however, also in rocky places lacking the arrival of fresh waters, as around Grynium and Myrina. They grow large according to the star, indeed, as we said in the nature of aquatic creatures, but particularly about the beginning of summer, pregnant with much milk and where the sun penetrates the shallows.
60| This seems the reason why smaller ones are found in the deep; shade checks growth, and in sadness they seek food less. They vary in colour: reddish in Spain, dusky in Illyricum, black in both flesh and shell at Circeii, but those held outstanding among any people are thick, not slippery with their own slime, to be judged by thickness rather than breadth, caught neither in muddy places nor in sandy, but in firm shallows, with a short hinge and not fleshy, not frilled with fibres and all in the belly.
61| The more expert add a mark, fibres with a purple fringe going round, and by that sign they judge them noble, calling them calliblephara. They delight also in travel and in being carried into unknown waters. So the Brundisian, fed together at Avernus, are believed both to keep their own juice and to adopt that of the Lucrine.
62| Let this be said of the body; we shall speak also of the nations, that the shores may not be cheated of their glory, but we shall speak in another's tongue, who was the most expert in this judging in our age; these then are the words of Mucianus, which I shall add: The Cyzicene are bigger than the Lucrine, sweeter than the Britannic, more agreeable than those of the Medulli, sharper than the Ephesian, fuller than the Iliciensian, drier than the Coryphantene, more tender than the Histrian, whiter than the Circeian. But it is found that none are sweeter or more tender than these.
63| In the Indian sea the authors of Alexander's exploits have reported that foot-long ones are found, and among us the nomenclature of a certain wastrel called them tridacna, wishing it understood that they were of such size that they had to be bitten three times.
64| Their medicinal merit will be told in full at this place: they restore the stomach uniquely, cure loathing of food, and luxury has added coldness, burying them in snow, mixing the summits of the mountains with the bottom of the sea. They soften the belly gently. The same, cooked with honey wine, free from tenesmus that is without ulceration. They also cleanse ulcers of the bladder. Cooked in their own shells, as they find them closed, they are wonderfully beneficial for catarrhs.
65| The ash of the shell of oysters soothes the uvula and tonsils when honey is mixed in, in the same way swellings by the ears, boils, and hardnesses of the breasts, ulcers of the head in water, and it stretches the skin of women; it is sprinkled on burns too. It is also approved as a dentifrice. It cures itchings and eruptions of phlegm in vinegar. Raw ones, if pounded, heal scrofulous swellings and chilblains of the feet.
66| Purpurae too are beneficial against poisons. And the seaweed of the sea Nicander reports to be a theriac. Of it there are several kinds, as we have said, with a long reddish leaf, another broader or curled. Most praised is that which in the island of Crete grows beside the land on rocks, used even for dyeing wools, so fixing the colour that it cannot afterwards be washed out. He orders it to be given in wine.
67| Baldness is made good by the ash of the hippocampus mixed with nitre and pig fat, or by itself in vinegar; the meal of the crusts of cuttlefish prepares the skin for the medicines; the ash of the sea mouse with oil also fills it, likewise of sea urchins burnt with their flesh, the gall of the sea scorpion, and 3 frogs also, if they are burnt alive in a pot, the ash with honey, better with liquid pitch. Leeches blacken the hair, those which have been left to rot in black wine for 40 days.
68| Others order a sextarius of leeches to rot in a lead vessel in 2 sextarii of vinegar for as many days, then to be smeared on in the sun. Sornatius reports so great a power in this that, unless those who dye hold oil in the mouth, he says the teeth too are blackened by their juice. For ulcers of the head the ash of shells of murices or purpurae is usefully smeared on with honey, or the meal of conchylia, if not burnt, in water; for pains, castoreum with peucedanum and rose oil.
69| The fats of all fishes, river and sea, melted in the sun with honey mixed in, contribute very much to clearness of the eyes, likewise castoreum with honey. Callionymus gall heals scars and consumes the superfluous flesh of the eyes. In none of the fishes is there more of it, as Menander too thought in his comedies. The same fish is also called uranoscopos from the eye which it has on its head.
70| And the gall of the coracinus rouses sight, and that of the red sea scorpion with old oil or Attic honey disperses beginning suffusions; one should be anointed three times, with days intervening. The same method takes away the white spots of the eyes. The eating of mulli is reported to dull the keenness of the eyes. The sea hare itself is venomous, but its ash on the eyelids restrains useless hairs once plucked out. For this use the smallest are most useful, likewise salted pectunculi pounded with cedria, and the frogs they call diopetae and calamitae; their blood with the tear of the vine is to be smeared on the eyelids, the hair having been plucked.
71| The swelling and redness of the eyes are soothed by the shell of the cuttlefish smeared on with a woman's milk, and by itself it corrects roughnesses; so they turn back the eyelids and take away the medicine after a little, and anoint with rose oil and soothe with bread laid on. By the same shell night-blind people are cured, it being pounded to meal and smeared on in vinegar. Its ash also draws out scales.
72| It heals scars of the eyes with honey, pterygia with salt and cadmia, a drachma of each, and corrects white spots of beasts of burden. They say too that eyelids, if they are rubbed with its little bone, are healed. Sea urchins in vinegar remove epinyctides. The Magi order the same to be burnt with the skins of vipers and frogs and the ash sprinkled into drinks, promising clearness of sight.
73| A fish is called ichthyocolla, whose skin is glutinous. The same name belongs to its glue; this removes epinyctides. Some say that ichthyocolla is made from the belly, not from the skin, like bull glue. The Pontic is praised, white and lacking veins and scales, and which dissolves most quickly. It must be soaked, cut up, in water or vinegar for a night and a day, then pounded with sea stones, so that it dissolves more easily. They affirm it useful also for pains of the head and for tetanus.
74| The right eye of a frog, for the right, the left for the left, hung from the neck in a cloth of its natural colour, heal bleariness of the eyes; and if they are taken out at the conjunction of the moon, white spots too, tied on likewise in an eggshell. The remaining flesh laid on draws off a bruise. They say also that the eyes of a crab tied round the neck cure bleariness.
75| There is a small frog living chiefly in reed-beds and among herbs, mute and without voice, green, which, if it is swallowed by chance, distends the bellies of oxen. The moisture of its body, scraped off with probes, they say brings clearness to the eyes anointed with it. And they lay the flesh itself on pains of the eyes. Some thrust 15 frogs, thrown into a new earthen pot, through with rushes, and to the juice of them that so flows out they add the tear of the white vine, and so correct the eyelids, taking out the useless hairs, dropping this juice with a needle into the traces of those plucked.
76| Meges made a psilotrum for the eyelids in vinegar, killing the rotting ones, and for this used many and various ones born in the autumn floods. The same effect is thought to be provided by the ash of leeches smeared on in vinegar (they must be burnt in a new vessel), and by the dried liver of the tunny, in the weight of 3 denarii, with cedar oil, on the hairs anointed for 8 months.
77| Most useful for the ears is the fresh gall of the fish batia, but also kept in nitre, likewise that of the bacchus, which some call mizyene, likewise of the callionymus poured in with rose oil, or castoreum with the juice of poppy. They call certain creatures in the sea too lice, and order them, pounded, to be dropped into the ears in vinegar. Wool, both by itself and dyed with conchylium, is of great benefit; some soak it in vinegar and nitre.
78| There are those who, above all against all faults of the ears, praise a cyathus of excellent garum, half as much again of honey, and a cyathus of vinegar, to be boiled down in a new cup over a gentle fire, the foam wiped off now and then with feathers, and when it has ceased to foam, to be poured in lukewarm. If the ears are swollen, the same authorities prescribe that they first be eased with coriander juice. Frogs' fat dropped in takes away pains at once. The juice of river crabs with barley meal is most effective for wounds of the ears. Swellings by the ears are cured by the ash of the shells of murices with honey, or of conchylia in honey wine.
79| Pains of the teeth are eased by the bones of the sea dragon, the gums being scarified with them, by the brain of the dogfish boiled down in oil and kept, so that the teeth are rinsed with it once a year. The spine of the pastinaca, too, is most useful for scarifying the gums in pain. Pounded and smeared on with white hellebore, it draws teeth without distress. The ash of salted fish burnt in an earthen vessel, with marble meal added, is among the remedies.
80| Also old cybia, washed in a new vessel and then pounded, are beneficial for pains. Equally the spines of all salted fish, burnt, pounded and smeared on, are said to help. Frogs are boiled down too, one to each hemina of vinegar, so that the teeth are rinsed with it and the juice is held in the mouth. If disgust stood in the way, Sallustius Dionysius hung them by the hind feet, so that the venom might flow from the mouth into the boiling vinegar, and this from several frogs; for stronger stomachs he gave them to be chewed from the broth. And they think that the jaw teeth are especially healed so, and loose ones made firm with the vinegar spoken of above.
81| For this some macerate the bodies of two frogs, with the feet cut off, in a hemina of wine, and order that the tottering teeth be rinsed with it. Some tie them on whole to the jaws. Others boiled ten in 3 sextarii of vinegar down to a third, to make loose teeth firm. And they boiled the hearts of 46 frogs in a sextarius of old oil under a bronze cover, to pour through the ear of the aching jaw. Others laid the liver of a frog, boiled and pounded, with honey on the teeth. All those written above are more effective from the sea frog.
82| If the teeth are decayed and foul, they prescribe that the cetus be dried in an oven overnight, and then as much salt added, and so rubbed on. Enhydris is the name among the Greeks for the snake living in water. With 4 of its upper teeth they scarify the upper gums in pain, with the lower the lower; some are content with the canine tooth of them only. They use also the ash of crabs, for the ash of murices is a dentifrice.
83| Lichens and leprosies are removed by the fat of the sea calf, the ash of menae with three obols of honey each, the liver of the pastinaca cooked in oil, the ash of the hippocampus or dolphin smeared on in water. Ulceration should be followed by treatment which leads to a scar. Some roast dolphin in an earthen pot until fat like oil flows; with this they anoint.
84| The ash of the shells of murices or conchylia cleanses spots on the faces of women, smeared on with honey, and removes wrinkles from the skin and stretches it, smeared on for seven days in such a way that on the eighth it is fomented with the white of eggs. Of the kind of murices are those which the Greeks call coluthia, others coryphia, equally turbinate but smaller, much more effective, and also preserving the breath of the mouth. Ichthyocolla removes wrinkles and stretches the skin, boiled down in water for 4 hours, then pounded and worked up to the liquidity of honey.
85| So prepared, it is stored in a new vessel, and in use to 3 drachmas of it are added two of sulphur and as many of anchusa, 8 of silver foam, and, water having been sprinkled, they are ground together. The face smeared with it is washed after 4 hours. The ash of the bones of cuttlefish cures freckles and other blemishes. The same removes also excrescent flesh and moist ulcers. A frog boiled in 5 heminae of sea water removes psorae; it must be boiled down until it has the stickiness of honey.
86| There is made in the sea what is called alcyoneum, from the nests, as some think, of the alcyones and ceyces, as others, by the thickening of the filth of foams, others from mud or a certain down of the sea. Of it there are four kinds: ash-coloured, dense, of rough smell; another soft, milder in smell and nearly that of seaweed; a third of a whiter little worm; a fourth more like pumice, resembling a rotten sponge.
87| The one that is almost purple is best; this is also called Milesian. The whiter it is, the less approved. Their power is to ulcerate and cleanse. They are used roasted and without oil. They wonderfully remove leprosies, lichens, freckles, with lupine and 2 obols of sulphur. Alcyoneum is also used for scars of the eyes. Andreas used the ash of a crab with oil for leprosies, Attalus fresh tunny fat.
88| Ulcers of the mouth are healed by the brine of menae and the ash of their heads with honey. Scrofulous swellings are helped by being pricked, in such a way as not to wound, with the little bone from the tail of the fish called the frog in the sea. This is to be done daily until they are thoroughly cured. The same power is in the spine of the pastinaca and the sea hare, laid on so as to be quickly removed, in the shells of sea urchins crushed and smeared on in vinegar, likewise in the marine scolopendra with honey, in the river crab pounded or burnt with honey. The bones of cuttlefish, pounded and smeared on with old axle-grease, are wonderfully beneficial.
89| So too they use them for swellings by the ears, and the livers of the sea fish saurus, and indeed shards of a jar of salted fish pounded with old axle-grease, and the ash of murices in oil, for swellings by the ears and scrofulous swellings. Stiffness of the neck is softened also by the sea creatures called lice, a drachma drunk, by castoreum drunk with pepper in honey wine, by frogs boiled in oil and salt, so that the juice is sipped. So too they cure opisthotonos and tetanus, and for spasms with pepper added.
90| Anginas are removed by the ash of the heads of salted menae smeared on with honey, and by the juice of frogs boiled in vinegar; this is beneficial also against the tonsils. River crabs, pounded, one in a hemina of water, cure anginas when gargled, or drunk in wine and hot water. The uvula is cured by garum placed beneath with spoonfuls. The voice is helped by fresh or salted siluri taken in food.
91| Vomitings are stirred by mulli kept till old and pounded, in a drink. For asthmatics, castoreum with a small portion of Hammoniacum in honeyed vinegar is most useful, drunk by those fasting. The same drink in hot honeyed vinegar soothes spasms of the stomach.
92| A cough is said to be cured by frogs boiled in dishes from a broth in the manner of fishes. But they are to be hung by the feet, and when their saliva has dripped into the dishes, are ordered to be gutted and, the entrails thrown away, seasoned. There is a small frog that climbs trees and croaks from them; if anyone spits into its mouth and lets it go, he is reported to be freed from his cough. They prescribe also that the raw flesh of a snail, pounded, be drunk in hot water for a bloody cough.
93| For pains of the liver [….] a sea scorpion killed in wine, so that it is drunk from it; the flesh of the long conch drunk in honey wine with an equal quantity of water, or, if there are fevers, in honey water. Pains of the side are soothed by roasted hippocampi taken, and tethea like an oyster taken in food; for sciatics, the brine of the silurus poured in by clyster. The conchs are given at three obols each, diluted in 2 sextarii of wine, for 15 days.
94| The belly is softened by the silurus from its broth and the torpedo in food and the sea vegetable like the cultivated (it is hostile to the stomach and purges the belly very easily, but because of its sharpness is cooked with fat meat) and the broth of all fishes. The same moves urine, best in wine. The best is from scorpions and the iulis and rock fishes, neither tasting of rankness nor fat. They ought to be cooked with dill, celery, coriander, leek, with oil and salt added.
95| Old cybia purge, and particularly indigestions; they draw phlegm and bile. Myaces also purge, whose nature will be told in full at this place. They are heaped up in the manner of murices and live in weedy places, most pleasing in autumn and where much fresh water mingles with the seas, and for that reason most praised in Egypt. As winter advances they take on bitterness and a red colour.
96| Their broth is reported to empty the belly and bladder, to scour the entrails, open everything, purge the kidneys, reduce blood and fat. And so they are most useful for dropsical people, for women's purgations, jaundice, the joint disease, inflations, likewise for the obese, for faults of the bile and phlegm, the lung, liver, spleen, for rheumatisms. They only trouble the throat and dull the voice.
97| They heal ulcers that creep or must be cleansed, and likewise carcinomata when burnt like murices; and the bites of dogs and men with honey, leprosies, freckles. Their ash, washed, corrects dimness of sight, roughnesses, white spots, faults of the gums and teeth, eruptions of phlegm; and against dorycnium or opocarpathum they take the place of an antidote.
98| They degenerate into two species: the mituli, which taste of salt and rankness, and the myiscae, which differ in roundness, somewhat smaller and bristly, with thinner shells, sweeter in flesh. The mituli also, like murices, have a caustic power when burnt, and for leprosies, freckles and spots. They are also washed in the way of lead, for thickenings of the eyelids and white spots and dimness of the eyes, and in other parts for foul ulcers and pustules of the head. Their flesh is laid on dog bites.
99| But pelorides soften the belly, as does castoreum in honey water, two drachmas. Those who wish to use it more strongly add a drachma of the dry root of the cultivated cucumber and 2 of aphronitrum. The tethea meet gripings and inflations. These are found on leaves in the sea, sucking, rather of the kind of fungi than of fishes. The same dissolve tenesmus and faults of the kidneys.
100| There is produced also in the sea wormwood, which some call seriphum, chiefly around Taposiris of Egypt, thinner than the land kind. It loosens the belly and frees the intestines of harmful creatures (cuttlefish also loosen); it is given in food, cooked with oil and salt and meal.
101| Salted menae smeared on the navel with bull's gall loosen the belly. The broth of fishes cooked in a dish with lettuce disperses tenesmus. River crabs, pounded and drunk in water, stop the belly, and move urine in white wine. With the claws removed they drive out stones, 3 obols, with myrrh and iris, a drachma of each of them; for ileus and inflations, castoreum with seed of daucus and parsley, as much as can be taken in three fingers, in 4 cyathi of warm honey wine; for gripings, with dill in mixed wine. Erythini taken in food stop the belly. Frogs boiled with squill, so that pastilles are made, cure dysenteries, or their heart pounded with honey, as Niceratus reports; for jaundice, salted fish with pepper, in such a way that the rest of the flesh is abstained from.
102| The spleen is cured by a sole fish laid on, likewise the torpedo, likewise the rhombus; it is then released alive into the sea. A sea scorpion, once killed in wine, heals faults of the bladder and stones; the stone found in the tail of the sea scorpion, drunk in the weight of an obol, the liver of the enhydris, the ash of blendii with rue. Little stones as it were are also found in the head of the fish bacchus; these drunk in water cure those with stones excellently. They say also that the sea nettle drunk in wine is beneficial, likewise the sea lung boiled down in water.
103| The eggs of the cuttlefish move urine and draw out phlegm from the [….]. Ruptures and convulsions are healed by river crabs pounded, best in asses' milk, and stones by sea urchins pounded with their spines and drunk in wine (the measure is a hemina for each; it is drunk until it helps), and otherwise in [….] they are of use for this. The bladder is cleansed also by the food of scallops. Of these the males some call donakas, others aulous, and the females onychas. The males move urine. The females are sweeter and of one colour. [The eggs of cuttlefish also move urine and purge the kidneys.]
104| For those with rupture of the intestine the sea hare is smeared on, pounded with honey. The liver of a water snake, and likewise of the hydrus, pounded and drunk, benefits those with stones. Salted fish of the silurus, poured in by clyster, the belly having first been emptied, relieve sciatics; for chafing of the seat, the ash from the head of mugiles and mulli; they are burnt in an earthen vessel and must be smeared on with honey.
105| Likewise the ash of the heads of menae is useful both for fissures and condylomata, as is the ash of the heads of salted pelamydes, or of cybia with honey. A torpedo applied checks there the disease of a prolapsing intestine. The ash of river crabs in oil and wax mends cracks in the same part; sea crabs also have the same power.
106| Boils are dispersed by salted coracini, by the entrails and scales of the sciaena burnt, by a scorpion boiled in wine in such a way that they are fomented with it. The shells of sea urchins, pounded and smeared on in water, resist boils that are beginning, and the ash of murices or purpurae in both ways, whether it is needed to disperse those beginning or to bring the ripened ones out. Some compose a medicine thus: 20 drachmas of wax and frankincense, 40 of silver foam, 10 of the ash of murices, a hemina of old oil.
107| Cooked salted fish are beneficial by themselves, and river crabs pounded; for pustules of the private parts, the ash from the head of menae, likewise their flesh boiled down and laid on, similarly the ash from the head of the salted perca with honey added, the ash of the head of pelamydes, or the skin of the squatina burnt.
108| This is the one by which we said wood is polished, since the uses of the craftsman too come from the sea. Smarides are also beneficial smeared on, and the ash of shells of murices or purpurae with honey, more effectively of the crenatae with their flesh. Carbuncles of the private parts are particularly quenched by cooked salted fish with honey. If a testicle has descended, they wish the foam of snails smeared on.
109| Incontinence of urine is corrected by hippocampi roasted and often taken in food, by the little fish ophidion, like a conger, with lily root, and by tiny fishes taken out of the belly of one that has devoured them, burnt in such a way that their ash is drunk in water. They also order African snails to be burnt with their flesh and the ash given in Signian wine.
110| For gout and joint diseases the oil in which frogs' intestines have been boiled down is useful, and the ash of the bramble frog with old fat. Some add also the ash of barley, of the three things in equal weight. They order the gout to be rubbed with a fresh sea hare, and the feet to be shod with beaver skins, especially of the Pontic beaver, and likewise of the sea calf, whose fat also helps the same; and also bryon, of which we have spoken, like lettuce, with more wrinkled leaves, without a stem.
111| It has an astringent nature, and laid on soothes the attacks of gout. Likewise the seaweed alga, of which also we have spoken. In it this is observed, that it is not laid on dry. Chilblains are corrected by the sea lung, the ash of the sea crab in oil, likewise by river crabs pounded and burnt, worked up with ash and oil, the fat of the silurus. In the joints the onset of diseases is calmed by fresh frogs laid on from time to time; some order them to be laid on cut open. The broth of mituli and conchs increases the body.
112| Epileptics, as we have said, drink the rennet of the sea calf with the milk of a mare or ass, or with the juice of a pomegranate, some in honeyed vinegar. Some too swallow it by itself as pills. Castoreum is given, in 3 cyathi of honeyed vinegar, to those fasting, but to those who are seized more often, poured in by clyster, it is wonderfully beneficial. Of castoreum there will have to be 2 drachmas, a sextarius of honey and oil and as much water. For those just seized, the smell of it with vinegar gives relief. The liver of the sea weasel is also given, likewise of the mouse, or the blood of tortoises.
113| The cycles of fevers are removed by the liver of a dolphin, tasted before the attacks. Hippocampi are killed in oil of roses so that patients with cold fevers may be anointed with it, and the creatures themselves are tied on the sick. Likewise the little stones from the fish called the asellus, which are found in its head at full moon, are tied on in a scrap of linen. The longest tooth of the river phager, tied on with a hair in such a way that the patient does not see the person who ties it on for five days, and frogs boiled in oil at a crossroads with the flesh thrown away, free from quartans those who are anointed with it.
114| There are some who strangle the frogs in oil, tie them on secretly, and anoint with that oil. The heart of frogs, tied on, lessens the chills of fevers, and so does the oil in which their intestines have been boiled. But frogs most of all free people from quartans when their claws have been removed and they are tied on in the same way, and so does the rubeta, if its liver or heart is tied on in a whitish cloth. River crabs, pounded in oil and water, are beneficial in fevers to those anointed before the attacks; some add pepper as well.
115| Others advise that for quartans they be boiled down to a quarter in wine and drunk by patients as they come out of the bath, while some advise swallowing the left eye. The Magi promise that tertians are driven away if their eye is tied on the patient before sunrise, in such a way that they release the blinded frogs into water.
116| They report that the same eyes, bound in deerskin with the flesh of a nightingale, ensure wakefulness by driving off sleep. For people verging on lethargy they use rennet of a whale or of a sea calf, by smell. Others smear the blood of a tortoise on the lethargic. The vertebra of a perch, tied on, is also said to cure tertians, and fresh river snails taken as food to cure quartans; some preserve them in salt for this purpose, so as to give them pounded in a drink.
117| Strombi rotted in vinegar rouse the lethargic by their smell. They are also good for sufferers of the heart. For the cachectic, whose bodies are wasted with leanness, tethea are useful with rue and honey.— Melted dolphin fat, drunk with wine, relieves dropsy. The unpleasantness of the taste is countered by touching the nostrils with ointment or perfumes, or by stopping them in any way. The flesh of the strombus also, pounded and given in 3 heminae of mead with an equal measure of water, or, when fevers are present, in honeyed water, is effective, as is the juice of river crabs with honey,
118| and the water frog too, boiled in old wine with spelt, and taken as nourishment in such a way that the drink is taken from the same vessel, or a tortoise with its feet, head and tail cut off and its entrails taken out, the remaining flesh being so seasoned that it can be eaten without distaste.— River crabs, taken in broth, are also reported to benefit consumptives.
119| Burns are healed by the ash of a sea crab or river crab with oil, and by ichthyocolla; scalds from boiling water are healed by the ash of frogs; this treatment even restores the hair. They also think that the ash of river crabs should be used with wax and bear's fat. The ash of beaver skins is helpful too.— Erysipelas is put out by living frogs' bellies applied; they order them to be tied on face downward by the hind feet, so that by their more frequent panting they may help. They also use the ash of the heads of salted siluri with vinegar.— Itching and scab, not only of men but of four-footed animals, are most effectively relieved by the liver of the pastinaca, boiled down in oil.
120| Sinews, even when cut through, are glued together by the callus of purple-fish, with which they cover themselves, pounded. For tetanic patients rennet of the sea calf is a help, drunk in wine to the weight of an obol, and so is ichthyocolla; for those with tremors, castoreum, if they are anointed with it in oil. I find that mullets are of no use as food for the sinews.
121| They think blood is produced by a diet of fish, and stopped by an application of pounded polypus, about which these things too are reported: that it sends out brine of its own accord and therefore ought not to have any added in cooking; that it is cut with a reed, since it is stained by iron and takes on a defect, its nature being at odds with it. To stop blood they also apply the ash of frogs, or their dried blood.
122| Some order that blood or ash be made from the frog that the Greeks call calamites, because it lives among reeds and bushes, the smallest of all and the greenest; some also order that the ash of tadpoles, those frogs that are being born in water and still have a tail, burned in a new cup, be stuffed into the nostrils if blood flows through them.
123| The use of leeches, which they call blood-suckers, for drawing blood is of a different kind. For the reasoning about them is judged to be the same as that about medicinal cupping vessels, to lighten the body of blood and to open the pores; but there is the fault that once they have been applied they create a craving for the same remedy at the same times of year always. Many have held that they should be applied for gout too. They drop off when sated, pulled away by the very weight of the blood, or when sprinkled with salt; sometimes, however, they leave their heads stuck in, and this causes incurable wounds and has killed many, as it did Messalinus, one of the patrician ex-consuls, when he had applied one to his knee, the remedy having turned into the poison of a venom.
124| The red ones are most dreaded for this; so, once they have begun to suck, people snip them with scissors, and the blood runs out as through siphons, and gradually, as they die, the heads contract and are not left behind. Their nature is hostile to bugs, which they kill by fumigation.— The ash of beaver skins burned with liquid pitch, softened with leek juice, stops nosebleeds.
125| The ash of the shell of cuttlefish draws out missiles lodged in the body, and so does the ash of the shell of purple-fish in water, and the flesh of salted fish, pounded river crabs, and the flesh of the river siluris, which is born elsewhere than in the Nile, applied fresh or salted. The ash of the same fish draws them out; its fat and the ash of its spine take the place of spodium.
126| Spreading ulcers, and the growths that swell in them, are checked by the ash of the head of the menae or of the siluris; cancerous sores are checked by the heads of salted menae, more effectively if salt and head-bearing cunila are mixed with their ash and worked up with oil. The ash of a sea crab burned with lead restrains cancerous sores. For this, the ash of a river crab is enough with honey and a lint of linen; some prefer alum and honey to be mixed with the ash. Phagedaenic ulcers are healed by an old siluris pounded with sandarac, and malignant ulcers, nomae and putrefactions by old cybium; worms that have been born in them are removed by the gall of frogs.
127| Fistulas are opened and dried by salted fish inserted with a scrap of linen, and within two days, worked up and applied like a plaster, they remove every callus and the putrefying and spreading parts of ulcers. Allex also cleans ulcers on shredded linen, and so does the ash of the shell of sea urchins. Carbuncles are dispersed by salted coracini applied, and likewise by the ash of salted mullet, though some use only the head with honey, or by the flesh of coracini. The ash of murex shells with oil takes away swellings, and the gall of the sea scorpion takes away scars.
128| Warts are removed by the liver of the glanis applied, by the ash of the head of the menae pounded with garlic (they use it raw for thymia), by the gall of the red sea scorpion, by zmarides pounded and applied, and by allex brought to the boil. Roughness of the nails is thinned by the ash from the head of the menae.
129| For women, the glauciscus taken in broth produces an abundance of milk, and so do zmarides taken with barley-water or boiled with fennel. The breasts themselves are effectively healed by the ash of the shells of murex or purple-fish with honey, and likewise by river or sea crabs applied. Murex flesh applied removes hair on the breast. Squatinae applied do not allow the breasts to grow. Lint smeared with the fat of a dolphin and set alight rouses women suffocated by the womb, and so does strombus rotted in vinegar.
130| The ash of the head of perches or menae, with salt added and cunila and oil, cures the womb; by fumigation it also draws down the afterbirth. Likewise the fat of a sea calf is dripped into the fire and applied to the nostrils for women half-dead from a fault of the womb, with the rennet of the same animal placed on a fleece. The sea lung tied on cleanses discharges excellently; living sea urchins pounded and drunk in sweet wine stop them, and so do river crabs pounded and drunk in wine.
131| Likewise by the fumes of siluris, especially the African, births are said to be made easier; crabs drunk in water are said to stop discharges, and drunk in hyssop to purge. And if a birth is choking, they help when drunk in the same way. They drink the same, fresh or dried, to hold back births. Hippocrates uses them also for purgations and for dead births, five at a time, pounded with dock root, rue and soot and given in mead as a drink.
132| The same crabs, cooked in broth with dock and celery, ease the monthly purgations and produce abundance of milk; the same, given to women in a dry wine, are said to be beneficial in a fever that comes with headaches and quivering of the eyes. Castoreum drunk in mead is beneficial for purgations, and against the womb it is smelled with vinegar and pitch or put under in pastilles.
133| It is also beneficial for the afterbirth, in the same way, with panax in 4 cyathi of wine, and for those suffering from cold, in doses of three obols. But if a pregnant woman steps over castoreum or a beaver, she is said to miscarry, and to be in danger in childbirth if it is carried over her. What I find about the torpedo is remarkable too: if it is caught when the moon is in Libra and kept three days in the open air, it afterwards makes births easy whenever it is brought near. The spine of the pastinaca is also thought to help when tied on the navel, if it was taken from the living fish and the fish itself was let go into the sea.
134| I find in certain authors that what some call onyx is called ostraceum; that when fumigated with it it wonderfully resists the pains of the womb; that its smell is that of castoreum, and that burned with castoreum it works better; and that old ulcers and malignant sores are also healed by the ash of the same. They report that carbuncles and cancerous sores on a woman's private parts are healed by a most immediate remedy, a female crab pounded with flower of salt after the full moon and applied in water.
135| A psilotrum is the blood, gall or liver of the tunny, whether fresh or kept, the liver also pounded and kept in a lead box with cedar oil mixed in. In this way the midwife Salpe prepared boys for sale as a dealer would. The sea lung has the same power, as do the sea hare's blood and gall, or if this hare is killed in oil [….] canori; the ash of the sea scolopendra with oil, sea nettle pounded in squill vinegar, and the torpedo's brain applied with alum on the 16th day of the moon.
136| The ooze of the small frog, which we described in treating the cure of the eyes, is a most effective psilotrum if it is applied fresh, and so is the frog itself dried and pounded, then boiled down in 3 heminae to a third, or boiled in oil in bronze vessels. In the same measure others make a psilotrum from 15 frogs, as we said in treating the eyes. Leeches also, roasted in an earthenware vessel and smeared on with vinegar, produce the same effect against hair. [The smoke of those who burn them kills bugs.] People are also found to have used castoreum smeared on with honey, in place of a psilotrum, for several days. In every psilotrum, however, the hairs must be plucked out first.
137| For the gums and teething of infants, the ash of a dolphin's teeth with honey is of the greatest help, and also if the gums are touched with the tooth itself. Tied on, the same tooth removes sudden terrors. The tooth of the dogfish has the same effect. Ulcers that arise in the ears or in any part of the body are healed by the juice of river crabs with barley meal.
138| and for other diseases, pounded in oil, they help those who are anointed with it. Siriasis of infants is most effectively cured by a cold sponge, the brain having been moistened, with a frog tied on upside down. They affirm that the frog is found dried up. A mullus killed in wine, or a fish called rubellio, or 2 eels, and likewise sea grape rotted in wine, bring a distaste for wine to those who have drunk from it.
139| Sexual desire is checked by the echeneis, by the skin of a hippopotamus's forehead, taken from the left part, tied on in lambskin, and by the gall of a living torpedo smeared on the genitals. Desire is aroused by the flesh of river snails kept in salt and given in a drink with wine, by erythini taken as food, by the liver of the diopetes or calamites frog tied on in the skin of a crane, by the molar tooth of a crocodile fastened to the arm, by a hippocampus, or by the sinews of a rubeta tied on the right upper arm. Love is ended by a rubeta tied on in the fresh hide of a farm animal.
140| The mange of horses is thinned by frogs boiled in water until they can be smeared on. They say that horses treated in this way are not attacked by it again. — Salpe says that dogs do not bark if a living frog has been given them in a morsel. Among aquatic things the calamochnus must also be mentioned, called adarca in Latin. It is born around slender reeds from the foam of fresh water and sea water where they mix. It has a caustic force, and is therefore useful for acopa and against the ill effects of chills. It also removes freckles from the faces of women.
141| Reeds too must be mentioned here. The fresh root of the phragmites, pounded, cures dislocations, and applied in vinegar it cures pains of the spine; the bark of the Cyprian reed, which is also called donax, burned, cures alopecia and long-standing ulcers, and its leaves draw out things lodged in the body and cure erysipelas. The flower of the panicle, if it enters the ears, makes them deaf. The ink of the cuttlefish has such power that, added to a lamp, Anaxilaus reports, Ethiopians appear when the earlier light has been taken away. — A rubeta boiled down in water and given as a drink cures the diseases of swine, and so does the ash of any frog at all. — If wood is rubbed with the sea lung, it seems to burn, so that a staff shines ahead in this way. —
142| Now that the properties of aquatic creatures have been completed, it seems not out of place to point out that in so many seas, so vast, poured into the land across so many miles and surrounding it on the outside, a measure which is understood to be almost that of the world itself, there are animals of a hundred and forty-four kinds in all, and that these can be embraced by name, which cannot be done among land animals and birds.
143| For we do not know the wild beasts or birds of all India and Ethiopia, or of Scythia and the deserts, when even of human beings themselves there are very many differences, those that we have been able to discover. Add to these Taprobane and the other islands of the ocean, one after another, that are told of in fable. Surely it will be agreed that not all kinds can be called into one general view. But, by Hercules, the things that are born in so great a sea and ocean are definite, and better known, which is remarkable, than the things nature has sunk in the deep.
144| To begin with the monsters: the arbores, physeteres, ballaenae, pistrices, Tritons, Nereids, elephants, the men who are called marine, rotae, orcae, arietes, musculi and others in the form of rams among fishes, dolphins and the sea calves celebrated by Homer, and tortoises for luxury, and beavers for the doctors — of whose kind we have not heard that otters ever dive in the sea, since they speak only of the sea kind —
145| then dogfish, drinones, cornutae, gladii, serrae, and those common to land, sea and river: hippopotami and crocodiles; and, of river and sea alone, thynni, thynnides, siluri, coracini, percae. Peculiar to the sea are the acipenser, aurata, asellus, acharne, aphye, alopex, eel, araneus, boca, batia, bacchus, batrachus, belonae, which we call spiny ones, the balanus,
146| the corvus, citharus, the worst of the kind of rhombi, chalcis, cobio, callarias, a kind of asellus (if it were not smaller), coliae, either the Parianus or the Sexitanus, named for its country Baetica, the smallest of the lacerti, from those of our own waters, the cybium — so is called the pelamys when cut up, which returns after 40 days from the Pontus into the Maeotis — the cordyla — this too is a small pelamys; when it goes out from the Maeotis into the Pontus it has this name — the cantharus, the callionymus or uranoscopos, the cinaedi, the only yellow ones among fishes,
147| the cnide, which we call the nettle, kinds of crabs, chemae striped, chemae smooth, chemae of the kind of the pelorides, differing in variety and roundness, chemae glycymarides, which are bigger than the pelorides, the coluthia or coryphia, kinds of shells, among which are also the pearl-bearers, cochloe, of whose kind are the pentadactyli, likewise helices (called actinophoroe by others), which have rays; [….] sing — these innards are, in oil-making use, the round kind of snail —
148| the cucums, cynops, cammarus, cynosdexia, draco — some want the dracunculus to be something else; it is, however, very like the gerricula, has spines in its gills pointing toward the tail, and stings like a scorpion when it is lifted in the hand — the erythinus, echenais, echinus, elephants of the kind of locusts, black, with four feet, cloven in two — besides which they have 2 arms with two joints each and single toothed pincers — fabri or zaei, glauciscus, glanis, gonger, gerres, galeos, garos, hippos,
149| hippuros, hirundo, halipleumon, hippocampos, hepar, ictinus, iulis, kinds of lacerti, the flying lolligo, locustae, lucerna, lelepris, lamirus, lepus, leones, whose arms are like those of crabs — the rest of the body being a locust's — mullus, merula, praised among the rock fishes, mugil, melanurus, mena, maeotes, murena, mys, mitulus, myiscus, murix with eyes, ophidion, oysters, otia, orcynus — this is the largest of the kinds of pelamydes and does not itself return into the Maeotis, similar to the tritomum,
150| better with age — orbis, orthagoriscus, phager, phycis, one of the rock fishes, pelamys — the largest of that kind is called apolectum, harder than the tritomum — porcus, phthir, passer, pastinaca, kinds of polypi, pectines — the largest, and among these the blackest in summer, are most praised, and these are at Mytilene, Tyndaris, Salonae, Altinum, on the island of Chios, and at Alexandria in Egypt — pectunculi, purpurae, pegrides, pina, pinoteres, rhine, which we call squatus,
151| rhombus, scarus (the foremost fish today), solea, sargus, squilla, sarda (this is the name of the long pelamys that comes from the Ocean), scomber, salpa, sorus, scorpaena, scorpio, salax, sciaena, sciadeus, scolopendra, smyrus, sepia, strombus, solen or aulos or donax or onyx or dactylus, spondyli, smarides, stellae, sponges, turdus (notable among the rock fishes), thynnus, thranis, which others call xiphias, thrissa, torpedo, tethea, tritomum (the large breed of pelamys, from which three cybia apiece are made), veneria, uva, xiphias.
152| To these we shall add the animals recorded by Ovid that are found in no other writer, but are perhaps native to the Pontus, where he began that volume in the last period of his life: the bos; the cercyrus that lives among the rocks; the orphus and the reddish erythinus; the iulus; the painted mormyres and the chrysophrys of golden color; besides these, the perca, the tragus, and the melanurus, pleasing for its tail; and the epodes, of the broad kind.
153| Besides these, he reports these notable facts about fish: that the channe conceives by itself; that the glaucus never appears in summer; the pompilus, which always accompanies the course of ships; the chromis, which builds a nest in the water. He says that the helops is unknown in our waters; from which it appears that those who have thought it the same as the acipenser are mistaken. Many have given the helops the palm for flavor among fish.
154| There are, besides, fish named by no writer. One is called sudis in Latin and sphyraena in Greek; its snout is like its name, and in size it is among the largest; it is rare, and not inferior in quality. There are also the creatures called pernae, of the shellfish kind, very plentiful around the Pontiae islands. They stand like a pig's leg, fixed upright in the sand, and, gaping where they are broad, they hunt their food over a space of no less than a foot; they have teeth all round their edges, set close together like a comb; inside is the flesh of a large spondylus. And I have seen a hyaena fish caught off the island of Aenaria. Besides these, some refuse too is cast up, not worth reporting and to be counted among seaweeds rather than animals.

======== Natural History — Book XXXIII ========

1| Now metals will be spoken of, and wealth itself, and the prices of things, as our industry searches the inside of the earth in many ways. In one place she is dug for riches, as life seeks gold, silver, electrum and copper; in another for luxury, seeking gems and pigments for walls and woodwork; in another for recklessness, seeking iron, which amid wars and slaughter is even more welcome than gold. We follow up all her veins and live on top of the earth we have hollowed out, and then wonder that she sometimes gapes open or trembles, as if this could not truly be wrung from the indignation of our sacred mother.
2| We go into her entrails and seek wealth in the abode of the dead, as though she were not kind and fruitful enough where she is trodden underfoot. And among all this, very little of our searching is for the sake of remedies; for how few dig for the sake of medicine? And yet this too she has given on her uppermost surface, like the crops, generous and easy in all the things that do us good.
3| It is the things she has hidden and sunk deep that destroy us, that drive us down to the underworld: things that are not produced in a moment, so that the mind, flying out into the void, may reckon what end there will ever be, through all the ages, to draining her, and how far greed will burrow. How innocent, how happy, indeed how even refined life would be, if it desired nothing from anywhere but above the earth, and, in short, nothing but what lies at hand!
4| Gold is dug out, and next to it chrysocolla, which keeps a name taken from gold so that it may seem the more precious. For it was not enough to have found one bane of life unless even the pus of gold were also prized. Greed was seeking silver; in the meantime it was glad to have found minium, and thought up a use for a red earth. Alas, for our prodigal ingenuity: in how many ways we have raised the prices of things! The art of painting was added, and by engraving we have made gold and silver dearer. Man has learned to challenge nature. The incitements of vice have increased the arts as well: it has pleased us to engrave lusts on our cups and to drink through obscenities.
5| Then these things were thrown aside and began to look shabby, when there was too much gold and silver. From the same earth we have dug out murrina and crystallina, whose very fragility gives them their price. It was thought the proof of wealth and the true glory of luxury to own something that could perish entirely in an instant. Nor was this enough. We drink from a crowd of gems and encrust our cups with zmaragdi, and to get drunk we like to hold India in our hands. Gold is now a mere accessory,
6| and would that it could be banished from life altogether [accursed by hunger, as the most celebrated writers have said], reviled with abuse by all the best men and discovered for the ruin of life. How much happier was the time when goods themselves were exchanged one for another, as we should believe was done even in Trojan times, on the word of Homer! For this, I think, is how trade was introduced, for the sake of a living.
7| He records that some bought goods with ox hides, others with iron and captives. And so, although he himself already admired gold, he valued things in cattle, saying that Glaucus exchanged golden armor worth 100 oxen for Diomedes' armor worth 9 oxen. From this custom, even at Rome, many of the fines in the ancient laws are reckoned in cattle.
8| The worst crime against life was committed by the man who first put gold on his fingers, and who did so is not recorded. For I consider everything about Prometheus to be fable, although antiquity gave him too an iron ring and meant it to be understood as a chain, not as an ornament. As for the ring of Midas, which, when turned round, made its wearer invisible to everyone, who would not admit that it is even more fabulous?
9| It was hands, and in fact left hands, that won gold its greatest prestige; not Roman hands, however, for it was the Roman custom to wear iron rings, as a mark of valor in war. About the Roman kings I could not easily say. The statue of Romulus on the Capitol has none, and none of the others has one apart from those of Numa and Servius Tullius, not even that of Lucius Brutus. This surprises me most in the case of the Tarquins, whose family came from Greece, the source of this use of rings, although even now at Lacedaemon they wear an iron one.
10| But it is established that Tarquinius Priscus, first of all men, presented his son with a golden bulla when he had killed an enemy while still of an age to wear the toga praetexta; and from this the custom of the bulla has lasted, so that the sons of those who had served in the cavalry wear it as a mark of distinction, and the rest a leather strap. And so I am surprised that the statue of that Tarquin is without a ring. Though I see that there is doubt even about the name itself. The Greeks named it from the fingers; among us the ancients called it ungulus, and later both the Greeks and our own people called it symbolum.
11| It is certainly clear that for a long time not even the Roman senate had gold rings, since rings were given at public expense only to those who were to go as envoys to foreign nations, because, I suppose, that was how the most honored men were recognized among foreigners. Nor was it the custom for anyone to wear them except those who had received them at public expense for that reason; and generally men celebrated their triumphs in this way: though an Etruscan crown of gold was held up behind the general, the ring on his finger was nevertheless of iron, for the triumphing general and for the slave holding the crown over him alike.
12| So Gaius Marius triumphed over Jugurtha, and it is reported that he did not take a gold ring before his third consulship. Those also who had been given gold rings on account of an embassy wore them only in public, and at home wore iron ones; and as evidence of this, even now an iron ring, and that without a gem, is sent to a betrothed girl as a gift. For my part I see that there were no rings even in the times of Ilium. Homer at any rate nowhere mentions them, although he tells that tablets were sent about for the sake of letters, and that garments and vessels of gold and silver were stored away in chests and were tied up with the mark of a knot, not of a ring. He tells that leaders drew lots against challenges not with rings, and that the workshops of the gods made brooches and other things of women's adornment, such as earrings, in the beginning, with no mention of rings.
13| And whoever first established the custom did so hesitantly: he put it on the left hand and kept it hidden, when, if the honor had been secure, it should have been displayed on the right. But if any impediment could be understood in this, that too would be proof of a later use: it would have been greater on the left, with which the shield is held. There is indeed in the same Homer gold plaited into the hair of men; therefore I do not know whether the earlier use began with women.
14| At Rome there was not even any gold, except a very small amount, for a long time. Certainly when the city had fallen to the Gauls and peace was being bought, not more than a thousand pounds could be produced. Nor am I unaware that 2,000 pounds of gold perished in the third consulship of Pompey from the throne of Capitoline Jupiter, placed there by Camillus, and that for this reason most think 2,000 pounds were collected. But what was added came from the booty of the Gauls and was taken by them from part of
15| the shrines of the captured city — that the Gauls were accustomed to fight with gold, Torquatus is evidence; so it is clear that there was only that much of the gold of the Gauls and of the temples, and no more. This was indeed understood in a divination, when the Capitoline had given back twice as much. It is also fitting to point out in passing — we have returned to our discussion of rings as well — that a warden of the temple, caught in charge of it, broke the gem of his ring in his mouth and died at once, and so the evidence was destroyed.
16| So even granting that there were only 2,000 pounds at the time Rome was captured, in the year 364, when already 152,573 free persons had been counted in the census, in that same city 307 years later what Gaius Marius the son had brought to Praeneste from the burning of the Capitoline temple and from all the other shrines was 14,000 pounds, which under that label Sulla carried over in his triumph, and 6,000 of silver. The same man had carried over the day before, from all the rest of the victory, 15,000 pounds of gold and 115,000 pounds of silver.
17| A more frequent use of rings, however, is not found before Gnaeus Flavius, son of Annius. For when he had made public the calendar of days, which the people used to ask each day of a few of the leading men, he gained so much favor with the plebs — he was born of a freedman father, and was himself secretary to Appius Caecus, at whose urging he had taken down those days by constant consulting with his sharp mind and had published them — that he was elected curule aedile together with Quintus Anicius of Praeneste, who had been an enemy a few years earlier, Gaius Poetilius and Domitius, whose fathers had been consuls, being passed over.
18| It was added in Flavius's case that he was also tribune of the plebs at the same time, and when this was done, so great an indignation blazed up that rings were thrown away, as is found in the oldest annals. Most people are mistaken in thinking that the equestrian order too did this at that time; for this too was added, but phalerae were also laid aside, and for that reason the name of the knights was added, and it was recorded in the annals that rings were set aside by the nobility, not by the senate as a whole. This was done in the consulship of Publius Sempronius and Lucius Sulpicius.
19| Flavius vowed a temple of Concord if he should reconcile the orders to the people, and when money was not decreed for it from public funds, he made a little bronze shrine in the Graecostasis, which was then above the comitium, out of fines levied on moneylenders who had been condemned, and he inscribed on a bronze tablet that this temple was made 204 years after the dedication of the Capitoline.
20| This was done in the year 449 since the city was founded, and it is the first trace of rings that exists; a second trace of their promiscuous use is in the second Punic war, for otherwise that three-modius measure of rings could not have been sent to Carthage by Hannibal. Between Caepio and Drusus too enmity began over a ring put up for sale at an auction, whence the origin of the Social War and the ruin of affairs.
21| Not even then did all senators have them, inasmuch as within the memory of our grandfathers many, even ones who had held the praetorship, grew old with an iron ring — as Fenestella reports of Calpurnius and Manilius, who had been a legate of Gaius Marius in the Jugurthine war, and many of that Lucius Fufidius to whom Scaurus wrote about his life — while in the family of the Quinctii it was the custom that not even the women had gold, and the greater part of peoples and men, even those who live under our rule, have none at all today. The East does not seal, nor does Egypt even now, content with letters alone.
22| In many ways, as with everything else, luxury has varied this, by adding gems of choice brilliance and loading the fingers with rich fortunes, as we shall say shortly in the volume on gems, and by engraving various likenesses so that in one place the art, in another the material, is the thing prized. Then it judged it a sin that other gems should be damaged, and, so that no one should think they were on the rings for the sake of sealing, it put them on solid.
23| Some gems indeed it has not enclosed in gold even on the side where they are hidden by the finger, and it has made gold cheaper than [….] of little stones. On the contrary, many admit no gems at all and seal with the gold itself. This was invented in the principate of Claudius Caesar. And now even slaves surround iron with gold — others adorn rings by themselves with pure gold — and the origin of this license is declared by the very name, which shows that the practice was established in Samothrace.
24| At first it had been the custom to wear one ring on a single finger, the one next to the smallest. So we see it in the statues of Numa and of Servius Tullius. Afterwards they put it on the finger beside the thumb, even on images of the gods; then they took pleasure in giving it to the smallest finger too. The Gauls and Britons are said to have used the middle one. This one alone is now exempted, all the others are loaded, and even privately the joints with other smaller rings.
25| There are some who heap them on the smallest finger only, but others, even for this finger, put only one, with which they seal up their signet ring. That ring, stored away as a rare thing and unworthy to suffer wear, is brought out as if from a shrine, so that even to have had one ring on the little finger is a display of more precious furnishings kept in store. Now others show off the weights of their rings. For some it is a labor to carry more than one; others think it safer, for anxiety about the gems, to stuff foils with a lighter material against a fall; others enclose poisons under the gems, as Demosthenes, the greatest orator of Greece, did, and keep rings for the sake of death.
26| Finally, even the greatest crimes of wealth are done by rings. What a life that was of the ancients, what innocence, in which nothing was sealed! Now even food and drink are protected from plunder by a ring. This is what the legions of slaves have brought about, a foreign crowd in the house, and now a nomenclator has to be employed even on account of the slaves. It was otherwise among the ancients: single Marcipors or Lucipors, clansmen of their masters, had all their food in common, and there was no need at home for any guarding by the household.
27| Now banquets are prepared to be plundered, and also those who will plunder them, and to have sealed the very keys is not enough. Rings are pulled from people weighed down with sleep or dying, and a greater reckoning of life has begun to attach to this instrument. It is uncertain from what time; yet we seem able to grasp the authority of the matter among foreigners in the case of Polycrates, tyrant of Samos, whose beloved ring was thrown into the sea and was brought back when a fish had been caught, he himself being killed about the year 230 of our city. A more frequent use must have begun with moneylending.
28| The evidence is the custom of the common people, who even now let the ring spring out at pledges, drawn from that time when there was not yet a quicker pledge, so that we can state plainly that coins began among us first, then rings. About coins it will be spoken a little later.
29| Rings marked off a second order from the plebs, once they had begun to be common, just as the tunic marked off the senate from the rings. Although this too came late, and we find that even heralds commonly used a broader purple on the tunic, as did the father of Lucius Aelius Stilo, who was surnamed Praeconinus for that reason. But rings clearly inserted a third order, in the middle between the plebs and the fathers, and what military horses had formerly given as a name, those who now declare their fortune bestow. Nor was this done long ago.
30| When the deified Augustus was arranging the decuries, the greater part of the judges wore an iron ring, and they were called not knights but judges. The name of knights was left in the squadrons of public horses. Of judges, too, there were at first no more than four decuries, and scarcely a thousand each were found in the decuries, the provinces not yet being admitted to this duty; and it has been kept to this day that none of the new citizens should judge in them.
31| The decuries themselves were also divided under several names: of tribunes of the treasury, of selected men, and of judges. Besides these, nine hundred still were called, chosen from all, to guard the voting urns at the elections. And this order too was divided by a proud usurpation of names, when one named himself among the nine hundred, another among the selected, another a tribune.
32| Only in the ninth year of the principate of Tiberius did the equestrian order come into unity, and a form was established for the authority of rings, in the consulship of Gaius Asinius Pollio and Gaius Antistius Vetus, in the year 775 since the founding of the city, for a cause, which we may wonder at, almost trifling, when Gaius Sulpicius Galba, hunting a youthful reputation with the emperor by punishments of eating-houses, complained in the senate that hucksters guilty of that offence were commonly shielded by their rings. For this reason it was established that no one should have the right unless he himself was freeborn, and his father and paternal grandfather had been rated at 400,000 sesterces and had sat in the fourteen rows by the Julian theatre law. Afterwards this badge began to be sought in crowds.
33| On account of these distinctions the emperor Gaius added a fifth decury, and so much pride grew up that decuries which under the deified Augustus could not be filled cannot hold this order, and even those freed from slavery leap in all directions to these ornaments, which had never been done before, since knights and judges were recognized by the iron ring. And this began to be so indiscriminate that before Claudius Caesar, in his censorship, one of the knights, Flavius Proculus, brought 400 defendants to trial on that ground. Thus while the order was separated from the freeborn, it was shared with slaves.
34| The Gracchi, however, were the first of all to set this order apart under the title of judges, in a divisive popular politics aimed at insulting the senate; soon, once the authority of the name had been overcome, with varying outcome of the seditions, it came to rest around the tax-farmers, and for some time men of a third rank were the tax-farmers. Marcus Cicero at last established the equestrian name, in his consulship, in the affair of Catiline, glorying that he had come from that order and seeking its strength by a peculiar popular appeal. From that time this third body clearly became part of the commonwealth, and the equestrian order began to be added to the senate and the Roman people. For this reason even now it is written after the people, because it began last to be added.
35| The very name of the knights, indeed, has often been varied, even among those who drew it from the cavalry. Under Romulus and the kings they were called celeres, then flexuntes, afterwards trossuli, when they had taken, without any help from foot soldiers, a town of that name in Etruria, 9,000 paces this side of Volsinii; and that name lasted beyond Gaius Gracchus.
36| Junius, at any rate, who was called Gracchanus from his friendship with him, left it written in these words: As far as the equestrian order is concerned, they used formerly to call them trossuli, now they call them knights, for the reason that they do not understand what the name trossuli means, and many are ashamed to be called by that name. And he sets out the cause, which was indicated above, and says that they are still, nevertheless, called trossuli against their will.
37| There are still some differences in gold that are not to be omitted. They gave auxiliaries and foreigners golden torques, but citizens only silver ones, and besides they gave citizens armlets, which they did not give to foreigners.
38| The same people, which makes us wonder more, gave crowns of gold even to citizens. Who was first presented with one, I have not found; who first gave one is reported by Lucius Piso: Aulus Postumius the dictator at Lake Regillus, the camp of the Latins having been stormed, him by whose work above all it had been captured. This crown from the booty he gave, of 2 pounds; likewise the consul Lucius Lentulus to Servius Cornelius Merenda, a town of the Samnites having been taken, but this one of five pounds; Piso Frugi gave his son one of three, from his private money, and bequeathed that crown to him by will.
39| For the sake of honoring the gods, in sacred rites nothing else was devised than that victims, the larger ones at least, be sacrificed with gilded horns. But in military life too this luxury grew so far that letters of Marcus Brutus from the Philippian fields are found, fuming that the brooches of tribunes be worn in gold. Is that so, by Hercules? For you, Brutus, said nothing of gold worn on women's feet. And do we accuse of crime that man who first gave dignity to gold through rings! Let men now also have on their upper arms what came from the Dardani — it was therefore called Dardanium; they are called viriolae in Celtic, viriae in Celtiberian —
40| let women have it on their armlets and on all their fingers, neck, ears, coils; let chains run about the flanks, and in privacy let little bags of pearls hang by gold from the necks of the mistresses, so that even in sleep there be awareness of the unions: shall it also be put on the feet, and shall it make this equestrian order of women, midway between the stola and the common crowd? We men more decently bestow it on our troops of page-boys, and the costly beauty of boys has transformed the baths.
41| Now indeed men too begin to carry Harpocrates and statues of Egyptian divinities on their fingers. There was another distinction also in the principate of Claudius, unusual among those to whom free admission had given the right to wear the emperor's image in gold on a ring, with great occasion for charges; all of which the beneficial rise of the emperor Vespasian abolished, by making the emperor equally public. About gold rings and their use let this much be said.
42| The next crime was that of him who first stamped a denarius in gold, and this too is hidden, the author being uncertain. The Roman people did not use even silver stamped before the defeat of King Pyrrhus. The as was a pound in weight — whence even now the libella and the dupondius are so called — and was weighed out; hence the penalty was called one of heavy bronze, and to this day items of expenditure in accounts are called expensa,
43| and likewise inpendia and dependere, and indeed the soldiers' stipendia, that is, the weights of the coin, and paymasters, scale-holders, by which custom, in those purchases which are of mancipium, a balance is even now interposed. King Servius first stamped bronze. Timaeus reports that before that the Romans used it raw. It was stamped with the mark of cattle, whence it was also called pecunia. The greatest assessment was 120,000 asses under that king, and therefore this is the first class.
44| — Silver was stamped in the year 485 of the city, when Quintus Ogulnius and Gaius Fabius were consuls, five years ahead of the first Punic war. And it was decided that the denarius should be worth 10 pounds of bronze, the quinarius 5, the sestertius two and a half asses. But the weight of the pound of bronze was diminished in the first Punic war, when the commonwealth was not sufficient for its expenses, and it was decided that the asses be struck at the weight of a sextans. So five parts of profit were made, and debt was discharged.
45| The mark of that bronze was a double Janus on one side, and on the other the prow of a ship, and on the triens and quadrans, rafts. The quadrans was previously called teruncius, from three unciae. Afterwards, when Hannibal was pressing, in the dictatorship of Quintus Fabius Maximus, asses were made of an uncia, and it was decided that the denarius should be exchanged for 16 asses, the quinarius for eight, the sestertius for four. In this way the commonwealth made a profit of half; in the soldiers' pay, however, the denarius was always given for 10 asses.
46| The stamps on silver were two-horse chariots and four-horse chariots; hence the coins were called bigati and quadrigati. Soon, by the Papirian law, asses were made of half an uncia. Livius Drusus, in his tribunate of the plebs, mixed an eighth part of bronze into the silver. The coin which is now called the victoriatus was struck by the Clodian law; for before that this coin, brought in from Illyricum, was counted as merchandise. It is stamped with a Victory, and hence the name.
47| — A gold coin was struck 51 years after the silver one, in such a way that the scripulum was worth twenty sesterces each, which makes, on the reckoning of the sesterce that was then current, VDCCLX to the pound. Afterwards it was decided that 40 denarii be struck from each pound of gold, and little by little the emperors reduced the weight, and most recently Nero to 45.
48| But from the coin came the first origin of avarice, with usury devised and idleness made profitable, and not gradually: avarice, or rather a hunger for gold, blazed out in a kind of madness, inasmuch as Septumuleius, a familiar friend of Gaius Gracchus, brought his head, cut off, to Opimius to be paid back in gold, and, lead having been added in the mouth, cheated the commonwealth even in his parricide; and not any of the Quirites now, but with the whole Roman name disgraced, King Mithridates poured gold into the mouth of the general Aquilius when he had been captured.
49| This is what the desire of having begets! It is shameful, looking at those names, which are devised ever new in Greek speech, gold being sprinkled over and inlaid in silver vessels, so that for such luxuries gilded ware sells for more than golden, although we know that Spartacus forbade anyone in his camp to have gold or silver. So much more spirit had our runaway slaves!
50| The orator Messalla reported that the triumvir Antony used golden vessels for all obscene needs, a charge that would shame even Cleopatra. The height of license among foreigners had been that King Philip was accustomed to sleep with a golden cup placed under his pillows, and that Hagnon of Teos, a prefect of Alexander the Great, fastened his sandals with golden nails: Antony alone, by an insult to nature, made gold cheap. O man worthy of proscription, but by Spartacus!
51| For my part I am surprised that the Roman people, when peoples were conquered, always demanded silver as tribute, not gold, as from Carthage when Hannibal was defeated, eight hundred thousand, 16,000 pounds annually for fifty years, no gold. Nor can this be thought to have happened from a scarcity in the world. Already Midas and Croesus had possessed it without limit, already Cyrus, when Asia was conquered, had found 24,000 pounds besides vessels and worked gold, and in it a throne, a plane tree, a vine. In this victory he carried away 500 talents of silver and the mixing bowl of Semiramis, whose weight came to 15 talents.
52| Marcus Varro reports that the Egyptian talent was a weight of 80 pounds. Already there had reigned in Colchis Saulaces, offspring of Aeetes, who, finding virgin earth, is said to have dug out the most gold and silver among the people of the Suani, and moreover in a kingdom famous for golden fleeces. And the golden vaults of that king, with silver beams and columns and pilasters, are told as conquered by Sesostris, king of Egypt, so proud that it is handed down that each year he was accustomed to yoke to his chariot by lot one of the kings of his subjects and so to triumph!
53| And we have done things that posterity will think fabulous. Caesar, who was afterwards dictator, was the first, in his aedileship, at the funeral show for his father, to use silver for all the equipment of the arena, and condemned men then for the first time attacked the beasts with silver equipment, which even in the municipalities they now emulate. Gaius Antonius made games with a silver stage, and so did Lucius Murena; the emperor Gaius led a pegma in the circus, in which there were 124,000 pounds of silver.
54| Claudius, his successor, when he triumphed over Britain, showed by inscriptions that among the golden crowns there were 7,000 pounds from Hither Spain and 9,000 from Long-haired Gaul. His successor Nero then covered Pompey's theater with gold for a single day, to show it to Tiridates, king of Armenia. And what a small part that was of the Golden House that encircles the city!
55| When Sextus Julius and Lucius Aurelius were consuls, seven years ahead of the third Punic war, the treasury of the Roman people held 17,410 pounds of gold and 22,070 of silver, and in coin 6,135,400; when Sextus Julius and Lucius Marcius were consuls, that is, at the beginning of the Social war, it held of gold [….] 1,620,831.
56| Gaius Caesar, on his first entry to the city in his civil war, brought out from the treasury 15,000 gold ingots, 30,000 silver, and in coin 30,000,000. Nor was the commonwealth richer at any other time. Aemilius Paulus also brought in, when King Perseus was defeated, from the Macedonian booty 300,000,000, from which time the Roman people ceased to pay tribute.
57| Coffered ceilings, which are now covered with gold even in private houses, were first gilded on the Capitol after the overthrow of Carthage, in the censorship of Lucius Mummius. From there they passed to vaults and also walls, which now themselves are gilded like vessels, although his own age judged variously of Catulus, because he had gilded the bronze tiles of the Capitol.
58| The first discoverers of gold, as of nearly all metals, we told in the seventh volume. I think the special favor of this material came not from its color, which is brighter in silver and more like daylight, and for that reason more familiar on military standards, since it shines farther, those people being plainly in error who think that the color of the stars pleased in gold, when in gems and other things it is not outstanding.
59| It was preferred to the other metals neither for weight nor for ease of working, since it yields to lead in both, but because it alone among things loses nothing in fire, even safely in conflagrations and on pyres. Nay, the more often it has been burned, the more it improves in goodness, and the test of gold is fire, in that it glows red and itself ignites with a like color; they call it obrussa.
60| The first proof of goodness, however, is to catch fire with the greatest difficulty. Besides, it is remarkable that, unconquered by the coals of the most violent wood, it kindles very quickly with chaff, and is cooked with lead in order to be purified. A second cause of its price, a greater one, is that it wears least in use, while lines are drawn with silver, bronze and lead, and hands are soiled by the falling material.
61| Nor is anything else spread out more widely or divided into more parts, inasmuch as ounces of it are scattered into seven hundred and fifty or more leaves, four fingers each way. The thickest of these are called Praenestine, the gilded image of Fortune there most faithfully still retaining the name. The next leaf is called the quaestorian.
62| Spain calls small masses of gold striges. Above all, it alone is taken in a mass or in grains. Whereas other things found in mines are finished by fire, this is gold at once and has its material complete as soon as it is found. For this finding of it is natural; the other, which we shall describe, is forced. Above the rest, there is no rust, no verdigris, nothing from itself that consumes its goodness or lessens its weight. Moreover, against the juices of salt and vinegar, tamers of things, it overcomes everything by its constancy, and besides it is spun and woven like wool, or without wool.
63| Verrius teaches that Tarquinius Priscus triumphed in a golden tunic; we ourselves saw Agrippina, wife of the emperor Claudius, when he was giving the spectacle of a naval battle, sitting by, dressed in a military cloak of woven gold without any other material. With Attalic cloths, indeed, it was long ago woven in, an invention of the kings of Asia.
64| On marble and on things that cannot be made white-hot, it is put on with the white of egg; on wood, with a specially compounded glue; they call it leucophorum. What this is and how it is made we shall teach in its place. To gild bronze with quicksilver, or at least with hydrargyrum, was the lawful way; about these we shall speak when we give their nature.
65| A fraud has been devised, for the bronze is first tortured and, when heated, quenched with salt, vinegar and alum, afterwards sanded off, the glitter showing whether it has been recooked enough, and again it is heated by fire, so that, thoroughly tamed, with pumice, alum and quicksilver mixed, it can receive the leaves laid on. Alum also has in cleaning a force such as we said lead has.
66| Gold is found in our world, to leave aside the Indian gold dug out by ants or that among the Scythians dug out by griffins, in three ways: in the grains of rivers, as in the Tagus of Spain, the Po of Italy, the Hebrus of Thrace, the Pactolus of Asia, and the Ganges of India, and no gold is more perfect, being polished by the very running and wearing. In another way it is dug from the pits of shafts or is sought in the fall of mountains; let each method be described.
67| Those who look for gold first of all pick up the segutilum; so the indication is called. It is a bed of sand, which is washed, and from what settles a conjecture is made. Sometimes it is found at once in the top of the earth by a rare good fortune, as lately in Dalmatia in the principate of Nero, pouring out even fifty pounds each day. When it is found in this way in the top turf, they call it talutium, if gold-bearing earth also lies beneath. Otherwise the mountains of the Spains, dry and barren and ones where nothing else grows, are forced to be fertile in this good.
68| What is dug from pits they call canalicium, others canaliense, clinging to the gravel of marble, not in the way in which in the East it glitters in sappirus and Theban stone and other gems, but embracing the flakes of marble. These channels of veins wander through the sides of the pits and hither and thither, whence the name was found, and the earth is held up by wooden columns. What has been dug out is pounded, washed, burned, ground.
69| The flour from the mortar they call scudes; the silver that comes out of the furnace, sweat. The filth that is thrown from the furnace in every metal is called scoria. In gold this is pounded and cooked again. Crucibles are made from tasconium; this is a white earth like clay, for no other bears the blast and the fire and the burning material.
70| The third method would have surpassed the works of the Giants. Tunnels are driven over great distances and mountains hollowed out by the light of lamps; the same is the measure of the watches, and for many months daylight is not seen. They call this kind arrugiae. And cracks suddenly settle and crush the workers, so that it seems now less rash to seek pearls and purples from the depth of the sea. So much more harmful have we made the lands! Therefore frequent arches are left to hold up the mountains.
71| Flints meet them in both kinds; these they break with fire and vinegar, but more often, since that chokes the tunnels with heat and smoke, they cut them with breakers holding 150 pounds of iron, and carry out the debris on their shoulders by night and day through the darkness, handing it to the next; the last see the light. If the flint seems too long, the digger follows its side and goes around it. And yet the work is thought easier in flint;
72| for there is an earth of a kind of clay mixed with gravel — they call it gangadia — almost impregnable. They attack it with iron wedges and the same hammers, and think nothing harder, except that among all things the hunger for gold is hardest. When the work is finished, they cut the necks of the arches from the farthest point. The fall gives the signal, and only the watchman at the summit of that mountain perceives it.
73| He orders the workers to be called out by voice and by a nod, and at the same moment flies down himself. The broken mountain falls of itself far off with a crash that cannot be conceived by the human mind, and with an incredible blast of air as well. The victors watch the ruin of nature. And yet there is as yet no gold, nor did they know there was any when they were digging, and for such dangers and expenses it was cause enough to hope for what they desired.
74| Another labor, equal or of even greater expense: they have led streams for washing this fallen mass from the ridges of the mountains, often from a hundredth milestone away; they call them corrugi, from conrivatio, I believe. Here too are a thousand labors: the fall must be steep, so that the water rushes rather than flows; therefore it is led from the very highest parts. Valleys and gaps are joined by built-up channels. Elsewhere impassable cliffs are cut away and forced to give a bed to hollowed timbers.
75| The man who cuts hangs from ropes, so that to one looking from afar he takes on the look not even of wild beasts but of birds. Hanging, for the most part, they level, and draw lines ahead for the route, and where there is no place for the footsteps of a man to stand, rivers are drawn by man. There is a fault in washing if the flowing stream brings in mud; this kind of earth they call urium. Therefore they lead the water over flints or pebbles and avoid urium. At the heads of the slope, on the brows of the mountains, pools are hollowed out, two hundred feet in each direction and ten in depth. Outlets of five square feet each are left in them, about three in number, so that when the pool is full and the stoppers are knocked out, the torrent bursts out with such force that it rolls the rocks along.
76| There is yet another labor on the plain. Ditches through which it may flow are dug — they call them agogae; these are laid step by step with ulex. It is a shrub like ros marinus, rough, and it retains gold. The sides are closed with planks, and over steep places the channels are hung. So the earth, flowing, slides into the sea, and the broken mountain is washed away, and for these reasons Spain has already pushed the land far out into the sea.
77| In the former kind, the water that is drawn off with immense labor lest it fill the pits is in this kind let in to flood the ground. Gold sought by arrugia is not cooked, but is at once its own. In this way masses are found, and also in the pits, even exceeding ten pounds each; they call them palagae, others palacurnae, and the same people call what is small baluce. Ulex is dried and burned, and its ash is washed over a grassy turf laid beneath, so that the gold settles.
78| Some have reported that Asturia, Callaecia and Lusitania yield twenty thousand pounds each year in this way, in such a way that Asturia produces the most. Nor in any other part of the world has this fertility persisted through so many ages. We have said that Italy is spared by an old prohibition of the fathers; otherwise no land was more fruitful in metals also. There survives a censors' law about the gold mines of the Victumulae in the territory of Vercellae, by which it was provided that the tax-farmers should not have more than five thousand men at the work.
79| There is still one way of making gold, from auripigmentum, which is dug in Syria for painters in the topmost earth, of the color of gold but brittle, like specular stones. The hope had enticed the emperor Gaius, most greedy of gold; for which reason he ordered a great weight to be smelted, and he made gold that was indeed excellent, but of so little weight that, having tried it, he felt the loss because of his avarice, although pounds of auripigmentum were exchanged at 4 denarii. Nor was it tried by anyone afterwards.
80| In all gold there is silver, in varying weight, in some places a tenth part, in others an eighth. In only one mine of Callaecia, which they call the Albucrarense, a thirty-sixth portion is found; therefore it excels the rest. Wherever there is a fifth portion of silver, it is called electrum. These filings are found in canaliense. Electrum is also made by art, silver being added. If it has exceeded a fifth portion, it does not stand up to the anvils.
81| Electrum too has an ancient authority, with Homer as witness, who reports that the palace of Menelaus shone with gold, electrum, silver and ivory. Lindos, on the island of the Rhodians, has a temple of Minerva in which Helen dedicated a cup of electrum; history adds, of the measure of her breast. It is the nature of electrum to shine more brightly than silver by the light of lamps. What is natural also detects poisons. For in cups arcs like rainbows run about with a fiery hiss, and in a twofold manner give warning.
82| A golden statue, the first of all, with no hollowness, and before any was made in any way of bronze, which they call holosphyraton, is said to have been set up in the temple of Anaitis, in the region of the world in which we have marked this name, the divinity most sacred to those peoples.
83| It was plundered in the Parthian affairs of Antony, and a witty reply is told of one of the veterans, at Bononia, at a hospitable dinner of the deified Augustus. When he was asked whether he knew that the man who had first violated that divinity had died blinded and crippled, he answered that at that very moment Augustus was dining off his leg, that he was the man, and that his whole fortune came from that plunder. Of men, the first to set up both a golden and a solid statue of himself, about the 70th Olympiad, was Gorgias of Leontini, at Delphi, in the temple. So great was the profit of teaching the art of oratory.
84| Gold has power in several ways in remedies, and is applied to the wounded and to infants, so that the poisons brought against them may harm less. Gold itself, when carried over, also has a harmful power, even on the offspring of hens and of cattle. The remedy is to wash it when brought in and to sprinkle those whom you wish to cure. It is also roasted with twice its weight of salt, three times its weight of misy, and again with 2 portions of salt and one of the stone they call schistos. In this way it draws out the poison, the things being burned together in an earthenware vessel, and the gold itself remains pure and uncorrupted.
85| The remaining ash, kept in an earthenware pot and applied with water, cures lichens on the face — it is agreed that the face be washed with lomentum — and also heals fistulas and what are called haemorrhoids. And if pounded pumice is added, it mends putrid ulcers and those of foul smell; boiled in honey with melanthium and applied to the navel, it gently loosens the bowels. That warts are cured with gold, Marcus Varro is the authority.
86| Chrysocolla is a liquid in the pits that we have spoken of, running down through a vein of gold, the slime thickening in the cold of winter to the hardness of pumice. It has been found that a more praised kind is made in copper mines and the next in silver mines. It occurs in lead mines as well, and a cheaper kind in gold mines. In all these mines it is also made by art, much below that natural one, water being let gently into the vein through all the winter up to the month of June, then dried up in June and July, so that it is plainly understood that chrysocolla is nothing else than a rotting vein.
87| The natural kind differs most in hardness; they call it uva. And yet that one also is dyed with the herb they call lutum. Its nature is that of linen or wool, to drink up juice. It is pounded in a mortar, then sifted through a fine sieve, afterwards ground and then sifted more finely. Whatever does not pass through is taken back to the mortar, then ground.
88| The powder is always distributed into dishes and soaked in vinegar so that all hardness is dissolved, and again pounded, then washed, dried in shells, then dyed with split alum and the herb mentioned above, and painted before it paints. It matters how absorbent and tractable it is. For if it has not seized the color, scytanum and turbistum are added; so they call the drugs that force it to absorb.
89| When painters have dyed it, they call it orobitis and make two kinds of it: the washed, which is kept as lomentum, and the liquid, in small balls dissolved with sweat. Both these kinds are made in Cyprus. The most praised, however, is in Armenia, the second in Macedonia, the most plentiful in Spain; the highest recommendation is that it reproduce as closely as possible the color of the herb of a green and flourishing crop.
90| It has now been seen at the shows of the emperor Nero that the sand of the circus was strewn with chrysocolla, when he himself was going to drive in a cloth of the same color. The unlearned crowd of workmen distinguishes it into three kinds: rough, which is priced at 7 denarii the pound, middle at 5 denarii, and worn, which they also call herbaceous, at 3 denarii. They coat the sandy kind, however, before they lay it on, with atramentum and paraetonium.
91| These are its binders, pleasing in color. Paraetonium, since by nature it is the greasiest and because of its smoothness the most adhesive, is sprinkled with atramentum, so that the whiteness of the paraetonium may not bring a paleness to the chrysocolla. They think that the yellow kind, lutea, is named from the herb lutum, and this very herb, rubbed under with caeruleum, they lay on in place of chrysocolla, the cheapest and most deceptive kind.
92| The use of chrysocolla is also in medicine, for cleaning wounds with wax and oil. The same, dry by itself, dries and contracts. It is also given in a sore throat or orthopnoea, to be licked with honey. It stirs vomiting; it is also mixed into eye-salves for scars of the eyes and into green plasters, to soften pains and to draw scars. The doctors call this chrysocolla acesis, which is not orobitis.
93| Goldsmiths also claim chrysocolla for themselves for gluing gold, and say that from it all similarly green things are named. It is tempered, however, with Cyprian verdigris and the urine of a boy before puberty, nitre being added, and is ground with Cyprian copper in Cyprian mortars; our people call it santerna. In this way gold is soldered, that which they call silvery. A sign is, if santerna being added makes it shine. On the contrary, coppery gold contracts and becomes dull and is soldered with difficulty. For this a glue is made from gold and a seventh part of silver, with the aforesaid things added and ground together.
94| It is fitting also to join together the rest on this subject, so that admiration for nature may touch the whole. The glue for gold is of this kind: clay for iron, cadmea for masses of bronze, alum for plates, resin for lead and for marble, while black lead is joined to white, and the white to itself, with oil; likewise tin to bronzes, silver to tin. — Bronze and iron are best melted with pine wood, but also with Egyptian papyrus, gold with chaff. — Lime is kindled by water, and the Thracian stone too, which is put out by oil; fire, however, is best put out by vinegar and birdlime and egg. — Earth burns least; charcoal has greater force when burned out and burning again.
95| After these, let the silver mines be spoken of, the madness that follows. It is found only in pits and is born with no hope of itself, with no glittering sparks, as in gold. The earth is in some places red, in others ash-colored. It cannot be smelted except with black lead or with a vein of lead — they call it galena — which is usually found beside the veins of silver. And in the same operation of the fires part goes off into lead, but the silver floats on top, like oil on water.
96| It is found in nearly all provinces, but most beautiful in Spain, and that too in barren soil and even on mountains, and wherever one vein has been found, another is found not far off. This is so indeed in almost every material, whence the Greeks seem to have said metalla. It is remarkable that the pits begun by Hannibal throughout the Spains still last. They have their names from their discoverers, of which one is called Baebelo today,
97| which furnished Hannibal with 300 pounds a day, the mountain being already hollowed out for 1,500 paces, through which space Aquitanians, standing night and day, carry out the water by the measure of lamps and make a river. A vein of silver found on the surface is called crudaria.
98| The limit of digging for the ancients used to be the discovery of alum; nothing was sought beyond. Recently a vein of copper found beneath alum has made an end of any limit to hope. The smell from silver mines is hostile to all animals, but most of all to dogs. — The softer gold and silver are, the more beautiful. Most people wonder that black lines are drawn with silver.
99| There is also a stone in these veins, whose pocket of everlasting liquid is called quicksilver. It is the poison of all things and breaks through vessels, seeping through with dire corruption. All things float upon it except gold; this alone it draws to itself. For this reason it also cleans gold best, spitting out its other impurities with frequent tossing in earthenware vessels. When the faults have been thrown out in this way, so that it too parts from the gold, it is poured into worked skins, through which, running down like sweat, it leaves pure gold behind. So also, when bronze is gilded, laid under the leaves it holds them on most tenaciously, but by its pallor it reveals leaves that are single or very thin. Therefore people seeking this theft used the white of egg to adulterate it, and soon hydrargyrum too, about which we shall speak in its place. And in any case quicksilver is not found in abundance.
101| In the same silver mines is found, to speak properly, a stone of foam, white and shining, though not translucent; they call it stimi, others stibi, others alabastrum, some larbasis. There are two kinds of it, male and female. They approve the female more; the male is rougher and scabbier and less heavy and less radiant and sandier, whereas the female shines, is friable, and splits open in fissures, not in lumps.
102| Its power is to bind and cool, but its chief use is about the eyes, for that is why many have also called it platyophthalmon, since in women's eye paints it widens the eyes, and its powder with gum of frankincense mixed in checks flows of the eyes and ulcerations of the eyes. It also stops blood flowing from the brain, and most effectively, sprinkled as powder, against fresh wounds and against old dog bites, and against burns from fire, with fat and spuma argenti and cerussa and wax.
103| It is burned, coated with morsels of ox dung, in ovens, then quenched with women's milk, and ground in mortars with rainwater added; and from time to time the cloudy liquid is poured off into a bronze vessel cleaned with nitre. Its dregs, which have settled in the mortar and are thrown away, are understood to be very full of lead. Then the vessel into which the cloudy liquid has been poured is covered with a cloth and left through the night, and the next day whatever floats on top is poured off or taken up with a sponge.
104| What has settled there is understood to be the flower, and with a cloth interposed it is dried in the sun, not so that it dries out entirely, and again ground in the mortar and divided into pastilles. Before all, however, the measure of burning is necessary, lest it become lead. Some do not use dung in the roasting, but fat. Others strain the powder in water through a threefold cloth and throw away the dregs, and pour off what has flowed through, collecting whatever settles. They mix it also into plasters and eye-salves.
105| The scoria in silver the Greeks call helcysma. Its power is to bind and cool the body, and it is added to plasters as a remedy, like molybdaena, of which we shall speak under lead, chiefly for gluing scars, and, infused in clysters with myrtle oil, against tenesmus and dysenteries. They also add it to the medicines they call lipara, for excrescences of ulcers, whether caused by friction or running on the head.
106| In the same mines is made also what is called spuma argenti. There are three kinds of it: the best, which they call chrysitis, the next, which they call argyritis, and the third, which they call molybditis. And generally all these colors are found in the same tubes. The most approved is the Attic, the next the Spanish. Chrysitis is made from the vein itself, argyritis from silver, molybditis from the casting of lead itself — which is made at Puteoli — and from this it has its name.
107| All of it is made, when its material has been smelted, by flowing down from an upper dish into a lower, and being taken up from it with small iron spits and rolled up in the flame itself on the spit, so that it may be of moderate weight. It is, as can be understood from the name, the foam of material that is boiling and will become something. It differs from scoria as foam can differ from dregs: the one is a fault of material purging itself, the other of material purged.
108| Some make two kinds of foam, which they call scirerytis and peumene, and a third, molybdaena, to be spoken of under lead. Foam, to be useful, is cooked a second time, the tubes having been broken to the size of rings. So, kindled with bellows to separate the coals and ash, it is washed in vinegar or wine and quenched at the same time. But if it is argyritis, to give it whiteness, it is ordered, broken to the size of a bean, to be cooked in an earthenware vessel with water, new wheat and barley being added in little cloths, until they are cleansed.
109| Afterwards for 6 days they grind it in mortars, washing three times a day with cold water and, when the day ends, with warm, adding fossil salt at an obol to the pound of foam. On the last day they then store it in a lead vessel. Others cook it with white bean and barley-water and dry it in the sun; others, in white wool with a bean, until it does not darken the wool. Then they add fossil salt, changing the water from time to time, and dry it during the 40 hottest days of summer. They also cook it in a pig's belly in water, and when taken out rub it with nitre and grind it as above in mortars with salt. There are those who do not cook it but grind it with salt and wash it with water added.
110| Its use is for eye-salves and for removing the ugliness of scars and blemishes from women's skin, and for washing the hair. Its power is to dry, soften, cool, purge moderately, fill ulcers, and soothe swellings; it is added to such plasters and to the lipara mentioned above. It also removes erysipelas, with rue and myrtle berries and vinegar, and chilblains with myrtle berries and wax.
111| In silver mines minium is also found, now among pigments of great standing and formerly among the Romans not only of the greatest but even sacred. Verrius lists authorities whom it is necessary to believe that the face of the image of Jupiter himself was accustomed to be smeared with minium on festival days, and the bodies of those who triumphed;
112| that Camillus so triumphed; that from this religious scruple it is even now added to the unguents of the triumphal banquet, and that the very first contract the censors let is for painting Jupiter with minium. The reason for this I for my part wonder at, although it is agreed that even today it is sought by the peoples of the Ethiopians and that their chiefs are entirely dyed with it, this being the color of the images of the gods there. For that reason we shall pursue everything about it more carefully.
113| Theophrastus reports that minium was found by Callias the Athenian 90 years before Praxibulus' magistracy among the Athenians — a time that works out as the year 349 of our city — Callias at first hoping that gold could be smelted from a reddish sand in the silver mines; that this was its origin,
114| but that it was found already at that time in Spain, though hard and sandy, and likewise among the Colchians on a certain inaccessible rock, from which men knocked it down by hurling missiles; that this was the adulterated kind, but the best above Ephesus in the Cilbian fields, a sand having the color of scarlet; that this is ground, then the meal is washed and what settles is washed again; that the difference in the art is that some make minium from the first washing, among others that is thinner, but the best is from the following washing.
115| I am not surprised that the color had standing. For already in Trojan times red ochre was in honor, with Homer as witness, who recommends ships by it, otherwise rare about pigments and paintings. The Greeks call it milton, and they call minium cinnabaris.
116| Hence arose an error through ignorance of names. For so they call the gore of a dragon crushed by the weight of dying elephants, the blood of both animals mixed together, as we have said, and there is no other color that properly renders blood in painting. That cinnabaris is most useful for antidotes and medicines. But, by Hercules, doctors, because they call it cinnabaris, use this minium, which we shall teach a little later is a poison.
117| The ancients painted with cinnabaris what even now are called monochromes. They also painted with Ephesian minium, which has been abandoned because the treatment of it was a great work. Besides, both were thought too sharp. Therefore they passed to red ochre and sinopis, of which I shall speak in their places. Cinnabaris is adulterated with goat's blood or crushed sorb-apples. The price of the genuine is 50 nummi.
118| Juba reports that minium is born also in Carmania, Timagenes also in Ethiopia, but from neither place is it brought to us, nor almost from anywhere other than Spain, the most famous being the region of Sisapo in Baetica, a minium mine belonging to the revenues of the Roman people, with the guarding of no other thing more careful. It is not permitted to finish it or smelt it there; the ore is brought to Rome under seal, about two thousand pounds a year; at Rome, however, it is washed, a price fixed by law for its sale, so that it should not exceed 70 sesterces to the pound. But it is adulterated in many ways, whence profit for the company.
119| For there is another kind in almost all silver mines and likewise lead mines, made from burned stone mixed with the veins, not from that one whose pocket we called quicksilver — for that too is smelted into silver — but from others found at the same time. They are also sterile flecks of lead. They are detected by color alone, and they redden only in furnaces, and burned they are pounded into meal. This is secondary minium, known to very few, much below those natural sands.
120| With this, then, minium is adulterated in the workshops of the partners, and more cheaply with Syricum. How Syricum is made we shall teach in its place; that Syricum is laid under minium, the reasoning of saving shows. And in another way there is an opportunity for theft among painters, as they from time to time wash out their full brushes. It settles in the water and is secured for the thieves.
121| In the genuine kind there ought to be the brightness of scarlet, but the splendor of the secondary on walls smacks of plumbago. Although this is a kind of rust of the metal. The Sisapo minium mines, however, have their own vein of sand without silver. It is smelted in the manner of gold; it is tested with white-hot gold, for the counterfeit turns black, the genuine retains its color. I find also that it is adulterated with lime, and that in a similar manner it is detected by a plate of white-hot iron, if no gold is to hand.
122| For what is smeared on, contact with sun and moon is hostile. The remedy is that, the wall having dried, Punic wax melted with oil be spread on hot with bristles, and again burned in with charcoal of galla brought near it until it sweats, afterwards worked over with candles and then with clean linen cloths, as marbles are made to shine. Those who polish minium in the workshops tie loose bladders over the face so as not to draw in the deadly dust as they breathe, and yet look out above them. Minium is also used in writing volumes, and makes letters brighter on a wall or on marble, even on tombs.
123| From the secondary minium, life itself invented hydrargyrum too, as a substitute for the quicksilver spoken of a little earlier. It is made in two ways: with minium ground in bronze mortars with pestles in vinegar, or placed in earthenware dishes with an iron shell, covered with a cup, clay plastered over it, then fire kindled beneath the dishes with continuous bellows, and the sweat on the cup wiped off in this way, which comes out with the color of silver and the liquidity of water. It is likewise easily divided into drops and runs together with slippery moisture. Since it is agreed to be a poison, I judge all that is reported about minium in the use of medicine to be rash, except perhaps that when smeared on the head or belly it stops blood, provided it does not penetrate into the viscera and touch a wound. I would not myself advise using it otherwise.
125| With hydrargyrum silver alone is gilded now, almost, although it ought to be applied in a similar way to bronze. But the same fraud, which is most ingenious in every part of life, has devised a cheaper material, as we have taught.
126| The mention of gold and silver is accompanied by a stone they call coticula, once not usually found except in the river Tmolus, as Theophrastus is the authority, but now everywhere. Some call it Heraclian, others Lydian. They are moderate in size, not exceeding four unciae in length and two in breadth. The part of them that has faced the sun is better than that which has faced the earth. When experts have scraped a test from a vein on these little stones, as with a file, they say at once how much gold is in it, how much silver or bronze, to a difference of a scripulum, by a wonderful method that does not fail.
127| Silver has two differences. It is tested with iron shovels glowing hot, a grain being placed on it, by whether it stays white. The next goodness is with a reddish one, none with a black one. But fraud intervenes in the test as well. If the shovels have been kept in men's urine, the grain is stained in passing, while it is being burned, and counterfeits whiteness. There is also a test of polished silver in a person's breath, if it sweats at once and disperses the cloud.
128| It was believed that plates could be drawn out into the likeness of glass only from the best. That used to be sound, but that too is now corrupted by fraud. There is a wonderful nature in rendering images, which is agreed to happen by the air being driven back and thrown back into the eyes. By the same force, thus, in the use of a mirror, when the thickness is polished and is pushed forward a little, the size of the images is enlarged immensely. So much does it matter whether it receives that reflection or rejects it.
129| Indeed cups too are so shaped, with many hollows driven in as if mirrors, that even for one person looking, a crowd of as many images appears. Monstrous ones are also devised, such as were dedicated in the temple at Smyrna. This happens from the shape of the material. It matters greatly whether they are concave and like a cup or a Thracian shield, depressed in the middle or raised, transverse or oblique, upturned or turned down, the quality of the receiving shape twisting the shadows that come;
130| for that image is nothing other than the shadow of the receiving material, spread out by its brightness. And, so that everything about mirrors may be completed in this place, the best among our ancestors had been the Brundisian, of tin and bronze mixed. Silver ones were preferred; Pasiteles first made them in the time of Pompey the Great. Recently people have begun to believe that a truer image is given when gold is set behind.
131| Egypt dyes silver, so that on vessels it looks upon its Anubis, and it paints silver, it does not engrave it. Hence the material has passed also to triumphal statues; and, remarkably, the price grows for a brightness blinded. This is done in the following way: to the silver is mixed a third part of the finest Cyprian bronze, which they call coronarium, and as much live sulphur as silver; they are fused in this way in an earthenware vessel coated round with clay; the measure of cooking is until the lids open of themselves. It also turns black with the yolk of a hardened egg, yet it is rubbed off with vinegar and chalk.
132| The triumvir Antony mixed iron into the denarius, others mix bronze in false coinage, others also take from the weight, though it is lawful that 83 be struck from a pound. Hence the testing of denarii was made an art, by a law so welcome to the plebs that they dedicated whole statues to Marius Gratidianus ward by ward. And remarkably, in this alone of the arts faults are learned, and the pattern of a false denarius is looked at, and a counterfeit is bought for more genuine denarii.
133| Among the ancients there was no number beyond a hundred thousand; therefore even today these are multiplied, so that they are said as ten hundred-thousands or more often. Usury made this, and the coin struck, and in this way too debt is even now called aes alienum. Afterwards men were surnamed Dives, provided that it is known that the one who first received this surname had defaulted on his creditors.
134| From the same family Marcus Crassus used to deny that anyone was rich unless he could maintain a legion from his yearly income. In lands he possessed 200,000,000 sesterces, the richest of the Quirites after Sulla, and it was not enough unless he had seized the whole gold of the Parthians; and — so that he may have taken hold of the memory of wealth, for it is a pleasure to hound that insatiable desire of having — we have known many afterwards freed from slavery who were wealthier, and in the principate of Claudius, a little before, three at once: Callistus, Pallas, Narcissus.
135| And, leaving these aside, as though they still held power, in the consulship of Gaius Asinius Gallus and Gaius Marcius Censorinus, on the sixth day before the Kalends of February, Gaius Caecilius Isidorus, freedman of Gaius, declared in his will that, although he had lost much in the civil war, he was nevertheless leaving 4,116 slaves, 3,600 yoke of oxen, 257,000 head of other livestock, and in cash 60,000,000 sesterces; he ordered that 1,000,000 sesterces be spent on his funeral.
136| Let them heap up riches exceeding number; yet how small a portion they will be of Ptolemy, who, Varro reports, while Pompey was operating around Judaea, maintained eight thousand horsemen from his own funds, and fed a thousand guests, with as many golden drinking cups, changing those vessels with the courses! And how small a portion would even that man himself — for I am not speaking of kings — have been of Pythes the Bithynian,
137| who gave King Darius that famous golden plane tree and vine, entertained the forces of Xerxes, that is 788,000 men, at a banquet, and promised five months' pay and grain, asking that of his five children one at least be left to his old age in the levy! Let someone compare even this man with King Croesus! What madness, curse it, is it to desire in life that which has either fallen to slaves as well or has found no limit even in kings!
138| The Roman people began to scatter largesse in the consulship of Spurius Postumius and Quintus Marcius; there was such an abundance of money that they contributed it to Lucius Scipio, from which he gave games. For when the people contributed sextantes of bronze to the funeral of Menenius Agrippa, I should judge that to be a matter of honor and necessity because of Agrippa's poverty, not of generosity.
139| Vessels of silver the amazing inconstancy of the human mind varies, no kind of workshop being approved for long. Now the Furnian, now the Clodian, now the Gratian — for we adopt shops for our tables — now we seek relief work and roughness cut away around the paintings of lines,
140| and now indeed we set tables on stands to bear the dishes, and scrape out some parts, so that the file may have destroyed as much as possible. That cooking vessels are made of silver, the orator Calvus cries out; but we have found carriages to be engraved with silver, and in our own age Poppaea, wife of the emperor Nero, ordered even the shoes of her more delicate pack animals to be made of gold.
141| Thirty-two pounds of silver was what the later Africanus left his heir, and the same man, when he triumphed over the Carthaginians, carried over 4,370 pounds. This was all the silver that Carthage had, that rival of the earth, a city later conquered by how great an apparatus of tables! When Numantia was destroyed, the same Africanus gave the soldiers 7 denarii each in his triumph. O men worthy of that commander, for whom this was enough! His brother Allobrogicus was the first of all to have a thousand pounds, but Drusus Livius in his tribunate of the plebs had 10.
142| For that an old man who had triumphed was marked by the censors on account of five pounds seems now fabulous, and likewise Aelius Catus, when the envoys of the Aetolians, in his consulship, approached him lunching off earthenware, did not accept the silver vessels sent by them, and had no other silver up to the last day of his life than two cups which his father-in-law Lucius Paulus gave him for his courage when King Perseus was conquered.
143| We find that the envoys of the Carthaginians said that no men lived more kindly among themselves than the Romans. For they themselves had dined from the same silver at everyone's house. But, by Hercules, we know that Pompeius Paulinus, son of a Roman knight of Arelate, clad in skins from his paternal race, had 12 pounds of silver with the army when set against the fiercest peoples;
144| and that the beds of women have long since been covered entirely with silver, some dining couches also. To these Carvilius Pollio, a Roman knight, is reported to have been the first to add silver, not to cover them or to make a Delian appearance, but a Punic one; he made the same also golden, and not long after silver ones imitated the Delian. All of which the civil war of Sulla atoned for.
145| For a little before this, dishes were made of a hundred pounds of silver each, which it is agreed there were at that time more than 150 in number at Rome, and many were proscribed on account of them by the deceit of those who coveted them. Let the annals blush that charged that civil war with such faults; our age was bolder. In the principate of Claudius his slave, Drusilianus by name, Rotundus, steward of Hither Spain, had a five-hundred-pound platter, for the making of which a workshop had first been built, and its eight companions up to 250 pounds, I ask you, how many of his fellow slaves were needed to carry them in, or who were the diners?
146| Cornelius Nepos reports that before the victory of Sulla there were only two silver dining couches at Rome, and that silver began to be added to sideboards in his own memory. Fenestella, who died at the very end of the principate of Tiberius Caesar, says that tortoiseshell too then came into use, but a little before his own time wooden ones, round, solid and not much larger than tables, and that in his boyhood square and joined ones began, covered with maple or citrus wood; soon silver was added at the corners and in lines along the joints; tympana, indeed, were so called in his youth, and then from balances also platters, which the ancients had called magides.
147| Nor does life rage only with the abundance of silver, but even more with the wages of craftsmen, and that long since, so that we may forgive ourselves. Dolphins bought at five thousand sesterces to the pound Gaius Gracchus had, and the orator Lucius Crassus two cups engraved by the hand of the artist Mentor for 100 sesterces, yet confessed that he had never dared use them, out of modesty. We know that the same man had vessels bought at 6,000 sesterces for each pound.
148| Asia, first conquered, sent luxury into Italy, since Lucius Scipio carried over in his triumph 1,400 pounds of engraved silver and 1,500 pounds of golden vessels [in the 565th year from the founding of the city]. But the same Asia, when bequeathed, afflicted morals much more gravely still, and that inheritance, on the death of King Attalus, did more harm than the victory.
149| For it was then, in the year of the city 622, that the scruple against buying these things at Rome at the royal auctions was removed, since in the 57 years in between the community had learned to love foreign opulence, and not merely to admire it; and the Achaean victory had also had an immense weight in driving morals on, for it too, won within this interval, in the city's year 608, brought in statues and paintings. So that nothing should be lacking,
150| luxury was born at the very moment Carthage was destroyed, by such a concurrence of fates that it became both pleasant and permissible to embrace vices. Some of the men of old, too, sought prestige from this source. Gaius Marius, after his victory over the Cimbri, is said to have drunk from canthari, after the example of Father Liber: he, the ploughman of Arpinum, a general from the common soldiery.
151| It is wrongly supposed that the use of silver first passed into statues through the flattery of the times of the deified Augustus. For we find that already in the triumph of Pompey the Great a silver statue of Pharnaces, the first to reign in Pontus, was carried in procession, likewise one of Mithridates Eupator, as well as chariots of gold and silver.
152| Silver sometimes takes the place even of gold, through the luxury of women of the common people who make anklets for themselves, since a custom grown too common forbids them to wear gold ones. We ourselves have seen Arellius Fuscus, who was removed from the equestrian order for a notorious false accusation, wearing silver rings at the time when crowds of young men flocked to his school. And what is the point of collecting such things, when soldiers' sword hilts are chased with silver, even ivory now being scorned, when their scabbards jingle with little chains and their belts with plates; when, indeed, page boys at the passage to manhood are kept in check with silver, when women bathe and scorn any bathtubs but silver ones, and the same material serves both for food and for indecency?
153| If only Fabricius could see these things, and the baths of women who bathe together with men, so paved with silver that there is no room for a footstep! Fabricius, who forbade generals in war to own more silver than a libation dish and a saltcellar: if only he could see the rewards of the brave being made from this, or broken up to make such things! Alas for our morals: Fabricius puts us to shame!
154| It is remarkable that no one has become famous for engraving gold, but many for silver. The most praised, however, is Mentor, whom we have spoken of above. Only four pairs in all were made by him, and none is said to survive now, owing to the fires that burned the Capitol and the temple of Diana at Ephesus.
155| Varro writes that he too owned a bronze statue by him. Next to him in admiration were Acragas, Boethus and Mys. Works by all of them survive today on the island of the Rhodians: by Boethus in the temple of Minerva at Lindus; by Acragas, in the temple of Father Liber in Rhodes itself, cups engraved with Centaurs and Bacchants; by Mys, in the same temple, Sileni and Cupids. A hunting scene on cups by Acragas was also very famous.
156| After these Calamis became celebrated, and Antipater, who was said to have laid a Satyr weighed down with sleep in a libation bowl rather than to have engraved it [….]; then Stratonicus of Cyzicus, and Tauriscus. Likewise Ariston and Eunicus of Mitylene are praised, and Hecataeus, and, around the time of Pompey the Great, Pasiteles, Posidonius of Ephesus [hedys], Thracides, who engraved battles and armed men, and Zopyrus, who engraved the Areopagites and the trial of Orestes on two cups valued at 1,200,000 sesterces. There was also Pytheas, 2 ounces of whose work sold for 10 denarii: it was Ulysses and Diomedes stealing the Palladium, on the emblem of a libation bowl.
157| The same artist also made cooks, called magiriscia, on little drinking cups, from which no one was allowed even to take casts, so open to damage was their delicacy. Teucer the crustarius was also famous; and then this art suddenly died out, so that it is now valued only for its antiquity, and engravings are prized when they are so worn down by use that the figure cannot be made out. (Silver is stained by medicinal waters and by salty air,
158| as in the inland parts of Spain.) In mines of silver and gold pigments are also found, sil and caeruleum. Sil is properly a mud. The best of it is the kind called Attic, priced at 2 denarii a pound; next is the marbled kind, at half the price of the Attic. The third kind is pressum,
159| which others call Scyrian, from the island of Scyros, and now from Achaia too; they use it for shadows in painting, at a price of two sesterces a pound; and, at a dupondius a pound less, the kind they call lucidum, which comes from Gaul. This and the Attic they use for highlights, and for panels only the marbled kind, because the marble in it resists the bitterness of lime. It is also dug in the mountains at the 20th milestone from the city; afterwards it is burned by those who adulterate it, and they call it pressum. But that it is false and burned is evident from its bitterness and because it has been reduced to powder.
160| Polygnotus and Micon were the first to paint with sil, and only with the Attic. The age that followed used it for highlights, and for shadows the Scyrian and the Lydian. The Lydian was bought at Sardis; it is now no longer used.
161| Caeruleum is a sand. Anciently it came in three kinds. The Egyptian is the most approved; next, the Scythian dissolves easily and, when it is ground, changes into four colors, whiter or blacker, and coarser or finer; the Cyprian is still preferred to it. To these were added the Puteolan and the Spanish, after sand began to be prepared in those places. All of it is dyed and boiled with its own plant, and drinks in the juice. The rest of the preparation is the same as for chrysocolla. From caeruleum is made what is called lomentum;
162| it is finished by washing and grinding. This is whiter than caeruleum. Its price is 10 denarii a pound, that of caeruleum 8 denarii. It is used on creta; it does not tolerate lime. Recently Vestorian has been added as well, named after the man who first made it. It is made from the lightest part of the Egyptian; its price is 1 denarius a pound. The Puteolan has the same uses, and is used besides for windows;
163| they call it cylon. Not long ago Indian caeruleum also began to be imported; its price is 7 denarii. Its use in painting is for the incisions, that is, for dividing the shadows from the light. There is also a very cheap kind of lomentum, which they call tritum, valued at five asses. The test of pure caeruleum is that it blazes up on a live coal. It is counterfeited with dried violets boiled in water, the juice being squeezed through linen into Eretrian creta. Its power in medicine is to cleanse ulcers; so they add it to plasters, and also to caustics. It is, however, very difficult to grind.
164| In medicine sil is gently biting and astringent, and fills up ulcers. It is burned in earthenware pots to make it effective. As for the prices of things that we have given anywhere, we are aware that they differ from place to place and change almost every year, according to the cost of shipping, or the terms on which each man bought, or as some powerful dealer whips up the market price; nor have we forgotten that under Nero's principate the whole of the Seplasia brought Demetrius before the consuls with an accusation. Nevertheless it was necessary to give the prices that generally held at Rome, so as to convey the value of things.

======== Natural History — Book XXXIV ========

1| Next let us speak of the mines of copper, the metal that also comes next in value for use; indeed the Corinthian kind ranks ahead of silver and almost ahead of gold. It also had the authority of coinage, as we have said. Hence we speak of soldiers' aera, of the tribuni aerarii and the aerarium, of men who are obaerati and aere diruti. We have shown how long the Roman people used only stamped copper; and another fact of antiquity declares its prestige to be as old as the city: King Numa established the copper-smiths as the third guild.
2| The ore is dug in the way we have described and refined by fire. Copper is also made from a coppery stone which they call cadmea, which is famous overseas and was once found in Campania, and now also in the territory of the Bergomates, at the far end of Italy; they say it has lately been found in the province of Germany as well. It is also made from another stone, which they call chalcitis, in Cyprus, where copper was first discovered; soon its value fell sharply, when a better kind was found in other lands, above all aurichalcum, which long held special esteem for its quality and was admired, but has not been found for a long time now, since the earth is exhausted.
3| Next in quality was the Sallustian, in the Alpine territory of the Ceutrones; it too did not last long, and the Livian, in Gaul, succeeded it. Both were named after the owners of the mines, the former after a friend of the deified Augustus, the latter after his wife.
4| The Livian also quickly gave out; at any rate very little of it is found. The height of fame has now passed to the Marian, which is also called the Corduban. After the Livian, this absorbs cadmea best, and imitates the quality of aurichalcum in our sesterces and dupondii, while the asses are content with their own Cyprian copper. So much for the natural excellence of copper.
5| The remaining kinds depend on human skill, and they will be given in their proper places, after the most famous have first of all been pointed out. Once bronze was fused and mixed with gold and silver, and yet the workmanship was more precious than the material; now it is uncertain which is worse, the workmanship or the material. And, wonderful to say, while the prices of works have risen beyond all limit, the prestige of the art has died out. For, like everything else, it has begun to be practised for gain, though it used to be practised for glory (that is why it was even ascribed to the work of the gods, when the leading men of nations sought fame by this road too); and the method of casting precious bronze has so far died out that for a long time now not even chance has had the privilege of art in this matter.
6| Of that ancient glory, the Corinthian is the most praised. Chance produced this alloy at Corinth, when the city was burned at its capture; and many people's passion for it is wonderfully frenzied, since it is reported that Verres, whom Marcus Cicero had convicted, was proscribed together with Cicero by Antony for no other reason than that he had refused to give up his Corinthian bronzes to him. To me, the greater part of these people seem to pretend to this knowledge in order to set themselves apart from others, rather than to understand anything more subtle in it; and I shall show this in a few words.
7| Corinth was taken in the 158th Olympiad, in its third year, the 608th of our city, when for ages before this there had been no famous modellers, all of whose statues these people today call Corinthian. Therefore, to refute them, we shall set out the dates of the artists; for the years of our city will be easy to work out from the correspondence with the Olympiads given above. The only true Corinthian articles, then, are vessels, which these connoisseurs convert now into dishes for food, now into lamps or basins, with no regard for refinement.
8| There are three kinds of it: a white kind, coming as close as possible to silver in brilliance, in which that metal predominated in the mixture; a second, in which the tawny nature of gold predominated; a third, in which all were blended in equal measure. Besides these there is one whose composition cannot be accounted for, though it is made by human hand; but chance does the blending in images and statues, and produces a bronze prized for its own color, tending toward the look of liver, which is therefore called hepatizon. It is far behind the Corinthian, yet well ahead of the Aeginetan and the Delian, which long held first place.
9| The most ancient fame in bronze belonged to the Delian, since the whole world thronged to the market on Delos, and hence care was given to the workshops. There bronze first won distinction in the feet and frames of dining couches; then it came also to images of the gods and to likenesses of men and other animals.
10| The next praise went to the Aeginetan; the island itself was made famous by it, not because the metal was produced there, but because of the alloying done in its workshops. A bronze ox taken from there stands in the Forum Boarium at Rome. This will be the example of Aeginetan bronze; of Delian, the Jupiter on the Capitol in the temple of Jupiter the Thunderer. Myron used the former bronze, Polycletus the latter; both were contemporaries and fellow pupils, and so their rivalry extended even to their material.
11| Aegina made a specialty of the upper parts of lampstands only, as Tarentum did of the stems. In these, then, the merits of the two workshops are combined. Nor are people ashamed to pay the salary of a military tribune for them, although the very name evidently comes from the light of candles. At a sale held by the crier Theon, the appendage to one such lampstand was Clesippus, a fuller, a hunchback and hideous besides in other respects, when Gegania bought it for 50 sesterces.
12| She showed off her purchase at a banquet; he was stripped naked for mockery, and then, through the shamelessness of her lust, taken into her bed, and soon into her will. Grown immensely rich, he worshipped that lampstand as if it were a god, and added this tale to the story of Corinthian bronzes; morality was avenged, however, by a splendid tomb, through which the memory of Gegania's disgrace would endure forever above the earth. But although it is agreed that there are no Corinthian lampstands, that name is especially celebrated in connection with them, since Mummius' victory destroyed Corinth, it is true, but at the same time scattered the bronzes of many towns of Achaia.
13| The ancients also commonly made thresholds and doors in temples of bronze. I find too that a double portico by the Flaminian circus, made by Gnaeus Octavius, who celebrated a naval triumph over King Perseus, was called Corinthian from the bronze capitals of its columns, and that it was decided that the temple of Vesta itself be roofed with a Syracusan surface. Syracusan are the capitals of the columns in the Pantheon set up by Marcus Agrippa. Indeed private opulence also practiced it in this way. Spurius Carvilius the quaestor included among the charges against Camillus that he had bronze-plated doors in his house.
14| For dining couches of bronze, and sideboards and monopodia, Lucius Piso is the authority that Gnaeus Manlius first brought in, Asia having been conquered, in his triumph, which he celebrated in the year 567 of the city; Antias indeed says that the heirs of the orator Lucius Crassus sold even many dining couches of bronze. They also commonly made of bronze the cauldrons of tripods, called by name also Delphic, since they were dedicated chiefly as gifts to Apollo of Delphi. Hanging lampstands in shrines were also liked, or shining in the manner of trees bearing apples, such as the one in the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, which Alexander the Great had taken in the storming of Thebes and dedicated at Cyme to the same god.
15| The art then passed, commonly everywhere, to images of gods. At Rome I find a statue made of bronze first for Ceres, from the property of Spurius Cassius, whom his own father put to death for aiming at kingship. It passed also from gods to statues and likenesses of men in many ways. The ancients used to stain them with bitumen, which makes it more remarkable that it pleased people to cover them with gold. This, I suspect, may have been a Roman invention; at any rate the practice does not even have an old name.
16| Likenesses of men were not accustomed to be made except for some illustrious cause, for those deserving perpetuity: first by victory in the sacred contests, and most of all at Olympia, where it was the custom for statues to be dedicated of all who had won, but of those who had won three times there, with the likeness taken from their own limbs, which they call iconic.
17| The Athenians, I do not know whether they were not the first of all, set up statues at public expense to Harmodius and Aristogiton, the tyrannicides. This was done in the same year in which kings were driven out at Rome too. The thing was then taken up by the whole world with a most humane ambition, and in the forums of all the municipalities statues began to be an ornament, and the memory of men to be handed on, and honors to be read by posterity to be inscribed on bases, so that they would not be read only on tombs. Soon a forum was made also in private houses and in halls: the honor of clients established this way of cultivating patrons.
18| Togate statues were dedicated in this way in ancient times. Nude ones holding a spear were also liked, from the models of the ephebes in the gymnasia; they call them Achilles figures. It is a Greek thing to veil nothing, but on the contrary Roman and military to add cuirasses. Caesar the dictator, indeed, allowed a statue of himself in a breastplate to be dedicated in his own forum. For those in the dress of the Luperci are as new as those that have recently appeared dressed in cloaks. Mancinus set up a statue of himself in the dress in which he had been surrendered.
19| It has been noted by authors that the poet Lucius Accius also set up a statue of himself in the temple of the Camenae of very large form, although he had been quite short. Equestrian statues at any rate have a Roman celebrity, the example arising without doubt from the Greeks. But the Greeks dedicated only victors on racehorses, celetes, at the sacred games, and later also those who had won with two-horse or four-horse chariots; whence our chariots too were born, for those who had triumphed. This is late, and among these only the six-horse chariots, from the deified Augustus, as also elephants.
20| The celebrating of two-horse chariots is not old either, for those who, having held the praetorship, had been carried in a chariot through the circus; older is that of columns, as for Gaius Maenius, who had conquered the ancient Latins, from whom under treaty the Roman people were due thirds of the booty, and who in the same consulship had fixed on the platform the beaks of ships from the conquered Antiates, in the year 416 of the city, and likewise for Gaius Duilius, who first celebrated a naval triumph over the Carthaginians, which is even now in the forum,
21| and likewise for Lucius Minucius, prefect of the grain supply, outside the Porta Trigemina, with a contribution of an uncia from each — I do not know whether it was the first such honor from the people, for before it was from the senate — a splendid thing, had it not begun from trivial beginnings. For there was also a statue of Attus Navius before the senate house — its base was burned when the senate house was set on fire at the funeral of Publius Clodius — and there was one of Hermodorus of Ephesus in the comitium, interpreter of the laws that the decemvirs were writing, dedicated at public expense.
22| Another cause, another authority, belongs to the statue of Marcus Horatius Cocles — which lasts to this day — when he had alone kept the enemy from the Sublician bridge. I am not surprised, for my part, that there are also Sibyls beside the rostra, though there are three: one which Sextus Pacuius Taurus, plebeian aedile, restored; two which Marcus Messalla set up. I should think these and that of Attus Navius, set up in the time of Tarquinius Priscus, the first, were it not that there are statues of the preceding kings on the Capitol,
23| of whom those of Romulus and Tatius are without a tunic, as is also that of Camillus on the rostra. And before the temple of the Castors there was the equestrian statue, togate, of Quintus Marcius Tremulus, who had twice conquered the Samnites and, Anagnia having been taken, had freed the people from tribute. The oldest include those of Tullus Cloelius, Lucius Roscius, Spurius Nautius and Gaius Fulcinius on the rostra, men killed by the Fidenates on an embassy.
24| This used to be granted by the commonwealth to those killed by violence, as to others, and to Publius Junius and Tiberius Coruncanius, who had been killed by Teuta, queen of the Illyrians. It seems not to be omitted that the annals have noted that statues of three feet were set up for them in the forum; this, evidently, was the measure honored at that time. I shall not pass over Gnaeus Octavius either, because of a single word of a decree of the senate. As King Antiochus was saying that he would give his answer, he drew a circle around the king with a rod which he happened to be holding, and compelled him to give his answer before he stepped out of that circle. On that embassy he was killed, and the senate ordered a statue to be set up in the most conspicuous place possible, and it is on the rostra.
25| A statue is found decreed also to Taracia Gaia, or Fufetia, a Vestal virgin, to be set up where she wished, an addition which has no less honor than that it was decreed to a woman. I shall put her merit in the very words of the annals: because she had made the Tiber field a gift to the people.
26| — I find that statues of Pythagoras and of Alcibiades were also set up at the corners of the comitium, when in the Samnite war Pythian Apollo had ordered that images of the bravest of the Greek race and of another, the wisest, be dedicated in a crowded place. They stood until the dictator Sulla built the senate house there. And it is remarkable that those fathers preferred Pythagoras to Socrates, who was preferred in wisdom to all by the same god, or Alcibiades to so many others in courage, or anyone at all to Themistocles, who excelled in both.
27| The reasoning of columns was to be raised above other mortals, which arches too signify, a new invention. The first honor, however, began with the Greeks, and I think statues were dedicated to no one in greater number than to Demetrius of Phalerum at Athens, since they set up 360, the year not yet exceeding this number of days, which they soon tore down. At Rome too the tribes set up statues to Marius Gratidianus in all the streets, as we have said, and overturned them on the entry of Sulla.
28| Statues on foot were without doubt in authority at Rome for a long time; and yet the origin of equestrian ones is very old, since honor was shared even with women in the equestrian statue of Cloelia, as if it were little to be girded with a toga, when none was decreed to Lucretia and to Brutus, who had driven out the kings, on whose account Cloelia had been among the hostages.
29| I should believe this the first, together with that of Cocles dedicated at public expense — for it is likely that Tarquinius set up those of Attus and the Sibyl, and the kings their own — except that Piso also reports of Cloelia's that it was set up by those who had been fellow hostages with her, returned by Porsina in her honor. On the other hand, Annius Fetialis says that the equestrian statue, which stood facing the temple of Jupiter Stator in the forecourt of Superbus's house, was Valeria's, the consul Publicola's daughter, and that she alone had fled and swum across the Tiber, the other hostages who were being sent to Porsina having been killed by the ambush of Tarquinius.
30| Lucius Piso reports that in the consulship of Marcus Aemilius and Gaius Popilius, the latter for the second time, the statues around the forum of those who had held magistracies were all removed by the censors Publius Cornelius Scipio and Marcus Popilius, except those which had been set up by decision of the people or the senate, and that the one which Spurius Cassius, who had aimed at kingship, had set up for himself beside the temple of Tellus was even melted down by the censors. Evidently those men foresaw ambition in this matter too.
31| The outcries of Cato in his censorship survive, against statues being set up to Roman women in the provinces; yet he could not prevent them from being set up at Rome also, as to Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, who was the daughter of the elder Africanus. A seated statue of her, distinguished by sandals without a strap, was set up in the public portico of Metellus, and that statue is now in the works of Octavia.
32| — It was set up at public expense by foreigners at Rome for Gaius Aelius, tribune of the plebs, a law having been carried against Sthennius Stallius the Lucanian, who had twice harassed the people of Thurii. On that account the Thurians presented Aelius with a statue and a golden crown. The same afterwards presented Fabricius with a statue, being freed from siege, and peoples were everywhere received into clientships in this way, and all distinction was so far removed that statues even of Hannibal are seen in three places in that city within whose walls he alone of enemies hurled a spear.
33| That the art of statue-making was also familiar to Italy and ancient is shown by the Hercules consecrated by Evander, as they report, in the cattle market, who is called Triumphal and is clothed in triumphal dress at triumphs, and besides the double Janus dedicated by King Numa, who is worshiped as a sign of peace and war, with fingers so shaped as to indicate a mark of 365 days [or by signification of the season of the year] and that he is the god of time.
34| Of Tuscan statues also, scattered through the lands, there is no doubt that they were commonly made in Etruria. I should think they were only of gods, were it not that Metrodorus of Scepsis, whose surname was given from his hatred of the Roman name, charged that Volsinii was stormed on account of 2,000 statues. And it seems remarkable to me that, though the origin of statues is so old in Italy, images of the gods dedicated in shrines were of wood or clay until Asia was conquered, whence luxury came.
35| What the first origin of expressing likenesses was will be more fittingly told in that art which the Greeks call plastice; for it was earlier than statuary. But this flourished without limit, a work of many volumes if anyone wished to pursue more;
36| for who could do everything? In the aedileship of Marcus Scaurus there were 3,000 statues on the stage alone, in a temporary theater. Mummius, when Achaia was conquered, filled the city, not meaning to leave his daughter a dowry; for why should it not be put down with an excuse? The Luculli also brought in many. At Rhodes there are even now 3,000 statues, Mucianus, thrice consul, reports, and not fewer are believed to survive at Athens, Olympia and Delphi.
37| Who of mortals could pursue all this, or what use in knowing it is understood? It would be pleasant to have touched on the most distinguished and those noted for some reason, and to have named the celebrated craftsmen, though for each of them the multitude is impossible to unfold, since Lysippus is reported to have made 1,500 works, all of such art that even single ones could give him fame: the number was found out after his death, when his heir broke open the treasure chest; for he was accustomed to set aside one gold denarius from the fee for each statue.
38| Art was carried beyond human belief by success, and soon by daring as well. As proof of success I shall bring one example, and not one of the likenesses of gods or men expressed. Our age saw on the Capitol, before it last of all burned, set on fire by the Vitellians, in the cell of Juno, a dog of bronze licking its wound, whose exceptional wonder and indistinguishable likeness to truth is understood not only from its having been dedicated there but also from the security given; for since no sum seemed adequate, it was publicly established that the guardians should pledge their lives for it.
39| Of daring there are countless examples. We see indeed huge structures of statues devised, which they call colossi, equal to towers. Such is the Apollo on the Capitol, carried by Marcus Lucullus from Apollonia, a city of Pontus, of 30 cubits, made for 500 talents;
40| such is the Jupiter on the Campus Martius, dedicated by Claudius Caesar, which is swallowed up by the nearness of Pompey's theater; such too is the one at Tarentum made by Lysippus, of 40 cubits. A remarkable thing in it is that, as they report, its balance is so movable by hand that it is shaken loose by no storms. The craftsman is said to have foreseen this also, by a column set up at a moderate distance, where the blast most needed to be broken. And so, on account of its size and the difficulty of shifting it, Fabius Verrucosus left it untouched when he carried the Hercules which is on the Capitol away from there.
41| Before all, however, in admiration was the colossus of the Sun at Rhodes, which Chares of Lindos had made, pupil of Lysippus mentioned above. The height of this image was 70 cubits; after 66 years it was overthrown by an earthquake, but lying it too is a marvel. Few can embrace its thumb; its fingers are larger than most statues. Vast caverns gape where the limbs are broken; inside are seen rocks of great mass, by whose weight the maker had steadied it when setting it up. They report it was completed in twelve years for 300 talents, which had fallen to them from the equipment of King Demetrius, left behind, weary of the delay, when Rhodes was besieged.
42| There are another hundred in number in the same city, colossi smaller than this, but each of which, wherever it had stood alone, would have made the place famous, and besides these five of gods, which Bryaxis made.
43| Italy has also made colossi. We see, at any rate, a Tuscan Apollo in the library of Augustus's temple, fifty feet from the thumb, doubtful whether more wonderful for its bronze or its beauty. Spurius Carvilius also made the Jupiter that is on the Capitol, after the Samnites, fighting under the sacred law, were conquered, from their breastplates, greaves and helmets. Its size is such that it is seen from the Jupiter of Latium. From the remnants of the filings he made his own statue, which is before the feet of that image.
44| On the same Capitol two heads also hold admiration, which the consul Publius Lentulus dedicated, the one made by Chares mentioned above, the other made by [….]dicus, so far beaten by the comparison that he seems the least approved of craftsmen.
45| But in our age Zenodorus surpassed all the size of statues of that kind, having made a Mercury in a state of Gaul, among the Arverni, over ten years, for a fee of 40,000,000 sesterces, after he had sufficiently proved his art there; summoned to Rome by Nero, he made there a colossus destined as an image of that emperor, 119½ feet in length, which, with that emperor's crimes condemned, was dedicated to the Sun for veneration.
46| We marvelled in his workshop not only at the remarkable likeness made from clay but also at what was the first thing of the work begun, from very small twigs. That statue showed that the knowledge of casting bronze had perished, though Nero was ready to bestow gold and silver and Zenodorus in the knowledge of modeling and engraving was inferior to none of the ancients.
47| When he was making the statue of the Arverni, in the governorship of Dubius Avitus over the province, he emulated two cups engraved by the hand of Calamis, which Germanicus Caesar, having loved them dearly, had given to Cassius Salanus, Avitus's uncle and his own teacher, so that there was scarcely any difference in art. The greater the superiority of Zenodorus, the more the obliteration of bronze is detected.
48| With the statues they call Corinthian, most people are so taken that they carry them around with them, as the orator Hortensius did a sphinx taken from Verres when on trial, because of which Cicero in the altercation at that trial, when Hortensius denied that he understood riddles, replied that he ought to, since he had a sphinx in his house. The emperor Nero also carried about an Amazon, of which we shall speak, and a little before, the ex-consul Gaius Cestius a statue, which he even had with him in battle. The tent of Alexander the Great, too, is reported to have been supported by statues, of which two have been dedicated before the temple of Mars the Avenger, and as many before the palace.
49| For smaller images and statues a nearly countless multitude of craftsmen has been made famous, but before all, Phidias the Athenian, who, having made the Olympian Jupiter of ivory and gold, made statues also of bronze. He flourished in the 83rd Olympiad, about the year 300 of our city; at the same time his rivals were Alcamenes, Critias, Nesiotes, Hegias, and then in the 87th Olympiad Hagelades, Callon, Gorgias the Laconian; again in the 90th, Polyclitus, Phradmon, Myron, Pythagoras, Scopas, Perellus.
50| Of these, Polyclitus had pupils in Argius, Asopodorus, Alexis, Aristides, Phrynon, [Dinon], Athenodorus, Demeas of Clitor, and Myron Lycius. In the 95th Olympiad there flourished Naucydes, Dinomenes, Canachus, Patroclus; in the 102nd, Polycles, Cephisodotus, Leuchares, Hypatodorus; in the 104th, Praxiteles, Euphranor; in the 107th, Aetion, Therimachus. In the 113th was Lysippus, when Alexander the Great also lived, and likewise Lysistratus his brother, Sthennis, Euphron, Eucles, Sostratus, Ion, Silanion — in this last the remarkable thing is that he was famous without any teacher; Silanion himself had a pupil, Zeuxiades —; in the 121st, Eutychides, Euthycrates, Laippus, Cephisodotus, Timarchus, Pyromachus.
52| The art then ceased and revived again in the 156th Olympiad, when there were, far below those mentioned, yet approved, Antaeus, Callistratus, Polycles the Athenian, Callixenus, Pythocles, Pythias, Timocles.
53| With the ages of the most celebrated thus distinguished, I shall run quickly through the remarkable ones, the remaining multitude being scattered here and there. The most praised also came into competition, though born in different ages, since they had made Amazons, which, when they were being consecrated in Diana's temple at Ephesus, it was decided should be judged, the most approved chosen by the judgment of those very artists who were present; and it appeared that the best was the one that all had judged second after their own. This is Polyclitus's; the next after it, Phidias's, the third Cresilas's, the fourth Cydon's, the fifth Phradmon's.
54| Phidias, besides the Olympian Jupiter, whom no one rivals, made likewise of ivory the Minerva at Athens, which stands in the Parthenon, and of bronze, besides the Amazon mentioned above, a Minerva of such exceptional beauty that she received the surname of beauty. He made also a cliduchus and another Minerva, which Paulus Aemilius dedicated at Rome beside the temple of the Fortune of This Day, and likewise two statues which Catulus dedicated in the same temple, one cloaked and the other a nude colossal figure; and he is judged, deservedly, to have been the first to open and demonstrate the art of toreutice. Polyclitus of Sicyon,
55| pupil of Hagelades, made a diadumenus, a soft youth, made famous by a hundred talents, and also a doryphorus, a boy of manly bearing. He made also the one that artists call the canon, seeking from it the lineaments of art as from a kind of law, and he alone of men is judged to have made art itself by a work of art. He made also a man scraping himself and a nude man attacking with a javelin, and two boys, likewise nude, playing at knucklebones, who are called astragalizontes and are in the hall of the emperor Titus — most judge no work more perfect than this —; likewise a Mercury,
56| which was at Lysimachia, a Hercules which is at Rome, a hagetor taking up arms, and Artemon, who was called periphoretos. He is judged to have completed this science and so to have schooled toreutice, as Phidias opened it. It is peculiar to him to have devised that statues should stand on one leg, yet Varro says that they are square and almost to a pattern.
57| Myron, born at Eleutherae, himself also a pupil of Hagelades, made himself most famous by a heifer, praised in celebrated verses, since most are recommended more by another's genius than their own. He made also a dog, a discobolus, a Perseus, the pristae, a Satyr marveling at the pipes, and a Minerva, Delphic pentathletes, pancratiasts, and the Hercules which is by the Circus Maximus in the temple of Pompey the Great. That he made a monument to a cicada and a locust Erinna indicates in her poems.
58| He made also an Apollo, which, taken away by the triumvir Antony, the deified Augustus restored to the Ephesians, warned in a dream. He seems the first to have multiplied truth, richer in his art than Polyclitus and more careful in symmetry, and yet himself, careful only as far as bodies went, he did not express the feelings of the mind, and made hair and pubic hair no more correctly than rude antiquity had established.
59| Pythagoras of Rhegium, from Italy, surpassed him with a pancratiast set up at Delphi; with the same he also surpassed Leontiscus. He made also Astylos the runner of the stadium, who is shown at Olympia, and a Libys, a boy holding a tablet in the same place, and a nude figure carrying apples; and at Syracuse a lame man, whose ulcer's pain even the onlookers seem to feel, likewise an Apollo and the serpent pierced by his arrows, a citharode who was called Dicaeus, because, when Thebes was taken by Alexander, gold hidden by a fugitive was concealed in the fold of his garment. He first expressed sinews and veins and hair more carefully.
60| — There was also another Pythagoras, of Samos, at first a painter, whose statues at the temple of the Fortune of This Day, seven nude and one of an old man, were praised. He is reported to have been similar to the one mentioned above, even indistinguishable in face, and Sostratus to have been the pupil and sister's son of the man of Rhegium.
61| Duris denies that Lysippus of Sicyon was anyone's pupil, but says that at first a worker in bronze he took his boldness from the reply of the painter Eupompus. For when asked which of those before him he followed, he pointed to the crowd of men and said that nature itself was to be imitated, not an artist.
62| He made the most statues of all, as we said, of a most fertile art, among them the man scraping himself, which Marcus Agrippa dedicated before his Baths, wonderfully pleasing to the emperor Tiberius. He could not restrain himself in this case, although in command of himself in the early part of his principate, and he moved it into his bedroom, another statue being substituted, whereupon the Roman people showed such obstinacy that with outcries in the theater it demanded the apoxyomenos be put back, and the emperor, though he loved it, put it back.
63| Lysippus is made famous also by a drunken flute-girl and by dogs and a hunt, and especially by the four-horse chariot with the Sun of the Rhodians. He made also Alexander the Great in many works, beginning from his boyhood, which statue the emperor Nero ordered gilded, delighted by it exceedingly; then, when the grace of the art had perished for the price, the gold was removed, and it was considered more precious so, even with the scars of the work and the cuts in which the gold had clung remaining.
64| The same man made Hephaestion, friend of Alexander the Great, whom some ascribe to Polyclitus, though the latter lived nearly a hundred years earlier; likewise Alexander's hunt, which is dedicated at Delphi, a Satyr at Athens, and the squadron of Alexander, in which he expressed the likenesses of his friends with the greatest resemblance of all; this Metellus carried to Rome when Macedonia was subdued. He made also four-horse chariots of many kinds.
65| To the art of statuary he is reported to have contributed most by expressing hair, by making heads smaller than the ancients did, and bodies slimmer and drier, through which the height of statues might seem greater. Symmetria has no Latin name; this he guarded most carefully, by a new and untouched method changing the square statures of the ancients, and he commonly said that they had made men such as they were, he such as they seemed to be. Peculiar to him seem to be the subtleties of his works, preserved in the smallest things too.
66| He left sons and pupils, praised craftsmen, Laippus, Boedas, but before all Euthycrates. Although he imitated the steadiness of his father rather than his elegance, he preferred to please in a severe style rather than a pleasing one. And so he best expressed the Hercules at Delphi, the Alexander as hunter at Thespiae, a cavalry battle, the image of Trophonius itself at the oracle, several four-horse chariots, a horse with baskets, and dogs of huntsmen.
67| — Moreover, a pupil of his was Tisicrates, himself also of Sicyon, but closer to the school of Lysippus, so that several statues are scarcely distinguished, like the old Theban and King Demetrius, and Peucestes, savior of Alexander the Great, worthy of so great a glory.
68| The craftsmen who have recorded these things in composed volumes celebrate with wonderful praises Telephanes of Phocaea, otherwise unknown, since [….] he lived in Thessaly and his works lay hidden there; otherwise by their own votes he is equaled to Polyclitus, Myron, Pythagoras. They praise his Larisa and Spintharus the pentathlete and an Apollo. Others think that this was not the cause of his obscurity, but that he had given himself up to the workshops of the kings Xerxes and Darius.
69| Praxiteles also, who was happier in marble and was therefore more famous, made nevertheless the most beautiful works in bronze too: the Rape of Proserpina, likewise a catagusa, and Father Liber, Drunkenness, and with it a famous Satyr, which the Greeks call periboetos, and the statues that stood before the temple of Felicity, and the Venus which itself was burned in the fire of that temple in the principate of Claudius, equal to that marble one of his, famous throughout the lands, likewise a stephanusa,
70| a pseliumene, an Opora, Harmodius and Aristogiton the tyrannicides, whom Alexander the Great, when Persia was conquered, sent back to the Athenians, having been captured by Xerxes king of the Persians. He made also a youthful Apollo lying in wait with an arrow, at close quarters, for a lizard creeping up, whom they call sauroctonos. Two statues of his are looked at, expressing different feelings, a weeping matron and a rejoicing courtesan. They think she was Phryne, and detect in her the artist's love and the payment in the courtesan's face.
71| His kindness too has an image; for he placed his own charioteer on the four-horse chariot of Calamis, lest Calamis, better in the likeness of horses, be thought to have failed in man. Calamis himself made other four-horse and two-horse chariots, always with horses expressed without rival; but, lest he seem inferior in the likeness of men, no Alcumena is more famous.
72| Alcamenes, pupil of Phidias, made marble works too, but a bronze pentathlete, who is called encrinomenos; and Aristides, pupil of Polyclitus, four-horse and two-horse chariots. Amphicrates is praised for a Leaena. She was a prostitute, a familiar of Harmodius and Aristogiton by her singing to the lyre. Their plans for the killing of the tyrant she did not betray, though tortured by the tyrants even to death; for this reason the Athenians, wishing to honor her yet not wishing to have celebrated a prostitute, made an animal of her name and, so that the cause of the honor might be understood, forbade the artist to add a tongue to the work.
73| — Bryaxis made an Aesculapius and a Seleucus, Boedas a man praying, Baton an Apollo and a Juno,
74| which are at Rome in the temple of Concord; Cresilas a wounded man fainting, in whom it can be understood how much breath remains, and an Olympian Pericles worthy of the name; and the wonder in this art is that it made noble men more noble. Cephisodorus made a wonderful Minerva in the harbor of the Athenians and the altar at the temple of Jupiter the Savior in the same harbor,
75| to which few are compared; Canachus made a nude Apollo, who is surnamed Philesius, in the Didymaeum, of the Aeginetan alloy of bronze, and together with it a stag so poised on its footsteps that a linen thread is drawn underneath the feet, with alternate gripping, heel and toes holding the ground, and so jointed by a tooth on both sides that by the push it springs back in turn. The same made boys riding racehorses; Chaereas made Alexander the Great and his father Philip; Ctesilaus a doryphorus and a wounded Amazon,
76| Demetrius a Lysimache, who was priestess of Minerva for 64 years; the same also a Minerva, who is called myctica — the snakes in her Gorgon resound with a ringing at the strokes of the lyre; the same, the horseman Simon, who first wrote about horsemanship. Daedalus, himself too praised among modelers, made two boys scraping themselves; Dinomenes, a Protesilaus and Pythodemus the wrestler.
77| — Euphranor's Alexander Paris is one in which it is praised that everything is understood at once: judge of the goddesses, lover of Helen, and yet slayer of Achilles. His is the Minerva at Rome that is called Catulian, dedicated below the Capitol by Quintus Lutatius, and the image of Good Outcome, holding a dish in the right hand and an ear of corn and poppies in the left, likewise Latona in childbed holding the infants Apollo and Diana in the temple of Concord.
78| He made also four-horse and two-horse chariots, and a cliticon of exceptional beauty, and Virtue and Greece, both colossal, a woman wondering and praying, and likewise Alexander and Philip in four-horse chariots; Eutychides made the Eurotas, in which very many have said the art was more liquid than the river itself. — Of Hegias, a Minerva and King Pyrrhus are praised, and boys riding racehorses, and Castor and Pollux in front of the temple of Jupiter the Thunderer; of Hagesias, in the colony of Parium, a Hercules; of Isidotus, a buthytes.
79| — Lycius was a pupil of Myron, who made a boy blowing on dying fires, worthy of his teacher, and Argonauts; Leochares made an eagle sensing what it is carrying off in the Ganymede, and for whom, and sparing the boy with its talons even through his garment, Autolycus the victor in the pancratium, on whose account Xenophon wrote the Symposium, and that Jupiter the Thunderer on the Capitol, praiseworthy before all, likewise an Apollo wearing a diadem, Lyciscus the slave-dealer, a boy of sly and painted servility; Lycius himself also made a boy fumigator.
80| — Menaechmus's calf is pressed down by a knee, its neck bent back. Menaechmus himself wrote about his art. — Naucydes is esteemed for a Mercury, for a discobolus, and for a figure sacrificing a ram, Naucerus for a wrestler panting, Niceratus for an Aesculapius and Hygia, which stand in the temple of Concord at Rome. — The four-horse chariot of Pyromachus is driven by Alcibiades. Polycles made a famous Hermaphrodite, Pyrrhus a Hygia and a Minerva, Phanis, a pupil of Lysippus, an epithyusa.
81| — Styppax of Cyprus is celebrated for one statue, the splanchnoptes; he was a home-born slave of Pericles the Olympian, roasting entrails and kindling the fire by blowing with a full mouth. Silanion cast Apollodorus, a modeler himself also, but of all the most careful in his art and an unfair judge of himself, often breaking finished statues, since he could not be satisfied in his desire for art, and therefore surnamed the madman — this he expressed in him,
82| and made not a man from bronze but anger — and a noble Achilles, likewise an epistates exercising athletes; Strongylion an Amazon, whom they call eucnemos from the excellence of her legs, for which reason she was carried about in the retinue of the emperor Nero. The same made a boy, whom Brutus of Philippi, by loving him, made famous under his own surname.
83| — Theodorus, who made the labyrinth at Samos, cast himself in bronze. Besides the marvelous fame of the likeness, he is celebrated for great subtlety: his right hand holds a file, and in the left he held with three fingers a little four-horse chariot, carried over to Praeneste as a miracle of smallness: a fly, made at the same time, covered [….] it, the chariot and the driver, with its wings. — Xenocrates, pupil of Tisicrates, or, as others say, of Euthycrates, surpassed both in the abundance of statues. He also composed volumes on his art.
84| Several craftsmen made the battles of Attalus and Eumenes against the Gauls: Isigonus, Pyromachus, Stratonicus, Antigonus, who wrote volumes about his art. Of Boethus, although better in silver, there is a child strangling an exceptional goose. And of all those that I have recounted, the most famous are now already dedicated in the city by the emperor Vespasian in the temple of Peace and in his other works, brought together into the city by the violence of Nero and set out in the sitting rooms of the Golden House.
85| Besides, there are craftsmen celebrated for an even standard, but outstanding in none of their works: Ariston, who also was accustomed to engrave silver, Callides, Ctesias, Cantharus of Sicyon, Diodorus, pupil of Critias, Deliades, Euphorion, Eunicus and Hecataeus, engravers of silver, Lesbocles, Prodorus, Pythodicus, Polygnotus, the same also a painter among the most noble, likewise among engravers Stratonicus, Scymnus, pupil of Critias.
86| Now I shall review those who made works of the same kind, such as Apollodorus, Androbulus, Asclepiodorus, Aleuas, philosophers, Apellas, and women adorning themselves, Antignotus, and a perixyomenos and the tyrannicides mentioned above, Antimachus, Athenodorus, noble women, Aristodemus, and wrestlers and two-horse chariots with a driver, philosophers, old women, King Seleucus. His doryphorus too has its own grace.
87| — There were two Cephisodoti: of the elder is the Mercury nursing Father Liber in infancy; he made also a man addressing an assembly with the hand raised — the person is uncertain —; the later made philosophers. Colotes, who had made the Olympian Jupiter with Phidias, made philosophers, and likewise Cleon and Cenchramis and Callicles and Cepis; Chalcosthenes made comedians and athletes, Daippus a perixyomenos, Daiphron and Damocritus and Daemon, philosophers.
88| — Epigonus, imitating nearly all those mentioned, excelled in a trumpeter and in an infant pitifully caressing its murdered mother. A woman wondering is praised among the works of Eubulus, a figure counting on its fingers among those of Eubulides. — Micon is looked at for athletes, Menogenes for four-horse chariots. — Nor less did Niceratus, who attempted everything that the others did, represent Alcibiades, and, by the kindling of torches, his mother Demarata sacrificing.
89| — On the two-horse chariot of Tisicrates, Piston placed a woman; the same made a Mars and a Mercury, and these stand in the temple of Concord at Rome. Let no one praise Perillus, crueler than the tyrant Phalaris, for whom he made a bull, promising the bellowing of a man shut inside when fire was set beneath, and was himself the first to experience that torture, with a more just cruelty. To this he had called away from the images of gods and men the most humane of arts. Therefore had so many founders of it labored, that torments should be made of it! And so for one reason alone are his works preserved, that whoever sees them may hate the hand.
90| — Sthennis made a Ceres, a Jupiter, a Minerva, which are at Rome in the temple of Concord, the same also weeping matrons and women praying and sacrificing. Simon made a dog and a bowman; Stratonicus, the celebrated engraver, made philosophers, both making hostesses;
91| athletes, however, and armed men and hunters and men sacrificing were made by Baton, Euchir, Glaucides, Heliodorus, Hicanus, Iophon, Lyson, Leon, Menodorus, Myagrus, Polycrates, Polyidus, Pythocritus, Protogenes, the same also a painter among the most famous, as we shall say, Patrocles, Pollis, Posidonius, who also engraved silver nobly, an Ephesian by birth, Periclymenus, Philon, Symenus, Timotheus, Theomnestus, Timarchides, Timon, Tisias, Thrason.
92| Of all these artists, the one most distinguished by his nickname is Callimachus, always a fault-finder of his own work and with no limit to his painstaking, for which reason he was called catatexitechnus, "the one who wears his art away"; he is a memorable example of the need to apply a measure even to care. His is the statue of the Spartan women dancing, a corrected work, but one from which his diligence has removed every grace. They say that he was also a painter. On the Cyprus expedition Cato kept back from sale only one statue, that of Zeno, not because he was captivated by the bronze or by the art, but because it was a philosopher's, so that this so striking an example too may be known in passing.
93| In mentioning statues, there is one that must not be passed over, although its maker is uncertain: it stands near the rostra, a Hercules in a tunic, the only one at Rome in that dress, grim of face, and feeling the last agonies of the tunic. On it there are three inscriptions: one, that Lucius Lucullus the commander set it up from the spoils of war; another, that Lucullus' son, a ward, dedicated it by decree of the senate; the third, that Titus Septimius Sabinus, curule aedile, restored it from private ownership to public. So many contests, and so great a dignity, did that image have.
94| Now we shall turn to the differences and mixtures of bronze. In Cyprian [coronarium and regulare are both ductile]: coronarium is beaten thin into sheets, and when dyed with bull's gall it gives the appearance of gold in actors' crowns, and the same, with six scruples of gold added to the ounce, glows like the very thin leaf of pyropus. Regulare is also made in other mines, and likewise caldarium. The difference is that caldarium is only cast and is brittle under the hammer, to which regulare yields, and is called by others ductile, which is what all Cyprian bronze is. But in the other mines too the care taken distinguishes it from caldarium; for all bronze whose faults have been more carefully purged and burnt out by fire is regulare.
95| —Among the remaining kinds the palm is given to the Campanian, which is most approved for household vessels. It is made in several ways. For at Capua it is melted not over charcoal fires but over wood fires, is cleansed through an oak sieve, being drenched with cold water, and is cooked again, quite often, in the same way, and last of all ten pounds of Spanish silver-lead are added to every hundred of bronze. In this way it becomes tough and takes on a pleasing color, such as people seek in other kinds of bronze with oil and salt.
96| A bronze like the Campanian is made in many parts of Italy and in the provinces, but they add eight pounds of lead and cook it again over charcoal because of the shortage of wood. How much difference this makes is felt most of all in Gaul, where the bronze is melted among white-hot stones; for the cooking, since it burns it too much, makes it black and brittle. Besides, they cook it again only once, whereas to have done so more often contributes very greatly to its quality. It is also not beside the point to have noted this, that all bronze is better cast in great cold.
97| —The next mixture is that for statues, which is also the one for plates, made in this way: the mass is first blown out, then a third part of collected bronze is added to what has been blown out, that is, bronze bought up from use. This has a special seasoning, being tamed by wear and, as it were, made gentle by the habit of polish. Twelve and a half pounds of silver-lead are also mixed in for every hundred of the blown metal.
98| There is further a mixture called "for the mould," of very soft bronze, since a tenth part of black lead is added and a twentieth of silver-lead, and in this way it best takes up the color they call Greek.—Last is the one called ollaria ("for pots"), the name being given by the vessel, with three or four pounds of silver-lead added to every hundred of bronze.—If lead is added to Cyprian, the color of purple results, in the borders of statues' togas.
99| Bronzes that have been wiped clean gather rust more quickly than neglected ones, unless they are rubbed with oil. They say they are best preserved in liquid pitch. The use of bronze for the perpetuity of records was long ago transferred to bronze tablets, on which public enactments are engraved.
100| The mines of bronze supply medicine in many ways, inasmuch as all ulcers are healed there most quickly; yet cadmea is of most benefit. This is without doubt made in silver furnaces also, whiter and less heavy, but by no means comparable with that from the bronze-works. There are, however, several kinds. For just as the stone itself from which bronze is made is called cadmea, necessary for founders, useless for medicine, so in turn another kind arises in the furnaces which takes the name of its origin.
101| It is made when the finest part of the material is driven out by the flames and the blast, and is applied to the vaults and sides of the furnaces in proportion to its lightness. The finest is at the very mouth of the furnaces, what the flames have belched out, called capnitis, burnt up and from its great lightness like ash. The inner kind is the best, hanging from the vaults and named botryitis from that circumstance; this is heavier than the former,
102| lighter than those that follow—it has two colors, the worse ash-gray, the better like pumice—, friable and most useful for medicines for the eyes. The third is on the sides of the furnaces, which because of its weight could not reach the vaults. This is called placitis, likewise from its character, being more truly a flat crust than a pumice, variegated inside, more useful for psora and for drawing out scars.
103| Two other kinds are made from it: onychitis, almost blue outside, inside like the markings of the onyx, and ostracitis, wholly black and the foulest of the others, most useful for wounds. All cadmea, however, the best being that from the furnaces of Cyprus, is cooked a second time by physicians over pure charcoal, and when it has returned to ash it is quenched in Aminnean wine if it is being prepared for plasters, but in vinegar if for psora.
104| Some burn it, after pounding, in earthenware pots and wash it in mortars, afterwards drying it. Nymphodorus burns the stone itself, the heaviest and densest possible, on glowing coals, quenches it when burnt with Chian wine and pounds it, then sifts it through linen and grinds it in a mortar, then soaks it in rainwater and again grinds what has settled, until it becomes like cerussa, with no grittiness to the teeth. The method of Iollas is the same, but he chooses the purest stone available.
105| The effects of cadmea are to dry, to heal thoroughly, to stop fluxes, to clear away pterygia and the filth of the eyes, to reduce roughness, and whatever else we shall say of the effect of lead. Bronze itself too is burnt for all the same purposes, and besides white spots on the eyes and scars it cures ulcers of the eyes also when used with milk; and so the Egyptians grind it in small whetstones in the manner of an eye-salve.
106| Taken in honey it also causes vomiting. Cyprian bronze is burnt in unfired earthenware with an equal weight of sulphur, the vent of the vessels being sealed around, in kilns, until the vessels themselves are thoroughly baked. Some add salt too, some alum in place of sulphur, others nothing, but only sprinkle it with vinegar. When burnt it is ground in a Theban mortar, washed with rainwater, and ground again with more added, and left until it settles, and this is repeated several times, until it returns to the appearance of minium. Then, dried in the sun, it is kept in a bronze box.
107| The slag of bronze is washed in a similar way, with less effect than the bronze itself. But the flower of bronze also is useful for medicine. It is made when bronze has been melted and moved to other furnaces; there, by a more frequent blast, something like millet scales is shaken off, which they call flower; these fall when the cakes of bronze are cooled with water, and in the same way scales of bronze go red, which they call lepida, and so the flower is adulterated, so that scale is sold in place of it. Scale of bronze, however, is what is knocked off by force from the nails with which the bronze cakes are soldered together, chiefly in the workshops of Cyprus. The whole difference is this, that the scale is shaken off by a blow from the same cakes, while the flower falls of its own accord.
108| There is another, finer kind of scale, knocked off, that is, from the very top of the surface down, which they call stomoma. And all these things the physicians—if I may say so with their leave—do not know. They obey the names: so far are they from preparing medicines, which used to be the proper business of medicine. Now whenever they come upon little books, wishing to compose something from them, which is to test the commentaries at the expense of the wretched, they trust the Seplasia, which corrupts everything with frauds. Plasters and eye-salves now they buy already made, and let the rot of the wares or the fraud of the Seplasia be stirred up in this way!
109| Both scale and flower are burnt in earthenware or bronze dishes, then washed, as above, for the same uses; scale moreover removes fleshy growths of the nostrils and likewise of the seat, and heaviness of the ears when driven into them through a pipe by blowing, and the uvula of the mouth when meal is applied, and the tonsils with honey. A scale made from white bronze is far less effective than the Cyprian. Some, about to shake off the scale, first soak the nails and cakes in a boy's urine, and grind them and wash them in rainwater. They also give it to dropsy patients, 2 drachmas in a hemina of honey wine, and they smear it on with fine flour.
110| Verdigris too has great use. It is made in several ways. For it is scraped from the stone from which bronze is cooked, and also from white bronze that has been pierced and hung in jars over sharp vinegar and closed with a lid. It is much more approved if this same thing is done with scales. Some store the vessels themselves of white bronze in earthenware in vinegar and scrape them on the tenth day;
111| others cover them with grape-skins and scrape after the same number of days, others sprinkle filed-off bronze dust with vinegar and turn it with spatulas several times a day, until it is used up. The same dust others prefer to grind in bronze mortars with vinegar. It comes most quickly of all when the clippings of the crown-makers are added to the vinegar.
112| They adulterate it, especially the Rhodian verdigris, with ground marble, others with pumice or gum. But above all it deceives when adulterated with shoemakers' black; for the other adulterations are detected by the tooth, grating in the grinding. A test is made on an iron shovel, for what is pure keeps its own color, while what is mixed with the black turns red. It is also detected by papyrus first soaked in gall, for it blackens at once when smeared with the verdigris. It is also detected by sight, from its grudging green.
113| But whether it is pure or adulterated, it is most suitable to wash it, and when dried to burn it in a new dish and turn it until it becomes ash; afterwards it is ground and stored away. Some burn it in unfired earthenware until the clay is thoroughly baked. Some also mix in male frankincense. Verdigris is washed like cadmea. Its force is most suited to eye-salves, and by its biting it helps watering of the eyes, but it must be washed off with warm swabs until it stops eating away.
114| —The eye-salve called hieracium is so named because it consists chiefly of it. It is compounded of 4 ounces of hammoniacum, 2 of Cyprian verdigris, as much of shoemakers' black, which they call chalcanthum, 1 of misy, and 6 of saffron. All these are ground and gathered with Thasian vinegar into little pills, an excellent remedy against the beginnings of glaucomata and suffusions, against dimness or roughness and white spots and faults of the eyelids. Raw verdigris, however, is mixed into plasters for wounds.
115| It also wonderfully corrects ulcerations of the mouth and gums, and sores of the lips, with oil. If wax is added as well, it cleanses and brings them to a scar. Verdigris also eats away the callus of fistulas and the faults around the seat, whether smeared on by itself or with hammoniacum, or driven into the fistulas in the manner of an eye-salve. The same, worked up with a third part of turpentine resin, removes leprous sores.
116| There is also another kind of verdigris, which they call scolex, made of Cyprian bronze ground with alum and salt or nitrum in equal weight, with the sharpest white vinegar. This is not made except on the hottest days about the time when the Dog Star rises. It is ground until it becomes green and draws itself together in the shape of little worms, whence the name. If it is spoiled, to have it corrected, urine of a boy under puberty is mixed in, 2 parts to what there was of vinegar. The same effect in medicines is produced by santerna, with which we have said gold is soldered. The use of both is that of verdigris. Scolex is also made of itself, scraped from the bronze-workers' stone, of which we shall now speak.
117| They call it chalcitis, and from this too bronze is cooked. It differs from cadmea in that cadmea is cut above ground from rocks in the open air, chalcitis from buried ones, and also in that chalcitis crumbles at once, being of a soft nature, so that it looks like wool matted together. There is another distinction as well, that chalcitis contains three kinds, of bronze, of misy and of sory, of each of which we shall speak in its own place. It has elongated veins of bronze.
118| It is approved when honey-colored, with a fine spreading of veins, crumbling and not stony. They think too that the fresh is more useful, since the aged turns into sory. Its force is against growths in ulcers, to stop blood, to restrain gums, uvula and tonsils with meal, and to be applied in wool for ailments of the womb. With the juice of leek, however, it is added to plasters for the private parts.
119| It is soaked in an earthenware vessel in vinegar, the vessel sealed round with dung, for 40 days, and takes on the color of saffron. Then, mixed with an equal weight of cadmea, it makes the medicine called psoricon. If 2 parts of chalcitis are compounded with a third of cadmea, the same is made sharper; still more violent if it is mixed with vinegar rather than wine; roasted, however, it becomes more effective for all the same purposes.
120| Of sory the Egyptian is most praised, far surpassing the Cyprian and the Spanish and the African, although some think the Cyprian more useful for treating the eyes; but in whatever country, the best is the one whose smell is strongest to the nose, and when ground turns black and greasy and is spongy. It is so contrary to the stomach that to some the smell alone brings on vomiting. And the Egyptian is of this kind; that of another country when ground shines like misy and is more stony. It also helps toothache, if kept in the mouth and swilled about, and serious ulcers of the mouth and those that creep. It is burnt over coals like chalcitis.
121| Some have handed down that misy is made by burning stone in pits, its yellow flower mingling with the ash of pine wood. In truth, however, it is made from the stone spoken of above, formed by nature and separated by force, the best in the workshops of the Cypriots, the marks of which are golden sparks when crumbled and, when ground, a sandy nature without earth, similar to chalcitis. This is mixed in by those who refine gold. Its usefulness is when poured in with rose oil into discharging ears, and when put on in wool for ulcers of the head. It also reduces old roughness of the eyes, and is especially useful for the tonsils and against quinsies and suppurations.
122| The method is that 16 drachmas are cooked in a hemina of vinegar with honey added, until it thickens. So prepared it is useful for the purposes mentioned above. Whenever its force needs to be softened, honey is sprinkled on. It eats away the callus of fistulas when used as a fomentation with vinegar, and is added to eye-salves; it stops blood and ulcers that creep or putrefy, and consumes proud flesh. It is particularly useful for ailments of the male organs, and stops the women's flux.
123| The Greeks have made it a relation of bronze by the name, and of shoemakers' black; for they call it chalcanthon. Nor is there any whose nature is so wonderful. It is made in the wells of Spain, or in pools holding water of this kind. It is boiled down mixed with fresh water in equal measure and poured into wooden vats. Over these, on immovable cross-beams, are hung cords stretched with small stones, to which the slime adheres in glassy berries, giving a kind of image of a grape. When taken out it is dried in this way for 30 days. The color is blue with a most remarkable brilliance, and it is believed to be glass; by dissolving it, it becomes the black for dyeing leather.
124| It is made also in several ways: in a kind of earth, with pits hollowed in it, from the sides of which icicles dripping in the winter frost are called stalagmia, and there is nothing purer. But the kind from this that takes a white color, with a violet tint, they call lonchoton.
125| It is made also in the basins of rocks from rainwater, with the slime hardened by frost; and it is made in the manner of salt, when the hottest sun curdles fresh water let in. Therefore some, by a twofold difference, call it fossile or facticium ("dug" or "made"), the latter paler and as much worse in goodness as in color.
126| For medicinal use they most approve the Cyprian. It is taken, to drive out the creatures of the belly, in the weight of a drachma with honey. Diluted and instilled in the nostrils, it cleanses the head, and the stomach likewise when taken with honey or honeyed water. It cures also roughness of the eyes, pain and dimness, and ulcers of the mouth. It stops bleeding of the nose, and of the haemorrhoids likewise. With the seed of hyoscyamus it draws out broken bones; it holds back fluxes of the eyes when applied to the forehead with a swab; it is effective also in plasters for cleansing wounds and the growths of ulcers.
127| It removes the uvula also, or even if they are only touched with a decoction of it; with the seed of flax too it is laid over plasters to remove pains. The part of it that is white is preferred over the violet kinds for one use only, to be blown through pipes into the ears for heaviness. Smeared on by itself it heals wounds, but dyes scars. Recently it has been found out that the jaws of bears and of lions in the arena are sprinkled with it, and so great is its power of contraction that they cannot bite.
128| Still further, in the bronze-works are found what they call pompholyx and spodos. The difference is that pompholyx is separated by washing, spodos is unwashed. Some have called pompholyx what is white and lightest, saying that it is the ash of bronze and cadmea, and spodos what is blacker and heavier, scraped from the walls of the furnaces, with sparks mixed in, and sometimes with charcoal.
129| When vinegar is added, this gives off the smell of bronze and, if touched with the tongue, a rough taste. It suits medicines for the eyes, meeting whatever faults there are, and serves for all the purposes of spodos. It differs only in this, that its force is more washed out. It is also added to plasters in which a gentle cooling and drying is sought. It is more useful for everything when it has been washed in wine.
130| Spodos from Cyprus is the best. It is made when cadmea and the bronze-workers' stone melt. This is the lightest part of the whole blast, and flies out of the furnaces and clings to the roofs, distinguished from soot by its whiteness. What of it is less white is evidence of an unripe furnace; some call this pompholyx. What of it is found rather reddish has a sharper force and so ulcerates that, when it is being washed, if it touches the eyes it blinds.
131| There is also a honey-colored spodos, in which a great deal of bronze is perceived. But whatever the kind, it becomes more useful by washing; it is first cleansed with a feather, then in a coarser washing the rough bits are picked out with the fingers. The spodos washed in wine is of outstanding force. There is some difference too in the kind of wine. For washed in a mild wine it is thought less useful for eye-salves, while the same is more effective for ulcers that persist, or those of the mouth that are moist, and for all medicines prepared against gangrenes.
132| Spodos is also made in silver furnaces, which they call Lauriotis. But that which is made in the gold-works is declared the most useful for the eyes, and in no other part is there more cause to wonder at the ingenuity of life. For, so that metals need not be sought, it has devised the same uses from the cheapest things.
133| They call antispodon the ash of the fig tree or the wild fig or of leaves of myrtle with the tenderest parts of the branches, or of the wild olive or the olive or the quince or the mastic, likewise of unripe mulberries, that is white ones, dried in the sun, or of the foliage of box or pseudocyperus or bramble or terebinth or oenanthe. It has been found that the ash of bull's glue or of linen cloths is similarly potent. All these are burnt in unfired earthenware in furnaces until the clay is thoroughly baked.
134| In the bronze-works smegma is also made, when the bronze has already been melted and fully cooked, with charcoal added besides and gradually kindled, and then by a suddenly stronger blast a kind of chaff of bronze is spat out. The ground on which it is caught must be strewn with marilla.
135| From it is distinguished what in the same workshops the Greeks call diphryges, from the fact that it is roasted twice. Its origin is threefold. For it is said to be made from pyrites stone burnt in kilns until it is cooked down into red ochre. It is made also in Cyprus from the clay of a certain cave, dried first, then with vine-cuttings gradually piled around it. In a third way it is made in the furnaces, as the dregs of the bronze settle. The difference is that the bronze itself flows down into basins, the slag out of the furnaces, the flower floats on top, and the diphryges remain.
136| Some report that in the furnaces balls of the stone that is to be cooked are fastened together, that the bronze boils around this, that the stone itself is not thoroughly cooked unless moved into other furnaces, and that it is a kind of knot of the material; that what is left over from the cooked is called diphryges. Its use in medicine is like that of those mentioned: to dry, to consume growths and to cleanse again. It is tested with the tongue, so that it dries it at once on touch and gives back the taste of bronze.
137| One further marvel of bronze we shall not omit. The Servilian family, famous in the Fasti, keeps a bronze triens fed with gold and silver, which consumes both. Its origin and nature are unknown to me. I shall set down the very words of old Messalla on the matter: The family of the Servilii has a sacred triens, to which with the greatest care and splendor they make sacrifices every year. They say that it seems at one time to have grown, at another to have shrunk, and that from this it signifies either honor or diminution for the family.
138| Next the mines of iron must be described. It is the best and the worst instrument of life, since with it we cleave the earth, plant trees, prune orchards, and each year force the vines to grow young again by cutting off their squalor; with it we build houses, cut stone, and use iron for all other purposes, but the same iron for wars, slaughter and brigandage, not only hand to hand but also as a missile and winged weapon, now shot from engines, now from the arm, now indeed feathered, which I judge the most criminal trick of the human mind, since, to make death reach man more quickly, we made it a bird and gave iron its wings.
139| Wherefore let the blame be taken to be its own and not nature's. By a number of proofs it has been shown that iron can be innocent. In the treaty which Porsina gave the Roman people after the kings were driven out, we find it expressly included that iron should not be used except in the cultivation of the land. And the oldest authors have handed down that it was then the custom to write with a bone stylus. There survives an edict from Pompey the Great's third consulship, made in the tumult of Clodius' killing, forbidding any weapon to be in the city.
140| And ancient art itself did not fail to give iron too a milder honor. The artist Aristonidas, wishing to express the madness of Athamas, who sat in repentance after hurling down his son Learchus, mixed bronze and iron, so that by the rust of the iron shining through the brightness of the bronze the blush of shame might be expressed. This statue survives today at Rhodes.
141| There is in the same city also an iron Hercules, which Alcon made, led to it by the endurance of the god in his labors. We see at Rome also cups of iron dedicated in the temple of Mars the Avenger. The same kindness of nature stood in the way, exacting penalties from iron itself by rust, and the same foresight, making nothing more mortal among things than what was most hostile to mortality.
142| The mines of iron are found almost everywhere, since the island of Italy, Ilva, produces it too, and they are recognized with the least difficulty, the color of the earth itself being plain. The method of smelting the veins is the same; in Cappadocia only there is a question whether the credit belongs to the water or to the earth, since the earth, when drenched by the river Cerasus, yields iron from the furnaces in no other way. The differences of iron are many.
143| The first lies in the kind of earth or climate: some supply only a soft iron close to lead, others a brittle and bronzy iron which is above all to be avoided for the uses of wheels and for nails, and for which the former method is suitable; another is liked only for its shortness and for soldiers' hobnails, another feels rust more quickly. All these are called strictures, which is not said of other metals, the name having been given from drawing the edge tight.
144| There is a great difference of furnaces too, and a certain core of iron is smelted in them to harden the edge, and in another manner to compact anvils or the heads of hammers. The greatest difference, however, is in the water, into which the glowing metal is plunged again and again. This, more useful in one place than another, has made places famous for the glory of their iron, as Bilbilis in Spain and Turiaso, and Comum in Italy, although there are no iron mines in those places.
145| Of all the kinds, however, the palm belongs to Seric iron; the Seres send this with their garments and skins; second is the Parthian.—Nor are other kinds of iron tempered from pure steel edge, for a softer embrace is mixed with the rest. In our world in one place the vein gives this goodness, as in the Norican, in another the working, as at Sulmo, in another the water, as we have said, since for sharpening, oil-whetstones and water-whetstones differ, and with oil the edge becomes more delicate.
146| And it is a wonder that when the vein is smelted, the iron is liquefied like water, and afterwards is broken up into sponge-like masses. It is the custom to quench the finer iron tools in oil, lest they be hardened by water into brittleness. Human blood takes vengeance on iron, for iron that has been touched by it gathers rust the more quickly.
147| Of the magnet stone, and of the concord which it has with iron, we shall speak in its own place. This is the only material that receives a virtue from that stone and keeps it for a long time, seizing other iron, so that a chain of rings is sometimes seen. The ignorant common people call this living iron, and wounds from such become rougher.
148| This stone is born in Cantabria too, not as that true magnet is, in continuous rock, but in scattered bulbs—so they call it—; I do not know whether it is equally useful for melting into glass, for no one has yet tried; at any rate it infects iron with the same force.—With the magnet stone the architect Timochares had begun to vault the temple of Arsinoe at Alexandria, so that in it an image of iron might seem to hang in the air. His own death intervened, and that of King Ptolemy, who had ordered it to be made for his sister.
149| —Of all the metals the vein of iron is most abundant in Cantabria. On the sea side, where the ocean washes, a very high mountain—incredible to tell—is wholly of this material, as we have said in the circuit of the ocean. Iron heated in fire, unless it is hardened by blows, is spoiled. When red it is not workable by hammering, nor until it begins to whiten. Smeared with vinegar or alum it becomes like bronze.
150| It is protected from rust by cerussa and gypsum and liquid pitch. This is what the Greeks call antipathy in iron. They say indeed that it is done by a certain religious scruple, and that there is an iron chain at the river Euphrates, in the city called Zeugma, with which Alexander the Great joined a bridge there, whose rings, those that have been replaced, are attacked by rust, while the earlier ones are free of it.
151| There is medicine from iron also other than in cutting. For to be encircled by a circle drawn three times around with the point of a blade is good for adults and infants alike against harmful drugs, and to have fixed on the threshold nails pulled out of tombs against nocturnal frenzies, and to be pricked lightly with the point of the blade that has struck a man, against sudden pains of the sides and chest which bring a stabbing. Certain things are cured by burning, and in particular the bite of a mad dog, since even when the disease is far advanced and they dread drink, once the wound is cauterized they are at once set free. Drink heated with glowing iron is also used in many ailments, and in particular for dysentery.
152| Rust itself is also among the remedies, and thus it is handed down that Achilles healed Telephus, whether he did it with a bronze or an iron spear; at any rate he is painted so, scraping it off with his sword. But the rust of iron is scraped from wet iron, from old nails.
153| Its power is to bind, to dry, to stop. Applied, it corrects alopecias. They use it also for roughness of the eyelids and pustules over the whole body, with wax and myrtle oil, and for sacred fires with vinegar, likewise for scab, for whitlows of the fingers and for pterygia in little linen pads. Laid on in fleeces it stops women's fluxes, and for fresh wounds diluted in wine and worked up with myrrh, for condylomata with vinegar. Smeared on, it eases gout too.
154| The scale of iron too is in use, from the edge or points, very similar but of sharper force than rust, for which reason it is also taken against fluxes of the eyes. It stops blood, since wounds are made above all by iron. It also stops women's fluxes. It is applied against ailments of the spleen, and checks haemorrhoids and creeping ulcers. It also helps the eyelids, sprinkled on for a short time like meal.
155| Its chief recommendation, however, is in the hygremplastrum, for cleansing wounds and fistulas, and eating away all callus, and renewing flesh over bones that have been scraped. It is compounded in this way: propolis, 6 obols; Cimolian chalk, 6 drachmas; pounded bronze, 2 drachmas; scale of iron, as much; wax, 10; oil, a sextarius. To these a cerate is added, when wounds need to be cleansed or filled up.
156| Next comes the nature of lead, of which there are two kinds, black and white. The most precious is the white, called by the Greeks cassiteros, and it is fabulously told that it is sought in islands of the Atlantic sea and brought in wickerwork boats covered round with hide. Now it is known to be in Lusitania. It is produced also in Gallaecia at the very surface of the earth, sandy and of black color. It is detected only by weight;
157| small pebbles are mixed in too, especially in dried torrents. The miners wash these sands and cook in furnaces what has settled. It is found also in the gold mines which they call alutiae, where water let in washes out black pebbles, slightly variegated with white, which have the same heaviness as gold, and therefore remain with it in the baskets in which gold is collected; afterwards they are separated in kilns, and when smelted are resolved into white lead.
158| Black lead is not made in Gallaecia, although neighboring Cantabria abounds in black alone, nor silver from the white, though it is made from the black. Black lead cannot be joined with itself without white, nor this with it without oil, nor can white even with itself without black. White had authority in the Trojan times too, with Homer as witness, who called it cassiteros.
159| The origin of black lead is twofold; for either it comes from its own vein and produces nothing else from itself, or it is born with silver and smelted from mixed veins. The first liquid that came out of the furnaces of this is called stagnum; the second, silver; what remained in the furnaces is galena, which is a third portion of the vein added; this smelted again gives black lead, with 2 ninth parts taken off.
160| Stagnum smeared on bronze vessels makes the taste more pleasant and checks the poison of verdigris, and, wonderfully, does not add to the weight. Mirrors also, most praised, as we have said, were tempered from it at Brundisium, until even maidservants began to use silver ones. Now stagnum is adulterated by the addition of a third portion of white bronze to white lead. It is made also in another way, by mixing pounds of white lead and black; this some now call argentarium. The same call tertiarium that in which there are two portions of black and a third of white. Its price is 20 denarii per pound. With this pipes are soldered.
161| The less scrupulous, adding equal parts of white to the tertiarium, call it argentarium and plate with it what they wish. They make its price 70 denarii per pound. For white by itself, pure, the price is 80 denarii, for black 7. The nature of white has more of the dry, and on the contrary that of black is wholly moist. Therefore white is useful for nothing without a mixture. Nor is silver soldered with it, since silver would melt first,
162| and they affirm that if less black is mixed with the white than is enough, the silver is eaten away by it. White is plated on bronze works, an invention of the Gauls, in such a way that it can hardly be told from silver, and these they call incoctilia. Then they began to plate silver too in the same way, chiefly the ornaments of horses and of pack animals and yokes, at the town of Alesia; the rest of the glory belonged to the Bituriges.
163| Then they began to adorn their carriages, and colisata and petorita, in the same way, a luxury which has now reached golden figurines too, not only silver ones, and what it was extravagant to see on cups is called refinement when worn away on vehicles. The test of white lead is on paper, that it seems to have broken through when melted by its weight, not by heat. India has neither bronze nor lead, and exchanges these for her gems and pearls.
164| Black lead we use for pipes and sheets; it is dug with more labor in Spain and throughout all the Gauls, but in Britain at the very skin of the earth so abundantly that a law is actually laid down that not more than a fixed amount be produced. The kinds of black have these names: Iovetanum, Caprariense, Oleastrense, and there is no difference between them if the slag has been carefully smelted out. It is wonderful that in these mines alone, when abandoned, they come to life again more fertile.
165| Air, let in to satiety through opened vents, seems to do this, just as abortions make some women more fertile. This was lately discovered in Baetica in the Samarian mine, which used to be let at 200,000 denarii a year, and after it had been blotted out was let at 255,000 denarii. In the same way the Antonian mine in the same province, at the same letting, has come to 400,000 sesterces of rent. It is a wonder also that vessels of lead, when water is put in, do not melt, but the same, if a pebble or a bronze quadrans is dropped into the water, are burnt through.
166| In medicine the use of lead by itself is to repress scars, and, with sheets bound on the region of the loins and kidneys, to check by its colder nature the urges of Venus and visions in the sleep of Venus that burst out of nature's own accord to the point of a kind of disease. With these sheets the orator Calvus is said to have restrained himself and to have preserved his bodily strength for the labor of his studies. Nero, the emperor, since the gods so pleased, with a sheet laid on his chest, shouting out songs beneath it, showed the method for nourishing the voice.
167| For medical use it is roasted in earthenware dishes with crumbled sulphur spread underneath, and thin plates of it laid on top and covered with sulphur mixed with iron. While it is being roasted, the breathing passages should be protected during the work; otherwise the noxious exhalation of lead furnaces is felt. It is deadly too, and most swiftly to dogs; and the exhalation of all mines is deadly to flies and gnats, which is why those pests do not occur in mines.
168| Some, in roasting it, mix with the sulphur lead filings obtained with a file; others use cerussa rather than sulphur. Washed lead is also made for use in medicine. Lead is ground against itself in lead mortars with rainwater added, until the mixture thickens; then the water floating on top is taken off with sponges, and what was thickest is dried and divided into pastilles. Some grind filed lead in this way; some also mix in plumbago, others vinegar, others wine, others fat, others rose.
169| Some prefer to grind it with a lead pestle in a stone mortar, above all one of Theban stone, and the medicament comes out whiter that way. Lead that has been burnt, on the other hand, is washed like stibis and cadmea. It can act as an astringent, check fluxes and draw scars together; it is used in the same way in eye-medicines too, especially against prolapse of the eyes, and for the hollows of ulcers or growths, fissures of the seat, haemorrhoids and condylomata.
170| For these purposes washed lead is most effective; the ash of burnt lead, however, is used for creeping or foul ulcers, and the same method of judging its progress applies as with sheets of papyrus. It is burnt in dishes, in small plates, with sulphur, and stirred with iron rods or rods of fennel-giant until the liquid changes into ash; then, once cooled, it is ground to flour. Others cook the filings in an unbaked earthenware vessel in kilns until the clay is fired through. Some mix in cerussa in equal measure, or barley, and grind it as has been described for the raw lead, and they prefer lead prepared in this way to Cyprian spodium.
171| The slag of lead is also in use. The best is the one that comes nearest to a yellow colour, with no remnants of lead and no look of sulphur, and free of earth. It is broken small and washed in mortars until the water takes on a yellow colour, and it is decanted into a clean vessel, and this is done again and again until the most useful part settles. It has the same effects as lead, but sharper. And one is moved to marvel at life's spirit of experiment, which has left not even the dregs of things and the foulness of refuse untried in so many ways.
172| Spodium is also made from lead in the same way as from Cyprian copper. It is washed in loose-woven linen with rainwater, and the earthy part is separated by pouring off; it is sifted and ground. Some prefer to spread this powder out with feathers and to grind it in fragrant wine.
173| There is also molybdaena, which in another place we have called galena, a vein shared by silver and lead. It is better the more it has the colour of gold and the less it is leaden; it should be crumbly and moderately heavy. Cooked with oil, it takes on the colour of liver. It also forms on the furnaces of gold and silver, and this kind they call 'metallic'. The most highly praised is that produced at Zephyrium; those are approved which are least earthy and least stony. They are roasted and washed in the manner of slag.
174| It is used in lipara, to soothe and cool ulcers, and in plasters which are not bound on but, simply smeared on, bring wounds to a scar in tender bodies and the softest parts. The recipe is 3 pounds of it to a pound of wax and 3 heminae of oil; for an aged body, lees of oil are added. Mixed with spuma argenti and slag of lead, it is applied hot as a fomentation for dysentery and tenesmus.
175| Psimithium, that is, cerussa, is also furnished by the lead-works; the most highly praised is at Rhodes. It is made from the finest shavings of lead set over a vessel of the sharpest vinegar and so dripping into it. What has fallen from the lead into the vinegar itself is dried, milled and sifted, then mixed with vinegar once more, divided into pastilles and dried in the sun in summer. It is also made another way: lead is put into jars of vinegar, which are kept sealed for 10 days; what has formed is scraped off like a mould, and the lead is put back again, until the material is used up.
176| What has been scraped off is ground, sifted and roasted in dishes, being stirred with small rods until it turns red and becomes like sandaraca. Then it is washed with fresh water until all the little clouds have been washed out. Afterwards it is dried in the same way and divided into pastilles. Its virtue is the same as that of the substances described above, except that it is the mildest of them all; besides, it serves to whiten women's complexions. It is, however, lethal if drunk, like spuma argenti. Cerussa itself, moreover, if it is roasted, turns red.
177| The nature of sandaraca too has been more or less described. It occurs in gold mines as well as in silver mines. It is better the redder it is and the more it gives off the rank smell of sulphur, and when it is pure and crumbly. It serves to cleanse, to check fluxes, to heat and to erode; its supreme gift is as a septic. Applied with vinegar it fills in alopecias; it is added to eye-medicines; taken with honey it clears the throat and makes the voice clear and tuneful; taken in food with terebinth resin it is a pleasant remedy for the short-winded and those with a cough; and burnt as a fumigation with cedar, it treats the same complaints by its very fumes.
178| Arrhenicum too is made of the same material. The best is of a colour that would be outstanding even in gold; what is paler or resembles sandaraca is judged inferior. There is also a third kind, in which a golden colour is mingled with the colour of sandaraca. These last two are both scaly, but the first is dry and pure, and splits along a fine course of veins. Its virtue is the same as above, but sharper. So it is added both to caustics and to depilatories. It also removes pterygia of the fingers, fleshy growths in the nostrils, condylomata and whatever grows to excess. To make it more effective, it is roasted in a new earthenware pot until it changes colour.

======== Natural History — Book XXXV ========

1| The nature of metals, in which wealth consists, and of the substances that grow up alongside them, has now been more or less set out, the subjects being so linked that the boundless forest of medicine, the darkness of the workshops and the fastidious subtlety of chasing, modelling and dyeing have all been told together. There remain the kinds of earth itself and of stones, a still more numerous series, each of them treated in a great many volumes, chiefly by the Greeks. For our part we shall keep to a brevity that suits our plan, while omitting nothing that is necessary or belongs to nature;
2| and first we shall say what remains to be said about painting, an art once noble — in the days when kings and peoples sought it — and one that ennobled others whom it had deigned to hand down to posterity; but now it has been driven out entirely by marble, and indeed by gold as well — and not only so that whole walls are covered, but with marble cut away and inlaid, and with veneers worked in vermiculate patterns into the likenesses of objects and animals.
3| Panels no longer please us, nor expanses that spread mountains across a bedroom: we have begun to paint with stone as well. This was invented in the principate of Claudius; in Nero's came the practice of varying the uniformity of the veneers by inserting markings that were not in them, so that Numidian marble should be marked with ovals and Synnadic picked out with purple, just as luxury would have wished them to be born. These are the reinforcements of mountains that are running short, and luxury never stops working to lose as much as it can in fires.
4| The painting of portraits, by which the truest likenesses were passed down through the ages, has died out entirely. Bronze shields are set up with silver faces, the features of the figures blurred into dull sameness; the heads of statues are exchanged — a practice long since a common joke, even in verse. So much do all men prefer that their material be gazed at rather than that they themselves be known. And meanwhile they stitch together picture galleries out of old paintings and revere other people's likenesses, while they themselves count something an honour only for its price — so that an heir may break it up and a thief's noose drag it off.
5| So it is that, with no one's likeness living on, they leave behind portraits of their money, not of themselves. The same people adorn their wrestling grounds and anointing rooms with portraits of athletes, and carry the face of Epicurus through their bedrooms and take it about with them. They sacrifice on his birthday, and every month keep a feast on the twentieth day of the moon, which they call the icades — they above all, who do not wish to be known even while they are alive. So it surely is: idleness has destroyed the arts, and since there are no portraits of minds, those of bodies are neglected too.
6| It was otherwise among our ancestors. In their atria these were the things put on display: not statues by foreign artists, nor bronzes or marbles, but faces moulded in wax were set out each in its own cupboard, so that there might be likenesses to accompany the funerals of the clan; and always, when anyone died, the whole company of his family that had ever lived was present. Family trees, moreover, ran in branching lines to the painted portraits.
7| The record rooms were filled with books and documents of deeds done in office. Outside, and around the doorways, were other likenesses of mighty spirits, with spoils taken from the enemy fixed beside them, which not even a buyer was permitted to take down; and the houses celebrated triumphs forever, even when their owners changed. This was a powerful spur, when every day the very walls reproached an unwarlike owner for entering into another man's triumph.
8| There survives the indignant speech of Messala the orator, which forbade the insertion of the alien portrait of the Laevini among those of his family. A similar cause drew from old Messala those volumes he composed on families, when he had passed through the atrium of Scipio Pomponianus and seen the Salvittones — for that had been their cognomen — creeping by testamentary adoption into the name of the Scipios, to the disgrace of the Africani. But — with the Messalas' leave be it said — even to lay false claim to the portraits of famous men showed some love of their virtues, and was much more honourable than to deserve that no one should seek one's own.
9| Nor must we pass over a new invention as well: portraits, if not of gold or silver, then at any rate of bronze, are dedicated in libraries to those whose immortal spirits speak in those very places; indeed, even portraits that do not exist are fashioned, and longing gives birth to faces that have not been handed down, as has happened in the case of Homer.
10| In my own judgement, at least, there is no greater proof of good fortune than that all people should forever long to know what a man was like. At Rome this was the invention of Asinius Pollio, who by dedicating the first library made men's talents public property. Whether the kings of Alexandria and Pergamum, who founded libraries in fierce rivalry, had begun it earlier, I could not easily say.
11| That a love of portraits once burned fiercely is attested by Atticus, Cicero's friend, who published a volume on them, and by Marcus Varro, who by a most generous invention inserted into the abundance of his volumes portraits, in some form, of as many as seven hundred illustrious people, refusing to let their features perish or the long passage of time prevail over men. He was the inventor of a gift that even the gods might envy, since he not only bestowed immortality but sent it out into every land, so that they could be present everywhere, like gods. And this, indeed, he did for others.
12| But the first to establish the private dedication of shields in a sacred or public place was, so far as I find, Appius Claudius [who was consul with Publius Servilius in the year 259 of the City]. He set up his ancestors in Bellona's temple, and wished them to be seen on high and the inscriptions of their honours to be read — a handsome thing, especially if a crowd of children in little portraits displays the offspring together like a kind of nest; there is no one who does not look on such shields with pleasure and goodwill.
13| After him Marcus Aemilius, colleague of Quintus Lutatius in the consulship, set them up not only in the Basilica Aemilia but also in his own house — and that, too, on a precedent drawn from war. For the portraits were set within shields like those with which men fought at Troy, and from this they also took the name clupei — not, as the perverse subtlety of the grammarians would have it, from cluere, 'to be renowned'. It is an origin full of valour, that the face of each man should be reproduced on the shield he had used.
14| The Carthaginians used to make shields and portraits of gold, and carried them with them. In the captured camp, at any rate, Marcius, avenger of the Scipios in Spain, found such a shield of Hasdrubal, and this shield was above the doors of the temple on the Capitol until the first fire. The great carelessness of our ancestors in this matter is noted, in that in the consulship of Lucius Manlius and Quintus Fulvius, in the year of the city 575, Marcus Aufidius, contractor for the care of the Capitol, informed the senators that the shields which for several lustra had been recorded as bronze were silver.
15| The inquiry about the beginnings of painting is uncertain and not part of the work I have undertaken. The Egyptians maintain that among themselves it was discovered six thousand years before it crossed into Greece, a vain boast, as is plain; the Greeks, however, say some that it was found at Sicyon, others among the Corinthians, all agreeing that it began with tracing a line around a man's shadow, and so the first was of that kind, the second used single colors and was called monochrome, after a more elaborate kind had been invented, and it continues to this day.
16| Linear painting was invented by Philocles the Egyptian or Cleanthes the Corinthian; it was first practised by Aridices the Corinthian and Telephanes the Sicyonian, still without any color, yet already scattering lines inside. Hence the custom also of writing beside the figures the names of those they painted. Ecphantus the Corinthian was the first to wash them over with color, of crushed tile, as they say. That he was a different man of the same name from the one whom Cornelius Nepos hands down as having followed Damaratus, father of Tarquinius Priscus, king of the Romans, into Italy when Damaratus was fleeing from Corinth from the injuries of the tyrant Cypselus, we shall presently show.
17| For painting was already perfected even in Italy. There survive at any rate to this day paintings older than the city, at Ardea in sacred buildings, than which I wonder at none so much, lasting so long in the bareness of a roofless building as if fresh. Similarly at Lanuvium, where Atalanta and Helen are painted close together, naked, by the same artist, each of the most excellent form, but the one as a maiden, and not damaged even when the ruin of the temple fell.
18| The emperor Gaius, inflamed by lust, tried to remove them, if the nature of the plaster had allowed. At Caere also there are older ones which still last, and anyone who has weighed them carefully will admit that no art was brought to completion more quickly, since it is plain that it did not exist in the Trojan times.
19| Among the Romans too this art early won honor, since the Fabii, a most distinguished family, took from it the surname Pictor, and the first of that surname himself painted the shrine of Salus in the year 450 after the city's founding, a painting that lasted to our own memory until the temple was burnt in the principate of Claudius. Most recently the painting in the temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium by the poet Pacuvius has been celebrated. He was born of the sister of Ennius, and made that art more illustrious at Rome through the glory of the stage.
20| Afterwards it was not regarded as the work of honorable hands, unless perhaps one wishes to bring in Turpilius, a Roman knight from Venetia, of our own age, whose beautiful works still survive at Verona. He painted with his left hand, which is recorded of no one before. Titedius Labeo, an ex-praetor, who has recently died in extreme old age, and who had even held the proconsulship of the province of Narbonensis, boasted of his small panels, but the thing was mocked and was even a source of insult.
21| There was also a famous decision, not to be omitted, by leading men concerning painting, when Quintus Pedius, grandson of Quintus Pedius, consular and triumphal, who was given by Caesar the dictator as co-heir to Augustus, was mute from birth. The orator Messala, from whose family the boy's grandmother had come, judged that he should be taught painting, and the deified Augustus too approved; the boy died after making great progress in that art.
22| Distinction, however, grew especially at Rome, as I think, from Manius Valerius Maximus Messala, who first displayed a panel [painting] of the battle in which he had conquered the Carthaginians and Hiero in Sicily, on the side of the Curia Hostilia, in the year from the founding of the city 490. Lucius Scipio did the same, and placed a panel of his Asiatic victory on the Capitol, and they say that his brother Africanus took this ill, not undeservedly, since his son had been captured in that battle.
23| Lucius Hostilius Mancinus, who first broke into Carthage, likewise gave offense, not unlike this, to Aemilianus, by displaying in the forum a painting of its site and the assaults, and standing by himself while the people looked, explaining each detail; by which courtesy he obtained the consulship at the next elections. At the games of Claudius Pulcher the stage-set too caused great admiration for its painting, when ravens, deceived by the image, flew down to it on account of its likeness to roof tiles.
24| Authority for foreign panels at Rome, officially, was first of all made by Lucius Mummius, to whom his victory gave the surname Achaicus. For when in the sale of the booty King Attalus had bought a panel by Aristides, Father Liber, for 600,000 denarii, Mummius, wondering at the price and suspecting some merit in it that he himself did not know, called the panel back, Attalus complaining much, and set it up in the shrine of Ceres. This I think was the first foreign painting publicly dedicated at Rome; thereafter I see that they were also commonly placed in the forum.
25| From this comes that well-known wit of the orator Crassus when pleading beneath the Veteres; when a witness he had addressed pressed him, "Tell me then, Crassus, what sort of man do you know me to be?" "Such a man," he said, pointing to a panel on which a Gaul was most crudely depicted sticking out his tongue. In the forum there was also that painting of an old shepherd with a staff, concerning which the ambassador of the Teutons, asked how much he valued it at, replied that he would not want such a man given to him even if living and real.
26| But the dictator Caesar gave panels their chief public authority, when he dedicated the Ajax and the Medea in front of the temple of Venus Genetrix; after him Marcus Agrippa, a man closer to rusticity than to refinements. There survives at any rate a magnificent speech of his, worthy of the greatest of citizens, on making all panels and statues public property, which would have been better than driving them off into the exile of country villas. Yet that same grimness bought two panels, an Ajax and a Venus, from the people of Cyzicus for 1,100,000 sesterces. In the hottest part of his baths also he had enclosed small panels in marble, removed a little while ago when the baths were being repaired.
27| Above all, the deified Augustus set up in his forum, in its most frequented part, two panels which have a painted figure of War and of Triumph, likewise the Castors and Victory. He also set up those which we shall name in mentioning the artists in the temple of his father Caesar. The same man also, in the senate house which he was dedicating in the comitium, fixed two panels to the wall. Nemea sitting on a lion, herself carrying a palm, with an old man standing by with a staff, over whose head hangs a small panel of a two-horse chariot: Nicias wrote that he had burned this in; for that is the word he used.
28| The admiration of the other panel is that a grown son is like his old father, with the difference of age preserved, an eagle flying over carrying a snake; Philochares has attested that this work is his. Immense is the power of art, if one were to value this one panel alone, when because of Philochares the senate and people of Rome, through so many ages, look at Glaucion and his son Aristippus, otherwise most obscure! Tiberius Caesar also, an emperor of least gentleness, set up in the temple of Augustus himself those which we shall presently indicate. So far be it said of the dignity of a dying art.
29| With which single colors the first painters worked we have said, when we were treating of those pigments among the metals, which are called monochromata from the kind of painting. Who afterwards invented what, and at what times, we shall say in mentioning the artists, since to point out the natures of the colors is the first reason of the work undertaken. At length the art distinguished itself and discovered light and shadow, the difference of colors, by turns, setting each other off. Afterwards brilliance was added, different from light. What lay between these and the shadows they called tonos, but the joinings of colors and the transitions harmogen.
30| Colors, however, are either austere or florid. Each comes about by nature or by mixture. The florid are—those which the patron supplies to the painter—minium, Armenium, cinnabaris, chrysocolla, Indicum, purpurissum; the rest are austere. Of all, some are born, some are made. Born are Sinopis, rubrica, Paraetonium, Melinum, Eretria, auripigmentum; the rest are manufactured, first those we have mentioned among the metals, and besides, of the cheaper kinds, ochra, burnt cerussa, sandaraca, sandyx, Syricum, atramentum.
31| Sinopis was first found in Pontus; hence the name from the city of Sinope. It also grows in Egypt, the Balearic Islands and Africa, though the best is found in Lemnos and in Cappadocia, dug out of caves. The part that has clung to the rocks is outstanding. In the clods its color is its own, on the outside spotted. The ancients used this for brilliance. The kinds of Sinopis are three: red, less red, and in between these a middle one. The price of the best is 2 denarii; its use is with the brush, or if one wishes to color wood;
32| of that which comes from Africa, 8 asses each—they call it cicerculum—; it is redder than the rest, more useful for abaci. The price is the same for that which is called pressior, which is the darkest. Its use is for the bases of abaci; in medicine, however, it is mild [….] and in plasters and malagmata, easy to work whether in a dry composition or a liquid one, against ulcers situated in moisture, as those of the mouth and of the seat. It checks the bowels when poured in; taken as a drink in the weight of a denarius it stops women's fluxes. The same burnt dries roughness of the eyes, especially in wine.
33| Some have wished this to be understood as a kind of rubrica of second rank, for they gave the palm to the Lemnian. This is nearest to minium, much celebrated by the ancients along with the island in which it is born. It was not sold unless sealed, and hence they also called it sphragis.
34| With this they underlay minium and adulterate it. In medicine it is held a splendid thing. For smeared around the eyes it eases fluxes and pains, and keeps aegilopia from running; for those spitting blood it is given in vinegar to be drunk. It is drunk also against ailments of the spleen and kidneys and against women's purgings, and likewise against poisons and the stings of serpents, of land and sea, and therefore it is a familiar ingredient in all antidotes.
35| —Of the remaining kinds of rubrica, the Egyptian and African are the most useful for craftsmen, since they are most absorbed by plasterwork. Rubrica is born also in iron mines. It is also made from burnt ochra in new pots plastered around with clay. The longer it has burned in the kilns, the better it is. All rubrica dries, and therefore among plasters it will suit even sacred fire.
36| Half a pound of Pontic Sinopis, 10 pounds of bright sil, and 2 of Graecensian Melinum, mixed and ground together for twelve days, make leucophorum. This is the glue for gold, when it is spread on wood. Paraetonium has its name from a place in Egypt. They say it is the foam of the sea solidified with mud, and therefore tiny shells are found in it. It is made also on the island of Crete and at Cyrene. At Rome it is adulterated with Cimolian chalk, boiled down and thickened. The price of the best is 50 denarii for 6 pounds. Of the white colors it is the greasiest and the most tenacious of plasterwork on account of its smoothness.
37| Melinum is itself a white, the best on the island of Melos. What is produced on Samos painters do not use, because of its excessive greasiness; reclining, they dig the vein out there among the rocks, searching for it. In medicine it has the same use as Eretrian chalk; besides, it dries the tongue on touch and pulls out hair by a cleansing force. The price is one sesterce per pound. The third of the white colors is cerussa, whose method we have described among the lead mines. There was also an earth by itself found at Smyrna in the estate of Theodotus, which the ancients used for painting ships. Now all of it is made from lead and vinegar, as we have said.
38| Burnt cerussa was found by chance in the fire at the Piraeus, when cerussa was burned in jars. Nicias, mentioned above, first used this. The best is now held to be the Asiatic, which is also called purpurea. Its price is 6 denarii per pound. It is also made at Rome by burning marbly sil and putting it out with vinegar. Without the burnt, shadows are not made. Eretria has its name from its earth. Nicomachus and Parrhasius used this. It cools, softens and fills wounds; if boiled it is prescribed for drying, and it is useful for headaches and for detecting pus; for they understand that pus lies beneath if, smeared on from water, it at once dries.
39| Juba has handed down that sandaraca and ochra are born on the island of Topazos in the Red Sea, but from there they are not brought to us. How sandaraca is made we have said. A counterfeit is also made from cerussa cooked in a furnace. The color ought to be flame-colored. The price is 5 asses per pound.
40| If this is roasted with an equal part of rubrica mixed in, it makes sandyx, although I observe that Virgil thought it was a herb, in that verse: "Of its own accord let sandyx clothe the grazing lambs." The price is half that of sandaraca per pound. Nor are there other colors of greater weight. Among the manufactured colors is also Syricum, with which we said minium is underlaid. It is made from Sinopis and sandyx mixed.
41| Atramentum too will be among the manufactured, although there is also an earthy kind, of twofold origin. For either it exudes in the manner of a salt deposit, or an earth of sulphur color is approved for this purpose. Painters have been found who dug out charcoal from desecrated tombs. All this is troublesome and a novelty. For it is made from soot in several ways, from resin or pitch burned up, for which reason they even built workshops that do not let this smoke out. The most praised is made in the same way from pine torches. It is adulterated with the soot of furnaces and baths, which is used for writing books.
42| There are those who also cook down dried wine lees and affirm that, if that lees comes from good wine, this atramentum gives the appearance of Indicum. Polygnotus and Micon, most famous painters, made it at Athens from grape-skins, calling it tryginon. Apelles devised making it from burnt ivory, which is called elephantinum.
43| Indicum too is brought from India, of a discovery as yet unexplored by me. It is also made among dyers from the black flower which clings to the bronze vats. It is made also from burnt pine torch wood and charcoal ground in a mortar. Wonderful is the nature of cuttlefish in this respect, but none is made from them. All atramentum is finished in the sun, for books with gum, for plasterwork with glue mixed in. What has been liquefied in vinegar is washed out with difficulty.
44| Of the remaining colors, which we have said are given by the patrons on account of the greatness of their price, before all is purpurissum. Silver-chalk is dyed along with purples, and takes up that color more quickly than wool. The first is the best, soaked in a boiling cauldron with the raw drugs; the next, when it has been drawn out, has chalk added to the same liquor, and every time this is done, the quality is lessened in proportion to the number, as the liquor grows thinner.
45| Why is the Puteolan praised rather than the Tyrian or the Gaetulian or the Laconian, whence come the most precious purples? The reason is that it is dyed chiefly with hysginum and rubia, which it is forced to soak up. The cheapest is from Canusium. The price runs from 1 denarius per pound up to 30. Painters, having underlaid with sandyx, then spreading purpurissum over it with egg, produce the brilliance of minium. If they prefer to make purples, they underlay with caeruleum, then lay purpurissum over it with egg.
46| After this the greatest authority is Indicum's. It comes from India, as the slime clinging to the foam of reeds. When seen it is black, but in dissolving it gives a wonderful mixture of purple and blue. A second kind of it is what floats on the vats in the purple dye-works, and is the foam of purple. Those who adulterate it dye pigeon dung with true Indicum, or stain Selinusian chalk or ring-chalk with vitrum. It is tested with charcoal; for what is pure gives the flame of an excellent purple and, while it smokes, the smell of the sea. For this reason some think it is gathered from rocks. The price of Indicum is 20 denarii per pound. In medicine Indicum calms stiffness and attacks, and dries ulcers.
47| Armenia sends what is called by its name. It is a stone, dyed in this case too in the manner of chrysocolla, and the best is that which is closest to caeruleum and shares its color. Its pounds used to be priced at 300 sesterces each. A sand was found throughout the Spains that takes the same treatment; and so the cheapness returned to 6 denarii. It differs from caeruleum by a slight whiteness, which makes this color more delicate. Its use in medicine is only for making hair grow, and most of all on the eyelids.
48| There are still two new colors, from the cheapest: there is green, which is called Appianum and imitates chrysocolla, as if not enough lies had been told about it already; it is made from green chalk, valued at sesterces per pound. What they call anulare is white, with which women's portraits are lit up; it too is made from chalk, with glassy gems from common rings mixed in, whence it is also called anulare.
49| Of all colors, purpurissum, Indicum, caeruleum, Melinum, auripigmentum, Appianum and cerussa love a ground of chalk and refuse to be laid on a wet surface. Waxes are dyed with these same colors for those pictures which are burnt in, a kind foreign to walls but familiar to fleets, and now to merchant ships too, since we even paint the dangers, let no one wonder that pyres too are painted, and it pleases those who are to fight to death, or at least to slaughter, to be carried in splendor. In contemplating so many colors of such great variety, one comes to wonder at antiquity.
50| With four colors only those immortal works were made—of the whites, Melinum; of the sils, the Attic; of the reds, Pontic Sinopis; of the blacks, atramentum—by Apelles, Aetion, Melanthius and Nicomachus, most famous painters, when single panels of theirs were sold for the wealth of towns. Now, when purples are migrating onto walls and India is contributing the slime of her rivers and the blood of dragons and elephants, no painting is famous. All things, therefore, were better then, when there was less abundance. So it is, since, as we said above, watch is kept over the prices of things, not of the mind.
51| And I shall not omit the madness of our own age in painting. The emperor Nero had ordered himself painted as a colossus on a linen cloth of 120 feet, a thing unknown up to this time. This painting, when it was finished in the Maian gardens, was struck by lightning and burned up along with the best part of the gardens.
52| His freedman, when giving a gladiatorial show at Antium, covered the public porticoes with paintings, as is agreed, with true likenesses of all the gladiators and attendants rendered. For many generations now this has been the highest spirit in painting, but to paint gladiatorial shows and display them in public began with Gaius Terentius Lucanus. He gave thirty pairs in the forum over three days for his grandfather, by whom he had been adopted, and placed a painted panel in the grove of Diana.
53| Now I shall run through the celebrated artists in this art in the greatest possible brevity, for such a full account is not part of the work undertaken; and so it will suffice to have named some of them even in passing and incidentally in mentioning others, except for the famous achievements of works which it will be right to touch upon, whether they survive or have perished.
54| The care of the Greeks is not consistent with itself in this part, in celebrating painters many Olympiads later than sculptors and workers in relief, and first in the 90th Olympiad, although Phidias himself is said to have been a painter at the beginning, and a shield painted by him at Athens, and besides it is agreed that in the 83rd his brother Panaenus lived, who painted the inside of the shield of Minerva at Elis, which Colotes had made, a pupil of Phidias and his helper in making the Olympian Jupiter.
55| What of this, that it is likewise agreed that the panel of the painter Bularchus, on which was the battle of the Magnetes, was paid for in gold by Candaules, king of Lydia, last of the Heraclidae, who was also called Myrsilus? So great already was the dignity of painting. This must have happened around the age of Romulus, for Candaules died in the eighteenth Olympiad or, as some report, in the same year as Romulus, unless I am mistaken, the glory of the art being already manifest then, and indeed its perfection.
56| If this must be accepted, it is apparent at once that the beginnings were much older, and that those who painted in monochrome, whose date is not handed down, lived somewhat earlier: Hygiaenon, Dinias, Charmadas, and Eumarus of Athens, who first in painting distinguished male from female, and dared to imitate all figures, and Cimon of Cleonae, who developed his discoveries. He invented catagrapha, that is, oblique images, and to form faces in various ways, looking back or up or down; he marked out the limbs by their joints, brought out the veins, and besides invented folds and hollows in garments.
57| Panaenus indeed, the brother of Phidias, even painted the battle of the Athenians against the Persians at Marathon. So much had the use of colors already become common and so far was the art perfected that in that battle he is said to have painted the leaders as portraits, of the Athenians Miltiades, Callimachus, Cynaegirus, of the barbarians Datis and Artaphernes.
58| Nay more, a contest in painting was also established while he flourished at Corinth and Delphi, and he competed first of all, with Timagoras of Chalcis, and was defeated by him at the Pythian games, as appears from an old poem of Timagoras himself, there being an undoubted error of the chronologers. Others also after these were famous before the 90th Olympiad, as Polygnotus of Thasos, who first painted women in transparent dress, covered their heads with many-colored headbands, and contributed most to painting as the first, since he began to open the mouth, show the teeth, and vary the face from its ancient rigidity.
59| There is a panel of his in the portico of Pompey, which had been before his senate house, on which it is doubtful whether he painted a man going up with a shield or going down. At Delphi he painted a temple, and at Athens the portico which is called the Poecile, free of charge, while Micon painted part of it for pay. His authority was even greater, since the Amphictyones, which is the public council of Greece, decreed him free hospitality.—There was also another Micon, who is distinguished by the surname Minor, whose daughter Timarete herself also painted.—
60| In the 90th Olympiad, however, there were Aglaophon, Cephisodorus, Erillus, Euenor, father of Parrhasius and teacher of that greatest painter, of whom we shall speak in his own years, all of them already illustrious, yet not such that the account should linger on them, as it hurries to the luminaries of the art, among whom Apollodorus of Athens first shone, in the 93rd Olympiad. He first began to render the appearances of things, and first rightly brought glory to the brush. His is the priest adoring and the Ajax struck by lightning, which is seen today at Pergamum. And before him no panel of anyone is shown that holds the eyes.
61| After him Zeuxis of Heraclea entered the opened doors of the art in the 95th Olympiad's fourth year, and brought to great glory the brush, which was already daring something—for let us speak of him still—placed by some wrongly in the 89th Olympiad, though Demophilus of Himera and Neseas of Thasos must have lived then, since it is uncertain which of them was his teacher.
62| Against him Apollodorus, mentioned above, made a verse, that Zeuxis carried off with him the art taken from them. He also acquired such wealth that, in a display of it at Olympia, he showed off his own name woven in gold letters in the checks of his cloaks. Afterwards he began to give his works away, saying that they could not be exchanged for any price worthy enough, as the Alcmena to the people of Agrigentum, the Pan to Archelaus.
63| He made also a Penelope, in which he seems to have painted character, and an athlete, and in that was so pleased with himself that he wrote beneath it a verse that became famous, that someone would sooner envy it than imitate it. Magnificent is his Jupiter on a throne with the gods standing by, and the infant Hercules strangling 2 serpents, with his mother Alcmena looking on in terror, and Amphitryon.
64| He is criticized, however, as being rather heavy in heads and joints, though otherwise so great in his care that, when about to make a panel for the people of Agrigentum, which they were to dedicate publicly in the temple of Juno Lacinia, he inspected their maidens naked and chose five, to render in the painting what was most praised in each. He also painted monochromes in white. His contemporaries and rivals were Timanthes, Androcydes, Eupompus, Parrhasius.
65| This last is reported to have come down into a contest with Zeuxis, and, when the other had brought in grapes painted with such success that birds flew to the stage, he himself brought in a linen curtain painted with truth so exactly represented that Zeuxis, swelling with pride at the judgment of the birds, demanded that the curtain at last be removed and the picture shown; and when he understood his error, he yielded the palm with ingenuous shame, since he himself had deceived birds, but Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist.
66| It is reported that afterwards Zeuxis also painted a boy carrying grapes, and when birds flew to them, he came forward with the same ingenuousness, angry at his work, and said, "The grapes I painted better than the boy; for had I perfected this as well, the birds ought to have been afraid." He made also works in clay, the only ones left in Ambracia when Fulvius Nobilior was transferring the Muses from there to Rome. By the hand of Zeuxis at Rome there is a Helen in the porticoes of Philip, and in the shrine of Concord a Marsyas bound.
67| Parrhasius, born at Ephesus, himself also contributed much. He first gave symmetry to painting, first the liveliness of the face, the elegance of hair, the beauty of the mouth, and, by the admission of artists, won the palm in the outlines. This is the highest subtlety of painting. For to paint bodies and the middle of things is indeed a great work, but one in which many have won glory; to make the extremities of bodies and enclose the limit of a painting as it ends is rarely achieved with success in art.
68| For the outline ought to go round itself and so end that it promises other things behind it and shows even what it conceals. This glory was conceded to him by Antigonus and Xenocrates, who wrote on painting, proclaiming it, not only admitting it; and many other traces of his drawing survive on his panels and parchments, from which artists are said to make progress. Yet he seems less when compared with himself in rendering the middle parts of bodies.
69| He painted the Demos of the Athenians also with an ingenious conception. For he showed it variable: wrathful, unjust, inconstant, and the same placable, merciful, compassionate; boastful [….], lofty, humble, fierce and fleeing, and all things at once. He also painted a Theseus, which was at Rome on the Capitol, and a ship's captain in a breastplate, and on one panel, which is at Rhodes, Meleager, Hercules and Perseus; this was three times scorched by lightning there and not obliterated, which in itself increases the marvel.
70| He painted also an archigallus, a picture which the emperor Tiberius loved, and, as Deculo reports, valued at 6,000,000 sesterces, he shut it up in his bedchamber. He painted also a Thracian nurse with the infant in her arms, and Philiscus, and Father Liber with Virtue standing by, and two boys, in whom the carefreeness and simplicity of their age are seen, likewise a priest with a boy standing by holding an incense box and a garland.
71| There are also two most famous pictures by him, a hoplite in a contest running down so that he seems to sweat, another laying down his arms so that he is perceived to gasp. Praised also are Aeneas and Castor and Pollux on the same panel, likewise Telephus, Achilles, Agamemnon, Ulysses. A prolific artist, but one than whom no one has used the glory of his art more insolently, for he even usurped surnames, calling himself habrodiaetus, and in other verses the prince of the art and one who had brought it to completion, above all that he was sprung from the stock of Apollo, and that the Hercules which is at Lindus was painted by him such as he had often seen him in sleep, and,
72| When he had been defeated by a large vote by Timanthes at Samos over an Ajax and the judgment of the arms, he used to say that he took it ill on the hero's account, because for a second time he had been beaten by an unworthy man.—(He painted also, on smaller panels, wanton scenes, refreshing himself with this kind of petulant jest).—
73| For Timanthes had very much ingenuity. His is the Iphigenia celebrated in the praises of orators, in which, when she stands at the altar about to perish, having painted all the bystanders sad, and especially her uncle, and having used up every image of grief, he veiled the face of the father himself, which he could not show worthily.
74| There are other examples of his ingenuity too, such as the sleeping Cyclops on a very small panel, whose size, even so, he wished to express, and painted beside him Satyrs measuring his thumb with a thyrsus. And in the works of this one man more is always understood than is painted, and, though his art is the highest, his ingenuity is nevertheless beyond his art. He painted also a hero, a work of utmost perfection, embracing the art of painting men itself, a work that now stands at Rome in the temple of Peace.
75| Euxinidas in this age taught Aristides, an outstanding artist, and Eupompus taught Pamphilus, the teacher of Apelles. Of Eupompus there is a victor holding a palm after a gymnastic contest. His own authority was so great that he divided painting: the kinds, which before him were two—they called them Helladic and Asiatic—became three on account of him, who was a Sicyonian, the Helladic being divided: Ionic, Sicyonian, Attic.
76| Of Pamphilus there are a Kinship, and the battle at Phlius and the victory of the Athenians, likewise Ulysses on a raft. He himself was a Macedonian by birth, but [….] first in painting educated in all letters, especially arithmetic and geometry, without which he denied that the art could be perfected, and taught no one for less than a talent—500 denarii a year—which fee both Apelles and Melanthius paid him.
77| By his authority it was brought about, first at Sicyon, then in all Greece, that freeborn boys were first of all taught graphice, that is, drawing on boxwood, and that this art was received into the first rank of the liberal arts. There was always indeed this honor for it, that the freeborn practised it, then that persons of respectability did, with a perpetual prohibition that slaves should not be taught. Therefore neither in this nor in toreutice are the works of anyone who has been a slave celebrated.
78| Famous also in the hundred and seventh Olympiad were Aetion and Therimachus. Of Aetion the noted pictures are Father Liber, likewise Tragedy and Comedy, Semiramis from a slave girl winning a kingdom, an old woman carrying torches, and a new bride remarkable for her modesty.
79| But all those born before and to be born afterward Apelles of Cos surpassed, in the hundred and twelfth Olympiad. He contributed to painting almost more by himself than all the others, having also published volumes which contain that teaching. In his art his chief quality was charm, though the greatest painters were of the same age; when he admired their works, he used to say, praising them all, that there was lacking in them that grace of his own, which the Greeks call charis; everything else had fallen to them, but in this alone no one was his equal.
80| And he claimed another glory, when he admired a work of Protogenes, of immense labor and of care anxious beyond measure; for he said that everything was equal between himself and him, or better in Protogenes, but that in one thing he excelled, that he knew how to take his hand off a panel, a memorable precept that excessive diligence often does harm. He was a man of no less simplicity than of art. To Melanthius he yielded in composition, to Asclepiodorus in measures, that is, how far each thing ought to be from each.
81| A clever thing happened between Protogenes and him. Protogenes was living at Rhodes, where Apelles had sailed, eager to know the works of a man known to him by reputation alone, and at once made for his workshop. Protogenes himself was away, but a panel of ample size, fitted on a frame, was guarded by an old woman alone. She answered that Protogenes was out, and asked whom she should say had sought him. "This one," said Apelles, and seizing a brush he drew a line of extreme fineness in color across the panel.
82| And when Protogenes returned, the old woman told him what had been done. They say that the artist, at once contemplating the fineness, said that Apelles had come, that so perfect a work could not fall to any other; and that he himself drew in another color a still finer line over that very line, and as he went away instructed the old woman, if the other came back, to show it and add that this was the man he was seeking. And so it happened. For Apelles returned, and blushing to be beaten, split the lines with a third color, leaving no more room for fineness.
83| But Protogenes, confessing himself beaten, flew down to the harbor seeking his guest, and it was decided that the panel should be handed on to posterity as it was, to the amazement of all, but especially of artists. I hear that it was destroyed in the earlier fire of Caesar's house on the Palatine, having been seen before at Rhodes, containing over a wide space nothing but lines that escape the sight, among the outstanding works of many looking like a blank, and by that very fact alluring and more noble than any work.
84| Apelles had besides a constant habit of never letting a day be so occupied that he did not exercise his art by drawing a line, which came from him into a proverb. He also used to put his finished works out on a platform for passers-by, and, himself hiding behind the panel, listened for the faults that were noticed, preferring the crowd as a more careful judge than himself;
85| They say that he was criticized by a shoemaker because in a pair of sandals he had made one loop fewer on the inside; and when the next day the same man, proud of the correction of his earlier admonition, was finding fault about the leg, Apelles looked out indignant and warned that a shoemaker should not judge above the sandal, which too went into a proverb. For he had affability also, on account of which he was the more agreeable to Alexander the Great, who frequently came to his workshop—for, as we have said, Alexander had forbidden by edict to be painted by anyone else—but when Alexander in the workshop discoursed ignorantly at length, he courteously urged him to silence, saying that he was being laughed at by the boys who were grinding the colors.
86| So great was the authority of right against a king otherwise quick to anger. Yet Alexander showed him honor by a most famous example. For when he had ordered Apelles to paint naked, in admiration of her form, a woman dear to him above all his concubines, by name Pancaspe, and had perceived that, while obeying, the painter had been taken with love, he gave her to him as a gift, great in spirit, greater in command over himself, and no less by this deed than by another victory,
87| because he conquered himself, and gave to the artist not only his bed but also his affection, not moved even by regard for the beloved, though she had been now the king's, now the painter's. There are those who think that the Venus Anadyomene painted by him was taken from her as model. Apelles, kind even to his rivals, was the first to establish Protogenes' standing at Rhodes.
88| He was held cheap by his own people, as domestic things commonly are, and when Apelles asked at what price the finished works could be had, Protogenes had named some small sum; but Apelles demanded fifty talents each, and spread the report that he was buying them to sell as his own. This affair roused the Rhodians to understand the artist, and he did not part with them except to those who raised the price. He painted portraits of such indistinguishable likeness that—incredible to tell—Apion the grammarian left in writing that a certain man who divined from the face of men, those they call metoposcopi, said from them either the years of death to come or those of life past.
89| He had not been in favor in the retinue of Alexander with Ptolemy, in whose reign, driven to Alexandria by force of storm, a royal buffoon having been suborned by the fraud of his rivals, he was invited, and came to dinner; and when Ptolemy was angry and pointed to his own summoners, so that he might say by which of them he had been invited, he snatched an extinguished charcoal from the hearth and drew on the wall an outline of the face, the king at once recognizing the face of the buffoon, though it was only begun.
90| He painted also a portrait of King Antigonus, who was deprived of one eye, the first to think of a method of hiding blemishes; for he made it in profile, so that what was lacking in the body might seem rather to be lacking in the picture, and showed only that part of the face which he could have shown entire. Among his works there are also portraits of the dying. Which are the most famous it is not easy to say.
91| The Venus emerging from the sea, which is called Anadyomene, the deified Augustus dedicated in the shrine of his father Caesar; while she is so greatly praised in Greek verses, she is overcome by the ages, but made illustrious. No one could be found to restore her damaged lower part, but the very injury turned to the glory of the artist. This panel aged with decay, and Nero in his principate put another in its place, by the hand of Dorotheus.
92| Apelles had begun another Venus also for the people of Cos, intending to surpass even that earlier one of his own. Death begrudged it when a part had been finished, nor was anyone found to succeed to the work according to the outlines laid down. He painted also Alexander the Great holding a thunderbolt in the temple of Ephesian Diana, for twenty talents of gold. The fingers seem to stand out and the thunderbolt to be outside the panel—let readers remember that all this was done with four colors—; the pay for this panel he received in gold coin, by measure, not by count.
93| He painted also the procession of the megabyzus, priest of Ephesian Diana, Clitus hastening to war on horseback, and his armor-bearer handing him the helmet he asks for. How often he painted Alexander and Philip it is superfluous to count. His Habron at Samos is admired; at Rhodes Menander, king of Caria, likewise Antaeus; at Alexandria Gorgosthenes the tragic actor; at Rome the Castor and Pollux with Victory and Alexander the Great, likewise the image of War with hands bound behind the back, Alexander triumphing in a chariot.
94| Both of these panels the deified Augustus had dedicated in the busiest parts of his forum, in a moderate simplicity; the deified Claudius thought it better, with the face of Alexander cut out of both, to add portraits of the deified Augustus. They think that by the same hand there is also in the temple of Diana a Hercules seen from behind, so that, which is most difficult, the painting shows his face more truly than it promises. He painted also a naked hero, and by that picture he challenged nature herself.
95| There is also his horse, or there was, painted in a contest in which he appealed from men to dumb four-footed animals. For feeling that his rivals prevailed by canvassing, he showed the pictures of each to horses led in: only to Apelles' horse did they neigh, and this has happened also afterwards, always, so that that test of art is paraded.
96| He made also Neoptolemus on horseback against the Persians, Archelaus with wife and daughter, Antigonus in a cuirass advancing with a horse. Those more expert in the art prefer above all his works the same king seated on a horse, and Diana mixed in a chorus of sacrificing maidens, in which he seems to have surpassed the verses of Homer describing this very thing. He painted also what cannot be painted, thunder, lightning bolts and flashes; they call them Bronte, Astrape and Ceraunobolia.
97| —His discoveries benefited others too in the art; one thing no one has been able to imitate, that he spread over his finished works an atramentum so thin that the very coat, while it called up the reflection of all the colors and guarded them from dust and dirt, appeared to one looking only when the hand was brought near; but it also had a great principle of lighting, so that the brightness of the colors should not offend the eye of those looking as if through a lapis specularis, and so that from a distance the same thing should secretly give austerity to colors that were too florid.
98| His contemporary was Aristides of Thebes. He first of all painted the mind and expressed the feelings of man, which the Greeks call ethe, likewise the disturbances of the mind, a little harsher in his colors. His works [….] a town being captured, an infant creeping toward the breast of a mother dying from a wound, and the mother is understood to feel and to fear that, her milk dead, he may lick blood. This panel Alexander the Great had transferred to Pella, his native land.
99| The same man painted a battle with the Persians, embracing a hundred men in that panel, having contracted for each one ten minae from Mnason, the tyrant of the Elateans. He painted also chariots running, and a suppliant almost with a voice, and hunters with their catch, and Leontion of Epicurus, and an anapauomene on account of her brother's love, likewise Liber and Ariadne, seen at Rome in the temple of Ceres, a tragic actor and a boy in the temple of Apollo,
100| the charm of which panel perished through the ignorance of a painter to whom the praetor Marcus Junius had entrusted it for cleaning on the day of the Apolline games. There was seen also in the temple of Fides on the Capitol his old man teaching a boy with a lyre. He painted also a sick man, praised without end, and he was so strong in his art that King Attalus is said to have bought one panel of his for a hundred talents.
101| At the same time, as has been said, Protogenes also flourished. His native place was Caunus, of a people subject to the Rhodians. Extreme poverty at the beginning, and the greatest intensity in his art, and therefore smaller fertility. Who taught him they do not think is established; some say that he painted ships even until his fiftieth year; the proof being that when at Athens, in the most frequented place, he was painting the propylon of the shrine of Minerva, where he made the famous Paralus and Hammonias, whom some call Nausicaa, he added small warships in what painters call parergia, so that it might appear from what beginnings his works had come to the summit of display.
102| The palm among his panels is held by the Ialysus, which is dedicated at Rome in the temple of Peace. While painting it, he is said to have lived on soaked lupines, because in this way he supported hunger and thirst together and did not clog his senses with excessive sweetness. Over this painting he laid color four times, as three reserves against injury and age, so that when the upper wore away the lower would succeed. In it there is a dog wonderfully made, one that chance painted as well. He did not judge himself to express in it the foam of a panting animal, though in all the rest, which was most difficult, he had satisfied himself.
103| The art itself, however, displeased him: it could not be reduced, and it seemed excessive and to depart too far from truth, the foam being painted, not born from the mouth. In anxious torment of mind, since in painting he wanted what was true, not what was like truth, he had wiped it off and changed the brush many times, in no way approving it to himself. Finally, angry with the art, because it was perceived, he dashed a sponge at the hateful spot of the panel. And it put back the colors it had removed just as his care had wished, and in the picture chance made nature.
104| By his example Nealces too is said to have had a similar success with the foam of a horse, with a sponge likewise dashed, when he was painting a poppyzon restraining it. Thus Protogenes showed fortune also. Because of this Ialysus, in order not to burn the panel, King Demetrius, although only from that side could he capture Rhodes, did not set fire to it, and in sparing the picture the opportunity of victory fled from him.
105| Protogenes was then in his little garden in the suburbs, that is, in Demetrius' camp, and, not interrupted by the battles, did not break off at all the works begun, except when summoned by the king; and when asked in what confidence he was working outside the walls, he replied that he knew the king's war was with the Rhodians, not with the arts. The king set guards for his protection, glad that he preserved the hands which he had spared, and, so as not to call him away too often, himself, an enemy, came to him, and leaving the vows of his victory, among arms and the blows on the walls, watched the artist; and this report follows the panel of that time, that Protogenes painted it under the sword:
106| This is the Satyr whom they call anapauomenos, holding pipes, so that nothing may be lacking to the security of that time. He made also Cydippe and Tlepolemus, Philiscus, writer of tragedies, meditating, and an athlete and King Antigonus, the mother of Aristotle the philosopher, who urged him to paint the deeds of Alexander the Great for the eternity of the subject—an impulse of mind and a certain desire of art carried him rather to these—; last he painted Alexander and Pan. He made also statues in bronze, as we have said.
107| In the same age there was Asclepiodorus, whom Apelles admired for symmetry. To him the tyrant Mnason gave for the twelve gods thirty minae each, and to Theomnestus twenty each for the heroes.
108| To these must be added Nicomachus, son and pupil of Aristides. He painted the Rape of Proserpina, a panel which was on the Capitol in the shrine of Minerva above the chapel of Youth, and, on the same Capitol, one that the commander Plancus had set up, Victory carrying a four-horse chariot up on high. He first added the cap to Ulysses. He painted also Apollo and Diana, and the Mother of the Gods sitting on a lion,
109| likewise the famous Bacchae with Satyrs creeping up on them, and a Scylla, which now stands at Rome in the temple of Peace. Nor was there anyone quicker in that art. For they say that he was hired to paint by Aristratus, tyrant of the Sicyonians, who was making a monument to the poet Telestes, with a day fixed in advance by which it was to be finished, and that he had come not long before it, the tyrant being fired to punishment, and in a few days finished it, with speed and wonderful art.
110| —He had as pupils his brother Ariston and his son Aristides and Philoxenus of Eretria, whose panel, to be put behind none, painted for King Cassander, contained the battle of Alexander with Darius. The same man painted also a Wantonness, in which three Sileni are revelling. He, following the speed of his teacher, found out certain still shorter shortcuts in painting.
111| —To these is added also Nicophanes, elegant and neat to such a degree that few are compared with him in charm; the buskin and the gravity of the art are far from Zeuxis and Apelles.—(Apelles' pupil Perseus, to whom he wrote about this art, had been of this age).—Of Aristides of Thebes the pupils were also his sons Niceros and Ariston, whose work is a Satyr crowned, with a cup; his pupils were Antorides and Euphranor, of whom we shall presently speak.
112| For it is fitting to add those famous in the lesser painting with the brush, of whom was Piraeicus, to be put behind few in art: by purpose, I do not know whether he distinguished himself, since, following lowly subjects, he nevertheless won the highest glory in lowliness. He painted barbers' shops and cobblers' shops and little asses and provisions and the like, and for this was surnamed rhyparographos, "painter of filth"; in these he is of consummate pleasure, since they sold for more than the greatest works of many.
113| On the other hand, says Varro, the panel of Serapion under the Veteres covered all the balconies. He painted stage scenery excellently, but could not paint a man. In contrast, Dionysius painted nothing else than men, and for that reason was surnamed anthropographos, "painter of men".
114| Callicles also made small works, likewise Calates with comic panels, and Antiphilus both. For he painted both the famous Hesione and Alexander and Philip with Minerva, which are in the school in the porticoes of Octavia, and in the porticoes of Philip, Father Liber, Alexander as a boy, Hippolytus terrified at the bull let loose, and in Pompey's portico Cadmus and Europa. The same man for jests painted a man named Gryllus in a ridiculous dress, whence this kind of picture is called gryllus. He himself was born in Egypt and learned from Ctesidemus.
115| It is proper not to be silent about the painter of the temple at Ardea, especially since he was given citizenship there and a poem, which is on the painting itself, in these verses: "Worthy things to the worthy. Marcus Plautius, who is renowned as sprung from broad Asia, adorned with paintings in this place the temple of Queen Juno, wife of the highest, and now and always for this art Ardea praises him"; and these are written in ancient Latin letters,
116| nor must Studius be cheated, in the age of the deified Augustus, who first introduced the most pleasant painting of walls, villas and porticoes and topiary works, groves, woods, hills, fishponds, canals, rivers, shores, whatever one might wish, with various figures of people strolling there or sailing or approaching villas by land on little asses or in vehicles, then people fishing, fowling or hunting or even gathering the vintage.
117| In his exemplars there are famous villas with a marshy approach, women carried on shoulders for a wager with men slipping about, those carried trembling, and besides very many such witticisms of most amusing salt. The same man began to paint seaside towns on open-air walls, of a most agreeable appearance and at the least expense.
118| But there is no glory for artists except those who painted panels. The more venerable appears the prudence of antiquity. For they did not adorn walls for owners only, nor houses that would stay in one place, which could not be rescued from fires. Protogenes was content with a hut in his little garden; in Apelles' plastered walls there was no painting. It was not yet pleasing to color whole walls; the art of all of them kept watch for cities, and the painter was a common possession of the lands.
119| —There was also Arellius, celebrated at Rome a little before the deified Augustus, had he not corrupted the art by a notable disgrace, always pandering to whatever woman he was burning with love for, and on that account painting goddesses, but with the likeness of his beloveds. And so in his painting the harlots could be counted.
120| There was also recently Famulus, a grave and severe painter, and at the same time swollen with florid manner. His was a Minerva who looks at the one looking at her, from whatever angle she was looked at. He painted for a few hours of the day, and that too with gravity, in that he was always in his toga, even on scaffolding. The Golden House was the prison of his art, and therefore no other examples of it greatly survive. Next in authority after him came Cornelius Pinus and Attius Priscus; they painted the temples of Honor and Virtue for the Emperor Vespasian Augustus when he was restoring them, Priscus more like the ancients.
121| —In mentioning painting, the celebrated story about Lepidus must not be omitted, since in the triumvirate, led by the magistrates to a certain place, a woodland lodging, he complained to them threateningly the next day that sleep had been taken from him by the chorus of birds; and they put around the grove a snake painted on a very long parchment, and by that terror the birds are said then to have fallen silent and afterwards to be able to be restrained.
122| Who first thought of painting in waxes and burning in a painting is not agreed. Some think it the invention of Aristides, afterwards perfected by Praxiteles; but encaustic paintings existed somewhat older, as those of Polygnotus and Nicanor, and of Mnesilaus of Paros. Elasippus too inscribed on his picture at Aegina enekaen, "he burned it in", which he would surely not have done had encaustic not been invented.
123| Pamphilus too, the teacher of Apelles, is reported not only to have painted in encaustic but also to have taught Pausias of Sicyon, the first famous in this kind. He was the son of Bryes and at first the pupil of the same. He himself also painted walls with the brush at Thespiae, when those formerly painted by Polygnotus were being restored, and was thought to be much surpassed by the comparison, since he had competed in a kind not his own.
124| The same man also first began to paint paneled ceilings, nor was it the custom before him to adorn vaults in this way; he painted small panels, and especially boys. His rivals interpreted this as his doing because that method of painting was slow. For this reason, intending to give him a reputation for speed, he finished in one day a panel, which was called hemeresios, with a boy painted.
125| In his youth he loved Glycera, his fellow citizen, an inventor of garlands, and by competing in imitation of her he brought that art to a most numerous variety of flowers. Finally he painted her too, seated with a garland, which is among the most famous of panels, called stephanoplocos, by others stephanopolis, because Glycera had supported her poverty by selling garlands. The copy of this panel, which they call apographon, Lucius Lucullus bought for two talents [….] Dionysius at Athens.
126| Pausias, however, made large panels too, as the sacrifice of oxen seen in the portico of Pompey. This kind of painting he was first to invent, which many afterwards imitated and none equaled. Before all, when he wished to show the length of an ox, he painted it facing, not sideways, and its size is abundantly understood. Then,
127| though all who wish things to seem to stand out make them in a whitish color, and what they hide in black, he made the whole ox of a dark color and gave the body of shadow from the shadow itself, showing with great art what stands out on a level surface, and all solid in the broken. At Sicyon he too spent his life, and for a long time that was the home of painting. All the panels thence, being forfeited out of the public holdings on account of the debt of the state, the aedileship of Scaurus transferred to Rome.
128| After him Euphranor of the Isthmus stood out far above all in the 104th Olympiad, the same who has been mentioned by us among the sculptors. He made colossi and marble works and carved reliefs, apt to learn and laborious beyond all, and excelling in whatever kind and equal to himself. He seems to have been the first to express the dignities of heroes and to have taken up symmetry, but he was slighter in the whole of bodies and larger in heads and joints.
129| He also composed volumes on symmetry and colors. His works are a cavalry battle, the 12 gods, and a Theseus, concerning which he said that Parrhasius's Theseus had been fed on roses, but his own on meat. His famous panel is at Ephesus: Ulysses, in feigned madness, yoking an ox with a horse, and cloaked men thinking, and a leader sheathing a sword.
130| At the same time lived Cydias, whose panel of the Argonauts the orator Hortensius bought for 144,000 sesterces, and made a shrine for it in his house at Tusculum; and Antidotus, the pupil of Euphranor. His are a man fighting with a shield at Athens and a wrestler and a trumpeter, praised among few. He himself, more careful than prolific, and severe in colors, became most famous through his pupil Nicias of Athens, who painted women most carefully.
131| He guarded light and shadow and took the greatest care that paintings should stand out from their panels. Of his works there is the Nemea brought from Asia to Rome by Silanus, which we have said was placed in the senate house, likewise Father Liber, in the temple of Concord; and a Hyacinthus, which Caesar Augustus, delighted with it, took with him when Alexandria was captured, and for that reason Tiberius Caesar dedicated this panel in his temple, and a Danae,
132| at Ephesus the tomb of the megabyzus, priest of Ephesian Diana, at Athens the necyomantea of Homer. This he refused to sell to King Attalus for 60 talents and gave it instead to his country, abounding in wealth. He made also large pictures, among which are Calypso and Io and Andromeda; Alexander also, outstanding in the porticoes of Pompey, and a seated Calypso are ascribed to this same man.
133| Of four-footed animals he rendered dogs most successfully. This is the Nicias of whom Praxiteles, asked which of his works in marble he most approved, said: those to which Nicias had put his hand; so much did he attribute to his finishing coat. It is not sufficiently distinguished whether some make another of the same name or this same man flourish in the 112th Olympiad.
134| With Nicias is compared, and sometimes preferred, Athenion of Maroneia, pupil of Glaucion of Corinth, more austere in color and in austerity more pleasing, so that learning shines out in the painting itself. He painted in the temple at Eleusis the phylarch, and at Athens a crowd, which they called syngenicon, likewise Achilles hidden in the dress of a maiden with Ulysses detecting him, and on one panel 6 figures, and that by which he became most famous, a groom with a horse. If he had not died in his youth, no one would be compared with him.
135| There is a name too for Heraclides the Macedonian. At first he painted ships, and when King Perseus was captured he migrated to Athens. There, at the same time, was Metrodorus, a painter and also a philosopher, of great authority in both sciences. And so when Lucius Paulus, after defeating Perseus, asked the Athenians to send him the most approved philosopher possible to educate his children, and likewise a painter to adorn his triumph, the Athenians chose Metrodorus, declaring the same man most outstanding in both requirements, as Paulus too judged.
136| Timomachus of Byzantium, in the age of the dictator Caesar, painted an Ajax and a Medea, placed by him in the temple of Venus Genetrix, sold for 80 talents. The Attic talent Marcus Varro reckons at 6,000 denarii. Equally praised of Timomachus are an Orestes, an Iphigenia in Tauris, together with a Lecythion, a trainer of agility, a Kinship of famous people, cloaked men whom he painted about to speak, one standing, the other seated. The art seemed, however, to have favored him especially in the Gorgon.
137| Aristolaus, son and pupil of Pausias, was among the most severe painters; his are Epaminondas, Pericles, Medea, Virtue, Theseus, an image of the Attic people, and a sacrifice of oxen.—There are those who like also Nicophanes, pupil of the same Pausias, for a diligence which only artists understand, otherwise hard in colors and abundant in sil. As for Socrates, he rightly pleases everyone; of this kind are his daughters of Aesculapius, Hygia, Aegle, Panacea, Iaso, and the lazy man who is called Ocnos, twisting spartum, which a little ass gnaws.
138| With the foremost in each kind pointed out so far, those next to the first will not be passed over in silence: Aristoclides, who painted the temple of Apollo in Delphi. Antiphilus wins praise for a boy blowing up a fire, with the house, otherwise beautiful, glowing, and the face of the boy himself, likewise for a wool-working in which the tasks of all the women are hurried along, Ptolemy hunting, but most famous a Satyr with a panther skin, whom they call aposcopeuon; Aristophon a wounded Ancaeus, struck by a boar, with Astypalaea, the companion of his grief, and a many-figured panel in which are Priam, Helen, Credulity, Ulysses, Deiphobus and Guile.
139| Androbius painted Scyllus cutting the anchors of the Persian fleet, Artemon a Danae with the pirates wondering at her, Queen Stratonice, Hercules and Deianira, and most famous of all, those which are in the works of Octavia, Hercules from Mount Oeta in Doris, his mortality burned away, going into heaven by the consent of the gods, and the story of Laomedon around Hercules and Neptune; Alcimachus, Dioxippus, who won in the pancratium at Olympia without a throw of dust, which they call akoniti; Coenus, pedigrees.
140| Ctesilochus, pupil of Apelles, became known by a petulant picture, Jupiter depicted giving birth to Liber, wearing a headband and groaning like a woman among the goddesses acting as midwives; Cleon, a Cadmus; Ctesidemus, the capture of Oechalia and a Laodamia; Ctesicles, by an outrage against Queen Stratonice. For, received by her with no honor, he painted her rolling about with a fisherman, whom rumor had it the queen loved, and displayed that panel in the harbor of Ephesus, himself carried off under sail. The queen forbade its removal, the likeness of both being wonderfully rendered. Cratinus painted comic actors at Athens in the Pompeion; Eutychides, a two-horse chariot: Victory drives it.
141| Eudorus is noted for a stage scene—the same man also made statues in bronze—, Hippys for a Neptune and Victory. Habron painted a Friend and Concord and images of gods, Leontiscus Aratus as victor with a trophy, and a woman lyre-player, Leon a Sappho, Nearchus a Venus among the Graces and Cupids, a Hercules sad with repentance at his madness,
142| Nealces a Venus, ingenious and skilled, [….] for when he had painted a naval battle of the Persians and the Egyptians, which he wished to be understood as having taken place on the Nile [whose water is like the sea], he declared by an expedient what he could not by art: he painted a little ass drinking at the water's edge, and a crocodile lurking in ambush for it;
143| Oenias a syngenicon, Philiscus a painter's workshop with a boy blowing up a fire, Phalerion a Scylla, Simonides Agatharchus and Mnemosyne, Simus a youth resting, a fuller's workshop celebrating the Quinquatrus, and the same man an outstanding Nemesis,
144| Theorus a man anointing himself, and the same man the killing of his mother and Aegisthus by Orestes, and the Trojan war on several panels, which is at Rome in the porticoes of Philip, and a Cassandra, which is in the shrine of Concord, Leontium of Epicurus thinking, King Demetrius; Theon the madness of Orestes, Thamyras the lyre-player; Tauriscus a discus-thrower, Clytaemestra, Paniscus, Polynices claiming back his kingdom and Capaneus.
145| Among these a striking example will not be omitted. For Erigonus, the color-grinder of the painter Nealces, advanced so far himself that he left even a celebrated pupil, Pasias, brother of the sculptor Aegineta. But this is exceedingly rare and worthy of memory, that the last works of artists and unfinished panels, such as the Iris of Aristides, the Tyndaridae of Nicomachus, Timomachus' Medea and the Venus of Apelles that we have mentioned, are in greater admiration than finished ones, since in them the remaining outlines and the very thoughts of the artists are seen, and in the allurement of commendation there is the grief for the hand put out while it was at work.
146| There are still some not ignoble, though to be mentioned in passing: Aristocydes, Anaxander, Aristobulus the Syrian, Arcesilas, son of Tisicrates, Coroebus, pupil of Nicomachus, Charmantides, of Euphranor, Dionysodorus of Colophon, Dicaeogenes, who lived with King Demetrius, Euthymides, Heraclides the Macedonian, Milon of Soli, pupils of Pyromachus the sculptor, Mnasitheus of Sicyon, Mnasitimus, Aristonidas' son and pupil, Nessus, the son of Habron, Polemon the Alexandrian, Theodorus of Samos and Stadios, pupils of Nicosthenes, Xenon of Sicyon, pupil of Neocles.
147| Women also have painted: Timarete, daughter of Micon, a Diana, which is on a panel at Ephesus, of most ancient painting; Irene, daughter and pupil of the painter Cratinus, a girl, which is at Eleusis, Calypso, an old man and the juggler Theodorus, the dancer Alcisthenes; Aristarete, daughter and pupil of Nearchus, an Aesculapius. Iaia of Cyzicus, a perpetual virgin, in the youth of Marcus Varro at Rome, painted both with the brush and with the burin on ivory, chiefly portraits of women, and at Naples an old woman on a large panel, and also her own likeness in a mirror.
148| No one's hand in painting was quicker, and her art was such that she far surpassed in fees the most celebrated portrait painters of the same age, Sopolis and Dionysius, whose panels fill picture galleries. Olympias also painted some things, of whom only this is remembered, that Autobulus was her pupil.
149| In encaustic painting there were anciently two kinds, with wax and, on ivory, with the cestrum, that is, a little spit, until fleets began to be painted. A third was added, of using the brush with waxes melted by fire, a painting which is not spoiled on ships by sun or salt or winds.
150| They paint cloths also in Egypt, in a manner marvelous among few, smearing white sails, after they have rubbed them, not with colors but with drugs that absorb color. When they have done this, nothing appears on the sails, but when they are dipped in a cauldron of boiling pigment, after a moment they are drawn out painted. And it is a wonder that, though there is one color in the cauldron, from it one color and another arises in the cloth, changed by the quality of the drug that receives it, and afterwards it cannot be washed out. So the cauldron, which would undoubtedly mix the colors if it received them painted, distributes them from one, and paints while it boils, and these cloths, thus scorched, become firmer for use than if they were not burned.
151| —Of painting enough and more than enough. It would be fitting to have joined with these also plastice, of the same work, of earth. To model likenesses from clay was first discovered by Butades of Sicyon, a potter, at Corinth, through his daughter, who, taken with love for a young man, when he was leaving for abroad, outlined on the wall by lamplight with lines the shadow of his face, on which her father pressed clay and made a relief, and set it out hardened by fire with the other earthenware, and they say it was preserved in the Nymphaeum until Mummius overthrew Corinth.
152| There are those who hand down that at Samos Rhoecus and Theodorus first of all invented plastice, long before the Bacchiadae were driven out of Corinth, and that Damaratus, a fugitive from the same city, who in Etruria fathered Tarquinius, king of the Roman people, was accompanied by the modellers Euchir, Diopus and Eugrammus; that by them plastice was handed on to Italy. It was Butades' invention to add red ochre or to model from red clay, and he first placed masks on the ends of the eaves-tiles, which at the beginning he called prostypa; afterwards the same man made ectypa. Hence arose the pediments of temples too. Because of him modellers were called plastae.
153| The likeness of a man, however, from the face itself in plaster, was first of all expressed, and wax poured into that plaster mould for correcting, by Lysistratus of Sicyon, brother of Lysippus, of whom we have spoken. He also began to render likenesses; before him they strove to make them as beautiful as possible. The same man invented also taking impressions from statues, and the practice grew so far that no statues or figures were made without clay. From which it appears that this knowledge was older than that of casting bronze.
154| The most praised modellers were Damophilus and Gorgasus, the same also painters, who had adorned the temple of Ceres at Rome by the Circus Maximus in both kinds of their art, with verses inscribed in Greek by which they signified that on the right were the works of Damophilus, on the left of Gorgasus. Before this temple all things in temples were Tuscan, as Varro is authority, and from this one, when it was being rebuilt, the plaster of the walls was cut out and enclosed in framed panels, likewise the statues from the pediments were dispersed.
155| Chalcosthenes also made unbaked works at Athens, a place called Ceramicos from his workshop. Marcus Varro reports that he knew at Rome a man named Posis, by whom apples and grapes were made that no one could tell by sight from real ones. The same man extols Arcesilaus, a friend of Lucius Lucullus, whose proplasmata were wont to sell for more to artists themselves than the work of others;
156| that by him was made the Venus Genetrix in the forum of Caesar, and that before it was finished, in the haste of dedicating, it was set in place; that by Lucullus a statue of Felicitas was contracted from him for 1,000,000 sesterces, which the death of both prevented; that for Octavius, a Roman knight who wished to make a mixing bowl, a model made of plaster cost a talent. He praises also Pasiteles, who called plastice the mother of chasing and sculpture and carving and, though he was supreme in all of these, never made anything before he modelled it.
157| Moreover this art was worked up in Italy and above all in Etruria; Vulca was summoned from Veii, to whom Tarquinius Priscus gave the contract for an image of Jupiter to be dedicated on the Capitol; that he was of clay and therefore used to be painted with minium; that the four-horse chariots on the pediment of that temple were of clay, of which we have often spoken; that by this same man was made the Hercules which still keeps in the city the name of the material. For these were then the most splendid images of the gods, nor are we ashamed of those who worshipped them as such; for gold and silver they did not make even for the gods.
158| Such images still last in most places; pediments of temples indeed, numerous even in the city and in the municipal towns, of wonderful chasing and art and of lasting strength, are holier than gold, certainly more innocent. In sacred rites indeed, even among these riches, libation is made today not with murrine or crystal vessels but with earthenware ladles, through the unspeakable kindness of the Earth, if one weighs them singly, even setting aside in the kinds of crops,
159| wine, fruits, herbs and shrubs, drugs and metals, her benefits which we have described so far. Nor do the works of the potteries fail to satisfy by their constant use, with jars devised for wine, pipes for water, bath fittings, for roofs baked tiles and small bricks and foundations or what are made on the wheel, on account of which King Numa founded the seventh guild, of potters.
160| Nay, many have preferred to be laid to rest after death in earthenware coffins, as Marcus Varro, in the Pythagorean manner in leaves of myrtle and olive and black poplar. The greater part of mankind uses earthen vessels. Samian ware is still praised for table use. Arretium in Italy keeps this fame, and for cups alone Surrentum, Hasta, Pollentia, in Spain Saguntum, in Asia Pergamum.
161| Tralles has its own works there, and in Italy Mutina, since peoples are made famous in this way too, and these also are carried across seas and lands to and fro, from the notable workshops of the wheel. At Erythrae two jars are shown to this day in a temple, consecrated for their thinness, from a contest between pupil and master as to which would draw out the thinner clay. To the Coan ware belongs the greatest praise for this, to the Hadrian for strength, and with some there are even examples of severity about it.
162| We find that Quintus Coponius was condemned for bribery because he had given an amphora of wine as a gift to a man who had the right of voting. And so that some authority may come to earthenware even from luxury: the tripatinium, says Fenestella, was the name for the highest splendor of dinners; one dish was of murenae, a second of lupi, a third of mixed fish, morals clearly now sinking, so that we can nevertheless rank them above even the philosophers of Greece, since at the auction of the heirs of Aristotle seventy dishes are reported to have been sold.
163| When we were speaking of the nature of birds and said that one dish of Aesopus the tragic actor cost 100 sesterces, I do not doubt that readers were indignant. But, by Hercules, Vitellius in his principate made a dish of 1,000,000 sesterces, for the making of which a furnace had been built in the fields, since luxury has come to the point that even earthenware costs more than murrine.
164| Because of this dish Mucianus in his second consulship reproached, in a complaint, the marshes of dishes to the memory of Vitellius, though it was no fouler than the dish by whose poison, in the case of the defendant Asprenas, the accuser Cassius Severus charged that 130 guests had died.
165| Towns also are made famous by these, as Regium and Cumae. The Galli, as the priests of the gods' Mother are called, cut off their manhood with a Samian potsherd, and not otherwise without destruction, let us believe Marcus Caelius, who charged it as a grave reproach that a tongue should be cut off in this way, as if he himself were already then abusing the same Vitellius. What does life not devise, even using broken potsherds, so that they last more firmly, pounded with lime added, which they call Signina! In this kind it devised even pavements.
166| But there are other inventions of the earth itself. For who can sufficiently wonder that the worst part of it, and therefore called dust, in the hills of Puteoli is set against the waves of the sea, and immersed at once becomes a single stone unconquerable by the waves and stronger daily, especially if it is mixed with Cumaean rubble?
167| The nature of the earth is the same in the region of Cyzicus too, but there it is not dust but the earth itself, cut out to whatever size one pleases and sunk in the sea, which is drawn out as stone. The same is said to happen around Cassandrea, and in a fresh spring at Cnidus within eight months earth turns to stone. From Oropus indeed to Aulis, whatever of the earth is touched by the sea is changed into rock. Not much different from the dust of Puteoli is the finest sand from the Nile in one part of it, not for sustaining seas and breaking waves, but for subduing bodies in the pursuits of the palaestra.
168| From there at any rate it was brought to Patrobius, freedman of the emperor Nero. Nay, I find that this was commonly carried for Craterus and Leonnatus and Meleager, leaders of Alexander the Great, with the rest of military supplies, being about to say no more on this part, no more, by Hercules, than on the use of earth in ceromata, by whose exercise our youth loses the strength of the mind in gaining that of the body.
169| What of this? In Africa and Spain, are not walls of earth, which they call formaceous, since they are stuffed rather than built in a frame with 2 boards put around on each side, lasting for ages, uncorrupted by rains, winds, fires, and firmer than any rubble? Spain even now looks upon the watchtowers of Hannibal and earthen towers set on the ridges of mountains. Hence too the nature of turf is suited to camp ramparts and, against the onrush of rivers, to embankments. Who does not know that the wattles of walls are plastered with clay and raised with unbaked bricks?
170| Bricks are not to be drawn from a sandy or gravelly, and much less a stony soil, but from chalky and whitish earth, or from red ochre, or even from a sand, at least a coarse one. They are best shaped in spring, for at the solstice they become cracked. For buildings they approve none but two-year-old, since the mixture itself of them also ought to be soaked before they are shaped.
171| Their kinds are three: the Lydian, which we use, a foot and a half long and a foot broad, the second the tetradoron, the third the pentadoron. For the ancient Greeks called the palm doron, and therefore gifts dora, because they were given by the hand; so they are named from four and from five palms, as the case may be. The width is the same. The smaller is used in private works, the larger in public in Greece. At Pitane in Asia and in the states of farther Spain, Maxilua and Callet, bricks are made which, when dried, do not sink in water. For they are of pumice-like earth, when it can be worked, most useful.
172| The Greeks, except where building could be made of flint, preferred walls of brick. For they are eternal, if made to the plumb line. Therefore they built both public works and royal houses so: the wall at Athens which looks toward Mount Hymettus, and at Patrae the temples of Jupiter and of Hercules, although they surrounded them with stone columns and architraves, the royal house of Attalus at Tralles, likewise that of Croesus at Sardis, which they made the gerusia, the house of Mausolus at Halicarnassus, which last even now.
173| From Lacedaemon, indeed, a work of plasterwork cut out from brick walls, enclosed in wooden frames on account of the excellence of its painting, was carried to Rome by Murena and Varro in their aedileship to adorn the comitium. Although the work was marvelous in itself, its transport was admired still more. In Italy too there is a brick wall at Arretium and at Mevania. At Rome buildings of this kind are not made, because a wall of a foot and a half does not bear more than one storey, and it is provided that a common wall be not made thicker, nor does the principle of party walls allow it.
174| Let this be said about bricks. Among the remaining kinds of earth, however, the nature of sulphur is perhaps the most wonderful, by which very many things are mastered. It is produced in the Aeolian islands between Sicily and Italy, which we have said are on fire, but the most famous is on the island of Melos. In Italy too it is found, in the Neapolitan and Campanian territory, in the hills which are called Leucogaei. There it is dug out of tunnels and finished by fire. There are 4 kinds:
175| the live, which the Greeks call apyron, is born solid, alone—for the rest consist of a liquid and are made by being cooked in oil—; the live is dug out and is translucent and green. Of all the kinds physicians use this one only. The second kind they call glaeba, familiar only in the workshops of fullers. The third kind too has only one use, for fumigating wools, since it confers whiteness and softness. This kind is called egula; the fourth, from rock, is prepared chiefly for making lamp wicks; for the rest it has such force that placed on fire it detects comitial disease by its smell. Anaxilaus too played a trick with it, adding it to a cup of wine and carrying it around with a coal beneath, the reflection of the blazing flame pouring out a dreadful pallor like that of the dead at banquets.
176| Its nature heats, ripens, but also disperses gatherings in the body, and for this reason it is mixed into plasters and malagmata of that kind. It is also wonderfully helpful for the kidneys and loins in pain when applied with fat; with the resin of terebinth it takes away lichenes of the face, and leprous sores; harpax it is called, from the speed of its offering, for it must be torn off at once.
177| It helps asthmatics too, by licking, and those who cough up pus, and against the stings of scorpions. Live sulphur mixed with nitrum and ground with vinegar and smeared on removes vitiligines, likewise nits, and, mixed with vinegar and sandaraca, on the eyelids. It has also a place in religious rites, for expiating houses by fumigation. Its force is perceived even in hot waters, and nothing else is kindled more easily, from which it appears that a great force of fires is in it. Thunderbolts and lightning flashes also have the smell of sulphur, and their very light is sulphurous.
178| And the nature of bitumen is near. In one place it is a slime, in another an earth, slime emerging from the lake of Judaea, as we have said, earth in Syria around Sidon, a maritime town. Both of these thicken and come together into density. There is indeed liquid bitumen, such as the Zacynthian and that which is brought from Babylon; there too a white is produced. The Apolloniatic is liquid, all of which the Greeks call pissasphalton, from the evidence of pitch and bitumen.
179| A fat kind, of oily liquid, is produced also in Sicily at a spring of Agrigentum, tainting a stream. The inhabitants collect it with the panicles of reeds, to which it clings very quickly in this way, and use it for the light of lamps in place of oil, and also for scab in beasts of burden. There are those who ascribe naphtha also, of which we spoke in the second volume, to the kinds of bitumen, but its burning nature and kinship with fires are far removed from all use.
180| The test of bitumen is that it should shine as much as possible and be heavy, strong-smelling, moderately black, since it is adulterated with pitch. Its force is that of sulphur: it stops, disperses, contracts, glues. Kindled, it puts serpents to flight by its smell. For suffusions of the eyes and white spots the Babylonian is reported effective, likewise for leprous sores, lichenes and itchings of the body. It is also smeared on for gout. All its kinds, moreover, turn back troublesome hairs of the eyes, and cure toothaches when ground in with nitrum.
181| It soothes an old cough and shortness of breath when drunk with wine; it is given in the same way to dysentery patients too and stops the bowels. Drunk with vinegar, however, it disperses and draws off clotted blood. It relieves pains of the loins and likewise of the joints; applied with barley meal it makes a plaster peculiar to it by name. It stops blood, closes wounds, glues sinews. For quartan fevers they also use a drachma of bitumen and as much of hedyosmum worked up with an obol of myrrh.
182| Burnt, it detects comitial diseases. By its smell, with wine and castoreum, it disperses suffocations of the womb; by fumigation it presses back prolapses; drunk in wine it brings on women's purgings; in other use it is smeared on bronze vessels and strengthens them against fire. We have said also that bronze used to be dyed with it and statues smeared. It served also for the use of lime, the walls of Babylon being soldered together in this way. It is liked in the smiths' workshops for dyeing iron, for the heads of nails and for many other uses.
183| Nor is the work of alum smaller or so very different, which is understood to be a brine of the earth. There are many kinds of it too. In Cyprus there is a white and a blacker, with a slight difference of color, though the use is great, since for dyeing wools in a bright color the white and liquid is most useful, and on the contrary for dark or dusky ones the black. Gold also is cleansed with the black.
184| All of it is made from water and slime, that is, from the nature of earth sweating out its moisture. Collected in channels in winter, it is ripened by the summer suns. What of it was early-ripening becomes whiter. It is produced in Spain, Egypt, Armenia, Macedonia, Pontus, Africa, and on the islands Sardinia, Melos, Lipara and Strongyle. The most highly praised is in Egypt, the next in Melos. This too has two kinds, liquid and thick. The test of the liquid kind is that it be clear and milky, free of any roughness when rubbed, with a certain small spark of heat. This they call phorimon. Whether it has been adulterated is detected with the juice of the pomegranate; for the pure kind in a mixture [….]. The other kind is pale and rough and which is stained by gall, and for that reason they call it paraphoron.
185| The power of liquid alum is to bind, to harden, to eat away. Mixed with honey it heals sores of the mouth, pimples and itches. This treatment is carried out in the baths, with 2 parts of honey and a third of alum. It allays the odor of the armpits and of sweat. It is taken in pills against ailments of the spleen and to drive blood out through the urine. It also cures scab, when natron and melanthium are mixed in.
186| Of solid alum the Greeks call one kind schiston, splitting into certain greyish filaments, for which reason some have preferred to call it trichitis. It is made from the stone from which copper too is made, which they call chalcitis, as a kind of sweat of that stone coagulated into a foam. This kind of alum dries less and checks less the useless moisture of the body, and poured into the ears it is of great benefit; or smeared on, it is also good for sores of the mouth and for the teeth, and if it is held in the mouth with the saliva. It is suitably put into eye medicines and into those for the private parts of either sex. It is cooked in dishes until it ceases to liquefy. The other kind, which they call strongyle, is the more sluggish.
187| This too has two kinds: the spongy, which is easily dissolved by any moisture and is wholly condemned; and the better, which is pumice-like, like a sponge with channels of holes, round by nature, closer to white, with a certain richness, without grit, crumbling, and not staining black. This is cooked by itself over pure charcoal until it becomes ash.
188| The best of all is what they call Melian, from the island, as we have said. None has greater power either of binding or of blackening or of hardening, none is denser. It reduces roughness of the eyes; burnt, it is more useful for holding back eye-discharges, and so too for itches of the body. It also stops blood, whether drunk or smeared on externally. It is smeared on with vinegar where hairs have been plucked out, and softens them as they grow back into down.
189| The whole power of all the kinds lies in binding, whence the Greeks have the name. For that reason they are very suitable for ailments of the eyes, and with fat they check flows of blood. With fat it restrains the putrefying of sores, and so too it dries the sores of infants and the eruptions of the dropsical; with the juice of the pomegranate it treats ailments of the ears; it treats roughness of the nails, hardness of scars, pterygia and chilblains; with vinegar, or burnt with an equal weight of gall, it treats phagedaenic sores; with the juice of vegetables, leprous eruptions; with 2 parts of salt, creeping ailments; and mixed with water, nits and the other animals of the hair.
190| So too it benefits burns and scurf of the body, with pitch whey. It is also poured in for sufferers from dysentery, and it compresses the uvula and tonsils in the mouth. For all the uses we have named in the other kinds, it is understood to be more effective when brought from Melos; for as to the remaining uses of life, how great its importance is in finishing hides and wools has been shown.
191| After these we shall treat the kinds of earth that pertain to medicine by themselves. There are 2 Samian earths, which are called collyrium and aster. The merit of the former is that it be fresh and very smooth and sticky to the tongue; the latter is more clodlike; both are white. They are burnt and washed. There are those who prefer the former. They benefit those who spit blood; and they are mixed into plasters that are compounded for drying, and also into eye medicines.
192| Eretria has the same number of varieties, for it is white and ash-colored, and the ash-colored is preferred in medicine. It is approved by softness, and by the fact that if it is drawn across bronze it gives a violet color. Its power and manner of use in healing have been stated among the pigments.
193| All earth is washed (for we shall say it in this place): water is poured over it and it is dried in the sun, then ground again with water and set aside until it settles and can be divided into lozenges. It is cooked in pots that are shaken frequently.
194| Among medicines there is also Chian earth, whitish. Its effect is the same as that of Samian; its use is chiefly for the skin of women. The same is true of Selinusian earth. This is of a milky color and is very quickly dissolved in water; the same dissolved in milk is used to touch up whitewash on plasterwork. Pnigitis is very like Eretrian, only in larger clods and sticky. Its effect is the same as that of Cimolian, only weaker. Ampelitis is very like bitumen. The test of it is whether, taken up with oil, it melts in the manner of wax, and whether a blackish color remains when it is roasted. Its use is for softening and dispersing, and for these purposes it is added to medicines, especially in preparations for darkening the eyelids and for dyeing the hair.
195| There are several kinds of chalk. Of these, two of Cimolian chalk pertain to physicians, a white one and one inclining to purpurissum. The power of both is to disperse swellings and to stop flows, taken up with vinegar. Smeared on, it also restrains abscesses and parotid swellings, and the spleen, and pustules; but if aphronitrum and cyprus and vinegar are added, it treats swellings of the feet, provided that this treatment is done in the sun and after 6 hours is washed off with salt water. With cyprus and wax added it benefits swellings of the testicles.
196| Chalk also has a cooling nature: smeared on, it checks excessive sweating, and taken with wine in the baths it likewise keeps pimples down. The Thessalian is the most highly praised. It is also found in Lycia, near Bubon. Cimolian earth has another use as well, on clothing. For the Sardinian kind, which is brought from Sardinia, is used only on white garments and is useless on coloured ones, and it is the cheapest of all the kinds of Cimolian; the Umbrian is more valuable, and so is the kind they call 'saxum'. The peculiarity of saxum is that it swells when soaked;
197| and so it is bought by weight, the other by measure. The Umbrian is used only for polishing garments. Nor shall I be reluctant to touch on this subject too, since there exists the Metilian law addressed to fullers, which the censors Gaius Flaminius and Lucius Aemilius gave to be put before the people.
198| So much did everything concern our ancestors. The procedure, then, is this. First the garment is washed with Sardinian earth, then fumigated with sulphur; next, if it is of a genuine colour, it is scoured with Cimolian. For a counterfeit colour is detected, turns black and runs under the sulphur; but genuine and costly colours Cimolian softens, and with a certain lustre brightens them when they have been dulled by the sulphur. For white garments saxum is more useful after the sulphur, but it is harmful to colours. Greece uses Tymphaean gypsum instead of Cimolian.
199| Another chalk is called silversmiths' chalk, because it restores the sheen to silver; but there is a very cheap kind which our ancestors made it the custom to use for drawing the line in the circus that marks victory, and for marking the feet of slaves for sale who had been brought from overseas. Such were Publilius Antiochius, founder of the mime stage, his cousin Manilius Antiochus, founder of astrology, and likewise Staberius Eros, founder of grammar, whom our great-grandfathers saw brought in on the same ship.
200| But why should anyone mention these men, who are commended by the honour of letters? Men so marked were seen on the auction-stand: Chrysogonus, Sulla's freedman, Amphion of Quintus Catulus, Hector of Lucius Lucullus, Demetrius of Pompey, and Auge of Demetrius — though she too was believed to be Pompey's — Hipparchus of Mark Antony, Menas and Menecrates of Sextus Pompey, and others after them whom there is now no point in listing, men enriched by the blood of Roman citizens and the licence of the proscriptions.
201| This is the badge of the slave-dealers' herds and the reproach of insolent fortune. We ourselves have seen such men rise so high in power that we saw the insignia of a praetor decreed to them by the senate at the bidding of Agrippina, wife of Claudius Caesar, and saw them all but sent back with laurelled fasces to the place from which they had come with chalked feet.
202| There are, besides, kinds of earth with special properties of their own, of which we have already spoken; but their nature must be recorded in this place too. Earth from the island of Galata and from around Clupea in Africa kills scorpions; Balearic and Ebusan earth kills snakes.

======== Natural History — Book XXXVI ========

1| The nature of stones remains, that is, the chief madness of our morals, even if gems, together with amber, crystallus and murrina, are passed over in silence. For everything we have treated up to this volume may be thought to have been brought into being for the sake of man; but mountains Nature had made for herself, as a kind of framework for holding firm the inward parts of the earth, and at the same time for taming the onrush of rivers, breaking the waves and restraining the least quiet of her parts with the hardest of her materials. We quarry these and haul them away for no other reason than our pleasures — mountains which it was once a marvel even to have crossed.
2| Our ancestors held it almost a portent that the Alps had been crossed by Hannibal and afterwards by the Cimbri; now the Alps themselves are cut into a thousand kinds of marble. Headlands are laid open to the sea, and the world is levelled flat; we carry away what had been set in place as boundaries to divide nations, ships are built for the sake of marble, and mountain ridges are carried this way and that over the waves, the most savage part of nature — and with still more indulgence than when a vessel for cold drinks is sought in the clouds and rocks nearest the sky are hollowed out so that men may drink ice.
3| Let each man think to himself, when he hears the prices paid for these things and sees the masses that are carted and dragged along, how much happier many people's lives are without them. That mortals should do such things — or rather, to speak more truly, suffer them — for what uses, for what pleasures, except to lie among spotted stones! As if the darkness of the nights, half of every man's life, did not rob them of these joys!
4| As one reflects on these things, a sense of shame even for antiquity comes over one. There survive the censorial laws of the Claudii forbidding dormice and other things too trivial to mention to be served at dinners; but no law was ever passed forbidding the importing of marble, or the crossing of seas for that purpose.
5| Someone may perhaps say: 'That is because it was not being imported.' That is false. In the aedileship of Marcus Scaurus men saw 360 columns carried to the stage of a temporary theatre that was to remain in use for scarcely one month, and the laws were silent. But of course they were indulging public pleasures. And why that very thing? By what road do vices creep in more than by public ones? By what other way did ivory, gold and gems come into private use? Or what have we left for the gods at all?
6| But let it be granted that they indulged public pleasures. Did they keep silent even when the largest of those columns, of Lucullean marble and no less than thirty-eight feet tall, were set up in the atrium of Scaurus? Nor was this done in secret or by stealth. The contractor for the sewers forced him to give security against possible damage when they were being hauled up to the Palatine. With so bad an example, then, would it not have been more useful to protect morals? They kept silent while such huge masses were dragged into a private house, past the earthenware pediments of the gods!
7| Nor can Scaurus be thought to have crept up on a city that was inexperienced in this evil and off its guard, as a kind of first beginner in the vice. Already Lucius Crassus, the famous orator, who was the first to own columns of foreign marble, on that same Palatine — Hymettian columns, however, no more than six of them and none longer than twelve feet — had for that reason been called 'the Palatine Venus' by Marcus Brutus in the course of a quarrel.
8| No doubt they let these things pass because morals had been defeated; seeing that the things they had forbidden were forbidden in vain, they preferred to have no laws at all rather than laws made void. This and what follows will prove that we are better men. For who today has an atrium with columns of such size? But before we speak of marbles, we think the worth of the men who worked in them should be set first. First, then, we shall review the artists.
9| The first of all to become famous for carving marble were Dipoenus and Scyllis, born on the island of Crete while the Medes were still in power and before Cyrus began to reign in Persia, that is, at about the fiftieth Olympiad. They moved to Sicyon, which was long the home of all such workshops. The Sicyonians had commissioned statues of the gods from them at public expense; before these were finished, the artists complained that they had been wronged and went off to the Aetolians.
10| At once famine fell on Sicyon, and barrenness, and dreadful grief. When they sought a remedy, Pythian Apollo answered: if Dipoenus and Scyllis should complete the statues of the gods. This was obtained with great payments and much deference. The statues were of Apollo, Diana, Hercules and Minerva — and this was afterwards struck by lightning.
11| When these men were living, there had already been on the island of Chios the sculptor Melas, then his son Micciades, and after him the grandson Archermus, whose sons Bupalus and Athenis were the most famous of all in that art in the time of the poet Hipponax, who certainly lived in the 60th Olympiad. And if anyone traces their family back as far as the great-grandfather, he will find that the origin of the art began with the beginning of the Olympiads.
12| Hipponax had a notably ugly face; for this reason they wantonly exhibited a joke portrait of him to circles of laughing people. Hipponax, indignant, unsheathed the bitterness of his verses to such effect that some believe he drove them to the noose. That is false. For afterwards they made many statues in the nearby islands, for example on Delos, and beneath them they inscribed a verse declaring that Chios was renowned not only for its vines but also for the works of the sons of Archermus. The people of Iasus also show a Diana made by their hands.
13| In Chios itself people tell of a face of Diana, their work, set up on high, whose expression those who enter think sad, and those who leave think cheerful. At Rome there are statues of theirs on the pediment of the temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and on almost all the buildings erected by the deified Augustus. Their father's works, too, were to be found both on Delos and on the island of Lesbos.
14| Ambracia, Argos and Cleonae were indeed filled with works of Dipoenus. But all of them used only the white marble from the island of Paros, a stone that began to be called lychnites, since it was quarried by lamplight in tunnels, as Varro is our authority, though many whiter kinds were found afterward, and recently even in the quarries of the people of Luna. But in the Parian quarries a marvel is reported: when a clod of a single stone was split apart by the wedges of the men dividing it, the image of a Silenus was found to have come to light inside.
15| It must not be left out that this art was much older than painting or statuary, both of which began with Phidias in the eighty-third Olympiad, about 332 years later; and they report that Phidias himself also carved marble, and that a Venus of his at Rome, in the works of Octavia, is of exceptional beauty.
16| Alcamenes of Athens, it is certain, he taught, and he was among the foremost in renown; his are many works at Athens in sacred temples, and the famous Venus outside the walls, which is called Aphrodite in the Gardens. Phidias himself is said to have put the finishing hand to this.
17| A pupil of the same man was Agoracritus of Paros, who was a favorite by reason of his age, and so he is said to have given most of his own works to his master's name. The two pupils, moreover, competed with each other in making a Venus, and Alcamenes won, not by the work, but by the votes of the citizens, who favored their own man against a foreigner. For this reason Agoracritus is said to have sold his statue on the condition that it should not be at Athens, and to have called it Nemesis. It was set up at Rhamnus, a village of Attica, and Marcus Varro preferred it to all statues. There is also in the same city, in the shrine of the Great Mother, a work of Agoracritus.
18| That Phidias is the most famous among all nations that understand the renown of the Olympian Jupiter no one doubts, but so that even those who have not seen his works may know that he is deservedly praised, we shall bring forward small proofs, and of his genius only. For this purpose we shall not use the beauty of the Olympian Jupiter, nor the size of the Minerva he made at Athens, though she is 26 cubits tall (she is made of ivory and gold), but on her shield he engraved the battle of the Amazons, on the swelling circuit of it; on the hollow side of the same shield, the fights of the gods and the Giants; and on her sandals, those of the Lapiths and Centaurs. So fully was every smallest detail capable of art for him.
19| What is engraved on the base, moreover, they call the birth of Pandora: the gods at her birth [….] are 20 in number. The Victory is especially marvelous, and experts admire also the serpent and, under the very spear point, the bronze sphinx. Let these things be said in passing about an artist who can never be praised enough, and at the same time so that it may be known that his magnificence was equal in small things too.
20| The age of Praxiteles we have given among the statuaries; he surpassed even himself in the glory of marble. His works are at Athens in the Ceramicus, but before all is the Venus, not only of Praxiteles but of the whole world, which many sailed to Cnidus to see. He had made two and was selling them at the same time, one of veiled appearance, which for that reason the people of Cos, whose right of choice it was, preferred when he offered both at the same price, thinking it severe and modest; the one they rejected the Cnidians bought, with an immense difference in fame.
21| King Nicomedes afterward wished to buy it from the Cnidians, promising to pay off the whole debt of the community, which was huge. They preferred to endure everything, and not without reason; for by that statue Praxiteles made Cnidus renowned. Its little shrine is entirely open, so that the image of the goddess can be viewed from every side, made, as is believed, with her own favor. Nor is the admiration less from any side. They say that a certain man, seized by love, hid himself at night and clung to the statue, and that a stain is the witness of his desire.
22| There are at Cnidus other marble statues also by famous artists: a Father Liber by Bryaxis, and another by Scopas, and a Minerva; and there is no greater proof of the Venus of Praxiteles than that among these it alone is remembered. By the same hand is also the Cupid that Cicero threw in Verres's face, the one on account of which Thespiae used to be visited, now set up in Octavia's schools; by the same, another, nude, at Parium, a colony on the Propontis, the equal of the Cnidian Venus in renown and in outrage; for Alcetas of Rhodes fell in love with it and left in this one too a similar trace of passion.
23| At Rome the works of Praxiteles are a Flora, a Triptolemus, a Ceres in the Servilian gardens, the images of Good Event and Good Fortune on the Capitol, likewise Maenads and those they call Thyiads and Caryatids, and Sileni in the monuments of Asinius Pollio, and an Apollo and a Neptune.
24| The son of Praxiteles, Cephisodotus, was also heir to his art. Praised of his is the famous group of wrestlers at Pergamum, with fingers pressed into the body more truly than into marble. At Rome his works are a Latona in the shrine on the Palatine, a Venus in the monuments of Asinius Pollio, and, inside the porticos of Octavia, in the temple of Juno, an Aesculapius and a Diana.
25| The praise of Scopas rivals theirs. He made the Venus and the Pothos who are worshipped at Samothrace with the most sacred rites, likewise the Palatine Apollo, a seated Vesta praised in the gardens of Servilius and two campteres around her, whose pair are in the monuments of Asinius, where also is a canephoros by the same.
26| But held in the greatest esteem is the group in the shrine of Gnaeus Domitius in the Flaminian circus: Neptune himself and Thetis and Achilles, Nereids sitting on dolphins and sea monsters or sea horses, likewise Tritons and the chorus of Phorcus and pistrices and many other sea creatures, all by the same hand, a splendid work even if it had been the work of a whole life. Now, however, besides the works mentioned above and those we do not know, there is still a seated colossal Mars by the same hand in the temple of Brutus Callaecus beside the same circus, and in the same place a nude Venus, surpassing that Venus of Praxiteles and destined to make renowned any other place.
27| At Rome, indeed, the multitude of works, and by now the forgetting of them, and still more the heaps of duties and business, all draw people away from contemplation, since such admiration belongs to those with leisure and to great stillness of place. For this reason the artist is unknown even of that Venus which the Emperor Vespasian dedicated in the works of his Peace, a work worthy of the fame of the ancients.
28| There is equal uncertainty in the temple of Apollo Sosianus whether Scopas or Praxiteles made the dying children of Niobe; likewise Father Janus, dedicated in his own temple by Augustus and brought from Egypt, by which of the two hands it is, now indeed even hidden by gold. Similarly in the hall of Octavia the question arises about the Cupid holding a thunderbolt; this alone is affirmed, that it is Alcibiades, foremost in beauty at that age.
29| Many things in the same school give pleasure without known authors: four Satyrs, of whom one holds out Father Liber veiled by a mantle over his shoulders, another Libera likewise, a third checks the crying of an infant, a fourth with a mixing bowl quenches the thirst of the other, and two Breezes making sails of their own garment. Nor is the question less in the Saepta, who made Olympus and Pan, and Chiron with Achilles, especially since fame judges them worthy of a capital security.
30| Scopas had as rivals in the same age Bryaxis and Timotheus and Leochares, of whom we must speak together, since they engraved the Mausoleum in equal shares. This is the tomb made by his wife Artemisia for Mausolus, the petty king of Caria, who met his death in the 107th Olympiad's second year. That this work should be among the seven wonders, these artists especially brought about. It extends from south and north sixty-three feet, shorter on the fronts, 440 feet in its whole circuit; it rises in height 25 cubits and is surrounded by 36 columns. They called the circuit the pteron.
31| On the east Scopas engraved, on the north Bryaxis, on the south Timotheus, on the west Leochares, and before they completed it the queen died. They did not, however, withdraw until it was finished, judging it by now a monument of their own glory and of their art; and to this day the hands compete. A fifth artist also joined. For above the pteron a pyramid equals the lower part in height, drawing itself together in twenty-four steps to the peak of a turning-post; at the top is a marble four-horse chariot, which Pythis made. This, added, completes the whole work at a height of 140 feet.
32| By the hand of Timotheus is the Diana at Rome, on the Palatine, in the shrine of Apollo, whose statue Avianius Evander restored its head to. In great admiration are the Hercules of Menestratus and the Hecate at Ephesus in the temple of Diana behind the shrine, in the contemplation of which the temple wardens warn people to spare their eyes; so great is the radiance of the marble. (Not to be put after them are also the Graces in the entrance of the Athenians, which Socrates made, he being another than the painter, though some think he is the same.) For the old drunken woman of that Myron who is praised in bronze is at Smyrna, among the most celebrated.
33| Asinius Pollio, as he was of keen vehemence, so too wished his monuments to be looked at. In them are Centaurs carrying Nymphs, by Arcesilaus; Thespiads, by Cleomenes; Oceanus and Jupiter, by Heniochus; Appiads, by Stephanus; Hermeroses, by Tauriscus, not that engraver but the man of Tralles; a Jupiter Hospitalis, by Papylus,
34| a pupil of Praxiteles; Zethus and Amphion and Dirce and the bull and the binding rope, from the same stone, works brought from Rhodes, by Apollonius and Tauriscus. These two made a contest over themselves between their parents, professing that they seemed to be Menecrates's but were in fact Artemidorus's natural sons. In the same place a Father Liber by Eutychides is praised, and at the portico of Octavia an Apollo by Philiscus of Rhodes in his own shrine, likewise Latona and Diana and the nine Muses and another Apollo, nude.
35| The one who holds the lyre in the same temple Timarchides made; inside the porticos of Octavia, in the temple of Juno, the goddess herself was made by Dionysius, and another by Polycles; the Venus in the same place by Philiscus, the other statues by Praxiteles. The same Polycles and Dionysius, sons of Timarchides, made the Jupiter that is in the nearest temple; the Pan and Olympus wrestling at that same spot, by Heliodorus, which is the second famous group of wrestlers in the world; the Venus washing herself, Daedalsas; the standing one, Polycharmus.
36| From the honor paid it is apparent that the work of Lysias was held in great authority, which on the Palatine, above the arch, the deified Augustus dedicated in honor of Octavius his father in a little shrine adorned with columns, that is, a four-horse chariot and car and an Apollo and Diana from one stone. In the gardens of Servilius I find praised an Apollo by Calamis, that engraver, boxers by Dercylides, and Callisthenes the writer of histories by Amphistratus.
37| Nor after this is there fame of many more, the renown of some who excel in their works being obstructed by the number of artists, since neither does one man take the glory nor can several be named equally, as in the Laocoon, which is in the house of the Emperor Titus, a work to be preferred to all in both the art of painting and that of statuary. Out of one stone, he and his sons and the wondrous coils of the snakes, by decision of a council, the highest artists Hagesander and Polydorus and Athenodorus of Rhodes made.
38| Similarly the Palatine houses of the Caesars were filled with most approved statues by Craterus with Pythodorus, by Polydeuces with Hermolaus, and by another Pythodorus with Artemon, while Aphrodisius of Tralles stands alone. Diogenes of Athens decorated the Pantheon of Agrippa; on the columns of that temple the Caryatids are esteemed as works of rare quality, as are the statues set on the pediment, but on account of the height of the place these are less celebrated.
39| Without honor, and in no temple, is the Hercules to whom the Carthaginians had sacrificed a human victim every year, standing on the ground in front of the entrance to the Portico of the Nations. There were also set up Thespiads at the temple of Felicitas, one of whom a Roman knight, Iunius Pisciculus, loved, as Varro relates, an admirer also of Pasiteles, who also wrote five volumes on the famous works in the whole world.
40| Born in the Greek coast of Italy and given Roman citizenship together with those towns, he made an ivory Jupiter in the temple of Metellus, by which one goes to the Campus. It happened to him, when in the dockyards where the African wild beasts were, he was looking through a cage and engraving a lion, that a panther burst out of another cage, to the no light danger of that most careful artist. He is said to have made a good many works; what he made is not recorded by name.
41| Varro also praises Arcesilaus, saying that he himself had a marble lioness of his, and winged Cupids playing with her, of whom some held her tied up, others forced her to drink from a horn, others put little slippers on her, all from one stone. The same writer states that the fourteen nations that stand around Pompey were made by Coponius.
42| I find that Canachus too, praised among the statuaries, made works in marble. Nor is it fitting that Saurus and Batrachus be forgotten, who made the temples enclosed within the porticos of Octavia, themselves Spartans by nation. Some think that they were also very powerful in means and built them at their own expense, hoping for an inscription, and that when this was refused they nevertheless claimed it in another way. There are certainly even now carved on the bases of the columns, as proof of their names, a lizard and a frog.
43| In the temple of Jupiter, the painting and all the remaining furnishings from these consist of feminine subjects; for it had been made for Juno, but when the statues were being carried in, the bearers are said to have exchanged them, and this was kept out of scruple, as if the gods themselves had thus divided the seats. Therefore in the temple of Juno too there is the furnishing that ought to have been Jupiter's. There are also those who gained fame in tiny marble works: Myrmecides, whose four-horse chariot with its driver a fly covered with its wings, and Callicrates, whose ants' feet and other limbs cannot be made out.
44| Let this be said about the carvers of marble and the greatest renown of artists, in the course of which treatment it comes to mind that spotted marble then had no authority. They made works also from Thasian, equal to the marble of the Cyclades islands, and from Lesbian; this is a little more livid. Many-colored spots, however, and the whole apparatus of marbles, even Menander, a most careful interpreter of luxury, was the first to touch, and rarely.
45| At last they used columns in temples, and not for the sake of splendor (for such things were not yet understood), but because they could not otherwise be set up more firmly. So the temple of Olympian Jupiter at Athens was begun, from which Sulla had carried columns to the buildings of the Capitol. Yet there was a difference between stone and marble already in Homer too;
46| for he speaks of one struck by a marble rock, but only so far; even royal houses, when at their most splendid, he adorns, besides bronze, gold, electrum and silver, with ivory only. The first to show these many-colored spots, as I judge, were the quarries of the Chians, when they were building walls, with the witty remark of Marcus Cicero upon it (for they were showing it to everyone as magnificent): I should wonder much more, he said, if you had built in Tiburtine stone. And, by Hercules, there would have been no honor at all for paintings, certainly not so great, without some authority of marbles.
47| Whether the cutting of it into slabs was the invention of Caria, I do not know. The most ancient, so far as I shall find, is at Halicarnassus, where the house of Mausolus was adorned with Proconnesian marble, with walls of brick. He died in the 107th Olympiad, in its second year, 403 from the founding of the city of Rome.
48| Cornelius Nepos relates that the first at Rome to cover the whole walls of his house on the Caelian Hill with a veneer of marble was Mamurra, a Roman knight born at Formiae, prefect of engineers to Gaius Caesar in Gaul, so that nothing might be lacking in unworthiness, the thing being invented by such an author. For this is the Mamurra torn apart in the poems of Catullus of Verona, whose own house, as the fact is, said more clearly than Catullus that he had whatever Long-haired Gaul had had. For the same Nepos adds that he was the first to have in his whole house no column except of marble, and all of them solid, of Carystian or Lunensian.
49| Marcus Lepidus, colleague of Quintus Catulus in the consulship, was the first of all to place thresholds of Numidian marble in a house, to great reproach. He was consul in the year of the city 676. This is the first trace I find of Numidian marble imported, not however in columns or veneers, as with the Carystian above, but in a block and in the humblest use, thresholds. Four years after this Lepidus, Lucius Lucullus was consul, who gave his name, as is evident from the fact, to Lucullan marble, being greatly delighted with it, and was the first to bring it to Rome; it is black otherwise, while the rest are recommended by spots or colors.
50| It is produced on the island of Melos, and this is almost the only marble that took its name from a lover. Among these first, as I judge, the stage of Marcus Scaurus had marble walls; I could not easily say whether of cut slabs or polished from solid blocks, as is today the temple of Jupiter Tonans on the Capitol. For I do not yet find traces of cut marble in Italy.
51| But whoever first discovered how to cut it and divide it for luxury was of a ruthless mind. It is done with sand, and seems to be done with iron, the saw pressing the sand along a very thin line and by the very drawing back and forth doing the cutting. The Ethiopian sand is most approved, for this too has been added, that what would cut marble should be sought all the way from Ethiopia, indeed even among the Indians, where it was unworthy of strict morals even to seek pearls.
52| The Indian is next in praise; but the Ethiopian is softer; it cuts with no roughness, while the Indian does not polish equally, but those who polish marbles are told to rub with it after it has been burnt. Naxian has a similar fault, and so has the Coptic, which is called Egyptian. These were the ancient kinds for cutting marbles. Later one was found, no less to be approved, from a certain shallow of the Hadriatic Sea, laid bare by the tide, by an observation not easy to make.
53| Now, however, the fraud of craftsmen has dared to cut with any sand from all the rivers, a loss which very few understand. For coarser sand wears with looser segments and eats away more marble and leaves greater work of roughness to the polishing; thus the cut slabs are made thinner. Again, Theban is suited to polishings, and that which is made from porus stone or from pumice.
54| For polishing marble statues, and for engraving and filing gems also, Naxian was long preferred before others. So are called the whetstones born in the island of Cyprus. Those brought from Armenia afterward overcame them. The kinds and colors of marbles it is not fitting to tell, with so great knowledge of them, nor is it easy to enumerate them in so great a multitude. For in what place, taking each in turn, is there not found a marble of its own? And yet the most celebrated kinds have been told over the circuit of the lands, with their peoples.
55| Not all, moreover, are produced in quarries, but many are scattered under the earth, and are of the most precious kind, such as the Lacedaemonian green, more cheerful than all, as also the Augustan and then the Tiberian, first discovered in Egypt in the principates of Augustus and Tiberius. Their difference from ophites is that the latter is like the spots of serpents, whence it also took its name, while these gather their spots in a different way, the Augustan curled in waves into whorls, the Tiberian with whiteness scattered, not rolled up.
56| And no columns are found of ophites except quite small ones. There are two kinds of it: a soft, of white, and a hard, of blackish. Both are said to relieve headaches when bound on, and also the strokes of serpents. Some order the whitish to be bound on those who are frenzied and lethargic. Against serpents, moreover, of those some especially praise the one they call tephrias, from the color of ashes. It is also called Memphites, from the place, of a gem-like nature. Its use is to be ground and, for those things that are to be burnt or cut, smeared on with vinegar; the body is thus made numb and does not feel the pain.
57| Porphyrites is red, in the same Egypt; from the same, with white points intervening, one is called leptopsephos. The quarries suffice for cutting masses of whatever size. From it statues were brought to Rome from Egypt for Claudius Caesar by his procurator Vitrasius Pollio, the novelty not much approved; no one afterward at least imitated it.
58| Egypt found also in Ethiopia the stone they call basanites, of the color and hardness of iron, whence it also gave it the name. Never has a larger one been found than the one dedicated in the temple of Peace by the Emperor Vespasian Augustus as an image of the Nile, with sixteen children playing around it, by whom are understood as many cubits of the greatest rise of that river as it grows. A not unlike one is told of at Thebes, dedicated in the shrine of Serapis, to a statue, as they think, of Memnon, which they report, touched by the rays at each daily sunrise, crackles.
59| Onyx our elders thought is born only in Arabia's mountains and nowhere else, Sudines said in Carmania. Cornelius Nepos relates that it was a great marvel when drinking vessels were first made from it, then feet of couches and chairs, when Publius Lentulus Spinther had shown amphorae of it of the size of Chian jars, and after five years then he had seen columns of 32 feet in length.
60| There was variation in this stone afterward too, for as a notable marvel Cornelius Balbus placed four moderate ones in his theater; we have seen 30 larger ones in the dining room which Callistus, one of the freedmen of Claudius Caesar, known for his power, built for himself. Some call this stone alabastrites; they hollow it out also for perfume vessels, since it is said to keep them best uncorrupted.
61| The same, burnt, suits plasters. It is produced around Egyptian Thebes and Damascus in Syria. This one is whiter than the others, but the most approved is in Carmania, next in India, and now indeed also in Syria and Asia, the cheapest and without any shine in Cappadocia. Those of honey color are approved the most, spotted in whorls and not translucent. Faults in them are a horn color or a white one, and whatever is like glass.
62| Many think that lygdinos, found on Paros in a size that does not exceed dishes and mixing bowls, differ little from it in trustworthiness for perfumes; formerly they used to be brought only from Arabia; they are of exceptional whiteness. Great is the honor also of two of contrary nature to each other: the corallitic, found in Asia, in size not beyond two cubits each, in whiteness next to ivory and with some resemblance to it. From the opposite side is the black Alabandic, named from its land, although it is born also at Miletus, yet tending more toward purple in appearance. The same is melted by fire and poured for the use of glass.
63| Theban stone, speckled with golden drops, is found in the part of Africa ascribed to Egypt, suited, by a certain natural usefulness, to small whetstones for grinding eye salves; around Syene in the Thebaid there is syenites, which they formerly called pyrrhopoecilon.
64| Kings made beams from it in a kind of rivalry, calling them obelisks, dedicated to the godhead of the Sun. The likeness of his rays is in the shape, and so it is signified by the Egyptian name. The first of all to establish this was Mespheres, who was king in the City of the Sun, commanded by a dream; this very thing is inscribed on it, for those carvings and figures that we see are Egyptian letters.
65| Afterward other kings also cut them out. Sesothes set up four in the above-mentioned city, forty-eight cubits each in length, and Rhamses, in whose reign Ilium was taken, one of 140 cubits. The same [….] when they had departed from there, where the palace of Mnevis had been, set up another, of 120 cubits in length, but of prodigious thickness, eleven cubits on each side. This work they say 120,000 men made.
66| The king himself, when it was about to be raised, and fearing that the machines would not suffice for the weight, in order to announce a greater danger to the care of the craftsmen, bound his own son to the top, so that his safety, among those who were working at it, might benefit the stone as well. Out of this admiration for the work it came about that when king Cambyses was storming that town, and the fires had reached the foundations of the obelisk, he ordered them put out, he who had had no respect for the city, out of reverence for the massive work.
67| There are also two others, one set up by Zmarres, the other by Phius, without inscriptions, forty-eight cubits each. At Alexandria Ptolemy Philadelphus set up one of eighty cubits. King Necthebis had cut it out plain, and more work was found in carrying it down and setting it up than in cutting it out. Some relate that it was carried down by the architect Satyrus on a raft, Callixenus that it was by Phoenix, the Nile being led by a canal right up to the lying obelisk,
68| and two ships spread wide in breadth, loaded with foot-sized bricks of the same stone, reckoned at double the obelisk's weight by a twofold measure, in such a way that they went under the obelisk, which hung by its ends on the banks on each side; afterward, when the bricks had been taken out, the lightened ships received the burden; it was set up, moreover, on six die-shaped blocks from the same mountain, and the craftsman was given 50 talents. This was placed in the Arsinoeum by the king mentioned above, as a gift of love to his wife, who was also his sister, Arsinoe.
69| From there, since it was in the way of the dockyards, a certain Maximus, prefect of Egypt, moved it to the forum, its top cut off, wishing to add a gilded pinnacle, which he afterward gave up. And there are two others at Alexandria at the harbor in the temple of Caesar, which king Mesphres cut out, forty-two cubits each. Above all there came the difficulty of carrying them down to Rome by sea, and the ships became a great spectacle.
70| The deified Augustus had dedicated the ship that had brought the former to Puteoli, for the sake of the marvel, in permanent dockyards; it was consumed by fire. The deified Claudius, after preserving it for some years, sank the ship in which Gaius Caesar had brought one, more wonderful than all that have ever been seen at sea, and in the ship itself, towers having been built up of dust at Puteoli, brought it to Ostia for the sake of the harbor. From this there is another care, for ships that go up the Tiber, by which experiment it became clear that this river has no less water than the Nile.
71| That obelisk, however, which the deified Augustus set up in the great circus was cut out by king Psemetnepserphreus, in whose reign Pythagoras was in Egypt, of 85 feet and three-quarters, besides the base of the same stone; but the one in the Campus Martius, nine feet smaller, by Sesothis. Both inscribed, they contain an interpretation of the nature of things according to the philosophy of the Egyptians.
72| To the one in the Campus the deified Augustus added a wonderful use for finding the shadows of the sun and thus the lengths of days and nights, a stone pavement having been laid to the length of the obelisk, with which the shadow would be equal on the sixth hour of the day of the winter solstice completed, and little by little, along the rules that are inlaid in bronze, would decrease day by day and again increase, a thing worthy of being known, by the ingenuity of the mathematician Facundus Novus. He added a gilded ball to the point, at whose top the shadow would be gathered into itself, the point otherwise throwing it out of measure, the reasoning, as they say, having been understood from a man's head.
73| This observation has for nearly 30 years now not agreed, whether by the discordant course of the sun itself and some change of the sky, or because the whole earth has been moved somewhat from its center (as I learn is detected in other places too), or because by the tremors of the city the gnomon has been twisted there alone, or because by floods of the Tiber a settling has been caused in the mass, although the foundations are said to have been driven into the earth to the height of the load placed upon them.
74| The third is at Rome in the Vatican, in the circus of the emperors Gaius and Nero (of all, one alone was broken in the moving), which Nencoreus, son of Sesosis, had made. Of the same king there remains also another, of a hundred cubits, which, when his sight was restored after blindness, he consecrated to the Sun on the instruction of an oracle.
75| Let the pyramids too be mentioned in passing, in the same Egypt, an idle and foolish display of the money of kings, since the reason for making them is reported by most to be that they might not leave money to successors or to rivals plotting against them, or that the common people might not be idle. There was much vanity of those men about this.
76| Traces of several begun pyramids remain. One is in the Arsinoite nome, two in the Memphite, not far from the labyrinth, of which also we shall speak, and as many where the lake of Moeris was, that is, a great ditch, but one told among the Egyptians among the wonders and memorable things. The tops of these are said to stand out of the water by 200 cubits. The remaining three, which have filled the world with their fame, are plainly visible from every side to those sailing up, and are placed in the part of Africa on a rocky and barren mountain between the town of Memphis and what we said is called the Delta, less than 4 miles from the Nile, from Memphis 7,500, by a village close by which they call Busiris; in this they are accustomed to climb them.
77| In front is the sphinx, which should be told of even more, about which they are silent, the divinity of the neighbors. They think that king Harmais is buried in it and want it to seem brought in; it is, however, worked from the natural rock. The face of the monster is honored with rubrica. The circuit of the head across the forehead measures a hundred and two feet, the length is 143 feet, the height measured from the belly up to the top of the asp on the head is 61½.
78| The largest pyramid consists of stone from the Arabian quarries. 360,000 men are reported to have built it in 20 years. The three, however, were made in 88 years and 4 months.
79| Those who have written about them (there are Herodotus, Euhemerus, Duris of Samos, Aristagoras, Dionysius, Artemidorus, Alexander Polyhistor, Butoridas, Antisthenes, Demetrius, Demoteles, Apion), among all these it is not agreed by whom they were made, by a most just chance, the authors of so great a vanity having been forgotten. Some of them have reported that 1,600 talents were spent on radishes and garlic and onions.
80| The largest occupies seven iugera of ground. At equal intervals of the four angles, the sides measure 783 feet each; the height from the peak to the ground measures 725 feet, the circuit of the peak 16½ feet. The single intervals of the second, through the four angles, take in 757½ feet. The third, smaller indeed than those mentioned, but much more to be looked at, rises of Ethiopian stones, 363 feet between the angles.
81| No traces of buildings exist, the sand around being pure far and wide, like lentils, such as is in the greater part of Africa. The sum of the inquiries is by what method the rubble was laid under to so great a height. Some say that natron and salt were heaped up as the work rose, and when it was finished dissolved by irrigation from the river; others, that bridges built of bricks made of mud, and when the work was done the bricks distributed to private houses, for they do not think the Nile could have watered it, being much lower. In the largest pyramid there is inside a well of 86 cubits; they think the river was let in there.
82| The measure of their height, and of every like thing, Thales of Miletus found how to take, by measuring the shadow at the hour when it is usually equal to the body. These are the wonders of the pyramids, and the last of them, that no one may wonder at the wealth of kings, is that the smallest of them, but the most praised, was made by the courtesan Rhodopis. She was once the fellow slave and companion of Aesop, the philosopher of fables, the greater wonder being that such wealth was gathered by a courtesan's trade
83| Another tower made by a king on the island of Pharos, which holds the harbor of Alexandria, is also magnified, which they report cost 800 talents, with the great spirit, not to omit anything, of King Ptolemy, in that he permitted the name of Sostratus of Cnidus, the architect, to be inscribed in the very structure. Its use is to show fires to ships' night course, to give notice of shoals and the entrance of the harbor, such as now blaze in several places, as at Ostia and Ravenna. The danger is in the continuity of the fires, lest it be thought a star, since from far off the appearance of flames is similar. This same architect is reported to have made, first of all, a hanging walkway at Cnidus.
84| Let us speak also of the labyrinths, the most portentous work of human expense, yet not, as may be thought, false. It lasts even now in Egypt in the Heracleopolite nome, the first one made, 3,600 years ago, as they report, by king Petesuchis or Tithoes, although Herodotus says that the whole work was of 12 kings and of Psammetichus the last. They interpret the reasons for making it variously: Demoteles, that it was the palace of Moteris; Lyceas, the tomb of Moeris; several, that it was built sacred to the Sun, which is most believed.
85| From this at any rate there is no doubt that Daedalus took the pattern of that labyrinth which he made in Crete, but imitated only the hundredth part of it, which contains the windings of the paths and the meetings and inextricable retracings, not (as we see in pavements and in boys' games on the field) containing in a short strip many miles of walking, but with frequent doors put in to deceive the meetings and to turn back to the same wanderings.
86| This was the second labyrinth after the Egyptian one, the third in Lemnos, the fourth in Italy, all roofed with vaults of polished stone, the Egyptian one (which I indeed marvel at) with an entrance of stone from Paros and with columns, the rest of syenites, in masses put together which not even the ages could dissolve, the Heracleopolites helping, who looked at the work with wondrous hatred.
87| It is not possible to relate the layout of that work and its single parts, since it is divided into regions and prefectures, which they call nomes, 21 vast houses being assigned to their names, and besides it contains the temples of all Egypt's gods, and over this has enclosed Nemesis in 40 little shrines, and several pyramids of forty ulnae, each holding six arourae at the base. Already wearied with going, they come to that inextricable wandering of the ways,
88| Moreover there are upper rooms lofty on slopes, and porticos are descended by ninety steps each; inside are columns of porphyrites stone, images of the gods, statues of kings, monstrous figures. Some of the houses are so situated that for those opening the doors a terrible thunder arises inside, and in the greater part the passage is through darkness. Again, outside the wall of the labyrinth there are other masses of buildings; they call it the pteron. From there other underground houses are made by tunnels dug through.
89| Only a few things there were restored, by Chaeremon alone, the eunuch of king Necthebis, 500 years before Alexander the Great. This too is reported, that the vault was supported by beams of spina boiled in oil, while squared stones were rising into arches.
90| Of the Cretan labyrinth enough has been said. The Lemnian, like that one, was more memorable only for 150 columns, whose drums hung so balanced in the workshop that they were turned on the lathe by a boy rotating them. The architects were Zmilis and Rhoecus and Theodorus, natives. And relics of it remain even now, while of the Cretan and the Italian there remain no traces.
91| For it is fitting to speak also of the Italian, which Porsina, king of Etruria, made for himself for the sake of his tomb, so that the vanity of foreign kings should also be surpassed by Italians. But since the fabulousness exceeds everything, we shall use in this exposition the words of Marcus Varro himself: "He was buried beneath the city of Clusium, in which place he left a monument of squared stone, square, each single side thirty feet, fifty high. In this square base there is inside an inextricable labyrinth, into which if anyone has entered without a ball of flax thread he cannot find the way out.
92| Above this square stand five pyramids, four in the corners and one in the middle, wide at the bottom, seventy-five feet each, high, a hundred and fifty, so tapering that on the top a single bronze disk and a hat are placed on all of them, from which bells fitted to chains hang, which, stirred by the wind, carry their sounds far, as was once done at Dodona.
93| Above this disk four pyramids stand on top, one each, a hundred feet high. Above these on a single floor, five pyramids." Varro was ashamed to add their height; Etruscan fables report it was the same as that of the whole work up to them, he having sought, in mad folly, glory at an expense that would profit no one, and besides having worn out the strength of his kingdom, so that nonetheless the praise of the artist might be greater.
94| A hanging garden is also read of, indeed a whole town, Egyptian Thebes, the kings being accustomed to lead armed armies out beneath it with none of the townspeople noticing; even this is less marvelous than that a river runs through the midst of the town. If these things had been so, it is beyond doubt that Homer would have said so, when he proclaimed a hundred gates there.
95| A true object of admiration among Greek magnificence is the temple of Ephesian Diana, made in 120 years by the whole of Asia. They made it on marshy ground, so that it should not feel earthquakes or fear chasms, and again, so that the foundations of so great a mass should not be placed on a slippery and unstable ground, they laid under them trodden charcoal, then fleeces of wool. The length of the whole temple is 425 feet, the width 225, the columns 127, made by single kings, 60 feet in height, of which 36 are carved, one by Scopas. The architect Chersiphron was in charge of the work.
96| The crowning marvel was that the architraves of so great a mass could be raised; he achieved this with sacks full of sand, a gentle slope heaped up above the tops of the columns, gradually emptying the lowest ones, so that the work settled little by little in its place. This was most difficult at the very lintel, which he was placing on the doors; for that was the greatest mass, and it did not settle in its bed, the artist, in his anguish, resolving at last on death.
97| They report that in that thought, wearied, in the time of night, in sleep, he saw before him the goddess for whom the temple was being made, urging him to live: she had set the stone in place. And so it appeared on the next day; it seemed corrected by its own weight. The remaining ornaments of that work take up the space of several books, and have nothing to do with the showing of nature.
98| The shrine at Cyzicus also lasts, in which the artist put under all the joints of the polished stone a gold thread, to dedicate an ivory Jupiter inside, with a marble Apollo crowning him. The joints therefore shine through with the finest hairlike threads, and refresh the statues with a gentle breath, and besides the artist's genius, the material itself, hidden though it is, is understood in the price of the work.
99| In the same town there is a stone called the Fugitive; the Argonauts had used it as an anchor and left it there. This, which often ran away from the prytaneum (so the place is called), they bound with lead. In the same city near the gate that is called Thracian, seven towers multiply the voices they receive by a numerous rebounding. The name Echo has been given to this marvel by the Greeks.
100| And this indeed happens by the nature of places, and mostly of valleys; there it happens by chance, but at Olympia by art, in a marvelous manner, in the portico which for that reason they call the heptaphonon, since the same voice is given back seven times. At Cyzicus they also call a large building the buleuterium, with the timberwork so arranged without any iron nail that the beams are taken out without props and put back. The same is held sacred at Rome on the Sublician bridge, since it was torn away with difficulty when Horatius Cocles was defending it.
101| But it would be fitting to pass over also to the marvels of our city, and to examine the teachable forces of 800 years, and so to show that the circle of the lands was conquered. That this has happened almost as many times as marvels are related will be clear; but gathered in the totality and cast into one heap, no other greatness will arise than if some other world were being told of in one place.
102| And not to count among great works the Circus Maximus built by Caesar the dictator, three stadia in length, one in breadth, but with the buildings four iugera, with seating for 250,000: shall we not count among magnificent ones the basilica of Paulus, marvelous with columns from Phrygia, and the forum of the deified Augustus and the temple of Peace of the Emperor Vespasian Augustus, the most beautiful of works that the world ever saw? Nor the roof of the voting hall made by Agrippa, though Valerius of Ostia, architect, had before roofed a theater at Rome for the games of Libo?
103| We marvel at the pyramids of kings, when Caesar the dictator bought merely the ground for building the forum for 100,000,000 sesterces, and, if any expense moves minds taken by avarice, Clodius, whom Milo killed, lived in a house bought for |C̅X̅L̅V̅I̅I̅ sesterces.
104| This I indeed marvel at no differently from the madness of kings; and so I count even Milo himself, who owed 70,000,000 sesterces of debt, among the prodigies of the human mind. But then the old men marveled at the vast space of the rampart, the substructions of the Capitol, and besides the sewers, the greatest work of all to tell of, mountains having been tunneled and, as we related a little before, the city hanging and sailed beneath by Marcus Agrippa in his aedileship after his consulship.
105| Seven rivers collected in channels pass through, and, forced by their headlong course in the manner of torrents to sweep and carry off everything, moreover stirred up by the mass of rains, they shake the shallows and the sides; at times the Tiber, poured backward, is taken in, and the different onrushes of waters fight inside, and yet a firmness, braced against them, withstands.
106| Masses so great are dragged from above without the hollows of the work giving way, ruins fall headlong of their own accord or are driven in by fires, the ground is shaken by earthquakes, yet they last, from Tarquinius Priscus, 700 years, almost unassailable, an example not to be omitted, even more memorable since it has been left out by the most celebrated writers of history.
107| When Tarquinius Priscus was making this work with the hands of the common people, and it was uncertain whether the labor was greater or longer, death being sought for themselves everywhere, as the Quirites fled the weariness of it, that king found a new remedy, unthought of before and after, to fix the bodies of all who had so died to crosses, to be looked at by the citizens and at the same time to be torn by wild beasts and birds.
108| For this reason the shame proper to the Roman name, which has often saved lost situations in battles, came to help then too, but at that time [….] blushing after life, since it shamed the living, as though it were going to shame the dead. He is reported to have made the size of the hollows such as to let through a wagon heavily loaded with hay.
109| Small are all the things we have said, and all to be compared with a single marvel, before I touch on the new. In the consulship of Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Catulus, as is agreed among the most careful authors, no house was more beautiful at Rome than that of Lepidus himself, but, by Hercules, within 35 years the same did not hold the hundredth place.
110| Let anyone who wishes reckon in this estimate the mass of marbles, the works of painters, the royal expenses, and the hundred houses competing with the most beautiful and most praised, and afterward surpassed by countless others down to this day. Surely fires punish luxury, and yet it cannot be brought about that our ways understand that anything is more mortal than man himself.
111| But two houses surpassed all of them. Twice we have seen the whole city ringed with the houses of the emperors Gaius and Nero, of the latter indeed, that nothing might be lacking, a golden one. No doubt it was in such a way that those who made this empire so great had lived, going out from the plow or the hearth to subdue nations and bring back triumphs, whose fields too took up a smaller measure than the sitting rooms of those men!
112| The thought arises, indeed, what portion of these were those sites which they decreed at public expense to unconquered commanders for building houses; and the highest honor of them was, as in Publius Valerius Publicola, the first consul with Lucius Brutus, after so many merits, and in his brother, who twice in the same magistracy had defeated the Sabines, that it was added by decree that the doors of their house should open outward and the door be thrown back on to the public way. This was the most distinguished mark among triumphal houses too.
113| I shall not allow those two to enjoy even this glory of fame, and we shall show that even their madness was surpassed by the private wealth of Marcus Scaurus, whose aedileship I am inclined to think did most to cast down morals, and whether Sulla's greater evil was not the great power of his stepson rather than the proscription of so many thousands.
114| In his aedileship he made the greatest work of all that ever were made by human hand, not for a temporary delay, but even with a purpose of eternity. This was a theater; it had a triple stage in height, of 360 columns, in that state which had not endured six Hymettian columns without reproach to a most eminent citizen. The lowest part of the stage was of marble, the middle of glass, a kind of luxury unheard of even afterward, the top of gilded panels; the columns, as we said, the lowest, of thirty-eight feet each.
115| The bronze statues between the columns, as we indicated, were 3,000 in number; the auditorium itself held 80,000 people, though that of the theater of Pompey, with the city so many times multiplied and the population so much greater, suffices amply for 40,000 to sit. The remaining equipment was so great in Attalic cloth, painted panels, and other stage furnishing that, when what overflowed from the delights of daily use had been carried back to his Tusculan villa, the villa, set on fire by angry slaves, was burnt down at a loss of 30,000,000 sesterces.
116| The contemplation of so prodigal a mind takes the thought away and forces it to turn aside from the intended path, and it links on another, greater madness, in wood. Gaius Curio, who died in the civil war on the Caesarian side, at the funeral games for his father, being unable to surpass Scaurus in wealth and equipment (for whence had he a stepfather Sulla and a mother Metella, the buyer-up of proscribed estates? whence a father Marcus Scaurus, so often foremost of the state and a pocket for the plunder of provinces from Marius's fellowship? since now not even Scaurus himself could be equal to himself, when he certainly had this reward of that fire, with things brought together from the circle of the lands, that no one afterward was equal to that madness
117| of his), Curio therefore had to use his own genius and think of something. It is worth the effort to know what he devised, and to rejoice in our morals, and, with the manner reversed, to call ourselves the elders. He made two very large theaters of wood, side by side, each hung on a revolving balance of a single pivot, in both of which, with the morning show of the games given with their backs to each other, so that the stages should not drown one another out, they were suddenly turned around (as is agreed, after the first days even with some people sitting in them), and with their horns coming together into themselves he made an amphitheater and gave gladiators' fights, carrying around the Roman people itself, more truly bound by oath.
118| For what would anyone marvel at first in this: the inventor or the invention, the craftsman or the author, someone who dared to devise this or to undertake it or to order it? Above all will be the madness of a people daring to sit on so treacherous and unstable a seat. Behold, this is that conqueror of the lands and tamer of the whole world, who divides nations and kingdoms, sends laws to foreigners, a certain portion of the immortal gods for the human race, hanging on a machine and applauding at its own danger!
119| What cheapness of lives is that, or what complaint about Cannae! How much harm could have happened! That cities are swallowed by gaping of the earth is the public grief of mortals: behold the whole Roman people, as if placed on two boats, held up by two pivots, and watching itself fight to the finish, about to perish at some moment if the machines were dislocated!
120| And by this favor is sought in tribunician assemblies, so that he may shake the hanging tribes; what would he not dare on the rostra before those whom he had persuaded of this! For to those who confess the truth, the whole Roman people fought it out at the funeral games at the tomb of his father. He varied this magnificence of his, the pivots being wearied and thrown into disorder, and with the form of an amphitheater kept, on the last day he gave athletes with the two stages set apart through the middle, and the platforms suddenly snatched away in the opposite direction, he brought out on the same day victors from among his gladiators. And Curio was not a king nor a commander of nations, not remarkable in wealth, as one who had nothing in his property besides the discord of the leading men.
121| But let wonders unconquered by true reckoning be told. Quintus Marcius Rex, ordered by the senate to restore the conduits of the waters Appia, Anio and Tepula, brought in a new one, called by his own name, with tunnels driven through mountains, within the time of his praetorship; Agrippa, however, in his aedileship, with the Virgo water added and the rest collected and repaired, made 700 basins, besides 500 fountains, 130 reservoirs, many of them splendid in decoration, and on these works he set up 300 statues in bronze or marble, 400 columns of marble, and all of it within the span of a year. He himself adds, in the record of his aedileship, that games were also given for fifty-nine days and that 170 baths were provided free, which now at Rome have grown to an endless number.
122| The most recent expense, of a work begun by Gaius Caesar and finished by Claudius, surpassed the preceding aqueducts, since from the 40th milestone to such a height that all the hills of the city were watered, the Curtian and Caerulean springs and the New Anio flowed in, |M̅M̅M̅| D sesterces being spent on that work.
123| And if anyone has reckoned more carefully the abundance of waters in public, in baths, pools, channels, houses, gardens, suburban villas, the lengths of the water coming, the arches built, the mountains pierced through, the valleys leveled, he will confess that nothing was more to be marveled at in the whole circle of lands.
124| Of the same Claudius I, for my part, would count among the most memorable things, although abandoned through the hatred of his successor, the mountain pierced through to let out the Fucine lake, at an indescribable expense indeed and with a multitude of workmen through so many years, when either the collected water, by which the mountain was earthy, was drained up to the top by machines, or flint was cut, and how great things were done inside, in darkness, which cannot be conceived by the mind except by those who saw them, nor told in human speech!
125| For I pass over the work of the harbor of Ostia, likewise roads cut through mountains, the Tyrrhenian sea shut off from Lucrinus by moles, so many bridges made at such expense. And among very many other marvels of Italy itself, Papirius Fabianus, most expert in the nature of things, is authority that marbles grow in the quarries; the quarrymen also affirm that those wounds of the mountains fill up of their own accord. If these things are true, there is hope that luxury will never be lacking.
126| To one turning aside from marbles to the remarkable natures of the other stones, who would doubt that the magnet meets us first? For what is more marvelous, or in what part of nature is there greater wickedness? It had given a voice to rocks, as we said, answering a man, indeed even speaking against him. What is more sluggish than the stiffness of stone? Behold, it grants it senses and hands. What is more combative than the hardness of iron?
127| Nature has granted it feet and ways. For it is drawn by the magnet stone, and that subduer of all materials runs toward some void I know not what, and, as it comes nearer, leaps up, is held and clings in an embrace. For this reason they call it by another name sideritis, and some Heraclion. The magnet was named from its discoverer, as Nicander is authority (on Ida, as I find, for they are found here and there also, in Spain too); he is said to have discovered it when the nails of his sandals and the point of his staff stuck to it while he was pasturing herds. Sotacus shows five kinds of magnet:
128| the Ethiopian, and one from Magnesia, which borders Macedonia, on the right for those going from Euboea to Iolcus; the third in Hyettus in Boeotia, the fourth around Alexandria Troas, the fifth in Magnesia of Asia. The first difference is whether it is male or female, the next is in color. For those found in Macedonian Magnesia are red and black, the Boeotian have more of the red color than of the black. The one found in the Troad is black and of the female sex and for that reason without strength, the worst however is in Magnesia of Asia, white and not attracting iron and like pumice. It has been found out that they are better the more they are blue.
129| The palm is given to the Ethiopian, and its weight is paid back in silver. It is found in Zmiris of Ethiopia; so a sandy region is called. There also is the haematites magnet, of blood color and giving back blood if it is ground, but also saffron. In attracting iron haematites does not have the same nature as the magnet. A proof of the Ethiopian is that it draws another magnet to itself.
130| All these, however, are good in medicines for the eyes, each in its own measure, and they most of all check eye discharges. Burnt and ground, they also heal burns. Another magnet again, in the same Ethiopia, not far off, drives away and spurns all iron. About both natures we have spoken more often. They report that a stone from the island of Syros floats, and the same crumbled sinks.
131| At Assos in the Troad the sarcophagus stone is split by a cleaving vein. It is agreed that bodies of the dead laid in it are consumed within the 40th day, the teeth excepted. Mucianus is authority also that mirrors and strigils and clothes and shoes brought in for the dead become stone. Rocks of the same kind are both in Lycia and in the east, which, bound on even to the living, eat away the body.
132| Milder, however, for keeping bodies and not consuming them, is chernites, very like ivory, in which they say Darius was laid, and like Parian in whiteness and hardness, only less heavy, which is called porus. Theophrastus is authority also for a translucent stone in Egypt, which he says is like Chian. Perhaps it was so then, since they both cease and new ones are found. The Assian one, salty to the taste, relieves gout, the feet being put into a vessel hollowed out of it. Besides, all ailments of the legs are cured in those quarries, whereas in all mines the legs are damaged.
133| Of the same stone there is what is called the flower, soft into meal, similarly effective for some things. It is like red pumice. Mixed with Cyprian wax it heals ailments of the breasts, while with pitch or resin it disperses scrofulous swellings and abscesses. It helps also consumptives by licking. With honey it brings old sores to scars, eats away excrescences, and dries suppurations resisting treatment from the bite of beasts. A poultice is made of it for the gouty, mixed with bean-meal.
134| The same Theophrastus and Mucianus believe there are some stones that give birth; Theophrastus, that fossil ivory too is found, white and black, and that bones are born from the earth and bony stones are found. Palm-shaped ones are found around Munda in Spain, where Caesar the dictator defeated Pompey, and this every time you break one.
135| There are also black ones, whose authority has come into marbles, as the Taenarian. Varro reports that black ones from Africa are firmer than those in Italy; on the other hand, that white Coran ones are harder than Parian; the same, that Lunensian flint is cut with a saw, the Tusculan splits apart in fire, the dark Sabine, with oil added, even shines. The same says that revolving mills were invented at Volsinii; we find some even moved of their own accord among the prodigies.
136| Nowhere is this one produced more useful than in Italy, and it is a lapis, not a saxum. In some provinces, however, it is not found at all. There are some in this kind that are softer, and are even smoothed by a whetstone, so that to those looking from afar it can seem to be ophites, and there is no other firmer, since the nature of the stone, like wood, does not endure rains and suns or winters, in some kinds and others. There are also those that do not tolerate the moon and those that with age draw rust or change a white color with oil.
137| Some call the millstone pyrites, since there is very much fire in it, but there is another, only more spongy, and still another pyrites resembling bronze. They want it found in Cyprus in the mines around Acamas, one of silver color, the other of golden. They are cooked in various ways, by some a second and third time in honey until the liquid is used up, by others first on live coals, then in honey, and afterward washed like bronze. Their use in medicine is to heat, dry, disperse, thin and turn hardnesses into pus. They are also used raw and pounded for scrofulous swellings and boils.
138| Some make still one kind of pyrites having the most fire. These, which we call living, are the heaviest, and are most necessary to scouts of camps. Struck with a nail or another stone, they give out a spark, which, taken up by sulphur or dry fungi or leaves, gives fire quicker than it can be said.
139| The ostracitae have the likeness of a potsherd. Their use is in place of pumice for smoothing the skin. Drunk, they stop blood, and smeared on with honey they heal sores and pains of the breasts. Amiantus, like alum, loses nothing in fire. It resists all poisonings, particularly those of the Magi.
140| Geodes they call from its character, because it has enclosed earth; it is most useful in medicines for the eyes, and likewise for ailments of the breasts and testicles. The melitinus stone gives out a sweet juice, honeyed. Pounded and mixed with wax, it cures eruptions of phlegm and spots of the body and ulceration of the throat; it removes epinyctides; laid on in a fleece, it relieves pains of the womb.
141| The gagates stone has its name from a place and from the river Gages in Lycia. They say too that at Leucolla it is cast out by the sea and gathered within 12 stadia. It is black, flat, pumice-like, light, not much different from wood, brittle, heavy in smell if it is ground. Earthenware inscribed with it is not erased; when it is burnt it gives out a sulphurous smell; and, marvelous to say, it is kindled by water and put out by oil.
142| It drives away serpents in this way, and restores the strangulations of the womb. By fumigation it detects the sonticus disease and virginity. The same, boiled in wine, cures the teeth, and mixed with wax, scrofulous swellings. The Magi are said to use this in the divination they call axinomantia, and they say it is not burned through if what one wishes will come to pass.
143| Spongite stones are found in sponges and are marine. Some call them tecolithi, since they cure the bladder; drunk in wine they break stones. The Phrygian stone has the name of a people; it is, however, a pumice-like clod. It is first burnt, sprinkled with wine, blown with bellows until it reddens, and again quenched in sweet wine three times, useful only for dyeing clothes.
144| Schistos and haematites have a kinship. Haematites is found in mines; burnt, it imitates the color of minium; it is burnt like the Phrygian, but is not quenched in wine. An adulterated haematites is distinguished by reddish veins and a friable nature. It suits eyes suffused with blood wonderfully.
145| Drunk, it stops women's flows. Those who have spat blood drink it too with the juice of the pomegranate. It is also drunk as effective in ailments of the bladder, and in wine against the strokes of serpents. All the same things are weaker in the one they call schiston. For ailments of the eyes the one like saffron is handier, and is peculiar for filling the hollows of sores in woman's milk, and it admirably restrains protruding eyes. This is the opinion of those who have written most recently;
146| Sotacus, among the most ancient authors, reports five kinds of haematites besides the magnet. He gives the first place among them to the Ethiopian, most useful in medicines for the eyes and in those which he calls panchresta, and likewise for burns. The second kind, he says, is named androdamas, black in color, remarkable for weight and hardness, and from that to have taken its name and to be found especially in Africa; it draws to itself silver, bronze, iron.
147| The test of it, he says, is on a whetstone of basanite stone, for it gives out a blood-colored juice, and it is a remedy of special merit for ailments of the liver. The third kind he makes the Arabian, of similar hardness, scarcely giving out a juice on a water whetstone, sometimes like saffron. Of the fourth kind he says it is called hepatites as long as it is raw, but miltites when cooked, useful for burns, and for everything more useful than rubrica; of the fifth kind, schiston, checking hemorrhoids in a drink.
148| All haematites, however, ground in oil, in a weight of 2 drachmas, are to be drunk by people fasting for ailments of the blood. The same man reports a schiston and a stone of another kind than haematites, which he calls anthracites; it is born in Africa, black, and rubbed on water whetstones gives from the part that was by the root a black color, from the other part one of saffron. It is itself useful in medicines for the eyes.
149| The aetite stones have great fame from the character of their name. They are found in the nests of eagles, as we said in the tenth book. They say they are found in pairs, a male and a female, and that without them the eagles we mentioned do not lay, and for that reason there are only pairs; their kinds are four: one born in Africa, small and soft, having inside itself, as in a womb, a sweet white clay. They think this friable one of the female sex, but the male, which is born in Arabia, hard, like gall or somewhat reddish, having in the womb a hard stone.
150| The third is found in Cyprus, in color like those born in Africa, larger however and flattened; the rest have a round shape. It has in the womb pleasing sand and little stones, itself so soft that it is even crumbled by the fingers. Of the fourth kind it is called Taphiusian, born near Leucas in Taphiusa, which place is on the right for those sailing from Ithaca to Leucas. It is found in rivers, white and round. In its womb is a stone called callimus, and nothing earthy.
151| The aetites, bound on pregnant women or on four-footed animals in the skins of sacrificed animals, hold back births, and are not to be removed unless they are in labor; otherwise the womb falls out. But unless they are taken away from women in labor, they would not give birth at all.
152| There is also a Samian stone in the same island where we praised the earth, useful for polishing gold, and in medicine for ulcers of the eyes with milk in the manner said above, and against old watering of the eyes. Drunk, it helps also against ailments of the stomach, relieves vertigo and restores disturbed minds. Some think it is usefully given also for the falling sickness and for difficulties of urine. And it is mixed into acopa. It is approved by weight and whiteness. They also say births are held back when it is bound on. The Arabian stone,
153| like ivory, burnt, is suited to tooth powders. Particularly it heals hemorrhoids with lint of linen cloths or laid on linen pads.
154| The nature of pumice stones must not be passed over either. Eaten-away rocks in buildings are called by that name, those they call musaea, hanging down to render the likeness of a cave by art, but those pumices that are in use for smoothing the bodies of women, and now indeed of men, and, as Catullus says, books, are most praised in Melos, Nisyros and the Aeolian islands.
155| The test is in whiteness and least weight, and that they be as spongy and dry as possible, easy to grind and not gritty in rubbing. Their power in medicine is to thin and to dry, by a threefold burning, so that they are heated on pure charcoal and as many times quenched in white wine. They are then washed like cadmia, and when dried are stored in a place as little damp as possible. The use of the meal made from them is chiefly in medicines for the eyes:
156| they gently cleanse ulcers of the eyes and fill them, and mend scars. (Some, after the third burning, prefer to grind them cooled rather than quenched, in wine.) They are added also to malagmata, most useful for ulcers of the head and of the private parts. Tooth powders are made of them also. Theophrastus is authority that drinkers in a contest of drinking take this meal beforehand, but are in danger unless they are altogether filled by drink, and that there is so great a nature of cooling that musts cease to ferment when pumice is added.
157| Authors have taken care over the stones of mortars too, and not only of medicinal ones or those pertaining to pigments. The Etesian stone they preferred in these to others, next the Theban, which we called pyrropoecilon (some call it psaranus), third the chrysites from chalazius, but for physicians that of basanites. For this stone gives out nothing from itself. Those stones that give out a juice are thought useful in medicines for the eyes; for that reason Ethiopian ones are especially approved for these.
158| They report that the Taenarian stone and the Phoenician and haematites are beneficial in those medicines which are compounded from saffron; from another Taenarian, which is black, and from Parian stone, one not equally useful to physicians, and a better one from Egyptian alabastrites or from white ophites. For this is a kind of ophites, from which they make vessels and even jars.
159| In Siphnos there is a stone that is hollowed and turned into vessels useful for cooking food or for the uses of edibles, which we know also happens with the green stone from Comum in Italy, but in the Siphnian one it is singular that when heated with oil it turns black and hardens, being by nature most soft. So great is the difference of qualities, for the chief examples of softness are across the Alps. In the province of Belgica they cut a white stone with a saw, as wood is cut, and even more easily, only for the purpose of tiles and roof-tiles or, if one likes, what they call pavonacea kinds of roofing.
160| And these indeed are cuttable, but the specularis, since this too holds the name of stone, splits by a much easier nature into any thin slabs one likes. Hither Spain alone formerly gave this, and not all of it, but within 100 paces around the city of Segobriga; now also Cyprus and Cappadocia and Sicily, and recently it has been found in Africa, all however to be put after those of Spain; the Cappadocian ones are the largest in size, but dark.
161| There are also small ones in the Bononian part of Italy, the flaw bound by the embrace of flint, whose nature however appears similar. In Spain it is dug up from wells of deep depth, and also is found enclosed in rock under the earth and extracted or cut out, but for the most part of a mined nature, complete in itself in the manner of rubble, never yet larger than five feet in length. That this moisture of the earth is frozen by a certain breath of the earth, in the manner of crystallus, and hardens into stone is clearly apparent from this, that when wild beasts have fallen into such wells, the marrow in their bones after one winter is fixed into the same nature of stone.
162| It is found also sometimes black, but the white has a wondrous nature, though its softness is known, in enduring suns and frosts, and it does not grow old, if only injury is absent, since this happens also in rubble of many kinds. They found another use in its shavings and scales, to strew the Circus Maximus for the Circus games, so that whiteness may be a recommendation.
163| In the reign of Nero a stone was found in Cappadocia with the hardness of marble, white and translucent even in the part where tawny veins had cut across, called phengites from its character. With this he had built the temple of Fortune, which they call that of Sejanus, consecrated by King Servius, enclosed by the golden house; therefore even with the doors shut by day there was daylight there in a manner other than that of the specularia, as though the light were enclosed, not transmitted. Juba is authority that in Arabia too there is a stone translucent like glass, which they use instead of specularia.
164| Now it would be fitting to have passed to the stones of the workmen, and first whetstones for sharpening iron. There are many kinds of them: the Cretan long held the greatest praise, the second the Laconian from Mount Taygetus, both requiring oil. Among water-whetstones the Naxian had the greatest praise, next the Armenian, of which we spoke. Those from oil and water, the Cilician are strong; those from water, the Arsinoitic.
165| Some have also been found in Italy that draw an edge with water, most keen in effect, and likewise across the Alps, which they call passernices. The fourth way is with human saliva: these are the ones that serve well in barbers' shops. The Laminitanian ones from Hither Spain are foremost in that kind.
166| Of the remaining multitude of stones, tufa is useless for buildings through its perishability and softness. Some places nevertheless have no other, as Carthage in Africa. It is eaten away by the breath of the sea, crumbled by the wind, beaten by rain. But they protect it with care by pitching the walls, since it is eroded even by the lime of the plaster, and it was wittily said that they use pitch on roofs, lime on wines, since that is how they season musts.
167| Others are soft, around Rome, the Fidenate and the Alban. In Umbria also and Venetia a white stone is cut with a toothed saw. These, workable in the building, endure labor also, under a roof at least; by spray and frost and rime they break into shards, and are not strong against the sea breeze. The Tiburtine, strong against everything else, splits in heat.
168| Black flints are best, in some places also reddish ones. Elsewhere indeed white ones too, as in the Tarquinian, in the Anician quarries around Lake Volsinii and in the Statonian, which not even fire harms. The same, carved also in monuments, remain uncorrupted against age too; from them are made molds, in which bronzes are cast. There is also a green stone vehemently resisting fire,
169| but nowhere abundant, and where it is found it is a lapis, not a saxum. Of the rest, the pale one is rarely useful in rubble, the round one is strong against injuries but unreliable for structure unless bound with much bracing. Nor is the riverine more certain, always as if wet.
170| The remedy with a doubtful stone is to take it out in summer and not insert it in a roof before two years, when it is tamed by the weather. Those parts of it that have been damaged are more usefully fitted to underground structure; those that have withstood it may safely be committed even to the open sky.
171| The Greeks build from hard stone or flint leveled, like brick walls. When they have so done, they call the kind of structure isodomon; but when the courses are built of unequal thickness, pseudisodomon. The third is emplecton; only the faces are dressed, the rest they place as it chances.
172| It is necessary that alternate joinings be made, so that the middle stones hold the joints of those before, in the middle of the wall too, if the matter allows; if not, at least at the sides. To stuff middle walls with broken rubble they call diatonicon. The reticulate structure, in which they build most frequently at Rome, is liable to cracks. A structure must be made to the square and the level and must answer to the plumb line.
173| Cisterns are to be built of 5 parts of pure sharp sand, 2 of the most vehement lime, with fragments of flint not exceeding a pound in weight; thus the floor and walls similarly are to be rammed with iron-shod bars. It is more useful for them to be double, so that in the first the impurities settle and through a strainer pure water passes into the next.
174| Lime from mixed stone Cato the Censor disapproves; from white is better. That from hard stone is more useful for structure; from porous, for plasterwork; for both it is condemned from flint. The same is more useful from quarried stone than from stone collected from river banks, more useful from millstone, because its nature is somewhat richer. A marvelous thing: after it has burned, it is kindled by waters. There are three kinds of sand:
175| pit-sand, to which a fourth part of lime ought to be added, and to river or sea sand a third. If a third part of ground potsherds is added too, the material will be better. From the Apennine to the Po pit-sand is not found, nor across the seas.
176| The cause of the ruins of the city is chiefly this, that through theft of lime the rubble is put together without its own binding. Mortar also, the older it is, the better. In the laws of ancient buildings it is found that the contractor shall not use any fresher than three years old; therefore no cracks disfigured their plasterwork. Plasterwork, unless it has been laid on with three coats of sand and two of marble dust, never has enough brilliance. In damp places, and where salt would spoil it, it is more useful to coat first with potsherd mortar.
177| In Greece, for plasterwork, they work the sand coat too, which they are going to lay on, first in a mortar with wooden bars. The test of marble stucco is in the working, until it does not stick to the hoe; on the contrary, in whitewash work, that the slaked lime stick like glue; it ought to be slaked only from a lump. At Elis stands a temple of Minerva, in which Panaenus, the brother of Phidias, laid on plaster kneaded with milk and saffron, as they report; for that reason, if saliva is rubbed on it with the thumb today, it gives back the smell and taste of saffron.
178| The same columns set more densely seem thicker. Their kinds are four: those that have a sixth part of the height in the lowest thickness are called Doric; those with a ninth, Ionic; with a seventh, Tuscan; the Corinthian have the same ratio as the Ionic, but a difference, since the capitals of the Corinthian have the same height as is gathered from the lowest thickness, and for that reason they seem slenderer; for in the Ionic the height of the capital is a third part of the thickness.
179| The ancient ratio was that the height of the columns be a third part of the widths of the shrine. In the temple of Ephesian Diana, which was the earlier one, bases were first put under the columns and capitals added, and an eighth part of the height was approved for the thickness, and that the bases have half the thickness and a seventh part be taken off the thickness at the top. Besides these there are those called Attic columns with four corners, with equal interval of sides.
180| Lime has a great use in medicine also. Fresh lime is chosen, not sprinkled with waters. It burns, disperses, draws out, and restrains the first onsets of creeping ulcers; when mixed with vinegar and rose oil and rubbed on, then tempered with wax and oil of roses, it brings to a scar. For dislocations also it cures with liquid resin or pig's fat with honey, and by the same composition scrofulous swellings.
181| Maltha is made of fresh lime. The lump is quenched in wine, then pounded with pig's fat and fig, a double softening. This is the most tenacious of all things and surpasses the hardness of stone. What is to be coated with maltha is rubbed over with oil beforehand.
182| A thing akin to lime is gypsum. It has several kinds. For it is both cooked from stone, as in Syria and at Thurii, and dug from the earth, as in Cyprus and Perrhaebia; from the top of the soil also is the Tymphaic. The stone that is cooked ought not to be unlike alabastrites or marbly stone. In Syria they choose the hardest for this and cook it with cow dung, so that it may burn more quickly. Of all, however, it is found that the best is made from specular stone or one having such a scale.
183| Wet gypsum must be used at once, since it sets very quickly; yet again it allows itself to be pounded and dissolved into meal. The use of gypsum is most welcome in whitework, in figures and cornices of buildings. A famous example is that Gaius Proculeius, supported by the intimacy of Augustus Caesar, in a pain of the stomach drank gypsum and killed himself.
184| Pavements have their origin among the Greeks, worked with the art and method of painting, until lithostrota drove it out. Most famous in this kind was Sosus, who laid at Pergamum what they call the unswept house, since the leavings of a dinner and what is usually swept away from pavements he had made as though left behind, of small tesserae dyed in various colors. Marvelous there is a dove drinking and darkening the water with the shadow of its head; others sun themselves, scratching themselves on the lip of a drinking cup.
185| Pavements first made, I believe, are those we now call barbaric and subtegulanean, in Italy rammed with rammers. This at least can be understood from the name itself. At Rome the scutulate pavement was first made in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus once the third Punic war had begun; pavements, however, were frequent before the Cimbric war, and of the great favor of minds toward them the famous verse of Lucilius is the indication: With the craft of pavement and the worm-like inlay.
186| Open-air floors the Greeks invented, roofing houses with such, a kind easy in a warm region, but deceptive wherever rains freeze. It is necessary that two layers of planking be laid under, crosswise, and that their ends be nailed down so that they are not twisted, and that to new rubble a third part of ground potsherds be added, then the rubble, in which 2 fifths of lime are mixed, be rammed to a foot's thickness,
187| then a thick core be laid on, 6 digits, and a large tessera be set, not less than 2 digits deep, but a slope be kept of ten feet by a sescuncia, and it be carefully skimmed with a whetstone. To plank it with oak boards they think useless, because they warp; rather even to lay ferns or straw beneath is better, so that less of the force of the lime may reach. It is necessary also that a round stone be put under. In a similar way herringbone potsherd floors are made.
188| One more kind, the Greekish, must not be neglected: on a rammed ground there is thrown rubble or a potsherd pavement; then, charcoal having been densely trodden, a material of gravel and lime and ash mixed is laid on in thickness of half a foot, made true to the rule and the level, and it is an earthen form; if it has been polished with a whetstone, it holds the use of a black pavement.
189| Lithostrota were begun already under Sulla; with very small slabs at least there survives to this day what he made in the shrine of Fortune at Praeneste. Pavements, driven then from the ground, passed into vaulted ceilings with glass. This too is a new invention; Agrippa at least in the baths he made at Rome painted the earthenware work in the hot rooms with encaustic and adorned the rest with whitewash, without doubt going to make the vaults glass if this had been invented earlier or if it had come from the walls of the stage of Scaurus, as we said, into vaults. For which reason the nature of glass must also be indicated.
190| The part of Syria that is called Phoenicia, adjoining Judaea, has within the roots of Mount Carmel a marsh which is called Candebia. From this the river Belus is believed to rise, flowing into the sea in a space of five miles near the colony Ptolemais. It is slow in its course, unwholesome to drink, but sacred for rites, muddy, deep in its shallow, and shows its sands only when the sea has withdrawn; for rolled by the waves they shine, their dirt worn off.
191| Then they are also believed to be bound by the bite of the sea, not useful before. It is a stretch of shore of no more than five hundred paces, and for many ages this was the only place for producing glass. The story is that a ship of merchants in natron, having been driven ashore, while they were scattered along the shore preparing a meal and there was no chance of stones for raising the cooking pots, they put lumps of natron from the ship under them, and when these were kindled, the sand of the shore being mixed in, translucent streams of a new liquid flowed, and this was the origin of glass.
192| Soon, as skill is inventive, it was not content with having mixed in natron; the magnet stone began to be added too, since it is believed to draw the liquid of glass to itself as it does iron. In a similar way shining pebbles began to be burnt in many places, then shells and fossil sands. Authors state that in India glass is made from broken crystallus and that for this reason none is compared with the Indian.
193| It is cooked, moreover, with light and dry woods, with cyprus and natron added, especially Egyptian. In continuous furnaces it is melted as bronze is, and masses are made, blackish in a rich color. The sharpness is so great anywhere that without any feeling it cuts through to the bones whatever of the body it has breathed on. From the masses it is again melted in the workshops and dyed, and one thing is shaped by blowing, another is ground on the lathe, another is engraved in the manner of silver, Sidon once being famous for these workshops, since it had even devised mirrors.
194| That was the old way of making glass. Nowadays, however, in Italy too, at the river Volturnus, a white sand found along six miles of shore between Cumae and Liternum is taken where it is softest and ground with pestle or mill. Then it is mixed with 3 parts of nitrum, by weight or by measure, and once melted is poured off into other furnaces. There it forms a mass which is called hammonitrum; this is melted again, and becomes pure glass and a mass of white glass. Nowadays sand is treated in a similar way throughout the provinces of Gaul and Spain as well.
195| They say that in the principate of Tiberius a way of tempering glass was devised which made it flexible, and that the craftsman's whole workshop was destroyed, so that the value of copper, silver and gold should not be lowered; but this story was for a long time more widespread than reliable. Yet what does it matter, when in the principate of Nero a technique of glass-making was discovered that sold two modest cups, which they called petroti, for 6,000 sesterces?
196| Under the heading of glass are also counted the obsiana, so called from their likeness to the stone which Obsius found in Ethiopia. It is of a very black colour, sometimes translucent as well, but cloudy to the eye, and when set in walls as mirrors it gives back shadows instead of images. Many make gems from it; we have also seen solid statues of the deified Augustus in this material, which allows of such thickness, and he himself dedicated 4 obsian elephants in the temple of Concord as a marvel.
197| Tiberius Caesar, too, restored to the cult of the Heliopolitans an obsian statue of Menelaus that had been found in the estate of Seius, who had been prefect of Egypt; from this it appears that the material has an older origin, though it is now debased by the glass made to resemble it. Xenocrates reports that obsian stone occurs in India, in Samnium in Italy, and on the Ocean coast in Spain.
198| Obsian glass is also made by a kind of dyeing, for tableware, and also a glass that is entirely red and not translucent, called haematinum. Glass is also made white, and in imitation of murrina, or of hyacinthi and sapphiri, and in every other colour; nor is there any other material nowadays more pliant, or even better suited to painting. Yet the highest esteem goes to colourless translucent glass, as near as possible in likeness to crystallus.
199| Its use for drinking has driven out the metals silver and gold. It cannot, however, bear heat unless cold liquid is poured in first; yet glass balls with water put in them, when set facing the sun, become so hot that they set clothes on fire. Fragments, when warmed, can only be stuck together; they cannot be melted down again whole, except into separate drops broken off from one another, as when the little counters are made which some name after eyes, some of them multicoloured in various ways. — Glass melted down with sulphur fuses into stone.
200| And now that we have finished with everything that depends on human ingenuity, where art reproduces nature, one is moved to marvel that there is almost nothing that is not brought to completion by fire. Fire takes sands, and from them it pours out, in one place glass, in another silver, in another minium, in another kinds of lead, in another pigments, in another medicines. By fire stones are melted into copper, by fire iron is born and tamed, by fire gold is perfected, by fire stone is burnt so that the rubble in buildings is bound together.
201| Some things benefit from being burnt again and again, and the same material produces one thing at the first firing, another at the second, another at the third; for charcoal itself begins to have its powers only when it has been quenched, and when it is thought to be dead, it gains greater strength. Fire is a boundless and unruly part of nature, and one of which it may be doubted whether it destroys or creates the more.
202| Fires themselves also have a medicinal power. It is certain that in a pestilence brought on by a darkening of the sun, fires lit in many places are a help. Empedocles and Hippocrates demonstrated this in different places. For internal organs that are wrenched or bruised, Marcus Varro — I shall use his very words — says: 'Let the hearth be your medicine-chest.'
203| For the lye-ash from it, taken as a drink, is a remedy. One can see gladiators, when they have finished their bout, helped by this drink. What is more, carbunculus, the kind of disease of which, as we have mentioned, two men of consular rank recently died, is cured by oak charcoal ground with honey. So true is it that even things condemned and now worthless have some uses — charcoal, for example, and ash.
204| Nor shall I pass over one instance of the hearth that is famous in Roman literature. They relate that in the reign of Tarquinius Priscus a male member suddenly appeared out of the ash on his hearth, and that Ocresia, a captive, handmaid of Queen Tanaquil, who had been sitting there, rose up pregnant. In this way, they say, Servius Tullius was born, who succeeded to the throne. Later, too, as he lay asleep in the palace as a boy, his head blazed with fire, and he was believed to be the son of the household Lar. For this reason, they say, he was the first to institute the games of the Compitalia in honour of the Lares.

======== Natural History — Book XXXVII ========

1| So that nothing may be lacking from the work we have undertaken, there remain gems, in which the majesty of nature is gathered into a narrow compass — in the eyes of many, nowhere more wonderful. Men set such store by their variety, colours, substance and beauty that they hold it sacrilege to violate some of them even with engraving for seals, which is the purpose of gems, and consider others to be beyond any price or reckoning in human wealth, so that for most people a single gem is enough for the highest and most perfect contemplation of nature.
2| What their origin was, and from what beginnings this admiration blazed up to such a height, we have told to some extent in speaking of gold and rings. Legend traces its first beginning to the rock of the Caucasus, by a fated interpretation of the chains of Prometheus: the first fragment of that rock was enclosed in iron and put round his finger, and this, they say, was the ring, and this the gem.
3| From these beginnings their prestige rose into so great a passion that to Polycrates of Samos, tyrant of islands and coasts, it seemed sufficient atonement for his good fortune — which even he, the fortunate one, admitted was excessive — to make the voluntary sacrifice of a single gem, if by that he might square accounts with the fickleness of Fortune; and he thought he would amply buy himself off from her envy if he suffered this one grief, weary as he was of unbroken joy. So he sailed out into the deep in a ship and sank his ring.
4| But a fish of extraordinary size, born to be a king's, snatched it up as food and, to make a portent, returned it to its owner in his kitchen, by the hand of a Fortune lying in wait. It is agreed that the gem was a sardonyx, and at Rome, if we believe them, they show it in the shrine of Concord, set in a golden horn, the gift of Augusta, where it holds almost the lowest place, with many preferred to it.
5| After this ring, the gem of another king is famous, that of the well-known Pyrrhus who waged war against the Romans. For he is said to have owned an achates in which the nine Muses and Apollo holding his lyre could be seen — not by art, but by nature's own doing, the markings running in such a way that each of the Muses too was given her own emblem.
6| After that, no other renown of gems is recorded by the authors that is much worth relating, except that the choral piper Ismenias used to wear many brilliant ones, and a story goes with this that shows his vanity. When a smaragdus engraved with Amymone was offered to him in Cyprus for six gold pieces, he ordered the money to be counted out; and when two were brought back to him, he said, 'Bad business, by Hercules: a great deal has been taken off the gem's worth.'
7| He seems to have started the fashion by which all those of the musical art were judged by this display as well — Dionysodorus, for example, his contemporary and rival — so that the man who was the third among the musicians of that time did not seem their equal in this respect either: for Nicomachus is said merely to have owned many gems, but chosen with no expertise.
8| And it is by a kind of chance that these examples have presented themselves at the start of the volume, against those who arrogate distinction to themselves by this display, so that it may be plain that they are puffed up with the glory of pipers. The gem of Polycrates that is pointed out is untouched and unengraved; in the time of Ismenias, many years later, it appears that even smaragdi were commonly engraved. This same view is confirmed by the edict of Alexander the Great in which he forbade anyone but Pyrgoteles, undoubtedly the most famous master of that art, to engrave his likeness on this gem. After him, Apollonides and Cronius were renowned, and Dioscurides, who engraved a most faithful likeness of the deified Augustus, with which the emperors have since sealed.
9| The dictator Sulla always sealed with the surrender of Jugurtha. It is recorded by the authors, too, that the famous man of Intercatia, whose father Scipio Aemilianus had killed in single combat after a challenge, sealed with a picture of that fight — whence the widely repeated quip of Stilo Praeconinus: what would he have done if Scipio had been killed by his father?
10| The deified Augustus at first sealed with a sphinx. He had found two of them among his mother's rings, so alike as to be indistinguishable. With one of them, during the civil wars, when he himself was away, his friends sealed the letters and edicts that the circumstances of the time demanded be put out under his name, while the recipients joked, not without wit, that this sphinx brought riddles. Indeed, even Maecenas' frog was a cause of great terror during the levies of money. Later, to avoid the gibes about the sphinx, Augustus sealed with a likeness of Alexander the Great.
11| The first of all at Rome to own a collection of gems — which they call by a foreign name a dactyliotheca — was Sulla's stepson Scaurus, and for long there was no second, until Pompey the Great dedicated on the Capitol, among his gifts, the one that had belonged to King Mithridates; as Varro and other authors of that time confirm, it far surpassed that of Scaurus. Following this example the dictator Caesar consecrated six dactyliothecae in the shrine of Venus Genetrix, and Octavia's son Marcellus one in the temple of Palatine Apollo.
12| Yet it was that victory of Pompey's that first turned fashion toward pearls and gems, just as the victories of Lucius Scipio and Gnaeus Manlius had turned it toward chased silver, Attalic fabrics and bronze dining couches, and that of Lucius Mummius toward Corinthian bronzes and paintings. So that this may be understood more clearly, I shall add some words from the very records of Pompey's triumphs.
13| Well then: in his third triumph, which he celebrated over the pirates, Asia, Pontus, and the peoples and kings listed in volume 7 of this work, in the consulship of Marcus Piso and Marcus Messala, on the day before the Kalends of October, his birthday, he carried in procession a gaming board complete with its pieces, made of two gems, three feet wide and four feet long — and lest anyone doubt that our resources have been exhausted, when no gem today comes anywhere near this size, there was on it a golden moon weighing 30 pounds —
14| three dining couches, vessels of gold and gems for nine sideboards, three gold statues, of Minerva, of Mars and of Apollo, 33 crowns of pearls, a square golden mountain with deer and lions and fruits of every kind, surrounded by a golden vine, a grotto of pearls, on whose pediment was a clock. There was also an image of Pompey made of pearls, pleasing with that handsome swept-back hair, that countenance of his, upright and venerated among all nations, fashioned from pearls, severity thus conquered and the truer triumph of luxury!
15| Never surely among those men would the surname of the Great have lasted, if his first victory had triumphed in such a way! Of pearls, Great one, so prodigal a thing and found for women, which it would not be right for you to wear, to have your features made? Thus to seem precious? Is not that image of yours then more like you which you set upon the ridges of the Pyrenees?
16| It would surely have been a grievous, foul disgrace, unless it were more truly to be believed a savage portent of the anger of the gods, and could be clearly understood that even then that head was displayed with the wealth of the East, without the rest of the body. The other things of his triumph, how manly! 200,000,000 sesterces given to the public treasury, to the legates and quaestors who had defended the sea coasts 100,000,000 sesterces, to the soldiers, six thousand sesterces each.
17| It made, however, a more tolerable cause for Gaius the emperor, who besides other womanish things put on slippers of pearls, or Nero the emperor, who built scepters and masks and traveling beds of large pearls. Indeed we seem even to have lost the right of taking to task jeweled drinking vessels and various kinds of furnishings, translucent rings. For what luxury could not be thought more innocent?
18| The same victory first brought myrrhina into the city, and Pompey was the first to dedicate bowls and cups of it to Jupiter on the Capitol from that triumph. These straightway passed into the use of men, sideboards and food vessels also being sought; and its luxury grows by the day. A myrrhina cup bought for 70,000 sesterces, plainly holding three sextarii, a man of consular rank, [….]anus, drank from, for love of it gnawing its rim, so that nevertheless that injury increased the price; nor is there today a more outstanding valuation of any other myrrhina.
19| How much the same man swallowed of the rest of that kind can be estimated from the multitude, which was so great that, when Nero was taking it from his children, the objects set out filled a private theater across the Tiber in the gardens, which for the people to fill, when he sang, while he was rehearsing for the theater of Pompey, was enough even for Nero. I saw then the pieces of a single broken cup counted, which, in grief for the age, I believe, and as an envy of Fortune, it pleased them to keep in a tomb, like the body of Alexander the Great, so that they might be shown.
20| Titus Petronius, of consular rank, about to die through the envy of Nero, in order to disinherit his table, broke a myrrhina ladle bought for 300,000 sesterces; but Nero, as was fitting for an emperor, surpassed all by procuring a single bowl for 1,000,000 sesterces. A thing to be remembered, that a commander and father of his country drank from something worth so much!
21| The East sends myrrhina. It is found there in several places, none remarkable, chiefly of the Parthian kingdom, the best however in Carmania. They think the moisture is thickened under the earth by heat. In size they never exceed small sideboards, in thickness rarely as much as the drinking cups described. There is a shine to them without strength, and a gleam more truly than a shine. But the price lies in the variety of colors, with spots turning round from time to time into purple and white and a third from both, as if the purple were kindling in passing of the color, or the milky reddening.
22| There are those who praise especially in them the edges and certain reflections of colors, such as are seen in the rainbow. Now to others fat spots are pleasing (that any of it be translucent or pale is a fault), and likewise salt-like specks and warts, not standing out but, as in a body too, mostly sessile. Some recommendation lies also in smell.
23| A contrary cause produces crystallus, which, congealed by a more violent frost, is certainly found nowhere other than where winter snows are hardest, and it is certain that it is ice, whence the Greeks gave it the name. The East sends this too, since none is preferred to the Indian. It is born also in Asia, cheapest around Alabanda and Orthosia and their neighbors, likewise in Cyprus, but the one praised in Europe is from the ridges of the Alps.
24| Juba is authority that it is also born on a certain island in the Red Sea, lying off Arabia, which is called Necron, and in the one which bears the topaz gem nearby, and that a cubit-long piece was dug out by Pythagoras, prefect of Ptolemy; Cornelius Bocchus, that in Lusitania also, of wonderful weight, in the Ammaean ridges, wells being sunk to the level of the water.
25| This is marvelous, which Xenocrates of Ephesus reports, that it is turned up by the plow in Asia and Cyprus; for it had been believed not to be found in earthy ground and only among crags. More like the truth is what the same Xenocrates reports, that it is often also carried down by torrents. Sudines denies that it is born except in places facing south. What is certain is that it is not found in watery places, although in a very frozen region, or if rivers freeze right down to the shallows. It must be made of heavenly moisture and pure snow;
26| therefore, impatient of heat, it is not used except for cold drinks. Why it is born with six-sided faces is not easy to reckon, all the more because the form is not the same in the points, and the smoothness of the sides is so perfect that it can be matched by no art.
27| The greatest size seen so far by us was that which Livia dedicated on the Capitol, of about 150 pounds. The same Xenocrates is authority that a vessel of an amphora's size was seen, and some from India of four sextarii. (We can state with certainty that it is born on crags of the Alps, so impassable for the most part that people hanging by a rope draw it out.) The signs and indications are known to the experts.
28| It is beset by very many faults, a rough flaw, a spotted cloud, at times a hidden abscess, a very hard and brittle center, likewise what is called salt. There is also a reddish rust in some, in others a hairline like a crack. This the craftsmen hide by engraving. Those which are without fault they prefer to be pure, calling them acenteta, and not of foamy color but of clear water. The last authority is in weight. I find among physicians that, for the parts of bodies that are to be burnt, they think they are not more usefully burnt in any other way than with a ball of crystallus set against the sun's rays.
29| There is another madness in these, a matron, not rich, having bought one ladle for one hundred and fifty thousand sesterces not many years ago. Nero, on receiving news of lost affairs, in his last anger broke two cups of crystallus, dashing them down. This was the vengeance of a man punishing his own age, that no one else should drink from them. The fragments can in no way be mended. Glass vessels have come wonderfully close to them in likeness, but in the manner of a portent, so that they have increased their own price and not diminished that of crystallus.
30| The next place in delights, of women only so far, is held by amber, and all these have the same authority as gems; certainly the former for certain reasons: crystallus for cold drinking, myrrhina for both; in amber not even delight has so far been able to devise a reason.
31| There is an occasion for exposing the vanity of the Greeks: let readers bear it in an even temper, since it matters to life also to know that not everything they handed down is to be wondered at. That the sisters of Phaethon, struck by lightning, changed in grief into poplar trees, pour out amber in their tears every year beside the river Eridanus, which we have called the Po, and that amber is so called because the sun was named Elector, very many poets have said, and first, as I judge, Aeschylus, Philoxenus, Euripides, Nicander, Satyrus. That this is false is plain from the testimony of Italy.
32| The more careful of them have said that the Electrides islands are in the Hadriatic Sea, to which it would be carried down from the Po. By that name it is certain that there never were any there, nor indeed any so placed that anything could be carried to them by the course of the Po. For as to Aeschylus saying that the Eridanus is in Hiberia [that is, in Spain] and the same is called the Rhodanus, and Euripides again and Apollonius that on the Hadriatic shore the Rhodanus and the Po flow together, so great an ignorance of the world makes easier pardon for ignorance of amber.
33| More modest, but equally false, are those who have reported that at the extremity of the Hadriatic gulf, on impassable rocks, trees stand which discharge this gum when the Dog Star rises. Theophrastus said it is dug in Liguria, Chares that Phaethon died in Ethiopia on the island of Ammon, that his shrine and oracle are there and that amber is produced. Philemon, that it is fossil and is dug up in Scythia in two places, a white one of wax color that was called electrum, in the other a tawny one that was called sualiternicum.
34| Demostratus calls it lyncurium and says it is made from the urine of lynx beasts, from males a tawny and fiery one, from females a more languid and white one; that others call it langurium and that in Italy there are beasts called languri. Zenothemis calls the same beasts langae and assigns their life to them around the Po; Sudines, that the tree that produces it in Liguria is called lynca.
35| Metrodorus was of the same opinion. Sotacus believed that in Britain it flows from rocks, which he called electrides; Pytheas, that the Guiones, a people of Germany, live beside an estuary of the ocean named Metuonis, over a space of six thousand stadia; that from this an island, Abalus, is a day's sail away; that to it in spring it is carried by the waves and is a refuse of the congealed sea; that the inhabitants use it for fire instead of wood and sell it to their neighbors the Teutones.
36| Timaeus also believed this, but called the island Basilia. Philemon denied that flame is given off by amber. Nicias wished this to be understood as a juice of the sun's rays; that near the setting, driven more violently into the earth, they leave a fat sweat in it, and then it is cast up on the shores of the Germans by the tides of the ocean. That it is born in Egypt in a similar way (it is called sacal), and likewise in India, and is more pleasing to the Indians even than incense itself;
37| that in Syria also women make spindle whorls of it and call it harpaga, because it snatches leaves and chaff and the fringes of clothes. Theochrestus, that when the ocean surges out it is driven to the promontories of the Pyrenees, which Xenocrates also believed, who wrote about these things most recently and is still alive. Asarubas reports that beside the Atlantic Sea there is a lake Cephisis, which the Moors call Electrum. This, heated by the sun, gives out amber floating up from the mud.
38| Mnaseas calls a place in Africa Sicyon, and a river Crathis flowing out into the ocean from a lake in which live birds he calls meleagrides and penelopes; that it is born there in the same way as was said above. Theomenes, that near the great Syrtis there is the garden of the Hesperides and the lake Electrum, there poplar trees, from whose tops it falls into the lake; that it is gathered, moreover, by maidens of the Hesperides.
39| Ctesias says that in India there is a river Hypobarus, by which name it is signified that it bears all good things; that, flowing out of the north, it runs into the eastern ocean beside a mountain wooded with trees that bear amber. These trees are called psitthachorae, by which name is signified a very sweet pleasantness. Mithridates, that on the shores of Carmania there is an island, which is called Serita, wooded with a kind of cedar, and that from there it flows down on to rocks.
40| Xenocrates, that amber is called in Italy not only sucinum but also thium, and by the Scythians sacrium, since it is born there too; that others think it is produced from mud in Numidia. Above all is Sophocles the tragic poet, which I for my part wonder at, since so great is the gravity of his buskin, and besides the reputation of his life, a man otherwise born to the first rank at Athens and known for his deeds and for having led an army. He said that beyond India it is made of the tears of the meleagrid birds weeping for Meleager.
41| Who would not wonder that he believed this, or hoped it could be persuaded to others? Or what childhood so unskilled can be found as to believe in yearly lamentations of birds, or in tears so large, or in birds which from Greece, where Meleager died, went to the Indians to lament? What then? Do not poets report many things equally fabulous? But for anyone to have said this seriously, in a matter that is imported daily and abounds and refutes the falsehood, is the utmost contempt for men and an intolerable impunity of lies.
42| It is certain that it is produced in the islands of the northern ocean and is called by the Germans glaesum, and for that reason one of the islands was called Glaesaria by our people, when Germanicus Caesar was operating there with fleets, and was called Austeravia by the barbarians. It is born, moreover, by the pith flowing down from trees of the pine kind, as gum bursts out in cherry trees and resin in pines through abundance of moisture. It is thickened by cold or time or the sea, when the swelling tide itself has snatched it from the islands, and it is driven out onto certain shores, so buoyant that it seems to hang and not to settle in the shallows.
43| Even our ancestors believed it to be the juice of a tree, calling it sucinum for that reason. That it belongs to a tree of the pine kind is shown by the pine smell on rubbing, and that when kindled it burns like a torch of pine with a smoky smell. It is brought from the Germans especially to the province of Pannonia, and from there the Veneti first, whom the Greeks called Eneti, made the fame of the thing, and those nearest Pannonia and those living around the Hadriatic Sea.
44| To the Po, however, a story has been attached, with an evident cause, since to this day the country women of the Transpadane people wear amber in place of necklaces, chiefly for the sake of adornment, but for medicine too; it is in fact believed to resist the tonsils and ailments of the throat, a certain kind of waters near the Alps variously afflicting the throats of men.
45| That shore of Germany from which it is imported is, it was recently learned, about 600 miles from Carnuntum in Pannonia, and there lives a Roman knight sent to procure it by Iulianus, who was in charge of the gladiatorial show of the emperor Nero. He traveled through both those markets and the shores, and brought in so great a quantity that the nets protecting the podium, to restrain the wild beasts, were knotted with amber, and the arena and the bier and the whole equipment of a single day, in the variation of each day's procession, were of amber.
46| The greatest weight of a lump he brought was 13 pounds. That it is born in India also is certain. Archelaus, who reigned in Cappadocia, reports that it is brought from there raw, with pine bark clinging to it, and polished boiled in the fat of a suckling pig. That it first drips liquid is shown by certain things translucent inside, such as ants and gnats and lizards, which undoubtedly stuck to the fresh substance and, enclosed as it hardened, remained.
47| Its kinds are several. Of these the white is of the most excellent smell, but neither for these nor for the wax-colored is there a price. The tawny have greater authority. Of these, those more translucent still, except if they blaze with too great a heat; it is agreed that in them there is the image of fire, not fire. The highest praise is for the Falernian, so called from the color of the wine, clear with a soft gleam, in which the smoothness of boiled-down honey also pleases.
48| But this too ought to be known, that however they like, they are dyed, with kid's tallow and the root of anchusa, since indeed they are now stained even with conchylium. Moreover, by rubbing with the fingers, having received the breath of heat, they draw to themselves chaff and dry leaves and linden bark, as the magnet stone draws iron. Shavings of it also, with oil added, burn more brightly and longer than the pith of flax.
49| The valuation in delights is so great that a human figure of it, however small, exceeds the prices of living, vigorous men, so that a single rebuke is not enough. In Corinthian ware, bronze mixed with silver and gold pleases; in engraved work, art and talent; of myrrhina and crystallus we have told the favor; pearls are carried about on the head, gems on the fingers; in all other vices, finally, either display or use pleases: in amber, only the consciousness of delight.
50| Domitius Nero, among the other portents of his life, had also adopted the hair of Poppaea his wife under this name, calling it amber even in a certain poem, since for no vices do precious names fail; from this a certain third color began to be sought by matrons. Some use of amber, however, is found in medicine, but it is not for this that women like it. It is of benefit bound on infants, on the principle of an amulet.
51| Callistratus reports that it benefits also persons of any age against frenzies, and, drunk or bound on, in difficulties of urine. He also made a new distinction by calling one chryselectrum, which is of a golden color and of a most pleasing appearance in the morning, most greedy of flames, catching fire very quickly if they are near. This, bound on the neck, cures fevers and diseases, but ground with honey and oil of roses, ailments of the ears, and, if ground with Attic honey, the dimness of the eyes also, and ailments of the stomach too, either its meal taken by itself or drunk with mastic in water. Amber has a great place also in the adulterating of gems that are translucent, especially amethysti, though it is dyed, as we said, in every color.
52| About lyncurium the obstinacy of the authors compels us to speak next, since, even if it is not amber, they nevertheless contend that it is a gem, and that it is made, indeed, from the urine of the lynx, but also from a kind of earth, that animal straightway covering its urine, because it grudges it to man, and that there it turns to stone. That it is, moreover, such as in amber,
53| of a fiery color, and can be engraved, and that it snatches to itself not only leaves or straw but also thin plates of bronze and iron, which Theophrastus too believes, trusting a certain Diocles. I judge all of this false, and no gem has been seen in our age under that name. False also is what is reported at the same time about medicine, that bladder stones are broken by drinking it and the royal disease is relieved, if it is drunk in wine or even looked at.
54| Now we shall speak of the acknowledged kinds of gems, beginning with the most praised, and we shall not do this alone, but, for the greater usefulness of life, shall refute the unspeakable vanity of the Magi, since they have handed down very many things about gems, passing from a most flattering appearance of medicine to prodigies.
55| The greatest price in human affairs, not only among gems, belongs to adamas, for a long time known only to kings and to quite few of them. So was called a knot of gold found in mines, very rarely [companion of gold], and it seemed to be born nowhere but in gold. The ancients thought that it is found only in the mines of the Ethiopians between the shrine of Mercury and the island of Meroe, and said that it is found no larger than a cucumber seed, nor different in color.
56| Now six kinds of it are first recognized: the Indian, not born in gold and with a certain kinship to crystallus, since it does not differ in translucent color and in the six-angled smoothness of its faces, whirled to a point from two opposite parts, so that we may wonder the more, as if two tops were joined at their widest parts, in size indeed even of a hazelnut kernel. Similar to this is the Arabian, only smaller, born in a similar way. The rest have the pallor of silver and are born only in the most excellent gold.
57| These are tested on anvils, so repelling the blows that the iron leaps away on both sides and the anvils themselves even spring apart. For the hardness is indescribable, and at the same time its nature is a conqueror of fires and never grows hot, whence it also took its name [in Greek interpretation, an untamed force]. One of them they call cenchron, of the size of millet, the other Macedonian, found in Philippic gold; this is equal to a cucumber seed.
58| After these is the one called Cyprian, found in Cyprus, verging to a bronze color, but most effective in medical power, of which we shall speak. After this, the siderites of iron brilliance, in weight ahead of the rest, but unlike in nature. For it can be broken by blows and bored through by another adamas, which happens also to the Cyprian, and, in short, like degenerates they have only the authority of the name.
59| Now what we have tried to teach in these whole volumes about the discord and concord of things, which the Greeks have called antipathia and sympathia, cannot be understood more clearly otherwise, since that unconquered force, the despiser of two most violent things of nature, iron and fires, is broken by goat's blood, and not otherwise than when soaked in fresh and warm blood, and even so with many blows, and even then it breaks iron anvils and hammers, unless they are exceptional ones.
60| By whose invention, or by what chance, was this discovered? Or what was the guess that led to trying a thing of immense price in the foulest of animals? Such a discovery is surely of the divinities, and this whole gift, and no reason is to be sought in any part of nature, but a will! When it has happened happily to break it, it is crumbled into such small fragments that they can scarcely be seen. These are sought by engravers and enclosed in iron, easily hollowing out any hardness whatever.
61| Adamas disagrees with the magnet so far that, placed beside it, it does not allow iron to be drawn away, or, if the magnet, brought near, has seized it, it snatches it and carries it off. Adamas also overcomes poisons and makes them ineffective, and drives away frenzies, and expels empty fears from the mind. For this reason some have called it anancites. Metrodorus of Scepsis, alone, so far as I have read, says that it is born in the same Germany, on the island Basilia, where amber also is, and prefers it to the Arabian. Who could doubt that this is false?
62| The next price among us is that of Indian and Arabian pearls, of which we spoke in the ninth volume among marine things. The third authority is credited to smaragdi for several reasons, since the sight of no color is more pleasing. For we look eagerly even at quiet herbs and foliage, but at smaragdi so much the more gladly, because nothing at all that is green, compared with them, is greener.
63| Moreover, they alone of gems fill the eyes by looking and do not satiate. Indeed, from another straining, the sight is refreshed by the view of a smaragdus, and for engravers of gems there is no more welcome restoration of the eyes: so by their green mildness they soothe weariness. Besides, they are enlarged to the view from a distance, tinting the air about them with their reflection, not altered by sun, nor by shade, nor by lamps, always radiating gradually and admitting the sight to their thickness by a translucent ease, which delights us in waters also.
64| The same are mostly concave, so as to gather the sight. For this reason, by decree of men, they are spared, engraving them being forbidden. Yet the hardness of the Scythian and Egyptian is so great that they cannot be wounded. Those, however, whose body is extended, on the same principle as mirrors, lying flat, give back the images of things. The emperor Nero used to watch the fights of gladiators in a smaragdus.
65| Their kinds are twelve: the most noble the Scythian, called after the people in whose country they are found. In none is there greater austerity or less fault; as far as smaragdi are from gems, so far is the Scythian from other smaragdi. The next praise, as also place, belongs to the Bactrian. They are said to be gathered in the joints of rocks when the Etesian winds blow; for then, the earth being uncovered, they gleam, because by those winds the sands are most moved. But these, they report, are much smaller than the Scythian. The Egyptian hold third place. They are dug out around Coptos, a town of the Thebaid, from hollowed hills.
66| The remaining kinds are found in copper mines, for which reason the Cyprian hold the first rank among them. Their endowment is in a color liquid and not diluted, but from a moist richness, and through which one sees, imitating the translucent of the sea, equally so that it be translucent and shine [that is, so that it drive out the color and take in the sight]. They say that in that island, on the tomb of the petty king Hermias beside the fish pools, a marble lion had eyes put in of smaragdi so radiant even into the deep that the tunnies, frightened, shrank back, the fishermen long wondering at the strange thing, until they changed the gems for other eyes.
67| But it is fitting that faults too be shown, at such prodigal prices. They are indeed the same in all, though some are peculiar to nations, as in man. So the Cyprian, variously bluish-gray, more and less in the same smaragdus in different parts, do not always keep that steadiness of Scythian austerity. Besides, in some a shadow runs through, and the color becomes dull, which is disapproved even when more diluted.
68| From this the kinds are distinguished, so that some are dark, which they call blind, others dense and not translucent from liquid, some variegated, some covered by a little cloud. This is different from the shadow, of which we have spoken. The little cloud is a fault of whitishness, when the green view does not pass through, but either meets something inside or a whiteness catches the sight at the end. These are faults of color; likewise of body, the hairline, salt, plumbago, which are almost common.
69| After these the Ethiopian are praised, from Coptos a journey of 25 days, as Juba is authority, sharply green, but not easily pure or of one color. Democritus puts in this kind the Thermiaean and the Persian, the former swelling richly, the Persian not translucent, but filling the sight with an agreeable steadiness which they do not admit, like the eyes of cats and panthers; for those too radiate and cannot be seen through, and the same are dulled in the sun, shine back in the shade, and gleam farther than the rest.
70| A fault, further, of all these is that they have the color of gall or of acrid oil, bright indeed and liquid, but not green. These faults are felt most in the Attic ones found in the silver mines. In the place which is called Thoricos they are always less rich, but more beautiful from a distance. Plumbago is frequent in these too, that is, so that in the sun they look leaden. This is peculiar, that some of these grow old, the greenness gradually vanishing, and are damaged by the sun also.
71| After these the Median have the most variety, sometimes something also from sappirus. These are wavelike and contain images of things, of poppies for example or of birds and whelps or of feathers. Some, however, seem to be born green, since they become better with oil, and the size of the others is no greater.
72| The Chalcedonian (I do not know whether wholly) have died out, after the copper mines there failed, and nevertheless were always the cheapest and the smallest, the same brittle and of uncertain color, and, like the neck feathers of doves and the greenish ones in the tails of peacocks, more or less bright with the inclination, the same veined and scaly.
73| There was also a peculiar fault in them called sarcion, that is, a certain flesh of the gem. There is a mountain near Chalcedon in which they were gathered, called Smaragdites. Juba is authority that a smaragdus which they call chlora is built in Arabia into ornaments of buildings, and a stone which the Egyptians call alabastrites, and that several from nearby places and on Mount Taygetus are dug out like the Median, and others in Sicily.
74| There is inserted among smaragdi also the gem called tanos, coming from the Persians, unpleasantly green and dirty inside, likewise the chalcosmaragdos from Cyprus, turbid with bronze veins. Theophrastus reports that in the records of the Egyptians it is found that a smaragdus four cubits in length and three in width was sent as a gift to their king by the king of Babylon, and that there was among them in the shrine of Jupiter an obelisk formed from four smaragdi, forty cubits in length, and in width four in one part,
75| in part two; and that at the time of his writing there was in Tyre in the temple of Hercules a large pillar of smaragdus, unless it is rather a pseudosmaragdus, for that kind too is found; and that in Cyprus a stone has been found which was half smaragdus and half iaspis, the moisture not yet wholly transformed. Apion, surnamed Plistonices, left written a little earlier that there is even now in the labyrinth of Egypt a colossal Serapis of smaragdus, nine cubits high.
76| Many think the berulli have the same nature, or at any rate a similar one. India produces them, and they are rarely found elsewhere. All of them are polished in a six-sided shape by the ingenuity of the craftsmen, because the colour, dull in a flat surface, is brought to life by the reflection from the angles; polished any other way, they have no brilliance. The most approved of them are those that imitate the greenness of a clear sea; next are those called chrysoberulli, a little paler, but with a brilliance passing into a golden colour.
77| Close to this is a kind that is paler, and some judge it to be a kind of its own and call it chrysoprasus. In fourth place are counted the hyacinthizontes, in fifth those they call aeroides, afterwards the wax-coloured and then the oleagini, that is, of the colour of oil, and last those like crystallus. These generally have hair-like flaws and dirt, and are otherwise faint, all of which are defects.
78| The Indians take wonderful pleasure in their length, and say that they alone of gems are ones that people would rather have without gold; for this reason they bore them through and hang them on elephants' bristles. It is agreed that those whose goodness is perfect ought not to be bored, the ends being held only by golden knobs. For that reason they prefer to make cylinders of them rather than gems, since the highest recommendation lies in length.
79| Some also think that they are born angular from the start, and that they become more pleasing when bored, once the central core of whiteness is removed and the reflection of the gold is added, or when its thickness is cut away altogether for the sake of transparency. Their defects, besides those already mentioned, are almost the same as in smaragdi, and also pterygia. In our part of the world they are thought sometimes to be found around the Pontus. The Indians have discovered how to adulterate other gems too by tinting crystallus, but especially berulli.
80| The opali differ least and at the same time most from these, yielding only to the smaragdi. India alone is their mother as well. Combined, as they are, from the glory of the most precious stones, they present the greatest indescribable difficulty. In them there is the gentler fire of the carbunculus, the gleaming purple of the amethystus, the green sea of the smaragdus, all shining together in an incredible mixture.
81| Some believe that their utmost brilliance is equalled only by the Armenian colour among pigments, others by the flame of burning sulphur or of fire kindled with oil. The size equals a hazelnut. The story is notable even among us, since there survives today a gem of this kind on account of which Nonius the senator was proscribed by Antony, the son of that Struma Nonius whom the poet Catullus took it ill to see in a curule chair, and the grandfather of Servilius Nonianus, whom we saw as consul. Fleeing in proscription, he carried off this ring with him out of all his fortune.
82| It is certain that it was then valued at two million sesterces; but remarkable was the savagery and extravagance of Antony, proscribing a man on account of a gem, and no less the stubbornness of Nonius, in loving his own proscription, when even wild beasts, after gnawing off the part of their body for which they know they are in danger, are believed to buy their lives by leaving it behind.
83| The defects of opali are these: if the colour passes into the flower of the plant called heliotropium, or into crystallus or hail; if salt intervenes, or roughness, or points that meet the eyes. No gems does a fraud, indistinguishable in likeness, adulterate more with glass. The test is in the sun alone: for when the false ones are held up against the rays between finger and thumb, one and the same colour shows through, spent in itself; the brilliance of the true ones keeps changing, and scatters more now from this part, now from that, and the glitter of the light pours onto the fingers.
84| Because of its exceptional charm, most people have called this gem paederota. Those who make a separate kind of it say it is called sangenon by the Indians. It is said to be born in Egypt and in Arabia, and the cheapest in Pontus, likewise in Galatia, and in Thasos and Cyprus. The one that excels among these has the charm of the opalus, but shines more softly and is seldom not rough. Its highest colour consists of sky-blue and purple; the greenness of the smaragdus is lacking. That one is better whose brilliance is darkened to the colour of wine than one that is diluted to that of water.
85| Thus far there is agreement about the first place, chiefly by the decree of the women's senate. There is less certainty about those on which men also pass judgement; for each man's fancy sets prices for himself, and above all rivalry, as when Claudius Caesar wore smaragdi or sardonyches. The first of the Romans to use a sardonyx was the elder Africanus, as Demostratus relates, and from that the authority of this gem among the Romans. On that account we shall assign it the next place.
86| Sardonyches were once understood, as is clear from the very name, as a whiteness in a sarda, that is, like flesh laid upon a man's fingernail, both being translucent. And such, they say, are the Indian ones: so say Ismenias, Demostratus, Zenothemis and Sotacus, the last two calling all the others, which are not translucent, blind.
87| Those which now have taken the name, with no trace of Indian sardae, are Arabian, and these gems began to be recognized in several colours, with a root black or imitating sky-blue, and a nail of minium, ringed about with rich white, and not without some promise of purple where the white passes into minium. Zenothemis writes that these are not held in honour by the Indians, being at other times of such great size that from them
88| they used to make into hilts — for it is agreed that there they are laid bare by torrents — and that they found favour in our part of the world at first because, almost alone of gems, when engraved they did not take away the wax. Then we persuaded the Indians to take pleasure in them themselves too. The common people wear them bored, on the neck; and this is now the proof of Indian ones. The Arabian ones excel in whiteness, with a translucent ring that is not thin and that gleams neither in the hollow of the gem nor at its edge, but shines on the very bosses, and besides with a base of the blackest colour.
89| In the Indian ones this is found blue or horn-coloured. Likewise a certain breath of the rainbow is in their white ring, while the surface is like sea lobsters, with reddish shells. For those that are honey-coloured or dreggy — for this is the name of the defect — are disapproved, or if the white band spreads itself out and does not bind, and likewise if it admits into itself something of another colour out of due measure. Nothing pleases that is interrupted in its own place by what is alien. There are also Armenian ones, otherwise to be approved, but with a pale band.
90| We must also set out the nature of the onyx itself, because of the sharing of the name. Elsewhere this is the word for a stone; here it is the word for a gem. Sudines says that in the gem there is a whiteness like that of a human fingernail, and also the colour of chrysolithus and of sarda and of iaspis; Zenothemis, that the Indian onyx has several varieties — fiery, black, horn-coloured — with white veins encircling it in the manner of an eye, and in some the oblique veins intervene. Sotacus also relates that the Arabian onyx differs in that the Indian has little fires, encircled by white bands, one or several, otherwise than in the Indian sardonyx; for there it is a dot, here a circle; and that Arabian onyxes are found black with white bands;
91| Satyrus says that the Indian ones are fleshy, partly of carbunculus, partly of chrysolithus and amethystus, and he rejects that whole kind; but the true onyx, he says, has very many varied veins along with milky ones, the colour of all of them in passing indescribable and returning into one harmony with a pleasing sweetness. Nor must the sarda be put off, a gem sharing the same name with it as a part, and in passing the nature of all the burning gems must be indicated.
92| The first place belongs to the carbunculi, so called from their likeness to fires, although they themselves do not feel fire; for this reason some call them acaustoe. Their kinds are the Indian and the Garamantic, which they also called Carchedonian on account of the wealth of Great Carthage. They add the Ethiopian and the Alabandic, born in Orthosia in Caria, but finished at Alabanda. Besides, in every kind the sharper ones are called male, and those shining more languidly female.
93| Among the males, too, they observe those more liquid, or of a blacker flame, and certain ones that are bright from deep within and blaze more than the rest in the sun; the best of all are the amethystizontes, that is, those whose outermost little fire passes into the violet of the amethystus; next to them are those they call syrtitae, radiating with a feathered brilliance. They are found, moreover, where the reflection of the sun is greatest.
94| Satyrus says the Indian ones are not bright, and are mostly dirty and always of a parched brilliance; that the Ethiopian are rich and, not pouring out light, blaze with a rolled-up fire. Callistratus says that the brilliance of a carbunculus ought to be white, so that when set down it is clouded to the eye at the furthest sight, but if it is lifted up, the brilliance flares out — for this reason most have called this the white carbunculus, and the one that shines more languidly lignyzon —;
95| that the Carchedonian are much smaller, while the Indian are even hollowed to the measure of one sextarius. Archelaus says that the Carchedonian are of a blacker look, but are aroused more sharply than the others by fire or the sun and by tilting; that the same appear purple when a roof shades them, flame-coloured under the open sky, and sparkle against the rays of the sun, and that when used to seal they melt wax, though in shade.
96| Many have written that the Indian are whiter than the Carchedonian, and conversely are dulled by tilting; that further, in the Carchedonian males a star burns within, while the females pour their whole brilliance outside themselves; that the Alabandic are blacker than the rest and rough. And around Miletus they are born in the ground, of the same colour, feeling fire hardly at all.
97| Theophrastus is the authority that they are also found at Orchomenus in Arcadia, and in Chios, those blacker, from which mirrors too are made; that there are also Troezenian ones, varied with white spots intervening, likewise Corinthian, but paler, from white; that they are imported from Massilia also. Bocchus wrote that they are dug up also in the territory of Olisipo, with great labour on account of the clay of the scorched soil.
98| Nor is there anything more difficult than to distinguish these kinds; so great in them is the opportunity for art, with things put underneath through which they are forced to shine. They say that the duller ones, steeped in vinegar for 13 days, glitter, the brilliance lasting for as many months. They are counterfeited in glass with the closest likeness, but are detected by the whetstone, as other gems are; for the material of the fakes is softer and brittle. The centrosae are detected by the whetstone and by weight, which is less in glass ones, and sometimes also by blisters gleaming like silver.
99| There is also one called anthracitis, dug up in Thesprotia, like coals. I think it false that they have reported it born also in Liguria, unless perhaps they were born there then. They relate that among these there are also ones girdled by a white vein. Their colour is fiery like the above, but peculiar to them is that at a touch they go out as if half-dead, whereas when drenched with water they blaze up.
100| Akin too is the sandastros, nearest to it in nature, which some call Garamantic. It is born among the Indians in a place of the same name. It is produced also in Arabia, on the side turned to the south. Its highest recommendation is that, as if with fire held within a translucent body, it glitters inside with starlike golden drops, always in the body, never in the skin. A religious feeling is added, from the kinship with the stars that is told of it, since they are starred almost in the arrangement and number of the Pleiades and Hyades; for this reason they are held in the ceremonies of the Chaldaeans.
101| and here too a certain austerity distinguishes the males, and a vigour that tinges what is placed next to it; the Indian ones indeed are even said to dull the sight. The flame of the females is gentler, shining upon rather than kindling. There are those who prefer the Arabian to the Indian and say that the latter are smoky and like chrysolithus. Ismenias denies that sandastri are polished, on account of their tenderness, and for that reason they sell at a great price. Some call these sandrisitae. All agree that as much as is added to the number of their stars, so much is added to their price.
102| The likeness of the name sandaresus sometimes brings error. Nicander calls it sandaserion, others sandareson, and some indeed call this one sandastrus and that one sandaresus, which is also born in India and keeps the name of the place, of the colour of an apple or of green oil, disapproved by all.
103| Of the same kind of burning stones is the one called lychnis, from its agreement with lamps, and then of special charm. It is born around Orthosia and in all of Caria and the places near, but the most approved are in India. Some have said that it is a milder carbunculus, and that the second in goodness is the one resembling the flowers called Jupiter's. And I find other differences too: one that radiates purple, another that radiates scarlet; these, warmed by the sun or by rubbing with the fingers, draw to themselves straws and the threads of papyrus sheets.
104| The same thing is said to be done also by the Carchedonian, although it is much cheaper than those mentioned. It is born among the Nasamones in the mountains, by a divine rain, as the inhabitants think. They are found especially by the reflection of the full moon; they were once carried to Carthage. Archelaus relates that they are born also in Egypt around Thebes, brittle, veined, like a dying coal. I find that drinking cups were regularly made of this and of the lychnis; and all these kinds stubbornly resist engraving and hold part of the wax in the seal.
105| In contrast, most useful for these purposes is the sarda, which has shared its name with the sardonyx. It is itself common, and was first found at Sardis; the most praised are around Babylon. When certain quarries are opened, they are found sticking in the rock like hearts. They say that this vein failed among the Persians, but they are found in several other places, as in Paros and Assos; in India of three kinds: red ones, and those they call pionias from their fatness; the third kind is the one which they underlay with silver foil.
106| The Indian are translucent, the Arabian are thicker. Near Leucas in Epirus also, and in Egypt, there are found ones that are underlaid with gold foil. And among these too the males gleam more briskly, the females more sluggishly and with a thicker shine. Nor was any other gem among the ancients more frequent in use — of this certainly the plays of Menander and Philemon are proud — and none of the translucent gems is more slowly dulled when moisture is laid under it, and more so by oil than by any other liquid.
107| Of these, the honey-coloured are condemned, and the more strongly testaceous. The topazus has even now a distinguished glory of its own, from the green kind, and when first found it was preferred to all. It happened on an island of Arabia which was called Cytis, to which Troglodyte robbers, weary with hunger and storm, had come, that while digging up herbs and roots they dug up the topazus.
108| This is the opinion of Archelaus. Juba says that Topazus is an island in the Red Sea, 300 stadia from the mainland; that it is misty and so was often sought by sailors, and received its name from that cause, for topazin in the language of the Troglodytes has the meaning of seeking. That from it a first stone was brought to Queen Berenice, who was the mother of the next Ptolemy, by the prefect Philo; that the king was wonderfully pleased, and from it a statue of Arsinoe, wife of Ptolemy, four cubits high, was made, and consecrated in the shrine which was called the Arsinoeum.
109| The most recent authors say that it is born also around Alabastrum, a town of the Thebaid, and make two kinds of it, the prasoides and the chrysopteron, similar to chrysoprasus. For the whole likeness is directed to the juice of the leek. It is, moreover, the largest of gems. It alone of the noble ones feels the file; the others are polished with Naxian stone and whetstones. This one is also worn down by use.
110| There accompanies it, nearer in likeness than in authority, the callaina, pale out of green. It is born behind the back of India among the inhabitants of Mount Caucasus, the Hyrcanians, Sacae and Dahae, conspicuous in size but full of pipes and dirt, much purer and finer in Carmania; in both places, however, on pathless and icy rocks, bulging in the shape of an eye and adhering slightly, not as if grown to the rocks but as if set on them.
111| For this reason the horse-riding peoples, from the laziness of their feet, are weary of climbing to them, and the danger also frightens them; so they attack them from far off with slings and knock them down together with all their moss. This is a tax, this an ornament worn on the neck, most welcome to the fingers, they know; from this comes wealth, this glory among those who from boyhood tell the number they have brought down; in which fortune varies, some having taken splendid ones at the first blow, many to old age none. And such is the hunting of callainae. After that they are shaped by cutting, being otherwise easy to work.
112| The best have the colour of the smaragdus, though so that it is apparent that what pleases is something foreign. Set in, they are adorned with gold, and none become gold more. The more beautiful of them lose their colour with oil, ointment, even unmixed wine; the cheaper keep it more steadily, and no other is more imitable by the falsehood of glass. There are those who say that in Arabia they are found in the nests of birds which they call melancoryphi.
113| There are also many other kinds of green stones. Of the cheaper crowd is the prasius, a second kind of which is disfigured by blood-red points, a third distinguished by three white streaks. To these is preferred the chrysoprasos, itself also recalling the juice of the leek, but it declines a little from topazus toward gold. It has also such size that even cups are made from it, and cylinders very frequently.
114| India produces these too, and the nilion, which differs from it in brilliance only a little, and deceptively when you look at it. Sudines says that it is born in the Siberus too, a river of Attica. Its colour is that of smoky topazus or sometimes of honey. Juba relates that it is produced in Ethiopia on the banks of the river we call the Nile, and draws its name from there. The molochitis is not translucent; it is a denser green, having taken its name from the colour of the mallow, praised for rendering seals and as a guardian of infants and as a certain innate remedy against dangers.
115| The iaspis is green and often translucent, and though surpassed by many it keeps the glory of antiquity. Very many peoples bear it: the Indians one like smaragdus, Cyprus a hard one with a rich grey-green, the Persians one like the air, which for that reason is called aerizusa; of that kind is the Caspian too. A blue one is found around the river Thermodon, in Phrygia a purple one, and in Cappadocia a blue out of purple, gloomy and not gleaming. Amisos sends one like the Indian, Calchedon a turbid one. But it matters less to distinguish the nations than the qualities.
116| The best is the one that has something of purple, second that which has something of rose, third that of smaragdus. For each the Greeks gave names from the evidence. The fourth among them is called boria, like the autumn sky in the morning; this will be the one that is called aerizusa. [It is like sarda too, and imitates violets as well.] No fewer kinds remain, but all lapse into blue, as one like crystallus or myxae, and likewise the terebinthizusa. For this reason the finer ones are enclosed in a setting open on both sides, so that they are exposed on both sides, and nothing but the rims is clasped by the gold.
117| The defect in them is a brief lustre not shining far, and salt, and everything else that belongs to the rest. They are also adulterated with glass, which becomes evident when they scatter their brilliance outside and do not hold it in themselves. The rest they call sphragides, the common name of gems being given to these alone [because they seal best].
118| The whole East, moreover, is reported to wear them as an amulet. The one of them that is like smaragdus is often girdled in the middle by a white line across it and is called monogrammos; the one with several lines, polygrammos. It is pleasant to refute here also, in passing, the vanity of the Magi, since they have reported this stone useful to those addressing assemblies. There is also one joined with onyx, called iasponyx, which contains a cloud, imitates snows, and is starred with ruddy points. There is also one like Megarian salt and as if stained with smoke, called capnias. Of a size of 16 unciae we have seen a figure of Nero in a cuirass formed from it.
119| The cyanos will also be given separately, its name having been applied a little earlier to iaspis too, from the blue colour. The best is Scythian, then Cyprian, last Egyptian. It is adulterated chiefly by dyeing, and this is a glory of the kings of Egypt; the man who first dyed it is even recorded. It is divided, moreover, into males and females. It sometimes has also a golden dust, not such as in sappiri; for in these the gold shines in points.
120| The sappiri too are blue, and rarely with purple. The best are among the Medes, yet nowhere entirely translucent. Besides, they are useless for engraving because of crystalline centres intervening. Those of them which are of cyan colour are considered males.
121| A further class after this is to be given to the purple stones or those that descend from them. The Indian amethysti hold the first place, but they are found also in the part of Arabia which borders on Syria and is called Petra, and in Lesser Armenia and Egypt and Galatia, while the dirtiest and cheapest are in Thasos and Cyprus. They give as the reason for the name that, approaching the colour of wine, before it tastes of it the brilliance ends in violet; others, that there is something in that purple not wholly fiery, but failing into the colour of wine. All are translucent with a violet beauty, easy to engrave.
122| The Indian has the finished colour of Phoenician purple. To it the dyers' workshops direct their prayers. It sheds a look gently pleasing, not quivering in the eyes, as carbunculi do. A second kind of them descends to the hyacinthi; this colour the Indians call socon, and such a gem socondion. A more diluted one of the same is called sapenos, and the same is pharanitis in the neighbouring part of Arabia, from the name of the people. The fourth kind has the colour of wine.
123| The fifth descends to the neighbourhood of crystallus, with a whitish failing of purple. This is least approved, since the finest ought to be, on being looked at, a certain gently rosy glitter in purple, as if shining from a carbunculus. Some prefer to call such paederotae, others anterotes, many Venus's cheek.
124| The vanity of the Magi promises that these resist drunkenness and are named from that; further, that, should the names of the moon and the sun be inscribed on them and they are so hung from the neck with hairs of a dog-headed ape and feathers of a swallow, they resist poisonings; and indeed that, in whatever way, they bring the kings' favour to those about to approach them; that they also turn away hail and locusts with a prayer added, which they set out. And they have likewise promised similar things for smaragdi too, if eagles or scarabs are engraved on them, things which I think they wrote not without contempt for, and mockery of, the human race.
125| Far from this is the hyacinthus, though descending from a neighbouring colour. The difference is this: that the violet brilliance flashing out in the amethystus is diluted in the hyacinthus and, pleasing at first sight, vanishes before it satisfies, and so little fills the eyes that it scarcely touches them, fading more quickly than the flower of its name.
126| Ethiopia sends hyacinthi and also chrysolithi, translucent with a golden brilliance. To these the Indian are preferred and, if they are not variegated, the Tibarenian. The worst are the Arabian, since they are turbid and variegated, the brilliance interrupted by a cloud of spots, and even those that happen to be clear are as if stuffed with sawdust. The best are those which, when compared, make gold look whitish with a certain look of silver. These are set in a mounting that is open, transparent; under the others aurichalcum is placed, although they have already gone out of use as gems.
127| Some are also called chryselectrae, inclining to the colour of electrum, but only in the morning view. Pontic ones are detected by their lightness. Some are hard and reddish, some soft and dirty. Bocchus is the authority that they are found also in Spain, and in that place he said that crystallum is dug up at the level of water in wells sunk down, and that he saw a chrysolithus of 12 pounds.
128| There are also leucochrysi, a white vein intervening. In this kind there are also capniae. There are also ones like glass, shining as if with saffron; they are adulterated with glass, so that they cannot be distinguished by sight; touch detects them, being warmer in the glass ones. In the same kind are the melichrysi, as if clear honey shone through gold. India bears these, though brittle in hardness, not unpleasing. The same land produces also the xuthon, a common gem of its own.
129| The leader of the white stones is the paederos, although it can be asked in what colour it ought to be counted, a name so often bandied about among the beauties of others that the prerogative of beauty has become a matter of the word. Yet it has also a kind of its own, worthy of such expectation. For there meet in a translucent crystallus the green, in its own way, of the air, and of purple together, and a certain glitter of golden wine always at the extremity of the view, but crowned with purple. It seems to be moist, both with each of these singly and with all of them together,
130| and no gem can be more liquid, with a pleasing sweetness to the eyes. It is most praised among the Indians, among whom it is called sangenon, next in Egypt, where it is syenites, third in Arabia, but rough, then the Pontic, which radiates more softly, the Thasian, itself softer, and the Galatian and Thracian and Cyprian. Their defects are languor, or being clouded by foreign colours, and those of the rest.
131| Next of the whitish ones is asteria. It holds first place by a property of its nature, that it keeps light enclosed in a sort of pupil. This it pours across when tilted, showing it, as if walking about inside, now in one place and now in another. The same, turned against the sun, throws back whitish rays in the manner of a star, from which it found its name. Those born in India are difficult to carve. The Carmanian are preferred.
132| Similarly white is the one called astrion, near to crystallus, born in India and on the shores of Patalene. In this a star shines inside from the centre with the full brilliance of the moon. Some give as the reason for the name that, set against the stars, it seizes their brilliance and throws it back. They say the best is produced in Carmania and that none is less subject to defect; that the poorer one is also called ceraunia; and that the worst is like the light of lanterns.
133| They celebrate also the astriotes, and they report that Zoroaster sang wonderful praises of it in the arts of the Magi. Sudines says that astolos is like the eyes of fishes, and radiates with a white brilliance like the sun.
134| Among the white ones is also that which is called ceraunia, seizing the brilliance of the stars, itself crystalline, of a blue splendour, born in Carmania. Zenothemis concedes that it is white, but has a star flashing inside; that there are also dull cerauniae, which, steeped in nitre and vinegar for some days, conceive that star, which fades after as many months.
135| Sotacus made also two other kinds of ceraunia, black and reddish [that they are like axes]. Of these, the black and round ones, he says, are sacred; by them cities are stormed and fleets; they are called baetuli; those that are long, cerauniae. They make also another, very rare, sought after by the zeal of the Magi, since it is not found anywhere but in a place struck by lightning.
136| Next to ceraunia, among them, is the name that is given to the one called iris. It is dug up on a certain island of the Red Sea, which is 60,000 paces distant from the city of Berenice, the stone being crystallus in the rest of its substance. Therefore some have said that it is the root of crystallus. It is called iris from the evidence, for when struck by the sun under a roof it casts the appearance and colours of the heavenly bow onto the nearest walls, constantly changing and increasing wonder at itself by great variety.
137| It is agreed to be six-sided like crystallus, but some say it has rough sides and unequal angles, and that in open sun it scatters rays glowing within itself, but that by a certain brightness thrown out before it, it lights up what lies near. They give colours, however, only from shade, as we have said, and not as though they themselves had them, but so that they strike them out by the rebound from the walls; the best is the one that makes the greatest arcs, most like the heavenly ones. There is also another iritis, similar in the rest, but extremely hard.
138| Orus wrote that this, burned and pounded, is a remedy for the bites of ichneumons, and that it is born in Persia. — Similar in look, but not of the same effect, is the one called leros, with white and black spots marking the crystallus across. Having set out the principal gems by classes of colour, we shall explain the rest in alphabetical order.
139| Achates was once of great authority, now it is of none. It was first found in Sicily beside the river of the same name, afterwards in very many lands, outstanding in size, abundant in varieties, which change its surnames. For it is called iaspachates, cerachates, smaragdachates, haemachates, leucachates, dendrachates, which is marked as if with little trees, antachates, which, when burned, smells of myrrh, and corallachates, sprinkled with golden drops in the manner of sappirus, of which kind the most abundant is in Crete. This one is also called sacred. Some think it is of benefit against the stings of spiders and scorpions.
140| This I should believe at any rate of the Sicilian ones, since at the first breath of that province the plague of scorpions is extinguished. Those found in India also have power against the same, with great other marvels: for they reproduce the appearance of rivers, of groves, and even of beasts of burden. From it they make statuettes for chariot-fighters, ornaments for horses, and small whetstones for physicians, for even to have looked at them is good for the eyes.
141| They also allay thirst when put in the mouth. The Phrygian have no green. Those found at Egyptian Thebes lack reddish and white veins, and these too are strong against scorpions. The Cyprian have the same authority. There are those who most approve in these a glassy transparency. They are found also in Trachinia around Oeta and on Parnassus and in Lesbos and in Messene, like the flowers of boundaries, and in Rhodes.
142| Among the Magi there are other differences in them: those found like lions' skins, they say, have power against scorpions. In Persia, moreover, by the fumigation of them storms and presteres are turned away and rivers stopped — the proof being that if they are put into boiling cauldrons they cool them — but, to be of use, they must be tied on with lions' manes, for tied with a hyena's they bode discord to households. The one that is of a single colour is unconquerable for athletes, the proof being that cast into a pot full of oil with pigments and made to boil for two hours, it makes of all one colour, that of minium.
143| Acopos is similar in colour to nitre, pumice-like, starred with golden drops. With this, oil that has been heated through relieves weariness in those anointed with it, if we believe it. — Alabastritis is born at Alabastron in Egypt and at Damascus in Syria, its whiteness interspersed with various colours. This, burned and ground with rock salt, is said to lessen heaviness of the mouth and teeth. —
144| They call alectoriae those found in the stomachs of cocks, of crystalline appearance, the size of a bean, by use of which they want it believed that Milo of Croton was unconquered in contests. — Androdamas has the shine of silver [like adamas], always like square tesserae. The Magi think the name was given from the fact that it tames the attacks and angers of men. Whether argyrodamas is the same or another, the authorities do not explain.
145| — Antipathes is black and not translucent. The test of it is that it is cooked in milk; for it makes it like murra. Something immense someone may perhaps expect in it, when among so many examples the possession of this name has been given to one. The Magi want it to help against bewitchings. — Arabica is very like ivory, and would be thought so, if its hardness did not deny it. This they think is of benefit to those who have pains in the sinews. — Aromatitis is itself found in Arabia, but also in Egypt around Philae, everywhere stony and of the colour and smell of myrrh, and on this account much used by queens.
146| — Asbestos is born in the mountains of Arcadia, of iron colour. — Aspisatis Democritus relates is born in Arabia, of fiery colour, and ought to be tied on with camel dung for those with spleen trouble, and at any rate is found in the nest of Arabian birds; and another of the same name is born there in Leucopetra, silver in colour, radiant; with [….] against those who are possessed by madness.
147| — Atizoe, he says, is born in India and on Mount Acidane in Persia, shining with a silver brilliance, three fingers in size, in the shape of a lentil, of pleasant smell, necessary to the Magi when they appoint a king. — Augitis seems to many to be no other than callaina. The stone amphidanes is called by another name chrysocolla, born in the part of India where the ants dig up gold, in which it is also found, like gold, of square shape. It is affirmed that its nature is that of the magnet, except that it is also reported to increase gold.
148| — Aphrodisiaca is reddish out of white. — Apsyctos keeps heat for seven days when warmed by fire, black and heavy, reddish veins marking it. They think it of benefit against colds. — Aegyptilla Iacchus takes to be one through the white of a sarda with black veins crossing it, but the common people one with a black root and a blue face. The name is from the place.
149| Of the balanitis there are two kinds, one greenish and the other like Corinthian bronze, the former coming from Coptos, the latter from the Troglodyte country, a flame-coloured vein cutting the middle. — Batrachitae too Coptos sends, one like a frog in colour, another also in its veins, a third like toads, out of black. — Baptes, though soft otherwise, excels in smell. — The eye of Belus, whitish, surrounds a black pupil gleaming from the middle with a golden colour, and on account of its appearance is dedicated to the most sacred god of the Assyrians. Another belum, however, so called, Democritus relates is born at Arbela, of the size of a walnut, of glassy appearance.
150| — Baroptenus or baripe, black with blood-red and white knots, when tied on is cast away as if portentous. — Botryitis: one kind is black, another vine-leaf coloured, like a grape just beginning. — Bostrychitis Zoroaster calls more like women's hair. — Bucardia, like an ox's heart, is born only at Babylon. — Brontea, like the head of tortoises, falls with thunder, as they think, and, they say, puts out what is struck by lightning, if we believe it. — Boloe are found on the Hiber, in the likeness of a clod.
151| Cadmitis is the same as the one called ostracitis, except that blue blisters sometimes encircle this one. — Callais imitates sappirus, is whiter and is like the sea along a shore. — Capnitis seems to some to have a kind of its own, to most to be a smoky iaspis, as we said in its place. — Cappadocia is born also in Phrygia, like ivory. — Callaica they call one out of a turbid callainus. They report that several are always found joined together.
152| — Catochitis is a stone of Corsica, larger and more wonderful than the rest, if what is handed down is true, holding a hand laid on it as if with gum. — Catoptritis comes forth in Cappadocia, throwing back an image by its whiteness. — Cepitis or cepolatitis is white, the lines of its veins meeting into one. — Ceramitis has the colour of a potsherd.
153| — Cinaediae are found in the brain of the fish of the same name, white and oblong and wonderful in the outcome, if only there is credit in their foretelling the condition of the sea, cloudy or calm. — Ceritis is like wax, circos like a hawk, corsoides like the greyness of a head, corallachates like coral, marked with golden drops, corallis with minium; it is produced in India and at Syene.
154| — Crateritis has a colour between chrysolithus and electrum, of very hard nature. — Crocallis shows wax. — Cyitis is born around Coptos, white, and seems to have within it an offspring, which is sensed even by a rattling. — Chalcophonos is black, but when struck it gives out the ringing of bronze, to be carried by tragic actors, as they urge.
155| — Chelidoniae are of two kinds, of the colour of swallows, purple on one side, in the other purple interrupted by black spots. — The chelonia is the eye of an Indian tortoise, most portentous with the lies of the Magi. For they promise that, laid on the tongue with the mouth rinsed with honey, it gives divination of future things on the 15th day of the moon and at the new moon all day, but when the moon is waning before sunrise, on other days from the first to the sixth hour. — There are also chelonitides, like the surface of other tortoises, from which they prophesy much for calming storms, but say that the one of them sprinkled with golden drops, thrown with a scarab into boiling water, stirs up storms.
156| — Chloritis is of the colour of grass; the Magi say it is found in the belly of the bird motacilla, born with it, and they order it to be enclosed in iron for certain prodigies of their custom. — Choaspitis is named from a river, golden in brilliance out of green. — Chrysolampsis is born in Ethiopia, pale at other times, but fiery by night. — Chrysopis seems to be gold. — Cetionides are born in Aeolis, at Atarneus, now a village, once a town, translucent with many colours, sometimes glassy, sometimes crystalline, sometimes like iaspis, but even the dirty ones have such a shine that they give back images like mirrors.
157| Daphnea Zoroaster points out for the falling sickness. — Diadochos is like berullus. — Diphyes is double, white and black, male and female, the genital organ of each, a line distinguishing the sex. — Dionysias, black and hard, with reddish spots mixed in, when ground in water produces the taste of wine and is thought to resist drunkenness.
158| — Draconitis or dracontias is made from the brain of dragons, but does not become a gem unless the head is cut off from the living animal, from the spite of the creature feeling that it is dying. [So they cut it off from sleeping ones.] Sotacus, who wrote that he saw this gem at the court of a king, relates that those seeking it are carried in two-horse chariots, and on seeing a dragon scatter sleep-inducing drugs, and thus cut off the head of the drugged creature. He says it is of translucent whiteness, and afterwards cannot be polished nor admits art.
159| Encardia has the surname enariste, with the likeness of a heart standing out on a black ground; another of the same name shows the appearance of a heart in green colour, a third a black heart, the rest of it white. — Enorchis is white and, when the fragments are divided, shows the likeness of testicles. — Exhebenum Zoroaster relates to be handsome and white, with which goldsmiths polish gold.
160| — Erythallis, though white, seems to turn red when tilted. — Erotylos or amphicomos or hieromnemon is praised by Democritus in the proofs of divination. — Eumeces is born in Bactria, like flint, and placed under the head gives night visions in the manner of an oracle. — Eumitres, the gem of Belus, most holy of their gods, the Assyrians revere, of the colour of a leek, pleasing for superstitions. — Eupetalos has four colours,
161| blue, fiery, that of minium, that of an apple. — Eureos is like the kernel of an olive, striped in the manner of shells, not so white. — Eurotias seems to cover blackness with mould. — Eusebes is from that stone from which a seat was made, it is handed down, in the temple of Hercules at Tyre, from which the pious easily rose. — Epimelas is made when a white gem blackens on top.
162| Galaxia some call galactites, like those just mentioned, but with blood-red or white veins running through. — Galactitis is of one colour, that of milk. The same they call leucogaea and leucographitis and synechitis, notable in rubbing for the juice and taste of milk, in nursing, productive of milk for nurses. Tied on the neck of infants, it is reported to produce saliva, but to dissolve in the mouth; the same takes away memory. The rivers Nile and Achelous send it. There are those who call a smaragdus bound round with white veins galactites.
163| — Gallaica is like argyrodamas, a little dirtier; they are found joined two and three together. — Gassinades the Medes send, of the colour of the bitter vetch, as if sprinkled with flowers; it is born also at Arbela. This gem too is said to conceive and, when shaken, to declare an offspring within itself, and to conceive in the space of three months.
164| — Glossopetra, like a human tongue, is said not to be born in the earth, but to fall from the sky when the moon is failing, necessary for divination by the moon. That we should not believe it, the vanity of the promise also makes; for they tell that winds are held in check by it. — Gorgonia is nothing other than coral. The cause of the name is that it is changed into the hardness of stone after being soft in the sea. This, they affirm, resists lightning and typhoons. — Goniaea, with the same vanity, they promise brings about the punishment of enemies.
165| Heliotropium is born in Ethiopia, Africa and Cyprus, of the colour of a leek, marked with blood-red veins. The cause of the name is that, thrown into a vessel of water, when the brilliance of the sun falls upon it, it changes the sun's colour by a blood-red reflection, especially the Ethiopian. The same, out of the water, receives the sun in the manner of a mirror and detects eclipses, showing the moon passing under. The impudence of the Magi has even a most manifest example in this stone too, since they deny that the wearer is seen if the herb heliotropium is mixed with it and certain prayers are added.
166| — Hephaestitis also has the nature of a mirror in giving back images, although ruddy. The test is, if boiling water poured on at once is cooled, or if, set in the sun, it at once kindles dry material. It is born in Corycus. — Hermu aedoeon, from the evidence of virility, is so called in a white gem or black, sometimes also pale, with a ring of golden colour about it.
167| — Hexecontalithos, many-coloured in small size [it took this name for itself], is found in the Troglodyte country. — Hieracitis alternates throughout, as if with feathers of kites and black ones. — Hammitis is like the eggs of fishes, and another as if composed of nitre, very hard otherwise. — The horn of Ammon is among the most sacred stones of Ethiopia, of golden colour, giving the likeness of a ram's horn; it is promised to show dreams of divine foresight.
168| — Hormiscion is seen among the most pleasing, radiating from a fiery colour with gold [carrying with it at the extremities a white light]. — Hyaeniae, stones from the eyes of the hyaena, [….] are said to be found and, if we believe it, put under a man's tongue to foretell the future.
169| — Haematitis in Ethiopia is indeed the chief, but it is found also in Arabia and in Africa, of blood-red colour, with promises not to be omitted for exposing the snares of the Magi. Zachalias of Babylon, in the books he wrote for King Mithridates, attributing human fates to gems, not content with having honoured this one with medicine for the eyes and liver, gave it also to those about to ask something of a king, set it between lawsuits and trials, and declared it salutary in battles even to the bloodless. There is also another of the same kind, which is called menui, by others xuthos. So the Greeks name the whitish out of tawny.
170| The Idaean dactyli in Crete, of iron colour, represent a human thumb. — Icterias is like the skin of a sallow apple and therefore thought wholesome against the royal disease. There is also another of the same name, more livid; a third like a leaf, broader than the former and almost without weight, with sallow veins; a fourth kind in the same colour, blacker, with sallow veins running through it. — Jupiter's gem is white, not heavy, tender. This they also call drosolithos. — Indian stones have the names of their peoples, of a slightly reddish colour, but in rubbing they run with a purple sweat. Another of the same name is white, of dusty appearance. — Ion among the Indians is violet; it is rare for it to shine with a deep colour.
171| Lepidotis imitates the scales of fishes in various colours, Lesbias clods, having the name of its country; it is found, however, also in India. — Leucophthalmos, ruddy at other times, contains the look of an eye, white and black. — Leucopoecilos marks its whiteness with drops of minium from gold. — Libanochrus shows the likeness of frankincense and the juice of honey.
172| — Limoniatis seems to be the same as smaragdus. — Of liparea only this is handed down, that when it is burned as incense all wild beasts are called out. Lysimachos, like Rhodian marble with gilded veins, is polished from a greater size down to narrow compass, so that the useless parts are rubbed away. — Leucochrysos is made out of chrysolithus with whitish in between.
173| What Memnonia is like is not handed down. — Media is black, found from that fabled Media; it has veins of golden colour, gives out a sweat of saffron, the taste of wine. Meconitis represents poppies. — Mithrax comes from Persia and from the mountains of the Red Sea, many-coloured and gleaming variously against the sun. — Morochthos, of leek colour, sweats milk. — Mormorion from India is translucent in a very black colour; it is called also promnion; when the colour of carbunculus is mixed in it, Alexandrion; where that of sarda, Cyprium. It is born also in Tyre and in Galatia; Xenocrates relates that it is born also under the Alps. These are the gems that are fitted for engraved impressions in relief. —
174| Myrrhitis has the colour of myrrh and the look least of a gem, the smell of ointment, and when rubbed even of nard. — Myrmecias has black projections like warts, myrsinitis a honey colour, the smell of myrtle. — Mesoleucos is made when a white border marks the middle of the gem, mesomelas when a black vein cuts through the middle, in whatever colour.
175| Nasamonitis is blood-red with black veins. — Nebritis, sacred to Father Liber, took its name from the likeness to fawn-skins; there is another, out of black, of the same kind. — Nipparene takes its name from a city and people of Persia, like the teeth of the hippopotamus.
176| Oica, of a barbarian name, is pleasing from black and tawny and green and white. — Ombria, which others call notia, as also ceraunia and brontea, is said to fall with rains and lightning and to have the same effect; further, that libations put on altars with it are not burned up. — Onocardia is like scarlet, and nothing else is handed down about it. — Oritis, of globular appearance, is called by some also sideritis, not feeling fire.
177| — Ostracias or ostracitis is testaceous, harder than ceramitis, like achates, except that that one becomes greasy with polishing. In this there is such hardness that other gems are engraved with fragments of it. — Ostritis oysters gave its name, from the likeness. — Ophicardelon the barbarians call a black colour enclosed by two white lines. — Of the obsian stone we spoke in the previous book. There are found also gems of the same name and colour not only in Ethiopia and India, but also in Samnium and, as some think, in Spain, on the shores of that ocean.
178| Panchrus is made up of almost all colours. — Pangonus, no longer than a finger, by the number of its several angles prevents it from looking like crystallus. — What Paneros is like, Metrodorus does not say, but he sets out a not inelegant poem of Queen Timaris about it, dedicated to Venus, from which it is understood that her fertility was aided by it. Some call this paneraston. — Of the Pontic there are several kinds:
179| one is starred, now with blood-red, now with gilded drops, and is counted among the sacred. Another has lines of the same colour instead of stars, another the figures of mountains and valleys. — Phloginos, which they call also chrysitis, made like Attic ochre, is found in Egypt. —
180| Phoenicitis is named from its likeness to the date, phycitis from seaweed. — Perileucos is made when white descends from the rim of the gem to the root. — Paeanitides, which some call gaeanides, are said to become pregnant and give birth, and to help women in labour. [….] in Macedonia beside the monument of Tiresias, with the appearance of frozen water.
181| The gem of the Sun is white, scattering rays in a circle to the appearance of a star shining. — Sagda the Chaldaeans call, and they find it, as they report, sticking to ships, of leek-green colour. — The island Samothrace gives one of its name, black and without weight, like wood. — Sauritis they relate is found in the belly of a green lizard when it is cut open with a reed. — Sarcitis shows ox flesh. — Selenitis is translucent out of white with a honey brilliance, containing the image of the moon, and gives back from it, day by day, the appearance of the star as it waxes and wanes, if it is true. It is thought to be born in Arabia. — Sideritis is like iron;
182| brought in by malice, someone makes discord. It is born in Ethiopia. Sideropoecilos is made from it with variegating drops. — Spongitis represents its name. — Synodontitis is from the brain of the fishes that are called synodontes. — Syrtitides are found on the shore of the Syrtes, and now of Lucania too, shining from a honey colour with saffron, but contain inside faint stars. — Syringitis, like the internode of a stalk, is hollowed with a continuous pipe.
183| Trichrus comes from Africa, black, but gives three juices: black from the root, blood-red in the middle, ochre at the top. — Thelyrrhizos, of ash colour or red, is distinguished by white roots. — Thelycardios, in colour [….] of a heart, delights greatly the Persians, among whom it is produced; they call it mucul. — Thracia is of three kinds, livid or paler, in the third with blood-red drops.
184| — Tephritis has the appearance of the new moon bent into horns, although in the colour of ash. — Tecolithos seems an olive kernel, and there is no honour in that gem, but it breaks and drives out the stones of those who lick it. Venus' hair, of a very black shine, contain in themselves the appearance of a red hair. — Veientana is an Italian gem, found at Veii, a white boundary line marking the black material.
185| Zathene Democritus relates is born in Media, of the colour of electrum, and, if one rubs it in palm wine and saffron, to grow soft like wax, with a smell of great sweetness. — Zamilampis is born in the Euphrates, like Proconnesian marble, with a grey-blue colour in the middle. — Zoraniscaeos in the river Indus is told to be a gem of the Magi, and nothing more about it.
186| There is still another distinction, which I for my part might have made with a varied exposition from time to time, since they have names from the members of the body: hepatitis from the liver, steatitis from fat, of many kinds from the fat of different animals; Adadu nephros or kidneys, the eye of the same, the finger; he too is a god worshipped by the Syrians. Triophthalmos is born in onyx, showing three eyes of a man at once.
187| They are named from animals: carcinias, of the colour of the sea crab; echitis, of the viper; scorpitis, of the scorpion, either by colour or by likeness; scaritis, of the fish scarus; triglitis, of the mullet; aegophthalmos, with the eye of a goat, likewise another with a pig's; and from the neck of the crane, geranitis; hieracitis from the hawk; aetitis from the colour of an eagle, with a whitish tail. Myrmecitis has the innate likeness of a creeping ant; of scarabs, cantharias. Lycophthalmos is of four colours, ruddy, blood-red; in the middle it surrounds black with white, like the eyes of wolves. Taos is like a peacock, and likewise one like the asp, which I find is called timictonia.
188| There is a likeness to things in ammochrysos, as if gold mixed with sand; in cenchrites, scattered grains of millet; in dryites, the trunks of trees; this burns also like wood. Cissitis is translucent in white with ivy leaves, which hold the whole narcissitis, marked in veins also in the rest. Cyamias is black, but when broken produces from itself the likeness of a bean. Pyren is named from the olive kernel; in this the spines of fishes sometimes seem to be inside; phoenicitis is like a date.
189| — Chalazias has both the whiteness and the shape of hail, of adamantine hardness, so that they tell that even when put into fires it keeps its own cold. Pyritis is black, but burns the fingers by rubbing. Polyzonos [in black] shows white with many lines marking it, astrapaea [in white or cyan] with rays of lightning running across the middle. In phlogitis a flame seems to burn inside which does not go out, in anthracitis sparks run about.
190| — Enhygros is always of perfect roundness in a gentle whiteness; at movement liquid moves about inside it, as in eggs. — Polythrix shows in green a head of hair, but is said to cause the falling out of hair. There are also ones named from the lion's skin and from the panther's.
191| Colour has named: drosolithus, herb-green; melichrus, honey-coloured, of which there are several kinds; melichlorus, double, partly yellow, partly honey-coloured; crocias, of saffron; polias, scattering out of black a certain likeness of greyness; spartopolias, rarer. Rhoditis is of rose, melitis of the colour of an apple, chalcitis of bronze, sycitis of fig, bostrychitis in black branching with white or blood-red leaves, chernitis as if in a rock, with white hands clasped together.
192| — With anancitis, they say, the images of the gods are called up in hydromancy; with synochitis the shades of the dead, once called up, are held fast; and with white dendritis, buried under a tree that is to be felled, the edge of the axes is not blunted. — There are many more, and still more monstrous, to which they have given outlandish names, admitting that they are stones, not gems. For us it will be enough, in these cases, to have exposed the abominable lies of the Magi.
193| Gems also come into being suddenly, new and without names. For instance, Theophrastus records that one was once found in the gold mines of Lampsacus, and that because of its beauty it was sent to King Alexander.
194| The cochlides, which are now very common, are made rather than born. Huge lumps are found in Arabia which, it is said, are boiled in honey for seven days and seven nights without a break; when in this way everything earthy and faulty has been shaken off, the cleansed and pure lump is marked out in various ways by the craftsmen's ingenuity with veins and streaks of spots, laid out on the most saleable plan; and they were once made of such a size that they served the kings of the East as frontlets for their horses and as pendants in place of phalerae.
195| Besides, all gems take on a sheen when boiled in honey, especially Corsican honey, which for every other use is shunned for its sharpness. Those that are variegated, when the cunning of craftsmen contrives to cut them down to a single colour, and when for that reason they have no regular name, they call physis, as though they were selling in them the wonder of nature herself. Since there is no end to the names — which I for my part have no intention of pursuing, numberless as they are and the fruit of Greek vanity — now that the famous gems have been set out, and indeed the common ones too, it will be enough to have distinguished the kinds of the rarer ones that are worth mentioning. One thing only it will be well to remember: as spots and warts grow in various ways, and lines run across them in manifold course and colour, the names are often changed, though the material is for the most part the same.
196| Now, following the opinions of the authors, we shall speak of what concerns the examination of all gems in common. Gems that are concave or bulging are thought less valuable than those with an even surface. An oblong shape is the most approved; next, the one called lenticula; after that, the epipedos and the round; angular gems have the least favour.
197| To tell true gems from false is a matter of great difficulty, since a way has been found of turning genuine stones of one kind into false ones of another. Sardonyxes, for example, are glued together out of three gems in such a way that the craft cannot be detected: black taken from one, white from another, minium from another, each of them the most highly approved of its kind. What is more, there even exist treatises by authors — whom I for my part shall not point out — on the ways of dyeing smaragdus out of crystallus, and other translucent gems too, sardonyx out of sarda, and the rest likewise out of others; nor is there any fraud in life more profitable.
198| We, on the other hand, shall set out the method of detecting false gems, since it is right that even luxury should be armed against fraud. So, apart from what we have said specifically under the chief stone of each kind, they hold that translucent gems should be tested in the morning, or, if it must be, up to the fourth hour; after that they advise against it.
199| The tests are of several kinds: first by weight, for true gems are heavier; next by coolness, for they also feel colder in the mouth; after that by their substance. In counterfeits a bubble shows in the depths, there is roughness on the surface and there are hairlines, the brilliance is unsteady, and the lustre fails before it reaches the eyes.
200| The most effective test, a chip struck off and burnt on an iron plate, the gem dealers understandably refuse, and the test of the file likewise. Fragments of obsiana do not scratch true gems, while on counterfeits every scratch shows white. There is, moreover, so great a difference between them that some cannot be engraved with iron, others only with blunted iron, but all can be with adamas. Most effective of all in working them, however, is the heat of the drill. The gem-bearing rivers are the Acesinus and the Ganges; but of all lands, India bears them most.
201| And now that all the works of nature have been covered, it will be fitting to draw some comparison between the things themselves and between lands. In the whole world, then, wherever the vault of heaven bends, the most beautiful of all lands, in all the things that rightly hold the first rank in nature, is Italy, ruler and second mother of the world: in her men and women, her generals and soldiers, her slaves, her pre-eminence in the arts and the brilliance of her talents; and also in her situation, the healthiness and mildness of her climate, her easy access for all nations, her coasts rich in harbours, and the kindly breath of her winds. This comes from her position, jutting out in the most advantageous direction and midway between the risings and the settings of the sun; and from her plenty of water, her wholesome woods, the jointed ranges of her mountains, the harmlessness of her wild beasts, the fertility of her soil and the richness of her pastures.
202| Whatever there is that life ought not to lack is nowhere more excellent: grain, wine, oil, wool, flax, cloth, bullocks. Not even in the three-horse chariot races do they prefer any horses to native ones. In mines of gold, silver, copper and iron she yielded to no land, as long as working them was lawful; and now, pregnant within herself, in place of every dowry she pours out varied juices and the flavours of grain and fruit.
203| After her — leaving aside the fabulous tales of India — I for my part would rank Spain next, at least wherever it is bordered by the sea. Though parched in part, yet where it does bear, it is fertile in grain, oil, wine, horses and metals of all kinds; in these Gaul is its equal. But Spain wins with the spartum of its deserts and with lapis specularis, with its luxuries in pigments too, with the energy of its labour, the training of its slaves, the hardiness of its people's bodies and the vehemence of their hearts.
204| As for the things themselves, the highest price among those born in the sea belongs to pearls; among those on the surface of the earth, to crystalli; among those within it, to adamas, smaragdi, gems and murrina; among those that grow out of the earth, to coccum and laser; among foliage, to nard and Seric fabrics; among trees, to citrus; among shrubs, to cinnamon, casia and amomum; among the saps of tree or shrub, to amber, opobalsamum, myrrh and frankincense; among roots, to costus. Of creatures that breathe, on land the highest price is for elephants' tusks, in the sea for the shell of turtles; among hides, for the pelts that the Seres dye, and for the hair of the goats of Arabia, which we have called ladanum; among things that belong to both land and sea, for shellfish and purpura. In the nature of birds nothing remarkable is recorded, apart from plumes for war-helmets and the fat of Commagenian geese. We must not pass over the fact that gold, about which all mortals go mad, scarcely holds the tenth place in value, and silver, with which gold is bought, almost the twentieth.
205| Hail, Nature, mother of all things, and look with favour on me, who alone of the citizens of Rome have celebrated you in every part of your being.