Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
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.
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