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