Natural History — Book XIX

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

1| The theory of the stars and of the weather has now also been set out, in a way that is easy and beyond doubt even for the unskilled; and for those who really understand, the countryside contributes no less to grasping the sky than the science of the stars does to tilling the field. Many writers have made the care of gardens their next subject;

2| but to us it does not seem the right moment to pass straight on to that, and we are surprised that some who sought from these subjects the credit of science or the glory of learning should have passed over so much, making no mention of so many things that come up of their own accord or by cultivation, especially since for most of them a greater importance, in value and in usefulness to life, is claimed than even for the field crops. And, to begin with a usefulness that everyone admits, and with things that have filled not only all lands but the seas as well: flax is sown, and yet it cannot be called either a field crop or a garden plant,

3| but in what part of life do we not meet it? Or what greater marvel is there than that a plant should exist which brings Egypt so close to Italy that Galerius reached Alexandria from the Strait of Sicily on the seventh day, and Balbillus on the sixth, both of them prefects; and that 15 years later, in summer, Valerius Marianus, a senator of praetorian rank, reached it from Puteoli on the ninth day with a very gentle breeze?

4| That a plant should exist which brings Gades, at the Pillars of Hercules, to Ostia on the seventh day, Nearer Spain on the fourth, the province of Narbonensis on the third, and Africa on the second, as happened, with a very light breeze at that, to Gaius Flavius, legate of the proconsul Vibius Crispus? Reckless life, full of crimes! That something should be sown to catch the winds and the storms,

5| and that it is too little to be carried by the waves alone; that now even sails larger than the ships are not enough, but although single trees are barely sufficient for the size of the yards, yet still more sails are added above the sails, and others are spread at the bows and others at the sterns, and death is challenged in so many ways; in short, that from so small a seed should spring the thing that carries the world to and fro, from so slender a stalk, rising so little above the ground; and that it is not woven with its own strength, but broken and pounded and forced by ill-treatment into the softness of wool, and then with the utmost daring carried across the sea!

6| No curse is enough against its inventor (we have spoken of him in his place), for whom it was not enough that man should die on land unless he also perished unburied. In the previous book we were giving warning of rains and winds to be guarded against for the sake of the crops and our food: and here is a thing sown by man's hand and harvested by the same man's wits that would have winds at sea! Moreover, so that we may know the Powers of Vengeance have favoured it, nothing grows more easily; and so that we may feel that nature is unwilling for it to be sown, it scorches the field and makes even the soil poorer.

7| It is sown chiefly in sandy ground, with a single ploughing, and nothing grows faster. What is sown in the spring is torn up in summer, and this too is an injury it does to the land. Still, one might forgive Egypt for sowing it, so as to import the wares of Arabia and India. But are the Gallic provinces too to be rated by this source of income? Is it not enough that mountains have been set against the sea, and that on the side of the Ocean the very thing they call the void stands in the way?

8| The Cadurci, Caleti, Ruteni, Bituriges, and the Morini, who are thought the remotest of men, and indeed the whole of Gaul, weave sailcloth; and now even our enemies across the Rhine do so, and their women know no lovelier dress. This reminds me of what Marcus Varro records: that in the family of the Serrani it is a family tradition for the women not to wear linen clothing.

9| In Germany, moreover, the women do this work dug in underground. It is done in the same way in the region of Italy called Aliana, between the rivers Po and Ticinus, where flax takes third prize in Europe after that of Saetabis; for second place is taken by the Retovine flax, in the neighbourhood of the Aliana, and by the Faventine on the Aemilian Way. For whiteness the Faventine is preferred to the Aliana, which is always unbleached; the Retovine has the greatest fineness and closeness, and the whiteness of the Faventine, but no nap, which some find a charm and others a fault. Its thread is strong and almost more even than a spider's, and it rings when you choose to test it with your teeth. That is why it fetches twice the price of the others.

10| After these, Nearer Spain has a flax of outstanding brilliance, owing to the nature of the torrent in which it is polished, the one that washes Tarraco; and its fineness is wonderful, and it was there that carbasus was first discovered. Not long ago the Zoelican flax came into Italy from the same Spain, most useful for hunting nets; that community belongs to Gallaecia and lies near the Ocean. The Cumaean flax in Campania also has a glory of its own, for nets to catch fish and birds.

11| It is also the material for hunting nets (for with flax we lay snares for all the animals no smaller than those we lay for ourselves); but Cumaean nets cut through a boar's bristles and get the better even of the edge of iron. We have seen nets of such fineness that they would pass, ropes and all, through a man's ring, a single man carrying a mass of netting with which whole forest glades could be encircled. Nor is it the greatest wonder that each of their strands consists of a hundred and fifty threads, as in the nets belonging lately to Julius Lupus, who died in office as prefect of Egypt.

12| Those who do not know of it may well marvel that in the corselet of a former king of Egypt, whom they call Amasis, in the temple of Minerva at Lindus on the island of Rhodes, each thread consists of 365 threads; Mucianus, three times consul, recently stated that he had tested this himself, and that only small remnants of it now survive because of the damage done by people testing it.

13| Italy too still holds the flax of the Paeligni in honour, but only for the use of fullers. None is whiter or more like wool, just as the Cadurci hold the chief glory for mattresses. Mattresses, and stuffing as well, are an invention of the Gallic provinces. In Italy, at any rate, the old custom survives even now in the word for bedding, stramentum, 'straw'.

14| 3 Egyptian flax has the least strength, the most profit. There are four kinds there: the Tanitic, the Pelusiac, the Butic, the Tentyritic, named for the regions in which they grow. The upper part of Egypt, inclining toward Arabia, produces a shrub which some call gossypion, more call xylon, and therefore the linens made from it are called xylina. It is small and bears a fruit like a bearded nut, from whose inner bombyx the down is spun. No fabrics are softer or more downy, and none so white. Garments of it are most welcome to the priests of Egypt.

15| A fourth kind they also call othoninum. It is made from a reed-like marsh plant, but only from its panicle. Asia makes from broom linen for nets which are particularly durable in fishing, the shrub being steeped for 10 days; the Ethiopians and Indians make it from apples, the Arabs from gourds growing on trees, as we have said.

16| Among us its ripeness is recognized by two proofs: by the swelling of the seed, or by yellowing in color. Then, pulled up and tied in handfuls in bundles, it is dried in the sun, hanging with the roots turned uppermost for one day, then for 5 other days with the tops of the bundles turned toward one another, so that the seed falls into the middle. The seed has medicinal power, and was also used in a certain rustic and very sweet food of Italy north of the Po, but now for a long time only for the sake of sacred rites.

17| Then, after the wheat harvest, the stalks themselves are sunk in water warmed by the sun, pressed down by some weight; for nothing has greater lightness. That they are macerated is shown when the skin comes looser, and again turned over, as before, they are dried in the sun, and when dried they are pounded on a stone with a tow-mallet. What was nearest the bark is called tow, of inferior flax, more suited generally to the wicks of lamps; yet even this is combed with iron teeth until all the skin is stripped off,

18| and the husks shaken off serve for ovens and furnaces. The pith has more numerous distinctions in whiteness and softness. Spinning flax is becoming even for men. There is an art of combing and arranging: the proper yield is that fifteen pounds be carded from every fifty pounds of bundles. Then again on the thread it is polished, beaten frequently against a flint out of water, and the cloth woven is again pounded with clubs, always the better for ill-treatment.

19| There has been found by now even a kind that is not consumed by fire. They call it living flax, and we have seen napkins of it blazing on the hearths at banquets, their stains burned away, shining more from fire than they could from water. From it the funeral tunics of kings keep the ashes of the body apart from the rest of the ash. It is found in the deserts of India, burnt by the sun's heat, where no rains fall, among dreadful serpents, and it becomes accustomed to living by burning, rare to find, difficult to weave because of its shortness. For the rest, its red color gleams in the fire.

20| When it is found, it equals the price of the finest pearls. It is called by the Greeks asbestinon from the evidence of its nature. Anaxilaus is the authority that a tree wrapped around with this linen can be cut down with muffled blows that cannot be heard. Therefore to this flax belongs the first place in the whole world. Next comes byssus, chiefly for the luxury of women, produced around Elis in Achaea; scruples of it were once exchanged at 4 denarii each, as I find, like gold.

21| The lint of linen cloths, especially from the sails of seagoing ships, is of great use in medicine, and its ash has the power of spodium. There is also among the poppies a certain kind from which linens draw a special whiteness.

22| Flax was also tried with dyes, so as to take on the madness of clothing, first in the fleets of Alexander the Great, sailing on the river Indus, when his commanders and prefects had varied the insignia of the ships in a kind of contest, and the shores were amazed at the many-colored sails driven by the wind. At Actium Cleopatra came with Mark Antony in a purple one, and in the same she fled. This was the mark of the commander's ship.

23| Afterward they made it into shade in theaters only, which Quintus Catulus was the first of all to devise, when he dedicated the Capitol. Then Lentulus Spinther is reported to have been the first to draw linen awnings in the theater, at the Apolline games. Soon Caesar the dictator covered the whole Roman Forum, and the Sacred Way from his house and the slope up to the Capitol, which they report was seen as more marvelous than the gladiatorial show itself.

24| Then, even without games, Marcellus, born of Octavia, the sister of Augustus, in his aedileship, in the 11th consulship of his uncle, from the Kalends of August shaded the Forum with sails, so that litigants might stand in greater comfort. How much changed from the ways of Cato the censor, who had decreed that the Forum should even be strewn with murices! Sails recently, colored like the sky and studded with stars, have been drawn on ropes even in the amphitheaters of the emperor Nero. They are reddened in the open courts of houses and shield the moss from the sun. For the rest, a persistent favor has remained for the white.

25| There was honor for it already in the Trojan war too. For why should it not take part in battles as in shipwrecks? That a few nevertheless fought in linen breastplates Homer is witness. From this, the more learned interpret, even the ship's tackle in him was of it, since when he said sparta he signified sown things.

26| The use of spartum, indeed, began many centuries later, and not before the Punic arms, which first carried it into Spain. It too is a plant, growing of its own accord and one that cannot be sown, and a rush belonging properly to dry ground, given to one land by a defect. For this is an evil of the land, and nothing else can be sown or grow there. In Africa a small and useless amount is produced. The Carthaginian portion of Nearer Spain, and not all of that, but as far as it bears, covers even the mountains with spartum.

27| From it country people make their bedding, from it their fires and torches, their shoes and the clothing of shepherds. It is harmful to animals except in the tenderness of its tips. For other uses it is pulled up laboriously, with the legs in greaves and the hand in woven sleeves, wrapped up, with bone or holm-oak instruments for the effort, now even close to winter, but most easily from the Ides of May into June. This is the time of ripeness.

28| Pulled up, it is bound in bundles in a heap for two days; on the third it is untied, spread in the sun and dried, and again goes back in bundles under cover. Afterward it is steeped, best in sea water, but also in fresh, if sea water is lacking, and dried in the sun it is wetted again. If need suddenly presses, soaked in hot water in a tub and dried standing, it shows a saving of labor.

29| It is then beaten in order to become useful, especially unconquered in waters and at sea. On dry land they prefer ropes of hemp, but spartum is nourished even when sunk under water, as if making up for the thirst of its birth. Its nature is indeed one that can be patched, and the old is mixed with the new as one likes.

30| Yet let him who wishes to appraise the marvel take in with his mind how great is its use in all lands, in the rigging of ships, in machines for building, and in other needs of life. What suffices for all these uses will be found to extend less than 30,000 paces in breadth from the shore of New Carthage and less than 100 in length. Costs prevent its being carried farther.

31| We may believe from the name by which they call that plant that the Greeks used rush for ropes, afterward the leaves of palms and philyra. It is very probable that the use of spartum was carried over from this by the Carthaginians.

32| Theophrastus is the authority that there is a kind of bulb growing about the banks of rivers, in which between the outermost rind and the part that is eaten there is a woolly substance, from which felt slippers and certain garments are made. But he gives neither the region in which this is done, nor anything more carefully than that in the copies which I for my part have found it is called eriophoron, and he makes no mention at all of spartum, though he investigated everything with great care 390 years before us, as we have already said in another place, from which it appears that spartum came into use after that lapse of time.

33| And since we have begun from the marvels of things, we shall follow their order, among which the very greatest is that something is born and lives without any root. These are called tubers, surrounded on all sides by earth and supported by no fibers or even by hair-roots, nor indeed does the place in which they grow bulge out or show cracks. They do not themselves cohere with the earth, but are even enclosed in a rind, so that we can say plainly that they are neither earth nor anything other than a callus of the earth.

34| These generally grow in dry and sandy and shrubby places. They often exceed the size of a quince, even to the weight of a pound. Of these there are two kinds: the sandy kind, hostile to the teeth, and in the other kind clean. They are distinguished also by color, red and black and white within, the most praised being those of Africa. Whether they grow, or whether this is a defect of the earth (for nothing else can be understood), whether it is at once rounded off at the size at which it will be, and whether it lives or not, I do not think can easily be understood. For the process of rotting is common to it with wood.

35| We know that it happened a few years ago to Lartius Licinius, a man of praetorian rank, administering justice in Spain at Carthage, when biting into a tuber, that a denarius found inside bent his front teeth, whereby it will be evident that the nature of the earth is rounded into itself. What is certain is that they will be among the things which are born and cannot be sown.

36| Similar is what they call misy in the province of Cyrenaica, outstanding for sweetness of smell and taste, but fleshier, and what in Thrace they call iton, and what in Greece geranion.

37| About tubers these things are handed down in particular: that when there have been autumn rains and frequent thunder, then they are born, and most of all with thunder, and do not last beyond a year, and are most tender in spring. In some places they are brought forth only when irrigation has been received; so at Mytilene they say they are not born unless the seed is brought by the overflowing of the rivers from the Tiaris. That is the place in which the most are born. In Asia the most famous are around Lampsacus and Alopeconnesus, in Greece around Elis.

38| There are also in the family of the fungi those called by the Greeks pezicae, which are born without root or stalk. Next after these will be mentioned laserpicium, most famous in repute, which the Greeks call silphion, found in the province of Cyrenaica, whose juice is called laser, splendid in use and in medicines and repaid by weight in silver denarii.

39| For many years now it has not been found in that land, since the tax-farmers who rent the pastures, perceiving greater profit in this way, lay it waste with the grazing of flocks. Only one stalk in our memory has been found and was sent to the emperor Nero. If at any time a beast comes upon the hope of it growing, this is detected by this sign: the sheep, when it has eaten, at once falls asleep, the goat sneezes repeatedly.

40| And for a long time now no other laser is imported to us than what grows plentifully in Persis or Media and Armenia, but far inferior to the Cyrenaic, and that too adulterated with gum or sacopenium or crushed bean; so much the less should it be omitted that in the consulship of Gaius Valerius and Marcus Herennius 30 pounds of laserpicium was brought from Cyrene to Rome at public expense, and that Caesar the dictator, at the beginning of the civil war, brought out of the treasury, among the gold and silver, 1,500 pounds of laserpicium.

41| We find among the most trustworthy authorities of Greece that it was born by a rain of pitch, the ground suddenly drenched about the Hesperides' gardens and the Greater Syrtis, seven years before the town of Cyrene, which was founded in the 143rd year of our city, and that that force prevailed over 4,000 stadia of Africa.

42| In that region laserpicium used to grow, a wild and stubborn thing which, if cultivated, fled into the wilderness, with a root abundant and thick, and a stalk like that of a ferula and of similar thickness. Its leaves they called maspetum, most like celery. The seed was leaf-like, and the leaf itself fell in spring.

43| Flocks were accustomed to feed on it and were first purged, then grew fat, the flesh wonderfully pleasant. After the leaves were lost, people also fed on the stalk itself in every way, boiled, stewed and roasted, and by it their bodies too were purged during the first 40 days. The juice was taken in two ways, from the root and from the stalk, and these were two names, rhizias and caulias, the latter cheaper and apt to rot.

44| The root has a black bark. For adulteration of the merchandise they brought the juice itself to ripeness by throwing it into vessels with bran mixed in and shaking it from time to time; if they had not done so, it would rot. The sign of ripeness was the color and dryness once the sweating had ended.

45| Others report that the root of laserpicium was larger than a cubit, and that a tuber stood on it above ground. When this was cut, a juice used to flow as of milk, the stalk growing above, which they called magydaris. Leaves of golden color served in place of seed, falling after the rising of the Dog when the south wind blows. From these laserpicium used to be born, the root and stalk completing themselves in the space of a year. These authors also related that it was dug around, and that the flocks were not purged, but the sick were healed or died at once, which happened in few. The earlier opinion agrees with Persian silphium.

46| A second kind of it is what is called magydaris, more tender and less vehement, without juice, which grows around Syria and does not come up in the region of Cyrenaica. It grows copiously also on Mount Parnassus, and some call it laserpicium, by all of which the authority of a most health-giving and useful thing is adulterated. The first test of the genuine is in a color moderately red, and white inside when it is broken, then a shining drop, and that which dissolves most quickly in saliva. Its use is in many medicines.

47| There are still two kinds known only to the common sort of the lowly, though they are strong in profit, first of all rubia, necessary for dyeing wool and hides. The Italian is most praised and especially that near the city, and almost all the provinces abound in it. It comes up of its own accord and is sown, like ervilia, but with thorny leaves and stalk. It is jointed, with five leaves around the joints in a circle. Its seed is red, finally black, the root is red. What uses it has in medicine we shall say in its place.

48| But what is called radicula has a juice only for washing wools, wonderful in how much it contributes to whiteness and softness. It is grown from seed everywhere, but wild it is best in Asia and Syria, in stony and rough places, though the most praised is beyond the Euphrates, with a stalk like a ferula, itself thin, sought after in the foods of the natives and in ointments, whatever it is boiled down with; its leaf is that of the olive. The Greeks call it struthion. It flowers in summer, pleasing to look at but without scent, with a stalk of thorny down. It has no seed, the root is large, which is cut up for the use already mentioned.

49| 1 After these it remains to turn back to the care of gardens, memorable by its own nature, and because antiquity admired nothing before the gardens of the Hesperides and the kings Adonis and Alcinous, and likewise the hanging ones, whether Semiramis made them or the Syrian king of Assyria, of whose construction we shall speak in another volume.

50| The Roman kings indeed cultivated them themselves; for even the Proud sent back that savage and bloodthirsty messenger to his son out of a garden. In the Twelve Tables of our laws a farmhouse is nowhere named, always in that meaning a garden, and for a garden the word heredium; for which reason a certain religious awe has attended it, and we see that only to the garden and the forum are satyric figures dedicated as a remedy against the bewitchments of the envious, although Plautus assigns gardens to the protection of Venus. Now indeed, under the name of gardens, they possess within the city itself pleasure grounds, fields and country houses.

51| The first to institute this at Athens was Epicurus, master of leisure; until him it was not the custom to live in the fields while in the towns. At Rome, indeed, a garden was by itself the field of a poor man.

52| 2 From the garden of the common people came the market, with how much more innocent a diet! For it is better, I suppose, to plunge into the depths and seek kinds of oysters at the risk of shipwreck, to hunt birds beyond the river Phasis, not safe even for the terror of fable, indeed all the more precious for it, others in Numidia and the tombs of Ethiopia, or to fight with wild beasts and to be eaten oneself while capturing what another will eat. But by Hercules, how cheap are these things, how ready for pleasure and satiety, were not the same indignation that meets us everywhere to confront them!

53| It would doubtless be bearable that choice fruits are born, some for flavor, some for size, some forbidden to the poor by their monstrousness; that wines are aged and have their strength removed with sacks; that to no one is life so long that he does not drink what was made before him; that from grain also luxury has long ago devised for itself alica, and lives on only their marrow and on the labors of bakeries and the carvings of chasers, with one bread for the nobles, another for the crowd, the food supply descending in so many kinds down to the lowest plebeian.

54| Has a distinction been found even among herbs, and does wealth make a difference even in a food sold for a single as? In these too they deny that some grow for the many, the stalk fattened to such a degree that a poor man's table cannot hold it. Nature had made wild asparagus so that anyone might cut it everywhere. Behold, fattened asparagus is on show, and Ravenna sells them at three to the pound. Alas, the prodigies of the belly! It would be a marvel if cattle were not allowed to eat thistles: the commons are not allowed!

55| Waters too are separated, and the very elements of nature are sorted by the power of money. Some drink snow, others ice, and turn the penalties of the mountains into the pleasure of the gullet. Cold is stored against the heats, and means are devised so that snow may freeze in months not its own. Others boil down waters, and soon make them winter as well. Nothing at all pleases man as it pleases the nature of things.

56| Is some herb pastured even for the rich alone? Will no one look around at the Sacred Mount and the Aventine, and the secessions of the angry commons? Surely the market will equalize those whom money has separated. And so, by Hercules, no tax at Rome was greater than that of the market, amid the clamor of the commons complaining before all the emperors, until the duty on this merchandise was remitted, and it was discovered that no other source of income is held more profitable or safer, or with less hazard to one's fortune: although this rent is entrusted to the very poorest, the guarantor is in the soil itself, the return falls on a fixed day, and the surface rejoices under any sky.

57| 3 Of garden crops Cato praises cabbages. From these, first, the farmers of old judged, and so they made their verdict at once, that the mistress of the household was worthless where the garden was neglected, since the household must then live from the meat-safe or the market (for this was called the woman's care). Nor did they approve cabbages, as is now most the case, condemning relishes that needed another relish: this was to spare oil, for the desire for garum was even a reproach.

58| Garden crops pleased most which needed no fire and spared wood, a ready thing, always prepared, whence they are also called acetaria, easy to digest and not burdening the senses with food and least likely to kindle a desire for bread. The part of them that belongs to seasonings confesses that borrowing at home used to be the custom, and that no Indian pepper was sought, nor what we seek across the seas.

59| The city commons even used to present the countryside daily to the eyes in their windows through the image of gardens, before the savage banditry of an innumerable multitude forced all views to be shut off. Wherefore let some honor be given to these also, and let lowness not take authority from things, especially since we see even the surnames of the nobles born from them, and the Valerian family was not ashamed to be called Lactucini, and let some thanks fall to our work and care, Virgil too having confessed how hard it is to give honor in words to things so small.

60| There is no doubt that gardens should be joined to the farmhouse and, if possible, kept chiefly irrigated, by a flowing river; if not, from a well, watered by a wheel or pneumatic engines or by the drawing of swing-beams. The ground is to be broken up from the time of the west wind by those preparing for autumn, and gone over again after 14 days and before midwinter. It is proper to spade it at 8 days' work to the iugerum, to mix dung 3 feet deep with the earth, to divide it into plots, and to surround each with channels of paths, with the cushion beds laid back, where access can be given to a man and runoff for the overflowing waters. Of the things that grow in gardens, some are commended by the bulb, some by the head, some by the stalk, some by the leaf, some by both, some by the seed, some by the cartilage, some by the flesh or both, some by the rind or skin and cartilage, some by fleshy coats.

61| The fruit of some is in the earth, of others both in it and outside, of others only outside. Some lie and grow along the ground, as gourds and the cucumber; the same hang, although they are much heavier even than those which grow on trees. But the cucumber consists of cartilage and flesh, the gourd of rind and cartilage; the rind of this one alone passes with ripeness into wood.

62| Radishes and navews and turnips are stored in the earth, and in another way inula, siser and parsnips. Some we shall call ferulaceous, as dill and mallows. For the authorities report [in Arabia] that mallows in the seventh month grow into trees and provide the use of staves.

63| An example is the mallow tree in Mauretania at the estuary of the town of Lixus, where the Hesperides' gardens are said to have been, 200 paces from the ocean, near a shrine of Hercules older, they say, than that at Gades. The tree itself is 20 feet in height, of a thickness that no one could embrace. In a similar class will be reckoned hemp also. Nor shall we fail to name some fleshy kinds, as sponges born in the moisture of meadows. For the callus of fungi we spoke of in the nature of wood and trees, and in another class of tubers a little before.

64| Of the cartilage class, and outside the earth, is the cucumber, sought by the emperor Tiberius with wonderful pleasure. For there was no day on which he lacked them, the gardeners moving their hanging gardens into the sun on wheels and in winter days calling them back again within the protection of specularia. Indeed it is written by the ancient authorities of Greece that they should be sown with the seed soaked two days in honeyed milk, so that they become sweeter.

65| They grow in the shape to which they are forced. In Italy the green and the very smallest please, in the provinces the very largest and waxen-colored or black. The most abundant are those of Africa, the largest those of Moesia. When they have exceeded in size they are called pepones. Swallowed, they remain in the stomach until the next day and cannot be digested in meals, yet are not very unhealthy. By nature they wonderfully hate oil and no less love water, even when cut.

66| If water is placed a little distance from them, they creep toward it; from oil they shrink back, or, if something stands in the way, or if they are hanging, they are curved and twisted. This is detected in a single night, if a vessel with water is set beneath them at an interval of four fingers, for they descend before the next day, whereas if oil is placed the same way, they are bent into hooks. The same, when the flower has dropped, grow into a tube of wonderful length.

67| See, just now a new form of them has come up in Campania in the likeness of a quince. By chance, I hear, one was first born so, and soon from its seed a kind was made, which they call melopeponas. These do not hang, but are rounded on the ground, of golden color. What is wonderful in them, besides shape, color and scent, is that, having attained ripeness, although not hanging, they at once part from the stalk.

68| Columella hands down his own device, so that they may be had all year: to transfer a very large bramble shrub to a sunny place and cut it back, leaving a stump of two fingers, about the spring equinox. Then, the seed of the cucumber being inserted in the pith of the bramble, with fine earth and dung heaped around, the roots withstand the cold. Of cucumbers the Greeks made three kinds, the Laconian, the Scytalic, the Boeotian; of these only the Laconian delights in water. There are those who order that their seed, steeped in a pounded herb whose name is culix, be sown, so that they come up without seed.

69| Gourds have a similar nature, at least in coming up. They equally hate winter, love irrigated ground and dung. Both are sown from seed, in ground dug to a depth of a foot and a half, between the spring equinox and the solstice, most suitably at the Parilia; some prefer to sow gourds from the Kalends of March, and on the Nones, and the cucumber through the Quinquatrus. In a similar way, with creeping tendrils, climbing the rough walls up to the roof, it is by nature greedy for height. Its strength is not enough to stand without support, but its speed is brisk, covering vaults and arbors with a light shade.

70| Hence these first two kinds, the vaulted and the common, which grows on the ground; in the former the weight is wonderfully balanced, motionless, on a thin stalk in the breeze. The gourd too is raised to a peak in every way, chiefly in wicker sheaths, being put into them after it has flowered, and it grows in the form to which it is forced, often [and] in the shape of a coiled serpent. When freedom is granted to hang, it has been seen at 9 feet in length. The cucumber flowers in parts, flowering over itself, and endures drier places, covered with a white down, and more so while it grows.

71| The uses of gourds are more numerous. And first the stalk is used in food, and from it the nature is wholly different. Lately they have come into use in baths in place of jugs, and for a long time even of casks for storing wines. When green the rind is tender, yet it is scraped away in food. The food is wholesome and mild in several ways, yet among those that cannot be digested by the human belly, though they do not swell.

72| The seeds that were nearest the neck produce long ones, likewise from the bottom, but not to be compared with those above mentioned; those in the middle produce round ones; those in the sides, thick and shorter ones. They are dried in the shade and, when you wish to sow, soaked in water.

73| For food, the longer and thinner they are, the more agreeable, and for that reason those that have grown hanging are more wholesome, and such have the least seed, the hardness of this ending their agreeableness in food. Those that are kept for seed are not customarily cut before winter; afterward they are dried in smoke, for storing the seeds of garden plants,

74| as rustic utensils. A method has been found by which they are kept also for food (and the cucumber in the same way) nearly to other crops; and that is done with brine. But they also report that they are kept green in a pit in a shady place, with sand spread beneath and dry hay laid over and then earth. There are wild ones too in both kinds and in almost all garden plants. But these have only a medical nature, for which reason they will be deferred to their own volumes.

75| All the rest of the cartilaginous nature is hidden in the earth. Among these we could seem to have spoken enough about turnips, were it not that physicians make the round ones of the male sex, and the broader and hollow ones of the female, superior in sweetness and easier to pickle; sown more often, they pass into the male. The same authors made five kinds of navews: the Corinthian and the Cleonaean, then the Liothasian and the Boeotian, and one they called green of itself.

76| Of these the Corinthian grows up to a great size, with a nearly bare root. For this kind alone extends upward and not, like the rest, into the earth. The Liothasian some call Thracian, very patient of cold. After it the Boeotian is sweet, remarkable even for its short roundness, and not, like the Cleonaean, very long. In general, those whose leaves are smooth are themselves sweeter; those whose leaves are rough and angular and bristly, more bitter.

77| There is besides a wild kind, whose leaves are like those of rocket. The palm at Rome is given to those of Amiternum, then to those of Nursia, third to our own. The rest about their sowing has been said in the case of turnips.

78| 1 Radishes consist of rind and cartilage, and in many of them the rind is thicker even than in some trees. They have the greatest bitterness relative to the rind's thickness (the rest also sometimes woody) and a wonderful power of drawing in breath and of loosening belching.

79| For this reason it is an ungenteel food, at least if a vegetable is eaten right after it; but if eaten by itself with ripe olives, belching is rarer and less foul. In Egypt it is wonderfully celebrated because of the fertility of the oil which they make from its seed. This they are most eager to sow, if permitted, since the profit is more than from grain and there is less tribute, and no oil is more plentiful there.

80| 2 The Greeks made three kinds of radish by the difference of the leaves: the crinkled, the smooth, and a third, wild. This last has leaves that are smooth, but shorter and round, and plentiful and bushy, while the taste is sharp and, like a medicine, apt for drawing out the bowels. And in the former kinds, too, there is a difference in the seed, since some bear worse and some a very small amount. These faults occur only in the crinkled leaves.

81| 3 Our people made other kinds: the Algidus kind, from the place, long and translucent; another, in the shape of a turnip, which they call the Syrian, generally very sweet and very tender and especially patient of winter. Yet it appears to have been brought from Syria not long ago, since it is not found in the authorities; it lasts the whole winter.

82| Still one more wild kind the Greeks call cerain, the people of Pontus armon, others leuce, our people armoracia, with more foliage than body. In judging all, the stalks are chiefly looked at, for in the harsh ones they are rounder and thicker and with long channels; the leaves themselves are more somber and bristly with angles.

83| 4 The radish wants to be sown in loose, damp ground. It hates dung, content with chaff. It so delights in cold that in Germany it equals the size of infant children. It is sown after the Ides of February, so as to be a spring crop, and again about the Vulcanalia, which is the better sowing. Many sow also in March and April and September. When growth begins it helps to bury the alternate leaves, and heap earth up around the roots themselves; for the one that has come up out of the ground becomes hard and spongy.

84| Aristomachus orders the leaves to be pulled off through the winter and earth heaped up so that the hollows do not hold water; thus they grow large by summer. Some have reported that if a stake is driven in and the hole is lined with chaff to the depth of six fingers, then seed and dung and earth are piled in, it grows to the size of the pit. Chiefly, however, they are nourished by salty things; and so they are even watered with such waters, and in Egypt sprinkled with nitrum, where they are outstanding in sweetness.

85| In general also their bitterness is removed by salt, and they become like boiled ones. For even when boiled they grow sweet and pass into the place of navews. Physicians recommend that they be eaten raw with salt, by those fasting, to gather the sharp humors of the viscera, and so they prepare the passage for vomiting.

86| They report also that this juice is necessary to the midriff, since it has been found that phtheiriasis clinging inside the heart could not be driven out otherwise in Egypt, where the kings had the bodies of the dead cut open to examine diseases. And, as is Greek vanity, it is said that at Delphi, in Apollo's temple, the radish was so preferred to other foods that it was dedicated in gold, the beet in silver, the turnip in lead.

87| You would know that Manius Curius, the commander, was not born there, who, when envoys of the hosts brought him gold and he was about to refuse it, was found roasting a turnip on the hearth, as our annals have handed down. Moschion the Greek also wrote a single volume on the radish. They are thought most useful in food in the winter time, and they are always the enemy of teeth, since they wear them down; ivory, at any rate, they polish. They have the greatest hatred for the vine, and the vine shrinks back from radishes sown beside it.

88| The rest which we have placed in the cartilage class are more woody, and it is a marvel that all have a vehemence of flavor. Of these, one kind of parsnip comes up wild of its own accord, the other, the Greek, is sown by root or seed in early spring or autumn, as Hyginus prefers, in February, August, September, October, the ground being dug over as deep as possible.

89| At a year old it begins to be useful, at two years more useful, more pleasing in autumn and especially for dishes, and even so there is an intractable rankness in it. Hibiscus differs from the parsnip in slenderness, condemned in food, but useful for medicine. There is also a fourth kind, in the same likeness of the parsnip, which our people call Gallic, the Greeks daucos, of which they made even four kinds, to be spoken of among the medicines.

90| Siser also the emperor Tiberius made famous, demanding it every year from Germany. There is a fort called Gelduba, set on the Rhine, where its quality is especially fine, from which it appears that it suits cold places. In its length there is a fiber, which is drawn out when it is boiled, though a great part of the bitterness is left, which, tempered in food with honeyed wine, is even turned to pleasantness. The same fiber is in the greater parsnip, at least when a year old. Siser is sown in February, March, April, August, September and October.

91| Shorter than these, and more muscular and more bitter, is inula, by itself most hostile to the stomach, but when mixed with sweet things most wholesome. In several ways, its harshness overcome, it finds favor. For it is pounded when dry into flour and tempered with a sweet liquid, and boiled in posca, or kept, or steeped, in several ways, and then mixed with defrutum or worked into honey or raisins or fat caryotae.

92| In another way again, varied with quinces or service-berries or plums, sometimes with pepper or thyme, it chiefly rouses the failing stomach, made famous especially by the daily diet of Julia Augusta. Its seed is unnecessary, since it is planted from the root, with the eyes cut out, like the reed; and this and siser and parsnip are all planted at both seasons, spring and autumn, with wide intervals between the seeds; inula not less than three feet apart, since it bushes out widely. Siser is better transplanted.

93| Next to this is the nature of bulbs, which Cato directs to be sown first of all, celebrating the Megarian. But the most renowned is the squill, although it was born for medicine and for sharpening vinegar. None has greater size, as none has a sharper power. There are two medicinal kinds, the male with white leaves, the female with black. But there is a third kind, pleasing in food, called Epimenidus, narrower in leaf and less sharp.

94| All of them have a great deal of seed; but they come up more quickly when planted from the bulbs that form around the sides, and to make them grow, their leaves, which are broad in these plants, are bent over and buried around them; in this way the heads draw all the sap into themselves. They grow wild in great abundance in the Balearic Islands and Ebusus and throughout the Spains. The philosopher Pythagoras composed one volume about them, collecting their medicinal powers, which we shall give in the next book.

95| The remaining kinds of bulbs differ in colour, size and sweetness, since some are eaten raw, as in the Tauric Chersonese. After these, those born in Africa are most praised, then the Apulian. The Greeks have made these kinds: bolbine, setanion, opition, cyica, aegilops, sisyrinchion. In this plant it is a marvel that its lowest roots grow in winter, but in spring, when the violet has appeared, they shrink and contract, and then the bulb grows fat.

96| Among the kinds is also what they call aron in Egypt, nearest to the squill in size, with leaves like those of the lapathum, a straight stem of two cubits, the thickness of a staff, and a root of softer nature, which is eaten even raw.

97| Bulbs are dug up before spring or they quickly become worse. The sign of ripeness is leaves withering from the bottom up, and the older ones are rejected, and likewise long and small ones; by contrast the reddish and rounder ones are praised, and the very large. Most have bitterness at the top, and their middles are sweet. Earlier writers have handed down that bulbs are not born except from seed, but in the plains of Praeneste they grow wild, and without limit even in the fields of the Remi.

98| Nearly all garden plants have a single root each, as the radish, beet, celery and mallow, but the largest is that of the lapathum, which goes down as far as three cubits (the wild kind is smaller), and when dug up it lives a long time, if moist. Some, however, have hair-like roots, as celery and mallow; some have shoot-like roots, as basil; others fleshy, as beet, and even more so saffron; some consist of bark and flesh, as the radish and turnips; the roots of some are jointed, as of grass.

99| Plants that do not have a straight root rely at once on very many small fibres, as atriplex and blitum. The squill, however, and bulbs and onions and garlic send out roots only straight down. Among those that grow wild, some are more numerous in root than in leaf, as spalax, perdicium and saffron.

100| Serpullum, habrotonum, napus, radishes, mint and rue flower in dense masses, and the rest, once they have begun, finish flowering; basil, however, flowers in parts and begins at the bottom, for which reason it flowers longest. This happens also in the herb heliotropium. The flower is white in some, yellow in others, purple in others. The leaves fall from the tops in origanum and inula, and sometimes in rue when it has been injured. Onions and getium are the most hollow.

101| Garlic and onions Egypt holds among the gods in swearing oaths. The kinds of onion among the Greeks are the Sardian, Samothracian, Alsidene, setania, schista, and the Ascalonian, named after a town of Judaea. All have a smell that brings tears, especially the Cyprian, least the Cnidian. All have a body made wholly of a fat cartilage of coats.

102| Of them all the setania is the smallest, except the Tusculan, but it is sweet. The schista and the Ascalonian, however, are preserved in seasoning. They leave the schista in the ground through winter with its leafy top, and in spring pull off the leaves, and others grow up beneath along the same divisions, whence its name too. By this example they order the leaves to be pulled off the other kinds as well, so that they grow into heads rather than into seed. The Ascalonians have a nature of their own.

103| For they are, as it were, sterile from the root, and for that reason the Greeks ordered them to be sown from seed, not set out, and rather late, about spring, but when they sprout, to be transplanted; thus they thicken and hurry on, making up for the time that has gone by. One must hurry with them, however, since when ripe they quickly rot. If they are set out, they send up a stalk and seed and themselves vanish.

104| There is also a difference of colours; for at Issus and Sardis very white ones are produced. The Cretan are also in esteem, about which they are in doubt whether they are the same as the Ascalonian, since when sown their heads swell, and when set out they produce stalk and seed. They differ only in a sweet flavour.

105| Among us there are two principal kinds: one for seasoning, which they call getion and our people pallacana, sown in the months of March, April and May; the other the headed kind, sown from the autumn equinox or from the west wind. The kinds in order of sharpness: the African, Gallic, Tusculan, Ascalonian, Amiternine; the best, however, is the roundest. Likewise the red is sharper than the white, the dry than the green, the raw than the cooked, as also than the preserved.

106| The Amiternine is sown in cold and moist places, and alone is planted by the head, in the manner of garlic; the others are sown from seed, and in the following summer they send out no seed but only a head, which swells. In the next year, however, the order is changed: seed is produced, and the head itself is spoiled. Therefore every year seed is sown separately for the sake of the onion, and separately an onion for the sake of the seed. They are best kept in chaff.

107| Getium is almost without a head, having only a long neck, and therefore is all in its foliage, and is cut back rather often, like the leek. For that reason they sow it too, and do not set it out. Otherwise they direct that onions be sown in ground dug three times, with the roots of the herbs pulled out, ten pounds to the iugerum, that savory be mixed in, since they come on better, and that they be weeded besides and hoed, if not more often, four times. Our people sow the Ascalonian in February. The seed of onions they reap when it begins to turn black, before it dries out.

108| It is fitting to speak of the leek in this same family, especially since the emperor Nero lately gave authority to the cutting leek, by eating it for the sake of his voice, in oil, on fixed days of every month, and nothing else, not even bread. It is sown from seed from the autumn equinox, more thickly if one wishes to make cutting leek. It is cut in the same bed until it fails, and is always manured,

109| if it is being raised into heads, before it is cut. When it has grown, it is moved to another bed, the topmost leaves lightly trimmed before the pith, and the heads drawn back, or the outer coats. The ancients spread out the heads by putting a flint or a potsherd beneath them (this too is done with bulbs); now the roots are lightly loosened with a hoe, so that, weakened, they feed the plant and do not pull it apart.

110| It is remarkable that, though it delights in dung and rich soil, it hates watered ground. And yet some leeks depend on the particular quality of the soil: the most praised is that of Egypt, next Ostia and Aricia. There are two kinds of cutting leek: one with a grass-green leaf, its incisions plainly marked, which the druggists use; the other kind has a yellower and rounder leaf, with smoother incisions. The story is that Mela, of the equestrian order, summoned by the emperor Tiberius on a charge arising from a procuratorship, in utter despair drank the juice of leek to the weight of three silver denarii and at once died, without torment. They say a larger dose is not harmful.

111| Garlic is believed to be beneficial for many remedies, especially of the countryside. The whole is clothed in the thinnest membranes, which are despised, then it is put together out of several kernels, and these are separately clothed, with a harsh flavour; the more kernels there are, the harsher it is. This also causes disgust by its breath, as onions do, though none when cooked.

112| The difference of kinds lies in time (the early kind ripens in 60 days), then in size. Of this class also is ulpicum, which the Greeks have called Cyprian garlic, and others antiskorodon; it is especially celebrated in Africa among the country relishes, and is larger than garlic. Pounded in oil and vinegar, it swells up in foam to a marvellous degree. Some forbid ulpicum and garlic to be sown on level ground, and say it should be put in little mounds, in turret fashion, set three feet apart from each other. Between the cloves there should be a gap of 4 fingers; as soon as three leaves have broken out, they should be hoed. They grow larger the more often they are hoed.

113| The stalks of those that are ripening are pressed down and buried in the earth; in this way they are kept from running to foliage. In cold places it is more useful to sow in spring than in autumn. For the rest, to make them lack the smell, all these are directed to be sown when the moon is under the earth, and gathered when she is in conjunction. Without these means, Menander, among the Greeks, is the authority that for those who eat garlic, if they eat afterward a beet root roasted in embers, the smell is extinguished.

114| There are those who think that both garlic and ulpicum are most suitably sown between the Compitalia and the Saturnalia. Garlic also comes from seed, but slowly. For in the first year it makes a head of the thickness of a leek, in the next it is divided, in the third it is completed, and some think it finer in that state. It ought not to go to seed, but the stalk is twisted round for the sake of the crop, so that the head may become stronger.

115| But if one wishes to keep garlic and onion long into age, the heads must be rubbed with warm salt water; in this way they will become longer-lasting and better for use, and sterile in sowing. Others are content to have hung them first over embers and think they thereby do enough to keep them from sprouting, which it is certain garlic and onion do even out of the earth, and when the little stalk is driven out they vanish. Some think garlic is best preserved in chaff as well.

116| There is also a garlic that grows wild in the fields (they call it alum), which, against the wickedness of birds that graze on the seeds, is cooked and thrown out so that it cannot grow again, and at once the birds that have devoured it are caught by hand, stupefied, and, if you delay a little, are sound asleep. There is also a wild kind, which they call ursinum, of a similar smell, with a very slender head and large leaves.

117| Of things sown in the garden, the quickest to come up are basil, blitum, napus and rocket. For they break out on the third day; dill on the fourth, lettuce on the fifth, radish on the sixth, cucumber and gourd on the seventh (the cucumber sooner), cress and mustard on the fifth, beet in summer on the sixth, in winter on the 10th, atriplex on the eighth, onions on the 19th or 20th, gethyum on the 10th or the twelfth, coriander more stubbornly, cunila indeed and origanum after the 30th day, and hardest of all celery. For on the 40th day at the quickest, and for the most part on the 50th, it comes up.

118| The age of the seeds also contributes something, since fresh seeds produce earlier in leek, gethyum, cucumber and gourd, but from old seed celery, beet, cardamum, cunila, origanum and coriander come up more quickly. A marvel concerns beet seed: it does not all produce in the same year, but some in the next, some even in the third; and so it grows up only moderately from a plentiful supply of seed. Some bear only in their own year, some more than once, as celery, leek and gethyum; for these, sown once, come up with a recurring fertility over several years.

119| The seeds of most are round, of some oblong, of a few leaf-like and broad, as in atriplex, of some narrow and grooved, as in cumin. They differ also in colour, black or whiter, and in the hardness of a twig-like nature. In radishes, mustard and turnip they are in a little pod. The seed of coriander, dill, fennel and cumin is bare; that of blitum, beet, atriplex and basil is covered with a husk; but in lettuces it is in down.

120| Nothing is more fruitful than basil. They teach that it should be sown with curses and abuse, so that it may come up more luxuriantly; when it has been sown, the earth is beaten down. Those who sow cumin also pray that it may not come up. Plants that are in a husk dry out with the greatest difficulty, basil most of all, and for that reason all are dried and are fruitful. In any case, they grow better with seed sown in a heap than with seed scattered. Thus at least leek and celery are sown bound in the corners of a cloth, celery even with a stake, a hollow being made and dung heaped in.

121| All plants, however, are born either from seed or by being torn away; some from seed and from a shoot, as rue, origanum and basil (for they cut this one back too, when it has reached a palm in height); some from both seed and root, as onion, garlic, bulbs, and any perennial plants whose roots are left in the ground. Of those, however, that are born from the root, the root is long-lived and bushy, as in bulbs, gethyum and squills. Others put out shoots without forming a head, as celery and beet.

122| When the stalk is cut off, almost all grow again, except those that do not have a rough stalk, and for use, basil, radish and lettuce; they think lettuce is even sweeter from growing again. The radish at any rate is pleasanter when the leaves are stripped off, before it runs to stalk. The same is true of turnips. For these too, when their leaves are stripped and they are covered with earth, grow and last into the summer.

123| There is a single kind each of basil, lapathum, blitum, cress, rocket, atriplex, coriander and dill. For these are everywhere the same, and one is nowhere better than another. Rue that grows stolen is thought to come up more fruitfully, just as stolen bees do worst. Some grow even unsown: mentastrum, nepeta, intubum, pulegium. On the other hand, of those we have spoken of and shall speak of, there are several kinds, and first of all of celery.

124| For that which grows of its own accord in moist places is called helioselinum, with a single leaf and not hairy; again, in dry places, hipposelinum, with several leaves, like helioselinum. The third is oreoselinum, with leaves of hemlock, a thin root, and the seed of dill, only smaller. The cultivated kinds also differ in the leaf, dense, curled, or sparser and smoother, likewise in the stalk, thinner or thicker, and the stalk of some is white, of others purple, of others variegated.

125| Of lettuce the Greeks made three kinds: one with a broad stalk, so much so that they have handed down that little garden doors were often made out of them (the leaf in these is a little larger than a herb's and very narrow, as if the growth had been used up elsewhere); a second with a round stalk; the third sessile, which they call Laconian. Others have distinguished the kinds by colour and by time of sowing; for there are black ones, the seed of which is sown in the month of January, white ones, in March, and reddish ones, in April, and the plants of all of them are transplanted after two months each.

126| The more careful make more kinds: purple, curled, Cappadocian, Greek (these with a longer leaf and broad stalk), and in addition a long and narrow one, similar to intubum. The worst kind they have called pikris, with a reproach for its bitterness. There is still another distinction of the white one, which is called mekonis from the abundance of its sleep-bringing milk, although all are believed to bring sleep. Among the ancients of Italy this was the only kind of them, and for that reason lettuces have their name from milk.

127| The purple one with the largest root they call the Caecilian, but the round one with the smallest root and broad leaves, astytis, and some eunucheion, because this one most resists Venus. By nature all are cooling, and for that reason pleasing in summer. They take away disgust from the stomach and create an appetite for food.

128| The deified Augustus, at any rate, is said to have been preserved by lettuce in an illness, through the good sense of the physician Musa, when the excessive scruple of his earlier physician, Gaius Aemilius, had forbidden it, and the recommendation was so accepted that it was then discovered how to preserve them even into months not their own with oxymel. They are believed also to increase the blood. There is also what is called the goat lettuce, of which we shall speak among the medicinal plants, and see, just lately, a kind much approved has begun to creep in among cultivated ones, which is called the Cilician, with the leaf of the Cappadocian, if it were not curled and broader.

129| Intubi cannot be said to be either of the same kind or of another; they endure winter better and show a bitter taste, but are no less welcome for their stalk. They are sown from the spring equinox, and their plants are transplanted at the end of spring. There is also a wild intubum, which in Egypt they call cichorium, about which more elsewhere. It has been found to prolong the life of all the thyrsi or leaves of lettuces by storing them in jars, and to cook them fresh in dishes.

130| Lettuces are sown in the whole year, in rich, watered and manured ground, two months between seed and plant and ripeness. It is the rule, however, to cast the seed from midwinter, to transplant the plant with the west wind, or the seed with the west wind and the plant at the spring equinox. The white ones endure winter best.

131| All garden plants delight in moisture and dung, especially lettuces and more so intubi. It matters also that the roots be set smeared with dung and filled in with earth after the trench has been dug around. Some also increase the size otherwise, by cutting them back when they have grown to half a foot and smearing them fresh with pig dung. Whiteness they think is attained only by those which are of white seed, if sand from the shore is heaped from the first growth into their middles and the growing leaves are tied up against them.

132| Beet is the smoothest of garden plants. Of it also the Greeks make two kinds by colour, the black and the whiter, which they prefer (it has very little seed), and they call it the Sicilian, preferring it, to be sure, for the difference of whiteness, as they do lettuce. Our people make kinds of beet, the spring and the autumn, from the times of sowing. Although it is sown in June too; the plant is transplanted in autumn.

133| These also love to have their roots smeared with dung and a place similarly wet. They are used with lentils and beans, and as the other greens are, and especially so that the mildness may be roused by the sharpness of mustard. Physicians have judged it more harmful than other greens, on which account to taste it even when set before one is a scruple to some, so that they may rather be in food for the strong.

134| They have a twofold nature, that of a green vegetable and that of the head itself of a bulb springing up, and their finest appearance lies in breadth. This is achieved, as with lettuces, when they have begun to take on colour, by laying a light weight on them. In no other garden plant is the breadth greater; they sometimes spread to two feet each, the nature of the soil contributing much too, since the largest grow in the territory of Circeii.

135| There are those who think beets are best sown when the pomegranate is in flower, and transplanted when they have begun to have 5 leaves. A marvellous difference, if it is true: the white ones loosen the bowels, the black ones check them, and when the flavour of wine in a cask is spoiled by cabbage, it is restored by sinking beet leaves in the same.

136| The cabbage and its stalks, which now hold first place among garden plants, I do not find were in honour among the Greeks, but Cato sings marvellous praises of cabbage, which we shall repeat in the place for healing. He makes kinds of it: one with outspread leaves and a large stalk; a second with a curled leaf, which they call apiaca; a third with small stalks, mild, tender, and he approves it least.

137| Cabbage is sown in the whole year, since it is cut in the whole year, but most usefully from the autumn equinox, and it is transplanted when it has 5 leaves. From the first sowing it supplies the cyma in the next spring. This is a certain more delicate and tender little stalk of the stalks themselves, scorned in the luxury of Apicius and through him by Drusus Caesar, not without a rebuke from his father Tiberius.

138| After the cyma, from the same cabbage come summer and autumn little stalks, then winter ones, and cymas again, no kind being so equally productive, until it is used up by its own fertility. The second sowing is from the spring equinox, the plant of which is planted at the end of spring, so that it may not bear cyma before stalk. The third is around the solstice, from which, if the place is moister, it is planted in summer, if drier, in autumn. If moisture and dung are lacking, there is more pleasure of flavour; if they abound, a richer fertility. Ass's dung is most suitable.

139| This too is among the works of the glutton, wherefore it will not irk us to follow it up at greater length. The stalk becomes outstanding in flavour and size, first of all if you sow in ground dug over a second time, then if you follow the little stalks as they flee the earth, and as they raise themselves in luxuriant height you heap up other earth by piling, so that no more than the top stands out. This kind is called Tritan, at a twofold reckonable expense and trouble.

140| The other kinds are numerous: the Cumaean, with a sessile leaf, spreading in head; the Aricine, not taller in height, more numerous in leaf than tender; this is reckoned most useful, because beneath nearly all the leaves it sprouts peculiar little stalks. The Pompeian is taller, with a stalk thin from the root, thickening inside the leaves; these are sparser and narrower, but tenderness is in its dowry. It does not tolerate cold, on which the Bruttian are nonetheless nourished, very large in leaves, thin in stalk, sharp in flavour.

141| The Sabellian has leaves curled to the point of wonder, the thickness of which makes the stalk itself thin, but they are reported the sweetest of all. Lately the Lacuturnian from the valley of Aricia have come in, very large in head, numberless in leaf, some gathered into a ball, others swollen in breadth; and none has more head after the Tritian, whose head is sometimes seen a foot across, and the cyma of none is later.

142| To every kind, however, frosts bring the greatest sweetness, but unless the pith is protected by a slanting cut, they do the most harm. Those destined for seed are not cut. There is also a kind with its own charm that never goes beyond the habit of the plant; they call them halmyridia, because they do not come up except in places by the sea. They say that even on a long voyage they are kept green, if when cut at once, so that they do not touch the ground, they are stored in jars of oil dried out as closely as possible and stopped, every breath being shut out.

143| There are those who think a plant, in transplanting, with sea-wrack laid under the little foot, or as much pounded nitre as is taken up in three fingers, becomes ripe sooner. There are those who sprinkle the seed of trefoil and nitre pounded together on the leaves. Nitre in cooking also preserves greenness, as does the Apician cooking, the plants being steeped in oil and salt before cooking.

144| Among herbs there is a kind of grafting, by cutting off the buds of the stalk and adding seed from others into the pith. This is done also in the wild cucumber. And there is also a wild vegetable, celebrated at the triumph of the deified Julius especially in songs and soldiers' jests; for in alternating verses they reproached that they had lived on lapsana at Dyrrachium, mocking the meagreness of the rewards. This is, moreover, wild cyma.

145| Of all things in gardens the most elegant care is for asparagus. Of their origin from wild corruda enough has been said, and how Cato ordered them to be sown in reed-beds. There is another kind, ruder than asparagus, milder than corruda, growing everywhere even in the mountains, the fields of Upper Germany being full of it, in a not unwitty saying of Tiberius Caesar, that a certain herb grows there very like asparagus.

146| For what grows of its own accord on Nesis, an island of Campania, is reckoned by far the best. The garden kind is sown from sponges. For it has a very great root and sprouts very deep. It is green when the thyrsus first shoots out, which, drawing out the stalk, at the very time tapers to a point in ridged knobs. It can also be sown from seed.

147| Cato set down nothing more carefully, and it is the last thing of his book, so that it appears the matter was a sudden novelty. He orders the place to be worked, moist or rich, and the sowing made with a half-foot interval all around, so that it may not be trodden, and in addition that two or three seeds to a line be dropped in with a stake (evidently they were then sown only from seed),

148| This is to be done around the spring equinox; the bed is to be fed full with dung and cleaned often, and care taken that the asparagus is not pulled up with the weeds; in the first year it is to be protected from winter with litter, uncovered in spring, hoed, weeded, and in the third year burned in spring. The earlier it is burned, the better it comes up. For that reason it suits reed-beds best, which hasten to be burned. The same writer orders it to be hoed only after the asparagus has come up, so that the roots are not harmed in hoeing.

149| From it the asparagus is to be pulled from the root, for if it is broken off it runs into stumps and dies; to be pulled until it goes to seed (this ripens toward spring), and to be burned, and again, when the asparagus has appeared, hoed and manured, and after 8 years, when it is now old, to be broken up, the ground being worked and manured, then sown from sponges at an interval of one foot each. He even names sheep's dung to be used, since another kind produces weeds.

150| Nor has anything more useful been tried since, except that around the Ides of February they sow seed buried in heaps in very small pits, much soaked in dung. Then after two years, the roots being tied together, they set out the sponges thus made after the autumn equinox at intervals of a foot, the fertility lasting for ten years each.

151| No soil is more welcome to these than that of the gardens of Ravenna, as we have indicated. Corruda (for so I understand wild asparagus, which the Greeks call horminon or myacanthon and by other names) I find also comes up from rams' horns, pounded and buried.

152| All things that are in esteem might seem to have been told, were there not left a thing of the greatest profit which must be told not without shame. It is certain, indeed, that cardoons, at Great Carthage and Corduba especially, return six thousand sesterces each from small beds, since we turn even the monstrosities of the earth to gluttony and sow even what all four-footed beasts shun.

153| Cardoons, then, in two ways: in autumn by plant, and by seed before the Nones of March, and the plants from it are set out before the Ides of November, or in cold places about the time of the west wind. They are manured too, if you please, and come up more richly. They are preserved also in vinegar diluted with honey, with a root of laser and cumin added, so that no day may be without cardoon.

154| The rest can be told in passing. Basil, they say, is best sown at the Parilia, some even in autumn, and they direct that when it is sown for winter the seed be drenched in vinegar. Rocket also and cress come up most easily either in summer or winter. Rocket, a despiser of cold above all, is of a nature opposite to lettuce and rouses Venus.

155| For that reason it is joined to it almost always in meals, so that a heat mixed in may balance an excessive chill. Cress (nasturtium) took its name from the torment of the nostrils, and from that, by proverb, the word has come to be used as a sign of vigour, as of something rousing torpor. In Arabia it is said to grow to a marvellous size.

156| Rue also is sown with the west wind and from the autumn equinox. It hates winter, moisture and dung, delights in sunny and dry places and in soil as much like brick-earth as possible, and wants to be fed with ashes. This also is mixed with the seed, so that it may be free of caterpillars. A special authority belonged to it among the ancients. I find that a mead flavoured with rue was given to the people by Cornelius Cethegus, colleague of Quintus Flamininus in the consulship, when the elections were over. Its friendship with the fig is so great that it comes up nowhere more luxuriantly than beneath this tree. It is sown also from a cutting,

157| better placed in a bored bean, which nourishes the cutting with its juice by gripping it. It sows itself too, for when the tip of some branch is bent over and has touched the earth, it at once takes root. Basil has the same nature, except that its seed dries up with more difficulty. Rue is weeded not without difficulty, because of itching sores, unless this is done with hands protected or defended with oil. Its leaves, however, are also preserved and kept in bundles.

158| From the spring equinox celery is sown, the seed lightly pounded in a mortar. They think it becomes more curled this way or if, once sown, it is trodden down with a roller or with the feet. It is peculiar to it that it changes colour. Its honour in Achaia is to crown the victors of the sacred contest at Nemea.

159| At the same time mint is sown by plant or, if it is not yet sprouting, by sponge. It delights in moisture no less. It stays green in summer and goes yellow in winter. Its wild kind is mentastrum; from this it is propagated as the vine is, or if branches are planted inverted. The sweetness of its smell changed the name of mint among the Greeks, when otherwise it was called mintha, from which our ancestors declined the name; now, however, it has begun to be called hedyosmon. Welcome by its fleece, it passes over the tables with its smell in rustic feasts.

160| Once sown it lasts a long time. It goes with pulegium, whose nature of flowering again in meat-stores has been spoken of more than once. These also are preserved in a similar manner, I mean mint, pulegium and nepeta. Of all seasonings, however, that [….] to the fastidious, cumin is the friendliest.

161| It grows at the very top of the ground, hardly clinging and stretching upward, especially in rotten and warm places, and is to be sown in mid-spring. Another kind of it is wild, which they call rustic, others Theban, which, pounded and drunk in water, helps in pain of the stomach. In Carpetania, in our world, it is most praised; otherwise the palm goes to the Ethiopian and the African; some prefer the Egyptian in this.

162| But olusatrum above all is of marvellous nature. The Greeks call it hipposelinum, others zmyrnium. It is born from the tear of its own stalk. It is sown also from the root. Those who collect its juice say it has the flavour of myrrh, and Theophrastus is the authority that it was born of sown myrrh.

163| The ancients instructed that hipposelinum be sown in uncultivated, stony places near a wall (now it is sown also in ground dug over a second time, and from the west wind after the autumn equinox), since the caper too is sown in this way, in the driest places especially, the bed therefore being enclosed by a ditch and with banks built up all around with stone; otherwise it strays over the fields and makes the soil barren. It flowers in summer and is green until the setting of the Vergiliae, and is most at home in sandy ground. Its faults, in the kind that is born overseas, we have told among the foreign shrubs.

164| Foreign also is careum, called by the name of its own people, the chief of kitchens. It wants to be sown in any soil, on the same principle as olusatrum, but the most praised is in Caria, the next in Phrygia.

165| Ligusticum is wild in the mountains of its own Liguria; it is sown also everywhere. The cultivated kind is sweeter but without strength. Some call it panax. Crateuas among the Greeks calls the cunila bubula by that name, but the rest call it conyza, that is cunilago, and thymbra is what cunila is. This among us has another name too, called satureia in the seasoning class. It is sown in the month of February. It and its rival origanum are never both added, since their effect is alike. But to cunila only Egyptian origanum is preferred.

166| Lepidium too was a foreign plant. It is sown from the west wind, then, when it has put out shoots, it is cut off close to the ground, then weeded and manured. For two years after this they use the same shrubs, if the savagery of winter does not come down on them, since it is least able to bear cold. It grows also to a cubit in height, with leaves of the bay, but softer. Its use is not without milk.

167| Git is for bakeries, anise and dill come up for kitchens and for physicians; sacopenium, with which laser is adulterated, is itself in gardens too, but only for medicine. There are certain companions in the sowing of others; for poppy is sown with cabbage and purslane, and rocket with lettuce.

168| The cultivated poppy has three kinds: the white, the seed of which, roasted, was given in the second course with honey among the ancients; this is sprinkled also on the crust of country bread, sticking when egg is poured on, where celery and git season the lower crust with a flavour of grain. The second kind of poppy is the black, from the cut stalk of which a milky juice is collected.

169| The third kind the Greeks call rhoea, ours the wild poppy; it comes up of its own accord, but especially in fields with barley, similar to rocket, a cubit in height, with a red flower, quickly falling, whence it also took its name from the Greeks. Of the remaining kinds of poppy growing wild we shall speak in the place for medicine. That it was always in honour among the Romans is shown by Tarquinius Superbus, who, to the envoys sent by his son, by striking off the tallest poppies in his garden, gave that bloody answer by this roundabout act.

170| Again, in another company, at the autumn equinox are sown coriander, dill, atriplex, mallow, lapathum, caerefolium, which the Greeks call paederota, and the most pungent in flavour, fiery in effect and most wholesome for the body, mustard, which needs no cultivation, but is better when the plant is transplanted. On the contrary, once it has been sown it is hardly possible to free the place of it, since the seed, as it falls, at once turns green.

171| Its use is even in place of a relish, boiled in little dishes, without sense of its sharpness. The leaves are cooked too, like those of the other greens. There are three kinds: one slender, another similar to the leaves of turnip, a third to those of rocket. The best seed is the Egyptian. The Athenians called it napy, others thlaspi, others saurion.

172| With serpyllum and sisymbrium most mountains abound, as those of Thrace. Therefore they bring down branches torn from them and sow them, likewise at Sicyon from their mountains and at Athens from Hymettus. In a like manner they sow sisymbrium too. It grows most luxuriantly on the walls of wells and around fish-ponds and pools.

173| The remainder are of the ferula kind, as fennel, which, as we have said, snakes find most welcome, for seasoning very many things when it has dried, and very like it thapsia, of which we have spoken among the foreign shrubs; then hemp, most useful for ropes. It is sown from the west wind; the denser it is, the more tender. Its seed, when ripe, is stripped from the autumn equinox and dried in sun or wind or smoke. The hemp itself is pulled after the vintage and peeled and cleaned by lamplight.

174| The best is the Alabandic, especially for the uses of nets. There are three kinds of it there: that nearest the bark or the pith is disapproved; the most praised is from the middle, which is called mesa. Second is the Mylasean. As to height, the Rosean of the Sabine territory equals the height of trees.

175| Two kinds of ferula we have told among the foreign shrubs. Its seed is food in Italy; it is stored, in fact, and keeps in jars even for the space of a year. Two kinds come from it, stalks and clusters. This they call corymbia, and corymbi those that they preserve.

176| Garden plants too feel diseases, as the rest of what is sown in the earth. For basil degenerates with age into serpyllum, and sisymbrium into zmintha, and from old seed of cabbage turnips are made, and the reverse. And cumin is killed by haimodoron, unless it is cleared away; it has, moreover, a single stalk and a root like a bulb, and grows only in thin soil. Another disease peculiar to cumin is scab. And basil turns pale under the rising of the Dog Star. All, indeed, turn yellow at the approach of a woman during her monthly courses.

177| Kinds of little animals are born in them too: fleas in the napus, caterpillars and little worms in radish, likewise in lettuces and greens, and in both of these in addition slugs and snails, but the leek has creatures of its own, which are most easily caught by throwing dung on it, as they bury themselves in it. That it does not pay to touch rue, cunila, mint, basil with iron is the authority of Sabinus Tiro in the book kepourika, which he dedicated to Maecenas.

178| The same writer also showed a remedy against ants, not the least of the plagues of gardens when they are not well watered: sea mud or ash to stop up their holes. But they are killed most effectively with the plant heliotropium. Some also think that water in which unbaked brick has been dissolved is deadly to them.

179| The remedy for napus is to sow a little ervum along with it, as chickpea is sown with greens; for it keeps off caterpillars. If this has been neglected and the caterpillars have hatched, the remedy is to sprinkle on the juice of absinthium boiled down, or of sedum;

180| we have spoken of this kind of plant, which others call aeizoon. They say that if the seed of greens is soaked in its juice before it is sown, the greens will be at the mercy of no creature; and that caterpillars are killed off altogether if the bones of the head of an animal of the horse kind, a female only, are set up on a stake in the garden. They say that a river crab suspended in the middle of the garden also helps against caterpillars. There are some who touch with rods of sanguineus the plants they do not want to be at the mercy of caterpillars. Gnats also infest watered gardens, especially if there are some small trees in them; they are driven off by burning galbanum.

181| Now, as to the replacing of seed: some seeds have greater durability, such as coriander, beet, leek, cress, mustard, rocket, cunila and, in general, the pungent ones; while those of orach, ocimum, gourd and cucumber are weaker, and all summer plants weaker than winter ones; and gethyum lasts least of all. But even of the strongest, none is useful beyond four years old, for sowing, that is; for the kitchen they are fit even beyond that.

182| Radish, beet, rue and cunila have a remedy of their own in salt water, which in any case contributes a great deal to their flavour and their yield. For the rest, irrigation with fresh water is beneficial. The most useful of such waters are the coldest and the sweetest to drink. Less useful are water from a pond and the water that is brought in by channels, since they carry in the seeds of weeds. Rain, however, nourishes them best of all, for it also kills the little creatures that breed on them.

183| The hours for watering them are morning and evening, so that the water is not heated up by the sun; only ocimum is watered at midday as well, for it is even thought that ocimum, once sown, breaks through very quickly if it is sprinkled with hot water at the beginning. All plants become better and larger when they are transplanted, especially leeks and napus. There is a remedy too in transplanting, and plants stop feeling injuries, as gethyum, leek, radishes, apium, lettuces, turnips and cucumber do.

184| Nearly all the wild kinds are smaller in leaf and stalk and sharper in juice, such as cunila, origanum and rue. Of them all, lapathum alone is better wild. The cultivated kind of this is called rumex, the hardiest of all plants that are sown or grow; at any rate they say that once sown it lasts and is never beaten by the soil, especially near water.

185| As food it is used only with ptisan, to which it gives a milder and pleasanter flavour. The wild kind is useful for many medicines. (So far has diligence left nothing out that I find it set down even in verse that if the seeds of leek, rocket, lettuce, apium, intubus and cress are enclosed in pellets of goat dung, each hollowed out, and so sown, they come up wonderfully well. Those plants that also grow wild are understood to be drier and sharper than the same plants in cultivated form.)

186| We must also speak of the differences in juices and flavours, which are even greater among these plants than among fruits. Pungent are the juices of cunila, origanum, cress and mustard; bitter those of absinthium and centaureum; watery those of cucumber, gourd and lettuce; sharp those of thyme and cunila; sharp and fragrant those of apium, anetum and fennel. Of the flavours, salt alone does not grow in plants; it sometimes settles on the outside like dust, and only on cicercula.

187| And so that it may be understood how empty belief is, as for the most part in life: panax gives back the taste of pepper, and siliquastrum even more so, having for that reason been given the name piperitis; libanotis gives the smell of frankincense, and zmyrnium that of myrrh. Of panax enough has been said. Libanotis is sown from seed in crumbly, poor and dewy places. It has the root of olusatrum, which differs not at all from frankincense. Used after a year it is very healthful for the stomach. Some call it by another name, rosmarinus. Zmyrnium, a vegetable, is sown in the same places, and its root tastes of myrrh.

188| Siliquastrum is sown in the same way. The rest differ from the others in both smell and taste, as anetum does; and so great is the difference and the potency that one flavour is not only altered by another but even taken away altogether. With apium cooks remove the vinegar from dishes, and with the same plant, put in bags, cellarers remove a heavy smell from wine.

189| Let this be all we say on garden plants, so far as food is concerned. The greatest of nature's work in them, indeed, still remains, since so far we have dealt only with their yields and some main headings, whereas the true nature of each can be fully known only from its effect as medicine, a vast and hidden work of the divine, than which nothing greater could be found. Sound reasoning kept us from weaving this into the individual items, since the needs of healing concern other readers, and there would have been long delays for both sorts if we had mixed them together. Now each subject will stand in its own section, and those who wish can join them.

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