Natural History — Book XX

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

1| From here we shall begin the greatest work of nature: we shall tell man about his own foods and force him to admit that the things by which he lives are unknown to him. Let no one think this a small or slight matter, misled by the cheapness of the names. In these things will be told the peace or war of nature with herself, the hatreds and friendships of things that are deaf and without sensation, and, to make us wonder all the more, all of them for the sake of man. This is what the Greeks have called sympathy and antipathy, on which everything rests: fire being put out by water, water devoured by the sun and brought forth by the moon, one heavenly body failing through the injury done it by the other, and,

2| to come down from loftier things, the magnes stone drawing iron to itself and another stone in turn driving it away; adamas, the rare joy of wealth, unbreakable and unconquered by every other force, being shattered by goat's blood; and other wonders, equal or greater, which we shall tell of in their places. Only let pardon be granted to one who begins with the smallest things, but with healthful ones, and first with the garden plants.

3| We have said that there is a wild cucumber, much smaller in size than the cultivated one. From it is made the medicine called elaterium, from the juice pressed out of the seed; and unless the fruit is cut open for this rather early, the seed bursts out, even endangering the eyes. Once picked, it is kept for one night, and the next day it is cut open with a reed, and the seed is packed in ash to check the excess of juice; the juice, when pressed out, is received in rainwater and settles, and is then thickened in the sun into lozenges, for great uses among mortals: for dimness and defects of the eyes, and for ulcers of the eyelids.

4| They say that if the roots of vines are touched with this juice, the grapes are not touched by birds. The root, boiled in vinegar, is applied to gout, and its juice cures toothache; dried and mixed with resin it heals impetigo and scab and the complaints called psora and lichens, parotid swellings and panus, and restores colour to scars; and the juice of the leaves is dropped with vinegar into deaf ears.

5| The right season for elaterium is autumn, and no medicine keeps longer. It begins to be good at three years old. If anyone wants to use it fresher, he should soften the lozenges in vinegar in a new earthenware pot over a slow fire. The older it is the better, and it has been kept for 200 years, according to Theophrastus; and up to its fiftieth year it puts out the flames of lamps. For this is the test of the genuine article: when brought near a flame it makes it sparkle up and down before putting it out.

6| The pale, smooth kind is better than the grass-green, rough kind, as is the mildly bitter. They think that conception is helped by the seed worn as an amulet, so long as it has not touched the ground; and childbirth if it is tied in ram's wool to the woman's loins without her knowledge, on condition that it is snatched out of the house immediately after the delivery.

7| Those who extol the cucumber itself say that the best grows in Arabia, and the next best in Arcadia; others report that at Cyrene a cucumber like heliotropium grows among the leaves and branches, the size of a walnut, but that its seed is curved back like a scorpion's tail, though white.

8| Some even call it the scorpion cucumber, after the scorpion, since both the seed and the elaterium are very effective against scorpion stings. To purge the bowels in both directions the dose, in proportion to the patient's strength, is from half an obol to a whole one; a larger amount kills. Taken in the same way it is also drunk against phthiriasis, and by people with dropsy. Applied with honey or old oil it cures quinsy and complaints of the windpipe.

9| Many think that this is the plant which among us is called anguinus, and by others erraticus; if a decoction of it is sprinkled about, mice do not touch things. The same people apply it, boiled in vinegar, to gout and diseases of the joints as an instant remedy, and they cure pains of the loins with the seed dried in the sun, then pounded, and given to the weight of X XX in a hemina of water, and sudden swellings by applying it with women's milk. Elaterium purges women, but makes pregnant women miscarry. It is good for asthmatics, and for jaundice when put into the nostrils. Smeared on in the sun, it takes freckles and spots from the face.

10| Many attribute all the same properties to the cultivated kinds, which are of great importance even without them. For their seed too, as much as three fingers can pick up, pounded with cumin and drunk in wine, helps those with a cough; given in a woman's milk it helps those with phrenitis; in the amount of an acetabulum, those with dysentery; with an equal weight of cumin, those who spit up pus; and in honey-water, faults of the liver. It promotes urine when taken in sweet wine, and for pain of the kidneys it is injected in clysters together with cumin.

11| The kind called pepones are very cooling as food and loosen the bowels. Their flesh is applied for fluxes of the eyes or for pains in them. The root heals ulcers that crust over like a honeycomb, which are called ceria. It also provokes vomiting: it is dried, pounded into flour and given at four obols in honey-water, on condition that whoever has drunk it walks five hundred paces afterwards.

12| This flour is also added to cleansing pastes. The rind too provokes vomiting, and it cleans the face; the leaves of any cultivated kind, applied, do this as well. With honey they also heal epinyctides, and with wine, dog bites, and likewise the bite of the multipeda, which the Greeks call seps, a long creature with hairy feet, especially harmful to cattle; a swelling follows the bite, and the place festers. The cucumber itself, by its smell, revives a person who has fainted. (It is certain that cucumbers peeled and cooked are pleasanter served with oil, vinegar and honey.)

13| A wild gourd is also found, called somphos by the Greeks, which is hollow inside, hence its name, a finger thick, and growing only in rocky places. The juice of it, when it is chewed, is very good for the stomach.

14| Another is called colocynthis, itself full of seed, but smaller than the cultivated. The pale is more useful than the green. Dried by itself it empties the bowels. Infused also in clysters it cures all faults of the intestines, and of the kidneys and loins, and paralysis. With the seed removed, it is boiled down in honeyed water to half; in this way, most safely, four obols are infused.

15| It benefits the stomach, and also in pills of dry meal taken with a decoction of honey. In the royal disease 7 of its seeds are taken, and at once honeyed water. Its flesh with absinthium and salt removes toothache, but the juice warmed with vinegar steadies loose teeth. Likewise pains of the spine, loins and hips, if it is rubbed in with oil. Besides, marvellous to say, its seeds, if they are an even number, tied up in a linen cloth, are said to free from the fevers which the Greeks call periodic.

16| Of the cultivated kind, too, the scraped-off juice, warmed, cures the ears; its inner flesh without seed cures corns of the feet and suppurations, which the Greeks call apostemata. The juice of the whole boiled steadies the movement of teeth and checks pain; wine boiled with it checks even attacks on the eyes. Its leaves, pounded with fresh leaves of cypress and applied, and themselves also roasted in a pot of clay and ground with goose fat, heal wounds.

17| Besides, with shavings of fresh bark it cools gout and burning of the head, of infants especially, and sacred fires, either with the same scrapings applied or with the seeds. Juice from the scrapings, smeared on with oil of roses and vinegar, cools the burning of fevers. The ash of the dried, applied, marvellously heals burns. The physician Chrysippus condemned them as food, but by the consent of all they are judged most useful to the stomach, and against ulcerations of the inner parts and bladders.

18| There is medicinal power in the turnip too. Applied hot, it heals chilblains, and likewise drives cold from the feet. The water of its decoction, hot, cures gout even when cold, and the raw, pounded with salt, any fault of the feet. The seed, smeared on and drunk in wine, is handed down as salutary against serpents and poisons, but by many as having the power of an antidote in wine and oil.

19| Democritus altogether banned them in food because of the swellings they cause; Diocles raised them with great praise, declaring that even Venus is stimulated by them, and Dionysius likewise, and more if they were seasoned with rocket; roasted too, with fat, they benefit pain of the joints.

20| The wild turnip grows especially in the fields, bushy, with white seed, twice as large as the poppy's. This they use to smooth the skin in the face and the whole body, mixed with meal in equal measure of ervum, barley, wheat and lupine. The root is useless for everything.

21| Two differences among the napi the Greeks keep in medicine too. The one with angular stalks of the leaves and the flower of dill, which they call bunion; its decoction is useful for the purgings of women and for the bladder and urine, drunk in honeyed water, or a drachma of its juice; the seed, roasted and pounded in four cyathi of hot water, for those with dysentery. But it checks urine, if seed of flax is not drunk with it. The other kind they call buniada, similar both to radish and to turnip, with seed distinguished against poisons. On that account they use it also in antidotes.

22| The radish too, we have said, is also wild. The most praised is in Arcadia, although it grows elsewhere too, more useful only for moving the urine, otherwise heating. In Italy they call it armoracia also.

23| And the cultivated radishes, besides what has been said about them, purge the stomach, thin phlegm, move urine, draw off bile. Besides, their barks, boiled in wine and drunk in the morning, to three cyathi each, crush stones and expel them. The same, boiled in posca, are smeared on against the bites of serpents.

24| For cough also it helps to eat radishes with honey in the morning on an empty stomach, and their seed roasted and chewed itself; with a radish tied on, to drink water in which its leaves have been boiled, or its juice itself in two cyathi, against lice-disease; to smear them pounded on tumours; on a fresh bruise, the bark with honey; for the lethargic, to chew them as sharp as possible, and the seed roasted, then ground with honey, for asthmatics.

25| The same are of use against poisons, are hostile to horned vipers and scorpions (with hands rubbed with the radish itself or its seed you may handle them safely, and scorpions die when a radish is put on them), are salutary also against the poisons of mushrooms or henbane and, as Nicander relates, against the blood of a bull. Against mistletoe too, the two Apollodori direct them to be given, but the one of Citium the seed pounded in water, the one of Tarentum the juice. They likewise thin the spleen, benefit the liver and pains of the loins, and for dropsy taken in vinegar or mustard, and for lethargics and epileptics and melancholics.

26| Praxagoras thinks they should be given to those with ileus, Plistonicus also to those with coeliac trouble. They also heal ulcers of the intestines and the purulent conditions of the praecordia, if they are eaten with honey. Some for these prefer to cook them smeared with clay; thus women too are purged. Taken in vinegar and honey they draw out the animals of the intestines; the same, with a decoction of them boiled down to a third, drunk with wine, help those with rupture of the intestines; thus they draw out useless blood also.

27| Medius directs them, cooked, to be given for these purposes and to those spitting blood, and to women in childbirth for increasing the abundance of milk; Hippocrates says that falling of hair on the heads of women should be rubbed with radishes, and that they should be laid above the navel against torments of the womb. They bring scars back to the colour. The seed also, laid on in water, checks the ulcers which they call phagedaenae.

28| Democritus thinks that Venus is stimulated by this food, and for that reason some have handed down that perhaps it harms the voice. The leaves, those only that grow on the oblong ones, are said to rouse the keenness of the eyes. Where, however, a sharper remedy from radish has been applied, they order hyssop to be given at once; this is an antipathy. And they instil the juice of radish for heaviness of the ears. For to those about to vomit it is most useful as the last of the meal.

29| Similar to the parsnip is hibiscum, which they call molochen agrian and some pleistolocheia, which heals ulcers, cartilage and broken bones. Its leaves drunk in water loosen the bowels; they drive away serpents, and smeared on they heal the stings of bees, wasps and hornets. Its root, dug up before sunrise, they wrap in wool of the colour they call natural, and besides in that of a ewe which has borne a female lamb, and bind it on scrofulous swellings or suppurated ones. Some for this use think it should be dug up with gold, and care taken that it does not touch the ground. Celsus directs also for gouty pains that are without swelling that its root boiled in wine be applied.

30| The second kind is staphylinus, which they call the wild parsnip. Its seed, ground and drunk in wine, soothes a swollen belly and the suffocations of women and pains, to such a degree that it sets the wombs right. Smeared on with raisin wine, it would also benefit their belly; and for men too, ground with an equal portion of bread and drunk in wine, it would benefit against pains of the belly. It drives urine, and checks the phagedaenae of ulcers, laid on fresh with honey or sprinkled on as dry meal.

31| Its root Dieuches directs to be given in honeyed water against faults of the liver or spleen and loins and kidneys, Cleophantus also to those with long-standing dysentery. Philistio boils it in milk and gives four ounces of the root for strangury, in water for the dropsical, and similarly for those with opisthotonos and pleurisy and epilepsy. Those who have it are said not to be struck by serpents, or those who have tasted it beforehand not to be hurt; for the struck it is applied with lard. The leaves are chewed against indigestions.

32| Orpheus said there was a love-charm in staphylinus, perhaps since it is certain that Venus is stimulated by this food. For that reason some have handed down that conception is helped. For the rest the cultivated also is powerful, but the wild is more effective, and more so if born in stony places. The seed of the cultivated, too, against the stings of scorpions, in wine or posca, is salutary. Teeth scraped round with its root are freed from pain.

33| Syria, most laborious in gardens (at least in the proverb the Greeks have of the many greens of the Syrians), sows a herb very like staphylinus, which others call gingidion, only thinner and more bitter and of the same effect. It is eaten cooked and raw to the great benefit of the stomach; for it dries all its humours from deep within.

34| Wild siser is like the cultivated and in effect: it rouses the stomach, wipes away disgust when taken in vinegar flavoured with laserpicium, or in pepper and mead or in garum. It moves urine, as Ophion believes, and Venus. Diocles is of the same opinion; and besides, it suits the heart of convalescents or after many vomitings is exceedingly useful.

35| Heraclides gave it against quicksilver and against Venus repeatedly giving offence and to the sick recovering themselves. Hicesius said that for that reason it seemed useless to the stomach, since no one could keep on eating three siseres, but that it was nonetheless useful to convalescents passing to wine. The juice of the cultivated, specially, drunk with goat's milk, checks the bowels.

36| And since the likeness of Greek names confuses most people, we add also about sil [but this is common knowledge]. The best is the Massilian, for it has a broad and tawny grain; second the Ethiopian, darker; the Cretan is most sweetly scented of all. The root has a pleasant smell. Vultures too are said to eat the seed. It benefits a person for old cough, for ruptures and convulsions, drunk in white wine, likewise for those with opisthotonos and faults of the livers and griping and strangury, by the measure of two or three lingulae.

37| The leaves too are useful, for they help the births even of four-footed animals; on this hinds about to give birth are said to feed above all. They are also smeared on for sacred fire. And at the end of a meal it contributes much to digestion, whether in leaf or seed. It also checks the bowels of four-footed animals, whether ground and infused into a drink or given for chewing, recommended with salt. For diseases of oxen it is infused ground in this way.

38| Inula, too, chewed by those fasting, makes the teeth firm. If, as soon as it is dug up, it does not touch the ground, stored it mends cough; the juice of the boiled root drives out tapeworms, and the meal of it, dried in the shade, heals cough, convulsions, swellings and the windpipes. It drives away the bites of venomous creatures. The leaves in wine are smeared on for pain of the loins.

39| There are no wild onions. The cultivated cure dimness by smell itself and by the shedding of tears, but more by anointing with the juice. They are also reported to bring sleep and to heal ulcers of the mouth, chewed with bread, and dog bites, applied green with vinegar or dry with honey [….] and wine, so that they are loosened after the third day. So they heal chafings too. Many have laid it, cooked in ashes with barley meal, on discharges of the eyes and on ulcers of the genitals.

40| With the juice they have anointed both scars of the eyes and white spots and argema, and bites of serpents and all wounds with honey; likewise of the ears [….] with woman's milk, and in the same, correcting ringing or heaviness, they have dropped it in with goose fat or with honey. And they have given it to be drunk in water to those who suddenly lose their voice.

41| For pain too they have dropped it in for rinsing the teeth, and on the blows of all beasts, especially of scorpions. They have rubbed bald patches and itch-scabs with pounded onions. Cooked, they have given them to be eaten by those with dysentery and against pains of the loins; and the refuse of them, burned to ash, they smear on with vinegar for the bites of serpents, and the onions themselves in vinegar for the multipeda.

42| For the rest there is a wonderful diversity among physicians. The most recent said they were useless to the praecordia and to digestion and cause swelling and thirst. The school of Asclepiades said that a strong colour also is gained by this food and that, if people eat them daily on an empty stomach, firmness of health is preserved,

43| that they are useful to the stomach, soften the belly by agitation of the breath, open haemorrhoids when put in place of suppositories; that the juice with the juice of fennel works wonders against incipient dropsy, likewise against quinsies with that of rue and honey; that lethargics are roused by the same. (Varro is the authority that an onion pounded with salt and vinegar and dried is not attacked by little worms.)

44| Cutting leek checks flows of blood from the nostrils, when it is ground and the nostrils are stopped with it, or mixed with gall-nut or mint; likewise flows after miscarriage, the juice drunk. With woman's milk it cures even old cough and faults of the chest and lung. With the leaves smeared on are healed pimples and burns and epinyctides (so the ulcer is called which, and also syce, runs with constant moisture in the corner of the eye; some call by the same name pustules

45| that are livid and disturb the nights) and other ulcers, when pounded with honey, or the bites of beasts, with vinegar, likewise of serpents and other venomous creatures, and faults of the ears with goat's gall or an equal measure of mead, ringings with woman's milk, headaches, if it is poured into the nostrils of those about to sleep, or into the ears, two spoonfuls of juice, one of honey.

46| The juice is also drunk with unmixed wine against serpent and scorpion stings, and for pains of the loins, drunk with a hemina of wine. To those spitting blood and the consumptive and those with long catarrhs either the juice or food made of it itself is of benefit, likewise for the royal disease or the dropsical and for pains of the kidneys, with the juice of ptisan, by the measure of an acetabulum. The same measure with honey purges the wombs. It is eaten also against the poisons of mushrooms,

47| is laid on wounds, stimulates Venus, quenches thirst, dispels drunkenness, but is handed down as dulling the keenness of the eyes, and also as causing swellings, which however do not harm the stomach and soften the belly. It gives brightness to the voice.

48| The headed leek is stronger for the same effects. For those throwing up blood, its juice is given with gall-nut or meal of frankincense or acacia. Hippocrates directs it to be given without any other mixture too, and thinks that it opens contracted wombs, and that the fertility of women is even increased by this food. Pounded with honey it cleans ulcers.

49| It heals cough and catarrhs of the chest, and faults of the lung and windpipe, given in a sip of ptisan or raw, apart from the heads, without bread, so that it is taken on alternate days, or if pus is coughed up. So too it contributes much to voice and to Venus and to sleep. The heads, boiled twice with the water changed, soften the bowels [….] checks old fluxes; the bark boiled and smeared on dyes grey hairs.

50| Garlic has great power, great uses against changes of waters and places. It drives away serpents and scorpions by its smell and, as some have handed down, all beasts. It cures stings, by drink or food or smearing, especially against the haemorrhois, taken with wine and brought up by vomiting. And, lest we be surprised that it prevails against the venomous bites of shrew-mice, it overcomes aconite, which by another name is called pardalianches, likewise hyoscyamus, and bites of dogs, on which wounds it is laid with honey.

51| Against the stings of serpents, indeed, roasted with its own stems it is smeared on most effectively with oil, and on rubbed parts of the body, or if they have swollen into blisters. Hippocrates holds that, by fumigation with it, the afterbirth is drawn out; with its ash and oil he restores running ulcers of the head to health. For asthmatics some have given it cooked, some raw;

52| Diocles gave it to the dropsical with centaury or in a double fig to empty the bowels, which it does more effectively green, with coriander drunk in unmixed wine; to asthmatics some have given it also pounded in milk. Praxagoras mixed it with wine against the royal disease and against ileus in oil and porridge, smearing it thus on scrofulous swellings too. The ancients gave it raw even to the insane, Diocles boiled to the frenzied. Against quinsies, pounded in posca, to gargle is of benefit.

53| Toothache it lessens, three heads pounded in vinegar, or if the teeth are rinsed with the water they were boiled in and the garlic itself is put in the hollows of the teeth. The juice with goose fat is dropped also into the ears. Lice-disease and scurf it restrains, drunk, and likewise infused with vinegar and nitre; catarrhs, cooked with milk or pounded or mixed with soft cheese, in which way it also lessens hoarseness, or in a sip of pea or bean.

54| On the whole, however, cooked is more useful than raw, and boiled than roasted; so it contributes more to the voice. Tapeworms and the other animals of the inner parts it drives out, cooked in vinegar and honey; for tenesmus it heals in porridge; for pains of the temples it is smeared on boiled, and on pustules cooked, then pounded with honey; for cough, boiled with old fat or with milk or, if blood is also coughed up or pus, roasted under embers and taken with an equal measure of honey; for convulsions and ruptures with salt and oil. Likewise with fat it heals suspected tumours.

55| It draws out the faults of fistulas with sulphur and resin, and reeds with pitch; leprous sores, lichens and freckles it ulcerates and heals with origanum, or its ash smeared on with oil and garum; so too sacred fires; bruises or livid marks it brings back to colour, burned, with honey.

56| They believe also that the falling sickness is healed, if one uses it in food and drink; that it drives out quartan fevers too, one head drunk with an obol of laserpicium in austere wine, (cough, and in another way whatever suppurations of the chest, it heals, boiled in with split beans and so taken in food until it restores health. It also induces sleep, and

57| in general gives redder bodies) that it also stimulates Venus, pounded with green coriander and drunk in unmixed wine. Its faults are that it dulls the eyes, causes swellings, harms the stomach if taken in quantity, and produces thirst. For the rest, mixed with spelt in food, it benefits even poultry against phlegm. They hand down that beasts of burden pass urine and are not tormented if the genital part is touched with it pounded.

58| The first kind of lettuce growing wild is the one they call goat lettuce, by which fish are killed at once if it is thrown into the sea, those that are nearby. Its milk, thickened and then put in vinegar to the weight of two obols, with one cyathus of water added, is given to the dropsical. With stalk and leaves pounded, salt sprinkled on, cut sinews are healed. The same, pounded in vinegar and used as a rinse in the mornings twice a month, prevents toothache.

59| The second kind is what the Greeks call caesapon. Its leaves, pounded and smeared on with polenta, cure ulcers. These grow in the fields; the third kind, growing in woods, they call isatis. Its leaves, pounded with polenta, benefit wounds. The fourth the dyers of wool use. It was like the wild lapathum in leaves, except that it had more and darker. It checks blood, heals phagedaenae and putrefying ulcers or those that creep, likewise swellings before suppuration, and sacred fire, by the root or the leaves. It is of benefit also for the spleen, drunk. These are the properties of each.

60| Common to the wild-growing kinds, however, are whiteness, a stalk sometimes the length of a cubit, and roughness in the thyrsus and leaves. Of these the one having round and short leaves some call hieracion, since hawks, by scratching it and bathing their eyes with its juice, dispel dimness when they have felt it.

61| The juice in all is white, and in powers too like the poppy; it is gathered at harvest time by cutting the stalk, stored in a new earthen vessel, excellent for many things. It heals all faults of the eyes with woman's milk, argema, little clouds, scars and all burnings, especially dimness. It is laid also on the eyes in wool against discharges.

62| The same juice purges the bowels, drunk in posca to two obols. It cures the stings of serpents drunk in wine. And the leaves and thyrsi, pounded, are drunk in vinegar, smeared on a wound, most against the stings of scorpions, but against phalangia mixed with wine and vinegar.

63| They resist other poisons too, except those which kill by strangling or those that harm the bladder, and also except psimithium. They are laid on the belly with honey and vinegar to draw out faults of the bowels. The juice mends difficulties of urine. Crateuas directs it to be given also to the dropsical, two obols in vinegar and a cyathus of wine.

64| Some collect a juice also from the cultivated kinds, less effective. The peculiar effects of these (besides those already told, of causing sleep and checking Venus, cooling heat, purging the stomach, increasing blood) are not few that remain, since they both disperse swellings and make belching gentle, help digestion, and themselves never cause indigestion. And nothing in food both rouses and checks appetite more; in either case the cause is quantity: so in greater amounts they loosen the bowels, in moderate they check them.

65| They break up sluggishness of phlegm and, as some have handed down, clear the senses, and are most useful to relaxed stomachs. They are helped for these uses by oxyporum in obols, tempering the harshness by sweetness added to a dip of vinegar, if the phlegm is thicker, with scillites or wine of absinthium, and if cough is also felt, with hyssopites mixed in. They are given to those with coeliac trouble with wild intubum and for hardness of the praecordia.

66| The white are given in greater quantity also to melancholics and for faults of the bladder. Praxagoras gave them also to those with dysentery. They help burns too when fresh, before blisters form, smeared on with salt. They also restrain ulcers that creep, at the start with aphronitrum, then in wine. Pounded, they are smeared on sacred fire. Their stalks, pounded with polenta in cold water, soothe convulsions and dislocations, and eruptions of pimples with wine and polenta.

67| In cholera, too, they gave them cooked in dishes, for which those with the largest stalk and the bitter are most useful. Some infuse them with milk too. These stalks, boiled up, are handed down as very useful also for the stomach, as for sleep the summer lettuce especially, and the bitter and the milky one, which we have called meconis. It is prescribed that this milk, with woman's milk, is most useful for clearness of the eyes, provided the eyes are anointed when the head is ripe, and for faults produced in them by cold. I find other wonderful praises too:

68| that it benefits faults of the chest no less than habrotonum with Attic honey; that women also are purged by this food; that the seed of the cultivated kinds is given against scorpions; that by the seed pounded and drunk in wine even the imaginings of desires in sleep are restrained; that waters that upset the system do no harm to those who eat lettuce. Some, however, have handed down that eating it more frequently impairs the clearness of the eyes.

69| Nor is either beet without remedies: whether white or black, the root, fresh and moistened and hung from a cord, is said to be effective against the bites of serpents; white beet cooked and taken with raw garlic, against tapeworms; roots of the black boiled in water remove scurf, and on the whole the black is handed down as the more effective. Its juice soothes old headaches and dizziness, and likewise ringing of the ears when infused into them.

70| It moves urine, cures dysentery when injected, and the royal disease, and soothes pains of the teeth. The juice smeared on avails also against the stings of serpents, but this only when pressed out of the root. The boiled beet itself meets chilblains. The white soothes discharges of the eyes, smeared on the brow; with a little alum mixed in, pounded without oil, it soothes sacred fire.

71| So too it cures burns. And against eruptions of pimples, and the same cooked, it is smeared on ulcers that creep, and raw on bald patches and on ulcers which run on the head. Its juice with honey put into the nostrils purges the head. It is cooked also with lentil, vinegar being added, to soften the belly. Cooked more strongly, it checks fluxes of the stomach and belly.

72| There is also a wild beet which they call limonium, others neuroides, with much smaller leaves, thinner and denser; often eleven to a single stalk. Its leaves, useful for burns, draw together the mouth of those who taste them. The seed, by the measure of an acetabulum, benefits those with dysentery. The water in which a beet root has been boiled, they say, takes out stains from garments, and likewise from parchments.

73| Intubi too are not outside remedies. Their juice with oil of roses and vinegar soothes headaches, and the same drunk with wine, those of the liver and bladder; and it is laid on discharges of the eyes. The wild kind some among us have called ambubaia. In Egypt they call cichorium the wild, but the cultivated serim, which is smaller and more veined.

74| Cichorium cools, taken in food or smeared on collections of matter; the juice of it boiled loosens the belly, benefits the liver and kidneys and stomach. Likewise, if it is boiled in vinegar, it dispels gripings of the urine, and the royal disease in mead, if without fever. It helps the bladder. For the purgings of women a decoction in water is of so much benefit that it draws out dead births. The Magi add that those anointed with the juice of the whole plant with oil become more favoured and obtain more easily what they wish. Because of its singular wholesomeness some even call the same plant chreston, others pancration.

75| There is also a second wild kind (they call it hedypnois), of broader leaf. It draws together a relaxed stomach when cooked, and raw checks the bowels. It benefits also those with dysentery, more so with lentil. Ruptures and convulsions are helped by either kind, likewise those from whom seed flows away through disease of health. Seris too itself,

76| very like lettuce, is of two wild kinds: the better is the black and summer, the worse the winter and whiter. Both are bitter, most useful for the stomach; in food with vinegar they cool especially one whom moisture troubles, or smeared on, and they disperse other ailments than those of the stomach.

77| With polenta the roots of the wild kinds are sipped for the stomach's sake, and are smeared on the cardiacs over the left breast, with vinegar. All of these are useful to those with gout and to those spitting blood, likewise to those from whom seed flows away, drunk on alternate days. Petronius Diodotus, who wrote the anthologoumena, condemned seris altogether, arguing against it in many ways, but the opinion of all others stands against him.

78| The praises of cabbage are long to follow out, since both the physician Chrysippus has dedicated a volume to it specially, arranged by the single members of the human body, and Dieuches, and before all Pythagoras, and Cato has celebrated it no more sparingly; it is fitting to follow his opinion all the more carefully, that it may be known what medicine the Roman people used for 600 years.

79| The Greeks of the oldest time divided it into three species: the curled, which they called selinas from the likeness to the leaves of celery, useful to the stomach, softening the bowels moderately; the second helia, with broad leaves coming out from the stalk, whence some have called it caulodes, of no weight in medicine. The third is properly called crambe, with thinner leaves, simple and very dense, more bitter, but most effective.

80| Cato approves the curled most, then the smooth with large leaves and a large stalk. He relates that it benefits headaches, dimness of the eyes and sparkling before them, the stomach and the praecordia, raw with vinegar and honey, with coriander, rue, mint and a little root of laser, taken in two acetabula in the morning, and that the power is so great that one who pounds these feels himself become stronger.

81| So either pounded with these to be sipped or taken as a dip from this; for gout, however, and diseases of the joints to be smeared on with rue and coriander and a grain of salt and barley meal; the water of its boiling also, he says, helps sinews and joints wonderfully, if they are bathed in it. Wounds both fresh and old, even cancers which can be healed by no other medicines, he orders to be first bathed in hot water and the cabbage, pounded, laid on twice a day.

82| So too fistulas and dislocations and swellings, which it is needful either to draw out or to disperse. It removes sleeplessness and wakefulness also, boiled, if those fasting eat as much as possible with oil and salt; griping, if the boiled cabbage is boiled again, with oil, salt, cumin and polenta added. If it is taken thus without bread, it will do more good. Among the rest, bile is drawn off, drunk through black wine.

83| Nay, he even orders the urine of one who has eaten cabbage regularly to be kept, and says that, warmed, it is a remedy for the sinews. I shall add his own words to express his meaning: little boys, if you wash them in that urine, never become weak. For the ears also he advises that cabbage juice in wine be dropped in lukewarm, and he asserts that this benefits even slowness of hearing, and that impetigo is healed by the same without ulcer.

84| The opinions of the Greeks too it is fitting now to set down, for Cato's sake, only in those matters which he passed over. They think that when not thoroughly cooked it draws off bile, and likewise loosens the bowels, and the same cooked twice checks them. That it is hostile to wine as an enemy of the vine, drunkenness being guarded against if it is eaten beforehand, and a hangover dispelled if taken afterward.

85| That this food contributes much to clearness of the eyes, and the juice of the raw, even if only the corners are touched, with Attic honey very much. That it is digested most easily, and the senses are cleared by this food. The school of Erasistratus proclaims that nothing is more useful to the stomach and sinews, and therefore directs it to be given to the paralytic and the tremulous and to those spitting blood.

86| Hippocrates gives it to coeliacs and those with dysentery cooked twice with salt, likewise for tenesmus and on account of the kidneys, judging also that an abundance of milk comes to women in childbirth from this food, and purgation to women. A raw stalk, if chewed, drives out even dead births. Apollodorus holds that against the poisons of mushrooms the seed or the juice is to be drunk, Philistion for those with opisthotonos the juice with goat's milk, salt and honey.

87| I find also that people were freed from gout by eating it and by drinking the broth of the boiled; this given also to cardiacs and for epileptic diseases with salt added, likewise to splenics in white wine for 40 days, and to the jaundiced, and also to the frenzied. For the hoarse he shows that the juice of the raw is to be gargled and drunk, but against hiccups it is with coriander and dill and honey and pepper in vinegar.

88| Smeared on, it benefits swellings of the stomach too, likewise the stings of serpents and foul ulcers and old ones, or the water itself with barley meal, the juice with vinegar or with Greek hay. So some lay it also on joints and gouty feet. It relieves epinyctides and whatever else creeps over the body, laid on, likewise sudden dimness of sight, and this also if it is chewed with vinegar; bruises and other livid marks it heals smeared on pure, leprous sores and itch-scabs with round alum in vinegar.

89| So it also holds fast falling hair. Epicharmus says it is most usefully laid on for the ailments of the testicles and genitals, more effectively the same with bean, pounded, likewise on convulsions, with rue against the burnings of fevers and faults of the stomach, with seed of rue against the afterbirth and the bites of the shrew-mouse. The meal of the dried leaves empties from either part.

90| Of all kinds of cabbage the sweetest is the cyma, but it is held useless, hard in cooking and contrary to the kidneys. This also is not to be omitted, that the water of the boiled, praised for so many uses, stinks when poured out on the ground. The ash of the dried stalks of cabbage is counted among caustics, for pains of the hips, with old fat, and with laser and vinegar among the psilotra: smeared on after hairs have been plucked, it prevents others from growing.

91| It is drunk also with oil, lightly heated, or boiled by itself for convulsions and ruptures within and for one who has fallen from a height. Are there then no charges against cabbage? Nay, among the same people it is said to cause heaviness of breath and to harm teeth and gums. And in Egypt, on account of its bitterness, it is not eaten.

92| Cato praises the wild or straying kind as of immensely more effect, so much so that he affirms that when its dried meal is collected in a little scent-bottle, or even when the smell alone is drawn into the nostrils, faults of the nostrils and a bad smell are healed. Others call this petraea, most hostile to wine, which the vine especially flees from or, if it cannot flee, dies.

93| It has thin leaves, round, small, smooth, more like the plants of the vegetable, the cultivated being whiter and more hairy. Chrysippus is the authority that this heals swellings, and melancholics too, and fresh wounds with honey, so that it is not loosened before the seventh day, and scrofulous swellings and fistulas, ground in water. Others say it restrains ailments of the body that creep (they call them nomae), and removes excrescences,

94| reduces scars to a level, takes away ulcers of the mouth and tonsils, chewed and boiled, the juice gargled with honey, likewise itch-scabs and old leprous sores, with three parts of itself and two of alum smeared on in sharp vinegar. Epicharmus says it is enough for it to be laid on against the bite of a rabid dog; better if with laser and sharp vinegar; that dogs too are killed by it if it is given in meat. Its seed, roasted, helps against serpents, mushrooms, the blood of a bull.

95| The leaves, cooked and given to splenics in food, and raw smeared on with sulphur and nitre, benefit, likewise hardness of the breasts. The ash of the roots cures the uvula swelling in the throat by touch, and smeared on with honey checks the parotid swellings, and heals the bites of serpents. Of the powers of cabbage we shall add one great and marvellous proof: crusts take hold inside all vessels in which water boils, so that it is impossible to tear them off; if cabbage is boiled in them, they come away.

96| Among the wild cabbages there is also lapsana, a foot in height, with hairy leaves, like mustard, were it not whiter in flower. It is cooked in food, and softens the bowels gently. Sea cabbage moves the bowels most violently of all. It is cooked, on account of its sharpness, with fat meat, and is most hostile to the stomach.

97| Of squills, in medicine the white, and the female black; the whitest will be the most useful. From this, when the dry coats have been torn away, what remains of the living part is cut up and hung on a line at moderate intervals. Afterward the dried pieces are sunk in a jar of the sharpest vinegar, hanging so as not to touch the vessel at any part.

98| Then the jar, smeared with gypsum, is placed under tiles that receive the sun for the whole day. This is done before the solstice, for 48 days. After that number of days the vessel is taken up, the squill is removed, the vinegar is poured off. This makes the keenness of the eyes clearer; it is salutary for the stomach, and for pains of the sides, taken fasting. But so great is its power that, drunk too eagerly, it presents the appearance of one whose breath is extinguished for some moment.

99| It benefits gums and teeth too, even chewed by itself. It drives out tapeworms and the other animals of the belly, taken in vinegar and honey. Placed fresh under the tongue it also secures that the dropsical do not thirst. It is cooked in many ways: in a pot which is thrown into an oven or furnace, either smeared with fat or clay, or in pieces in dishes.

100| And raw it is dried, then cut up and cooked in vinegar, when it is laid on the stings of serpents. Roasted too it is cleaned and its middle boiled again in water. The use of it so cooked is for the dropsical, for moving urine, drunk to three obols with honey and vinegar, likewise for splenics and for the stomachic, if they feel no ulcer, in whom food floats, for griping, for the royal diseases, for old cough with panting.

101| It disperses scrofulous swellings with its leaves, loosened on every fourth day; scurf of the head and running ulcers it heals, smeared on, cooked in oil. It is cooked also in honey for the sake of food, chiefly to bring about digestion. So too it purges the inner parts. It heals cracks of the feet, cooked in oil and mixed with resin. Its seed is laid with honey on pain of the loins. Pythagoras relates that a squill hung even on the threshold of the door has power against the entrance of evil drugs.

102| The other bulbs in vinegar and sulphur heal ulcers in the face, but pounded by themselves, contraction of sinews, and with wine scurf, with honey the bites of dogs; Erasistratus is pleased with pitch. The same writer relates that, smeared on with honey, they check blood. Others, if it flows from the nostrils, add coriander and meal.

103| Theodorus also cures lichens with bulbs in vinegar, eruptions on the head with austere wine or egg. And the same smears bulbs on discharges of the eyes, and the middle of them on dry soreness of the eyes. The red bulbs especially, smeared on in the sun with honey and nitre, mend faults in the face, and freckles with wine or with vinegar. They benefit wounds too, wonderfully, by themselves or, as Damion says, in mead, if they are loosened on the fifth day.

104| With the same he cures also broken ears and the phlegm of the testicles; for pains of the joints he mixes meal too. Boiled in wine and smeared on the belly, they soften hardness of the praecordia. To those with dysentery they are given tempered in wine with rain water, for convulsions within with silphium in pills of the size of a bean. For sweating, pounded, they are smeared on. Useful to the sinews, and therefore given also to the paralytic.

105| Dislocations in the feet they heal very quickly, of these the red ones, with honey and salt. The Megarian most stimulate Venus; the garden kind, taken with boiled must or raisin wine, help birth; the wild soothe blows and faults of the inner parts, swallowed in pills with silphium. The seed of those is drunk in wine against phalangia.

106| The bulbs themselves are smeared on in vinegar against the stings of serpents. The seed the ancients gave to be drunk by the insane. The flower of bulbs, pounded, mends spots and variegations of the legs made by fire. Diocles thinks the eyes are dulled by them. He adds that boiled ones are less useful than roasted, and that they are hard to digest, from the force of the nature of each.

107| Bolbine the Greeks call a herb with leek-like leaves and a reddish bulb. It is handed down as wonderfully useful for wounds, only fresh ones. The bulb which they call vomitorium from its effect has black leaves, longer than the rest.

108| Among foods most useful to the stomach, asparagus is handed down. With cumin indeed added they disperse swellings of the stomach and colon, the same bring clearness to the eyes, soften the belly gently, benefit pains of the chest and spine and faults of the intestines, wine being added when they are cooked. For pains of the loins and kidneys the seed is drunk in the weight of three obols, with an equal amount of cumin. They stimulate Venus, and move urine very usefully,

109| except in an ulcerated bladder; the root also, by the declaration of very many. Pounded and drunk in white wine it also drives out stones, and soothes pains of the loins and kidneys. Some give the root also with sweet wine for pain of the womb. The same boiled in vinegar profits against elephantiasis. Anointed with asparagus pounded in oil, one is said not to be stung by bees.

110| Wild asparagus some call Libyan, the Attic writers horminon. Its power is more effective for all the above, and greater in the whiter. They reduce the royal disease. For the sake of Venus they direct the water of their boiling to be drunk to a hemina. The seed is equally powerful with dill, three obols of each. The boiled juice is also administered for serpent stings; the root is mixed with the root of marathrum among the most effective helps.

111| If blood is passed through the urine, Chrysippus directs the seed of both asparagus and celery and cumin to be given, three obols each, in two cyathi of wine. But he teaches that this is contrary to the dropsical, though it moves urine, and likewise to Venus, and to the bladder too unless boiled; and that if this water is given to dogs, they are killed. The juice of the root when it has been boiled down in wine cures the teeth, if it is held in the mouth.

112| Celery is popular. For its sprigs float in drinks of milk throughout the countryside and have a peculiar charm in seasonings. Besides, smeared on the eyes with honey, so that they are bathed repeatedly with the hot juice of its boiling, and for discharges of the other parts, pounded by itself or laid on with bread or polenta, it helps wonderfully. Fish too, if they sicken in fishponds, are revived with green celery.

113| But among the learned no other thing dug out of the earth is subject to greater variety of opinions. It is distinguished by sex. Chrysippus says that the female has more curled and hard leaves, a thick stalk, a sharp and fiery flavour; Dionysius [….] blacker, short, of root [….], producing little worms; both say that neither is to be admitted to meals, nay that it is altogether forbidden, for it is dedicated to the funeral feasts of the dead (it is also hostile to clearness of sight) [that little worms are produced in the stalk of the female] and that those

114| who have eaten it become sterile, males or females; that in childbed, however, from this food those who suck the breasts become epileptic; the male is nevertheless the more harmless. And this is the reason that the shrub is not to be condemned among the unlawful things. It softens hardness of the breasts when the leaves are laid on.

115| Boiled in a drink it gives sweeter waters. With the juice especially of the root in wine it eases pains of the loins, and dropped in by the same method, heaviness of the ears. With the seed it moves urine, the monthly courses and the afterbirth, and if the parts are bathed in the seed boiled. Bruises it restores to colour smeared on with egg white. Boiled in water and drunk it cures the kidneys; pounded in cold water, ulcers of the mouth. The seed with wine or the root with old wine breaks stones of the bladder. The seed is given also to the jaundiced in white wine.

116| Apiastrum Hyginus calls melissophyllum, but it is under admitted condemnation as poisonous in Sardinia. For all the things that hang from the same name among the Greeks must be woven together.

117| Olusatrum, which they call hipposelinum, is hostile to scorpions. Its seed, drunk, cures griping and the inner parts; likewise for difficulties of urine its seed boiled and drunk in mead. The root boiled in wine drives out stones and pains of the loins and side. Drunk and smeared on, it cures the bites of a rabid dog. Its juice drunk warms those who are cold. A fourth kind from the same some make oreoselinum, a palm high, a straight shrub, with seed like cumin, effective for urine and the monthly courses. Heleoselinum has a peculiar power against spiders; with it and oreoselinum women are purged in wine.

118| In another kind some give the name petroselinum to that born on rocks, outstanding for abscesses, two spoonfuls of the juice being added to a cyathus of the juice of marrubium and then to three cyathi of hot water. Some have added buselinum, differing in the shortness of its stalk from the cultivated and in the red colour of its root, of the same effect, to prevail against serpents drunk and smeared on.

119| Basil also Chrysippus sharply attacked as useless to the stomach, to urine, to clearness of the eyes too, and besides as causing madness and lethargies and faults of the liver, and for that reason that goats refuse it, judging that men also should avoid it. Some add that pounded, if covered with a stone, it generates a scorpion, and chewed and placed in the sun, worms;

120| the Africans indeed say that if anyone is struck by a scorpion on the day he has eaten basil, he cannot be saved. Nay more, some relate that if a handful of basil is pounded with 10 sea or river crabs, all the scorpions from near by gather to it. Diodorus in the empirics says that basil as food even produces lice.

121| The following age keenly defended it, for it is the goats' food, and no one's mind was disturbed, and it heals the stings of land scorpions and the poisons of sea ones in wine with a little vinegar added. It has also been found by use that the smell, with vinegar, is salutary to those who faint, likewise to lethargics and the inflamed by cooling, and smeared on for headaches with oil of roses or myrtle and vinegar, and likewise laid on discharges of the eyes in wine.

122| It is useful also for the stomach, taken in vinegar to dissolve swellings by belching, laid on to check the bowels, to move urine; thus it benefits the royal disease and the dropsical, and in cholera too catarrhs of the stomach are restrained. Hence Philistio also gave it to coeliacs and cooked to those with dysentery, and against [….] Plistonicus, some also in tenesmus and to those spitting blood in wine, and for hardness of the praecordia. It is smeared on the breasts and empties the coming of milk.

123| Most useful for the ears of infants, especially with goose fat. The seed, pounded and drawn into the nostrils, restrains sneezing and also catarrhs of the head when smeared on; it purges the wombs in food with vinegar. Warts it removes, mixed with shoemakers' black. It stimulates Venus, and therefore is even given to horses and asses at the time of covering.

124| The wild basil has more effective power for all the same things, peculiar for faults contracted by frequent vomiting, and abscesses of the womb; against the bites of beasts, in wine, the root is most effective.

125| The seed of rocket cures the poisons of scorpions and of the shrew-mouse, keeps off all little animals that are born on the body, mends faults of the skin in the face smeared on with honey, freckles with vinegar, and brings black scars back to whiteness with ox gall. They say that, drunk in wine, it puts into those about to undergo flogging a certain hardness of feeling against it.

126| In seasoning dishes its pleasantness is so great that the Greeks called it euzomon. They think that, if the eyes are bathed with rocket ground fine, clearness is restored, [….] cough of infants is soothed. Its root boiled in water draws out broken bones [….] (for we have spoken of stimulating Venus) three leaves of wild rocket picked by the left hand and pounded in honeyed water, if they are drunk.

127| On the contrary, cress checks Venus and sharpens the mind, as we have said. There are two kinds of it. It purges the bowels, draws off bile, drunk to the weight of X in 7 of water; for scrofulous swellings, smeared on with lomentum and covered with cabbage, it cures admirably. The second is blacker, which purges faults of the head [and clears the sight], calms disturbed minds taken in vinegar, and the spleen drunk in wine or taken with a fig, and cough, in honey, if they take it daily fasting.

128| The seed in wine drives out all the animals of the intestines, more effectively with mentastrum added. It benefits also against panting and cough, with origanum and sweet wine, and for pains of the chest boiled in goat's milk. It disperses pani with pitch, and draws out stings and spots from the body smeared on in vinegar; against cancers the white of eggs is added.

129| And it is smeared on the spleen in vinegar, and on infants most usefully in honey. Sextius adds that burned it puts serpents to flight, resists scorpions, ground relieves headaches, bald patches are mended when mustard is added, heaviness of the ears with it ground and laid in the ears with a fig, toothaches with the juice poured into the ears, scurf and ulcers of the head with goose fat. It ripens boils with leaven.

130| It brings carbuncles to suppuration and breaks them, cleans the phagedaenae of ulcers with honey. It is smeared on hips and loins with polenta in vinegar, likewise on lichen, on rough nails, since its nature is caustic. The best is the Babylonian; the wild has greater effect for all these.

131| Rue is among the foremost medicines. The cultivated has broader leaves, bushier branches; the wild is rough and for effect is sharper in all respects. The juice is pressed from the pounded plant with a little water sprinkled on and is kept in a Cyprian box. This, given in larger quantity, has the harmfulness of poison, in Macedonia especially near the river Haliacmon; and it is marvellous that it is extinguished by the juice of hemlock: so much are there even poisons of poisons.

132| The juice of hemlock benefits also the hands of those gathering rue. Otherwise it is mixed among the first of antidotes, especially the Galatian; but any rue even by itself serves as an antidote, the leaves pounded and taken in wine, against aconite especially and mistletoe, likewise mushrooms, whether it is given in drink or in food; in a like manner against the stings of serpents, since weasels about to fight them fortify themselves beforehand by eating rue.

133| They are strong also against the stings of scorpions and spiders, bees, hornets, wasps, and cantharides and salamanders, or the bites of a rabid dog. The juice is drunk in wine by the measure of an acetabulum, and the leaves, pounded or chewed, are applied with honey and salt, or with vinegar and pitch after boiling. They say that people anointed with the juice, and even those who have it, are not struck by these maleficent creatures, and that serpents flee the smell if rue is burned.

134| Most effective, however, is the root of the wild, taken in wine; they add that the same is more effective drunk in the open air. Pythagoras distinguished in this too the male, with smaller leaves of herb colour, from the female, which has more luxuriant leaves and colour. He thought it also harmful to the eyes; false, since engravers and painters use it as food for the sake of the eyes, with bread or cress, and wild goats too for sight, as they say.

135| Many, anointed with its juice with Attic honey, have dispersed dimness, or with the milk of a woman who has borne a male child, or with pure juice touching the corners of the eyes. Smeared on with polenta it soothes discharges; likewise headaches, drunk with wine or with vinegar and smeared on with oil of roses; if it is truly a cephalaea, with barley meal and vinegar. The same disperses indigestions, soon also swellings and old pains of the stomach.

136| It opens wombs and sets right those turned over, smeared in honey over the whole belly and chest; for the dropsical with fig, and boiled to the half parts and drunk in wine. It is drunk thus also for pains of the chest and of the sides and loins, coughs, panting, faults of the lungs, liver and kidneys, cold shiverings, heaviness from a hangover. The leaves are boiled for those about to drink; and in food, whether raw or boiled or preserved, it is beneficial; likewise for griping boiled in hyssop and drunk with wine.

137| So it also checks blood within, and put into the nostrils for it; so too it benefits when the teeth are rinsed. Into the ears also in pain the juice is poured, care being taken, as we have said, over the dose in the case of the wild kind, but against slowness of hearing and ringing, with oil of roses or with laurel oil or with wine and honey.

138| The juice of the pounded plant in vinegar is dropped also on the temples and brain of the frenzied. Some have added serpyllum and laurel, smearing heads and necks. They gave it to lethargics in vinegar to smell, and to epileptics to drink, the juice of the boiled in 4 cyathi; before attacks of which the chill is intolerable, and to those sensitive to cold also raw in food.

139| It drives urine also, even bloody, and the purgings of women and the afterbirths and already dead births, as Hippocrates thinks, drunk in sweet black wine. Therefore he orders it smeared on and also fumigated for the sake of the wombs. Diocles lays it on cardiacs too in vinegar and honey with barley meal, and against ileus the meal boiled in oil and gathered up in fleeces. Many indeed think that against purulent expectorations two drachmas of the dried plant should be taken, and one and a half of sulphur, and against bloody ones 3 sprigs boiled in wine.

140| It is given also to those with dysentery, ground with cheese in wine. They have given it too, crushed with bitumen, in a drink for shortness of breath, to those who have fallen from a height: 3 ounces of the seed, a pound of oil and a sextarius of wine. It is smeared on, with the leaves boiled in oil, on parts which cold has scorched. If it moves urine, as Hippocrates thinks, it is strange that some give it in a drink as checking it, against incontinence of urine.

141| Itch-scabs and leprous sores it mends smeared on with honey and alum, likewise vitiligines, warts, scrofulous swellings and the like, with trychnos and pig's fat and bull's suet; sacred fire, with vinegar and oil or psimithium; a carbuncle, with vinegar; some direct laserpicium to be smeared on along with it, without which they cure epinyctides and pustules. They lay it on swollen breasts, boiled, and on eruptions of phlegm with wax, and on discharges of the testicles with tender sprigs of laurel,

142| with so peculiar an effect on these organs that they report that, with wild rue and old lard, ruptures are healed when smeared on, and broken limbs when the seed, pounded with wax, is laid on. The root of rue, smeared on, mends blood suffused in the eyes and scars or spots over the whole body. Of the other things that are handed down, it is strange, since it is agreed that the nature of rue is hot, that a bundle of it boiled in oil of roses, with an ounce of aloes added, checks sweat in those anointed with it, and that generation too is hindered by this food.

143| For that reason it is given in a flow of seed, and to those who often imagine Venus in dreams. Pregnant women must be warned to abstain from this food, for I find that births are killed. The same, of all cultivated plants, is also in the greatest use for the diseases of four-footed animals, whether for those breathing with difficulty or against the stings of maleficent animals, infused through the nostrils in wine or, if they have swallowed a leech, in vinegar, and in any similar kind of disease, tempered as in man.

144| Mentastrum is a wild mint, differing in the appearance of its leaves, which are in the shape of basil, with the smell of pulegium, because of which some call it wild pulegium. By chewing these and laying them on, elephantiasis was found to be healed, in the age of Pompey the Great, by the chance experiment of a certain man, who smeared his face for shame.

145| The same are smeared on and drunk against the stings of serpents, two drachmas in two cyathi of wine, against those of scorpions with salt, oil and vinegar, likewise against scolopendras the broth of the boiled plant. Against all poisons the dried leaves are kept like meal. Strewn beneath or burned, it puts even scorpions to flight.

146| Drunk, it purges women, but kills births. It is most effective for ruptures, convulsions, orthopnoea, griping, cholera, likewise laid on the loins and in gout. The juice is dropped into ears that have worms. In the royal disease it is drunk, on scrofulous swellings it is smeared, it checks dreams of Venus, drives out tapeworms drunk in vinegar, and against scurf it is poured on the head in vinegar in the sun.

147| The smell of mint itself rouses the mind and its flavour appetite in food, and therefore it is familiar in the mixtures of embammata. It does not allow milk to turn sour or to curdle or be thickened; therefore it is added to drinks of milk, and given in water or mead to those who are being choked by a drink of coagulated milk. By the same power it is believed to resist generation too, by preventing the genitals from thickening.

148| Equally in males and females it checks blood, and checks the purgings of women, and drunk in water with starch, the attacks of coeliacs. Smeared on, it cures ulceration and abscesses of the womb, faults of the liver in three obols given in mead, likewise for those spitting blood in a sip of broth. Ulcers on the head of infants it heals wonderfully,

149| dries moist windpipes, draws together dry ones, purges corrupted phlegm in mead and water. Useful to the voice by its juice, only in a contest, and the juice is also gargled when the uvula is swollen, with rue and coriander added in milk; useful also against the tonsils with alum, for a rough tongue with honey, and by itself for convulsions within and faults of the lung. It checks hiccups and vomitings with the juice of pomegranate, as Democritus shows.

150| The juice of the fresh plant, drawn up by the breath, mends faults of the nostrils; the plant itself pounded, drunk in vinegar, checks cholera, fluxes of blood within, and ileus also when laid on with polenta, and if the breasts are tense. It is smeared on the temples in headache, and is taken against scolopendras and sea scorpions and for serpents. It is smeared on discharges of the eyes and on all eruptions on the head, likewise on faults of the seat.

151| It prevents chafing too, or if only held in the hand. It is dropped into the ears with mead. They say also that it cures the spleen when tasted in the garden, in such a way that it is not plucked, if the person who bites it says that he is curing the spleen, for 8 days; and the meal of the dried, taken up in three fingers, soothes pain of the stomach in water and, sprinkled in the same way in a drink, drives out the animals of the belly.

152| Great is the fellowship with it of pulegium for reviving those faint at heart, both with their sprigs thrown into glass flasks of vinegar. For which reason Varro declared a crown of pulegium more worthy of our bedrooms than one of roses; for even laid on it is said to relieve headaches, and moreover by its smell to protect the head against the injury of cold and heat and, it is handed down, from thirst, and those who in the sun have two sprigs of pulegium laid on their ears are not overheated.

153| It is smeared on also in pains with polenta and vinegar, the female more effectively. This one has a purple flower; the male has a white. Likewise nausea it checks, drunk with salt and polenta in cold water; so too pain of the chest, and of the stomach in water. It checks gnawings and vomitings likewise with vinegar and polenta, and loosens the bowels with salt and vinegar and polenta. Faults of the intestines it heals boiled with honey and nitre, it drives urine in wine and, if the wine is Aminean, stones and all inward pains.

154| In honey and vinegar it calms the monthly courses and the afterbirths, sets right wombs that are turned, expels dead births. The seed is held to the nose by smell for those who have lost their voice. To epileptics it is given in vinegar by the measure of a cyathus. If unwholesome waters must be drunk, it is sprinkled in, pounded. It lessens weariness of the body, if it is handled at all; for the sinews and in contraction it is rubbed in with salt and vinegar, in opisthotonos with honey.

155| The decoction is drunk for the stings of serpents, pounded in wine for those of scorpions, especially that which grows in dry places. For ulcerations of the mouth, for cough, it is held effective. The flower of the fresh plant, burned, kills fleas by its smell. Xenocrates relates that a sprig of pulegium wrapped in wool is given to be smelled in tertian fevers before the attack, or is put under the coverlets and the patient so placed, among remedies.

156| The wild has more effective power for the same ends. It is like origanum, with smaller leaves than the cultivated, and by some is called dictamnus. Tasted by cattle and goats, it brings on bleating, whence some Greeks, a letter changed, have called it blechon. Its nature is so fiery that it ulcerates the parts smeared with it. Pounded, it is fitting to rub it on for chill before baths and before the shivering of attacks.

157| For convulsions and griping, for gout, it is wonderfully beneficial; to spastics it is given to be drunk with honey and salt; it makes the faults of the lungs easy to cough up. For the spleen it is useful with salt, and for the bladder and for panting and swellings; the decoction with the juice equally sets right the wombs and is strong against the scolopendra, land or sea, likewise scorpions, and especially against a human bite. The root, fresh, is most potent against spreading ulcers, and dried it brings comeliness to scars.

158| Pulegium also has a partnership with nepeta. Boiled in water to a third, they disperse chills [and are of benefit for the monthly courses of women] and in summer calm heats. Nepeta too has powers against serpents; they flee its smoke and smell, and indeed to strew it beneath is useful to those about to sleep in fear of them. Pounded, it is laid on aegilops, and for headaches it is smeared on fresh, tempered with a third part of bread in vinegar. Its juice dropped into the nostrils of a person lying on his back checks a flow of blood; likewise the root, which gargled with the seed of myrtle in lukewarm raisin wine cures quinsies.

159| Cumin is also wild, very slender, with four or five leaves each, as if serrated, but like the cultivated it is of great use, especially in remedies for the stomach. It disperses phlegm and swellings, pounded and taken with bread or drunk in water and wine, griping too and pains of the intestines. All of it, nevertheless, produces pallor in those who drink it.

160| So at any rate they say that the followers of Porcius Latro, famous among teachers of speaking, imitated the likeness of colour contracted by study, and a little earlier Julius Vindex, that champion of liberty against Nero, thus made a pretence for the hunting of a legacy. Put into pastilles, or fresh in vinegar, it checks bleeding of the nose, and laid on by itself it benefits discharges of the eyes, and when swollen, with honey.

161| It is enough for infants to have it laid on the belly. For the royal disease it is given in white wine after the baths; [….] the Ethiopian especially in posca and in a linctus with honey. The African, they think, especially checks incontinence of urine. The cultivated is given for faults of the liver, roasted and ground in vinegar, likewise for dizziness; to those whom sharper urine bites, ground in sweet wine; for faults of the womb in wine, and also with leaves laid on in a fleece; for swellings of the testicles, roasted and ground with honey or oil of roses and wax.

162| The wild is more effective for all the same ends, and besides for serpents with oil, for scorpions, scolopendras. It checks vomiting and nausea too in wine, as much as three fingers take up. For the colon also it is drunk and smeared on hot with a brush, and is pressed on with bandages. It opens strangulations of the womb, drunk in wine, three drachmas in three cyathi of wine. It is dropped into the ears for ringing and buzzing with calf suet or honey. On bruises it is smeared with honey and raisin and vinegar, on black freckles with vinegar.

163| There is a plant very like cumin which the Greeks call ami. Some, however, think it is the Ethiopian cumin. Hippocrates called it royal, evidently because he judged it more effective than the Egyptian. Most think it altogether of another nature, since it is slenderer and whiter. Its use, nevertheless, is similar. For it is put under Alexandrian loaves too and is interposed in seasonings.

164| It disperses swellings and griping, moves urine and the monthly courses, mitigates bruises of the eyes and discharges, with seed of flax drunk in wine two drachmas for the stings of scorpions, and especially for those of horned vipers with an equal portion of myrrh. It likewise changes the colour of those who drink it into pallor. Fumigated with raisin or resin it purges the womb. They relate that those women conceive more easily who smell it during intercourse.

165| Of the caper we have said enough among the foreign shrubs. The transmarine is not to be used; the Italian is more harmless. They say that those who eat it daily are not in danger of paralysis nor of pains of the spleen. Its root removes white vitiligines, if pounded and rubbed on in the sun.

166| It benefits splenics, the bark of the root drunk in wine, two drachmas, the use of baths being withheld; and they say that in 35 days the whole spleen is discharged through urine and bowels. It is drunk for pains of the loins and for paralysis. It soothes toothaches, pounded in vinegar, or the seed boiled, or the root chewed.

167| The decoction in oil is poured also into the ear in pain. The ulcers they call phagedaenae, the leaves and fresh root heal with honey. So too the root disperses scrofulous swellings, and boiled in water, parotid swellings and worm-infestations. For pains of the liver it is laid on pounded with barley meal. It cures ills of the bladder as well. They give it also for tapeworms in vinegar and honey. Boiled in vinegar it removes ulcerations of the mouth. That it is useless to the stomach is agreed among the authorities.

168| Ligusticum (some call it panaces) is useful to the stomach, likewise for convulsions and swellings. There are some who have called it cunila bubula as well, as we have said, wrongly.

169| Of cunila, besides the cultivated, there are several kinds in medicine. That which is called bubula has the seed of pulegium, useful for wounds, chewed and laid on, so that it is loosened on the fifth day after. And against serpents it is drunk in wine and, pounded, laid on the blow. They rub it on the wounds made by them, as do tortoises about to fight serpents; and some in this use call it panacea. It calms swellings and ills of the male parts, dry or with the leaves ground, in every use wonderfully suiting wine.

170| There is another cunila, called gallinacea by our people, by the Greeks origanum Heracleoticum. It benefits the eyes pounded with salt added; it also mends cough and faults of the liver, and pains of the sides with meal, tempered in a sip of oil and vinegar, but especially the bites of serpents.

171| The third kind is of that which is called mascula by the Greeks, cunilago by our people, of foul smell, woody root, rough leaf. They relate that its powers are the most violent among all its kinds; that when a handful of it is thrown down, all the cockroaches of the whole house gather to it; that especially against scorpions it is strong in posca; that with three leaves in oil, a man anointed puts serpents to flight.

172| On the contrary, that which is called soft, with hairier and prickly branches, pounded has the smell of honey, the fingers sticking together at its touch; the other has the smell of frankincense, which we have called libanotis. Each avails against serpents, in wine or vinegar; fleas also, pounded and sprinkled with water, it kills.

173| The cultivated also has its uses. Its juice with oil of roses helps the ears, and the plant itself is drunk for stings. From it is made the mountain kind, like serpyllum, effective against serpents. It moves urine, purges women after childbirth. It wonderfully helps digestion and appetite for food, each sprinkled in a drink even for those fasting from indigestion; useful also for dislocations, and against stings of wasps and the like, with barley meal and posca, most useful. The other kinds of libanotis will be told in their places.

174| Piperitis, which we have also called siliquastrum, is drunk against epileptic diseases. Castor described it otherwise: with a red and long stalk, dense joints, leaves of the bay, a white seed, thin, with the taste of pepper, useful to gums, teeth, sweetness of the mouth and belching.

175| Origanum, which rivals the flavour of cunila in strength, as we have said, has several kinds in medicine. Onitis, others call prasion, not unlike hyssop. Its use is especially against gnawings of the stomach in lukewarm water and against indigestions, spiders and scorpions in white wine, dislocations and bruises in vinegar and oil and wool.

176| Tragoriganum is more like the wild serpyllum. It moves urine, disperses swellings, against mistletoe drunk and the sting of a viper it is most effective, for a stomach belching sour and for the praecordia. It is given also to those who cough with honey, and to those with pleurisy and with peripneumonia.

177| Heraclium also has three kinds: the darker with broader leaves, sticky; another with thinner leaves, softer, not unlike sampsuchum, which some prefer to call prasion. The third is between these, but less effective than the rest. The best, however, is the Cretan, for it also smells pleasantly; next the Smyrnaean, harder; the Heracleotic is more useful in drink, which they call onitis.

178| Its common use is to put serpents to flight, to be given to the stricken for eating and the decoction for drinking, to move urine, to cure ruptures and convulsions with the root of panax, for the dropsical with fig or with hyssop, in measures of an acetabulum boiled down to a sixth; likewise for scab, itching, itch-scabs on going down from the baths. The juice is poured into the ears with woman's milk. It cures the tonsils and uvula too, and ulcers of the head. The decoction extinguishes the poisons of opium and gypsum, if it is drunk with ash in wine.

179| It softens the bowels by the measure of an acetabulum, is smeared on bruises, and likewise for toothache, to which it also gives whiteness, with honey and nitre. It checks blood of the nostrils. For parotid swellings it is boiled with barley meal, for rough windpipes it is ground with gall-nut and honey, for the spleen the leaves with honey and salt.

180| Thicker and black phlegms it thins, boiled with vinegar and salt and taken little by little. For the royal disease it is poured pounded with oil into the nostrils. The weary are anointed with it, so that the belly is not touched. It heals epinyctides with pitch, opens boils with roasted fig, scrofulous swellings with oil and vinegar and barley meal, pains of the side smeared on with fig, fluxes of blood in the genitals pounded and smeared on with vinegar, and the remains of the purgings after childbirth.

181| Lepidium is counted among the burning plants. So too it mends the skin on the face by ulcerating it, so that nevertheless it is easily healed with wax and oil of roses. So too it always easily removes leprous sores and itch-scabs, and the ulcers of scars. They relate that, tied to the arm on the side where the tooth aches, it turns the pain away in toothache.

182| Git, some of the Greeks call melanthium, others melaspermon. The best is that of the most pungent smell and the blackest. It cures blows of serpents and of scorpions; I find it is smeared on with vinegar and honey and that, burned, it puts serpents to flight. It is drunk, one drachma, against spiders also.

183| It disperses catarrh of the nostrils, pounded in a little linen cloth and smelled; headaches, smeared on in vinegar; infused into the nostrils with oil of iris, discharges of the eyes and swellings; toothaches, boiled with vinegar; ulcers of the mouth, pounded or chewed; likewise leprous sores and freckles in vinegar; difficulties of breathing, drunk with nitre added; hardnesses and old swellings and suppurations, smeared on. It increases the milk of women, taken for several successive days.

184| Its juice is gathered like that of henbane and, taken in larger amount, is a poison, which we may wonder at, since the seed seasons even loaves most agreeably. It clears the eyes also, and moves urine and the monthly courses. Nay more, I find that 30 grains only, tied in a little linen cloth, draw out the afterbirth. They say it also cures corns on the feet, pounded in urine, and kills gnats by fumigation, and flies likewise.

185| And anise is held against scorpions in wine, praised by Pythagoras among few things, whether raw or boiled; likewise green or dried it is desired in everything that is seasoned and everything that is dipped, even put under the lower crusts of bread. Added to sacks with bitter nuts, it recommends wines.

186| Nay more, it makes the very breath of the mouth sweeter and removes foulness, chewed in the mornings with zmyrnium and a little honey, then rinsed with wine. It gives a younger countenance. It relieves sleeplessness, hung on a pillow, so that sleepers smell it. It gives appetite for foods, since luxury has made this too among the arts, from which labour stopped demanding food. For these reasons some have called it anicetum.

187| The most praised is the Cretan, the next the Egyptian. This does the service of ligusticum in seasonings. It relieves headaches, fumigated into the nostrils. For discharges of the eyes Euenor lays on its root, pounded; Iollas the plant itself with saffron in equal measure and wine, and by itself with polenta for great fluxes and for drawing out anything that has fallen into the eyes. Smeared on in water it also consumes the carcinodes of the nostrils.

188| It calms quinsies, gargled with hyssop and honey in vinegar, is poured into the ears with oil of roses, purges phlegms of the chest, roasted and taken with honey. Better, for cough, to grind with an acetabulum of anise 50 bitter nuts, cleaned, in honey; most easily, however, three drachmas of anise, two of poppy are mixed with honey to the size of a bean and taken three a day.

189| It is outstanding for belching; therefore it cures swellings of the stomach and griping of the intestines and coeliacs. Hiccups the smell and the drink of the decoction check. With the leaves boiled it disperses indigestions. The juice of the decoction with celery, smelled, checks sneezing. Drunk it procures sleep, drives out stones, restrains vomitings and swellings of the praecordia, and is most useful for faults of the chest, and for the sinews also, by which the body is girt.

190| It is of benefit for headaches that the juice of the decoction be dropped in with oil. They think nothing more useful to the belly and intestines; therefore it is given roasted to those with dysentery and in tenesmus. Some add opium also, in pills of the size of a lupine, three a day, dissolved in a cyathus of wine.

191| Dieuches used the juice even for pains of the loins, gave the seed pounded with mint to the dropsical and coeliacs, Euenor the root for the kidneys also. Dalion the herb-gatherer laid a poultice of it with celery on women in labour, likewise for pain of the womb, and gave it to be drunk with dill to women in labour. For the frenzied too they smear it on, even fresh with polenta; so also on infants who show the epileptic fault or contractions.

192| Pythagoras indeed denies that those holding it in the hand are seized by the epileptic fault, and therefore as much as possible should be sown at home; that women smelling it give birth more easily, and that immediately after birth it should be given in a drink, sprinkled with polenta. Sosimenes used it in vinegar against all hardnesses and against weariness, boiling it in oil with nitre added. He guaranteed help for weariness to travellers by drinking its seed.

193| Heraclides for swellings of the stomach gave the seed, three fingers, with two obols of castoreum in mead, similarly for swellings of the belly or intestines, and for those with orthopnoea as much of the seed as three fingers can take up, and as much again of henbane, with ass's milk. Many advise those about to vomit to drink acetabula of it and ten leaves of laurel, pounded in water, during dinner.

194| Strangulations of the womb it calms, if it is chewed and smeared on warm or if it is drunk with castoreum in vinegar and honey; dizziness after childbirth it disperses with the seed of cucumber and flax in equal measure of three fingers' amount, with three cyathi of white wine. Tlepolemus for quartan fevers used three fingers of seed of anise and of fennel in vinegar and one cyathus of honey.

195| It soothes diseases of the joints, smeared on with bitter nuts. There are those who think that its nature is hostile also to the poisons of asps. It moves urine, restrains thirst, stimulates Venus, with wine gently provides sweating, and defends clothes from moths. It is always more effective fresh, and the blacker the better; it is useless to the stomach, however, except when swollen.

196| Dill also provokes belching and calms griping, checks the bowels. For discharges of the eyes the roots are smeared on in water or wine. The seed, hot, restrains hiccups by smell; taken in water it calms indigestions. Its ash relieves the uvula in the throat, and dulls the eyes and the seed of generation.

197| Sacopenium, which is produced among us, is altogether different from the transmarine. For that, like a tear of ammoniacum, is called sagapenon. It benefits pains of the sides and chest, convulsions, old coughs and expectorations, swellings of the praecordia. It heals also dizziness, tremors, opisthotonos, the spleen, the loins, chills. It is given to be smelled in vinegar in strangulation of the womb; in other cases it is both given in a drink and rubbed in with oil. It benefits also against evil drugs.

198| Of the cultivated poppy we have told three kinds, and of that growing wild we have promised others. Of the cultivated, the cup itself of the white is ground and drunk in wine to cause sleep. The seed cures elephantiasis. From the black poppy sleep-inducing juice is produced by cutting the stalk, as Diagoras advises, when it swells, as Iollas, when it has finished flowering, at the third hour of a clear day, that is when the dew on it has dried. They direct the incision to be made beneath the head and the cup, nor in any other kind is the head itself cut.

199| The juice, both this and that of any herb, is taken up on wool or, if there is little, with the nail of the thumb, as with lettuces, and on the next day more, what has dried, [but of the poppy abundant] thickened and ground into pastilles is dried in the shade, not only of soporific force but, if drunk in larger amount, deadly even through sleep. They call it opium. Thus we know that the father of Publius Licinius Caecina, a man of praetorian rank, was destroyed in Spain, at Bavili, when an intolerable illness had made him hate life; likewise very many others.

200| On account of which a great dispute arose. Diagoras and Erasistratus condemned it altogether as deadly, forbidding it to be infused besides, since it harmed the sight. Andreas added that people were not at once blinded by it because it was adulterated at Alexandria. But afterward its use was not disapproved in a famous medicine which they call dia kodyon.

201| Its seed also, ground into pastilles with milk, they use for sleep, likewise for headaches with oil of roses; with this it is dropped also into the ear in pain. It is smeared on gout with the milk of women (they use the leaves themselves so too), likewise for sacred fires and wounds in vinegar. I should, however, condemn its being added to eye salves, and much more to those they call lexipyretoi and to the peptic and coeliac kinds.

202| The black, however, is given to coeliacs in wine. The cultivated is all larger. Its heads are round, but the wild one's long and small, though more powerful for all effects. It is boiled and drunk against sleeplessness, and with the same water they bathe the mouth. The best is in dry places and where it rains seldom. When the heads themselves and the leaves are boiled, the juice is called meconium, much feebler than opium.

203| The test of opium is first in the smell (for the pure cannot be endured), next in lamps, that the flame burn clear and that, when put out, it finally smell, which does not happen with the adulterated. It is also kindled with more difficulty and often goes out. There is a test of the pure in water, since it floats like a little cloud, while the counterfeit gathers into blisters. But it is most wonderful that it is detected by the summer sun; for the pure sweats and dissolves itself until it becomes like fresh juice. Mnesides thinks it is best kept with seed of henbane added, others in a bean.

204| Between the cultivated and wild there is a middle kind, since it grows in fields, but of its own accord, which we have called rhoea and the wild poppy. Some, plucking it, chew it at once with the whole cup. It empties the bowels. Five heads boiled and drunk in three heminae of wine also cause sleep.

205| One kind of the wild they call ceratitis, black, a cubit high, with a thick and barky root, with a little cup curved like a little horn. The leaves are smaller and thinner than in the other wild kinds. The seed is slight and ripe at harvest; it purges the bowels in half an acetabulum in mead.

206| The leaves, pounded with oil, heal argema in beasts of burden. The root, boiled by the measure of an acetabulum in two sextarii down to the half, is given for faults of the loins and liver. The leaves with honey cure carbuncles. Some call this kind glaucion, others paralion. For it grows where the sea blows on it or in a nitrous place.

207| A second of the wild kinds is called heraclium, by others aphrodes, with leaves which, if you look from a distance, present the appearance of sparrows, a root in the very surface of the earth, a foamy seed. From this linens draw their brightness. In summer it is pounded in a mortar. For epileptic diseases it is most useful, an acetabulum of seed in white wine (for it causes vomiting), likewise in the medicine called dia kodyon and arteriace.

208| This is made, however, of this poppy or of any wild one, from 120 heads soaked for two days in rain water, three sextarii of it, and boiled down in the same, then the juice dried and again boiled down with honey to half the parts, over a gentle steam. Later they added six drachmas each of saffron, hypocisthis, frankincense, acacia, and a sextarius of Cretan raisin wine. These are for show; the simple and ancient wholesomeness, indeed, consists of poppy and honey.

209| The third kind is tithymalon (some call it mecon, others paralion), with a leaf like flax, a white flower, and a head of bean size. It is picked while the vine is flowering, and dried in the shade. The seed, drunk in half an acetabulum of honey wine, purges the bowels. The head of any poppy, green or dry, applied as a salve soothes inflammations of the eyes. Opium, if given at once in neat wine, resists the stings of scorpions. Some assign this only to the black poppy, if its heads or leaves are pounded.

210| There is also porcillaca, which they call peplis, not much more effective than the cultivated kind, and remarkable uses are reported of it: that the poisons of arrows, and of the haemorrhoid and prester snakes, are quenched when it is taken as food, and are drawn out when it is laid on the wounds; likewise those of hyoscyamus, when the juice is pressed out and drunk in raisin wine. When the plant itself is not at hand, its seed helps with a like effect. It resists also faults of the waters, and, pounded in wine and applied, headache and ulcers; other ulcers it heals when chewed with honey.

211| So too it is applied to the brain of infants and to a protruding navel, and for inflammations of the eyes in everyone to the forehead and temples with pearl barley, but on the eyes themselves in milk and honey; the same, if the eyes protrude, with leaves pounded with the husks of beans, and for pustules with pearl barley, salt and vinegar. Sores of the mouth and swelling of the gums it relieves when chewed raw, as it does toothache; the juice of the boiled plant relieves ulcers of the tonsils;

212| some have added a little myrrh. For it steadies loose teeth when chewed [raw it soothes] and strengthens the voice and wards off thirst. Pains of the neck it relieves with gall, flaxseed and honey in equal measure, and troubles of the breasts with honey or Cimolian chalk; the seed drunk with honey is wholesome also for those who struggle for breath.

213| Taken in salads it strengthens the stomach. It is applied with pearl barley to one burning with fevers, and otherwise, eaten, it cools even the intestines. It stops vomiting. For dysentery and abscesses of the lungs it is eaten in vinegar or drunk with cumin, and for tenesmus it is eaten boiled. It helps epileptics, as food or drink, and for the monthly purgations a measure of an acetabulum in boiled-down must; applied with salt it helps hot gout and erysipelas.

214| Its juice, drunk, benefits the kidneys and bladder, and drives out the animals of the belly. For the pains of wounds it is applied in oil with pearl barley. It softens hardness of the sinews. Metrodorus, who wrote the Epitome of Root-Cutting, held that it should be given for the purgations after childbirth. It checks sexual desire and the dreams of desire.

215| There is a leading man of Spain, the father of a man of praetorian rank, whom I know to wear its root hung from his neck on a thread, except in the baths, because of the incurable diseases of the uvula, and so to be freed from every trouble. Indeed I have found in the authors that a head anointed with it feels no catarrh for a whole year. It is thought, however, to dull the eyes.

216| Coriander is not found among wild plants. The Egyptian is agreed to be the best. It is of power against one kind of serpent, which they call amphisbaenae, drunk and applied. It heals other wounds as well, and, pounded, the pustules called epinyctides; so also all swellings and gatherings with honey or raisins, and, pounded in vinegar, boils. Some direct that three grains of the seed be swallowed in tertian fevers before the onset, or more of them be smeared on the forehead.

217| There are those who think it effective also to put it under the pillows before sunrise. The green plant has great power for cooling burning heats. It heals also spreading sores, with honey or raisins, as well as the testicles, burns, carbuncles and the ears; with a woman's milk, inflammations of the eyes; and the seed drunk in water, fluxes of the belly and intestines. It is drunk also in cholera with rue.

218| The seed drunk with the juice of a pomegranate and oil drives out the animals of the intestines. Xenocrates reports a marvel, if it is true: that the menses are held back for one day if women drink one grain, for two days if two, and for as many days as the grains they have taken. Marcus Varro thinks that all meat is kept uncorrupted in summer by coriander, cumin and vinegar pounded fine.

219| There is also a wild atriplex. It was accused by Pythagoras of causing dropsy, jaundice and pallor, and of being digested with the greatest difficulty; he blamed it also because nothing next to it, even in gardens, grows except feebly. Dionysius and Diocles added that very many diseases arise from it, that it must not be cooked except after the water has been changed often, that it is hostile to the stomach, and that it produces freckles and pimples.

220| I wonder why Solon of Smyrna reported that it grows with difficulty in Italy. Hippocrates pours it with beet into the faults of the womb. Lycus of Naples gave it to be drunk against cantharides, and held that, applied boiled or raw, it is useful for boils, incipient furuncles and all hardnesses, and likewise, with honey, vinegar and natron, for erysipelas, and similarly for gout. It is said to take off rough nails without a sore.

221| There are those who give its seed with honey for jaundice, who rub the windpipe and tonsils with it, natron added, and who move the bowels with it boiled, either by itself or with mallow or lentil. They also provoke vomiting. With the wild kind they dye the hair, and use it for the things written above.

222| By contrast, in great praise stand both kinds of mallow, the cultivated and the wild. Two kinds of them are distinguished by the breadth of the leaf. The larger the Greeks call malope among the cultivated, and the other, they think, is named malache from softening the belly. But of the wild kinds, the one with a large leaf and white roots is called althaea, and by some plistolochia, from the excellence of its effect.

223| All the soil in which they are sown they make richer. They are effective against all stinging blows, especially those of scorpions, wasps and the like, and of the shrew. Indeed, those who have been rubbed beforehand with any of them pounded in oil, or who carry them, are not struck. A leaf laid on scorpions brings them to numbness. They are of force also against the poisons of psimithium. Applied raw with aphronitrum they draw out all stings; drunk boiled with their own root they quench the poison of the sea hare, as some say, if it is vomited up.

224| Other marvels too are reported of these same plants, but chiefly this: that if anyone swallows each day half a cyathus of the juice from any one of them, he will be free of all diseases. Weeping ulcers on the head they heal when the plants have been rotted in urine, and lichens and sores of the mouth with honey; the root boiled heals scurf on the head and teeth that are loose. With the root of the kind that has a single stalk they prick around an aching tooth, until the pain stops;

225| the same root, with human saliva added, clears scrofulous swellings, swellings of the parotid glands, and boils without a wound. The seed, drunk in dark wine, frees from phlegm and nausea. The root, tied on in black wool, counters faults of the breasts; boiled in milk and taken in the manner of a gruel for five days at a time, it corrects a cough.

226| Sextius Niger says they are unsuited to the stomach; Olympias of Thebes says that with goose fat they cause abortion; some say that women are purged by a handful of their leaves taken in oil and wine. At any rate it is agreed that women in labor are delivered more quickly if the leaves are spread beneath them; but immediately after the birth the leaves must be taken away, lest the womb follow.

227| They give also a hemina of the juice of the plant boiled in wine, to be drunk by women in labor fasting. They tie the seed to the arm of those who cannot retain their seed, and the plants are so much made for Venus that Xenocrates reports that the seed of the single-stalked kind, sprinkled on a remedy for women, increases their appetites without limit, and likewise three roots tied on side by side. For tenesmus and for dysentery it is of the greatest use as an injection, and likewise for faults of the seat, or if the part is bathed with it. To the melancholic the juice is given warm, three cyathi at a time, to the insane four, and to epileptics a hemina of the juice of the boiled plant.

228| This juice is applied warm also to those with stone, with flatulence and colic, or with opisthotonos. For erysipelas and burns the leaves boiled in oil are applied, and for the onsets of wounds, raw with bread. The juice of the boiled plant benefits the sinews and the bladder and gnawings of the intestines, and softens the womb both in food and in an injection. The juice of the boiled plant, passed through the bowels, makes the stools soft.

229| In all the cases named above, the root of althaea is more effective, especially for those with convulsions and ruptures. Boiled in water it stops the bowels; in white wine it deals with scrofulous swellings, parotid swellings, and inflammations in the breasts; and the leaves boiled in wine and applied take away boils; the same leaves dried and boiled in milk cure with the greatest speed a cough however destructive.

230| Hippocrates gave the juice of the boiled root to be drunk by the wounded and by those parched from loss of blood, and applied the root itself to wounds with honey and resin, and likewise to bruises, dislocations and swellings; and to the muscles, sinews and joints he applied it as above; to those with spasms and dysentery he gave it to be drunk in wine. It is marvelous that water, with this root added to it, thickens in the open air and turns to ice. It is the more effective the fresher it is.

231| Nor does lapathum have unlike effects. There is also a wild kind. This others call oxalis, our own people rumex, and others canterine lapathum; it is nearest in taste to the cultivated kind, with sharp leaves, the color of white beet, and a very small root, and with lard it is most effective for scrofulous swellings. Another kind they usually call oxylapathum, more like the cultivated [likewise] and with a sharper and redder leaf, growing only in marshy ground. There are those who report also hydrolapathum, born in water, and another, hippolapathum, larger than the cultivated, and whiter and denser.

232| The wild kinds cure the stings of scorpions and, to those who carry them, prevent being struck. The root boiled in vinegar helps the teeth if the juice is used as a rinse, and, if it is drunk, jaundice. The seed heals the inextricable faults of the stomach. The root of hippolapathum also, in particular, takes off rough nails;

233| its seed, drunk in wine in a dose of two drachmas, frees dysenteric patients. Oxylapathum seed, washed in rain water, with acacia added to the size of a lentil, benefits those who spit blood. They make the finest lozenges from the leaves and root, with natron added and a little frankincense. For use they dilute them in vinegar.

234| But the cultivated kind they apply to the forehead for inflammations of the eyes. With the root they treat lichens and leprosies, and, boiled in wine, scrofulous swellings and swellings of the parotid glands; drunk in wine, it treats stones, and applied, the spleen; likewise coeliac troubles, dysentery and tenesmus; and a broth made from it, more effective for all these, causes belching, stirs the urine, and disperses dimness of the eyes, as well as itching of the body when added to the bathtubs of the baths or when applied first by itself without oil.

235| The root, when chewed, strengthens the teeth as well; the same boiled with wine stops the bowels, while the leaves loosen them. Solon added, lest we omit anything, bulapathum, differing only in the depth of its root, and of excellent effect for dysenteric patients when drunk in wine.

236| Mustard, of whose three cultivated kinds we have spoken, Pythagoras judged to hold the first place among those plants whose power is borne upward, since nothing else penetrates more into the nostrils and the brain. For the bites of serpents and the stings of scorpions it is pounded with vinegar and applied; it disperses the poisons of mushrooms. Against phlegm it is held in the mouth until it melts, or gargled with honeyed water.

237| For toothache it is chewed; for the uvula it is gargled with vinegar and honey. It is most useful to the stomach against all its faults; taken with food, it makes the coughing-up of phlegm from the lungs easy. It is given to those who struggle for breath, and to epileptics three times a day with the juice of cucumbers. It clears the senses, and by making one sneeze it clears the head, softens the bowels, and stirs the menses and the urine. It is also applied to dropsical patients, pounded with fig and cumin, three parts of each.

238| Its smell, mixed with vinegar, rouses those who are overcome by epilepsy or by the turning of the womb; likewise the lethargic. Tordylon is added to it (this is a seed from seseli), and if a more violent lethargy oppresses, it is applied with fig in vinegar to the legs or even to the head. Old pains of the chest, loins, hips and shoulders, and in any part of the body where faults must be drawn from deep within, it corrects when applied, by its caustic force, making blisters; but where there is great hardness it is laid on without fig, or, if a more violent burning is feared, through a double thickness of cloth.

239| They use it for alopecia, with red ochre, for itch, leprosies, lice, tetanic patients and those with opisthotonos. They also anoint rough eyelids or dimmed eyes with its juice and honey, and the juice is pressed out in three ways in an earthen vessel and warmed in it a little in the sun. A milky juice comes out of the little stalk as well; a drop of it, when it has hardened, cures toothache.

240| The seed and root, when they have been soaked in must, are ground up, and a handful measure is sipped to make firm the throat and stomach, the eyes, the head, and every sense, and the weariness of women as well, as a most wholesome kind of medicine. It disperses stones also, drunk in vinegar. It is applied to bruises and black-and-blue marks with honey and goose fat or Cyprian wax. An oil is also made from this seed, soaked in oil and pressed out, which they use for stiffness of the sinews, loins and hips, and for chills.

241| Adarca, which is counted among the wild plants and grows in the bark of reeds just beneath the tuft, is reported to have the nature and the same effects as mustard. Horehound many have recommended among the foremost herbs; the Greeks call it prasion, others linostrophon, and some philopais or philochares, a plant better known than needs explaining. Its leaves and seed, crushed, are good against serpents, for pains in the chest and the side, and for chronic cough. For those who have spat blood it is exceptionally useful, when its twigs are boiled in water with millet so that the harshness of the juice is softened. With fat it is applied to scrofulous swellings.

242| There are those who direct that the green seed, as much as they can take in two fingers, boiled with a pinch of emmer, with a little oil and salt added, be sipped fasting for a cough. Others think nothing comparable, for the same complaint, to the juices of horehound and fennel, pressed out to three sextarii and boiled down to two sextarii, then a sextarius of honey added, boiled down again to two sextarii, and a spoonful measure sipped each day in a cyathus of water.

243| Pounded with honey it is wonderfully good for faults of the male parts. With vinegar it clears lichens; it is wholesome for ruptures, convulsions, spasms and the sinews. Drunk with salt and vinegar it loosens the bowels, and likewise the menses and the afterbirth of women. The dry meal with honey is most effective for a dry cough, as well as for gangrene and pterygia. The juice benefits the ears, and, given through the nostrils, jaundice, and, with honey, the reduction of bile; it is also powerful against poisons, among few.

244| The herb itself, with iris and honey, clears the stomach and the coughing-up from the chest, and stirs the urine; it should be avoided, however, in an ulcerated bladder and faults of the kidneys. The juice is said to help clearness of the eyes. Castor reports two kinds of horehound, the black and, the one he prefers, the white. He puts the juice into an emptied egg-shell and pours in the egg itself with honey, in equal portions, promising that this, warmed, it bursts, clears and thoroughly heals abscesses. He applies it also to wounds made by a dog, pounded with old lard.

245| Serpyllum is thought to be named from creeping, because it happens so in the wild kind, most of all on rocks; for the cultivated kind does not creep, but grows to a palm in height. The self-sown is richer, with whiter leaves and branches. It is effective against serpents, above all cenchris and the scolopendras of land and sea, and against scorpions, with the branches and leaves boiled in wine. By its smell also it drives off all of them, if it is burned, and it is especially strong against the poisons of sea creatures.

246| For headaches it is boiled in vinegar and applied with rose oil to the forehead and temples, and likewise for the frenzied and the lethargic. Against colic, difficulties of the urine, quinsy and vomiting it is drunk in water, in a dose of four drachmas; for cravings of the liver the leaves are given, four obols; for the spleen, in vinegar. For spitting of blood it is pounded in two cyathi of vinegar and honey.

247| Wild sisymbrium, called by some thymbraeum, is no more than a foot in height. The kind that grows in watered places is like nasturtium, and pounded it is effective against stinging creatures such as hornets and the like; the kind that grows in dry ground is fragrant and is put into garlands, with a narrower leaf. Both ease headache, and likewise inflammations of the eyes, as Philinus reports.

248| Some add bread; others boil it by itself in wine. It heals epinyctides and faults of the skin on the faces of women, if applied at night and removed by day within four days. It checks vomiting, hiccups, colic and looseness of the stomach, whether taken in food or as the juice drunk. It should not be eaten by pregnant women unless the conception is dead, since even when applied it expels it. Drunk with wine it moves the urine, and the wild kind the stones as well. Those who must stay awake it rouses, poured over the head with vinegar.

249| Flaxseed is used with other things, but by itself too it corrects faults of the skin on women's faces, and its juice sharpens the sight. With frankincense and water, or with myrrh and wine, it soothes inflammations of the eyes; with honey, fat or wax, swellings of the parotid glands; for looseness of the stomach it is sprinkled on in the manner of pearl barley meal; for quinsy it is boiled in water and oil and applied with anise.

250| It is toasted to stop the bowels. For coeliac troubles and dysentery it is applied in vinegar. For pains of the liver it is eaten with raisins; for consumption, electuaries made from the seed are most useful. The meal of the seed, with natron, salt or ashes added, softens hardness of the muscles, sinews, joints and neck, and of the membranes of the brain. The same with fig [….], and likewise it brings to a head and ripens; with the root of wild cucumber it draws out whatever is lodged in the body, and so too broken bones.

251| Boiled in wine it prevents an ulcer from spreading, and with honey it checks eruptions of phlegm. It corrects rough nails, with an equal measure of nasturtium; faults of the testicles and ruptures, with resin and myrrh; gangrene, in water; pains of the stomach, with fenugreek, a sextarius of each boiled in honeyed water; and destructive faults of the intestines and chest, by an enema in oil or honey.

252| Blitum seems dull and without any flavor or sharpness, whence husbands in Menander make it a reproach to their wives. It is unsuited to the stomach. It upsets the belly so much that someone may get cholera from it. It is said, however, to help against scorpions when drunk in wine, to be applied to corns of the feet, and likewise to the spleen, and, in oil, to pain of the temples. Hippocrates thinks the menses are stopped by this food.

253| Meum is not sown in Italy except by physicians, and by very few of them. There are two kinds of it: the nobler they call Athamanticum or Athamanicum, those as if invented by Athamas, these because the most praised is found in Athamania; it is like dill in leaf and stalk, sometimes two feet high, with many slanting black roots, some of them deep, and less red than the other kind. It stirs the urine, drunk in water with the root pounded or boiled, wonderfully disperses flatulence of the stomach, and likewise colic and faults of the bladder and womb. For the joints, with honey [….]; for infants, applied with celery to the lower belly, it moves the urine.

254| Fennel was made famous by serpents, which, as we have said, taste it to cast off old age and to restore the sharpness of their sight with its juice, from which it was understood that dimness of sight in men also is relieved by it above all. It is gathered when the stalk is swelling, dried in the sun, and used as an ointment with honey. [This is found everywhere.] The most praised is made in Iberia, from the tears. It is made also from fresh seed and from roots cut at their first sprouting.

255| There is also a wild kind in this genus, which they call hippomarathum, others myrsineum, with larger leaves, a sharper taste, taller, as thick as a staff, with a white root. It grows in warm and stony places. Diocles has reported another kind of hippomarathum, with a long, narrow leaf and the seed of coriander.

256| Its medicinal use in the cultivated kind is against the stings of scorpions and serpents, the seed being drunk in wine. The juice is also dropped into the ears and kills the little worms in them. The plant itself is put into nearly all seasonings, and most suitably into oxyporum. It is even laid under the crusts of bread. The seed binds a stomach that is slack, even when taken in fevers; pounded in water it settles nausea, and it is most praised for the lungs and the liver. It stops the belly when taken in moderation, and stirs the urine, and for colic is given as a drink. The decoction, drunk when milk fails, fills the breasts.

257| The root taken with barley gruel cleans the kidneys, or else taken with juice from the root when it is boiled in wine. The root drunk in wine helps the dropsical, and likewise those with convulsions. The leaves are applied in vinegar to burning swellings; they drive out stones of the bladder and stimulate desire. In whatever way it is taken, it brings abundance of seed, and it is very friendly to the private parts, whether for fomenting, with the root boiled in wine, or crushed in oil and applied. Many apply the root with wax [and] to bruises. They use the juice of the seed, or the root with honey, against the bite of a dog, and in wine against the multipede.

258| Hippomarathum is stronger for everything, and drives out stones in particular; with mild wine it benefits the bladder, and the menses of women when they are held back. Its seed is more effective than its root. The measure in either is what can be taken in two fingers, ground, and added to a drink. Petrichus, who wrote the Ophiaca, and Micion, who wrote the Rhizotomumena, thought that nothing was more effective against serpents than hippomarathum; and Nicander also placed it not among the last.

259| Cannabis first grew in the woods, darker in its leaves and rougher. Its seed is said to extinguish the generative power of men. The juice from it drives out the little worms of the ears and any creature that has entered them, but with headache, and such is its force that, poured into water, it is said to curdle it; and for that reason, drunk in water, it relieves the bowels of beasts of burden. The root boiled in water softens contracted joints, and likewise gout and similar attacks. Raw, it is smeared on burns, but is replaced often, before it dries.

260| Ferula has a seed like dill. The kind that divides at the top from a single stalk is thought to be female. The stalks are eaten boiled and are recommended with brine and honey, useful to the stomach. If more are taken, they cause headache. The root, in the weight of a denarius in two cyathi of wine, is drunk against serpents, and the root itself is applied. So too it cures colic, and in oil and vinegar it is of use against excessive sweating, even in fevers.

261| The juice of ferula, swallowed in the amount of a bean, loosens the bowels. Taken from the green pith it is useful for the womb, and for all those same disorders. To stop bleeding, ten grains of the seed are drunk pounded in wine, or the pith is. There are some who think it should be given to epileptics from the 4th to the 7th day of the moon, in the measure of a small spoonful. The nature of ferulae is extremely hostile to morays, for if they are touched with one they die. Castor thought that the juice of the root also contributes much to clearness of sight.

262| We have also spoken of the sowing of cardui among the garden plants, so let us not put off their medicinal uses either. Of the wild cardui there are two kinds: one bushier, branching straight from the ground, the other with a single stem and thicker. Both have few leaves, which are prickly with pointed tips; but one of them sends out among the spines a purple flower that quickly turns white and goes off on the breeze. The Greeks call it skolymos.

263| This one, crushed and pressed out before it flowers, restores the hair in alopecia when the juice is applied. The root of either kind, boiled down in water, is said to make drinkers thirsty. It strengthens the stomach, and for the womb [….]; if we believe it, it is also said to contribute something towards the begetting of males. So at any rate wrote Glaucias, who seems to have been most painstaking on the subject of cardui. Among the cardui, mastiche makes the breath pleasant.

264| And as we are about to leave the garden plants, we append one very famous compound made from them, against venomous animals, which is carved in verse on a stone in the temple of Aesculapius at Cos: of serpyllum, the weight of two denarii; of opopanax and of meum, the same amount of each; of trefoil seed, the weight of one denarius; of the seed of anise, of fennel, of ammi and of apium, six denarii of each kind; of ervum meal, 12 denarii. These are pounded and sifted and made up with the finest wine obtainable into lozenges, each of the weight of a victoriatus. One of them is given at a time, in three cyathi of diluted wine. King Antiochus the Great is said to have used this theriace against all venomous creatures except the asp.

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