Natural History — Book XXIII

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

1| We have now completed the nature of the cereals, in healing too, and of everything that springs from the upturned face of the earth for the sake of food, flowers or scents. Pomona did not yield to them, but gave healing properties to the things that hang as well. She was not content to shelter with the shade of trees and to nourish the plants we have described; rather, as if indignant that there should be more help in things that stood farther from the sky and had come into being later, she claimed that man's first food had come from her, that this was how he had been led to look up at the sky, and that even now he could feed on her without crops.

2| And so, by Hercules, she gave her skills above all to the vines, not content to have furnished delights as well, and scents and perfumes, splendidly, through omphacium, oenanthe and massaris, which we have described in their places. "The greatest part of man's pleasure," she says, "comes from me. I produce the juice of wine and the liquid of oil; I produce dates and fruits and all their varieties; and not, like Tellus, everything through toil, to be ploughed with bulls, threshed on floors, then ground with stones, so that one must ask when food is to be had, and at the cost of how much work. From me everything comes ready, with no care to be laboured over; it offers itself of its own accord, and if one is too idle to reach for it, it even falls." She competed with herself, and brought forth even more for use than for pleasure.

3| The leaves and shoots of vines, with polenta, soothe headaches and inflammations of the body; the leaves alone, in cold water, soothe burning of the stomach, and with barley meal, diseases of the joints. The shoots, pounded and applied, dry up every swelling; their juice, injected, cures dysentery. The tear of the vine, which is like a gum, heals lepra, lichen and psora, when these have first been prepared with nitrum. Smeared on the hair with oil several times, the same tear acts as a depilatory, especially the tear that green vines exude when set on fire; this also removes warts.

4| The shoots, steeped and drunk, help those who spit blood and women who faint after conceiving. The bark of vines and the dry leaves stanch the blood of wounds and close the wound itself. The juice of the white vine, pounded green, removes impetigo. The ash of vine cuttings and of grape-skins, in vinegar, treats condylomata and ailments of the anus; with rose oil, rue and vinegar, also dislocations, burns and swelling of the spleen. Again, for the sacred fire it is sprinkled on in wine without oil, and on chafing.

5| It also removes hair. They also give the ash of vine cuttings to drink as a remedy for the spleen, sprinkled with vinegar, in such a way that two cyathi are drunk in warm water and the drinker lies on the side of the spleen. The tendrils themselves, by which vines creep, pounded and drunk in water, stop habitual vomiting.

6| Ash of vines with old axle-grease helps against swellings, cleans fistulas and then heals them completely; it also helps pains of the sinews caused by cold, and cramps; bruised parts, even with oil; flesh growing out over bones, with vinegar and nitrum; and the stings of scorpions and bites of dogs, with oil. The ash of the bark alone restores hair to burned places.

7| How omphacium is made from the grape at the beginning of its ripening we have explained in the section on perfumes. Now we shall set out what concerns it in medicine. It heals ulcers in moist parts, such as those of the mouth, tonsils and genitals. It contributes a great deal to clearness of the eyes, and helps roughness of the eyelids, ulcers in the corners of the eyes, cloudy spots, running ulcers in any part, flabby scars, and bones foul with pus. Its harshness is softened with honey or raisin wine. It also helps dysentery, those who spit blood, and quinsy.

8| Close to omphacium comes oenanthe, which wild vines bear; we have spoken of it in our account of perfumes. The most highly praised is in Syria, especially around the mountains of Antioch and Laodicea, and from the white vine. It cools and binds; it is sprinkled on wounds, smeared on the stomach; it is useful for the urine and the liver, for headaches, dysentery, coeliac and cholera patients, and, drunk at the weight of an obol in vinegar, against loss of appetite. It dries running eruptions of the head and is most effective for ailments in moist parts, and therefore for ulcers of the mouth, of the private parts and of the anus, with honey and saffron.

9| It stops the bowels and corrects roughness of the eyelids and watering of the eyes; in wine it corrects a disordered stomach, and drunk in cold water, the spitting of blood. Its ash is approved for eye-salves, for cleaning ulcers, and for whitlows and pterygia. It is burned in an oven until the bread is baked through. Massaris is produced for scents only; and the greed of human ingenuity has made all these things famous by its haste to snatch them.

10| As grapes ripen, the black are the more powerful, which is why the wine from them is less pleasant; the white are sweeter, because air is more easily taken in through what is translucent. Fresh grapes upset the stomach and the breath, and the bowels with flatulence. So they are condemned in fever, especially in quantity, for they cause heaviness of the head and the disease lethargy. More harmless are those that have hung a long time after being picked, and this airing even makes them useful for the stomach and for the sick, for they cool slightly and take away loss of appetite.

11| Next after the hanging grapes come those kept in chaff; for those kept in grape-skins are harmful to the head, bladder and stomach, though they do stop the bowels and are very useful for those who spit blood. Those that have been preserved in wine or in sweet wine affect the head; those that have been in must have an even worse effect than those kept in grape-skins. Sapa too makes them bad for the stomach.

12| Physicians think the most wholesome are those kept in rain water, even if least pleasant, but that their pleasure is felt in burning of the stomach, in the bitterness of the liver and the vomitings of bile and in cholera, and for dropsical patients sick with burning fevers. But those kept in jars rouse the mouth and the stomach and the appetite, though they are thought to become a little heavier from the breath of the grape-skins. If cocks eat the bloom of the grape in their food, they do not touch the grapes.

13| The stalks of the grape clusters, on which the berries hung, have an astringent power, more effective those from jars. The kernels of the grapes have the same power. These are what cause headache in wine. Toasted and ground they are useful to the stomach. Their meal is sprinkled into drinks in the manner of polenta for dysenterics and coeliacs and for looseness of the stomach. Their decoction is also useful for bathing psorae and itching.

14| Grape-skins by themselves harm the head or bladder less than the kernels; ground with salt they are useful for inflammation of the breasts. A decoction of them helps chronic dysenterics and coeliacs, both by drinking and by bathing. The theriac grape, of which we have spoken in its place, is eaten against the stings of serpents. They also advise that its leaves be eaten and applied. Both wine and vinegar made from them have a helping power against the same things.

15| The raisin, which they call astaphis, would affect the stomach, belly and intestines, were it not that, as a remedy, there are kernels in the berries themselves. With these removed it is held useful to the bladder and for cough (the white more useful), useful also for the windpipe and the kidneys, just as passum made from them is especially potent, among serpents, against the haemorrhois.

16| They are applied to inflammation of the testicles with meal of cumin or coriander, likewise to carbuncles, and to joint diseases, ground without kernels with rue. The ulcers should first be bathed with wine. They cure epinyctides and cerion and dysentery, with their own kernels. And boiled in oil they are applied to gangrenes with radish rind and honey, to gout and to loose nails with panax. And by themselves, chewed with pepper, they cleanse the mouth and head.

17| Astaphis agria, or staphis, which some falsely call the uva taminia (for it has its own kind), with black, upright stalks and the leaves of the wild vine, bears pods rather than berries, green, like a chickpea, and within them a three-cornered kernel. It ripens with the vintage and grows black, whereas we know the berries of the taminia to be reddish, and we know that the former grows in sunny places, the latter only in shaded ones. I should not advise using these kernels for purging, because of the dangerous choking, nor for drying phlegm of the mouth, because they injure the throat.

18| Ground, they free the head and the rest of the body from lice, more easily with sandaraca mixed in, and likewise from itching and psorae. For toothache they are boiled in vinegar, for ailments of the ears, for rheumatismoi of scars, for weeping ulcers. The flower ground in wine is drunk against serpents; the seed I should reject, because of its excessive burning force. Some call it pituitaria. They apply it, in any case, to the blows of serpents.

19| The wild vine also bears the oenanthe, sufficiently spoken of. This plant, called ampelos agria by the Greeks, has thick and whitish leaves, is jointed, has a cracked bark, and bears grapes reddish like coccum; they clear the skin of women's faces, and pimples, and ground with the leaves and juice are good for ailments of the hips and loins. The root, boiled in water, drunk in 2 cyathi of Coan wine, moves the moisture of the belly, and is therefore given to the dropsical. This I should rather believe to be what the common people call uva taminia.

20| They use it as an amulet and also employ it for spitting of blood, no further than gargling and so that nothing is swallowed, with salt, thyme and honeyed vinegar added. For this reason they think it dangerous also for purgings. There is one like it, but growing among willows; it is therefore distinguished by name, though it has the same uses, and is called salicastrum. It removes the mange and itching of men and four-footed animals, ground in honeyed vinegar, more effectively.

21| The white vine is what the Greeks call ampelos leuke, others staphyle, others melothron, others psilotrum, others archezostis, others cedrostis, others madon. Its twigs, jointed with long and slender internodes, climb. The leaves, vine-like, are divided to the size of ivy as those of vines are. The root is white, large, like a radish at first. From it stalks come out resembling asparagus. These boiled in food provoke the belly and urine.

22| The leaves and stalks make the body ulcerate; they are applied with salt, in any case, to phagedaenic ulcers and gangrenes and to the weariness of the shins. The seed hangs in a grape with sparse berries, with a reddish juice, afterwards saffron-coloured. Those who finish hides know it; for they use it. It is applied to psorae and leprae; boiled with wheat and drunk it causes abundance of milk.

23| The root, famous for its numerous uses, ground, is drunk against the stings of serpents at 2 drachmas. It corrects blemishes of the skin on the face and pimples and freckles and bruises and scars, and does the same boiled in oil. It is given also to epileptics, drunk, likewise to those disturbed in mind or suffering from vertigo, at the weight of a drachma daily for a whole year. But the plant itself in larger amount sometimes disturbs the senses.

24| That power is remarkable, that it draws out broken bones, applied in water, like bryonia; for which reason some call this the white bryonia, and the other the black. It is more effective in the same use with honey and frankincense. It disperses incipient suppurations, and ripens and cleanses old ones. It provokes the menses and urine.

25| An ecligma is made from it for asthmatics, and against pains of the side, ruptures and convulsions. Drunk at three obols, it consumes the spleen in 30 days. The same with fig is applied also to pterygia of the fingers. Applied in wine it draws down the afterbirth in women, and phlegm at a drachma drunk in honeyed water.

26| The juice of the root ought to be collected before the ripening of the seed. This, applied by itself and with ervum, dresses up bodies with a somewhat more cheerful colour and tenderness of skin, and puts serpents to flight. The root itself is pounded with rich fig and smooths the wrinkles from the body, if two stadia are walked at once; otherwise it burns, unless it is washed off with cold water. The black vine does the same more pleasantly, since the white brings itching. There is also the black, which they properly call bryonia, others Chironia, others gynaecanthe or apronia, like the former except in colour; for the colour of this we have said is black. Its asparagi Diocles preferred to true asparagus in food, for provoking urine and reducing the spleen.

28| It grows chiefly in thickets and reedbeds. The root is black outside, of boxwood colour within. It draws out broken bones, even more effectively than the plants mentioned above, and the rest is the same. A particular property is that it uniquely cures the necks of beasts of burden. They say that if someone girds a farmhouse with it, hawks flee and the farmyard birds become safe. The same, bound around them, heals swellings of the legs, or blood that has settled down to the ankles, in a beast or a man. And so far of the kinds of vines.

29| Musts have these natural differences, that they are white or black or between the two, some from which wine is made, others from which passum. Treatment makes the differences innumerable; it will therefore be fitting to have said this in full: all must is bad for the stomach, pleasant to the veins. Drunk hastily and without drawing breath after the baths, it kills. It is hostile to the nature of cantharides, likewise to serpents, above all the haemorrhois and the salamander.

30| It causes headaches and is bad for the throat; it benefits the kidneys, liver and intestines, bladder; for it lightens them. It is particularly effective against buprestis, meconium, the curdling of milk, hemlock, toxica, dorycnium, drunk with oil and brought up again in vomiting. For all these the white is weaker; the must of passum is more pleasant and brings less headache.

31| The kinds of wine and their very many differences we have set out, and almost the properties of each. And no part is harder to treat or more numerous, since it is hard to say whether it helps or harms more people. Besides, how doubtful in its outcome is a drink that is at once either help or poison! For we are now speaking only of the nature that bears on remedies.

32| Asclepiades composed one volume on the giving of it, and those named after him afterwards discoursed endlessly on that one volume. We, with Roman gravity and an appetite for the liberal arts, shall distinguish those matters carefully, not as physicians but as judges of human health. To discuss the single kinds is immense and inexplicable, the opinions of physicians being discordant.

33| The ancients most approved the Surrentine, the following age the Alban or Falernian, and then different men others, in a most unfair kind of decree, pronouncing against all the others whatever was most pleasing to each. Even if opinions were agreed, what fraction of mortals could use these kinds? Nay, even the leading men nowhere have wines unmixed. Things have come to such a pass that only the names of cellars are sold, and vintages are adulterated at once in the vats.

34| And so, by Hercules, marvellous to tell, whatever is humbler and less known is now more harmless. Yet these seem to be the most steady opinions, those of which we have made mention. If someone will demand this distinction too, Falernian is not wholesome to the body either in its newness or in excessive age; its middle age begins from 15 years.

35| Drunk cold it is useful to the stomach, not so in the warm. For a lingering cough, it is usefully sipped unmixed by those fasting, likewise in quartan fevers. By nothing are the veins so roused. It stops the belly, nourishes the body. It has been believed to cause dimness of sight and to be of no benefit to the sinews or bladder. Alban wines are more useful to the sinews; sweet ones less so to the stomach; austere ones, even more than Falernian, are more useful. They help digestion less, fill the stomach moderately; but the Surrentine do so in no way, nor do they attack the head, and they hold back rheumatismoi of the stomach and intestines.

36| Caecuban wines are no longer produced. And those that survive, the Setine, force foods to be digested; they have more strength than the Surrentine, more austerity than the Alban, less vehemence than the Falernian. After these the Statanian would be at no long interval. For those with quick bowels it is beyond doubt that Signine is most beneficial. The rest will be spoken of in common.

37| By wine the strength, the blood and the colour of men are nourished. In this the middle of the world and the milder zone differ from the surrounding regions. As much strength as fierceness gives to those peoples, so much does this juice give to us. Drinking milk nourishes the bones, grain the sinews, water the flesh; therefore there is less ruddiness in those bodies, and less strength and endurance against labours.

38| By moderate wine the sinews are helped, by more copious they are harmed; so too the eyes. The stomach is restored and the appetite for foods invited; sadness and care are dulled, urine and chill are expelled, sleep is induced. It also stops vomiting, and soothes collections externally when applied on moist wool. Asclepiades pronounced that the usefulness of wine can scarcely be equalled by the power of the gods. Old wine is mixed with more water; the more it expels urine, the less it resists thirst. The sweet intoxicates less, but floats on the stomach; the austere is digested more easily.

39| The lightest is the one that ages fastest. That which grows sweet with age troubles the sinews less. A rich, dark wine is less useful to the stomach, but nourishes the body more. A thin and austere wine nourishes less, feeds the stomach more, passes more quickly through the urine; it attacks the head all the more; let this be said once for every other juice as well.

40| Wine aged by long smoke is most unwholesome. The dealers in their storerooms devised this, and now even heads of households, to add age. And yet by themselves they drew rot. By which word, certainly, the ancients gave sufficient counsel, since smoke eats away rot even in timber; but we, on the contrary, hold it as persuaded that antiquity is put on by the bitterness of smoke. Wines that are quite whitish become unwholesome with age. The more noble the wine, the more it thickens with age and curdles into a bitterness least useful to the body. To season another, less aged wine with it is unwholesome; to each wine its own savour is most harmless, to each its own age most pleasing, that is, the middle one.

41| For those wishing to increase the body or soften the belly, it is advantageous to drink among the foods; for those, on the contrary, who are reducing and who hold back the belly, to thirst while eating and afterwards to drink little. To drink wine fasting is, by a recent invention, most harmful for the careful and for those who strain the vigour of the mind for action; but for sleep and security it has long been what the Homeric Helen served before the meal. So too it has passed into a proverb that wisdom is overshadowed by wine.

42| We men owe it to wine that we alone of animals drink when not thirsty. To interpose a drink of water is most useful, and likewise to drink spring water after it. Drunkenness, indeed, the drinking of cold water immediately disperses.

43| Hesiod advises using unmixed drinks for 20 days before the Dog Star rises, and for as many after. Unmixed wine is a remedy against hemlock, coriander, aconite, mistletoe, meconium, quicksilver, bees, wasps, hornets, phalangia, the stings of serpents and scorpions, and against everything that harms by chilling, particularly against haemorrhois, prester serpents, fungi, likewise against swellings and gnawings of the midriff, and in those whose stomach pours out into vomiting, and if the belly or intestines feel a rheumatismos, for dysenterics, for those who sweat from a long cough, and in epiphorae unmixed.

44| For those with heart disease it helps to place unmixed wine in a sponge on the left breast, and for all these especially white wine that is growing old. Manhood too is usefully bathed with warm wine. Poured in through a horn for beasts of burden, it takes away weariness. Apes and four-footed animals that have toes, they say, do not grow if accustomed to drinking unmixed wine.

45| Now our talk of wines will concern illnesses. For the gently born the most wholesome is whatever Campanian wine is thinnest; for the common people, whatever strong wine has helped each most. Most useful to all is wine whose strength has been broken by the strainer. Let us remember that it is a juice which by boiling has made strength for itself from the must. To mix several kinds is useless for everybody. Most wholesome is the one to which nothing has been added in the must, and better if pitch has not been on the vessel. For who, even if strong, would not have shuddered at wine seasoned with marble and gypsum or lime?

46| First, then, wine made with sea water is bad for the stomach, sinews and bladder. Wines seasoned with resin are thought useful to cold stomachs, but not advantageous in vomiting, just as neither must nor sapa nor passum. New resinated wine suits no one; it causes headache and vertigo. From this is named crapula. The named ones are good for those who cough and in rheumatismos, likewise for coeliacs and dysenterics, and for the menses of women. In this kind the red or the black constrains more and warms more. Wine seasoned with pitch alone is more harmless. But we must remember that pitch is nothing other than the flux of burnt resin.

47| This kind of wine warms, digests, purges. It is useful to the chest and belly, likewise to pain of the womb, if without fever, to an old rheumatismos, to ulceration, ruptures, convulsions, abscesses, weakness of the sinews, swellings, cough, panting, and to dislocations, applied in greasy wool. For all these the more useful is the kind that by the nature of itself has the taste of pitch and is called pitched, in the district of Helvicum, though it is agreed that the head is attacked by too much of it.

48| As regards the conditions of fevers, it is certain that it is not to be given in fever, except to old patients and not except when the disease is declining; in acute dangers, to none except those who have manifest remissions, and these rather at night (half the danger at night, that is, for those drinking in hope of sleep), and not after childbirth or miscarriage or to those sick from lust, nor in headaches, nor to those whose attacks come with chill of the extremities, nor to those coughing in fever, nor in trembling or pains of the sinews or of the throat, or if the force of the disease is perceived about the flanks, nor in hardness of the midriff, violence of the veins, nor in opisthotonos or tetanus, nor to those with hiccups, nor if there is difficulty of breathing with fever;

49| and least of all to those whose eyes are stiff, with eyelids standing out or failing, heavy, nor those whose eyes show through when they blink, or whose eyelids do not close, or if the same happens when they sleep, or if the eyes are suffused with blood, or if there is rheum in the eyes; least of all with a spongy or heavy tongue, and to those who speak and then break off; nor if urine is passed with difficulty, nor to those who suddenly take fright, nor to the spasmodic or, again, the numbed, nor if the seed is discharged in sleep.

50| In the disease of the cardiaci, it is certain that this alone is the hope, from wine. But they hold that it must be given only at the onset, others in the remission; the former, to check the sweat, the latter because they think it safer when the disease is lessening, which I see is the opinion of the greater number. In any case it ought to be given only with food, and not after sleep, nor after any other drink having gone before,

51| that is, to one who is thirsty, and not except in the last despair, and more readily to a man than a woman, to an old man than a young, to a young man than a boy, in winter than summer, to those accustomed rather than the inexperienced. The measure of giving is according to the strength of the wine, and likewise the mixture of water. Commonly they think it enough that one cyathus be mixed with 2 of water; if there is looseness of the stomach, it is to be given; if food does not go down, again.

52| The kinds of wine which we taught to be compounded, I do not think are even made now, and their use is superfluous, since we teach the use of the very things from which they are compounded. At other times the ostentation of physicians in these matters had exceeded all measure, as that a wine made from turnips is useful for weariness from arms or riding, as they prescribe, and, to omit the rest, even one from juniper. And who would think it better to use wine of wormwood rather than wormwood itself? Among the rest let palm wine be omitted, harmful to the head and of no use except for softening the belly and for those who spit blood.

53| That which we have called bion cannot be thought artificial, since in it there is only haste in place of art. It is good for a loose stomach or one that does not complete the digestion of food, for pregnant women who are failing, for paralytics, for those who tremble, for vertigo, gripings, and sciatica. In pestilence too and on journeys it is said to have great power of helping.

54| The fault of wine, too, passes into remedies in vinegar. Its chief power is in cooling, yet no less in dispersing; so it happens that poured on the ground it foams. It has been said more often, and will be said, as many times as it is of use with other things. Taken by itself it disperses disgust, holds back hiccups, and smelt, sneezing. In the baths it keeps off heat, if it is held in the mouth. Further, drunk with water it is useful to the stomach of many, and with the same it is used as a gargle for convalescents, and in that way a bathing of the eyes against the burning of the sun is also most wholesome.

55| Drunk, it is a cure when a leech has been swallowed; likewise leprae, scurf, weeping ulcers, the bites of dogs, the stings of scorpions, of scolopendras, of the shrew-mouse, and against the poisons of all creatures that sting, and itchings; likewise against the bite of the multipeda, warm on a sponge, with a sextans of sulphur added to 3 sextarii, or a bunch of hyssop. It cures also ailments of the seat, in a flux of blood after the cutting of stones, and in every other case externally, applied on a sponge; internally, drunk, at two cyathi, as sharp as possible.

56| At any rate it disperses blood that has clotted. Against lichen it is both drunk and applied. It stops the belly and rheumatismos of the intestines when poured in, likewise prolapses of the seat and womb. It restrains an old cough and rheumatismos of the throat, orthopnoea, and loosening of the teeth. It harms the bladder and weaknesses of the sinews. The physicians did not know how much it avails against asps. Recently a man struck by an asp he had trodden on, carrying a skin of vinegar, felt the blow whenever he put it down, and at other times seemed unhurt. The remedy was understood there and relief given by drinking.

57| And not otherwise do those who suck out poisons rinse their mouths. In general this power is a subduer, not of foods only but of very many things. Poured on, it breaks rocks which fire applied beforehand has not broken. Of foods and flavours, indeed, no other juice commends or rouses more; in this use it is softened with burnt bread or cumin, or sharpened with pepper and laser, and in any case restrained by salt.

58| A huge example of it must not be passed over, since Marcus Agrippa, in his last years, afflicted with a grave disease of the feet, when he could not endure that pain, on the portentous knowledge of one of his physicians, without the knowledge of the deified Augustus, thought it worth the price to be without the use of his feet and all sensation, provided he were also without that pain, his legs being plunged into hot vinegar in the sharpest onset of the disease.

59| Vinegar of squill, aged, is more approved. Beyond what we have said, it is good for foods that turn sour, for on tasting it disperses that distress; likewise for those who vomit when fasting, for it makes a callus of the throat and stomach. It removes the smell of the mouth, draws together the gums, firms the teeth, gives a better colour. It also clears dullness of hearing by gargling and opens the passage of hearing. It incidentally sharpens the keenness of the eyes. For epileptics, melancholics, vertigo, strangulations of the womb, those struck or thrown down and therefore with clotted blood, weak sinews, and ailments of the kidneys, it is exceedingly useful; it must be avoided by the ulcerated.

60| Oxymeli the ancients, as Dieuches reports, mixed in this way: of honey 10 minae, of old vinegar 5 heminae, of sea salt a pound and a quarter by weight, of water 5 sextarii; they boiled them together in a cauldron, ten times boiling down, and so they poured it out and aged it.

61| Asclepiades did away with all that and refuted it (for they even gave it in fevers), yet he admits that it was beneficial against the serpents they call sepae, and against meconium and mistletoe, and, warm, as a gargle for anginas, and for the ears, and for desires of the mouth and throat. All of which are now achieved more effectively by oxyalme, that is, salt and fresh vinegar.

62| Akin to wine is sapa, made of must boiled down until a third part remains. This is better from white. Its use is against cantharides, buprestis, the caterpillars of pines, which they call pityocampae, salamanders, against venomous biting creatures. It draws down the afterbirth and dead foetuses, drunk with bulbs. Fabianus is the authority that it is a poison if someone drinks it fasting after the bath.

63| Next to these is the lees, of its own kind in each. The lees of wine, therefore, have such power that they kill those who go down into the vats. An experiment is offered by a lamp let down, which gives warning of the danger as long as it is extinguished. Unwashed, it is mixed into medicaments; with iris in equal weight it is applied to eruptions of phlegm, and dry or moist against phalangia and for inflammation of the testicles and breasts or in whatever part of the body, likewise boiled in wine with barley meal and the fine flour of frankincense.

64| It is also burnt when dried. The test of one properly burnt is that, when cooled, it seems to burn the tongue on touch. It is very quickly spent if stored uncovered. Burning adds much strength to it; boiled with fig, it is most useful for restraining lichens and scurf. So too it is applied to leprae and weeping ulcers.

65| It is contrary to the nature of fungi when drunk, but more so raw. Boiled and washed it is mixed into medicines for the eyes. Applied, it cures the testicles and genitals too, and in wine it is drunk against strangury. When it has lost its breath, it is also useful for washing bodies and clothes, and then it has the use of acacia.

66| The lees of vinegar, in proportion to its substance, must be sharper and ulcerate much more. It resists the growth of suppurations; applied, it helps the stomach, intestines and belly. It stops rheumatismos of those parts and the menses of women. It disperses panos not yet ulcerated and anginas, and erysipelas with wax.

67| The same dries up breasts that cannot bear their own milk, and takes away rough nails. Of serpents, against cerastes it is most effective with polenta, against the bite of the crocodile and of the dog with melanthium. And this burnt increases in strength. Then, with mastic oil added, applied for one night, it reddens the hair. The same, in water on a small cloth, applied, purges the womb.

68| Burns are healed by the lees of sapa, better with the down of the reed added; the same lees boiled and drunk cures old coughs. It is cooked in pans with salt and fat also for swelling of the jaws and neck.

69| Of the olive tree the next standing is understood. Its leaves are very strongly astringent, cleansing, and checking. Therefore chewed and applied they cure ulcers, and applied with oil, headaches; their decoction with honey is used for those parts which physicians have burnt, for inflammations of the gums, paronychiae and foul and putrefying ulcers. With honey it restrains the flow of blood from sinewy parts.

70| Their juice is effective for ulcers around the eyes that turn to carbuncles, and for pustules and a prolapsing pupil, for which reason it is added to eye salves. For it cures old watering of the eyes and erosions of the eyelids. The juice is pressed from the leaves when pounded, with wine and rain water poured on, and when dried is divided into lozenges. It stops the menses, applied to the womb in wool; it is useful also for those weeping a discharge, likewise for condylomata, erysipelas, creeping ulcers, and epinyctis.

71| The flower of them has the same effects. The little stalks in blossom are burnt, so that the ash serves in place of spodium, and with wine poured on are burnt again. Suppurations and panos they smear with that ash or with the leaves pounded with honey, and the eyes with polenta. The juice of the fresh shrub, set alight and dripping, cures lichens, scurf and weeping ulcers. For the tear which drips from the tree itself,

72| chiefly of the Ethiopian olive, it is not enough to wonder that men have been found who advised applying it to toothache, though proclaiming that it is a poison and should even be sought in the wild olive. The bark of the root of the olive, as young as possible, scraped into honey, cures by frequent tasting those who bring up blood and those who cough up purulent matter. The ash of the olive itself, with axle-grease, heals swellings and draws out the defects from fistulas and heals the fistulas themselves.

73| White olives are more useful to the stomach, less to the belly. They have an excellent use, before they are pickled, fresh by themselves, swallowed like food. For they cure gravelly urine, and teeth worn down or loosened by chewing meat. The black olive is less useful to the stomach, easier on the belly; it does not suit the head or eyes. Either is good for burns, the white ground and applied, but the black is chewed and, applied straight from the mouth, prevents pustules from forming. Colymbades cleanse foul ulcers, and are useless for difficulties of urine.

74| On amurca we might seem to have said enough, following Cato, but it must be rendered to medicine too. It helps most effectively the gums and ulcers of the mouth and the steadiness of the teeth, likewise poured on erysipelas and on creeping ulcers. For chilblains the amurca of black olives is more useful, likewise for bathing infants, but that of white ones is applied to a woman's womb in wool. Much more effective is all amurca when boiled. It is cooked in a Cyprian vessel to the thickness of honey. Its use, with vinegar or old wine or honeyed wine, as each case requires, is in the treatment of the mouth, teeth, ears, weeping ulcers, genitals, and rhagades.

75| It is applied to wounds on small cloths, to dislocations in wool. Here the use is huge, in any case as a medicine that has been aged; for such heals fistulas. It is poured into ulceration of the seat, the genitals, and the womb, and applied to incipient gout, likewise to joint diseases. If it is boiled again with omphacium to the thickness of honey, it draws out decayed teeth; likewise it wonderfully heals the mange of beasts of burden, with a decoction of lupines and the herb chamaeleon. Raw amurca is most useful for bathing gouty limbs.

76| The leaves of the wild olive have the same nature. Spodium from the little stalks holds back rheumatismos more strongly. It also calms inflammations of the eyes, cleanses and fills mortified ulcers, gently eats away and dries growths and brings them to a scar. The rest as in the cultivated olives, but a peculiarity is that the leaves are boiled in honey and given in 3 spoonfuls against spitting of blood.

77| The oil only is sharper and more effective, and for that reason the mouth too is rinsed with it for firmness of the teeth. The leaves are applied to paronychiae and carbuncles and, with wine, against every collection, and with honey to those that need cleansing. A decoction of the leaves and the juice of the wild olive are mixed into medicines for the eyes. It is usefully dropped into the ears with honey, even if pus flows out.

78| The flower of the wild olive is applied to condylomata and epinyctides, and with barley meal to the belly in rheumatismos, with oil to headaches. The little stalks, boiled and applied with honey, press down the skin on the head when it separates from the bones. Of the wild olive, the ripe fruits taken as food stop the belly, and toasted and ground with honey they cleanse nomae and burst carbuncles.

79| The nature and causes of oil we have set out at length. For medicine, from the kinds of oil these things are relevant: that the most useful is omphacium, next the green, besides that which is as fresh as possible (except when the oldest is sought), thin, fragrant and one that does not bite, the opposite of what is chosen for food. Omphacium is good for the gums if it is held in the mouth, and keeps the colour of the teeth and steadies their movement. It checks sweats.

80| Oenanthinum has the same effect as rosaceum. By every oil the body is softened and takes on vigour and strength. It is contrary to the stomach, and increases the growth of ulcers. It roughens the throat and dulls all poisons, especially those of psimithium and gypsum, drunk in honeyed water or a decoction of dried figs against meconium, in water against cantharides, buprestis, salamanders, pityocampae, and drunk by itself and brought up in vomiting against all the above-mentioned. It is a restorer after weariness and chills.

81| Gripings it drives out, drunk warm in 6 cyathi, and more with rue boiled in at the same time, likewise the creatures of the belly. It loosens the belly, drunk in the measure of a hemina with wine and hot water or with the juice of tisana; useful in wound plasters, it cleanses the face. Poured through the nostrils of oxen until they belch, it calms swelling.

82| Old oil, however, warms bodies more and disperses sweats more, spreads hardnesses more, and is a help to lethargics, even when the disease is declining. It contributes something to clearness of the eyes with an equal portion of smokeless honey. It is a remedy for headaches, likewise for burning heats in fever with water. If there is no opportunity for the old, it is boiled to present the appearance of age.

83| Cicinum oil is drunk for purges of the belly with an equal measure of hot water. In particular it is said to purge the midriff. It is good also for diseases of the joints, all hardnesses, the womb, the ears, burns, and with the ash of murex shells for inflammations of the seat, likewise for psora. It commends the colour of the skin and calls forth the hair by its fertile nature. No living creature touches the seed from which it is made.

84| Lamp wicks are made from its cluster, of outstanding brightness; from oil the light is dim, because of its excessive fatness. The leaves are applied to erysipelas in vinegar, and fresh by themselves to the breasts and epiphorae; the same boiled in wine are applied to inflammations with polenta and saffron; by themselves, laid on for three days, they cleanse the face.

85| Almond oil purges, softens the body, smooths wrinkles from the skin, commends brightness, and with honey removes pimples from the face. It is good also for the ears boiled with rosaceum or honey and the rind of the pomegranate, and kills little worms in them, and disperses heaviness of hearing, uncertain sounds and ringing, and incidentally headaches and those of the eyes. It cures boils, and with wax the burns of the sun. It cleans out weeping ulcers and scurf with wine, and condylomata with melilot; by itself, smeared on the head, it entices sleep.

86| Laurel oil is more useful the fresher it is and the greener in colour. Its power is warming, and therefore it is applied warmed in the calyx of a pomegranate for paralytics, spasmodics, sufferers from sciatica, for bruises, headaches, old catarrhs, and the ears.

87| Similar is the account of myrtle oil. It draws together and hardens. It cures the gums, toothache, dysentery, ulcerated womb, bladders, old or weeping ulcers with copper scale and wax, likewise eruptions and burns. Rubbed in, it heals scurf too, rhagades, condylomata, dislocated joints, and heavy odour of the body. It is hostile to cantharides, buprestis and other bad drugs that harm by causing ulcers.

88| Of chamaemyrsine or oxymyrsine the nature is the same. Cypress oil has the same effects as myrtle, and so does citrus. That from the walnut, which we have called caryinum, is useful for alopecias, and poured into the ears for dullness of hearing, and applied for headache, otherwise inert and of heavy flavour. Indeed if there is anything rotten in the kernel, the whole modius is lost.

89| That made from the Cnidian grain has the same power as cicinum. That made from mastic is most useful for acopon, and would achieve the same as rosaceum, if it were not perceived to be a little harder. They use it also against excessive sweats and sweat-pimples. It heals the mange of beasts of burden most effectively. Balaninum oil cleans pimples, boils, freckles, and the gums.

90| What the cyprus is like and how oil is made from it we have taught. Its nature warms and softens the sinews. The leaves are applied to the stomach and to a disordered womb, and their juice too is applied. Fresh leaves chewed cure weeping ulcers on the head, likewise those of the mouth and collections, condylomata. A decoction of the leaves is good for burns and dislocations.

91| The leaves themselves, pounded with the juice of the struthium quince added, redden the hair. The flower calms headaches, applied with vinegar, and likewise burnt in an unbaked pot it cures nomae and putrefying ulcers, by itself or with honey. The odour of the flower and of the oil induces sleep. Gleucinum draws together and cools by the same reasoning as oenanthinum.

92| Balsaminum is by far the most precious of all, as we said in dealing with perfumes; effective against all serpents, it contributes most to clearness of the eyes, disperses dimness, and likewise difficulties of breathing, and soothes all collections and hardnesses. It prevents blood from thickening, cleanses ulcers, and is exceedingly useful for the ears, headaches, those who tremble, spasmodics and ruptures. Drunk in milk it is hostile to aconite, and it makes fevers that come with shivering lighter for those anointed with it. It must however be used moderately, since it burns and increases the faults when proportion is not kept.

93| Of malobathrum too we have set out the nature and kinds. It provokes urine; pressed out in wine it is very usefully applied to epiphorae of the eyes, likewise to the foreheads of those who wish to sleep, more effectively if the nostrils are also smeared with it or if it is drunk in water. A leaf placed under the tongue commends the sweetness of the mouth and breath, as placed among clothes it does their odour.

94| Hyoscyaminum is useful for softening, useless for the sinews. Drunk, indeed, it causes movements of the brain. Therminum from lupines softens, with an effect next to rosaceum. Narcissinum has been spoken of with its flower. Raphaninum removes lice contracted from long illness, and corrects roughnesses of the skin on the face.

95| Sesaminum heals pains of the ears and ulcers that creep, and those they call cacoethe. Lilinum, which we also called Syrian, is most useful for the kidneys and for drawing out sweats, for softening the womb and for digesting internally. Selgiticum we have said is useful to the sinews, as is also the herbal oil, which the people of Iguvium sell around the Via Flaminia.

96| Elaeomeli, which we have said flows in Syria from the olives themselves, with a flavour of honey, loosens the belly not without nausea; it draws off bile especially when given at 2 cyathi in a hemina of water; those who drink it grow numb and are repeatedly roused. Drinkers about to compete take beforehand one cyathus of it. Pissinum oil is used for cough and the mange of four-footed animals.

97| After vines and olives the next distinction belongs to palms. Fresh dates intoxicate; the less dry bring headache, and are not, so far as appears, useful to the stomach. They roughen a cough, they nourish the body. The juice of those boiled the ancients gave to the sick in place of hydromel to restore strength and to quench thirst, in which use they preferred the Theban; useful also to those who spit blood, chiefly in food. Caryotae are applied to the stomach, bladder, belly, and intestines with quinces and wax and saffron. They correct bruises. The kernels of palms, burnt in a new earthen pot, the ash washed, serve in place of spodium and are mixed into eye salves and make beautiful eyelids, with nard added.

98| The palm which bears myrobalanum, most approved in Egypt, has no stones in its fruits, as the others have. It provokes the belly and the menses, in austere wine, and glues wounds together.

99| The palm elate, or spathe, contributes to medicine its shoots, leaves and bark. The leaves are applied to the midriff, stomach, liver, to creeping ulcers that resist a scar. Its tender bark with resin and wax cures psorae in 20 days. It is also boiled for ailments of the testicles. It blackens the hair. By fumigation it draws out the afterbirth. It is given to drink for ailments of the kidneys and bladder and midriff, being hostile to the head and sinews. A decoction of it stops flows of the womb and belly; likewise the ash, and gripings, drunk in white wine, most effective for ailments of the womb.

100| Next, apples have varieties of kinds and of medicines. Of these the spring ones are sour and useless to the stomach, they turn the belly and bladder, and harm the sinews. Boiled they are better. Quinces boiled are sweeter, yet raw, provided they are ripe, they are good for those who spit blood and for dysenterics, cholera patients, coeliacs. Boiled they cannot do the same, since they lose that astringent power of the juice, and yet they are boiled in rain water for the same purposes as were written above.

101| They are applied also to the chest in the burning heats of fevers, and for pains of the stomach they are applied raw or boiled in the manner of a cerate. Their down heals carbuncles. They restore hair in alopecias when boiled in wine and applied with wax.

102| Those of them that are stored raw in honey move the belly; they add much to the sweetness of honey and make it more useful to the stomach. Those that are stored cooked in honey, some give for ailments of the stomach, ground with boiled rose leaves, in place of food. The juice of raw ones is good for the spleen, for orthopnoea, for the dropsical, likewise for the breasts, condylomata, varices; the flower, both green and dry, for eye inflammations, spitting of blood, the menses of women.

103| A mild juice is also made from them, pounded with sweet wine, useful for coeliacs and the liver. With their decoction too the womb and the intestines are bathed, if they prolapse. Oil is also made from them, which we called melinum, whenever [….] they have not grown in damp places. Therefore the most useful are those that come from Sicily, less useful the struthia, though akin. The root of them, the earth having been drawn round it, is taken with the left hand, in such a way that he who does it says why he takes it and for whose sake. So tied on, it cures scrofulous swellings.

104| Melimela and the other sweet ones loosen the stomach and belly, causing thirst and heat, but they do not harm the sinews. The orbiculata stop the belly and vomiting, and provoke urine. Wild apples are like the sour spring ones and stop the belly; certainly for this use they must be unripe.

105| Citrus fruits are drunk in wine against poison, either the fruit itself or the seed. They give sweetness to the mouth, rinsed with their decoction or with the juice pressed out. Of these the seed they advise to be eaten by pregnant women in nausea, and the fruit itself against weakness of the stomach, but they are not easily chewed except in vinegar.

106| Of the pomegranate, to repeat the nine kinds now is superfluous. Of these the sweet ones, which we called by another name apyrena, are held useless to the stomach; they produce swellings and harm the teeth and gums. But those next to them in flavour, which we called winy, having a small kernel, are understood to be somewhat more useful; they stop the belly and stomach, but only a few, and even these must not be given beyond satiety, although in fever none at all, neither the flesh of the seeds being useful nor the juice. They are to be avoided equally by those prone to vomiting and by those who bring up bile.

107| In these nature has shown the grape, and not even must but at once wine. Both have a rather rough rind; that of the sour kind is much used. The common people know that hides are chiefly finished with it; for this reason physicians call it malicorium. They show that urine is provoked by the same, and that, boiled in vinegar with a gall-nut mixed in, it steadies loose teeth. It is sought for the nausea of pregnant women, since on tasting it moves the child. The fruit is divided and steeped in rain water for about three days each; this is drunk cold by coeliacs and those who spit blood.

108| From the sour kind is made a medicine called stomatice, most useful for ailments of the mouth, nostrils, ears, for dimness of the eyes, pterygia, the genitals, and for those called nomae and for growths in ulcers, and against the sea hare in this way: the seeds with the rind removed are pounded and the juice boiled down to a third, with half a pound of saffron and of split alum, of myrrh, and of Attic honey.

109| Others also make it in this way: the sour pomegranates, many of them, are pounded, the juice cooked in a new pot to the thickness of honey, for ailments of manhood and of the seat and everything that is cured with lycium, for purulent ears, incipient epiphorae, red spots on the hands. The branches of pomegranates put serpents to flight. The rinds of the pomegranate, cooked in wine and applied, cure chilblains. A pomegranate crushed, boiled down from 3 heminae of wine to one hemina, expels gripings and tapeworms. A pomegranate in a new pot, the lid sealed, burnt in an oven and ground and drunk in wine, stops the belly and disperses gripings.

110| The first offspring of this fruit, when it begins to flower, is called cytinus by the Greeks, of marvellous observance by the experience of many. If someone, freed from every bond of belt and shoe and even of ring, plucks one of them with 2 fingers, the thumb and the fourth, of the left hand, and then, the eyes having been purified with a light touch, puts it in his mouth and swallows it, taking care not to touch it with the tooth, it is affirmed that he will suffer no weakness of the eyes in that same year.

111| The same cytini, dried and ground, restrain growths of flesh, and cure the gums and teeth, even when they are loose, with the juice boiled. The little bodies themselves, ground, are applied to ulcers that creep or putrefy, likewise to inflammation of the eyes and of the intestines and generally for everything for which the rinds of the fruits serve. They are hostile to scorpions.

112| It is not enough to wonder at the care and diligence of the ancients, who, searching everything, left nothing untried. In this very cytinus are little flowers, bursting out of course before the fruit itself appears, which we have said are called balaustium. These too, then, they tried and found hostile to scorpions. Drunk, they stop the menses of women, they cure ulcers of the mouth, tonsils, the uvula, spitting of blood, looseness of the belly and stomach, the genitals, and weeping ulcers in any part.

113| They dried them as well, so that in this way too they might test them, and found that the meal of them pounded recalls dysenterics from death. They stop looseness. Further, they did not shrink from testing the very kernels of the seeds. Toasted and pounded, they help the stomach in food or in drinks. By themselves they are drunk in rain water to stop the belly. The root, boiled, gives off a juice which kills tapeworms, at the weight of a victoriatus. The same, boiled thoroughly in water, provides the uses of lycium.

114| There is also a wild pomegranate, so called from the likeness. Its roots, with red bark, at the weight of a denarius drunk in wine, bring sleep. When the seed is drunk, the water that has crept under the skin is dried up. By the smoke of pomegranate rind gnats are put to flight.

115| The eating of all pears, even for the healthy, is burdensome, and for the sick is denied as wine is. The same boiled are wonderfully wholesome and pleasant, especially the Crustumine; and all that are boiled with honey help the stomach. Poultices are made from pears to disperse ailments of the body, and with their decoction they treat hardnesses. They are themselves hostile to boleti and fungi, and drive them out by their weight and by the conflict of their juice. The wild pear ripens most slowly.

116| It is cut up and dried hung up, to stop the belly, which its decoction also does when drunk. The leaves too are boiled with the fruit for the same uses. The ash of pear wood is still more effective against fungi. Apples and pears are wonderfully heavy for beasts of burden to carry, even a few. A remedy, they say, is to give them something to eat first, or at least to show it to them.

117| The milky juice of the fig has the nature of vinegar, and therefore curdles milk in the manner of rennet. It is taken before the ripeness of the fruit and dried in the shade, for opening ulcers and bringing on the menses applied as a pessary with the yolk of an egg or drunk with starch. It is applied to gout with fenugreek meal and vinegar. It also removes hairs and corrects scabbiness of the eyelids, likewise lichens and psorae.

118| It loosens the belly. The nature of fig milk is hostile to the poisons of hornets and wasps and the like, especially of scorpions. The same with axle-grease removes warts. The leaves and the figs that have not ripened are applied to scrofulous swellings and to everything that needs softening or dispersing; the leaves also do this by themselves. Another use of them is in rubbing lichen and alopecias and wherever it is necessary to make an ulcer.

119| And against dog bites the tender stalks of the branches are applied to the skin. The same with honey are applied to the ulcers called cerion. With the leaves of wild poppy they draw out broken bones; the bites of mad dogs they quench with the leaf ground in vinegar. From the black fig the white stalks are applied to boils, and with wax to the bites of the shrew-mouse. The ash of them, from the leaves, is for gangrenes and for consuming growths.

120| Ripe figs provoke urine, loosen the belly, and stir sweat and papules, and for this reason are unhealthy in autumn, since bodies sweating under the effect of this food chill. They are not useful to the stomach, except for a short time, and are understood to be contrary to the voice. The last are more wholesome than the first, but medicated ones never. They increase the strength of the young, make the health of the old better and give fewer wrinkles. They quench thirst and cool heat, and for this reason are not to be denied in contracted fevers, which they call stegnai.

121| Dried figs harm the stomach, but are magnificently useful to the throat and gullet. Their nature is to warm. They bring thirst, soften the belly, are contrary to rheumatismos of it and to the stomach, are always useful to the bladder and to the short-winded and asthmatic, likewise for ailments of the liver, kidneys, spleen. They build up the body and strength; for this reason athletes formerly were fed on this food (Pythagoras the trainer was the first to move them to meat);

122| most usefully for those recovering from a long illness. They are applied also to epileptics and the dropsical and to everything that needs ripening or dispersing, more effectively with lime or nitrum or iris mixed in. Cooked with hyssop they clear the chest, phlegm, an old cough, and with wine the seat and swellings of the jaws. For boils, panos, parotid swellings, they are applied boiled. It is also useful to bathe with their decoction, and women with the same decoction with fenugreek.

123| They are useful to pleurisy and peripneumonia patients; cooked with rue, for gripings. They are good for ulcers of the shins with flower of copper, and for parotid swelling, for pterygia with pomegranate, for burns, for chilblains with wax, for the dropsical cooked in wine and with wormwood and barley meal. With nitrum added, chewed, they loosen the belly. For the stings of scorpions they are applied ground with salt. They draw out carbuncles, cooked in wine and applied. For a carcinoma, if it is without ulcer, to apply the fattest possible fig is almost a unique remedy, likewise for phagedaena.

124| The ash of no other tree is sharper. It cleanses, glues together, fills, and draws together. It is drunk also to disperse clotted blood, likewise for those struck, thrown down, ruptured, convulsed, a cyathus of the ash in a cyathus each of water and oil. It is given to those with tetanus and spasms, likewise drunk or poured in for coeliacs and dysenterics. And if someone is anointed with it with oil, it warms. The same, worked with wax and rosaceum, draws a very thin scar over burns. Applied with oil, it corrects the purblind, and faults of the teeth by frequent rubbing. They also report that,

125| if someone, the tree being bent over, with face upturned, takes off one of its knots with his bite, with no one seeing, and, bound in a piece of soft leather, hangs it from his neck on a thread, scrofulous swellings and parotid swellings are dispersed. The bark ground with oil heals ulcers of the belly. Unripe figs remove warts, thymi with nitrum and meal added. The ash of the shoots coming from the root serves in place of spodium. Washed twice, with psimithium added, it is divided into lozenges for ulcers of the eyes and roughness.

126| The caprifig is still much more effective than the fig; with a twig of it milk is curdled into cheese. It has less milk; this taken and curdled to hardness gives sweetness to meats by rubbing. Diluted with vinegar it is mixed into ulcerating medicines. It loosens the belly, opens the womb with starch, brings on the menses with the yolk of an egg. It is applied to the gouty with fenugreek meal. It clears leprae, psorae, lichens, freckles, likewise the stings of venomous creatures and dog bites.

127| This juice too, applied on wool, is good for toothache, or put into the hollow of the teeth. The stalks and leaves, with ervum mixed in, are good against the poisons of marine creatures; wine is also added. The stalks, added, cook beef thoroughly with a great saving of wood. Unripe figs applied soften and disperse scrofulous swellings and every collection; to some extent the leaves too. The softest of them, with vinegar, cure weeping ulcers and epinyctides and scurf.

128| With honey the leaves cure cerion and fresh dog bites, with wine phagedaenas; with the leaves of poppy they draw out bones. The unripe figs of the caprifig disperse inflammations by fumigation (they resist bull's blood when drunk, and psimithium, and curdled milk when drunk), and, boiled in water and applied, parotid swellings. The stalks or unripe figs of it, the smallest possible, are drunk in wine for the stings of scorpions.

129| The milk too is dropped on the wound and the leaves are applied, likewise against the shrew-mouse. The ash of the stalks calms the uvula of the throat, the ash of the tree itself with honey rhagades, the root boiled in wine toothache. The winter caprifig, cooked in vinegar and ground, removes impetigines. Shavings from a branch without bark, as fine as possible, in the manner of sawdust, are applied.

130| A marvel of one medicine is added to the caprifig too: if a boy not yet grown, having broken off a branch, strips with his teeth its swelling bark, the pith itself, tied on before sunrise, prevents scrofulous swellings. The caprifig, put round their necks, restrains bulls however fierce, with so marvellous a nature that it renders them motionless.

131| The Greeks also call a herb erinos, to be given at this place on account of its kinship. It is a palm high, with usually five little stalks, like basil; the flower is white, the seed black and small. Ground with Attic honey it cures epiphorae of the eyes. The dropping in of its juice (for the herb, when plucked, flows with abundant sweet milk) is exceedingly useful for pain of the ears, with a little nitrum added. The leaves resist poisons.

132| The leaves of the plum tree, boiled, are good for the tonsils, gums and uvula, boiled in wine more strongly, used as a rinse repeatedly. The plums themselves loosen the belly, not very useful to the stomach, but only for a short moment. More useful are peaches and their juice, even pressed out in wine or in vinegar. Nor is there any food more harmless than these fruits; nowhere is there less scent, and more juice, which nevertheless stimulates thirst [….] their leaves, ground and applied, stop haemorrhage. The kernels of peaches are applied to headaches with oil and vinegar.

133| The berries of wild plums, or the bark from the root, if they are boiled in austere wine so that [….] out of a hemina remains, stop the belly and gripings. It is enough to take single cyathi of the decoction. In these and in the cultivated plums there is a slime of trees, which the Greeks call lichen, wonderfully useful for rhagades and condylomata.

134| Mulberries, in Egypt and Cyprus of their own kind, as we have said, abound in plentiful juice when the uppermost bark is stripped off; the deeper wound is dry, by a wonderful nature. The juice is hostile to the poisons of serpents, is good for dysenterics, disperses panos and all collections, glues wounds together, calms headaches, likewise those of the ears. It is drunk and applied by sufferers from the spleen and against chills.

135| It very quickly feels the woodworm. Nor in our country is the use of the juice less: drunk in wine it is hostile to aconite and spiders; it loosens the belly and draws out phlegm and tapeworms and the like creatures of the belly. The same is done by the bark, ground. The leaves dye the hair, cooked in rain water with the black fig and the bark of the vine. The juice of the fruit itself loosens the belly at once. The fruits themselves are for the moment useful to the stomach, they cool, they cause thirst; if no other food follows, they swell up. From unripe ones the juice stops the belly, as though from some living creature in this tree, the marvels to be observed which we have told in its nature.

136| From the fruit is made panchrestos stomatice, also called arteriace, in this way: 3 sextarii of juice from the fruit are reduced over a gentle steam to the thickness of honey; afterward is added a weight of dry omphacium of 2 denarii, or of myrrh 1 denarius, of saffron 1 denarius; these ground together are mixed into the decoction. And there is no remedy more agreeable for the mouth, windpipe, uvula and stomach. It is made also in another way: 2 sextarii of juice and a sextarius of Attic honey are boiled as we said above.

137| Marvellous besides are the things that are reported: that at the first budding, before they come out into leaves, the fruits that are to be are plucked with the left hand. The Greeks call them ricini. If these have not touched the ground, tied on they stop blood, whether it flows from a wound or from the mouth or the nostrils or from haemorrhoids. For this purpose they are kept stored.

138| The same is said to be done by a branch broken off at full moon as it begins to bear fruit, if it has not touched the ground, tied on the arm of women particularly against abundance of the menses. They think that this is done also at any time when it is plucked from the trees themselves so that it does not touch the ground, and tied on. The leaves of the mulberry, ground or boiled dry, are applied to the stings of serpents; the same effect is had by drinking. Against scorpions the juice of the bark of the root, drunk in wine or vinegar-water, is hostile. The compound of the ancients must be given too.

139| They boiled the expressed juice of the ripe fruit mixed with that of the unripe in a bronze vessel to the thickness of honey. Some, with myrrh added and cypress, hardened it first in a vessel, roasting it in the sun and stirring with a spatula three times a day. This was stomatice, with which they also brought wounds to a scar. Another preparation of the juice: they pressed it from the dried fruit, contributing much to the flavour of relishes, in medicine against nomae and phlegm of the chest and wherever it was needed to bind the viscera. They rinsed the teeth with it too.

140| A third kind of juice is from the leaves and root boiled, to be applied with oil to burns. The leaves are applied by themselves as well. The root, cut at harvest time, gives a juice most suitable for toothache and collections and suppurations. It purges the belly. Mulberry leaves steeped in urine take the hair off hides.

141| Cherries loosen the belly and are useless to the stomach; the same dried stop the belly and provoke urine. I find in the authorities that if someone swallows them dewy in the morning with their kernels, the belly is so far relieved that the feet are freed from disease. Medlars, except the setanian, which have a force nearer to the apple, the rest draw together the stomach and stop the belly. Likewise dried sorb apples, for fresh ones are good for the stomach and for those with quick bowels.

142| Pine nuts, which have resin, lightly crushed, with a sextarius of water added to each, boiled down to a half, cure spitting of blood, in such a way that two cyathi of it are drunk at a time. A decoction of the bark of the pine in wine is given against gripings. The kernels of the pine nut quench thirst and the sharpness and gnawings of the stomach and contrary humours settled there. And they strengthen weakness of the powers, being useful to the kidneys and bladder.

143| They seem to roughen the throat and cause cough. They drive out bile, drunk in water or wine or passum or a decoction of acorns. Cucumber seed and the juice of purslane are mixed with them against the more violent gnawings of the stomach, likewise for ulcers of the bladder and for the kidneys, since they also provoke urine.

144| A decoction of the roots of the bitter almond corrects the skin of the face and makes the colour more cheerful. The nuts themselves induce sleep and appetite, and provoke urine and the menses. They are applied to headache, most of all in fever; if it comes from drunkenness, in vinegar and rosaceum and a sextarius of water. They stop blood with starch and mint, are good for lethargics and epileptics when the head is anointed, heal epinyctides in old wine, putrefying ulcers, dog bites with honey, and scurf on the face when it has been prepared beforehand by bathing; likewise pains of the liver and kidneys, drunk in water, but often also as an ecligma with terebinth resin.

145| For those with stones and difficulty of urine they are effective ground in passum, and for clearing the skin in honeyed water. They are good as an ecligma with milk for the liver, for cough and for the colon, with elelisphacos added in moderation, in honey; the amount taken is the size of a hazelnut. They say that drinkers who have taken five or so beforehand do not feel drunkenness, and that foxes, if they have eaten them and cannot get at water nearby to lap, die. The sweet ones have less strength in remedies. These nevertheless purge and provoke urine. Fresh ones fill the stomach.

146| With Greek nuts, taken with wormwood seed in vinegar, the regius morbus is said to be cured, and the same applied by themselves cure ailments of the seat and especially condylomata, likewise cough and spitting of blood.

147| Walnuts the Greeks named from heaviness of the head. For indeed the rank smell of the trees themselves and their leaves penetrates the brain. The kernels do this with less torment, but in foods. Fresh ones are more pleasant; dry ones are oilier and useless to the stomach, hard to digest, bringing headache, hostile to those who cough, suited to those about to vomit fasting in tenesmus alone, for they draw phlegm. The same, taken beforehand, dull poisons, and are likewise hostile to onions and soften their flavour.

148| They are applied to inflammation of the ears; with a small quantity of honey and rue they are applied to the breasts and to dislocations, for angina with rue and oil, with onion and salt and honey to the bite of a dog or a man. A hollow tooth is cauterized with the shell of a walnut. The shell, burnt and ground, applied in oil or wine to the head of infants, nourishes the hair; therefore they use it so for alopecias. The more nuts someone eats, the more easily he drives out tapeworms. Walnuts that are very old cure gangrenes and carbuncles, likewise bruises; the husk of walnuts cures the fault of lichens and dysenterics; the leaves ground with vinegar, pain of the ears.

149| In the sanctuaries of Mithridates, the greatest of kings, after he had been conquered, Pompey found in a private notebook in his own hand a composition of an antidote from 2 dried nuts, likewise as many figs and 20 leaves of rue, ground together, with a grain of salt added: that for him who takes this fasting no poison will do harm on that day. Against the bite of a mad dog also, kernels that a fasting man has chewed and applied are said to be an immediate remedy.

150| Hazelnuts cause headache and swelling of the stomach, and contribute more to the body and to fatness than is likely. But toasted they cure catarrh too, and a chronic cough, ground and drunk in honeyed water; some add grains of pepper, others drink them in passum. Pistachios have the same uses as pine kernels, and besides for the stings of serpents, whether eaten or drunk. Chestnuts strongly stop flows of the stomach and belly, move the bowels, are good for those who spit blood, and nourish the flesh.

151| Carob pods, fresh, are useless to the stomach and loosen the belly. The same dried stop it and become more useful to the stomach, and provoke urine. The Syrian ones, in pain of the stomach, some boil down, three of them to each sextarius of water, to a half, and drink that juice. The sweat of a branch of the cornel tree, caught on a red-hot iron plate without touching the wood, and the rust formed from it applied, cures lichens in their beginning. The arbutus, also called unedo, bears fruit hard to digest and useless to the stomach.

152| The laurel has a warming nature in leaves and bark and berries; therefore a decoction of these, and especially of the leaves, is agreed to be good for wombs and bladders. Applied, they resist the poisons of wasps and hornets and bees, likewise of serpents, above all the sepes, dipsas and viper. They are good also for the menses of women, cooked with oil, and with polenta, the tender ones ground, against inflammations of the eyes, and with rue against those of the testicles, with rosaceum or with iris oil for headaches. Moreover, chewed and swallowed, three each for three days, they free from cough, and ground with honey the same for shortness of breath.

153| The bark of the root must be avoided by pregnant women. The root itself breaks stones, and is good for the liver, drunk in fragrant wine at 3 obols. The leaves drunk move vomiting. The berries draw the menses, applied ground or drunk. An old cough and orthopnoea are cured by berries, two with the bark removed, drunk in wine; if there is also fever, boiled in water or in an ecligma made with passum or honeyed water.

154| They are good for consumptives in the same way and for all rheumatismoi of the chest; for they both digest phlegm and draw it out. Against scorpions four each are drunk in wine. The juice of the berries corrects epinyctides, applied with oil, and freckles and weeping ulcers and ulcers of the mouth and scurf, scaly eruption of the skin, and lice; for pain or heaviness of the ears it is dropped in with old wine and rosaceum.

155| All venomous creatures flee from those anointed with it; drunk it is good against stings. But the most effective is the laurel that has the thinnest leaves. The berries with wine resist serpents and scorpions and spiders; with oil and vinegar they are applied to the spleen and the liver, and with honey to gangrenes. And in weariness or chill it is good to be anointed with that juice, with nitrum added.

156| There are some who think that the root, drunk in water to the measure of an acetabulum, does much to speed childbirth, the fresh root more effectively than the dried. Some prescribe 10 berries to be given in drink against the stings of scorpions; likewise, as a remedy for a relaxed uvula, that berries or leaves, a quarter of a pound by weight, be boiled down in 3 sextarii of water to a third and gargled hot; and, for headache, that an odd number of berries be pounded with oil and warmed.

157| The leaves of the Delphic laurel, pounded and smelled from time to time, keep off the contagion of pestilence, all the more if they are also burned. Oil from the Delphic laurel is useful for cerates and acopum, for dispelling chills, relaxing the sinews, pains in the side and cold fevers; likewise, warmed in the rind of a pomegranate, for earache. The leaves, boiled down in water to a third, check the uvula when gargled and, when drunk, pains of the bowels and intestines; the most tender of them, pounded in wine and applied at night, check pimples and itching.

158| The other kinds of laurel have nearly the same powers. The Alexandrian or Idaean laurel speeds childbirth, its root drunk at a weight of 3 denarii in 3 cyathi of sweet wine; it also expels the afterbirth and the menses. Daphnoides, or the wild laurel under the names we have given, drunk in the same way, is beneficial; it loosens the bowels, either the fresh leaf or the dried, at 3 drachmas, with salt in hydromel. Chewed, it draws out phlegm, and the leaf also brings on vomiting; it is bad for the stomach. In the same way the berries too are taken, fifteen at a time, to purge.

159| The white cultivated myrtle is less useful in medicine than the black. Its seed cures those who spit blood, and, drunk in wine, it acts against mushrooms. It sweetens the breath even if chewed the day before; so in Menander the women of the Synaristosae eat it. The same is given for dysentery at the weight of a denarius in wine. Gently heated with wine, it heals stubborn ulcers at the extremities of the body.

160| It is applied with polenta to inflamed eyes, and for heart patients on the left breast, and in neat wine against the sting of the scorpion, and for ailments of the bladder, headaches, and aegilops before it suppurates, and likewise to swellings; with the kernels taken out and pounded in old wine, to eruptions of phlegm. The juice of the seed stops the bowels and promotes urine. It is smeared on with cerate for eruptions of pustules and of phlegm, and against phalangia; it blackens the hair.

161| Milder than the juice is the oil from the same myrtle, and milder too the wine, on which people never get drunk. When aged it stops the bowels and the stomach, cures colic and drives away loss of appetite. The meal of the dried leaves, sprinkled on, checks sweating, even in fever; it is useful also for coeliac patients, for prolapse of the womb, ailments of the anus, running ulcers, the sacred fire as a fomentation, falling hair, dandruff, and other eruptions as well, and burns.

162| It is added to the medicaments they call liparae, for the same reason as the oil made from the leaves; it is most effective for ailments in moist parts, as in the mouth and the womb. The leaves themselves, pounded in wine, counteract mushrooms, and with wax, diseases of the joints and gatherings. The same, boiled in wine, are given to drink for dysentery and dropsy. They are dried into a meal, which is sprinkled on ulcers or on a haemorrhage.

163| They also clear freckles, pterygia, whitlows, epinyctides, condylomata, the testicles and foul ulcers, and likewise burns, with cerate. For running ears they use the leaves burned, and the juice, and the decoction. They are also burned for antidotes; so too the young stalks, picked in flower, burned in an oven in a new covered earthenware pot and then pounded in wine. Ash of the leaves also treats burns. To keep the groin from swelling as the result of an ulcer, it is enough just to carry a twig of myrtle that has touched neither iron nor earth.

164| We have told how myrtidanum is made. It helps the womb as a pessary, a fomentation and a liniment, and is more effective than myrtle, whether bark, leaf or seed. A juice is also pressed from the leaves: the softest are pounded in a mortar while dry wine is poured on little by little, or else rainwater; and they use the pressed juice for ulcers of the mouth, anus, womb and belly, for blackening the hair, for bathing the armpits, for clearing freckles, and wherever something needs to be bound.

165| The wild myrtle, or oxymyrsine, or chamaemyrsine, differs from the cultivated by its reddish berries and its shortness. Its root is held in esteem: boiled in wine and drunk, for pains of the kidneys and for difficult urine, especially when it is thick and foul-smelling; pounded with wine, for jaundice and for purging the womb. The young stalks too are taken as food in the manner of asparagus, and cooked in the ashes.

166| The seed, drunk with wine, or with oil and vinegar, breaks up stones; likewise, pounded in vinegar and rose oil, it relieves headaches, and drunk, jaundice. Castor called oxymyrsine, with the [….] of myrtle and pointed leaves, from which brooms are made in the country, ruscum, and used it for the same purposes. So far, then, the medicines of the trees of the town; let us pass on to the wild ones.

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