Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| The vanities of magic we have often refuted in the preceding part of this work, wherever the subject and the place required it, and we shall go on exposing them still. Yet it is a subject worthy, as few are, of being discussed at greater length, if only because, the most fraudulent of all the arts, it has held the greatest sway over the whole world and through very many ages. Let no one wonder that its authority has been so very great, since it alone of the arts has embraced the three others that most command the human mind and drawn them together into itself.
2| No one will doubt that it was born first from medicine and crept in under a show of promoting health, as a higher and holier medicine; that so, to its most seductive and most longed-for promises, it added the powers of religion, about which even now the human race is most in the dark; and that, so that this too might come to its aid, it mixed in the arts of astrology, for everyone is greedy to know his own future and believes it is most truly sought from the sky. So, having taken possession of men's senses with a triple bond, it has grown to such a height that even today it prevails among a great part of the nations, and in the East commands the kings of kings.
3| Without doubt it arose there, in Persia, with Zoroaster, as the authorities agree. But whether there was only this one, or another later as well, is not sufficiently established. Eudoxus, who wished it to be regarded as the most famous and most useful of the schools of wisdom, recorded that this Zoroaster lived six thousand years before Plato died; so too did Aristotle.
4| Hermippus, who wrote most carefully about that whole art and expounded twenty times 100,000 lines of verse composed by Zoroaster, adding indexes of his volumes as well, recorded that the teacher by whom Zoroaster said he had been instructed was Agonaces, and that Zoroaster himself lived five thousand years before the Trojan War. What is wonderful above all is that the memory and the art should have lasted through so long an age with no written commentaries to carry them, and moreover without being preserved by any famous or continuous succession.
5| For how many people know, even by hearsay, those who alone are named — Apusorus and Zaratus the Medes, Marmarus and Arabantiphocus the Babylonians, or Tarmoendas the Assyrian — of whom no records survive? Most wonderful of all, however, is that Homer kept such silence about that art in the Trojan War, and yet built so much of his work on it in the wanderings of Ulysses, so much so that his whole work rests on nothing else,
6| since they will have it that Proteus and the song of the Sirens in his poem are to be understood in no other way, and that with Circe at any rate, and the calling up of the dead, this alone is the subject. Nor has anyone since told how it came to Telmesus, a most devout city, or when it passed over to the women of Thessaly, whose name long prevailed in our part of the world, though the art was foreign to that people, who at least in Trojan times were content with the medicines of Chiron and with Mars alone hurling his thunderbolts.
7| I wonder indeed that its reputation clung so closely to the peoples of Achilles that Menander too, born without a rival for refinement in letters, gave the name Thessalian to a maidservant versed in the trickery of women who draw down the moon. I would think that Orpheus first brought the art in from close at hand, having advanced as far as the bordering ground of superstition and medicine, had not his home, the whole of Thrace, been without magic.
8| The first to have written about it, so far as survives, as I at least find, was Osthanes, who accompanied Xerxes, king of the Persians, in the war that he brought upon Greece, and scattered, as it were, the seeds of the monstrous art along the way, infecting the world wherever he went. More careful writers place shortly before him another Zoroaster, of Proconnesus. What is certain is that it was this Osthanes above all who drove the peoples of the Greeks not merely to an eagerness but to a frenzy for that science. And yet I observe that in ancient times, and almost always, the highest distinction and glory in letters was sought from that science.
9| Certainly Pythagoras, Empedocles, Democritus and Plato sailed abroad to learn it, undertaking exiles rather than journeys; it was this they proclaimed on their return, this they held among their mysteries. Democritus made famous Apollobeches of Coptos and Dardanus of Phoenicia, seeking out the volumes of Dardanus in his tomb and publishing his own on the basis of their teaching. That these should have been accepted by any human beings at all, and passed on through memory, is as wonderful as anything in life;
10| so utterly do they lack all credibility and decency, so much so that those who approve the rest of the man's work deny that these writings are his. But in vain; for it is agreed that he above all fixed that charm in men's minds. And this too is full of wonder: that both arts flourished together — medicine, I mean, and magic — in the same age, the former made illustrious by Hippocrates, the latter by Democritus, around the Peloponnesian War of Greece, which was waged from the three hundredth year of our City.
11| There is also another faction of magic, deriving from Moses, Jannes and Lotapes and the Jews, but many thousands of years after Zoroaster. So much more recent still is the Cyprian faction. In the times of Alexander the Great, too, no slight authority was added to the profession by a second Osthanes, honoured with a place in his retinue, who plainly — no one would doubt it — travelled all over the world.
12| Certainly traces of it survive among the Italian peoples too, in our Twelve Tables and in other evidence, which I set out in the previous volume. Only in the 657th year of the City, in the consulship of Gnaeus Cornelius Lentulus and Publius Licinius Crassus, was a decree of the senate passed that no human being should be sacrificed; and it is evident that up to that time monstrous rites were performed.
13| It certainly took possession of the Gauls, and indeed down to our own memory. For the principate of Tiberius Caesar did away with their Druids and this whole class of seers and physicians. But why should I recall this, when the art has crossed even the ocean and been carried to the void of nature? Britain to this day practises it in awe, with such ceremonies that it might seem to have given it to the Persians. So far have these things been agreed upon in the whole world, though it is at odds and unknown to itself. Nor can it be sufficiently estimated how much is owed to the Romans, who did away with those monstrosities in which to kill a man was the most religious act, and to eat him was even most health-giving.
14| As Osthanes has related, there are several kinds of it. For it promises divine knowledge by water and globes and air and stars and lamps and basins and axes and many other ways, and besides, conversations with shades and the dead below. All of which in our age the emperor Nero discovered to be vain and false. For his passion for the lyre and for tragic song was no greater than this, the fortune of human affairs at its height exulting in the deep vices of his mind, and first of all he longed to command the gods, and wanted nothing more noble. No one ever favoured any art more strongly.
15| Moreover he lacked neither wealth nor strength nor a mind for learning, which the world would have allowed in no other case! It is an immense and undoubted example of a false art that Nero abandoned it; and would that he had consulted the dead and whatever gods he suspected, rather than entrust those inquiries to brothels and prostitutes! No rites, certainly, even though barbarous and savage, would have been less gentle than his thoughts. Thus more cruelly he has filled us with shades.
16| The Magi have certain refuges, as that divine powers do not obey, or appear to, those who have freckles. Did this perhaps stand in his way? Nothing was lacking in his limbs. For choosing fixed days was within his freedom, and as for victims that must be of black colour only, that was easy; and to sacrifice men was even most welcome. The Magus Tiridates had come to him, bringing an Armenian triumph over himself and therefore a burden to the provinces.
17| He had refused to sail, since they hold it a sin to spit into the sea or to violate that nature by the other necessities of mortals. He had brought Magi with him, and had initiated Nero in magical banquets; yet when he gave him a kingdom he was not able to receive this art from him. Let it therefore be firmly believed that it is abominable, ineffectual and empty, though it has certain shadows of truth, but in these it is the poisoner's arts that are strong, not the magical.
18| Let someone ask what lies the old Magi told, when Apion the grammarian, whom I saw in my youth, reported the herb cynocephalia, called in Egypt osiritis, divine and good against all poisonings, but if it were uprooted whole, the man who had dug it up died at once; and that he himself had called up shades to question Homer as to what country and what parents he was born of, though he did not dare to declare what answer he said Homer had given him.
19| A particular proof of vanity is that of all animals they most admire moles, condemned by nature in so many ways, with perpetual blindness, buried besides in darkness, like the interred. In no other entrails do they place equal trust, and they judge no animal more capable of religious meaning, so that, if one devours its heart, fresh and still throbbing, they promise divinations and the outcomes of things to be accomplished.
20| They affirm that toothaches are cured when a tooth is taken from a living mole and tied on. The other opinions of theirs about this animal we shall give in their places. Nothing more probable will be found than that moles are hostile to the bites of shrews, since the earth pressed down by wheel-ruts, as we said, is hostile too.
21| For the rest, toothaches, as the same people relate, are cured by the ash of the heads of dogs that died of madness, burned without the flesh, dripped through the ear, on the side where the pain is, in oil of cyprus; the largest left canine tooth, with scarification around the aching one; or a dragon's bone from the spine, and likewise of the enhydris; it is a male and white serpent. With its largest tooth they scarify around, or, for pain in the upper teeth, tie on two upper ones, and the lower ones for the contrary.
22| With its fat those who hunt the crocodile are anointed. They scarify the teeth also with bones of the lizard taken from the forehead at full moon, so that they do not touch the ground. They rinse with dogs' teeth boiled in wine down to half. The ash of them helps boys slow at teething, with honey. Tooth powder is made in the same way. Into hollow teeth is put the ash of mouse dung or the dried liver of lizards.
23| A snake's heart, if bitten or tied on, is held effective. Among them are those who bid a mouse be eaten twice a month and so guard against pains. Earthworms boiled in oil and poured into the little ear on the side where the pain is give relief. The ash of the same, thrown into decayed teeth, makes them fall easily; smeared on sound aching teeth it helps; but it must be burned in a potsherd. They help also boiled with mulberry root in vinegar of squill, so that the teeth are rinsed with it.
24| The small worm too that is found in the herb called Venus's basin, put into hollow teeth, is wonderfully beneficial. For caterpillars fall when touched by cabbage leaves, and bugs from mallow are poured into the ears with oil of roses. Tiny grains of sand which are found in the horns of snails, put into hollow teeth, free from pain at once. The ash of empty snails with myrrh helps the gums; so does the ash of a serpent burned in a pot with salt, poured with oil of roses into the opposite ear; and the membrane of a snake's spring slough with oil and pitch-pine
25| resin, warmed and poured into one ear or the other (some add frankincense and oil of roses); the same put into hollow teeth makes them fall without trouble. I think it idle that about the rising of the Dog Star white snakes cast that membrane, since it has been seen in Italy before the rising, and it is much less credible that in warm regions it is cast so late. They report, though, that even when aged it pulls out teeth very quickly with wax. And a snake's tooth, tied on, mitigates pains.
26| There are those who think that the spider itself, caught with the left hand and ground in oil of roses and poured into the ear on the side where the pain is, does good. They report that a little bone of a hen, kept in a wall with its hollow intact, touched to the tooth, or to the gum when scarified, and then thrown away, makes the pain depart at once; likewise raven's dung tied on in wool, or sparrows' dung warmed with oil and poured into the nearest ear. It does cause an unbearable itch, and so it is more useful to rub in the ash of young sparrows burned with the twigs, in vinegar.
27| They affirm that the savour of the mouth is improved if the teeth are rubbed with mouse ash and honey; some mix in fennel roots. If the teeth are scraped with a vulture's feather they cause a sour breath. That a porcupine's quill has done the same bears on firmness. Ulcers of the tongue and lips are healed by swallows boiled in honeyed wine, cracks by goose or hen fat, oesypum with oak gall, white spiders' webs, and those that are spun small on beams. If boiling things have scalded the inside of the mouth, it will be healed at once with dog's milk.
28| Spots on the face are thinned by oesypum with Corsican honey, which is held to be the roughest, and likewise by the scrapings of skin on the face laid on in a fleece with oil of roses (some add butter); and if there are vitiligines, by dog's gall, after the places have first been pricked with a needle; livid and bruised places, by the lungs of rams and of sheep cut into thin membranes and laid on warm, or pigeon dung.
29| The skin on the face is preserved by goose fat or hen fat. Lichens they also smear with mouse dung in vinegar and with the ash of a hedgehog in oil; in this treatment they prescribe that the face first be bathed with natron in vinegar. The ash of snails also, those broad and small ones found everywhere, with honey, removes blemishes from the face. The ash of all snails, indeed, thickens and warms, with a cleansing force, and is therefore mixed into caustics and smeared on for itch and leprous eruptions and freckles. I find that ants are also called Herculanean, and that when ground with a little salt added they cure such blemishes.
30| The buprestis is an animal rare in Italy, very like a long-legged scarab; it escapes notice among the herbs, especially of an ox, whence it also found its name, and swallowed, by touching the gall it so inflames it that it bursts. This, smeared on with goat tallow, removes lichens from the face by a corrosive power, as was said above. Vulture blood ground with the root of the white chamaeleon, an herb we have described, and cedria, and covered with cabbage, heals leprous eruptions; so do the feet of locusts ground with goat tallow, and hen fat worked up with onion for pimples. Honey in which bees have died is also most useful for the face, but swan fat above all cleanses the face and smooths wrinkles. Brands are removed by pigeon dung in vinegar.
31| I find that a head cold is ended if one kisses the nostrils of a mule. The uvula and pain of the throat are eased by the dung of lambs, before they have tasted grass, dried in the shade; the uvula, by the juice of a snail pierced with a needle and smeared on, the snail itself being hung in smoke; by the ash of swallows with honey; so too the tonsils are helped.
32| Tonsils and throat are helped by gargling sheep's milk, by multipeda ground up, by pigeon dung gargled with raisin wine, and even applied outside with dry fig and natron. Roughness of the throat and rheums are soothed by snails (they must be cooked unwashed, with only the earth removed, and pounded and given in raisin wine to drink; there are those who think the Astypalaean ones most effective, and the smallest of them), and by a gryllus rubbed on, or if a person touches the tonsils with the hands with which he has crushed it.
33| Quinsies are relieved very quickly by goose gall with elaterium and honey, by the brain of an owl, by swallow ash drunk in hot water. The author of this medicine is the poet Ovid. But more effective for everything that is shown from swallows are the young of the wild ones (the shape of the nests identifies them), and yet most effective of all are the young of the bank swallows; so they call those that nest in the hollows of banks. Many think that the young of any swallow should be eaten, so that this ill is not feared for the whole year.
34| They burn those that have been strangled, with the blood, in a vessel, and give the ash with bread or in a drink. Some also mix in the ash of a weasel in the same way; so they give it as a remedy for scrofula, and daily in a drink to those with the falling sickness. Swallows preserved in salt are also drunk, a drachma, for quinsy, an ill which their nest also is said to cure when drunk. They think the milipeda smeared on quinsies most effective;
35| others, 20 of them ground up, to be given in a hemina of honeyed water through a reed, since if they touch the teeth they do no good. They report also that a mouse boiled down with vervain, if that liquid is drunk, is a remedy, and a dog's lead wound three times around the neck, and pigeon dung blended with wine and oil. For the sinews of the neck, and for opisthotonus, a twig of vitex from a kite's nest, tied on, is said to help,
36| For ulcerated scrofula, the blood of a weasel, or the weasel itself boiled in wine; it is not, however, applied to scrofula that has been cut. They say that the same is achieved by taking it in food, or the ash of it burned with vine twigs mixed with axle-grease. A green lizard is tied on; after 30 days another must be tied on. Some keep its heart in a little silver vessel for scrofula, of women and of men.
37| Snails are smeared on, ground with their shells, especially those that cling to thickets; the ash of asps is likewise laid on with bull tallow, snake fat mixed with oil, and the ash of snakes smeared on in oil or with wax. It helps also to have eaten the middle of them, with the extremities cut off at both ends, against scrofula, or to have drunk the ash of those burned in a new earthen pot, much more effectively if killed between two cart-ruts.
38| They recommend also smearing on a gryllus dug up with its own earth, likewise pigeon dung by itself or with barley or oat meal in vinegar, and smearing on the ash of a mole in honey. Others rub the liver of the same, ground between the hands, and do not wash it off for three days. They affirm that its right foot also is a remedy for scrofula. Others cut off the head and, having ground it with the earth thrown up by moles, divide it into pastilles kept in a tin box, and use them for everything that swells, and what they call apostemata, and those in the neck; they forbid eating pork at that time.
39| Bulls is the name given to earth-dwelling scarabs like the tick (the name they were given is from their little horn); others call them lice of the earth. The earth thrown out by these too they smear on scrofula and similar defects, and on gout, and do not wash it off for three days. This medicine helps for a year, and they ascribe to them everything that we have reported about the grylli. Some use in this way the earth thrown out by ants too. Others tie on as many earthworms as there are scrofulous swellings, and the swellings dry up together with them.
40| Others cut a viper around at the rising of the Dog Star as we said, then burn the middle, and give that ash to be drunk, as much as is taken in three fingers, for three times seven days; thus they treat scrofula; some, however, wrap round the neck a thread with which the viper was bound below the head and hung until it died. And they use milipedae, with a fourth part of turpentine resin added, a medicine by which they bid all apostemata be cured.
41| Pains of the shoulder are treated by the ash of a weasel with wax. That the armpits may not be hairy, ants' eggs rubbed in on boys achieve it, and for dealers in slaves, to produce down in those coming to puberty, the blood from the testicles of lambs when they are castrated, which, smeared on after the hairs are plucked out, is good also against the rank smell.
42| We call the praecordia by one name, the inward parts in man; if, when there is pain in any of these, a suckling puppy is applied and pressed to those parts, the disease is said to pass into it, and this is detected when it has been disembowelled and wine poured over it, by the damaged organ, the one that pained the man; but it is a religious duty to bury such animals.
43| Those too that we call Maltese relieve pain of the stomach when applied often; that the diseases pass into them is understood from their sickness, and often from their death. Mice also, especially African ones, treat defects of the lungs, with the skin removed, boiled in oil and salt and taken in food. The same remedy treats spitting of pus or blood,
44| but above all a meal of snails is good for the stomach. They must be warmed in water with their body untouched, then roasted in embers with nothing added, and so taken with wine and garum, especially the African. This was lately found to help very many; they also observe that they should be taken in an odd number. Their rank smell, however, makes the breath heavy. When the shells have been removed and they are ground in water, they help also as a drink for those spitting blood.
45| The most highly praised are the African (among them the Iolitan), the Astypalaean, and also the Sicilian if moderate in size, because size makes them hard and without juice; the Balearic, which they call cave-dwellers because they are born in caverns; those from the islands, and of Capreae, are praised. None, however, are pleasing as food, whether old or fresh. River snails and white ones have a rank smell, and woodland ones are not useful to the stomach, they loosen the bowels, as do all the small ones. Sea snails, by contrast, are more useful to the stomach; the most effective in pain of the stomach, among those praised, are said to be any swallowed alive with vinegar.
46| There are besides those called akeratoi, broad, born in many places, whose use we shall describe in their places. The membrane of the stomach of chickens, if old, sprinkled on a drink, soothes rheums of the chest and moist cough, or fresh, roasted. Raw snails ground up and sipped with 3 cyathi of lukewarm water quiet a cough. A dog's skin put around any finger quiets rheums. The stomach is restored by broth of partridges.
47| Pains of the liver are treated by a wild weasel taken in food, or its liver, and by a ferret roasted like a piglet; for asthma, the multipeda, in such a way that three sevens of them are diluted in Attic honey and drunk through a reed (for every vessel turns black by contact). Some roast a sextarius in a pan until they turn white, then mix with honey [others call it centipeda] and bid it be given in hot water, in food.
48| To those whose spirit fails, or whose mind is alienated, or who have fits of dizziness, snails are given: one each, ground up with its own shell in 3 cyathi of raisin wine and warmed, in a drink for at most 9 days; some gave one on the first day, two the next, three on the third, 2 on the fourth, and 1 on the fifth; thus they correct also shortness of breath and abscesses.
49| Some think there is an animal like a locust without wings, called trixallis in Greek, having no Latin name, and not a few authors say that this is what are called grylli; of these they bid 20 be roasted and drunk in honeyed wine against orthopnoea. For those spitting blood, snails, if someone pours protropum over them unwashed, or boils them in sea water in this way and takes them in food, or if they are ground with their shells and taken with protropum; so too they cure a cough.
50| Honey in which bees have died specially heals abscesses. For those throwing up blood, a vulture's lung burned with vine wood, with the flower of the pomegranate added in half the quantity, and quince and lilies in the same proportions, drunk morning and evening in wine, if there are no fevers, if not, in water in which quinces have been boiled.
51| By the precepts of the Magi, the fresh spleen of a sheep is stretched over the aching spleen, the one who is treating saying that he is making a remedy for the spleen. After this they bid it be enclosed in the plaster of the wall of the patient's bedroom and sealed with a ring three times nine times, and the same words said. A dog's spleen, if taken out of the living animal and eaten, frees from that ailment. Some bind it on fresh.
52| Others give, without the patient knowing, the spleen of a two-day-old puppy in vinegar of squill, or the spleen of a hedgehog, and likewise the ash of snails with linseed and nettle, with honey added, until it is thoroughly cured. A live green lizard also frees, hung in a pot before the bedroom of the person who is being treated, so that going out and returning he touches it with his hand; likewise the ash from the head of an owl with ointment, honey in which bees have died, and a spider, especially the one called lycos.
53| The heart of the hoopoe is praised for pains of the side, and a meal of snails boiled in barley-water; they are also smeared on by themselves. The ash of the skull of a mad dog is sprinkled into a drink. For pain of the loins, a transmarine stellio, with the head removed and the intestines, boiled in wine, with half the weight of a denarius of black poppy, that liquid is drunk. Green lizards with feet and head cut off are taken in food; 3 snails ground up with their shells and boiled in wine with 15 grains of pepper.
54| They pull out the feet of an eagle backwards from the hock, in such a way that the right one is tied on for pains of the right side, the left for the left. The multipeda also, which we have called oniscus, helps, drunk in the weight of a denarius in 2 cyathi of wine. The Magi bid that an earthworm be put in a wooden cup previously split and bound with iron, the water collected poured over it and buried where you dug it up, and then the water drunk from the cup, affirming that this helps sciatica wonderfully.
55| Dysenteric patients are restored by the thighs of sheep boiled with linseed, that water being drunk, by old sheep's cheese, and by sheep's tallow boiled in harsh wine. This also treats ileus and old cough; for dysentery, a transmarine stellio with the intestines, head, feet and skin removed, boiled, equally also taken in food; 2 snails with an egg, both ground up with the shell and warmed in a new vessel with salt and 2 cyathi of raisin wine, or palm juice and 3 cyathi of water, and given as a drink.
56| They help also burned, so that their ash is drunk in wine, a pinch of resin added. The naked snails of which we have spoken are found chiefly in Africa, most useful to dysenteric patients, five burned with half a denarius's weight of acacia; of that ash two spoonfuls are given in wine of myrtle or any harsh wine with an equal amount of hot water.
57| Some use all African ones in this way, others pour in the same number of African snails, veiled, and if the flux is greater they add acacia the size of a bean. The slough of snakes is boiled for dysentery and tenesmus in a tin vessel with oil of roses, or, if in another, smeared on with tin. Broth from chickens treats the same, but the strongly salted broth of an old cock moves the bowels.
58| The membrane of hens, roasted and given in oil and salt, eases the pains of coeliacs (both the hen and the person should abstain from grain beforehand); so does pigeon dung, roasted and drunk. The flesh of the wood-pigeon boiled in vinegar treats dysenteric and coeliac patients; a thrush roasted with myrtle berries, dysenteric patients, and likewise blackbirds; honey in which bees have died, boiled.
59| The gravest defect of the belly is called ileus. They say it is resisted by the blood of a bat torn apart, and that help is also given by smearing the belly. The bowels are stopped by a snail, tempered as we said for the asthmatic, and by the ash of those burned alive, drunk in harsh wine; by the roasted liver of chickens, or the membrane of the stomach, which is usually thrown away, aged, with poppy juice mixed in (others roast it fresh, to be drunk in wine);
60| by partridge broth, and by the stomach itself ground in black wine; by a wild wood-pigeon boiled in posca, by a sheep's spleen roasted and ground in wine, by pigeon dung smeared on with honey, and by the dried and drunk belly of the ossifrage, most useful to those who do not digest food, or even if they merely hold it in the hand when taking food. Some tie it on for this reason, but they must not keep on, for it causes wasting.
61| The blood of male ducks also stops the bowels. Inflations are dispersed by a meal of snails; gripings, by a sheep's spleen roasted and drunk in wine, a wild wood-pigeon boiled in posca. The fat of the bustard in wine; the ash of an ibis burned without its feathers, drunk. What is reported besides for gripings is a marvel: a duck applied to the belly, the disease passes into it and the duck dies.
62| Gripings are cured also by honey in which bees have died, boiled. A defect of the colon is cured most effectively by the galerita bird, roasted and taken as food. Some bid it be burned in a new vessel with its feathers and ground to ash, and drunk in water, three spoonfuls, for four days; some bid its heart be tied on the thigh; to others it is swallowed fresh and still warm.
63| The house of the Asprenates is a consular one, in which one of the brothers was freed from colic by taking this bird in food, with its heart enclosed in a golden bracelet; the other, after a certain sacrifice was made in a shrine of unbaked bricks built in the shape of a furnace, and, as soon as the rite was completed, the shrine walled up. The ossifrage has one intestine, of a marvellous nature, which digests everything it has devoured; it is established that the end part of this, tied on, helps against colic.
64| There are hidden diseases of the inward parts, about which a marvel is reported. If puppies, before they can see, are applied for three days to the stomach especially and the chest, and take the suck of milk from the sick person's mouth, the force of the disease passes into them, and at last they die, and when cut open the causes of the sick person's trouble are plainly shown; they advise that they be buried, covered with earth. The Magi report that by touching the belly with the blood of a bat one is guarded for a whole year, or in pain, if someone, washing his feet, can bring himself to drink the water three times.
65| To smear the belly with mouse dung helps against stones. They say the flesh of a hedgehog is pleasant if it is killed with a single blow to the head, before it passes water on itself. This flesh, of one killed in this way, corrects dribbling of the bladder, as does fumigation from the same. But if it has passed water on itself, those who have eaten the flesh are reported to contract the disease of strangury.
66| They bid also that earthworms be drunk in wine or raisin wine to break up stones, or snails boiled as for the asthmatic, the same taken out of their shells, 3 ground up and drunk in a cyathus of wine, the next day 2, on the third day 1, to correct dribbling of urine; and the ash of empty shells to expel stones; likewise that the liver of the hydrus be drunk, or the ash of scorpions, or taken in bread [or if someone eats it like a locust],
67| that little stones found in the bladder of chickens or in the stomach of wood-pigeons be ground and sprinkled into a drink, likewise the dried membrane from the stomach of a chicken or, if fresh, roasted, and that pigeon dung be taken in a bean against stones and other difficulties of the bladder; similarly the ash of the feathers of wild wood-pigeons in honeyed vinegar, and the ash of their intestines, 3 spoonfuls; a clod from a swallows' nest diluted in hot water;
68| the dried stomach of the ossifrage; turtle-dove dung boiled down in honeyed wine, or the broth of the bird itself boiled down. To have eaten thrushes with myrtle berries is good for the urine, as are cicadas roasted in pans, the milipeda oniscus drunk, and, in pains of the bladder, a decoction of lambs' feet. The bowels are moved by the broth of chickens boiled down, which also softens sharp humours, and by swallows' dung put in below with honey added.
69| For defects of the seat the most effective are oesypum (some add pompholyx and oil of roses), the ash of a dog's head, the sloughed skin of a serpent in vinegar, if there are fissures, the ash of white dog dung with oil of roses (they say this was a discovery of Aesculapius, and that with the same warts too are removed most effectively), the ash of mouse dung, swan fat, and the fat of the boa. Prolapses there are repelled by the juice of snails, drawn out by pricks and smeared on.
70| Chafings are treated by the ash of a woodland mouse with honey; the gall of a hedgehog with the brain of a bat and dog's milk; goose fat with the brain, alum and oesypum; pigeon dung with honey; for condylomata specially a spider with head and feet removed, rubbed in, so that sharp things do not burn; goose fat with Punic wax, white lead, and rose oil; swan fat. This is said also to heal haemorrhoids.
71| For sciatica they say raw snails ground up in Aminean wine with pepper help when drunk, and a green lizard in food with the feet, entrails and head removed; so too the stellio, with 3 obols of black poppy added to it; for ruptures and convulsions, the gall of sheep with woman's milk.
72| Crawling sensations and warts of the private parts are treated by the juice of a ram's lung that has been roasted; other defects, by the ash of its fleeces or of soiled wool in water, by tallow from the caul of sheep, especially near the kidneys, with the ash of pumice and salt mixed in, by greasy wool in cold water, by the flesh of a sheep burned, in water, by the ash of a mule's hooves, by the meal of a crushed horse's tooth sprinkled on, and for the testicles by meal from the bones of a dog's head crushed without flesh. If one testicle drops, the foam of snails smeared on is reported to be a remedy.
73| For foul and running ulcers there the fresh ashes of a dog's head help, small broad snails ground in vinegar, the sloughed skin of snakes in vinegar or its ash, honey in which bees have died, with resin, the naked snails which we said are born in Africa, ground with fine meal of frankincense and the white of eggs; on the 30th day they undo it; some mix in a bulb in place of frankincense.
74| For those with hydrocele they report that the stellio is of wonderful benefit, the head, feet and entrails removed and the remaining body roasted (this is given more often in food), as for incontinence of urine dog fat with schistus alum the size of a bean, African snails burned with their flesh and shell and the ash drunk, and the tongues of 3 geese, roasted, in food. The authority for this is Anaxilaus. But swellings are opened by the tallow of sheep with roasted salt,
75| mouse dung with fine meal of frankincense and sandaraca mixed in disperses them; so do the ash of a lizard, and the lizard itself cut up and laid on, likewise the multipeda ground up with turpentine resin mixed in the proportion of a third (some also mix in sinopis), snails crushed by themselves, and the ash of empty snails mixed with wax. Pigeon dung has a dispersing power, smeared on by itself or with barley or oat meal. Cantharides mixed with lime take off swellings in place of a scalpel; small snails smeared on with honey ease swelling of the groin.
76| That varicose veins may not arise, the legs of boys are smeared with the blood of a lizard, fasting, by one fasting. Gout is eased by oesypum with woman's milk and white lead, by the dung of flocks which they pass liquid, by the lungs of sheep, by ram's gall with tallow, by mice cut open and laid on, by the blood of a weasel smeared on with plantago and the ash of one burned alive, in vinegar and oil of roses if it is applied with a feather, or if wax and oil of roses are mixed in; by dog's gall, in such a way that the hand does not touch it but it is smeared on with a feather, by chicken dung, and by the ash of earthworms with honey, so that they are loosed on the third day.
77| Some prefer to smear on in water, others the worms themselves, by the measure of an acetabulum with 3 cyathi of honey, the feet first anointed with oil of roses. Broad snails drunk are said to remove pains of the feet and joints; two are drunk, ground up in wine. The same are smeared on with the juice of the herb helxine; some are content to have rubbed them in with vinegar. They say that by taking more often the salt burned together with a viper in a new pot one is freed from gout, and that it is useful also to anoint the feet with viper fat.
78| And of the kite they affirm that, if it is dried and ground, as much as 3 fingers hold is drunk in water, or if the feet are anointed with its blood. They are also smeared with the blood of pigeons with nettle, or with their feathers, when they are first growing, ground up with nettle. Indeed their dung too is smeared on for pains of the joints, and likewise the ash of a weasel or of snails, also with starch or tragacanth. Spiders' webs most suitably treat bruised joints. There are those who would rather use the ash of the webs, as also the ash of pigeon dung with barley groats and white wine.
79| For dislocated joints, sheep's tallow with the ash of a woman's hair is immediate in effect. For chilblains too, sheep's tallow with alum is laid on, or the ash of a dog's head or of mouse dung. And if the ulcers are clean, they are brought to a scar with wax added, by the ash of shrews or dormice burned, in oil, likewise of a woodland mouse with honey, and of earthworms with old oil, and of the snail that is found naked.
80| The ash of those burned alive heals all ulcers of the feet; the ash of chicken dung, ulcerations; of pigeon dung in oil. For chafing from shoes, the ash of an old sole, a lamb's lung and a ram's heal; the meal of a crushed horse's tooth, subluvies in particular; the blood of a green lizard smeared on rubbed feet of men and of beasts of burden; for corns of the feet, the urine of a mule, male or female, smeared on with its own mud; sheep dung; the liver of a green lizard or its blood laid on in a tuft of wool; earthworms in oil; the head of a stellio ground in oil in the same way with leaves of vitex; pigeon dung boiled in vinegar;
81| for warts of every kind, fresh dog's urine smeared on with its own mud, the ash of dog dung with wax, sheep dung, fresh mouse blood smeared on or the mouse itself torn apart, the gall of a hedgehog, the head of a lizard, or the blood or ash of the whole animal, the membrane of the old age of snakes, chicken dung with oil and natron. Cantharides ground with the taminia grape eat them away, but those so eroded must be cured by the other things we have shown for completely healing ulcers.
82| Now we shall turn to the things that are to be feared for whole bodies. The gall of a black male dog the Magi say is an amulet for a whole house fumigated or purified with it, against all bad drugs; likewise the blood of a dog sprinkled on the walls, and its genitals buried beneath the threshold of the door. They will wonder less at this who know how highly they magnify the foulest of animals, the tick, since it alone has no outlet for its fattening nor end other than death, living the longer in hunger: they report that it lasts seven days in this way, while in satiety it bursts in fewer;
83| that this, taken from the left ear of a dog and tied on, quiets all pains. And they use it as a sign in augury of vital matters, for if the sick man at the beginning answers the one who has brought it, standing at his feet and asking about the disease, the hope of life is sure; he who is to die answers nothing. They add that it should be plucked from the left ear of a dog whose colour is wholly black.
84| Nigidius left written that dogs flee for a whole day the sight of the one who has plucked this animal from a pig. Again the Magi report that the frenzied recover their senses when a mole's blood is sprinkled on them, and that those who are hounded by nocturnal gods and by Fauns are freed by anointings in the morning and in the evening, using a dragon's tongue, eyes, gall and intestines, boiled in wine and oil and cooled overnight under the open sky.
85| For chills, Nicander reports that the amphisbaena serpent, dead, tied on, or only its skin, is a remedy; indeed, tied on a tree that is to be felled, it keeps the fellers from feeling cold, and the work goes more easily. It is the only serpent that trusts itself to the cold, coming out first of all, even before the cuckoo's song. There is another marvel of the cuckoo: in whatever place one first hears that bird, if the right foot is traced around and that footprint is dug out, fleas are not bred wherever it is scattered.
86| For those who fear paralysis, they report that the fat of dormice and shrews, boiled, is very useful, and milipedae drunk as we said under quinsy; for those who feel the onset of consumption, a green lizard boiled in 3 sextarii of wine down to one cyathus, taken a spoonful at a time through the days until they recover; the ash of snails drunk in wine;
87| for falling-sickness, oesypum with a pinch of myrrh and 2 cyathi of wine, diluted to the size of a hazelnut, drunk after the bath; and the testicles of rams, aged and ground, in half the weight of a denarius, in a hemina of water or ass's milk. Drinking of wine is forbidden for five days before and after.
88| The blood of sheep, drunk, is also magnificently praised, as is gall with honey, especially that of a lamb; a suckling puppy taken with the head and feet cut off, in wine and myrrh; the lichen of a mule drunk in oxymel, 3 cyathi; the ash of a transmarine stellio drunk in vinegar; the little skin of the stellio, which it casts off in the same way as a snake, in a drink. Some have given the stellio itself, disembowelled with a reed and aged, to be drunk, others roasted on wooden spits in food.
89| It is worth knowing how the winter membrane is snatched away, once it has cast it, from the animal that otherwise devours it, since they say that no creature grudges man more cunningly, whence the name of stellio has been transferred to abuse. They watch its lair in summers; it is in the frames of doors and windows or in vaults and tombs. There in early spring they set up traps woven of split reeds, like fish-baskets, in whose narrow space it even delights, shedding the more easily the torpor that surrounds it; but once left behind it cannot return.
90| Nothing is preferred to it as a remedy in falling-sickness. The brain of a weasel, aged and drunk, helps, and its liver; also the testicles, and the womb or stomach aged with coriander, as we said, and the ash likewise; and the wild one taken whole in food. The same are all asserted of the ferret. A green lizard with seasonings that wipe away disgust, feet and head removed, and the ash of snails with linseed and nettle added, with honey, heal by smearing.
91| More agreeable is the tail of a dragon, tied on in the skin of a gazelle with stag sinews, or little stones from the belly of young swallows, fastened to the left upper arm; for they are said to give a little stone when the chick has hatched. And if that chick is given in food, the first one the mother bird has borne, when one has first been attacked, he is freed from that ill; afterwards the blood of swallows with frankincense, or the heart, fresh, swallowed, is the cure. Indeed a little stone from their nest, laid on, is said to revive at once, and tied on to protect for ever.
92| A kite's liver, swallowed, is also advertised, and the old age of serpents; a vulture's liver, ground with its own blood, drunk for three times seven days; the heart of a young vulture tied on. But they bid the vulture itself be given in food, and indeed one glutted on a human corpse. Some judge its breast should be drunk in a cup of oak wood, or the testicles of a cock in water and milk, with abstinence from wine beforehand for 5 days; for this reason they age them. There were those also who would give 21 red flies, and from a dead man, in a drink, fewer for the weaker.
93| Jaundice is resisted by the earwax or teat-dirt of a sheep, in the weight of a denarius, with a pinch of myrrh and 2 cyathi of wine; by the ash of a dog's head in honeyed wine; by the multipeda in a hemina of wine; by earthworms in honeyed vinegar with myrrh; by a hen, if it has yellow feet, first purified with water,
94| then rinsed with wine, which is to be drunk; by the brain of a partridge, or an eagle's, in 3 cyathi of wine; by the ash of the feathers or entrails of a wood-pigeon in honeyed wine, up to 3 spoonfuls; by the ash of sparrows burned with the twigs, 2 spoonfuls in honeyed water. A bird is called icterus from its colour; they report that if it is looked at, the ill is cured and the bird dies. This I think is called in Latin the galgulus.
95| For the frenzied, a sheep's lung, warm, bound around the head seems to help. For who could give a mouse's brain in a drink in water, or the ash of a weasel, or even the aged flesh of a hedgehog, to a raving man, even if the medicine were certain? The ash of an owl's eyes I would accept among those things by which they portentously make sport of life, and the medicine of fevers especially renounces their rules.
96| For they have even distributed it among the twelve signs, with the sun passing through and again the moon, a whole which I shall show must be rejected, by taking a few from the many, since they bid the sick be anointed with the ash of crests, ears and claws of cocks burned and ground up with oil, when the sun passes through the Twins;
97| if the moon, with their rays and beards; if either one is in the Virgin, with grains of barley; if in the Archer, with bats' wings; if the moon in the Lion, with a leaf of tamarisk, and they add, of the cultivated; if in the Water-carrier, with charcoal of boxwood, ground. From these we shall set down what is admitted or at least probable, such as that lethargy is roused by things smelled, and among them perhaps by the aged testicles of a weasel or burnt liver. For these too they think it useful that a sheep's lung, warm, be tied around the head.
98| In quartan fevers, clinical medicine has almost no force. For which reason we shall set down more of their remedies, and first those which they bid be tied on: dust in which a hawk has rolled, in a reddish thread, in a little linen cloth; the longest tooth of a black dog. They call a wasp that flies alone a pseudosphex; this they seize with the left hand and tie on, others the first that one has seen that year; the head of a viper cut off, in a little linen cloth, or the heart taken from it while alive;
99| They tie on the tip of a mouse's snout and the very ends of its ears in a reddish cloth, and let the mouse itself go; and the right eye of a living lizard, gouged out, then the beetle that rolls balls, with its head cut off, in a little goatskin. Because of this beetle a great part of Egypt worships beetles among its deities, with a painstaking interpretation by Apion, by which he argues that this creature bears a likeness to the works of the Sun, to excuse the rites of his own people.
100| But the Magi tie on other kinds too: the one with curved little horns, picked up with the left hand; a third, called the fuller, with white spots, which they cut in two and tie one half on each arm, the rest on the left; the heart of snakes taken out with the left hand while they are alive; four joints of a scorpion's tail with the sting, in black cloth, in such a way that the sick man sees neither the scorpion let go nor the man who has tied it on for three days, and after the third round he puts it away.
101| They bind the uruca in a little linen cloth, wrapping it round three times with thread and tying as many knots, the man who is to cure the patient saying at each why he does it; a slug in a small skin, or four slugs' heads cut off with a reed; a multipeda wrapped in wool; the little worms from which gadflies come, before they sprout wings; others, hairy, from thorny shrubs. Some tie on four of these shut up in the husk of a walnut.
102| Snails found without their shells, a stelio shut in little boxes, they place under the head and release at the departure of the fever. They also order the heart of a sea-diver bird, taken out without iron, to be swallowed, or kept till old, pounded and drunk in warm water; swallows' hearts with honey; others give dung, one drachma in 3 cyathi of goat's or sheep's milk or of raisin wine before the attacks; and there are those who judge that the swallows should be swallowed whole.
103| The peoples of the Parthians drink the skin of an asp, in the weight of a sixth part of a denarius, with the same amount of pepper, as a remedy for quartan fever. The philosopher Chrysippus has handed down that a phryganion tied on is a remedy for quartans. What animal it was, neither he described nor have we found anyone who knew; yet it had to be set out, as said by so weighty an authority, in case anyone's diligence in inquiring might prove more effective. Eating the flesh of a crow and smearing on its nest they think most useful in long illnesses.
104| And for tertian fevers let there be an opportunity of making trial, since an abundance of hope delights the wretched, whether the web of the spider they call lycon, with the spider itself, laid in a little patch of resin and wax on both temples and the forehead, will help, or the spider itself tied on in a reed, as is also reported to help in other fevers; likewise a green lizard tied on alive in the vessel that will hold it, a method by which they affirm that relapses too are frequently driven off.
105| For dropsical patients oesypum in wine with myrrh added is given as a drink in small quantity, the size of a hazelnut. Some add goose fat in myrtle wine. The filth from the udders of sheep has the same effect, as does the flesh of a hedgehog, kept till old and taken. The vomit of dogs, applied to the belly, is promised to draw off the water.
106| The sacred fire is cured by oesypum with pompholyx and rose oil, by the blood of a ricinus, by earthworms applied in vinegar, by a cricket crushed in the hands, a method that ensures that whoever has done it, before the malady begins, will not have it all that year (it must be lifted with iron, with the earth of its burrow); by goose fat, by the dried head of a viper kept and burnt, then applied in vinegar, by the sloughed skin of serpents applied in water after the bath with bitumen and lamb's tallow.
107| A carbuncle is removed by pigeon dung applied by itself or with linseed in vinegar and honey, likewise by bees that have died in honey being applied, with polenta laid on top. If it is on the private parts, as with other ulcers there, oesypum with honey and scales of lead meets it, likewise the dung of cattle for carbuncles just beginning. Tumours and whatever needs softening are treated most effectively with goose fat; crane fat does the same.
108| A spider is said to cure boils, applied before it is named and removed on the third day; a shrew-mouse strangled while hanging, in such a way that it does not touch the ground afterwards, carried three times round the boil, the healer and the man to be healed spitting each time; also the red dung of the cock, best fresh, smeared on in vinegar; a stork's stomach boiled in wine; flies in an odd number rubbed in with the ring finger; the filth from the ears of cattle; old sheep's tallow with the ash of a woman's hair; ram's tallow with the ash of pumice and salt in equal weight.
109| Burns are cured by the ash of a dog's head, likewise of dormice with oil, sheep dung with wax, the ash of mice, and of snails too, so that not even a scar appears; viper's fat; the ash of pigeon dung applied in oil;
110| for knots in the sinews, the ash of a viper's head in cyprus oil, and earthworms applied with honey. For their pains [….] fat, an amphisbaena dead and tied on, vulture fat with [….], a belly dried and pounded with old pig's fat, the ash from the head of an owl drunk in honey wine with lily root, if we believe the Magi. In contraction of the sinews pigeon flesh in food is beneficial, and kept till old, hedgehog for those with spasms, likewise the ash of a weasel, the sloughed skin of serpents tied on in bull's hide. It prevents spasms and opisthotonos: the dried liver of a kite, 3 obols drunk in 3 cyathi of honey water.
111| Hangnails and the pterygia that grow on the fingers are removed by the ash of a dog's head, or a womb boiled down in oil with sheep's butter and honey applied over it, likewise the membrane of the gall of any animal; roughness of the nails by cantharides with pitch, removed on the third day, or by roasted locusts with goat's tallow, or cattle tallow. Some mix mistletoe and purslane, others copper flower and mistletoe, so that they remove it on the third day.
112| Bleeding from the nostrils is stopped by tallow from the omentum of cattle put in, likewise by rennet in water, lamb's best, drawn up or poured in, even if other things do not help; by goose fat with an equal weight of butter put in as pastilles; by the earthy part of snails, and the snails themselves with their shells extracted; for a flow from the nostrils, snails crushed and smeared on the forehead, and the web of a spider; the little brain of a cock or its blood for discharges from the brain, likewise that of a pigeon, kept and clotted for this purpose. If it flows excessively from a wound, the ash of horse dung burnt with eggshells, laid on, stops it wonderfully.
113| Ulcers are cured by oesypum with barley ash and verdigris in equal parts; it is also effective for carcinomata and spreading sores. It eats away the edges of ulcers, brings proud flesh down to a level, and also fills them and leads them to a scar. There is great power too in the ash of sheep dung for carcinomata, with natron added, or in the ash of the thigh-bones of lambs, especially in those ulcers that do not draw a scar. Great too is the power of lungs, especially of rams: they bring proud flesh in ulcers down to a level most effectively;
114| by the dung of sheep itself, heated under a tile and worked, the swelling of wounds is eased, fistulas are cleansed and healed, and so are epinyctides. The best of all is the ash of a dog's head: it eats away all excrescences in place of spodium and heals them thoroughly. They are also eaten away by mouse dung, and by the ash of weasel dung. Hardnesses deep in ulcers and carcinomata are pursued by the multipeda pounded and mixed with turpentine resin and sinopis. The same are most useful in those ulcers that are in danger from worms.
115| Indeed the kinds of worms themselves have wonderful uses. The cossi, which are born in wood, heal all ulcers, and burnt, applied with an equal weight of anesum in oil, they heal spreading sores. Earthworms glue fresh wounds together so well that there is a conviction that even severed sinews, when they are applied, are made whole within seven days; therefore they judge that they should be kept in honey. Their ash removes the harder edges of ulcers, with liquid pitch or symphytum and honey.
116| Some use them dried in the sun on wounds in vinegar and do not loosen them until two days have passed. By the same method the earthy part of snails is beneficial, and whole snails taken out, pounded and laid on, glue fresh wounds together and stop spreading sores. (A creature too is called herpes by the Greeks, by which especially whatever creeps is healed.) Snails are beneficial also pounded with their shells; with myrrh and frankincense they are said to heal even cut sinews.
117| The fat of dragons too, dried in the sun, is of great benefit, and so is the brain of a cock for fresh blows. They hand down that salt of viper taken in food makes ulcers more manageable and heals them more quickly. Indeed the physician Antonius, when he had come upon incurable ulcers, gave vipers to be eaten and healed them completely with wonderful speed. The ash of trixallides removes the hard edges of ulcers with honey, likewise that of pigeon dung with arrhenicum and honey, and these also are corrosive.
118| The brain of an owl with goose fat is said to glue wounds together wonderfully; for those called cacoethe, the ash of a ram's thigh-bones with a woman's milk, the linen cloths having first been carefully washed; the bird ulula boiled in oil, to which, once melted, sheep's butter and honey are mixed. Bees dead in honey soften the harder lips of ulcers, and the blood and ash of a weasel soften elephantiasis. Wounds from blows and weals are wiped out by fresh sheep skins laid on.
119| For fractures of the joints the ash of a sheep's thigh-bones with wax is especially curative (the same remedy is made more effective if jawbones are burnt together with it, and stag's horn, and the wax softened with rose oil); for broken bones, dog's brain smeared on a linen cloth, with wool laid over it that is poured over again and again with oil; it generally knits them in 14 days, and no more slowly does the ash of a wild mouse with honey, or of earthworms, which also draws out bones.
120| Scars are brought back to colour by the lung of cattle, especially from a ram, by tallow with natron, by the ash of a green lizard, by the sloughed skin of snakes boiled down in wine, by pigeon dung with honey; likewise white vitiligines in wine; vitiligo also by cantharides with 2 parts of rue leaves. The patient must endure the sun until the skin crawls; afterwards it is necessary to foment and anoint with oil and to smear on again, and to do this for several days, taking care to avoid deep ulceration.
121| For the same vitiligines they order flies to be smeared on with the root of Eupatoria, the white of hens' dung kept in old oil in a horn box, the blood of a bat, the gall of a hedgehog in water. For scabies, the brain of an owl with aphronitrum, but above all dog's blood relieves it; for itching, small, broad snails pounded and applied.
122| Reeds and whatever other missiles must be drawn out of the body are called out by a mouse cut open and laid on, but especially by a lizard cut open, or even only its head pounded with salt and laid on; by snails, of those kinds that go about in flocks on leaves, pounded and laid on with their shells, and also those that are eaten, taken from their shells, but most effectively with hare's rennet. The bones of snakes, together with any four-footed animal's rennet, prove the same effect within three days. Cantharides ground with barley meal are also praised.
123| In women's complaints the membranes from the birth of sheep are of use, as we have reported in discussing goats. The dung of cattle too has the same uses. By the fumigation of locusts strangury is relieved, most of all in women. If a woman eats cocks' testicles repeatedly after conception, males are said to be formed in the womb. The ash of porcupines, drunk, holds conceptions; that of a dog, drunk in milk, brings them to maturity; the membrane from the afterbirth of dogs calls them out, if it has not touched the ground, when the loins of women in labour are touched with it.
124| Mouse dung diluted in rainwater restores women's breasts swollen after childbirth. The ash of hedgehogs, with oil, rubbed on, guards births against miscarriage. Those women are delivered more easily who have sipped [….] goose [….] with 2 cyathi of water, or the waters flowing out through the genital from a weasel's little bladder.
125| Earthworms applied prevent the sinews of the neck and shoulder blades from aching. Drunk in raisin wine they expel a heavy afterbirth. Applied by themselves they bring abscesses of the breasts to a head, open them, draw them out and lead them to a scar. Drunk with honey wine they draw down milk. There are also little worms found in grass which, tied to the neck, hold back the birth; they are removed at the time of labour, otherwise they do not allow the child to be brought forth; care is also needed that they are not put on the ground. For the sake of conception also they are given in drink, five or seven at a time.
126| Snails taken in food hasten birth, and likewise conception when applied with saffron. The same, smeared on with starch and tragacanth, stop discharges. They are beneficial also taken in food for the purgations, and they set right a womb turned aside, with stag's marrow, in such a way that a denarius' weight of it, and of cyprus, is added to each snail. They also disperse inflations of the womb, taken from their shells and pounded with rose oil. For these purposes the Astypalaean ones are chosen above all.
127| In another way, two African ones pounded with what 3 fingers can hold of fenugreek, 4 spoonfuls of honey added, are smeared on the belly, which has first been anointed with iris juice. There are also small snails with white shells, wandering everywhere; these dried in the sun on tiles and pounded to a flour are mixed with an equal part of bean meal and bring whiteness and smoothness to the body. Small, broad ones with polenta remove the desire to scratch.
128| Should a pregnant woman step over a viper, she will miscarry, and likewise over an amphisbaena, but only a dead one, for those who keep a live one in a box step over it unharmed; even if dead and kept, it makes births easy. In the dead one it is a marvel that, if pregnant women step over it without its having been kept, it becomes harmless, if they step over a kept one at once. By the fumigation of an old snake the menses are helped.
129| The sloughed skin of snakes tied round the loins makes births easier, and must be removed straightaway after the delivery. They also give it to be drunk in wine with frankincense; taken otherwise it causes miscarriage. The staff with which a frog has been struck off a snake helps women in labour; the ash of trixallides smeared on with honey helps the purgations, as does a spider: one that lets down its thread from on high must be caught in the hollow of the hand, and pounded and applied; if it catches it as it comes back, the same will check the purgations.
130| The stone aetites, found in an eagle's nest, guards births against all the snares of miscarriage. A vulture's feather placed under the feet helps women in labour. The egg of a raven is agreed to be avoided by pregnant women, since for those who step over it it causes miscarriage through the mouth. The dung of a hawk drunk in honey wine is thought to make women fruitful. Hardnesses and gatherings of the womb are softened by goose or swan fat.
131| Goose fat with rose oil and a spider guards the breasts after childbirth. The Phrygians and Lycaones discovered that the fat of the bustard is useful for breasts troubled by childbirth. For women who are suffocated by the womb they also smear on cockroaches. The ash of partridge eggshells, mixed with cadmia and wax, keeps the breasts standing. They also think that breasts led three times round a partridge egg, or [….], do not sag; and that, if the eggs are sipped, they give the same fruitfulness and also an abundance of milk; that with goose fat, breasts anointed have their pains lessened; that they break moles of the womb, and soothe scabies of the vulva, if they are smeared on with a bug pounded.
132| The blood of bats has the power of psilotrum, but smeared on the armpits of boys it does not do enough unless verdigris or hemlock seed is afterwards applied; for so either the hairs are removed altogether or do not grow beyond down. They think the same is achieved by their brain; it is of two kinds, in any case red, and white. Some mix in the blood and liver of the same.
133| Some boil down a viper with the bones removed in 3 heminae of oil and use it in place of psilotrum, the hairs having first been plucked out which they do not want to grow again. The gall of a hedgehog is a psilotrum, at any rate mixed with the brain of a bat and goat's milk, and the ash by itself likewise. Parts anointed with the milk of a bitch that has borne once, the hairs having first been plucked out or not yet born, do not put forth others.
134| The same is reported to happen with the blood of a ricinus plucked from a dog, likewise with the blood or gall of swallows, with the eggs of ants. They report that the eyebrows are blackened by crushed flies; but if one wishes children to be born with dark eyes, a shrew-mouse is to be eaten by the pregnant woman; that hair may not turn grey, this is ensured by the ash of earthworms mixed with oil.
135| For infants troubled by curdled milk, lamb's rennet drunk in water is a protection, or, if it befalls from milk that has curdled, it is dispersed by rennet given in vinegar. For teething the brain of cattle is most useful. Bones found in dog dung, tied on, correct the burning of infants called siriasis; a rupture of infants is cured by a green lizard brought to the sleeping child to bite. Afterwards they tie it to a reed and hang it in smoke, and they report that the infant is healed together with the lizard as it expires.
136| Snails' slime smeared on infants' eyes straightens the eyelashes and makes them grow. For hernia, the ash of snails with frankincense, applied with a probe in white of egg for 30 days, is a cure. Sandy hard bits are found in the little horns of snails; tied on as an amulet, these make teething easy. The ash of empty snail shells mixed with wax prevents the ends of the intestines from prolapsing; but the matter let out by pricking must first be mixed with the ash.
137| A viper's brain tied on in a piece of skin helps teething. The largest teeth of serpents have the same power. Raven's dung tied on in wool cures infants' cough. Some things can hardly be treated seriously, and yet should not be left out, since they have been handed down. For hernia in infants they prescribe a lizard. It must be a male that is caught; it is recognized by having a single opening under the tail.
138| The thing to do is to make it bite the affected part through a clasp of gold or silver; then it is tied up in a new cup and set in the smoke. Children's urine is held back when boiled mice are given them as food. The large, toothed horns of beetles, tied on them, serve as an amulet.
139| They say there is a little stone in the head of the boa, which it spits out if it fears death; and that if its head is cut off while it is off its guard, the stone taken out and tied on is wonderfully good for teething. They also prescribe tying on the brain of the same creature for the same purpose, and the little stone, or small bone, of the slug; it is found in its back. A sheep's brain rubbed on the gums is also a splendid help, as goose grease with juice of ocimum, put on the ears, helps the ears. On thorny plants there are little worms, rough and woolly; they say that these, tied on, at once cure infants if anything from their food sticks in the throat.
140| Sleep is brought on by oesypum with a pinch of myrrh dissolved in 2 cyathi of wine, or with goose grease and myrtle wine; by a cuckoo tied on in a hare's skin; by the beak of a little heron tied on the forehead in an ass's skin. They think that the beak by itself, washed in wine, also has the same effect. Conversely, the dried head of a bat tied on keeps sleep away.
141| A lizard drowned in a man's urine checks the sexual desire of the man who did it; for the Magi say it is one of the love charms. Snails also check it, and pigeon's dung drunk with oil and wine. The right-hand parts of a vulture's lung, tied on in a crane's skin, arouse desire in men; so do the yolks of five pigeon's eggs mixed with the weight of a denarius of pork fat, if swallowed in honey; sparrows or their eggs in food; and the right testicle of a cock tied on in a ram's skin.
142| They report that if women are anointed with the ash of ibises mixed with goose grease and iris oil, the child conceived is retained; that, on the other hand, desire is checked by the testicles of a fighting cock smeared with goose grease and tied on in a ram's skin, and likewise by those of any cock if they are put under the bed with a cock's blood. Unwilling women are forced to conceive by hairs from a mule's tail, if they are pulled out while the mules are coupled and tied together during intercourse.
143| A man who urinates into a dog's urine is said to become more sluggish in desire. Remarkable too, if it is true, is what is said of the ash of the stellio: wrapped in a linen cloth and held in the left hand, it stimulates desire, and if it is moved to the right hand, it checks it; likewise that a bat's blood collected on a tuft of wool and placed under women's heads arouses their lust, or a goose's tongue taken in food or drink.
144| Phthiriasis, even over the whole body, is killed within three days by drinking the slough of snakes, or the whey left after the cheese is taken out, drunk with a little salt. They say that cheeses do not spoil with age or get touched by mice if a weasel's brain is added to the rennet; and that if the ash of the same weasel is given to chickens and pigeons in a morsel, they are safe from weasels. Gripes with retention of urine in draught animals are ended by tying on a bat; worms, by carrying a ring-dove three times round their middle. Wonderful to say, the ring-dove dies when it is let go, and the animal is freed at once.
145| Owls' eggs given to drunkards in wine for three days bring on a disgust for it. Drunkenness is warded off by the roasted lung of a sheep eaten beforehand. The ash of a swallow's beak, ground with myrrh and sprinkled into the wine that is to be drunk, will make one safe from intoxication. Orus, king of the Assyrians, discovered this.
146| Besides these, there are notable facts about animals belonging to this volume. The gromphena, a bird reported in Sardinia and like a crane, is, I think, now unknown even to the Sardinians. In the same province there is the ophion, like the deer only in its hair, and born nowhere else. The same authorities have told of the sirulugus without saying what kind of animal it was or where it was born. That it existed I do not doubt, since remedies from it have been set out. Marcus Cicero records that there are animals called biuri that gnaw the vines in Campania.
147| The remaining marvels, from among those we have spoken of: that a dog will not bark at a man who has the membrane from a bitch's afterbirth or who holds a hare's dung or hairs. That among the gnats the muliones [….] live no longer than one day; and that those who have the beak of a woodpecker and take out honey are not touched by the bees; that pigs follow anyone from whom they have received a raven's brain in a morsel.
148| That dust in which a she-mule has rolled, sprinkled on the body, cools the fires of love. That shrews run away if one of them is castrated and let go. That if a snake's skin, with salt and spelt and serpyllum, all ground together, is poured with wine down the throats of oxen when the grape is ripening, they stay healthy for the whole year; or if swallow chicks are given to them, three at a time in three morsels. That if dust gathered from a snake's track is scattered, the bees return to their hives. That if a ram's right testicle is tied off, only ewe lambs are born.
149| That those who have sinews taken from a crane's wings and legs never tire in any labor. That mules do not kick once they have drunk wine. That the hooves of mules alone were found, and no other material, that was not eaten through by the poison of the water of Styx, when Antipater sent it to be given to Alexander the Great: this deserves to be remembered; it was a plot devised to the great infamy of Aristotle. Now we shall turn to the creatures of the water.
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