Pliny the Younger & Pliny the Elder · a new plain-English translation from the Latin
1| In the order of things we have come to the summit of nature and of her examples, and there presents itself unbidden an immense proof of hidden power, such that nothing further ought to be sought at all, nor can anything equal or like it be found: nature outdoing herself, and in many ways at that. For what is more violent than the sea and the winds, whirlwinds and storms? In what part of herself has nature been aided by human ingenuity more than by sails and oars? Add to these the indescribable force of the ebb and flow of the tides, and the whole sea turned into a river.
2| Yet all these forces, even when they all drive together to the same end, one single fish, and quite a small one, called the echenais, holds back in itself. The winds may rush, the storms may rage: it commands their fury, restrains such great forces and makes ships stand still, which no cables can do, no anchors cast with a weight that cannot be drawn back. It bridles their onset and tames the madness of the world with no effort of its own, not by resisting, nor in any other way than by clinging.
3| This tiny creature is enough to stop ships from moving against so many forces. Yet armed fleets load themselves with towers as bulwarks, so that even at sea battle may be fought as if from walls. Alas for human vanity, when a fish half a foot long can check those beaks armed with bronze and iron for ramming, and hold them fast as if bound! It is said that at the battle of Actium it held back the flagship of Antony as he was hurrying to go round and encourage his men, until he crossed to another ship, and that for this reason Caesar's fleet at once came on with greater force.
4| Within our own memory too it held back the ship of the emperor Gaius as he was sailing back from Astura to Antium; as things turned out, it was a fish of omen as well, since that emperor, on that very occasion returning to Rome for the last time, was stabbed to death by his own soldiers' weapons. Nor was the wonder at that delay long-lived, for the cause was understood at once: when out of the whole fleet his quinquereme alone was making no headway, men immediately jumped overboard to search around the ship. They found the fish clinging to the rudder and showed it to Gaius, who was indignant that it was this that had held him back and had stood in the way of the obedience of four hundred oarsmen against him.
5| It was well known that he was especially amazed at how it had held the ship while clinging to it, and did not have the same power once it was taken aboard. Those who saw it then and afterwards say it is like a large slug. We have set out the opinions of a number of writers in our account of aquatic creatures, when we spoke of it, and we do not doubt that all those kinds have the same power, since there is a famous and even consecrated instance at the shrine of the Cnidian Venus, where we must believe that shells too have the same power.
6| Some of our writers have called it in Latin mora; and, remarkably, among the Greeks some have reported, as we have said, that tied on as an amulet it holds back slippery and prolapsing births until they are mature; others, that preserved in salt and tied on to pregnant women it brings on the birth, and that for this reason it is called by another name, odinolytes. However these matters stand, who, after this example of ships held fast, would doubt any power of nature, or the force and effect in remedies of the things that grow of their own accord?
7| Again: even without this example, would not the torpedo, from the same sea, be enough on its own? That even at a distance and from far off, even if it is touched with a spear or a rod, arms however strong go numb, and feet however swift in running are held fast? If this example forces us to admit that there is a power which affects the limbs merely by its scent and by a kind of emanation from its body, what may we not hope for from the potency of all remedies?
8| No less wonderful are the things reported of the sea hare. Given in drink or food it is a poison to some, to others even by sight: if pregnant women so much as look at a female of that kind, they at once feel sick, betray the disorder by vomiting, and then miscarry. The remedy for this is a male hardened in salt, which they keep in their bracelets. In the sea the same creature does no harm even to the touch. Only one animal feeds on it without dying, the mullus fish; it merely grows soft and becomes more sluggish and of lower worth.
9| People to whom it has been administered smell of fish; this is the first sign by which the poisoning is detected. For the rest, they die in as many days as the hare lived, and Licinius Macer says that this is a poison of uncertain timing. In India they assert that it is not caught alive, and that there, in turn, man is a poison to it, and that if merely touched with a finger in the sea it dies; and that it is much larger there, like the other animals.
10| Juba, in the volumes about Arabia that he wrote to Gaius Caesar, son of Augustus, reports that mussels hold three heminae apiece; that whales six hundred feet long and three hundred and sixty wide entered a river of Arabia, and that merchants traded in their fat; and that in that region camels are rubbed all over with the fat of every kind of fish, so that its smell drives the asili away from them.
11| To me, too, the cleverness of fish that Ovid reported in his volume entitled Halieuticon seems remarkable: that the scarus, when shut in a fish-trap, does not break out head first or thrust its head between the hostile osiers, but turns away and loosens the door with repeated blows of its tail, and so creeps out backwards; and if another scarus outside happens to see it struggling, it seizes the tail in its mouth and helps the efforts of the one breaking out; that the lupus, when surrounded by a net, ploughs up the sand with its tail and so hides itself until the net passes over;
12| The moray, conscious of its smooth, slippery back, seeks the very meshes, then loosens itself with many a twist until it escapes; the polypus seeks the hooks and embraces them with its arms, not with a bite, and does not let go before it has gnawed round the bait, or is lifted out of the water by a reed; the mullet knows that the hook is in the bait and is not ignorant of the snare, yet its greed is so great that it shakes off the food by lashing with its tail.
13| The lupus has less cleverness in foreseeing, but great strength in repenting. For when it has stuck on a hook, with a tumultuous dashing about it enlarges the wounds until the snare falls out. Morays swallow more than the hook, bring the lines to their teeth and so gnaw through. The anthias is reported to do the same, turning itself over when the hook is fixed, since on its back there is a knife-like spine, and it cuts the line through.
14| Licinius Macer reports that morays are of the female sex only and conceive from serpents, as we have said (for which reason they are called out by fishermen by hissing, as if serpents, and caught), and grow fat; that when a cudgel is thrown they are not killed, but at once by a rod. It is certain that they have life in the tail and die very quickly when struck there, with difficulty at a blow to the head. Those touched by the fish novacula smell of iron. The hardest of fishes is agreed to be the one called orbis; it is round, without scales, and consists wholly of head. (Whenever the lolligo is seen flying outside the water, storms are announced.) Trebius Niger says that the xiphias,
15| that is the sword-fish, has a pointed beak, and that ships pierced by it sink; that in the ocean at a place in Mauretania called Cotta, not far from the river Lixus, the same writer reports lolligines flying out of the water in such a multitude that they sink vessels.
16| Fish feed from the hand in several villas of Caesar, but (what the ancients handed down with wonder, in pools, not fishponds) in the fortress of Helorus in Sicily not far from Syracuse, likewise in the spring of Jupiter at Labranda, eels wear earrings put on them, and similarly in Chios beside the shrine of the Old Men, and in the spring Chabura in Mesopotamia, of which we have spoken, there are fish.
17| For in Lycia at Myra, in the spring of Apollo, which they call Curium, fish called three times by the pipe come for divination. For those consulting it is a joyful sign that they tear in pieces the flesh thrown to them, a dire one that they drive it away with their tails. At Hierapolis in Syria, in the lake of Venus, they obey the voices of the temple attendants, and when called come adorned with gold; fawning, they are stroked, and offer their gaping mouths for hands to be put in. In the Stabian territory of Campania, at the rock of Hercules, melanuri in the sea snatch bread thrown out, but approach no food in which there is a hook.
18| Nor is it least among marvels that fish are bitter at the island Pele and at Clazomenae, opposite the rock of Sicily, and at Leptis of Africa and Euboea and Durrachium, and again so salt that they could be thought salted fish, around Cephallania and Ampelos, Paros and the rocks of Delos, while in the harbour of that same island they are sweet. There is no doubt that this difference lies in their feeding.
19| Apion reports that the most marvellous of fishes is the porcus, which the Lacedaemonians call orthagoriscus; that it grunts when caught. But that nature has this accommodation (which we may wonder at the more) even in certain places will be met by an example adduced, since it is agreed that salted fish of all kinds are refreshed in Italy at Beneventum.
20| That sea fish were in use straight from the founding of Rome is vouched for by Cassius Hemina, whose words on the matter I shall add: Numa established that fish which were not scaly should not be offered, having devised it from thrift, so that public and private banquets and the dinners at the sacred couches might be provided more easily, lest those who bought for the offering should spare the price less and buy them up beforehand.
21| As great as is the price among us of Indian pearls, of which we have said enough in their place, so great among the Indians is that of coral; for these things rest on the conviction of nations. It grows in the Red Sea also, but darker, likewise in the Persian, where it is called lace; the most praised is in the Gallic gulf around the islands Stoechades and in the Sicilian around the Aeolian islands and Drepana. It grows also at Graviscae and before Naples in Campania, most of all red, but soft, and therefore cheapest at Erythrae.
22| Its form is that of a shrub, its colour green. Its berries are white under water and soft, and when taken out harden at once and turn red, in appearance and size like the cultivated cornel. They say it turns to stone on being touched, if it is alive, and therefore it is seized and torn up by nets or cut off with a sharp iron tool, for which reason they explain the name curalium. The most approved is the reddest possible and the most branching, not scabby or stony, nor again empty and hollow.
23| The authority of its berries is no less precious to the men of the Indians than Indian pearls are to our women. Their haruspices and seers think it above all a sacred thing to wear, for averting dangers. So they delight in it both for beauty and religion. Before this became known, the Gauls adorned swords, shields and helmets with it. Now, because it is so saleable a commodity, there is such a scarcity of it that it is very rarely seen in its own country.
24| Twigs tied on infants are believed to hold protection, and against the ills of gripings, the bladder and stones, reduced to powder by fire and drunk in water they help; in the same way drunk in wine or, if there is fever, in water, they bring sleep (it resists fire long), but they hand down that when the same medicine is drunk more often the spleen too is wasted. For those spitting or coughing up blood their ash is a cure; it is mixed into medicines for the eyes, for it thickens and cools, fills the hollows of ulcers, and thins scars.
25| As to the mutual opposition of things, which the Greeks call antipathy, there is nothing anywhere more venomous in the sea than the pastinaca, seeing that we have said that trees are killed by its spine. Yet the galeus hunts it, and other fishes too, but the pastinacae especially, as on land the weasel hunts serpents (so great is its appetite for the poison itself); those struck by it are cured by these here too, but also by the mullus and by laser,
26| a notable power of nature, in creatures too whose living is in the lands as well, as with the fibri, whom they call castores, and the castoreum, their testicles. That these are cut off by the animals themselves when they are caught, Sextius, the most careful in medicine, denies, saying on the contrary that they are small, drawn in and clinging to the spine, and cannot be taken away without the animal's life; that it is adulterated, however, with the kidneys of the same, which are large, whereas the true testicles are found quite small; that besides, there are not even bladders,
27| though they are twin, which is true of no other animal; that in those sacs a liquid is found and is preserved with salt; and so among the proofs of a false one are twin sacs hanging from one connection, and that this itself is corrupted by the fraud of those who put in gum with blood or Hammoniacum, since they ought to be of the colour of Hammoniacum when wrapped round, with a liquid like waxy honey, heavy in smell, bitter and sharp in taste, and friable. The most effective come from Pontus and Galatia, next Africa.
28| They move sneezing by their smell. They bring sleep, with rose oil and peucedanum, when the head is anointed, and by themselves, drunk in water, and for that reason are useful to the frenzied; the same rouse the lethargic by the fumigation of their smell, and faintings of the womb, even by application below, and they bring on the menses and the afterbirth, drunk, 2 drachmas, with pennyroyal in water.
29| They cure also vertigo, opisthotonos, tremors, spasms, disorders of the sinews, sciatica, stomach complaints, paralytics, all being anointed, or pounded to the thickness of honey with the seed of the vitex in vinegar and rose oil. So too taken against epileptics, and drunk against inflations, gripings and poisons.
30| The only difference against the kinds of poison is in the mixture, for against scorpions they are drunk in wine, against phalangia and spiders in honey wine, in such a way that they are brought up by vomiting or are retained, with rue; against chalcides with myrtites, against the cerastes and presteres with panax or rue in wine, against the other serpents with wine. Two drachmas are enough to give; of the things that are added, one drachma each.
31| They help especially against mistletoe, in vinegar, against aconite in milk or water, against white hellebore in honey water and nitre. They cure teeth too, poured with oil into the ear on the side from which they ache, pounded; better for pain of the ears if with meconium. They bring clearness of sight with Attic honey for those anointed. They check hiccups in vinegar. The urine of the fiber also resists poisons and for that reason is added to antidotes. It is best kept, however, in its own bladder, as some think.
32| There is a twin way of life in the waters and on land also in tortoises, and their effect is equal, and they are to be held in honour or on account of their outstanding price in use and the peculiarity of their shape. The kinds of tortoise, then, are land, sea, mud, and those that live in fresh water. These some of the Greeks call emydes.
33| The flesh of land tortoises, proper for fumigations and for refuting the magic arts, and salutary against poisons, is reported to be most plentiful in Africa. These there, with the head and feet cut off, are said to be given as an antidote, and taken in food from a broth they disperse scrofulous swellings and remove disorders of the spleen, likewise epileptic complaints; their blood makes clear sight and disperses suffusions of the eyes. And against the poisons of all serpents and of spiders and the like and of frogs it helps, the blood being kept in meal, made into pills and, when need is, given in wine. The gall of tortoises with Attic honey benefits glaucomata when anointed.
34| It is dropped in against the strokes of scorpions. The ash of the shell, worked with wine and oil, heals cracks of the feet and ulcers; the scales scraped off the top and given in drink restrain venery. This is the more wonderful because the meal of the whole shell is reported to kindle desire. Their urine I do not think can be found otherwise than by dissecting them in the bladder, and among those things is this too, which the Magi set out monstrously, singular against the strokes of asps, yet more effective, as they say, with bugs mixed in. The eggs, hardened, are smeared on scrofulous swellings and on ulcers made by cold or burning. They are sipped for pains of the stomach.
35| The flesh of sea tortoises, mixed with the flesh of frogs, helps excellently against salamanders, and there is nothing more hostile to the salamander than the tortoise. By the blood the baldness of alopecia and scurf and all ulcers of the head are cured; it must dry and be slowly washed off. It is also dropped into pain of the ears with women's milk. Against epileptic complaints it is chewed with fine wheat flour, and of the blood 3 heminae are mixed with a hemina of vinegar.
36| It is given also to asthmatics, but then a hemina of wine is added; for these also with barley meal, vinegar being mixed in too, so that there is a quantity of the size of a bean to be swallowed; and these single portions are given in the morning and the evening, then after some days two in the evening. To epileptics it is dropped in with the mouth held open; for those who are seized by spasm in a moderate degree, it is poured in with castoreum by clyster.
37| But if the teeth are rinsed three times a year with the blood of tortoises, they become free from pain. It also disperses shortness of breath and what they call orthopnoea; for these it is given in polenta. The gall of tortoises produces clearness of the eyes, thins scars, soothes tonsils and anginas and all faults of the mouth, in particular spreading sores there, and likewise of the testicles. Smeared on the nostrils it raises and rouses epileptics. The same with the sloughed skin of snakes, vinegar being mixed in, is uniquely beneficial to discharging ears; some mix ox gall with the broth of boiled tortoise flesh, with sloughed snake skin added equally;
38| but they boil the tortoise in wine. At any rate the gall, anointed with honey, corrects all faults of the eyes, and for suffusions the gall of the sea tortoise, with the blood of the river kind and milk. Women's hair is dyed with the gall. Against salamanders it is enough to have drunk even the broth of the boiled tortoise.
39| The third kind of tortoises is of those that live in mud and marshes. They have a breadth, on the back like the chest, not curved in a convex shell, unpleasant to see. Yet from this kind too some helps come. For three of them thrown on burning brushwood, their coverings splitting apart, are snatched out; then their flesh, pulled out, is cooked in a congius of water with a little salt added; the broth of those boiled down to a third part is drunk by those who feel paralysis and joint diseases. The gall draws off phlegms and corrupt blood. By that remedy the belly is checked, by a drink of cold water.
40| From the fourth kind of tortoise, those in rivers, the fats of those torn apart, pounded with the herb aizoon, with ointment and lily seed mixed in, if the sick are anointed with it before the attacks, except the head, and then, wrapped up, drink hot water, are said to be freed from quartans. This tortoise ought to be caught on the 15th day of the moon, so that more fat is found, but the sick man anointed on the 16th. From the same kind of tortoise, the blood dropped in the brain soothes pains of the head, and scrofulous swellings likewise.
41| There are those who order that the blood of tortoises be received in a new earthen vessel with a bronze knife, the heads of those lying on their backs being cut off; that sacred fire of whatever kind is smeared with the blood, likewise running ulcers of the head, warts. The same promise that the dung of all tortoises disperses boils; and, what is incredible to say, some report that vessels carrying the right foot of a tortoise go more slowly.
42| From here we shall then arrange aquatic creatures by disease, not because we do not know that the whole body of animals is more pleasing and of greater wonder, but this is more useful for life, to have remedies brought together, since one thing helps one man, and another is found more easily in one place.
43| Poisonous honey we have said where it is produced. A help is the fish aurata in food. Or if from pure honey loathing or indigestion, which is most grievous, should befall, a tortoise cut round, with the feet, head and tail removed, boiled down, is an antidote, as Pelops is authority; the scincus, Apelles—what the scincus is we have said—but we have more often said how much poison there is in women's menses.
44| Against all these helps, as we have said, the mullus, also against the pastinaca and scorpions of land and sea, and dragons, and phalangia, smeared on or taken in food; the ash of the head of the same fresh against all poisons, particularly against mushrooms. Evil drugs, they say, cannot be brought in, or at least cannot harm, if a sea-star smeared with fox blood is fastened to the upper threshold or to a bronze nail of the door.
45| The strokes of the sea dragon and of scorpions are healed by laying their flesh on, likewise the bites of spiders. In sum, against all poisons, whether harmful by drink or stroke or bite, their juice, boiled down from broth, is held most effective. There are also medicines in preserved fish, and the food of salted fish benefits those struck by a serpent, and against the strokes of beasts when neat wine is taken after it, so that to satiety the food is brought up again by vomiting,
46| particularly for those struck by the chalcis, the cerastes, or those they call sepes, or the elops, the dipsas. Against the scorpion salted fish benefit if more is taken but not vomited up, so that thirst is endured; and it is fitting to lay the same on the wounds. Against the bites of crocodiles indeed nothing else is held more immediate. Particularly against the bite of the prester the sarda helps. Salted fish are laid on also against a mad dog,
47| or if the wounds have not been burnt with iron and the bodies emptied by clysters, this by itself suffices. And against the sea dragon they are laid on in vinegar. The cybium has the same effect. The sea dragon indeed, laid on itself, or its brain drunk, is beneficial against the poison of its own spine with which it strikes.
48| The juice of sea frogs boiled down in wine and vinegar is drunk against poisons, and against the poison of the bramble frog and against salamanders, or of the river ones; if the flesh is eaten or the broth of those boiled down is sipped, they benefit also against the sea hare and against the serpents mentioned above, against scorpions in wine.
49| Democritus indeed reports that if anyone pulls out the tongue of a living frog, no other part of the body adhering, and, the frog itself being released into water, lays it on a sleeping woman over the beating of the heart, she will answer truly whatever she is asked. The Magi add still other things, which, if true, would make frogs be considered much more useful for life than laws; for if, in frogs transfixed with a reed from the genitals through the mouth, a twig is fixed by the husband in the menses, loathing of adulterers results.
50| It is certain that purpurae are attracted especially by their flesh, or when it is put on a hook. They say the liver of the frog is twofold and ought to be thrown to the ants; the part which they seek is an antidote against all poisons. There are those that live only in brambles, and therefore, as we have said, have the name of rubetae, which the Greeks call phrynoi, the largest of all, with twin horns as it were, full of poisonings. The authors vie in reporting marvels about them:
51| that when they are brought among a people, silence falls; that a little bone which lies in the right side, thrown into boiling water, cools the vessel, and the water does not boil afterwards unless it is taken out; that it is found by throwing the frog to the ants and the flesh being eaten away, each added to oil; that there is one in the left side and that when it is thrown in, the water seems to boil,
52| that it is called apocynon, that the attacks of dogs are checked by it, that love is stirred and quarrels when it is added to a drink, that desire is aroused when it is tied on; again that from the right side boiling things are cooled; that by this too quartans are healed, tied on in the fresh skin of a lamb, and other fevers, and love is inhibited. From these same frogs the spleen helps against poisons that come from the frogs themselves, and the liver even more effectively.
53| There is a snake that lives in water. Those who hunt crocodiles, having its fat and gall, are said to be wonderfully helped, the beast daring nothing against them, still more effectively if the herb potamogiton is mixed in. River crabs, pounded and drunk fresh in water, or from ash that has been kept, are beneficial against all poisons, particularly against the strokes of scorpions, with asses' milk, and if there is none, goat's milk or any; wine ought to be added too.
54| They kill scorpions when pounded and applied with basil. The same power is against the bites of all venomous creatures, especially the scytale and snakes, and against the sea hare and the bramble frog. Their ash, kept and drunk, benefits those in danger from terror after the bite of a mad dog. Some add gentian and give it in wine, and if terror has already seized, they direct pastilles worked up in wine to be swallowed.
55| But when ten crabs are tied up with a bunch of basil, the Magi say that all the scorpions that are there will gather to that place, and they lay the crabs themselves, with basil, or their ash, on those who have been struck. In all these the sea crabs are less beneficial. Thrasyllus is authority that nothing is so hostile to serpents as crabs; that swine struck by serpents cure themselves with this food; that when the sun is in Cancer, serpents are tormented.
56| Against the strokes of scorpions the flesh of river snails resists, raw or cooked. Some for that reason keep them salted too. They lay them on the wounds themselves. The coracini fish are peculiar to the Nile, but we set these things out for all lands. Their flesh laid on avails against scorpions. Among the poisons of fishes are the spines on the back of the sea pig, with great torment to the wounded. The remedy is mud from the remains of the body of those fishes.
57| For the bites of a mad dog, those terrified at drink have the face anointed with the fat of the sea calf, more effectively if the marrow of a hyena and mastic oil and wax are mixed. The bites of morays are healed by the ash of their own head.
58| And the pastinaca is a remedy against its own stroke, with its own ash smeared on in vinegar, or that of another. For the sake of food there must be pulled out from its back whatever is like saffron, and the whole head; and they rinse both this and all shellfish moderately before eating, because the savour perishes. Against poisoning by the sea hare, hippocampi drunk quench it. Against dorycnium, sea urchins are most helpful, and for those who have drunk the juice of carpathum, especially taken from a broth. The broth of sea crabs boiled down is held effective against dorycnium, and particularly against the poisons of the sea hare.
59| Oysters too are opposed to the same, and it cannot seem that enough has been said about them, since the palm of the tables has long been given to them. They delight in sweet waters and where very many rivers flow in; therefore the deep-sea ones are small and few. They are produced, however, also in rocky places lacking the arrival of fresh waters, as around Grynium and Myrina. They grow large according to the star, indeed, as we said in the nature of aquatic creatures, but particularly about the beginning of summer, pregnant with much milk and where the sun penetrates the shallows.
60| This seems the reason why smaller ones are found in the deep; shade checks growth, and in sadness they seek food less. They vary in colour: reddish in Spain, dusky in Illyricum, black in both flesh and shell at Circeii, but those held outstanding among any people are thick, not slippery with their own slime, to be judged by thickness rather than breadth, caught neither in muddy places nor in sandy, but in firm shallows, with a short hinge and not fleshy, not frilled with fibres and all in the belly.
61| The more expert add a mark, fibres with a purple fringe going round, and by that sign they judge them noble, calling them calliblephara. They delight also in travel and in being carried into unknown waters. So the Brundisian, fed together at Avernus, are believed both to keep their own juice and to adopt that of the Lucrine.
62| Let this be said of the body; we shall speak also of the nations, that the shores may not be cheated of their glory, but we shall speak in another's tongue, who was the most expert in this judging in our age; these then are the words of Mucianus, which I shall add: The Cyzicene are bigger than the Lucrine, sweeter than the Britannic, more agreeable than those of the Medulli, sharper than the Ephesian, fuller than the Iliciensian, drier than the Coryphantene, more tender than the Histrian, whiter than the Circeian. But it is found that none are sweeter or more tender than these.
63| In the Indian sea the authors of Alexander's exploits have reported that foot-long ones are found, and among us the nomenclature of a certain wastrel called them tridacna, wishing it understood that they were of such size that they had to be bitten three times.
64| Their medicinal merit will be told in full at this place: they restore the stomach uniquely, cure loathing of food, and luxury has added coldness, burying them in snow, mixing the summits of the mountains with the bottom of the sea. They soften the belly gently. The same, cooked with honey wine, free from tenesmus that is without ulceration. They also cleanse ulcers of the bladder. Cooked in their own shells, as they find them closed, they are wonderfully beneficial for catarrhs.
65| The ash of the shell of oysters soothes the uvula and tonsils when honey is mixed in, in the same way swellings by the ears, boils, and hardnesses of the breasts, ulcers of the head in water, and it stretches the skin of women; it is sprinkled on burns too. It is also approved as a dentifrice. It cures itchings and eruptions of phlegm in vinegar. Raw ones, if pounded, heal scrofulous swellings and chilblains of the feet.
66| Purpurae too are beneficial against poisons. And the seaweed of the sea Nicander reports to be a theriac. Of it there are several kinds, as we have said, with a long reddish leaf, another broader or curled. Most praised is that which in the island of Crete grows beside the land on rocks, used even for dyeing wools, so fixing the colour that it cannot afterwards be washed out. He orders it to be given in wine.
67| Baldness is made good by the ash of the hippocampus mixed with nitre and pig fat, or by itself in vinegar; the meal of the crusts of cuttlefish prepares the skin for the medicines; the ash of the sea mouse with oil also fills it, likewise of sea urchins burnt with their flesh, the gall of the sea scorpion, and 3 frogs also, if they are burnt alive in a pot, the ash with honey, better with liquid pitch. Leeches blacken the hair, those which have been left to rot in black wine for 40 days.
68| Others order a sextarius of leeches to rot in a lead vessel in 2 sextarii of vinegar for as many days, then to be smeared on in the sun. Sornatius reports so great a power in this that, unless those who dye hold oil in the mouth, he says the teeth too are blackened by their juice. For ulcers of the head the ash of shells of murices or purpurae is usefully smeared on with honey, or the meal of conchylia, if not burnt, in water; for pains, castoreum with peucedanum and rose oil.
69| The fats of all fishes, river and sea, melted in the sun with honey mixed in, contribute very much to clearness of the eyes, likewise castoreum with honey. Callionymus gall heals scars and consumes the superfluous flesh of the eyes. In none of the fishes is there more of it, as Menander too thought in his comedies. The same fish is also called uranoscopos from the eye which it has on its head.
70| And the gall of the coracinus rouses sight, and that of the red sea scorpion with old oil or Attic honey disperses beginning suffusions; one should be anointed three times, with days intervening. The same method takes away the white spots of the eyes. The eating of mulli is reported to dull the keenness of the eyes. The sea hare itself is venomous, but its ash on the eyelids restrains useless hairs once plucked out. For this use the smallest are most useful, likewise salted pectunculi pounded with cedria, and the frogs they call diopetae and calamitae; their blood with the tear of the vine is to be smeared on the eyelids, the hair having been plucked.
71| The swelling and redness of the eyes are soothed by the shell of the cuttlefish smeared on with a woman's milk, and by itself it corrects roughnesses; so they turn back the eyelids and take away the medicine after a little, and anoint with rose oil and soothe with bread laid on. By the same shell night-blind people are cured, it being pounded to meal and smeared on in vinegar. Its ash also draws out scales.
72| It heals scars of the eyes with honey, pterygia with salt and cadmia, a drachma of each, and corrects white spots of beasts of burden. They say too that eyelids, if they are rubbed with its little bone, are healed. Sea urchins in vinegar remove epinyctides. The Magi order the same to be burnt with the skins of vipers and frogs and the ash sprinkled into drinks, promising clearness of sight.
73| A fish is called ichthyocolla, whose skin is glutinous. The same name belongs to its glue; this removes epinyctides. Some say that ichthyocolla is made from the belly, not from the skin, like bull glue. The Pontic is praised, white and lacking veins and scales, and which dissolves most quickly. It must be soaked, cut up, in water or vinegar for a night and a day, then pounded with sea stones, so that it dissolves more easily. They affirm it useful also for pains of the head and for tetanus.
74| The right eye of a frog, for the right, the left for the left, hung from the neck in a cloth of its natural colour, heal bleariness of the eyes; and if they are taken out at the conjunction of the moon, white spots too, tied on likewise in an eggshell. The remaining flesh laid on draws off a bruise. They say also that the eyes of a crab tied round the neck cure bleariness.
75| There is a small frog living chiefly in reed-beds and among herbs, mute and without voice, green, which, if it is swallowed by chance, distends the bellies of oxen. The moisture of its body, scraped off with probes, they say brings clearness to the eyes anointed with it. And they lay the flesh itself on pains of the eyes. Some thrust 15 frogs, thrown into a new earthen pot, through with rushes, and to the juice of them that so flows out they add the tear of the white vine, and so correct the eyelids, taking out the useless hairs, dropping this juice with a needle into the traces of those plucked.
76| Meges made a psilotrum for the eyelids in vinegar, killing the rotting ones, and for this used many and various ones born in the autumn floods. The same effect is thought to be provided by the ash of leeches smeared on in vinegar (they must be burnt in a new vessel), and by the dried liver of the tunny, in the weight of 3 denarii, with cedar oil, on the hairs anointed for 8 months.
77| Most useful for the ears is the fresh gall of the fish batia, but also kept in nitre, likewise that of the bacchus, which some call mizyene, likewise of the callionymus poured in with rose oil, or castoreum with the juice of poppy. They call certain creatures in the sea too lice, and order them, pounded, to be dropped into the ears in vinegar. Wool, both by itself and dyed with conchylium, is of great benefit; some soak it in vinegar and nitre.
78| There are those who, above all against all faults of the ears, praise a cyathus of excellent garum, half as much again of honey, and a cyathus of vinegar, to be boiled down in a new cup over a gentle fire, the foam wiped off now and then with feathers, and when it has ceased to foam, to be poured in lukewarm. If the ears are swollen, the same authorities prescribe that they first be eased with coriander juice. Frogs' fat dropped in takes away pains at once. The juice of river crabs with barley meal is most effective for wounds of the ears. Swellings by the ears are cured by the ash of the shells of murices with honey, or of conchylia in honey wine.
79| Pains of the teeth are eased by the bones of the sea dragon, the gums being scarified with them, by the brain of the dogfish boiled down in oil and kept, so that the teeth are rinsed with it once a year. The spine of the pastinaca, too, is most useful for scarifying the gums in pain. Pounded and smeared on with white hellebore, it draws teeth without distress. The ash of salted fish burnt in an earthen vessel, with marble meal added, is among the remedies.
80| Also old cybia, washed in a new vessel and then pounded, are beneficial for pains. Equally the spines of all salted fish, burnt, pounded and smeared on, are said to help. Frogs are boiled down too, one to each hemina of vinegar, so that the teeth are rinsed with it and the juice is held in the mouth. If disgust stood in the way, Sallustius Dionysius hung them by the hind feet, so that the venom might flow from the mouth into the boiling vinegar, and this from several frogs; for stronger stomachs he gave them to be chewed from the broth. And they think that the jaw teeth are especially healed so, and loose ones made firm with the vinegar spoken of above.
81| For this some macerate the bodies of two frogs, with the feet cut off, in a hemina of wine, and order that the tottering teeth be rinsed with it. Some tie them on whole to the jaws. Others boiled ten in 3 sextarii of vinegar down to a third, to make loose teeth firm. And they boiled the hearts of 46 frogs in a sextarius of old oil under a bronze cover, to pour through the ear of the aching jaw. Others laid the liver of a frog, boiled and pounded, with honey on the teeth. All those written above are more effective from the sea frog.
82| If the teeth are decayed and foul, they prescribe that the cetus be dried in an oven overnight, and then as much salt added, and so rubbed on. Enhydris is the name among the Greeks for the snake living in water. With 4 of its upper teeth they scarify the upper gums in pain, with the lower the lower; some are content with the canine tooth of them only. They use also the ash of crabs, for the ash of murices is a dentifrice.
83| Lichens and leprosies are removed by the fat of the sea calf, the ash of menae with three obols of honey each, the liver of the pastinaca cooked in oil, the ash of the hippocampus or dolphin smeared on in water. Ulceration should be followed by treatment which leads to a scar. Some roast dolphin in an earthen pot until fat like oil flows; with this they anoint.
84| The ash of the shells of murices or conchylia cleanses spots on the faces of women, smeared on with honey, and removes wrinkles from the skin and stretches it, smeared on for seven days in such a way that on the eighth it is fomented with the white of eggs. Of the kind of murices are those which the Greeks call coluthia, others coryphia, equally turbinate but smaller, much more effective, and also preserving the breath of the mouth. Ichthyocolla removes wrinkles and stretches the skin, boiled down in water for 4 hours, then pounded and worked up to the liquidity of honey.
85| So prepared, it is stored in a new vessel, and in use to 3 drachmas of it are added two of sulphur and as many of anchusa, 8 of silver foam, and, water having been sprinkled, they are ground together. The face smeared with it is washed after 4 hours. The ash of the bones of cuttlefish cures freckles and other blemishes. The same removes also excrescent flesh and moist ulcers. A frog boiled in 5 heminae of sea water removes psorae; it must be boiled down until it has the stickiness of honey.
86| There is made in the sea what is called alcyoneum, from the nests, as some think, of the alcyones and ceyces, as others, by the thickening of the filth of foams, others from mud or a certain down of the sea. Of it there are four kinds: ash-coloured, dense, of rough smell; another soft, milder in smell and nearly that of seaweed; a third of a whiter little worm; a fourth more like pumice, resembling a rotten sponge.
87| The one that is almost purple is best; this is also called Milesian. The whiter it is, the less approved. Their power is to ulcerate and cleanse. They are used roasted and without oil. They wonderfully remove leprosies, lichens, freckles, with lupine and 2 obols of sulphur. Alcyoneum is also used for scars of the eyes. Andreas used the ash of a crab with oil for leprosies, Attalus fresh tunny fat.
88| Ulcers of the mouth are healed by the brine of menae and the ash of their heads with honey. Scrofulous swellings are helped by being pricked, in such a way as not to wound, with the little bone from the tail of the fish called the frog in the sea. This is to be done daily until they are thoroughly cured. The same power is in the spine of the pastinaca and the sea hare, laid on so as to be quickly removed, in the shells of sea urchins crushed and smeared on in vinegar, likewise in the marine scolopendra with honey, in the river crab pounded or burnt with honey. The bones of cuttlefish, pounded and smeared on with old axle-grease, are wonderfully beneficial.
89| So too they use them for swellings by the ears, and the livers of the sea fish saurus, and indeed shards of a jar of salted fish pounded with old axle-grease, and the ash of murices in oil, for swellings by the ears and scrofulous swellings. Stiffness of the neck is softened also by the sea creatures called lice, a drachma drunk, by castoreum drunk with pepper in honey wine, by frogs boiled in oil and salt, so that the juice is sipped. So too they cure opisthotonos and tetanus, and for spasms with pepper added.
90| Anginas are removed by the ash of the heads of salted menae smeared on with honey, and by the juice of frogs boiled in vinegar; this is beneficial also against the tonsils. River crabs, pounded, one in a hemina of water, cure anginas when gargled, or drunk in wine and hot water. The uvula is cured by garum placed beneath with spoonfuls. The voice is helped by fresh or salted siluri taken in food.
91| Vomitings are stirred by mulli kept till old and pounded, in a drink. For asthmatics, castoreum with a small portion of Hammoniacum in honeyed vinegar is most useful, drunk by those fasting. The same drink in hot honeyed vinegar soothes spasms of the stomach.
92| A cough is said to be cured by frogs boiled in dishes from a broth in the manner of fishes. But they are to be hung by the feet, and when their saliva has dripped into the dishes, are ordered to be gutted and, the entrails thrown away, seasoned. There is a small frog that climbs trees and croaks from them; if anyone spits into its mouth and lets it go, he is reported to be freed from his cough. They prescribe also that the raw flesh of a snail, pounded, be drunk in hot water for a bloody cough.
93| For pains of the liver [….] a sea scorpion killed in wine, so that it is drunk from it; the flesh of the long conch drunk in honey wine with an equal quantity of water, or, if there are fevers, in honey water. Pains of the side are soothed by roasted hippocampi taken, and tethea like an oyster taken in food; for sciatics, the brine of the silurus poured in by clyster. The conchs are given at three obols each, diluted in 2 sextarii of wine, for 15 days.
94| The belly is softened by the silurus from its broth and the torpedo in food and the sea vegetable like the cultivated (it is hostile to the stomach and purges the belly very easily, but because of its sharpness is cooked with fat meat) and the broth of all fishes. The same moves urine, best in wine. The best is from scorpions and the iulis and rock fishes, neither tasting of rankness nor fat. They ought to be cooked with dill, celery, coriander, leek, with oil and salt added.
95| Old cybia purge, and particularly indigestions; they draw phlegm and bile. Myaces also purge, whose nature will be told in full at this place. They are heaped up in the manner of murices and live in weedy places, most pleasing in autumn and where much fresh water mingles with the seas, and for that reason most praised in Egypt. As winter advances they take on bitterness and a red colour.
96| Their broth is reported to empty the belly and bladder, to scour the entrails, open everything, purge the kidneys, reduce blood and fat. And so they are most useful for dropsical people, for women's purgations, jaundice, the joint disease, inflations, likewise for the obese, for faults of the bile and phlegm, the lung, liver, spleen, for rheumatisms. They only trouble the throat and dull the voice.
97| They heal ulcers that creep or must be cleansed, and likewise carcinomata when burnt like murices; and the bites of dogs and men with honey, leprosies, freckles. Their ash, washed, corrects dimness of sight, roughnesses, white spots, faults of the gums and teeth, eruptions of phlegm; and against dorycnium or opocarpathum they take the place of an antidote.
98| They degenerate into two species: the mituli, which taste of salt and rankness, and the myiscae, which differ in roundness, somewhat smaller and bristly, with thinner shells, sweeter in flesh. The mituli also, like murices, have a caustic power when burnt, and for leprosies, freckles and spots. They are also washed in the way of lead, for thickenings of the eyelids and white spots and dimness of the eyes, and in other parts for foul ulcers and pustules of the head. Their flesh is laid on dog bites.
99| But pelorides soften the belly, as does castoreum in honey water, two drachmas. Those who wish to use it more strongly add a drachma of the dry root of the cultivated cucumber and 2 of aphronitrum. The tethea meet gripings and inflations. These are found on leaves in the sea, sucking, rather of the kind of fungi than of fishes. The same dissolve tenesmus and faults of the kidneys.
100| There is produced also in the sea wormwood, which some call seriphum, chiefly around Taposiris of Egypt, thinner than the land kind. It loosens the belly and frees the intestines of harmful creatures (cuttlefish also loosen); it is given in food, cooked with oil and salt and meal.
101| Salted menae smeared on the navel with bull's gall loosen the belly. The broth of fishes cooked in a dish with lettuce disperses tenesmus. River crabs, pounded and drunk in water, stop the belly, and move urine in white wine. With the claws removed they drive out stones, 3 obols, with myrrh and iris, a drachma of each of them; for ileus and inflations, castoreum with seed of daucus and parsley, as much as can be taken in three fingers, in 4 cyathi of warm honey wine; for gripings, with dill in mixed wine. Erythini taken in food stop the belly. Frogs boiled with squill, so that pastilles are made, cure dysenteries, or their heart pounded with honey, as Niceratus reports; for jaundice, salted fish with pepper, in such a way that the rest of the flesh is abstained from.
102| The spleen is cured by a sole fish laid on, likewise the torpedo, likewise the rhombus; it is then released alive into the sea. A sea scorpion, once killed in wine, heals faults of the bladder and stones; the stone found in the tail of the sea scorpion, drunk in the weight of an obol, the liver of the enhydris, the ash of blendii with rue. Little stones as it were are also found in the head of the fish bacchus; these drunk in water cure those with stones excellently. They say also that the sea nettle drunk in wine is beneficial, likewise the sea lung boiled down in water.
103| The eggs of the cuttlefish move urine and draw out phlegm from the [….]. Ruptures and convulsions are healed by river crabs pounded, best in asses' milk, and stones by sea urchins pounded with their spines and drunk in wine (the measure is a hemina for each; it is drunk until it helps), and otherwise in [….] they are of use for this. The bladder is cleansed also by the food of scallops. Of these the males some call donakas, others aulous, and the females onychas. The males move urine. The females are sweeter and of one colour. [The eggs of cuttlefish also move urine and purge the kidneys.]
104| For those with rupture of the intestine the sea hare is smeared on, pounded with honey. The liver of a water snake, and likewise of the hydrus, pounded and drunk, benefits those with stones. Salted fish of the silurus, poured in by clyster, the belly having first been emptied, relieve sciatics; for chafing of the seat, the ash from the head of mugiles and mulli; they are burnt in an earthen vessel and must be smeared on with honey.
105| Likewise the ash of the heads of menae is useful both for fissures and condylomata, as is the ash of the heads of salted pelamydes, or of cybia with honey. A torpedo applied checks there the disease of a prolapsing intestine. The ash of river crabs in oil and wax mends cracks in the same part; sea crabs also have the same power.
106| Boils are dispersed by salted coracini, by the entrails and scales of the sciaena burnt, by a scorpion boiled in wine in such a way that they are fomented with it. The shells of sea urchins, pounded and smeared on in water, resist boils that are beginning, and the ash of murices or purpurae in both ways, whether it is needed to disperse those beginning or to bring the ripened ones out. Some compose a medicine thus: 20 drachmas of wax and frankincense, 40 of silver foam, 10 of the ash of murices, a hemina of old oil.
107| Cooked salted fish are beneficial by themselves, and river crabs pounded; for pustules of the private parts, the ash from the head of menae, likewise their flesh boiled down and laid on, similarly the ash from the head of the salted perca with honey added, the ash of the head of pelamydes, or the skin of the squatina burnt.
108| This is the one by which we said wood is polished, since the uses of the craftsman too come from the sea. Smarides are also beneficial smeared on, and the ash of shells of murices or purpurae with honey, more effectively of the crenatae with their flesh. Carbuncles of the private parts are particularly quenched by cooked salted fish with honey. If a testicle has descended, they wish the foam of snails smeared on.
109| Incontinence of urine is corrected by hippocampi roasted and often taken in food, by the little fish ophidion, like a conger, with lily root, and by tiny fishes taken out of the belly of one that has devoured them, burnt in such a way that their ash is drunk in water. They also order African snails to be burnt with their flesh and the ash given in Signian wine.
110| For gout and joint diseases the oil in which frogs' intestines have been boiled down is useful, and the ash of the bramble frog with old fat. Some add also the ash of barley, of the three things in equal weight. They order the gout to be rubbed with a fresh sea hare, and the feet to be shod with beaver skins, especially of the Pontic beaver, and likewise of the sea calf, whose fat also helps the same; and also bryon, of which we have spoken, like lettuce, with more wrinkled leaves, without a stem.
111| It has an astringent nature, and laid on soothes the attacks of gout. Likewise the seaweed alga, of which also we have spoken. In it this is observed, that it is not laid on dry. Chilblains are corrected by the sea lung, the ash of the sea crab in oil, likewise by river crabs pounded and burnt, worked up with ash and oil, the fat of the silurus. In the joints the onset of diseases is calmed by fresh frogs laid on from time to time; some order them to be laid on cut open. The broth of mituli and conchs increases the body.
112| Epileptics, as we have said, drink the rennet of the sea calf with the milk of a mare or ass, or with the juice of a pomegranate, some in honeyed vinegar. Some too swallow it by itself as pills. Castoreum is given, in 3 cyathi of honeyed vinegar, to those fasting, but to those who are seized more often, poured in by clyster, it is wonderfully beneficial. Of castoreum there will have to be 2 drachmas, a sextarius of honey and oil and as much water. For those just seized, the smell of it with vinegar gives relief. The liver of the sea weasel is also given, likewise of the mouse, or the blood of tortoises.
113| The cycles of fevers are removed by the liver of a dolphin, tasted before the attacks. Hippocampi are killed in oil of roses so that patients with cold fevers may be anointed with it, and the creatures themselves are tied on the sick. Likewise the little stones from the fish called the asellus, which are found in its head at full moon, are tied on in a scrap of linen. The longest tooth of the river phager, tied on with a hair in such a way that the patient does not see the person who ties it on for five days, and frogs boiled in oil at a crossroads with the flesh thrown away, free from quartans those who are anointed with it.
114| There are some who strangle the frogs in oil, tie them on secretly, and anoint with that oil. The heart of frogs, tied on, lessens the chills of fevers, and so does the oil in which their intestines have been boiled. But frogs most of all free people from quartans when their claws have been removed and they are tied on in the same way, and so does the rubeta, if its liver or heart is tied on in a whitish cloth. River crabs, pounded in oil and water, are beneficial in fevers to those anointed before the attacks; some add pepper as well.
115| Others advise that for quartans they be boiled down to a quarter in wine and drunk by patients as they come out of the bath, while some advise swallowing the left eye. The Magi promise that tertians are driven away if their eye is tied on the patient before sunrise, in such a way that they release the blinded frogs into water.
116| They report that the same eyes, bound in deerskin with the flesh of a nightingale, ensure wakefulness by driving off sleep. For people verging on lethargy they use rennet of a whale or of a sea calf, by smell. Others smear the blood of a tortoise on the lethargic. The vertebra of a perch, tied on, is also said to cure tertians, and fresh river snails taken as food to cure quartans; some preserve them in salt for this purpose, so as to give them pounded in a drink.
117| Strombi rotted in vinegar rouse the lethargic by their smell. They are also good for sufferers of the heart. For the cachectic, whose bodies are wasted with leanness, tethea are useful with rue and honey.— Melted dolphin fat, drunk with wine, relieves dropsy. The unpleasantness of the taste is countered by touching the nostrils with ointment or perfumes, or by stopping them in any way. The flesh of the strombus also, pounded and given in 3 heminae of mead with an equal measure of water, or, when fevers are present, in honeyed water, is effective, as is the juice of river crabs with honey,
118| and the water frog too, boiled in old wine with spelt, and taken as nourishment in such a way that the drink is taken from the same vessel, or a tortoise with its feet, head and tail cut off and its entrails taken out, the remaining flesh being so seasoned that it can be eaten without distaste.— River crabs, taken in broth, are also reported to benefit consumptives.
119| Burns are healed by the ash of a sea crab or river crab with oil, and by ichthyocolla; scalds from boiling water are healed by the ash of frogs; this treatment even restores the hair. They also think that the ash of river crabs should be used with wax and bear's fat. The ash of beaver skins is helpful too.— Erysipelas is put out by living frogs' bellies applied; they order them to be tied on face downward by the hind feet, so that by their more frequent panting they may help. They also use the ash of the heads of salted siluri with vinegar.— Itching and scab, not only of men but of four-footed animals, are most effectively relieved by the liver of the pastinaca, boiled down in oil.
120| Sinews, even when cut through, are glued together by the callus of purple-fish, with which they cover themselves, pounded. For tetanic patients rennet of the sea calf is a help, drunk in wine to the weight of an obol, and so is ichthyocolla; for those with tremors, castoreum, if they are anointed with it in oil. I find that mullets are of no use as food for the sinews.
121| They think blood is produced by a diet of fish, and stopped by an application of pounded polypus, about which these things too are reported: that it sends out brine of its own accord and therefore ought not to have any added in cooking; that it is cut with a reed, since it is stained by iron and takes on a defect, its nature being at odds with it. To stop blood they also apply the ash of frogs, or their dried blood.
122| Some order that blood or ash be made from the frog that the Greeks call calamites, because it lives among reeds and bushes, the smallest of all and the greenest; some also order that the ash of tadpoles, those frogs that are being born in water and still have a tail, burned in a new cup, be stuffed into the nostrils if blood flows through them.
123| The use of leeches, which they call blood-suckers, for drawing blood is of a different kind. For the reasoning about them is judged to be the same as that about medicinal cupping vessels, to lighten the body of blood and to open the pores; but there is the fault that once they have been applied they create a craving for the same remedy at the same times of year always. Many have held that they should be applied for gout too. They drop off when sated, pulled away by the very weight of the blood, or when sprinkled with salt; sometimes, however, they leave their heads stuck in, and this causes incurable wounds and has killed many, as it did Messalinus, one of the patrician ex-consuls, when he had applied one to his knee, the remedy having turned into the poison of a venom.
124| The red ones are most dreaded for this; so, once they have begun to suck, people snip them with scissors, and the blood runs out as through siphons, and gradually, as they die, the heads contract and are not left behind. Their nature is hostile to bugs, which they kill by fumigation.— The ash of beaver skins burned with liquid pitch, softened with leek juice, stops nosebleeds.
125| The ash of the shell of cuttlefish draws out missiles lodged in the body, and so does the ash of the shell of purple-fish in water, and the flesh of salted fish, pounded river crabs, and the flesh of the river siluris, which is born elsewhere than in the Nile, applied fresh or salted. The ash of the same fish draws them out; its fat and the ash of its spine take the place of spodium.
126| Spreading ulcers, and the growths that swell in them, are checked by the ash of the head of the menae or of the siluris; cancerous sores are checked by the heads of salted menae, more effectively if salt and head-bearing cunila are mixed with their ash and worked up with oil. The ash of a sea crab burned with lead restrains cancerous sores. For this, the ash of a river crab is enough with honey and a lint of linen; some prefer alum and honey to be mixed with the ash. Phagedaenic ulcers are healed by an old siluris pounded with sandarac, and malignant ulcers, nomae and putrefactions by old cybium; worms that have been born in them are removed by the gall of frogs.
127| Fistulas are opened and dried by salted fish inserted with a scrap of linen, and within two days, worked up and applied like a plaster, they remove every callus and the putrefying and spreading parts of ulcers. Allex also cleans ulcers on shredded linen, and so does the ash of the shell of sea urchins. Carbuncles are dispersed by salted coracini applied, and likewise by the ash of salted mullet, though some use only the head with honey, or by the flesh of coracini. The ash of murex shells with oil takes away swellings, and the gall of the sea scorpion takes away scars.
128| Warts are removed by the liver of the glanis applied, by the ash of the head of the menae pounded with garlic (they use it raw for thymia), by the gall of the red sea scorpion, by zmarides pounded and applied, and by allex brought to the boil. Roughness of the nails is thinned by the ash from the head of the menae.
129| For women, the glauciscus taken in broth produces an abundance of milk, and so do zmarides taken with barley-water or boiled with fennel. The breasts themselves are effectively healed by the ash of the shells of murex or purple-fish with honey, and likewise by river or sea crabs applied. Murex flesh applied removes hair on the breast. Squatinae applied do not allow the breasts to grow. Lint smeared with the fat of a dolphin and set alight rouses women suffocated by the womb, and so does strombus rotted in vinegar.
130| The ash of the head of perches or menae, with salt added and cunila and oil, cures the womb; by fumigation it also draws down the afterbirth. Likewise the fat of a sea calf is dripped into the fire and applied to the nostrils for women half-dead from a fault of the womb, with the rennet of the same animal placed on a fleece. The sea lung tied on cleanses discharges excellently; living sea urchins pounded and drunk in sweet wine stop them, and so do river crabs pounded and drunk in wine.
131| Likewise by the fumes of siluris, especially the African, births are said to be made easier; crabs drunk in water are said to stop discharges, and drunk in hyssop to purge. And if a birth is choking, they help when drunk in the same way. They drink the same, fresh or dried, to hold back births. Hippocrates uses them also for purgations and for dead births, five at a time, pounded with dock root, rue and soot and given in mead as a drink.
132| The same crabs, cooked in broth with dock and celery, ease the monthly purgations and produce abundance of milk; the same, given to women in a dry wine, are said to be beneficial in a fever that comes with headaches and quivering of the eyes. Castoreum drunk in mead is beneficial for purgations, and against the womb it is smelled with vinegar and pitch or put under in pastilles.
133| It is also beneficial for the afterbirth, in the same way, with panax in 4 cyathi of wine, and for those suffering from cold, in doses of three obols. But if a pregnant woman steps over castoreum or a beaver, she is said to miscarry, and to be in danger in childbirth if it is carried over her. What I find about the torpedo is remarkable too: if it is caught when the moon is in Libra and kept three days in the open air, it afterwards makes births easy whenever it is brought near. The spine of the pastinaca is also thought to help when tied on the navel, if it was taken from the living fish and the fish itself was let go into the sea.
134| I find in certain authors that what some call onyx is called ostraceum; that when fumigated with it it wonderfully resists the pains of the womb; that its smell is that of castoreum, and that burned with castoreum it works better; and that old ulcers and malignant sores are also healed by the ash of the same. They report that carbuncles and cancerous sores on a woman's private parts are healed by a most immediate remedy, a female crab pounded with flower of salt after the full moon and applied in water.
135| A psilotrum is the blood, gall or liver of the tunny, whether fresh or kept, the liver also pounded and kept in a lead box with cedar oil mixed in. In this way the midwife Salpe prepared boys for sale as a dealer would. The sea lung has the same power, as do the sea hare's blood and gall, or if this hare is killed in oil [….] canori; the ash of the sea scolopendra with oil, sea nettle pounded in squill vinegar, and the torpedo's brain applied with alum on the 16th day of the moon.
136| The ooze of the small frog, which we described in treating the cure of the eyes, is a most effective psilotrum if it is applied fresh, and so is the frog itself dried and pounded, then boiled down in 3 heminae to a third, or boiled in oil in bronze vessels. In the same measure others make a psilotrum from 15 frogs, as we said in treating the eyes. Leeches also, roasted in an earthenware vessel and smeared on with vinegar, produce the same effect against hair. [The smoke of those who burn them kills bugs.] People are also found to have used castoreum smeared on with honey, in place of a psilotrum, for several days. In every psilotrum, however, the hairs must be plucked out first.
137| For the gums and teething of infants, the ash of a dolphin's teeth with honey is of the greatest help, and also if the gums are touched with the tooth itself. Tied on, the same tooth removes sudden terrors. The tooth of the dogfish has the same effect. Ulcers that arise in the ears or in any part of the body are healed by the juice of river crabs with barley meal.
138| and for other diseases, pounded in oil, they help those who are anointed with it. Siriasis of infants is most effectively cured by a cold sponge, the brain having been moistened, with a frog tied on upside down. They affirm that the frog is found dried up. A mullus killed in wine, or a fish called rubellio, or 2 eels, and likewise sea grape rotted in wine, bring a distaste for wine to those who have drunk from it.
139| Sexual desire is checked by the echeneis, by the skin of a hippopotamus's forehead, taken from the left part, tied on in lambskin, and by the gall of a living torpedo smeared on the genitals. Desire is aroused by the flesh of river snails kept in salt and given in a drink with wine, by erythini taken as food, by the liver of the diopetes or calamites frog tied on in the skin of a crane, by the molar tooth of a crocodile fastened to the arm, by a hippocampus, or by the sinews of a rubeta tied on the right upper arm. Love is ended by a rubeta tied on in the fresh hide of a farm animal.
140| The mange of horses is thinned by frogs boiled in water until they can be smeared on. They say that horses treated in this way are not attacked by it again. — Salpe says that dogs do not bark if a living frog has been given them in a morsel. Among aquatic things the calamochnus must also be mentioned, called adarca in Latin. It is born around slender reeds from the foam of fresh water and sea water where they mix. It has a caustic force, and is therefore useful for acopa and against the ill effects of chills. It also removes freckles from the faces of women.
141| Reeds too must be mentioned here. The fresh root of the phragmites, pounded, cures dislocations, and applied in vinegar it cures pains of the spine; the bark of the Cyprian reed, which is also called donax, burned, cures alopecia and long-standing ulcers, and its leaves draw out things lodged in the body and cure erysipelas. The flower of the panicle, if it enters the ears, makes them deaf. The ink of the cuttlefish has such power that, added to a lamp, Anaxilaus reports, Ethiopians appear when the earlier light has been taken away. — A rubeta boiled down in water and given as a drink cures the diseases of swine, and so does the ash of any frog at all. — If wood is rubbed with the sea lung, it seems to burn, so that a staff shines ahead in this way. —
142| Now that the properties of aquatic creatures have been completed, it seems not out of place to point out that in so many seas, so vast, poured into the land across so many miles and surrounding it on the outside, a measure which is understood to be almost that of the world itself, there are animals of a hundred and forty-four kinds in all, and that these can be embraced by name, which cannot be done among land animals and birds.
143| For we do not know the wild beasts or birds of all India and Ethiopia, or of Scythia and the deserts, when even of human beings themselves there are very many differences, those that we have been able to discover. Add to these Taprobane and the other islands of the ocean, one after another, that are told of in fable. Surely it will be agreed that not all kinds can be called into one general view. But, by Hercules, the things that are born in so great a sea and ocean are definite, and better known, which is remarkable, than the things nature has sunk in the deep.
144| To begin with the monsters: the arbores, physeteres, ballaenae, pistrices, Tritons, Nereids, elephants, the men who are called marine, rotae, orcae, arietes, musculi and others in the form of rams among fishes, dolphins and the sea calves celebrated by Homer, and tortoises for luxury, and beavers for the doctors — of whose kind we have not heard that otters ever dive in the sea, since they speak only of the sea kind —
145| then dogfish, drinones, cornutae, gladii, serrae, and those common to land, sea and river: hippopotami and crocodiles; and, of river and sea alone, thynni, thynnides, siluri, coracini, percae. Peculiar to the sea are the acipenser, aurata, asellus, acharne, aphye, alopex, eel, araneus, boca, batia, bacchus, batrachus, belonae, which we call spiny ones, the balanus,
146| the corvus, citharus, the worst of the kind of rhombi, chalcis, cobio, callarias, a kind of asellus (if it were not smaller), coliae, either the Parianus or the Sexitanus, named for its country Baetica, the smallest of the lacerti, from those of our own waters, the cybium — so is called the pelamys when cut up, which returns after 40 days from the Pontus into the Maeotis — the cordyla — this too is a small pelamys; when it goes out from the Maeotis into the Pontus it has this name — the cantharus, the callionymus or uranoscopos, the cinaedi, the only yellow ones among fishes,
147| the cnide, which we call the nettle, kinds of crabs, chemae striped, chemae smooth, chemae of the kind of the pelorides, differing in variety and roundness, chemae glycymarides, which are bigger than the pelorides, the coluthia or coryphia, kinds of shells, among which are also the pearl-bearers, cochloe, of whose kind are the pentadactyli, likewise helices (called actinophoroe by others), which have rays; [….] sing — these innards are, in oil-making use, the round kind of snail —
148| the cucums, cynops, cammarus, cynosdexia, draco — some want the dracunculus to be something else; it is, however, very like the gerricula, has spines in its gills pointing toward the tail, and stings like a scorpion when it is lifted in the hand — the erythinus, echenais, echinus, elephants of the kind of locusts, black, with four feet, cloven in two — besides which they have 2 arms with two joints each and single toothed pincers — fabri or zaei, glauciscus, glanis, gonger, gerres, galeos, garos, hippos,
149| hippuros, hirundo, halipleumon, hippocampos, hepar, ictinus, iulis, kinds of lacerti, the flying lolligo, locustae, lucerna, lelepris, lamirus, lepus, leones, whose arms are like those of crabs — the rest of the body being a locust's — mullus, merula, praised among the rock fishes, mugil, melanurus, mena, maeotes, murena, mys, mitulus, myiscus, murix with eyes, ophidion, oysters, otia, orcynus — this is the largest of the kinds of pelamydes and does not itself return into the Maeotis, similar to the tritomum,
150| better with age — orbis, orthagoriscus, phager, phycis, one of the rock fishes, pelamys — the largest of that kind is called apolectum, harder than the tritomum — porcus, phthir, passer, pastinaca, kinds of polypi, pectines — the largest, and among these the blackest in summer, are most praised, and these are at Mytilene, Tyndaris, Salonae, Altinum, on the island of Chios, and at Alexandria in Egypt — pectunculi, purpurae, pegrides, pina, pinoteres, rhine, which we call squatus,
151| rhombus, scarus (the foremost fish today), solea, sargus, squilla, sarda (this is the name of the long pelamys that comes from the Ocean), scomber, salpa, sorus, scorpaena, scorpio, salax, sciaena, sciadeus, scolopendra, smyrus, sepia, strombus, solen or aulos or donax or onyx or dactylus, spondyli, smarides, stellae, sponges, turdus (notable among the rock fishes), thynnus, thranis, which others call xiphias, thrissa, torpedo, tethea, tritomum (the large breed of pelamys, from which three cybia apiece are made), veneria, uva, xiphias.
152| To these we shall add the animals recorded by Ovid that are found in no other writer, but are perhaps native to the Pontus, where he began that volume in the last period of his life: the bos; the cercyrus that lives among the rocks; the orphus and the reddish erythinus; the iulus; the painted mormyres and the chrysophrys of golden color; besides these, the perca, the tragus, and the melanurus, pleasing for its tail; and the epodes, of the broad kind.
153| Besides these, he reports these notable facts about fish: that the channe conceives by itself; that the glaucus never appears in summer; the pompilus, which always accompanies the course of ships; the chromis, which builds a nest in the water. He says that the helops is unknown in our waters; from which it appears that those who have thought it the same as the acipenser are mistaken. Many have given the helops the palm for flavor among fish.
154| There are, besides, fish named by no writer. One is called sudis in Latin and sphyraena in Greek; its snout is like its name, and in size it is among the largest; it is rare, and not inferior in quality. There are also the creatures called pernae, of the shellfish kind, very plentiful around the Pontiae islands. They stand like a pig's leg, fixed upright in the sand, and, gaping where they are broad, they hunt their food over a space of no less than a foot; they have teeth all round their edges, set close together like a comb; inside is the flesh of a large spondylus. And I have seen a hyaena fish caught off the island of Aenaria. Besides these, some refuse too is cast up, not worth reporting and to be counted among seaweeds rather than animals.
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