ACTA CLASSICA XLIX (2006) 1-29
ISSN 0065-1141
KEY-NOTE ADDRESS ! OPENINGSREDE
DRUGS AND DRUG LORE IN THE TIME OF
THEOPHRASTUS:
FOLKLORE, MAGIC, BOTANY,
PHILOSOPHY AND THE ROOTCUTTERS
John Scarborough
University of Wisconsin
Honorary Research Fellow, University of the Free State
ABSTRACT
Theophrastus of Eresus on Lesbos (c. 370-c. 287 BC) is famed for his pioneering manual of botany, the Enquiry into Plants (Historia Plantarum); embraced are plants used
as foods, drugs, and those with special magical properties known in folklore. Aristotle’s students included both Theophrastus and Alexander, and the Lyceum in
Athens became the hub of inquiry into every aspect of human activity, including the
customs of farmers, hunters and fishermen as linked to what we would term ‘natural
history’, and among the disparate topics researched in the contexts of philosophy
were the powers of animal products and plants storied in myth, folklore, and the
rural expertise of the professional ‘rootcutters’, the rhizotomoi.
Unlike modern academic philosophers, Greek practitioners of the philosophic arts of logic, persuasion, debate, argument and counter argument and
analysis of data were very much part of a polis and its social and economic
life: the public reading of a will was an important event, especially if it was
that of a famous philosopher …
Context: Aristotle’s will
Presume you are in a crowd of Athenians loitering and chattering while
waiting for the will of Aristotle to be read aloud, this late summer afternoon
of 322 …
Gossip here in the agora buzzes news about the important will soon to
be promulgated: Aristotle, famous metic philosopher and student of the even
more renowned Plato, died two weeks ago, perhaps deservedly exiled to his
mother’s native town, Chalcis on the island of Euboea (still, we hear, ruled
BC
1
by those uncouth Macedonians). Someone said that he passed his increasingly miserable days in a small house, and that he drowned while he was attempting to measure the ebb and flow of the tides in the straits of Euripus (typical
of the man!), but he was 63 … an odd tale … always burrowing into natural
things … and the most garrulous of the gossips says that the will gives everything to Pythias (she’s the daughter of the Old Man’s first marriage to the girl
from Assos, you know: related to that tyrant of Assos, Hermias) and to a
nephew (anybody remember his name?) and if anything should be a problem, that wonderful lecturer and student and writer Theophrastus is supposed to administer it all, and – so they say – take Pythias into his own
household. Theophrastus is lucky: he’s from Lesbos, one of our oldest allies.
Not tainted by any Macedonian ordure.
Aristotle. His mere name conjures the loathed memory of Athens under
the occupation of Macedon. Yes, we got rich from the empire conquered by
Alexander and we know a few of the poorer farm-folk who took up the invitation to go and settle in one of those new cities somewhere in – where was
it? – Cilicia or something like that. Alexander. That boy who conquered the
world. Aristotle taught him too. Aristotle came back to Athens after Philip
number Two of Macedon was stabbed by a relative up there in Pella, and
after Alexander went off with the army to take on Persia. Alexander. Wonder
of the gods.
Alexander’s name summons a dazzling career: who among us can ever
forget the gloom that crept over Athens as might a cold Aegean mist after
the defeat of the Athenian and Theban phalanxes at the hands of the skilled
strategy and tactics of Philip and young Alexander sixteen years ago at the
Battle of Chaeronea? Who can forget the surprise and guarded joy when
Philip sent his son into Athens to charm us with his flashing smile and genial
manners? We still speak of Alexander’s time then as the goodwill ambassador to a defeated Athens by the all-powerful kingdom of the Macedonians.
And after the welcomed treaties of peace – voted by the ekklesia over the
loud stentorian protests of Demosthenes – who could ever forget the swift
unfolding of shocking things that overtook both Philip and Alexander? Two
seasons after Chaeronea, Philip met his end at the point of a dagger wielded
by a disgruntled relative (what was his name? … no, I don’t believe Alexander’s deranged mother, Olympias, was behind any plot … but you never
know …), and not quite two years after that, Alexander launched his
conquest of the elephantine Empire of Persia. Did you know that Aristotle
was Alexander’s personal tutor for a couple of years? Reading philosophy
and history, so they say. Maybe learning tactics and strategy from military
handbooks. Mostly Homer, so we hear in the scuttlebutt. To attack with a
mere 20,000 and up a riverbank at the Granicus … generals said it couldn’t
2
be done … but Alexander did exactly what was unexpected and won. Started
collecting plants and animals, to send back to his teacher, then at his School
with its colonnades outside the walls of Athens. Seems he heard some sort of
‘call’ from his former student to send as many well-schooled philosophertypes as he could to ‘run things’ out there. Lots of new slaves, too few real
Greeks. Anyone who wants a job using his education in script or logics of
organization or analytical techniques or anything like that gets a New Life
out there in Asia …
Those stories, those tales. Stunning accounts trickled back to us of amazing victories against hordes, of long and difficult marches, sieges of cities,
visiting Amon in Egypt, long and dangerous campaigns into lands ninety
days’ march from the sea, a final victory and pursuit of a forlorn and defeated king found murdered by one of his own. More plants and animals and
books and other writings arrived at Aristotle’s Lyceum (did you hear the yarn
about a huge thing called an elephant? – an enormous, smelly, long-nosed
beast – that turned up one night, only to die on a pier down there in the
Piraeus – some of those doctors who had heard the animal-talks of Aristotle
couldn’t resist the chance to open up the behemoth, and they saw and touched and smelled the liver (no little bulb there with the green stuff we know
from an ox), heart, diaphragm, all those gut-organs, very much like an ox or
a sheep – grist for Aristotle’s books). Skinny, naked ‘philosophers’ sent by
Alexander (that’s what they were called) arrived off-and-on, making noises
nobody could fathom, and those who could write made scratches nobody
could read.
More tales of the troops marching through deserts and rocky snowstuffed mountains that scraped the sky, and even more unbelievable things
about a king who led his armies against Alexander on the back of one of
those ‘elephant-beasts’, all fought in dank and cluttered jungles populated by
snakes as big as temples, swarming with insects as large as your fists. The
packages of herbs redolently sweet, and then drugs, and now some curious
medical tools, now some seeds, and even some scrolls in a script somebody
said had sounds like Greek but wasn’t written anything like Greek … all for
Aristotle’s swelling library …
And then Alexander had died in Babylon, some said from imbibing too
much wine too often, others that Alexander did too much too soon at too
young an age, others whispering of complicated plots against the King of
Asia. He was 33 when he died a year ago (nobody believed the report at first,
with one of our local wits remarking that ‘if Alexander was dead, the whole
world would reek of his corpse’), and now his teacher has followed him into
the land of shadows, ghosts and shades (awful were his last days, so we hear:
vomiting blood and worse). Plain and traditional funeral for the philosopher
3
(only the necessary mourners hired) … unlike the King of Asia: his body was
in a coffin of wrought gold and the most exquisite ivory carvings depicting
martial deeds from Epirus to the Indus (that fellow who just came from
Syria says that the sarcophagus was filled with the finest spices, herbs and
clarified honey to ensure survival of Alexander’s god-like body (the Babylonian and Egyptian mummifiers claimed his cadaver hadn’t decayed one
whit after seven days) and that many-camel caravans and thousands upon
thousands of mourners set out with the coffin for the interminable trek back
to the royal burial grounds at Vergina in Macedonia …) you don’t say?!
Ptolemy stole the sarcophagus?! A couple of talents of gold must have
changed hands that day … Ptolemy is going to put the gold-and-ivory coffin
with Alexander’s honey-preserved corpse in his new temple-precinct ‘to the
god Alexander’ in his new city? ‘Alexandria in Egypt’, you say …
Where is that man to read the will? It’s getting late, and many of us are
due at a symposium at dusk. New poetry, maybe. Good resinated wine. Fine
food, excellent hetairai. One of Aristotle’s students to debate one of Plato’s?
Forms this time? I hope not, so very tedious. I’d rather hear about those
plants from India, especially the aphrodisiacs. Philosophy …
Philosophy: we all know how different was Aristotles’ Lyceum from
Plato’s Academy. Aristotle apparently took as his goal the gathering of all
manner of things into scrolled records, a huge pool of data from which he
and his students could summarize the whole of man’s achievements in
politics, art, the practice of medicine, music, history, the business of writing
city constitutions, and even collections of facts about rhetoric, stones, poetic
expression, and why the collected information about plants, animals,
minerals, the motions of the stars and planets – in fact the entire world of
nature – would interlock with human understanding of the inner intellect and
the nature of the psychē, that part of us deemed immortal by both Plato and
Aristotle. At the Lyceum, Aristotle studied the animals as did Theophrastus,
as well as plants, stones, and even gathered observations and details about
strange behaviours of animals that bored holes in rock or sloughed off their
tails to escape hunters. Other students collected documents on constitutions
(someone said that there are over 150 of these works), the historiai of various
arts and skills (music, medicine, and so on) and even folklore and superstition attending so many of the things in Nature.
We all know Theophrastus, liked and deservedly famous for his colourful, vividly illustrated lectures which attract the generally uninterested among
us – uninterested, that is, in the abstruseness of philosophy – we who will
show up for his gleaming evocations of Nature in the series, ‘On the doctrines of the natural philosophers’ or even his lectures and discussions ‘On
laws’. Rumours multiply that he is hard at work on a magnificent study of
4
things botanical, tentatively titled ‘Inquiry into plants’, and many of the Attic
rhizotomoi have come into town with their bundles of roots, stems, leaves and
seeds (some berries and fruits) asking for Theophrastus (he wants to know
all about where these medicinals come from, how long they take to grow and
mature, how they are prepared as drugs, perhaps similar to the preparationtechniques we know from the Committee of Eleven elected to make hemlock to put away miscreants and traitors – Plato’s teacher Socrates drank the
stuff seventy-seven years ago – or those who offend our gods). In recent
lectures, Theophrastus has said he wants to formulate ‘how plants come to
be’ and ‘how they pass away’, and has started another series, ‘Causes or
explanations of plants’ … we wonder what Aristotle’s will leaves to Theophrastus … and the time has finally come for the reading of the will … what
about his books? What will happen to his children?
The public orator intones: ‘Antipater is executor for all matters, but until
Nicanor is able to come to Athens, Theophrastus (… and some other names
we can’t quite hear in the crush and press of the crowd listening intently) …
is to take charge of both the estate and Aristotle’s mistress, Herpyllis, who
had given him a son named Nichomachus … (’bout time that Herpyllis
becomes a free woman …).’ Nothing at all about the books, nothing about
Aristotle’s own writings, known generally often to be only in the form of
notes and in occasional transcriptions of lectures he had delivered …1
The preceding, lightly fictionalized account suggests the range of subjects, the
genius-level individuals, and the general mechanics of data-gathering and study
involved in Aristotle’s Lyceum, from pure logic and comparative anatomy to pure
folklore and magic. The setting is quite ‘realistic’: Athenians were free to attend
lectures on all the subjects, and often favoured one category over another; Theophrastus was a gifted teacher, and popular were his public lectures on botany and
related topics. Allusions to events in the careers of Philip II, Alexander, Plato and
Aristotle are derived from well known primary sources, generally embedded in good
modern histories of 4th century BC Greece. Not so well known is the source of the
‘elephant for Aristotle’, for which see Scarborough 1985. The ‘Alexander’s corpse
would reek’ is an adaptation of the sentiments expressed by Demades of Athens, as
reported by Plutarch, Phocion 22.4. The tangle of ‘how Alexander died’ receives a
sensible review in Green 1991:475-78 with references; see also Retief & Cilliers 2005,
and esp. Bosworth 1971. Alcoholism is the theme of O’Brien 1994. What happened
to Alexander’s body was also a thicket of tales, with Quintus Curtius Rufus, Hist.
Alex. 10.9-20, recording what modern scholars call the ‘vulgate’ tradition of
Alexander’s life and times, reflected in part by Diodorus Siculus, Library of History
17.117-18; 18.28.2-5; cf. Bosworth 2002:13 with nn. 30-31. A version (used here) of
Aristotle’s will is in Diogenes Laertius, De Clar. Philosoph. Vitis …: Vit. Arist. 5.12.
The fate of Aristotle’s books has been debated since antiquity: texts analyzed and
discussed in Barnes 1997.
1
5
Contexts: Peripatetic philosophy, zoology and folklore
Aristotle of Stagira (384-322 BC) was the son of a physician named Nicomachus, a court doctor to Amyntas II of Macedonia, and Aristotle likely
spent some of his childhood at the court at Pella. Nicomachus died when
Aristotle was quite young, so any medical knowledge imparted to his son
probably was of the common household variety, or perhaps gained in observation of his father’s ministrations at court or in the countryside. Young
Aristotle would have absorbed what every farm-boy would have known
about animal anatomy, herbal remedies and the local plants, whether beneficial or poisonous.2 Traditionally, members of a medical guild (the Asclepiadae) taught the skills of medicine to their sons, so it seems reasonable that
Aristotle assimilated more than he acknowledged in his later years. At age 17
Aristotle went to Athens to study philosophy with Plato, and remained there
until Plato’s death in 348 BC, and these twenty years had a deep influence on
how Aristotle would perceive logic and criticism, and especially methods
applied to classifications in zoology. One cannot understand Aristotelian
biology, or the zoology and botany of Theophrastus without taking account
of Plato’s heavy authority.3
When Plato died, Aristotle left Athens, quite probably due to his Macedonian links, or he may have been disappointed that another student had
been selected as the new head of the Academy. He was, in effect, a postdoctoral student seeking employment, so that when Hermias, tyrant of Assos
and Atarneus in the Troad, asked Aristotle to be a tutor of the royal family,
the offer was accepted; soon marrying Hermias’ adopted daughter, Pythias,
Aristotle seemed ‘set’, and was shortly engaged in the first of his zoological
researches at Assos, followed by further work on the same topic at Mytilene
on the island of Lesbos. It is in this period that Aristotle was joined by Theophrastus of Eresus, and the significance of this professor-student association
cannot be exaggerated: the descriptions of marine zoology accomplished by
Aristotle and his first and most brilliant student (if one excepts Alexander)
were so excellent in detail and accuracy that this branch of Peripatetic ichthyology and physiology retained a peerless status until the time of William
Harvey (1578-1657),4 and Charles Darwin counted the Aristotelian-TheoSee, generally, Scarborough 1996a and 1996b.
Biographical details have often been assembled; standard accounts include Ross
1949:1-20; Grayeff 1974:13-48; Guthrie 1998:18-48. More recent bibliographies
accompany Nussbaum 1996.
4 Whitteridge 1959 and 1964 (index entries on ‘Aristotle’).
2
3
6
phrastean vivisections and marine zoology as admirable, even as he did his
own research on barnacles and other marine life in the mid-19th century.5
In 345 BC there were no ‘handbooks’ on zoology or on fish and marine
animals, so sources for the team in their researches were the animals themselves as well as the deep expertise of fishermen, who made their livings by
knowing exactly when tuna ‘ran’ in the Aegean,6 as they sought breeding
grounds through the Bosphorus and into the Black Sea,7 or how one described the dogfish sharks so famous in the later work we know as the Historia
Animalium:8 here is the first mention of live births from fish, demonstrating
skill in vivisection, doubtlessly noted in the methods followed by the fishermen of Lesbos, who did not ‘study’ what they found, but who had ‘prepared’
many fish for the markets, and knew precisely the internal organs and how to
‘dress’ them for sale. From the beginnings Theophrastus learned that the
primary source for natural history came from those who earned their livings
from animals and plants: farmers in their small plots, fishermen with their
depths of knowledge about the denizens of the sea from sponges9 and seaurchins,10 to sea-anemones and the dogfish sharks and monk seals that were
very common in the eastern Mediterranean.11
Long acknowledged is the persistent influence of Peripatetic zoology in the 19th
century: one often supported ‘unchanging’ types (that is what Aristotle and Theophrastus termed ‘producing to its kind’), as in the arguments against Darwin and his
supporters, represented earlier by Georges Cuvier and a number of other later
adherents. The debate was fierce and friendships fragile. See Winsor 1976; Coleman
1987. Acknowledgement of Aristotle became common and perfunctory (e.g. Huxley
1977:4), which tells us that even in 1880 one begins with Aristotle, Historia Animalium 4.2.525a-27b (the famed and detailed description of prawns, crayfishes and
similar kinds), although Huxley does not cite these passages: what follows is hardly
an improvement over Aristotle. See Desmond & Moore 1991:367-69 (barnacles);
Schmitt 1965:68 (Darwin’s West Indian stalked barnacles). Darwin certainly followed
a central maxim of Peripatetic natural history in his on-site researches, especially in
the contexts of agriculture: Darwin 1881: passim.
6 Arist. HA 4.10.537a.
7 Lund & Gabrielsen 2005.
8 Arist. HA 3.1.511a
9 Arist. HA 5.16.548b-49a (three types described); 9.44.630a (used to staunch
bleeding).
10 Arist. HA 4.531a3-5, a difficult text resolved by Balme 2002:187. Aristotle and
Theophrastus were fascinated by the anatomy of this sea creature, and the animal’s
curious form and internal organs are detailed in HA 4.4.530a1-5.531a7. This is the
famous ‘Aristotle’s Lantern’, which has engendered literature and commentary since
the Renaissance, for which see Lennox 1983. The species is likely Echinus esculentus
L., and was a delicacy among gourmands in Theophrastus’ day, suggested by the
5
7
Aristotle also notes the various cheeses made from particular animals,12
and the listing includes goats, mares, cows and sheep, and immediately following this passage is a description of rennet (puetiva), which ‘…is a [kind of]
milk, found in the stomach of the young animals while they are suckling.’13
Rennet is ‘milk mixed with fire’, emerging from the animals’ natural heat ‘…
while the milk is concocted’,14 and ruminants all produce rennet, as well as
do hares and young deer, the best quality of all. Added to its use in making
cheese, old rennet (cow, hare or deer) is a good remedy for diarrhoea. The
lore of the farm connects automatically to the folklore of pharmacology. An
important example among Theophrastus’ recountings of remedies derived
from animals includes varieties of cheeses and rennets gained from the
stomachs of various animals (wild and domestic): the rennet of the monk
seal is the ‘best’ of this class of drug,15 employed commonly in the treatment
of the Falling Sickness or epilepsy.
The ‘experts’ on rennets were those who raised goats, sheep and cattle,
and anyone with pretensions of rural culture could instantly identify good
cookbook of Archestratus of Gela (fl. c. 350 BC). See Olson & Sens 2000:345 with
references; Thompson 1947:70-73, for suggested species. Ashed sea urchins long
retained medical utility (i.e. Dioscorides, De Materia Medica 2.1; Plin. NH 32.127;
Aelian, De Natura Animalium 14.4), but toxicologists in the 19th century noted that
consumption caused ptomaine poisoning, confirmed by the isolation of an amine in
the sea urchin’s sex-organs, a bonbon in French cuisine in the 1880s. See Théodoridès 1980:738-39 with references. The Greek oiJ ejci`noi as the ‘prickly’ or ‘spiny’
ones appears in Theophr. HP 3.9.7, to describe seed-coverings (in this instance those
without such spines), and one cannot escape the impression that Theophrastus has in
mind the sea-urchin. ‘Spiny’ creatures figure in descriptives of land animals as well,
e.g. the hedgehog who tunnels two holes (north and south) in seeming anticipation
of approaching storms (the animal seals the opening of one to signal wind from that
direction, and stops up both if violent weather is in the offing). Cf. Theophr. De
Signis Tempestatum 30.
11 Arist. HA 489b11; 566b27-567a14 (descriptions of seals); 492a26 and 29 (seals
have no ears); 497a7 (kidney of the seal); 508a27 (tongue).
12 Arist. HA 3.21.522a (mares, cows, goats): ‘There is more cheese in the milk of a
cow than from a goat; for graziers tell us that an ajmforeuv~ (about 9 gallons) of
goat’s milk makes 19 cheeses which bring an obol each [at market], while the same
quantity of milk from a cow yields 30 cheeses’ (my trans.).
13 Arist. HA 522b5-6: hJ de; puetiva gavla ejstivn: tw`n ga;r e[ti qhlazovntwn givgnetai
ejn th`/ koiliva/.
Arist. HA 522b7-9.
Theophr. HP 9.11.3: to be mixed with a panax gum, probably gained from
Opopanax chironium (L.) Koch., in proportions of one to four. Later texts testify to the
ordinary use of rennets/curds as antidotes for snakebites, e.g. Dioscor. 2.75 and
schol. Nicander, Theriaca 577.
14
15
8
cheese from its special and distinctive odour, much as could wine-snobs tell
which year and which vineyard in which region. This is the technology of the
farm, wedded to a ‘common knowledge’, now fused by Aristotle and Theophrastus into a formal study of animal classification. Aristotle records dissection of bats and seals to show why these animals were ‘… merely quadrupeds
badly formed’,16 and had determined by analogy that seal kidneys were
similar to those of an ox, but that seals had no gall bladder.17 Moreover – as
any mariner would know – seals did not breathe sea water, and bore their
young alive, and staged dissections (and probably vivisections) determined
that seals produced a chorion, had bones that resembled cartilage, and,
confirming what ‘everybody knew’, had no external ears.18 Philosophical
templates of what was a ‘higher’ vs. a ‘lower’ animal (a soul, movement to
obtain food, manner of reproduction, innate heat) marked the monk seal as a
kind similar to oxen but distant from the ‘highest’ animal of all, the human
male, familiar from the passages in Aristotle’s Generation of Animals.19 And
even as he develops his logic from observations in comparative physiology
to suggest how and why men are superior to women, the setting is inexorably
rural: menstruals occur as the moon wanes, and that part of the month is
colder and more moist; country folk say wind directions matter too: sex
when winds are northern or from the south, or if animals face north or south
when copulating, can alter the heat or cold in the offspring.20
As Aristotle challenges his own teacher, Plato, so too does Theophrastus
question many of the methodologies and mechanics of Aristotle’s views of
the natural world, especially the concepts of a teleological nature, well illustrated in Aristotle’s Parts of Animals.21 Some of Theophrastus’ doubts seem
evident in his Metaphysics, and teleology in its four-part formal explanations
(as summarized by Lennox),22 did not satisfy Theophrastus’ continuous
questions about structures, functions and the apparent relationships among
organisms in the natural world, and why some ‘lived’ in ways quite unaccounted in Aristotle’s presumption that ‘… nature does nothing incompletely or in vain [and thus] it becomes necessary that nature has fashioned all
Arist. De Motu Animalium 19.10.714b10.
Arist. De Partibus Animalium 3.9.671b4-6; 4.2.676b28-30.
18 Arist. HA 6.11.566b27-567a15: chorion and cartilage; De Generatione Animalium
5.2.24-29.781b24-29 = PA 2.12.21-24.657a21-24: ears.
19 Esp. 4.2.767a; 4.6.775a.
20 GA 4.2.767a5-13.
21 E.g. PA 2.14.658a22-24; 3.3.665a9-26; 3.4.665b18-21; 3.10.672b21; 4.13.696b2832.
22 Lennox 1985.
16
17
9
these things for the sake of human beings.’23 The variety of forms, the
multiplicity of customs, the variations in utility of plants and animals by
different kinds of men and women, and the very shadings – if not complete
dissonance – among animals (including human beings), caused Theophrastus
unease as he gathered ever more ‘facts’ from his ‘expert’ sources, the
farmers, fishermen, rootcutters and hunters, those who knew the world of
nature for what it was, not as explained in the higher realms of philosophy.
The folklore of medicine and pharmacology often suggested exceptions to
organizing principles, quite similar to the debates involving modern Darwinists as they sometimes postulate ‘engineering’ models to explain functional
requirements of life-forms. Or as Lennox puts it, ‘If the fit between model
and structure is a good one, that is taken as presumptive evidence in favor of
the hypothesis that the structure is an adaptation, a product of selection for
that niche.’24 This, of course, requires a kind of prior knowledge, and Theophrastus’ unease about Aristotle’s ‘Final Cause’ in Metaphysics reflects an
ancient example of doubts expressed about all-inclusive explanations in
nature,25 especially those that cannot include such ‘useless’ things as male
breasts, a deer’s antlers, the location of the larynx, and many of the customs
in folklore that appear useless but which on investigation prove to be both
practical and effective.
Interweaving of medical folklore in Peripatetic writings is illustrated by
two passages, set in tandem: in the Pseudo-Aristotelian Marvelous Things
Heard,26 a member of the Lyceum recorded that the rennet of the monk seal
was therapeutically useful in treating epileptics; and Theophrastus indicates
his sources use the rennet of the monk seal (fwvkh~ pituva/) against epilepsy,27
and in his Creatures that are Said to be Grudging,28 says other sources (presuArist. Pol. 1.3.1256b21-22 (my trans.).
Lennox 1985:144.
25 Met. 9.11b25-27.
26 Mir. 77.835b32-34.
27 Theophr. HP 9.11.3.
28 Fr. 175 Wimmer 1866:460, col. 1 (Greek) = Photius, Cod. 528b in ed., Henry
1977:166-67; Frr. 362D and 362H Fortenbaugh et al. 1985; commentary by Sharples
1994:74, 78 and 84.
The new edition of Theophrastus’ fragmentary works has multiple editors, translators and commentators; thus Fortenbaugh et al. 1992. Each fragment receives a
number (362D and 362H are from Theophrastus’ Creatures that are Said to be Grudging
and Fish Found in Dry Places), with the Greek text (or Latin, or Arabic) and English
translations in Parts One and Two, according to the categories established in the
sub-titles of each volume; thus Frr. 362A (Photius, Cod. 528a40-b27), 362D (Plin.
NH 8.111-12, 115 [almost the same as Fr. 362A]) and 362H (Plut. 7.2.1.700c-d
[from Fish Found in Dry Places]) appear in Part Two, 154-57, 158-59, 162-63.
23
24
10
mably fishermen and farmers) employ the seal rennet not only for the Falling
Sickness, but also in making cheeses, and in the compounding of medicinals.29 In turn, behaviours of the living animals and the products derived
from them became data incorporated into the scheme of classification, and
each of the animal products reinforced that same categorization. Agricultural
technology, folklore and cheese-making all underpin some of the assumptions Theophrastus reaches in his conclusions about animals and people. The
forests, fields, seas and farms were the cockpit of all ‘facts’ and the experts
were the fishermen, gatherers of wild plants and their parts, and farmers,
whose full knowledge of animals and their habits and lives were the ultimate
source of the first ‘handbooks’ of comparative anatomy and botany. Theophrastus’ wide interests are signaled in the titles of lost works, collected by
Fortenbaugh and others,30 and several of his other treatises have survived as
well.31
In addition, volumes of ‘Commentaries’ are published intermittently, e.g. Sharples
1994 (on the natural history), who comments on rennet as contained in Theophrastus’ Creatures Said to be Grudging and Fish in Dry Places on pp. 74, 78, and 84. Published
separately but by the same editors with the same publisher are other works deemed
to merit individual volumes, and one volume of this kind has appeared: Fortenbaugh
et al. 2003. The edition of Wimmer (1866) still remains basic for the Historia Plantarum, since the Loeb edition (1916) omits ‘offensive’ passages, and the latest edited
text in the Budé series does not include Book 9. See Amigues 1988-2003.
29 Schol. Nic. Ther. 577 (Crugnola 1971:220). Wendel 1967:83-84 (on Theocr. 7.16).
That pituva tavmiso~: Erotian, Hippocratic Terminologies T, 32 (Nachmanson 1918:
87). Cf. the Hippocratic Diseases of Women 2.192 (8.372, line 19 Littré), Galen, Hippocratic Glossary T, first entry (19.145 Kühn), and Hesych. 108 (Schmidt 1965:127).
30 In the collection of Fortenbaugh et al. 1985, Part Two, one will find fragments
(‘Human Physiology’) of Vertigo, Dizziness (pub. separately by Fortenbaugh in 2003);
=
Fainting, Choking, Paralysis, Epileptics, Plague, Melancholy, Inspiration, Types of Tiredness
(pub. separately as Fatigue by Fortenbaugh); Sleep and Dreams, Sweating (pub. separately
by Fortenbaugh); Types of Hair, Secretion, and Breaths, and one tiny fragment of
Medicines; (‘Zoological Works’); Living Creatures, Differences in Voice of Creatures of the
Same Kind, Differences with Regard to Locality, Creatures that Appear in Swarms, Creatures
that Bite and Sting, Creatures Said to be Grudging, Creatures that Live on Dry Land, Creatures
that Change Color, Creatures that Retreat into Holes, Intelligence and Habits of Living Creatures,
and Ways and Characters and Habitats; and (‘Botany’, added to the Historia Plantarum
and De Causis Plantarum), Flavours or Juices, Farming Months, Fruits and Nuts,
Pomegranates, Truffles, Water Lilies, Pines, Spiny Plants, Beets, The Willow, Celeries, Wine and
Olive-Oil, Odours, and Honey. There is, of course, much debate about titles and
contents, given the nature of the fragments, as well as the use made of Theophrastus’ writings by later authorities. See, for example, Sollenberger 1988; White 2002.
31 Modern editions of Theophrastus’ writings have increased in number, albeit
slowly, and all are of interest to the student of Greek natural history, medicine, and
11
Contexts: Magic, superstition and the rootcutters
Two professional, if traditional and rural, occupations in Theophrastus’ time
were the ‘experts’ on medicinal substances: the pharmakopōlai (‘drug vendors’)
and the rhizotomoi (‘rootcutters’);32 in any of the agorai in the Greek cities from
Sicily through the eastern Mediterranean, there were specific spots (called
often misleadingly ‘stalls’ in the literature) set aside for these individuals, who
hawked their wares as always ‘fresh’, or ‘just brought from the East’ (the
capital letter here is intentional): their drugs, ointments, perfumes, basically
raw roots, stems, seeds, flowers (sometimes the petals were displayed
separately, as in the case of roses, used by the wealthier households to make
home-manufactured perfumes and emollients), and occasionally peeled
barks, were always ‘very powerful’, ‘absolutely the finest available’, and other
familiar phrases still characteristic of marketplaces anywhere in the world.
Aristotle knew such professionals throughout his life, but it was Theophrastus who took them as the primary sources of what he concluded about
pharmacologically active plants as contrasted to the botanical lore that
encompassed only nutrition. The distinction is important: many foods were
(and are) ‘drugs’ (we think of spices this way), but not all foods are drugs,
even though ancient and modern dietetics agree that the ‘balances’ among
nutrients promotes good health, while an excess gives the opposite. In the
beginning of his ‘herbal’ account in the Enquiry into Plants,33 Theophrastus
first addresses the actual functions of the rootcutters and drug vendors in
their everyday roles in the Attic marketplaces, and he notes how such
botany. In addition to those mentioned in note 28 above, others are available as well:
Stratton 1917, 1964 = On the Senses, fundamental for our knowledge of Alcmaeon of
Croton and others; Ross & Fobes 1929, 1982; Eichhholz 1965; Coutant &
Eichenlaub 1975; Coutant 1971; Eigler & Wöhrle 1995 (replaces that of Hort
1916:325-89); Einarson & Link 1976-1990; Rusten 2002; Hort 1916:391-434 will
shortly be replaced in an edition and trans. by David Sider of New York University.
See Sider 2002.
32 An older contemporary, Diocles of Carystos, put together a selection of the ‘rootcutters’ herbs and other medicinals derived from botanicals, but citations of Diocles’
rhizotomikon are rare. See Van der Eijk 2000:1, 356-57: to;n e[rinon Dioklh`~ ejn tw`/
JRizotomikw/`/ fhsin ei\nai o{moion wjkivmw/ (Fr. 204). And the title of a play (lost) by
Sophocles is JRizotovmoi, of which two fragments are extant. Also Lloyd-Jones
1996:269-71 (Frr. 534 and 535). Medea dances naked in the moonlight while
preparing her herbal potion (the Prometheion) to protect Jason in his coming ordeal.
Magic and plant-lore intertwined, much as would be understood by Athenian
playgoers. For the broader contexts, see Scarborough 1991:144 with nn. 70-77.
33 HP 9.8.5-8.
12
sources of information shade from the purely empiric to the hoarily superstitious. He admits explicitly that he is interested in ‘… things that are called
fairy tales by earlier thinkers’, but also says that such notions can incorporate
useful information of an empirical sort. For example, the root-cutters tell
him that certain roots should be cut while the gatherer stands to the windward, and before the cutting of such things as the so-called deadly carrot, the
fruit of the rose (rose-hips) and similar plants, the rootcutters should cover
themselves in oil so that their bodies do not swell up, or that there is danger
to the eyes if one gathers honeysuckles in the daytime, so one should do so
at night.34 These are practical pointers of presumed caution, but they also
encapsulate some useful observations about the basic properties of the
plants: ‘they say that [these plants] grasp one as would a fire and burn’, or
‘that hellebore shortly makes the head feel heavy, so that they cannot dig it
for very long.’35 On the other hand, some of what the drug sellers and
rootcutters say is ‘far fetched’ and not especially germane to rootcutting: if
one digs up a peony during the daytime, he might be seen by a woodpecker,
and thus lose his eyesight, and if he chances to be cutting the peony’s root at
the same time he will suffer from an instant prolapse of the lower bowel.
More birds appear in the folk beliefs carried by the rootcutters: vultures
sighted at the time of gathering the centaury will engender harm,36 and yet if
someone is asked to offer a prayer before commencing his plant-gathering,
that is within reason; but ‘things added to this command are ridiculous’,37 for
instance, when one is cutting the Asclepian panax, one should then replace
what is taken from the ground with various fruits and prepared pieces of
sweetened bread, or if someone cuts a particular flower then one replaces it
with small rolls of a wheat-bread made from wheat sown in the spring, or,
one has to cut the flower’s stem with a two-edged sword, making a circle
around it three times, with the first piece held up in the air while the rest is
being cut.
Theophrastus records how 4th century BC Greek customs linked aphrodisiacs with anodynes, since the rootcutters say that when one harvests
mandrake apples, one is supposed to draw three circles around the apples
and the plant with a sword, and to be sure one cuts it while facing westward,
and in cutting the second piece, one then does a dance around the plant
uttering as much as one can remember about lust, sex and the full mysteries
HP
HP
36 HP
37 HP
34
9.8.5.
35
9.8.6.
9.8.6-7.
9.8.7.
13
of erotic passion.38 Theophrastus had earlier noted an opposite ritual in the
gathering of cumin-seeds:39 one had to curse it while it was being planted.
One superstition is very old and was venerated enough to be repeated by
Dioscorides three centuries later:40 the rootcutters say that one should draw a
circle around a black hellebore, cutting while facing eastward and praying, all
the while watching out for the appearance of an eagle to one’s left and one’s
right, for if the bird were to make its presence known to the rootcutters, then
he would perish within the year. ‘These things would not seem to be
pertinent, as I have said.’
When Theophrastus adds that ‘these are the only ways rootcutters perform
their skills’, he is not condemning them for silly beliefs, but telling us that the
rootcutters have a number of techniques in approaching the gathering of
pharmaceutically useful plants and plant-parts: digging up roots and tubers
both at night and during the day suggests that harvesting went on for some
plants when the flower was open, others when it was not; using a sword for
simple cutting suggests an everyday implement carried by almost every male
citizen of 4th century Attica, and one’s trusty sword functioned as cleaver,
knife, chopper and basic tool for all kinds of food preparation; drawing
patterns around a particular plant suggests how one set out a garden plot
before making the first grooves into the soil before planting, a habit observed commonly today among amateur gardeners with small plots; and anointing oneself with oil before beginning the labor of rootcutting was customary
then among farmers doing late springtime work in the fields preparing for
the harvest (one has to remember the planting season in Greece was just
before the rains came, so that the first sowing occurred in October or
November, and harvests in May or a little earlier). One cannot equivalate an
olive oil lotion to a modern sun blocker, but dermatologists have long
recommended natural oils as a pre-treatment for long exposures to bright
sunshine. All this is ‘practical stuff’: Theophrastus carefully distinguishes the
useful, the relevant, and the productive from those customs and procedures
that were merely ‘traditional’, or which were parts of true superstitions, wellknown from medico-pharmacal rites performed by the stereotypical talismanic-obsessed man in his Characters.41 Purifications with squills,42 some38 HP 9.8.8. The Greek is curious, and I am presuming the broader contexts
embedded in the sort sentence to;n d j e[teron kuvklw/ periorcei`sqai kai; levgein wJ~
plei`sta peri; ajfrdisivwn.
7.3.3.
9.8.8; Dioscor. 4.108 and 109, with parallels in 162.
41 Theophr. Char. 16: ‘Superstition’. Among the laughable habits are purifications,
wine-boiling, and the purchase of expensive herbs and drugstuffs, e.g. 16.7: ‘He is
apt to purify his house frequently, claiming Hekate has bewitched it’; 16.10: ‘On the
39 HP
40 HP
14
times called the ‘sea onion’ (Urginea maritima Baker) bore hallowed beliefs
about its properties older than Greek civilization itself, and Theophrastus
understood that everyone had absorbed such beliefs from childhood.
Contexts: Medicine, pharmacology, the East and sex
In the Characters, Theophrastus depicts folkloristic practices but does not
condemn them outright, and the banal and hackneyed if overdrawn
personages in the sketches still bring laughter in modern comedy; but the
student of Aristotle, now turned skilled botanist, asks different if important
questions about the drugs and herbs associated with very old religio-magical
practices as much as they are known for their pharmakōdeis dynameis
(‘properties as drugstuffs’, or ‘medical properties’).43 Theophrastus asks: ‘why
these plants?’
Squill is a good illustration of how the Greek intellect mixed what we
call practical botany with magico-religious rituals of deep antiquity, as well as
knowledge of precise details of medical and pharmacal utility.44 Theognis (fl.
c. 544 BC) provides the first mention of squill, and the single line sets the ‘sea
onion’ firmly into its context of agriculture and botany: ‘From squill grow
neither roses nor hyacinth and the child of a slave mother is never free in
spirit.’45 Another roughly contemporary poet, Hipponax (fl. c. 540-537 BC),
gives the religio-magical milieu: ‘… to purify the city and be struck with fig
branches … in winter striking him and flogging him with fig branches and
squills as though a scapegoat [pharmakos] … [until] he become withered from
hunger and led like a scapegoat may he be flogged seven times on his penis
[with squills].’46 This brutal description of the customary use of a pharmakos
fourth and seventh of every month he orders his household to boil some wine, then
he goes out and buys myrtle, frankincense and cakes, comes back home and spends
all day putting wreaths on the Hermaphrodites’; 16.13: ‘If he ever notices someone
at the crossroads wreathed in garlic he goes away, takes a shower, summons
priestesses and orders a deluxe purification by sea onion [squills] or dog’ (transl. by
Rusten 2002:99 and 101).
42 Scarborough 1991:146-48 with nn. 90-119.
43 Theophr. HP 9.8.1: levgw d j oi|on ei[ tine~ farmakwvdei~ h] kai; a[lla~ e[cousi
dunavmei~.
Stannard 1974; Scarborough 1991:146-48.
Theogn. 537-38, transl. Gerber 1999a:251.
46 Hipp. Frr. 5, 6 and 10 West, transl. Gerber 1999b:359 and 361. I have slightly
altered Gerber’s translation of Fr. 10 to suggest what is actually taking place. This
appears more vividly (the scapegoat’s remnants are flung into the sea) in Fr. E of an
ancient commentary (P. Oxy. 10.1233, fr. 29), tentatively translated by Gerber (44849).
44
45
15
to cleanse a diseased city is summarized by a late Byzantine polymath, John
Tzetzes (fl. c. 1130 AD), who notes how a pharmakos was selected in ‘ancient
times’, and Tzetzes says ‘… Hipponax describes the custom best.’47
Why squill? Other texts demonstrate that squill and certain other herbs,
for example the chaste tree (Vitex agnus castus L.), have special significance
connected with choosing a pharmakos to expunge plague or pestilence from a
community or household,48 in turn linked with an ancient sense of ‘hunger’,
likely a carry-over from a timeless fear of famine suggested by the associated
term boulimos.49 While Tzetzes terms his description a katharma (‘ritual
cleansing’), one notes that squill was known in antiquity as an acrid cultivar
and commonly used as a herbal remedy for coughs, asthma and as an alexipharmakon (‘antidote for poisons’) when hung as a whole at the front
entrance to buildings.50 All these aspects intertwine with the notion of a
pharmakos, an obvious cognate to the more common pharmakon, first mentioned as a ‘poison’ or ‘beneficial drug’ or ‘spell’ in the Homeric epics.51 By
Hellenistic times the old pharmakos (‘scapegoat’, accented on the last syllable)
becomes fused with a second meaning, inclusive of someone who is a
‘sorcerer’ or ‘magician’ (accented on the first syllable).52 Theophrastus and
other writers of his day may be reviving a ‘Homeric’ sense of the doublet
47 Fr. 5 West, preserved by Tzetzes, Chil. 5.728ff., who elaborates on this ‘ancient
custom’ (transl. by Gerber 359).
48 Parker 1983: esp. 230-32 with nn. 134-51. In a generally perceptive examination,
Parker leans too much on ‘interpretive analyses’, esp. Bremmer 1983 in which
modern psychiatric terminologies tend to dominate.
49 Grk. a[gno~ = Vitex agnus castus L., e.g. as in Plut. 693f, where one learns that at
Chaeronea a slave is beaten with the branches of a[gno~, to get rid of a ‘great hunger’
(bouvlimo~). The ‘sap’ or ‘honey’ of the a[gno~ was widely used in antiquity as a
wound healer, due to its dessicant properties (e.g. Arist. HA 627a7), and the fruit of
the ‘tree’ (which is much more of a bush) was valued as an emmenagogue, contraceptive, and sedative (Dioscor. 1.103.1-2 Wellmann). In folk medical traditions, the
fruits and leaves (‘Monks’ Peppers’) function as sexual suppressants. Usher 1974:
602. The phytochemistry of the ‘chaste tree’ reveals a complex array of volatile oils
of variable composition including sabinene (2-44%), 1,8-cineole (4-35%), and others,
along with glycosides, flavonoids, and diterpenes. In European herbal medicine,
‘chaste tree’ is recommended for ‘… menstrual irregularities, premenstrual complaints, and mastodynia especially if the symptoms are accompanied by pathologically elevated prolactin levels’ (Willuhn 2004:8).
50 Dioscor. 2.171.3 Wellmann.
51 Scarborough 1991:139-40; Artelt 1937. Favrmakon by the late 5th and 4th centuries
BC generically could mean ‘drug’, but often (according to context) ‘poison’ as well.
See Lloyd 1979:44, with examples drawn from Thucydides, Plato and Antiphon.
52 E.g. Septuagint: Exodus 8.11, and Malachias 3.5.
16
term, since botanists were wrestling with classifications of plants that possessed ‘medical properties’;53 Theophrastus exhibits a quandary in describing a
plant that has both ‘traditional’ and religious associations coupled with a folk
history of employment as a drug among herbalists, rootcutters and physicians. Morphological botany could serve for some classifications, after close
observation and repeated analyses of similars and differences (leaves, stems,
seeds, bark, flowers to fruit, seasons of seedlings, process from seedling to
senescence),54 but some other approaches than simple botany or pharmacology were necessary to describe squill, the chaste tree, and various similar
medicinals as they were understood by the different medical practitioners in
the Greek world of c. 300 BC. Teleology was not exactly useless, but if a
plant ‘produced to its kind’, that explanation did not account for the multiple
characteristics of a herb which had overlapping uses of quite distinct sorts
among physicians as contrasted to the folklore attending exactly the same
plants. Thus Theophrastus begins his pharmacognostic sections of Historia
Plantarum 9 with ‘how we define’, ‘how we describe’, and ‘how we analyze’
before consideration of the major herbs themselves (along with the curd of the
monk seal). He intends for his account to be a careful analysis of significant
medicinals, thereby deliberately limiting his consideration, so that by the end
of Book 9, there are about sixty carefully depicted herbs (and one rennet)
and some suggested uses of them as remedies for particular ailments.55
Significantly, the first herb on the list is mandrake, initially given a
contextual description in terms of the superstitions surrounding its gathering.56 As noted, there is much that is sexual in the folklore connected with
mandrake.57 Careful perusal, however, of Theophrastus’ account demonstraTheophr. HP 8.1 conjoined with specific definitions and examples in 9.1.1-7, similarly to his discussion of ‘medicinal properties’ of certain plants at 9.1.4, here scammony compared with silphium, myrrh and others that have ‘juices’ that are ‘gums’: hJ
53
de; scammwniva kai; ei[ ti a[llo toiou`ton, w{sper ejlevcqh, farmakwvdei~ e[cousi ta;~
dunavmei~.
Wöhrle 1985:95-98 (‘Vorrang der Morphologie’), 110-12 (‘Terminologie der
Dihairesis’), 123-29 (‘Die Durchführung der Differenzierung der Pflanzen’).
55 Scarborough 1978 for some of the phytochemical details.
56 HP 9.8.8.
57 Very famous, indeed, are these connotations, and the passages in the Song of
Solomon (often called either the Canticles or Song of Songs) is explicit in providing pure
lust as associated with mandrake. Song 7.13, in the revised King James version: ‘The
mandrakes give a smell, and at our gates are all manner of pleasant fruits, new and
old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved’, and the Septuagint: Song 7.13, is
more or less the same. Of course, there are several ‘spices’ in the love chamber,
including mandrake, and the list has myrrh, frankincense, pomegranates, spikenard,
calamus-reed, saffron, cinnamon, and aloes, esp. at Song 4.8-15, probably the most
54
17
tes much more than the simply erotic: he begins his description proper on
the pharmacological uses of plants and plant-parts,58 and the manner in
which he organizes the text is consequential. First, he says (as the rootcutters
have informed him) that ‘parts’ of some plants – the root, the fruit, the
juice/sap – illustrated earlier in his comments on scammony, cyclamen, thapsia, and ‘others’, are useful as medicines, but now the signal example among
‘the others’ is mandrake which receives a precise, pointed, pharmacological
delineation:
… its leaf combined with wheat-meal is beneficial for wounds, the root
peeled then soaked in vinegar is good for treating erysipelas, as is [this]
for treating gouty conditions (ta; podragrikav), and for inducing sleep,
and for the making of aphrodisiacs (pro;~ u{pnon kai; pro;~ fivltra). It is
given in wine or vinegar. They [i.e. those who imparted the information,
presumably the rootcutters] cut slices of the root into pastilles
(teJmnousi de; trocivskou~) just as they do with radishes, and string them
up to hang over smoky must [my trans.].
The combination of treatment for gout and skin rashes, and action as an
anaesthetic, with sexual stimulation in the form of manufactured aphrodisiacs are all credited to the rootcutters and other rural experts, and not
until Book 9.18 does Theophrastus explain why he has given this structure to
his account and provide his reasoning about how pharmacological substances ‘work’ as contrasted to other botanicals. ‘As has been noted, there
are roots and shrubs that have many properties (dynameis) which affect not
only living things but also things that are bereft of life.’59 Here his exemplars
are akantha (probably gum Arabic), and althaia (the marsh mallow, Althea
officinalis L.) because they form a gummy thickness when added to water.
With continuing examples of pharmacological substances that act on both
living and non-living bodies,60 Theophrastus deftly connects medically useful
plants with their effects on lifeless things, and thus is able quite neatly to
pornographic and loveliest section of the book. Elsewhere, mandrake is mentioned
in Genesis 30.14-16, with similarly erotic ambience. Bible scholars have paid more
attention to mandrake than have students of Greek and Roman botany and pharmacy, so that there is a large literature on the Hebrew texts, the Talmudic interpretations, and the Greek translation that is the text we know as the Septuagint. See Pope
1977:647-51 (commentary). Behind the Hebrew traditions are the more ancient ones
from Dynastic Egypt: Manniche 1999:100-02 with references.
58 HP 9.9.1.
59 HP 9.18.1 (my trans.).
60 Scarborough 1991:148 with nn. 120-24.
18
proceed from herbal remedies to botanicals that have other uses, including
those of magico-religious importance.
In Historia Plantarum 9.18.3-11, Theophrastus broaches the subject of
fertility and anti-fertility drugs and herbs, leading one back into the arcana
and curiosa of aphrodisiacs and anaphrodisiacs. First, and most importantly,
he notes that there is an instance in which a plant has both kinds of aphrodisiac properties, and once again we meet the squills: ‘the orchis [lit. ‘testicle’]61
… has leaves like a squill.’ In these sections of his botanical manual Theophrastus demonstrates his awareness of the reported powers of would-be
aphrodisiacs, and that some of these reports have sifted in from India,62
likely through Alexander’s dispatch of botanical packets,63 if not the sex
manuals themselves.64 On the one hand the properties of the orchid-bulbs
prevented sexual desire (much as did the sap of the chaste tree), but, on the
other hand, there were presumably reliable reports that it functioned as a
lust-inducer as well. Such is quite acceptable to the philosopher-botanist: ‘It
is paradoxical … that opposite effects result from a single nature, but it is
not paradoxical that such properties exist.’65 And then there is the gentleman
named Indos (‘the Indian’) who used a fantasy-drug, supposedly to keep
several women happy at the same time (in India? Theophrastus does not
say):
Probably the early purple orchid, Orchis mascula [L.] L., from which a drink called
salep is made from the macerated tubers. Polunin 1969:577 no. 1894; Reynolds
1982:960, col. 1, no. 5454-z.
62 Bretzel 1903 does not include the Indian sex-drugs.
63 Bretzel’s almost mistitled monograph gives a complete listing of the geographical
origins of Theophrastus’ botanical data (1903:409-11 and 387: ‘Indischer Feigenbaum,’ and the index entries ‘Indus’) and surprisingly few species are included, in
spite of relevant discussions of Pliny the Elder’s notices, side-by-side with those of
Arrian and his sources, which do emerge from Alexander’s time in the Far East.
Important, however, is the summary of what is meant by ‘Indian’ in botanical names
(202), and how Greek botany learned about ‘Indian’ plants and trees cultivated in
winter (200-01). Bretzel is convinced that the ‘eastern’ plants that appear in Greek
botany and pharmacology are generally from central Asia and occasionally from
Afghanistan, although details about caravan-routes, commerce and exchange do not
appear.
64 Although the oldest extant sex-manual from India (the Kamasutra by Vatsyayana) is
usually dated to about 300 AD, Sanskrit scholars generally agree that many of the
traditions in the Kamasutra are far more ancient, some going back to the era of the
Rig Veda; Doniger & Kakar 2002: esp. xiii-xiv.
65 HP 9.18.4 (my trans.).
61
19
Most marvelous is the plant which Indos had; they said that it keeps the
penis hard, not by ingesting the plant, but using it for anointing; the
power of this plant is so great that one can have sex with as many
women as one likes – those who use it say as many as twelve. Indos
himself – he was big and strong – actually said that he once had sex
seventy times, but his semen came out drop by drop, and finally he
drew out blood. Besides women are considerably more eager when they
use this drug. This power, if true, is excessive.66
HP 9.18. 9)
(
Much of Historia Plantarum Book 9 is taken up with careful analyses of the
medical properties of about sixty herbs and herbal remedies, not with
consideration of claims for plants that are magical, semi-occult, or plants that
have religious connotations; these things are considered ‘subsidiary’ to the
information gained about the technologies of harvesting, preparation and
marketing of the pharmaka, information from the ever-present rhizotomoi and
phamakopolai, who would also relate the numerous folk customs attached to
specific herbs or herbal remedies. By simply recording what he had heard,
and qualifying particulars with ‘it is claimed’, ‘if this account were true’, and
similar phrases, Theophrastus exercises a criticism of his purported facts and
thereby sorts the probable from the impossible. Even the super-aphrodisiac
from India is subject to this kind of logic of choice: ‘if true, excessive’, ergo
probably not true.
Contexts: Politics and poison
Infamous is the execution of Socrates by hemlock in 399 BC. Aristotle’s
teacher, Plato was a gifted writer, unusual for a philosopher; Plato’s Greek is
limpid, clearly expressed and chock-full of homely illustrations of how one
could strive to achieve understanding of the Good. Perhaps the most beautiful of Plato’s many writings is the Phaedo, often called ‘The Last Days of
Socrates’, since it includes the details of how the hemlock took effect once
quaffed.67 Modern scholars affirm,68 or deny,69 Plato’s ‘medical knowledge’,
66 Trans. by Preus 1988:89. Rather shamefully, Hort 1916 (never revised or augmented to date!) omits both the Greek and any English rendition of HP 9.18.3-11. Two
translations exist of these ‘missing sections’. Gemmill 1973, rendered from the
Greek text of Wimmer 1866; there is no commentary. Better (and with a good
commentary) is Preus 1988:88-89.
67 Phd. 117b-18.
68 Burnett 1978:149-50 (App. 1: ‘Death by hemlock’) 149-50. Lewin 1920:67-68
(‘Der Tod des Sokrates’) 69-72 (‘Medizinische Schilderungen der Schierlingswirkungen’) is a running account of hemlock poisonings and descriptions in the texts
20
but a careful assessment of the toxicology of hemlock ingestion indicates
that Plato got right the essential details of ‘how long’, and ‘what parts’ were
first affected.70 Usually left unconsidered is the preparation of the poison
used for capital punishment in Athens,71 and once the question is asked the
following emerge: ordinary Athenian citizens seemed to know the technologies of preparation and members of the Board of Eleven were chosen by lot,
as was the ‘executioner’ (a ‘public man’, dēmios),72 suggesting that most
everyone knew about hemlock, especially those citizens resident in the
demes outside the city walls; and the details of that preparation are provided
by Theophrastus,73 along with a clipped history of its presumed discovererinventor, and modifications of preparation techniques coming down to his
own time, roughly a century after Socrates’ death. Thrasyas of Mantinea and
his talented student, Alexias, are otherwise unknown, but the locales in this
terse account also indicate widespread knowledge of hemlock, its preparation
and use. Theophrastus indicates that he has either a written tract by Thrasyas, or heard from him directly, about the properties of the opium poppy
latex and hemlock,74 and what the herbalist says about his poisons keeping
for a long time, is basically correct regarding the ‘lumps’ of the opium latex,
and less so for hemlock,75 whose juice has to be prepared fresh to attain the
desired, lethal results. The quantity required would be quite small, another
from antiquity, ranging from Nicander and Dioscorides to Pliny the Elder, Plutarch,
the Suda, and Justin-Trogus.
69 Gill 1973.
70 Duke 1985. Under ‘toxicity’, he writes (140): ‘Following lethal doses … symptoms
rapidly begin to show … first the feet and legs, then the buttocks, arms, then paralysis of the swallowing and speech. With increasing dyspnea and cyanosis, death
ensues through central respiratory paralysis. Lethal dose is about 500 to 100 mg for
man.’ See also Debelmas & Delaveau 1979:105 (‘Symptômes’, ‘Ciguë tachette’). Cf.
Plato, Phd. 117b-18. The phytochemistry is predictive: effects result from the actions
of the reduced pyridine alkaloids (mostly coniine) in the natural biogenesis from 5oxoctanoic acid through coniine and conhydrinone. See Evans 1996:404-05.
71 The exception is Sullivan 2001, citing the relevant texts in Theophratus and
Nicander, as well as appropriate references in the modern phytochemical literature;
Sullivan is a basic refutation of the arguments by Gill 1973.
72 Harrison 1968-1971:2, 17-18; MacDowell 1978:254-58 (‘Penalties’).
73 HP 9.16.8-9.
74 Ibid.: ... w{sper e[legen, w{ste rJa/divan poiei`n kai; a[ponon th;n ajpovlusin toi`~ ojpoi`~
crwvmeno~ kwneivou te kai; mhvkwno~ kai; eJtevrwn toiouvtwn ...
Modern ‘Conii fructus’ consists of the dried, unripe fruits of Conium maculatum L.,
so that storage would not lessen toxicity over the short term. See Evans 1996:404.
The opium poppy latex, once solidified, and before being remelted, has a very long
‘shelf-life’.
75
21
technical improvement boasted by Thrasyas, but Theophrastus implies that
there have been further improvements as differing preparation-techniques
were attempted, or as he puts it, ‘And numerous facts demonstrate that the
method of employment of the different substances do make a difference.’
And thereby
… the Ceians once upon a time did not use the hemlock in the manner
[I] have just described, but simply shredded it all up, much as did most
other peoples, but nowadays nobody would shred the hemlock; they
first peel off the outer bark, removing the husk, since this is what had
caused the difficulty, since [without peeling the bark] the hemlock was
not easily absorbed; then they bruise the hemlock in a mortar, and after
straining it through a finely-meshed sieve, sprinkle it on water, and
drink it; thus death is quick and easy.76
Once this account of preparation of the hemlock is put into the context
of Socrates’ execution by the Athenian democracy as a penalty for ‘offence
to the state gods’, and less so for ‘corrupting the youth of the city’, Plato’s
recounting makes even better sense, as does the election by lot of the executioner himself. Since Theophrastus’ sources know of a simple way to prepare
the poison, and since the same sources have related specific details of the
structures and parts of the hemlock, once again the philosopher-botanist can
marshal ‘facts’ to show ‘common knowledge’ of plants, in this instance,
those that are poisonous. In many ways Theophrastus’ narrative of hemlock’s preparation for employment by Athenians in capital crimes shows
exactly how ordinary was such knowledge by farmers and the rootcutters and
why (again) Theophrastus has used these ‘natural experts’ as the basic source
for his new textbook of botany.
Closer in time than the death of Socrates to Theophrastus’ Historia
Plantarum is the apparently sensational trial and execution of Theoris of
Lemnos, prosecuted as a witch (farmakiv~), and charged with casting incantations (ejpw/daiv) and the employment of death-dealing drugs.77 To be sure,
the details presented are ‘… notoriously unreliable in the [recollection of]
76
77
HP 9.16.9 (my trans.).
Ps.-Demosth. Against Aristogeiton 79-80. The trial took place sometime between
338 and 324 BC, and the reference to Theoris comes as the prosecutor presents a
deeply negative character-sketch of the twin-brother of the accused, a deft Athenian
example of guilt-by-association. The details (abbreviated) are somewhat different in
Plut. Dem. 14.4, but both texts state that she suffered the death penalty. The case was
set apart from the usual homicide by poison trials by the ‘singing of the incantations’, but as argued by Collins 2001, Theoris was executed for poisoning, not for
witchcraft.
22
historical details’,78 but one gains a sure impression that the trial left a lasting
memory of the practice of a poison-lore both feared and alluring to Athenians at large. Pseudo-Demosthenes does not, of course, give precise information on the drugs or the toxic substances, but he does say that Theoris
had the skill to cure the Falling Sickness,79 an expertise famously refuted by
the author of the Hippocratic On the Sacred Disease.80
Neither the trial nor Theoris are mentioned by Theophrastus, but the
purported treatments and cures for epilepsy have their corollaries in the
Aristotelian comment on the rural employment of cheeses for the disease,81
as well as Theophrastus’ specific suggestion that the rennet of a monk seal
was curative.82 Even without the data on the particular poisons used by
Theoris, one notes that the Athenian jury condemned her on the basis of the
pharmaka used for nefarious purposes, and the presumed ‘witchcraft’ may
have played an important contextual role, but was not crucial to the arguments implied by the later mentionings of the trial. Thessalian ‘witches’ had
special powers, and folklore and the matrix of myth enveloped such women
with the old and well-known expertise of Medea,83 but Athenian jurors –
similarly to Theophrastus – understood magic and folkloristic practices
based on incantations or spell-casting as a part of Nature,84 much as the
author of the Sacred Disease ringingly asserts that epilepsy is also ‘natural’, and
thereby cures eventually will emerge. Poisonous drugs had different dynameis
than those of beneficial use, but Theophrastus continuously reflects an
78
79
Collins 2001:477, with citations of conclusions and arguments in Thomas 1989.
Ps.-Demosth. Against Aristogeiton 80: ... magganeuvei kai; fenakivzei kai; tou;~
ejpilhvptou~ fhsi;n ija`sqai, aujto;~ w]n ejpivlepto~ pavsh/ ponhiva/.
Esp. Sacred Disease 1.1.4 (Jouanna 2003:3-5 = Jones 1923:140-45). The list of such
claimants includes ‘magicians’ (mavgoi) and ‘purification experts’ (kaqavrtai) who
employ ‘purifications and incantations’ (kaqarmou;~ kai; ejpaoidav~).
81 Ps.-Arist. Mir. 77, 835b32-34.
82 Theophr. HP 9.11.3.
83Collins 2001:478-79 with nn. 11-19.
84 A specific instance of the broader principles examined in Lloyd 1979:29-32. That
there are ‘laws’ for even what we might call the ‘occult’ or which gain the label of
‘superstitious’, indicates not only that Greek thinking generally thought of the
universe (and everything in it) as ‘alive’, but also that magic (and the agents or
agencies of magic) is one of the ways perceived as ‘natural’ coupled with ‘divine’, so
that the ‘unexpected’ or ‘spontaneous’ results of something or somebody ‘magical’ is
not contrary to nature. Greek thought and custom recognized classes of expertise
and skills that did not follow the ‘normal’ causative patterns observed generally in
the natural world, but the assumption was basically that such individuals practiced
‘arts’ fitting a nature that did not necessarily exclude ‘divine’ forces – by definition
‘divine’.
80
23
acceptance of their properties as well-known to his oral and literary sources:
some can be relegated to the class of what today we might term ‘superstitions’, but even that term imposes a modernism quite alien to 4th century
BC Attica.85 All data gathered by Theophrastus are fit for questioning, and
the traditions and lore of magicians and witches were to be tested by logic
and reason, much as the tales of an Indian super-aphrodisiac could be designated ‘not probable’. In some respects, modern scholars and students of
Peripatetic philosophy must keep in mind a living milieu of folklore and
magic that often furnished the basics of science, signaled in the title of Lynn
Thorndike’s investigation of ancient, medieval and Renaissance magic and
science.86 The actions of poisons were well understood in Theophrastus’ day:
the puzzle was how they worked.
Bibliography
Amigues, S. (ed., trad., comm.). 1988-2003. Théophraste recherches sur les plantes,
4 vols. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Artelt, W. 1937. ‘Der Begriff favrmakon in den homerischen Epen.’ In Studien
zur Geschichte der Begriffe „Heilmittel” und „Gift”, 38-46. Leipzig: J.A. Barth.
Repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft 1968.
Balme, D.M. (ed.). 2002. Aristotle: Historia Animalium. Vol. 1: Books I-X: Text.
Prepared for publication by A. Gotthelf. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
Barnes, J. 1997. ‘Roman Aristotle.’ In J. Barnes & M. Griffin (edd.),
Philosophia Togata, vol. 2, 1-69. Oxford & New York: Oxford University
Press.
Bosworth, A.B. 1997. ‘The death of Alexander the Great: rumour and propaganda.’ CQ 21:112-136.
Bosworth, A.B. 2002. The Legacy of Alexander. Oxford & New York: Oxford
University Press.
Bremmer, J.N. 1983. ‘Scapegoat-rituals in Ancient Greece.’ HSCP 87:299320.
Bretzel, H. 1903. Botanische Forschungen des Alexanderzuges. Leipzig: Teubner.
Burnett, J. (ed.). 1978. Plato’s Phaedo. Oxford: Clarendon Press [1931].
Coleman, W. 1987 [1964]. Georges Cuvier Zoologist. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press.
Scarborough 1991:138-39, seconded by Collins 2001:480-81.
Thorndike 1923-1958. Note the coupling of ‘magic’ with ‘experimental science’. In
spite of the title in the first volumes, Thorndike’s work carries the story through the
17th century, concluding with Isaac Newton.
85
86
24
Collins, D. 2001. ‘Theoris of Lemnos and the criminalization of magic in
fourth-century Athens.’ CQ 51:477-493.
Coutant, V. (ed., trans., comm.). 1971. Theophrastus De Igne. Assen: Royal
VanGorcum.
Coutant, V. & Eichenlaub, V.E. (edd., trans., comm.). 1975. Theophrastus De
Ventis. Notre Dame & London: University of Notre Dame Press.
Crugnola, A. (ed.). 1971. Scholia in Nicandri Theriaka. Milan: Cisalpino.
Darwin, C. 1881. The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms.
London: John Murray.
Debelmas, A.-M. & Delaveau, P. 1975. Guide des plantes dangereuses. Paris:
Maloine.
Desmond, A. & Moore, J. 1991. Darwin. New York & London: W.W.
Norton.
Doniger, W. & Kakar, S. (trans.). 2002. Vatsyayana: Kamasutra. Oxford World
Classics. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
Duke, J.A. 1985. ‘Conium maculatum L. (Apiaceae) – Hemlock.’ In Handbook of
Medicinal Herbs, 139-140. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Eichhholz, D.E. (ed., trans., comm.). 1965. Theophrastus De Lapidibus. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Eigler, U. & Wöhrle, G. (edd., trans., comm.). 1995. Theophrastus De Odoribus.
Stuttgart: Teubner.
Einarson, B. & Link, G.K.K. (edd., trans.). 1976-1990. Theophrastus De Causis
Plantarum, 3 vols. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University Press.
Evans, W.C. 1996. Trease and Evans’ Pharmacognosy. 14th ed. London & Philadelphia: Saunders.
Fortenbaugh, W.W., Huby, P.M. & Long, A.A. (edd.). 1985. Theophrastus of
Eresus: On his Life and Work. New Brunswick & Oxford: Transaction
Books.
Fortenbaugh, W.W. & Sharples, R.W. (edd.). 1988. Theophrastean Studies: On
Natural Science, Physics and Metaphysics, Ethics, Religion and Rhetoric. New
Brunswick & Oxford: Transaction Books.
Fortenbaugh, W.W., Huby, P.M., Sharples, R.W. (Greek and Latin) & Gutas,
D. (Arabic) (edd., trans.). 1992. Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life,
Writings, Thought and Influence. Part One: Life, Writings, Various Reports, Logic,
Physics, Metaphysics, Theology, Mathematics; Part Two: Psychology, Human Physiology, Living Creatures, Botany, Ethics, Religion, Politics, Rhetoric and Poetics, Music,
Miscellanea. Leiden: E.J. Brill.
Fortenbaugh, W.W. & Wöhrle, G. (edd.). 2002. On the Opuscula of Theophrastus. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
25
Fortenbaugh, W.W., Sharples, R.W. & Sollenberger, M.G. (edd., trans.,
comm.). 2003. Theophrastus of Eresus: On Sweat, On Dizziness and On Fatigue.
Leiden & Boston: E.J. Brill.
Gemmill, C.L. 1973. ‘The missing passages in Hort’s translation of Theophrastus.’ Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 49:127-129.
Gerber, D.E. (ed., trans.). 1999a. Greek Elegiac Poetry. Cambridge, Mass. &
London: Harvard University Press.
Gerber, D.E. (ed., trans.). 1999b. Greek Iambic Poetry. Cambridge, Mass. &
London: Harvard University Press.
Gill, C.1973. ‘The death of Socrates.’ CQ 23:25-28.
Grayeff, F. 1974. Aristotle and his School. London & New York: Routledge &
Harper and Row.
Green, P. 1991. Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography.
Rev., enl., ed. Berkeley, Los Angeles & Oxford: UCLA Press.
Guthrie, W.K.C. 1998. A History of Greek Philosophy. Vol. 6: Aristotle: An
Encounter. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press [1981].
Harrison, A.R.W. 1968-1971. The Law of Athens, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Henry, R. (ed.). 1977. Photius Bibliothèque, vol. 8. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Hort, A.F. (ed., trans.). 1916. Theophrastus: Enquiry into Plants. Vol. 2: Concerning Odours, 325-389; Concerning Weather Signs, 391-434. Cambridge, Mass. &
London: Harvard University Press.
Huxley, T. 1977. The Crayfish: An Introduction to the Study of Zoology. Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press [New York 1880].
Jones, W.H.S. (ed., trans.). 1923. Hippocrates. Vol. 2: The Sacred Disease. London & Cambridge, Mass.: William Heinemann and Harvard University
Press.
Jouanna, J. 2003. Hippocrate. Tome 2, 3e partie: La maladie sacrée. Paris: Les
Belles Lettres.
Lennox, J.G. 1983. ‘Aristotle’s lantern.’ JHS 103:147-151.
Lennox, J.G. 1985. ‘Theophrastus on the limits of teleology.’ In Fortenbaugh et al., 143-163.
Lewin, L. 1920. Die Gifte in der Weltgeschichte. Berlin: Springer.
Lloyd, G.E.R. 1979. Magic, Reason and Experience: Studies in the Origin and
Development of Greek Science. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Lloyd-Jones, H. (ed., trans.). 1996. Sophocles: Fragments. Cambridge, Mass. &
London: Harvard University Press.
Lund, J. & Gabrielsen, V. 2005. ‘A fishy business. Transport amphorae of
the Black Sea region as a source for the trade in fish and fish products in
the Classical and Hellenistic periods.’ In T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.), Ancient
26
Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region, 161-170. Aarhus: University
of Aarhus Press.
MacDowell, D.M. 1978. The Law of Classical Athens. London & Ithaca, New
York: Thames & Hudson, and Cornell University Press.
Manniche, L. 1999. Sacred Luxuries: Fragrance, Aromatherapy and Cosmetics in
Ancient Egypt. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.
Nachmanson, E. (ed.). 1918. Erotiani Vocum Hippocraticarum collectio. Göteborg: Eranos.
Nussbaum, M. 1996. ‘Aristotle.’ In OCD3 1996:165-169.
O’Brien, J.M. 1994. Alexander the Great: The Invisible Enemy. London & New
York: Routledge.
Olson, S.D. & Sens, A. 2000. Archestratos of Gela: Greek Culture and Cuisine in
the Fourth Century BCE. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.
Parker, R. 1983. Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Polunin, O. 1969. Flowers of Europe. Oxford & New York: Oxford University
Press.
Pope, M.H. (trans., comm.). 1977. Song of Songs. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday.
Preus, A. 1988. ‘Drugs and sex in HP 9: a translation of Theophrastus. HP
9.18.3-11’ in his ‘Drugs and psychic states in Theophrastus’ Historia
Plantarum 9.8-20.’ In Fortenbaugh and Sharples 1988:76-99.
Retief, F.P. & Cilliers, L. 2005. ‘The death of Alexander the Great.’ In Health
and Healing, Disease and Death in the Graeco-Roman World, 14-28. Bloemfontein: University of the Free State.
Reynolds, J.E.F. (ed.). 1982. Martindale: The Extra Pharmacopoeia. 28th ed.
London: The Pharmaceutical Press.
Ross, D. 1949. Aristotle. 5th ed. London: Methuen.
Ross, W.D. & Fobes, F.H. (edd., trans., comm.).1982. Theophrastus: Metaphysics. Hildesheim: Georg Olms [Oxford: Clarendon Press. 1929].
Rusten, J. 2002. ‘Theophrastus: Characters.’ In J. Rusten & I.C. Cunningham
(edd., trans.). Theophrastus: Characters. Herodas: Mimes. Sophron and Other Mime
Fragments, 5-178. 3rd ed. Cambridge, Mass. & London: Harvard University
Press.
Scarborough, J. 1978. ‘Theophrastus on herbals and herbal remedies.’ Journal
of the History of Biology 11:353-384.
Scarborough, J. 1985. ‘Galen’s dissection of the elephant.’ Koroth 8.11-12:123134.
Scarborough, J. 1991. ‘The pharmacology of sacred plants, herbs, and roots.’
In C.A. Faraone & D. Obbink (edd.), Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and
Religion, 138-174. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
27
Scarborough, J. 1996a. ‘Botany.’ In OCD3 1996:255-256.
Scarborough, J. 1996b. ‘Pharmacology.’ In OCD3 1996:1154-1155.
Schmidt, M. (ed.). 1965. Hesychii Alexandrini Lexicon, vol. 4. Amsterdam:
Hakkert [Halle 1864].
Schmitt, W.L. 1965. Crustaceans. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Sharples, R.W. 1994. Theophrastus of Eresus: Sources for his Life, Writings, Thought
and Influence: Commentary. Vol. 5: Sources on Biology. Leiden & New York: E.J.
Brill.
Sider, D. 2002. ‘On On Signs.’ In Fortenbaugh & Wöhrle 2002:99-111.
Sollenberger, M.G. 1988. ‘Identification of titles of botanical works of
Theophrastus.’ In Fortenbaugh & Sharples 1988:14-24.
Stannard, J. 1974. ‘Squill in ancient and medieval Materia Medica, with
special reference to its employment for dropsy.’ Bulletin of the New York
Academy of Medicine 50:684-713.
Stratton, G.M. (ed., trans.). 1964. Theophrastus and the Greek Physiological
Psychology before Aristotle. Amsterdam: E.J. Bonset [London: George Allen &
Unwin. 1917].
Sullivan, J. 2001. ‘A note on The Death of Socrates.’ CQ 51:608-610.
Théodoridès, J. 1980. ‘Considerations on the medical use of marine invertebrates.’ In M. Sears & D. Merriman (edd.), Oceanography: The Past, 734-39.
New York & Berlin: Springer.
Thomas, R. 1989. Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, D.W. 1947. A Glossary of Greek Fishes London: Oxford University
Press.
Thorndike, L. 1923-1958. A History of Magic and Experimental Science During the
First Thirteen Centuries of our Era, 8 vols. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Usher, G. 1974. A Dictionary of Plants Used by Man. London: Constable.
Van der Eijk, P.J. (ed., trans., comm.). 2000-2001. Diocles of Carystus, 2 vols.
Leiden & Boston: E.J. Brill.
Wendel, C. (ed.). 1967. Scholia in Theocritum vetera. Stuttgart: Teubner [Leipzig
1914].
White, S. 2002. ‘Opuscula and opera in the catalogue of Theophrastus’
Works.’ In Fortenbaugh & Wöhrle 2002:9-38.
Whitteridge, G. (ed., trans.). 1959. William Harvey’s De Motu Locali Animalium.
Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press.
Whitteridge, G. (ed., trans.). 1964. The Anatomical Lectures of William Harvey.
Prelectiones Anatomie Universalis De Musculis. Edinburgh & London: E.S.
Livingstone.
28
Wöhrle, G. 1985. Theophrasts Methode in seinen botanischen Schriften. Amsterdam:
B.R. Grüner.
Willuhn, G. 2004. ‘Agni casti fructus/Chaste Tree fruit (AHP), Agnus castus
(BHP).’ In M. Wichtl (ed.). Herbal Drugs and Phytopharmaceuticals, 7-10. (3rd
ed., trans. of 4th German ed. by J.A. Brinckmann & M.P. Lindenmaier).
Stuttgart: Medpharm.
Wimmer, F. (ed.). 1866. Theophrasti Eresii Opera. Paris: Didot.
Winsor, M.P. 1976. Starfish, Jellyfish, and the Order of Life. New Haven &
London: Yale University Press.
[email protected]
29