Hide browse bar Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the line to jump to another position:
This text is part of:
Table of Contents:
1 "The work of his own hands," according to Hesychius.
2 "Admiration of man." It is impossible to say what plant is meant under this name, but the pæony, Pæonia officinalis, has been suggested; also the Tropæolum majus. Desfontaines queries whether it may not he the Cæsalpinia pulcherrima, a native of the East. Some authors, Fée says, have identified it with the "Moly" of Homer.
3 So called from Achæmenes, the ancestor of the Persian kings. Fée thinks that it was a variety of the Euphorbia antiquorum, or else a night- shade.
4 "Food for the gods"
5 See B. xii. c. 30; also the Introduction to Vol. III.
6 "Venerable" or "majestic."
7 "Hard as a diamond."
8 The Spina Ariana is mentioned in B. xii. c. 18.
9 See B. xx. c. 65, where a plant is mentioned by this name.
10 Dalechamps thinks that an Euphorbia is meant under this name.
11 "Serpent-plant." Fée thinks that a hemlock may possibly be meant, or perhaps the Arum serpentaria; see c. 93 of this Book.
12 "Brightness of the sea." A narcotic plant, Fée thinks, probably a night-shade.
13 Hardouin suggests "potamitis," river-plant.
14 It is not impossible that this may in reality be an allusion to the. effects of opium, or of hasheesh.
15 "Messenger of the gods," apparently.
16 "Laughing leaves." Possibly, Fée thinks, the Ranunculus philonotis, the Herba Sardoa or Sardonic plant of Virgil, known by some authorities as the Apium risus, or "laughing parsley." Desfontaines suggests that hemp (prepared in the form of hasheesh) is meant.
17 "Convivial" plant. Desfontaines identifies it with the Areca catechu, which is chewed in India for the benefit of the teeth and stomach, and as a sweetener of the breath.
18 "Brother" plant.
19 "Bride of Dionysus or Bacchus."
20 "Sun-flower." Not the plant, however, known to us by that name.
21 "Beauty of the sun," apparently.
22 "Mixture of Hermes," apparently.
23 Previously mentioned in this Chapter.
24 As Fée remarks, it has been a notion in comparatively recent times, that it is possible to procreate children of either sex at pleasure.
25 The "bashful" plant. An Acacia, Fée thinks; see B. xiii. c. 19. The Mimosa casta, pudica, and sensitiva, have similar properties: the Sensitive Plant is well known in this country.
26 Fée queries whether this may not be the Silene muscipula of Lin- næus, the fly-trap.
27 The "wine-tamer."
28 Hardouin thinks that he alludes to the Grammarian Apion. Dalechamps thinks that it is either Apion or Apollodorus.
29 The "returning" plant. Fée says that the Sedum Telephium of Linnæus, or orpine, is called in the dictionaries by this name. He queries whether it may not be the Sedum anacampseros, or evergreen orpine, as Hesychius says that it continues to live after being taken up from the earth; a peculiarity, to some extent, of the house-leek.
30 He probably alludes to his remarks upon Magic, in Books xxix. and xxx.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.
View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.
- Cross-references to this page
(1):
- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), THEMISCY´RA
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (3):