pflanzen, Fungi’’) translates ‘‘boletos’’ with ‘‘Kaiser- 
schwiimme’’, 1.e. Amanita caesarea, for it is commonly 
assumed that these were Claudius’ favored dish. When 
Plinius points out that mushrooms (whatever kind he 
may have had in mind), though being rich and choice 
food, may at times be dangerous to a person’s health he 
obviously means this in an ironical sense, which proves 
that, at least, he must have been a humorous character. 
More humorous indeed than e.g. A. Forcellinus who, 
with reference to the above quotation from Plinius, 
writes in his ‘“Totius Latinitatis Lexicon”’: 
“Boletus i, m., genus fungi omnium optimi, sed simul maxime 
periculosi, ut qui facillime venenum attrahit, ut Plin. 22, 46, 4, os- 
tendit, uovolo, boleto.’’ 
Forcellinus recognized that Plinius had not been 
speaking of a poisonous mushroom. But since Plinius 
wrote that it is dangerous to eat them, Forcellinus 
concluded that they must easily ‘‘attract’’ poison. 
The assumption that the ‘boleti’ of the Romans are 
the ‘Amanitae’ of today is—as we see it—not sufficiently 
supported by the dictionaries, according to which the 
word ‘boleti’ appears to have four meanings: 
1. Mushrooms quite generally. 
2. Edible mushrooms, including Amanitae as well as 
non-Amanitae. 
3. Possibly several particularly tasty edible mush- 
rooms. 
4. The two particularly tasty mushrooms Psalliota 
campestris and Amanita caesarea. 
Also, there is no reason to assume that ‘boletus” was 
a special term for poisonous mushrooms. This weakens 
the probability that in any given context the word ‘bo- 
letus’ might be meant to designate 4. phalloides. 
If we can trust Tacitus, Agrippina wanted Locusta 
to mix a poison which was to fulfill two requirements: 
[ 215 ] 
