RANDOLPH. — MANDRAGORA IN FOLK-LORE AND MEDICINE. 491 



of digging ceremonies employed in connection with other plants. Three 

 circles are made with a sword hefore digging xiris* Facing the west while 

 digging is not altogether novel, for hellebore was dug facing east,^ and 

 Theophrastus himself observes that the custom of repeating aphrodisiac 

 formulas in digging mandragora is similar to the repetition of curses in 

 sowing cuminiim.t 



Theophrastus and Pliny are the only classic writers who mention a 

 digging ceremony in connection with mandragora, and we evidently have 

 in their account the form of the story as far as it pertained to this plant 

 up to at least 100 A. d. But by the fifth century it had taken on some 

 new features. In the Juliana Auicia manuscript of Dioscorides — written 

 in that century — appears a miniature which represents the Goddess of 

 Invention, Heuresis, offering the mandragora to Dioscorides and holding 

 a dead § dog || by a cord. 



Here we see transferred to the mandragora the substance of two very 

 similar digging stories told by Josephus and Aelian about two other plants, 

 which, though bearing different names, were probably identical. H 



Josephus ** says that a place called Baaras, near the Dead Sea, brings 

 forth a peculiar plant called by the same name. Its color is fiery, and 



* 9. 8. 7. Circles (presumably three) were made about hellebore also: 9. 8. 8. 



t 9. 8. 8. Lobeck, Aglaophot., 915'', interprets this looking toward the west as 

 an act of reverence to the chthonic gods. What Theoplirastus says in the section 

 preceding this about the custom of depositing honey-cakes in the ground as a pro- 

 pitiatory offering (fieKmoinas avTi/xfidWeiv ixiaQ6v) upon digging asclepieum and 

 xiris supports this view. 



t 9. 8. 8. 



§ According to Cohn (Friedlaender, Sittengeech.^, vol. 1, p. 576), ein erdrosselter 

 Hund. But there seems to be uo mention anywhere of the strangulation of tlie dog. 

 Tlie story was rather that the dog's death was caused by the terrible cry uttered by 

 the plant when taken from the ground. See below, pp. 493 and 495. 



The miniature in this manuscript is reproduced by Lambecius, Comm. de Bibl. 

 Caes. Vind., pars II, tab. ad p. 211. Other interesting figures representing the 

 mandragora and the dog used to pull it are reproduced from manuscripts and 

 Anglo-Saxon printed editions of pseudo-Apuleius, by J. F. Payne, English Medi- 

 cine in the Anglo-Saxon Times (London, 1904), figures 3-6, at the end of the book. 



II According to Th. von Heldreich, Nutzpfl. Griechenlands, p. 36 f., the belief 

 exists in Greece to-day that the person who digs a mandragora root must die, and 

 it is therefore only to be pulled with the aid of a dog tied to the upper part of the 

 root. Von Luschan, p. 728, testifies to a present-day belief in Syria regarding the 

 danger attending the digging of the root. 



IF Langkavel, Rotanik der spiit. Griech., p. 33, identifies haaras and atjlaophotis as 

 Paeonia officimdis, L. 



** Beil. lud., 7. 6. a 



