520 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



8. Isidorus. This writer used as the chief source of the 17th book 

 of the Ortgines, in which the passage above quoted occurs, a Latin 

 translation of Dioscorides.* The section on mandragora is brief, contain- 

 ing nothing not found in Dioscorides except a few unimportant comments. 

 It is to be observed that, while the sentence on the use of the plant asau 

 anaesthetic seems to be simply an excerpt from Dioscorides, yet this is 

 the only medicinal use which the author thinks it worth while to mention. 



9. Pseudo-Apuleius. The authorship of this work is uncertain, and, 

 the chapter on mandragora is evidently an interpolation.! I have had 

 no means of ascertaining when it — the last chapter in* the work — 



* See Stadler, Archiv fiir Lat. Lexicog., 10, p. 403 ff. 



t It is a recognized fact that tliis work is interpolated in innumerable places 

 throughout ; certain parts of almost any chapter can be picked out as interpola- 

 tions (see Schanz, Rom. Litt., Teil 3, p. 114 f.). Tlie chapter on mandragora 

 stands apart from all the rest, and I am persuaded that it is a later addition to the 

 already interpolated work. 



From inforiuation given by Payne, English Medicine in the Anglo-Saxon Times 

 (London, 1904), p. 72 ff., it is evident that Anglo-Saxon versions of the pseudo- 

 Apuleian work present the chapter on mandragora in a form very different from 

 that which appears in Wechel's edition, giving many things that are not found 

 there, and omitting some that are. This goes still further to show that the latter 

 part of the work was tampered with. 



Several things have led me to this conclusion : (1) The chapter does not appear 

 in all the printed editions, which indicates that it is lacking in some of the manu- 

 scripts ; for example, the Basel edition of 1597 (where tlie De Medicaminibus 

 Herbarum is printed with the works of Apuleius of >\Iadaura) has no chapter on 

 mandragora ; in the Paris edition of 1529 (Wechel) it is the last chapter in the 

 book. So with various otiier editions: see Meyer, vol. 2, p. 316 ff. The informa- 

 tion about tire manuscripts contained in Koebert's dissertation (see footnote, p. 488, 

 for the title) goes to confirni tliis (see next footnote, p. 521). (2) The style of this 

 chapter as it appears in Wechel's edition differs in several points from tlie rest of 

 the work : (n) Here we have a connected description of the plant and its virtues, 

 without frequent repetition of the name ; elsewiiere the account of the virtues of 

 the plant under discussion is divided into several tituli (the term used by Acker- 

 mann ; see Koebert, p. IV, note), at the beginning of which the name of the plant 

 is almost invariably repeated, (b) There is no list of synonyms at the beginning 

 of this chapter, as tliere usually is elsewhere, [c) While conditional sentences with 

 si (like si (lahls . . . saniihiiur) are rare in the other chapters, this one has no less 

 than six si clauses. (3) Tlie interpolated plant descriptions throughout the rest of 

 the work show a marked resemblance to Dioscorides (see Rose, Ilermcs, 8 [1874], 

 p. 57, and Koebert, p. 39), while the description of the mandragora shows a wide 

 divergence from him ; it records the resemblance of tlie root to the human form, 

 says that its color is asiien {cinen'riiis). coin])ares the leaves of tlie " male " to those 

 of hlifnm, and of the "female" to those of lettuce. None of these tilings is stated 

 by Dioscorides or his interpolator. 



