456 pltnt's natural histoet. [Book XXIL 



CHAP. 82. THE USE MADE OF THE TEAST OF ZYTHUM. 



Different beverages, too, are made from the cereals, zytlium 

 in Egypt, cselia and cerea in Spain, cervesia'^ and numerous 

 liquors in Gaul and other provinces. The yeast'"' of all of these 

 is used by women as a cosmetic for the face. — But as we are 

 now speaking of beverages, it will be the best plan to pass on 

 to the various uses of wine, and to make a beginning witli the 

 vine of our account of the medicinal properties of the trees. 



• 



ScMMAKY. — Remedies, naiTatives, and observations, nine 

 hundred and six. 



Authors quoted. — All those mentioned in the preceding 

 Book ; and, in addition to them, Chrysermus,"^ Eratosthenes,'' 

 and Alcaeus.®" 



'6 As to the beers of the ancients, see B. xiv. c. 29. Very few par- 

 ticulars are known of them ; but we learn from the Talmud, where it is 

 called zeithnm. that zythum was an Egyptian beverage made of barley, wild 

 saflVon, and salt, in equal parts. In the Mishna, the Jews are enjoined 

 not to use it during the Passover. 



''' *'Spuma;" literally, •' foam." 



'^ A physician who lived, probably, at the end of the second or the be- 

 ginning of the first century B.C., as he was one of the tutors of Heraclides 

 of Krythrae. His definition of the pulse has been preserved by Galen, De 

 Differ. Puis. B. iv. c. 10, and an anecdote of him is mentioned by Sextua 

 Empiricus. 



" See end of B. ii. 



^^ A native of Mytilene, in the island of Lesbos, the earliest of the 

 ^olian lyric poets. He flourished at the latter end of the seventh cen- 

 tury B.C. Of his Odes only a few fragments, with some Epigrams, have 

 come down to us. 



