2 HISTORY OF BOTANY. 



inquiries about tliem, but described them all like a philo- 

 soplier, and demonstrated his exquisite knowledge of their 

 several properties."* Whether Josephus had any further 

 authority than is to be found in the Bible is doubtful. We 

 are told that the wisdom of Solomon " excelled the wisdom 

 of the children of the east, and all the wisdom of Egypt," 

 from which we may infer that similar knowledge was widely 

 spread. This period was about b. c. 1000. Besides the use 

 of plants as timber, food, and medicine, they probably also 

 played a considerable part in the composition of philters 

 and charms, and in other mysteries of sorcery. 



§ 2. Early Greeks. 



The traditional history of the science of medicine among 

 the Greeks, if we could accept it as of much value, extends 

 further back than the time of Solomon, for ^sculapius, the 

 celebrated, though mythical, physician of antiquity, accom- 

 panied, we are told, the Argonautic expedition (b. c. 1263), 

 and was considered so skilled in the medicinal power of 

 plants, that he was called the inventor as well as the god of 

 medicine. 



The most ancient writings on plants that have come down 

 to us are those of Hippocrates, who mentions the uses of 

 two hundred and forty. He was born at Cos, a small island 

 in the Grecian archipelago, b. c. 459. He studied physic 

 diligently and attentively, improving himself by reading the 

 tablets in the temples of the gods, where each individual 

 had written down the diseases under which he had laboured, 

 and the means by which he had recovered. He delivered 

 Athens from a dreadful pestilence, and was publicly rewarded 

 with a golden crown, and the privileges of a citizen of 

 Athens. Hippocrates openly declared the measures he had 



" Antiquities, Book viii., chap. ii. 



