456 PLINY'S NATURAL HISTOBY. [Book XXII. 



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



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

 in Egypt, caelia anci cerea in Spain, cervesia 76 and numerous 

 liquors in Gaul and other provinces. The yeast 77 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 with the 

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



SUMMARY. Remedies, narratives, and observations, nine 

 hundred and six. 



AUTHORS QUOTED. All those mentioned in the preceding 

 Book ; and, in addition to them, Chrysermus, 78 Eratosthenes, 79 

 and Alcaeus. 80 



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

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

 not to use it during the Passover. 



77 "Spuma;" literally, "foam." 



78 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. Puls. B. iv. c. 10, and an anecdote of him is mentioned by Sextus 

 Empiricus. 



79 See end of B. ii. 



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

 ^Eolian 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. 



