BOOK XII. xxxvii. 73-75 



XXXVII. Arabia also still boasts of her ladanum.« ^um- 

 A considerable number of writers have stated that 

 this becomes aromatic entirely by accident and 

 o^\ing to an injury : goats, they say, an animal very 

 dcstructive of foliage in general, but especially fond 

 of scented shrubs, as if understanding the prices they 

 fetch, crop the stalks of the shoots, which swell with 

 an extremely sweet fiuid, and wipe off with the 

 nasty shaggy hair of their beards the juice dropping 

 from the stalks in a random mixture, and this 

 forms lumps in the dust and is baked by the sun ; 

 and that is the reason why goats' hairs are found in 

 ladanum ; though they say that this does not take 

 place anywhere else but in the territory of the 

 Nabataei, a people from Arabia who border on Syria. 

 The more recent of the authorities call this substance 

 < storbon,' and say that the trees in the Arabs' 

 forests are broken by the goats when browsing, and 

 so the juice sticks to their hairs ; but that the true 

 ladanum belongs to the island of Cyprus — to mention 

 the various kinds of scents incidentally even though 

 not in the order of their locaUties of provenance. 

 It is reported that the same thing takes place there 

 too, and that there is a substance called oesypum 

 which sticks to the beards and shaggy knees of the 

 goats, but that it is produced by their nibbhng down 

 the flower of the ivy while they are browsing in the 

 morning, when Cyprus is wet with dew; and that 

 subsequently when the sun has driven away the 

 mist the dust cUngs to their damp fieeces and thus 

 ladanum can be combed out of them. 



Some people call the plant in Cyprus from which Locai 

 ladanum is produced ' leda,' as in fact these call ^i^anutn. 

 the scent ' ledanum '; they say that its fat juices 



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