INTRODUCTION 



B.C., a famous herbalist {pit^oroiios) mentioned by 

 both Pliny and Dioscorides. There is an interesting 

 (and genuine) fragment of Crateuas that can for- 

 tunately be compared with Dioscorides II. 176 and 

 Pliny XXI. § 164." Several phrases in Crateuas are 

 exactly, or almost exactly, the same as the corre- 

 sponding phrases in Dioscorides, so that it is certain 

 that the latter made full use of the material collected 

 by the former. It may be that Pliny, too, read 

 Crateuas, but he is not as close to Crateuas as is 

 Dioscorides in the passage under consideration, so 

 that some hold that Pliny got most of his informa- 

 tion from one Sextius Niger, who, as Pliny tells 

 us, wrote in Greek. A vet earlier physician and 

 herbalist, Diocles of Carystos, may be the original 

 source of all the later writers on materia medica. 

 .Speculation on such a point is useless, but our know- 

 ledge is sufficient to show that Pliny had access to 

 writings so similar to the work of Dioscorides that 

 the resemblances between the two authors can be 

 explained without supposing that Pliny was a 

 deceitful plagiarist. 



NOTE ON THE MaGI. 



The early history of the Magi is obscure, although 

 modern research ^ has done much to put the main 



" See the German translation of Dioscorides by J. Berendes 

 (Stuttgart, 1902), p. 8. See also Wellmann, Dioscorides Vol. 

 III. pp. 144-148, especially fr. 4 of Crateuas on p. 144. 



* See e.g. the article in Pauly s.v. magoi, and that in 

 Hastings' Encyclofedia of Religion and Ethirs. See also the 

 admirable summary in How and Wells' Commentary on 

 Herodotus Vol. I. Appendix viii, pp. 407-^10, and a most 

 interesting note by A. D. Nock in The Beginnings of Christianity, 

 Part I, by Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, pp. 164-188. 

 The •writer considers Apion to be Pliny's authority. 

 XX 



