BOOK XX. XXIII. 54-xxiv. 58 



with milk ; or if there be also spitting of blood or pus, 

 it is roasted under live ashes and taken with an equal 

 part of honey. For sprains and ruptures it is used 

 with salt and oil. With fat, however," it cures 

 suspected tumours. Mixed with sulphur and resin it 

 draws the pus from fistulas, with pitch extracting even 

 arrows. Leprous sores, hchen and freckly eruptions 

 are cleansed and cured by it and wild marjoram, or 

 by a liniment made out of its ash with oil and fish- 

 sauce. Used in this way it is also good for erysipelas. 

 Burnt to ash and mixed with honey it brings back to 

 the original colour parts that are black-and-blue or 

 livid. It is beHeved that epilepsy too is cured by 

 garlic taken in food and drink, and that one head of it, 

 taken in a dry wine with an obohis of silphium shakes 

 oif a quartan ague. Taken in another way, namely 

 boiled in broken beans and eaten with food until 

 health is restored, it cures a cough, and suppuration 

 of the chest, however severe. It induces sleep also, 

 and makes the body generally of a ruddier colour. 

 It is believed to act as an aphrodisiac, when pounded 

 with fresh coriander and taken in neat wine. Its 

 drawbacks are that it dulls the siglit, causes flatu- 

 lence, injures the stomach when taken too freely, 

 and creates thirst. In addition, mixed with emmer- 

 wheat * and added to their food it is good for poultry 

 to save them from the pip. Beasts of burden are said 

 to pass urine without pain, if their parts are treated 

 with pounded garlic. 



XXIV. The chief kind of lettuce growing wild is f^etiuce. 

 the one called goat-lettuce, which when thrown into 

 the sea kills immediately all the fish in the neigh- 

 bourhood. Its milk, or juice, when thickened and 

 then added to vinegar, in doses of two oboU to one 



35 



