BOOK XX. Li. 133-136 



one acetabulum, and the leaves pounded or chewed 

 are ajjplied with honey and salt, or after boiling with 

 vinegar and.pitch. It is said that any besmeared 

 with its juice, and even those haviug it on their 

 persons, are never stung by these poisonous creatures, 

 and that serpents avoid the fumes that come from 

 burning rue. Its most efficient form is the wild 

 root taken with wine. Authorities add that this 

 root is more efficacious if the draught be taken out 

 of doors. Pythagoras divided rue also into (a) 

 niale, with smaller leaves and of a grass-green 

 colour, and (6) female, with more luxuriant leaves 

 and more colour. He also thought it iniurious to 

 the eyes, wrongly, since engravers aud painters use 

 rue as food, with bread or cress, for the sake of their 

 eyes; wild goats also, they say, eat it to improve 

 their vision. Many have dispelled dimness by 

 anointing the eyes with its juice added to Attic 

 l.oney or to the milk of a woman who has just borne 

 a male child, or even by touching the corners of the 

 eyes with the pure juice. Ilue applied with pearl 

 barley reheves fluxes from the eyes ; taken in wine 

 or appHed with vinegar and rose oil, headaches hke- 

 wise ; if however the headache be chronic, barley flour 

 and vinegar shoukl be the other ingredients. The 

 same plant soon reUeves indigestion, flatulence and 

 chronic pains of the stomach. It opens the womb, 

 and corrects displacement of it, if apphed in honey 

 to the whole abdomen and cliest ; added to figs and 

 boiled down to one half it is administered in wine 

 in cases of dropsy. In this form it is also taken for 

 pains in the chest, sides and loins, for coughs and 

 asthma, for complaints of the lungs, hver and kidneys, 

 and for cold shivers. To prevent the after-effects 



79 



