BOOK XX. Lxxvi. 203-Lxxviii. 206 



next best test is to put it in a lamp, when it should 

 burn with a bright, clear flame, and smell only when 

 it has gone out ; adulterated opium does not behave 

 in this fashion. Adulterated opium is also harder 

 to Hght, and is continually going out. A further 

 test of pure opium is by water, on which it floats as 

 a light cloud, while the impure gathers into bhsters. 

 But especially wonderful is the fact that pure opium is 

 detected by the summer sun. For pure opium sweats 

 and melts until it becomes Hke freshly gathered juice. 

 Mnesides thinks that opium is best kept by adding 

 the seed of henbane, others by putting it in beans. 



LXXVII. Intermediate between the cultivated 

 poppy and the wild is a third kind, for though growing 

 on cultivated land it is self-sown ; we have called it 

 rhoeas or roving poppy." Some gather it and eat it 

 straight away with the whole calyx. It acts as a 

 purge ; five heads boiled in three heminae of wine 

 also induce sleep. 



LXXVIII. Of the wild poppy one kind is called "'"'"^'^ 

 ceratitis. Black-seeded, a cubit high, with a thick 

 root covered with a hard skin, it has a Httle calyx 

 curved Hke a Httle hoi-n. Its leaves *• are smaller and 

 thinner than those of the other wild varieties. The 

 seed is small, ripening at harvest ; half an acetabulum 

 of it, taken in honey wine, acts as a purge. The 

 pounded leaves with oil cure eye-ulcers of beasts of 

 burden. Its root, in the proportion of one acetabulum 

 to two sextarii of water, boiled down to one half, is 

 given for complaints of the loins and Hver. Its leaves 

 appHed in honey are a cure for carbuncles. This 

 variety is called glaucion ^ by some and paraHum ^ 

 by others, for it grows within reach of the sea breezes 

 or in alkaHne soils. 



119 



