BOOK XXI. Lxvin. 108-111 



special delicacy. There is a tradition that if asphodel 

 be planted before the ^ate of a country house it 

 keeps away the evil influences of sorcery. Homer " 

 also mentioned asphodel. Its root is like a navew 

 of moderate size, and no plant has more bulbs, 

 eighty being often grouped together. Theophras- 

 tus ** and the Greeks generally, beginning with 

 Pythagoras, have given the name of anthericus to 

 its stem, a cubit and often two cubits long, with 

 leaves like those of wild leek ; it is the root, that is 

 to say the bulbs, that they call asphodel. We of 

 Italy call this plant albucus," and anthericus " royal 

 spear ", the stem of which bears berries, and we 

 distinguish two kinds. Albucus has a stalk a cubit 

 long, large, without leaves and smooth, which Mago*^ 

 recommends shoukl be cut at the end of March or 

 the beginning of April, when the blossoming has 

 ceased but before its seed has begun to swell ; he 

 adds that the stalks should be split, and brought out 

 into the sun on the fourth day, and that of the 

 material so dried bundles should be made. The 

 same authority adds that the Greeks call oistos,*" the 

 plant which we include among sedge and call arrow. 

 He recommends that from the fifteenth of May to 

 the end of October it should be stripped of its skin 

 and dried in mild sunshine, and also that the second 

 kind of gladiolus, called cypiros, which too is a 

 marsh plant, should be cut down to the root through- 



■» See XVIII. § 22. 



' The 'pistana of Detlefsen can scarcely be right, an 

 accnsative being required, and the word is aTra^ Aeyd/xevov. 

 Weise's conjectiire as emended by Mayhof! is palaeographi- 

 cally easy, and olittos does mean " arrow," being found, 

 though rarely, in good prose. 



241 



