PLINY: NATURAL HISTORY 



BOOK XXIV 



I. NoT even the woods and the wilder face of The sym- 

 Nature are without medicines, for there is no place anh'p?^if,i"s'i!( 

 where that holy Mother of all things did " not ^oinre. 

 distribute remedies for the heaUng of mankind, so 

 that even the very desert was made a drug store,'' at 

 every point occurring wonderful examples of that 

 well-known antipatliy and sympathy. The oak and 

 the oHve are parted by such inveterate hatred that, 

 if the one be planted in the hole from which the other 

 has been dug out, they die, the oak indeed also dying 

 if planted near the wahiut. Deadly too is the 

 hatred between the cabbage and the vine ; the very 

 vegetable that keeps the vine at a distance itself 

 withers away when planted opposite cyclamen or 

 wikl marjoram. Moreover, trees it is said, that are 

 now old and being felled are more difficult to cut 

 down, and decay more quickly, if man's hand touch 

 them before the axe. There is a behef that beasts of 



* 1 think that medicina here means the shop or booth 

 {officina) where the physician prescribed and sold his medicines. 

 Cf. Pliny XXIX. § 12 : Cassius Hemina , . . auctor est primwn 

 e medicis venisse Romam . . . Archagathum . . . eique . . . 

 lahernam in compito Acilio emptam. This sense occurs in 

 Plautus, and Pliny, in a rather poetic passage, may well have 

 so used it metaphorically. 



