BOOK XXV. I. 3-III. 6 



of every root and the uses to which can be put mere 

 slim threads of vegetation, and tui'ning to healthful 

 purposes that which the very beasts refuse to touch 

 as food. 



II. This subject was less popular with our country- Roman 

 men than it should have been considering their vast "^e^Zhj^t 

 appetite for all things useful and good ; the first 

 student of it, and for a long time the only one, being 



that same Marcus Cato, the master of all excellent 

 crafts, who merely touched briefly the subject, without 

 neglecting even veterinary medicine. After him one 

 only of our distinguished men has tried his hand at 

 the subject, Gaius Valgius, an author of approved 

 scholarship, who left unfinished a work dedicated to 

 the late emperor Augustus, beginning also his preface 

 with a devout prayer that his Imperial Highness 

 should always, and above all others, be the healer of 

 every human ill. 



III. Before Valgius the only Roman who had 

 written on this subject, as far as I can discover, was 

 Pompeius Lenaeus, a freedman of Pompeius Magnus, 1 

 in whose day, I find, scientiiic treatment of it 



tirst found a home among lloman students. For it 

 was Mithridates, the greatest king of his time, whom MHhridau 

 Pompeius vanquished, that was, we know by 

 evidence as well as by report, a more attentive 

 investigator of life's problems " than any of 

 those born before him. By his unaided eiforts he 

 thought out the plan of drinking poison daily, after 

 first taking remedies, in order that sheer custom 1 



might render it harmless ; he was the first ^ to ' 



discover the various antidotes, one of which is even 

 known by his name ; he also discovered the mixing 

 with antidotes of the blood of Pontic ducks, because 



139 



