BOOK XXV. V. 11-14 



of ancient learning, while expressing in several 

 passages great admiration for Circe, gives the prize 

 for herbs to Egypt, even thoiigh at that time the 

 irrigated Egypt of today did not yet exist, for it was 

 formed afterwards by the alluvial mud of the river. 

 At any rate he says " that Egyptian herbs in great 

 number were given by the wife of the king to the 

 Helen of his tale, including that celebrated 

 nepenthes, which brought forgetfulness and remission 

 of sorrow,'' to be administered especially by Helen to 

 all mortals. But the tirst of all those known to tra- 

 dition to pubhsh anything about botany carefully was 

 Orpheus ; after him Musaeus and Hesiod, as we have 

 said,'' expressed great admiration for the plant called 

 poUum ; Orpheus and Hesiod recommended fumiga- 

 tions. Homer mentions by name other plants also, 

 which I shall speak of in their appropriate places. 

 After him the celebrated philosopher Pythagoras 

 was the first to compose a book on the properties of 

 plants, assigning their original discovery to Apollo, 

 Aesculapius and the immortal gods generally ; 

 Democritus also composed a similar work. Both of 

 them visited the Magi of Persia, Arabia, Ethiopia 

 and Egypt, and so amazed were the ancients at these 

 books that they positively asserted <* even unbehevable 

 statements. Xanthus, who wrote books on history, 

 relates in the first of them that a young snake, 

 which had been killed, was restored to Ufe by his 

 father, who used a plant called by Xanthus baUs, and 

 that the same plant brought back to Ufe one Tylo, 

 whom the snake had kiUed. Juba too records that 

 a man in Arabia was restored to Ufe by means 

 of a plant. Democritus said, and Theophrastus 

 beUeved him, that there was a plant which, carried by 



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