BOOK XXV. V. 14-VI. 16 



the bird I have mentioned," forced out by its touch a 

 wedge driven into a tree by shepherds. Although 

 these tales are incredible, yet they fill us with 

 wonder, and force us to admit that there is still 

 much truth in them. Hence too I find that most 

 authorities hold that there is nothing which cannot 

 be achieved by the power of plants, but that the 

 properties of most are still unknoMTi. Among these 

 thinkers was Herophihis, famous in medicine, who 

 is reported to have said that certain plants are 

 perhaps beneficial even when merely trodden on. It 

 has been observed at any rate that wounds and 

 diseases get worse * on the arrival of people who 

 have made a journey on foot. 



VI. Such was the condition of medicine in the Medkinat 

 old days, all of it finding its way into the dialects '^ of modern 

 Greece. But the reason why more herbs are not '"'"^*- 

 famihar is because experience of them is confined to 

 ilHterate country-folk, who form the only class Hving 

 among them ; moreover nobody cares to look for them 

 when crowds of medical men are to be met every- 

 where. Many simples also, though their properties 

 have been discovei-ed, still lack names, for instance, 

 the plant I mentioned when deahng with the cultiva- 

 tion of crops,*^ which we know keeps all birds away if 

 buried at the corners of the cornfield. The most 



foot." Tliere is nothing unusual in the zeiigma of taking 

 both milnera and morbus with inflammari. Possibly superventu 

 has been misplaced by a scribe. 



"■ It is difficult to see why Pliny has used the plural. In the 

 first place there is no point in referring to dialects, and in the 

 second it is a misleading, if not inaccurate, remark. Most 

 (rreek medical works, at least down to the beginning of the 

 Alexandrine era, were written in an artificial variety of lonic. 

 AfterSOO b.c, the Koivri was commonly used. 



" See XVIII. § 160. 



147 



