BOOK XXV. Lvii. 103-LV111. 104 



LVII. An agaric grows as a white fungus on trees Agarie. 

 around the Bosporus. A dose is four oboH crushed 

 and two cyathi of oxymel. The kind that grows in 

 Gaul " is considered of inferior strength ; further,'' 

 the male is firmer and more bitter — this kind 

 causes headaches — but the female is softer, and at 

 first its taste is sweet, but afterM'ards turns bitter.*' 



LVIII. Echios of either kind is Hke pennyroyal '^ ; Echios. 

 its foHage is used for chaplets. The dose is two 

 drachmae in four cyathi of wine ; Hkewise ^ with the 

 second kind, which is marked by a prickly down, and 

 also has Httle heads Hke a viper's ; this is taken in 

 wine and vinegar. Some give the name echios to 

 personata (" masked plant ") whose leaf is broader 

 than that of any kind,/and which bears large burs. 

 A decoction of the root of this is given with vinegar as a 



^ The MSS. give no variant, and only Jan among the 

 editors thinks that something ia wrong, or missing, here. 

 So I have done my best to make sense of Mayhoff 's text, but 

 I suspect, with Jan, that there is a lacuna after generis. The 

 missing words would be something giving the sense of: 

 contra serpentes (aspidas't) utilis. altera, " is good for the 

 poison of snakes (asps?). The first kind is like etc." Perhaps 

 a sleepy scribe was led astray by the hke endings of utilis 

 and siniilis. An allera to correspond to the item altera of the 

 next sentence is required, and some versions, including 

 Littre's, assume its presence. 



" The translators, so far as I have seen, omit item. I 

 think that it refers to the dosage, and means that the dose 

 of the second kind is two drachmae of the herb to four cyathi 

 of hquid; only the latter, as we see from the end of the sentence, 

 is wine and vinegar, not wine only. 



^ Apparently " of any other kind of echios". The Latin, 

 however, m any other context, would surely mean, " than any 

 other leaf (of any plant)," which is absurd. Perhaps there is 

 another lacuna here. The text of this whole chapter is odd, 

 and the last sentence, about henbane, seems out of place. 



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