10 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



from the fifth century, though no copy so ancient as this is in 

 existence now. The name Apuleius Platonicus is possibly 

 fictitious and nothing is known of the writer, who was, of 

 course, distinct from Apuleius Madaurensis, the author of the 

 Golden Ass. The Saxon translation of this herbal (now in the 

 British Museum) is supposed to date from A.D. 1000-1050, and 

 belongs to the school of yElfric of Canterbury. The frontispiece 

 is a coloured picture in which Plato is represented holding a 

 large volume which is being given him by ^Esculapius and the 

 Centaur, and on the other side of the page is a blue circle spotted 

 with white and red, within which is the name of the book : 

 " Herbarium Apuleii Platonici quod accepit ab Escolapio et 

 Chirone centauro magistro Achillis." The book consists of 132 

 chapters, in each of which a herb is described, and there are 

 accompanying illustrations of the herbs. Throughout the book 

 there are also remarkable pictures of snakes, scorpions and 

 unknown winged creatures. It has been pointed out that the 

 figures of herbs are obviously not from the original plants, but 

 are copied from older figures, and these from others older still, 

 and one wonders what the original pictures were like. It is 

 interesting to think that perhaps the illustrations in this Saxon 

 herbal are directly descended, so to speak, from the drawings of 

 Cratevas, 1 Dionysius or Metrodorus, of whom Pliny tells us 

 ' They drew the likeness of herbs and wrote under them their 

 effects." The picture of the lily is very attractive in spite of 

 the fact that the flowers are painted pale blue. The stamens in 



says that he found this MS. in the library of the monastery of Monte Cassino. 

 In the first impression the book is dedicated to Cardinal de Gonzaga ; in the 

 second impression to Cardinal de Ruvere. (The copy in the British Museum 

 is of the second impression.) In this small quarto volume the illustrations 

 are rough cuts. It is interesting to remember that these are the earliest 

 known printed figures of plants. The printed text contains a large number 

 of Greek and Latin synonyms which do not appear in the Saxon translation. 

 Subsequent editions were printed in 1528 (Paris) and in the Aldine Collection 

 of Latin medical writers, 1547 (Venice). 



1 Cratevas is said to have lived in the first century B.C. Pliny, Dioscorides 

 and Galen all quote him. 



