ASTER HIsTory 11 
rences known to-day, though the fortune of the papyrus-hunter 
may still unearth some one of the many antecedent references that 
doubtless once existed. 
The mention of the Asteriscus occurs in the History of Plants 
by Theophrastus, the “father of botany,” written perhaps about 
320 B. C.; stating, book 14, chapter 13, of certain small taper 
seeds that they resemble those of the asteriscus but are more slen- 
der. His casual manner of reference indicates that the plant and 
its name were no new thing to the Greeks of that day. His use 
of the diminutive also suggests that the name in the positive form 
had been long familiar, for it is a mark of the senescence of a 
word’s life that it should drop into the diminutive ; like the use 
of swéacute for acute or Augustulus for Augustus. 
Allusions by the Greek and Roman poets are the next refer- 
ences that have come downto us. They bring us the first sur- 
viving trace of the power of the asters to charm, in the tribute paid 
them by the Ionian poet Nicander, about 160 B.C., saying of his 
datépa pwrttlovta, 
Whoe’er indeed you may be that may gather the luminous Aste 
Or pluck the Helenium, place them on the roadside shrines of a gods,— 
Yea, even on the images wreath them, and that when first you behold them ; 
Pluck again and again these enchantments beautiful, and pluck the chrysanthemums, 
And lilies, and lay them as garlands on the tombs of the weary at rest. 
First to draw and paint the Aster seems to have been Cratevas 
the Greek herbalist, perhaps 100 B.C., whose custom was to 
paint figures of plants and write their names and properties to ac- 
company each figure. Part of his credulous lore respecting the 
properties of his Aster has come down to us; the original figure, 
which doubtless accompanied it once, has long since perished ; 
but something of its semblance after numerous copyings, probably 
still survives in certain illustrated manuscripts of Dioscorides. 
Vergil, perhaps seventy years later, followed with the chief tri- 
bute which the Aster was to receive from Latin poetry, and Colu- 
mella, after another seventy years, bestowed on it its chief tribute 
from Latin prose. Soon followed the great treatises of Dioscorides 
and Pliny, the Greek physician and the Roman naturalist writing 
at nearly the same time, the Roman perhapsa dozen years the 
later, both including the Aster among their medical plants, and 
