Dicest OF ANCIENT BELIEF 55 
flowers to be taken into the right hand of the patient [inadvert- 
ence for /eft|.—Parkinson, 1640. 
There were other left-hand plants besides Aster ; of one of the 
chief, our verbena, Pliny remarks, ‘“ Peristereon must be taken up 
with the left hand,’ and so fixed did this belief become as to oc- 
casion for it the name Aristereon,* or “the left-hand plant par 
excellence,” from adptatepos, the left hand, Lat. sznistra. 
These associations of left-hand plants with good fortune agree 
with the Roman idea respecting divination, in which szmster = 
favorable, explained as ‘‘ because the Romans on these occasions 
turned the face towards the south and so had the eastern or fortu- 
nate side on the left, while the Greeks, turning to the north, had it 
on their right.”—-Harpers. But these plant associations of good 
fortune with the left trace to the Greek, where they ought, by this 
theory, to have been ominous of ill-fortune. 
Time of Gathering, or of Use-—Luna decrescente, cum erit in 
signo Virginis—Apuleius Platonicus. 
PROCURING SLEEP OR FORGETFULNESS 
The ancient Greeks ascribed to plants of stomachic properties 
the power of inducing sleep, or bringing good dreams but preventing 
nightmares, and of producing forgetfulness. When recommending 
Aster as stomachic, all this was doubtless implied to many. | The 
modern Greeks still hold firm faith in such plants ; as shown in the 
folk-poem cited by Rodd, t 271, 
**T shall cross the plain, the mountains, and ask the wild =, in them, 
Can they not find me a drug that will teach me to forget you 
Earlier Greeks had one plant which they named on account of 
this potency, the dyecpodoretoa, the dream-bestower. 
Modern Greek fairy-tales perpetuate the same idea; as in the 
story of “ The Princess who went to the Wars,” § where the Prince 
“opened the chamber-door and flung a sleeping-herb upon the 
* So named in the Orphics, in Aelian’s Natural History, and by Eustathius. 
t The beliefs of many had not even this foundation ; witness Pliny’s use of the 
cuckoo amulet to produce sleep, and the bat’s head re to prevent it (book 30, ¢. 48); 
and Democritus’ use of the chameleon to procure dre 
t The Customs and Lore of Modern Greece, Be Kemet Rodd, Lon. 1892. 
4 Geldart’s Folk-lore of Modern Greece, Lon. 
