\ 
NAMES FoR ASTER ATTICUS 65 
Form Aoviovd:, a flower, Contopoulos, 1868. 
Form jovdovédx, which has been cited as a mod. Gr. specific 
name, “is not so but means ‘one little flower,’ and is what any 
Greek girl might say if anyone asked her what blossom she held 
in her hand,” Aftica. 
Compare also mod. Gr. Aovddx, indigo (Contopoulos, 1868). 
Compare also form AovAdxov which appears first, it seems, in 
Stephen Magnetes,* about 1100 A.D., in Latin version as Lu- 
lacium and Lulakion: supposed by Meyer to mean Scolymos be- 
-cause of a form dy pzodovddany (in Dufresne’s Glossary of Mediaeval 
Greek) attributed to Scolymos or Artichoke. — Aovddxcov, however, 
requires to have its similarity to Persian Zi/d&, lilac, explained. 
Asraraticon.—Arabic form of Aster Atticus, Matthiolt, 
1560. 
Aster Articus (aster acticus, Ortus, Caesalpino; atratisus, 
Avicenna), the true Aster Attick, Parkinson, 1640. This binomial 
first occurs in Dioscorides, bk. 4, c. 118, and in the Euporista at- 
tributed to Dioscorides, bk. 2,c. 115. Gorraeus, about 1550, put 
the reason for the specific name in these words: “ quod autem in 
Atheniensi agro optimo et frequens nasceretur, ’Attexd¢ appellata 
fuit.”’ 
Similar geographic binomials in Dioscorides are his Acantha 
Arabica, which Sibthorp thought to be Oxopordon Arabicum L. ; 
and his Batos Idaia, Bdro¢ ’J0ata, “ quia copiose in Ida ‘nascitur ;”’ 
= Rubus Idaeus, L.; D. bk. 3, ¢. 38. 
The development of such a binomial is seen arrested just short 
of the preceding stage in Damocrates, the bucolic poet, in at least 
four different examples, as his ofe%xov cio ’Atcexys,y “ of the 
hyssop of Attica.’’ 
Binomials similar to his Aster Atticus, but not geographical, 
are quite numerous in Dioscorides and include as examples, some 
of them transliterations from the Latin,—(in this partial list I pre- 
cede the Greek form by its Latin translation) : 
Symphytum petraeus, Sbpgvtoy netpatoy, 4, co 
: aliud (another) ddhov, ch te 
* See Meyer, iii., 375 
+Grk. Bucolic Poets, edn. Didot, 115, line 71; cf. line 25, and pp. 12%; #2]. 
