HIPPOCRATES’ POLYOPHTHALMON 105 
in ancient Greek ; but without any recognized specialization as a 
plant-name.* 
The synonym Hyophthalmon.—Among the synonyms added 
to the received text of Dioscorides, is one for Aster which reads 
of 0& bogbadyoy, z. ¢., “some call it hyophthalmon” (pig’s-eye, 
sow's-eye or boar-eyes). This word seems to occur nowhere 
else in ancient or modern Greek except in quotations of this 
passage ; and indeed has been uniformly neglected by the Greek 
lexicographers,* failing to appear in Stephanus’ Thesaurus + or 
in DuCange,{ and actually appearing only in Coumanoude’s 
recent ‘“‘ Lexicon of uncollected words from ancient and modern 
writings.’’ § 
There seems little appropriateness in the name 5ég@aipov for 
Aster Atticus. The Greeks had felt the beauty of the flower; 
witness Nicander’s epithet ¢wrZovra, “ luminous,” and his singling 
it out as fit ornament to shrine and altar. It seems unlikely 
that they would have framed for the aster a name sdg@aipov 
in an intentionally derogatory sense; with ridicule as that of 
Aristophanes when coining the word Sopoveta,  swinish taste in 
music”’; or as the Greeks seem to have felt in their name Soaxa- 
0, literally hog’s-bean, the poisonous henbane, the Hyoscyamus 
of both ancient and modern botany. Other instances of Greek 
plant-names derived from swine are few: doaspe, “ hog’s-endive,”’ 
(quoted by Pliny, claimed to be Centaurea nigra) seems to stand 
alone, except for oavov;yeov, Sisyrinchium, ‘swine’s snout,” 
by them applied to some kind of iris, and explained as due to the 
habit of hogs of rooting up its rhizomes. || 
a Eng. and Mod. Gr. Dict., N. Y., 1895; Legrand’s Mod. 
1882; Scarlatos Byzantios’ Mod. Gr. t asia. er 1874 ; a 
7a Athens, til Dehéque’s Mod. Gr. and Fr. Dict., Paris, 1875; Kind 
- Gr. and Ger -» Leipsic, 1876; Alexandros aN Lexikon Triglosson, 
{ DuCange, Glossarium ad scriptores media infimae Graecitatis, Leyden, 1688. 
wha ian 1883; citing Apuleius Platonicus’ eal from Dioscorides ; by nam 
v 
I sence in his ** Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister ’’ representing a monk in the 
garden as muttering ‘* What's the Latin name for swine’s-snout?’’ probably did not 
Mean Sisyrinchium at all, but the common eh widely known in mediaeval 
Europe as swine’s snout, ** Rostrum um.’’ In fact mediaeval Germany produced 
@ whole crop of porcine names, both in pone and in ae ; for example : 
