118 Aster History; NICANDER 
flower under the names Aster Afficus and asterion ; a fable which 
was also the very first bit of so-called information about the Aster 
to survive the Middle Ages and be set down in that mass of in- 
dustrious credulity, the Ortus Sanitatis, perhaps 1400 A. D..,or later. 
No other among the many brief fragments of Nicander seems 
to apply to the aster, unles it was present to the poet’s mind as one 
of the flowers in this last known fragment. 
As 5 
paxyyot xegahac remavbsaw gatéhayro, 
‘With Bacchic wreaths of flowers they crowned their heads,”— 
Coronis Bacchicis floridis capita ornarunt ; 
quoted by Athenaeus from Nicander’s poem /n linguis.* 
Nicander has also a reference to asterion as glowing and shin- 
ing in splendor ;+ -but his asterion unlike that of other classics, is 
a kind of lizard; so called from its star-like spots, as an early 
scholiast { on Nicander remarks. 
Other Greek bucolic poets leave no surviving mention of the 
aster so far as I find, though they praise its relatives, the chrys- 
anthemum, § buphthalmon, || senecio,{ etc. 
Nicander's chief contribution to literature of Aster consists of 
his reference to the flower as glowing, as commonly plucked by 
flower-lovers, and as a flower fit to decorate shrines and tombs. 
V.  CRATEVAS. 
Cratevas, the next Greek writer to speak of the Aster, may have 
written about 100 B. C., his date** being inferred from his dedica- 
* Nicander, Didot edn., 163. 
fT ‘‘ At vero asterion dorsi fulgore coruscum, 
Virgatis splendet maculis, alboque relucet,”’ 
Nicander’s Theriaca, lines 725, 726, as translated by Gorraeus, 53, Paris, 1557: 
{ See Gorraeus’ Nicander, 98. 
4 Marcellus Sidetes ; also Anonymi Carmen de herbis, etc. 
|| Praised by the unknown author of Anonymi Carmen de herbis; see i/ra. 
{ Praised by Damocrates, Didot’s Bucolici, 129. 
have suggested for Cratevas the date 100 B, C., a comparatively early date ci 
Mithridates’ reign, to bring him nearer in period to Andreas of 217 B. C., the other 
botanical writer with whom Dioscorides couples Cratevas (Diosc., introduction) and 
whose plant-names Dioscorides compares occasionally with those of Cratevas (bk. 4 
& 35s & 755 and see c. 33), ANDREAS, of whom little is known, was called Cary: 
ets it would seem from nativity Carystus in Euboea like Diocles (p- 108) ; was @ 
disciple of Herophilus ; was author, says a scholiast on Nicander, of a work concerning 
