Fe ET ee tes aa Se Cle] ee ee Sa ee en aes 
CRATEVAS’ MITHRIDATION 119 
tion of his plant Mithridation to Mithridates the Great, king of 
Pontus from 120 to 63 B. C., to whom Cratevas is said to have 
been court-physician. Mithridates discovered the plant and had 
himself used it medically as a poison-antidote, and Cratevas had 
bestowed on it in his Rhizotomica its discoverer’s name—so we 
learn from Pliny.* 
so much probability as the preceding ones cited. This Andreas is said to have been the 
first writer on hydrophobia (Riley's Pliny, 4 : 302, n.) and becomes therefore of special 
interest to the student of Asters, as his lost work is likely to have been a source from 
which Cratevas obtained his curious idea of using Aster Atticus as a hydrophobia-remedy 
(see p. 45, and p. 120). Andreas is the source of the name Cirsium, and of its use 
for varicose ) 
iny’s Nat. Hist., bk. 25, c. 6, section 26; ‘* Ipsi Mithridati Cratevas adscripsit 
aulis in 
above adscripsit that Cratevas named the plant for Mithridates ; Riley that Cratevas 
ascribed the discovery of the plant to Mithridates. Probably both inferences are cor- 
rect. Pliny’s statement taken together with other remarks by him, shows that the 
plant was Mithridates’ discovery, if not by original right, at least by his adoption as his 
own of the discoveries and medical usages of various regions and peoples, as was that 
formal volume a name already in use for it on the lips-of physicians of that time. What 
the plant actually was, Fée and Riley deemed indeterminable ; Commerson and Schrei- 
ber made it the Dorstenia tambourissa of Sonnerat ; Cesalpino identified it with speci- 
mens of Erythronium dens-canis L. (found by Anguillara, Semplici, 174, ‘‘in agro 
Forojuliensi,’’ not far from Venice) which Pliny’s brief description strongly suggests 
except that it would be doubtful in what sense the leaves were compared to acanthus. 
Another of Mithridates’ plants, the scordofis or sco rdion of Pliny, the oxépdiov or 
oKépodov of Dioscorides, deemed to be the labiate Teucrium Scordium L, ( Billerbeck, © 
147), also came to bear Mithridates’ name, the Dioscoridean synonyms citing Mithri- 
dation as aname for it, Pliny says of it (bk. 25, sec. 27) that a description of this 
thridates which were 
“ec of 
ompey and to the benefit of mankind.”’ 
f the other numerous personal plant-names used by Dioscorides and Pliny, the 
ere or original author is unknown or mythical ; as Eupatorium, 
ai, Philaeteria, Lysimachia, in honor of kings ; Heracleum, Persephonia, Circaea (for 
Mandragora ), Apollinaris (for Hyoscyamus), Palladium (for Leontopodium ), Asclepiasy 
o 1 for mythic characters. 
Gentiana, Polemo- 
ironia, Dionysias, Melampodium, Achillea, Helenium, etc., 
