a ee a ee en 
AkEMILIUS MACER, FRIEND OF VERGIL 133 
We may render : 
Flowers shine there with two-colored sprays 
And paint the turfs with twin graces ; 
Bees murmur pleasingly their light susurrus, 
Culling from the topmost blossoms or the latest dewdrop. 
Aemilius Macer Veroneunsis. 
The preceding lines are just such as we might suppose might 
have been written about Vergil’s garden by his friend the poet 
Aemilius Macer,* of Verona, perhaps the most distinctively 4 
poet of plants that Latinity produced, but whose works are lost 
tous. He was from Verona, near which the Aster Amellus still 
grows. We may suppose that it was familiar to him, as well as 
the other flowers of that northern part of Italy. Because he, as 
Ovid-+ tells us (writing ‘ Quacgue necet serpens, quae juvat herba, 
Macer’’), wrote of the plants which were potent against serpents, 
it is not unlikely that he may, like Cratevas, have mentioned the 
belief that the Aster’s fumes would put serpents to flight. But only 
slight fragments t of Macer remain, and what the friend of Vergil 
and Tibullus had to say of the Aster we are likely never to know. 
Vergil’s contribution to the knowledge of Aster, consisting of his 
ten lines on Amellus, is the principal ancient description outside 
of medicine. 
VII. Cetsvs. 
Cornelius Celsus, who wrote his eight books De Medicina$ 
perhaps about 40 A. D., seems not to have used aster or amellus 
asa plant-name, but makes mention of the use of something which 
he calls Asteriace, the sole occurrence || of the word so far as ap- 
Author of an Ornithogonia, a poem on birds, perhaps his chief ‘original swork 5 
ofa oes and an Alexipharmaca, probably modelled on those of Nicander (per- 
haps mere translations, surmises Meyer) ; died in Asia, 15 B. C. 
Ovid, Trist, iv, eclog. 10, v. 44. 
(2 edn., 1667) ; beaiening Ata gut mane baal vumpsert it ore; ee. lines 
ib ane neither t ror ioc Bragunesith of genuine 
lines are EB Fabricius ; Bibliotheca Graeca, 13: 36, etc. 
2 His y work which has survived entire ; fe, printed. Florence, by Nicalao, 
1478 ; adiiea pear Edinburgh, 1 1826: by Renzi, Naples, 1851-2 ; etc. 
| Celsus, V. 5,4 
