134 Aster Hisrory; CELsus 
pears in Latin or in ancient or modern Greek. Meyer suggests 
that it was perhaps a plant. It is possible that it is merely an- 
other synonym for Aster, like asterion, and asteriscus, for the 
latter of which it may possibly be a false reading. Harper's Lat. 
Dict. suggests that it is the name of a medicine. Several medical 
preparations were later known by the name aster (see pp. 85, 88), 
and it is on the whole probable that this was one of that class. 
VIII. CotumMeLia 
Columella,* the Roman writer on agriculture, of about 51 
A. D., mentions Aster by the name Amellus in his De ré rustica,t 
bk. L., c. 4, sec. 4, where his subject has been the aversion of bees 
to the yew. He then, like Vergil, or copying from Vergil, enume- 
rates the Amellus as one of the native plants of Italy of which 
bees are particularly fond, in the following words : 
‘ Mille praeterea semine vel crudo cespite virentia, vel subacuta 
sulco, flores amicissimos apibus creant, ut sunt in irriguo { solo 
[virgineo solo, Codex Longobardus| frutices § amelli, caules acan- 
thini, scapus asphodeli, || gladiolus narcissi.§ At in hortensi lira 
consita nitent candida lilia, nec his sordidiora leucoia, tum punicae 
rosae, pe et Sarranae violae,** nec minus coelestis numinis 
*L, Junius Moderatus Golumalte, born at Gades (Cadiz) in Spain, resided in 
poe travelled in Syria, Cilicia, etc. His surviving work, De re rustica, is in 12 
s, the loth a poem, De culto hortorum (Parma, 1478, etc.). Of an earlier work 
on tse same subject, one book, De arburitus remains. See p. 1 37: ke. 
f First printed 1470, Venice, by Nicolaus Jenson, together with Cato, etc. Edited 
in his “ Scriptures rei rusticae,’’ 7, ¢. , chiefly Cato, Varro, Columella nod Pallsdies by 
J. M. Gesner, 1735, etc. Edited ua by Schneider, 1794-7. 
tSo ties Medicei, followed by Politian, Victaand, Fritzsch and Schneider. 
meant for siruds in technical sense, for I find Columella using frutex « 
olus, biichics vegetables ; and of the lupine. Commentators who have claimed from 
Srutices in this passage, that Columella never saw the Amellus, can no more draw such 
an inference from this assumed nae description than from Vergil’s speaking of its clus- 
tered stems as ‘‘a forest of stalks. ; 
|| Pontedera, commen nting on Columella, and praising his style, remarks of the 
phrase frutices amelli, caules avanthini, scapus asphodeli, that it is “* elegans ile 
quendi forma.” Pontedera claims that Palladius imitated this passage, replacing 
Amellus by Citrago. See infra, under Palladius. 
The word gladiolus belongs here with marcissus, appropriately observes Ponte-_ 
dera ‘* gladiolum ob similitudinem appellatu 
** Two kinds of violets, observes Fritesch, the yellowish, and the Sarranian OF . 
ong or purplish. 
