136 Aster History; CoLuMELLA 
in a dry place through the winter, and changing to a sunny ex- 
posure in spring ”—as quoted by Pliny. 
‘‘To such languishing bees,” continues Columella, ‘should 
be given grains of pomegranate bruised and stirred into Aminean 
wine ;* or of raisins pounded up with an equal measure of Syriac- 
dew + moistened with an austere wine ; or if each by itself is not 
efficacious, all should be used together, weighed out in equal 
weights, and heated t ina pottery vase with Aminean wine, but 
quickly cooled, and placed in wooden troughs § before the 
bees. 
‘Some offer rosemary brewed in sweetened water, etc. 
“The disease is at its height at a time when some bees will 
bring out the bodies of the dead from their domiciles, and others 
walled within lie motionless in sad silence as overcome by public 
calamity. When the hive is found in that extremity, foods are to 
be offered, poured out in troughs of reed, well boiled down in 
honey and rubbed up with gall or dry rose. It is well also to 
burn galbanum, that it may heal by its odor. 
“* Best || of remedies, however, is the root of Amellus ; which is 
a yellow shrub, with purple flowers ; boiled with old Aminean 
Wine, it is wrung out, and so weighed out, its juice is given them.” 
“Hyginus indeed, in that book which he wrote concerning 
bees, says Aristomachus** considers that the bees should be treated 
in this manner ; first removal of the affected comb, then fresh food 
given, and fumigation,” 
* * . . . . - j 
Aminean wine, that of Aminea, a region in Picenum, famed for the vine. 
“ec 7 bd . id e . 
t**Cum rore Syriaco”; but another ancient reading is ‘‘sutorio’’?; and others 
amend to ‘ coriariorum ros’’ or «< rhus.’’ 
¢ Et in fictili vase 
ce ; * * . . 
|| ‘*Optime tamen facit Amelli radix ; cujus est frutex luteus, purpureus flos; cum 
vetere Amineo vino decocta exprimitur, et ita liquatus ejus succus datur.’’ 
Virgilius amelli florem aureum purpureumque docet scriberem ‘ Cuius est fruticis luteus 
ee if 
Biehl sive abflecto frutex, ‘cuius est luteus purpureusque flos.’ ”’ 
Aristomachus Solensis, who was, ‘says Pliny, ‘*for 58 years so absorbed with the 
love of bees that he attended to nothing else but to take care of bees and write books 
about them.”’ 
