ASTER-PROPERTIES UNDER VIOLA 143 
of this plant shine forth in the night; so that those who do not 
understand, when they see this, suppose it to bea phantasm ; but it 
is found and known by the shepherds of the flocks. Furthermore, 
Cratevas, the rhizotomist, states this: ‘‘ The green plant, bruised 
and mixed wirh old axle-grease, is a remedy for the mad-dog’s 
bite and for throat-tumor or goitre; and if burned its fumes put 
serpents to flight.’”] 
DioscorIDEs’ PuRPLE VIOLET 
Repetition of Aster-properties under Viola. Dioscorides pro- 
ceeds, after Aster Atticus, to describe his Isopyron, variously iden- 
tified as covering /sopyron thalictroides L., and also as a Fumaria 
or an Aquilegia. Next, he describes his Ion, the lola purpurea 
of Pliny, our Viola odorata L. After describing the violet’s ivy- 
like but darker leaf, and its love of shade, in terms applicable to 
Viola odorata, he mentions its properties as a refrigerant and then 
enumerates properties which duplicate some already narrated for 
Aster Atticus. The repeated lines read as follows—quoting Sara- 
cenus’ Latin version, which retains the duplicate properties under 
both plants : 
“Folia. . . stomacho ardenti, oculorum inflammationibus, pro- 
cidentique sedi auxiliantur. Aiunt et id quod in flore purpureum 
est in aqua potum, angina laborantibus, puerisque comitialibus * 
opitulari.”’ 
Matthioli, edn. 1560, p. 574, quoting the Arabic Mesue as 
“giving the faculties of the purple violet exquisitely,” cites Mesue’s 
version of the last sentence in the words “et morbo regio laboran- 
tibus opitulantur.” Fuchs repeats the same in the form “ puer-— 
orum comitialibus mederi affirmant’’ (Fuchs, 309. 1551). 
Commentators have suspected that the repetition here was 
accidental. If so, the kinship of the repeated characters with 
others of Aster Atticus and their unlikeness to others of Viola 
odorata points to Aster as their source. If they were accidentally 
duplicated by a scribe in one of the two occurrences, as it is amore 
natural and more frequent copyist’s error to repeat lines already 
Written than to anticipate, it remains more probable that the Aster 
* This supposed efficacy for epilepsy continued to be cited for Viola through the 
Arabic Writers and the Renaissance ; the ‘*‘ epileptics’ violet’’ of a gloss c. 1499 
