Tue NAME RATHIBIDA 145 
We will find the duplicate properties repeated occasionally 
under both plants by authors to Fuchs in 1551, and will discover 
one great mediaeval physician, Arnald de Villanova, who, about 
1310, had perceived the incongruity of these imported characters 
with those of Vola odorata L., and who wrote that they probably 
belonged to a different violet. 
DioscoripEs’ DACIAN NAME FOR ASTER 
Dioscorides’ Synonyms. One of the most valuable parts of 
Dioscorides’ work is the series of Greek, Latin, Carthaginian and 
other plant-names, quoted with each species described. Many of 
these may have been subsequent additions,* but many others oc- 
cur as if a part of the original text, and some of them occur in 
Pliny, quoted, it is claimed, from the text of Dioscorides. Spren- 
gel, editing Dioscorides in 1829, writes that the names in use for 
plants in various nations “were collected by Dioscorides scien- 
tifically,” “during his travels to Egypt, Carthage, Italy, Gaul and 
Spain.”” Without predicating genuineness of all, I shall simply 
refer to these synonyms as “ Dioscoridean.” 
Kathibida. The Dioscoridean synonyms record Rathibida, 
pa0¢%du, as the name for Aster Atticus among the Dacians, @. ¢., 
if in Dacia proper, in the region north of the Danube where it 
still grows and where it is particularly widely distributed. This 
name Rathibida of the MSS. may stand there in corrupt form, 
from error of copyist or from defect of the ear of the original in- 
vestigator ; and in some later copyings it lost its last consonant, 
appearing in Bock as Rathibia and in John Lonitzer as Rathibis. 
However, assuming that pad¢eda of the MSS. is substantially the 
original form, inquiry at once arises if it can be paralleled at all in 
the Greek—presumably the nearest cognate language to the obscure 
Dacian or Thracian. 
If the second syllable were an intrusion, it might be compared 
Ist with Dioscorides’ own word pdPocov in the immediate connection 
= little bush, a twig, a small stem. Or, 2d, with psec, present 
*Such are bracketed by Sprengel (but with the usual practice of bracketing all 
Synonyms indiscriminately) following the example of Saracenus, who himself followed 
the acute judgement of Marcellus Vergilius, the sagacious commentator on Dioscorides 
whose Latin translation appeared in 1518. 
