152 Aster Hisrory; DIoscoRIDES 
Stadler. Figures extend through the first book at least; that 
on Hydropiper, for example, has been much praised. 
Another very ancient Latin translation was extant in the time 
of Cassiodorus, or perhaps 540 A. D., but is now lost ; he cites 
it as “Herbarium Dioscoridis’’; it contained colored figures. 
Cassiodorus remarks of Dioscorides himself that “‘ he described and 
painted the plants of the field with wonderful accuracy’; which 
may not refer strictly to the original Greek author, but to the 
Latin edition bearing his name. 
A very ancient Syriac translation of Dioscorides must also have 
repeated the figures, for they were retained in the compend pre- 
pared from it in the thirteenth century by Gregorius Barhebraus 
under the title ‘‘ Liber Dioscoridis cum figura herbarum et earun- 
dem delectu et virtute,” etc. (Meyer, 3: 136). 
One of the early Arabic translations, made in 948-949 under 
the Moorish caliph Abd Arrahman III., was also filled with no- 
table pictures of the plants (Meyer, 3: 137). See fra, 185. 
Probably a figure of Aster Atticus occurred in each of the pre- 
ceding and in many more. 
Figures from some codex of Dioscorides prove also to have 
been used and copied by Bartolomeo Mino da Siena about 1330 
and by Rinius about 1418, before the invention of printing. See 
infra, under Circa instans. 
X. PLIny 
by 39 A. D.,, travelled when 21 in Africa, Egypt and Greece, was commander next 
year of a troop of cavalry in Germany, was made procurator in Spain by Nero, returned 
to Rome A. D. 70 and adopted his nephew Pliny the younger (author of the Letters), 
was made by Vespasian prefect of the Roman fleet ; when sailing to observe the eruptt 
of 79 A. D. he turned aside to rescue sailors near Vesuvius, and lost his life, two yo 
after finishing his last work, his only work extant, the Natural History, in 37 
dedicated to Titus, and composed largely of excerpts from Greek authors. Hardouin 
catalogs Over 400 authors cited in it. Books 12-27 are devoted to plants. 
: t Histo: iae naturalis abri 37 ; first printed at Venice, 1469, by Spina, only 300 
copies, and long excessively rare; with notes (of Sigismund Gelenius), Basle, 1539? 
with notes by Hardouin, and with variant readings from 8 manuscripts, Paris, 17233 
