al a a es oor + ae 
PAUSANIAS’ ASTERION 159 
and disappears. On* its banks grows a plant which they also 
name Asterion ; they offer the plant to Hera and twine its leaves 
into wreaths for her.”’ 
That this blossom, the Asterion, was the same as Aster Atticus 
has been asserted, and has been denied. The name Asterion oc- 
curs as one of the Dioscoridean synonyms for Aster Atticus, and 
it is by the name Asterion that Apuleius Platonicus describes the 
Aster Atticus, about 400 A. D. 
Two other plants sometimes called Asterion by the Greeks 
from their parted leaves, are out of consideration, because unfit for 
decorative use ; they are Cannabis sativa, the hemp, and Heracleum 
Sphondylium, a coarse, ill-smelling umbellifer. 
Ruellius + in 1536, summarizing the knowledge of his time 
about Aster Atticus, refers to Pausanias’ Asterion but remarks 
that he has not been able to prove that they were identical, 
saying : 
“Qualis autem Pausanias sit herba, quae in Mycenensi agro ad 
Junonis fanum, asterion vocatur, a flumine terram illam rigante, 
quia in ripis nascitur, cuius folia Junoni sacra in coronas nectunt 
accolae, non comperi.”’ 
Schliemann seems to have assumed that Pausanias’ Asterion 
was the same as that of Dioscorides, for speaking of his journey to 
Mycenae, he says t of the stream by his path: ‘“‘ The water of the 
Asterion fed the Asterion plant (a kind of aster), sacred to Hera, 
rom the leaves of which wreaths and festoons were made for the 
goddess,’’ 
Frazer, the latest translator and editor of Pausanias, is no 
further advanced in 1898 than Ruellius in 1537, toward identify- 
ing this Asterion, saying :§ “What the plant was, we do not know. 
Schliemann indeed calls it a kind of aster, but this may be a mere 
inference from the name.” 
are 
ag de avrov 70a Tpoc ie *Aareplwva ovouasover Kai THY woav ravrny 
ty “Hoe ka aut dépovel, Kar ATS TOV OLAAWY adTIC OT, egavovg mAEKOVoL* Translated 
: Shilleto (Pausanias, oa Bohn, Lon., 1886, 1: 122) «¢ And the flower called As- 
re “yond taal on its banks; they carry this flower to Hera and plait her crowns of its 
aves, 
ft Ruellius, De natura stirpium, Basle, edn. Froben, 1537; P- 633- 
} Mycenae, p. 26. 
2J. G. Frazer’s Pausanias, 4: 118. Lon., 1898. 
