GALLIC PLANT-NAMES 171 
Mater sylvae ; “ Periclymenon, quam Sylvae matrem voca- 
mus,” c. 23; the first appearance of that name for Caprifolium 
which became strangely confused with Aster a thousand years 
later; see Hieronymus Brunsvicensis. 
Gladiatoricia herba, Sanguinaria herba* (Salutaris herba,* 
rosemary), Personacea herba, Sacra herba (= Verbena), Verrucaria 
herba, Orbicularis herba (= Cyclamen), Cymbalitis herba, Fel ter- 
rae* or Centaureum, are a few of his descriptive names, not Gallic, 
and partly of uncertain identity. 
XVIH. ApuLerus PLATONICUS 
Apuleius Platonicus, styled Herbarius, and in one MS., Plato, 
is to be distinguished from Apuleius Medaurensis (born about 130 
A. D.), the author of the romance The Golden Ass, who was also 
sometimes styled Platonicus, having extended his education begun 
at Carthage, by studies in the Platonic philosophy at Athens. 
Our Apuleius Herbarius seems also to have written in Africa, 
about 400+ A. D., or at least before it was lost in Rome, in 439. 
It has been hinted that he was a descendant of the romancer; at 
any rate, the taste for the marvellous was still strong in him. 
* Also mentioned by Isodorus, about 600 A. D., by the same name. 
t Sprengel, Geschichte der bot. 1: 184, 199, conjectured that the author was a 
monk of the rrth or 12th century, who had assumed the name of a distinguished Ro- 
A rican or Carthaginian name which he gives for asparagus.—One MS. of Apuleius 
Was in possession, says Fabricius (Bibl. bot. 3), of Isaac Vossius, and was written before 
1200 A. D. It was also provided with figures. Cockayne collated § illustrated Latin 
MSS. in England chiefly Harleian. The figures are identical in most ices. It 
Seems to have taxed the illustrator to represent the form of his magic plant, the Aster, 
Suspended from the neck and shining in the night; as described in his text. Cockayne 
says that the drawing of Asterion in the best Anglo-Saxon MS. and in two of the Latin 
SS., is « beyond interpretation.’’ No doubt these simply repeated the figures of some 
eat MS. »—earlier than the gth century: but not of Dioscorides, fide Cockayne 's ex- 
amination of the Vienna plates. In the second-best Anglo-Saxon MS., , 
Ps 1180, Cockayne found the Asterion figure to “ remind us of Stellaria 
asif the illustrator were groping anew for a plant whose name should translate Asterion. 
