PALLADIUS’ CyrrAGco 175 
3. That Palladius made the substitution for Amellus which he 
did was probably due to the ancient gloss me/issophyllon which was 
early written against Amellus in Vergil’s fourth Georgic; or if 
Palladius did not see that gloss itself, the opinion which it repre- 
sented may have been current in his time. 
This leads to another inquiry. Did not a confusion grow up 
between the melissophyllon or apiastrum, and the Aster known as 
Amellus because of their similar reputation as bee-plants ; and did 
not the author of the gloss just cited actually mean Aster by his 
name weltssophyllon ? 
Such a probability is suggested by the ascription to balm of 
numerous uses highly characteristic of Aster Atticus, as follows : 
Dioscorides, bk. iii, c. 1a1 or 118 (describing his melzsso- 
phyllon or melittaina, in which bees delight), evidently intends to 
describe Melissa officinalis, but adds that it is efficacious against 
the bite of a dog, against tumors and ulcers. These properties 
sound very much as if borrowed from those of the other bee-plant, 
Aster Atticus. On examining Dioscorides’ preceding description 
of his Ballota, or black horehound, with which melissophyllon, he 
himself says, was often confused, we find the same properties re- 
peated. The properties may have been actually ascribed by phy- 
sicians of that time to both Ballota and Melissa ; or they may have 
been entered here under those names by confusion of the identity 
of the plants with Aster Atticus, a confusion due not to resem- 
blance of appearance but of bee-loving habit. 
Some general confusion certainly did exist later; apiastrum 
covering both Melissa officinalis L., and Selinum palustre L., 11 
Latin usage. Pliny, Columella and Palladius all furnish examples 
of lists in which the apiastrum and its usual equivalent melisso- 
Phyllon occur disjunctively as if not equivalents (though this may 
be due to inadvertence on part of the authors). In the 1492 
edition of his commentary on Vergil, Cristoforo Landino notes 
that some thought then that sze/i/otus was same as melissophyllon. 
So among such writers apiastrum or melissophyllon may have 
Meant Melissa, but a Melissa overloaded with properties imported 
from Aster Atticus, which some of Pliny’s multitudinous non-ex- 
tant authorities had probably confused with the preceding and de- 
scribed under the name melissophyllon. Ascription to Apiastrum 
1 
