STRABUS’ AGRiMONIA 195 
dedicatory verses addressed to ‘‘ Grimalde pater ductissime,” and 
written it would seem after Grimoald’s election as Abbot of St. 
Gall in 842, as Strabus speaks of ‘‘his mastership there of that 
school of pleasure,” “ schola laetabunda tuorum.” 
To the student of Asters, Strabus is of chief interest in his de- 
scription, lines 358-367, of his Agrimonia, by which Argemonia 
is meant, and for which he also uses the name Sarcocola, as Mar- 
cellus Empiricus had done four centuries before, and with the 
Same application to the healing of wounds. The manner of 
Strabus’ reference leaves no doubt that he meant one of the 
poppy kind, an Argemonia (not Argemon, 2. ¢., an Aster) and 
may be accepted as interpreting Marcellus’ use of the word also. 
Strabus begins (in translation) ; 
21. Agrimonia. ‘Here also Sarcocola clothes the fields 
abundantly which it is scattered over, and there grows discovered 
under the shades of neglected woodlands, easy to discern in its 
ranks of beauty.” * 
Its uses for pain in the stomach and for healing wounds fill 
out the other lines. 
Strabus describes only two or three Compositae, Absinthium, 
Abrotanum and perhaps Ambrosia. Absinthium receives one of 
his few touches of description : 
“Next the shrubs of sharp Absinthium demand place, 
Simulating the mother of herbs with slender twig. 
In the leaves is a different color, on the branches another odor, 
The hairy branches,—and of taste far bitterer its draught.’’ 
Abrotanum is similarly described : 
Nor less is one prompt to admire the Abrotanum, 
Its tall hairy shrubs,—and what beard one beholds 
In its branches’ wealth, imitating a diffusion of tresses. 
These odorous locks, plucked with their slender stem, 
Avail much to mingle with Paeonian remedies. 
It quenches a fever, it flies a weapon, it gladdens the limbs, 
It quells the uncertain injury of the hid poison-drop, 
It has as many powers besides as the threads of its tresses. 
His Ambrosia is identified by some with Artemisia campestris 
L.; by others with Chenopodium Botrys L., because Dioscorides, 
describing this his Botrys, adds that the Cappadocians call it Am- 
brosia or Artemisia. . 
* “ Ordinibus facile est discernere pulchris,’”’ an echo of Vergil’s remark of Aster 
Amellus L., * facilis quaerentibus herba.”’ 
ts 
