404 Prof. Christ i son on the Poisonous Properties of Hemlock, 



when he was condemned to die, and was drinking the ILawov, it 

 is said he tossed away what remained, exclaiming, &c* In like 

 manner the orator Lysias observes, in his oration against Era- 

 tosthenes, who had put his brother Polemarchus to death : 

 " The thirty despatched to Polemarchus their customary order 

 to drink Kaveiov."-f About the middle of the second century of 

 the Christian era, we find Diogenes Laertius following these 

 authorities, when he mentions the death of Socrates. " Socrates 

 imprisoned," observes he, " after a few days drank the Kwuov, 

 discoursing many beautiful and good things, which Plato has 

 given in his Phaedo."^: The same assumption is made by Pliny 

 between six and seven centuries later. " The cicuta," says he, 

 " is a poison, abhorred because the instrument of public punish- 

 ment among the Athenians, yet applicable to many purposes 

 which are not to be omitted. "S 



It is, nevertheless, not a little singular, that no mention is 

 made of the Kavsiov as the state-poison of the Athenians by an 

 author in natural history, who nourished at a time when the 

 memory of the death of Socrates, Phocion, and many other 

 eminent individuals, must have been fresh in the minds of all 

 philosophers, and who nevertheless mentions both the plant and 

 its poisonous qualities, — I mean Theophrastus. Theophras- 

 tus was born but twenty-eight years after the death of Socrates, 

 namely, 371 years before Christ, and was Aristotle's successor 



* Kxi i7rii yl oi7ro6r/ia-Kiiv ctvcLyxt&^ofiivos to xamov lira, t« Xli7TOf6ivov l<Px<rctv tx7roKOTTu/2iTXvTcc 



iiTuv xvtov. K^iTix tut iG-ra r*i xaXa. Xenophontis Hist. Graec. ii. 3. 24. Tom. Hi. 103. Edit. 

 Dodwell, 1770 Oxon. 



\ TloXi{£ci(>%a di ■7rctqt l yyH>.u.v ot tqixkovto. to hr hctmay li8i<r[ti>iov KapccyyiXftcc, Tiveiv xavaoii. 



Lysias. Orat. in Eratosthenen. In Orat. Graec. vol. v. p. 394. Editio Reiske. Lipsiae 

 1772. 



$ Cicuta quoque venenum est publica, Atheniensium poena, invisa, ad multa tamen usus 

 haud omittendi. Plinii Hist. Nat. xxv. 95. 



§ "Zay.QxTris £e e)i6us, (tlT k 7roXXccs yifcs^ecg \-mi to xamov, -nroXXx /.otXoi. yJ uyata $ixK%6iig, a, TXcituv 



b TOi Q>oiidun<pYio-iv. Diogenes Laertius. Editio Meibomii. Amstelod. I. ii. 42. Vol. i. 105. 



