iv.] OF THE ANCIENTS. 143 



tained, that Dioscorides lived in the age of Pliny, 

 for he dedicates his books to one Areus Asclepia- 

 deus, who was the friend of Lsecanius Bassus, one 

 of the Consuls in A.D. 64, during the reign of Nero, 

 fifteen years before the great eruption of Vesuvius 

 in which Pliny perished. 



At all events, it seems probable that both these 

 writers derived much of their information from one 

 common source, and it is to be feared that, in too 

 many instances, this was obtained not directly from 

 the observation of Nature, but from earlier autho- 

 rities, such as Theophrastus and others of inferior 

 credibility. 



Another remarkable proof of their practice of 

 appealing servilely to authority for the facts they 

 record, in preference to going themselves to the 

 fountain-head, is afforded by the drawings of plants 

 which accompany some of the MSS. of Dioscorides, 

 the oldest of which extant, is that of Vienna, already 

 alluded to in my Lectures a , having been executed 

 in the fifth century, and therefore not very far dis- 

 tant from the age in which Dioscorides himself 

 flourished ; yet they bear on the face of them the 

 appearance of being copies, and often blundering 

 copies, of drawings of even an earlier date. 



And a MS. several centuries more recent than 

 this, which had been originally procured from the 

 East by a Florentine nobleman named Renuccini, 

 in whose family it had remained for more than 

 a century, and which is now in the possession of 



"Rom. Husb.,"p. 231. 



