82 
Pliny's natural history. [Book XXV. 
treated with any degree of exactness on the subject of plants, 
is Orpheus ; and next to him Musseus and Hesiod, of whose 
admiration of the plant called polium we have already made 
some mention on previous occasions.^^ Orpheus and Hesiod 
too we find speaking in high terms of the eflScacy of fumiga- 
tions. Homer also speaks of several other plants by name, of 
which we shall have occasion to make further mention in their 
appropriate places. 
In later times again, Pythagoras, that celebrated philosopher, 
was the first to write a treatise on the properties of plants, a 
work in which he attributes the origin and discovery of them 
to Apollo, ^sculapius, and the immortal gods in general. 
Demoeritus too, composed a similar work. Both of these philo- 
sophers had visited the magicians of Persia, Ai'abia, Ethiopia, 
and Egypt, and so astounded were the ancients at their recitals, 
as to learn to make assertions which transcend all belief. 
Xanthus, the author of some historical works, tells us, in the 
first of them, that a young dragon^^ was restored to life by its 
parent through the agency of a plant to which he gives the 
name of ballis,'' and that one Tylon, who had been killed by 
a dragon, was restored to life and health by similar means, 
eluba too assures us that in Arabia a man was resuscitated by 
the agency of a certain plant. Demoeritus has asserted — and 
Theophrastus believes it — that there is a certain herb in 
existence, which, upon being carried thither by a bird, the name 
of which we have aiready^^ given, has the effect, by the contact 
solely, of instantaneously drawing a wedge from a tree, when 
driven home by the shepherds into the wood. 
These marvels, incredible as they are, excite our admiration 
nevertheless, and extort from us the admission that, making 
all due allowance, there is much in them that is based on 
truth. Hence it is too that I find it the opinion of most 
writers, that there is nothing which cannot be effected by the 
agency of plants, but that the properties of by far the greater 
part of them remain as yet unknown. In the number of 
these was Herophilus, a celebrated physician, a saying of whose 
is reported, to the efiect that some plants may possibly exercise 
a beneficial influence, if only trodden under foot. Be this as 
it may, it has been remarked more than once, that wounds and 
i« See B xxi. ec. 21, 84. ^9 Qr serp«it. 
2^ lii B. X. c. 20. 
