Allen Rokach 
Left: The Basilica of Santo Antonio seems to watch over the Botanical 
Garden of Padua University. This eighteenth-century view is taken from a 
history of the garden written by Roberto de Visiani, director from 1836 to 
1878. The garden beds were laid out in a parterre, a geometrical pattern 
popular in the sixteenth century, when the garden was built. The Botanical 
Institute, visible at the north end of the garden, houses a library and 
herbarium. Below: Epinoia, the Greek nymph of Intelligence, shows a 
mandrake to Dioscorides (right) and Crateuas (left) in this sixth-century a.d. 
edition of Dioscorides’ handbook of plants, De Materia Medica. The Greek 
naturalist Dioscorides, who in the Middle Ages was considered to be the final 
authority on plants, actually lived in the first century A.D., nearly two 
centuries after the Greek illustrator Crateuas, famed as the best plant artist 
of the ancient world. Ancient and medieval scholars believed the mandrake, 
with its resemblance to the human form, had magical and medicinal powers. 
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