416 
MERGE TO GYRENE. 
denarius*, seven of which, or eight drams, were equal to the 
English avoirdupois ounce, which was the same with the Roman. 
For many years past (he continues) no silphium has been found 
in the Cyrenaica ; the owners of the land having thought it more 
profitable to turn their sheep and cattle into the pasture lands 
(where the silphium, as we have before mentioned, is produced) than 
to preserve the plant as formerly. One only stem of it (it is Pliny 
who speaks) has been found in my recollection, which was sent to 
the Emperor Nero. And of late no other laser has been brought to 
us than that which grows extensively in Persia, Media, and Armenia, 
and which is very inferior to that of the Cyrenaica, being at the 
same time adulterated with gum, sagapeurn, and pounded beans. 
We learn from the same author that in the consulships of C. Vale- 
rius, and M. Herennius, thirty lbs. of laserpitium was brought into 
Rome, which seems to have been considered as a very fortunate 
occurrence ; and that Caesar, when dictator, at the commencement of 
the civil war, took from the public treasury, with the gold and 
silver which he carried away from it, an hundred and eleven pounds 
of the silphium (or laserpitium f) ; which proves how valuable the 
plant was at Rome, as, indeed, might be reasonably inferred from the 
circumstance of its being found in the treasury at all. 
The first appearance of the silphium in the Cyrenaica is said by 
Pliny (on the authority of Greek writers) to have been occasioned 
* Ad pondus argenti denarii pensum. 
t Most probably the laser or extract, which was the most valuable ; though Pliny’s 
word is laserpitium. 
