On the Names of Plants

...to enumerate individually those whose writings are extant: I could have established catalogs according to the difference of the treatment itself. For some have written only philologically, as we did in our catalog, where we interpret only the names. Others [wrote] historically, as Oribasius from Dioscorides; and we also in our history, where only descriptions were expressed, while the powers were omitted, except for common ones which could be set forth in very few words. Galen and those who followed him, Aëtius and [Paul of] Aegina, set forth almost only the virtues and powers—that is, they wrote medically. Others [wrote] philosophically and physically, as Aristotle, Theophrastus, and any others who distributed the genera, species, differences, and parts of plants according to commonplaces, or investigated their causes. For the physical description is also twofold: the Greeks call the former historical, the latter etiological. In both ways, just as Aristotle pursued the history of animals, so Theophrastus pursued that of plants. Finally, some [wrote] rustically, as the authors of the Geoponica and the Kepurika, who taught the various sowings, plantings, and cultivations. Others perhaps in yet another way, such as those who wrote concerning wreaths and flowers, and those concerning odors, cosmetically, erotically, symposiastically, and (so to speak) sensually. They can also be treated in the manner of dyeing, if anyone should explain those which are useful to dyers and painters. Some touched only upon those which provide the use of food or seasoning, culinarily, healthfully, and for pleasure. Those who wrote concerning plants magically and superstitiously, such as Orpheus and Democritus, whom Pliny often derides, are unworthy of mention. There are those who have joined together two, three, or more of the aforementioned modes. There are those whose writings in part survive, and in part are lost. Therefore, I have found no more convenient and at the same time easier method than the alphabetical one: to which is added this advantage, that there is no need for the same things to be repeated in different places, which would have been altogether necessary for one following a distinction of treatment; as in Theophrastus, who deals with plants not only physically—and that in two ways, as I said—but also historically and medically here and there, and similarly in several others. Furthermore, although some of the more recent [writers] may have written with little Latinity or learning, and in this learned age are despised by all, I nevertheless did not wish to pass them over in silence, because men studious and curious of these matters will find certain not useless things in almost all even "barbarous" books (which I would wish to be handled only by those who are already strong in judgment, having first been practiced in reading the best [authors]), although they are both few and perhaps scarcely worthy of that loss of time which is spent in searching them out. But some are so curious that, whatever study they have taken up to cultivate, they search through everything in detail so that they may excel in it. To me indeed, this commemoration of authors is pleasant, and by enumerating them, I seem to myself to perform as it were a certain duty of gratitude to each for his writings and labors, by which each wished to provide for posterity as much as was in his power.