On the Names of Plants

...up to the 27th [book]. In book 26, he writes that the account of wine was elucidated by him; and elsewhere, that he lived before Asclepiades.

Crateuas, Dionysius, and Metrodorus wrote about herbs in Greek in a most enticing manner, but one by which almost nothing else but the difficulty of the matter may be understood. For they painted likenesses of the herbs and thus wrote the effects beneath them. But indeed, a painting is deceptive, and with such numerous colors—especially in the imitation of nature—the varying luck of transcribers degenerates much. Moreover, it is not enough for their individual ages to be painted, since they change the appearance of the year with fourfold variations. For this reason, others have handed them down in discourse: some not even indicating a likeness, and for the most part satisfying themselves with bare names, since it seemed sufficient to demonstrate their powers and force to those wishing to seek them, as Pliny says, by whom he is cited everywhere in book 20 and the seven books immediately following.

Crateuas the rhizotomist wrote carefully indeed what he wrote concerning roots and herbs, but he omitted much. Dioscorides and Galen rebuke those who seek their knowledge of herbs and other remedies from books and descriptions rather than from teachers; and he says they are like τοῖς ἐκ τῶν βιβλίων κυβερνήταις, that is, pilots of ships who have drawn their art from some commentary. Yet if anyone, he says, should need descriptions of this kind, no one is so wretched (or unskilled) as to neglect the books of Dioscorides, Niger, Heraclides, Crateuas, and very many others who have grown old in that art.

The Scholiast of Nicander in the Theriaca cites Crateuas ῥιζοτομοῦντος [as he was cutting roots]; where we also read that he found the herb Thapsus on the island of Thapsos, one of the Sporades.

There exists an epistle of Hippocrates to him, which praises him as the best rhizotomist, because he was himself practiced in this art and received it from his ancestors.

D

Dalion the herbalist is cited by Pliny in book 20, chapter 17, and in several subsequent books, and in the same books also Damion the physician.

Damocrates celebrated the herb iberis in iambic trimeters in the book which is entitled Clinici, which Galen recites in book 10 of De compositione pharmacorum secundum locos in the treatment of sciatica; elsewhere also, both in the same work and in that which is De compositione secundum genera, and in the second book De antidotis, he records his verses concerning certain compound medicines.

Servilius Damocrates, the discoverer and herald of the herb which he called iberis, with which he used to cure all his patients: Pliny 25, 8.

Democritus, having traveled through Persia, Arabia, Ethiopia, and to the Magi of Egypt, composed a volume on the effect of herbs; and likewise Pythagoras, according to Pliny. Democritus is cited in Theophrastus, De Historia Plantarum 1. 8 and De Causis 2. 16 and 6. 1. From the two former places indeed, it becomes clear enough that he also committed something to writing concerning plants as to their causes.

Democritus, in the book entitled Chirocineta, records more wonderful effects concerning certain herbs, which Pliny repeats in 24, 17.