Theophrasti De Historia Plantarum (1483 Incunabulum)

Pliny the Elder has set this forth. For, to omit other things: hardly a few [errors] among his so numerous chapters seem to me to be lacking; regarding the nut-bearing trees, he says, "I think this will be sufficient to have shown in this place." For he denies entirely that the Latin language can embrace these trees under the name of a single genus. And I believe the cause: because he found none that would correspond to that Greek genus which is called dryis oak/tree. Therefore, he returns four certain kinds: the Oak, the Robur common oak, the Esculus Italian oak, and the cerrus turkey oak, and he adds those Greek ones: hemerida cultivated, aegylopem goat-oak, haliphoeum sea-nut, and platyphyllum broad-leaf, as if these four could not correspond to those four Latin ones. Nor would it be permitted to take robur common oak quite aptly for the common genus of all. Thus, through the negligence of that author, while he teaches less clearly, he also shows the Latin language to be more destitute than it is. Great negligence can also be perceived in other authors. Yet, what individuals ignored or neglected can in large part be gathered in the works of all [of them] together. But how laborious that is, can be easily deduced from interpreters, both ancient and those of our own age. For those ancient ones, if they translated anything, it is certainly of the kind of forensic speech, or the narration of past deeds, or a discussion about the life of men. These kinds of speaking, if the Latin language cannot accomplish them as fully as the Greek language, it can do so a little more closely. But no one has dared to touch upon the commentaries of plants, I believe because of that difficulty which would bring more labor than praise; for there is no one who would not attribute it to the greatest labor to have found by what names the Latins call elymum a type of grain, zeam spelt, and olyram rye, and the rest of the same genus. But when you hear an interpreter speaking of panicum millet, and semen seed, and siliginem fine wheat, and the rest, you judge that there is nothing at all for whose discovery he himself deserves praise. Among the younger ones, indeed the men of our own age, or those slightly older, who studied to translate more elegantly, they took up certain other things to be translated; but they did not wish in any way to endure the labor of plants. Those who, however, cared less about speaking each thing in Latin, were so [attached] to the Greek words themselves that a Latin man could derive almost no fruit from their interpretation. Therefore, if you also think that they revealed nothing about plants chiefly because of the difficulty, you would be mistaken in my opinion. It happens, therefore, because of either the laziness or the ignorance of the authors, that these can be converted into the Latin language with great difficulty. But the poverty of the language itself causes no less difficulty, indeed rather far more. This perhaps seems less credible to Latin men, because M. Tullius Cicero asserts that the Latins are not even surpassed by the Greeks in words. But those who read not only Latin books but also Greek ones with equal study would be easily persuaded by the fact itself. [They would judge] that the opinion of M. Tullius is rather incredible. Which indeed, to confess truly about myself, I would not very strongly wish to be so. For I would now labor less in translating these things if M. Tullius were not quibbling with a certain simple and absolute speech about some very minor things which perhaps the Latins have better, but were stating the true opinion. But now, how one must labor, not only so that we may say in Latin certain private and rarely used words, but also many things that are most used among the Greeks and held readily by all, can be sufficiently understood even here: for between an herb and a shrub, the Greeks return a third genus and call it by the most common name phryganum dry wood/shrub, but the Latins lack that name, nor do they make four kinds, but believe themselves to suffice by embracing all plants under the names of tree, shrub, and herb.