Pliny Natural History, Vol. VI (Loeb Latin-English)

they require. But some inconsistencies and uncertainties are inevitable.

The resemblance of certain passages in the Materia Medica of Dioscorides to parts of the botanical books of Pliny—even to some parts outside these books—is so striking that there must be a close relation between them. Scholars without hesitation use the Greek text when passing judgment on the readings or emendations of the manuscripts of Pliny. Many times it is clear that Pliny either saw (or heard read) Greek identical, or almost so, with our Dioscorides, but blundered badly in translating his authority. Among the cases of such blundering mentioned in the footnotes to this volume there is a striking example in XXIII. § 7, where Pliny has cicatricibus marcidis, ossibus purulente limosis (withered scars, bones filled with pus), but the text of Dioscorides reads (V. 5): original: "πρὸς ... οὖλα πλαδαρά, ὦτα πυορροοῦντα" (for loose gums, ears discharging pus). Here, Pliny has confused original: "οὖλα" (gums) and original: "οὐλή" (scar), and (unless with some editors we read auribus for the ossibus of the manuscripts) original: "ὦτα" (ears) and original: "ὀστᾶ" (bones).

Now, Pliny does not include Dioscorides among his authorities. Is this an accidental omission? Pliny's pride in acknowledging the sources from which he derived his information makes this an almost impossible explanation of the relationship between the two authors. It is even more unlikely that Dioscorides copied Pliny; the discrepancies, for one thing, are obviously the result of a misunderstanding of Greek, not of Latin.

There remains a third possibility: both authors may have a common source from which each made large borrowings. It is thought that this common source may have been Crateuas, of the first century