On Medical Matters

Nor can the terms phaskioson (Book II, ch. 67), spheklee instead of trygos (Book II, ch. 137)—which Alexander of Tralles uses first (Book II, p. 630)—nestikos instead of nestis, the inflections seselidos instead of seseleos, and ptereos instead of pteridos, come from any age other than that in which the Greek language had already begun to barbarophōnein speak in a barbarian manner.

C. Concerning the barbarian synonyms of plants.

I have turned over in my mind much and for a long time what should be judged concerning the barbarian synonyms of plants, which are obvious in all old copies, and which the Aldine edition received into the text without any distinction; but Asulanus and Marcellus Vergilius relegated them to the spurious, with later editors doing the same. Lambecius also agrees, who tries to prove at length that that Pamphilus—whom Galen calls a superstitious writer on herbs and a grammarian rather than someone distinguished by the actual science of plants—was the author of those synonyms. For Galen testifies of him that he added a multitude of names for each herb in vain, fables about the transformations of plants from the human race, incantations, libations, and other such prestige. Yet these arguments do not seem sufficient to me to erase the authority of the synonyms. Inasmuch as even Pliny, almost next to Dioscorides, sometimes received the same; Oribasius and Aëtius also repeat them at times; and those fables or deceits which Galen criticizes in Pamphilus are not attached to our synonyms. Nor are there any Babylonian names with which the commentaries of Pamphilus abounded: but rather the appellations of Romans, Dacians, Gauls, Phoenicians, and Egyptians. To these he adds those of the prophets or Egyptian priests; of Osthanes, that prince of the Magi, who, while accompanying Xerxes, is said to have scattered the seeds of a portentous art throughout Greece;

32) Commentaries on the Vienna Library, book 2, p. 593.
33) On simple faculties, book 6, p. 792, 793.
34) E.g., synonyms of lithospermum, book 27, 74, from Dioscorides 3, 158.
35) Regarding the prophets of the Egyptians, cf. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1, p. 305; Porphyry, On abstinence, p. 321; Aristides, Oration vol. 3, p. 553.