THE NATURAL HISTORY OF C. PLINIUS SECUNDUS,

BOOK TWENTY-FIVE.

PREFACE.

Chapter I. The nature of plants growing spontaneously.

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The very renown of the herbs that will now be discussed, given that it is the earth that brings them forth solely for the sake of medicine, stirs the mind to admire the care and diligence of the ancients. Nothing, therefore, was left unattempted or untested by them. Furthermore, nothing was kept hidden that they did not wish to benefit posterity. But do we today desire to conceal and suppress the things they elaborated, and even defraud life of the goods of others? Indeed, those who know a few things hide them away, begrudging them to others; and to teach no one is considered an authority in science. So far are present customs from devising new things and assisting life; for a long time now, the supreme work of talent has been to ensure that the good deeds of the ancients perish within each individual. Yet, by heaven, some have added individual discoveries to the number of the gods, and they have certainly made the life of all more illustrious through the naming of herbs, with memory gratefully and kindly returning the favor. This care of theirs would not be equally marvelous in those things which entice us by cultivation or invite us with food: but they even scrutinized the pathless summits of mountains, hidden wildernesses, and all the fibers of the earth, discovering what power each root possessed and to what uses the leaves of herbs pertained, turning even those things left untouched as fodder by quadrupeds to the uses of health.