Natural History, Vol. 3

they feed on the white. They hand down that it is timely at the harvest. It grows most of all on Mount Oeta, and the best in one place of it around Pyra. The black grows everywhere, but is better on Helicon, a mountain praised for other herbs as well. The white from Oeta is tested; the Pontic is second; in the third place is the Eleatic, which they say grows among vines; the fourth is the Parnassian, which is adulterated with the Aetolian from nearby. They call the black of these melampodion, with which they also fumigate and purge houses, scattering [it] even among cattle, with a solemn prayer: this is also collected more religiously. For first, it is circumscribed with a sword. Then, he who is about to cut it looks to the sunrise, and prays that he may be permitted to do so with the gods granting it, and he observes the flights of eagles; for they are generally present for those cutting. And if one flies near, it is an omen that he who is cutting will die that year. Nor is the white easily collected, as it weighs down the head, especially unless garlic is taken beforehand, and wine is sipped from time to time, and it is dug up quickly. Some call the black entomon, others polyrrhizon: it purges through the lower passages. The white, however, [purges] by vomiting, and it extracts the causes of diseases; formerly terrible, later so common that many, for the sake of their studies, in order to see more sharply the things they were contemplating, took it quite often. It is agreed that Carneades, about to respond to the books of Zeno, [took it]; also Drusus among us, the most famous of the popular tribunes, to whom the common people standing before [him] applauded, though the nobles blamed the Marsic War [on him], was freed from the comitial disease [epilepsy] by this medicine on the island of Anticyra. For there it is taken most safely, since (as we have said) they mix in sesamoides. Italy calls it veratrum. Their flour by itself, and mixed with the small root with which we said wool is washed, causes sneezing, and both [cause]