Translated by H.Rackham (1952), with some minor alterations. Click on the L symbols to go to the Latin text of each chapter.
← Book 11
{1.} L [1] Such are the generic and specific characteristics of all the animals about which it has been possible to obtain information. It remains to describe the things produced by the earth or dug up from it - these also not being devoid of vital spirit, since nothing lives without it - and not to pass over in silence any of the works of nature.
The riches of earth's bounty were for a long time hidden, and the trees and forests were supposed to be the supreme gift bestowed by her on man. These first provided him with food, their foliage carpeted his cave and their bark served him for raiment; there are still races which practise this mode of life. [2] This inspires us with ever greater and greater wonder that starting from these beginnings man has come to quarry the mountains for marbles, to go as far as China for raiment, and to explore the depths of the Red Sea for the pearl and the bowels of the earth for the emerald. For this purpose has been devised the fashion of making wounds in the ears, because forsooth it was not enough for jewels to be worn on the hands and neck and hair without making them even pierce through the body. Consequently it will be well to follow the biological order and to speak of trees before earth's other products, and to bring forward origins for our customs.
{2.} L [3] Once upon a time trees were the temples of the deities, and in conformity with primitive ritual simple country places even now dedicate a tree of exceptional height to a god; nor do we pay greater worship to images shining with gold and ivory than to the forests and to the very silences that they contain. The different kinds of trees are kept perpetually dedicated to their own divinities, for instance, the winter-oak to Jove, the bay to Apollo, the olive to Minerva, the myrtle to Venus, the poplar to Hercules; nay, more, we also believe that the Silvani and Fauns and various kinds of goddesses are as it were assigned to the forests from heaven and as their own special divinities. [4] Subsequently it was the trees with juices more succulent than corn that gave mellowness to man; for from trees are obtained olive oil to refresh the limbs and draughts of wine to restore the strength, and in fine all the flavours that come by the spontaneous generosity of the year, and the fruits that are even now served as a second course, in spite of the fact that battle must be waged with the wild beasts to obtain them and that fishes fattened on the corpses of shipwrecked mariners are in demand. [5] Moreover, there are a thousand other uses for those trees which are indispensable for carrying on life. We use a tree to furrow the seas and to bring the lands nearer together, we use a tree for building houses; even the images of the deities were made from trees, before men had yet thought of paying a price for the corpses of huge animals, or arranged that inasmuch as the privilege of luxury had originated from the gods, we should behold the countenances of the deities and the legs of our tables made of the same ivory. It is stated that the Gauls, imprisoned as they were by the Alps as by a then insuperable bulwark, first found a motive for overflowing into Italy from the circumstance that a citizen from the Helvetii named Helico, who had sojourned at Rome on account of his skill as an artificer, had brought with him when he came back some dried figs and grapes and some samples of oil and wine; and consequently we may pardon them for having sought to obtain these things even by means of war.
{3.} L [6] But who would not be justifiably surprised to hear that a tree has been procured from another clime merely for the sake of shade? This tree is the plane, which was first imported into the Ionian Sea as far as the island of Diomedes to plant over his tomb, and which crossed from there to Sicily and was one of the first trees bestowed on Italy, and which has now travelled as far as the territory of the Morini, and actually occupies soil that pays tribute to Rome, so that the tribes have to pay rent even for shade. [7] The elder Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, imported plane-trees to the city of Regium as a marvel to adorn his palace, on the site where afterwards a gymnasium was built; and it is found in the authorities that these trees were not able to grow to full size, and that in all Italy there were no others except the 'Spania.'
{4.} L [8] This took place at about the period of the capture of Rome ; and so much honour has since accrued to plane-trees that their growth is encouraged by having wine poured on them, as it has been found that this is of the greatest benefit to the roots, and we have taught even trees to be winebibbers!
{5.} L [9] Famous plane-trees are: (1) one that grew in the walks of the Academy at Athens, the roots of which were 33 cubits long and spread wider than the branches; (2) at the present day there is a celebrated plane in Lycia, allied with the amenity of a cool spring; it stands by the roadside like a dwelling-house with a hollow cavity inside it 81 feet across, forming with its summit a shady grove, and shielding itself with vast branches as big as trees and covering the fields with its long shadows, and so as to complete its resemblance to a grotto, embracing inside it mossy pumice-stones in a circular rim of rock - a tree so worthy to be deemed a marvel that Licinius Mucianus, who was three times consul and recently legate of the province, thought it worth handing down to posterity also that he had held a banquet with eighteen members of his retinue inside the tree, which itself provided couches of leafage on a bounteous scale, and that he had then gone to bed in the same tree, shielded from every breath of wind, and receiving more delight from the agreeable sound of the rain dropping through the foliage than gleaming marble, painted decorations or gilded panelling could have afforded. [10] (3) Another instance is connected with the Emperor Gaius, who on an estate at Velitrae was impressed by the flooring of a single plane-tree, and benches laid loosely on beams consisting of its branches, and held a banquet in the tree - himself constituting a considerable portion of the shadow - in a dining-room large enough to hold fifteen guests and the servants: this dining-room the emperor called his 'nest.' [11] (4) There is a single plane-free at the side of a spring at Gortyn in the island of Crete which is celebrated in records written both in Greek and Latin, as never shedding its leaves; and a typical Greek story about it has come down from early times, to the effect that underneath it Jupiter lay with Europa - just as if really there were not another tree of the same species in the island of Cyprus! Slips from this tree, however, planted first in Crete itself - so eager is human nature for a novelty - reproduced the defect: for defect it was, because the plane has no greater recommendation than its property of warding off the sun in summer and admitting it in winter. [12] During the principate of Claudius an extremely wealthy Thessalian eunuch, who was a freedman of Marcellus Aeserninus but had for the sake of obtaining power got himself enrolled among the freedmen of the emperor, imported this variety of plane-tree from Crete into Italy and introduced it at his country estate near Rome - so that he deserves to be called another Dionysius! And these monstrosities from abroad still last on in Italy also, in addition, that is, to those which Italy has devised for herself.
{6.} L [13] For there is also the variety called the ground-plane, stunted in height - since we have discovered the art of producing abortions even in trees, and consequently even in the tree class we shall have to speak of the unhappy subject of dwarfs. The ground-plane is produced by a method of planting and of lopping. Clipped arbours were invented within the last 80 years by a member of the equestrian order named Gaius Matius, a friend of the deified Augustus.
{7.} L [14] The cherry and the peach and all the trees with Greek or foreign names are also exotic; but those among them which have been naturalised here will be specified among the fruit-trees. For the present we will go through the real exotics, beginning with the one most valuable for health.
[15] The citron or Assyrian apple, called by others the Median apple, is an antidote against poisons. It has the leaves of the strawberry-tree, but with prickles running among them. For the rest, the actual fruit is not eaten, but it has an exceptionally strong scent, which belongs also to the leaves, and which penetrates garments stored with them and keeps off injurious insects. The tree itself bears fruit at all seasons, some of the apples falling while others are ripening and others just forming. [16] Because of its great medicinal value various nations have tried to acclimatise it in their own countries, importing it in earthenware pots provided with breathing holes for the roots (and similarly, as it will be convenient to record here so that each of my points may be mentioned only once, all plants that are to travel a specially long distance are planted as tightly as possible for transport); but it has refused to grow except in Media and Persia. It is this fruit the pips of which, as we have mentioned { 11.278 }, the Parthian grandees have cooked with their viands for the sake of sweetening their breath. And among the Medes no other tree is highly commended.
{8.} L [17] We have already described { 6.54 } the wool-bearing trees of the Chinese in making mention of that race, and we have spoken { 7.21 } of the large size of the trees in India. One of those peculiar to India, the ebony, is spoken of in glowing terms by Virgil { Georg. 2.116 }, who states that it does not grow in any other country. Herodotus { 3.97 }, however, prefers it to be ascribed to Ethiopia, stating that the Ethiopians used to pay as tribute to the Kings of Persia every three years a hundred logs of ebony, together with gold and ivory. [18] Nor also should we omit the fact, since that author indicates it, that the Ethiopians used to pay twenty large elephant tusks on the same account. So high was the esteem in which ivory was held in the 310th year of our city { 444 B.C. }, the date at which that author composed his history at Thurii in Italy; which makes all the more surprising the statement which we accept on his authority { 3.15 }, that nobody of Asia or Greece had hitherto been seen who had ever seen the river Po. [19] The exploration of the geography of Ethiopia, which as we have said { 6.181 } had lately been reported to the Emperor Nero, showed that over a space of 1,996 miles from Syene on the frontier of the empire to Meroe trees are rare, and there are none except of the palm species. That is possibly the reason why ebony was the third most important item in the tribute paid.
{9.} L [20] Ebony was exhibited at Rome by Pompey the Great on the occasion of his triumph over Mithridates. According to Fabius ebony does not give out a flame, yet burns with an agreeable scent. It is of two kinds: the better one, which grows as a tree, is rare - it is of a smooth substance and free from knots, and of a shiny black colour that is pleasing to the eye even in the natural state without the aid of art; whereas the other grows as a shrub like the cytisus, and is spread over the whole of India.
{10.} L [21] In India there is also a thorn the wood of which resembles ebony, but can be detected even by the flame of a lantern, as the light at once shines through people.
We will now describe the trees that aroused the wonder of the victorious expedition of Alexander the Great when that part of the world was first revealed.
{11.} L [22] The Indian fig tree { banyan } bears exceptionally fine fruit, and it is self-propagating, as it spreads its branches to an enormous width and the bottom ones bend down to the earth so heavily that in a year's time they take root, and produce for themselves a fresh offspring planted in a circle round the parent tree like the work of an ornamental gardener. Inside this bower the shepherds dwell in summer, as it is at once shaded and protected by the fence of the tree - a very attractive sight when looked at from below or from a distance, with its vaulted dome. [23] Its higher branches, however, shoot upward to a great height from the main bulk of the mother tree, forming an extensive grove, so as in many cases to enclose a circle sixty paces { 89 metres } across, while they cover with their shade a space of a two stades. The broad leaves have the shape of an Amazon's shield; consequently they cover over the fruit and prevent it from growing, and it is scanty and not larger in size than a bean; but as it is ripened by the rays of the sun shining through the foliage it has an extremely sweet taste, and is worthy of the marvellous tree that produces it. This fig grows mostly in the neighbourhood of the river Acesine.
{12.} L [24] There is another fig the fruit of which is larger and superior in flavour; the sages of India live on it. The leaf of this tree resembles birds' wings, and is 3 cubits long and 2 cubits broad. The fruit grows out of the bark, and is remarkable for the sweetness of its juice ; one bunch is enough for four people. The tree is called the pala { banana }, and the fruit ariena. It is most frequent in the territory of the Sydraci, which was the farthest point reached by the expeditions of Alexander. There is also another tree resembling this one, the fruit of which is sweeter, but causes derangement of the bowels. Alexander issued an order in advance forbidding any member of his expedition to touch it.
{13.} L [25] The Macedonians have given accounts of kinds of trees that for the most part have no names. There is also one that resembles the terebinth in every other respect but the fruit of which is like an almond, though smaller, and is remarkably sweet, at all events when grown in Bactria. This tree has been considered by some persons to be a special kind of terebinth rather than another plant resembling it. The tree from which they make linen for clothing resembles a mulberry by its leaves, but the calyx of the fruit is like that of a dog-rose. It is grown in the plains, and no other plantations add more to the beauty of the landscape.
{14.} L [26] The olive-tree of India is barren, except for the fruit of the wild olive. But trees resembling our junipers that bear pepper occur everywhere, although some writers have reported that they only grow on the southern face of the Caucasus. The seeds differ from those of the juniper by being in small pods, like those which we see in the case of the kidney-bean; these pods when plucked before they open and dried in the sun produce what is called long pepper, but if left to open gradually, when ripe they disclose white pepper, which if afterwards dried in the sun changes colour and wrinkles up. [27] Even these products, however, have their own special infirmity, and inclement weather shrivels them up and turns the seeds into barren husks, called bregma, which is an Indian word meaning 'dead.' Of all kinds of pepper this is the most pungent and the lightest, and it is pale in colour. Black pepper is more agreeable, but white pepper is of a milder flavour than either the black or the 'long' pepper.
[28] The root of the pepper-tree is not, as some people have thought, the same as the substance called ginger, or by others zinpiberi, although it has a similar flavour. Ginger is grown on farms in Arabia and the Troglodytes' Country it is a small plant with a white root. The plant is liable to decay very quickly, in spite of its extreme pungency. Its price is six denarii a pound. It is easy to adulterate long pepper with Alexandrian mustard. Long pepper is sold at 15 denarii a pound, white pepper at 7, and black at 4. [29] It is remarkable that the use of pepper has come so much into favour, as in the case of some commodities their sweet taste has been an attraction, and in others their appearance, but pepper has nothing to recommend it in either fruit or berry. To think that its only pleasing quality is pungency and that we go all the way to India to get this! Who was the first person who was willing to try it on his viands, or in his greed for an appetite was not content merely to be hungry? Both pepper and ginger grow wild in their own countries, and nevertheless they are bought by weight like gold or silver. Italy also now possesses a pepper-tree that grows larger than a myrtle, which it somewhat resembles. Its grains have the same pungency as that believed to belong to myrtle-pepper, but when dried it lacks the ripeness that the other has, and consequently has not the same wrinkles and colouring either. Pepper is adulterated with juniper berries, which absorb its pungency in a remarkable manner, and in the matter of weight there are several ways of adulterating it.
{15.} L [30] There is also in India a grain resembling that of pepper, but larger and more brittle, called the carvophyllon { clove }, which is reported to grow on the Indian lotus-tree; it is imported here for the sake of its scent. There is also a thorn-bush bearing an extremely bitter fruit that has a resemblance to pepper; this shrub has small thickly clustering leaves like the cyprus; the branches are 3 cubits long, the bark of a pale colour, and the root wide-spreading and woody, of the colour of box. This root boiled in water with the seed in a copper vessel produces the medicine called lycion. [31] The thorn in question also grows on Mount Pelion, where it is used for mixing with a drug, as also are the root of the asphodel, ox-gall, wormwood, sumach and the lees of olive oil. The best lycion for medicinal purposes is the kind that makes a froth; this is imported from India in leather bottles made of camel skin or rhinoceros hide. The shrub itself is sometimes known in Greece under the name of Chiron's buckthorn.
{16.} L [32] Another substance imported from India is macir, the red bark of the large root of a tree of the same name, which I have been unable to identify. This bark boiled with honey is considered in medicine to be a valuable specific for dysentery.
{17.} L Arabia also produces saccharon, but that grown in India is more esteemed. It is a kind of honey that collects in reeds, white like gum, and brittle to the teeth; the largest pieces are the size of a filbert. It is only employed as a medicine.
{18.} L [33] On the frontier of India is a race called the Arian, which has a thorn-bush that is valuable for the juice that it distils, resembling myrrh. It is difficult to get at this bush because it is hedged with thorns. In the same district there is also a poisonous bush-radish, [34] with the leaf of a bay-tree, the smell of which attracts horses, and nearly robbed Alexander of his cavalry when he first entered the region. This also happened in Gedrosia as well, on account of the foliage of the bay-trees; and in the same district a thorn was reported the juice of which sprinkled on the eyes caused blindness in all animals. There was also a plant with a very strong scent, that was full of tiny snakes whose bite was instantly fatal. Onesicritus reports that in the valleys of Hyrcania there are trees resembling the fig, named 'occhus-trees', which for two hours every morning drip honey.
{19.} L [35] Adjoining India is the Bactrian country, in which is produced the highly esteemed bdellium. The tree is black in colour, and the size of the olive; its leaf resembles that of the oak and its fruit that of the wild fig. The subsistence of the fruit is like gum; one name for it is brochos, another malacha, and another maldaeos, while a black variety which is rolled up into cakes has the name of hadrobolos. It ought to be transparent like wax, to have a scent, to exude grease when crumbled, and to have a bitter taste, though without acidity. When used in religions ritual it is steeped in wine, which makes its scent more powerful. This tree is native to Arabia and India, and also to Media and Babylon. Some people give to the bdellium imported from Media the name of peraticum; this kind is more brittle and also harder and more bitter than the others, [36] whereas the Indian sort is moister, and gummy. Almonds are used to adulterate Indian bdellium, but all the other sorts are adulterated also with the bark of scordastum, that being the name of a tree that resembles the gum. But these adulterations can be detected - and it must be enough to state this once for all, to apply to all other perfumes as well - by smell, colour, weight, taste and the action of fire. The Bactrian bdellium is shiny and dry, and has a number of white spots like fingernails; and also it has a specific weight of its own and ought not to be heavier or lighter than this. The price of pure bdellium is 3 denarii a pound.
{20.} L [37] Adjoining the races above mentioned is Persia. On the Red Sea, which at this point we have called the Persian Gulf, the tides of which are carried a long way inland, the trees are of a remarkable nature; for they are to be seen on the coast when the tide is out, embracing the barren sands with their naked roots like polypuses, eaten away by the salt and looking like trunks that have been washed ashore and left high and dry. Also these trees when the tide rises remain motionless although beaten by the waves; indeed at high water they are completely covered, and the evidence of the facts clearly proves that this species of tree is nourished by the brackish water. They are of marvellous size, and in appearance they resemble the strawberry-tree, but their fruit is like almonds outside and contains a spiral kernel. {21.} L [38] In the same gulf is the island of Tyros, which is covered with forests in the part facing east, where it also is flooded by the sea at high tide. Each of the trees is the size of a fig-tree; they have a flower with an indescribably sweet scent and the fruit resembles a lupine, and is so prickly that no animal can touch it. On a more elevated plateau in the same island there are trees that bear wool, but in a different manner to those of the Chinese as the leaves of these trees have no growth on them, and might be thought to be vine-leaves were it not that they are smaller; but they bear gourds of the size of a quince, which when they ripen burst open and disclose balls of down from which an expensive linen for clothing is made.
{22.} L [39] Their name for this tree is the gossypinus; it also grows in greater abundance on the smaller island of Tyros, which is ten miles distant from the other. Juba says that this shrub has a woolly down poring round it, the fabric made from which is superior to the linen of India. He also says that there is an Arabian tree called the cynas from which cloth is made, which has foliage resembling a palm-leaf. Similarly the natives of India are provided with clothes by their own trees. But in the Tyros islands there is also another tree with a blossom like a white violet but four times as large; it has no scent, which may well surprise us in that region of the world.
{23.} L [40] There is also another tree which resembles this one but has more foliage and a rose-coloured blossom, which it closes at nightfall and begins to open at sunrise, unfolding it fully at noon: the natives speak of it as going to sleep. The same island also produces palm-trees and vines, as well as figs and all the other kinds of fruit-trees. None of the trees there sheds its leaves; and the island is watered by cold springs, and has a considerable rainfall.
{24.} L [41] The country neighbouring on these islands, Arabia, calls for some detailed account of its products - inasmuch as the parts of trees that are utilised include the root, the trunk, the bark, the juice, the gum, the wood, the shoots, the blossom, the leaves and the fruit.
{25.} L In India a root and a leaf are held in the highest value. The root is that of the costus, which has a burning taste and an exquisite scent, though in other respects the plant is of no use. In the island of Patale just in the mouth of the river Indus, there are two kinds of costus plant, the black and the white; the latter is the better; it sells at denarii a pound.
{26.} L [42] About the leaf, which is that of the nard, it is proper to speak at greater length, as it holds a foremost place among perfumes. The nard is a shrub, the root of which is heavy and thick but short and black, and although oily, brittle; it has a musty smell like the gladiolus, and an acrid taste; the leaves are small, and grow in clusters. The shoots of the nard sprout into ears, and consequently both the spikes and the leaves of the nard are famous - a twofold product. Another kind of nard growing by the Ganges is entirely ruled out by its name, 'putrid nard,' having a poisonous smell. [43] Nard is also adulterated with a plant called bastard nard, which grows everywhere, and has a thicker and broader leaf and a sickly colour inclining to white; and also by being mixed with its own root to increase the weight, and with gum and silver-spume or antimony and gladiolus or husk of gladiolus. Unadulterated nard can be detected by its light weight and its ruddy colour and sweet scent and particularly by its taste, which dries up the mouth and leaves a pleasant flavour.
The price of nard is 100 denarii a pound. The nard-leaf market is graded according to the size of the leaf: [44] the kind called hadrosphaerum in larger pills costs 40 denarii; the smaller-leaved sort called mesosphaerum sells at 60 denarii; and the most highly spoken of, microsphaerum, is made of the smallest leaves and its price is 75 denarii. All the kinds have an agreeable scent, stronger when they are fresh. The better nard has a blacker colour, if it is old when gathered. [45] In our part of the world the next most highly praised kind is the Syrian, then that from Gaul, and in the third place is the Cretan, which some call agrion and others phun; it has a leaf like that of alexanders, a stalk one cubit long, knotted and coloured whitish purple, and a crooked hairy root resembling birds' claws. Wild nard is called valerian; we shall speak about it among flowers. All of these kinds of nard, however, are herbs except the Indian. Among them the Gallic kind is plucked with the root as well, and washed in wine, dried in a shady place, and done up with paper in small parcels; it does not differ much from the Indian nard, but it is lighter in weight than the Syrian. Its price is 3 denarii. [46] In the case of these varieties the only way to test them is that the leaves must not be brittle and parched instead of merely dry. With Gallic nard there always grows the herb called little goat because of its offensive smell, like the smell of a goat; it is very much employed to adulterate nard, from which it is distinguished by having no stem and smaller leaves, and by its root, which is not bitter and also has no smell.
{27.} L [47] Hazelwort also has the property of nard, indeed some people actually call it 'wild nard.' It has the leaves of the ivy, only rounder and softer, a purple flower, the root of Gallic nard, and seed like grape-stones, which has a warm taste with a flavour of wine. On shady mountains it flowers twice a year. The best variety grows in Pontus, the next best in Phrygia and the third in Illyricum. When it begins to shed its leaves it is dug up and dried in the sun, as it quickly becomes mouldy and loses its strength. A plant has also lately been found in Thrace the leaves of which do not differ at all from the Indian nard.
{28.} L [48] The clustered amomum is much in use; it is obtained from the Indian wild-vine, or as other people have supposed from a twisted shrub a hand high, and it is plucked with its root and then gently pressed together into bundles, as it is liable to break at once. The kind most highly spoken of is the one with leaves like those of the pomegranate and devoid of wrinkles, coloured red. The second best kind is of a pale colour; the grass-coloured one is not so good, and the white kind is the worst; it also goes white with age. [49] The price of clustered amomum is 60 denarii a pound, but as dust it fetches only 48 denarii. It grows in the part of Armenia called Otene, and also in Media and in Pontus. It is adulterated with the leaves of the pomegranate and with liquid gum to make the leaves stick together and form a cluster like a bunch of grapes.
There is also another substance called amomis, which is not so full of veins and is harder and has less scent, showing that it is either a different plant or amomum that has been gathered unripe.
{29.} L [50] Resembling these substances both in name and in the shrub that produces it is cardamomum, the seeds of which are oblong in shape. It is gathered in Arabia, in the same manner as amomum. It has four varieties: one very green and oily, with sharp corners and awkward to crumble - this is the kind most highly spoken of - the next sort a whitish red, the third shorter and of a colour nearer black, while an inferior kind is mottled and easily friable, and has little scent - in the true kind the scent ought to be near to that of costus. Cardamomum also grows in the country of the Medes. The price of the best sort is 3 denarii a pound.
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