of their dietary employment imparted to | Disinherited, exiled from its proper abode, them an idea of sacredness; or, possibly, without function, sense, or memory, it because the slightness of the nourishment survived, a vaporous image, a mere castthey afforded was judged suitable to the maintenance of the unsubstantial life of ghosts. At any rate, the custom became firmly established of planting graves with asphodel, with a view to making provision for their silent and helpless, yet still needy inmates. With changed associations the custom still exists in Greece, and, very remarkably, has been found to prevail in Japan, where a species of asphodel is stated to be cultivated in cemeteries, and placed, blooming in pots, on gravestones. We can scarcely doubt that the same train of thought, here as in Greece, originally prompted its selection for sepulchral uses. Unquestionably some of the natives of the Congo district plant manioc on the graves of their head, with no other than a provisioning design. The same may be said of the cultivation of certain fruit-trees in the burying-grounds of the South Sea Islanders. One of these is the Cratava religiosa, bearing an insipid but eatable fruit, and held sacred in Otaheite under the name of "Purataruru." The Terminalia glabrosa fills (or filled a century ago) an analogous position in the Society Islands. It yields a nut resembling an almond, doubtless regarded as acceptable to phantasmal palates. * away residuum of what once had been a man. Teiresias, the Theban soothsayer, alone, by special privilege of Persephone, retained the use of reason; the rest were vain appearances, escaping annihilation by a scarcely perceptible distinction. No wonder that life should have been darkened by the prospect of such a destiny — or worse. For there were, in the Homeric world to come, awful possibilities of torment, though none of blessedness. Deep down in Tartarus, those who had sinned against the gods Sisyphus, Ixion, Tantalus were condemned to tremendous, because unending punishment; while the haunting sense of loss, which seems to have survived every other form of consciousness, giving no rest, nor so much as exemption from fear, pursued good and bad alike. Nowhere does the utter need of mankind for the hope brought by Christianity appear with such startling clearness as in the verses of Homer, from the contrast of the vivid pictures of life they present with the appall ing background of despair upon which they are painted. Its relation to the unseen world naturally brought to the asphodel a host of occult or imaginary qualities. Of true We now see quite clearly why the Ho- medicinal properties it may be said to be meric shades dwell in meadows of aspho- devoid, and it accordingly finds no place del. These were, in the fundamental in the modern pharmacopoeia. Anciently, conception, their harvest fields. From however, it was known, from its manifold them, in some unexplained subsensual powers, as the "heroic" herb. It was way, the attenuated nutriment they might sovereign against witchcraft, and was require must have been derived. But this planted outside the gates of villas and primitive idea does not seem to have been farmhouses to ward off malefic influences. explicitly present to the poet's mind. It It restored the wasted strength of the had been already, we can infer, to a great consumptive; it was an antidote to the extent lost sight of before his time. It venom of serpents and scorpions; it enwas enough for him that the plant was tered as an ingredient into love-potions, popularly associated with the dusky re- and was sovereign against evil spirits; gions out of sight of the sun. He did not children round whose necks it was hung stop to ask why, his business being to see, cut their teeth without pain, and the terand to sing of what he saw, not to reason. rors of the night flew from its presence. He accordingly made his Hades to bloom Briefly, its faculties were those of (in for all time with the tall white flowers of Zoroastrian phraseology) a "smiter of the king's spear, and so perpetuated a fiends; yet from it we moderns distil connection he was not concerned to ex-alcohol. plain. Homer cannot be said to have attained to any real conception of the immortality of the soul. The shade which flitted to subterranean spaces when the breath left the body, resembled an animal principle of life rather than a true spiritual essence. • Unger, Die Pflanze als Todtenschmuck, p. 23. And sweet is moly, but his root is ill, wrote Spenser in one of his sonnets. But it may be doubted whether he would have committed himself to this sentiment had he realized that the gift of Hermes was neither more nor less than a clove of garlic. Ulysses, approaching the house of Circe as strong as is a small walking-staff. At the top of the stalk standeth a bundle of fair whitish flowers, dashed over with a wash of purple color, smelling like the flowers of onions. When they be ripe there appeareth a black seed wrapt in a white skin or husk. The root is great and bulbous, covered with a blackish skin on the outside, and white within, and of the bigness of a great onion. So much for the question in its matterof-fact aspect. We may now look at it from its fabulous side. in search of his companions (already, as | naked, smooth, thick stalk of two cubits high, he found out later, transformed into swine), was met on the road by the crafty son of Maia, and by him forewarned and forearmed against the wiles of the enchantress. Skilled in drugs as she was, a more potent herb than any known to her had been procured by the messenger of the gods. "Therewith," the hero continued in his narrative to the Phæacian king, "the slayer of Argos gave me the plant that he had plucked from the ground, and he showed me the nature thereof. It was black at the root, but the flower was like to milk. The gods call it moly, but it is hard for mortal men to dig; howbeit, with the gods all things are possible." It is thus evident that the Homeric moly is compounded of two elements-a botanical, so to speak, and a mythological. A substratum of fact has received an embellishment of fable. Before the mind's eye of the poet, when he described the white flowers and black root of the vegetable snatched from the reluctant earth by Hermes, was a specific plant, which he chose to associate, or which had already become associated, with floating legendary lore, widely and anciently diffused among our race. The identification of that plant has often been attempted, and not unsuccessfully. The earliest record of such an effort is contained in Theophrastus's "History of Plants." He there asserts the moly of the Odyssey to have been a kind of garlic (Allium nigrum, according to Sprengel), growing on Mount Cyllene in Arcadia, and of supreme efficacy as an antidote to poi sons; but he, unlike Homer, adds that there is no difficulty in plucking it. We shall see presently that this difficulty was purely mythical. The language of Theophrastus suggests that the association of moly with the Arcadian garlic was traditional in his time; and the tradition has been perpetuated in the modern Greek name molyza, of a member of the same family. John Gerard, in his "Herbal," calls moly (of which he enumerates several species) the "sorcerer's garlic," and describes as follows the Theophrastian, assumed as identical with the epic, kind. Homer's moly hath very thick leaves, broad toward the bottom, sharp at the point, and hollowed like a trough or gutter, in the bosom of which leaves near unto the bottom cometh forth a certain round bulb or ball of a green color; which being ripe and set in the ground, groweth and becometh a fair plant, such as is the mother. Among those leaves riseth up a And first, it is to be remembered that moly was not a charm, but a countercharm. Its powers were defensive, and presupposed an attack. It was as a shield against the thrust of a spear. Now if any clear notion could be attained regarding the kind of weapon of which it had efficacy thus to blunt the point, we should be perceptibly nearer to its individualization. But we are only told that the magic draught of Circe contained pernicious drugs. The poet either did not know, or did not care to tell more. There is, however, a plant round which a crowd of strange beliefs gathered from the earliest times. This is the Atropa mandragora, or mandrake, probably identical with the dudaim of Scripture, and called by classical writers Circea, from its supposed potency in philtres. The rude resemblance of its bifurcated root to the lower half of the human frame started its career as an object of credulity and an instrument of imposture. It was held to be animated with a life transcending the obscure vitality of ordinary vegetable existence, and occult powers of the most remarkable kind were attributed to it. The little images formed of the mandrakeroot, consulted as oracles in Germany under the name of Alrunen, and imported with great commercial success into this country during the reign of Henry the Eighth, were credited with the power of multiplying money left in their charge, and generally of bringing luck to their possessors, especially when their original seat had been at the foot of a gallows, and their first vesture a fragment of a windingsheet. But privilege, as usual, was here also fraught with peril. The operation of formidable consequences ensuing upon its uprooting a mandrake was a critical one, clumsy or negligent execution. These were only to be averted by a strict observance of forms prescribed by the wisdom of a very high antiquity. According to Pliny, three circles were to be drawn round the plant with a sword, within which the digger stood, facing west. This posi- | It was laid on beds against nightmare; it tion had to be combined, as best it might, cured the poisoned bites of reptiles; it with an approach from the windward side, was eaten to avert the evil effects of digupon his uncanny prey. Through the ging hellebore; while, in Cuba, immunity pages of Josephus the device gained its from jaundice was secured by wearing, earliest publicity of employing a dog to during thirteen days, a collar consisting receive the death penalty, attendant, in of thirteen cloves of garlic, and throwing his belief, on eradication. It was widely it away at a cross-road, without looking adopted, and by medieval sagacity forti- behind, at midnight on the expiration of fied with the additional prescriptions that that term. All the properties of this the canine victim should be black without savory root, it may be remarked, are bea white hair, that the deed should be done neficent, whereas all those of the mandrake before dawn on a Friday, and that the (regarded as an herb, not as an idol) are ears of the doer should be carefully stuffed maleficent. Later folk-lore, however, has with cotton-wool. For, at the instant of not brought them into direct competition. leaving its parent earth, a fearful sound, Each is thought of as supreme in its own which no mortal might hear and sanely line. Only in the Odyssey (on the supposurvive, issued from the uptorn root. This sition here adopted) they were permitted superstition found a familiar place in En- to meet, with the result of signal defeat glish literature down to the seventeenth for the powers of evil. century. Thus Suffolk, alleging the futility of bad language in apology for the backwardness in its use with which he has just been reproached by the gentle queen of Henry the Sixth, exclaims, Shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth, The persuasion was, moreover, included amongst the "vulgar errors " gravely combated by Sir Thomas Browne. Thus we see that the identification of moly with garlic is countenanced by whatever scraps of botanical evidence are at hand, fortified by a constant local tradition, no less than by the fantastic prescriptions of superstitious popular observance. The difficulty or peril of uprooting, which made the prophylactic plant obtained by Hermes all but unattainable to mortals, is a common feature in vegetable mythology. It figures as the price to be paid for something rarely precious, enhancing its value and at the same time affixing a scarce tolerable penalty to its possession. It belonged, for instance, in varying degrees, to hellebore and mistletoe, as well as to mandragora. With the last it most likely originated, and from it was transferred by Homer, in the exercise of his poetical license, to moly. From the adventure in the Ææan isle, Mandragora, then, is the most ancient as from so many others, Ulysses comes and the most widely famous of all magic out unscathed. The leading motive of his herbs; and the old conjecture is at least a character is found in his multiform expeplausible one that from its exclusive pos-rience. He is appointed to see and to session were derived the evil powers of the daughter of Perse. Moly, on the other hand, must be sought for amongst the herbaceous antidotes of fable. Perhaps the best known of these is the plant so repugnant to the fine senses of Horace, and smelling abominably in the nostrils of the gallants of the Elizabethan epoch. The name of garlic in Sanskrit signifies "slayer of monsters." It was invoked as a divinity in ancient Egypt. The Eddic valkyr, Sigurdrifa, sang of its unassailable virtue. As a sure preservative from witchcraft it was, by mediæval Teutons, infused in the drink of cattle and horses, hung up in lonely shepherds' huts, and buried under thresholds. VOL. LX. 3088 LIVING AGE. suffer all that comes within the scope of Greek humanity. No experience, however perilous, is spared him. Protection from the extremity of evil must and does content him. For his keen curiosity falls in with the design of his celestial patroness, in urging him to drink to the dregs the costly draught of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet it is to be noted that from the house of the enchantress there is no exit save through the gates of hell. Within the spacious confines of the universe there is perhaps but one race of beings whose implanted instincts and whose visible destiny are irreconcilably at war. Man is born to suffer; but suffering has always for him the poignancy of sur prise. The long record of multiform tribulation which he calls his history, has been moulded, throughout its many vicissitudes, by a keen and ceaseless struggle for enjoyment. Each man and woman born into the world looks afresh round the horizon of life for pleasure, and meets instead the ever fresh outrage of pain. Our planet is peopled with souls disinherited of what they still feel to be an inalienable heritage of happiness. No wonder, then, that quack medicines for the cure of the ills of life, should always have been popular. Of such nostrums, the famous Homeric drug nepenthes is an early example, and may serve for a type. We read in the Odyssey that Telemachus had no sooner reached man's estate than he set out from Ithaca for Pylus and Lacedæmon, in order to seek news of his father from Nestor and Menelaus, the two most eminent survivors of the expedition against Troy. But he learned only that Ulysses had vanished from the known world. The disappointment was severe, even to tears, notwithstanding that the banquet was already spread in the radiant palace of the Spartan king. The remaining guests, including the illustrious host and hostess, caught the infection of grief, and the pleasures of the table were overclouded. Then Helena the child of Zeus strange things Devised, and mixed a philter in their wine, Which so cures heartache and the inward stings, That men forget all sorrow wherein they pine. He who hath tasted of the draught divine Weeps not that day, although his mother die And father, or cut off before his eyne Brother or child beloved fall miserably, Hewn by the pitiless sword, he sitting silent by. Drugs of such virtue did she keep in store, Some baneful. In that climate each doth signifies the negation of sorrow; and we learn that it grew in Egypt, and that its administration was followed by markedly soothing effects. Let us see whither these scanty indications as to its nature will lead us. Many of the ancients believed nepenthes to have been a kind of bugloss, the leaves of which, infused in wine, were affirmed by Dioscorides, Galen, and other authorities, to produce exhilarating effects. It is certain that in Plutarch's time the hilarity of banquets was constantly sought to be increased by this means. But this was done in avowed imitation of Helen's hospitable expedient. It was, in other words, a revival, not a survival; and pos sesses for us, consequently, none of the instructiveness of an unbroken tradition. Of A new idea was struck out by the Roman traveller, Pietro della Valle, who visited Persia and Turkey early in the seventeenth century. He suspects the true nepenthean draught to have been coffee. From Egypt, according to the antique narrative, it was brought by Helen; and by way of Egypt the best Mocha reached Constantinople, where it served to recreate the spirits, and pass the heavy hours of the subjects of Achmet. this hypothesis we may say, in the phrase of Sir Thomas Browne, that it is "false below confute.' The next, that of honest Petrus la Seine, has even less to recommend it. His erudite conclusion was that in nepenthes the long-sought aurum potabile, the illusory ornament of the Paracelsian pharmacopoeia, made its first historical appearance. Egypt, he argued, was the birthplace of chemistry, and the great chemical desideratum from the earliest times had been the production of a drinkable solution of the most perfect among metals. Nay, its supreme worth had lent its true motive to the famous Argonautic expedition, which had been fitted out for the purpose of securing, not a golden fleece in the literal sense, but a parchment upon which the invaluable recipe was inscribed. The virtues of the elixir were regarded by the learned disin which exalted position we willingly sertator as superior to proof or discussion, leave them. More enthusiastic than critical, Madame Dacier looked at the subject from a point of view taken up, many centuries earlier, by Plutarch. Nepenthes, according to both these authorities, had no real exist The effects ascribed to it were ence. merely a figurative way of expressing the charms of Helen's conversation. Herodotus. He states that it grew in the country of the Scythians, that from its fibres garments closely resembling linen in texture were woven in Thrace, and that the fumes from its burning seeds furnished the nomad inhabitants of what is now southern Russia with vapor baths, serving them as a substitute for washing. Marked intoxicating effects attended this original method of ablution. But this was to endow the poet with a subtlety which he was very far from possessing. Simple and direct in thought, he invariably took the shortest way open to him in expression; and circuitous routes of interpretation will invariably lead astray from his meaning. It is clear accordingly that a real drug, of Egyptian origin, was supposed to have soothed and restored appetite to the guests of Menelaus - -a drug quite possibly known to Homer only by the rumor of its qualities, which he ingeniously turned to account for the pur-preparation of hemp was used (it was said, poses of his story. Now, since those qualities were undoubtedly narcotic, the field of our choice is a narrow one. We have only to inquire whether any, and, if so, what, preparations of the kind were anciently in use by the inhabitants of the Nile valley. In China, from the beginning of the third century of our era, if not earlier, a with perfect success) as an anæsthetic; and it is mentioned as a remedy under the name of b'hanga, in Hindu medical works of probably still earlier date. Its identity with nepenthes was first suggested in 1839, and has since been generally acquiesced in. But there are two objections. Unfortunately our information does not go very far back. A certain professor The practice of eating or smoking of botany from Padua, however, named hemp, for the sake of its exalting effects Prosper Alpinus, has left a remarkable upon consciousness, appears to have origaccount of his personal observations on inated on the slopes of the Himalayas, to the point towards the close of the six- have spread thence to Persia, and to have teenth century. The vulgar pleasures of been transmitted farther west by Arab intoxication appear to have been (as was agency. It was not, then, primitively an fitting in a Mohammedan country) little in Egyptian custom, and was assuredly unrequest; among all classes their place was known to the wife of Thôn. Moreover, taken by the raptures of solacing dreams hemp is not indigenous on the banks of and delightful visions artificially produced. the Nile. It came thither as an immiThe means employed for the purpose grant, most probably long after the buildwere threefold. There was first an elec-ing of the latest pyramid. Herodotus tuary of unknown composition imported includes no mention of it in his curious from India called bernavi. But this may and particular account of the country; at once be put aside, since the "medicine and, which is still more significant, no for a mind diseased” given by Polydamna relic of its textile use survives. to Helen, was, as we have seen, derived hempen fibre has ever been found in any from a home-grown Egyptian herb. There of the innumerable mummy-cases examremain of the three soothing drugs men- ined by learned Europeans. The ancient tioned by Alpinus, hemp and opium. Egyptians, it may then be concluded, Each was extensively consumed; and the were unacquainted with this plant, and we practice of employing each as a road to must look elsewhere for the chief ingre pleasurable sensations was already, in dient of the comfort-bringing draught dis1580, of immemorial antiquity. One of tributed by the daughter of Zeus. them was almost certainly the true Homeric nepenthes. We have only to decide which. Not a There is only opium left. If the case for identity fail here, nothing remains but to throw up the brief. But so extreme a The first, as being the cheaper form of measure is happily not needed. No seriindulgence, was mainly resorted to, our ous discrepancy starts up to shake our Paduan informant tells us, amongst the belief that we have indeed reached the lower classes. From the leaves of the truth. All the circumstances correspond herb Cannabis sativa was prepared a to admiration; the identification runs on powder known as assis, made up into all fours." The physical effects indicated boluses and swallowed, with the result of agree perfectly with those resulting from inducing a lethargic state of dreamy beati-a sparing use of opium. They tend to tude. Assis was fundamentally the same with the Indian bhang, the Arabic hashish one of the mainstays of Oriental sensual pleasure. The earliest mention of hemp is by just so much elevation of spirits as would impart a roseate tinge to the landscape of life. The intellect remains unclouded and serene. The Nemesis of indulgence, however moderate, is still behind the scenes. |