Miscellanies

1Table of contents. These things are in the seventh book of Africanus's Cesti: 1. On arming. 2. On the destruction of enemies. 3. On athletic contest. 4. For the cutting of one who has been struck. 5. For a wound from iron. 6. Taming a horse. 7. That a horse may not neigh. 8. For a horse's cataract. 9. That a horse may not be startled. 10. On the speed of horses. 11. The horse-frightener. 12. For the destruction of pack-animals. 13. For a kicking mule. 14. Military hunting. 15. To find the breadth of a river and the height of a wall. 16. Theft of sound. 17. A means of staying awake. 18. For a fight against elephants. 19. Paradoxes of farming. 20. A seal concerning the missile.

2Proem. The issues of affairs — births and destructions, alterations and healings — come by reason, or by law, or by fate, or by chance. It is good to know each of these, gathering from them all a varied profit that bears fruit: a cure for suffering, or a hidden history, or the beauty of speech. These things, in what has gone before and in what follows, have been achieved, as I think, according to my own modest measure.

3On arming. It is a good thing, in all matters, to know war as well. I have often wondered at the cause of the differing turn of armed contests, and from this that Greeks have beaten Romans, and Persians have beaten Greeks, and yet the Persians have not yet been beaten by the Romans, but the nations of upper Asia dare to claim freedom and force an equal rank toward us.

Giving an account to myself, I found the cause was not superiority of stratagems, nor soldierly strength as a whole (for among good men numbers count for nothing in war), but the preparation of the weapons and the form of the war-dress.

The Greeks delight in a heavy panoply: a double felt cap, a scale breastplate, a hollow bronze-faced shield held by two grips — one about the forearm, enough for shoving, the other held by the end of the hand — two greaves, a javelin in the hands, a close-fighting spear equal to that of the royal horsemen, and a broad sword that is not long. With this arming a run is rare: not far, but sharp, and only so much as a man pressing on needs in order to get inside missile-range in time.

They also knew how to lock shields together, and each of them fought on his own, so that the soldier's virtue was double: in common and alone. They used to cut down the barbarians in this way: they rested themselves often on the march, so that eagerness would not be blunted by the length of the road, and so they stayed fresh in this manner up to the dangers. Then, using sharp speed to get inside the missiles, they had work to do, the missiles flying farther over them once they had run in under the fall, while the others, because the infantry fought lightly armed, could not endure the charge of such a fence. For the power of a missile is length; at close quarters the safety of the fight is accomplished by the panoply.

So, that they may suffer nothing from afar, the breastplate is stronger than every missile by the folding of the scales, that it may remain unwounded; and the felt about the head, having a cap, and another overlay of bronze, and one helmet upon another, answers the shots from a sling, the outer scale being crushed and yielding so that what is sent may not reach the inner covering of the head. The face is bare and the neck free, so that looking round in every direction goes unhindered.

With the spears some hold off the lance-bearing horsemen, striking first before they fall on; others, setting their phalanxes more openly and opening a way, reach the barbarians. They also use peltasts and slingers without danger, screened in front by the wall of the arms. The short swords are useful for ease and for the violence of the blow. The Macedonian successors altered few of these things, because of the variety of their wars, and fitted out an arming common both against barbarians and against one another.

4A sign that the fighters' faces were left free under a Laconian felt cap in the Macedonian arming: they call this thing, and this practice, the soldier-king's. Alexander himself ordered the soldiers to shave their beards, and when someone rebuked him for shearing off the ornament of the face, he said: "You do not know, you unmilitary man, that there is no more convenient grip in a fight than a beard." Coming to close quarters with this arming, no barbarian would hold out, however he was equipped.

The Romans have a helmet of a single material, leaving the faces a little open for breath and sight, reaching down to the shoulder-blades, and tightening the neck so that it cannot turn; a chain-mail breastplate; one greave; a long sword; and a rectangular shield carried as a screen by the end of the hand. In the locking of shields this is weaker for the body, because the soldier cannot throw his whole shoulder into the weapon. Their spears are shorter than the Greek.

They fight with success against the panoply already described. They have safety from things nearly equal, but they have the advantage in lightness: they are easy for attacks and withdrawals, quicker at taking high ground, and by the use of the long sword they are ready to strike the Greek neck, getting the blow in before the close fight. They too have trained every art of fighting at close quarters, so that the experience is equal on both sides, and the advantage is the lightness of the dress.

So that the point of their spears may not be blunted, and so that they may not be broken against the Greek breastplates, they fitted a missile with skill and, pushing, pierced the scales.

So those who have always been beaten by the Greeks — the very men who have almost always beaten the Greeks — rarely beat them. The first cause is this: they do not rush running into the clash, so as not to leave the baggage behind; they are always shut up in the brick-shape of the army; and they go down on the knee, tiling the army with overlays of shields, in their eagerness to spend the Parthian missiles. This practice makes them both idle and unharmed, worn by sun and toil, while the barbarians come on in relays and withdraw again, resting by the interval-sendings of the nations. Further, no Roman fights by himself, nor does any become a champion fighting the mass in single combat.

5Shots from a sling that hit the heads crush the helmet and go in; and it is hard to duck a missile in flight because of the piece of iron about the neck. Besides this they do not throw the javelins with aim, spending ten on one possible kill, and they do not meet charging horsemen with small pikes.

If then someone put a Greek breastplate and helmet on a Roman soldier, and gave him a longer pike, and taught each man to throw each of the spears at each mark and to fight on his own, and sometimes set a run so that the charge inside missile-range against the enemy would be sharp, no barbarian, being cut down, would hold out against the Romans.

6On the destruction of enemies. One must not fight the enemy in all things by close order and by battles, nor make fortune mistress of the whole of affairs. The end of war is unclear, and most things go contrary to expectation. Those better prepared in iron and men, or in bows and walls, have often been injured by wind, or sun, or place, or deceit, or a spectacle and an apparition; and in great wounds the daimon Pan is a constant.

The Phocians, better prepared in everything, did not receive the Thebans when they saw them crowned with laurel: the men who did not fear the war fled the crown. Wind and sun, meeting them in the face, more injured Flaminius and Paulus. The narrowness of the Gates made Leonidas equal to the five hundred myriads. Pan ran with the Athenians to Marathon against the Persians. Themistocles drove Xerxes from Greece by a lie.

Some smear missiles with drugs so that every wound becomes fatal; others set their strength in woods. Some, as they flee, destroy the pastures first; many poison the wells. Alexander took the Alans by farming hellebore. So one must not attempt those who stand against us from the open only, but must also general against the enemy by many hidden arts.

This old Carthaginian law has been thought out: they honored generals who planned the best things even if they did not succeed, and they punished those who attempted something rash and accomplished it, making the judgment not of fortune but of purpose. Fine too is the old iambic: the safe leader is more profitable to all than the rash.

The arts of generalship are very many, and there is nothing that happens that is not written down, to teach so that those things may not happen: healthy and well-watered camping-places, seizures of higher ground, ditching, advance-guards, night-marches, forward-rides, searches, ambushes, scouts, good arming, foraging, and with sleep a sufficient preparation; toward the enemy, distrust in all things.

As for exposing how they do harm, these things are clear, I think, and known to those who have kept company with histories: drinks of theriac as a defense against poisoned missiles, and the same cure for corrupted waters. Salt-drinkings we would decline for most, because of the disgust of taking them.

7If you cut the enemies' trees you will keep the other side from hiding. For not needing the others' pasture, the fodder brought along is enough, and whatever else has been thought out for a long campaign, toward having plenty of supplies and toward suffering nothing hard from the enemy — which is also the first deed of valor, because not to suffer is much better than to do harm. Pyrrhus, at any rate, though he had the advantage of the Romans, was consumed.

Time first, and wearing, and famine, and destruction, must especially be used against barbarians, whose gathering of the army is for a season and not a lasting force, but plunder from a raid. They bring foods measured in days and a stated number of missiles, and when those are spent their flight is obvious. Why then hurry to meet enemies whom, if I wait, I shall see driven by their own time-limit? Famine comes on them overdue, the few foods spent in vain. Come then, let us not even permit those starving men to flee. Let destruction without iron hold them, an end without battle. Let us beat them with air as ally and water as helper; with the elements let us arm against them. I general a secret array; I use a fight that does not show. Let every enemy fall when he has breathed, when he thirsts, or when he has eaten; I make all things dangerous to him. Let him starve if he stays, and take plague so that he may not flee. Let us do the work of a great prayer. Air as ally emptied Athens when it was filled with Lacedaemonians, and such a condition held the Carthaginians in Sicily. The victors dedicate such wars to their own gods. Let us too imitate those gods: automatic fortune comes about under our art.

Food, then, thus: let us make breads that will nourish the last day, from animals which are written down at the end, in the first pentagon, where the musical scale of the Lydian mode are arranged, along with a malformed zeta and an inverted that there may be no breathing-out for the beasts consumed inside by themselves; then grind their remains and put them into the water from which the cake is mixed. You will do the same if you smear the ovens with this juice; but for those who bake, this is a danger. [The text is damaged here.] Having prepared enough of such foods, furnish them to the enemies in whatever way you can.

8It would happen without suspicion if someone, being careless, worked the carrying toward an easy raid of the enemies and a wished-for snatching of the things brought to them, or if someone, feigning a serious flight, yielded to those coming on of the camp fortified with such foods. These do not bring a one-day death, nor do they kill the user at once. A plague-art overtakes this man and the one who did not eat; it is mixed into all and passes to the messmate. Into a house, a city, an army, a nation the plot migrates. Such a fate an Erinys procures for them. These are just dinners of penalties against barbarians, disease pouring upon all and an inexorable disaster overtaking the enemies.

If we fear we may use such a preparation in vain, either because they do not use it from suspicion, or because they have learned this from deserters, then, having feasted them, let us release either the criminals or the captives beside them; those who have kept company with them will take plague at once. I send them a plotting kindness. Let us likewise give them to drink such a loving-cup.

Three kinds of animals which lie in the second pentagon, toward the signs of the highest of the high — a reversed gamma and a standard gamma: chop these so that all become ichor, and boiling them with very much water until all the fat of the boiled is consumed, pour into the enemies' watering-place. The bodies of those who have drunk will swell, themselves and the pack-animals; then a swelling with pain will stand upon them, and a man seeing himself become another from another, not recognizing the present form, slow both for flight and for an end, waiting the neighboring death, will pray for the speed of a warlike onset, that he may cease, both punished by the tension of inflammation and hated by himself because of the ugliness, the panoply that was inflated on the former body not holding the man now, so as to take from him even the pretense of standing in the arms.

Harm the waters also otherwise: fill the wells with dung and stones; and if the water is abundant, by fish-oil poured into them and by sea-purple, which for a long time make all water undrinkable. A greater standing of waters, or a lake, the myrtle-spurge thrown in will damage. Thus we shall first hinder the enemies by the drink. Let no one think the barbarians of the east unlearned in these things.

9They themselves often harm those who come against them. Poisoning of wine. Pharisees once prided themselves on having killed a phalanx of Romans by a pretense of flight. They were feasting, as it seemed, then withdrew when the others came on, leaving the meal ready. But the wine was a plot, poisoned with lime quenched in it. Wine is also poisoned with saltpeter-foam, box, hemlock, and like methods; for these, eaten, are enough to harm and to put enemies in a terrible state.

Since then we have taken foods and drinks as allies, come, let us also use air and wind against them. A man can guard himself from eating and drinking from enemies; how will he guard breath, how shut out air? Through these I come upon them.

Poisoning of air. The thrissos is a Thessalian snake, red in color, like a drakontis in length (and the same is also much in Asia; Syrians call it bathanerathan), which is written next in the third pentagon whose signs are of the parhypate of the high, a malformed beta and an inverted gamma; and the lion is another snake, different, for it is both small and large, but the small is more takeable for this (and it too is much born in Syria). Let both be shut together into a vessel, safely very tight; and let the sharpest sun look at the vessel. When then they have been destroyed by one another and by the marsh-air and by time, let the vessel, set toward the wind accustomed to carry continuously toward those men, be opened, so that the exhalation from it may go to the opponents, the breeze ferrying into the breaths of those plotted against. Examples of the working: a horse running by will fall, and a neighboring man, and a bird not flying over comes down from the air murdered, caught by a wind faster than a fleeing wing.

If somewhere also against us, either by art of those from a plot, or also from one of the elements, destruction should happen, I have taken the treatment in advance for escape from the plague, having set it out in the skins before these. Themistocles, generaling, promised the victory against the Medes to himself by the sea-fight coming to be of men who would sail round by sleeplessness — this too being a great advantage over the enemies: to snatch their sleep.

10Old emperors of the Romans used the thing more nakedly and more actively, bringing on at night to the camp of the opponents both the lightest infantry and, with them, trumpeter-horsemen, through whom they accomplished one of two things: either, catching the advance-guards and watches more careless, they destroyed those in the way, or they threw in a panic. Some both shot and threw javelins, and those sent from a sling, whenever they missed, were carried against tent or horse or weapon: the noise accomplished more than wounding, always striking the neighbor with fear. The trumpeters, riding round, sounded the war-note, so as always to furnish to those stationed at that point the impression that the enemies would fall on at any moment.

Then after day they led the camp out, by every means contriving not to join battle, and setting out the coming night like the one past, their own men resting with all leisure of day, or by the sending of others, and the same men always being plotted against to stay sleepless. Who does not know how unmanageable the things from this are? Pain of the head, bad eating, slackness of body from desire to sleep even somehow, the same condition succeeding night and day. Having done this next, we shall take the opponents at the first shout, made womanish by sleeplessness.

11Athletic contest. All those skilled in these things praise the stones found in the bellies of noble cocks as co-workers of virtue and victory. Worn either in leather, or carried under the tongue, they keep soldiers and athletes and gladiators well set, lasting, and not thirsty. Others tell another form and color of them: some crystal-like and rough, some black — those who speak truly. They are found in the winner when he is cut up, as if not the virtue of the bird but the nature of the stone had become the cause of prevailing.

Since then, whether worn under the mouth or about the arm, the stone either falls out or is cut round by an antagonist, one must use an unsuspected wrapping of much power. Let the cock that has won, prepared as is the custom, be eaten whole by the contestant, so that the flesh is stripped, all of it, and the bones kept whole and unbroken; then after the table let it be purified by fire. The bird, no longer of day but a messenger of victory that will be, making the eater successor of its own unbeatenness, migrates into the man as by virtue.

The son of Neocles used the stone and the food when fighting the Persians; and from there he legislated the cock-fights in Athens when it had been raised, and the Athenians after the Median victory led a victory-feast of cocks.

12For the cutting of one who has been struck. Since many are cowardly toward the necessary treatments from iron, fearing the pain from the healing more than the coming harm from not being treated, come, let us somehow comfort the hesitation of the pain, making the sufferers more confident to endure the healing.

Let the healer have a light hand, so that he may run the cut easily, and let him bring a sharp edge; for bluntness is painful. The helper, being ready for all things, must also sprinkle with the brick which lies in the pentagon, in which, according to the pyramid-shape, are laid signs of speech and of striking of the high enharmonic: an inverted alpha and a turned-back gamma having a line behind.

13For a wound from iron. For the one struck by iron this too is a cure of pain: one ought to smear the iron that wounded, then strike it against the wound. Let us say "ta ta" three times, while also spitting a certain Roman phrase which is laid in the pentagon set out, the fifth, toward the chromatic signs: an inverted alpha with a line behind, and a turned-back gamma with two lines behind.

The pain will then cease. Let the sons of physicians treat the wound, the sufferer readily furnishing himself to their touching.

14Taming a horse. Unmixed virtue is rare among men, and so also among horses. Next to the good things sits a grudging vice, so that the fine may not appear clean. One man is eloquent but not grave; another generals but is not temperate; someone is brave, but being a braggart he did not keep beauty unstained for himself; and another in another thing both has the advantage and misses. The fine and the bad in horses are like that: swift but lustful, hunters but hard-mouthed, walkers but violent. Some will not take riders; others shake them off. Some rub against walls or plants. Some are mischief-makers by nature, others have been made so by their owners. They bite and kick and stand off and rear, either hating or despising their masters. I can tell of many, each destroyed in a different disaster and form of evils under horses.

The arts of colt-tamers, as far as they can, either check or correct the vices: scant food for the violent, castration for the lovers, muzzles for the biters, wolf-bits for the hard-mouthed, blows for the disobedient. But what would a man do against the one that has stood off, and has chosen to obey in no way, toward nothing, either of commands or of lessons? Just as the wildest beasts, taken full-grown, are not tamed, but even if for a little they seem to have become handy they still do not forget the former savagery, so also this creature is hard to turn once vice has grown old in it.

Since then blow and threat and art and feeding are weak toward such things, let a vice of nature be corrected by an art of nature. Let a writing also tame him — a writing he will not fear, will not suspect, and wearing which he will be broken. In the hollow of the hoof of the front left foot, with the left hand, engrave with a bronze graver, on a sixteenth-day moon, a threat of a Roman command. The writing has a necessity of obedience. It lies in the pentagon whose numeral is blank in the lock, in which have been written the signs of the high diatonic: phi and digamma.

15That a horse may not neigh. Horses neigh, some as a threat, others when they have taken only the smell from the females. Both their voice and their silence are useful. When they charge they are taught to shout together into fear with the fellow-soldiers; when they lie in ambush, to hide together with them. But this artificial thing is blunted still more either by the season of the year or by erotic nature.

Aristomenes the Messenian took Lacedaemonians who were lying in ambush when their horses neighed, himself leading a mare. And again he himself set his ambush without danger, his horses having been forced to be silent by a station of Spartan mares. The Messenian's stratagem remains remembered. So whether a man would go through a place infested with brigands, or would sit a cavalry ambush under the enemy, let him do what will be shown. This is not only a work and invention of old Greek generals: the Parthians also lead their own horses silent into the fights in this way.

With a well-twisted sinew the tail of the horse is bound tight above the hair, so that the bond sinks far into the surface. By the tension of the binding the horse, being in pain, keeps the same spirit and speed, but holds back only the voice, even if the compelling occasion is love.

16For a horse's cataract. Homer wrote the Trojan horses as swift, but he made the Thessalian ones prophetic and gave them a human voice — not pointing out daimons, but exposing a horse-learning. Those now set over horses need to learn the divination from horses clearly, but they are unused to it. A horse's nod and look and voice and silence signify various things. I leave the rest aside: winters and prosperities and good years of fruits and their own offspring. The greatest: they both say and show the onsets of enemies; they also foretell murders; and they have often exposed hidden brigand-bands by a tension of the ears, or by hesitation of going forward, or by snorting.

And they have shown not only wicked men. Trust me when I say it: they see daimons too, and I know many that at crossroads neighed and fell and proclaimed the threat by the voice. Those of two unlike eyes seem to excel especially toward the understanding of such things, despising both war and apparition, and alone claiming against lions the kingship of the animals. Whether then it is a work of soul, or a nature of eyes, both must be trained: the one by teaching and art, the other by care.

Horses, like human athletes, must hold off from sex. This brings harm of the eyes; and much winter, having brought a chronic drip, does so too, and a cough besides. Let each affection be treated — the cataract — with the Bacchic plant. Treatment of horses that have the cataract: ivy juiced and mixed with the material already named; let it be an ointment two days running; then, the next being skipped again, let this be three times and often, until the horse recover the accustomed prophetic sight. I do not begrudge the treatment also to the second-rank beasts of horses. Use this for the cough; in a little you will find something lying inside.

17That a horse may not be startled. For horses not being startled in vain by new sights or shadows, a cure is a tail attached to the right ear of the animal, cut from the beast while it was living. It lies in the seventh pentagon, over which are set the signs of hypate meson: sigma and sigma.

18On the speed of horses. The speed of horses is blunted and it increases. [The text is damaged here.] a wolf as a counter-charm stands to each, and the two feet go numb; more quickly it comes to earth under a wolf. Wolf-feet are a possession horsemen seek after, and an astragalus of the same beast, hung on, also checks a runner. Rare, then, is the wounding and thinning that can happen.

We found another way the wolf can help toward swiftness, without harm to the horse. The canine teeth, taken out of a living wolf, are woven into the neck-pieces and contribute to both: they are an unsuspected help, and an ornament of contest-trappings. It is a fine thing if a man attach it to the whole four-horse team; if not, even the lead horse alone, having this wrapping, is enough to make the co-runners faster.

19The horse-frightener. The story is that the Sybarites once drove luxury to this point: they would lead the horses into the symposium at dinner. The horses, having heard an aulos-tune, stand up on the two hind feet and dance with the front as if gesturing with the hands. An aulos-player who had been insulted deserted to the Crotoniates, freshly beaten in a horse-fight. He promised to benefit the common thing to the greatest degree, for he would hand over the whole Sybarite horse-force captive. The Crotoniates trusted him and allowed him to general. He gathered the city's aulos-players, showed the tune, and when it was time passed the word for the sally upon the enemies.

When the Sybarites came on with the whole people, snorting quite with the surplus of horse, and the phalanxes mixed with one another, under one signal all piped. The horses, having heard the accustomed sound as they had been taught at home, shook off the riders and all danced. Then the horsemen were caught lying, and the horses were taken dancing, the accustomed tunes having set them up.

Others also, being about to fight, pray — and they also sacrifice, having stood in contest — to Taraxippos Poseidon. We too found a drug quicker than prayer, better than all you might have, whose form has been inscribed at the end in the eighth pentagon, over which are set the musical notes of the musical note parhypate of the middle, rho and inverted sigma. It is put into pus-extractors and in the array is given to light men to carry, so that they may stand easily under the press of the front-fighters.

Those then come on having trusted in strength and speed and iron. Whether they happen to be cataphracts, or equipped otherwise, they hurry into the same danger. For when the charge into the infantry has happened, the front-ranked bear the onset by the fence of the shields, and those holding the pus-extractors squeeze the drug into the horses' breaths (the juice is terrible even to men for harm). When the horses receive the smell of the evil they go mad and snort and stand up in haste, as if they had feared the breath from the earth, and they leap upright. The riders fall from the horses to the ground, ready for capture and for slaughter together, fettered by their own breastplates against escaping, either trampled or struck.

20It is possible also to take a trial of this drug even at leisure, and to wonder how much strength there is from it, and in war better than missiles. A horse would fall otherwise, the nostrils sprinkled with the bile of a sea-turtle; and, given up by his own, it is our gain. For he will stand up if someone mix saffron and myrrh together with lily equally and apply it to his snout. Fallen mules will also stand up. But the juice of karpasos is more death-dealing to horses. They would also die if they became entangled with phalangia and with a salamander, and with ivy-tear and storax-juice. They are harmed too by the smoke from a menstrual rag. Let these things have been said otherwise.

Dercyllidas the Lacedaemonian, having brought an infantry phalanx against the opponents' horse, stationing them in the brick-shape and back-to-back in depth, ordered those behind, sitting under the shield, to dig pits with the daggers as fast as possible. Then he led the hoplites into the middle; and they were a defense. For the pits are most hostile to the horsemen.

21For the destruction of pack-animals. A horse that has fallen sick is a hindrance to a soldier, and so is a pack-animal carrying arms in war, and a pack-mule carrying the necessaries. To all these such a treatment of both the other affections and the plague-affections must be brought.

Treatment of sick cattle. Three half-xestai of celery seed; and four-thirds as much linseed; of fenugreek, double the second; of ground vetch, quadruple the fenugreek: these by measure. Of allheal-root and of Illyrian iris and of savin of the Sabine grass, forty-eight drachmas each; and quadruple the three together, the weight of old unsalted axle-grease. Each of the dry things named is chopped separately and sieved, and is dusted with old wine and the fat; then, shaped into little cakes, it is dried in the shade. At need, as much as a royal walnut's size (which weighs seven grammata) is pounded with three kyathoi of honey, then dissolved in the oldest and most serious wine; let it be one xestes. Taking it in for three days of each year, the beast will not suffer the killing affection of cattle. For the sick, instead of the wine, it is dissolved in water, of those who introduced the equal before.

If need should arise to use bran also, even from the sick constitution, in the absence of the cakes, drench three rolls soaking them in wine, the way many insert axle-grease by itself. Those for whom wolves are hunted most easily heal the pack-animals of the affections named thus: cutting broad thin steaks of wolf-flesh, they dry them lean, hanging them over smoke, such as we do of cattle. At need one must boil some of these until it melts, and mixing with the water a half-xestes each of wine and of oil, drench each year. A head cut off from a dog already dead and rotten also loosens that terrible affection for the sick horse; smoked by the continuous exhalation of the smell, he will be healed.

A more various and more many-ingredient composition. The most many-ingredient, of which I myself had trial, which the leading Romans use, it is necessary to learn: as much as eight drachmas of cluster-amomum and of each pepper, black and white — [The text is damaged here.] the double; triple of leaf and of pyrethrum and of aristolochia, and of wormwood and of hyssop and of the dirty iris; and still of gentian the quadruple.

22Fivefold, namely spikenard and aromatic calamus, along with meum, pyrethrum, aloe, myrtles, costus, cassia, ginger, saffron-paste, saffron, rock-parsley, and Ethiopian cumin. Each of these is chopped finely and sieved with an aromatic sieve. Taking from this with three fingers, mix with one measure of the finest wine, add a very little oil, then beat it moderately, and pour down the left nostril through the horn: to pack-mules and to adult pack-animals the complete mix; to horses half the mixture; and to three-year mules or two-year of the other beasts. To the healthy, each year, three times, which would be three days running. To the animal that has fallen sick of the killing disease it will likewise suffice, the rest of the care, as is reasonable, being brought to them from custom. Other things are needed against the smaller affections, and other things against the troublesome.

Treatment of coughing horses. For a coughing horse a treatment is hulled lentil, if you grind or pound it finely without the husks and give it to drink with water. The measure of the pulse for every animal by itself would be a fourth of a xestes, a fair amount. Every beast slack from toil, or fallen into upright-breathing, you would heal thus: give it lice or bedbugs pounded in wine, or the wet pitch together with barley-meal. You will not want for the other treatments, which lie scattered in these writings.

23For a kicking mule. There is no use in a pack-animal that is healthy but mutinous, either otherwise disobedient or also kicking. For the obedience of horses the Roman voice is set forth. You will stop a kicking mule by boiling the seed of box and the caltrops in wine and giving it to drink; and for you she will remain tame for the months whose numeral is blank in the lock.

24Military hunting. Instead of exercise, hunting of lions will also be attached to an army. Lions catch the swift by speed, and pull down the strong by strength. No one of men would take them alive by force, but by timing and art and engine: what does not come by strength is accomplished by thought. The most hegemonic of the beasts — lightest and fastest and most fight-ready — is taken by various manners, of which, in this writing, I will recount those useful to an army.

When the war-leader will exercise together with the army and will approve a hunt, he leads all the infantry out to a hunt dressed in the war-gear. The trackers of the strong beasts have announced the mark where a lion dens. Quietly therefore, having come on, each man holding to the next, they stand in a circle, throwing the shields round and fitting them both toward one another and upon one another, so that their overlay is an image of roof-tiles. The trumpets sound vehement, and the men shout together loud. The beast leaps from the den disturbed, and having seen both the wall of the hoplites and burning torches being brought (for the hoplites carry these instead of spears), he is quiet and remains and does not leap over the press of the shields.

Where the ground is more downhill, a machine is brought on which a broad and spread-out cage is set, carrying a kid. Behind the lion, men in full armor, having dry and whole hides, shout in, striking with woods. Struck by the sound and the sight and the cry, he rushes at a run upon the cage — the hoplites behind the machine having leaned down and being unseen by the beast, and those around the cage walled with high boards — so that, seeming to escape by that way alone, he may be mastered. This then is one manner of hunting for a phalanx being exercised; the others I have recounted elsewhere.

25To find the breadth of a river and the height of a wall. Those moderately possessed of encyclical education have, as is likely, touched Euclid's Elements to some extent. It is not hard, then, through the first book, to establish these things too: to measure the breadth of a river, the other bank being untrodden because of the enemies stationed on it, so as to bring on a matching span to bridge it; and by the same ratio to take the height of a wall from a distance, so as to bring up helepolis engines of equal standing.

For ease of learning the proof, this theorem will lead: “If one of the sides about the right angle of a right-angled triangle is bisected, and from the cut a straight line is raised at right angles, and through the point where it cuts the remaining side a parallel is drawn, the remaining sides of the triangle are also bisected.”

Let ABΓ be a right-angled triangle, having the right angle at B. Let AB be bisected at Δ. Let ΔΕ be drawn at right angles. Through E let EZ be drawn parallel. I say that the remaining sides of the triangle are also bisected: AΓ at E, BΓ at Z. Join ΔZ. Since AΔ is equal to ΔB, and ΔB to EZ, AΔ is therefore equal to EZ and parallel. And the lines joining equals and parallels on the same parts are equal and parallel. ΔΕ and ZΓ also make parallelogram ΓΕΔZ. ΔZ is therefore equal to ΕΓ. But it was also equal to AE. ΕΓ is therefore equal to AE. Again, since each of BΔ EZ and ΓΕ ΔZ is a parallelogram, ΔΕ is therefore equal to each of BZ and ZΓ, for they are opposite. So BZ and ZΓ are also equal. The proofs hold also for every triangle.

Following these things, the breadth of a river will be measured from a distance. Let there be banks: opposite, the enemies' bank, on which is point A; toward us, ΦΗ. A split dioptra is planted in a place toward us, at I, so that the interval from I to our bank of the river is greater than the river. This is easy to guess. Two points are sighted at right angles: one on the opposite bank — a stone or a bush or some other easy mark — and let it be A; the other, the point toward us, from the other line of the cross, Υ. Moving the dioptra onto Υ I sight A and make a right-angled triangle. Let IΥ be bisected at K.

26From K let KΘ be drawn parallel to AI, and from Θ let ΘΡ be drawn parallel to IΥ. Since then of right-angled triangle AIΥ, IΥ has been bisected at K, and ΘΚ is parallel to AI and ΘΡ to IΥ, AI too is bisected at Ρ. Measure off the interval from I to Ρ. The interval from Ρ to A is therefore also given. Subtracting from this the interval from Ρ to Φ, we shall have the rest: that is, the breadth of the river.

If it seems laborious to someone to take a larger interval standing off on our own land, the sight there being of necessity disturbed and the result confused, we may, standing on the same bank of the river, easily take the magnitude of the breadth in this way. Again let point A have been taken on the opposite part. On the part toward us let point B have been taken, so that AB is at right angles to the line through the bank, BΓ. Some point Δ has been taken on BΓ, on which let rod ΔΕ lie. At the end of the rod let gnomon E be raised, so that if rod ΔΕ should touch the surface of the water, the gnomon is at the surface. Let the rod be carried, at right angles to ΔΕ, along BΓ, until from some point Γ on line BΓ, through a dioptra, points E and A are seen. It will be analogon: as BΓ is to ΓΔ, so AB is to EΔ. The ratio of BΓ to ΓΔ has been given. The ratio of AB to ΔΕ has therefore also been given. And ΔΕ is given. AB is therefore also given.

By the same ratio the height of a wall will also be taken, on the same diagram set upright. Let the top of the battlement be A, the base B, and the line from the wall to us, outside missile-range, BΓ. A dioptra hangs from a pole (which is called a “lampstand”), planted at right angles at Γ. Let the pole be line ΔΓ. Tilting the dioptra, I sight the top of the wall, which is A. Going to the other vessel, on the same straight I take point E. Triangle AEB it will be, and parallel to one of the sides, AB, is ΓΔ. The ratio that ΕΓ has to ΓΔ, this EB has to BA. The ratio of ΕΓ to ΓΔ has been given, for each of them has been given. The ratio of EB to AB has therefore also been given. EB has also been given, as was shown on the river. BA is therefore also given, which was to be shown.

27Theft of sound. The Mauretanians see sharpest of all. They recognize one approaching from far off, and they hear equally, though hearing is slower than seeing. Their sight is long by exercise and by nature: besides the runs they train, breathing very light air, they also abstain from everything hot and from salts, as being causes of dim sight.

So that they may never be caught sleeping, and an approach of enemies not escape them at night, they set under the neck that sleeping-wood of theirs, leaving the ear unhindered for hearing, dig a little pit, and hear both from far off — both voice and shouts. I have heard that the brigands of the western Gauls do the same. This is an improvised hunting of hearing.

If someone in a great camp should wish to learn the counsels of his own soldiers, or the secrets of the enemy — Art of knowing things to come — having dug a deep well, let him let down whom he wants, covering the mouth with some cloak. Nothing will escape the one sitting in it; he will recount to you what was said or what sounded, as if prophesying.

Let everyone trust my word: the one hunting long hearing by sitting with it, and the other, on a lightless night, to see something hidden on the earth, reasonably without fire. For the higher air is full of sound, and the plain earth strikes the sight with thickness and dulls the hearing with noise.

28A means of staying awake. The poets put Zeus to sleep, outgeneraled by Hera and Sleep, so that either the Greeks might catch their breath, or Heracles be harmed; they also often make rivers stand still.

We ourselves have observed how the current is quiet at night, so that one might say the water is found sleeping. The breaths of the winds too are gentler than the night; perhaps these also are calmed by sleep. It is superfluous to say that heroes have been caught by Sleep's swoop.

He rules all: men, birds, plants, waves, winds, gods; all-subduer and limb-loosener, occupying souls away from bodies. Death is his brother, and Toil a fellow-worker; they toast one another the evil misfortunes of those about to sleep.

The commander of Ilium expected to take the Achaean “worn with toil and with sleep,” but the care on that side stood equal against him. How much would the Thracians have valued the wakefulness of Rhesus, a noble king betrayed by toil and sleep? No one was struck with awe at his fine panoply; no one feared his swift horses. How many hopes of success has the sleep of a single hour overturned?

From this the stratagem has come down to later times: they leave much wine in the camp for enemies following under the appearance of flight, so that even if a man has not toiled he may sleep at least from drinking; and others, coming on here and there at night, kill them as they rise, still sleeping. Panics too often arise in camps for one frightened in sleep.

We pity human fortune; let us remedy the outrages of untimely sleeps by a daimonic passion. The Phrygian king found Silenus sleeping and bound him; another fortunate commander bound a satyr. I do not think myself unworthy of equal honor with them. They took earth-dwelling daimons, humble ones, asleep; I seek to take the one who bound them. I want Sleep to become inferior to my experience, so that this king and all-subduer may dwell with me alone.

Let a king in council stay awake with me, and a soldier on guard, and a champion who has toiled. I array myself against you, Sleep: as you campaign against all, so I will campaign against you.

There is a winged animal, membrane-winged, living in dark places, of which alone among the egg-laying winged creatures the young are fed with milk. Its skeletonized head, sewn into a little piece of leather, makes the one who hangs it about himself sleepless as long as he wears it.

29Let someone pull out a whole wing of it while it is alive and use it as a scraper-scoop for drawing drink — infrequently if for a short time, but often and with both wings if someone needs long watches. If someone uses this drink without measure, he will remain sleepless altogether.

If you should also wish to play a trick by throwing someone into sleeplessness, take the head of a living one and sew it to the pillow where it is his custom to sleep. He will not sleep, as if he had hung the whole creature about him; for it keeps sleepless throughout the one who wears it so.

You are Night's child, O Sleep; a bird of night beats you. Even if you happen to be winged, I too forestall you with another wing. Thus the marriage of Pasithea to Sleep.

Eros stays awake; and the theft of the wing is the pledge under Hera of this. What wonder if Hera received this too from the Charites? For she borrowed the cestus-bands from Aphrodite.

If then you recognized the animal from the tokens — for it is not set out unclearly or hard to grasp — you might perhaps be praised. If not, you will find it lying at the end in pentagon 9, toward the signs of the middles of the enharmonic Lydian mode — and it is toward the last ones — pi and a reversed sigma.

30For a fight against elephants. The ancients thought elephants a great help in the fights: to strike with fear horses unaccustomed at the first spectacle, and men; and themselves, having been towered, to be a fear, as if a wall were walking before the phalanx. The clang is sharp, and the charge unbearable. The tusks are sufficient even otherwise for the overturn of every crowd; they also fitted to them spear-points analogous to the size, fenced most of them with broad breastplates, and even gave the beasts javelins to throw with the trunk. It was a portable phalanx, an image of every kind of war having the advantage: from above, the sendings of missiles of many men on high; at the feet, things unfightable; and hostile flights even far off. The fight is not from equal honor; one had to fight a wall against the elephant.

The crowds, overturned, the shield-lock always having been broken, furnished easy to the opponents the loosened order for destruction, as if, a bronze-mouth trireme having been broken by a very small charge, the whole surge, roughened, dissolved. Who will withstand the bearing of a crag that has broken? A fighting elephant is the image of a mountain. He overturns, throws down, breaks, destroys; and he does not disdain even the man lying, in the manner of noble beasts. Drawing with the trunk both horse and man and chariot, bringing them down by force and turning them, he drags them as far as his own feet; and leaning on the knees, he crushes them even otherwise, having perceived his own burden, and then is heavier still by the putting-on of the towers, so that a man is not pressed by one elephant, but is destroyed by a meeting of much heaviness.

How should one ward off a beast hard to fight, armed both with many advantages from nature and with the arts of men? He overturns the standing, overtakes the fleeing, crushes the fallen, frightens the horseman, strikes the chariot-drivers from the tower. First, then, one must set light javelin-men and bowmen against them, and no longer station cavalry against them, so that the army not be thrown together by the horses' fear from the unaccustomed sight. Let the trumpeters shout in terribly, so that the clang of the instrument, opposing the hiss of the beast, blunts the threat. Let the peltasts aim at the elephant, not using an unmissable mark; let the bowmen throw fire-bearing arrows onto the towers. For a chance missile stuck in is enough for the destruction of the whole.

31For the beast, having perceived the flame and feared the danger of the fire, shakes off the battlements laid on it — and one might liken it to a tower falling on a sacked city. If it is itself wounded in the bare parts, it has already feared the enemies, and having turned onto the friends it rages harder. Like a mountain flame or a torrent downhill, being angered it thus most of all kills, wounds, takes away, throws down, treads; and it hates the corpses themselves, heaps fallen bodies, and fences the roads of those fleeing, as if warding off the friends because it has suffered these things through them.

I, however, think it better not to stand against the elephant at the start, nor to go close to the multiplied danger, but to take in advance its threats, its charges, its fights, its fallings; For, when it is surrounded and falls, it will destroy many. Iron caltrops are forged, sharp, seated, thick. These, along beasts, are thrown dense by those pretending to withdraw, and having been trodden they stop the elephant, having sunk into the hides of the feet. For by that with which it treads the others by weight, by this it is itself caught, treading itself whole. A double advantage from this: either, being in pain, it destroys its own, consoling an incurable pain; or, not being able to stand, it falls all together.

All spoils from wars are solemn; more solemn than all, an elephant bears. A general's shield is not so honorable, nor the breastplate of a champion who has been killed, as a living elephant captive, or the first-fruits of the elephant, to a king who has conquered.

32Paradoxes of farming. Nor indeed will agricultural matters be left out here, equally as everywhere; for they will have some things useful even to those at war. It is blessed, on the one hand, to farm all-bearing land in peace, receiving varied fruit of different seasons, to pluck, to reap, to vintage, taking abundant wealth from one country, not needing foreign goods, nor waiting on hopes from across the sea. But as things are now, not all countries bear all things: some, by excess of cold, nourish only grain-fields; sandy others vintage the vine or the olive; the much-spread plains possess and bear wine rarely, and some only a poor wine at that. Let us therefore furnish a device for both: to find wine when it is not, and the change of the poor into the better.

Let the measure of wine with water be tenfold; then let it be boiled with much fire, until the tenth of the mixture is consumed. There is a loss of the water, but a gain of the wine, which has become better in the virtue of which the flame is mother. Doing this the ancients reported that the fire midwifed Dionysus. Those who do not have vines, nor have been fortunate in the fruit from these plants, have imitated wine by a preparation of other seeds or tree-fruits, or by a composition of roots, declining the drink of pure water. The Egyptians, at any rate, drink zython, the Paeonians kamon, the Celts kerbesia, the Babylonians sikera. For Dionysus left them in anger and gifted them nothing of vine-culture, keeping the victory-prizes for Greek farmers alone. Let us imitate Dionysus; let us toast to men the friendship-cup without the cluster. I know other fruits that are makers of wine.

This, then, is a preparation of wine: one mina of dried figs, three choes of clean seawater, two bundles of licorice. Chop the roots and throw them into a jar from the fig, then again having passed a portion of the root through up to three times, and then pour on the sea — and under the vessel let there be horse-fennel, about two bundles — and let it soak five days and pour it off through a strainer, and let it be sweet. Then give sweet water the same measure and let it soak five days, and having strained this mix it with the former; then having stoppered it put it away in the shade, and it will be good wine. If, having poured water, you should let it soak upon these seven days, and having strained it you should throw in the pressed-husks from the jars and stopper it until the tenth day, you will make vinegar — but do it in winter.

33And the vinegar itself is not to be neglected. Vinegar is multiplied if, having boiled beet, you throw into the chous of water four drachmas of Cretan licorice and, having boiled it, you add one drachma of Greek nitre; with this preparation is mixed, to one measure of vinegar, double the water. Every vinegar is intensified when five drachmas of pepper, and of juniper equally, are mixed into the metretes.

The hope that concerns only the spoilage of wine is slow and is not a farmer's prayer; and I know vinegar forced into speed by all kinds of practices, the wine already having turned and changed for the worse. Some throw in burnt barley, some a potsherd that has been fired, and others iron. Honey is often thrown in too. I, however, will make vinegar self-grown and sweet, bringing use and pleasure, without the loss of the wine. For the squeezed grape-stone is enough: together with the marc it is soaked into water, so that the water takes the quality of must; then, thrown into a cauldron, it is fired underneath and boiled to the half, and having cooled it is transferred into another vessel. It changes, then, as mixed with water, but remains sweet as must boiled down.

Vinegar could also come without a grape. Pitch last year's full pine-cones with wet pitch and burn them round until the pitch is burnt off; then honey them all with a feather. Let there be water in a large vessel, and the cones about ten to each chous of water; throwing these into the wet, boil as much as to warm; let the vessel be short by cotylae —; then having uncovered it, take off as much of the vinegar as you want and throw on the equal of water. Thus for a long time you will have vinegar unfailing.

One must be eager about the oil too. The Iberian somehow thus: a handful of wild-olive leaves, four drachmas of dry fenugreek, one of wormwood, and two drachmas of roasted lees which the Romans call "fecula." Chop all and make a handful-mass, then bind it in a rag, let it down into the jar, and after nine days draw it off for use. And you would have Istrian too: chop green leaves of bitter almonds, make a mass, throw it into the vessel, stir it, and let it settle. Mastic-oil is prepared thus: the ripe fruit of the mastic, thrown into a mortar, is chopped with a wooden pestle.

34Then it is poured down into vessels; soaked the longest time in boiling water and taken up, it is squeezed out with wicker baskets. Some, having chopped and mixed with water, set them in ovens until it is boiled, and thus squeeze them out. The terebinth-oil is prepared likewise to the mastic. Others, having chopped, throw them into pots that have a little water standing above, then boil and pick off the oily that floats on top (good oil comes off to the bottom of the jar, green dill and salt having been let down).

Black and dirty oil you will brighten thus: roast one litra of nitre, chop it, sift it, throw it into the jar. If you also want to make it like omphacinum, chop bark of wild olive and leaves, make a mass, and by weight throw a litra into a jar. If you want to make the Iberian I first said, which we name "Spanum," throw chopped wild-olive leaves into very clear Sidetic oil, having bound them in a proportionate linen and hung them, and let them soak as many days as you want; and thus it will acquire the Iberian quality.

You would heal turbid oil by pouring it into a wide-mouth vessel and setting it in steady sun, and sprinkling roasted salts sufficiently, toward the rewarming; whenever it has settled, transfer it into vessels. The foul-smelling thus: chop green olive without the pits, as much as a half-choenix, throw it into the metretes; set it in the sun and heat it enough, then take out what was thrown in and transfer into more vessels.

And from calf suet oil could come, even odorless oil: choes of pickled-olive brine — minas; let it have a weight toward not floating, a stone laid in, and fire underneath with a soft fire. Taking off what boils up, throw it at once into a newly-emptied oil-jar; and of the suet having melted, filter the remainder with a strainer and throw it onto the vessel, and having taken it aside let it for twenty days; then use it. But also garum from one part of unmixed brine and two of the sweet wine. The serious one comes from Lydia; and the one named "soccius," which they praise more than all garums.

35Of the so-called abdomia, ten xestai, and as much Libyan stagmas of fortunate Libya (which the locals call phriton), and a bundle of Cretan hyssop, and the Roman apple (called orbiclatum), mixing them with sixteen cotylai of honey, boil with a fig branch for three days and three hours each day on a gentle fire, and that too will turn out.

36A seal concerning the missile. Let this writing too end in some ancient and learning-loving tale, following those who have led: the tale of a bow and a missile. One missile, carried through a whole night and day, can come down as far as twenty-five thousand stades, if the motion were continuous.

About the flight of the missile it would be like this. Let some commensurate men, not more than ten, stand toward a mark of a measured plethron. Let them have bows ready, and let a missile lie on the string, so that the first hits the mark and a second throws straightway after him, and a third in sequence, and the others likewise, the second always resting his throw only so long as the first man's missile takes to reach the mark. I have seen some trying it, and I have the history from trial.

The number of the stades has been gathered somehow thus. Six plethra make a stadion. One missile was carried for each plethron. The missiles being numbered into one hour, not more than six thousand were sent in the hour. (Think and reckon the number of the missiles as the travel of one missile: give the examination to the interval, not to the multitude of those sent.) Therefore one missile — for let the many be measured as one by the rush of the interval — went through six thousand plethra from the beginning of the hour to its ending, which make a thousand stades. The intervals of the night and the day, cycled into twenty-four hours, set as twenty-four thousand. Let a thousand be added upon these, given to the leisure of each preparation, so that even the beginning of the delay not be without number. Still there is always inequality in the hours of day and night, and much of it. If then someone, having watched an equinoctial hour, should make the trial of the throw according to it, it will happen for him that they become twenty-five thousand stades.

37Syrmos the Scythian used this trial, and Bardesanes the Parthian, and perhaps even more somewhere. I saw it myself, in the house of Abgar the king, Mannos his son having often tried it, I directing. He was so terrible an archer that once, a hunt being around midday — I happened to be riding by, not as some hunter but as a spectator of the hunt — a woodland bear leaps out from some thicket, fearful to approach, terrible to see, perhaps even impossible to hit. All were startled and seeking the roads of flight. Mannos, exhorting us to take courage, dissolved all the fear by throwing two missiles: he shot the bear in the eyes, making it easy to handle, as it could no longer see the hunters.

Bardesanes was a wise archer if anyone else was. I know a man who shot as a painter does. The manner was this. He once stood a man opposite, a youth beautiful and stout, whom even a painter would have tired imitating. The youth was holding forth the shield: Bardesanes ordered this, showing the art to us spectators. He, like a good painter, transferred the man holding it onto the shield. First he was drawing the head with upright missiles, imitating a circle of a head; then the casts of the eyes, the harmony of the lips, the line of the chin; and the rest of the man followed the order of the body. He was priding himself, having taken painting together with archery: drawing with missiles and shooting drawings. We wondered, seeing that the shooting was not a warlike practice, but was something delightful too, and danger a pleasure. The youth, having laid down the shield, saw himself drawn upon his own weapon and was rejoicing, having become a soldierly painting. This, then, I have, having wondered.

What would I say of Syrmos? Syrmos too was a wise archer, not having painted with missiles as Bardesanes, but having devised to make a missile a hostile missile. New is the spectacle, but not unbelievable. I saw a missile under a missile. I saw a missile, and a missile being made ready, I was ready to throw. Someone else, a counter-archer, had stood against him from afar. Different was the contest of the archery: the one was contending with an armed missile, the other with a naked one. The mark for each was to join missile with missile. The one was meeting only, like a naked soldier against an armed enemy, and it was bold; the other, inasmuch as it had not been stripped, stuck into the one that met it and was drawing it, hung, as a hostile captive. The stripped one, having been taken, was no longer a missile, but the spoil of a missile.

Cestus 7 of Julius Africanus.

38How through wine one might work upon those who have drunk, so they sleep for three days. Enviable is the man who is not without such a drug: for if he will have the means to prepare wine from this, those who have used this drink sleep, so that those who have drunk are even caught by the enemy sleeping up to three days. They will rise if someone should anoint their nostrils with vinegar.

The preparation of this is as follows. Two parts of Theban opium, as in a dose: pound these smooth with one part of henbane juice, and pound the dirt from the right ear of a donkey, and throw it into the wine.

39On the destruction of fields. There are times, travelling through hostile land, when you will attempt to destroy its fields, farming hellebore; for Alexander the Macedonian, using this manner, took the Alans. Fields are also destroyed by salts being sown in them and covered with ploughs; for a long time this can put them in a very bad state.

40On the destruction of trees. It seems right to us also to destroy the fruit-bearing trees of the fields, so that the enemies, often lacking foods, may not find the fruits instead of food. You will dry every tree except the apple, if you plant the sting of the sea stingray into the stem of the tree. The Quintilii say that the husks of beans, put to the roots, dry these. I am rather pleased, speaking of all that have grown for beauty, that these be cut down; for when this has been done, no enemy hides in the cut, no bird sits over them for hunting — which is complete destruction.

41On making horses unmovable from the same place. Laboring at the exposition of the present writing, I read in Neptunianus's Physica that a wolf's ankle-bone of the right forefoot, thrown before a four-horse team, stops the chariot. If then it stops four, how much more when in battle-line we give one each to a few slingers? When they have thrown these into the enemy's horse, not only will the one ankle-bone harm one horse, but as many as happen to ride past through it.

42Anointing of arrows. Scythians anoint arrows with the so-called toxicon for the swift killing of those they wound. When I was seeking this, a trustworthy man gave me the drug set out below, which produces the same effect.

It is this: take the palisade-spurge, which rises into stalk-like branches; put it into a newly made earthen vessel and boil it with water until it releases all its fat into the hot water. Then draw up the woods of the plant that were put in, and throw other green ones into the same water. Draw them up again and, throwing in others, boil until the water from their juice becomes honey-like. I do not have confidence whether this has been made safely. Some of the ancients say that the venom of the viper, and of the asp and the salamander as well, is unfailing for this.

43On the health of the soldiers. That a physician is a good thing in an army is clear. So that a soldier does not fall ill from the sun and toil, one must divide their food: not once or twice, but in small portions throughout the day, especially when there is no battle.or this is saving and suitable toward digestion.

It is necessary, having boiled rue and wild mallow and mixed them with fermented wine, to take them in the middle of the foods; likewise, having mixed milk and water and poured on a little turned wine, to take it before eating. This must be done from the beginning of spring until the end of autumn. And again wormwood-wine is drunk to the same end, not only before food but also after food and in the food itself. If we have no wormwood-wine, let us give wormwood with hot water. Squill-wine does the same. They also prepare squill-vinegar: if someone takes of the squill-wine, before eating; if of the vinegar, after dinner. And marsh-wine — that is, the wine that comes to be in the marshes — is exceedingly healthy. And kiln-bread, formed thin and dried in the sun, is most useful toward health. If the water lying by should also be sickly, let it be boiled until a tenth of it is spent, then let it be cooled; and thus it will be harmless.

44Against being taken by a deleterious drug. So that we suffer nothing toward poison — there being two cures, of healing and of making it that one not suffer, and the second necessary — let someone, having fasted from all food, take twenty leaves of rue, two dried figs, and of walnuts an equal to the dried figs, and he would become unconquered to every drug; let a grain of salt also be present with these. Many bear witness by trial. Others, gathering more exactly, doubled the salt and the rue, and set twenty berries of pepper.

the more complete method, which renders all drugs harmless and which is easy to carry in camp, is this: of fatty dried figs, and likewise of the finest walnuts, and of dry rue, and also of ripe juniper berries, and still of Lemnian seal, equal parts, crushed in a mortar and formed into small balls the size of a Pontic nut, and take one each day.

45To glue a wound without a suture. Since in war some, being wounded, the division from iron being great, are the more subdued by sutures, toward this we found a natural help able to glue without a suture. It is this: pound the bulb which we eat, set it on, and it will glue beside.

46To stop blood that flows unstoppably.

Take human blood, either from a vein-cutter or from any other source, in whatever way it may happen, and throw it into a wide-mouthed vessel.

Dry it in the sun, and on the first day you will find a watery part floating on top.

This must be thrown out, and the rest made dry; and at the time of need plaster it on and bind it.

For it will stand, even if the flow is hard to check.

47So that the horses not be sick. The horses will certainly not sicken if someone takes a little from a deer's horn and, having made it as an ornament, fastens it around the neck.

48To kindle automatic fire. Kindling automatic fire also by this composition. It is prepared thus: unburnt sulphur, mined salt, lye, thunder-stone, and pyrites, equal parts, are pounded smooth in a black mortar while the sun is at mid-heaven. Mixed in also is an equal of black-mulberry juice and of wet Zacynthian asphalt and of the self-flowing asphalt, each equal, so that it becomes sooty. Then a very little lime is added to the asphalt. One must rub carefully, with the sun at mid-heaven, and guard the face: for it will kindle suddenly.

Once kindled it must be lidded with some bronze vessel, so as to have it ready thus in a box, and no longer show it to the sun. But in the evening, if you wish to set the enemy's arms on fire, you will smear these or some other thing — secretly, though: for when the sun appears, all will be burned.

49A hunt of hearing. I read something unbelievable to the many, but for me in doubt, and because of the paradox I brought this up too. Some say that the Mauretanians — this is a nation — resting the neck on a piece of wood, let the ear go unhindered into hearing, having dug a little pit and lying down. And the brigands of the western Gauls are heard to do the same. This is an improvised hunt of hearing.

If someone in a great camp should wish to learn either the plans of his own soldiers or the plans of the enemy, having dug a deep well, let him let down whatever sort of man he wishes, having covered the mouth with whatever cloak is at hand: not one thing will escape the man sitting in, but he will narrate to you the things said or the things sounded, as if giving an oracle.

50On a horse with elephantiasis. Of Africanus. The liver of the land hedgehog, dried in the sun, heals horses that have elephantiasis.

51Of Africanus: for the eyes. The swallow carries the juice of a certain plant, from which, if it should drip onto the earth, another plant grows from the drop, named after the one that dropped it. And it comes up even if the nestlings, having partaken of it, defecate onto the earth. This is a marvelous and sharp drug against dim-sight; it also thins little by little the white films from wounds and restores the eye to the form of one that has not suffered.

The plant generated from it is milder, and succeeds less. Yet when rubbed it drives away those with glaucoma; and its powder with water, like the former, has done everything. For if anyone was lucky enough to take the first plant, he would have opened even blind eyes.

Two stones found in the bellies of the nestlings, split open with a sharp reed — for they are found in one of the two — white and black, a white dove having been sacrificed and invoked as Aphrodite, are put into a gold necklace and keep off all ophthalmia. But if you cut open the spring nestlings you will meet with stones in the belly, of which one is mottled and the other clean. So before they touch earth, bind them in the hide of a fawn or a calf against the great disease: perhaps you will heal it, but in any case you will lessen the epilepsy. For this one must cut them open at the beginning of the month and as it goes, taking the time as it admits.

They say also that a partridge's bile mixed with Attic honey is a healing of dim-sight and of cataract; which is also evident to many. And the eyes of the vulture, bound in a clean linen cloth and applied to the eyes each day, do not allow dim-sight, nor indeed do they allow cataract to settle. And its eye, fastened around in a dog's hide, does not allow ophthalmia. And its bile, smeared on with juice of horehound and Attic honey, takes away every dimming and mist of the eyes and does not allow beginning cataracts to form.

The eyes of a living frog, taken off and fastened around in a linen rag, worn on the left arm or the neck, keep the eyes unharmed; and if you fasten them on one who is in pain, you will loose the suffering. And one must release the frog whence it was taken. And its bile too is anointed on for sharp-sight and for cataract.

Nothing is greater than this for sharp-sight: having made ivy root into the form of collyria, throw them into a box of red bronze together with a little child's urine, and having bound it securely, bury it in horse dung for forty days.

52Then drawing them out, rub them on a whetstone and make them as collyria with the liquid that is in it, and you will marvel at the activity, and you will also stop beginning cataracts.

53Of Africanus: on the generation of horses. If then you want a male to be born, turn the horses toward the east, so that as they mate, they face the sun; for the west produces the females, as the Mauretanian horse-herder related.

For also, as the account of all has it, it is believed that the male horses are yoked to the Sun and that the flame is driven by them, and they say that the females drive the Night. And justly: the Sun is male-making, and the Moon happens to be mother of a like-named nature.

54Of the same: restoratives of strength. Myris is a plant similar in all respects to hemlock except the flower, which is itself similar too, but much smaller. It has an elongated root, somewhat resembling, very fragrant and most pleasant to eat. It is found in cultivated fields.

Having pounded this whole plant carefully, one must put it into clean barley-gruel that has been well boiled, and boil them together carefully, stirring. Then add so much of the most fragrant wine as not to make the barley-gruel too liquid, and drench the one who is fasting. No one would find a better help than this for the purpose; but if he lacks the root, having boiled swine marrows — especially the spinal ones — together in barley-gruel and likewise added wine, he will have a second-best help for the matter at hand.

55Of Africanus: for frequent and easy intercourse. One must soak the animal in skink meat mixed with wine.

56A most genuine easy-birth, very much so. Polygonon is a herb plentiful everywhere, which is also called drōsa. Wrapped in a dog's membrane that has been treated with myrrh and cleaned as it must be, and hung around, it becomes a cause of conception.

So that the animal may conceive what you want, whether male or female: the herbs linozostis and peristereon are thought to be male and female — males the upright ones, the spread-out the contrary. Make it wear these with the former: if you wish it to bear a male, a male herb; if a female, a female.

57Of the same: into abundance of milk. The galactites stone, hung around the breasts of the animal, draws down a great deal of milk. So that it may also have plenty of still more milk, drench with the galactites stone itself, pounded, with wine and water.

58Of the same: toward not miscarrying an embryo. Sailors take the echeneis, the fish, and pickle it, using it as a stronger drug both for not aborting and for conception. From it, being pounded, the animal that is drenched retains what is in the belly

And if someone should also apply it living to the belly of the mare when the stallion comes together with her, she will conceive both then and for the rest, and will never suffer the aforesaid slip.

59Of Africanus: toward earache. I wish to help the ears in a double manner: so that both, being in pain, they cease, and having ceased they no longer pain. For when the affection about the ear becomes hard to bear and to carry away, sores coming to be, and it rears foul-smelling pus and worms, the pain that comes about them hard to endure — partridge-herb, cheap and growing everywhere, as if nature were ambitious with what is easy to get, is chopped strongly, so that much juice of it comes to be. Then a little Attic honey is taken, and not much sharp vinegar, and a little of sea-stuffs. These, mixed and warmed, become salvation to the one in pain.

60Of Africanus: toward ozaenae and polyps about cough. Mix the root of alkekengi equal with butter, and use.

61Of Africanus: about dysuria. If a horse's urine has been held, let a virgin, having loosed the girdle she wears, strike him on the face with the girdle, and immediately he will urine in a mass and the pain will cease.

62Of Africanus: toward a dropsical. Drench with crow-fat together with twenty ounces of wine, warm; or drench with the ash of a burnt land hedgehog in wine.

63Of Africanus: about the complexion of horses. The complexions of horses are various, as their virtues are; and complexion is a mark of fortune, and a well-set hide is a solemn thing for the animal. Some of them are self-grown; some people craft, changing them toward the better. Some of them are remade with drugs; some are variegated with burnings.

A horse, then, would become black from tawny if plastered with squill with vinegar and pounded pumice; and it would turn out white with the drug boiled. Tawny from white would come to be of lime and litharge, smooth, boiled in water to the thickness of glue, if it were plastered for two hours. If the anointing should remain more hours, it would turn out black from white.

Apart from colors, fire forges the hair into another sight on the animal and falsifies the horse's variegation. A white-starling horse — this is a name for a color — is drawn on in this manner: a round cautery, hollow in the middle, rolled into the circumference of the letter omicron, having been fired, is set on the bound horse by placing and lifting. The circle outside is black; the ancient body remaining from it falsifies a leopard, composed both upon the feet and upon the neck. You might see its face too as of a beast. Fine to inscribe this on a spirited horse, so that it have speed similar to the hide.

64Of Africanus: a permanent hair dye. Of lees, of black acacia, of round alum, of polytrichon, of each one ounce; of oak-gall two staters and one keration; ten green walnuts; of black myrtle from blood lock measure unrestored; of ladanum one ounce; of old black wine five litrai. Boil all with wine until it is reduced to a third, and having mixed it in, dip the hairs three nychthemera, and you will wonder.

65Of Africanus. The body of the sea hedgehog, smeared on a mangy body, makes it healthy.

66Of Africanus. A dog's brain calluses a fracture in fourteen days, smeared into a linen cloth and applied, with wool wound on from above.

67Of Africanus: about figs and myrmekiai and acrochordonas. Myrmekiai are outgrowths of bodies resembling rough nails; they come to be for many in many places. They call the affection myrmekiai, which many superstitious people also set as signs of something about to happen to them. The riddance of them is various and tried by all.

Some, having watched a dog urinate on the ground, kneaded up the mud, set it on the place, and shut the cause together with the mud. Others, having rubbed elaterion and setting it on, thus prevailed. Or the flower of chicory, which is properly called heliotrope: having taken it before the rising of the sun [The text is damaged here.], draw round the place three times and the myrmekia will cease.

68Of Africanus. Having hidden a snake's slough in dates, if you feed morsels to any of the animals, you will clean its acrochordonas.

69Of Africanus. To cast out the worms with unmedicated clysters, clean water is enough for me, taken in this manner: having drawn with the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, turned back, sprinkle the place sick with the worms three times with “unmuddied stream of a spring.” They will all come out following one another, nothing being left behind inside.

Of Africanus. That a donkey, of all the animals, bears neither lice nor ticks.

70Of Africanus: about those bitten by rabid animals and hydrophobes and remaining bites of creeping things. The present drench is composed of four ingredients: gentian, myrrh, round aristolochia, and daphnides. Cut these in equal parts and sift, taking them up with raw honey. The dose is the size of an Egyptian bean.

Give it to those bitten by snakes in water, to those struck by scorpions in first-rate wine, as a three-day dose.

71Of the same. A treatment for the bite of asps: very many bedbugs, being taken, are believed to be a greatest cure for those bitten by asps; or tortoise-urine being drunk and dripped on the bite, both by itself and with many bedbugs.

The physician Phobius, to those bitten by asps, was giving the snake called haemorrhois, roasting and pounding it and giving it to drink in wine; and the reverse, he was saying those bitten by a haemorrhois should use an asp likewise. For Inarus the Libyan, he was affirming, handed it down as a remedy of one another.

72An easy-to-get antipathic: of the same. Twenty leaves of rue, two royal walnuts, one grain of salt, two dried figs: giving these first to a fasting horse in a drench, you will make it be harmed by no drug or any other venomous thing. And toward not being bitten by a scorpion, write on a tin plate: “abbas,” and bind this around the neck of the animal.

73Of Africanus: for the bite of every beast.

Having pounded cardamom, plaster it on with a linen cloth; or soak the seed of this and pound it, and likewise apply it with a linen cloth.

74Of the same: for venomous water-animals' strikes, against inflammation. Lemnian earth is fitted toward the strikes of venomous sea-creatures, mixed with wine; and the white mountain-earth, mixed with vinegar, heals similarly.

75Of the same: a protection against being wronged by any venomous bite. Two litrai of raw-pressed oil, four ounces of marrow of a newly slaughtered deer, enough wax: having melted both and strained, use against all the venomous.

76Of the same: about a scolopendra. The scolopendra does greater harm; but you, having smeared on some part of the theriac antidote, heal the stung place. Fruit of asphodel and the flowers, drunk with wine, counter the scolopendra; and fig-olunthoi with wine and vetch, being plastered, stop the pain.

77Of the same: about spiderlings. There are many kinds of spiderlings. Those able to wrong from them are two: mainoles and chalkis. To those struck by mainoles, then: four ounces of hyssop or oregano, four of roasted salt, pound and set on with honey; or cumin as much as the three fingers hold, and an equal of agnus-fruit, drench with three ounces of wine. Give also mazas and garlics, and and having taken, beneficial through the mouth [The text is damaged here.].

78Of the same: against bees. Against the insects — wasps, bees, hornets, tenthrēdones, bombylii, and bembices — plaster leaves of laurel, or of mallow, or of sisymbrium, or of coriander. Dung smeared on also works, and fig-sap with mulberry leaves, or calamint, or lentil anointed with oil. Root of wild cucumber boiled together with oil keeps the creatures unstruck...; therefore one must anoint them with galbanum and oil. Likewise this, being fumigated before the hives are opened, keeps them unstung; or anoint having rubbed melissa with oil; or fumigate dung or sage. Every insect sprinkled with oil is killed.

79Of the same: about a dipsas. The dipsas itself is also many-named: It is called causon and prestes from what it puts on, and melanouros and ammodutes from its appearance and diet — a beast smaller than a viper and harder. For it makes in those bitten burnings and a thirst stretched on until the drinkers burst.

Toward the bite of a dipsas, then, a cyperus-drench through wine and water benefits, and ladanum pounded and given with wine; and still the hesperian apple called citron, drunk beforehand, is antipathic, and drunk after it helps, especially the gilding of it.

80About a dryinas. The dryinas snake, making its life in the roots of the oaks and rolling toward other trees, is so wicked toward destroying badly that if someone should step on it the feet are flayed and swellings come to be through the whole of the legs. And still more wonderful: if someone also wishes to treat them, this one's hands too are flayed. The juice of the leaves of an ash, then, before all food and drink, is very useful being given as a drench.

81Of the same: about various bites and strikes. Proper, then, toward both bites and strikes of the venomous animals are the things said before; common are these: iris drunk with vinegar, seed of paliurus or juice of myrtle with wine, cardamom likewise, or fruit of pear or of trefoil [f barley, a drench of a decoction of poley, and centaury, dittany, castoreum, rue, sage, calamint, agnus. Toward these also plaster still with brans with vinegar, or wine, or radishes, or bulbs. These, then, many have already taken before, each praising by trial what is approved.

Toward these, one has someone drink juice of leek; another, having taken out the brain of a living hen, dissolving it in unmixed wine, held it out to the one in danger; another gave urine of a child mixed with wine itself; another, having split a mouse, set it on the strike and drew the venom up into the mouse. I prefer, of the many, the Parthian mystery which I set out toward both those bitten by rabid animals and those struck by scorpions, which is accomplished through four equals: myrrh, aristolochia, gentian, daphnis centaury. Having taken these on, then, and having rubbed them with wine and boiled them up, drench.

Easy to get are these: goat-milk by itself and given with five ounces of wine; frogs boiled with wine and drenched, toward all venomous things and toads. And southernwood, smooth, with wine; agaric likewise and fruit of agnus likewise; Ethiopian ammi and Italian cumin drenched with wine; ampeloprasion being eaten; the leaves of laurel, smooth, drenched with wine or water; or acorns of an oak being eaten fit, and fruit of a bedbug, root of mandrake with honey-milk. And leeches set on the bite help and draw. Goat-dung with oregano set on helps those struck by a beast, and dry dung of an elephant. And leaves of agnus being plastered; barley-meal likewise with lees of wine and harsh wine, or of the sea, being drenched abundantly, fit toward all venomous animals, as many as kill by chill.

A beast, then, of whatever kind it bite, having taken up its head set it on the bites and, having bound it on, you will heal without inflammation. Or having burnt the head that struck, set on the ash. Or having rubbed a root of drakontion, set it on the struck place, having scarified first.

82Juice of hyacinth, being drenched, is antipathic to every beast. Both the root of the wild grape-plant, hung around, and the fruit, being drenched, protects against every bite of a beast and strikes.

83Of Africanus: so that livestock not be harmed by a toad lurking at night or in a dark place, puffing upon them. The toad is accustomed to puff upon livestock most harshly if it lurk unnoticed in a stable at night or in a gloomy place; and from this pestilential diseases follow the animals, and swellings hard to heal, so that all aid toward the danger is idle. Therefore, so that it never do such a thing, one must kindle a lasting fire in the stables; for this creature fears fire as its own check.

84Of Africanus: to soothe inflammations of the feet and of other parts. Having first soaked seven dates in sweet wine until they become soft, rub them with sufficient rose-oil as smoothly as possible. Then, having boiled a little equal parts of wax, fresh hog's fat, and bread-crumbs with rose-oil, pour them over the smoothed dates; having united them in a mortar, make the mixture wet as a plaster, and having applied it you will take the inflammation away at once.

85Of Africanus: toward the same. The right testicle of a swan, hung around, stops the disease.

86Of Africanus: erasure of horses' brands. This theft of valuable horses, having changed the brands, is to take out the letters burnt into the bodies and to make the former mark vanish by another color and unrecognizable to the former master. It is done thus: a pulse, whose form is inscribed at the end, thoroughly boiled at the first moon at the third hour — plaster it on whichever part you wish to erase bramble. For ulcerating by the burn it brings up white hair; and if you plaster it in many places, the formerly single-colored will be variegated. Against all the other colors — whites only excepted, because of the like nature of the hair's regrowth — the art will cut out the letter and will keep the original color.

87From the Cesti of Africanus: on weights and measures. Since I have mentioned weights and measures in many places, and exact proportion of them is needed, so that some, erring in the quantity, may not slander the remedies compounded from these, I judged it necessary to make clear which ones and of what sort one must use, and to set out their differences toward one another.

Now the Attic and the Italian are in use among many, and among some the Syrian and the Egyptian, which are also called "Ptolemaic". These then must be compared with one another. As a rule every talent has 60 minae of its own. Every mina (that is, of the systems just named) has 25 staters; and the stater has 4 drachmas, which are holkai. Therefore every talent has 60 minae, 1500 staters, and blank drachmas. The drachma has... obols; and the obol has 8 chalkoi. Therefore the drachma has 48 chalkoi.

But the Attic talent is equal in weight to the Ptolemaic and the Antiochene, and equal in number throughout; yet in power it is fourfold the Ptolemaic according to the coin, four-thirds the Syrian and Antiochene, and equal to the Tyrian. The other units will be taken along according to the difference stated about the talent: for mina will differ from mina, stater from stater, and drachma from drachma in the same way as the difference about the talent.

I also know another wood-talent in Antioch, which has 60 minae of its own, but almost six times the coin-weight; and the wood-talent in Alexandria differs by a fifth, exceeding the local one already mentioned. The talent in Homer was equal in power to the later daric, as is clear from the contest-prizes set for Patroclus. For he set as prize for the first a woman and a huge cauldron; for the second a pregnant mare; and for the third a cauldron of 4 measures; and for the fourth he set two gold talents; which could not, if they were more valuable than the first prizes, be able † but to set a thing superior to the fifth as a lower approach-prize † which was the "two-handled cup".... The gold-piece — the Homeric talent here — weighs 2 Attic drachmas,... grammata, namely four tetartai.

Nor does it escape me that there are still more differences among drachmas: the Delian and the Aeginetan, and the Rhodian and..., are five times the Ptolemaic, and the one called "island" is six times.

88One must use the Attic, then, toward weight and coin, since it is equal in power and equal in weight to the Italian which is called a denarius; for in general many now use the Italian.

The Attic mina has 25 staters; the Italian litra is of 24 staters; of the remaining minae there are myriad differences, and nothing of them is necessary for us to set out now.

89The Ptolemaic medimnos is one-and-a-half of the Attic, and it was composed of two artabai in the old time; for the artabe was of 4 Italian modii.

Now, through the Roman use, the artabe transacts 3 modii.

The Phoenician kor is of 30 sata; the saton is one-and-a-half of the modius; of the sata there are few differences.

Three fingers seize 2 drachmas of the dry mixtures.

The chous is the six-xestes measure: the weight of wine is 10 litrai, that of oil 9 litrai, that of honey amounts to 15 litrai; and of every measurable matter there are many differences according to the weight.

The ounce of pepper has 400 grains; the litra has 5 grains.

90(What one must do, he has said.) “O rivers and earth, and you who beneath punish worn-out men, whoever should swear a false oath: you be witnesses, and complete the song for us. I came consulting, that I may arrive into the land of Telemachus, whom I left upon a nurse’s bosom, my child.” For such was the best incantation.

(What one must chant, he says.) “Hear me, kindly-smiling and overseer, well-sowing Anubis [ressed chthonic Zeus; […] fulfill this incantation. Here, Hades and Chthon, unquenchable fire, Helios Titan; come also Ia and Phtha and Phre […], and much-honored Nephtho and much-blessed Ablanatho, fire-dragon-girded, earth-drawer, ibis-named, Abrasax, far-famed daemon of the cosmic name, allotting axis and chorion and lights, all-father of the Bears; come also, in mastery more excellent than all, to me, Phren, [-burning Fire; come, Isis chthonic and heavenly and who rule over dreams, and Sirius who …”

And these things I shouted, standing beside the pit; for I remembered well Circe’s instructions, who knows as many drugs as the wide earth nourishes. And a great wave came of lion-fighting Acheron, Cocytus and Lethe and greatest Pyriphlegethon, and a fleet of the dead stood around also beside the pit; and first came the soul of Elpenor the companion. (And the things next.) Either, then, being thus, the poet himself kept silent the rest of the overcurious incantation because of the dignity of the subject, or the Peisistratids, stitching the other verses together, split these off, judging them alien to the line of the poetry there [The text is damaged here.]; as a more precious offspring of epic composition, I myself arranged it here.

This whole hypothesis, laid up, you will find both in the archives of the ancient fatherland-colony Aelia Capitolina of Palestine and at Nysa in Caria, and through the thirteenth in Rome, toward Alexander’s baths, in the beautiful library in the Pantheon which I myself architected for the Augustus. Julius Africanus, Cestus 18.

From the Cesti of Africanus, which is Cestus 13, chapter 22: simple purgatives. Juice of cyclamen smeared on the navel is a vigorous purgative. And the summer cleansing is this:

91Having pounded gourds in a mortar and strained the juice through linen together with a little honey mixed in, drink and purge.

Which is also more suitable in winter: having boiled the white beets thoroughly, put them into another new vessel, and from that same water, with a little salt, make a broth by boiling it up. Eat the beets first, without bread, and having mixed the broth, drink it.

And in spring, similarly, the most painless emptying: the juice of safflower seed mixed with whey from the milk and drunk.

From the Cesti of Africanus: On cinnamon. Herodotus says nobody knows how cinnamon comes to be, and that birds build nests on the peaks of inaccessible rocks from cinnamon, and that the locals cannot go up onto the peaks; and having sacrificed large cattle and cut them limb from limb, if they believe these birds to be hooked-clawed, they leave the pieces in sight of those among us; and that they carry the meats up onto their own nests and fill them until they are brought down by the weight; and that those who take up the cinnamon sell it. Herodotus boasts that he knows this is a lie.

But I say from trial that cinnamon is a plant similar to a shrub and […]; and that the tree resembles […] a chaste-tree; and the height as much as to three-[…] the whole; and it is divided into […] first its […] its tip; […] then the rest.

From Africanus’s book: making of sharp purple. Taking the wool that has been mordanted, let it down into 1 choenix of groats, 4 choenix of phykos; having boiled, let down the wool and leave it until evening; and having taken it up, rinse with seawater, then with water.

92From Africanus, from book 3. Stypsis toward every dyeing is this: first the animal, or also the hide, is washed off; for thus it would take on the things of the stypsis. Then one must dissolve alum in vinegar and smear whatever one would dye. Dried in the sun it is washed off and, freed of the moisture, it takes on every dyeing. Night and day one must keep the thing being stypticked under the stypsis.

93From Michael Psellus, On paradoxical readings. Conception is worked by God and Nature, as I at least am persuaded; but Africanus says that there is also a technical generation, and it will be generated technically if the man about to come to intercourse should smear the member with hare’s blood or with goose fat: in that way male, in this way female.

And this man also draws down milk from breasts by a technical method, and those swelling after childbirth he quenches with a cyprine cerate. He also makes a woman barren by hanging an atokion on her: this is a frog’s brain wrapped in a linen rag. And to those in hard labor, putting a gagate stone into the left hand, he makes them give birth quickly. There have been made by him also other conception-mixtures and devices and [The text is damaged here.] and by him other conception-mixtures and devices and child-making plasters.

And he has a styptic thing composed from mulberry twigs, an amulet when the luminaries are under the earth; and he gives it its power by a certain unspeakable incantation. He also dyes white hairs from pounded litharge. He also makes a voice-training remedy from iris and tragacanth. He also rusts gold with the saliva of a rabid dog. And he makes an antipathetic for beasts’ strikes with the two-faced plaster. And he names certain scorpion-remedies as paradoxes.

And he makes a certain test of hidden thieves, cutting off the tongues of frog-tadpoles and pickling them, then at the time of need mixing them with barley-meal and giving them to those under suspicion of the taking-away of the thing sought. And the one who took away the stolen thing, he says, as if becoming in a trance, openly publishes himself; and he names the food “thief-detector.”

And about farming too this man says paradoxes. For a mulberry-tree, he says, bears white mulberries when it has received a grafted-in white poplar; and a white poplar in which a mulberry has been budded would also bear the same. And peaches become most-red inscribed, if someone inscribes the fruit that lies in the stone. He also stops a plague either with balsam sap or with the foul-smelling confinement of the tanner’s trade, by opposites. He also prepares wine of every kind, one with nard-spike, one with mastic-flower, and another with another drug. He also fashions hyacinth-stones and emerald-stones and sardonyxes. And he treats asp-bites and mist of the eyes not with the known drugs but with certain amulets and incantations.

94And from the dung of cows that have coupled, and from urine, he makes a man defecate and a woman urinate when he would, and laugh very greatly. He works a technical, or rather a magical, fertility for fields, and the opposite barrenness from antipathies. He collects aphroselenon from the dew of plants and the moon’s rays. He keeps those who spend the night in wine amethystous (not drunk).

He tells wonders of certain helps from a tortoise, from a bear’s genitals, from other animals and beasts. He has also made a thinning drug of excess flesh. He also makes disappear the little animals in vegetables, proposing certain new methods.

He also speaks about the gorgonion: this is a plant mostly underground. He says that if a girl should couple near it as Aphrodite’s custom, the plant comes up to the sight and watches the happening curiously. He also makes eyelash-beautifying drugs and scrying ones. It is also very easy for him to make a woman who has been rolled with many men a virgin again.

He also puts a parasite to sleep, and what happens is for him a source of cheer. He also checks the hold of dreams, and very easily brings down the afterbirth and blacks grey eyes. He also has a key of veins for slips, and something else night-shining. He both kindles loves and quenches them. And white hairs he blacks, and black he whites. And other such things this man in his Cesti tells as wonders and goes through.

95Zosimus, in On the fact that the art has spoken all things about one dyeing. Accordingly Africanus also says: “the things that go into the dyeing: metals and liquids and earths and plants.”

96Olympiodorus, in On Zosimus according to activity. Salt was invented by the ancients so that the arsenic should not stick to the glass pot, which glass pot Africanus called an asympoton.

97Anonymous, in Paris manuscript gr. 2286. As the Babylonian Africanus says, if someone wants to beget a child, before coming together with the woman — that is, when he is about to come to intercourse — let him smear his member with hare’s blood and he will make a male child; but if he smears goose-fat he will make a female.

98Pseudo-Diophanes, in the Geoponics. For those around Democritus and Africanus say that the ripened grape remains well six days only, and not more; if then the pip no longer appears green, but black, it signifies that it is ripe.