T H E R I A C A,

AND the various forms, and with dire tooth of wild beasts

The bites on the unwary, then with what remedy the harm

You may drive away, greater to me than the rest joined by blood,

Dear Hermesianax, I will tell you in easy verse.

Whether they are now reaping, or turning the earth with the plowshare,

Or cutting down wood, struck by a malignant tooth,

The farmers observe you teaching these amulets.

Fierce serpents and phalangia with foul bite,

And the viperous race, and a thousand ills of the earth,

Rumor has it sprang forth from the spilled blood of the Titans,

If the Ascraean Hesiod once sang true things

In the Melissaean cave by the waves of the river Permessus.

But indeed the Titanian maiden created the chilling

Scorpion, armed with a stinger and fearsome in its tail,

Demanding punishments from the Boeotian Oarion,

Who dared to violate with his hands the sacred robe of Diana.

Which hiding under the blind arch of a small stone,

Violated his hard heel with an unforeseen wound.

On account of which, as if of one hunting, it is brought back into the stars

As a constellation, and gleams motionless with a great light.

But you will drive all things far from the stable and the enclosures,

Whether it pleases to spread your bed on the lowest earth,

Or to hang it in a high place, when Sirius burns

The fields, and cast upon the empty stubble, avoiding the heat,

You sleep until evening moderates the air,

Or near a leafy mound, or deep in a valley,

Where the serpent, numerous, grazes the woods, and the bristling

Shrubs and bushes, and the ditches lacking light.

Or whether an ample threshing-floor holds you in a leveled space,

Or you lie where the soft grass first covers the fields.

When the serpent has shed its old age and its rough hide

Egressing from its hiding places, and slow in its body

And heavy in its eyes it seeks out fennel in the spring,

By feeding on which vigor and sharpness return to its eyes.

For you can drive away the burning plagues, if you wish

To fumigate the beds with the branching horn of a stag,

Or even to commit to the flames the dry Gagates stone,

Which is not consumed by rapid fire,

Or to kindle the foliage of the multifid fern with flame.

Select moreover the sharp root bearing *cachrys*,

And mixing it with cress in an equal scale,

Burn it, or you shall set the dry horns of a young deer

Together in the balance, and add *melanthion*

In equal weights, or smelling sulfur, or dark bitumen.

Hand over likewise to Vulcan the Thracian stone,

Which, wet with waters, shines with flame, but the same

Immediately extinguishes the flame when oil is poured on.

The flesh-eating shepherds, while they follow their flocks in the country,

First brought it discovered to us

From the Thracian river, which they call Pontus by name.

Moreover, it also helps to kindle the galbanum odors of the fennel-giant,

And the nettle, then to scrape the cedar

With a bronze comb. It spreads these fumigations far and wide,

And drives away the *chelydri* from afar with a foul stench.

Thus they will flee the caves, and retreat from their hiding places,

And you, reclining on the ground, will be satisfied with peaceful sleep.

If this labor is heavy, and the already approaching night urges

To give your weary limbs to pleasing rest, the work being finished,

Track down the calamint, notable for its leaves, at the banks

Of a rapid river; it grows most abundantly in liquid

Places, and captivated by the great sweetness of the water

Luxuriates in branches, and surrounds the rivers and shores.

Or build your bed with cut stalks of the long chaste-tree,

Or strew it with the fragrant branches of poly.

Pluck likewise echium or oregano, and the wild

Offspring of southernwood which gleams white in the lowest valley

Of the mountain, and seek the branches of creeping thyme through the fields,

Which, born from the damp earth, creeps, and driving

Roots from its leaves, lives with many an offshoot.

View the gleaming flowers of the chaste-tree, and the bushes

Of the lowly fleabane, and the *onogyros* with its sharp thorns.

Likewise gather the rough shoots of the pomegranate tree,

And the green asphodel adorned with a long neck,

And nightshade and *scyra* detested by hardy plowmen,

Which by their pasture seize the heifers with lust in the spring.

Also sulfurweed, whose heavy odor filling the air

Drives away snakes, and wards them off from encounters with men.

Hastily arrange these into a spread bed through the fields,

But also throw a part over the curved dens.

But if you crush cedar berries in a clay vessel or pot,

And smear your nimble limbs with the moisture,

Or if it pleases you to have crushed the leaves of heavy sulfurweed,

Or the dry hair of wild fleabane with oil,

Or what sage, the avenger of a pestilential bite, bears,

Or if you add the root of silphium ground down by a file,

(Often they are also terrified by the smell of human saliva)

Or if the caterpillar, which lives dewy in the gardens,

Crushed with oil, spotted on its back with green color,

Or the tops and tender stalks of the wild mallow

Over your limbs, you will pass the night without a wound.

And in the hollow of a mortar made of marble, insert

Two leafy branches of noble southernwood.

To which mix cress weighing an obol, and together

Pound as much fresh seeds of carrot as the right hand can hold

With a pestle, and let the lozenges properly formed into rounds

Be dried, exposed to the wind in the shade.

Crush these in a vessel, then smear your limbs with them liquefied.

But if you enclose snakes, gathered from the crossroads while they burn with love,

And rush into mating, in a pot,

You will learn by what remedy you are able to remove the plagues.

But to these you will join three times ten drachms in weight

Of the marrow of a not old deer, which the bones enclose,

And let a third part of a *congius* of rose oil be added,

Which the perfumer calls first, and middle, and much-rubbed.

Let an equal weight of raw and pure olive oil be added,

And a quarter of wax. Let these be cooked in a spacious vessel

Mixed together, until the melting flesh falls away around

The spines with an easy shake. Then take the finished [ointment]

Expertly with a spoon, and with the snakes themselves together

You shall crush all things, but indeed remember to remove the spines,

Since the cruel venom sits innate in these.

With this, whether you sleep, or make a journey, smear your body,

Or after the harvested crops in the warm summer

Girded up, you shall purge the heaps of grain with a pitchfork.

But if you meet serpents not protected by ointment,

And empty of food, when the harm of wild beasts is grave,

You will avoid bites, hiding these precepts in your mind:

The female agitated by headlong fury before all

Approaches, with jaws open wide, and tail swelling.

From there she strikes with much graver peril of fate.

And you must avoid harmful wild beasts in summer,

Observing the risings of the Pleiades, which on the extreme

Body of the bull affixed do not all swim across the ether,

Or when with her young lying through the sunny caves

She sleeps in ambush, thirsty and unfed the serpent:

Or eagerly she hastens to pasture, or closing her eyes

In sleep, from pasture she seeks her bed satiated.

Alas stand away from the crossroads, when in fear the livid viper

Escapes the fierce angers of his furious wife.

While swelling she clings with her bite to him copulating with her.

And with impure tooth cuts off the neck of her husband.

Or the young seeking penalties for their father's slaughter

The little avenging vipers, and through the intestines of the parent

With gnawed womb emerge into the light lacking a mother.

For she alone is pregnant with offspring: when the others in the deep

Woods, egg-laying, hatch their shelled pledges.

Nor when with bristling old age deposited with its scales

The serpent advances happy with youthful back:

Or when avoiding the breath of deer, from his dens

He leaps out, and into a man vibrates his lethal poison.

For greatly the gliding snakes with long coils

The roe deer and stags hate: and through the rough rocks

They track them, and search the shaggy hedges and caves.

And with their breath they rouse them from their nostrils, wondrous to tell.

But also the dark serpents the stormy and rough

Othrys holds, and the hollow valleys, and the abrupt uneven places,

And the dense ridges in the woods, where the thirsty Seps wanders.

Which with diverse skin, never of one color, is seen

Always similar to the seat which it chooses in the fields.

In the rocks and in the small heaps of stones they stable

Rough and burning, of whom not with impunity a traveler

Will bear the cruel wounds from its ungentle bite.

That one resembles terrestrial snails: that one dressed

In green scales twists its immense volumes,

And draws out various folds. By whiteness are marked

Very many, and poured in the middle they are rolled in the sands.

The deadly dire Aspis with dry scales

Observe, than which there is no monster more sluggish.

It insists on crawling its path straight, and its long

Belly drawing oppositely, it is carried by a direct path.

Terrific in sight is its body, which it rolls slow along the path

By a sluggish dragging: and always it is thought

Blinking to concede its closed eyes to heavy sleep.

But as soon as it has drawn in a voice with watchful ears,

Or has sensed a noise, shaken from its torpid lethargy

It turns its contorted sinuous body into a circle,

And horrid in the middle it raises its dire head high.

Long indeed it is by the space of an ell, than which worse in any

Lands you would not see born, but wide it swells

As much as by a smith's adze a turned spear-shaft

For the battle of bulls and truculent lions.

That one sometimes shines with dark skin, or ash-color

Or of an ash tree, sometimes it is marked by spots,

Or it is fuliginous very often, very similar to the black

Mud of the Ethiopians, which with vast murmur the Nilus

Rolls, and pours into the sea through seven mouths.

On the top of its forehead for this as if twin tubercles...

They stand out from the eyelashes, and the reddening eyes are hidden

deep within their folds. But when it becomes inflamed with anger,

and rages, threatening death, going to meet those who approach,

its rough neck swells, and it hisses with a wide mouth.

Four teeth within it, curved and hollow

and long, cling with deep roots to the jaw.

These hold the poison, covered over everywhere by a membrane,

untamed [poison], which from there it shoots into the limbs of men;

may such cruel dangers befall our enemies!

No traces of an inflicted wound on the skin, no burning

and no swelling, nor sense of pain in death,

only the torpid limbs perish in a heavy sleep.

But only the ichneumon [Greek: Ἰχνεύμων] unhurt turns aside

such great strikes of the asp, whether when it stirs up fierce wars,

or when, while the snake incubates its death-bringing offspring,

it scatters them all over the ground, and devours them

freed from their membranes, and crushes the eggs with a great crunching of its mouth.

This is very similar to the small marten, which they call by its true name

ictis [Greek: Ἰκτιδός], which in the farmyard courtyard, searching through the high roosts

for the birds ensnared in sleep,

while they lie down and warm their chicks under a warm breast,

snatches them from their nests and slaughters them with wicked deceit.

But when in the rushes of Egypt it renews the fight

with the asp, and prepares to contend in a great war,

it suddenly throws itself into the river with a leap, and shakes its limbs

in the muddy whirlpool, and rolling its body through the black

mud it befouls and pollutes itself, until burning Sirius

makes it a breastplate, by which it may endure the hooks of the tooth.

From there it gnaws off the head of the licking beast, leaping into

its deepest jaws, or throws it down snatched by the tail

into the mossy streams, and submerges it under the waves.

Now observe the viper's appearance and its various forms;

that one is long, this one short, with such a difference

do Asia and Europe bear them, and nowhere will you see them alike.

For throughout Europe they are short, with swellings on the tips

of their nostrils, and they are white and bear horns;

these inhabit the rocks of Sciron, and the high Pammonian,

Rhypeum, the village of Corax, and the hoary Aselenum.

But Asia feeds them rising to one cubit or more,

such as hold rocky Bucarteron, and the lofty peaks of Ægagea,

and which vast Cercaphus raises.

The head of these is broader, and in the highest extension

of the body are the short coils of a small tail,

stiff with a continuous series and linking of scales,

and their gait is slow as they wander through the shaggy thickets.

But this male is long, that one short, but all are conspicuous

with a sharp head, and more tightened with a slender belly.

The tail also, gradually thinned into smaller knots,

is stretched out, hanging small from the long body

and with rubbed-away scales. But if fury piles up his anger,

his red eyes flash, and licking his mouth with forked tongues,

he roughens the extreme end of his lowest tail.

They call the viper Cocytus by its proper name.

Twin teeth appear in this one, pouring poison

into the flesh, but the female is fierce with more spits [teeth].

For she clings biting with her whole mouth, and the struck

gums are marked on the skin with a wide gap.

From there issues forth bloody matter not unlike rich olive oil,

sometimes bloody or pale, then the flesh

rising up, dyed with a green or red color,

or a livid one, gives a heavy swelling of great size.

Now here it swells full of water, and frequent blisters,

such as devouring fire raises on a burned body,

break out scattered, and overflow with foul fluid.

Soon putrid ulcers surround the wound, and consume

it, flowing with bloody matter and foul gore.

And the body burns and is consumed by a burning fire,

and frequent hiccups in a dense line shake the throat,

and cause sounds, rushing through the neck.

His limbs spin in a blind dizziness, his loins stand with no strength,

and his joints crack with great weariness.

His head is darkened and pressed down by heaviness, and a harsh thirst

sometimes scorches his dry jaws:

Often his nails grow stiff, and the sick man shudders

in his whole body, as if overwhelmed by a cold shower of hail.

Often too he vomits pale from his mouth the heaps of bile

gathered in his stomach. Sweat flows in streams from all sides,

colder than the snows which the clouds of heaven pour forth.

His very skin grows black, now dark with the color of lead:

sometimes it is blue, very like the flower of heather.

Now you may easily recognize the cerastes [Latin: Cerastem] equipped with deceit.

This one is of a viper's form, and born with the same appearance.

But nevertheless, the latter is mutilated, the former relying often on four

horns, or two, and by this distinction it is known.

Its color grows white with squalor, and hidden in the ruts of wheels

it lies among the middle sands of the road.

And while the viper, dragging its huge coils straight ahead

and straightly, creeps with its body equally balanced,

that one, rough with its back and rattling scales, enters the path

obliquely, yielding from the straight track:

no differently than a ship which, by the rapid blast of the wind

inclining to its side, and almost sunk beneath the waves,

is driven into the winds, and repelled by the breath of the East wind.

If it has pressed its tooth, soon in the wound itself a hard

callus forms like a nail, then many a blister around it

grows livid, fleeing the light with dark vision,

equal to the light bubbles born in a shower of rain.

Nor yet does any force of great pain torture him,

but he survives, until the Sun has shone with its ninth rising,

he on whom the cerastes [Latin: Cerastes] has inflicted wounds with its dire tooth.

Bitter labor settles in his twin groins and vexes

his knees, and the skin changes its proper color

as it turns livid, and at length, his frame undone by troubles,

failing in spirit, the wretched man scarcely rescues himself from Orcus.

Now receive the signs by which you may recognize the haemorrhois [Latin: Hæmorrhoon].

That one always fixes its seat in rocky caves

and, stretched on a small and hard bed,

returning sated from pasture in the fields, it takes its leisure.

Its measure is equal to a foot, and drawn back into narrows

its body is gradually thinned from its flaming head.

Sometimes its color is shining, or conversely burnt dark.

It is drawn tight with a narrow neck, and its compressed tail,

scattered on the ground, grows very slender from its middle belly.

It bears two white horns on its lofty brow,

like a locust in its shining orbs and eyes;

its terrifying head bristles, stiff with scales, and itself

slanting its small body in the manner of the curved cerastes [Latin: Cerastæ],

moves its short column forward by its middle back,

scraping the soil with its belly, and sounding with its scales in its very

step it gives a thin noise, as if treading on straw.

Immediately, when the wound is struck, the foul flesh takes on

a blue color. There is pain in the heart, and

the very liquid belly is roused. And in the first night through the ears,

through the neck and nostrils, mixed with venomous bile,

a bloody humor gushes and is poured out in streams.

Then the urine reddens: finally through the whole body

broken ulcers lie open, and the dry skin forms cracks.

But beware lest the harsh haemorrhois [Latin: Hæmorrhois] pours virus into your limbs

by its bite: the fiery ruin rages in all

the gums, the nails from their topmost root drop blood,

and the teeth, bedewed with blood, gnash.

To this [snake] Helen, returning from Troy [Latin: Troiâ], if the report is true,

when she had scarcely at last set her fleet, driven over the sea by rapid North Winds,

on the shores of the wavy Nile,

being heavily inflamed by the death of the ship-captain Canobus

(whom soon, as he was recalling his weary strength on the shore,

Thonius beheld; with pressed neck, it [the snake] sprinkled venom

in his limbs, and laid him flat on a hard bed),

She broke the middle of the body, and the connected joints of the back,

And the nodes and bonds of the spine she untied.

Since then, the hipless haemorrhois [*Hæmorrhi*], and the twisted cerastes [*Cerastæ*]

Move as if lame, paying the penalty for their deceit.

Now the image of the sepedon [*Sepedonos*] will become clearly known to you.

This is similar in form to the haemorrhois [*Hæmorrho*], but directs its steps

With the opposite part of its body: the forehead is swollen with no horn,

And the skin is painted in the manner of a hairy carpet.

The head is large in bulk, but the tail appears small to one moving,

Because it twists it bent into many circles.

Its bite is lethal, and full of bitter pain:

And the hostile ruin of the venom feeds on the whole body,

And every hair falls from the dry skin,

Just as the light thistledowns fall from a withering acanthus.

For the hairs flow from the eyebrows and the bald crown,

And the hairs from the eyelids, when the wound is received.

Vitiligo marks the smooth joints, and deformed leuce [*leuce*]

Brings white freckles [*ephelin*] onto the limbs.

But indeed the dipsas [*Dipsas*] is known under the image of a small

Viper [*Viperulæ*], but whoever it violates with its rabid mouth,

The fates quickly snatch away, and the tail, more drawn together,

Puts on a dark black color in its furthest nodes.

The whole heart burns with a flame from the bite, the dry lips

Are burned by the feverish heat, and are moistened by no fluid.

But he himself, face down from the river, drinks the waters

With a great gape like a bull, until the belly

Springs apart with a ruptured abdomen, and pours its unjust weight on the ground.

An ancient tale is told among youths, that when

The older Jupiter held heaven, having driven out his father,

And had placed his brothers in a share of the realms,

He gifted mortals with the magnificent gift of green youth,

Already then condemning the thefts of Prometheus,

Yet that the foolish ones could never take possession of this.

Tired, they placed so excellent a gift on a heavy ass;

It, while it goes laden, gathered thirst in its dry

Throat, and begged a fierce snake standing by the lairs,

To bring help to its needy affairs.

And when this one demanded the load of its curved back as a reward,

Oppressed by the mishap the mad one did not refuse.

Hence the fierce snakes exchange their old age on a youthful back,

And grand old age oppresses humans,

And from that ass they drew a sad disease, and the rabies of a brayer,

And the fierce ones give wounds with a cruel tooth.

Come now, you should learn of the chersydrus [*Chersydrum*], whose form is the terrifying one

Of the asp [*Aspidis*], and the atrocious signs of its malignant bite.

The dry skin smelling foul, and distended from the bottom,

And gaping with cracks, a putrid fluid having been gathered,

Betrays the venomous bites, and fiery pains

Consume the wretched man, and sudden flames wander,

And run about alternately in the whole body.

He, first inhabiting the flowing pools, exercises

The frogs with a perennial hatred: but when Sirius drinks

All the moisture, and mud remains in the gulf,

He leaps out onto the dry land, and foul and discolored

He warms his foul limbs in the sun, and vibrating hisses with his tongues

He grazes on the dry bushes through the dusty fields.

Now know the amphisbaena [*Amphisbænam*] extending a head in twin directions

On a small body, whose orbs of light are dull and sluggish,

With the cheeks extended on both sides, and left apart

By a space. A skin rivaling the earth

And robust covers it, smeared with various spots.

When it has first proceeded from the caves fully grown,

A woodcutter seizing it, having cut off a branch of wild olive,

Before the spring chirping of the new cicada,

Strips it, its hide being torn off. Thus with its skin

It benefits many, when hands have become stiff and sluggish

From the blast of Boreas and are numb conquered by the cold,

Or soft nerves labor in a loose frame.

And you will look at the scytale [*Scytalen*] of the same form as it.

But what could surpass even the tail of an *amphisbaena* [Latin: Amphisbaenae]

in its slender thickness. For the *scytale* [Latin: scytale] is like the handles of hoes,

while the former is like a soft, round earthworm,

and an intestine, which bursts forth from the nurturing earth.

When in early spring the serpent emerges into the open fields,

and leaving the rocks and hollows wanders through the lands,

it does not pluck these shoots of flowering fennel

having shed its slough, shining with renewed youth,

but through the valleys, and in dense woodlands, bound by deep

sleep, it lies hidden. There the earth abundantly supplies nourishment,

nor is any water sought to relieve its thirst.

Observe also the small, but in strength surpassing all,

king [*basilisk*], whose body with a pointed head

and reddish color, is three palms in measure and extent.

No serpent could endure its terrifying hisses,

whether they are ranging far and wide over the meadows,

or hurrying to quench their thirst under the midday sun;

it gives warning, and compels the fearful to turn their backs in flight.

Flames spread into the limbs from its bite, and black,

livid flesh flows from the putrefying body.

Neither an eagle nor a vulture, nor the black croaking bird

that announces coming rain, nor the rest of the wild beasts

in the woods, would dare to taste the corpse,

which once it has assailed, it taints with its foul breath.

But if mad hunger compels an ignorant beast to turn its bite to it,

it is held in sudden and certain death.

Now listen to the plagues of the *dryinas* [Latin: Dryinae], which often in the hollowed

trunks of an oak makes its fissured bed,

or lurks under the undermined bark of an old beech;

some call this the *hydrus* [Latin: Hydrum], others have called it the *chelydrus* [Latin: Chelydrum].

After it has left the familiar lakes and the marshy weeds,

and in the meadows hunts frogs and winged locusts,

struck by the point of the swift gadfly

it flees, and headlong with a rapid leap goes under the caves of the beech,

and hides itself in the hollow belly of the trunk.

It has black skin, and a head very much like the *hydrus* [Latin: hydro],

and likewise its sides. But its body exhales a foul odor,

not otherwise than the worms that are born from the rotting hide

of horses, and are cut by the scalpel.

If it strikes the ankle or the prints of the top of the heel,

from there a heavy breath spreads around the vital organs

and chokes them, and the wound swells into black tumors.

Hostile pains agitate the languid and sorrowful mind,

the body dries up from the cruel wound

trembling with a foul-smelling breath. The consuming venom devours the limbs,

and at the same time the infection spreads widely,

and a dense mist envelops the unsteady eyes.

Some utter bleatings, and are choked by tightened

throats, their urine stops; you may see these on the other hand snoring,

steeped in sleep, their flanks shaken by frequent

hiccups, and rapid vomits brought forth through the mouth

of blood or bile. Finally, the venom causing thirst,

a tremor runs spreading through the languid limbs.

Nor indeed would I pass over the golden *draco* [Latin: draconem], shining like the sky,

which the offspring of Phoebus nurtured on a beech tree

in the Pelethronian valley, by cold Pelion, a snake

of outstanding beauty, whose teeth joined in a row

threefold, adhere to the jaws on either side.

Its large eyes are hidden by thick eyebrows,

and a golden beard hangs down from its wrinkled chin.

It, even rousing its anger and gnashing, will not inflict much pain.

For a faint wound is seen from its tiny tooth,

and it appears no wider than the bite of a mouse.

Against it the armor-bearing bird of Jove from its first origin

stirs up fierce wars, and with its curved beak, hostile,

presses hard on it, when it sees it moving through the middle of the fields.

For it devastates homes and nests with their sweet offspring:

and devouring the eggs, leaves the beds bereaved.

Indeed, snatching a bird and a swift hare through the void,

Leaping from the bush, it soon snatches [it] from the eagle's claw.

It flees, they fight over the prey. Flying to and fro

It follows in vain, drawing sinuous coils,

And looking up with fierce eyes at the one departing into the stars.

If ever you visit wintry Samos, and famous for the fall

Of Mulciber, if you approach Lemnos, which is nearest to the Thracian

Shores, far away from Rescynthian Juno,

Where the Hebrus is, and the mountains with the snowy peak of Zona,

And the tall Oeagrian oaks, and the Zerynthian caves,

You will find the Cenchrenes of horrendous size, which the farmers

Call a lion varied with scales and spots.

The monster's body does not have one uniform measure. It occupies

Everything far and wide, and a putrefaction curable by no art

Quickly eats away the limbs, and always driving pain

In the heavy belly, a wicked dropsy presses the knot of the abdomen.

When the sun burns the lands with fervent rays,

Behold, it approaches the hills and the rough groves of the mountain,

Intensely thirsty for blood, and seeks the flocks of Mosychlus

And Saeus in ambush, while the shepherd secure

Under the spreading fir captures the coolness and leisure.

Let no confidence cause you to stand before it when enraged

And raising threats, lest it scatter flames from its whole body

And strike you, entwined with knots connected on all sides,

And suck the blood from your ruptured chest.

But flee, not straight, but running on an oblique path,

Cut your way, and frustrate the beast's shortcuts:

Thorny chains weave delays, and offended it sticks in the rough places,

While it rushes most rapidly on a straight and level field.

Such a snake brings itself forth in the Thracian tracts.

Here also the vile Stellio delivers cruel bites.

Why Achaean Ceres once injured him,

Fame relates, when she loosened his boyish limbs

At the well Callichorus, when pious Metanira and the old man

Had received the goddess in the hospitality of her friend Celeus.

Besides, a by no means harmful crowd of beasts grazes

The woods and bushes and the dens covered in darkness.

These they call elopes, and libyas, and crowned myagri,

Also jaculi, and mild moluri,

And the typhlopes that wander harming with no plague.

But I will now detail the painted flowers, and their cures

For diseases, and the leaves, and the times suited for picking roots,

By which you may be able to counter the advancing plague,

Embracing all things in easy verse:

In the beginning, in the woods, where the broad beasts graze

The savage pastures, while the wound drips with gore,

Pick fresh herbs, such are accustomed to surpass the old.

Before all, pick the root of Centaury, famous

By the name of Chiron, which first on high Pelion

Chiron the son of Philyra with his long neck observed.

¶ A hanging foliage with marjoram-like leaf surrounds the stem,

And golden flowers shine, and the root above

Scattered in the Pelethronian glade, wanders along the surface.

Pound this either dry, or green in a mortar,

And bestow it mixed with a cotyla of unmixed wine.

This assists all, and for that reason is called Panacea.

Or the shade-dwelling aristolochia is to be ground,

That with leaves of honeysuckle, and akin to ivy,

With flowers red with crimson, and an offensive odor,

In the middle of which you will see hanging the fruit

Such as the myrtle-like pear or the berry bears.

The female sprouts resting on round tubers of roots,

But the males have long ones, [buried] a cubit deep under the nourishing

Earth. The color of boxwood is inside both.

You will not easily find any medicine for viper

Bites that is more beneficial, if it pleases to mix fragments of the weight

Of a drachma in yellow Falernian wine.

No less against these plagues pluck the triphyllon,

Whether it holds the lofty ridges, or rises along the slopes.

This one calls it minyanthes, but that one tripetelon, with a rustic [voice]...

In foliage it resembles the lotus, and it sheds the smell of rue,

But when it has brought forth all its flowers and comely leaves,

it smells heavy with asphalt. Pulling from there

as many seeds as a wine-bowl takes, and grinding

all with a pestle, you will medicate the venom with a drink.

Now come, I will sing of mixed things that drive away such great plagues.

First put together the wholesome root of thapsia

Trinacrian, and the gathered seed from the white vitex,

and nerion, and rue drawing its shoots widely.

Let a sprig of savory be added, which rejoices in the fields

scattered on the soil to spread branches like serpyllum.

You also pluck the round root of the flowering

asphodel, or the stalk raising its high peaks,

or the seeds which are enclosed in a distinct follicle.

And also helxine, which many have called clybatis.

It rejoices in waters, and grows green with evergreen foliage through cultivated places.

Grind all, and with a cotyla of wine or biting vinegar

drink them mixed: you can also avert the plague with waters.

Pluck equally the root of alcibium echium, always

whose rough foliage bristles with sharp spines,

purple flowers are around it, and the deep

and slender root sends itself down into the lowest earth.

For Alcibius, while he entered sleep stretched out in a cave,

at the end of the threshing floor, a viper had struck the groins with a bite

and immediately the dark one had blown forth pain,

he chewed the root torn from the soil, and

sucked out all the juice, and covered the raw wound with the mash.

Furthermore, pounding the greening shoots of marrubium

you will be of use, if you drink them mixed at once with white wine.

Then, hostile to her offspring, while he sucks the empty dugs:

which with hatred settled fills the heifer with milk,

rustic herdsmen have called it meliphyllon,

or melittena, because captured by the smell of honey

bees are accustomed to buzz around and settle on its branches.

And the small membrane which wraps the brain of a

farmyard hen, and also sometimes to be gathered

pieces of polycnemon and origanon, or take the topmost

fiber of a boar's liver, which growing on the table

turns to the sac of the bile, and approaches the gates.

Let these be pounded and drunk diluted with mixed vinegar.

Or with wine, but the greatest power by far is in wine.

And grant the leaf of green cypress in a drink,

or panaces, or accept the wretched testicle of a beaver,

Or of the horse feeding through the great Saite

rivers of the Nile, and reaping the grains of the earth with its evil mouth:

Which, coming out of the river and from the whirlpool of foul mud

while the crop flourishes, and it has exchanged grass for ears of grain,

proceeds as far as is enough to take the joyful

pastures, and be able to return into the left behind waves.

From it cut off what equals the weight of a drachma,

And pound all together in a mortar with waters poured on.

Nor indeed let forgetfulness of abrotonum or the fruit of the laurel

seize you, and slender amaracus contributes, filling

the areas of gardens and banks with green frond.

To these mix the rennet of a swift hare, or timid fallow deer,

or roe deer, but with the dregs torn away beforehand.

Or the belly of a stag, which many by the name of echinus

and reticulum call, hiding under the deep belly.

Offer these taken out in the weight of two drachmas

mixed in four cyathi of old wine.

But neither ignore the help of polium, or cedar, or juniper,

and do not despise the pill of the large plane tree,

the seed also of bupleurum and Idaean cypress,

Or even to cut off the genital penis of a stag.

For all come to the rescue, and overcome the suffering.

Now learn other arts, now other means of putting death

to flight, and rub polybatea in the hollow of a mortar,

pouring on a hemina of ptisana, and adding twin cyathi

of falernian wine born under an early consul,

And as much rich sap as flows from the olive. These things mixed together will draw the gnawing bile from the wound.

Moreover, give an ounce and a half of strong-smelling pitch, and grant with it the inner pith of green giant fennel, or the large roots of great horse-fennel crushed with cedar berries, and seeds of marsh celery: let the full measure for all be an oxybaphon.

Add to them the chopped seed of horse celery, and pitch-black myrrh to the doubled weight of a drachma, and at the same time pluck the weighed fruit of spiked cumin, or mix in the body of a viper without any weight, and drink them mixed in three cyathi of unmixed wine.

Then take a drachma of nard shining with a beautiful ear, and pound an eight-footed crab snatched from a river with fresh milk, then an iris grown on the banks of the Naro, and where the Drilo flows through Illyrian lands, and the foundations of Harmonia and Sidonian Cadmus, where the twin dragons creep through the pasture lands.

Moreover, promptly pick the flowering foliage of the leafy heath, this the swarms feed upon and fly around. Immediately let the twigs of the barren tamarisk be gathered, the prophetic deity of seers, by which Corypaean Apollo granted to give lots and speak responses.

To these join the green branches of strong-smelling fleabane, and light elder, and the frequent flowers and foliage of marjoram, and cytisus and the milky spurges. Pound these, and diluted with wine, receive them in a spacious jar, which a single congius takes ten times over.

And it especially helps to have boiled in Palladian liquid in a vessel the complaining parents of tadpoles. Often a liver, whatever chance has provided you, or the deadly head of a wild beast, drunk with wine, whether in river water or unmixed wine, has dispelled the bitter plague.

But let not sweet helichrysum, nor corcorus lying with lowly leaf, be absent, nor panacean conila, which some have called Heraclean origanon, and the origanon which asses feed on, and pound at the same time the dry little heads of savory that root out severe disease.

Use also small poppies resembling the rich buckthorn, which a whiter flower clothes around with a hoary mantle, those who inhabit Tmolus and the monuments of Gyges, and the ridge of Parthenius, where the Clerus provides pasture for equine flocks, and the mouths of the effusive Cayster spread out, call it by the name Phileteris.

Come now, hear the roots opposed to snakes, among which you will see the twofold viper's bugloss, one bristling with sharp spines, with the leaf of alkanet, not buried in deep earth, with a thin and short root.

But the other flourishes with a larger calyx and leaf, wreathed with a tiny purple flower, bearing viperine seed above on its bound head. An equal portion of both cut up is useful, crushed in a wooden mortar or hollowed stone.

Crush also the very root of eryngo and of the wholesome bear's breech, both in equal scales of the balance, and the wild fig that comes forth in wet valleys. Take too the wild leaf of eucnemos, and join to it the very Nemean seed of ever-leafy celery.

Add also double of the invincible, and draw back upwards the scale pan first depressed by the weight of the roots. Mixing these with themselves, and storing them kneaded in a jar, you will promptly medicate viperine plagues, and the wounds which a scorpion has inflicted, or dire phalangia, if it pleases you to soften three obols in wine.

Distinguish the mountain one, and mark the white chameleon: for it comes ambiguous, the one black with a dark color, not unlike the golden thistle, spreads round foliage from its stem, resting on a thick and black root, and shunning the sun comes forth in rigid woodlands.

This one swells, joyful with a rougher leaf, and it drops down a sessile head born from the middle of its breast, and its white root is infused with a honeyed taste. But you advise to avoid the black one, and dilute a cut drachm's weight of the other in river water.

There is another plant named after Alcibius [Greek: Ἀλκιβίην], a handful of which, crushed, drink in a little nectar. A hunter found this on the crags of Phalacra, while wandering in the open fields of Crymne, and through Gras, and the meadows of the sacred Horse, and adding strength to his Amyclaean dogs with his cry, and sharpening their anger with barking. For while a dog tracks the hidden footprints of a roe deer, struck by a viper's bite at the tearful corner of the eye, when he has shaken off the viper with a yelp, he chews the meager shoots, and thus averts death and a bitter fate.

Moreover, let the rich twigs of the castor-oil plant [Greek: κρότωνος] be given, mixed with the leaves of the bee-foraged plant [Greek: μελισσοβότοιο], and its shaggy hair. Or the herb to which the highest turning of the sun gave its name, knowing how to predict the returning paths of the Titan, with leaves like the blue-grey foliage of the olive. And equally the root of the pennywort [Greek: κοτυληδόνος], which dissipates the swellings ruptured on the ankles by glacial cold. Sometimes pluck the green foliage of growing pellitory [Greek: πυρεθρέος], or offer the harvested stalk of hart's-tongue fern [Greek: σκολοπενδρήσιο]. And also take the Phlegyan all-heal [Greek: πάνακες Φλεγυήϊον], found by the sun-born one, and which he first found at the shores of the river Melas, and saved the offspring of Amphitryon's son Iphiclus, when as a companion of Hercules he set fire to the dire hydra.

If you care to hunt the pups of the weasel [Greek: γαλέης], or the rapacious mother herself, first strip her of her fleece, and burn her hairs with blazing flames. Then you shall dry the carcass, emptied of its intestines and filth, and seasoned with salt, in the soft shade, lest the tender flesh melt away in the fervid sun. And when the evil poison demands the use of a medicine, like tender silphium, or the hard weights of curdled milk, scrape the dry limbs of the wild beast with a small knife, and mix it with unmixed wine. Nothing more excellent than this will be able to drive all kinds of plagues from the body.

Now come, receive the help and medical powers of the sea turtle [Greek: χέλυος], if ever a more truculent snake has harmed a man, a huge assistance for wicked bites. When a fisherman has drawn this ruinous creature from the deep sea, and drawn it up onto the dry sand in his net, immediately turning it over, cut the projecting neck of the supine creature with iron, and pour the foul gore into new earthen vessels, mindful then to pass all the serum that flows out, and the overflowing bloody matter, through a strainer. And when you have dried it there, hardened into pieces, to four drachmas of blood add two of wild cumin, and rennet taken from a hare by the weight of half a drachm, and that which weighs one drachm drawn from the mass itself: drink it together with mild wine. Let these be your amulets against the bites of wild beasts.

Now attend to the marks and dire wounds of the pestiferous venomous spider [Greek: φάλαγγος]. That one is distinguished by a pitch-black color, which has the name Rhox, and with numerous feet: its mouth is in the middle of its belly, deadly with a hard tooth. If it has imprinted a bite, there are no traces of a bloody wound, the eyes burn suffused with redness underneath, stiffness shakes the limbs, and immediately the private parts and body are convulsed upwards, the penis itself stands up, becoming soiled with seed, and the hips are oppressed with cold, the languid knees give way with loosened bonds.

But indeed the asterion, flashing with the gleam of its back,

shines with striped spots, and glows white.

Soon after a bite stiffness grips the limbs, and the head is made drowsy by the tooth, and the collapsed knees grow weak.

Another dark blue one darts about raised on high on its feet,

And hairy with shaggy down. Their bites give sad death,

If it strikes anyone, their hearts struggle with pain,

Their temples grow dark, and like a spider, a slow

vomit returns to the mouth, and they are hastily called to their fates.

There is also a wild one, of the one that deceivingly kills flies

Having the shape of a wolf. This one hunts gnats and bees,

and sets ambushes for gadflies, and lays woven nets,

But the light wound vanishes with no pain.

There is also the *sphecion* [Greek: σφηκεῖον], named after a wasp, which the common people

call *dysderi*, reddish, and to a fierce wasp

Similar, which shows the bold spirit of its ancestors.

For as bees come from a bull, so from the putrid flesh

of swift-footed horses are fierce wasps born.

If it strikes, behold, a great swelling surrounds the wounds,

Then various diseases emerge, either the knees tremble,

Or relaxed they give way. With their strength failing, at last

Sleep creeps over them, a rest and end of labors.

Observe the *myrmecion* [Greek: μυρμηκίον], similar to an ant. For it

A yellow neck indeed, but the rest has the appearance of black

soot, its back gleams everywhere with starry

spots, and a black head stands out from its neck.

Its bites and pain are the same as the first *phalangia* [Greek: φαλάγγια].

If ever a farmer plucks seeds of grain with his hand,

And pulls legumes from the earth without a sickle,

Small *phalangia* [Greek: φαλάγγια] attack him when caught with a blind bite.

Their shape is like that of blister beetles (*cantharides*), clothed in a reddish color.

Soon, from the received wound, a frequent blister bubbles up

here and there, and mad dementia vexes his insane chest.

He utters things to be spoken and not to be spoken, and twists his perverse eyes.

Now contemplate the noxious pests which the Egyptian region produces,

Which have the shape of a moth (*phalæna*), which those dining

in the evening drive away as it rushes around the lamps.

Dense wings, and bereft of green moisture, like dust

Or dry ashes, if you attempt to touch them.

Not unlike it, a pest lives in the *persea* [Greek: περσείοις] tree,

Whose very hard head nods, and it stares grimly,

And its belly is heavy. If ever it sprinkles black poison

With its sting onto the top of the neck and the head,

Without delay it condemns the struck ones to pitiless Averno.

Now indeed I will relate the scorpion, armed with a bloody

point on its tail, and the dire differences of its kind.

The white one is harmless with its stings, and innocent of death.

But the one notable for its red mouth consumes men with sudden

flames; they themselves, as if driven by fevers,

Cannot stand in one place, and an insatiable thirst rages.

The one that is black stirs up unstable motions in the body,

And makes men mad, and produces foolish laughter.

But the green one, if it attacks anyone with its point, suddenly

A shivering, and as if dense showers with winter hail

Rattle in their bodies, or if a dog burns with heat.

Such is its sting, which the vertebrae, fitted with many links,

render more harmful at the lowest part.

Another is livid, a glutton dragging a broad belly,

And it is always hungry, satiable by no herb.

If it strikes in the groin, an inevitable wound

Is inflicted; such a great gluttony stands in its mouth.

Another is similar to a crab, living on the shore, and it

feeds on seaweed, and whatever the tide of the sea casts back.

Others have a large body, and are rapacious with hard

pincers, and at the same time with a rougher shell, very similar

to the various crabs (*paguri*) which frequent the smooth rocks.

The offspring of these are the worst, when they have left

the rocks of the sounding sea, and the green moss.

For when a fisherman draws them from the deep, deceived by bait,

And captured they yield as prey, they hide themselves in the

smallest crevices, where, destroyed by blind death, they bring forth

cruel scorpions as sons from their putrid blood.

Add the *melichlorus* [Greek: μελίχλωρον], whose knot at the end of its tail

is black. This one [kindles] flames which you cannot extinguish

It rouses, and with bent feet shining like fire,

A bitter plague of men, it presently sinks boys in death.

Moreover, on its back with thick joints wings

Are fitted, and such as one may see locusts,

While it flies to the crop, and consumes the yellow awns,

On Mount Pedasus, and having walked in the clusters of ivy.

But indeed I know how to heal the darts of these,

And also of the wild silkworm, and the malignant bee,

By whose sting nevertheless black death threatens, for the labor

If ever around the beehives intent in the fields

It has fixed, and left its burning stings in the wound.

To the bees themselves indeed they provide both life and death.

And I know what the fierce wasp, what the millipede may perpetrate,

And the small pemphredo. Then what the centipede with its doubtful

Head, causing lamentable fate without moving,

And imitating a ship propelled by oars in its course.

And I know by how dreadful a mouth the spider is to be feared,

The blind one, and dying in the furrows which the wheel-track splits.

And often to avoid the lizard similar to a quadruped,

And the hostile deceits of the salamander and its always noxious

Wounds. Which walking untouched through the rapid fires

Not with cracked skin, nor finally on the tips of its feet

Is burned, or suffers surrounded by great flames.

But neither do those escape me which the sea rolls in its whirlpool.

Not the fierce moray, which often from its deepest cell

Leaping out, roars with a cruel mouth, and the boats being left

Compels the wretched fishermen to entrust themselves to the sea.

It is said that, receding from the waves, if the rumor is true,

It goes into the embraces of vipers, and conceives venom in its belly.

Nor do the amulets of the stingray, and of the dragon ravaging the deep

Lie hidden from me. It arouses great pains,

If it has grazed the fisherman and the one dragging the prey and the rare

Nets with its ray, or has dashed its weapon into the trunk of a fruitful

Tree. For flaccid it languishes,

And the wound being received, as if consumed by the suns, the tree

Withers at the root, unhonored with falling leaves.

But for a man the putrid flesh melts away. Ulysses

Thus they say fell pierced by the marine ray.

Now I will say what medicines may avail against them.

Take either the leaves of alkanet rivaling lettuces,

Or cinquefoil, or the flowery garlands of brambles,

Arction, and oxalis, and lycopson with its long stalk,

And cicama, and the green ordilum. Let them be crushed and together

Ajuga, and the bark from the inner body of the beech,

To these both caucalis, and the harvested seeds of the wild

Pastinaca, and add the fresh fruit of the terebinth,

Or also the crimson seaweed which is born in the sea.

And mix the hair of Venus never wet,

Upon which the showers poured from the clouds do not settle.

And the smyrnium always green, or of the herb leucas,

Or also the spiky root of eryngo let be crushed.

Do not doubt to add the libanotis bearing canchry,

But neither let the pulybatea, and the sleep-bringing poppy,

Thylacis or epitelis secluded from these recede.

Pluck at the same time the new buds of the untamed fig,

Or also the round unripe figs which it brings forth,

Before that tree clothes itself with fruits.

And have pyracantha, and also throw in the flowers of the male

Verbascum, and the leaves of aegilops and celandine,

And daucus, and finally the root of the white vine,

Which deletes the freckle hateful on the female body.

Add the leaves of the sacred herb, and pleasing to doves,

Or take the branches of the rhamnus warding off noxious things,

Which even alone withdraws fasting ones from cruel Orcus.

And moreover pluck the green shoots of parthenium,

Corcoron or petalitis, and these together rub with the red

Lemnian, to which is the power to soothe every plague.

And the bitter root of the fierce cucumber which the earth hides

Must be cut: and the fruits of the sharp paliurus

It relieves the swollen bowels of the contracted disease.

Equally the spiny leaves, and tender broomrape [Latin: orobanchi],

And the red, not yet gaping buds of the pomegranate [Latin: puniceæ ... mali],

Where the white flower surrounds them with a purple covering,

Hyssop [Latin: Hyssopus], and restharrow [Latin: ononis] rough with frequent knots,

And the leaves of orpine [Latin: Telephii], and a fresh cluster on the vine-branch,

And garlic [Latin: Allia], and the seeds of coriander [Latin: corij] which grows on the high mountains,

Or the small, lightly blooming foliage of fleabane [Latin: conyzæ].

Often also pound fresh pepper [Latin: piper], or Median cress [Latin: nasturcia Medica],

But when the plague is already advancing, withered pennyroyal [Latin: Puleium] and nightshade [Latin: strychnum] and biting mustard [Latin: sinapi] will relieve it,

And green leek [Latin: porrum] from Stratia, and the seeds of the harmful nettle [Latin: vrticæ], with which young men are accustomed to play together.

Add the snowy head of a squill [Latin: scyllæ], along with the dry seeds of a bulb [Latin: bulbi],

And the small stalk called by the name of dragon [Latin: draconis],

And the shoots of the bushy buckthorn [Latin: rhamni], and those things which are hidden with the nuts of the pine [Latin: pini] through the deep glades of the groves.

But if you should pick the green root of the gentle herb, which is equal to the pestilential sting that the fierce scorpion [Latin: scorpius] thrusts out,

And the pomegranates [Latin: sidas] which the Psamatheian land bears, and which the Copaean lakes produce on their muddy margin, where Schoenus [Latin: Schænus] and Cnopus glide with poured-out waters,

And the pistachio [Latin: Pistacium] which the mouth of the Indian river Choaspes produces, hanging from the tree in the form of an almond [Latin: amygdalina],

You shall mix together caucalis [Latin: Caucalidas] and unripe myrtle [Latin: myrtum], and the hairy leaves of clary [Latin: hormini], and flowering fennel [Latin: marathrum], iasimon [Latin: Iasimon], and the seed of wild chickpea [Latin: ciceris], and you shall put in the herb itself with its heavily scented branches.

For these ills also sisymbrium [Latin: sisymbra] is a mild relief, and the flowers of melilot [Latin: meliloti], and the tender buds of the white wild vine [Latin: Labruscæ], which the shepherd pounds in the woods: and that which is born from the lower lychnis [Latin: Lychnide], and the red thryallis [Latin: thryallide], and the seed growing on the top of the rose [Latin: rosæ] or violet [Latin: violæ].

Also knotgrass [Latin: polygonum] to be gathered through the planted fields, and psilothrum [Latin: Psilotrum], and the flower of the weeping hyacinth [Latin: hyacinthi], which moved fierce groans and tears from the grieving Phoebus, after he unwillingly slew the beardless Taenarian by the streams of the Eurotas, and the discus, bouncing back by chance from a rock, smashed his brain and soft temples.

Add trefoil [Latin: triphyllon] to these, and the juice flowing with laser [Latin: lasere], weighing out three obols [Latin: obolos] of each on an equal scale.

Or you may rub horned thyme [Latin: serpyllum], or low cypress [Latin: cupressum], often also samphire [Latin: crethmon], you shall mix in anise [Latin: anison], and together you shall grate Libyan roots [Latin: Radices Libycas] into the medicated cups.

Of these, many at once, or single ones pounded separately, mixed in a bowl with wine or vinegar, or water, drink as a toast, but it is also helpful to dissolve them in milk.

But if by chance an evil snake [Latin: anguis] has fallen upon you with a bite as you wander in the thirsty woods, soon on the path itself chew the roots growing there, or seed, or green herb, and when you have milked the juice with pressed mouth, apply the half-eaten remains to the fresh wound, so that you may be able to avoid death and the beastly agonies.

Nay more, a bronze cupping-glass [Latin: Ærea ... cucurbita] affixed will draw out the venom and abundant gore from the defiled flesh.

Or instill the juice of a milky fig [Latin: fici], and drive burning iron, snatched from the glowing furnace, into the wound.

And a goat's skin [Latin: caprinus vter] full of the Lenaean gift is of help, if hands or feet violated by the infectious tooth are held plunged in the middle of it, and you tightly bind the groins with the skin's bonds, until the wicked plague yields to the drawing wine.

And let a leech [Latin: hirudo], sucking from the wound itself, be sated, or pour in juice pressed from onions [Latin: cepis], or put around it goat dung [Latin: fimum ... Caprillum] dissolved in the dregs of wine or vinegar, and cover the wound with fresh dung.

Now, so that you may be able to drive away all plagues, this will be an excellent medicine for you, which you can trust, if you have gathered all the drugs into a solid mass.

Among these [let there be] the root of iris and birthwort,

And nard, and let galbanum be mixed with dry pellitory,

And daucus, and bryony famous for many remedies,

And the small, recently dug root of peony,

And the dry foliage of black hellebore, and the foam of niter.

Add cumin at the same time, and join the stalk of fleabane.

With the bark of wild stavesacre, and the fiery seeds of laurel

In equal weight, cytisus, and the lesser nettle.

To these let the orb of cyclamen be added, and the lichen torn

From the stiff equine leg, and fresh opium, and the seeds

Of the chaste tree, and cinnamon, and Sabaean

Balsams, and cow-parsnip, and also the shell of marine salt.

Together also compound the rennet of a hare, and in sweet

Waters swimming a crab, and dwelling in rivers.

Crush these gathered in the hollowed trunk of a hard tree

With pestles cut from smooth marble.

And when you knead them together, frequently the liquor of cleavers

Instill on the dry mixture, and loaves to the weight of a drachma

Fashion, suspending the scales with equal balance,

And dissolve them infused in two heminas of wine.

You then shall live ever mindful of the poet Nicander,

Whom his mother raised in the wintry city of Clarus.