Category Archives: Classical Antiquity

Wild Thyme, Bitter Almonds, and Extract of Beavers – The Medicinal Recipes of Scribonius Largus

By Ianto Jocks

Written in the mid-first century CE, the Compositiones medicamentorum (The Composition of Remedies, sometimes simply translated as Recipes) of Scribonius Largus falls into the same historical context as the more famous works of Celsus, Pliny the Elder, and Dioscorides, but have – undeservedly – received much less attention. Scribonius provided an account of his practical medical knowledge, obtained during the reigns of Roman emperors Tiberius and Claudius, in form of a pharmacological recipe book written at the behest of his patron Callistus. It includes a preface discussing medical ethics and pharmacotherapy, and 271 recipes providing practical instructions for the composition and administration of remedies against various complaints. While the recipes are intriguing in their own right, the Compositiones furthermore make for a fascinating study as Scribonius tends to supplement his practical instructions with comments on medical ethics, contemporary life, or other medical practitioners.

The Compositiones indicate the continuity of human concerns for their health, covering treatments of potentially life-threatening ailments, such as tumours and fevers, as well as those less dangerous but nevertheless detrimental to well-being, such as disfiguring scars and various aches. One recipe from the latter category provides a good example of Scribonius’ approach to pharmacotherapy and recipe formulation:

V. Against headache, when it is of long standing, this composition acts favourably:

1 denarius[1] of myrrh
2 denarii of saffron
2 denarii of bitter almond
3 denarii of green/ fresh rue
1 denarius of cow parsnip
1 denarius of panax
3 denarii of laurel berries
2 denarii of wild thyme
1 denarius of castoreum

These all are ground with vinegar and pastilles are made. When there is need, they are diluted with vinegar and rose (oil) to the consistency of honey, and then the forehead and temples are coated (with this).

Some of the ingredients entering the composition of Scribonius Largus' headache remedy
Some of the ingredients entering the composition of Scribonius Largus’ headache remedy

This recipe (chapter 5) is included in one of the eleven chapters dedicated to the treatment of headaches. Scribonius shows little interest in theorising about the nature of disease, but instead provides practical instructions for the creation of remedies. As demonstrated here, he generally gives precise weights and measures for the individual components, but occasionally leaves matters to expertise – vinegar and rose oil quantities are to be added based on the consistency of the final product. In terms of the ingredients, Scribonius’ recipe uses a variety of botanical components, as well as one animal remedy (castoreum is an extract from the scent glands of beavers; although no longer medicinally used, it is still encountered in perfumes and occasionally as a food additive). As such, this recipe provides an example of polypharmacy, the use of multiple drugs to compose a single remedy, which is frequently encountered in ancient pharmacology. Here Scribonius’ use of nine initial components constitutes a rather modest example – the most famous remedies, particularly antidotes such as Theriac and Mithridatium (which drew additional popularity and legitimacy from their traditional attribution to king Mithridates VI of Pontus), could include more than fifty ingredients, many of them expensive and complicated to obtain.

It may come as a surprise that many of the drugs used by Scribonius can still be easily purchased today, even though the internet will nowadays often take the role of the drug peddlers (pharmakopolae) of Scribonius’ days. While they are less frequently encountered in a medicinal context, we still use them as culinary herbs and spices, as ingredients for herbal or medicinal teas, or as resins and oils to be burned or cosmetically used for their pleasing smells. Others, however, remain elusive; while access to a few ingredients is now restricted (opium is the obvious example), the problem is more frequently that we do not exactly know what plant or substance Scribonius means. For example, the Oxford Latin Dictionary provides six different identifications for the plant panax alone, one of them simply ‘an unknown plant’. As such, the study of ancient pharmacological texts is always fascinating and rewarding, but occasionally poses questions to which there is no clear or definite answer.

Medical treatment has changed much over the centuries, but in the study of pharmacological recipes we can find a degree of continuity. People were and are plagued by headaches, and a vast range of different remedies was and is available. Scribonius describes how to make pills against headache, but they are not to be taken internally, but dissolved again and rubbed into the temples. While painkillers to be ingested are the most common modern form of treatment, this is reminiscent of the use of lavender oil or other soothing ointments available as alternative treatments today. As such, there is much of modern relevance and interest to be found in this first century recipe book.

[1] A denarius is both a Roman coin and a unit of weight estimated at around 3.9 g

Flower power: Cato’s medicinal recipes

By Jane Draycott

Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 BCE) is often presented as the archetypal example of the ancient Roman head of the household taking charge of his family members’ health, the result of claims made by Pliny the Elder (23-79 CE) in his encyclopaedia Natural History:

For [Cato] adds the medical treatment by which he prolonged his own life and that of his wife to an advanced age, by these very remedies in fact with which I am now dealing, and he claims to have a notebook of recipes, by the aid of which he treated his son, servants, and household. 

[Pliny, Natural History 29.8.15]

A bucolic scene featuring a walled garden, Red Room, Villa of Agrippa Postumus, Boscoreale
A bucolic scene featuring a walled garden, Red Room, Villa of Agrippa Postumus, Boscoreale

The Greek historian Plutarch (c. 40-120 CE) offers more detail in his Parallel Lives, describing Cato’s theories, methods and practices, which show strong parallels with those utilised by the period’s physicians:

[Cato] had written a book of recipes, which he followed in the treatment and regimen of any who were sick in his family. He never required his patients to fast, but fed them on greens, or bits of duck, pigeon, or hare.  Such a diet, he said, was light and good for sick people, except that it often causes dreams. By following such treatment and regimen he said he had good health himself, and kept his family in good health. [Plutarch, Life of Cato the Elder 23.4]

Both Pliny and Plutarch offer Cato’s longevity as proof of his medical capabilities, at least in respect of himself (his wife and one of his sons predeceased him). Unfortunately, Cato’s book of recipes has not survived. What has is his treatise On Agriculture, the very first such work to be written in Latin, which dates to around 160 BCE. The treatise was directed at a very specific audience: young men who, thanks to Rome’s recent triumph in the Second Punic War, were in a position to purchase fertile agricultural land in central Italy, along with sufficient slaves to enable them to cultivate grapes and olives in order to produce wine and oil for sale, but who were not in possession of sufficient knowledge or experience as to how to proceed beyond that. The priority is economic self-sufficiency and investment potential, with as much as possible being produced on the estate, for use on the estate, hence the prominent place the garden takes in Cato’s list of requirements: a garden can be used to grow fruit, vegetables, flowers, and herbs not only for food, but also for medicine.

The prescriptions and recipes found in On Agriculture indicate that, in addition to acting as a healer for the human members of his household, Cato also acted as a veterinarian for his livestock (oxen, cattle, and sheep are all mentioned specifically), and recommended that others do the same. Throughout the text the authority of the master – which, it is made clear, results from a combination of knowledge and experience – is emphasised, as is the importance of drawing upon the resources immediately to hand, those grown on the estate, predominantly in the garden. Of Cato’s numerous prescriptions and recipes for the treatment of both humans and animals, the ingredients required are all those which he either explicitly states were cultivated within his garden, or were likely to have been.

Pomegranates, Garden Room, Villa of Livia, Prima Porta
Pomegranates, Garden Room, Villa of Livia, Prima Porta

In conjunction with Cato’s recommendation that, if an estate is located near a town, the garden should be used to cultivate flowers for garlands, he lists those he considers to be the most suitable: ‘white and black myrtle, Delphian, Cyprian, and wild laurel, smooth nuts, such as Abellan, Praenestine, and Greek filberts’ (On Agriculture 8.2). Elsewhere in the treatise, laurel leaves appear in a recipe for a tonic for oxen, while black myrtle is a main ingredient in a recipe for indigestion and colic (On Agriculture 70 and 125). In a remedy for indigestion and strangury, he includes pomegranates, instructing his reader to ‘gather pomegranate blossoms when they open’, thus implying that these plants were within easy reach (On Agriculture 127). Pomegranates also appear in a recipe for ‘gripes, for loose bowels, for tapeworms and stomach-worms, if troublesome’ (On Agriculture 126). The wine and oil produced on the estate are also frequently enlisted in Cato’s medicaments, both as primary and secondary ingredients. With regard to wine, the addition of black hellebore is recommended to make a laxative, while that of juniper is recommended to treat the retention of urine, and gout, while the amurca that results from the production of olive oil is enlisted (along with wine) as a treatment for scab in sheep (On Agriculture 114, 115, 122, 123, 96).

It would appear that in respect of domestic medical practice, Cato very much practiced what he preached!

Something old – something new: Greek and Roman recipes in focus

By Laurence Totelin

A Roman coin showing the god Janus. Source: http://www.livius.org/ja-jn/janus/janus.html
A Roman coin showing the god Janus. Source: http://www.livius.org/ja-jn/janus/janus.html

The double-faced Roman god Janus presided over transitions: transitions from war to peace, from month to month, and from year to year. The Romans celebrated him on the Kalends of January, the first day of the year. The festivities are described most fully by the poet Ovid (first century CE) in his Fasti, where the offerings to Janus are described as wine, frankincense, cakes and meal sprinkled with salt (Book 1, lines 75, 128, 172). Later in that same poem, Ovid indicated that the offering of such simple products as cakes, meal and salt harked back to a past when imported and luxury products were not available:

Of old the means to win the goodwill of gods for man were spelt and the sparkling grains of pure salt. As yet no foreign ship had brought across the ocean waves the bark-stilled myrrh; the Euphrates had sent no incense, India no balm. And the red saffron’s filaments were still unknown.

(Ovid, Fasti 1.337-342; translation: James Frazer).

The cake offered to Janus was called “janual” (Festus, s.v. janual). According to Cato the Elder (second century BCE), author of a famous work On Agriculture, heaps of such cakes were sacrificed to the god before the harvest (On Agriculture 134). Unfortunately, we do not have any recipe for the janual, but Cato transmits a couple of recipes for cakes used for sacrificial purposes – the libum and the placenta – which may have been somewhat similar (On Agriculture 75-76).

The Recipes Project cannot offer you cakes to celebrate the Kalends of January 2015, but it can present you this series about Greek and Roman recipes instead. Helen King and I have devoted several Recipes Project posts to these ‘old’ recipes, but for the series we have enrolled three brand new bloggers: Jane Draycott, Ianto Jocks and David Leith. Their posts will demonstrate – if there was any need – how much there is still to study about ancient recipes.

Jane opens the series with Cato the Elder, who is familiar to all classicists, but whose recipes are still understudied. She shows how Cato exploited the produce from his ideal farm, and in particular from its garden, in his medicinal and veterinary recipes. Ianto turns to Scribonius Largus (first century CE), one of the most neglected of classical writers, the author of the wonderful Compositiones (Compositions of Remedies). Ianto focusses more particularly on a recipe to cure a headache which includes, among other ingredients, castoreum. The ancients believed that substance to originate from the testes of beavers (in fact, it comes from a gland located near the anus) – we are here far from the hearty garden produce praised by Cato, that great admirer of cabbage. David discusses recipes preserved on a papyrus dating to around 400 CE, but which may originate from a much earlier period.

A medieval miniature representing a beaver biting off his testes to avoid been killed by a hunter for its castoreum. Source: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2012/11/beavers-on-the-run.html
A medieval miniature representing a beaver biting off his testes to avoid been killed by a hunter for its castoreum.
Source: http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2012/11/beavers-on-the-run.html

There are particular issues surrounding the study of ancient Greek and Latin recipes. Many texts are not translated into any modern language. In the case of Scribonius’ Compositions of Remedies there is no complete English translation. Translators have avoided that arduous task partly because it is sometimes impossible to identify ingredients listed in ancient recipes. It is important, however, not to use this obstacle as an excuse to neglect texts that are a rich source for social, economic, and medical history. As our bloggers show, one can still study an ancient recipe even though not all its ingredients are identifiable.

Studying ancient recipes can also be difficult when one is faced with fragmentary evidence, which is particularly the case for recipes preserved on papyrus. In antiquity, texts were copied onto papyrus, a very fragile material that survives only in certain climatic conditions. The climates of Greece and Rome are not favourable to the preservation of papyrus. However, the Greek and Roman worlds extended well beyond modern Greece and Italy, and included (from the end of the fourth century BCE onwards) one country in which papyrus survives quite well: Egypt. This explains why the Greek-language papyrus studied by David in his post was found in that country.

We hope you will enjoy our ‘Janual’ series on Greek and Roman recipes and that you will join in the discussion! Salve as they say in Latin.

‘One does not learn remedies through books’ (Aristotle)

By Laurence Totelin

My first love: Pellaprat's classic cookbook
My first love: Pellaprat’s classic cookbook

I love reading recipes. I guess that won’t come as a surprise; after all I have been working on the history of pharmacology for over ten years now. But this passion goes very far indeed. My first favourite book was Pellaprat’s Cuisine familiale et pratique (1974), which I dutifully pored over – and tore apart – from the age of one. When I read a recipe book, I feel myself surrounded, at times assaulted, by imagined smells, tastes, and visions (of sugarplums). Of course, I could not have this type of experience without growing up in a family of great cooks; I did not learn culinary skills through books, but through observation and experimentation. Most of my memories of my grand-mother are culinary in nature; and I spent hours sat on a chair in our kitchen watching my mum cook.

When I read the philosopher Aristotle’s statement whereby one cannot learn remedies through reading, I can’t help but agree:

Indeed one does not appear to become skilled in the art of medicine through books. And yet they attempt to describe not only the cures, but also how they might cure and how it is necessary to treat each individual, distinguishing his condition. But while these things seem useful to men of experience, they are useless to the inexperienced.

[Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics10.9, 1181b2-6]

Reading practical literature is useful for those who already have experience, but pointless for others; this does pose an issue when teaching ancient pharmacology in the modern classroom. Still, I believe written recipes, for all their dryness, can offer a very good entry point into a variety of topics. One of my favourite example here is a recipe found in a play by the great comedian Aristophanes. The god of healing, Asclepius, is treating patients who have come to his sanctuary in Athens. One of them is the corrupt politician Neocleides, whom Asclepius is not willing to cure:

Stele from Oropos (near Athens) showing a healing hero (Amphiaros) healing a patient. Fourth century BCE. Image courtesy of www.HolyLandPhotos.org
Stele from Oropos (near Athens) showing a healing hero (Amphiaros) healing a patient. Fourth century BCE. Image courtesy of www.HolyLandPhotos.org

First of all, for Neocleides, a remedy:

Asclepius undertook to knead a plaster, throwing in

Three heads of Tenian garlic. Then he crushed them

In a mortar, mixing them together with verjuice

And mastic. Then he soaked the mixture with Sphettian vinegar,

And he plastered it on, turning out the man’s eyelids,

To make him suffer more.

[Aristophanes, Plutus 716-721]

All three ingredients in this ‘remedy’ (garlic, verjuice and mastic) would have hurt the eyes. However, this recipe is not so far from the ancient medical reality. The ancients did use very strong ingredients to treat the eyes, but applied them outside the eyelid, not inside. Also, Greek medical authors, like Aristophanes, called their ingredients by their place of origin (Tenian garlic comes from Tenos, an Aegean island; Sphettian vinegar comes from Sphettos, a district of Athens). Clearly, Aristophanes was well-versed in ancient medicine. This short recipe, thus, offers a point of entry into the study of temple medicine; political satire; and the transmission of ancient medical ideas in the ancient world.

Dired rose, myrrh, orris (iris) root:  the three ingredients in my 'Greek' deodorant
Dired rose, myrrh, orris (iris) root: the three ingredients in my ‘Greek’ deodorant

Despite finding Aristophanes’ recipe fascinating, I appreciate that it needs much explication, as most ancient recipes do. I cannot expect every student to understand how painful this remedy would have been for Neocleides. I cannot expect them all to know what mastic is. Indeed, I cannot expect them all to have used a mortar and pestle. For these reasons, I have started to bring my experiments with ancient remedies to an audience near you. Recently, at a conference for teachers held at Cardiff University, I have replicated my attempts at producing an ancient deodorant made from iris root, myrrh, dried rose and wine. Passing the ingredients through the group allowed us to discuss our perception of these products; what memories they evoked; what we knew of their culture; etc. I learnt a lot – I hope the audience did too. They certainly left the room with a smile on their face. It remains for me to expand this experiment and re-create remedies with undergraduate students. I know that I will have to fill in health and safety forms, but I believe that it will be worth it. Here is an opportunity to appeal to various types of learning, and I would be a fool not to grab it!