By Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore
Over two millennia, the theriac recipe was the most debated in Galenic pharmacy throughout Europe and the Middle East. From the seventeenth century onward, missionaries, soldiers, and merchants carried it around the world. New versions of theriac were created in China, and across the Russian, Portuguese and Dutch empires, often incorporating local ingredients. The two excerpts below, from Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore’s The State Drug: Theriac, Pharmacy, And Politics in Early Modern Italy (Harvard University Press, 2025), detail how theriac was made and argue that it was an imperial recipe from the very beginning.
Repeated by hundreds of authors over the centuries, the origin story of theriac and mithridate told by De theriaca ad Pisonem explicitly outlined the relationship between the state and the two remedies. The state was both the creator and the recipient of such outstanding drugs: a king (Mithradates) created the antidote; a general (Pompey) secured powerful medicines; and an imperial physician (Andromachus) modified the king’s antidote for his emperor (Nero). Furthermore, De theriaca ad Pisonem associated the remedy with other emperors, not just Nero: “We know that the divine Marcus Aurelius . . . used the drug greedily and as if it were a food.”[1] Emperors used, commissioned, and cherished theriac.
Theriac’s imperial birth derived from its very materiality. Rare ingredients from across the known world entered its composition. Only a colossal empire at the peak of its power could plausibly expect to produce such a compound. A proper theriac demanded Cyperus longus from Africa, Costus odoratusfrom India, and licorice juice from Cappadocia, Turkey, to name just three ingredients. Such an antidote was the outcome of a productive, highly organized society with a vast and well-developed commercial network, the ability to set up complex supply chains, and wealthy patients willing to pay for expensive medicines.
Colloquially, preparing theriac was the epitome of complex tasks. In a letter to his dear friend Farinelli (Carlo Broschi, 1705–1782), the famous castrato singer, the poet Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782) ironically lamented how in Vienna it was easier to have the best cooks make a pot of theriac than a homey dish of macaroni with zucchini.[2] In the early modern period, making theriac was a significant undertaking, not limited to apothecaries. In 1687 the Bolognese Collegio Medico informed the Senate that “this year, since making theriac and other noble compositions requires it, the College will be occupied with great diligence throughout spring and summer.”[3]

Making theriac demanded time and refined artisanal skills. Recent scholars have described the making of theriac as nothing less than “an artistic endeavor,” recognizing the skills it demanded.[4] Early modern apothecaries approached production with reverence: it represented both the pinnacle of their various preparations and the culmination of their careers. As the editor of the Roman Antidotario declared, “After having discussed it, I was able to observe the composition of this antidote [theriac] many times. Yet, I only dared to attempt such composition at the age of forty-five, and not before.”[5]Making theriac was a challenging process for many reasons: the sheer number of ingredients and their cost; the difficulties in sourcing several components; the uncertainty of identifying which plants to use; the uncommon skills and knowledge required to carry out the long and intricate compounding procedure; and the need for money, preparation, and a wide network of social connections.
As we have seen, the successful production of “true theriac” was an apothecary’s key to becoming regarded as a “learned apothecary.” Recipes such as that of theriac needed interpretation by skilled artisans. Learned apothecaries became aware of and vocal about their artisanal competence, stressing the “universal rules of the apothecary art” over Galen’s instructions, as Georg Melich described: “Practice [l’esperimento] has found a better way . . . than what the Ancients wrote, and good apothecaries rely more on the general rules of the art and on experience than on the authority of Galen, although he is a great authority.”[6]Melich’s sense of pride and independence in his work, knowledge, and experience was shared by many learned apothecaries.[7] Most Theriaca magna recipes used in Italy in the early modern period listed sixty-three ingredients, not sixty-four as is often stated.[8] More precisely, the recipe comprised sixty-one ingredients plus wine and honey, which served as the medium for blending. The ingredients were divided into six classes, and each had a usually fixed number of components: one, four, eight, seventeen, twenty-four, and seven. […]
Three components of theriac—trocisci hedicroi, scyllitici, and viperini—were preparations that themselves involved several ingredients, so the actual number of ingredients totaled seventy-one (not counting repeats). However, the number of substances needed for the entire theriac manufacture was higher, because single components required other ingredients for production. For example, to make chalcitidis, apothecaries needed vitriol; to cook squill for trocisci scyllitici, they needed wheat flour; yet vitriol and wheat flour were not listed as ingredients of theriac.[9]
The ingredients of each class were added to the compound in fixed proportions: 48, 24, 12, 6, 4, and 2 drachms. Pharmacopoeias used the same scale for weights, but systems of weight differed greatly. Aldrovandi acknowledged the difficulties imposed by this variation: “As for the measures, we grope around and go blind in our understanding of Ancients’ medicinal doses.”[10] Apothecaries often compounded more than one batch at a time, multiplying each quantity to maintain the right pro-portions. Some pharmacopoeias, such as De Sgobbis’s Universale theatro farmaceutico, provided specific instructions for producing theriac in bulk.[11]
The ingredients were as diverse as they were numerous. […]
This enormous variety required apothecaries to have good planning, timing, and organization—indeed, it sometimes took over a year to assemble the ingredients in their entirety. Because theriac had to ferment, it was good practice to make it early, before the summer, in May or June, so the fermentation could benefit from the season’s natural heat.[12] This meant many herbs and roots had to be harvested a year before, during the previous summer, and then stored.[13] But then there was the risk of supplies becoming rotten, dusty, or moldy—especially trocisci viperini, which was notoriously susceptible to mold. For this reason, many apothecaries preferred to make theriac at a later date, in August. In 1577 the Collegio Medico in Florence decreed theriac-making season to run from June 1 and August 31.[14] Apothecaries wishing to make theriac had to navigate recipes rife with contradictions, follow steps that were often ambiguous or down-right obscure, then justify their decisions.
Excerpted from THE STATE DRUG: THERIAC, PHARMACY, AND POLITICS IN EARLY MODERN ITALY by Barbara Di Gennaro Splendore, published by Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2025 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[1] Robert Leigh, On Theriac to Piso, Attributed to Galen: A Critical Edition with Translation and Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 89.
[2] Pietro Metastasio, Lettere (Nice: Soc. Tipografica, 1787), vol. 5, 203.
[3] Archivio di Stato di Bologna (ASB), Assunteria di Studio 87, March 17, 1687.
[4] Nils-Otto Ahnfelt, Hjalmar Fors, and Karin Wendin, “Making and Taking Theriac: An Experimental and Sensory Approach to the History of Medicine,” British Journal for the History of Science Themes 7 (2022): 39–62, 43; Martin Kluge, “Das Theriak-Experiment,” in Materialwissen: Experimentelle Geschichte im Pharmaziemuseum, edited by Barbara Orland and Byron Cole Dowse (Zurich: Intercom, 2022).
[5] Collegio dei medici di Roma, Antidotario romano latino e volgare (Rome: Ruffinelli, 1624), 37.
[6] Georg Melich, Auertimenti nelle compositioni de’ medicamenti per vso della spetiaria (Venice: Giovanni e Andrea Zenaro, 1575), 42–43.
[7] On artisanal awareness, see Pamela H. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
[8] See also Edoardo Rosa, “La panacea dell’antichità approda all’Archiginnasio,” in L’Archiginnasio: Il Palazzo, l’Università, la BibliotecaGiovanni Roversi ed. (Bologna: Credito Romagnolo, 1987), vol. 1, 334.
[9] Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Badia di Mileto 268, 33r; vitriol was part of an apothecary’s list of missing ingredients for making theriac.
[10] Biblioteca Universitaria di Bologna, Ald. Ms. 21, IV, 127v.
[11] Antonio De Sgobbis, Nuovo et universale theatro farmaceutico (Venice: Stamperia Iuliana, 1667), folding sheet at 424–425.
[12] Bartolomeo Maranta, Della theriaca et del mithridato libri due (Venice: Marcantonio Olmo, 1572), 50–52.
[13] Adriano Riccardi, Istruttione intorno al comporre la Theriaca d’Andromaco (Bologna: Vittorio Benacci, 1606), 4.
[14] Sharon T. Strocchia, Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), 260 n62.






