All that can be gathered from the former of the above quotations is that these plants were found in the fields during the wheat harvests and that, either for their rarity, flavour, or, more probably, for their supposed quality of removing barrenness in women, as well as for the stimulating powers attributed to them, were greatly valued by the female sex. In the quotation from Solomon's Song, the Hebrew word _Dudaim_ expresses some fruit or flowers exhaling a sweet and agreeable odour, and which were in great request among the male sex.[76] According to Calmet, the word _Dudaim_ may be properly deduced from _Dudim_ (pleasures of love); and the translators of the Septuagint and the Vulgate render it by words equivalent to the English one--mandrake. The word _Dudaim_ is rendered in our authorized version by the word _mandrake_--a translation sanctioned by the Septuagint, which, in this place, translates _Dudaim_ by [Greek: mêla mandragorôn], _mandrake_--apples, and in Solomon's Song by [Greek: oi mandraorai] (_mandrakes_). With this, Onkelos[77] and the Syrian version agree; and this concurrence of authorities, with the fact that the mandrake (_atropa mandragora_) combines in itself all the circumstances and traditions required for the Dudaim, has given to the current interpretation, its present prevalence. Pythagoras was the first (followed by Plutarch) who gave to this plant the name of [Greek: anthrôpomorphos] (man-likeness), an appellation which became very generally used; but why he gave it is not precisely known: Calmet, however, suggests as a reason the partial resemblance it bears to the human form, from the circumstance of its root being parted from the middle, downwards. The opinion respecting the peculiar property of the mandrake was not confined to the Jews, but was also entertained by the Greeks and Romans, the former of whom called its fruit--love-apples, and bestowed the name of _Mandragorilis_ upon Venus. Dioscorides knew it by that of [Greek: Mandragoras], and remarks that the root is supposed to be used in philters or love-potions;[78] and another writer lauds it as exciting the amorous propensity, remedying female sterility, facilitating conception and prolificness, adding the singular fact that female elephants, after eating its leaves, are seized with so irresistible a desire for copulation, as to run eagerly, in every direction, in quest of the male.[79]