Speaking of the plant Eryngium, the elder Pliny says: "The whole variety of the Eryngium known in our (the Latin) language as the _centum capita_ has some marvellous facts recorded of it. It is said to bear a striking likeness to the organs of generation of either sex; it is rarely met with, but if a root resembling the male organ of the human species be found by a man, it will ensure him woman's love; hence it is that Phaon, the Lesbian, was so passionately beloved of Sappho."[80] If it be true, as is asserted by medical writers, that the above root contains an essential oil of peculiarly stimulating qualities, the fact would account, not only for Sappho's passion for Phaon, but also for the high value set upon it by the rival wives of Jacob. For the same reason as that suggested by Calmet, Columella calls the mandrake _semihomo_: "Quamvis _semihominis_ vesano gramine fœta Mandragoræ pariat flores."[81] "Let it not vex thee if thy teeming field The half-man Mandrake's madd'ning seed should yield;" and qualifies its seed by the epithet _vesanus_, because in his time (the first century after Christ) it was still supposed to form one of the ingredients of philters or love-potions. The superstitious ideas attached to the mandrake were indeed so current throughout Europe during the middle ages, that one of the accusations brought against the Knights Templars was that of adoring, in Palestine, an idol to which was given the name of Mandragora.[82] Even, comparatively, not very long ago, there might be seen in many of the continental towns quacks and mountebanks exhibiting little rudely-carved figures, which they declared to be genuine mandrakes, assuring their gaping auditors, at the same time, that they were produced from the urine of a gibbeted thief, and seriously warning those who might have to pull any out of the ground to stop their ears first, for otherwise the piercing shrieks of these plants would infallibly strike them with deafness. Wier thus describes the manufacture of these interesting little gentlemen: "Impostors carve upon these plants while yet green the male and female forms, inserting millet or barley seeds in such parts as they desire the likeness of human hair to grow on; then, digging a hole in the ground, they place the said plants therein, covering them with sand till such time as the little seeds have stricken root, which, it is said, would be perfectly effected within twenty days at furthest. After this, disinterring the plants, these impostors, with a sharp cutting knife, so dexterously carve, pare, and slip the little filaments of the seeds as to make them resemble the hair which grows upon the various parts of the human body."[83]