The silphium is described by Theophrastus as a plant with a large and thick root; and the stem, he tells us, resembled that of the ferula, and was of about the same thickness. The leaf which, he says, was termed maspetum (μασπετον), resembled that of parsley: the seed was broad and foliaceous: the stem annual, like that of the ferula[15]. Pliny’s account is copied from that of Theophrastus; but he has given us at the same time whatever information he could collect of the silphium and its properties in the age in which he himself lived. He informs us that—the celebrated plant Laserpitium, which the Greeks call silphium, was found in the Cyrenaica; and that the juice, or liquor, extracted from it was termed Laser; a drug so famous for its medicinal qualities that it was sold by the denarius[16], seven of which, or eight drams, were equal to the English avoirdupois ounce, which was the same with the Roman. For many years past (he continues) no silphium has been found in the Cyrenaica; the owners of the land having thought it more profitable to turn their sheep and cattle into the pasture lands (where the silphium, as we have before mentioned, is produced) than to preserve the plant as formerly. One only stem of it (it is Pliny who speaks) has been found in my recollection, which was sent to the Emperor Nero. And of late no other laser has been brought to us than that which grows extensively in Persia, Media, and Armenia, and which is very inferior to that of the Cyrenaica, being at the same time adulterated with gum, sagapeum, and pounded beans. We learn from the same author that in the consulships of C. Valerius, and M. Herennius, thirty lbs. of laserpitium was brought into Rome, which seems to have been considered as a very fortunate occurrence; and that Cæsar, when dictator, at the commencement of the civil war, took from the public treasury, with the gold and silver which he carried away from it, an hundred and eleven pounds of the silphium (or laserpitium[17]); which proves how valuable the plant was at Rome, as, indeed, might be reasonably inferred from the circumstance of its being found in the treasury at all.