Next to these, laserpitium[886] claims our notice, a very remarkable plant, known to the Greeks by the name of “silphion,” and originally a native of the province of Cyrenaica. The juice of this plant is called “laser,” and it is greatly in vogue for medicinal as well as other purposes, being sold at the same rate as silver. For these many years past, however, it has not been found in Cyrenaica,[887] as the farmers of the revenue who hold the lands there on lease, have a notion that it is more profitable to depasture flocks of sheep upon them. Within the memory of the present generation, a single stalk[888] is all that has ever been found there, and that was sent as a curiosity to the Emperor Nero. If it so happen that one of the flock, while grazing, meets with a growing shoot[889] of it, the fact is easily ascertained by the following signs; the sheep, after eating of it, immediately falls asleep, while the goat is seized with a fit of sneezing.[890] For this long time past, there has been no other laser imported into this country, but that produced in either Persis, Media, or Armenia, where it grows in considerable abundance, though much inferior[891] to that of Cyrenaica; and even then it is extensively adulterated with gum, sacopenium,[892] or pounded beans. I ought the less then to omit the facts, that in the consulship[893] of C. Valerius and M. Herennius, there was brought to Rome, from Cyrenæ, for the public service, thirty pounds’ weight of laserpitium, and that the Dictator Cæsar, at the beginning of the Civil War, took from out of the public treasury, besides gold and silver, no less than fifteen hundred pounds of laserpitium.