There was nothing more highly admired than an intimate knowledge of plants, in ancient times. It is long since the means were discovered of calculating before-hand, not only the day or the night, but the very hour even at which an eclipse of the sun or moon is to take place; and yet the greater part of the lower classes still remain firmly persuaded that these phænomena are brought about by compulsion, through the agency of herbs and enchantments, and that the knowledge of this art is confined almost exclusively to females. What country, in fact, is not filled with the fabulous stories about Medea of Colchis and other sorceresses, the Italian Circe in particular, who has been elevated to the rank of a divinity even? It is with reference to her, I am of opinion, that Æschylus,[521] one of the most ancient of the poets, asserts that Italy is covered with plants endowed with potent effects, and that many writers say the same of Circeii,[522] the place of her abode. Another great proof too that such is the case, is the fact, that the nation of the Marsi,[523] descendants of a son of Circe, are well known still to possess the art of taming serpents. Homer, that great parent of the learning and traditions of antiquity, while extolling the fame of Circe in many other respects, assigns to Egypt the glory of having first discovered the properties of plants, and that too at a time when the portion of that country which is now watered by the river Nilus was not in existence, having been formed at a more recent period by the alluvion[524] of that river. At all events, he states[525] that numerous Egyptian plants were sent to the Helena of his story, by the wife of the king of that country, together with the celebrated nepenthes,[526] which ensured oblivion of all sorrows and forgetfulness of the past, a potion which Helena was to administer to all mortals. The first person, however, of whom the remembrance has come down to us, as having treated with any degree of exactness on the subject of plants, is Orpheus; and next to him Musæus and Hesiod, of whose admiration of the plant called polium we have already made some mention on previous occasions.[527] Orpheus and Hesiod too we find speaking in high terms of the efficacy of fumigations. Homer also speaks of several other plants by name, of which we shall have occasion to make further mention in their appropriate places.