Ch. III. _This plague_ had not existed among our ancestors or fathers. For the first time it crept into Italy in the middle of the reign of _Tiberius Claudius Caesar_, a certain Perusinius, a Roman knight and Quaestorian secretary, after a period of service in Asia, importing the contagion from there. But women did not suffer from the malady, or slaves, nor yet common folk of humble or middle-class station; but nobles, and this particularly by the rapid infection of an embrace. In many cases the scar, where patients had submitted to medical treatment, was more horrible than the disease itself. For indeed it was curable by caustics, except when the body had been consumed to the very bones, the slowness of the treatment defeating its own end. Physicians arrived from Egypt, _mother-land of such taints_, practising this cure exclusively, to their own great profit. If, that is, it is true that Manilius Cornutus, of the Praetorians and governor of the Province of Aquitania, offered 200,000 sesterces for his cure when attacked by this disease). Here if ever, it particularly behoves us to begin with an elucidation of the meaning of the name given to the malady under discussion. _Gruner_[91] long ago called attention to the divergence of opinion as to the signification of λειχῆνες (scabs) among the writers of Antiquity, but without success in putting the actual facts in a clear light. We must try if we can be more fortunate. An old etymologist says: λειχὴν παρὰ τὸ λείχω, καὶ γὰρ φάσιν ἐκ τοῦ λείχειν τὸ πάθος ἐπαίρεται[92], (λειχὴν comes from λείχω,—I lick, because they say the complaint is set up by licking). On this we may say.—there is no doubt λειχῆνες and λιχῆνες are derived from λείχειν or λίχειν, but the explanation _Kraus_ gives of the reason in his Lexicon we cannot think conceivable, viz. “because Lichen, the same as a parasitic plant does, or a skin-disease in animals, always creeps round further and further (see _Herpes_,—creeping eruption), or _as it were licks its way_,” for λείχειν is not so much _lambere_, λάπτειν,—to lick over, lick along, as _lingere_, _ligurire_[93],—to lick up, lick up greedily. At the same time it is true the word (_lambere_) was used by the Romans in a somewhat similar sense, so perhaps we ought not to refer to _lambit flamma_ (a flame licks), but rather to Plautus’ expression (_Pers. prolog. 5._), “_quorum imagines lambunt hederae sequaces_” (whose images creeping ivy-tendrils lick, i. e. entwine). Most probably there are two different stems underlying the word. Of these one is λέγειν,—to lay, etc., hence λέγνη, the edging, the border, λίγνυς, soot (depositing itself on the edge), together with the bye-forms λέχω, λίχω with which in fact λιχὴν, _moss_[94], so far as it forms on the edge, the surface, fringes it, would be connected. The other stem will be λίγω, or λείγω (comp. λίβω and λείβω), λείχω and λείχην, λίγγω, λίζω, to which would have to be referred also λίγυς and λιγυρὸς,—clear,