COMMENTARY. Sprengel gives a long dissertation on the sordes palestræ. (Ad Dioscor. i, 36.) Suffice it to say in this place that it was collected from the bodies of the wrestlers in the palestra, and consisted of oil, sweat, dust, and any powder used for cleansing the skin. Sprengel, from a passage in the works of Theophrastus (H. P. v, 9), infers that the sordes gymnasiorum were collected from statues made of cedar, but he appears to have overlooked the account of it given by our author, from which it must be obvious that it was collected from statues of copper, or rather of bronze. The sordes balneorum, which is treated of by Dioscorides (i, 34), will be readily understood from the description which we have given in another place (Vol. I, 68), of the preparatory process which the bathers went through before going into the bath. It must have consisted then of human sweat and other impurities extracted from the skin, mixed up with soda, flour of beans, or any other substance used in cleansing the skin by means of the comb (strigil.) Dioscorides says it is heating, emollient, and discutient, and is used as a liniment to fissures and condylomata. These articles are treated of by most of the other authorities. On the sordes palestræ, see in particular Galen. (T. ii, 136, ed. Basil.) For the Arabians see Avicenna (ii, 2, 648), and Serapion (De Simpl. 169). Σαγαπηνὸν, Sagapenum, _Sagapen_, is the juice of a sort of ferula, being hot and attenuate. It is also somewhat detergent, so as to agree with cicatrices in the eyes and suffusions. * * * * *