Two Texts on Scent: Aristotle and Theophrastus

“Since there is an odd number of senses, and since an odd number always has a middle, it seems the sense of smell is itself in the middle between the haptic senses, i.e. touch and taste, and the mediated senses, i.e. sight and hearing. For this reason smell is also a certain affection both of things that are nourishing (for these are in the class of haptic things) and of things that are audible and visible, which is why [animals] smell in both air and water. Thus, the object of smell is something common to both of these classes, belonging to the haptic, and to the audible and transparent. That’s also why scent has reasonably been compared to a kind of dye-bath and a washing of the dry in the moist and liquid.”

ἔοικε δ' ἡ αἴσθησις ἡ τοῦ ὀσφραίνεσθαι, περιττῶν οὐσῶν τῶν αἰσθήσεων καὶ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ ἔχοντος μέσον τοῦ περιττοῦ, καὶ αὐτὴ μέση εἶναι τῶν τε ἁπτικῶν, οἷον ἁφῆς καὶ γεύσεως, καὶ τῶν δι' ἄλλου αἰσθητικῶν, οἷον ὄψεως καὶ ἀκοῆς. διὸ καὶ τὸ ὀσφραντὸν τῶν θρεπτικῶν ἐστὶ πάθος τι (ταῦτα δ' ἐν τῷ ἁπτῷ γένει), καὶ τοῦ ἀκουστοῦ δὲ καὶ τοῦ ὁρατοῦ, διὸ καὶ ἐν ἀέρι καὶ ἐν ὕδατι ὀσμῶνται. ὥστ' ἐστὶ τὸ ὀσφραντὸν κοινόν τι τούτων ἀμφοτέρων, καὶ τῷ τε ἁπτῷ ὑπάρχει καὶ τῷ ἀκουστῷ καὶ τῷ διαφανεῖ· διὸ καὶ εὐλόγως παρείκασται ξηρότητος ἐν ὑγρῷ καὶ χυτῷ οἷον βαφή τις εἶναι καὶ πλύσις.

Aristotle, On Sense and Sensible Objects, 5.27–28, 445a4–445a14

“They use aromatics for all perfumes. With some they treat the oil as with a mordant [ἐπιστύφοντες], with others they impart the scent derived from them. For in all cases they treat the oil as with a mordant [ὑποστύφουσι] in order that the oil might become more receptive to the scent, just like wool into a dye-bath. They use the weaker of the aromatics as a mordant, then later they add the one whose scent they wish to preserve. For the last one added always dominates, even if it is not much in quantity. For example, if someone were to add a mna of myrrh into a kotyle of oil, and later add two drachmas of cinnamon, the two drachmas of cinnamon would dominate.'“

Χρῶνται δὲ πρὸς πάντα τοῖς ἀρώμασι, τοῖς μὲν ἐπιστύφοντες τὸ ἔλαιον τοῖς δὲ καὶ τὴν ὀσμὴν ἐκ τούτων ἐμποιοῦντες. Ὑποστύφουσι γὰρ πᾶν εἰς τὸ δέξασθαι μᾶλλον τὴν ὀσμὴν ὥσπερ τὰ ἔρια εἰς τὴν βαφήν. Ὑποστύφεται δὲ τοῖς ἀσθενεστέροις τῶν ἀρωμάτων, εἶθ' ὕστερον ἐμβάλλουσιν ἀφ' οὗ ἂν βούλωνται τὴν ὀσμὴν λαβεῖν· ἐπικρατεῖ γὰρ ἀεὶ τὸ ἔσχατον ἐμβαλλόμενον καὶ ἂν ἔλαττον ᾖ· οἷον ἐὰν εἰς κοτύλην σμύρνης ἐμβληθῇ μνᾶ καὶ ὕστερον ἐμβληθῶσι κιναμώμου δραχμαὶ δύο, κρατοῦσιν αἱ τοῦ κιναμώμου δύο δραχμαί.

Theophrastus, On Scents, 4.17

Recreating Democritus’ Party Tricks II: Egg Yolks

Revisiting Democritus’ Party Tricks

Here’s an update on my attempt to replicate one of the party tricks or paignia (παίγνια) attributed to Democritus in the London Papyrus 121, col. 5, ll. 1–19.

Since last year, I’ve noticed that several translators have interpreted the word κρόκος to mean egg yolk instead of saffron.

“To make an egg like an apple: after boiling an egg, coat it with a mixture of egg yolk and wine.”

Ὠὸν ὅμοιον μῆλον* γενέσθαι· ζέσας τὸ ὠὸν χρεῖε κρόκῳ μείξας μετ’ οἴνου.

*μήλῳ Wessely

Papyri Graecae Magicae VII 171–172 = VII (Atomists) R127A.2 Laks-Most

I figured it was worth testing the egg-yolk hypothesis experimentally.

In Greek natural philosophical and medical literature, κρόκος normally refers to the saffron crocus, Crocus sativus L., in particular to the dried stigmata from the flowers used as a spice. Since the spice dyes and stains with a strong orange-yellow colour, the name also came to refer to the colour itself, just as κόκκος, the ‘berry’ of the kermes oak, came to be used for the dark red color of plums. At some point, it also came to refer to the yellow part of the egg, much like the English word ‘yolk,’ which comes from old English word geolca, ultimately from OE geolu, ‘yellow.’ (Both yolk and yellow are cognate with the ancient Greek word χλωρός, ‘fresh,’ ‘green,’ ‘yellow,’ which also came to mean egg yolk).

All this means that interpreters have two options when translating κρόκος in our passage: saffron or egg yolk. Maybe because of the egg connection, some interpreters wagered here it means yolk.

It seemed unlikely to me that mixing egg-yolk with wine could produce a dye of any effect, but I decided to try it out using roughly the same procedure I used last year, boiling the eggs and then dying both the shells and the boiled egg whites. I should have used controls, but this is mostly for fun.

The Experiment

I tried to stay as close to the original experiment as possible. I would use red and white wine, brown and white boiled eggs, and paint both the shells and the egg whites with the mixture. I also tested saffron again for comparison.

Testing the egg yolk interpretation: egg yolks, red and white wine, brown and white eggs.

Egg yolks mixed with red and white wine.

Here are the shells painted with egg yolk and saffron. As you can see, none of these looks like apples.

Brown and white egg shells painted and smeared with wine and yolk mixtures.

Then I peeled the eggs and painted the whites — and the yolks too for good measure. The egg painted with saffron and white wine is the most yellow, almost the colour of the yolk. The egg painted with egg yolk and wine also is a bit yellow, but the mixture flowed off pretty quickly without staining the egg at all (see large photo below). Red wine in all cases made the whites blue. If I’d run a control of plain red wine, I imagine the same would have happened. The egg yolks look pretty gross.

Testing yolk vs saffron on cooked egg whites.

Painted and smeared on.

Here the saffron and wine mixture worked much like last time. It produced egg slices that look like peach or apricot. The egg yolk and wine mixture didn’t produce much of anything.

Red wine (top row) makes egg whites go blue, regardless of what is added. White wine with yolk (bottom right) does almost nothing. White wine with saffron (bottom left) turns egg white saffron or peach coloured.

Conclusions

I talked about the results with Glenn Most and André Laks, who went with egg yolks in their translation for the Loeb series. They offered a response that I admit had not occurred to me and is worth keeping in mind: what if the recipe was not meant to work? What if it was designed to fail?

After all, one might suppose that the title, ‘παίγνια’, even if the term is used in an nonstandard way, still has something to do with childish things: games, jokes, ticks, trifles. What if, in this case, the tick is the one played on the person gullible enough to perform it? It’s a least plausible, given some of the tricks:

“To get hard whenever you want. Grind up pepper with honey and rub it on your thing.”

Στ[ύ]ειν ὅτε θέλεις· πέπερι μετὰ μέλιτος τρίψας χρῖέ σου τὸ πρᾶ̣γ̣μ̣α.

Papyri Graecae Magicae VII 186

Could be. Then again, here’s a 2015 patent for a topical preparation to enhance genital sensation using piperine, a primary component of Piper nigrum L., black pepper.

Replication of PGM VII 171-172

A dinner party plate. Can you tell which of these is an egg?

Aristotle on menstruating women and mirrors

“It is hard to believe that the man who set aside so widespread, tenacious and respectable a belief (sc. in the divine origin of prophetic dreams) accepted as fact the superstition that when a menstruous woman looks into the mirror its surface takes on a reddish tinge which may be difficult to remove.”

W.K.C. Guthrie, Review: Aristotle. Parva Naturalia. A revised text with introduction and commentary by Sir David Ross. (Oxford, Clarendon Press 1955. Pp. xi 355. Price £2.). Philosophy, 31 (118), 274-276.

“The story of the staining of the mirror by the eyes of a menstruating woman is thus a rationalization of a pre-existing superstition, the correctness of which Aristotle was not inclined to question, because he believed himself capable of explaining it.”

“Bei der Geschichte der Befleckung des Spiegels durch die Augen einer menstruierenden Frau haben wir es also mit einer Rationalisierung eines bereits vorhandenen Aberglaubens zu tun, dessen Richtigkeit Aristoteles nicht in Frage zu stellen geneigt war, weil er zu seiner Erklärung sehr wohl fähig zu sein glaubte.”

Philip van der Eijk, Aristoteles. De insomniis, De divinatione per somnum, Übersetzt und erläutert von Philip J. van der Eijk. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994, p. 182.

Superstition

I’ve been collecting texts related to a passage On Dreams where Aristotle says menstruating women tarnish a mirror when they look at it.

I think this has to be the strangest passage in Aristotle. It is not the frighteningly casual misogyny. Aristotle could have questioned his sources, something he often does, like when he questions seers’ beliefs about prophesying by dreams or when he questions fishermen’s reports of parthenogenic fish in the second book of Generation of Animals. Instead, his credulity in this case just goes to show how deeply he believed in the corrupting influence of women. The way he says it, it’s like he’s saying the most obvious thing in the world: when menstruating women look at a very bright mirror, a cloudy, bloody spot forms on the surface. If it’s a new mirror, then getting the stain out is very difficult; if it’s an older mirror, it’s easier. Like most of the men we are about to encounter, questioning this does not come up.

But for now, let’s suppose he’s picking up a common superstition. For a superstition, it is extremely specific. It’s not a lot of detail, but still weirdly specific enough to wonder if he had polished some such mirrors himself.

First, he says the mirrors need to be very clean (i.e., bright), so probably a highly polished bronze. Second, he says the newer the mirror, the harder it is to remove the tarnish, which means it can be buffed out, it just takes some work.

In fact, one thing about Aristotle’s description that makes it different from other reports of this phenomenon (all of which were written by people after Aristotle, by the way) is this kind of detail. We’ll see Pliny’s description, which is closer to what I would expect from superstition—with all his fear-mongering about menstrual blood sterilizing trees, killing bees, and giving dogs rabies, not to mention dimming mirrors, rusting metal, and dulling the edges of swords, and all given with no attempt to explain any of this nonsense.

Philip van der Eijk, whose commentary is the only detailed look at the Aristotle passage, points to parallels similar to Pliny in Columella De re rustica XI 3, 50; Geoponica XII 20, 5 and 25, 2; and Solinus, Collectanea Rerum Mirabilium I 54-56 (PJvdE p. 184). And indeed, they simply seem to take over Pliny’s account.

Aristotle, however, focuses not just on the fact that women causes mirrors to dim, or even cause bloody spots to appear on them, but on variations of the phenomenon, both with respect to the object affected (new vs. old mirrors) and on the type of effect (easy vs. hard to remove).

There’s a part of me that wants to find some explanation for this, to start from the assumption that the phenomenon was real, even though menstrual blood had nothing to do with it.

Did women’s bronze mirrors in particular show spots of rust? Was there some ingredient common to cosmetics or bronze polish or something which got onto fingers and then onto the mirror—something like soda (sodium carbonate) or white lead (lead carbonate)?

I found a website that explains how to get all sorts of different patinas on bronze or copper using different chemicals, but nothing really stuck out. And there is absolutely no record of this phenomenon anywhere at all apart from these weird passages.

So: was what Aristotle described a common superstition among the Greeks and Romans? Not really. It’s mentioned about ten times, and even then, rarely with the detail Aristotle goes into.

Is it plausibly a real phenomenon? That bronze tarnishes, sure. But that a specific rust-red patina shows up on bronze mirrors, or on specifically the kind of bronze alloy used for mirrors in antiquity? Who knows, but I’d be very curious to find out.

Explanations

I won’t get too much into the details here. Aristotle thinks that the eyes of menstruating women act on the mirror, via the air, I guess by changing the colour of the air, which changes the colour on the surface of the mirror. How he could have felt this is a satisfactory explanation is a mystery to me. Proclus, when he reports it, associates it with the arts of magicians and sympathetic relationality. Granted, sympathy hadn’t been thought up in Aristotle’s time, but I think Proclus probably couldn’t stand Aristotle’s explanation, and so he threw a reference to it in his discussion of the cave allegory in order to help him out.

Incredibly, Michael of Ephesus doesn’t even mention it. His commentary on Aristotle’s explanation is almost as weird as Aristotle’s explanation itself. He writes as if Aristotle was talking about an echo: if a menstruating woman looks at herself in a mirror, the small detail of the red in her eyes’ will be reflected back to her (we need to keep in mind here that mirrors back then would not have had the clarity and brightness of mirrors today); but on any other surface, it would not be.

Marsilio Ficino uses another analogy. He likens it to condensation. As breath condenses on a cold piece of glass, so the visual ray, which is a spirituous substance obviously, condenses on the cold, smooth, dense mirror when it touches it leaving a spot of blood. Before and after this passage, Ficino assimilates this explanation to the explanation of the evil eye and other forms of optical contagion. In all these cases, the contagion doesn’t operate sympathetically, but more like poisoning: if the visual ray, which is vaporized blood, condenses inside the body of someone else, then the blood, which was originally harmful (as it would be if it came from a person who was ill or menstruating or whatever), causes a change for the worse.

Another thing: these explanations totally re-describe the phenomenon: Aristotle is thinking of something like tarnish or rust. Proclus, however, ends up describing something else, like looking through red glasses or something. Michael thinks the phenomenon is seeing blood spots in the eyes via the mirror. And Ficino thinks a spot of blood (not tarnish) appears on the mirror.

Now, Aristotle is not an extramissionist: he doesn’t think sight is analogous to touch, i.e., that visual rays go out of the eye and touch objects, bringing back information about them. At least he’s not usually an extramissionist—there is all the stuff in the Meteorology where he seems to be.

Aristotle also doesn’t think particles leave surfaces and then come to our eyes (the standard criticism of this view is that if they did, we could never see things as big as mountains, since they could not fit into our pupil).

Instead, he thinks objects act on the air which acts on our eyes. And here he is trying to explain that the reverse is true as well: our eyes act on the air, which acts on objects. And he thinks this happens all the time, but in mirrors it is especially noticeable since they are especially sensitive to these changes. So sensitive in fact that the image can (so to speak) burn into the mirror.

So Ficino’s explanation is not Aristotle’s, because Ficino is an extramissionist. Michael’s explanation is not Aristotle’s either (I think he’s embarrassed at the text too and trying to save it). Meanwhile, Proclus is doing his own thing, trying to make it into a kind of magical illusion.

Aristotle, however, although he doesn’t use the term, is treating the process as one akin to alchemy, where the nature of a metal is changed into something else. And by extension, whether the intends to or not, he is conceiving of women as alchemists by nature.

Texts

Aristotle, On Dreams

“A sign that the sense-organs sense even a small difference quickly is what happens in the case of mirrors, a subject which, even on its own, someone might pause to inquire into and puzzle about. At the same time, from the same facts it is clear that, just as sight is acted upon, so it also produces some effect. For in the case of very clean mirrors, when menstruating women observe their reflection, the surface of the mirror becomes like a bloody cloud. And if the mirror is new, it is not easy to wipe off a stain like this; if it is old, however, it is easier.

“The cause, as we said, is that sight is not only affected by the air, but it also produces a certain effect and change. For the eye is a bright object and has colour. Therefore, it is reasonable that during menstruation, the eyes are affected, just like any other bodily part, for they are naturally veiny. For this reason, when menstruation occurs because of a disturbance and bloody inflammation, while to us the difference in the eyes is not evident, it is nevertheless present (for the nature of semen and the menstrual fluid is the same). The air is changed by the eyes, and since the air near the mirror is continuous [with it], it produces an effect like the one it was affected with, and then it produces the effect on the surface of the mirror.

“As with cloaks, those that are especially clean are quickest to be stained. For a clean mirror accurately shows whatever it receives, and an especially clean one shows even the smallest changes. The bronze mirror, because of how smooth it is, is especially sensitive to any touch (one should think about the air’s touch like a kind of friction, like wiping-off or washing), and because it is clean, it becomes evident, no matter its size. But the cause of stains not leaving quickly from new mirrors is cleanliness and smoothness. For through them, the stain permeates both deeply and all over: deeply because of their cleanliness, all over because of their smoothness. In the case of old mirrors, however, the stain does not remain, because the stain cannot penetrate in the same way, but only superficially.

“From this it is evident that change is caused even by small differences, that sensation is quick, and that the sense-organ of colours is not only affected, but produces an effect in return. Evidence for what we’ve described are facts about wines and perfumery. For oil, when it has been prepared, quickly takes on the scents of things close by, and wines are affected in the same way. For they not only acquire the scents of things thrown into them or mixed in with them, but also the things placed near or growing near the vessels.”

ὅτι δὲ ταχὺ τὰ αἰσθητήρια καὶ μικρᾶς διαφορᾶς αἰσθάνεται, σημεῖον τὸ ἐπὶ τῶν ἐνόπτρων γινόμενον· περὶ οὗ καὶ αὐτοῦ ἐπιστήσας σκέψαιτό τις ἂν καὶ ἀπορήσειεν. ἅμα δ' ἐξ αὐτοῦ δῆλον ὅτι ὥσπερ καὶ ἡ ὄψις πάσχει, οὕτω καὶ ποιεῖ τι. ἐν γὰρ τοῖς ἐνόπτροις τοῖς σφόδρα καθαροῖς, ὅταν τῶν καταμηνίων ταῖς γυναιξὶ γινομένων ἐμβλέψωσιν εἰς τὸ κάτοπτρον, γίνεται τὸ ἐπιπολῆς τοῦ ἐνόπτρου οἷον νεφέλη αἱματώδης· κἂν μὲν καινὸν ᾖ τὸ κάτοπτρον, οὐ ῥᾴδιον ἐκμάξαι τὴν τοιαύτην κηλίδα, ἐὰν δὲ παλαιόν, ῥᾷον.

αἴτιον δέ, ὥσπερ εἴπομεν, ὅτι οὐ μόνον πάσχει ἡ ὄψις ὑπὸ τοῦ ἀέρος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ποιεῖ τι καὶ κινεῖ, ὥσπερ καὶ τὰ λαμπρά· καὶ γὰρ ἡ ὄψις τῶν λαμπρῶν καὶ ἐχόντων χρῶμα. τὰ μὲν οὖν ὄμματα εὐλόγως, ὅταν ᾖ τὰ καταμήνια, διακεῖται ὥσπερ καὶ ἕτερον μέρος ὁτιοῦν· καὶ γὰρ φύσει τυγχάνουσι φλεβώδεις ὄντες. διὸ γινομένων τῶν καταμηνίων διὰ ταραχὴν καὶ φλεγμασίαν αἱματικὴν ἡμῖν μὲν ἡ ἐν τοῖς ὄμμασι διαφορὰ ἄδηλος, ἔνεστι δέ (ἡ γὰρ αὐτὴ φύσις σπέρματος καὶ καταμηνίων), ὁ δ' ἀὴρ κινεῖται ὑπ' αὐτῶν, καὶ τὸν ἐπὶ τῶν κατόπτρων ἀέρα συνεχῆ ὄντα ποιόν τινα ποιεῖ καὶ τοιοῦτον οἷον αὐτὸς πάσχει· ὁ δὲ τοῦ κατόπτρου τὴν ἐπιφάνειαν.

ὥσπερ δὲ τῶν ἱματίων, τὰ μάλιστα καθαρὰ τάχιστα κηλιδοῦται· τὸ γὰρ καθαρὸν ἀκριβῶς δηλοῖ ὅ τι ἂν δέξηται, καὶ τὸ μάλιστα τὰς ἐλαχίστας κινήσεις. ὁ δὲ χαλκὸς διὰ μὲν τὸ λεῖος εἶναι ὁποιασοῦν ἁφῆς αἰσθάνεται μάλιστα (δεῖ δὲ νοῆσαι οἷον τρίψιν οὖσαν τὴν τοῦ ἀέρος ἁφὴν καὶ ὥσπερ ἔκμαξιν καὶ ἀνάπλυσιν), διὰ δὲ τὸ καθαρὸν ἔνδηλος γίνεται ὁπηλικηοῦν οὖσα. τοῦ δὲ μὴ ἀπιέναι ταχέως ἐκ τῶν καινῶν κατόπτρων αἴτιον τὸ καθαρὸν εἶναι καὶ λεῖον· διαδύεται γὰρ διὰ τῶν τοιούτων καὶ εἰς βάθος καὶ πάντῃ, διὰ μὲν τὸ καθαρὸν εἰς βάθος, διὰ δὲ τὸ λεῖον πάντῃ. ἐν δὲ τοῖς παλαιοῖς οὐκ ἐμμένει, ὅτι οὐχ ὁμοίως εἰσδύεται ἡ κηλὶς ἀλλ' ἐπιπολαιότερον.

ὅτι μὲν οὖν καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν μικρῶν διαφορῶν γίνεται κίνησις, καὶ ὅτι ταχεῖα ἡ αἴσθησις, καὶ ὅτι οὐ μόνον πάσχει, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀντιποιεῖ τὸ τῶν χρωμάτων αἰσθητήριον, φανερὸν ἐκ τούτων. μαρτυρεῖ δὲ τοῖς εἰρημένοις καὶ τὰ περὶ τοὺς οἴνους καὶ τὴν μυρεψίαν συμβαίνοντα. τό τε γὰρ παρασκευασθὲν ἔλαιον ταχέως λαμβάνει τὰς τῶν πλησίον ὀσμάς, καὶ οἱ οἶνοι τὸ αὐτὸ τοῦτο πάσχουσιν· οὐ γὰρ μόνον τῶν ἐμβαλλομένων ἢ ὑποκιρναμένων ἀλλὰ καὶ τῶν πλησίον τοῖς ἀγγείοις τιθεμένων ἢ πεφυκότων ἀναλαμβάνουσι τὰς ὀσμάς.

Aristotle, On Dreams, Chapter 2, 459b23–460a32*

*In the 1935 Loeb, the Greek of this passage is translated into Latin instead of English ffs!

Pliny the Elder, Natural History

“But it is not easy that anything should be discovered that is more monstrous than woman’s menstrual fluid. New wine turns sour by coming near it, crops that are touched become barren, grafts whither, seeds of the garden dry up, fruit of trees by which she sits falls off, the brightness of mirrors are dimmed by reflecting her, the edge of iron is dulled, the brightness of ivory, bee hives die, bronze and even iron are seized by rust, and the air is seized by an awful smell. Dogs become rabid by tasting it and their bite is infected by an incurable poison. In fact, bitumen, too, which has an otherwise pliable and sticky nature and which floats at certain times of the year on the lake of Judaea, which is called Asphaltites, is not able to be divided up, as it sticks to everything it makes contact with, except a thread which is infected with this slime. Also ants, the tiniest animal, and sensitive to its presence, reject the tasty fruit which it was carrying never to return to it again.”

sed nihil facile reperiatur mulierum profluvio magis monstrificum. acescunt superventu musta, sterilescunt tactae fruges, moriuntur insita, exuruntur hortorum germina, fructus arborum, quibus insidere, decidunt, speculorum fulgor aspectu ipso hebetatur, acies ferri praestringitur, eboris nitor, alvi apium moriuntur, aes etiam ac ferrum robigo protinus corripit odorque dirus aera; in rabiem aguntur gustato eo canes atque insanabili veneno morsus inficitur. quin et bituminum sequax alioqui ac lenta natura in lacu Iudaeae, qui vocatur Asphaltites, certo tempore anni supernatans non quit sibi avelli, ad omnem contactum adhaerens praeterquam filo quem tale virus infecerit. etiam formicis, animali minimo, inesse sensum eius ferunt abicique gustatas fruges nec postea repeti.

Plinii Naturalis Historia 7.64–65

Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus

“For even the shadows [i.e., on the wall the cave], which they say the images correspond to, have a nature of this kind. For these are likenesses of bodies and shapes, and they are in total sympathy with those things from which they arise, as it is also clear from the magic arts which profess to do things with images and shadows. And why mention only their powers? For even irrational animals have them, without any rational activity. For the hyena, they say, when it wants to eat, it casts its shadow on top of a resting dog and makes the dog a meal.* And Aristotle says that when a menstruating women looks into a mirror, the mirror and the reflected image are stained with blood.”

καὶ γὰρ αἱ σκιαί, αἷς τὰ εἴδωλα συζυγεῖν φησιν, τοιαύτην ἔχουσι φύσιν· καὶ γὰρ αὗται σωμάτων εἰσὶ καὶ σχημάτων εἰκόνες, καὶ παμπόλλην ἔχουσιν πρὸς τὰ ἀφ' ὧν ἐκπίπτουσιν συμπάθειαν, ὡς δηλοῖ καὶ ὅσα μάγων τέχναι πρός τε τὰ εἴδωλα δρᾶν ἐπαγγέλλονται καὶ τὰς σκιάς. καὶ τί λέγω τὰς ἐκείνων δυνάμεις; ἃ καὶ τοῖς ἀλόγοις ἤδη ζῴοις ὑπάρχει πρὸ λόγου παντὸς ἐνεργεῖν. ἡ γὰρ ὕαινα, φασί, τὴν τοῦ κυνὸς ἐν ὕψει καθημένου πατήσασα σκιὰν καταβάλλει καὶ θοίνην ποιεῖται τὸν κύνα· καὶ γυναικὸς καθαιρομένης, φησὶν Ἀριστοτέλης, εἰς ἔνοπτρον ἰδούσης αἱματοῦται τό τε ἔνοπτρον καὶ τὸ ἐμφαινόμενον εἴδωλον.

Proclus, In Platonis rem publicam commentaria 1.290

*I’ve talked about the magic of the hyena here.

Michael of Ephesus, Commentary on Aristotle’s On Dreams

“And so this is the general idea [of what Aristotle wrote], but in the passage, “for sight, too, is a bright object and one that has colour”, ‘sight’ means the whole eye. Also, he says that “it is reasonable” that the eyes change during the period of menstruation. For since the whole body changes at that time, necessarily the eyes also change. After talking about ‘the eyes’ in the neuter, he shifts and talks about them in the masculine, saying ‘for they [masculine] are naturally veiny’. For the eyes [masculine] are veiny. He also says that, as among menstruating women, a certain bloody affection is produced around the eyes, so too it happens to us during the emission of semen. This is not obvious when we look into a mirror because of the fact that semen is naturally white.

‘The bronze mirror, because of how smooth it is, is especially sensitive to any touch.’

“The phrase ‘is especially sensitive’ can be paraphrased as, ‘it makes stains on it that are especially sensible and obvious to us.’ For just as noises are produced especially on smooth bodies because of the fact that the air on them is not broken up or in general divided up into very fine parts, so too on smooth mirrors the blemish becomes obvious because of the fact that they are continuous and unitary, so to speak, because of the extreme smoothness of the mirror. But on those that are not smooth they are not observed, since they are divided up into very fine parts because of the unevenness of the reflecting surface, and what is very fine is not easily sensed. Therefore, the smoothness is the cause of continuity, while the cleanliness is productive of the clarity. For if it were clean but not smooth, then it will not produce sensation since it is broken up into small parts due to the unevenness. It is clear that, in the case of clean mirrors, stains become visible deep down. But that sensation that is quick also apprehends the images from the sensible object quickly, this is not clear.

‘Evidence for what we’ve described are facts about wines and perfumery.’

“Having said ‘that change is caused even by small differences,’ as proof of it he adds what happens in the case of perfumery: ‘For oil, when it has been prepared, quickly takes on the scents of things close by.’ For the scent of something close by, when it changes the oil, gives it a share of its own scent.”

Ἡ μὲν οὖν διάνοια αὕτη, ἐν δὲ τῇ λέξει τῇ «καὶ γὰρ ἡ ὄψις τῶν λαμπρῶν καὶ ἐχόντων χρῶμα» ὄψιν τὸν ὅλον ὀφθαλμὸν εἴρηκε. λέγει δὲ καὶ ὅτι εὐλόγως ἐν τῷ τῶν καταμηνίων καιρῷ τὰ ὄμματα μεταβάλλει· τοῦ γὰρ σώματος ὅλου τότε μεταβάλλοντος ἀνάγκη συμμεταβάλλειν καὶ τὰ ὄμματα. εἰπὼν δὲ τὰ «ὄμματα,» τρέψας εἶπε τὴν λέξιν ἀρρενικῶς εἰπών· «καὶ γὰρ φύσει τυγχάνουσι φλεβώδεις ὄντες·» οἱ γὰρ ὀφθαλμοὶ φλεβώδεις. λέγει δὲ καὶ ὅτι, ὥσπερ ἐπὶ τῶν γυναικῶν γινομένων τῶν καταμηνίων γίνεταί τι πάθος περὶ τὰ ὄμματα αἱματικόν, οὕτω γίνεται καὶ ἡμῖν ἐν τῇ τοῦ σπέρματος προέσει. οὐ φαίνεται δὲ ἐνορῶσιν εἰς τὸ κάτοπτρον διὰ τὸ τὸ σπέρμα φύσει λευκὸν εἶναι.

ὥσπερ δὲ τῶν ἱματίων, τὰ μάλιστα καθαρὰ τάχιστα κηλιδοῦται· τὸ γὰρ καθαρὸν ἀκριβῶς δηλοῖ ὅ τι ἂν δέξηται, καὶ τὸ μάλιστα τὰς ἐλαχίστας κινήσεις. ὁ δὲ χαλκὸς διὰ μὲν τὸ λεῖος εἶναι ὁποιασοῦν ἁφῆς αἰσθάνεται μάλιστα (δεῖ δὲ νοῆσαι οἷον τρίψιν οὖσαν τὴν τοῦ ἀέρος ἁφὴν καὶ ὥσπερ ἔκμαξιν καὶ ἀνάπλυσιν), διὰ δὲ τὸ καθαρὸν ἔνδηλος γίνεται ὁπηλικηοῦν οὖσα. τοῦ δὲ μὴ ἀπιέναι ταχέως ἐκ τῶν καινῶν κατόπτρων αἴτιον τὸ καθαρὸν εἶναι καὶ λεῖον· διαδύεται γὰρ διὰ τῶν τοιούτων καὶ εἰς βάθος καὶ πάντῃ, διὰ μὲν τὸ καθαρὸν εἰς βάθος, διὰ δὲ τὸ λεῖον πάντῃ. ἐν δὲ τοῖς παλαιοῖς οὐκ ἐμμένει, ὅτι οὐχ ὁμοίως εἰσδύεται ἡ κηλὶς ἀλλ' ἐπιπολαιότερον.

«Ὁ δὲ χαλκὸς διὰ τὸ λεῖος εἶναι ὁποιασοῦν ἁφῆς αἰσθάνεται μάλιστα.»

Τὸ «αἰσθάνεται μάλιστα» ἴσον ἐστὶ τῷ ‘αἰσθητὰς μάλιστα καὶ διαδήλους ἡμῖν ποιεῖ τὰς ἐν αὐτῷ κηλῖδας’. ὥσπερ γὰρ ἐν τοῖς λείοις σώμασι μάλιστα γίνεται ὁ ψόφος διὰ τὸ μὴ θραύεσθαι ἐν αὐτοῖς τὸν ἀέρα μηδ' ὅλως εἰς λεπτότατα κατακερματίζεσθαι, οὕτω καὶ ἐν τοῖς λείοις κατόπτροις αἱ κηλῖδες διάδηλοι γίνονται διὰ τὸ μένειν συνεχεῖς καὶ ὡς εἰπεῖν μία διὰ τὴν τοῦ κατόπτρου λειότητα. ἐν δὲ τοῖς μὴ λείοις οὐχ ὁρῶνται, ὅτι κατακερματίζονται εἰς λεπτότατα διὰ τὴν τοῦ ἐνόπτρου ἀνωμαλίαν· τὸ δὲ λεπτότατον οὐκ εὐαίσθητον. τὸ μὲν οὖν λεῖόν ἐστιν αἴτιον τῆς συνεχείας, τὸ δὲ καθαρὸν τοῦ διαδήλους γίνεσθαι. κἂν γὰρ ᾖ καθαρὸν μὴ λεῖον δέ, εἰς μικρὰ κατακερματισθὲν διὰ τὴν ἀνωμαλίαν οὐ ποιήσει αἴσθησιν. ὅτι δὲ ἐν τοῖς καθαροῖς ἐνόπτροις εἰς βάθος ἐμφαίνονται αἱ ἐν αὐτοῖς κηλῖδες, δῆλον. ὅτι δὲ καὶ ἡ αἴσθησις ταχεῖα καὶ ταχέως ἀντιλαμβάνεται τῶν ἀπὸ τῶν αἰσθητῶν εἰδώλων, οὐδὲ τοῦτο ἄδηλον.

«Μαρτυρεῖ δὲ τοῖς εἰρημένοις καὶ τὰ περὶ τοὺς οἴνους καὶ τὴν μυρεψίαν συμβαίνοντα.»

Εἰπὼν «ὅτι μὲν οὖν καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν μικρῶν διαφορῶν γίνεται κίνησις,» πίστιν τούτου παράγει τὰ περὶ τὴν μυρεψίαν γινόμενα. «τὸ γὰρ παρασκευασθὲν ἔλαιον ταχέως λαμβάνει τὰς τῶν πλησίον ὀσμάς·» ἡ γὰρ ὀσμὴ τοῦ πλησίον κινήσασα τὸ ἔλαιον μετέδωκεν αὐτῷ τῆς οἰκείας ὀσμῆς.

Michael of Ephesus In de insomniis commentaria, 66,4–67,9 Wendland

Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium or On Love

“Aristotle writes that women, when they are menstruating, often make their mirror dirty with bloody specks when they look into it. I believe it happens for the following reason, because spirit [pneuma], which is the vapor of blood, appears to be blood so subtle that it escapes the eye’s observation, but when it condenses on the surface of the mirror, it becomes clearly visible. If it comes into contact with some less compact material, like a piece of cloth or wood, it cannot be seen because it does not remain on its surface, but penetrates into it. If it comes into contact with something dense but rough, like stones, bricks and the like, it is dissipated and broken up by the unevenness of its body. But on account of its hardness, the mirror keeps the spirit on the surface, on account of its evenness and smoothness, it prevents it from breaking up, and on account of its coolness, it condenses the extremely fine mist of the spirit into droplets. For the same reason, whenever we open our both and breath forcefully on glass, we sprinkle its surface with very fine saliva like dew. This is because the breath expelled from the saliva, when condensed on this material, returns to being saliva.”

Scribit Aristoteles, mulieres quando sanguis menstruus defluit, intuitu suo speculum sanguineis guttis sepe fedare. Quod ex eo fieri arbitror quia spiritus, qui vapor sanguinis est, sanguis quidam tenuissimus videtur esse, adeo ut aspectum effugiat oculorum, sed in speculi superficie factus crassior clare perspicitur. Hic si in rariorem materiam aliquam, ceu pannum aut lignum incidat, ideo non videtur quia in superficie rei illius non restat, sed penetrat. Si in densam quidem, sed asperam, sicuti saxa, lateres et similia, corporis illius inequalitate dissipatur et frangitur. Speculum autem propter duritiem sistit in superficie spiritum ; propter equalitatem lenitatemque servat infractum ; propter nitorem, spiritus ipsius radium iuvat et auget ; propter frigiditatem, rarissimam illius nebulam cogit in guttulas. Eadem ferme ratione quotiens hiantibus faucibus obnixe hanelamus in vitrum, eius faciem tenuissimo quodam salive rore conspergimus. Siquidem alitus a saliva evolans in ea materia compressus relabitur in salivam.

Marsilio Ficino, De amore: Commentarium in Convivium Platonis 7.4

Zosimus on the Demonic Origin of the Wicked Arts

“I have cited these words from the divine scriptures for the benefit of the willing. It is also fitting to cite a passage about these things from Zosimus, the philosopher of Panopolis, from his writings on the care of the gods in the ninth Book of Imhotep, which goes as follows:

‘The sacred scriptures, or indeed books, dear lady, say that there is a certain race of demons who sleep with mortal women. Hermes, too, mentioned this in his Physics, and nearly every public and secret discourse mentioned it. The ancient and divine scriptures, then, said that some angels desired mortal women and when they had descended taught them all the works of nature. This is why, they say, once the angels had fallen, they remained outside of heaven: because they taught humankind all that is wicked and of no benefit to the soul. And these same scriptures say it is from them that the giants were born. Theirs is the first tradition concerning these arts of Chemu. It was called the Book of Chemu, which is why the art, too, is called chemeia.’”

Ταῦτά τοι πρὸς ὠφέλειαν τῶν βουλομένων ἐκ τῶν θείων γραφῶν παρατέθεικα. ἄξιον δὲ καὶ Ζωσίμου τοῦ Πανοπολίτου φιλοσόφου χρῆσίν τινα παραθέσθαι περὶ αὐτῶν ἐκ τῶν γεγραμμένων αὐτῷ πρὸς θεοσέβειαν ἐν τῷ θʹ τῆς Ἰμοὺθ βίβλῳ, ἔχουσαν ὧδε·

‘φάσκουσιν αἱ ἱεραὶ γραφαὶ ἤτοι βίβλοι, ὦ γύναι, ὅτι ἔστι τι δαιμόνων γένος ὃ χρῆται γυναιξίν. ἐμνημόνευσε δὲ καὶ Ἑρμῆς ἐν τοῖς φυσικοῖς, καὶ σχεδὸν ἅπας λόγος φανερὸς καὶ ἀπόκρυφος τοῦτο ἐμνημόνευσε. τοῦτο οὖν ἔφασαν αἱ ἀρχαῖαι καὶ θεῖαι γραφαί, ὅτι ἄγγελοί τινες ἐπεθύμησαν τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ κατελθόντες ἐδίδαξαν αὐτὰς πάντα τὰ τῆς φύσεως ἔργα, ὧν χάριν, φησί, προσκρούσαντες ἔξω τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἔμειναν, ὅτι πάντα τὰ πονηρὰ καὶ μηδὲν ὠφελοῦντα τὴν ψυχὴν ἐδίδαξαν τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. ἐξ αὐτῶν φάσκουσιν αἱ αὐταὶ γραφαὶ καὶ τοὺς γίγαντας γεγενῆσθαι. ἔστιν οὖν αὐτῶν ἡ πρώτη παράδοσις Χημεῦ περὶ τούτων τῶν τεχνῶν. ἐκάλεσε δὲ ταύτην τὴν βίβλον Χημεῦ, ἔνθεν καὶ ἡ τέχνη χημεία καλεῖται’.

Zosimus of Panopolis, ap. Georgius Syncellus, Ecloga chronographica, 14.1–14 Mosshammer

Recreating Democritus’ Party Tricks

I. The Recipe

A while ago, I wrote about a collection of recipes for dinner party games in the Greek magical papyri. The collection is light and frivolous, much more so than its arcane and erotic neighbours. It calls itself paignia—tricks—and it also names its author—Democritus, no less!—something most of the other medical and magical recipes avoid. I doubt anyone thinks Democritus actually wrote these recipes, but I still find the ascription curious. Democritus tends to be associated with magic and alchemy (on this, see Matteo Martelli’s work on the Pseudo-Democritus, and his faculty page + academia.edu), and he’s even sometimes presented as a physician. But these recipes aren’t magic or medicine. They’re party tricks.

Now, along with recipes for drinking without getting drunk and techniques for picking up fellow guests, the text also includes a few practical jokes. The first is a recipe for making bronze tableware look like golden, perhaps an omen of alchemy. I’ll try this one as soon as I get my hands on the materials. Materials for the second one were easier to source: it’s a recipe for making eggs look like apples.

“To make an egg that resembles an apple: having boiled the egg, coat it with a mixture of saffron and wine.”

Ὠὸν ὅμοιον μήλον γενέσθαι· ζέσας τὸ ὠὸν χρεῖε κρόκῳ μείξας μετ’ οἴνου.

PGM VII 170–171

I was recently talking about this recipe with Lucia Raggetti (faculty page, academia.edu) from the AlchemEast project at l’Università di Bologna, who inspired me to try it out. It seemed like a good way to try to understand some puzzles about the text: what kind of eggs would they have used? Did they leave the shell on, like an Easter egg? What kind of wine was it? Does the strength of the wine matter? Could we just use water? And saffron—isn’t it yellow? What kind of yellow apple is this supposed to look like? I would need to experiment.

In the end, with a suggestion from Lucia, I think we’re pretty close to understanding the recipe and getting the joke.

Here’s what I came up with:

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Democritean still life: boiled eggs coated with saffron-infused white wine, cut to resemble peaches (with abnormally large stones).

The goal of the recipe seems to be to make the whites of boiled eggs look like the flesh of peaches or apricots. Maybe this conclusion is a bit speculative, but when I showed the results of the experiments to people, these were the ones they found convincing. The other candidates just looked like badly-dyed eggs.

II. Designing the Experiments

The replication of the recipe taught me that imagination and creativity are about as important for designing such experiments as the text itself. I went into the project with a bunch of assumptions about what the recipe was for, assumptions which turned out to be unjustified. I had assumed, for instance, something about the process, namely that I was going to be making Easter eggs; and I had assumed something about the result, namely that I would end up with things that look like little apples.

Because I was starting from these assumptions, my initial design for the experiment was constrained. I came up with what I thought was a thorough test: I would coat the shells of two kinds of eggs (brown and white) using saffron soaked in two kinds of wine (white and red), and I would run two controls, coating each kind of egg with plain red or white wine.

I didn’t realize how constraining these assumptions were until I ran the experiment. What I got looked… well … the results didn’t make convincing Easter eggs, never mind apples (pictured below).

And as it turns out, I had made two mistakes.

The first was to restrict myself to apples. The word written on the papyrus obviously isn’t the English word “apple”—it’s a Greek word, mēlon (μῆλον). This word is by an interesting historical fluke cognate with the English word “melon,” but in Greek it does not refer to cantaloupes or honeydew. Instead, like its Latin cognate, malum, it refers to some kinds of tree fruit. It is usually translated “apple,” like in the Eve and Adam story; and, indeed, “apple” is what I found in most modern translations of the ps.-Democritean paignia. But of course, mēlon doesn’t really mean apple. Its range of meanings is much wider: peaches, citrons, plums, and apricots are all “apples”, or more accurately mēla. The word covers most of the larger tree fruits, which in Greek are usually distinguished by region. Peaches for example are “Persian mēla”; citrons are “Median mēla”, etc.

I knew this. I’ve even written on it before; but, once I had rashly accepted “apple” as a translation, I forgot about the other possibilities. Instead, I’d anticipated a result that wasn’t implied by the text of the papyrus at all.

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First attempt at the replication. White-shelled eggs with (1) saffron and red wine (left) and (2) saffron and white wine (right). The brown eggs (not pictured) showed no appreciable colour change.

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Peaches, detail, showing characteristic long, slender leaves (left panel of those pictured at the top of the post).

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Dyed eggs sliced with shells on to look like apple slices.

My second mistake was to restrict the experiment to dying shells. I didn’t have a principled reason for doing this and the text itself didn’t suggest it. It was more or less force of habit. I’m just used to dyeing egg shells. That’s not to say it was a bad guess (even though I think it was wrong). What I should have done, however, was set up experiments dyeing all the parts of a boiled egg, because the recipe was vague on precisely this point. It doesn’t say what part of the egg is to be coated after you boil it.

Luckily, Lucia caught the mistake. After seeing my yellow Easter eggs, she suggested that I try slicing them to make them look more like what you might find on a plate at a dinner party. These sliced eggs didn’t come out too badly; and it also opened up the possibilities for experimenting. Once the yolks fell out, the imagination took over. It became clear how close the shape and visible texture of the sliced egg was to a slice of peach or apricot.

Once I coated the slices without the yoke and shell, it was immediately obvious.

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Peach slices, canned. Image from here.

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Boiled egg-white, soaked in white wine infused with saffron.

III. How to Make Eggs that Look Like Peaches

Materials:

• Red wine

• White wine

• Brown eggs

• White eggs

• Saffron (you’ll need lots—I got mine at a market pretty cheap)

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Procedure:

The set up for this experiment is pretty straightforward. It also got a bit messy, so best avoid nice clothes and linens.

1. I placed around 30 saffron stigmata in separate glass bowls and soaked them in approx. 10 ml of red or white wine. I used a lot of saffron—so much you could smell it even at an arm’s distance from the bowl. I might have gotten away with less.

2. I let the saffron soak in the wine for around 15 minutes at room temperature. If you don’t use a lot of saffron, let them soak longer.

3. At first, I tried brushing the wine and saffron onto the egg shells, masking half the egg with tape, brushing on the wine, letting them dry, and then painting on the other half. The difference, though, was so minor that I gave up and simply smeared the mixture onto the shells with my fingers without masking. This got me yellow eggs.

4. Lucia suggested slicing the eggs to hide the egg shape and give the impression of a fruit with a rind. It seemed even better to simply remove the shells altogether and try again.

5. After removing the shells, I rolled the eggs around in the wine and saffron.

6. I then sliced them and coated the slices with the saffron and wine mixture again. Sometimes, I removed a slice and left the yolk intact, dimpled with a pencil to look like a peach stone, so that the whole thing looked like something from the Pompeii frescoes.

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1. Adding wine to the saffron

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2. Letting the saffron soak in the wine

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3. Failed experiment: brushing on the saffron mixture

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4. Sliced egg with shell, resembling white-fleshed quince slices.

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5. Rolling eggs, shelled, in the wine and saffron mixture.

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6. Finished product: sliced, with yolk dimpled to look like a peach pit.

IV. Some Conclusions

I shouldn’t read too much into this experiment, but I can’t help but get excited about it. There is something about the process of replicating an ancient recipe that tempts a feeling of familiarity. It’s like being at their table.

I’d love to believe this experiment counts as a piece of evidence for culinary history, that it tells us people used to serve succulent peach slices at their symposia, maybe even with presentations like those we see in the Pompeian frescoes.

And maybe it’s a stretch, but I’d also like to think it adds something to a passage from Sextus Empiricus about yellow apples that always puzzled me:

“The phenomena that strike our senses seem to be complexes of sensations, just as the apple seems to be smooth, fragrant, sweet, and yellow.”

ἕκαστον τῶν φαινομένων ἡμῖν αἰσθητῶν ποικίλον ὑποπίπτειν δοκεῖ, οἷον τὸ μῆλον λεῖον εὐῶδες γλυκὺ ξανθόν.

Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.94

Maybe Sextus and Democritus went to the same kinds of parties.

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Why you probably shouldn’t invite Democritus to your dinner party

Dinner parties can be dull, even in ancient Greece. Democritus’ solution was to prank the hosts, eat lots of garlic, and try to sleep with everyone. No wonder he was called the laughing philosopher.

Here is all of his advice, some of it terrible (find the introvert, rub honey on their face, and tell them to lighten up), some not so bad (a cure for garlic breath), some that uses language I wouldn’t have expected (βινεῖν, στύειν, words discussed by sententiae antiquae). It’s almost certainly not by Democritus; still, it says something about how people might have imagined a night like this would go.

The text is included in the collection of Greek Magical Papyri, the edition of which is available online, with German translation, at the University of Heidelberg Library (vol 1) (vol 2). An English translation with notes is available at archive.org.

Democritus’ Party Tricks (paignia)

To make bronzeware look golden: mix unfired (i.e., native) sulfur with chalky earth and wipe it with it.
To make an egg like an apple: after boiling an egg, coat it with a mixture of saffron and wine.
To make it so that the cook can’t light the fire: put a house-leek plant on his stove.
To make it so that those who eat garlic don’t smell: bake some beetroot and eat it.
To make an old woman stop blathering and drinking so much: chop up some pine and toss it in her drink.
To make the painted gladiators fight. Smoke some hare’s head underneath them.
To make cold hors-d'oeuvres burn the person eating them. Soak squill in warm water and give it to him to wash his hands with. Relieve with oil.
To make those who have a hard time mingling more easy going. Give them gum with wine and honey to rub on their face.
To make those who drink a lot not get drunk. Eat baked pork lung.
To make those who have to walk home not get thirsty. Chug an egg beaten in wine.
To be able to fuck a lot. Grind up fifty small pine cones with two ladles of sweet wine and pepper corns and drink it.
To get hard whenever you want. Grind up pepper with honey and rub it on your thing.

Δημοκρίτου παίγνια·
Τὰ χαλκᾶ χρυσᾶ ποιῆσαι φαίνεσθαι· θεῖον ἄπυρον
μετὰ γῆς κρητηρίας μείξας ἔκμασσε.
Ὠὸν ὅμοιον μήλον γενέσθαι· ζέσας τὸ ὠὸν χρεῖε κρόκῳ
μείξας μετ’ οἴνου. Μάγειρον μὴ δύνασθαι τὴν πυρὰν
ἀνάψαι· βοτάνην ἀεί[ζω]ον θὲς αὐτοῦ εἰς τὴν ἑστίαν.
Φαγόντα σκόρδον μὴ ὄζειν· [ῥ]ίζας <σ>εύτλου ὀπτήσας φάγε.
Γραῦν μήτε πολλὰ λαλεῖν μήτε πολλὰ πίνειν· πίτυν
κόψας βάλε αὐτῆς εἰς τ[ὸ] κράμμα. Μονομάχας ἐζωγραφη-
μένους μάχεσθαι· ὑποκάτω αὐτῶν κάπνισον λαγοῦ κεφαλήν.
Ψυχρὰ τρώγοντα κατακαίεσθαι· σκίλλαν εἰς ὕδωρ χλιαρὸν
βρέξας δὸς αὐτῷ νίψασ[θ]αι. λύσις ἐλαίῳ. Τοὺς [μεμ]ει-
[γμ]ένους μόγις ε̣[ὖ] ποι[εῖ]ν̣· κόμι μετὰ οἴνου καὶ [μέλιτο]ς
δὸς εἰς τὴν ὄψιν μυρ[ίσα]σθαι. Πολλὰ πίνοντα καὶ μὴ με-
θύειν· χοιραῖον πνεύμονα ὀπτήσας φάγε. Ὁδοιποροῦντα
μὴ διψᾶν· ὠὸν <εἰς> οἶνον ἀνακόψας ῥόφα. Πολλὰ βι[ν]εῖν
δύνασθαι· στροβίλια πεντήκοντα μετὰ δύο κυά[θ]ων
γλυκέος καὶ κόκκους πεπέρεως τρίψας πίε. Στ[ύ]ειν,
ὅτε θέλεις· πέπερι μετὰ μέλιτος τρίψας χρῖέ σου τὸ πρᾶ̣γ̣μ̣α.

Papyri Graecae Magicae VII 168-186