Perhaps the great rarity of such archæological remains may serve as some apology for the present notice of some specimens of ancient Greek medical vessels or vases. Besides, the vases which I wish to describe are interesting in other points of view. They are all of them intended to contain one and the same drug, as shown by the inscriptions on their exterior; this drug was derived by the ancient Greeks chiefly from Hindostan,—one of the many points of evidence of the former freedom and frequency of the traffic between the south of Europe and India; and at the present day the same drug is still employed extensively and successfully, by the native practitioners of the East, for the very purposes for which it was, in former times, used by the medical practitioners of Greece.
The drug to which I allude is the Indian Lycium or Lykion, the ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΙΝΔΙΚΟΝ of Dioscorides. In modern collections and writings, I know of four ancient vases or drug-bottles intended to contain this valued eye-medicine. If our museums, however, were properly searched, perhaps various other Greek vases, for the same or for similar medicines, would be detected. The four specimens of bottles or vases for Lycium, to which I have adverted, are the following:—
1. In the collection of Greek antiquities contained in the British Museum is a small vase, made of lead, and of the exact form and size represented in Plate, Fig. 1. The vase is of a sub-ovoid form, and is somewhat above an inch in height, and about three quarters of an inch in breadth. An inscription, preceded by the ornament of a small tripod, encircles the middle of the vase. The inscription is in Greek letters, of which the following is a correct copy:—
This inscription may be read as ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΠΑΡΑΜΟΥΣΑΙΟΥ—the Lycium of Paramusaeus—as suggested to me by Mr. Birch, who first had the kindness to direct my attention to this vase, or, and perhaps more correctly, it may be rendered ΛΥΚΙΟΝ ΠΑΡΑ ΜΟΥΣΑΙΟΥ—the Lycium sold by Musaeus. Mr. Birch informs me that he thinks he met with the name of Paramusaeus as a medical practitioner in Fabricius’ Bibliotheca Græca. I have not been fortunate enough to detect the name in question, notwithstanding some considerable search through that learned work. On the other hand, the name of Museus, or Musaeus, is well known in Athenian biography. (See Fabricius’ Bibliotheca, vol. i. pp. 120-133.) I should, perhaps, have already stated, that the vase in question was sent to the British Museum, among a collection of antiquities from Athens.
2. Through the kindness of M. Sichel of Paris, I am enabled to give, in Plate, Fig. 2, an engraving of a second Lycium jar, not hitherto published, of nearly the same dimensions as the specimen contained in the British Museum. This second specimen is not made of lead, but of pottery-ware. It bears upon its side the inscription:—
HΡΑΚΛΕΙ°Υ
ΛΥΚ°N
This inscription—“the Lycium of Heracleus”—has the word ΛΥΚΟΝ spelt without the I; errors of this kind being, as is well known, very common in old Greek and Roman letterings.