And Theophrastus tells us, "The κόμαρος (as he calls it) is the tree which bears the arbutus berry."

There is question about the "Agen," a satyric drama, whether it was composed by Python, (and if by him whether he was a native of Catana or of Byzantium,) or by the king Alexander himself.

Then Laurentius says—"You, O Greeks, lay claim to a good many things, as either having given the names to them, or having been the original discoverers of them. But you do not know that Lucullus, the Roman general, who subdued Mithridates and Tigranes, was the first man who introduced this plant into Italy from Cerasus, a city of Pontus; and he it was who gave the fruit the Latin name of Cerasus, cherry, after the name of the city, as our historians relate."

Then Daphnis answers—"But there was a very celebrated man, Diphilus of Siphnos, many years more ancient than Lucullus, for he was born in the time of king Lysimachus, (who was one of the successors of Alexander,) and he speaks of cherries, saying, 'Cherries are good for the stomach, and juicy, but not very nutritious; if taken after drinking cold water they are especially wholesome; but the red and the Milesian are the best kinds, and are diuretic.'"

36. There is a fruit usually called the συκάμινον, which the people of Alexandria call the μόρον, in which they differ from every one else; but it has no connexion with the Egyptian

[[84]]fig, which some call συκόμορον, and which the natives scrape slightly with a knife, and then leave on the tree; and then when it has been tossed about by the wind, within three days it becomes ripe and fragrant, (especially if the wind is west,) and very good to eat, as there is something in it which is moderately cooling for people in a fever, when made up with oil of roses into a plaster, so as to be put upon the stomach, and it is no slight relief to the patient. Now the Egyptian sycaminus bears its fruit on the main stem, and not on the branches. But the sycaminus is a mulberry, a fruit mentioned by Æschylus in his Phrygians, where he says of Hector,

His heart was softer than a mulberry.

And in his "Cretan Women" he says of the brier—

As the full branch to earth is weigh'd
With mulberries, white and black and red.

And Sophocles has the lines—