[1580] Horace, B. i. Epist. 19, says the same; but in reality cummin produces no such effect.
[1581] M. Porcius Latro, a celebrated rhetorician of the reign of Augustus, a Spaniard by birth, and a friend and contemporary of the elder Seneca. His school was one of the most frequented at Rome, and he numbered among his scholars the poet Ovid. He died B.C. 4.
[1582] The son of a Roman senator, but descended from a noble family in Aquitanian Gaul. When proprætor of Gallia Celtica, he headed a revolt against Nero; but being opposed by Virginius Rufus, he slew himself at the town of Vesontio, now Besançon.
[1583] “Captationi” is suggested by Sillig as a preferable reading to “captatione,” which last would imply that it was Vindex himself who sought a place by this artifice, in the wills of others.
[1584] There would be but little difference, Fée observes, between this and the cummin of other countries, as it is a plant in which little change is effected by cultivation. Dioscorides, B. iii. c. 79, says that the cummin of Æthiopia (by Hippocrates called “royal cummin”) has a sweeter smell than the other kinds.
[1585] Fée is inclined to identify wild cummin, from the description of it given by Dioscorides, with the Delphinium consolida of Linnæus; but at the same time, he says, it is impossible to speak positively on the subject.
[1586] “Penicillis.”
[1587] The Ammi Copticum of modern botany.
[1588] The Æthiopian cummin, namely, which Pliny himself seems inclined to confound with ammi.
[1589] Or “horned” serpent. See B. viii. c. 35, and B. xi. c. 45.