[2828] As to the beers of the ancients, see B. xiv. c. 29. Very few particulars are known of them; but we learn from the Talmud, where it is called zeitham, that zythum was an Egyptian beverage made of barley, wild saffron, and salt, in equal parts. In the Mishna, the Jews are enjoined not to use it during the Passover.
[2829] “Spuma;” literally, “foam.”
[2830] A physician who lived, probably, at the end of the second or the beginning of the first century B.C., as he was one of the tutors of Heraclides of Erythræ. His definition of the pulse has been preserved by Galen, De Differ. Puls. B. iv. c. 10, and an anecdote of him is mentioned by Sextus Empiricus.
[2831] See end of B. ii.
[2832] A native of Mytilene, in the island of Lesbos, the earliest of the Æolian lyric poets. He flourished at the latter end of the seventh century B.C. Of his Odes only a few fragments, with some Epigrams, have come down to us.
[2833] In contradistinction to the fruits which hang from trees.
[2834] See B. xvii. c. 18.
[2835] In B. xii. cc. 60 and 61.
[2836] All this passage is found in Dioscorides, B. v. c. 1, who probably borrowed it from the same sources as our author.
[2837] Fée remarks, that all the statements here made as to the medicinal properties of the vine are entirely unfounded, except that with reference to the bark of the vine: as it contains a small quantity of tannin, it might possibly, in certain cases, arrest hæmorrhage.