[542] The flower of the Inula Britannica, Fée says, is much more likely, from its peculiarities, to have merited a peculiar name, than that of the Rumex.
[543] Lipsius, in his Commentaries upon Tacitus, Ann. i. 63, has very satisfactorily shown that it did not derive its name from the islands of Britain, but from a local appellation, the name given by the natives to the marshy tracts upon the banks of the Ems, between Lingen and Covoerden, which are still known as the “Bretaasche Heyde.” Munting and Poinsinet de Sivry suggest that it may have received its name from being used as a strengthener of the teeth in their sockets, being compounded of the words tann, “tooth,” and brita, “to break.”
[544] And therefore comparatively unknown.
[545] In c. 33, et seq., of this Book.
[546] In the next Book.
[547] See the case of M. Agrippa, mentioned in B. xxiii. c. 27.
[548] Said, by Plutarch, to have been administered to him by his freedman Callisthenes, with the view of securing his affection
[549] Od. x. l. 302, et seq.
[550] Fée devotes a couple of pages to the vexata quæstio of the identification of this plant, and comes to the conclusion that the Moly of Homer, mentioned on the present occasion, and of Theophrastus, Ovid, and the poets in general is only an imaginary plant; that the white-flowered Moly of Dioscorides and Galen is identical with the Allium Dioscoridis of Sibthorp; and that the yellow-flowered Moly of the author of the Priapeia is not improbably the Allium Moly or magicum of Linnæus. Sprengel derives the name “Moly” from the Arabic, and identifies it with the Allium nigrum of Linnæus.
[551] Homer says that there is difficulty to men, but not to the gods.