416 MERGE TO GYRENE.

denarius*, seven of which, or eight drams, were equal to the English avoirdupois ounce, which was the same with the Roman.

For many years past (he continues) no silphium has been found in the Cyrenaica ; the owners of the land having thought it more profitable to turn their sheep and cattle into the pasture lands (where the silphium, as we have before mentioned, is produced) than to preserve the plant as formerly. One only stem of it (it is Pliny who speaks) has been found in my recollection, which was sent to the Emperor Nero. And of late no other laser has been brought to us than that which grows extensively in Persia, Media, and Armenia, and which is very inferior to that of the Cyrenaica, being at the same time adulterated with gum, sagapeurn, and pounded beans.

We learn from the same author that in the consulships of C. Valerius, and M. Herennius, thirty lbs. of laserpitium was brought into Rome, which seems to have been considered as a very fortunate occurrence ; and that Caesar, when dictator, at the commencement of the civil war, took from the public treasury, with the gold and silver which he carried away from it, an hundred and eleven pounds of the silphium (or laserpitium f) ; which proves how valuable the plant was at Rome, as, indeed, might be reasonably inferred from the circumstance of its being found in the treasury at all.

The first appearance of the silphium in the Cyrenaica is said by Pliny (on the authority of Greek writers) to have been occasioned * Ad pondus argenti denarii pensum.

t Most probably the laser or extract, which was the most valuable ; though Pliny’s word is laserpitium.