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1 Introduction
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2 Translation
Nepualius, On Things According to Antipathy and Sympathy.
Since I know that you love learning and are ambitious in all things, most excellent Sextus, I endeavored to compile and write for you a book of sympathies and antipathies, not like those who have made compilations before, which contain many unbelievable and not quite truthful things, but only a few, and all of them coming to us through peíra (‘experience, experiment, proof’), so that from it you may learn my great experience and good will towards you. But since you are already a man adorned with all kinds of learning, it seems unnecessary to me to adduce philosophers, poets and diviners for proof that the greatest of treatments, through incantations (epōidaí), amulets (períhapta) and ointments (períkhristoi), heal through antipathy.
But let us begin with things though which sick animals heal themselves:
- Sick dogs eat green dog’s-tooth grass and vomit bile.
- Sick swine eat river crabs.
- A sick deer eats a crab.
- A sick lion eats a monkey.
- A sick hyena eats a dog puppy.
- A sick wolf eats earth.
- A sick panther drinks dog’s blood.
- A sick tiger eats human feces.
- A sick camel eats green oak leaves and vomits black bile.
- A sick monkey drinks its own urine.
- A sick ichneumon eats asps.
- A sick bear eats ants.
- A goat hit by an arrow eats dittany, and expels the arrow.
- A sick eagle eats a turtle.
- A sick crow (kórax) eats galingales.
- A sick heron eats a crab.
- A sick swan eats frogs.
- A sick leopard drinks blood of a wild goat.
- A sick cat eats flies.
- A sick tragélaphos (not the mythical ‘goat-stag’ but perhaps an antelope?) eats green olive shoots.
- A sick ibis drinks much sea water, vomits, and is no longer sick.
- Dim-sighted serpents eat fennel.
- Sick goats eat scammony or spurge.
- A sick crow (korṓnē) eats human feces.
- A sick lark eats dog’s-tooth grass and it likewise puts dog’s-tooth grass into its nest.
- A kite puts buckthorn (rhámnos) in.
- Foxes put leaves of squill into their dens, because of wolves.
- Ringdoves put leaves of laurel into their nest and so protect their chicks.
- A dim-sighted hawk (hiérax kírkos) …
- A dim-sighted vulture …
- Sick locusts eat olive leaves.
- A sick dove eats blue daisy, and the hawk spurge.
- A crow (korṓnē), vervain or sacred herb.
- Turtle-doves …
- Storks …
- Hawks …
- Hoopoes …
- Sparrows …
- Swans …
- Mouser, spotted lizard, because of scorpions.
- Lark, oak leaves.
- An owl …
- Serpent …
- Bats …
- Spotted lizards …
- Chaffinches …
- Turtle-doves …
- Swallows …
- Eagle …
- Thrush, myrtle.
- Bear …
- …
- …
- Domestic birds …
- …
- Hot blood of a goat dissolves a diamond.
- The skull of a cat …
- …
- Fire does not burn a salamander.
- A lion …
- Neither mice nor flies approach lion’s fat.
- …
- A lion is afraid of a rooster, especially a white one.
- …
- A lion …
- A dog …
- A dog …
- A dog …
- Roots of asphodel attract the crocodiles (that live) in Egypt.
- …
- …
- A horse …
- A horse …
- …
- …
- …
- A magnet stone draws iron.
- A wolf …
- …
- …
- …
- A lion …
- …
- …
- …
- …
SARTRIX 