_Love Charm from a Foal's Forehead_ (Vol. viii., p. 292.).--Your
correspondent H. P. will find the love charm, consisting of a fig-shaped
excrescence on a foal's forehead, and called _Hippomanes_, alluded to by
Juvenal, _Sat._ VI. 133.:
"Hippomanes, carmenque loquar, coctumque venenum,
Privignoque datum?"
And again, 615.:
"ut avunculus ille Neronis,
Cui totam tremuli frontem Cæsonia pulli
Infudit."
It was supposed that the dam swallowed this excrescence immediately on the
birth of her foal, and that, if prevented doing so, she lost all affection
for it.
However, the name Hippomanes was applied to two other things. Theocritus
(II. 48.) uses it to signify some herb which incites horses to madness if
they eat of it.
And again, Virgil (_Geor._ III. 280.), Propertius, Tibullus, Ovid, &c.,
represent it as a certain _virus_:
"Hippomanes cupidæ stillat ab inguine equæ."
The subject is an unpleasant one, and H. P. is referred for farther
information to Pliny, VIII. 42. s. 66., and XXVIII. 11. s. 80.