+THE SISTERS OF OLD+.
“What are these,
So withered, and so wild in their attire;
That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,
And yet are on’t?”——MACBETH.
There is no reason to doubt that the ancients were, in a manner,
acquainted with some of the narcotics known to us, although they did
not indulge in them as stimulants or luxuries. The antiquarian, it is
true, has failed to unearth the tobacco-box of Claudius, or the pipe of
Nero—however much the latter may have been given to smoke. And no one
has as yet discovered a snuff-box bearing the initials of Marc Antony,
whence the taper fingers of Egypt’s queen drew a pinch of Princess’
Mixture or Taddy’s Violet, gazing with loving eyes on Antony the while.
In those remote times the hemp and the poppy were not unknown; and
there is reason for believing that in Egypt the former was used as a
potion for soothing and dispelling care.
Herodotus informs us that the Scythians cultivated hemp, and converted
it into linen cloth, resembling that made from flax; and he adds also,
that “when, therefore, the Scythians have taken some seed of this
hemp, they creep under the cloths, and then put the seed on the red hot
stones; but this being put on smokes, and produces such a steam, that
no Grecian vapour-bath would surpass it. The Scythians, transported
with the vapour, shout aloud.”[3] The same author also states that the
Massagetæ, dwelling on an island of the Araxes, have discovered “trees
that produce fruit of a peculiar kind, which the inhabitants, when they
meet together in companies, and have lit a fire, throw on the fire
as they sit round in a circle; and that by inhaling the fumes of the
burning fruit that has been thrown on, they become intoxicated by the
odour, just as the Greeks do by wine, and that the more fruit is thrown
on, the more intoxicated they become, until they rise up to dance, and
betake themselves to singing.”[4]
Homer also makes Helen administer to Telemachus, in the house of
Menelaus, a potion prepared from _nepenthes_, which made him forget his
sorrows.
“Meanwhile with genial joy to warm the soul,
Bright Helen mix’d a mirth-inspiring bowl;
Temper’d with drugs of sovereign use to assuage
The boiling bosom of tumultuous rage;
To clear the cloudy front of wrinkled care,
And dry the tearful sluices of despair;
Charm’d with that virtuous draught, the exalted mind
All sense of woe delivers to the wind:
Though on the blazing pile his parent lay,
Or a loved brother groan’d his life away,
Or darling son, oppress’d by ruffian force,
Fell breathless at its feet a mangled corse;
From morn to eve, impassive and serene
The man entranced would view the deathful scene.
These drugs, so friendly to the joys of life,
Bright Helen learn’d from Thone’s imperial wife,
Who sway’d the sceptre where prolific Nile
With various simples clothes the fatten’d soil.
With wholesome herbage mixed, the direful bane
Of vegetable venom taints the plain;
From Pæon sprung, their patron-god imparts
To all the Pharian race his healing arts.”
POPE’S _Homer’s Odyssey_, b. iv.
Diodorus Siculus states that the Egyptians laid much stress on the
circumstance that the plant used by Helen had been given her by a woman
of Egyptian Thebes, whence they argued that Homer must have lived
amongst them, since the women of Thebes were celebrated for possessing
a secret whereby they could dissipate anger or melancholy. This secret
is supposed to have been a knowledge of the narcotic properties of
hemp. The plant was known to the Romans, and largely used by them in
the time of Pliny for the manufacture of cordage, and there is scarce a
doubt that they were acquainted with its other properties. Galen refers
to the intoxicating power of hemp, for he relates that in his time it
was customary to give hemp-seed to the guests at banquets as a promoter
of hilarity and enjoyment. Slow poisons and secret poisoning was an
art with which the Romans were not at all unfamiliar. What the medium
was through which they committed these criminal acts, can only be
conjectured from the scanty information remaining. Hemp, or opium, or
both, may have had some share in the work, since the poppy was sacred
to Somnus, and known to possess narcotic properties.
The latter plant is one of the earliest described. Homer speaks of
the poppy growing in gardens, and it was employed by Hippocrates, the
father of physic, who even particularizes two kinds, the black and the
white, and used the extract of opium so extensively, as to be condemned
by his contemporary Diagoras. Dioscorides and Pliny also make mention
of it; and from their time, it has been so commonly used, as to be
incorporated in all the materia medicas of subsequent medical writers.
Plutarch tells us that a poison was administered to Aratus of Sicyon,
not speedy and violent, but of that kind which at first occasions a
slow heat in the body, with a slight cough, and then gradually brings
on consumption and a weakness of intellect. One time when Aratus spat
up blood, he said, “This is the effect of royal friendship.” And
Quintilian, in his Declamations, speaks of this poison in such a manner
as proves that it must then have been well known.
The infamous acts of Locusta are noticed by Tacitus, Suetonius, and
Juvenal. This poisoner seems to have been a type of such a character as
the traditions of a later age embodied in the person and under the name
of Lucretia Borgia.
Agrippina, being desirous of getting rid of Claudius, but not daring
to despatch him suddenly, and yet wishing not to leave him time
sufficient to make new regulations concerning the succession to the
throne, made choice of a poison which should deprive him of his reason
and gradually consume him. This she caused to be prepared by an
expert poisoner, named Locusta, who had been condemned to death for
her infamous actions, but saved that she might be employed as a state
engine. The poison was given to the emperor in a dish of mushrooms,
but as, on account of his irregular manner of living, it did not
produce the desired effect, it was assisted by some of a stronger
nature. We are also further told that this Locusta prepared the drug
wherewith Nero despatched Britannicus, the son of Messalina, whom his
father, Claudius, wished to succeed him on the throne. As this poison
occasioned only a dysentery, and was too slow in its operation, the
emperor compelled Locusta, by blows, and by threatening her with death,
to prepare in his presence one more powerful. It was first tried on
a kid, but as the animal did not die till the end of five hours, she
boiled it a little longer, until it instantaneously killed a pig to
which it had been given, and this poison despatched Britannicus as soon
as he had tasted it. For this service the emperor pardoned Locusta,
rewarded her liberally, and gave her pupils, whom she was to instruct
in her art, in order that it might not be lost.
The pupils of Locusta have not left us, however, the secret which their
mistress confided to them. The demand made of the apothecary in “Romeo
and Juliet” would have suited Nero’s case, in the latter instance.
“Let me have
A dram of poison; such soon speeding geer
As will disperse itself through all the veins,
That the life-weary taker may fall dead;
And that the trunk may be discharged of breath
As violently, as hasty powder fired
Doth hurry from the fatal cannon’s mouth.”
What connection the narcotic hemp had with the famous oracle of
Delphi is not altogether certain, but it has been supposed, and such
supposition contains nothing of heresy in these days, that the ravings
of the Pythia were the consequences of a good dose of haschish, or
bang. The non-classical readers will allow us to inform them, and the
classical permit us to remind them, that the oracle at Delphi was
the most celebrated in all Greece. That it was related of old, that
a certain shepherd, tending his flocks on Mount Parnassus, observed,
that the steam issuing from a hole in the rock seemed to inspire his
goats, and cause them to frisk about in a marvellous manner. That this
same shepherd was tempted to peep into the hole himself, and the fumes
rising therefrom filled him with such ecstacy, that he gave vent to
wild and extravagant expressions, which were regarded as prophetical.
This circumstance becoming known, the place was revered, and thereon
a temple was afterwards erected to Apollo, and a priestess appointed
to deliver the oracles. This priestess of Apollo, Pythia, was seated
over the miraculous cavity upon a tripod, or three-legged stool, and
the fumes arising were supposed to fill her with inspiration, and
she delivered, in bad verses, the oracles of the deity. During the
inspiration, her eyes sparkled, her hair stood erect, and a shivering
ran over the whole body. Under the convulsions thus produced, with loud
howlings and cries, she delivered the messages, which were carefully
noted down by an attendant priest. Plutarch states, that one of the
priestesses was thrown into such an excessive fury, that not only those
who came to consult the oracle, but the priests in attendance, were
so terrified, that they forsook her and fled; and that the fit was so
violent, that she continued several days in agony, and finally died.
It has been believed that these fumes, instead of proceeding from the
earth, were produced by the burning of some narcotic herb, probably
hemp. Who shall decide?
In later times “bang” is referred to in the “Arabian Nights.” In one
of the tales, two ladies are in conversation, and one enquires of the
other, “If the queen was not much in the wrong not to love so amiable
a prince?” To which the other replied, “Certainly, I know not why she
goes out every night and leaves him alone. Is it possible that he does
not perceive it?” “Alas!” says the first, “how would you have him to
perceive it? She mixes every evening with his drink the juice of a
certain herb, which makes him sleep so sound all night, that she has
time to go where she pleases, and as day begins to appear, she comes to
him again, and awakes him by the smell of something she puts under his
nose.”
The Caliph Haroun al Raschid indulged too in “bang,” and although
somewhere we have seen this word rendered “henbane,” we still adhere
to the “bang” of the text, and think the evidence is in favour of the
Indian hemp. Further accounts of the early history of this plant we
will not however forestal, as it will occur more appropriately when we
come to speak of it in particular. Henbane has been long enough known;
but it has always had the misfortune either of a positive bad name, or
no one would speak much in its favour, and therefore it has never risen
in the world.
The lettuce, which has not been known to us three hundred years, was
also known to the ancients, and its narcotic properties recognized.
Dioscorides writes of it, and so also Theophrastus. It is referred
to by Galen, and, if we mistake not, spoken of by Pliny. It was
certainly wild, in some of its species, on the hills of Greece, and was
cultivated for the tables of the salad-loving Greeks and Romans. It had
been better that some of them had spent more of their time in eating
lettuce salads, and by that means had less time to spare for other
occupations of a far more reprehensible kind.
The “nepenthes” of Homer has already been shown to have found
a representative in hemp. There have also been claims made for
considering it as the crocus, or the stigmas of that flower known to us
as saffron. Pliny states that it has the power of allaying the fumes of
wine, and preventing drunkenness; and it was taken in drink by great
winebibbers, to enable them to drink largely without intoxication.
Its properties are of a peculiar character, causing, in large doses,
fits of immoderate laughter. The evidence in favour of this being the
true “nepenthes” is, however, we consider very incomplete, and not so
satisfactory, by any means, as that given on behalf of the Indian hemp.
When the Roman soldiers retreated from the Parthians, under the command
of Antony, Plutarch narrates of them that they suffered great distress
for want of provisions, and were urged to eat unknown plants. Among
others, they met with a herb that was mortal; he that had eaten of it
lost his memory and his senses, and employed himself wholly in turning
about all the stones he could find, and, after vomiting up bile,
fell down dead. Attempts to unravel the mysteries of this plant have
ended, in some cases at least, in referring it to the belladonna, a
plant common enough in these our days, and known to possess poisonous
properties of a narcotico-acrid character.
An analogous circumstance occurred in the retreat of the Ten Thousand,
as related by Xenophon. Near Trebizond were a number of beehives, and
as many of the soldiers as ate of the honeycombs became senseless, and
were seized with vomiting and diarrhœa, and not one of them could stand
erect. Those who had swallowed but little looked very like drunken men,
those who ate much were like madmen, and some lay as if dying; and
thus they lay in such numbers, as on a field of battle after a defeat.
And the consternation was great; yet no one was found to have died;
all recovered their senses about the same hour on the following day;
and on the third or fourth day thereafter, they rose up as if they had
suffered from the drinking of poison.
This poisonous property of the honey is said to be derived by the bees
from the flowers of a species of rhododendron (_Azalea pontica_), all
of which possess narcotic properties.
Supposing that blind old Homer—if ever there was an old Homer, and if
blind, no matter—knew the secret of Egyptian Thebes, and the power
of the narcotic hemp, and yet never smoked a hubble-bubble, it is
of little consequence, except to the Society of Antiquaries, and
certainly makes no difference to Homer now. Although Diagoras condemned
Hippocrates for giving too much opium to his patients, we are not
informed whether it was administered in the shape of “Tinctura opii,”
or “Confectio opii,” or “Extractum opii,” or “Godfrey’s cordial,” or
“Paregoric elixir.” The discovery would not lengthen our own lives,
and therefore we do not repine. We think that we have some consolation
left, in that we are wiser than Homer or Hippocrates in respect of that
particular vanity, called “shag tobacco,” which, we venture to suggest,
neither of those venerable sages ever indulged in during the period of
their natural lives. And although Herodotus found the Scythians using,
in a strange manner, the tops of the hemp plant, he never got so far
as Kamtschatka, and therefore never saw a man getting drunk upon a
toadstool. If he had ever seen it, he had never slept till he had told
it to that posterity which he has left us to enlighten.