Silphium

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Ancient silver coin from Cyrene depicting a stalk of silphium

Silphium (also known as laserwort or laser; Ancient Greek: Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Translit) is an unidentified plant that was used in classical antiquity as a seasoning, perfume, aphrodisiac, and medicine.<ref name="Tatman"/><ref name="BBC2017">Template:Cite web</ref>

It was an essential item of trade from the ancient North African city of Cyrene, and was so critical to the Cyrenian economy that most of their coins bore an image of the plant. The valuable product was the plant's resin, called in Latin laserpicium, lasarpicium, or laser (Laserpitium and Laser were used by botanists to name genera of aromatic plants, but the silphium plant is not believed to belong to these genera).

The exact identity of silphium is unclear. It was claimed to have become extinct in Roman times,<ref name="PlinyXIX"/> but is commonly believed to be a relative of giant fennel in the genus Ferula.<ref name="Tatman">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Straight Dope">Did the ancient Romans use a natural herb for birth control? Template:Webarchive, The Straight Dope, October 13, 2006</ref><ref name="National Geographic">Template:Cite news</ref> The extant plant Thapsia gummifera<ref name="Amigues">Template:Cite journal</ref> has been suggested as another possibility. Another theory is that it was simply a high-quality variety of asafoetida, a common spice in the Roman Empire. The two spices were considered the same by many Romans, including geographer Strabo.Template:Sfn

Silphium was considered invaluable by all who held it. The plant was sung about by Roman poets and singers, who considered it equivalent to its weight in gold.<ref name="BBC2017" /> Historically, Pliny the Elder blamed silphium's valuation on "tax-farmers", and Julius Caesar directly registered silphium as "1500 pounds of laser" in the Roman treasury.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Identity and extinction

A coin of Magas of Cyrene Template:Circa: the reverse has silphium and small crab symbols

The identity of silphium is highly debated. Without a surviving sample, no genetic analysis can be made. It is generally considered to belong to the genus Ferula as an extinct or living species. The extant plants Thapsia gummifera,<ref name="Amigues"/> Ferula tingitana, Ferula narthex, Ferula drudeana, and Thapsia garganica have been suggested as possible identities.<ref name="Tatman"/><ref name="Straight Dope"/><ref name="National Geographic" /><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Ferula drudeana, an endemic species found in Turkey, is considered a strong candidate for silphium based on several unusual shared features, such as the plant morphology, yellow foliage of mature plants, slow growth, resistance to cultivation from seed, and phytochemistry, including its production of an aromatic, spice-like gum resin with properties similar to those reported for silphium.<ref name="Miski">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="National Geographic" /> However, F. drudeana belongs to a lineage from the southern Caspian Sea region with no known connection to eastern Libya.<ref name = sb2018>Template:Cite journal</ref> This species is also considered highly imperiled, with few surviving populations, and threats posed by overharvesting for use as an aphrodisiac.<ref name="Miski" />

Theophrastus mentioned silphium as having thick roots covered in black bark, about one cubit (48 cm) long, with a hollow stalk, similar to fennel, and golden leaves like those of celery.<ref name="BBC2017"/>

Weighing and loading of silphium at Cyrene

The disappearance of silphium is considered to be the first extinction of a plant or animal species in recorded history.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The cause of silphium's supposed extinction is not entirely known, but numerous factors are suggested. Silphium had a remarkably narrow native range, about Template:Convert, in the southern steppe of Cyrenaica (present-day eastern Libya).<ref>"Off this tract is the island of Platea, which the Cyrenaeans colonized. Here too, upon the mainland, are Port Menelaus and Aziris, where the Cyrenaeans once lived. Silphium begins to grow in this region, extending from the island of Platea on the one side to the mouth of the Syrtis on the other." (Herodotus, iv.168–198 on-line text Template:Webarchive)</ref> Overgrazing combined with overharvesting have long been cited as the primary factors that led to its extinction.<ref name="PlinyXIX">Pliny, XIX, Ch.15 Template:Webarchive</ref> Recent research has challenged this notion, though, arguing instead that desertification in ancient Cyrenaica was the primary driver of silphium's decline.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Another theory is that when Roman provincial governors took over from Greek colonists, they overfarmed silphium and rendered the soil unable to yield the type that was said to be of such medicinal value. Theophrastus wrote in Enquiry into Plants that the type of Ferula specifically referred to as "silphium" was odd in that it could not be cultivated.<ref>Theophrastus, III.2.1, VI.3.3</ref> He reports inconsistencies in the information he received about this, however.<ref>Theophrastus, VI.3.5</ref> This could suggest the plant is similarly sensitive to soil chemistry as huckleberries, which when grown from seed, are devoid of fruit.<ref name="BBC2017"/>

Similar to the soil theory, another theory holds that the plant was a hybrid, which often results in very desired traits in the first generation, but hybrids are often sterile, so it is possible that silphium could not be propagated from seeds at all (which would indeed make cultivation considerably more difficult), but instead only asexually through their roots.<ref name="BBC2017"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Pliny reported that the last known stalk of silphium found in Cyrenaica was given to Emperor Nero "as a curiosity".<ref name="PlinyXIX"/>

Ancient medicine

Many medical uses were ascribed to the plant.<ref name="PlinyXXII">Pliny, XXII, Ch. 49 Template:Webarchive</ref> It was said that it could be used to treat cough, sore throat, fever, indigestion, aches and pains, warts, and all kinds of maladies. Hippocrates wrote:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

When the gut protrudes and will not remain in its place, scrape the finest and most compact silphium into small pieces and apply as a cataplasm.

The plant may also have functioned as a contraceptive and abortifacient.<ref name="Straight Dope"/><ref name=Riddle>Template:Cite book</ref>

Culinary uses

Silphium was used in Graeco-Roman cooking, notably in recipes presented in Apicius. Some historians have suggested that its use, particularly in the North African region of its origin, was extensive:

Not quite as ubiquitous as liquamen, but just as necessary in the Roman kitchen, was the herb silphium...Life in Cyrenaica revolved around [silphium] to such an extent that the dramatist Antiphanes, in the fourth century BC, made one of his characters groan: "I will not sail back to the place from which we were all carried away, for I want to say goodbye to all—horses, silphium, chariots, silphium stalks, steeple-chasers, silphium leaves, and silphium juice!"<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Long after its claimed extinction, silphium continued to be mentioned in lists of aromatics copied one from another, until it makes perhaps its last appearance in the list of spices that the Carolingian cook should have at hand—Template:Lang ("A short list of condiments that should be in the home")—by a certain "Vinidarius", whose excerpts of ApiciusTemplate:Efn survive in one eighth-century uncial manuscript. Vinidarius's dates may not be much earlier.<ref>Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, Anthea Bell, tr. The History of Food, revised ed. 2009, p. 434.</ref>

Hieroglyphs and symbols for silphium

Evans's 1921 description of silphium hieroglphys at Knossos
Evans's 1921 description of silphium hieroglphys at Knossos

The Minoans probably used silphium as the visual reference for the hieroglyph psi (), meaning "plant". It resembles a central shoot flanked by two stalks.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Minoan fetishes with this geometry are known as psi and phi type figurines, and are also designed for their letter-like shape. This glyph developed into the modern Greek psi (Ψ).

Egyptian hieroglyphs for Libyan silphium have also been documented in archaeological publications as a balm ingredient that must be dehulled and which produces a sap. In one record, it appears similar to the hieroglyph for branch (𓆱), written to be read from left to right.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

File:Cyrenecoin.jpg
Ancient Cyrenean silver coin depicting a silphium seed or fruit

Some speculation exists about the connection between silphium and the traditional heart shape (♥).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Silver coins from Cyrene of the 6th to 5th centuries BCE bear a similar design, sometimes accompanied by a silphium plant, and is understood to represent its seed or fruit.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> Some plants in the family Apiaceae, such as Heracleum sphondylium, have heart-shaped indehiscent mericarps (a type of fruit).

Drawing of Heracleum sphondylium, showing its heart-shaped mericarp

Contemporary writings help tie silphium to sexuality and love. Silphium appears in Pausanias' Description of Greece in a story of the Dioscuri staying at a house belonging to Phormion, a Spartan:

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Silphium as laserpicium makes an appearance in a poem (Catullus 7) of Catullus to his lover Lesbia (though others have suggested that the reference here is, instead, to silphium's use as a treatment for mental illness, tying it to the "madness of love"<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>).

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Heraldry

In the Italian military heraldry, Template:Lang ("Silphium of Cyrenaica, smoothly cut and printed in gold; in blazon: silphium couped or of Cyrenaica") is the symbol granted to units that distinguished themselves in the Western Desert Campaign in North Africa during World War II.<ref>"Si distinsero i soldati del 28° Reggimento Fanteria "Pavia" il cui scudo reca nel terzo quarto una pianta di silfio d'oro reciso e sormontata da una stella d'argento"." (Gaetano Arena, Inter eximia naturae dona: il silfio cirenaico fra ellenismo e tarda antichità, 2008:13</ref>

Characters in Lindsey Davis's 1998 historical crime novel Two for the Lions travel from Rome to North Africa in search of silphium.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

See also

Notes

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References

Footnotes

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Further reading

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