Silphium

Silphium (also known as laserwort or laser; Ancient Greek: σίλφιον, sílphion) is an unidentified plant that was used in classical antiquity as a seasoning, perfume, aphrodisiac, and medicine.^[1][2]

It was the 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 a picture of the plant. The valuable product was the plant's resin, called in Latin laserpicium, lasarpicium or laser (the words 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.^[3] It is commonly believed to be a relative of giant fennel in the genus Ferula.^[1][4][5] The extant plant Thapsia gummifera^[6] 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 the geographer Strabo.^[7]

Silphium was considered invaluable by all who held it. The BBC reports that the plant was sung about in Roman poems and songs, who considered it equivalent to its weight in gold.^[2] 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.^[8]

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 currently extant plants Thapsia gummifera,^[6] Ferula tingitana, Ferula narthex, Ferula drudeana, and Thapsia garganica have been suggested as possible identities.^{[1][4][5][9][10]} Ferula drudeana, an endemic species found in Turkey, is a candidate for silphium based on similarity of appearance in descriptions and production of a spice-like gum-resin with supposedly similar properties to silphium.^[11][5] However, F. drudeana belongs to a lineage from the southern Caspian Sea region, with no known connection to Eastern Libya.^[12]

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 celery.^[2]

The disappearance of silphium is considered the first extinction of a plant or animal species in recorded history.^[13] The cause of silphium's supposed extinction is not entirely known but numerous factors are suggested. Silphium had a remarkably narrow native range, about 125 by 35 miles (201 by 56 km), in the southern steppe of Cyrenaica (present-day eastern Libya).^[14] Overgrazing combined with overharvesting have long been cited as the primary factors that led to its extinction.^[3] However, recent research has challenged this notion, arguing instead that desertification in ancient Cyrenaica was the primary driver of silphium's decline.^[15]

Another theory is that when Roman provincial governors took over power from Greek colonists, they over-farmed 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.^[16] He reports inconsistencies in the information he received about this, however.^[17] This could suggest the plant is similarly sensitive to soil chemistry as huckleberries which, when grown from seed, are devoid of fruit.^[2]

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 second-generation can yield very unpredictable outcomes. This could have resulted in plants without fruits, when planted from seeds, instead of asexually reproducing through their roots.^[2]

Pliny reported that the last known stalk of silphium found in Cyrenaica was given to Emperor Nero "as a curiosity".^[3]

Many medical uses were ascribed to the plant.^[18] 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:^[19]

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.^[4][20]

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!"^[21]

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—Brevis pimentorum que in domo esse debeant ("A short list of condiments that should be in the home")—by a certain "Vinidarius", whose excerpts of Apicius^[a] survive in one 8th-century uncial manuscript. Vinidarius's dates may not be much earlier.^[22]

The Minoans probably used silphium as the visual reference for the hieroglyph psi (), meaning "plant." It resembles a central shoot flanked by two stalks.^[23] Minoan fetishes with this geometry are known as psi and phi type figurines, and are also designed for their letter-like shape. This glylph developed into the modern greek psi (Ψ).

Egyptian hieroglyphs for Libyan silphium have also been documented in archeological 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.^[24]

There has been some speculation about the connection between silphium and the traditional heart shape (♥).^[25] Silver coins from Cyrene of the 6th–5th centuries BCE bear a similar design, sometimes accompanied by a silphium plant, and is understood to represent its seed or fruit.^[26] Some plants in the family Apiaceae, such as Heracleum sphondylium, have heart-shaped indehiscent mericarps (a type of fruit).

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:

For it so happened that his maiden daughter was living in it. By the next day this maiden and all her girlish apparel had disappeared, and in the room were found images of the Dioscuri, a table, and silphium upon it.^[27]

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"^[28][29]).

In the Italian military heraldry, Il silfio d'oro reciso di Cirenaica ("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.^[30]

• 
  Italian coat of arms Il silfio d'oro reciso di Cirenaica
• 
  Silphium depicted on the arms of Italian Libya

Characters in Lindsey Davis's 1998 historical crime novel Two for the Lions travel from Rome to North Africa in search of Silphium.^[31]

• Necropolis of Cyrene

• Dalby, Andrew (2000). Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520227897.
• Herodotus. The Histories. II:161, 181, III:131, IV:150–65, 200–05.
• Pausanias. Description of Greece 3.16.1–3
• Pliny the Elder. Natural History. XIX:15 and XXII:100–06.
• Tatman, John. "Silphium: Ancient wonder drug?". Jencek's Ancient Coins & Antiquities. Archived from the original on 2007-03-30. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
• Theophrastus. Enquiry into plants and minor works on odours and weather signs, with an English translation by Sir Arthur Hort, bart (1916). Volume 1 (Books I–V) and Volume 2 (Books VI–IX) Volume 2 includes the index, which lists silphium (Greek σιλϕιον) on page 476, column 2, 2nd entry.

• Buttrey, Theodore V; MacPhee, Ian (1998). The coins from the sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone. The University Museum. ISBN 978-0-924171-48-2. OCLC 611613435.
• Fisher, Nick (1996). "Laser-Quests Unnoticed Allusions to Contraception in a Poet and a Princeps?". Classics Ireland. 3: 73–96. doi:10.2307/25528292. JSTOR 25528292.
• Gemmill, Chalmers L. (1966). "Silphium". Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 40 (4): 295–313. JSTOR 44447186. PMID 5912906. ProQuest 1296321392.
• Helbig, Maciej (2012). "Physiology and Morphology of σίλφιον in Botanical Works of Theophrastus". Scripta Classica (9): 41–48.
• Koerper, Henry; Kolls, A. L (April 1999). "The silphium motif adorning ancient libyan coinage: Marketing a medicinal plant". Economic Botany. 53 (2): 133–143. doi:10.1007/BF02866492. S2CID 32144481.
• Riddle, John M. (1997). "Silphium". Eve's Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Harvard University Press. pp. 44–46. ISBN 978-0-674-27026-8.
• Riddle, John M.; Estes, J. Worth; Russell, Josiah C. (1994). "Ever Since Eve... Birth Control in the Ancient World". Archaeology. 47 (2): 29–35. JSTOR 41770706. OCLC 5543506162.
• Tameanko, M. (April 1992). "The Silphium Plant: Wonder Drug of the Ancient World Depicted on Coins". Celator. 6 (4): 26–28.
• Tatman, J. L. (October 2000). "Silphium, Silver and Strife: A History of Kyrenaika and Its Coinage". Celator. 14 (10): 6–24.
• Wright, W. S. (February 2001). "Silphium Rediscovered". Celator. 15 (2): 23–24.
• William Turner, A New Herball (1551, 1562, 1568)
• Selivanova, Larisa (2018). "Растительный символ на монетах Кирены" [A Vegetation Symbol on Coins from Cyrene]. История (in Russian). 9 (2). doi:10.18254/S0002135-7-1.
• Asciutti, Valentina (2004). The Silphium plant: analysis of ancient sources (Thesis).

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Silphium (ancient plant).

• Contraception In Ancient Times: Use of Morning-After Pill by David W. Tschanz
• Silphion at Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages
• The Secret of the Heart
• Margotia gummifera
• Ferula tingitana