The Greek word pharmakon does not mean medicine.
It means the thing that works on the body, and the ancient Greek tradition refused to distinguish between the medicine and the poison in the way that the contemporary pharmaceutical tradition does, because the ancient Greek tradition understood that the distinction was not a property of the substance but a property of the dose and the intention. The same plant prepared in the same way could heal or kill depending on the quantity administered and the condition of the person who received it. The herbalist who knew this distinction was the herbalist who possessed the specific knowledge that the ancient tradition called pharmacological: the knowledge of what a substance did, at what dose, to what body, under what conditions.
The word pharmakon traveled from the ancient Greek into the modern world through the Latin pharmacum and produced the English words pharmacy, pharmaceutical, pharmacology: the entire vocabulary of the contemporary science of drug action was born from the single ancient Greek word that refused to separate the medicine from the poison. The contemporary pharmacist who dispenses the prescription that can kill at the wrong dose is the direct institutional descendant of the ancient Greek herbalist whose specific knowledge was the knowledge of the threshold between the therapeutic and the toxic.
This is the tradition that Hekate governed and that Circe practiced.
Hekate and the Liminal Theology
Hekate’s specific character in the ancient theological tradition is not the character of the witch goddess that the medieval and contemporary popular traditions have constructed from her, though the construction was not entirely without foundation. She was the goddess of the liminal: the specific divine being who presided over the thresholds between states of existence, between conditions of being, between the organized and the unorganized, between the known and the unknown.
The specific thresholds that Hekate governed were the thresholds that the ancient world identified as the most dangerous and most consequential: the crossroads where three or more roads met, the threshold of the house, the boundary between the city and the land outside it, the boundary between the living and the dead. These were the specific locations where the organized structure of the human world was most directly in contact with what lay outside it, where the civic order gave way to the wild, where the living community gave way to the realm of the dead, where the safety of the enclosed space gave way to the exposed intersection of multiple routes each leading toward a different outcome.
The specific offerings that the ancient tradition prescribed for Hekate were the offerings of the threshold: the Hekate’s suppers, the deipna Hekates, left at the crossroads at the new moon when the darkness was most complete and the goddess’s presence at the liminal spaces was most strongly felt. The specific foods of the offering, the eggs and fish and garlic and cheese and the sweepings of the household floor, were the foods whose specific character placed them at the boundary between the organized domestic world and the wild and uncanny world outside it: the garlic whose powerful smell the ancient tradition associated with the protective warding of evil spirits, the sweepings that carried the accumulated trace of the household’s life at its threshold.
The Hesiodic tradition gave Hekate a specific honor that distinguished her from the other divine beings who were superseded by the Olympian order when Zeus came to power: Zeus preserved Hekate’s specific honor from the pre-Olympian cosmological order, granting her the specific privilege of operating across all three realms, the sky and the earth and the sea, and the specific prerogative of granting or withholding success in any domain where the human being sought the divine assistance. The Hesiodic Hekate was not a malevolent or a marginal deity: she was the specific divine being whose specific character as the presider over the liminal gave her the specific prerogative that no other Olympian had, the capacity to move between the organized categories of the cosmic structure rather than being defined by one of them.
The botanical tradition associated with Hekate was the botanical tradition of the plants that grew at the liminal locations where her presence was strongest: the yew that grew in the cemetery and whose specific toxic properties made it the tree most directly associated with the boundary between the living and the dead, the aconite whose specific violent toxicity gave it the specific ancient associations with Hekate’s more dangerous aspects, and the hecateion, the plants of the Hekate sanctuary, whose specific pharmacological properties reflected the specific liminal character of the divine being they were associated with.
The pharmacological knowledge that Hekate’s priests and priestesses maintained was the knowledge of the plants that operated at the boundaries the goddess governed: the plants that in large doses crossed the boundary from consciousness to unconsciousness, from life to death, from the ordinary waking state to the altered state that the ancient tradition understood as the condition of the divine encounter. The pharmacological tradition and the theological tradition were not separate: the goddess of the liminal governed the plants that operated at the biological liminal, and the herbalist who knew those plants was the person who had access to the goddess’s specific knowledge.
Circe and the Pharmacological Practice
Circe in the Odyssey is the figure in the ancient literary tradition who most completely represents the specific intellectual character of the pharmacological practitioner: the person whose specific knowledge of what specific plants did to specific bodies at specific doses gave her the specific power that the ancient tradition attributed to her.
Homer describes Circe’s preparations with the Greek word pharmakon: the thing that works on the body, the preparation whose specific action was the specific action that the pharmacological knowledge had identified as the appropriate action for the specific purpose. When Circe transformed Odysseus’s companions into swine, she was not performing a supernatural act in any sense that the ancient pharmacological tradition could not account for: she was administering a preparation whose specific pharmacological properties produced the specific behavioral and physiological effects that the transformation description encoded in the mythological register.
The specific plants that the ancient tradition associated with Circe’s practice were the plants whose specific pharmacological properties were the properties that the transformation narrative required: the mandrake whose specific tropane alkaloid content produced the specific hallucinogenic and anesthetic effects that the ancient tradition documented, the henbane whose specific scopolamine content produced the specific disorienting and hallucinogenic effects that made it among the most powerful of the ancient pharmacological agents, and the combination of these and related plants in the specific preparations that the ancient herbalist tradition maintained as the pharmacological knowledge of the effects of the Solanaceae family.
The moly that Hermes gives Odysseus as the specific antidote to Circe’s preparations, the white-flowered plant with the black root that Homer describes, has been identified by the contemporary botanical tradition as the snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis, whose specific pharmacological properties include the compound galantamine, a cholinesterase inhibitor that the contemporary pharmaceutical tradition now uses in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The specific ancient knowledge that the snowdrop was the antidote to the effects of the anticholinergic alkaloids of the Solanaceae was the pharmacological knowledge that the ancient tradition encoded in the mythological narrative of Hermes giving Odysseus the specific plant that would counteract Circe’s pharmakon.
The pharmacological accuracy of the moly identification, if it is accepted, makes the Odyssey passage one of the oldest surviving descriptions of a specific drug interaction: the anticholinergic alkaloids of the henbane and mandrake preparation producing specific physiological effects, and the cholinesterase inhibitor of the snowdrop counteracting those effects by the specific mechanism that the contemporary pharmacological tradition has identified. Homer’s Circe was not a magical sorceress. She was a pharmacologist.
The Dittany of Crete
Origanum dictamnus, the dittany of Crete, is the plant whose specific combination of the endemic Cretan distribution and the extraordinary ancient reputation for healing properties has made it among the most thoroughly researched of the ancient Greek medicinal plants in the contemporary botanical and pharmacological literature.
The plant grows almost exclusively on the steep limestone cliffs of the Cretan mountain ranges, primarily in the White Mountains and the Dikti range, at elevations where the combination of the specific limestone substrate and the specific microclimate of the exposed cliff face produces the specific growing conditions that the plant requires. Its distribution in the wild is limited to these specific cliff habitats, and the historical practice of harvesting wild dittany from the Cretan cliff faces, which required the specific skills of the climber rather than the ordinary herbalist, gave the plant its specific rarity value and its specific ancient reputation as the herb worth the extraordinary effort required to obtain it.
The ancient tradition’s most celebrated account of the dittany’s healing properties is the account in Virgil’s Aeneid, where Aeneas is wounded by an arrow and the goddess Venus descends to heal him with dittany gathered from the Cretan mountains: the goddess herself harvested the plant, and the specific healing that followed, the arrow drawn out and the wound closed and the pain relieved, was the specific healing that the ancient tradition consistently attributed to the dittany’s unique pharmacological properties.
The contemporary pharmacological research on Origanum dictamnus has identified specific antimicrobial and antioxidant compounds in the plant’s essential oil whose specific activities are consistent with the ancient healing claims: the specific combination of the carvacrol and thymol content of the dittany’s essential oil, which are among the most potent naturally occurring antimicrobial agents identified in the botanical pharmacopoeia, and the specific anti-inflammatory activities of the plant’s secondary metabolites, give the ancient reputation for wound healing a specific pharmacological basis that the contemporary research has confirmed rather than dismissed.
The contemporary availability of dittany of Crete in the Cretan herbal market reflects the specific demand that the plant’s ancient reputation has sustained across the centuries: the dried herb sold in the Cretan open-air markets, the dittany-infused olive oils and honeys of the Cretan specialty food producers, and the dittany-based herbal preparations of the contemporary Cretan pharmacological tradition are the commercial expressions of the botanical knowledge that the Cretan mountain communities have maintained across the centuries of the plant’s cultivation and wild harvesting.
Theophrastus and the Founding of Botanical Science
The intellectual tradition that transformed the specific practical knowledge of the ancient Greek herbalist into the specific systematic science of botany was the tradition that Theophrastus organized in the late fourth century BCE at the Lyceum in Athens, working from the specific botanical resources of the island of Lesbos where he and Aristotle had studied the natural world in the late 340s BCE.
The Makrinitsa article in this collection develops Theophrastus’s companion Aristotle’s work on Lesbos and their simultaneous founding of the natural sciences. The Theophrastus contribution to the botanical tradition is the specific contribution that gave the ancient Greek pharmacological knowledge its most systematic intellectual organization: the Historia Plantarum, the Enquiry into Plants, and the De Causis Plantarum, the On the Causes of Plants, are the texts that organized the accumulated knowledge of the Greek botanical and pharmacological tradition into the specific systematic categories that the scientific tradition required.
The Historia Plantarum’s specific engagement with the pharmacological plants is the engagement of the systematic naturalist rather than the practicing herbalist: Theophrastus documented the specific pharmacological effects of the mandrake and the henbane and the aconite and the hemlock with the specific clinical precision of the observer who had access to the accumulated empirical knowledge of the Greek medical and herbalist tradition and who was organizing that knowledge into the systematic botanical description that the natural scientific tradition required.
The specific account in the Historia Plantarum of the mandrake’s pharmacological properties, the description of the specific dose-dependent effects from the sedative at low doses through the hallucinogenic at moderate doses to the toxic at high doses, is the specific pharmacological description that the contemporary pharmacological tradition has confirmed as the accurate clinical profile of the tropane alkaloid content of the Mandragora officinarum. Theophrastus was describing the dose-response relationship of a pharmacological agent in the specific terms that the contemporary pharmacokinetic tradition uses, fourteen centuries before the contemporary pharmacological tradition developed the conceptual vocabulary to describe what he was observing.
The Living Botanical Heritage
The specific botanical knowledge that the ancient Greek pharmacological tradition developed and that Theophrastus organized and that the medieval Byzantine monastic tradition preserved in the herb gardens and the medical texts of the monastery libraries is the knowledge that the contemporary Greek herbal tradition maintains in its most directly accessible living form in the specific regional botanical cultures of the Greek mainland and the islands.
The mountain tea tradition, the specific preparation of the Sideritis species that the Greek upland communities have maintained as the daily tisane whose therapeutic properties the ancient medical tradition documented and that the contemporary pharmacological research has confirmed as the basis for the specific anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects that the herbal tradition attributed to it, is the most widely maintained of the living botanical therapeutic traditions in contemporary Greece.
The Sideritis species, the ironworts, are the mountain plants whose specific distribution in the Greek upland habitats, the Pindus range and the mountain massifs of the Peloponnese and Crete and the Aegean islands, reflects the specific ecological character of the Greek mountain vegetation that the Ikaria article in this collection develops as the botanical context for the Ikarian longevity tradition: the wild herbs that the mountain communities gather for the daily tisane are the herbs whose specific therapeutic properties the ancient tradition identified and that the contemporary research has begun to characterize at the molecular level.
The specific herbal markets of Athens, most directly accessible in the Monastiraki district and in the central market’s dried goods section, are the commercial expressions of the same botanical knowledge in its urban and commercial form: the dried herbs, the essential oils, the herbal preparations, and the botanical remedies available in these markets represent the accumulated pharmacological knowledge of the Greek botanical tradition in its contemporary commercial form, organized around the specific plants whose ancient reputation the living tradition has maintained.
The Cretan mountain communities whose specific practice of wild herb harvesting the dittany tradition most completely expresses are the communities that maintain the most directly continuous relationship with the specific ancient botanical knowledge: the village herbalists of Anogeia and Spili and the mountain communities of the White Mountains and the Dikti range are the practitioners whose specific knowledge of the local flora, which plants grow where, at what season, in what condition, and for what specific therapeutic purposes they are most effective, is the knowledge that the pharmacological tradition has been refining in these specific landscapes since the period when Theophrastus was organizing the systematic botanical description of what those landscapes produced.
The Pharmacological Tradition and Its Honest Limits
The honest account of the ancient Greek pharmacological tradition requires the acknowledgment that the tradition contained both the genuine pharmacological knowledge and the magical and ritual framework whose specific claims the contemporary scientific tradition cannot confirm.
The genuine pharmacological knowledge was the knowledge of what specific plants did to specific bodies at specific doses: this knowledge was real, it was empirically developed, it was systematically organized by Theophrastus and transmitted through the medieval botanical tradition, and it is the knowledge whose contemporary expression is the modern pharmacological tradition whose vocabulary descends from the single Greek word pharmakon.
The magical and ritual framework was the framework that organized and transmitted this knowledge in the specific cultural context of the ancient world, where the distinction between the pharmacological and the magical was not made in the form that the contemporary scientific tradition makes it: the herbalist who knew that the mandrake produced specific physiological effects at specific doses was the herbalist who also understood those effects in the theological framework of Hekate’s liminal domain, and the two forms of knowledge were not in tension but in the specific complementary relationship that the ancient tradition maintained between the empirical and the theological.
The contemporary visitor to the Greek herbal market who buys dried dittany of Crete is buying the plant whose wound-healing properties the Virgil passage documented and the contemporary pharmacological research has confirmed. The contemporary visitor who buys rue as protection from the evil eye is buying the plant whose bitter aromatic compounds are genuinely toxic to insects and genuinely repellent to certain animals, and whose specific ancient association with the warding of malevolent influence may encode the specific practical observation that the strong aromatic plant placed at the threshold kept away the creatures whose presence was associated with disease and misfortune. The pharmaceutical and the protective are not as separate as the contemporary tradition’s categorical distinction between them suggests.
The pharmakon that heals and the pharmakon that harms are the same substance at different doses. Hekate’s knowledge was the knowledge of the threshold between them. Circe’s practice was the practice of the person who had mastered that knowledge. The contemporary pharmacologist who calculates the therapeutic index, the ratio between the therapeutic dose and the toxic dose of a pharmaceutical agent, is performing the same intellectual operation that the ancient Greek herbalist performed when she stood at the boundary between the healing preparation and the poison and chose the correct side.
At Olympus Estate, Cultural Chronicles traces the practices and institutions that defined Greek civilization from the inside. The Greek word pharmakon means the thing that works on the body, not medicine. The same plant at the same dose could heal or kill. Hekate governed the thresholds between states of being, including the pharmacological threshold between the therapeutic and the toxic. Circe’s preparations in the Odyssey were described with the word pharmakon, and the moly that counteracted them has been identified as the snowdrop whose galantamine compound the contemporary pharmaceutical tradition now uses to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Theophrastus organized the accumulated pharmacological knowledge of the ancient Greek tradition into the systematic botanical science that produced the vocabulary of the contemporary pharmaceutical industry. The dittany of Crete that the Cretan mountain communities still harvest from the cliff faces has the antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory compounds that the ancient reputation for wound healing required. The knowledge is still in the plants. The plants are still in the mountains.
