Category: Greek

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Coltsfoot & Smoking & Blossom & Cholera February 24th

Coltsfoot by Andreas Trepte Wikipedia

Coltsfoot is a daisy-like plant which is flowering about now. Gerard’s Herbal of 1633 suggests that the ‘fumes of the dried leaves taken through a funnel’ is good for those with coughs and shortness of breath. He suggests that it is smoked like tobacco and it ‘mightly prevaileth.’

This idea, Mrs Grieves says in her herbal (1931), is endorsed by ‘Dioscorides, Galen, Pliny, and Boyle’. And Coltsfoot is ‘nature’s best herb for the lungs’. (This is historic information re herbs and NOT current medical advice, as Coltsfoot can be very dangerous!).

engraving of a man smoking Lobspruch deß edlen hochberühmten Krauts Petum oder Taback Nuremberg, 1658 New York Public Library Public Domain
Detail from Lobspruch deß edlen hochberühmten Krauts Petum oder Taback Nuremberg, 1658 New York Public Library Public Domain

My grandson and parents found a 19th Century pipe bowl, much like the one above, by the Thames where there were many fragments of clay pipe. For more on 17th Century smoking, have a look here.

Blossom is also coming out in London a little early. (2022 we had a false spring when Cherry Blossom came out, and I think we are now just getting used to it, so I don’t think it is being noted so much in 2024). Blackthorn (I think) is coming out in profusion in my local park. Photos below by the Author of Haggerston Park in East London. Left February 2022, Right Feb 23.

February 2023 in Haggerston Park, London showing early blossom (Blackthorn?) Photos K

One thing I am trying to improve in my Almanac of the Past, is to include more specific London content. This can be difficult on a daily basis. But I think I have, by chance, found a solution. I was trying to glue the toe flap on a perfectly good pair of trainers so that it did not flap, and I needed a heavy weight to press the two edges together. I found a random couple of heavy books for the purpose. 24 hours later, I lifted the books to discover the failure of my project. But, as I returned the books to their place in the book case, I found the heaviest was called ‘A London Year. 365 Days of City Life in Diaries, Journals, and Letters.’ Compiled by Travis Elborough and Nick Bennison, published in 2013, and the price on it of £5.99 makes me feel I must have bought it second hand. Have I opened it before now? Indeed, I had forgotten its existence, but Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Book! What a timely rediscovery.

Cholera in London.
The news of the Cholera being in London has been received abroad. According to the feelings of the different nations towards England, France, who wish to court us has ordered a quarantine in her ports of three days; Holland, who feels aggrieved by our conduct at the conference, one of 40 days. The fog so thick in London that the illuminations for the Queen’s Birthday were not visible.

24th February 1832 Thomas Raikes, Diary 1832 (from ‘A London Year’ Compiled by Travis Elborough and Nick Bennison, 2013,

I think the Conference mentioned above was the London Conference of May 1832, which aimed to establish a Kingdom of Greece with a King, It was set up by Foreign Secretary Lord Palmerston without discussion with the Greeks and ended up giving them a Bavarian King. King Otto. Otto was forced from the throne in a revolution in 1862, and replaced by a Danish King, from whom Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was descended.

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Constellation of Gemini overhead February 10th

Photo of consteltion of gemini with connecting lines to show it better
Till Credner – Own work, http://www.AlltheSky.com from wikipedia

Gemini should be almost overhead in the Northern Hemisphere, and can be picked out by its two brightest starts, Castor and Pollux. Gemini can be seen from September to May. But between September to November it is only visible in the morning before sunrise. It is best viewed from January to March. For evening viewing it is possible from December to May In February it should best visible at 9.00pm.

I will follow this post up with another one about the Twins on July 15th but here are the basic details from that post:

The Divine Twins, the Dioscuri, were horsemen, patrons of calvary, athletes, and sailors. Pollux is the son of Zeus and Leda (raped by Zeus in the guise of a swan). His twin brother has a different and mortal father, the King of Sparta and the same mother, Leda. So they are examples of heteropaternal superfecundation.

One is therefore immortal and the other isn’t. They had many adventures including sailing with Jason as Arganauts.

According to some version of the story, Castor was mortally wounded, and Zeus gave his twin brother the option of letting Castor die while Pollux spends eternity on Mount Olympus, or sharing his immortality with his brother. He agreed to the latter, and the twins spend half their year as the Constellation of Gemini and the rest, immortal, on Mount Olympus. Thus, they are the epitome of brotherly love.

Their sisters were, no less than Helen of Troy, and Clytemnestra. But more about them in July.

Diagram of H. A. Rey‘s alternative way to connect the stars of the constellation Gemini. Twins are shown holding hands. Wikipedia AugPi CC BY-SA 3.0

See Also Almanac of the Past on Gemini.

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Day of the Moon Goddess Selene February 7th

Full Moon Photos by Natalie Tobert – you can find out more about her work here:

The Goddess Book of Days’ has the the 7th as the Day of Selene and other Moon Goddesses. (February 6th as the Festival of Aphrodite)

Selene is one of the most beguiling of Goddesses as she is the epitome of the Moon (Romans knew her as Luna). She, who gives that silvery, ethereal light to dark days, who appears and disappears to a routine few of us really understand. She is therefore beautiful, beguiling, unknowable. She is the Goddess of Intuition. She brings the tides and the monthly periods, and so is a Goddess of power as well as fertility, pregnancy and so love, and mothers, and babies.

To my mind, far more powerful than Aphrodite, Selene seems much more independent. On the Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum she is shown with her brother Helios, the Sun God; with Hercules – the epitome of male strength, Demeter and Persephone, representing the earth and underworld (or life and death), Athene and her father, Zeus; Iris, the messenger Goddess; Hestia, the Goddess of the home, and Dione with her daughter ,Aphrodite, representing love. At one end, Helios brings up the sun with his Chariot and Horse and at the other, Selene’s horse sinks exhausted in Oceanus after a glorious night of moon shine. It’s a wonderful arrangement, which suggests the scheme was to show a balanced cosmos between female and male forces, framed by the Sun and the Moon.

cartoon of Elgin Marble, showing Selene's Horse at the right hand end
Cartoon of Elgin Marble, showing Selene’s Horse at the right hand end

I did a longer piece on this pediment of the Parthenon Marbles here

Photograph of the Moon against a black background byMike Petrucci -unsplash
Selene – Moon Goddess by Mike Petrucci -unsplash

I have used several of Natalie Tobert’s photos in my post which I pluck from Natalie’s face facebook feed which is a veritable visual feast. She worked, as an archaeologist at the Museum of London at the same time as me. She is an excellent potter, photographer and artist. Natalie was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a member of Society of Designer Craftsmen. You can see more of her pictures here.

This is going to be transferred to April 20th in 2025.

First published in 2022, and revised February 2024.

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Time for a Tansy!

Tansy: by Georg Buzin (wikipedia)

Spring is time for a tansy, so time to bring out again the many stories behind this awesome plant.  The tansy not flowers display a classical  Fibonacci spiral, which is two counter-rotating  logarithmic spirals.

Mrs Grieve in her Modern Herbal repeats the belief that their name derives from the Greek word for immortality ‘Athanaton’.  This might be because they grow so well that in some areas they are proscribed they are so prolific. But Tansy was supposed to have been given to Ganymede by Zeus to make him immortal. And, they were used for preserving dead bodies from corruption. So, Tansy was placed in coffins and winding sheets and tansy wreaths placed with the dead.

Its toxicity means that it repels many insects, particularly, flies and ants, and so it was used as a medieval and early modern strewing herb. And yet there are other insects that love Tansy – it seems to have a dark side and a light side.

It was collected in August (along with meadowsweet or elder leaves) and strewn on the floors of houses (and the ‘thresh’ was held in by the threshold). But it was also placed between mattresses to keep away bugs. People rubbed meat with Tansy to keep flies off. It is now used as a natural protection for crops from insects to reduce the amount of artificial pesticides.

It was an important medical and culinary herb, said to be a substitute for nutmeg and cinnamon, and the leaves, shredded, as a flavouring for puddings and omelettes. At Easter ball games a Tansy Cake was the reward for the winners. It was symbolic of the bitter herbs eaten by the Israelites at Passover. Tansy was thought to be a very wholesome ingredient to eat after the sparsity of Lent and Winter, and voiding the body of the worms caused by eating too many fish. It was used for expelling worms from the stomachs of children.

Interestingly it contains thujone, which is also in Wormwood, the other main herb for expelling intestinal worms. Thujone can cause convulsions, liver and brain damage if too much is taken.

In the 14th Century it was used for treating wounds. It was thought to be useful both to induce abortions but also to help women conceive and to prevent miscarriages. Culpepper and Gerard suggests the root was a cure for gout.

Here is a recipe from the ‘The Closet of Kenelm Digby Opened‘ 1669. It was essentially a form of omelette. I would not try the recipe! In the BBC documentary “The Supersizers go … Restoration“, Sue Perkins suffered from the effects of the toxic tansy.

A TANSY (Do not try this at home!)

Take three pints of Cream, fourteen New-laid-eggs (seven whites put away)
one pint of juyce of Spinage, six or seven spoonfuls of juyce of Tansy, a
Nutmeg (or two) sliced small, half a pound of Sugar, and a little Salt.
Beat all these well together, then fryit in a pan with no more Butter then
is necessary. When it is enough, serve it up with juyce of Orange or slices
of Limon upon it.

Sir Kenelm Digby was a Catholic and a natural philosopher of some reputation. After his death an employee published his cookery book. His father was executed after the Gunpowder Plot, and he supported Charles 1st but found a way to work with Oliver Cromwell.

He made a great success of his idea of the ‘powder of sympathy’ – 29 editions of his book on the subject were sold. He found the powder in France and it was made with precise ‘astrological’ techniques. The most famous example of a suggested application for the powder was to win the competition for a method of working out longitude (in the 18th Century). Basically, a working method meant knowing the time, normally noon, in two different places. This allowed a triangle to be created between the two points and the Sun which allowed the distance between the two places to be discovered by triangulation. Clocks were not accurate enough (yet) to help so Digby’s famous powder of sympathy was suggested.

This is the method:

A wounded dog would be taken on board a ship, and a bandage from the wound would be left in London. At noon in London it would be sprinkled with the powder of sympathy. The dog on the ship would, perforce, yelp when the powder was administered on the bandage in London and so the Captain would know when it was noon in London! Digby was long dead when the application for the prize money was made and rejected.

‘Longitude’ by Dava Sobel tells the story of the discovery of a clock-based method of calculating longitude.

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Digital Heritage – The Past Deciphered by AI

This is one of the most exciting advances I have read about for a long time! A pile of burnt scrolls survive from the Villa dei Papiri, Herculaneum. They are being examined by several teams from American Universities including the University of Michigan, and the University of Kentucky. They are just beginning to read fragments of the texts, using all the scientific techniques they can throw at it including AI. The AI has begun to learn to read fragments of the tightly rolled scroll.

Burnt Scroll
Burnt Scroll

The scroll they are working on appears to be a piece about Alexander the Great and his legacy. It is an unknown text or to put it another way, it is potentially a brand new source of information for this period of time. It has been suggested that it might possibly be a copy of the lost diary of Alexander’s secretary, Eumenos or may have been written by a friend of the general Antigonos.  Either way, potentially eye witness accounts. Or not, as perhaps, they may be asking too much from the first investigation. It may be more prosaic. Time will tell.

The implications, however, are so exciting! Just as the amazing excavations at Stonehenge (and indeed in London) have revolutionised our knowledge of these places, so AI could introduce completely new insights into the past. There are many rolls that were burnt in the collection, but now AI is beginning to read them. what insights we might get even from small fragments? One of the scholars involved is particularly excited to imagine the discoveries that could be forthcoming from the Middle East

‘While others would love to see some of the lost work of the ancients, what I’d like to see is evidence of the turmoil that was happening in the first century around the development of Christianity and the Judeo-Christian tradition as it was evolving.’

Brent Seales, University of Kentucky

Part of scroll unfolded
Part of scroll unfolded

But those ‘lost works of the ancients’. There are so many that would rock history: Tacitus’s ‘Annals’ missing missing the last two years of Nero’s reign. Pytheas ‘On the Ocean’ with its first references to Britain in writing. 6 Plays of Aeschylus, 9 Books of Sappho and the list goes on. Have a look at Charlotte Higgins piece in Prospect Magazine for a little more detail.

Another feature of the study is that the teams have released images to the cloud and are encouraging others to ‘have a go’ at reading them. This shows the strides that Citizen Science has made, and how, scientists acknowledge that, in the days of big data, cooperation pays huge dividends.

My source of information is the marvellous The Society of Antiquaries of London Online Newsletter (Salon) which ‘is a fortnightly digest of heritage news‘ and for more information look at Issue 509.

Another source is Interestingengineering.com.

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Town Exploration Amsterdam 1

The Canals of Amsterdam

I’ve relieved of the necessity to search for the Town Walls of Amsterdam without prior research by the fact that I am here to see my daughter who has recently broken her ankle, so she has an excuse for refusing to go on forced forced marches around the City.

I haven’t yet had a good look at a map, but the pattern of Canals circuling the centre is amazing and it seems possible there was no need for walls, when the centre is protected by so many rings of water.

I don’t know much about Amsterdam, but it reminds me of the surprising fact that Holland was a major power in the 17th/18th Century. I discovered this on a visit to Kerala in India where I realised that Portugal had a vast empire which was largely taken over by the Dutch in the 17th Century and then taken over by the British in the 18th Century.

It was one of the major pivots in world history. These three countries were small peripheral seafaring nations of no great importance in Europe until the Age of Discovery. Portugal set up trading systems (perhaps rather systems of exploitation) first down the coast of Africa and then to India and beyond. The Dutch then took over the trading stations and took control of the spice routes. Then the British took over.

Previously the spice routes from the East came through Egypt, Greece, Rome, Carthage and later the Ottoman and the Venetian Empires. This made the Mediterranean the richest place in Europe, both north and southern coasts.

The new ocean routes led to a major shift in power from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, leading to the current situation where the Mediterranean is no longer the centre of the world. Greece, Southern Italy, North Africa now under performing economies. A Roman would find this hard to believe.

Portugal, then Holland followed by Britain rose to the status of world power which would, itself, have been inconceivable before the 16th Century.

Holland was in the perfect geographic position astride the trade routes that lead to the heart of Europe. The entry point was the major river systems around the Rhine/Danube axis including the Rhine, the Scheldt, the Waal, and the Amstel. Antwerp, Rotterdam and Amsterdam developed from regional trading towns to global Cities. They spawned a self confident set of merchants who set the foundations of modern capitalism with foundations in spices and slaves.

Central to this was the Dutch East India Company. The first organisation in Europe where an investor only risked their investment rather than the shirt off their back in the event of bankruptcy. This let the shackles off investment, took money out of gold in the bank vaults and multiplied it around the economy.

But not only did it take away the risks of the consequences of investment the Dutch East India Company, set up in Amsterdam in 1602, was given quasi state power, with the ability to fight wars and impose laws on subject populations. This template was copied by the British East India Company which conquered and ran India, setting the seal for the British Empire and Capitalism.

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