Seasonal purges, cinnamon, and the making of sharp purple

Having pounded gourds in a mortar and strained the juice through linen together with a little honey mixed in, drink and purge.

Which is also more suitable in winter: having boiled the white beets thoroughly, put them into another new vessel, and from that same water, with a little salt, make a broth by boiling it up. Eat the beets first, without bread, and having mixed the broth, drink it.

And in spring, similarly, the most painless emptying: the juice of safflower seed mixed with whey from the milk and drunk.

From the Cesti of Africanus: On cinnamon. Herodotus says nobody knows how cinnamon comes to be, and that birds build nests on the peaks of inaccessible rocks from cinnamon, and that the locals cannot go up onto the peaks; and having sacrificed large cattle and cut them limb from limb, if they believe these birds to be hooked-clawed, they leave the pieces in sight of those among us; and that they carry the meats up onto their own nests and fill them until they are brought down by the weight; and that those who take up the cinnamon sell it. Herodotus boasts that he knows this is a lie.

But I say from trial that cinnamon is a plant similar to a shrub and lock unrestored; and that the tree resembles lock unrestored a chaste-tree; and the height as much as to three-lock unrestored the whole; and it is divided into lock unrestored first its lock unrestored its tip; lock unrestored then the rest.

From Africanus’s book: making of sharp purple. Taking the wool that has been mordanted, let it down into 1 choenix of groats, 4 choenix of phykos; having boiled, let down the wool and leave it until evening; and having taken it up, rinse with seawater, then with water.