![]() Julius Caesar went so far as to store a cache (1,500lbs or 680kg) in the official treasury.īut today, silphium has vanished – possibly just from the region, possibly from our planet altogether. ![]() For centuries, local kings held a monopoly on the plant, which made the city of Cyrene, at modern Shahhat, Libya, the richest in Africa. Before they gave it away to the Romans, the Greek inhabitants even put it on their money. Indeed, the Romans loved it so much, they referenced their darling herb in poems and songs, and wrote it into great works of literature. It may have been the first genuinely effective birth control its heart-shaped seeds are thought to be the reason we associate the symbol with romance to this day. Silphium was a veritable wonder herb, a panacea for all manner of ailments, including growths of the anus (the Roman author Pliny the Elder recommends repeated fumigations with the root) and the bites of feral dogs (simply rub into the affected area, though Pliny warns his readers never, ever to try this with a tooth cavity, after a man who did so threw himself off a house).įinally, silphium was required in the bedroom, where its juice was drunk as an aphrodisiac or applied “to purge the uterus”. Then there were the medical applications. Why we should eat more like the Cantonese.The delicious flavor with a toxic secret.Known as “laser”, the condiment was as fundamental to Roman haute cuisine as eating your food horizontally in a toga. Perfume was coaxed from its delicate blooms, while its sap was dried and grated liberally over dishes from brains to braised flamingo. It was an excellent preservative for lentils and when it was fed to sheep, their flesh became delectably tender. Its roots were eaten fresh, dipped in vinegar. Its crunchable stalks were roasted, sauteed or boiled and eaten as a vegetable. To list its uses would be an endless task. It didn’t look like much – with stout roots, stumpy leaves and bunches of small yellow flowers – but it oozed with an odiferous sap that was so delicious and useful, the plant was eventually worth its weight in gold. Long ago, in the ancient city of Cyrene, there was a herb called silphium. ![]()
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