Silphium was an extinct Libyan plant famend for contraception, drugs, and commerce. Its disappearance stays a historic thriller, and scientists proceed trying to find surviving descendants.
Roman chief Julius Caesar is claimed to have stored a stock of it within the treasury. Ancient author Pliny the Elder says Rome’s Emperor Nero owned the last stalk of it.
And some have recommended rampant extramarital intercourse in elite Roman circles led to demand outstripping supply, and it dying out altogether.
What is it?
Silphium: an extinct plant that after grew wild in modern-day Libya.
Used for contraception and abortion, drugs, meals seasoning, fragrance, and as a livestock improver, its particular properties made this herb some of the treasured commodities in Graeco-Roman antiquity.
Then, at some point, it went extinct.
What Did Silphium Really Look Like?
Silphium is commonly described today as an aphrodisiac, regardless of no historic supply confirming this.
Some of the earliest depictions of silphium are of the plant’s heart-shaped seedpod, which will be the supply of this affiliation.
Depictions on cash and collectible figurines have led trendy botanists to marvel if silphium was associated to trendy wild giant fennels (from the genus Ferula). (It’s not related to vegetation of the genus Silphium, comparable to compass-plant and rosinweed, in North America).
Depictions of silphium subsequent to gazelles (one other product of Libya) recommend typical historic silphium stalks had been round 30 cm in height.
Resin was extracted from the plant’s stems and roots and preserved in flour, which allowed it to make the journey from Libya to additional shores.
How Silphium Fueled Ancient Economies
The Romans referred to as this resin “laser” or “laserpicium.” The greatest laserpicium was extracted from the foundation, however an inferior kind might additionally come from the stem.
And earlier than the Romans, the Greeks additionally used silphium; it was so central to some regional economies that it was a continuously depicted motif on coins.
The Greeks seemingly didn’t harvest silphium themselves; they got it as tribute by Libyan tribes who lived with it and knew harvest and put together it.
The Greeks of these areas capitalized on and exploited this indigenous data, creating and fulfilling a marketplace for this product. This pattern of extracting and making the most of the native data of indigenous peoples remains to be a characteristic of the fashionable globalized economic system.
Silphium in Ancient Medicine and Contraception
Silphium is continuously talked about in historic medical treatises and was usually administered by meals. The trendy distinction between food and medicine was not as pronounced in antiquity as it’s at the moment; curatives had been continuously added to easy dishes comparable to lentil porridge.
In Ancient Graeco-Roman drugs, silphium was thought-about a “windy” meals that would clear the physique of obstructions inflicting sick well being. “Windy” meals had been additionally thought to stop conception and ensure miscarriage (relying on once they had been administered).
Soranus of Ephesus’s four-volume textual content on gynecology, written across the 1st-2nd century CE, suggests numerous strong-tasting herbs and spices (together with silphium) may very well be blended with wine or easy meals for oral contraception. Soranus notes oral contraceptives continuously induced upset stomachs.
Preventive suppository ideas by Soranus embody smearing the cervix with substances comparable to outdated olive oil, honey, resin, balsam, white lead, myrtle oil, moistened alum, galbanum resin (a silphium relative utilized in fragrance), and a lock of wonderful wool. These weren’t medication however had properties that would reduce the possibility of conception by being antibiotic or spermicidal or offering a bodily barrier.
Women’s Knowledge and Uncertain Effectiveness
Looking to the male-authored literature for proof of girls’s drugs is, in fact, flawed. It is extremely possible data on being pregnant, contraceptives, and abortifacients was transferred between girls, a lot of which didn’t make it into surviving historic medical texts.
We haven’t any proof of the efficacy of silphium as a contraceptive or abortive agent, as we don’t have any to check.
Silphium resisted human cultivation, and as such, there was a finite provide. The monetary worth of silphium (and state management over it) appeared to be a bone of rivalry amongst native populations, and by the Roman interval, there have been studies of vandalism and native farmers bringing livestock to graze on it.
Climatic modifications and the desertification of the north coast of Africa could have led to the plant’s extinction. While the Romans believed silphium was extinct within the 1st century CE, it might have continued in native use and consumption till the 5th century CE.
There have been a number of makes an attempt to establish remnant pockets of silphium within the trendy world, however students can not agree on a single surviving plant. Silphium could have been a hybrid plant that reproduced asexually (making it arduous to domesticate and weak).
The Search for Silphium’s Modern Descendants
In 2021, a brand new species of giant fennel (Ferula drudeana) was identified around former Greek settlements in Anatolia (modern-day Turkey).
It looks much like the ancient depictions of silphium; it may be that seeds from Libya reached Turkey and survived to the present.
However, until we find evidence of the seeds of ancient silphium in securely dated archaeological deposits, we will not be able to test this hypothesis.
Many species of giant fennel occur across the Mediterranean and surrounding regions, but due to many outlets falsely reporting its aphrodisiac qualities (particularly for treating erectile dysfunction), there are growing conservation concerns about modern over-harvesting.
Adapted from an article originally published in The Conversation.
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