se, "just as the users of the conch-shell trumpet
believed they could do with this instrument. I have already (p. 196)
emphasized the fact that all of these plants, mandrake, bryony, peony,
and the rest, were really surrogates of the cowry, the pearl, and the
conch-shell. The first is the ultimate source of their influence on
womankind, the second the origin of their attribute of _aglaophotis_,
and the third of their supposed power of summoning the deity. The
attributes of some of the plants which Pliny discusses along with the
peony are suggestive. Pieces of the root of the _achaemenis_ (? perhaps
_Euphorbia antiquorum_ or else a night-shade) taken in wine, torment the
guilty to such an extent in their dreams as to extort from them a
confession of their crimes. He gives it the name also of "hippophobas,"
it being an especial object of terror to mares. The complementary story
is told of the mandrake in mediaeval Europe. The decomposing tissues of
the body of an innocent victim on the gallows when they fall upon the
earth can become reincarnated in a mandrake--the _main de gloire_ of old
French writers.

Then there is the plant _adamantis_, grown in Armenia and
Cappadocia, which when _presented to a lion makes the beast fall upon
its back_, and drop its jaws. Is this a distorted reminiscence of the
lion-manifestation of Hathor who was calmed by the substance _didi_? A
more direct link with the story of the destruction of mankind is
suggested by the account of the _ophiusa_, "which is found in
Elephantine, an island of Ethiopia". This plant is of a livid colour,
and hideous to the sight. Taken by a person in drink, it inspires such a
horror of serpents, which his imagination continually represents as
menacing him that he commits suicide at last: hence it is that persons
guilty of sacrilege are compelled to drink an infusion of it (Pliny,
"Nat. Hist.," XXIV, 102). I am inclined to regard this as a variant of
the myth of the Destruction of Mankind in which the "snake-plant" from
Elephantine takes the place of the uraei of the Winged Disk Saga, and
punishes the act of sacrilege by driving the delinquent into a state of
delirium tremens.

The next problem to be considered is the derivation of the word
_mandragora_. Dr. Mingana tells me it is a great puzzle to discover any
adequate meaning. The attempt to explain it through the Sanskrit _mand_,
"joy," "intoxication," or _mantasana_, "sleep," "life," or _mandra_,
"pleasure,"