Note 1020 — Chapter XVIII · THE SUCCESSION TO THE KINGDOM IN ANCIENT LATIUM

Aristotle, Hist. anim. v. 32, p. 557b, ed. Bekker; Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. ii. 8; id., De causis plantarum, ii. 9; Plutarch, Quaest. conviv. vii. 2. 2; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xv. 79-81, xvi. 114, xvii. 256; Palladius, iv. 10. 28, vii. 5. 2; Columella, xi. 2. 56; Geoponica, iii. 6, x. 48. As to the practice in modern Greece and the fig-growing districts of Asia Minor, see P. de Tournefort, Relation d’un voyage du Levant (Amsterdam, 1718), i. 130; W. R. Paton, “The Pharmakoi and the Story of the Fall,” Revue archéologique, IVème Série, ix. (1907) p. 51. For an elaborate examination of the process and its relation to the domestication and spread of the fig-tree, see Graf zu Solms-Laubach, “Die Herkunft, Domestication und Verbreitung des gewöhnlichen Feigenbaums (Ficus Carica, L.),” Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, xxviii. (1882) pp. 1-106. This last writer thinks that the operation was not practised by Italian husbandmen, because it is not mentioned by Cato and Varro. But their silence can hardly outweigh the express mention and recommendation of it by Palladius and Columella. Theophrastus, it is true, says that the process was not in use in Italy (Hist. Plantarum, ii. 8. 1), but he can scarcely have had exact information on this subject. Caprificatio, as this artificial fertilisation of fig-trees is called, is still employed by the Neapolitan peasantry, though it seems to be unknown in northern Italy. Pliny’s account has no independent value, as he merely copies from Theophrastus. The name “goat-fig” (caprificus) applied to the wild fig-tree may be derived from the notion that the tree is a male who mounts the female as the he-goat mounts the she-goat. Similarly the Messenians called the tree simply “he-goat” (τράγος). See Pausanias, iv. 20. 1-3.