Phanias of Eresus, the pupil of Aristotle, calls the fruit of the wild sycamine μόρον, or mulberry, being a fruit of the greatest sweetness and delicacy when it is ripe. And he writes thus: “The mulberry is a briery sort of tree,1 and when the round fruit is dried it has small pips of seed, woven in like net-work, and the fruit is nutritious and juicy.” And Parthanius has the following words:—῞αβρυνα, that is to say, συκάμινα, which some call mulberries." And Salmonius calls the same tree βάτιον, or brier. And Demetrius Ixion says the συκάμινον and μόρον are the same, being a very juicy fruit, superior to the fig. And Diphilus of Siphnos, who was a physician, writes thus: “The συκάμινα, which are also called μόρα, are moderately full of good juice, but have not much nourishment; they are good for the stomach and easily digested; and those which are not quite ripe have a peculiar [p. 85] quality of expelling worms.” But Pythemus states, according to Hegesander, that in his time the mulberry-trees produced no fruit for twenty years, and that during that time gout became so epidemic, that not only men, but even boys and girls, and eunuchs, and women, were afflicted with it; and even herds of goats were attacked with it, so that two-thirds of the cattle were afflicted with the same disorder.
1 The description of the mulberry given here, shows that it is rather a blackberry than our modern mulberry.
Athenaeus. The Deipnosophists. Or Banquet Of The Learned Of Athenaeus. London. Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden. 1854.
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