Black hellebore, that most renowned plant, and famous purger of melancholy, which all antiquity so much used and admired, was first found out by Melanpodius a shepherd, as Pliny records, lib. 25. cap. 5. [4220]who, seeing it to purge his goats when they raved, practised it upon Elige and Calene, King Praetus’ daughters, that ruled in Arcadia, near the fountain Clitorius, and restored them to their former health.  In Hippocrates’s time it was in only request, insomuch that he writ a book of it, a fragment of which remains yet.  Theophrastus, [4221]Galen, Pliny, Caelius Aurelianus, as ancient as Galen, lib. 1, cap. 6. Aretus lib. 1. cap. 5. Oribasius lib. 7. collect. a famous Greek, Aetius ser. 3. cap. 112 & 113 p. Aegineta, Galen’s Ape, lib. 7. cap. 4. Actuarius, Trallianus lib. 5. cap. 15. Cornelius Celsus only remaining of the old Latins, lib. 3. cap. 23, extol and admire this excellent plant; and it was generally so much esteemed of the ancients for this disease amongst the rest, that they sent all such as were crazed, or that doted, to the Anticyrae, or to Phocis in Achaia, to be purged, where this plant was in abundance to be had.  In Strabo’s time it was an ordinary voyage, Naviget Anticyras; a common proverb among the Greeks and Latins, to bid a dizzard or a mad man go take hellebore; as in Lucian, Menippus to Tantalus, Tantale desipis, helleboro epoto tibi opus est, eoque sane meraco, thou art out of thy little wit, O Tantalus, and must needs drink hellebore, and that without mixture.  Aristophanes in Vespis, drink hellebore, &c. and Harpax in the [4222] Comoedian, told Simo and Ballio, two doting fellows, that they had need to be purged with this plant.  When that proud Menacrates [Greek:  o zeus], had writ an arrogant letter to Philip of Macedon, he sent back no other answer but this, Consulo tibi ut ad Anticyram te conferas, noting thereby that he was crazed, atque ellebore indigere, had much need of a good purge.  Lilius Geraldus saith, that Hercules, after all his mad pranks upon his wife and children, was perfectly cured by a purge of hellebore, which an Anticyrian administered unto him.  They that were sound commonly took it to quicken their wits, (as Ennis of old, [4223]_Qui non nisi potus ad arma—­prosiluit dicenda_, and as our poets drink sack to improve their inventions (I find it so registered by Agellius lib. 17. cap. 15.) Cameades the academic, when he was to write against Zeno the stoic, purged himself with hellebore first, which [4224]Petronius puts upon Chrysippus.  In such esteem it continued for many ages, till at length Mesue and some other Arabians began to reject and reprehend it, upon whose authority for many following lustres, it was much debased and quite out of request, held to be poison and no medicine; and is still oppugned to this day by [4225] Crato and some junior physicians.  Their reasons are, because Aristotle l. 1. de plant.