Here, then, are proofs enough that rue was magical outside of Cappadocia.  But this is not an argument on Mr. Brown’s lines.  The Cappadocians called rue ‘moly’; what language, he asks, was spoken by the Cappadocians?  Prof.  Sayce (who knows so many tongues) says that ’we know next to nothing of the language of the Cappadocians, or of the Moschi who lived in the same locality.’  But where Prof.  Sayce is, the Hittites, if we may say so respectfully, are not very far off.  In this case he thinks the Moschi (though he admits we know next to nothing about it) ’seem to have spoken a language allied to that of the Cappadocians and Hittites.’  That is to say, it is not impossible that the language of the Moschi, about which next to nothing is known, may have been allied to that of the Cappadocians, about which we know next to nothing.  All that we do know in this case is, that four hundred years after Christ the dwellers in Cappadocia employed a word ‘moly,’ which had been Greek for at least twelve hundred years.  But Mr. Brown goes on to quote that one of the languages of which we know next to nothing, Hittite, was ’probably allied to Proto-Armenian, and perhaps Lykian, and was above all not Semitic.’  In any case ’the cuneiform mode of writing was used in Cappadocia at an early period.’  As even Professor Sayce declines to give more than a tentative reading of a Cappadocian cuneiform inscription, it seems highly rash to seek in this direction for an interpretation of a Homeric word ‘moly,’ used in Cappadocia very many centuries after the tablets were scratched.  But, on the evidence of the Babylonian character of the cuneiform writing on Cappadocian tablets, Mr. Brown establishes a connection between the people of Accadia (who probably introduced the cuneiform style) and the people of Cappadocia.  The connection amounts to this.  Twelve hundred years after Homer, the inhabitants of Cappadocia are said to have called rue ‘moly.’  At some unknown period, the Accadians appear to have influenced the art of writing in Cappadocia.  Apparently Mr. Brown thinks it not too rash to infer that the Cappadocian use of the word ‘moly’ is not derived from the Greeks, but from the Accadians.  Now in Accadian, according to Mr. Brown, mul means ‘star.’  ’Hence ulu or mulu = [Greek], the mysterious Homerik counter-charm to the charms of Kirke’ (p. 60).  Mr. Brown’s theory, therefore, is that moly originally meant ‘star.’  Circe is the moon, Odysseus is the sun, and ’what watches over the solar hero at night when exposed to the hostile lunar power, but the stars?’ especially the dog-star.

The truth is, that Homer’s moly, whatever plant he meant by the name, is only one of the magical herbs in which most peoples believe or have believed.  Like the Scottish rowan, or like St. John’s wort, it is potent against evil influences.  People have their own simple reasons for believing in these plants, and have not needed to bring down their humble, early botany from the clouds and stars.