Galeno e le piante officinali cretesi : farmacopea ufficiale e monopolio statale

Galen and Cretan medicinal plants: official pharmacopeia and State monopoly.The use of the endemic flora of Crete in the pharmacopeia of the early imperial age constitutes a topic of extreme interest not only for the history of ancient medicine, but also for the political and economic impact of the trade in Cretan medicinal herbs along the Roman Mediterranean routes. The physician Galen provides fundamental as well as unique testimony, both on the dynamics of supply (collection, packaging, transport and storage) of these medicinal plants in Rome between the second half of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century a.d. as well as on the imperial "monopoly" of the trade in Cretan herbs, which were taken every summer from the imperial βοτανικοὶ ἄνδρες and arrived in the capital, where they were used for the production of a powerful medicine such as theriac, prepared by the Pergamene archiater and taken daily by first Marcus Aurelius and then Septimius Severus [Publisher's Text].

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