The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 4 (of 6)

Chapter 17: CHAP. 15.—PTISAN.

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The text compiles practical and encyclopedic guidance on crop cultivation and plant uses, beginning with cereals and farm management — types of grain, sowing and harvesting schedules, ploughing, seed selection, storage, and maladies — plus weather and stellar prognostics for agricultural timing. It proceeds to flax and garden plants, detailing varieties, planting and processing methods, garden layout, and pest and disease remedies. The final section assembles medicinal preparations and numerous remedies derived from vegetables and herbs, listing applications and recipes for treating ailments using garden-grown plants.

CHAP. 15.—PTISAN.

With barley, too, the food called ptisan 149 is made, a most substantial and salutary aliment, and one that is held in very high esteem. Hippocrates, one of the most famous writers on medical science, has devoted a whole volume to the praises of this aliment. The ptisan of the highest quality is that which is made at Utica; that of Egypt is prepared from a kind of barley, the grain of which grows with two points.150 In Bætica and Africa, the kind of barley from which this food is made is that which Turranius calls the “smooth”151 barley: the same author expresses an opinion, too, that olyra 152 and rice are the same. The method of preparing ptisan is universally known.