Notes

Melze

Meleses estants si frequentes au territoire d’Embrum & autout de Morienne, ne donneront despense à recouurer. Elles ont leurs semences plus petites que Cyprés, tant en la pommette que au noyau, toutesfois chasque chartée sur le lieu, qui l’entreprendoit, ne cousteroit pas un sou. C’est sur celuy dont la Manne est cueillie, & la grosse Terebenthine & l’Agaric aussi, & dont l’arbre est autant frequent es montaignes des Grisons, nommez en Latin Theti, qu’il fut onc, & es mesmes endroicts dont Tibere Empereur en feit apporter à Rome pour refaire le pont Naumachiarius, qui auoit esté bruslé.

Terebinthes

Semences de Terebinthes se pourront aisément recouurer à charges de Chameaux, car ceux de Halep, Damas, Antioche, & toute Syrie les mangent auec le pain, toutesfois plus pres, les montaignes au dessous de Tournon en sont couuertes.

terebinthine

Térébenthine, résine du Térébinthe (Pistacia terebinthus, L.), exploitée jadis à Chio, d’où on l’exportait à Venise. Là, mélangée à la résine du mélèze, elle passait dans le commerce sous le nom de Térébenthine de Venise. «Mitissimæ vero duæ inter eas sunt [resinas], prima terebinthina, larix altera nuncupatur». Galien, De compos. medic. per genera, l. I, c. 12. (Paul Delaunay)

De Compositione Medicamentorum per Genera; Of the compounding of remedies in relation with their genera or On the composition of drugs according to kind.

Google translation: “Two of them are among the mildest [resinas], the turpentine, larch next call.”

Galen compares with turpentine

Galien, De compos. medic. per genera, I, 12: voir Tiers livre, éd. Lefranc, n. 33, p. 374.

Terebinth

Pistacia terebinthus, known commonly as terebinth and turpentine tree, is a species of Pistacia, native to the Mediterranean region from the western regions of Morocco, Portugal and the Canary Islands, to Greece and western Turkey. In the eastern shores of the Mediterranean sea — Syria, Lebanon and Israel — a similar species, Pistacia palaestina, fills the same ecological niche as this species and is also known as terebinth.

John Chadwick believes that the terebinth is the plant called ki-ta-no in some of the Linear B tablets. He cites the work of a Spanish scholar, J.L. Melena, who had found “an ancient lexicon which showed that kritanos was another name for the turpentine tree, and that the Mycenaean spelling could represent a variant form of this word.”

The word “terebinth” is used (at least in some translations) for a tree mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures (or Old Testament), where the Hebrew word “elah” (plural “elim”) is used. This probably refers to Pistacia palaestina which is common in the area.

Terebinth from Oricum is referred to in Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 10, line 136, where Ascanius in battle is compared to “ivory skilfully inlaid in […] Orician terebinth” (”inclusum […] Oricia terebintho […] ebur”).

Terebinth is referred to by Robin Lane Fox in Alexander the Great: “When a Persian king took the throne, he attended Pasargadae, site of King Cyrus’s tomb, and dressed in a rough leather uniform to eat a ritual meal of figs, sour milk and leaves of terebinth.”