Herbs

In my latest book, The Brothers of Death, Appius Claudius bribes an Etruscan assassin with silphium seeds, a plant so rare that it soon became extinct. As silphium’s prevalence waned, it became as valuable as gold. It isn’t much of a stretch to envision ancient Romans bartering with silphium seeds and plants, especially when coin money was still looked upon with suspicion. But what is silphium, and why was it so valuable? A purported relative of fennel, silphium was a do-everything plant for Romans, the closest thing I’ve seen to a real-life panacea. It was used as an aphrodisiac, contraceptive, seasoning, perfume, medicine, root vegetable, stalk vegetable, preservative, and trade item! So precious was silphium, it was considered a gift from the god Apollo. Julius Caesar had his own stash of silphium, cached away in the Roman treasury. So what happened to silphium, why did it become extinct? We aren’t sure, but there are two primary suspects: overharvesting and climate

read more Silphium: The Good-As-Gold Plant of the Roman Republic