Table 1.

English translation of reference to species of Mentha in De Materia Medica of Dioscorides (Beck, 2005).

Book	Translation
III, 31	[ϒλήχων (βλήχων), M. pulegium L. Pennyroyal]
The pennyroyal: it is a familiar herb, warming, thinning and promoting digestion. When drunk, it draws the menses, afterbirth, and embryos/fetuses. It brings up from the long phlegm when drunk with salt and honey and it helps people with spasms, and with sour wine mixed with water it relieves nausea and gnawing pains of the stomach. With wine, it drives down the bowel dark matter and helps those bitten by wild animals and when applied to the nostrils with vinegar, it revives those who fainted.
Ground up dry and burned, it also strengths the gums; plastered on with barley groats, it soothes all inflammations; it is suitable to use all by itself on the gouty until the skin surfaces becomes irritated and when used with a cerate, it checks facial eruptions; it also helps patients with spleen disease when plastered on with salt. Its decoction used as a wash stops itching and is suitable in a sitz bath for uterine inflations, indurations, and twistings. Some people call it blechon because sheep that taste it when in bloom bleat continuously.
III, 34		[ύбύοσμον Mentha sp. L. Green mint]
The green mint, but some call it minthe: it is a well-known little herb having warming, astringent and drying properties; it is for this reason that its juice, when drunk with vinegar, staunches blood, destroys the round intestinal worm, rouses sexual desire, and when two or three little sprays are drunk with the juice of sour pomegranate, stops hiccups, vomiting, and cholera. Applied as a plaster with barley groats, it dissipates abscesses, placed on the forehead, it assuages headaches, and it abates distension and swelling of the breasts.
With salt, it is a plaster for people bitten by dogs, and its juice with hydromel is suitable for earaches. Used by women as a pessary before sexual intercourse, it causes barrenness, and if rubbed on a rough tongue, it smothes it; it keeps milk from curdling when little sprays are stirred about in it, and it is through and through wholesome and spicy.
There is also a wild green mint which has thicker leaves, all told it is larger than bergamot mint which has thicker leaves, all told it is larger than bergamont mint, rather foul smelling, and less useful for health purposes.