'Give me to drink mandragora, That I might sleep out this great gap of time My Antony is away.'
And, again, when in Othello he makes Iago say:
'Nor poppy, nor mandragora, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world Can ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owedst yesterday.'
But, on the other hand, we find Apuleius--himself, by the way, not unsuspected of magical arts--writing that when the root of the mandrake is steeped in wine it produces vehement intoxication. The same idea is reflected in Mrs. Browning's Dead Pan:
'In what revels are ye sunken In old Ethiopia? Have the Pygmies made you drunken, Bathing in mandragora, Your divine pale lips that shiver Like the lotus in the river?'
And there can be little doubt that the mysterious 'Lhasis,' referred to by Sir William Davenant[5]--a word whose etymology is so obscure--is nothing else than the mandrake or mandragora; if so, then we see that the plant was valued for its exciting and stimulating effects rather than as an opiate.
Many commentators and most dictionaries dispose of Reuben's mandrakes as something altogether different from the plant now known by the name; but there is really no warrant for such a conclusion. The _Mandragora officinalis_ is quite common in Celicia, Syria, and elsewhere in the East, and is easily identifiable with the root of Baaras, which Josephus describes in the Wars of the Jews. This root, he says, is in colour like to that of flame, and towards the evening it sends out a certain ray like lightning. It is not easily to be pulled, it will not yield quietly, and it is certain death to anyone who dares pull it, unless he hangs it with the head downwards. As to the uses of the root, Josephus continues: 'After all his pains in getting it, it is only valuable on account of one virtue it hath: that if it only be brought to sick persons, it quickly drives away those called Demons, which are no other than the spirits of the wicked, which enter into men that are alive and kill them, unless they can obtain some help against them'; and the root was esteemed a useful stimulant, although in Baaras, at any rate, it seems to have lost its reputation as a love-philtre. It is noteworthy that Josephus also tells how Solomon had great skill in enchantments, and cast out devils by means of this root--an accomplishment he is said to have learned from some of the numerous foreign ladies with whom he surrounded himself.