Its botanical name comes from the Greek words meaning “sweet root.” The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Chinese, and Hindus recognized the natural medicinal qualities of liquorice.
Herodotus, Greek historian, extremely impressed by the Scythians and their military ability, horsemanship and efficiency as units of cavalry. They could also endure long periods of thirst by eating liquorice root and drinking mare’s milk.
Theophrastus (IV–III century BC), a Greek native of Eresos in Lesbos also the great botanist, pharmacologist and disciple of Plato and Aristotle, provides the first records of liquorice used as a drug in Europe. He suggested that the Greeks probably learnt about the pharmacological uses of liquorice from the Scythians, an ethnic group who lived to the north and east of Greece in the area of the Ukraine between the Black and Caspian Seas.
In the first century AD, Pedanius Dioscorides (ca. 40–90 AD), an ancient Greek physician and botanist, placed liquorice among the 650 medicinal substances of plant origin listed in his De Materia Medica. This became the standard work for over a thousand years. It contained descriptions of about 700 plants and 300 other remedies.
Liquorice was a very well-known remedy during ancient Roman times, as documented by the quotations of its beneficial effects reported by several other Roman authors, including Aulus Cornelius Celsus (ca. 25 BC–ca. 50 AD) and Scribonius Largus (2–52 AD), Claudius Galen (Galen, 129–211 AD), Marcellus Empiricus (IV/V century AD) and Cassius Felix (V century AD).
In the first century B.C., Pliny the Elder also makes mention of the various functions of licorice root. Pliny alleges that licorice in the form of a lozenge clears the voice and postpones hunger and thirst. Pliny states that, because of its association with thirst, licorice has served as a remedy for patients suffering from dropsy.
According to history, Romans marched their armies with the troops chewing the root as a medicinal stick. Including its thirst-quenching qualities.
Liquorice in history of ancient Greeks and Romans
