Moly (herb)

Snowdrop, perhaps the herb moly

Moly (Greek: μῶλυ, [môly]) is a magical herb mentioned in book 10 of Homer's Odyssey.^[1]

In the story, Hermes gave this herb to Odysseus to protect him from Circe's magic when he went to her home to rescue his friends.^[2] These friends came together with him from the island Aiolos after they escaped from the Cyclops. "The plant 'moly' of which Homer speaks; this plant, it is said, had grown from the blood of the Gigante killed in the isle of Kirke; it has a white flower; the ally of Kirke who killed the Gigante was Helios (the Sun); the combat was hard (Greek malos) from which came the name of this plant".^[3] Homer also describes Moly by saying "The root was black, while the flower was as white as milk; the gods call it Moly, Dangerous for a mortal man to pluck from the soil, but not for the deathless gods. All lies within their power".^[4]

There has been much controversy as to the identification. Philippe Champault decides in favour of the Peganum harmala (of the order Rutaceae),^[5] the Syrian or African rue (Greek πἠγανον), from the husks of which the vegetable alkaloid harmaline is extracted. The flowers are white with green stripes. Victor Bérard relying partly on a Semitic root,^[6] prefers the Atriplex halimus (atriplex, a Latin form of Greek ἀτράφαξυς, and ἅλιμος, marine), order Chenopodiaceae, a herb or low shrub common on the south European coasts. These identifications are noticed by R. M. Henry,^[7] who illustrates the Homeric account by passages in the Paris and Leiden magical papyri, and argues that moly is probably a magical name, derived perhaps from Phoenician or Egyptian sources, for a plant which cannot be certainly identified. He shows that the "difficulty of pulling up" the plant is not a merely physical one, but rather connected with the peculiar powers claimed by magicians.^[7] In Tennyson's The Lotos-Eaters, the moly is coupled with the amaranth ("propt on beds of amaranth and moly").^[2]

Medical historians have speculated that the transformation to pigs was not intended literally but refers to anticholinergic intoxication.^[8] Symptoms include amnesia, hallucinations, and delusions. The description of "moly" fits the snowdrop, a flower of the region that contains galantamine, which is an anticholinesterase and can therefore counteract anticholinergics.

Notes

References

• Homer; Butler, Samuel (1898), The Odyssey, Book X 

Attribution

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Moly". Encyclopædia Britannica 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 681