Online Encyclopedia

MOLY (Gr. mu Xu)

Online Encyclopedia
Originally appearing in Volume V18, Page 681 of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.
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MOLY (Gr. mu Xu)  , a mysterious plant with magical powers described in Homer, Odyssey, x . 302-306 . Hermes pulls it up and gives it to Odysseus as a
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protection against the arts of Circe . It is further described as " having a black root and a flower like milk, and hard for mortals to pull up." There has been much controversy as to the identification . Philippe Champault—Pheniciens et Grecs en Italie d'apres l'Odyssee (1906),pp . 504 seq.—decides in favour of the Peganum harmala (of the order Rutaceae), the Syrian or
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African rue (Gr. irir'avov), from the husks of which the
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vegetable
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alkaloid harmaline (C1aH14N20) is extracted . The flowers are white with green stripes . Victor Berard—Les Pheniciens et l'Odyssee, ii . 288 seq.—relying partly on a Semitic root, prefers the Atriplex halimus (atriplex, a
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Lat. form of Gr. arph¢aEas, and &X os, marine), order Chenopodiaceae, a herb or low
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shrub
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common on the south
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European coasts . These identifications are noticed by R . M . Henry in Class .

Rev . (Dec . Igoe), p . 434, who illustrates the Homeric

account by passages in the Paris and
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Leiden magical papyri, and argues that moly is probably a magical name, derived perhaps from Phoenician or
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Egyptian
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sources, for a plant which cannot be certainly identified . He shows that the " difficulty of pulling up " the plant is not a merely
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physical one, but rather connected with the
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peculiar powers claimed by magicians . In Tennyson's
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Lotus Eaters the moly is coupled with the amaranth (" propt on beds of amaranth and moly ") .

End of Article: MOLY (Gr. mu Xu)
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