Herbs in History: Celery

Celery Apium graveolens L. CONTENTS Uncertainties? A Classic Scholarly Uncertainty Ancient Ambivalence References

By Alain Touwaide & Emanuela Appetiti | March 2024

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Illustration 1: Celery (Apium graveolens L.)

Uncertainties?

If there is an easy growing and sociable plant, it probably is celery (Apium graveolens L.) (Apiaceae, ex Umbelliferae) (Illustration 1). A native from Macaronesia to Western Himalaya, from Europe to Northern Africa now ubiquitous (Illustration 2), it is a biennial, self-fertile aromatic plant that grows in light to heavy, and also saline soils, preferably moist. If it likes the sun or semi-shade, it tolerates frosts (even though it might suffer from hard frosts). And it is a good companion to leek, tomato, beans, and brassica, in addition to being an insect repellent.

 

Illustration 2: Native distribution and introduction of celery worldwide according to Plants of the World Online

A Classic

From the Hippocratics to Dioscorides and Pliny, to Walhafrid Strabo and Hildegard von Bingen, to ibn Sina and ibn al Baytar and later, celery is a classic of the literature on the materia medica of the ancient Mediterranean and Central-northern Europe. It will suffice here to cite the chapter on celery in De materia medica by Dioscorides (1^st cent. CE), which has been the major—if not the unique—reference for fifteen centuries and more:
 

Garden celery. The whole plant is suitable for the same medical conditions as coriander, and also for inflammations of the eyes applied with bread or fine barley groats; it alleviates heartburn, and relaxes breasts swollen with milk clots. Raw or cooked, it provokes urine.
 
Its decoction and the decoction of its roots in a draught counteract poisons, provoke vomiting, and stop diarrhea.
 
The seed is more diuretic, helping patients bitten by venomous animals and those who have drunk litharge. It dissolves flatulence. It is useful when it is mixed with analgesics, antidotes for venomous bites, and cough remedies.
 
The marsh celery, which grows in moist places and is larger than garden celery, treats the same conditions as garden celery.

 
A systematic browsing of the whole De materia medica through its later rearrangement by medical conditions known as On simple medicines compiled by an anonymous author possibly of the 1^st century CE, yields more information about the therapeutic uses of celery with the following indications by organ or major anatomical/physiological system as per the ancient analysis of the body (medical conditions are followed by the book and chapter number in the Greek text between parentheses for reference purposes):
 

• eyes

  • inflammation (fresh leaves in a cataplasm) (1.30)

• skin

  • erysipelas (liniment with other drugs, including mineral ones) (1.160)

  • growths on the skin (liniment with alum, bread and wine) (1.210)

• articulations and nerves

  • gout/arthritis (liniment, stops pain) (1.228)

  • sciatica (liniment, leaves cooked in wine) (1.232)

• digestive system/organs

  • heartburn (liniment) (2.2)

  • vomiting (leaves, plaster on the chest) (2.8)

  • diarrhea/dysentery (diet, stalks cooked) (2.51)

  • jaundice (leaves, decoction [2.58] and fruit, decoction [2.60])

  • spleen, swollen (whole plant, draught) (2.63)

• urinary tract

  • dysuria (root, decoction with wormwood) (2.113)

  • diuresis (provoking) (fruits, draught) (2.119)

• gynecology

  • amenorrhea (whole plant, decoction) (2.79)

• obstetric

  • post-partum, expulsion of the placenta (whole plant, sitz-bath) (2.85)

  • breastfeeding/swollen breasts (whole plant, fresh, liniment) (1.128)

• toxicology

  • snakebites (seed with germander, draught) (2.121)

  • litharge poisoning (seed, draught) (2.166)

Strangely, there is also an iatrogenic effect: the reduction of vision sharpness induced by the excessive consumption of celery (1.42).
 

Illustration 3: Parsley (Petroselinum crispum (Mill.) Fuss)

Scholarly Uncertainty

As this iatrogenic effect indicates, celery is wrapped in some uncertainty, including in modern scholarly literature.
 
The ancient Greek term traditionally believed to designate celery is selinon. However, in scholarly literature, this term is generally interpreted as referring to parsley (Petroselinum crispum (Mill.) Fuss) (Illustration 3), and not to celery.
 
In its most ancient attestations in Greek literature—the Iliad and the Odyssey——selinon is about celery, instead. In the Iliad, indeed, the horses of the Greek Myrmidons fighting Troy are described grazing selinon while their owners enjoy practicing sport between battles (Iliad 2.776):
 

… people along the seashore took their joy in throwing the discus and the javelin, and in archery; and their horses, each beside his own carriage, eating lotus and celery of the marsh, stood idle …

 
The Odyssey is even clearer in the description of Calypso’s cave (Odyssey 5.72):
 

… Round about the cave grew a luxuriant wood, alder and poplar and sweet-smelling cypress, wherein birds long of wing were wont to nest, owls and falcons and sea-crows with chattering tongues, who ply their business on the sea. And right there about the hollow cave ran trailing a garden vine, in pride of its prime, richly laden with clusters. And fountains four in a row were flowing with bright water hard by one another, turned one this way, one that. And round about soft meadows of violets and celery were blooming …

 
In both cases, particularly in the context of such a lush vegetation as around Calypso’s cave, celery seems much more appropriate than the low and less aromatic parsley.
 
Modern scholarship also claimed sometimes that the Ancient World did not know domesticated celery, but only its wild form. A clear indication to the contrary is the name used by Dioscorides in De materia medica (3.64): garden selinon. The term garden here explicitly refers to a cultivated space, probably an orchard. The term certainly could be understood as—and perhaps translated into—domesticated.
 
A further indication in this sense comes from the playwright Aristophanes (ca. 450-ca. 386 BCE). In the comedy Wasps first staged in 422 BCE, Aristophanes wrote (Wasps 480):
 

… as yet you've hardly entered on the parsley and the rue …

 
Because of an interpretation of celery discussed below, this exchange between the two personages has been read as meaning that one of them is about to die, crossing the line of parsley, which is the one that separates life from death. In fact, this verse simply refers to the fact that the two personages were in a garden and were involved in an animated discussion, probably moving in different, if not disordinate directions; one of them was about to step on the line of parsley that can be understood as a hedge in the garden, possibly to separate beds of different plant species. Aristophanes’ verse is not a reference to crossing the line between life and death, in addition to providing an indication of celery as a garden plant, domesticated, well before the treatise of Dioscorides cited above.
 
Nevertheless, in an earlier time, celery was used in an inhumation rite described by Herodotus (ca. 480 [?] – ca. 420 BCE), the Father of History. In his History of the Persian War, however, Herodotus describes this rite as typical of the Scythians, a non-Greek population considered as barbarian by the Greeks (History of Persian War 4.71):
 

… whenever their king has died, the Scythians dig a great four-cornered pit in the ground; when this is ready they take up the dead man—his body enclosed in wax, his belly cut open, cleansed and filled with cut marsh-plants, frankincense, selinon (= celery), and anise seed, and sewn up again—and carry him on a wagon to another tribe …

 
Later and more specifically, in the Roman World, celery was more explicitly connected with death as we shall see.
 

Ancient Ambivalence

In early classical Greece, the poet Pindar (518-446 BCE) wrote odes celebrating the winners of the sport games, the most famous of which were those held in Olympia. There were others—and no less famous in Antiquity—which were held in Nemea, Corinth, and Delphi. Whereas, in Olympia, the winners received a crown of laurel, in the so-called Isthmian games celebrated in Corinth, they were crowned with celery:
 

O praise ye him, who won the crown of wild Dorian celery in the Isthmian glade
Pindar, Isthmian Odes, 8, v. 64 (489 BCE)

 
A similar description of the crown earned by the winner in the Isthmian games—with the same adjective Dorian—is found in another Isthmian poem by Pindar:
 

Poseidon sent him to entwine about his hair a wreath of the wild Dorian celery,
Pindar, Isthmian Odes, 2, v. 16 (472 BCE)

 
In the poems celebrating the winner of other games (at Nemea and Delphi), Pindar recalls that he  already had been victorious in the Isthmian games and earned a crown of celery:
 

… he burst into bloom with the Isthmian crown of wild celery …
Pindar, Nemean Odes, 4, v. 88 (476 BCE)

 

… He hath thus attained what no mortal man ever had attained before. And two wreaths of wild celery crowned him, when he appeared at the Isthmian festival …
Pindar, Olympian Odes, 13, v. 33 (464 BCE)

 
The adjective wild in the last two odes does not need to be interpreted in a strictly botanical sense as referring to a wild species as opposed to a domesticated one, but must be connected with the adjective Dorian in the first two odes. Dorian refers to a group of the ancient Greek population, different from the Ionian. The Dorians were more markedly present in the Peloponnese to the natural world of which the adjectives Dorian and wild here probably referred. The fertility and abundant agricultural production of the Peloponnese was certainly opposed to the more urban and less agricultural nature of the Ionian branch of Greek population best represented by Athens.

This use of celery to crown winners of sport competitions might be surprising, unless we understand—as the documentation allows to do—that celery was a rarity and a prized plant, and not a vegetable used in the ancient Greek daily life and alimentation.

The prize of athletic excellence and a symbol of victory, celery saw its meaning changed at a certain point. This transformation is echoed by Timaeus (ca. 350-260 BCE) in his history of the so-called War for Sicily. In 341 or 339 BCE, Timoleon (d. ca. 330 BCE) from Corinth, was fighting against the Carthaginians in Sicily. As the story goes:
 

… During their campaign against the Carthaginians in the war for Sicily, the Corinthians suddenly saw some asses carrying celery. Most of the troops interpreted the encounter as a bad sign because celery is regarded as a symbol of mourning, and we say of those who are critically ill that “a sprig of celery is all you can give them now”. Timoleon, however, restored the spirits of his men precisely by reminding them that the celery was used as the crown of victory at the Isthmian games …
Plutarch, Quaestiones convivales (Table Talk), 2.5.

 

Illustration 4: Celery (?) on a coin from Selinus dating to 540-515 BCE

The fact is that celery seems to have been more abundantly grown and used in Italy and Sicily than in Greece. It might even have been typical of the plain where a city was founded in 651 BCE as the name of the city indicates: Selinus (now Selinunte) recalling the Greek name of celery, selinon. The figure on the obverse of Selinus coins (Illustration 4) seems to represent celery.

Returning to Timoleon’s troops, according to the historian Plutarch (before 50 CE-after 120 CE) reporting the Sicilian event, after his soldiers panicked at the view of asses carrying celery, Timoleon crowned himself with the plant, as commanders and soldiers did also after him. And they won the battle against the Carthaginians.
 
Nevertheless, celery seems to have gained a different reputation, passing from a symbol of victory to one of death. As early as the 3^rd century BCE, the Greek historian Duris (ca. 320-ca. 260 BCE) associates the crown of celery with death, as does also—though much later—the Latin naturalist Pliny (23/4-79 CE) in his vast compilation Historia Naturalis (Natural History). For him, celery was typical of funeral banquets.
 
This inversion of value is further confirmed in the Book of Dream Interpretation (Oneirocriticon) by the Greek writer Artemidoros of Ephesus (mid/late 2^nd cent. CE). Here is what Artemidoros wrote about a vision of a crown of celery in a dream (Book I, chapter 77):

A garland of celery signifies death to the sick and generally to people who suffer from dropsy because it is cold and moist and because such crown is awarded as a prize at a funeral game. For the athletes it is good, and for the other people it is inappropriate.

 
The key for this change in the perception of celery might be found in the conversations between banqueters reported—or artistically staged in writing—by Plutarch. In one of these conversations, the banqueters talked about the crown earned by the winners at the Isthmian games. At the time of his conversation—fictitious or real, it does not matter—the crown earned by the winners was made of pine instead of celery:
           

… the pine was the traditional garland at these games, and the crown of celery was imported
more recently from Nemea …although the celery prevailed as a fitting sacred symbol and caused the pine to be forgotten, nevertheless in the course of time the pine recovered its original prerogative, to flourish now in high honor …
Plutarch, Quaestiones convivales (Table Talk), 2.5.

 
As an evergreen plant, pine was a symbol of immortality and was planted in the cemeteries in Antiquity. This symbolism might have been transferred to celery when it substituted pine for the crowns of the winners in the Isthmian games, in a projection back-in-time of the value of pine to celery, resulting in confusing the interpretation of celery, both in ancient times and moder scholarship.

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