Opium Smoking in Ancient Rome/Egypt???

[Pertinax]

The reference may be Hindi I will post if my Bengalii contacts can make sense of it. Nushtar is a reference to opium tears .The cretic wine reference might be a Victorian "re-invention" of a peppered opiate based wine from Old Kingdom Egypt.

[Nephele]

Ah, I knew I could count on you, Pertinax, in all matters of pharmacology!

 

I guess the HBO Rome folks got their natrah confused with nushtar? I'm looking forward to hearing what your Bengalii contacts might have to add.

 

-- Nephele

[Pertinax]

Never mix your natrah and nushtar! It only leads to a bad hangover and recrimination.

[Nephele]

Never mix your natrah and nushtar! It only leads to a bad hangover and recrimination.

 

 

Absinthe! Food of the Goths!

 

-- Nephele

[harmonicus]

After watching last nights episode of ROME (episode 9 of series 2) and witnessing half the cast indulging in hookah pipes and bongs and little brass ganja pipes I can contain myself no longer and must explain that the Romans, or any Old World culture never actually smoked opium.

 

According to 'OPIUM: A HISTORY' by Martin Booth,

"...the exclusivity of opium, which was eaten, meant very few people were addicted. However, this was to change when a particularly unique new vice, originating in the New World, was introduced to China by European sailors. It was smoking"

 

Although this paragraph is not specifically about the Romans it does explain that smoking substances was an idea that did not exist.

 

"Thus was born one one of the most evil cultural exchanges in history - opium from the middle east met the native American Indian pipe".

 

"For the Romans , the poppy was a powerful symbol of sleep and death. Somnus, the god of sleep is often portrayed as a small boy carrying a bunch of poppies and an opium horn, the vessel in which the juice was collected by farmers..."

 

Could this opium horn be the cause of the misunderstanding? Is it being mistaken for some kind of pipe?

 

 

I am hoping that someone will contradict my post and point to evidense of Old World cultures smoking cannabis or something. It seems improbable to me that hashish was not smoked before Tobacco made its way to Europe and Asia.

[harmonicus]

After watching last nights episode of ROME (episode 9 of series 2) and witnessing half the cast indulging in hookah pipes and bongs and little brass ganja pipes I can contain myself no longer and must explain that the Romans, or any Old World culture never actually smoked opium.

 

According to 'OPIUM: A HISTORY' by Martin Booth,

"...the exclusivity of opium, which was eaten, meant very few people were addicted. However, this was to change when a particularly unique new vice, originating in the New World, was introduced to China by European sailors. It was smoking"

 

Although this paragraph is not specifically about the Romans it does explain that smoking substances was an idea that did not exist.

 

"Thus was born one one of the most evil cultural exchanges in history - opium from the middle east met the native American Indian pipe".

 

"For the Romans , the poppy was a powerful symbol of sleep and death. Somnus, the god of sleep is often portrayed as a small boy carrying a bunch of poppies and an opium horn, the vessel in which the juice was collected by farmers..."

 

Could this opium horn be the cause of the misunderstanding? Is it being mistaken for some kind of pipe?

 

 

I am hoping that someone will contradict my post and point to evidense of Old World cultures smoking cannabis or something. It seems improbable to me that hashish was not smoked before Tobacco made its way to Europe and Asia.

Excuse this somewhat belated reply: I'm a novus homo (my Latin is really provincial!). Excavations of Scythian tumuli have revealed that devices for inhalation of smoke were in use ca.400 CE. Bronze tripods held burning substances, probably cannabis, and users would enclose themselves in tents to inhale the smoke. There is also evidence for the use of hand-held pottery burners dating from the late-neolithic period in Europe, and again, the substance in use was probably cannabis. The gap between burning incense, and smoking isn't all that vast.

[M. Porcius Cato]

With regard to Jocasta's introducing Octavia to smoking hemp, Herodotus writes:

[4.74] Hemp grows in Scythia: it is very like flax; only that it is a much coarser and taller plant: some grows wild about the country, some is produced by cultivation: the Thracians make garments of it which closely resemble linen; so much so, indeed, that if a person has never seen hemp he is sure to think they are linen, and if he has, unless he is very experienced in such matters, he will not know of which material they are.

 

[4.75] The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed, and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy, and this vapour serves them instead of a water-bath; for they never by any chance wash their bodies with water.

To me, it's all clear now. Hemp-smoking barbarians who refuse to bathe? The Scythians were hippies!

[Andrew Dalby]

Resurrecting this thread, as I've just finished watching the commentary version of episode 5 of the second season of HBO's Rome.

 

The series writers or producers or consultants (?) acknowledged that opium was mainly ingested in the ancient world, rather than smoked, but they also gave this reason for their depiction of the opium smoking scenes:

 

"In the ancient world, opium was mainly eaten or taken as a drink, like laudanum, called cretic wine. There is, however, evidence from India that narcotics were already smoked in a primitive kind of bong. It was made from a gourd and its Indian name was doom natrah."

 

I can't find any reference anywhere to "doom natrah", and I've found only two references on the 'net to "cretic wine" Has anyone here ever heard or read of these?

 

-- Nephele

 

Sorry I didn't see this at the time, Nephele. Another resurrection, therefore. The proper English for "Cretic wine" (Latin "vinum Creticum", Greek "Kretikos oinos") is Cretan wine. Meaning that it was made in Crete, and exported to Rome and elsewhere. It was very good, and very sweet -- it was a distant ancestor of Malmsey, the sweetest and richest kind of Madeira -- but it was pure grape. No opium, no laudanum.

[spittle]

With regard to Jocasta's introducing Octavia to smoking hemp, Herodotus writes:

[4.74] Hemp grows in Scythia: it is very like flax; only that it is a much coarser and taller plant: some grows wild about the country, some is produced by cultivation: the Thracians make garments of it which closely resemble linen; so much so, indeed, that if a person has never seen hemp he is sure to think they are linen, and if he has, unless he is very experienced in such matters, he will not know of which material they are.

 

[4.75] The Scythians, as I said, take some of this hemp-seed, and, creeping under the felt coverings, throw it upon the red-hot stones; immediately it smokes, and gives out such a vapour as no Grecian vapour-bath can exceed; the Scyths, delighted, shout for joy, and this vapour serves them instead of a water-bath; for they never by any chance wash their bodies with water.

To me, it's all clear now. Hemp-smoking barbarians who refuse to bathe? The Scythians were hippies!

 

 

There is very little THC in the seeds. Plus the wild growing grass of the Russian steppe is Ruderalis (very weak). So smoking the weakest part of the weakest strain of cannabis would not have been a very effective 'high'.

 

The sativa (Light headed and giggle producing) or the Indica (heavy eyed wreck!) are the main ganja's of choice....or so I'm told. Personally I can't stand the stuff.

 

The Gourd (Primative Pipe) is a chillum. Still used all over India by dreadlocked Sadhu's.

[ASCLEPIADES]

To me, it's all clear now. Hemp-smoking barbarians who refuse to bathe? The Scythians were hippies!

[oldounce]

You guys are quite amazing, I never think about these knowledge and the truth.

Appreciate so much different merit of discussion, I would like to know more.