Annotatio CIX

”Rachel said: Give me part of thy [son’s] mandrakes.” — Genesis 30:14

Francesco Giorgio reprehends Jerome, in the first Tome, Problem 215,¹ because because, for the word which in this place is read in Hebrew דודאים Dudaim, he translated “Mandrakes,” when he ought to have expounded [it as] “Lilies.” For how can it be that Rachel, being barren, should so greatly have desired mandrakes out of a longing to conceive² — [mandrakes] which are most cold, and especially hostile to conceptions, indeed even lethal to those who take them, as Dioscorides sets forth in a long discourse? Hence the mandrake itself is also called Andraclon, because it kills a man — although others would have it called Andricelon, from a man’s image; which experience proves false. Unless perhaps the translator understood [it] of another kind of mandrake, which they call Circaea [Circe’s herb], whose root serves for love-charms; yet the root of this, as Dioscorides himself relates, brings heaviness of head to shepherds who chew it, and induces stupor. Likewise of another kind of mandrake, which is called Morion, the same author narrates that a dram of it, taken in drink, induces madness. Therefore the Dudaim are lilies, which are warm and very proper for conception. An error of this kind is also found in the Song of Songs, where it is said, “The MANDRAKES gave their odor,”³ whereas the mandrake is wholly odorless, and emits no odor at all.