Yarrow

Primary source

• Pliny the Elder; trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley, The Natural History of Pliny, vol. 5 (London: Bohn), 1856, Book XXV, ch. 19Pliny says Achilles discovered the wound-herb achilleos and cured Telephus with it, reports other authorities who credit verdigris instead, and gives the Roman name millefolium.
• James Legge (trans.), The Sacred Books of China, part 2: The Yi King (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16; Oxford: Clarendon Press), 1882, Introduction, ch. 3; Appendix III (Great Appendix), Section I, paragraphs 51, 68 and 73The Great Appendix calls the divining plant and the tortoise spirit-like things produced by Heaven and describes the forty-nine stalks; Legge identifies the plant as Ptarmica sibirica, seen by him at Confucius's grave, and judges the belief in the stalks' virtue a want of common sense.
• Homer; trans. Samuel Butler, The Iliad (Project Gutenberg #2199), 1898, Book XI, the healing of EurypylusAchilles knows healing herbs taught by Chiron; Patroclus treats Eurypylus with an unnamed bitter herb, so the Iliad gives the hero herb-lore without naming yarrow.

  he then crushed a bitter herb, rubbing it between his hands

• Dioscorides; ed. Max Wellmann, Pedanii Dioscuridis Anazarbei De materia medica libri quinque, vol. 2 (Berlin: Weidmann), 1906, Book IV, ch. 36Dioscorides names the wound-herb Achilleios sideritis and lists millefolium among its Roman names.

Scholarship

• Edward L. Shaughnessy, A First Reading of the Mawangdui Yijing Manuscript, Early China 19, 1994The Mawangdui manuscript, found in December 1973 and copied about 175 BCE, carries the Xici commentary; in 1994 it was the earliest known manuscript of the Zhouyi.