Changes

I. The earliest extant literary allusion to alfalfa1 (''Medicago sativa'') is made in 424 B.C. in the Equites ("The Knights") of Aristophanes, who says (V, 606) :

The term "Medike" is derived from the name of the country Media. In his description of Media, Strabo* states that the plant constituting the chief food of the horses is called by the Greeks "Medike" from its growing in Media in great abundance. He also mentions as a product of Media silphion, from which is obtained the Medic juice. 3 Pliny 4 intimates that "Medica" is by nature foreign to Greece, and that it was first introduced there from Media in consequence of the Persian wars under King Darius. Dioscorides6 describes the plant without referring to a locality, and adds that it is used as forage by the cattlebreeders. In Italy, the plant was disseminated from the middle of the second century B.C. to the middle of the first century a.d., 8—almost coeval with its propagation to China. The Assyriologists claim that aspasti or aspastu, the Iranian designation of alfalfa, is mentioned in a Babylonian text of ca. 700 B.C.; 7 and it would not be impossible that its favorite fodder followed the horse at the time of its introduction from Iran into Mesopotamia. A. de Candolle8 states that Medicago