Casia

More than just a key ingredient in Fireball, *casia*, otherwise known as cinnamon, is a plant featured several times throughout Vergil’s *Georgics*. It is an aromatic spice from the inside bark of different tree species under the genus Cinnamomum.
For example, in Book 4, cinnamon is used as part of an animal sacrifice of a *vitulus*, which is a young bull, or *taurus.*

## **Defining Casia + Grammar**

**casia, casiae, f - wild cinnamon**

* also has alternative spelling of cassia
* casia is also sometimes used to mean an aromatic shrub, possibly mezereon

For the purpose of this article, and because the commentary does not seem to express otherwise, I am choosing to interpret all of the passages in the Georgics that contain this word to be translated as cinnamon.

Fun etymology sourced from the footnotes in Kristina Chew’s translation:
“Greek kasia from Hebrew qesî’ âh, “cutoff bark” (Chew, 55n60).

 VOCATIVE
 ACCUSATIVE
 GENITIVE
 DATIVE
 ABLATIVE

## **Appearances in the *Georgics***

2.213: *Nam quidem clivosi glarea ruris vix humilis apibus **casias** roremque ministrat*

“For dry gravel of the hill country hardly serves humble wild cinnamon and rosemary to the bees”

2.466: *Nec **casia** liquidi corrumpitur usus olivi*

“Nor the olive oil they use corrupted by pure wild cinnamon”

4.30: *Haec circum **casiae** virides et olentia late … floreat*

“All around, let these green wild cinnamon plants with its scent having been carried … flower"

4.182: *pascuntur et arbuta passim et glaucas salices **casiamque**...*

“they are grazing strawberries far and wide and gray willow trees and wild cinnamon...”

4.304: *…et ramea costis subiciunt fragmenta, thymum **casiasque** recentes.*

“...and throw broken branches under his ribs, thyme, and fresh wild cinnamon.”

## **Other Appearances**

**Cinnamon in Sappho’s poetry (translated by Anne Carson)**

Fragment 44: “and everywhere in the roads was [

Bowls and cups [

Myrrh and cassia and frankincense were mingled.”

**Cinnamon in Herodotus’ *The Histories*, book 3 (translated by G. C Macaulay)**

107. “Then again Arabia is the furthest of inhabited lands in the direction of the midday, and in it alone of all lands grow frankincense and myrrh and cassia and cinnamon and gum-mastich. All these except myrrh are got with difficulty by the Arabians…”

110. “…and cassia is obtained as follows:—they bind up in cows'-hide and other kinds of skins all their body and their face except only the eyes, and then go to get the cassia. This grows in a pool not very deep, and round the pool and in it lodge, it seems, winged beasts nearly resembling bats, and they squeak horribly and are courageous in fight. These they must keep off from their eyes, and so cut the cassia.”

111. “Cinnamon they collect in a yet more marvellous manner than this: for where it grows and what land produces it they are not able to tell, except only that some say (and it is a probable account) that it grows in those regions where Dionysos was brought up; and they say that large birds carry those dried sticks which we have learnt from the Phenicians to call cinnamon, carry them, I say, to nests which are made of clay and stuck on to precipitous sides of mountains, which man can find no means of scaling. With regard to this then the Arabians practise the following contrivance:—they divide up the limbs of the oxen and asses that die and of their other beasts of burden, into pieces as large as convenient, and convey them to these places, and when they have laid them down not far from the nests, they withdraw to a distance from them: and the birds fly down and carry the limbs 100 of the beasts of burden off to their nests; and these are not able to bear them, but break down and fall to the earth; and the men come up to them and collect the cinnamon. Thus cinnamon is collected and comes from this nation to the other countries of the world.”