universally translated in our versions by the term sorcery or some similar word. At the time when the Apostles wrote this was evidently the prevalent meaning attached to the term. But in earlier Greek literature the reputable and the disgraceful ideas associated with the word seem to have run side by side for centuries. Homer uses pharmakon in both senses; Plato makes pharmakeuein mean to administer a remedy, while Herodotus adopts it to signify the practice of sorcery. Apparently this word came from an earlier, pharmassein, which was derived from a root implying to mix, and the gradual sense development was that of producing an effect by means of drugs. They might produce purging, they might produce a colour, or they might produce love.
The multiplication of names for the various classes connected with medicine and pharmacy in the Roman world is rather confusing. As the language of medicine up to and including Galen was largely Greek, many of the designations employed were those which had been drawn from that tongue. The name Pharmacopeus, used in Greek to denote certain handlers of drugs, had always a sinister signification. It suggested a purveyor of noxious drugs, a compounder of philtres, a vendor of poisons. The men who kept shops for the sale of drugs generally were called pharmacopoloi. This term was not free from reproach, because it was a common appellation, not only of the shop-keepers strictly so-called, but was also applied to the periodeutes, or agyrtoi, travelling quacks or assembly gatherers, or as they came to be named in Latin, circulatores or circumforanei.
These itinerant drug sellers are occasionally referred to by the classic authors. Lucian speaks of one hawking
