 It is necessary to look in a slightly different direction, in order to see how magical practices came to be particularly associated with Pythagoras and thus why Nigidius was called Pythagorean and magus. In the first century, it was widely believed that Pythagoras had studied with the Magi (Cicero, Fin. V 87), i.e. Persian priests/wise men. What Pythagoras was thought to have learned from the Magi most of all were the magical properties of plants. Pliny the elder (23–79 CE) identifies Pythagoras and Democritus as the experts on such magic and the Magi as their teachers (Nat. XXIV 156–160). Pliny goes on to give a number of specific examples from a book on plants ascribed to Pythagoras. This book is universally regarded as spurious by modern scholars, and even Pliny, who accepts its authenticity, reports that some people ascribe it to Cleemporus. We can date this treatise on plants to the first half of the second century or earlier, since Cato the elder (234–149 BCE) appears to make use of it in his On Agriculture (157), when he discusses the medicinal virtues of a kind of cabbage, which was named after Pythagoras (brassica Pythagorea).