 The first mention of the root in classical sources is from the 1st century AD; the Romans ate a root vegetable called "pastinaca", which may have been either the carrot or the closely related parsnip.The plant is depicted and described in the Eastern Roman Juliana Anicia Codex, a 6th-century AD Constantinopolitan copy of the Greek physician Dioscorides' 1st-century pharmacopoeia of herbs and medicines, De Materia Medica.Three different types of carrots are depicted, and the text states that "the root can be cooked and eaten".