Lycurgus Entwined in the Vine
People are not often transformed into plants in contemporary popular culture (though this might be currently changing). In Greek myths, on the contrary, this was very often the case. Is this caused by a peculiar ontology, a specificity concerning the interiority of plants as Others? It would rather seem to us that a similarity in material nature is at stake. A clue lies in a common way of reacting to heat, what they called “coction” (gk. pepsis), a slow cooking which affects both plants and animals. We hear about coction in the Hippocratic Corpus, then through Aristotelism down to Imperial medicine. This idea of a “common chemical operator” is strengthened, on the one hand, by links between plants and animals in the pharmakon, on the other hand, by the importance of creepers and vines in antiquity, as ornaments, as medicine, and as seasonal food. All these elements lead us to a comprehension of plants which is very far from ours, but maybe sometimes richer, in as much as it allows us to see plants as bodies growing through time.