Did the Romans drive a birth-control plant to extinction?

Yes and no . Yes , they almost certainly did ram this flora to extinction . No , it probably was n’t that good a method acting of birth dominance . get word how silphim , a long - dead congenator of fennel , power an entire economy , before it vanish constantly .

Top image : Roman Mosaic from Centocelle .

The long - ago Romans had a problem . They were self-aggrandizing fans of sex — and with all that gym time they logged , who could charge them ? — but they were n’t into freehanded kinfolk . Famously , the Romans had condoms , but consider most people did n’t have the money to buy disposable prophylactic , and some people did n’t even have the soap to wash the safety out with , this was not an attractive selection .

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So the Romans cast about for other methods of giving birth control — until they notice a little green goddess that was first break by ancient Greek settlers in North Africa . Silphium , or silphion , was a fennel - like herbaceous plant that grew along the seacoast . The Romans learned that a gang of its leaves , when toil up and put into a resin , reduced the likeliness of pregnancy . Word got around fairly fast , and soon both the Cerenean settlers , and the island they had left , Thera , were dishing out the herb to the Romans — and anyone else who could buy it . They were n’t blate about explaining what the herb purportedly did . Their coin prove pictures of genus Silphium on one side , and a woman gesticulate indelicately to her crotch on the other . And they had plenty of coins . Towards the end , genus Silphium was deserving its own weightiness in silver .

The mellow prices were good in the short - term for the vendors , but they reflect a longsighted - terminal figure job . Silphium could n’t be cultivated . Like the romp bush or the brazil nut tree today , it grew wild on the coast , or it did n’t turn at all . Because coastlines are tough to guard , this imply that the rigorous limits on the yearly harvesting did no good . Smugglers would come in and grab as much of the herbaceous plant as they could . Although some people say that the weed has ricochet up again on the coastlines of Libya , the most dependable sources arrogate the last pill was swallowed by the Emperor Nero . The Romans almost certainly cause the extinction of this plant .

But what , precisely , did they cause the experimental extinction of ?

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call up , these mass also believed that a person could cure a headache by tying a Charles James Fox ’s privates to their foreheads , and that eat the heart of a donkey could cure epilepsy . cook parturition control had to be easier than faking a cure for epilepsy . Today people point to the fact that silphium is link up to plants that are believed to be advanced - day abortifacient — which clear Nero ’s gesture selfish and pointless . clearly there are few studies to pass judgment the efficacy of these innovative herb . Reputable medical websites refuse to even list them — again , understandably . The fact that any number of plants could be related to the extensive list means that opine silphium to be an real parturition dominance agent is a take a big jump , based on a big supposititious .

Then again , the Romans were a practical lot , and they had to have talked among themselves . How likely is it that they ’d vanquish out for something with no note value at all when it came to something as comparatively predictable as gestation prevention ? Perhaps , in the end , the fact that genus Silphium was n’t widely available work in its favor . If only a relative few people could get their manpower on any measure , this would make a pseudo , or a negligible effect , harder to detect than if anyone could try it for themselves . The only affair we can be sure of now is , we ’re lucky to have other , well options .

Plant figure : USDA

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