Squill to Power: How an Unlikely Herb Saved Your Grandma and the West

Did your grandma have the same diet as Hercules? Good question. If your grandma was around in 1960s Australia it’s possible. You see, in ‘60s Australia many people were fond of a treat called Squill Candy. 

“What on earth is Squill Candy?” you might ask. Well, as you might possibly have guessed, Squill Candy is candy, made of squill.. To find out whether your grandparents’ squill has herculean properties we need to dig deeper and find the recipe because not all squill is made equal. “But hold on,” you might say, “You didn’t explain what squill is!” I’m glad you asked.

Squill is a bulbous plant. The variety we are interested in here, Drimia Maritima, or Urginea Maritima, more commonly known as sea-onion, sea-squill, maritime squill, or just squill, is usually found in the Mediterranean (where Hercules was from), especially in coastal areas. It is said – and has been often proven – to have a wide array of often contradictory properties. Since antiquity it has been used for everything from rat poison, to protecting towns from the plague.

It is also rather mysterious: this is how researcher Michael Chase put the conclusion of his article “Notes on Squill in Antiquity”: 

“Deadly yet medicinal, inedible but eaten in a variety of recipes, wet but dry, fertile but abortifacient, the plant Urginea maritima seems to share in the ambiguous, contradictory nature of the underworld divinities (Demeter, Persephone and Hecate) with which it was associated since earliest Greek Antiquity. It may have been this ambiguity and the dark, chthonic connotations of squill that contributed to its reputation as a cure for that dark, ambiguous malady known as melancholy. In fact, the squill’s ambiguous associations may be considerably older, if, as has been recently claimed, its use can be associated with certain manifestations of the Mistress of Animals as far back as the mid-second millennium BCE. When one thinks of the associations of squill with Crete, and recalls that Demeter also shows traces of a Cretan origin, this modest plant seems to open the door to a vast field of research in the history of Mediterranean religion and mythology.”

Part of the reason for this reputation is the manner in which it was used to protect towns from the plague: human sacrifice. This is actually a hotly debated point amongst academics, partly due to Byzantine historians often prioritising the poetic value of their texts over complete historical accuracy; but I digress. According to John Tzetzes, who we will hear more from further on, the Athenian festival of Thargelia featured a purification ceremony in which ugly men were chosen as scapegoats (pharmakoi). They were led out of Athens, and once they arrived at the right location, their genitals were whipped with squill leaves before they were burned at the stake. There are many more details, and they vary greatly depending on the source. For example, according to some accounts, the pharmakoi were merely exiled rather than being executed; but you get the gist of it. In any case, nearly all accounts feature men’s genitals being whipped with squill. You will not be surprised to learn that was a painful procedure. Indeed, according to academic Robert Graves, flogging with squill leaves would be similar to flogging with nettle leaves. (Thargelia is actually in a few days so you might want to figure out who the ugliest person you know is, and buy some really solid shorts if it’s you, just in case.) 

Squill was used for much more than ritual genital flagellation, however. While the bulb of the squill plant is said to be very bitter-tasting, it is also said to ward off evil spirits when hung above your doorway in spring (according to Pythagoras). Squill was also considered to have many more weird, wonderful, and – most surprisingly – often real properties, if you can tolerate it. Here’s a list of all the (supposed) ones I could find: 

Squill (prepared in all kinds of manners) is (in the West) traditionally used for treatment or relief of: dropsy, respiratory ailments (asthma, whooping cough, bronchitis, and generic coughs), bone and joint complications, liver issues, indigestion, jaundice, rheumatism, paralysis, cancer, and epilepsy. It was also sometimes used to protect against evil spirits, and it supposedly makes wolves fall asleep, and was thus used by shepherds.

On top of all that, in Iran it is traditionally used to help: appetite, digestion, belching, viper bites, tightening gums, teeth, bad breath, wart removal, constipation, cramps, bloating, chronic fever, dysuria, thirstiness, flows of menstrual blood, for increasing hair growth in alopecia areata, combating dandruff and head lice, cold headaches, dementia, arthritis, vertigo, and dizziness. It is also used for reducing sexual and erectile dysfunction, as well as “increasing semen”. 

On humans, experiments have indicated that topical use of roasted squill does indeed help hair growth, and squill vinegar does get rid of hair lice; squill vinegar with honey, also known as squill oxymel (a formula invented by Pythagoras), helps relieve asthma symptoms, and its epilepsy-relieving effects have been proven in mice. Squill also relieves musculoskeletal pain, has some antimalarial properties, and has insecticidal, anti-cancer, and anti-parasitic effects. And of course it was used to save towns for the plague.

This can be quite confusing because squill is very toxic: according to WebMD eating squill raw can lead to: “stomach irritation, loss of appetite, diarrhoea, vomiting, headache, vision changes, depression, confusion, hallucinations, irregular heartbeat, and skin rash. More serious side effects such as seizures, life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms, and death have occurred.”

To avoid such effects, this is how Pliny prepared his squill vinegar: “The dry coats being first taken off of it, the remaining part, or so much of it as retains life, is cut into pieces, which are then strung and suspended on a string, at short distances from each other. After these pieces are thoroughly dried, they are thrown into a jar of the very strongest vinegar, suspended in such a way, however, as not to touch any portion of the vessel. This is done forty-eight days before the summer solstice. The mouth of the jar is then tightly sealed with plaster; after which it is placed beneath some tiles which receive the rays of the sun the whole day through. At the end of forty-eight days the vessel is removed, the squills are taken out of it, and the vinegar poured into another jar.”

However this preparation of squill is mainly for medicinal purposes (incidentally, Pliny recommends using white squill for this, as red squill is better used as rat poison). This doesn’t seem to be quite what we are after if we are looking for the food of Hercules. In Antiquity, however, squill was also prized for its use as a hunger suppressant, and the recipe for that seems to be different. The Byzantine grammarian Tzetzes (our source on Thargelia provides an incomplete account of this recipe in what could only be termed a mediaeval rap-battle, replying to his apparently foolish predecessor Proclus (who wrote several centuries earlier):

While that has definitely got to be one of the most entertaining recipes ever written (even more so in the original Middle Greek, which has both rhythm and, to some extent, rhyme), it is far from the most useful.

Was this Hercules’ diet? According to Porphyry’s account of Pythagoras’ diet it seems fairly similar. This is what Porphyry had to say about what Pythagoras ate when going to the “sanctuaries of the divinities”: 

“[…] he made use of hunger-  and thirst-quenching foods.

To quiet hunger, he made a mixture of poppy seed and sesame, the

skin of a squill, well washed, until entirely drained of its external juice;

of the lowering stem of the asphodel, and the leaves of the mallow, of

barley and chick-peas; taking an equal weight of which, and chopping

it small, he moistened it with Hymettian honey. Against thirst he took

the seed of cucumbers, and the best dried raisins, extracting the seeds,

and the lower of coriander, and mallow-seeds, purselain, grated cheese,

the finest wheat-meal and butterfat; these he mixed with island honey.

He claimed that Hercules had learned this diet from Demeter, when

he was sent into the Libyan deserts.”

A recipe quite similar to this was probably still used a thousand years later by the armies of the Byzantine/Roman Empire. According to Denis Sullivan’s commentary of the works written by “Heron of Byzantium”, they used it as long-lasting rations for both expeditions and sieges, “for it is sweet and filling and causes no thirst”. 

According to another military manual of the 10th century renaissance, know as Sylloge Tacticorum, in chapter 57, on “How soldiers may easily be prevented from falling ill from sun and fatigue”: “The so-called squill-flavoured wine [is] also useful before the meal, and the vinegar of squills after the meal, but only in the spring, summer, or autumn, as we said.” Here it was probably used to help with digestion, as the chapter starts with “In the spring and summer and especially in the autumn, the soldiers must not eat just twice but many times a day and in small amounts, because this is better for digestion.” 

On an unrelated note, the Byzantine army used some fairly wild “wines” to look after its soldiers, such as this one (a variant of the classic Roman drink, Posca), also from Sylloge Tacticorum (chapter 62: How drinking wine makes those who consume it sleepy for two or three days, and how to wake them up): “When somebody thoroughly grinds and smooths two litra of Theban poppy juice, myrrh, one part of lettuce seed, one part of henbane juice and two parts of mandrake juice, then pours them into wine, he will make those who drink it sleepy for two or three days. On the other hand, when somebody puts vinegar in their noses, he will cause them to recover.” Interestingly, the Gospel of Mark says that Jesus was offered Posca (probably not this variety) before his crucifixion but refused it (Mark 15:23). A much milder but still similar concoction was apparently sold in the English town of Bridport for about 50 years until regulations caught up with it in 2006; it was reportedly extremely effective at treating coughs.

These manuals were quite influential in the 10th century military renaissance of the Byzantine Empire, so it could theoretically be argued that squill saved Western civilisation, and not just Hercules.

But did it save your grandma? Probably not. In an article that appeared in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1972, a recipe for Squill Candy is given, and it has disappointingly little in common with the squill recipes mentioned so far:

It only calls for three drops of squill essence, which almost certainly didn’t even contain vinegar! Even if it did, Squill Candy is very hard to find these days. Fortunately for those who want to withstand a siege, reverse their balding, or slay a Hydra, squill is a plant that is reportedly extremely easy to grow. At the date of writing, I doubt however that they grow fast enough to be ready on the 48th day before the summer solstice.