ABSTRACT
Among the Greeks and Romans, cannabis was primarily employed as fiber, but perhaps also as a multipurpose medicine. A quote often cited is the scene described in Homer's Odyssey (4:219-232). Helena drops the medicine Nepenthes into the wine drank by Telemachus and his comrades, which provokes the forgetting of all pain. Homer wrote:
And she added a potion to the wine that they were drinking, to calm pain and ,ruger and to forget all sorrows. Whomsoever enjoyed this potion with the wine, would not shed a tear that day, no matter if his mother and father lay dead before him, no matter if his dear son or brother were slayed by the sword before his very eyes.6
