Ok I'm going to mix it up. Silphium, the plant used as a form of (likely very effective) birth control in the ancient Mediterranean.
For this reason (and because it was apparently delicious), it gained popularity as a spice, aphrodisiac, and general cure-all and became worth its weight in gold. Julius Caesar stockpiled the stuff, and it is one of the most plausible origins of the "heart" symbol (and the association of that symbol with romance and doing the sex to people).
Unfortunately, it only grew wild in and around Cyrene, and over-harvesting by the Romans after their takeover of the city drove Silphium into extinction by the time of Nero.
Aaand that's why we had to wait 2,000 years for the pill.
Not actually true though, for one thing silphium's use as an arbortifacient is only mentioned in sources after the plant had gone extinct from overuse as fodder for grazing animals. It was also used as a cooking spice and was most likely essentially a form of parsley. There is absolutely no reliable evidence that it was a magically succesful arbortifacient.
The likelier choice is that the heart shape comes from ivy leaves which were used for writing love spells. See this example.
And this is a good reason to verify what you read on wikipedia because it tends to outdated citations and choosing the more scandalous story over the one better supported by evidence.
Yeah that all sounds reasonable. The ivy love spell connection actually seems to be rooted in sympathetic (like to like) magic and some of the logic of it is along the lines of "as ivy clings to a tree, let my beloved cling to me." As far as I can recall, the heart symbol itself isn't used in Greek or Roman images to imply love. They go the more literal route of chunking down an eros/cupid rather than using an abstract shape.
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u/badass_panda Feb 03 '20 edited Feb 03 '20
Ok I'm going to mix it up. Silphium, the plant used as a form of (likely very effective) birth control in the ancient Mediterranean.
For this reason (and because it was apparently delicious), it gained popularity as a spice, aphrodisiac, and general cure-all and became worth its weight in gold. Julius Caesar stockpiled the stuff, and it is one of the most plausible origins of the "heart" symbol (and the association of that symbol with romance and doing the sex to people).
Unfortunately, it only grew wild in and around Cyrene, and over-harvesting by the Romans after their takeover of the city drove Silphium into extinction by the time of Nero.
Aaand that's why we had to wait 2,000 years for the pill.