| ≥1 piece |
long pepper reached Greece in the sixth or fifth century BCE, though Hippocrates,the first writer to mention it, discussed it as a medicament rather than a spice. Among the Greeks and Romans and prior to the European discovery of the New World, long pepper was an important and well-known spice. The ancient history of Black Pepper is often interlinked with (and confused with) that of long pepper, though Theophrastus distinguished the two in the first work of botany. The Romans knew of both and often referred to either as just piper; Pliny erroneously believed dried black pepper and long pepper came from the same plant.