well known from earliest Greek history, the opium poppy (Papaver somniferum L.) occupied an important role in ancient pharmacy and medicine, and its use encompassed matters of dietetics as well as frequent employment as a soporific and general analgesic. Greco-Roman medicine and pharmacology incorporated a very succinct knowledge and command of the dangers and benefits in the use of the opium poppy, and actions of drugs were widely understood. Its harvesting, preparation, distribution, and application in general pharmacy and medical therapeutics all were sophisticated and as precise as was then possible. Our ancient sources attest repeatedly to this deep sophistication in the grasp and understanding of the opium poppy, and Hellenistic and Roman pharmacy had refined a lengthy and venerated tradition of multiple uses. Modern pharmacology and medicinal chemistry, of course, confirms much of this ancient expertise, even as we wrestle with the addictive effects of the major alkaloids commonly isolated and administered from the raw opium. One notes in the study of Hellenistic and Roman use of opium that the ‘natural product’ may have induced occasional addiction (and was certainly employed in suicides), but unlike the dangers explicit with the employment of morphine, codeine, thebaine, and other opium alkaloids in modern pharmacy and medicine, and ancients could presume their collected latex had benefits that far outweighed its dangers.