The use of sweet liquorice root goes back several millenia, having been used as medicine, a flavouring, or just as a sweet tasty bon-bon, in ancient China, India, the Middle East and Egypt ... and thence via classical Greece and Rome it was finally introduced into medieval Europe. When King Tutankhamun's tomb was discovered in 1922, besides all the archaeological treasures of gold, silver, bronze, ivory, ebony and precious stones, he was also interred with many bundles of liquorice roots - presumably there to sweeten his journey into the afterlife. (And liquorice root is notably very sweet to the taste; the active sweet ingredient, glycyrrhizin or glycyrrhizic acid, has a sweet taste some 30–50 times that of regular sucrose sugar, although the sweetness is rather different being less instant and rather longer lasting). I also seem to remember reading (possibly in Tacitus or Suetonius, but perhaps more likely in Pliny's 'Natural History') that Roman legionnaries on the march often chewed liquorice root to suppress their fatigue, hunger and thirst, and accordingly it was thus used rather like chewing coca leaves or tobacco ... or indeed like any modern, chewing-gum munching, squaddie.
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