chapter 64

, II, 761.

[2453] V. Rose (1875) 337-8 suggests that this is a fragment from a fuller work of Aesculapius to Augustus cited by Thomas of Cantimpré, Albertus Magnus, and Vincent of Beauvais. See also Peter of Abano, _De venenis_, cap. 5, “in epistola Esculapii philosophi ad Octavianum.” But perhaps these writers refer to the entire work of Sextus Papirius.

[2454] Ed. Ruellius, with Scribonius Largus, Paris, 1529.

[2455] In a later medieval vocabulary _taxus_ is given as a synonym for the animal called _camaleon_: _Alphita_, ed. Daremberg from BN 6954 and 6957 in De Renzi, _Collectio Salernitana_, III, 272-322.

[2456] Cotton Vespasian B, X, #6.

[2457] Harleian 3859, called tenth century in the Harleian catalogue which is often incorrect in its dating, but 11th or 12th century by d’Avezac, Mommsen in his edition of Solinus, and Beazley, _Dawn of Geography_, I, 523. Royal 15-B-II and 15-C-IV, both of the 12th century. For other MSS at Paris, Leyden, and Rome see Beazley, _op. cit._

[2458] But after all is Suetonius any more respectable a historian than Aethicus and Solinus are geographers?

[2459] Bunbury, _History of Ancient Geography_, II, Appendix: “How M. Wuttke can attach any value to such a production is to me quite incomprehensible; still more that he should ascribe the translation to the great ecclesiastical writer,” Jerome. Bunbury believed that the work was not earlier than the seventh century. Beazley, _Dawn of Geography_, I, 355-63, is of the same opinion.

[2460] In his edition of Solinus, p. xxvii, he contends that certain passages which Wuttke pointed out as common to Aethicus and Solinus are borrowed by Aethicus from Isidore who died in 636.

[2461] Harleian 3859.

[2462] Steele, _Opera hactenus inedita_, 1905, Fasc. I, pp. 1-2.

[2463] CUL 213, 14th century, fols. 103v-14, “Qui hunc librum legit intelligat Ethicum philosophum non omnia dixisse que hic scripta sunt, set Solinus (so James, but _Jeronimus_ in d’Avezac, p. 237) qui eum transtulit sententias veritati consonas ex libro eiusdem excerpsit et easdem testimonias scripture nostre confirmavit. Non enim erat iste philosophus Christianus sed Ethnicus et professione Achademicus.”

[2464] Bridges I, 267-8.

[2465] Cited by d’Avezac, pp. 257 and 267.

[2466] Vienna 2272, 14th century, fol. 92, De vindemiis a Burgundione translatus: Pars Geoponicorum.

[2467] Such is the view set forth in PW _Geoponica_.

[2468] H. Beckh, _Geoponica sive Cassiani Bassi scholastici de re rustica eclogae_, Lipsiae, Teubner, 1895. PW criticizes this edition as “_leider völlig verfehlten_.” Its preface lists the earlier editions.

[2469] _Geoponica_, VII, 5; II, 15.

[2470] VII, 11; XV, 1.

[2471] I, 12; VII, 13; etc.

[2472] XV, 1.

[2473] R. Heim, _Incantamenta magica graeca latina_, in _Jahrb. f. class. Philologie_, Suppl. Bd. 19, Leipzig, 1893, pp. 463-576, drew from the _Geoponica_ 13 out of his total of 245 instances of incantations from Greek and Latin literature.

[2474] VII, 14.

[2475] XIII, 15.

[2476] The first two volumes, published at Berlin in 1907, 1906, covered the first four of the five genuine books. A previous attempt was K. Sprengel’s edition in vols. 25-26 of C. J. Kühn’s _Medici Graeci_, Leipzig, 1829. On the textual history and problems see further Wellman’s articles: “Dioskurides” in Pauly-Wissowa, and in _Hermes_, XXXIII, (1898) 360ff.

[2477] Περὶ βοτανῶν, περὶ ζῴων παντοίων, περὶ παντοίων ἐλαίων, περὶ ὕλης δένδρων, περὶ οἴνων καὶ λίθων, is another order suggested.

[2478] The MS is said by Singer (1921) 60, to have now been removed from Vienna to St. Mark’s Library at Venice; it was procured from Constantinople in 1555 for the future Emperor Maximilian II (1564-1576). A photographic copy was published in 1906 in the Leiden Collection, _Codices Graeci et Latini_, by A. W. Sijthoff, with an introduction by A. von Premerstein, C. Wessely, and J. Mantuani (C. Wessely, _Codex Anciae Iulianae_, etc., 1906). See also A. v. Premerstein in the Austrian _Jahrbuch_ (1903) XXIV, 105ff.

I have examined the facsimile of this MS and found the large but faded and partially obliterated illuminations which precede the text rather disappointing after having read the description of them in Dalton’s _Byzantine Art_, (1911) 460-61, which, however, I presume is accurate and so reproduce here. These large illuminations include a portrait of Juliana Anicia, an ornamental peacock with tail spread, groups of doctors engaged in medical discussions, and Dioscorides himself seated writing, and again seated on a folding stool receiving the herb mandragora (which, of course, was a medieval favorite) from a female figure personifying Discovery (Εὕρησις), “while in the foreground a dog dies in agony,” presumably from the fatal effects of the herb. There are rough reproductions of this last picture in Woltmann and Woermann, _History of Painting_, I, 192-3, and Singer (1921) 62. When the text proper begins the illuminations are confined to medicinal plants.

Other early Greek manuscripts are the _Codex Neapolitanus_, formerly at Vienna, now at St. Mark’s, Venice, an eighth century palimpsest from Bobbio, and a Paris codex, (BN Greek 2179) of the ninth century. An Arabic translation from the Greek seems to have been made about 850; a century later the Byzantine emperor sent a Greek manuscript of Dioscorides to the caliph in Spain.

For the full text of the _De materia medica_ we are dependent on MSS of the 11th, 12th, 13th and later centuries.

[2479] Περὶ δηλητηρίων φαρμάκων and περὶ ἰοβόλων, edited by Sprengel in Kühn (1830), XXVI, as was the Περὶ εὐπορίστων ἁπλῶν τε καὶ συνθέτων φαρμάκων. The Περὶ φαρμάκων ἐμπειρίας, (“Experimental Pharmacy”), of which a Latin version, _Alphabetum empiricum, sive Dioscoridis et Stephani Atheniensis ... de remediis expertis_, was edited by C. Wolf, Zürich, 1581, is an alphabetical arrangement by diseases ascribed to Dioscorides and Stephen of Athens (and other writers).

[2480] Max Wellmann, _Die Schrift des Dioskurides_ Περὶ ἁπλῶν φαρμάκων, 1914, and col. 1140 of his article “Dioskurides” in Pauly-Wissowa.

[2481] _De inst. div. lit._ cap. 31.

[2482] V. Rose in Hermes VIII, 38A. Harleian 4986, fol. 44v, “... marcelline libellum botanicon ex dioscoridis libris in latinum sermonem conversum in quo depicte sunt herbarum figure ad te misi....”

[2483] Heinrich Kaestner, _Kritisches und Exegetisches zu Pseudo-Dioskorides de herbis femininis_, Regensburg, 1896; text in _Hermes_ XXXI (1896) 578-636. Singer (1921) 68, gives as the earliest MS, Rome Barberini IX, 29, of 9th century. Some other MSS are: BN 12995, 9th century; Additional 8928, 11th century, fol. 62v-; Ashmole 1431, end of 11th century, fols. 31v-43, “Incipit liber Dioscoridis ex herbis feminis”; Sloane 1975, 12th or early 13th century, fols. 49v-73; Harleian 1585, 12th century, fol. 79-; Harleian 5294, 12th century; Turin K-IV-3, 12th century, #5, “Incipit liber dioscoridis medicine ex herbis femininis numero LXXI .../ ... Liber medicine dioscoridis de herbis femininis et masculinis explicit feliciter.”

In Vienna 5371, 15th century, fols. 121v-124v, is a briefer Latin treatise ascribed to Dioscordes, which begins with the herb _aristologia_ and mentions silk (_sericum_) at its close. I have not seen the MS but from the title, _Quid pro quo_, and the fact that the writer dedicates it to his uncle, one might fancy that it was a work written by Adelard of Bath’s nephew in return for the _Natural Questions_ of his uncle. (See below,