Nicander
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Nicander of Colophon (Template:Langx; fl. 2nd century BC) was a Greek poet, physician, and grammarian.
The scattered biographical details in the ancient sources are so contradictory that it was sometimes assumed that there were two Hellenistic authors with the same name.Template:Sfn He may have been born at Claros (Ahmetbeyli in modern Turkey), near Colophon, where his family is said to have held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. The chronological indications range from the middle of the 3rd century BC until the late 2nd century BC.Template:Sfn
He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete. The longest, Theriaca, is a hexameter poem (958 lines) on the nature of venomous animals and the wounds which they inflict. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 630 hexameters treating of poisons and their antidotes.[1] Nicander's main source for medical information was the physician Apollodorus of Egypt.Template:Efn Among his lost works, Heteroeumena was a mythological epic, used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and epitomized by Antoninus Liberalis; Georgica,[1] of which considerable fragments survive, was perhaps imitated by Virgil.[2]
The works of Nicander were praised by Cicero (De oratore, i. 16), imitated by Ovid and Lucan, and frequently quoted by Pliny and other writers[1] (e.g., Tertullian in De Scorpiace, I, 1).
List of works
Surviving poems
- Theriaca (Of Venomous Animals)
- Alexipharmaca
- Epigrams[3]
Lost poems
- Cimmerii
- Europia
- Georgica ("Farming")
- Heteroeumena ("Metamorphoses")
- Hyacinthus
- Hymnus ad Attalum ("Hymn to Attalus")[4]
- Melissourgica ("Beekeeping")
- Oetaica
- Ophiaca
- Sicelia
- Thebaica
Lost prose works
- Aetolica ("History of Aetolia")
- Colophoniaca ("History of Colophon")
- De Poetis Colophoniis ("On poets from Colophon")
- Glossae ("Difficult words")
Notes
References
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- ↑ a b c One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Script error: No such module "template wrapper".
- ↑ Quintilian 10.1.56; but this may simply mean that Virgil, like Nicander, wrote a poem on farming.
- ↑ Anthologia Palatina 7.435, 7.526, 11.7.
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Bibliography
- Nicander ed. and tr. A. S. F. Gow, A. F. Scholfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953.
- Earlier editions by JG Schneider (1792, 1816); O. Schneider (1856) (with the Scholia).
- The Scholia (from the Göttingen manuscript) were edited by Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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- H. Klauser, "De Dicendi Genere Nicandri" (Dissertationes Philologicae Vindobonenses, vi. 1898).
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- W. Vollgraff, Nikander und Ovid (Groningen, 1909 ff.).
External links
- An ancient Life of Nicander, from the scholia
- Theriaca et Alexipharmaca recensuit et emendavit, fragmenta collegit, commentationes addidit Otto Schneider. Accedunt scholia in Theriaca ex recensione Henrici Keil., scholia in Alexipharmaca ex recognitione Bussemakeri et R. Bentlei emedationes, Lipsiae sumptibus et typis B. G. Teubneri, 1856.
- Poetae bucolici et didactici. Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Nicander, Oppianus, Marcellus de piscibus, poeta de herbis, C. Fr. Ameis, F. S. Lehrs (ed.), Parisiis, editore Ambrosio Firmin Didot, 1862, pp. 127-163.
- English translations of Theriaca and Alexipharmaca.
- Scholia
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- Pages with script errors
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- Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
- 2nd-century BC Greek physicians
- 2nd-century BC Greek poets
- 2nd-century BC Greek historians
- Ancient Greek epic poets
- Ancient Colophonians
- Ancient Greek grammarians
- Ancient Greek priests
- Historians from Hellenistic Anatolia
- Epigrammatists of the Greek Anthology
- Kingdom of Pergamon
- Ancient Greek didactic poets