Εμφανίζονται 100 (επί συνόλου 157) τίτλοι με αναζήτηση: Βιογραφίες στην ευρύτερη περιοχή: "ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ Σύμπλεγμα νήσων ΕΛΛΑΔΑ" .
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
Architect, City Planner. He followed Alexander the Great to his campaign as a technical consultant.
Works:
- City plan of Alexandria - Egypt, 332-331 BCE. The year 332 BCE Alexander commissioned
Deinocrates to lead the topographic works and elaborate the city planning drawings
of Alexandria. This is reported by Vitruvius, Valerius Maximus, Ammianus Marcellinus
and Plinius. Iulius Valerius gave the details for the planning and the construction
of the city. The urbanistic system was based on streets perpendicular to each
other and was the model for the design of many cities in the Near East. Deinocrates
collaborated with Crates the Olynthian, considered to be the best hydraulic engineer
of his time. He designed and constructed a very effective system of channels,
pipes and installations in order to supply the city with water. Many Greek architects
and engineers, like Heron the Libyan and Parmenion, took part at the construction
of Alexandria.
- City plan for may cities
- Temples at Delphi, Delos and at her cities.
- Philipp΄s Monument. A grave monument in the form of a pyramid was not realised
because of the extremely high cost and Alexander' s death as Diodoros the Sicilan
mentions.
- Alteration of Mount Athos, to a statue of Alexander the Great. The plan was
rejected by Alexander as utopic. Vitruvius mentions it in the preface of Book
II of his writing "De Architectura". According to Deinocrates΄ design
Alexander could hold in one hand a whole city and in the other one a wine bowl
from which a river would flow to the sea.
- Second Artemis Temple - Ephesos, 334 BCE One of the Seven Wonders of the world.
He collaborated with Paeonios the Ephesian and Demetrios.
- Hephaistion΄s Fire. A big monument described by Diodoros the Sicilan, Strabon,
Arrianos, Plutarchos and others. It was erected in Babylon in honour of Hephaestion
a close friend, general and Vice King of Alexander, who died at Ecbatana 324 BCE.
It was a stone monument with 6 stores invested along the whole height with golden
plates, total surface 380 sqm. Deinocrates used the Babylonian temples as his
model.
The greatest astronomer of antiquity, he is called
"The father of Astronomy". Born in Nicaea - Bithynia, he lived in Rhodes
and Alexandria. Hipparchos considered as prerequisite for the existence of geography
the use of astronomic methods for the determination of the latitude ( gnomon,
culmination of the fixed stars, duration of the longest day on a certain place
). Thus he determined the position of different cities. For the determination
of the longitude, he used the differences of the local time, calculated during
a solar eclipse. His maps were based on geometrical calculations and showed a
big progress in the History of Cartography. A crater of the moon was named in
his honour "Hipparchos". He is mentioned by Stobaios.
Works
"Astrolabos" He is inventor of this device with which he calculated
exactly the coordinates of the stars. Two kinds of "Astrolabos" were
in use : The spherical and the level-spherical. Helped by the last one he applied
the "stereographic projection", discovered by himself, in order to determine
the exact time.
"Dioptra". He completed this instrument and used it for the estimation
of the apparent diameter of the sun and the moon as well as of the distance and
their real size.
"Cathetion", "Gnomon", "Polos", "Heliotropion
or Skiatherion", "Sundial", "Clepsydra", "Solid
sphere", "Hydrologion", "Rings".
- He was the first to divide the circle to 360.
- He discovered the spherical shape of earth.
- He constructed the first earth globe.
134 BCE he discovered a star that did not exist before, probably a comet, at the
constellation of Scorpion and formulated the principle of astronomy that "the
stars on the sky ar not eternal".
Hipparchos' Star Catalogue. Was written in the year 127 BCE and is still in existence
today. Contains data on 1039 of the brightest, at this time visible stars like
"the sky length and width of them" (corresponding to the geographic
longitude and latitude, i.e. the sky coordinates of the stars ).
- He determined the year's duration to 365,246667 days ( the real one is : 365, 242217 days ).
- He calculated the obliquity of the ecliptic (i.e. the angle between the earth΄s trajectory and the equator ) to 23 51' (the real one at Hipparchos΄time was 23 43΄)
- Based on eclipse observations he estimated the average distance Moon-Earth to 33,66 X Earth΄s diameter ( the real one is 30,20 X Earth΄s diameter ) and the Moon΄s diameter to 1/3 X Earth΄s diameter (instead of 0,27 ).
- He estimated the time of lunar eclipses.
- He calculated the length of the maximal circle of the earth to 39.960 kms ( 252.000 stadions ), the real one being 40.000 kms i.e. with an approxmation of 40 kms .
- Using astronomic methods he determined the coordinates of points at the earth surface, estimating their latitude. The longitude estimated through the observation of the eclipses.
- He observed the planets and their trajectories
- He is the founder of both, level and spherical trigonometry .
- He made a table giving the length of the circle΄s chords.
- He was the first to apply the "stereographic projection of the sphere"
i.e. the depiction of the spherical surface on the level. This method is still
used today by the preparation of geographic maps.
- He criticized the work of Eratosthenes.
Books
- On constellations ( Περί των αστερισμών )
- On fixed stars syntaxis ( Περί της των απλανών συντάξεως )
- On simultaneous reverse attraction ( Περί της των συναναστολών πραγματείας )
- On the twelve signs of the zodiac ( Περί των δώδεκα ζωδίων αναφοράς )
- On the changes of tropical and spring points ( Περί της μεταπτώσεως των τροπικών και εαρινών σημείων )
- Parallactica - 2 books ( Παραλλακτικών - Βιβλία δύο )
- On solar and lunar sizes and distances ( Περί μεγεθών και αποστημάτων ηλίου και σελήνης )
- On the montly side ways movement of the moon ( Περί της κατά πλάτος μηνιαίας της σελήνης κινήσεως )
- On sun eclipses during the seven climates (Περί εκλείψεων ηλίου κατά τα επτά κλίματα )
- On monthly time ( Περί μηνιαίου χρόνου )
- On leap months and days ( Περί εμβολίμων μηνών τε και ημερών )
- On the year΄s size ( Περί του ενιαυσίου μεγέθους )
- On circle straight lines - 12 books ( Περί της πραγματείας των εκ κύκλω ευθειών - Βιβλία δώδεκα )
- On objects falling because of their weight ( Περί των διά βάρους κάτω φερομένων)
- To Eratosthenes and his Geography ( Προς τον Ερατοσθένη και τα εν τη γεωγραφία αυτού λεχθέντα )
- To the bests ( Εις τους αρίστους )
- On Aratos' and Eudoxos΄ Phaenomena - 3 books ( Περί των Αράτου και Ευδόξου φαινομένων - Βιβλία τρία ).
The last book is still in existence today. The others were burned during the fire-raising of the Library of Alexandria. Fortunatelly some extensive excerpts of Hipparchos΄ books still exist today in the writings of other ancient writers, like Ptoloemaeos, Plinius, Strabon, Theon of Smyrna, Theon of Alexandria, and Plutarchos.
Geminos the Rhodian. Philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, geographer He was
a student of Poseidonios at his Rhodes΄School.
Works
He wrote Introduction Books to astronomy and mathematics.
"Introduction to Phaenomena" ( Εισαγωγή εις τα φαινόμενα ). It still
exists today Contains the most important theories of ancient astronomy. He analysed
them in a very detailed way according to Hipparchos΄ theory.
"Epitomizing the Poseidonian Meteorological Explanation" ( Επιτομή της
Ποσειδωνίου Μετεωρολογικών εξηγήσεως ). Excerpts are still in existence today
in greek and arabic.
"On mathematic order" ( Περί της των μαθηματικών τάξεως ). History of
mathematics. Some parts still exist today in Greek and Arabic. He distinguishes
pure mathematics to : Arithmetic, geometry/applied mathematics : Logistic, geodesy,
harmony, optic, mechanics, astronomy. In his work he followed the astronomic tradition
started by Eudoxos.
A moon crater was named in his honour "Geminos". A group
of shooting stars was called "the Gemenides".
Geographer. Priest in the Helios' Temple in Rhodes.
Work:
"Voyage around the world" ( Οικουμένης Περιήγησις )
Writings on agriculture, Excerpts are in existence today
Geographer, Historian
Works: "Earth Period" ( Περίοδος γης ), "Historiae" ( Ιστορίαι ), "Periploi" ( Περίπλοι ).
Some excerpts still exist today.
Geographer, Chartographer, Explorer.
As an admiral of the King of Egypt Ptolemaeos the 2nd, (Philadelphos), took the
order to travel and explore. He studied the big philosophers and geographers of
the ancient world : Aristoteles, Dicaearchos, Eudoxos, Ephoros, Cleon. His work
was commented on by : Eratoshthenes, Strabon, Hipparchos and Marcianos. Strabon
notes : "Timosthenes circumnavigated the Tyrrhenian Sea". He is also
mentioned by Agathemeros.
Works
"On Ports" ( Περί λιμένων ) 10 Books. Not in existence today. The writing
was criticized by Eratosthenes, Hipparchos, and Strabon.
"On Islands" ( Περί νήσων ) He describes the islands : Cyprus, Thera,
Sicily, Cephallenia, Hecatonnes ( a group of hundred islands between Lesbos and
the Ionian coast ).
"Stadiasmoi - Explanatory" ( Σταδιασμοί - Εξηγητικού ) He made many
maps and wind diagrams based on "Meteorologica" of Aristoteles. He was
considered to be an expert on wind matters. He took Rhodes as centre of his maps
and this was continued by his successors.
Excerpts of his books still exist today in the writings of other scientists
ΛΙΝΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΛΙΝΔΟΣ
Chares, of Lindus in Rhodes, a statuary in bronze, was the favourite pupil of
Lysippus, who took the greatest pains with his education, and did not grudge to
initiate him into all the secrets of his art. Chares flourished at the beginning
of the third century B. C. (Anon. ad Herenn. iv. 6; printed among Cicero's rhetorical
works). He was one of the greatest artists of Rhodes, and indeed he may be considered
as the chief founder of the Rhodian school of sculpture. Pliny (H. N. xxxiv. 7.
s. 18) mentions among his works a colossal head, which P. Lentulus (the friend
of Cicero, cos. B. C. 57) brought to Rome and placed in the Capitol, and which
completely threw into the shade another admirable colossal head by Decius which
stood beside it (The apparently unnecessary emendation of Sillig and Thiersch,
improbabilis for probabilis, even if adopted, would not alter the general meaning
of the sentence, at least with reference to Chares).
But the chief work of Chares was the statue of the Sun, which, under
the name of "The Colossus of Rhodes", was celebrated as one of the seven wonders
of the world. Of a hundred colossal statues of the Sun which adorned Rhodes, and
any one of which, according to Pliny, would have made famous the place that might
possess it, this was much the largest. The accounts of its height differ slightly,
but all agree in making it upwards of 105 English feet. Pliny, evidently repeating
the account of some one who had seen the statue after its fall, if he had not
seen it himself, says that few could embrace its thumb; the fingers were larger
than most statues; the hollows within the broken limbs resembled caves; and inside
of it might be seen huge stones, which had been inserted to make it stand firm.
It was twelve years in erecting (B. C. . 292-280), and it cost 300 talents. This
money was obtained by the sale of the engines of war which Demetrius Poliorcetes
presented to the Rhodians after they had compelled him to give up his siege of
their city (B. C. 303). The colossus stood at the entrance of the harbour of Rhodes.
There is no authority for the statement that its legs extended over the mouth
of the harbour. It was overthrown and broken to pieces by an earthquake 56 years
after its erection (B. C. 224, Euseb. Chron., and Chron. Pasch. sub Ol. 139. 1;
Polyb. v. 88, who places the earthquake a little later, in B. C. 218). Strabo
(xiv.) says, that an oracle forbade the Rhodians to restore it (See also Philo
Byzant. de VII Orbis Miraculis, c. iv.). The fragments of the colossus remained
on the ground 923 years, till they were sold by Moawiyeh, the general of the caliph
Othman IV., to a Jew of Emesa, who carried them away on 900 camels (A. D. 672).
Hence Scaliger calculated considering the mechanical difficulties both of modelling
and of casting so large a statue, the nicety required to fit together the separate
pieces in which it must necessarily have been cast, and the skill needed to adjust
its proportions, according to the laws of optics, and to adapt the whole style
of the composition to its enormous size, we must assign to Chares a high place
as an inventor in his art.
There are extant Rhodian coins, bearing the head of the Sun surrounded
with rays, probably copied from the statue of Chares or from some of the other
colossal statues of the sun at Rhodes. There are two epigrams on the colossus
in the Greek Anthology.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Another passage concerning Chares, written in Rome around 70 B.C. but probably derived from a second-century Hellenistic rhetorician, has been taken by Preisshofen 1970-1 as a manifesto for eclectic neo-classicism:
Do not these schoolmasters, teachers of rhetoric to all the world, see that they are making asses of themselves when they seek to borrow the very thing they offer to bestow on others? . . . Chares did not learn from Lysippus how to make statues by Lysippus showing him a head by Myron, arms by Praxiteles, a torso by Polycleitus, but observed the master making all right in front of him; he could study the works of others, if he wished, on his own initiative. But these writers believe that those who want to learn [rhetoric] can best be taught by the methods of others.
(Auctor ad Herrenium 4.6.9)
This extract is from: Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works. Cited Feb 2003 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains extracts from the ancient literature, bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Architect, Sculptor, student of the famous sculptor Lysippos. Mentioned by Polybios,
Plinius, Philon the Byzantian, Stobaios and Strabon.
Work: The Colossus of Rhodes
This bronze statue is a remarkable work combining engineering, architecture and
sculpture and is one of the Seven Wonders of the world. It was dedicated to God
Apollon and weighed 225 ton. The height was equal to 33 m. The construction time
lasted 12 years, from 292 to 280 BCE. A group of almost normal beams, starting
at the feet and ending at the head, were connected to the outside covering (3,5
cm thick) which supported the whole statue. Chares used great volume of earth
which surrounded the statue. He began the construction from the lowest point going
upwards. After finishing the statue he removed the beams and the earth masses.
The total cost of the work amounted to 300 talents. Parts of the descriptions
of Philon Byzantios, Plinius and Strabon still exist today. Polybios mentions
that Plolaemeos promised the Rhodians to spend 3.000 talents for the re-erection,
but it never took place. Strabon justifies the "non reerection" by the
existence of an adverse oracle. The statue was broken at the knees and destroyed
by an earthquake in the year 220 BCE. The year 654 ACE it was sold to a Jewish
merchant who used 900 camels to remove it, according to the Byzantine Chonicler
Kedrenos (" A composition of Stories" - 11th cent. ACE ).
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
This extract is from: Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works. Cited Feb 2003 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains extracts from the ancient literature, bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
Agesander, a sculptor, a native of the island of Rhodes. His name occurs in no author except Pliny (H. N. xxxvi. 5. s. 4), and we know but of one work which he executed; it is a work however which bears the most decisive testimony to his surpassing genius. In conjunction with Polydorus and Athenodorus he sculptured the group of Laocoon, a work which is ranked by all competent judges among the most perfect specimens of art, especially on account of the admirable manner in which amidst the intense suffering portrayed in every feature, limb, and muscle, there is still preserved that air of sublime repose, which characterised the best productions of Grecian genius. This celebrated group was discovered in the year 1506, near the baths of Titus on the Esquiline hill : it is now preserved in the museum of the Vatican. Pliny does not hesitate to pronounce it superior to all other works both of statuary and painting. A great deal has been written respecting the age when Agesander flourished, and various opinions have been held on the subject. Winckelmann and Muller, forming their judgment from the style of art displayed in [p. 69] the work itself, assign it to the age of Lysippus. Miller thinks the intensity of suffering depicted, and the somewhat theatrical air which pervades the group, shews that it belongs to a later age than that of Phidias. Lessing and Thiersch on the other hand, after subjecting the passage of Pliny to an accurate examination, have come to the conclusion, that Agesander and the other two artists lived in the reign of Titus, and sculptured the group expressly for that emperor ; and this opinion is pretty generally acquiesced in. In addition to many other reasons that might be mentioned, if space permitted, if the Laocoon had been a work of antiquity, we can hardly understand how Pliny should have ranked it above all the works of Phidias, Polycletus, Praxiteles, and Lysippus. But we can account for his exaggerated praise, if the group was modern and the admiration excited by its execution in Rome still fresh. Thiersch has written a great deal to shew that the plastic art did not decline so early as is generally supposed, but continued to flourish in full vigour from the time of Phidias uninterruptedly down to the reign of Titus. Pliny was deceived in saying that the group was sculptured out of one block, as the lapse of time has discovered a join in it. It appears from an inscription on the pedestal of a statue found at Nettuno (the ancient Antium) that Athenodorus was the son of Agesander. This makes it not unlikely that Polydorus also was his son, and that the father executed the figure of Laocoon himself, his two sons the remaining two figures.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Athenodorus, a sculptor, the son and pupil of Agesander of Rhodes, whom he assisted in executing the group of Laocoon.
Asinius Pollio, an ardent enthusiast, naturally wanted his art collection to be seen. In it are the Centaurs carrying Nymphs by Arcesilaus, the Heliconian Muses of Cleomenes, the Oceanus and Jupiter of Heniochus, the Appian Nymphs by Stephanus, the Hermerotes by Tauriscus (not the well-known engraver but the native of Tralles), the Jupiter Hospitalis by Papylus, Praxiteles' pupil, and the group by Apollonius and Tauriscus that was brought from Rhodes: Zethus and Amphion, along with Dirce, the bull, and the rope, all carved from one block. These two artists started a dispute about their parentage, alleging that though Menecrates appeared to be their father, their real father was Artemidorus. In the same collection there is a praiseworthy Liber Pater [Bacchus] by Eutychides. Pliny, N.H.36.33-4
This extract is from: Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works. Cited Feb 2003 from Perseus Project URL below, which contains extracts from the ancient literature, bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
In this temple (the first temple of Apollo in Rome, in the campus Martius) were some famous works of art, brought probably for the most part to Rome by C. Sosius-paintings by Aristides of Thebes(Plin. NH xxxv. 99), several statues by Philiscus of Rhodes (ib. xxxvi. 34). . .
By the Porticus Octaviae an Apollo made by the Rhodian Philiscus stands in his
own shrine, together with a Leto, a Diana, the nine Muses, and another, nude Apollo.
Timarchides made Apollo who holds a cithara in the same temple, and in the temple
of Juno that stands with the Porticus the goddess herself, while Dionysius and
Polycles made another, Philiscus the Venus in the same place, and Praxiteles [or
Pasiteles] the rest of the statues. The same Polycles and Dionysus, the sons of
Timarchides, made the Jupiter in the shrine next door. . . Pliny, N.H. 36.34-35 This extract is from: Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works. Cited Feb 2003 from
Perseus Project URL below, which contains extracts from the ancient literature, bibliography & interesting hyperlinks.
A Greek sculptor of the school of Rhodes, author (in conjunction with Agesander and Athenodorus) of the celebrated group of Laocoon.
A Rhodian sculptor associated with Agesander and Polydorus in producing the famous group of Laocoon
Hermocles, (Hermokles), of Rhodes, a statuary, who made the bronze statue of Combabus in the temple of Hera at Hierapolis in Syria. He lived, therefore, in the reign of Antiochus II. (Soter), about B. C. 280, and belonged, no doubt, like Chares, to the Rhodian school of artists, who were the followers of Lysippus. (Lucian, de Dea Syria, 26.)
ΛΙΝΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΛΙΝΔΟΣ
Cleobulus (Kleoboulos), one of the Seven Sages, was son of Evagoras and a citizen
of Lindus in Rhodes, for Duris seems to stand alone in stating that he was a Carian
(Diog. Laert. i. 89; Strab. xiv.). He was a contemporary of Solon's, and must
have lived at least as late as B. C. 560 (the date of the usurpation of Peisistratus),
if the letter preserved in Diogenes Laertius is genuine, which purports to have
been written by Cleobulus to Solon, inviting him to Lindus, as a place of refuge
from the tyrant. In the same letter Lindus is mentioned as being under democratic
government; but Clement of Alexandria (Strom. iv. 19) calls Cleobulus king of
the Lindians, and Plutarch (de Ei ap. Delph. 3) speaks of him as a tyrant. These
statements may, however, be reconciled, by supposing him to have held, as aisumnetes,
an authority delegated by the people through election (Arist. Polit. iii. 14,
15). Much of the philosophy of Cleobulus is said to have been derived from Egypt.
He wrote also lyric poems, as well as riddles (griphous) in verse. Diogenes Laertius
also ascribes to him the inscription on the tomb of Midas, of which Homer was
considered by others to have been the author (comp. Plat. Phaedr.), and the riddle
on the year (els ho patep, paides de duodeka, k. t. l.), generally attributed
to his daughter Cleobuline. He is said to have lived to the age of sixty, and
to have been greatly distinguished for strength and beauty of person. Many of
his sayings are on record, and one of them at least -dein sunoikizein tas Dugateras,
parthenous men ten helikian, toi de phronein gunaikas- shews him to have had worthier
views of female education than were generally prevalent; while that he acted on
them is clear from the character of his daughter (Diog. Laert. i. 89-93; Suid.
s. v. Kleoboulos; Clem. Alex. Strom. i. 14; comp. Dict. of Ant. s. v. Chelidonia.)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Cleobulus (Kleoboulos). One of the Seven Sages, of Lindus in Rhodes, son of Evagoras, lived about B.C. 580. He and his daughter, Cleobuline or Cleobule, were celebrated for their skill in riddles. To the latter is ascribed a well-known one on the subject of the year: "A father has twelve children, and each of these thirty daughters, on one side white, and on the other side black, and, though immortal, they all died".
This is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ΚΩΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
Apelles, the most celebrated of Grecian painters, was born, most probably, at
Colophon in Ionia (Suidas, s. v.), though Pliny (xxxv. 36.10) and Ovid (Art. Am.
iii. 401; Pont. iv. 1. 29) call him a Coan. The account of Strabo (xiv.) and Lucian
(De Calumn. lix.2, 6), that he was an Ephesian, may be explained from the statements
of Suidas, that he was made a citizen at Ephesus, and that he studied painting
there under Ephorus. He afterwards studied under Pamphilus of Amphipolis, to whom
he paid the fee of a talent for a ten-years' course of instruction (Suidas, s.
v.; Plin. xxxv. 36.8). At a later period, when he had already gained a high reputation,
he went to Sicyon, and again paid a talent for admission into the school of Melanthius,
whom he assisted in his portrait of the tyrant Aristratus (Plut. Arat. 13). By
this course of study he acquired the scientific accuracy of the Sicyonian school,
as well as the elegance of the Ionic...
GTP-remarks:
More about Apelles at Ancient
Colophon
Anadyomene (Anaduomene), the goddess rising out of the sea, a surname given to Aphrodite, in allusion to the story of her being born from the foam of the sea. This surname had not much celebrity previous to the time of Apelles, but his famous painting of Aphrodite Anadyomene, in which the goddess was represented as rising from the sea and drying her hair with her hands, at once drew great attention to this poetical idea, and excited the emulation of other artists, painters as well as sculptors. The painting of Apelles was made for the inhabitants of the island of Cos, who set it up in their temple of Asclepius. Its beauty induced Augustus to have it removed to Rome, and the Coans were indemnified by a reduction in their taxes of 100 talents. In the time of Nero the greater part of the picture had become effaced, and it was replaced by the work of another artist. (Strab. xiv.; Plin. H. N. xxxv. 36.12. and 15; Auson. Ep. 106; Paus. ii. 1.7)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ΚΩΣ (Νησί) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
A famous Greek physician, was born in the island of Cos,
about B.C. 460. He was the son of Heraclides and of Phaenarete, and sprang from
the race of the Asclepiadae, a priestly family, who in the course of time had
gathered and preserved medical traditions, which were secretly handed down from
father to son. Like many of the Asclepiadae, he practised his art while travelling
in different parts of Greece. He is said to have been at Athens at the time
of the Peloponnesian War, and to have taken advantage of the instructions of
the sophists Gorgias and Prodicus; Democritus of Abdera is also named as one
of his teachers. The value he himself set upon philosophic education is proved
by his remark that "a philosophic physician resembles a god". Towards
the end of his life he lived chiefly in Thessaly and on the island of Thasos.
He died about B.C. 377 (or later) in the Thessalian Larissa, where his tomb
was to be seen as late as the second century A.D.
All through his long life his activity was unceasing in its
efforts to increase the amount of his knowledge on all subjects, by both practical
and theoretical investigations, and his practical knowledge was as great as
his theoretical. Some of his fragments and epigrammatic dicta have passed into
the literature of all time, as, for instance, the famous saying, "Life
is short, and Art is long." He was the founder of the school of a scientific
art of healing, and, as in the case of Homer, numerous writings of unknown authorship,
proceeding from the school which followed his system, were attributed to him.
Seventy-two works, great and small, in the Ionic and old Attic dialects, bear
his name, and, apparently, formed a single collection, even before they came
under the consideration of the critics of Alexandria. But it is clear that,
as the ancients themselves were aware, only a small portion, which can no longer
be precisely defined, really belongs to him.
It is highly probable that his nearest relations, who were
also distinguished physicians, contributed their share to the collection, and
that it contains works by his sons Thessalus and Dracon, his sonin-law Polybus,
and his two grandsons, the sons of Thessalus and Dracon, who bore his own name.
The best known of these works are the aphorisms (Aphorismoi), which, in antiquity
and in mediaeval times, were held in high esteem, and have been freely commented
on by Greeks, Romans, and Arabs; they consist of short sentences upon the nature
of illnesses, their symptoms and crises, and their final issue.
One of his treatises (Peri Aeron, Hudaton, Topon), which is
of general interest, and is in all respects among the best, is that on the influence
of the climate, the water, and the configuration of a country upon the physical
and intellectual life of its inhabitants. In the second portion of this work
are found the first beginnings of a comparative ethnography, which at once surprise
us by the acuteness and intelligence of its observation, and attracts us by
the simplicity and clearness of its style. Many ancient physicians wrote commentaries
on the works of Hippocrates, the most celebrated being those of Galen. The first
edition of the Greek text of Hippocrates is the Aldine.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Hippocrates, the second of that name, and in some respects the most celebrated
physician of ancient or modern times; for not only have his writings (or rather
those which bear his name) been always held in the highest esteem, but his personal
history (so far as it is known), and the literary criticism relating to his works,
furnish so much matter for the consideration both of the scholar, the philologist,
the philosopher, and the man of letters, that there are few authors of antiquity
about whom so much has been written. Probably the readers of this work will care
more for the literary than for the medical questions connected with Hippocrates;
and accordingly (as it is quite impossible to discuss the whole subject fully
in these pages) the strictly scientific portion of this article occupies less
space and than the critical; and this arrangement in this place the writer is
inclined to adopt the more readily, because, while there are many works which
contain a good account of the scientific merits of the Hippocratic writings, he
is not aware of one where the many literary problems arising from them have been
at once fully discussed and satisfactorily determined. This task he is far from
thinking that he has himself accomplished, but it is right to give this reason
for treating the scientific part of the subject much less fully than he would
have done had he been writing for a professed medical work.
A parallel has more than once been drawn be tween " the Father
of Medicine " and " the Father of Poetry; " and, indeed, the resemblances
between the two, both in their personal and literary history, are so evident,
that they could hardly fail to strike any one who was even moderately familiar
with classical and medical literature. With respect to their personal history,
the greatest uncertainty exists, and our real knowledge is next to nothing ; although
in the case of both personages, we have professed lives written by ancient authors,
which, however, only tend to show still more plainly the ignorance that prevails
on the subject. Accordingly, as might be expected, fable has been busy in sup
plying the deficiencies of history, and was for a time fully believed; till at
length a reaction followed, and an unreasoning credulity was succeeded by an equally
unreasonable scepticism, which reached its climax when it was boldly asserted
that neither Homer nor Hippocrates had ever existed. (See Houdart, Etudes sur
Hippocrate) The few facts respecting him that may be considered as tolerably well
ascertained may be told in few words. His father was Heracleides, who was also
a physician, and belonged to the family of the Asclepiadae. According to Soranus
(Vita Hippocr., in Hippocr. Opera, vol. iii.), he was the nineteenth in descent
from Aesculapius, but John Tzetzes, who gives the genealogy of the family, makes
him the seventeenth. His mother's name was Phaenarete, who was said to be descended
from Hercules. Soranus, on the authority of an old writer who had composed a life
of Hippocrates, states that he was born in the island of Cos, in the first year
of the eightieth Olympiad, that is. B. C. 460; and this date is generally followed,
for want of any more satisfactory information on the subject, though it agrees
so ill with some of the anecdotes respecting him, that some persons suppose him
to have been born about thirty years sooner. The exact day of his birth was known
and celebrated in Cos with sacrifices on the 26th day of the month Agrianus, but
it is unknown to what date in any other calendar this month corresponds. He was
instructed in medical science by his father and by Herodicus, and is also said
to have been a pupil of Gorgias of Leontini. He wrote, taught, and practised his
profession at home; travelled in different parts of the continent of Greece; and
died at Larissa in Thessaly. His age at the time of his death is uncertain, as
it is stated by different ancient authors to have been eighty-five years, ninety,
one hundred and four, and one hundred and nine. Mr. Clinton places his death B.
C. 357, at the age of one hundred and four. He had two sons, Thessalus and Dracon,
and a son-in-law, Polybus, all of whom followed the same profession, and who are
supposed to have been the authors of some of the works in the Hippocratic Collection.
Such are the few and scanty facts that can be in some degree depended on respecting
the personal history of this celebrated man; but though we have not the means
of writing an authentic detailed biography, we possess in these few facts, and
in the hints and allusions contained in various ancient authors, sufficient data
to enable us to appreciate the part he played, and the place he held among his
contemporaries. We find that he enjoyed their esteem as a practitioner, writer,
and professor; that he conferred on the ancient and illustrious family to which
he belonged more honour than he derived from it; that he rendered the medical
school of Cos, to which he was attached, superior to any which had preceded it
or immediately followed it; and that his works, soon after their publication,
were studid and quoted by Plato. (See Littre's Hippocr. vol. i.; and a review
of that work (by the writer of this article) in the Brit. and For. Med. Rev. April,
1844.)
Upon this slight foundation of historical truth has been built a vast
superstructure of fabulous error; and it is curious to observe how all these tales
receive a colouring from the times and countries in which they appear to have
been fabricated, whether by his own countrymen before the Christian era, or by
the Latin or Arabic writers of the middle ages. One of the stories told of him
by his Greek biographers. which most modern critics are disposed to regard as
fabulous, relates to his being sent for, together with Euryphon, by Perdiccas
II., king of Macedonia, and discovering, by certain external symptoms, that his
sickness was occasioned by his having fallen in love with his father's concubine.
Probably the strongest reason against the truth of this story is the fact that
the time of the supposed cure is quite irreconcileable with the commonly received
date of the birth of Hippocrates; though M. Littre, the latest and best editor
of Hippocrates, while he rejects the story as spurious, finds no difficulty in
the dates (vol. i.). Soranus, who tells the anecdote, says that the occurrence
took place after the death of Alexander I., the father of Perdiccas; and we may
reasonably presume that one or two years would be the longest interval that would
elapse. The date of the death of Alexander is not exactly known, and depends upon
the length of the reign of his son Perdiccas, who died B. C. 414. The longest
period assigned to his reign is fortyone years, the shortest is twenty-three.
This latter date would place his accession to the throne on his father's death,
at B. C. 437, at which time Hippocrates would be only twenty-three years old,
almost too young an age for him to have acquired so great celebrity as to be specially
sent for to attend a foreign prince. However, the date of B. C. 437 is the less
probable because it would not only extend the reign of his father Alexander to
more than sixty years, but would also suppose him to have lived seventy years
after a period at which he was already grown up to manhood. For these reasons
Mr. Clinton (F. Hell. ii. 222) agrees with Dodwell in supposing the longer periods
assigned to his reign to be nearer the truth; and assumes the accession of Perdiccas
to have fallen within B. C. 454, at which time Hippocrates was only six years
old. This celebrated story has been told, with more or less variation, of Erasistratus
and Avicenna, besides being interwoven in the romance of Heliodorus (Aethiop.
iv. 7.), and the love-letters of Aristaenetus (Epist. i. 13). Galen also says
that a similar circumstance happened to himself. (De Praenot. ad Epig. c. 6. vol.
xiv. p. 630.) The story as applied to Avicenna seems to be most probably apocryphal
(see Biogr. Dict. of the Usef. Knoul. Soc. vol. iv.); and with respect to the
two other claimants, Hippocrates and Erasistratus, if it be true of either, the
preponderance of historical testimony is decidedly in favour of the latter. Another
old Greek fable relates to his being appointed librarian at Cos, and burning the
books there (or, according to another version of the story, at Cnidos,) in order
to conceal the use he had made of them in his own writings. This story is also
told, with but little variation, of Avicenna, and is repeated of Hippocrates,
with some characteristic embellish ments, in the European Legends of the Middle
Ages.
The other fables concerning Hippocrates are to be traced to the collection
of Letters, &c. which go under his name, but which are universally rejected as
spurious. The most celebrated of these relates to his supposed conduct during
the plague of Athens, which he is said to have stopped by burning fires throughout
the city, by suspending chaplets of flowers, and by the use of an antidote, the
composition of which is preserved by Joannes Actuarius (De Meth. Med. v. 6., ed.
H. Steph.) Connected with this, is the pretended letter from Artaxerxes Longimanus,
king of Persia, to Hippocrates, inviting him by great offers to come to his assistance
during a time of pestilence, and the refusal of Hippocrates, on the ground of
his being the enemy of his country.
Another story, perhaps equally familiar to the readers of Burton's
" Anatomy of Melancholy," contains the history of the supposed madness
of Democritus, and his interview with Hippocrates, who had been summoned by his
countrymen to come to his relief.
If we turn to the Arabic writers, we find "Bokrat" represented
as living at Hems, and studying in a garden near Damascus, the situation of which
was still pointed out in the time of Abu/lfaraj in the thirteenth century. (Abu-l-faraj,
Hist. Dynast.; Anon. Arab. Philosoph. Bibl. apud Casiri, Biblioth. A rabico-Hisp.
Escur. vol. i.) They also tell a story of his pupils taking his portrait to a
celebrated physiognomist named Philemon, in order to try his skill; and that upon
his saying that it was the portrait of a lascivious old man (which they strenuously
denied), Hippocrates said that he was right, for that he was so by nature, but
that he had learned to overcome his amorous propensities. The confusion of names
that occurs in this last anecdote the writer has never seen explained, though
the difficulty admits of an easy and satisfactory solution. It will no doubt have
brought to the reader's recollection the similar story told of Socrates by Cicero
(Tusc. Disp. iv. 37, De Fato, c. 5), and accordingly he will be quite prepared
to hear that the Arabic writers have confounded the word Sokrat, with Bokrat,
and have thus applied to Hippocrates an anecdote that in reality belongs to Socrates.
The name of the physiognomist in Cicero is Zopyrus, which cannot have been corrupted
into Philemon ; but when we remember that the Arabians have no P, and are therefore
often obliged to express this letter by an F, it will probably appear not unlikely
that either the writers, or their European translators, have confounded Philemon
with Polemon. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that Philemon is said by
Abu-l-faraj to have written a work on Physiognomy, which is true of Polemon, whose
treatise on that subject is still extant, whereas no person of the name of Philemon
(as far as the writer is aware) is mentioned as a physiognomist by any Greek author.
(1) The only objection to this conjecture is the anachronism
of making Polemon a contemporary of Hippocrates or Socrates ; but this difficulty
will not appear very great to any one who is familiar with the extreme ignorance
and carelessness displayed by the Arabic writers on all points of Greek history
and chronology.
It is, however, among the European storytellers of the middle ages
that the name of "Ypocras" is most celebrated. In one story he is represented
as visiting Rome during the reign of Augustus, and restoring to life the emperor's
nephew, who was just dead; for which service Augustus erected a statue in his
honour as to a divinity. A fair lady resolved to prove that this god was a mere
mortal; and, accordingly, having made an assignation with him, she let down for
him a basket from her window. When she had raised him half way, she left him suspended
in the air all night, till he was found by the emperor in the morning, and thus
became the laughing-stock of the court. Another story makes him professor of medicine
in Rome, with a nephew of wondrous talents and medical skill, whom he despatched
in his own stead to the king of Hungary, who had sent for him to heal his son.
The young leech, by his marvellous skill, having discovered that the prince was
not the king's own son, directed him to feed on "contrarius drink, contrarius
mete, beves flesch, and drink the brotht," and thereby soon restored him to health.
Upon his return home laden with presents, "Ypocras" became so jealous of his fame,
that he murdered him, and afterwards "he let all his bokes berne." The vengeance
of Heaven overtook him, and he died in dreadful torments, confessing his crime,
and vainly calling on his murdered nephew for relief.
If, from the personal history of Hippocrates, we turn to the collection
of writings that go under his name, the parallel with Homer will be still more
exact and striking. In both cases we find a number of works, the most ancient,
and, in some respects, the most excellent of their kind, which, though they have
for centuries borne the same name, are discovered, on the most cursory examination,
to belong in reality to several different persons. Hence has arisen a question
which has for ages exercised the learning and acuteness of scholars and critics,
and which is in both cases still far from being satisfactorily settled. With respect
to the writings of the Hippocratic Collection "the first glance," says
M. Littre (vol. i.), "shows that some are complete in themselves, while others
are merely collections of notes, which follow each other without connection, and
which are sometimes hardly intelligible. Some are incomplete and fragmentary,
others form in the whole Collection particular series, which belong to the same
ideas and the same writer. In a word, however little we reflect on the context
of these numerous writings, we are led to conclude that they are not the work
of one and the same author. This remark has in all ages struck those persons who
have given their attention to the works of Hippocrates; and even at the time when
men commented on them in the Alexandrian school, they already disputed about their
authenticity."
But it is not merely from internal evidence (though this of itself
would be sufficiently convincing) that we find that the Hippocratic Collection
is not the work of Hippocrates alone, for it so happens that in two instances
we find a passage that has appeared from very early times as forming part of this
collection, quoted as belonging to a different person. Indeed if we had nothing
but internal evidence to guide us in our task of examining these writings, in
order to decide which really belong to Hippocrates, we should come to but few
positive results; and therefore it is necessary to collect all the ancient testimonies
that can still be found; in doing which, it will appear that the Collection, as
a whole, can be traced no higher than the period of the Alexandrian school, in
the third century B. C.; but that particular treatises are referred to by the
contemporaries of Hippocrates and his immediate successors. (Brit. and For. Med.
Rev.)
We find that Hippocrates is mentioned or referred to by no less than
ten persons anterior to the foundation of the Alexandrian school, and among them
by Aristotle and Plato. At the time of the formation of the great Alexandrian
library, the different treatises which bear the name of Hippocrates were diligently
sought for, and formed into a single collection; and about this time commences
the series of Commentators, which has continued through a period of more than
two thousand years to the present day. The first person who is known to have commented
on any of the works of the Hippocratic Collection is Herophilus. The most ancient
commentary still in existence is that on the treatise " De Articulis,"
by Apollonius Citiensis. By far the most voluminous, and at the same time by far
the most valuable commentaries that remain, are those of Galen, who wrote several
works in illustration of the writings of Hippocrates, besides those which we now
possess. His Commentaries, which are still extant, are those on the " De
Natura Hominis," " De Salubri Victus Ratione," " De Ratione
Victus in Morbis Acutis," " Praenotiones," Praedictiones I.,"
"Aphorismi," " De Morbis Vulgaribus I. II. III. VI," " De Fracturis,"
" De Articulis," "De Officina Medici," and " De Humoribus," with
a glossary of difficult and obsolete words, and fragments on the " De Aere,
Aquis, et Locis," and " De Alimento." The other ancient commentaries
that remain are those of Palladius, Joannes Alexandrinus, Stephanus Atheniensis,
Meletius, Theophilus Protospatharius, and Damascius; besides a spurious work attributed
to Oribasius, a glossary of obsolete and difficult words by Erotianus, and some
Arabic Commentaries that have never been published. (Brit. and For. Filed. Rev.)
His writings were held in the highest esteem by the ancient Greek
and Latin physicians, and most of them were translated into Arabic. (See Wenrich,
De Auct. Graec. Vers. et Comment. Syr. Arab., &c.) In the middle ages, however,
they were not so much studied as those of some other authors, whose works are
of a more practical character, and better fitted for being made a class-book and
manual of instruction. In more modern times, on the contrary, the works of the
Hippocratic Collection have been valued more according to their real worth, while
many of the most popular medical writers of the middle ages have fallen into complete
neglect. The number of works written in illustration or explanation of the Collection
is very great, as is also that of the editions of the whole or any part ot the
treatises composing it. Of these only a very few can be here mentioned: a fuller
account may be found in Fabric. Bibl. Gruec.; HIaller, Bibl. Medic. Pract.; the
first vol. of Kiihn's edition of Hippocrates; Choulant's Handb. der Bucherkunde
fur die Aeltere Medicin; Littre's Hippocrates; and other professed bibliographical
works. The works of Hippocrates first appeared in a Latin translation by Fabius
Calvus, Rom. 1525, fol. The first Greek edition is the Aldine, Venet. 1526, fol.,
which was printed from MSS. with hardly any correction of the transcriber's errors.
The first edition that had any pretensions to be called a critical edition was
that by Hieron. Mercurialis, Venet. 1588, fol., Gr. and Lat.; but this was much
surpassed by that of Anut. Foesius, Francof. 1595, fol., Gr. and Lat., which continues
to the present day to be the best complete edition. Vander Linden's edition (Lugd.
Bat. 1665, 8vo. 2 vols. Gr. and Lat.) is neat and commodious for reference from
his having divided the text into short paragraphs. Chartier's edition of the works
of Galen and Hippocrates has been noticed under Galen; as has also Kuhn's, of
which it may be said that its only advantages are its convenient size, the reprint
of Ackermann's Histor. Liter. Hippocr. (from Harless's ed. of Fabr. Bibl. Gr.)
in the first vol., and the noticing on each page the corresponding pagination
of the editions of Foes, Chartier, and Vander Linden. By far the best edition
in every respect is one which is now in the course of publication at Paris, under
the superintendence of E. Littre, of which the first vol. appeared in 1839, and
the fourth in 1844. It contains a new text, founded upon a collation of the MSS.
in the Royal Library at Paris; a French translation; an interesting and learned
general Introduction, and a copious argument prefixed to each treatise; and numerous
scientific and philological notes. It is a work quite indispensable to every physician,
critic, and philologist, who wishes to study in detail the works of the Hippocratic
Collection, and it has already done much more towards settling the text than any
edition that has preceded it; but at the same time it must not be concealed that
the editor does not seem to have always made the best use of the materials that
he has had at his command, and that the classical reader cannot help now and then
noticing a manifest want of critical (and even at times of grammatical) scholarship.
The Hippocratic Collection consists of more than sixty works; and
the classification of these, and assigning each (as far as possible) to its proper
author, constitutes by far the most difficult question connected with the ancient
medical writers. Various have been the classifications proposed both in ancient
and modern times, and various the rules by which their authors were guided; some
contenting themselves with following implicitly the opinions of Galen and Erotianus,
others arguing chiefly from peculiarities of style, while a third class distinguished
the books according to the medical and philosophical doctrines contained in them.
An account of each of these classifications cannot be given here, much less can
the objections that may be brought against each be pointed out: upon the whole,
the writer is inclined to think M. Littre's superior to any that has preceded
it; but by no means so unexceptionable as to do away with the necessity of a new
one. The following classification, though far enough from supplying the desideratum,
differs in several instances from any former one: it is impossible here for the
writer to give more than the results of his investigation, referring for the data
on which his opinion in each particular case is founded to the works of Gruner,
Ackermann, and Littre/, of which he has, of course, made free use. (2)
Perhaps a tabular or genealogical view of the different divisions and subdivisions
of the Collection will be the best calculated to put the reader at once in possession
of the whole bearings of the subject.
Class I., containing Prognostikon Praenotiones or Prognosticon
(vol. i., ed. Kuhn); Aphorismoi, Aphorismi (vol. iii.); Epidemion Bibgia A, G,
De Morbis Popularibus (or Epidemiorum), lib. i. and iii. (vol. i.); Peri Diaites
Oxeon, De Ratione Victus in Morbis Acutis, or De Diaeta Acntorumn (vol. ii.);
Peri Aepon, psdaton, topon, De Aere, Aquis, et Locis (vol. i.); Peri ton en kephale
tromaton, De Capitis Vulneribus (vol. iii.).
Class II., containing Peri Apchaies Ietpikes, De Prisca Medicina
(vol. i.); Peri axthron, De Articulis (vol. iii.); Peri Agmon, De Fractis (vol.
iii.); Mochlikos, Mochlicus or Vectiarius (vol. iii.); Horkos, Jusjurandum (vol.
i.); Nomos, Lex (vol. i.); Peri Helkon, De Ulceribus (vol. iii.); Peri Suringon,
De Fistulis (vol. iii.); Peri Aimorhro+idon, De Haemorrhoididibus (vol. iii.);
Kat ietreion, De Officina Medici (vol. iii.); Peri Ieres nousou, De Morbo Sacro
(vol. i.).
Class III., containing Prorhretikon A, Prorrhetica, or Praedictiones
i. (vol. i.); Koakai Prognoseis, Coacae Praenotiones (vol. i.).
Class IV., containing Peri Susios Anthropon, De Natura Hominis
(vol. i.); Peri Diaites, Hugieines, De Salubri Victus Ratione (?) (vol. i. );
Peri Gunaikeies Phusios, De Natura Muliebri (?) (vol. ii.); Peri nouson *B, *G,
De Uorbis, ii. iii (?) (vol. ii.); Peri Epikuesios, De Superfoetatione (?) (vol.
i.).
Class V., containing Peri Phuson, De Flatibus (vol. i.); Peri
Topon ton kat Anthropon, De Locis in Homine (vol. ii.); Peri technes, De Arte
(?) (vol. i.); Peri Diaites, De Diaeta, or De Victts Ratione (vol. i.); Peri enupnion,
De Insomniis (vol. ii.); Peri Pathon, De Affectionibus (vol. ii.); Peri ton entos
Pathon, De Internis Affectionibus (vol. ii.) ; Peri nouson A, De Morbis i. (vol.
ii.); Peri Heptamenou, De Septimestri Partu (vol. i.) ; Peri Oktamenou, De Octinestri
Partu (vol. i.); Epidemizu Bibgia B, D, Z, Epidemiorum, or De Morbis Popularibus,
ii. iv. vi. (vol. iii.); Peri Chumon, De Humoribus (vol. i.); Peri Hugron Chresios,
De Usu Liquidorum (voi. ii.)
Class VI., containing Peri Gones, De Genitura (vol. i.); Peri
Phusios Paidiou, De Natura Pueri (vol. i.); Peri Nouszn D, De Morbis in. (vol.
ii.); Peri Gunaikeion, De Mulierum Morbis (vol. ii.); Peri Parthenion, De Virginum
Morbis (vol. ii.); Peri Aphoron De Sterilibus (vol. iii.).
Class VII., containing Epidemion bibgla E, H, Epidemiorum, or
De Morbis Popularibus v. vii. (vol. iii.); Peri kardies, De Corde (vol. i.); *Peri\
*Trofh=s, De Alinmento (vol. ii.); Peri Sarkon, De Carnibus (vol. i.); Peri Hebdomadon,
De Septimanis, a work which no longer exists in Greek, but of which M. Littre
has found a Latin translation; Pororhretikon B, Prorrhetica (or Praedictiones)
ii. (vol. i.) ; Peri Odteon Sutios, De Natura Ossim, a work composed entirely
of extracts from other treatises of the Hippocratic Collection, and from other
ancient authors, and which therefore M. Littre is going to suppress entirely (vol.
i.); Peri Adenon, De Glandulis (vol. i.); Peri Ietrou, De Medico (vol. i.); Peri
Eudchemodunes, De Decenti Habitu (vol. i.); Papangegliai, Pracceptiones (vol.
i.); Peri Anatomes, De Anatomia (or De Resectione Corporum) (vol. iii.); Peri
Odontophuies, De Dentilione (vol. i.); Peri Enkatatomes Embruou, De Resectione
Foetus (vol. iii.); Peri Opsios, De Visu (vol. iii.); Peri Krision, De Crisibus
(or De Judicationibus) (vol. i.) ; Peri krisimon, De Diebus Criticis (or De Diebus
Judicatoriis) (vol. i.); Peri Pharmakon, De Medicamentis Purgatiris (vol. iii.).
Class VIII., containing Epistolai, Epistolae (vol. iii.); Presbeutikos
thessagou, Thessali Legati Oratio (vol. iii.; Epibomios Oratio ad Aram (vol. iii.);
Dogma Athenaion, Atheniensium Senatus Consultum (vol. iii.).
Each of these classes requires a few words of explanation. The first
class will probably be considered by many persons to be rather small; but it seemed
safer and better to include in it only those works of whose genuineness there
has never been any doubt. To this there is perhaps one exception, and that relating
to the very work whose genuineness one would perhaps least expect to find called
in question, as it is certainly that by which Hippocrates is most popularly known.
Some doubts as to the origin of the Aphorisms, and indeed the discussion of the
genuineness of this work may be said to be an epitome of the questions relating
to the whole Hippocratic Collection. We find here a very celebrated work, which
has from early times borne the name of Hippocrates, but of which som parts have
always been condemned as spurious. Upon examining those portions that are considered
to be genuine, we observe that the greater part of the first three sections agrees
almost word for word with passages to be found in his acknowledged works; while
in the remaining sections we find sentences taken apparently from spurious or
doubtful treatises; thus adding greatly to our difficulties, inasmuch as they
sometimes contain doctrines and theories opposed to those which we find in the
works acknowledged to be genuine. And these facts are (in the opinion of the critics
alluded to) to be accounted for in one of two ways: either Hippocrates himself
in his old age (for the Aphorisms have always been attributed to this period of
his life) put together certain extracts from his own works, to which were afterwards
added other sentences taken from later authors; or else the collection was not
formed by Hippocrates himself, but by some person or persons after his death,
who made aphoristical extracts from his works, and from those of other writers
of a later date, and the whole was then attributed to Hippocrates, because he
was the author of the sentences that were most valuable, and came first in order.
This account of the formation of the Aphorisms appears extremely plausible, nor
does it seem to be any decisive objection to say, that we find among them sentences
which are not to be met with elsewhere; for, when we recollect how many works
of the old medical writers, and perhaps of Hippocrates himself, are lost, it is
easy to conceive that these sentences may have been extracted from some treatise
that is no longer in existence. It must however be confessed that this conjecture,
however plausible and probable, requires further proof and examination before
it can be received as true.
The second class is one of the most unsatisfactory in the writer's
own opinion, and affords at the same time a curious instance of the impossibility
of satisfying even those few persons in Europe whose opinion on such a matter
is really worth asking; for, upon submitting the classification to two friends,
one of whom is decidedly the most learned physician in Great Britain, and the
other one of the best medical critics on the continent, he was advised by the
one to call this class "Works probably written by Hippocrates," and
by the other to transfer them (with one exception) to the class of " Works
certainly not written by Hippocrates." The amount of probability in favour
of the genuineness of all these works is certainly by no means equal; e. g. the
two little pieces called the " Oath," and the " Law," though
commonly considered to be the work of the same author, and to be intimately connected
with each other, seem rather to belong to different periods, the former having
all the simplicity, honesty, and religious feeling of antiquity, the latter somewhat
of the affectation and declamatory grandiloquence of a sophist. However, as all
of these books have been considered to be genuine by some critics of more or less
note, it seemed better to defer to their authority at least so far as to allow
that they might perhaps have been written by Hippocrates himself.
The two works which constitute the third class, and which are probably
the oldest medical writings that exist, have been supposed with some probability
to consist, at least in part, of the inscriptions on the votive tablets placed
in the temple of Aesculapius by those who had recovered their health, which certainly
constituted one of the sources from which the medical knowledge of Hippocrates
was derived.
In the fourth class are placed those works which were certainly not
written by Hippocrates himself, which were probably either contemporary or but
little posterior to him, and whose authors have been, with more or less degree
of certainty, discovered. The works De Natura Homiinis, and De Salubri Victus
Ratione, are supposed by M. Littre to have been written by the same author, because
it is said by Galen that in many old editions these two treatises formed but one;
and this author he concludes to have been Polybus, the son-in-law of Hippocrates
(vol. i.), because a passage is quoted by Aristotle (Hist. Anim. iii 3), and attributed
to Polybus, which is found word for word in the work De Natura Hominis (vol .
i). For somewhat similar reasons, Euryphon has been supposed to be the author
of the second and third books De Morbis, and the work De Natura Muliebri; and
also (though with much less show of reason) a certain Leophanes, or Cleophanes
(of whom nothing whatever is known), to have written the treatise De Superfoetatione
(Littre, vol. i.).
In the fifth class there is one treatise (De Diaeta) in which an astronomical
coincidence with the calendar of Eudoxus has been pointed to the writer by a friend,
which (as far as he is aware) has never been noticed by any commentator on Hippocrates,
and which seems in some degree to fix the date of the work in question. If the
calendar of Eudoxus, as preserved in the Apparentiae of Ptolemy and the calendar
of Geminus (see Petav. Uranol.), be compared with part of the third book De Diaela
(vol. i.), it will be found that the periods correspond so exactly, that (there
being no other solar calendar of antiquity in which these intervals coincide so
closely,and all through,but that of Eudoxus), it seems a reasonable inference
that the writer of the work De Diaeta took them from the calendar in question.
If this be granted, it will follow that the author must have written this work
after the year B. C. 381, which is the date of the calendar of Eudoxus; and, as
Hippocrates must have been at least eighty years old at that time, this conclusion
will agree quite well with the general opinion of ancient and modern critics,
that the treatise in question was probably written by one of his immediate followers.
The sixth class agrees with the sixth class of M. Littre, who, with
great appearance of probability, supposes it to form a connected series of works
written by the same author, whose name is quite unknown, and of whose date it
can only be determined from internal evidence that he must have lived later than
Hippocrates, and before the time of Aristotle.
The works contained in this and the seventh class have for many centuries
formed part of the Hippocratic Collection without having any right to such an
honour, and therefore are not genuine; but, as it does not appear that their authors
were guilty of assuming the name of Hippocrates, or that they have represented
the state of medical science as in any respect different from what it really was
in the times in which they wrote, there is no reason for denying their authenticity.
And in this respect they are to be regarded with a very different eye from the
pieces which form the last class, which are neither genuine nor authentic, but
mere forgeries; which display indeed here and there some ingenuity and skill,
but which are still sufficiently full of difficulties and inconsistencies to betray
at once their origin.
So much space has been taken up with the preliminary, but most indispensable
step of determining which are the genuine works of Hippocrates, and which are
spurious, that a very slight sketch of his opinions is all that can be now attempted,
and for a fuller account the reader must be referred to the works of Le Clerc,
Haller, Sprengel, &c., or to some of those which relate especially to Hippocrates.
He divides the causes of disease into two principal classes; the one comprehending
the influence of seasons, climates, water, situation, &c., and the other consisting
of more personal and private causes, such as result from the particular kind and
amount of food and exercise in which each separate individual indulges himself.
The modifications of the atmosphere dependent on different seasons and climates
is a subject which was successfully treated by Hippocrates, and which is still
far from exhausted by all the researches of modern science. He considered that
while heat and cold, moisture and dryness, succeeded one another throughout the
year, the human body underwent certain analogous changes, which influenced the
diseases of the period; and on this basis was founded the doctrine of pathological
constitutions, corresponding to particular conditions of the atmosphere, so that,
whenever the year or the season exhibited a special character in which such or
such a temperature prevailed, those persons who were exposed to its influence
were affected by a series of disorders, all bearing the same stamp. (How plainly
the same idea runs through the Observationes Medicae of Sydenham, our " English
Hippocrates " need not be pointed out to those who are at all familiar with
his works.) The belief in the influence which different climates exercise on the
human frame follows naturally from the theory just mentioned; for, in fact, a
climate may be considered as nothing more than a permanent season, whose effects
may be expected to be more powerful, inasmuch as the cause is ever at work upon
mankind. Accordingly, Hippocrates attributes to climate both the conformation
of the body and the disposition of the mind-indeed, almost every thing; and if
the Greeks were found to be hardy freemen, and the Asiatics effeminate slaves,
he accounts for the difference of their characters by that of the climates in
which they lived. With respect to the second class of causes producing disease,
he attributed all sorts of disorders to a vicious system of diet, which, whether
excessive or defective, he considered to be equally injurious; and in the same
way he supposed that, when bodily exercise was either too much indulged in or
entirely neglected, the health was equally likely to suffer, though by different
forms of disease. Into all the minutiae of the "Humoral Pathology" (as
it was called), which kept its ground in Europe as the prevailing doctrine of
all the medical sects for more than twenty centuries, it would be out of place
to enter here. It will be sufficient to remind the reader that the four fluids
or humours of the body (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) were supposed
to be the primary seat of disease; that health was the result of the due combination
(or crasis) of these, and that, when this crasis was disturbed, disease was the
consequence; that, in the course of a disorder that was proceeding favourably,
these humours underwent a certain change in quality (or coction),which was the
sign of returning health, as preparing the way for the expulsion of the morbid
matter, or crisis;and that these crises had a tendency to occur at certain stated
periods, which were hence called "critical days." (Brit. and For. Med.
Rev.)
The medical practice of Hippocrates was cautious and feeble, so much
so, that he was in after times reproached with letting his patients die, by doing
nothing to keep them alive. It consisted chiefly in watching the operations of
nature, and promoting the critical evacuations mentioned above; so that attention
to diet and regimen was the principal and often the only remedy that he employed.
Several hundred substances have been enumerated which are used medicinally in
different parts of the Hippocratic Collection; of these, by far the greater portion
belong to the vegetable kingdom, as it would be in vain to look for any traces
of chemistry in these early writings. In surgery, he is the author of the frequently
quoted maxim, that " what cannot be cured by medicines is cured by the knife;
and what cannot be cured by the knife is cured by fire." The anatomical knowledge
displayed in different parts of the Hippocratic Collection is scanty and contradictory,
so much so, that the discrepancies on this subject constitute an important criterion
in deciding the genuineness of the different treatises.
With regard to the personal character of Hippocrates, though he says
little or nothing expressly about himself, yet it is impossible to avoid drawing
certain conclusions from the characteristic passages scattered through the pages
of his writings. He was evidently a person who not only had had great experience,
but who also knew how to turn it to the best account; and the number of moral
reflections and apophthegms that we meet with in his writings, some of which (as,
for example, " Life is short, and Art is long ") have acquired a sort
of proverbial notoriety, show him to have been a profound thinker. He appears
to have felt the moral obligations and responsibilities of his profession, and
often tries to impress upon his readers the duties of care and attention, and
kindness towards the sick, saying that a physician's first and chief consideration
ought to be the restoring his patient to health. The style of the Hippocratic
writings, which are in the Ionic dialect, is so concise as to be sometimes extremely
obscure; though this charge, which is as old as the time of Galen, is often brought
too indiscriminately against the whole collection, whereas it applies, in fact
especially only to certain treatises, which seem to be merely a collection of
notes, such as De Humoribus, De Alimento, De Officina Medici, &c. In those writings,
which are universally allowed to be genuine, we do not find this excessive brevity,
though even these are in general by no means easy. (Brit. and For. Med. Rev.)
Of the great number of books published on the subject of the Hippocratic
Collection, only a very few of the most modern and most useful can be here enumerated;
a fuller list may be found in Choulant's Handb. der Bucherkunde fur die Aeltere
Medicin, or his Biblioth. Medico-Histor.; or in Ackermann's Historia Literaria
Hippocratis. Foesii Oeconomia Hippocratis is a very copious and learned lexicon,
published in fol. Francof. 1588, and Genev. 1662. Sprengel's Apologie des Hippocr.
und seiner Grundsatze (Leipz. 1789, 1792, 2 vols. 8vo.), contains, among matter,
a German translation of some of the genuine treatises, with a valuable commentary.
The treatise by Ermerins, De Hippocr. Doctrine a Proynostice oriunda (Lugd. Bat.
1832, 4to.), deserves to be carefully studied; as also does Link's dissertation,
Ueber die Theorien in den Hippocratiscien Schriften, nebst Bemerkungen uber die
Echtheit dieser Schriften, in the " Abhandlungen der Berlin. Akadem."
1814, 1815. Gruner's Censura Librorum Hippocrateorum qua veri a falsis, integri
a suppositis segregantur, Vratislav. 1772, 8vo., contains a useful account of
the amount of evidence in favour of each treatise of the collection, though his
conclusions are not always to be depended on. See also Houdart, Etudes Histor.
et Crit. sur la Vie et la Doctrine d' Hippocr. Paris, 1836, 8vo.; Petersen, Hippocr.
Nomine quae circumferuntur Scripta ad Temporis Rationes dispos. Hamburg, 1839,
4to. ; Meixner, Neue Prufung der Echtheit und Reihefolge Sammtlicher Schriften
Hippocr., Munchen, 1836, 1837, 8vo.
1 There is at this present time among the MSS. at Leyden a little
Arabic treatise on Physiognomy which bears the name of Philemon, and which (as
the writer has been informed by a gentleman who has compared the two works) bears
a very great resemblance to the Greek treatise by Polemon. (See Catal. Biblioth.
Lugdun. p. 461. § 1286.)
2 Some of the readers of this work may perhaps be interested
to hear that a strictly philologicalclassification of the works of the Hippocratic
Collection is still a desideratum; and that, as this is in fact almost the only
question connected with the subject which has not by this time been thoroughly
examined, any scholar who will undertake the work will be doing good service to
the cause of ancient medical literature.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
The central historical figure in Greek medicine is Hippocrates. The
events of his life are shrouded in uncertainty, yet tales of his ingenuity, patriotism
and compassion made him a legend. He provided an example of the ideal physician
after which others centuries after him patterned their existence.
He was associated with the Asclepium of Cos, an island off the coast
of Asia Minor, near Rhodes
and with a group of medical treatises known collectively as the Hippocratic Corpus.
Celsus says that Hippocrates first gave the physician an independent standing,
separating him from the cosmological speculator, or nature philosopher. Hippocrates
confined the medical man to medicine. At the same time that he assigned the physician
his post, Hippocrates would not let him regard the post as sacrosanct. He set
his face against any tendency toward sacerdotalism. He was also opposed to the
spirit of trade-unionism in medicine. His concern was rather with the physician’s
duties than his “rights”. Hence the greatest legacy of Hippocrates:
the Hippocratic Oath.
This extract is cited Sept 2003 from the University of Virginia Historical Collections URL below, which contains image.
Hippocrates (c. 460 BC-377 BC). Ancient Greek physician, commonly regarded as one of the most outstanding
figures in medicine of all times. He is often called “the father of medicine”.
He was the leader of a medical school of Cos and the author of most of writings
of the school. He had a great impact on succeeding generations of practitioners
of medicine and some general rules still apply.
His work and writings rejected the superstition and magic of primitive
“medicine” and laid the foundations of medicine as a branch of science.
The whole collection of works of the Hippocratic medical school were gathered
as the Hippocratic Corpus.
The best known of the Hippocratic writings is the Hippocratic Oath.
“I swear by Apollo the physician, by Aesculapius, Hygeia, and
Panacea, and I take to witness all the gods, all the goddesses, to keep according
to my ability and my judgement, the following Oath. To consider dear to me as
my parents him who taught me this art; to live in common with him and if necessary
to share my goods with him; to look upon his children as my own brothers, to teach
them this art if they so desire without fee or written promise; to impart to my
sons and the sons of the master who taught me and the disciples who have enrolled
themselves and have agreed to the rules of the profession, but to these alone
the precepts and the instruction. I will prescribe regimen for the good of my
patients according to my ability and my judgement and never do harm to anyone.
To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice which
may cause his death. Nor will I give a woman a pessary to procure abortion. But
I will preserve the purity of my life and my art. I will not cut for stone, even
for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be
performed by practitioners, specialists in this art. In every house where I come
I will enter only for the good of my patients, keeping myself far from all intentional
ill-doing and all seduction and especially from the pleasures of love with women
or with men, be they free or slaves. All that may come to my knowledge in the
exercise of my profession or in daily commerce with men, which ought not to be
spread abroad, I will keep secret and will never reveal.
If I keep this oath faithfully, may I enjoy my life and practice my
art, respected by all men and in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate
it, may the reverse be my lot.”
This extract is cited July 2003 from the Malaspina Great Books URL below, which contains image.
Hippocrates (c.460-377). Also called the “Father of Medicine”, Hippocrates was
born on the island of Kos.
Not much of him is known, except that he was exiled from his home,
an outstanding physician and that he died in Larissa,
where there is a monument of him. An anecdote tells us he was so sharp that once
he met a girl in the street, and greeted her saying “good morning, maiden”
but when he met her in the afternoon, he said “good evening, woman”.
Hippocrates was almost free of superstition, and believed disease
came from nature as opposed to from the gods. He even stated that epilepsy was
caused from a blockage in the brain. He was the first physician to actually examine
his patients.
A revolutionary aspect that was invented by Hippocrates was the concepts
of cleanliness. When the plague broke out he recommended that people burn their
clothes and boil the water before they drank it. It was to take over 2000 years
before this was rediscovered. He wrote about diagnostical methods, diets, the
importance of hygiene, how to prevent diseases, surgery, women's diseases, the
construction of towns and houses in order for people's environment to be healthy,
massage et.c.
Hippocrates believed the health is good when the four humours, blood,
yellow bile, black bile and phlegm, are in balance. When we vomit, cough or sweat
for example, the body is trying to get rid of excessive amounts of one or more
of these humours.
The Hippocratic Oath, which he might not have actually written himself,
is still sworn by new doctors in many parts of the world. This oath is the basis
for the ethics of the World Health Organization (WHO). Hippocrates also introduced
the vow of silence that all doctors still take.
This text is cited Sept 2003 from the In2Greece URL below.
Medicina (iatrike). The ancients ascribed the origin of the medical
art to the gods (Pliny , Pliny H. N.xxix. 2), and Prometheus, Chiron, and Asclepius
were among those who made it known to men. It was also believed to have been improved
by the observation of the remedies instinctively sought out by animals when suffering
from injuries or disease (Pliny , Pliny H. N.viii. 97). Thus, dogs taught the
Egyptians the use of purgatives, bleeding was learned from the hippopotamus, and
enemata from the ibis. Sheep and cattle led men to the use of the natural saline
and chalybeate waters. The results of these and various other observations of
cures were recorded on tablets, and suspended by the priests in the temples of
the gods both in Egypt and in Greece. These tablets were the beginnings of medical
literature.
The Asclepiadae, to which family Hippocrates belonged, were, in a
way, hereditary physicians, and founded a number of medical schools, of which
the most famous in early times were those of Rhodes, Cnidos, and Cos. From the
second came the collection of medical observations called Knidiai Gnomai, "Cnidian
Maxims", which long enjoyed a considerable repute. The school of Cos was,
however, the best known of the three, and one of its representatives was Hippocrates
himself. Herodotus mentions other schools at Crotona in Italy and Cyrene in Africa
(iii. 131). Of the different medical sects that sprang up at different times,
the following deserve especial mention:
(1) The Dogmatici or Hippocratici, founded about B.C. 400 by Thessalus,
the son, and Polybus, the son-in-law of Hippocrates;
(2) the Empirici, founded in the third century B.C., and so called
because they professed to base their knowledge and practice on experience alone;
(3) the Methodici, founded in the first century B.C. by Themison,
who taught doctrines partly theoretical and partly empirical;
(4) the Pneumatici, founded by Athenaeus in the first century a.d.;
and
(5) the Eclectici, founded at about the same time by Agathinus of
Sparta, or perhaps his pupil Archigenes.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Febr 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Medicus (iatros). A physician or surgeon, the name being indiscriminately
used of either. In Greece and Asia Minor, physicians were held in higher repute
than at Rome, probably because of the traditional association of medicine with
religion. A law of the Locrians quoted by Aelian (Var. Hist. ii. 37), punished
with death the patient who disobeyed the orders of his physician. Hippocrates
was treated as a demigod by the Athenians, if the account of Soranus
be true.
The Greek physician compounded his own medicines, and either sat in
his consulting-room (iatreion) or visited his patients, in the latter duty being
often accompanied by his pupils or assistants. There is only one mention of a
Greek hospital prior to the Roman period. State physicians were employed in Greece,
receiving a salary and their expenses, but no fees. Thus Democedes received from
the public treasury of Aegina about $1400 per annum, and from Athens afterwards
a salary of some $2000 ( Herod.iii. 131). A physician who cured King Antiochus
received from him a fee of over $100,000 (Pliny , Pliny H. N.vii. 123; xxix. 5).
State physicians attended gratis any one who called for them.
In the early days of the Republic, Rome had no regular physicians.
The haruspices and augurs pretended to some knowledge of medicine; but when a
man fell ill, he was usually treated by the old women with their simples; or if
the disease was a very serious one, he trusted to religious rites, vows, and sacrifices
for his recovery. The various deities of disease were propitiated by temples and
altars. In Varro's time there were in Rome three temples to the goddess of Fever;
in the Esquiline quarter, an altar to Mefitis, the goddess Malaria; in the centre
of the Forum Romanum, an altar to Cloacina, "the goddess of typhoid"
(so Lanciani), and near the Praetorian Camp, an altar to Verminus, the god of
diseasegerms.
At a later period, among the Greeks who first came in numbers to Rome
in the second century B.C., were many professed physicians; and from that time
the practice of medicine became a lucrative profession among the Romans, though
the chief practitioners remained Greeks, a fact to which the Latin vocabulary
bears witness in that its medical terms are nearly all of Greek origin. The elder
Pliny gives some interesting details regarding the fees received by the leading
doctors. The native physicians of celebrity, Cassius, Calpetanus, and Arruntius,
received, he estimates, an income of not less than 250,000 sesterces ($10,000)
a year. Quintus Stertinius, a fashionable physician, was asked by the emperor
to give up his private practice and devote himself to the imperial family alone.
Stertinius said that, as an especial favour, he would do it if he could receive
a salary of 500,000 sesterces ($20,000). This struck the emperor as an exorbitant
demand, but Stertinius showed from his books that his private practice was worth
to him at least 600,000 sesterces per annum. The brother of this Stertinius had
a sort of partnership with him, and when they died, which they did at about the
same time, they left a property of 30,000,000 sesterces ($1,200,000), though they
had lived very expensively, and given large sums to public objects. The Greek
physicians at Rome probably earned still larger sums. An ex-praetor paid 200,000
sesterces ($8000) as a single fee to the practitioner who treated him for leprosy.
Pliny mentions one Thessalus, of whom he says: "No popular actor, no famous
jockey, had a greater throng attending him when he appeared in public".
Nothing is known of the course of study necessary to qualify a man
for medical practice. That there were medical students and clinical lectures is
seen from Martial. It is probable that the profession was open to all kinds of
quacks and impostors, for we read of men taking up medicine as they would any
form of trade, with no mention of any special qualification. It is, in fact, likely
that, in the main, ancient medicine was little better than quackery, and that
the best physicians were men like Crinas who made a careful study of dietetics,
and like Asclepiades, who said "Nature is the true physician". How absurd
much of the treatment must have been is shown in the list of remedies given by
Pliny in his Historia Naturalis. The patent medicines of to-day sink into insignificance
beside them. Thus, we read of a mysterious preparation called Theriaca with 600
ingredients, and of another known as "the Mithridatic antidote" with
450. Pliny mentions 35 nostrums prepared from wool, 22 from eggs, and also several
pastes of which the principal constituent was pounded bugs. The notion, which
is still largely prevalent among the laity, that the efficacy of a drug is in
direct proportion to its nastiness seems to have had a strong hold on the minds
of the ancients. Dog's blood was given for narcotic poisons; urine for gout; goat's
gall for ophthalmia; bull's gall and garlic for ear-ache. Superstition entered
largely into the treatment. A person afflicted with hiccoughing was gravely advised
to touch his lips to a mule's nostrils and be cured. Hydrophobia was treated by
applying to the bite the ashes of the dead dog's hair. A still more effectual
remedy for the same disease was to cut out the liver of the dog and to eat it
raw, applying at the same time to the wound, horse-dung sprinkled with vinegar.
All these prescriptions are the serious advice of men of reputation.
It is not surprising if, on the whole, the profession was less esteemed than others.
Pliny the Elder sums up the matter in the following sentences: "There is
no doubt that physicians in pursuit of celebrity, by the introduction of some
novelty or other, purchase it at the cost of human life. Hence these woful discussions,
these consultations at the bedside of the patient; hence, too, the ominous inscription
to be read upon a tomb--'I perished by the multitude of physicians' . . . And
there is, moreover, no law to punish the mistakes of a physician, and no instance
before us of any punishment so inflicted. They acquire skill at our risk, and
put us to death for the sake of making an experiment; for a physician is the only
person who is licensed to kill".
Other scandals besides those due to ignorance were not unknown. So
many unprincipled persons entered the profession that it is not surprising to
find complaints made of their conduct. Even the palace of the Caesars was the
scene of strange occurrences, for it is recorded that both Livia, the wife of
Drusus, and the empress Messalina were criminally intimate with their medical
attendants. It is not remarkable, therefore, to find a Roman writer concluding
a discussion of the subject with the words: "Medicine is the only one of
the arts of Greece that, lucrative though it be, Roman dignity still refuses to
cultivate".
Nevertheless, medicine flourished, and its followers kept increasing
in number. We hear of the practice of specialties. General practitioners were
known as medici; surgeons as chirurgi and vulnerarii. There were also oculists
(ocularii) and dentists (medici a dentibus). We even read of female physicians
(Orell. Inscript. 4320-31), and, of course, of numerous midwives (obstetrices).
Pharmacies existed, their sign being the Aesculapian snake; and though physicians
usually furnished their own drugs, they also gave signed prescriptions (Duruy).
The physicians attached to the imperial household were under the direction of
a chief styled archiater (archiatros), or in pure Latin dominus medicorum. The
name archiater was also applied to the dispensary-physicians who gave their services
to the people (archiatri populares).
Surgery was the branch of medicine most scientifically pursued, and
successful operations were performed by the ancient surgeons for stone and cataract,
while trephining was not unknown.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Febr 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Diaetetica (diaitetike). One of the principal branches into which
the ancients divided the art and science of medicine. The word is derived from
diaita, which meant much the same as our word diet. It is defined by Celsus (De
Medic. Praef.lib. i.) to signify that part of medicine which cures diseases by
means of regimen and diet. Taken strictly in this sense, it would correspond very
nearly with the modern "dietetics", and this is the meaning which it
always bears in the earlier medical writers.
In later times the comic poet Nicomachus introduces a cook who, among
his other qualifications, implies that he is a physician; but no attention seems
to have been paid to eating as a branch of medicine before the date of Hippocrates.
Homer represents Machaon, who had been wounded in the shoulder by an arrow ( Il.xi.
507) and forced to quit the field, as taking a draught composed of wine, goat's-milk
cheese, and flour, which probably no surgeon in later times would have prescribed
in such a case. Hippocrates seems to claim for himself the credit of being the
first person who had studied this subject, and says that "the ancients had
written nothing on it worth mentioning". Among the works forming the Hippocratic
collection, there are four that bear upon this subject, of which, however, only
one (viz. that just quoted) is considered to be undoubtedly genuine. It would
be out of place here to attempt anything like a complete account of the opinions
of the ancients on this point, so that in this article only such particulars are
mentioned as may be supposed to have some interest for the classical reader.
In the works of Hippocrates and his successors almost all the articles
of food used by the ancients are mentioned, and their real or supposed properties
discussed, sometimes quite as fancifully as by Burton in his Anatomy of Melancholy.
In some respects they appear to have been much less delicate than the moderns,
as we find the flesh of the fox, the dog, the horse, and the ass spoken of as
common articles of food. Beef and mutton were of course eaten, but the meat most
generally esteemed was pork. A morbid taste for human flesh appears to have been
secretly indulged in the time of Xenocrates (first century A.D.); so that the
unnatural practice was forbidden by an imperial edict, which decree serves to
illustrate the "strange and revolting anecdote", as Milman calls it,
of the wild cry that, in a time of scarcity amounting to famine, assailed the
ears of the emperor Attalus, "Fix the tariff for human flesh" (pone
pretium carni humanae, Zosim. vi. 11).
With regard to the strength or quality of the wine drunk by the ancients,
we may arrive at something like certainty from the fact that Coelius Aurelianus
mentions it as something extraordinary that Asclepiades at Rome in the first century
B.C. sometimes ordered his patients to double and treble the quantity of wine,
till at last they drank half wine and half water. From this it appears that wine
was commonly diluted with five or six times its quantity of water. Hippocrates
also in particular cases recommends wine to be mixed with an equal quantity of
water, and Galen approves of the proportion. According to Hippocrates, the proportions
in which wine and water should be mixed together vary according to the season
of the year; for instance, in summer the wine should be most diluted, in winter
the least so. In one place the patient after great fatigue is recommended to get
himself drunk once or twice, in which passage it has been doubted whether actual
intoxication is meant or only the "drinking freely and to cheerfulness",
in which sense the same word is used by St. John and the Septuagint.
Exercises of various kinds and bathing are also much insisted on by
the writers on diet and regimen, but for further particulars on these subjects
the articles Balneae and Gymnasium must be consulted. It may, however, be added
that the bath could not have been very common, at least in private families, in
the time of Hippocrates, as he says that "there are few houses in which the
necessary conveniences are to be found". Another very favourite practice
with the ancients, both as a preventive of sickness and as a remedy, was the taking
of an emetic from time to time. In one of the treatises of the Hippocratic collection
the unknown author recommends it two or three times a month. Celsus considers
it more beneficial in the winter than in the summer, and says that those who take
an emetic twice a month had better do so on two successive days than once a fortnight.
In the first century B.C. this practice was so commonly abused that Asclepiades
rejected the use of emetics altogether.
It was the custom among the Romans to take an emetic immediately before
their meals, in order to prepare themselves to eat more plentifully; and again
soon after, so as to avoid any injury from repletion. Cicero, in his account of
the day that Caesar spent with him at his house in the country, says, "Accubuit,
emetiken agebat (he was meditating an emetic), itaque et edit et bibit adeos et
iucunde"; and this has by some persons been considered a sort of compliment
paid by Caesar to his host, as it intimated a resolution to pass the day cheerfully
and to eat and drink freely. He is represented as having done the same thing when
he was entertained by King Deiotarus. The glutton Vitellius is said to have preserved
his own life by constant emetics, while he destroyed all his companions who did
not use the same precaution; so that one of them, who was prevented by illness
from dining with him for a few days, said, "I should certainly have been
dead if I had not fallen sick". It might truly be said, in the strong language
of Seneca, Vomunt, ut edant; edunt, ut vomant. By some, the practice was thought
so effectual for strengthening the constitution that it was the constant regimen
of all the athletae, or professed wrestlers, trained for the public shows, in
order to make them more robust. Celsus, however, warns his readers against the
too frequent use of emetics without necessity and merely for luxury and gluttony,
and says that no one who has any regard for his health and wishes to live to old
age ought to make it a daily practice.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Febr 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Chirurgia (cheirourgia). Surgery; a word meaning literally "handiwork".
The practice of surgery was at first considered by the ancients to be merely
a part of a physician's duty; but, as in later times the two branches of the
profession were to a great extent separated, it will perhaps be more convenient
to treat of it under a separate head. Without touching upon the disputed question,
which is the more ancient branch of the profession, or even trying to give such
a definition of the word chirurgia as would be likely to satisfy both the physicians
and the surgeons of the present day, it will be sufficient to determine the
sense in which the word was used by the ancients; and then to give an account
of this division of the science and art of medicine as practised among the Greeks
and Romans, referring to the article Medicina for further particulars.
The word chirurgia is derived from cheir, "the hand",
and ergon, "a work", and is explained by Celsus to mean that part
of medicine quae manu curat, "which treats ailments by means of the hand";
in Diogenes Laertius (iii. 85) it is said to cure dia tou temnein kai kaiein,
"by cutting and burning". Omitting the fabulous and mythological personages,
Apollo, Aesculapius, Chiron, etc., the only certain traditions respecting the
state of surgery before the establishment of the republics of Greece, and even
until the time of the Peloponnesian War, are to be found in the Iliad and Odyssey.
There it appears that surgery was almost entirely confined to the treatment
of wounds, and the imaginary power of enchantment was joined with the use of
topical applications ( Il.iii. 218). The Greeks received surgery, together
with the other branches of medicine, from the Egyptians; and from some
observations made by the archaeologists who accompanied the French expedition
to Egypt in 1798, and by subsequent investigators, it appears that there are
documents fully proving that in very remote times this extraordinary people
had reached a degree of proficiency of which few of the moderns have any conception.
Upon the ceilings and walls of the temples at Karnac, Luxor, etc., bas-reliefs
are seen, representing limbs that have been cut off with instruments very similar
to those which are employed for amputations at the present day. The same instruments
are again observed in the hieroglyphics, and vestiges of other surgical operations
may be traced, which afford convincing proofs of the skill of the ancient Egyptians
in this branch of medical science.
The earliest remaining surgical writings are those in the
Hippocratic Collection, where there are ten treatises on this subject,
of which, however, only one is considered undoubtedly genuine. Hippocrates (B.C.
460-357?) far surpassed all his predecessors in the boldness and success of
his operations; and though the scanty knowledge of anatomy possessed in those
times prevented his attaining any very great perfection, still one should rather
admire his genius, which enabled him to do so much, than blame him because,
with his imperfect information, he could not accomplish more. The scientific
skill in reducing fractures and luxations displayed in his works De Fracturis,
De Articulis, excites the admiration of Haller (Biblioth. Chirurg.); and he
was most probably the inventor of the ambe, an old surgical machine for dislocations
of the shoulder, which, though now fallen into disuse, enjoyed for a long time
a great reputation. In his work De Capitis Vulneribus he gives minute directions
about the time and mode of using the trephine, and warns the operator against
the probability of his being deceived by the sutures of the cranium, as he confesses
happened to himself (De Morb. Vulgar. lib. v. tom. iii. p. 561, ed. Kuhn). Amputation,
in the modern sense of the word, is not described in the Hippocratic Collection;
though mention is made of the removal of a limb at the joint, after the flesh
has been completely destroyed by gangrene. The author of the "Oath"
commonly attributed to Hippocrates binds his pupils not to perform the operation
of lithotomy, but to leave it to persons specially accustomed to it (ergateisi
andrasi prexios tesde); from which it would appear as if certain persons confined
themselves to particular operations.
The names of several persons are preserved who practised surgery
as well as medicine in the times immediately succeeding those of Hippocrates;
but, with the exception of some fragments, inserted in the writings of Galen,
Oribasius, Aetius, etc., all their writings have perished. Archagathus deserves
to be mentioned, as he is said to have been the first foreign surgeon who settled
at Rome, B.C. 219 ( Plin. H. N.xxix. 12). He was at first very well received,
the ius Quiritium was conferred upon him, a shop was bought for him at the public
expense, and he received the honourable title of Vulnerarius; which, however,
on account of his frequent use of the knife and cautery, was soon changed by
the Romans, who were unused to such a mode of practice, into that of Carnifex.
Asclepiades, who lived at the beginning of the first century B.C., is said to
have been the first person who proposed the operation of tracheotomy. Ammonius
of Alexandria, surnamed Lithotomos, who is supposed to have lived rather later,
is celebrated in the annals of surgery for having been the first to propose
and to perform the operation of lithotrity, or breaking a calculus in the bladder
when found to be too large for safe extraction. Celsus has minutely described
his mode of operating, which in some respects resembles that of Civiale and
Heurteloup in the early part of the present century, and proves that, however
much credit they may deserve for perfecting the operation and bringing it out
of oblivion into public notice, the praise of having originally thought of it
belongs to the ancients. "A hook or crotchet", says Celsus, "is
fixed upon the stone in such a way as easily to hold it firm, even when shaken,
so that it may not revolve backward; then an iron instrument is used, of moderate
thickness, thin at the front end, but blunt, which, when applied to the stone
and struck at the other end, cleaves it: great care must be taken that the instrument
does not come into contact with the bladder itself, and that nothing fall upon
it by the breaking of the stone". The next surgical writer after Hippocrates,
whose works are still extant, is Celsus, who lived at the beginning of the first
century A.D., and who has devoted the four last books of his work De Medicina,
and especially the seventh and eighth, entirely to surgical matter. It plainly
appears from reading Celsus that since the time of Hippocrates surgery
had made very great progress, and had, indeed, reached a high degree of perfection.
We find in him the earliest mention of the use of the ligature for the arrest
of hemorrhage from wounded bloodvessels; and the Celsian mode of amputation
was continued down to comparatively modern times. He is the first author who
gives directions for the operation of lithotomy, and the method described by
him (called the apparatus minor, or Celsus's method) continued to be practised
till the commencement of the sixteenth century. It was performed at Paris, Bordeaux,
and other places in France, upon patients of all ages, even as late as the latter
part of the seventeenth century; and a modern author (Allan On Lithotomy, p.
12) recommends it always to be preferred for boys under fourteen. He describes
the operation of infibulatio, which was so commonly performed by the ancients
upon singers, etc., and is often alluded to in classical authors. He also describes
the operation of circumcision alluded to by St. Paul. Paulus Aegineta (De Re
Med. vi. 53) transcribes from Antyllus a second method of performing the same
operation.
The following description by Celsus of the necessary qualifications
of a surgeon deserves to be quoted: "A surgeon ought to be young, or, at
any rate, not very old; his hand should be firm and steady, and never shake;
he should be able to use his left hand as readily as his right; his eyesight
should be clear, and his mind not easily startled; he should be so far subject
to pity as to make him desirous of the recovery of his patient, but not so far
as to suffer himself to be moved by his cries; he should neither hurry the operation
more than the case requires, nor cut less than is necessary, but do everything
just as if the other's screams made no impression upon him".
Omitting Scribonius Largus, Moschion, and Soranus, the next author
of importance is Caelius Aurelianus, who is supposed to have lived about the
beginning of the second century A.D., and in whose works there is much surgical
matter, but nothing that can be called original. He rejected as absurd the operation
of tracheotomy. He mentions a case of ascites that was cured by tapping, and
also a person who recovered after being shot through the lungs by an arrow.
Galen, the most voluminous and at the same time the most valuable
medical writer of antiquity, is less celebrated as a surgeon than as an anatomist
and physician. He appears to have practised surgery at Pergamus, but upon his
removal to Rome (A.D. 165) he entirely confined himself to medicine. His writings
prove, however, that he did not entirely abandon surgery. His Commentaries on
the treatise of Hippocrates De Officina Medici, and his treatise De Fasciis,
show that he was well versed even in the minor details of the art. He appears
also to have been a skilful operator, though no great surgical inventions are
attributed to him.
Antyllus, who lived some time between Galen and Oribasius, is the
earliest writer whose directions for performing tracheotomy are still extant,
though the operation (as stated above) was proposed by Asclepiades about three
hundred years before. Only a few fragments of the writings of Antyllus remain,
and among them the following passage is preserved by Paulus Aegineta: "When
we proceed to perform this operation, we must cut through some part of the windpipe,
below the larynx, about the third or fourth ring; for to divide the whole would
be dangerous. This place is commodious, because it is not covered with any flesh,
and because it has no vessels situated near the divided part. Therefore, bending
the head of the patient backward, so that the windpipe may come more forward
to the view, we make a transverse section between two of the rings, so that
in this case not the cartilage, but the membrane which unites the cartilages
together, is divided. If the operator be a little timid, he may first stretch
the skin with a hook and divide it; then, proceeding to the windpipe, and separating
the vessels, if any are in the way, he may make the incision".
This operation appears to have been very seldom, if ever, performed
by the ancients upon a human being. Avenzoar tried it upon a goat, and found
it might be done without much danger or difficulty; but he says he should not
like to be the first person to try it upon a man.
Oribasius, physician to the emperor Julian (A.D. 361), professes
to be merely a compiler; and though there is in his great work, entitled Sunagogai
Iatrikai (Collecta Medicinalia), much surgical matter, there is nothing original.
The same may be said of Aetius and Alexander Trallianus, both of whom lived
towards the end of the sixth century A.D. Paulus Aegineta has given up the fifth
and sixth books of his work De Re Medica entirely to surgery, and has inserted
much useful matter, derived in a great measure from his own observation and
experience. Albucasis translated into Arabic great part of these two books as
the basis of his work on surgery. Paulus was particularly celebrated for his
skill in midwifery and female diseases, and was called on that account, by the
Arabians, Al-Kawabeli, "the Accoucheur" (Abulfaraj, Hist. Dynast.
p. 181, ed. Pococke). He probably lived towards the end of the seventh century
A.D., and is the last of the ancient Greek and Latin medical writers whose surgical
works remain. The names of several others are recorded, but they are not of
sufficient eminence to require any notice here. For further information on the
subject both of medicine and surgery, see Medicina; and for the legal qualifications,
social rank, etc., both of physicians and surgeons, among the ancient Greeks
and Romans, see Medicus.
The surgical instruments from which the accompanying engravings
... (see more in the URL below)
This extract is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Febr 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
The Hippocratic Oath was unquestionably the exemplar for medical
etiquette for centuries, and it endures in modified form to this day. Yet uncertainty
still prevails concerning the date the oath was composed, the purpose for which
it was intended, and the historical forces which shaped the document. The date
of composition in modern debate varies from the sixth century BCE to the fourth
century CE.
In antiquity it was generally not considered a violation of medical
ethics to do what the Oath forbade. An ancient doctor who accepted the rules laid
down by “Hippocrates” was by no means in agreement with the opinion
of all his fellow physicians; on the contrary, he adhered to a dogma which was
much stricter than that embraced by many, if not by most, of his colleagues.
I swear by Apollo the Physician and Asclepius and Hygeia and Panaceia and
all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according
to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant: To hold him who has taught
me this art as equal to my parent and to live my life in partnership with him,
and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring
as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art--if they desire
to learn it--without fee and covenant; to give share of precepts and oral instruction
and all other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me
and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to
the medical law, but to no one else. I will apply dietetic measure for the benefit
of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and
injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will
I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give a woman an abortive
remedy. In purity and in holiness I will guard my life and my art. I will not
use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of
such men as are engaged in this work. Whatever houses I may visit, I will come
for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all
mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons,
be they free or slaves. What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment
or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account
one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself holding such things shameful to
be spoken about. If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted
to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time
to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite be my lot.
--Translated by Ludwig Edelstein
The organization of the Hippocratic Oath is clearly bipartite. The first half
specifies the duties of the pupil toward his teacher and his obligations in transmitting
medical knowledge; the second half gives a short summary of medical ethics.
It is the second half, the ethical half, which is inconsistent with
the principles and practices of Hippocrates, thus the manifesto was incorrectly
attributed to him. One immediate inconsistency is the Oath’s prohibition against
abortion. The Hippocratic Corpus contains a number of allusions to the methods
of abortion and the use of pessaries. Apparently the prohibitions found within
the Oath did not echo the general feeling of the public. Abortion was practiced
in Greek times no less than in the Roman era, and it was resorted to without scruple.
In a world in which it was held justifiable to expose children immediately after
birth, it would hardly seem objectionable to destroy the embryo.
A second discrepancy between the Oath and general Hippocratic principles
is the ban on suicide. Suicide was not censured in antiquity. Self-murder as a
relief from illness was regarded as justifiable, so much so that in some states
it was an institution duly legalized by the authorities. Nor did ancient religion
proscribe suicide. It did not know of any eternal punishment for those who had
ended their own lives. Law and religion then left the physician free to do whatever
seemed best to him.
Pythagoreanism is the only philosophical dogma that can possibly account
for the attitude advocated in the Hippocratic Oath. Among all the Greek philosophical
schools, the Pythagoreans alone outlawed suicide and abortion and did so without
qualification. The Oath also concurs with Pythagorean prohibitions against surgical
procedures of all kinds and against the shedding of blood, in which the soul was
thought to reside.
The interdiction in the Oath against the knife is especially out of
keeping with the several treatises that deal at length with surgical techniques
and operating room procedures. It is little wonder that this Oath, although a
non-Hippocratic document, has remained steadfastly the symbol of the physician’s
pledge. The prohibition against abortion and suicide were (and remain) in consonance
with the principles of the Christian Church. The earliest reference to this Oath
is in the first century CE, and it may have been appropriated soon after to fit
the religious ideals of the time. The substitution of God, Christ and the saints
for the names of Asclepius and his family is easy enough.
It is ironic that the Hippocratic Oath in its present form with its
religious subtext is associated with Hippocrates, the man who first separated
medicine from religion and disease from supernatural explanations.
This text is cited Sept 2003 from the University of Virginia Historical Collections URL below, which contains image.
Πληροφορίες Σύνταξης
Τα ηλεκτρονικά κείμενα των έργων του Ιπποκράτη παρατίθενται στην Ελλάδα (αρχαία χώρα) στην κατηγορία Αρχαία Ελληνική Γραμματεία.
Thessalus (Thessalos). A Greek physician, son of Hippocrates. He passed some of his time at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, who reigned B.C. 413-399. He was one of the founders of the sect of the Dogmatici, and is several times highly praised by Galen, who calls him the most eminent of the sons of Hippocrates. He was supposed by some of the ancient writers to be the author of several of the works that form part of the Hippocratic Collection, which he might have compiled from notes left by his father.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Febr 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
From the death of Hippocrates about the year 375 B.C. till the founding
of the Alexandrian School, the physicians were engrossed largely in speculative
views, and not much real progress was made, except in the matter of elaborating
the humoral pathology. Only three or four men of the first rank stand out in this
period: Diocles the Carystian, "both in time and reputation next and second to
Hippocrates" (Pliny), a keen anatomist and an encyclopaedic writer; but only scanty
fragments of his work remain. In some ways the most important member of this group
was Praxagoras, a native of Cos, about 340 B.C. Aristotle, you remember, made
no essential distinction between arteries and veins, both of which he held to
contain blood: Praxagoras recognized that the pulsation was only in the arteries,
and maintained that only the veins contained blood, and the arteries air. As a
rule the arteries are empty after death, and Praxagoras believed that they were
filled with an aeriform fluid, a sort of pneuma, which was responsible for their
pulsation. The word arteria, which had already been applied to the trachea, as
an air-containing tube, was then attached to the arteries; on account of the rough
and uneven character of its walls the trachea was then called the arteria tracheia,
or the rough air-tube.(Galen: De usu partium, VII, Chaps. 8-9)We call it simply
the trachea, but in French the word trachee-artere is still used.
Praxagoras was one of the first to make an exhaustive study of the
pulse, and he must have been a man of considerable clinical acumen,as well as
boldness, to recommend in obstruction of the bowels the opening of the abdomen,
removal of the obstructed portion and uniting the ends of the intestine by sutures.
This text is cited Sept 2003 from the Greek & Roman Science & Technology URL below.
ΣΥΜΗ (Νησί) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
1860 - 1939
Νευρολόγος-ψυχίατρος, πρώτος που εισήγαγε στην Ελλάδα τους κλάδους αυτούς και ίδρυσε αντίστοιχη έδρα στο Πανεπιστήμιο. Ίδρυσε την πρώτη αντίστοιχη κλινική στο Αιγινήτειο Νοσοκομείο, διετέλεσε Πρύτανης Πανεπιστημίου, Διευθυντής Δρομοκαϊτείου, αντιπροσώπευσε την Ελλάδα σε πολλά συνέδρια και έγραψε πολλά συγγράμματα.
ΚΩΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
The son of Ptolemy I. by his wife Berenice, was born in the
island of Cos, 309.
His long reign was marked by few events of a striking character. He was engaged
in war with his half-brother Magas, who had governed Cyrene as viceroy under Ptolemy
Soter, but on the death of that monarch not only asserted his independence, but
even attempted to invade Egypt. Magas was supported by Antiochus II., king of
Syria; and the war was at length terminated by a treaty, which left Magas in undisputed
possession of the Cyrenaica, while his infant daughter Berenice was betrothed
to Ptolemy, the son of Philadelphus. Ptolemy also concluded a treaty with the
Romans. He was frequently engaged in hostilities with Syria, which were terminated
towards the close of his reign by a treaty of peace, by which Ptolemy gave his
daughter Berenice in marriage to Antiochus II. Ptolemy's chief care, however,
was directed to the internal administration of his kingdom, and to the patronage
of literature and science. The institutions of which the foundations had been
laid by his father quickly rose under his fostering care to the highest prosperity.
The Museum of Alexandria became the resort and abode of all the most distinguished
men of letters of the day, and in the library attached to it were accumulated
all the treasures of ancient learning. Among the other illustrious names which
adorned the reign of Ptolemy may be mentioned those of the poets Philetas and
Theocritus, the philosophers Hegesias and Theodorus, the mathematician Euclid,
and the astronomers Timocharis, Aristarchus of Samos, and Aratus. Nor was his
patronage confined to the ordinary cycle of Hellenic literature. By his interest
in natural history he gave a stimulus to the pursuit of that science, which gave
birth to many important works, while he himself formed collections of rare animals
within the precincts of the royal palace. It was during his reign also, and perhaps
at his desire, that Manetho gave to the world in a Greek form the historical records
of the Egyptians; and according to a well-known tradition it was by his express
command that the Holy Scriptures of the Jews were translated into Greek. The new
cities or colonies founded by Philadelphus in different parts of his dominions
were extremely numerous. On the Red Sea alone we find at least two bearing the
name of Arsinoe, one called after another of his sisters Philotera, and two cities
named in honour of his mother Berenice. The same names occur also in Cilicia and
Syria: and in the latter country he founded the important fortress of Ptolemais
in Palestine. All authorities concur in attesting the great power and wealth to
which the Egyptian monarchy was raised under Philadelphus. He possessed at the
close of his reign a standing army of 200,000 foot and 40,000 horse, besides war-chariots
and elephants, a fleet of 1500 ships, and a sum of 740,000 talents in his treasury;
while he derived from Egypt alone an annual revenue of 14,800 talents. His dominions
comprised, besides Egypt itself, and portions of Aethiopia, Arabia, and Libya,
the important provinces of Ph?nicia and Coele-Syria, together with Cyprus, Lycia,
Caria, and the Cyclades, and during a great part at least of his reign Cilicia
and Pamphylia also. Before his death Cyrene was reunited to the monarchy by the
marriage of his son Ptolemy with Berenice, the daughter of Magas. The private
life and relations of Philadelphus do not exhibit his character in as favourable
a light as we might have inferred from the splendour of his administration. He
put to death two of his brothers; and he banished his first wife Arsinoe, the
daughter of Lysimachus, to Coptos in Upper Egypt on a charge of conspiracy. After
her removal Ptolemy married his own sister Arsinoe, the widow of Lysimachus, a
flagrant violation of the religious notions of the Greeks, but one which was frequently
imitated by his successors. He evinced his affection for Arsinoe not only by bestowing
her name upon many of his newly-founded colonies, but by assuming himself the
surname of Philadelphus, a title which some writers referred in derision to his
unnatural treatment of his two brothers. By this second marriage Ptolemy had no
issue: but his first wife had borne him two sons--Ptolemy, who succeeded him on
the throne, and Lysimachus; and a daughter, Berenice, whose marriage to Antiochus
II., king of Syria, has been already mentioned.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ΑΣΤΥΠΑΛΑΙΑ (Νησί) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
(Onesikritos). A Greek historian, of the island of Astypalaea
or of Aegina. In mature years he was a pupil of the Cynic Diogenes, and then accompanied
Alexander the Great upon his expedition. By order of Alexander he investigated,
with Nearchus, the route by sea from India to the mouths of the Euphrates and
Tigris. He afterwards lived at the court of Lysimachus, king of Thrace. During
Alexander's life he began a comprehensive history of that personage, which fell
into disrepute, owing to its exaggerations and its false accounts of distant lands.
Only scanty fragments of it are preserved.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Oct 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ΑΣΤΥΠΑΛΑΙΑ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
Antisthenes, of Rhodes, a Greek historian who lived about the year B. C. 200.
He took an active part in the political affairs of his country, and wrote a history
of his own time, which, notwithstanding its partiality towards his native island,
is spoken of in terms of high praise by Polybius (xvi. 14; comp. Diog. Laert.
vi. 19). Plutarch (de Fluv. 22) mentions an Antisthenes who wrote a work called
Meleagris, of which the third book is quoted; and Pliny (H. N. xxxvi. 12) speaks
of a person of the same name, who wrote on the pyramids; but whether they are
the same person as the Rhodian, or two distinct writers, or the Ephesian Antisthenes
mentioned by Diogenes Laertius (vi. 19), cannot be decided.
Epimenides. The author of a History of Rhodes, which was written in the Doric dialect. (Diog. Laert. i. 115; Schol. ad Pind. Ol. vii. 24, ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 1125, iii. 241, iv. 57; Eudoc.; Heinrich, Epimenid.)
Eudoxus. Of Rhodes, an historical writer, whose time is not known. (Diog. Laert. l. c.; Apollon. Hist. Com. 24 Elym Mag. s. v. Adrias: Vossius, de Hist. Graec., ed. Westermann.)
ΚΑΜΕΙΡΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΡΟΔΟΣ
A Rhodian Greek poet of the Middle Comedy, who flourished in
B.C. 376. He is said to have been the first to make love affairs the theme of
comedy. His plays are said to have been characterized by sprightliness and humour,
but only fragments of them are now in existence.
Anaxandrides, an Athenian comic poet of the middle comedy, was the son of Anaxander,
a native of Cameirus in Rhodes. He began to exhibit comedies in B. C. 376 (Marm.
Par. Ep. 34), and 29 years later he was present, and probably exhibited, at the
Olympic games celebrated by Philip at Dium. Aristotle held him in high esteem
(Rhet. iii. 10-12; Eth. Eud. vi. 10; Nicom. vii. 10). He is said to have been
the first poet who made love intrigues a prominent part of comedy. He gained ten
prizes, the whole number of his comedies being sixty-five. Though he is said to
have destroyed several of his plays in anger at their rejection, we still have
the titles of thirty-three.
Anaxandrides was also a dithyrambic poet, but we have no remains of
his dithyrambs (Suidas, s.v.; Athen. ix.)
ΚΩΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
550 - 460
Epicharmus, (Epicharmos). The first Greek comic writer of whom
we have any definite account. He was a Syracusan, either by birth or emigration.
Some writers make him a native of the island of Cos, but all agree that he passed
his life at Syracuse. It was about B.C. 500, thirty-five years after Thespis began
to exhibit, eleven years after the commencement of Phrynichus, and just before
the appearance of Aeschylus as a tragedian, that Epicharmus produced the first
comedy properly so called. Before him, this department of the drama was little
more than a series of licentious songs and sarcastic episodes, without plot, connection,
or consistency. He gave to each exhibition continuity, and converted the loose
interlocutions into regular dialogue. The subjects of his Doric comedies, as we
may infer from the extant titles of thirty-five of them, were partly parodies
of mythological subjects, and, as such, not very different from the dialogue of
the satyric drama, and partly political, and in this respect may have furnished
a model for the dialogue of the Athenian comedy. Tragedy had, some years before
the era of Epicharmus, begun to assume its dignified character. The woes of heroes
and the majesty of the gods had, under Phrynicus, become its favourite themes.
The Sicilian poet seems to have been struck with the idea of exciting the mirth
of his audience by the exhibition of some ludicrous matter dressed up in all the
grave solemnity of the newly invented art. Discarding, therefore, the low drolleries
and scurrilous invectives of the ancient komoidia, he opened a novel and less
objectionable source of amusement by composing a set of burlesque dramas upon
the usual tragic subjects. They succeeded, and the turn thus given to comedy long
continued; so that when it once more returned to personality and satire, as it
afterwards did, tragedy and tragic poets were the constant objects of its parody
and ridicule. The great changes thus effected by Epicharmus justly entitled him
to be called the Inventor of Comedy, though it is probable that Phormis or Phormus
preceded him by a few Olympiads. But his merits do not rest here: he was distinguished
for elegance of composition as well as originality of conception. Demetrius Phalereus
says that Epicharmus excelled in the choice and collocation of epithets, on which
account the name of Epicharmios was given to his kind of style, making it proverbial
for elegance and beauty. So many were his dramatic excellences that Plato terms
him the king of comic writers, and in a later age and foreign country Plautus
chose him as his model and is thought to have borrowed from him the plot of the
Menaechmi. The parasite who figures so greatly in the plays of the New Comedy
and in those of Plautus was first brought upon the stage by Epicharmus.
The plays of Epicharmus, to judge from the fragments still
left us, abounded in apophthegms, little consistent with the ideas we might otherwise
have entertained of their nature from our knowledge of the buffooneries whence
his comedy sprang and of the writings of Aristophanes, his partially extant successor.
Epicharmus, however, was a philosopher and a Pythagorean. We find Epicharmus still
composing comedies B.C. 485, and again during the reign of Hiero, B.C. 477. He
died at the age of ninety or ninety-seven years. Epicharmus is said by some authorities
to have added the letters x, e, ps, o to the Greek alphabet, but inscriptions
show that these characters were in use at Miletus half a century before his reputed
birth.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Epicharmus, (Epicharmos), the chief comic poet among the Dorians, was born in
the island of Cos about the 60th Olympiad (B. C. 540). His father, Elothales,
was a physician, of the race of the Asclepiads, and the profession of medicine
seems to have been followed for some time by Epicharmus himself, as well as by
his brother.
At the age of three months he was carried to Megara, in Sicily; or,
according to the account preserved by Suidas, he went thither at a much later
period, with Cadmus (B. C. 484). Thence he removed to Syracuse, with the other
inhabitants of Megara, when the latter city was destroyed by Gelon (B. C. 484
or 483). Here he spent the remainder of his life, which was prolonged throughout
the reign of Hieron, at whose court Epicharmus associated with the other great
writers of the time, and among them, with Aeschylus, who seems to have had some
influence on his dramatic course. He died at the age of ninety (B. C. 450), or,
ac cording to Lucian, ninety-seven (B. C. 443). The city of Syracuse erected a
statue to him, the inscription on which is preserved by Diogenes Laertius. (Diog.
Laert. viii. 78; Suid. s. v. ; Lucian, Macrob. 25; Aelian, V. H. ii. 34; Plut.
Moral.; Marmor Parium, No. 55.)
In order to understand the relation of Epicharmus to the early comic
poetry, it must be remembered that Megara, in Sicily, was a colony from Megara
on the Isthmus, the inhabitants of which disputed with the Athenians the invention
of comedy, and where, at all events, a kind of comedy was known as early as the
beginning of the sixth century B. C. This comedy (whether it was lyric or also
dramatic, which is a doubtful point) was of course found by Epicharmus existing
at the Sicilian Megara; and he, together with Phonnis, gave it a new form, which
Aristotle describes by the words to muthous poiein (Poet. 6 or 5, ed. Ritter),
a phrase which some take to mean comedies with a regular plot; and others, comedies
on mythological subjects. The latter seems to be the better interpretation; but
either explanation establishes a clear distinction between the comedy of Epicharmus
and that of Megara, which seems to have been little more than a sort of low buffoonery.
With respect to the time when Epicharmus began to compose comedies,
much confusion has arisen from the statement of Aristotle (or an interpolator),
that Epicharmus lived long before Chionides. We have, however, the express and
concurrent testimonies of the anonymous writer On Comedy (p. xxviii.), that he
flourished about the 73rd Olympiad, and of Suidas (s. v.), that he wrote six years
before the Persian war (B. C. 485-4). Thus it appears that, like Cratinus, he
was an old man before he began to write comedy; and this agrees well with the
fact that his poetry was of a very philosophic character. (Anon. de Com. l. c.)
The only one of his plays, the date of which is certainly known, is the Nasoi,
B. C. 477. (Schol. Pind. Pyth. i. 98; Clinton, sub ann.) We have also express
testimony of the fact that Elothales, the father of Epicharmus, formed an acquaintance
with Pythagoras, and that Epicharmus himself was a pupil of that great philosopher.
(Diog. Laert. l. c.; Suid. s. v.; Plut. Numa, 8.) We may therefore consider the
life of Epicharmus as divisible into two parts, namely, his life at Megara up
to B. C. 484, during which he was engaged in the study of philosophy, both physical
and metaphysical, and the remainder of his life, which he spent at Syracuse, as
a comic poet. The question respecting the identity of Epicharmus the comedian
and Epicharmus the Pythagorean philosopher, about which some writers, both ancient
and modern, have been in doubt, may now be considered as settled in the affirmative.
(Menag. ad Laert. l. c.; Perizon. ad Aelian. V. H. ii. 34; Clinton, Fast. Hell.
vol. ii. Introd.)
The number of the comedies of Epicharmus is differently stated at
52 or at 35. There are still extant 35 titles, of which 26 are preserved by Athenaeus.
The majority of them are on mythological subjects, that is, travesties of the
heroic myths, and these plays no doubt very much resembled the satyric drama of
the Athenians. The following are their titles:--Alkuon, Amukos, Bakchai, Bousiris,
Deukalion, Dionusoi, Ebes gamos, Ephaistos e Komastai, Kuklops, Logos kai Logeina,
Odusseus automolos, Odusseus nauagos, Seipenes, Skiron, Sphige, Troes, Philoktetes.
But besides mythology, Epicharmus wrote on other subjects, political, moral, relating
to manners and customs, and, it would seem, even to personal character; those,
however, of his comedies which belong to the last lead are rather general than
individual, and resembled the subjects treated by the writers of the new comedy,
so that when the ancient writers enumerated him among the poets of the old comedy,
they must be understood as referring rather to his antiquity in point of time
than to any close resemblance between his works and those of the old Attic comedians.
In fact, we have a proof in the case of Crates that even among the Athenians,
after the establishment of the genuine old comedy by Cratinus, the mythological
comedy still maintained its ground. The plays of Epicharmus, which were not on
mythological subjects, were the following:--Agrostinos (Sicilian Greek for Alroikos),
Harpagai, Ga kai Thalassa, Diphilos, Elpis e Ploutos, Heorta kai Nasoi Epinikios,
Herakleitos, Thearoi, Megaris, Menes, Orua, Periallos, Persai, Pithon, Triakades,
Choreuontes, Chutrai. A considerable number of fragments of the above plays are
preserved, but those of which we can form the clearest notion from the extant
fragments are the Marriage of Hebe, and Hephaestus or the Revellers. Miller has
observed that the painted vases of lower Italy often enable us to gain a complete
and vivid idea of those theatrical representations of which the plays of Epicharmus
are the type.
The style of his plays appears to have been a curious mixture of the
broad buffoonery which distinguished the old Megarian comedly, and of the sententious
wisdom of the Pythagorean philosopher His language was remarkably elegant: he
was celebrated for his choice of epithets: his plays abounded, as the extant fragments
prove, with gnomai, or philosophical and moral maxims, and long speculative discourses,
on the instinct of animals for example. Muller observes that "if the elements
of his drama, which we have discovered singly, were in his plays combined, he
must have set out with an elevated and philosophical view, which enabled him to
satirize mankind without disturbing the calmness and tranquillity of his thoughts;
while at the same time his scenes of common life were marked with the acute and
penetrating genius which characterized the Sicilians." In proof of the high
estimate in which he was held by the ancients, it may be enough to refer to the
notices of him by Plato (Theact.) and Cicero. (Tusc. i. 8, ad Att. i. 19.) It
is singular, however, that Epicharmus had no successor in his peculiar style of
comedy, except his son or disciple Deinolochus. He had, however, distinguished
imitators in other times and countries. Some writers, making too much of a few
words of Aristotle, would trace the origin of the Attic comedy to Epicharmus;
but it can hardly be doubted that Crates, at least, was his imitator. That Plautus
imitated him is expressly stated by Horace (Epist. ii. 1.58),--
"Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi."
The parasite, who forms so conspicuous a character in the plays of
the new comedy, is first found in Epicharmus.
The formal peculiarities of the dramas of Epicharmus cannot be noticed
here at any length. His ordinary metre was the lively Trochaic Tetrameter, but
he also used the Iambie and Anapaestic metres. The questions respecting his scenes,
number of actors, and chorus, are fully treated in the work of Grysar.
Some writers attribute to Epicharmus separate philosophical poems;
but there is little doubt that the passages referred to are extracts from his
comedies. Some of the ancient writers ascribed to Epicharmus the invention of
some or all of those letters of the Greek alphabet, which were usually attributed
to Palamedes and Simonides.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Oct 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
In his Lives of the Philosophers Diogenes Laertius has left us a short
biography of Epicharmus, but as he treats him purely as one of the 'philosophic
family' and disdained to mention his dramatic writings, we would known nothing
about the great contributions made to dramatic literature by him were it not for
Suidas. From his short bu invaluable notice we learn that Epicharmus was the son
of Elotheles, a physician of Cos,
in which island his famous son was born in about 540 B.C., and whence when but
three months old he passed with his father to Sicilian Megara. But his father
belonged to the Asclepiad clan, and as the Asclepiads were certainly not Dorians,
neither can that race in general nor the Hyblaean Magarians in particular claim
him as their own. When the boy grew to man's estate, he embraced the tenets of
Pythagoras and made Syracuse
the scene of his life's work. He wrote on Natural Science, Philosophy, and Medicine;
he composed gnomes and left also a series of memoirs when he died at the age of
ninety. As a dramatist he was no less active, since he wrote fifty-two comedies
or according to others thirty-five. In these plays Comedy for the first time took
formal shape, since he and his contemporary Phormis were the first to use plots
(muthoi) and regular dialogues. His compositions, however, were simply burlesques
on the heroic themes which formed the usual subjects of the tragic performances
of the time.
The most famous of his plays was the Marriage of Hebe to Hercules,
in which that hero was degraded for the first time by being represented as a glutton.
Dr. Mahaffy is probably right in holding that the degradation in Greek literature
of Odysseus, Agamemnon and Menelaus may also have been due to Epicharmus. In a
certain sense, therefore, he may be regarded as the Cervantes of Greece, for as
the latter laughed mediaeval chivalry to death, so Epicharmus was the first to
make the great ones of the Heroic Age the butts of popular ridicule. But as Epicharmus
is said to have created the character of the conventional parasite in his Elpis,
he was also the founder of the comedy of manners as well as of the burlesque.
The date of his dramatic activity is well ascertained, for as he was in high favor
with Gelon (485-478 B.C.) and with his brother and successor Hieron (478-467 B.C.),
there seems no doubt that his dramatic activity should be placed between 485 and
467 B.C. But, as we shall soon find that his fellow dramatist Phormis was at work
in the reign of Gelon, we may place the date of the birth of true Comedy in the
reign of that monarch (485-478 B.C.). As Epicharmus was born about 540 B.C., and
lived to be ninety, his death may be placed about 450 B.C., a date which tallies
well with a statement respecting an attack made on him by Magnes the Attic comedian,
then a young man.
Alfred Bates, ed.
This text is cited July 2003 from the TheatreHistory URL below.
Comoedia, (komoidia). The Greek comedy, like the Greek tragedy and satyric drama, had its origin in the festivals of Dionysus. As its name, komoidia, or the song of the komos, implies, it arose from the unrestrained singing and jesting common in the komos, or merry procession of Dionysus. According to the tradition, it was the Doric inhabitants of Megara, well known for their love of fun, who first worked up these jokes into a kind of farce. The inhabitants of Megara accordingly boasted that they were the founders of Greek comedy. From Megara, it was supposed, the popular farce found its way to the other Dorian communities, and one Susarion was said to have transplanted it to the Attic deme of Icaria about B.C. 580. No further information is in existence as to the nature of the Megarian or Dorian popular comedy. The local Doric farce was developed into literary form in Sicily by Epicharmus of Cos (about B.C. 540-450). This writer gave a comic treatment not only to mythology, but to subjects taken from real life.
This extract is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ΛΙΝΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΛΙΝΔΟΣ
The most distinguished comic poet of Greece, from Lindus, on the island of Rhodes, a contemporary of Socrates
The greatest writer of Greek comedy. He lived at Athens, B.C. 444-388. His father, Philippus, is said to have been not a native Athenian, but a settler from Rhodes or Egypt, who afterwards acquired citizenship. . .
Πληροφορίες Σύνταξης
Βιογραφία, αναφορές και λοιπές εργασίες για τον Αριστοφάνη παρατίθενται στον αρχαίο αττικό δήμο Κυδαθηναίοι , τόπο καταγωγής του.
Πληροφορίες Σύνταξης
Τα ηλεκτρονικά κείμενα των έργων του Αριστοφάνη παρατίθενται στην Ελλάδα (αρχαία χώρα) στην κατηγορία Αρχαία Ελληνική Γραμματεία.
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
(Sometimes, of COLOSSUS) Theologian, d. 1440. He was Greek by birth,
and born of schismatic parents. In early youth he had no opportunities for education,
but afterwards devoted himself to Latin and Greek, and to theology, especially
the questions in dispute between the Latin and Greek Churches.
The study of the early Fathers, both Greek and Latin, convinced him
that in the disputed points, truth was on the side of the Latin Church. He therefore
solemnly abjured his error, made a profession of faith, and entered the Dominican
Order about the time of the Western Schism. He led thenceforth an apostolic life.
He was especially earnest in his efforts to induce his fellow-Greeks to follow
in his footsteps and reunite with Rome.
In 1413 he was made Archbishop of Rhodes.
The Dominican biographer, Echard, credits him with having taken an
active part in the twentieth session of the Council of Constance
(1414-18). Others maintain that there is here a confusion with Andrew of Colaczy,
in Hungary. At the Council
of Basle, he delivered an oration in the name of the Pope. He took part in the
Council of Ferrara-Florence,
and was one of the six theologians appointed by the Papal Legate, Cardinal Julian,
to reply to the objections of the Greeks. He proved that it was fully within the
province of the Church to add the Filioque to the Creed, and that the Greek Fathers
had been of the same opinion.
After the close of the Council, trouble arose between the Latins and
Greeks in Cyprus; the latter
accused the former of refusing to hold communion with them. Andrew was sent thither
by Eugene IV, and succeeded in establishing peace. He also succeeded in overcoming
the local forms of the Nestorian, Eutychian, and Monothelite heresies. The heretical
bishops abjured and made a profession of faith at a synod held at Nicosia;
some of the prelates went afterwards to Rome
to renew their profession before the Holy See.
There are preserved in the Vatican manuscript copies of his treatise
on the Divine essence and operation, compliled from the commentaries of St. Tomas
Aquinas, and addressed to Cardinal Bessarion also a little work in the form of
a dialogue in reply to a letter of Mark of Ephesus against the rites and ceremonies
of the Roman Church.
J.L. Finnerty, ed.
Transcribed by: Dawn Felton Francis
This text is cited June 2003 from The Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent online edition URL below.
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
Engineer, Technical Adviser of the Rhodians.
Work: Derrick Crane ( Περιστρεφόμενος γερανός )
Callias presented to the people of Rhodes in public, a model of a
part of the city wall, on which he had placed a derrick crane. This crane could
lift the siege machines of the enemies and transport them from the outer part
of the wall to the internal one. The Rhodians admired this invention so much that
they dismissed Diognetos, the chief engineer and employed Callias in his place.
As Demetrios the Besieger sieged Rhodes in 305 BCE, he brought with him his chief
engineer Epimachos the Athenian, who constructed a huge siege machine of 180 ton
weight, before, the wall of Rhodes. Callias was not able to stand in the way of
it with his derrick crane. Therefore Vitruvius was correct in saying : "What
is valid for a model is not necessarily valid in the real situation". The
Rhodians were desperate and begged Diognetos to help them. He instructed them
to perforate the city walls, insert drains and pour through the drains, mud, water
and sewage thus causing marshy ground a short distance away from the walls. This
prevented the siege machine from approaching the wall. The siegers abandoned the
siege machine and went away.
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
I was born in Rhodes
(1920). I studied Chemistry at the University of Athens, and, Superior Theory
of Music at the National Conservatory under Manoli Kalomiri. I have got two degrees
(grade excellent). Also degrees in Harmony, Counterpoint and Fuga.
I went for postgraduate studies to Germany, as I had been given a
scholarship from the German Government. Then later I went to Italy with another
scholarship from the Italian Government.
At Munich University I studied Musicology and history of Art. At the
State Superior School of Music I studied orchestra conducting, composition, musical
education and reviewing, also, History of Music.
Originally I taught the young children' s chair of the Municipality
of Athens, at the Dragatsio Educational Institution. Later, at the Superior School
of Economics and Commerce (ASO and EE) and since I962 I have been a professor
at the Superior School of Nurses -Evangelismos hospital for the “Acquaintance
with Music”, for sixteen years.
My basic presence in Music and Science starts with my election as
the Director of the Musical Department at the University of Athens, a position
which I held for thirty-three years.
I have represented our country at the Balkan Festival at Ankara, also
at Istanbul and in Wales.
I have worked with about ninety institutions, organisations and societies
on various matters.
For thirty-five years I have written reviews on various musical events.
The reviews and studies which have been edited in magazines and newspapers exceed
1500.
I have repeatedly been a member in committees concerning legislation
for the operation of state artistic events, musical education etc.
President of the Union of Drama and Greek Music Critics.
Regular member of the Greek Composers’ Unions.
Regular member of the Greek Centre of the International Institute
of the Theatre.
Regular member of the International Union of Drama and Music Critics
in Paris.
Regular member of the "Filecpedeftiki" Company.
Regular member of the National Greek Council of the European Movement
for the Unity of Europe.
Regular member of the "Friends of the People" company.
Honorary Director of the Music Department of the University of Athens.
Worked for 12 years for the newspaper "Ethnos", six years
for "Niki", two years for "Anagnosti" and since 1995 for the
newspaper "Adesmeftos Typos".
Honoured with many awards for his whole musical and scientifical work
as a critic, composer, professor and orchestra conductor.
WORKS:
Cantata No 1 (Seeking for Light)
Cantata No 2 (Night entreaty at the shadow of Van Gogh)
Six Songs for Voice and Piano
Adaptations of folk songs for choir, orchestra etc.
BOOKS:
Music and Theatre at the University of Athens.
This text is cited Apr 2003 from the Friends of Music Society "Lilian Voudouri" URL below.
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
Charicleitus (Charikleitos), one of the commanders of the Rhodian fleet, which, in B. C. 190, defeated that of Antiochus the Great under Hannibal and Apollonius, off Side in Pamphylia. (Liv. xxxiv. 23, 24.)
Docimus or Docimius. To a supposed Graeco-Roman jurist of this name has been sometimes attributed the authorship of a legal work in alphabetical order, called by Harmenopulus (§ 49) To mikron kata stoicheion, and usually known by the name of Synopsis Minor. It is principally borrowed from a work of Michael Attaliata. A fragment of the work relating to the authority of the Leges Rhodiae, was published by S. Schardius (Basel 1561), at the end of the Naval Laws, and the same fragment appears in the collection of Leunclavius (J. G. R. ii.). Pardessus has published some further fragments of the Synopsis Minor (Collection de Lois Maritimes), and Zachariae has given some extracts from it (Hist. Jur. G. R.); but the greater part of the work is still in manuscript. Bach conjectures that the compilation of the Rhodian laws themselves was made by Docimus (Hist. Jur. Rom. lib. iv. c. I, sect. 3.26); but Zachariae is of opinion, that the only reason for attributing to him the authorship of the Synopsis Minor was, that the manuscript of Vienna, from which the fragment in Schardius and Leunclavius was published, once belonged to a person named Docimus.
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Dec 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ΚΑΛΥΜΝΟΣ (Πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
ΚΑΜΕΙΡΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΡΟΔΟΣ
(Peisandros). An early Greek poet, born at Camirus, in the island
of Rhodes, and supposed to have flourished about B.C. 650, although some made
him earlier than Hesiod, and contemporary with Eumolpus. He wrote a poem, entitled
Heraclea (Herakleia), on the exploits of Heracles, of which frequent mention is
made by the grammarians. The Alexandrian critics assigned him a rank among epic
poets after Homer, Hesiod, Panyasis, and Antimachus.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Ο Πείσανδρος παραδίδεται ότι είχε γράψει το επικό ποίημα Ηράκλεια με τους άθλους του Ηρακλή (Στράβ.14.2.3)
ΚΩΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
or Herodas. A Greek writer of iambics, who lived probably at
Cos in the third century B.C., and of whose verses little was known before the
recent discovery among the papyri in the British Museum of a MS. containing [p.
807] seven poems. Previous to this discovery there existed only ten quotations
from him (one in iambic dimeter and nine in choliambics), five of which are found
in the British Museum MS., and served to identify the author, as his name is not
there given. These seven complete poems contain from 85 to 129 lines apiece, and
are entitled (1) Prokuklis e Mastropos, "The Matchmaker or the Go-between;"
(2) Pornoboskos, "The Pimp;" (3) Didaskalos, "The Schoolmaster;"
(4) Asklepioi anatitheisai kai thusiazousai, "A Visit to Asclepius;"
(5) Zelotupos, "The Jealous Woman;" (6) Philiazousai e Idiazousai, "Affectionate
Friends, or the Confidantes;" (7) Skuteus(?), "The Cobbler." The
titles of two more poems are found in the MS.--Enupnion, "The Dream;"
and Aponestizomenai, "Ladies at Breakfast." The poems are difficult
to read, abounding in words found hitherto only in Hesychius, and containing some
that are entirely unknown. Many of these strange vocables are probably the result
of copyists' errors, having been written in Egypt whence the MS. came, while others
are doubtless colloquialisms.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
This file forms part of A Hellenistic Bibliography, a bibliography on post-classical Greek poetry and its influence, accessible through the website of the department of Classics of the University of Leiden.
The file contains ca. 450 titles on Herodas; it has two sections:
Essentials (editions, etc.)
All titles (by year/author).
Compiled and maintained by Martijn Cuypers
Last updated: 3 july 2002
Near the end of the fourth century B.C., Philetas of Cos, celebrated as a poet by Theocritus and Propertius, wrote a famous book, atakta or glossai, on the meanings of words, especially of poetical and dialectic forms.
This extract is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Daphnis & Chloe. Philetas teaches Daphnis and Chloe about love and how to enjoy the beauties of it.
Philetas and the Liar Paradox
An ancient gravestone on the Greek Island of Cos was reported by Athenaeus to contain this poem about the difficulty of solving the paradox:
O Stranger: Philetas of Cos am I, 'Twas the Liar who made me die, And the bad nights caused thereby'.
Bittis, a woman beloved by the poet Philetas of Cos. His elegies, chiefly of an amatory nature and singing the praises of his mistress Battis (or Bittis), were much admired by the Romans.
Glossa . . .The word underwent a gradual development of meaning, which may be described with brevity. By the earliest Greek commentators and editors of texts, glossa denoted any word in an author that required definition or explanation. Such were (a) archaisms; (b) hapax legomena and newly-coined words; (c) provincialisms; (d) barbarisms; and (e) technical terms. In editing or transcribing a text it was usual for the editor or transcriber to define the glossa by writing opposite to it in the margin the more familiar synonym (onoma kurion). The term glossa soon came to be applied to the pair of words--the word in the text and the definition in the margin--the two being regarded as constituting a single whole. Finally, the explanation alone was called a glossa. With these glosses begins the history of lexicography; for collections of them began to be made, and published separately as glossaria or glossaries. Such was the compilation of the elegiac poet Philetas of Cos, whose collection was the first attempt at an Homeric glossary . .
This extract is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
This file forms part of A Hellenistic Bibliography, a bibliography on post-classical Greek poetry and its influence, accessible through the website of the department of Classics of the University of Leiden.
The file contains ca. 40 titles on Philetas, arranged by year/author.
Compiled and maintained by Martijn Cuypers
Last updated: 3 july 2002
ΛΕΡΟΣ (Νησί) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
There is no writer more frequently cited by the Scholiasts, and none with whom our poet more often agrees, than Pherecydes of Leros, one of the most celebrated of the early logographers. His chief work was a mythological history in ten books entitled Archaiologiai, Historiai, or Autochthones. The opening book was a Theogonia, and then followed a description of the heroic age. The legend of the Argonauts and the history of Jason came probably in the sixth and seventh books. Apollonius acquired from Pherecydes not merely details connected with the Argonauts, but also historical and geographical notices which he worked into his poem.
One of the best known of the Greek logographi, and a contemporary of Hellanicus and Herodotus. His chief work was a mythological history in ten books, beginning with the genealogy of the gods, and passing on to an account of the Heroic Age and of the origins of the great families of his own time.
Long before Pindar, Archilochus had related how Heracles overcame the tauriform suitor , and won the fair maiden; how, after their marriage, Heracles and Deianeira dwelt with Oeneus at Calydon, until they were obliged to leave the country, because Heracles had accidentally slain the king's cupbearer; and how, at the river Evenus, the Centaur Nessus offered insult to the young wife, and was slain by her husband . It may be added that the prose mythographer Pherecydes (circ. 480 B.C.) had told the story of Deianeira . His birthplace was the island of Leros, near Miletus; but his home was at Athens, and his work, it can hardly be doubted, was known to Sophocles.
Demodocus, (Demodokos) of Leros, the author of four epigrams in the Greek Anthology, containing bitter attacks upon the Chians, Cappadocians, and Cilicians. (Brunck, Anal. ii. 56 ; Jacobs, ii. 56, xiii. 698.) He is mentioned by Aristotle. (Ethic. Nicom. vii. 9.)
ΛΙΝΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΛΙΝΔΟΣ
Antheas Lindius, a Greek poet, of Lindus in Rhodes, flourished about B. C. 596. He was one of the earliest eminent composers of phallic songs, which he himself sung at the head of his phallophori (Athen. x.). Hence he is ranked by Athenaeus as a comic poet, but this is not precisely correct, since he lived before the period when comedy assumed its proper form. It is well observed by Bode, that Antheas, with his comus of phallophori, stands in the same relation to comedy as Arion, with his dithyrambic chorus, to tragedy.
Cleobuline, (Kleobouline), called also Cleobuline and Cleobyle (Kleoboulene, Kleoboule), was daughter to Cleobulus of Lindus, and is said by Plutarch to have been a Corinthian by birth. From the same author we learn that her father called her Eumetis, while others gave her the name which marks her relation to Cleobulus. She is spoken of as highly distinguished for her moral as well as her intellectual qualities. Her skill in riddles, of which she composed a number in hexameter verse, is particularly recorded, and we find ascribed to her a well-known one on the subject of the year, as well as that on the cupping-glass, which is quoted with praise by Aristotle. A play of Cratinus, called Kleoboulinai, and apparently having reference to her, is mentioned by Athenaeus (Plut. de Pyth. Orac. 14, Conv. vii. Sap. 3; Diog. Laert. i. 89; Menag. ad loc.; Clem. Alex. Strom. iv. 19; Suid. s. v. Kleobouline; Arist. Rhet. iii. 2.12; Athen. iv., x.). Cleobuline was also the name of the mother of Thales. (Diog. Laert. i. 22)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited Nov 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Νησί) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
Πληροφορίες Σύνταξης:
Βιογραφία, αναφορές και λοιπές εργασίες για τον Ομηρο παρατίθενται στη νήσο Ιο , ένας από τους τόπους που διεκδικούν την τιμή της καταγωγής του, όπου και ο τάφος του. Ανάμεσα σ' αυτούς, σύμφωνα με ένα επίγραμμα (Gell. III, 11), συγκαταλέγονται, μαζί με την Ιο, η Χίος, η Σμύρνη, η Ρόδος, η Κολοφών, η Σαλαμίνα της Κύπρου, το Αργος, η Αθήνα, η Κύμη της Αιολίδας, η Πύλος και η Ιθάκη.
ΡΟΔΟΣ (Αρχαία πόλη) ΔΩΔΕΚΑΝΗΣΟΣ
Apollonius Rhodius, was, according to Suidas and his Greek anonymous biographers,
the son of Silleus or Illeus and Rhode, and born at Alexandria (comp. Strab. xiv.
p. 655) in the phyle Ptolemais, whereas Athenaeus (vii. p. 283) and Aelian (Hist.
An. xv. 23) describe him as a native or, at least, as a citizen of Naucratis.
He appears to have been born in the first half of the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes,
that is, about B. C. 235, and his most active period falls in the reign of Ptolemy
Philopator (B. C. 221--204) and of Ptolemy Epiphanes (B. C. 204--181).
In his youth he was instructed by Callimachus, but afterwards we find
a bitter enmity existing between them. The cause of this hatred has been explained
by various suppositions; the most probable of which seems to be, that Apollonius,
in his love of the simplicity of the ancient poets of Greece and in his endeavour
to imitate them, offended Callimachus, or perhaps even expressed contempt for
his poetry. The love of Apollonius for the ancient epic poetry was indeed so great,
and had such fascinations for him, that even when a youth (ephebos) he began himself
an epic poem on the expedition of the Argonauts. When at last the work was completed,
he read it in public at Alexandria, but it did not meet with the approbation of
the audience. The cause of this may in part have been the imperfect character
of the poem itself, which was only a youthful attempt; but it was more especially
owing to the intrigues of the other Alexandrine poets, and above all of Callimachus,
for Apollonius was in some degree opposed to the taste which then prevailed at
Alexandria in regard to poetry. Apollonius was deeply hurt at this failure, and
it is not improbable that the bitter epigram on Callimachus which is still extant
(Anthol. Graec. xi. 275) was written at that time. Callimachus in return wrote
an invective-poem called " Ibis," against Apollonius, of the nature of which we
may form some idea from Ovid's imitation of it in a poem of the same name. Callimachus,
moreover, expressed his enmity in other poems also, and in his hymn to Apollo
there occur several hostile allusions to Apollonius, especially in v. 105.
Disheartened by these circumstances Apollonius left Alexandria and
went to Rhodes, which was then one of the great seats of Greek literature and
learning. Here he revised his poem, and read it to the Rhodians, who received
it with great approbation. At the same time he delivered lectures on rhetoric,
and his reputation soon rose to such a height, that the Rhodians honoured him
with their franchise and other distinctions. Apollomius now regarded himself as
a Rhodian, and the surname Rhodius has at all times been the mine by which he
has been distinguished from other persons of the same name. Notwithstanding these
distinctions, however, he afterwards returned to Alexandria, but it is unknown
whether lie did so of his own accord, or in consequence of an invitation. He is
said to have now read his revised poem to the Alexandrines, who were so delighted
with it, that he at once rose to the highest degree of fame and popularity. According
to Suidas, Apollonius succeeded Eratosthenes as chief librarian of the museum
at Alexandria, in the reign of Ptolemy Epiphanes, about B. C. 194. Further particulars
about his life are not mentioned, but it is probable that he herd his office in
the museum until his death, and one of his biographers states, that he was buried
in the same tomb with Callimachus.
As regards the poem on the expedition of the Argonauts (Argonautica),
which consists of four books and is still extant, Apollonius collected his materials
from the rich libraries of Alexandria, and his scholiasts are always anxious to
point out the sources from which he derived this or that account. The poem gives
a straightforward and simple deleription of the adventure, and in a tone which
is equal throughout. The episodes, which are not numerous and contain particular
mythuses or descriptions of countries, are sometimes very beautiful, and give
life and colour to the whole poem. The character of Jason, although he is the
hero of the poem, is not sufficiently developed to win the interest of the reader.
The character of Medeia, on the other hand, is beautifully drawn, and the gradual
growth of her love is described with a truly artistic moderation. The language
is an imitation of that of Homer, but it is more brief and concise, and has all
the symptoms of something which is studied and not natural to the poet. The Argonautica,
in short, is a work of art and labour, and thus forms, notwithstanding its many
resemblances, a contrast with the natural and easy flow of the Homeric poems.
On its appearance the work seems to have made a great sensation, for even contemporaries,
such as Charon, wrote commentaries upon it.
Our present Scholia are abridgements of the commentaries of Lucillus
of Tarrha, Sophocles, and Theon, all of whom seem to have lived before the Christian
era. One Eirenaeus is also mentioned as having written a critical and exegetical
commentary on the Argonautica. (Schol. ad Apollon. Rhod. i. 1299, ii. 127, 1015.)
The common Scholia on Apollonius are called the Florentine Scholia, because they
were first published at Florence, and to distinguish them from the Paris Scholia,
which were first published in Schaefer's edition of the Argonautica, and consist
chiefly of verbal explanations and criticisms.
Among the Romans the Argonautica was much read, and P. Terentius Varro
Atacinus acquired great reputation by his translation of it (Quintil x. 1.87).
The Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus is a free imitation of tlhe poem of Apollonius.
In the reign of Anastasius 1, one Marianus made a Greek paraphrase of Apollonius'
poem in 5608 iambics. The first edition of the Argonautica is that of Florence,
1496, by J. Lasearis, which contains the Scholia. The next is the Aldine (Venice,
1581), which is little more than a reprint of the Florentine edition. The first
really eritical edimon is that of Brunck (Argentorat. 1780). The edition of Beck
(Leipzig, 1797) is incomplete, and the only volume which appeared of it contains
the text, with a Latin translation and a few critical notes. G. Schaefer published
an edition (Leipz. 1810-13), which is an improvement upon that of Brunck, and
is the first in which the Paris Scholia are printed. The best edition is that
of Wellauer, Leipzig, 1828, which contains the various readings of 13 MSS., the
Scholia, and short notes.
Besides the Argonautica and epigrams (Antonin. Lib. 23), of which
we possess only the one on Callimachus, Apollonius wrote several other works which
are now lost. Two of them, Peri Archilochou (Athen. x. p. 451) and pros Zenodoton
(Schol. Venet. ad Hom. Il. xiii. 657), were probably grammatical works, and the
latter may have had reference to the recension of the Homeric poems by Zenodotus,
for the Scholia on Homer occasionally refer to Apollonius. A third class of Apollonius'
writings were his ktiseis, that is, poems on the origin or foundation of several
towns. These poems were of an historico-epical character, and most of them seem
to have been written in hexameter verse. The following are known:
1. Hpodou ktisis, of which one line and a half are preserved in Stephanus of Byzantium
(s. v. Dotion), and to which we have perhaps to refer the statements contained
in the Scholiast on Pindar (Ol. vii. 86; Pyth. iv. 57).
2. Naukpateos ktisis, of which six lines are preserved in Athenaeus (vii. p. 283,
&c.; comp. Aelian, Hist. An. xv. 23).
3. Alexandreias ktisis (Schol. ad Nicand. Ther. 11).
4. Kaunou ktisis (Parthen. Erot. I and 11).
5. Knides ktisis (Steph. Byz. s. v. Psukterios). Whether the last three were like
the first two in verse or prose is uncertain, as no fragments are extant.
6. Kanopos, which may likewise have been an account of the foundation of Canopus.
It was written in verse, and consisted of at least two books. Two choliambic lines
of it are extant (Steph. Byz. s. vv. Chora, Korinthos.) (Compare E. Gerhard, Lectiones
Apollonianae, Leipzig, 1816; Weichert, Ueber das Leben und Gedicht des Apollonius
von Rhodus, Meissen, 1821)
This text is from: A dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology, 1873 (ed. William Smith). Cited May 2005 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
Life of Apollonius
The date of the birth of Apollonius is quite uncertain. Dates ranging
from 296 to 235 b.c. have been assigned by different critics. On the whole it
is most satisfactory to assume that he was born about 265. We thus allow a sufficient
time for the development of the deadly feud which raged between him and Callimachus
who died about 240-235. Those who would fix his birth thirty years earlier are
prepared to throw over altogether the tradition that he succeeded Eratosthenes
as Librarian at Alexandria about 196 b.c. The birthplace of Apollonius is also
uncertain. Suidas and Strabo describe him as an Alexandrian, whereas Athenaeus
and Aelian mention also the other tradition that he was a native of Naucratis,
a town situated a little to the east of Alexandria. The simplest solution of the
difficulty is to assume that he was born at Naucratis, but brought up at Alexandria
from his early years. His connexion with Naucratis lends special point to the
attack made by Callimachus upon him in the Ibis, as we shall see later.
Apollonius attached himself as a pupil to Callimachus, who was the
leading literary figure of the day, and Librarian of the great Alexandrian Library.
Couat, in his admirable work La poesie Alexandrine, has shown how the Alexandrian
savants were divided into the same two classes as the Roman writers in the Augustan
epoch, and the French writers in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. These
were the conservatives and the innovators, those who adhered to the ancient poets,
and those who sought to introduce newer styles more in accordance with the spirit
of the age. Homer was reverenced by all as the greatest of poets, but Homer was
imitable by none; and so the Alexandrian school chose generally as models Hesiod,
with his didactic style and love of mythological speculation, Antimachus of Colophon,
the author of the Lyde, with his long-drawn elegies teeming with legends little
known, and Mimnermus, who had given to elegy its passionate erotic tone. Some
preferred the poems of Erinna, which combined brevity with perfection of artistic
form, to the longer and heavier work of Antimachus. Callimachus, in spite of his
erudition, was of the latter class. He censures the Lyde as of coarse texture
and wanting in subtle delicacy. He exhorts poets who would win success to avoid
the beaten track, to pursue originality of style and form, to cultivate the poetry
which consists in short and flawless pieces--odes, idylls, epigrams, and to shun
a big book as a big evil. To presume to rival the great epics of the past, to
challenge comparison with Homer, was an unpardonable sin in the eyes of Callimachus.
So too Theocritus says, "I hate all birds of the Muses that vainly toil with their
cackling note against the Minstrel of Chios."]
Yet there were not wanting stubborn spirits who would not yield to
the sway of Callimachus, authors who essayed mythological and historical epics.
Antagoras of Rhodes produced a Thebais, Rhianus of Crete an epic on the second
Messenian war, with Aristomenes as its hero. The youthful Apollonius feared not
to break away from his master's doctrines and to take as his theme for a heroic
epic the quest of the golden fleece. He was still an ephebos, i.e. between the
ages of eighteen and twenty, when he gave the first epideixis, or formal recitation,
probably not of the whole work, which could hardly have been completed, but of
parts thereof. Callimachus and his followers, however, were far too strong for
him, and his efforts were greeted with ridicule. Callimachus, we may be sure,
treated the youthful epic with the merciless sarcasm which he meted out to 'cyclic
poems.'
How long the mortified poet remained to face the mockery of his triumphant
critics we know not. His wounded pride must soon have led him to snake off the
dust of Alexandria. It was at Rhodes, that great centre of literary Hellendom,
that the Alexandrian exile resolved to settle. With dogged determination and unshaken
confidence in his powers he set himself, in the intervals of his duties as a teacher
of rhetoric, to revise and perfect his poem, and soon his labour met with a rich
reward. The second epideixis, when he recited his completed work at Rhodes, was
as striking a triumph as the first at Alexandria had been a failure. The Rhodians
exalted him to offices of honour, enrolling him amongst the citizens, whence he
is known as Apollonius 'the Rhodian.'
The fame which he had won nerved him with fresh confidence in flinging
back with added sting the contemptuous taunts of the Alexandrian dictator.
Rage burned unceasingly in his heart against Callimachus, to whose
influence he rightly attributed his first disgrace, and the feud between them
stands out as the most bitter in the ancient world of letters. Couat has attempted
to trace the progress of the quarrel, though the data we have to work on are very
slender. But, slender as they are, they suffice to give us glimpses of the venom
and rancour which prevailed. One biting epigram by Apollonius on his master has
been preserved:
In these lines Apollonius expresses his utter contempt for the affectation and
sterility of the author of the Aitia, a poem in four books treating of the causes
of various myths and ceremonies. In one of the books the legend of the Argonauts
had been introduced, and Callimachus may have charged his pupil with plagiarism
from his work. Apollonius, and probably others to whom the literary autocracy
of Callimachus was irksome, imputed Callimachus' dislike of a 'big book' to his
inability to produce such. To these insinuations Callimachus triumphantly replies
in the famous passage at the close of the hymn to Apollo. We may have a parody
of the opening of this passage in the third book of the Argonautica. But Callimachus
gave also a practical refutation of the accusation by writing a long epic which
gained immediate favour. This was the Hecale, so called from the aged crone who
hospitably entertained the hero Theseus when he was going forth to contend against
the Marathonian bull. The choice of such a humble theme was another reproof of
the presumption of Apollonius. The fresh laurels which Callimachus thus gained
in the field of epic poetry must have rendered his supremacy at Alexandria more
indisputable than ever, yet the feud with his unrepentant pupil still went on
with unabated fury.
The most curious product of the quarrel was the Ibis of Callimachus.
The immediate provocation which led to it we know not, but the epigram of Apollonius
must still have been rankling in his soul. The work itself has perished, but the
poem of Ovid which bears the same name, and which was avowedly an imitation thereof,
enables us to judge of the style and contents. Callimachus must have devoted his
enemy to destruction in the same way as Ovid does, and we may presume that the
whole poem also was obscured with the same mass of caecae historiae drawn from
the darkest recesses of the storehouse of legend. Critics have been sorely vexed
in trying to determine why Callimachus should have chosen the bird ibis to represent
Apollonius. Couat, and Ellis in his Prolegomena to the Ibis of Ovid, have collected
the various theories which have been put forward. The ibis, as Plato tells us,
was sacred to the god Theuth, or Hermes, worshipped originally at Naucratis, which
was probably the birthplace of Apollonius. The connexion between the ibis and
the god Theuth was very close. The god was depicted with the head of the bird,
and the bird was regarded as the familiar minister of the god. The filthy peculiarities
of the ibis are often mentioned by the ancients, and we may be sure that these
habits of the bird, a native of Naucratis like Apollonius, were employed by Callimachus
as a retort to the scurrilous way in which he had been stigmatized as katharma.
Hermes, amongst his other functions, was the god of thieves, and so Apollonius
was probably assailed as a familiar of the god of thieves by reason of his plagiarisms
from Homer and Callimachus. Conjectures like these are but a groping in the dark,
and the key to the riddle has been lost for ever.
There can be little doubt that the honours in this literary warfare
were regarded as resting with Callimachus. The struggle was brought to a close
by his death, 240-235 b.c. In his epitaph written by himself he claims to have
triumphed over spite.
Apollonius did not return to Alexandria immediately on the death of
his great antagonist. He remained for many years at Rhodes, ever bringing the
fruits of his ripe experience and grammatical studies to bear upon his well-beloved
poem. A dense mist envelops the closing period of his life. Did he pass the rest
of his days at Rhodes, as Susemihl maintains, or did he return to Alexandria and
become Librarian as successor to Eratosthenes? The first of the two lives is silent
on this question; the other, in a sentence introduced by tines de phasin, mentions
his return and the fact that he became Librarian after a third epideixis of his
poem at Alexandria. We have furthermore the definite statement in the notice in
Suidas that he succeeded Eratosthenes as head of the Library. Though this assertion
has been disputed by many critics in modern times, I see no valid reason for rejecting
it. There is nothing improbable in thinking that there may have been a reaction
against the theories of Callimachus after his death, and that the favour accorded
to the third recitation of the Argonautica and the appointment of its author as
Librarian may have been the outcome of this reaction. The whole chronology of
the Alexandrian school is in the most hopeless confusion, and no two critics seem
able to agree even approximately about the number, order, and dates of the early
Librarians. We have seen that the dates assigned for the birth of Apollonius vary
over a period of more than half a century, so that the arguments, based on so-called
chronology, against Suidas and one of the lives deserve but little attention.
Assuming, as we have done, that Apollonius was born about 265, he would have been
between the ages of sixty-five and seventy when he succeeded Eratosthenes, who
was born about 278 and lived to the age of eighty or eighty-two. Apollonius was
succeeded by Aristophanes of Byzantium, about whom we are definitely told that
he became Librarian at the age of sixty-two. He was born about 255, so we may
assume that Apollonius' tenure of the office terminated about 193, which we may
regard as approximately the year of the poet's death.
One last tradition concerning Apollonius, recorded at the end of the
second life, is that he was buried with Callimachus. Susemihl unnecessarily impugns
this statement as involving a desecration of the tomb of Callimachus. There may
well have been, as Weichert suggests, a place set apart at Alexandria by the Ptolemies
for the burial of those who had filled the honoured post of Librarian. And so,
after life's fitful fever, master and pupil would rest side by side in the silent
fellowship of the grave.
Sources of the Argonautica
To enumerate the probable and possible sources of the poem would be
to enumerate the greater part of Greek literature. Nurtured in a literary atmosphere,
Apollonius had devoted himself, heart and soul, to the study of all previous writings
which could aid him in his work. The rhetor Aelius Theon attributes to him the
saying Anagnosis trophe lexeos, and assuredly he must have dipped deeply into
the treasures of the great Alexandrian libraries. In trying to sketch briefly
the materials at his disposal when he began to write, we must rely, to a very
large extent, on the information which has come down to us through the scholia.
From them we learn much; but we must remember that they are merely excerpts from
the larger works of the grammarians, and, therefore, necessarily imperfect. The
sources from which our poet derived materials for his work and the authors whom
he imitated may be classified as follows:
(1) The Homeric poems;
(2) other ancient epic poems;
(3) early logographers and geographers;
(4) previous writers of Argonautica;
(5) writers who had introduced the story of the Argonauts incidentally;
(6) narrators of the deeds of Heracles;
(7) authors, most of them little known, to whom Apollonius was indebted on special
points;
(8) Alexandrian poets.
I. The Homeric poems constitute in the truest sense the pege
kai arche of the Argonautica. Though the matter of the work is not derived from
them, yet the diction and the form in which the particular incidents are set forth
continually recall to our minds the words of 'the poet,' as the ancients reverently
described Homer. Apollonius knew Homer by heart, and one of the chief charms of
his work is to come across the familiar phrases reset, some, it may be, dimmed
in the process, others shining with added lustre. Our poet was no servile imitator.
Nothing could be more erroneous than to regard his work as a mere cento of Homeric
phrases. Professor R. Ellis admirably states his position: "For Apollonius the
problem was how to write an epic which should be modelled on the Homeric epics,
yet be so completely different as to suggest, not resemblance, but contrast. We
think no one who has read even a hundred lines of the poem can fail to be struck
by this. It is in fact the reason why it is a success. The Argonautica could not
have been written without the Iliad and Odyssey, but it is in no sense an echo
of either. Nay, we believe that a minute examination of Apollonius' language and
rhythm would show that he placed himself under the most rigid laws of intentional
dissimilarity." In the period between the recensions of Zenodotus and Aristarchus
Apollonius had made a critical study of the Homeric poems, as we shall see when
we come to consider his other works.
The Argonautica often enables us to infer the meaning which he assigned
to doubtful words in Homer and the views which he must have held on disputed passages.
This has been worked out with the most painstaking fullness by Merkel in his Prolegomena.
Merkel illustrates at length, what F. A. Wolf had already noticed, that many words
which occur only once or twice in Homer are only found once or twice in Apollonius,
e.g. aages, ables, agerastos, hapsea, gaulos, truphos, glenos, kankanos, rhaphai,
mespha, amphidumos. He also shows that in the case of words like adinos, telugetos,
adeukes, autagretos, etc., the different views of the ancient grammarians about
their meanings are reproduced in different passages of the Argonautica.
II. We may be sure that Apollonius, in cultivating the epic style,
had studied the other old epic poems, not merely those belonging to the so-called
Epic Cycle, such as the Nostoi, Thebaiis, Alkmaionis, but also works like the
Aigimios (ascribed by some to Hesiod), and the Phoronis (a genealogical poem by
an unknown poet of Argos), both of which are cited in the scholia for purposes
of illustration. We have no evidence that Apollonius derived any of his matter
from them. His familiarity with the Homeric hymns is often shown, e.g. in the
opening line of the first book.
III. Large use must have been made of the early historians and
geographers, especially Herodotus, Hellanicus, Hecataeus, and Acusilaus, whose
writings are frequently mentioned in the scholia. Weichert shows that Apollonius
in all probability studied the logographoi more than the poets, and, in consequence,
passed over in silence some things very closely connected with his theme, e.g.
a description of the Argo, which must have been given by the earlier poets, while
he is very full in dealing with places, peoples, etc. Amongst the old prose writers
Simonides of Ceos is often referred to by the scholiasts as agreeing with our
poet, e.g. on ii 866, kai Simonides ho genealogos homoios toi Apollonioi genealogei.
Suidas tells us that he was reputed to be a grandson of the famous lyric poet,
that he lived before the Peloponnesian War, and that he wrote a Genealogia in
three books, and Heuremata, also in three books. He may have introduced the myth
of the Argo into the Genealogia. In the schol. on i 763 we find a reference to
a work of his, Summikta, which is not mentioned by Suidas.
IV. Most interest naturally attaches to the writers who had dealt
with the voyage of the Argo in special works. Of these the three principal were
Cleon, Herodorus, and Dionysius.
(a). Cleon was a native of Curium in Cyprus. We have no means of determining his
date. That Apollonius was indebted to his Argonautika is apparent from the schol.
on i 625, hoti de enthade Thoas esothe, kai Kleon ho Kourieus historei, kai Asklepiades4
ho Murleanos, deiknus hoti para Kleonos5 ta panta metenenken Apollonios.
(b). Herodorus was born at Heraclea in Pontus. He seems to have lived in the latter
part of the sixth century, and so would be a contemporary of Hecataeus. The erroneous
theory that his Argonautika was a poem arose from the schol. on ii 1211 ascribing
to him two lines from h. Hom. 34.6 The quotations from the work show that it was
written in prose. To judge from our scholia, Apollonius agreed with him on many
points, though Herodorus made the Argonauts return by the same route as on the
outward voyage. Another important work of his dealt with Heracles, ta kath' Heraklea,
and it is referred to both in our scholia and in those on Pindar. We have a quotation
from it in Athenaeus.
(c). The notices in Suidas of the various writers who bore the name of Dionysius
are hopelessly confused, and it is impossible to determine accurately whether
both Dionysius of Miletus and Dionysius of Mitylene wrote Argonautika. Dionysius
Mitulenaios is twice mentioned in our scholia and Dionysius Milesios five or six
times, and furthermore we have frequently the vague reference Dionusios en tois
Argonautais. Suidas enumerates amongst the works of Dionysius of Mitylene Argonautas
en bibliois hex, written in prose, and also attributes to Dionysius of Miletus,
a contemporary of Hecataeus, a Kuklos historikos, and a Kuklos muthikos. The contents
of the latter are probably given by Diod. Sic. (iii 66): Houtos (sc. Dionusios)
ta peri ton Dionuson, kai tas Amazonas, eti de tous Argonautas, kai ta kata ton
Iliakon polemon prachthenta, kai poll' hetera sunetaxe.
We may presume that Apollonius was familiar also with the poem in
6500 verses describing Argous naupegia kai Iasonos eis Kolchous apoplous, which
was ascribed to Epimenides of Crete, a contemporary of Solon, though the references
to it in our scholia are very slight.
The so-called Orpheos Argonautika cannot be included amongst the sources,
as it is in all probability an imitation of the work of Apollonius by some versifier
of the early Christian era. It consists of one book containing 1376 lines. Orpheus,
one of the Argonauts himself, tells, in the first person, of the main incident,
of the adventure, dwelling at length on the scenes in which he had played the
leading part, and more briefly describing the rest. The lateness of the work seems
clearly indicated by internal evidence, though some would assign it and more of
the 'Orphic' poetry to an early date.
V. Besides those authors who had written special Argonautica
there were several others who had introduced the story incidentally, from whom,
as far as we can estimate from our scholia, Apollonius drew more, and more directly,
than from the former group.
(a). Eumelus of Corinth was reckoned by some as belonging to the Epic Cycle. Eusebius
makes him contemporary with Arctinus about the fifth olympiad. The cyclic poem
on the return of the Greeks from Troy (Nostoi) is attributed to him by Pausanias.
In this poem apparently the story of Jason and Medea was introduced, and from
it, according to our scholia, Apollonius took iii 1372 sqq. He also wrote a hymn
in honour of the Delian Apollo, Bougonia (a poem on bees, containing the fable
of Aristaeus), Europia, Titanomachia, and Corinthiaca. Both the Titanomachia and
Corinthiaca are referred to in the scholia on the Argonautica.
(b). To Hesiod Apollonius seems to have been greatly indebted, though we could
better estimate his obligation if the Eoiai megalai (or Katalogos gunaikon) had
come down to us, for the legend of the Argonauts must have entered largely into
it. In several passages our Schol. say that Apollonius directly followed Hesiod
(Hesiodoi epekolouthesen), e.g. i 859, iii 311, iv 892. At other times the divergence
of Hesiod's views is mentioned, especially about the return voyage of the Argo.
In the Theogonia Hesiod outlines the whole theme of the Argonautica in a few verses,
from the orders of Pelias to the return of Jason to his native land.
(c). There is no writer more frequently cited by the Scholiasts, and none with
whom our poet more often agrees, than Pherecydes of Leros, one of the most celebrated
of the early logographers. His chief work was a mythological history in ten books
entitled Archaiologiai, Historiai, or Autochthones. The opening book was a Theogonia,
and then followed a description of the heroic age. The legend of the Argonauts
and the history of Jason came probably in the sixth and seventh books. Apollonius
acquired from Pherecydes not merely details connected with the Argonauts, but
also historical and geographical notices which he worked into his poem.
(d). Another author often mentioned in the scholia is ho ta Naupaktia pepoiekos,
once (ii 299) expressly called Neoptolemos ho ta Naupaktia pepoiekos. It has been
generally assumed that Neoptolemus of Paros (or Parium in Mysia) either wrote
it or commented on it. Pausanias (x 38, 6) agrees with Charon of Lampsacus in
attributing it to the cyclic poet Carcinus of Naupactus, the work deriving its
name from the birth-place of its author, like the Kupria of Stasinus of Cyprus.
The subject of the Naupaktia, according to Pausanias, was epe pepoiemena eis gunaikas.
Amongst the famous heroines we may infer that Medea was introduced, and consequently
the story of the golden fleece. Only once is the author mentioned as agreeing
with Apollonius, in all other cases as differing, the difference being strongly
marked with regard to the flight of Medea.
(e). Pindar in his masterpiece the fourth Pythian ode sings of the voyage of the
Argo, telling of the foundation of Cyrene by Battus from Thera, and the fate-fraught
clod of earth given by the god Triton to Euphemus in Libya. The story of Aristaeus
and the Etesian winds is derived from Pind. Pyth. ix. According to the Schol.
Pindar agreed with Hesiod and differed from our poet about the return of the Argonauts.
(f). Antimachus of Colophon is another poet whose influence on Apollonius must
have been very great. Weichert well describes him as "gleich beruhmt als Epiker
durch seine Thebais, wie als Elegiker durch seine Lyde, und in beiden Gattungen
der Poesie das Vorbild der Alexandriner." The love tragedy of Jason and Medea
must surely have formed part of his Lyde. On ii 296 we are told that Apollonius
took from him the version that the harpies were not slain by the sons of Boreas,
and again on iv 156 we find that Apollonius described the drugging of the dragon
and the winning of the fleece sumphonos Antimachoi.
(g). The three great Tragedians must have frequently woven the quest of the Argonauts
into their lost plays. Aeschylus' drama Hupsipule is cited by the Schol. on i
773 as describing the meeting of the heroes with the women of Lemnos, and on i
105 there is a reference to a work of his entitled Argo. On iv 284 we are told
that our poet followed the Prometheus luomenos in making the Ister flow from the
land of the Hyperboreans and the Rhipaean Mountains. In another play, the Kabeiroi,
we know that Aeschylus brought the Argonauts into contact with those strange divinities.
The plays of Sophocles embracing the legend which are quoted in the scholia are
those entitled Kolchides, Skuthai, Lemniai, Talos, Rhizotomoi, and Phineus. In
portraying the character of Medea Apollonius must have had ever present to his
mind the great tragedy of Euripides, and also the tragedies of lesser writers
such as Neophron on the same theme. Another play of Euripides, the Phrixos, is
referred to on ii 382 as describing the birds which discharged their plumes as
shafts on the island of Ares.
VI. Our poet, to judge from the scholia, made abundant use of
the many authors of Herakleia, whose writings recounted the deeds of Heracles.
Of these we may mention Cinaethon the cyclic poet of Lacedaemon, Pisander of Camirus
in Rhodes, and Panyasis of Halicarnassus the kinsman of Herodotus. Writers on
the same theme who were contemporary with, or subsequent to, Apollonius were Demaratus,
Rhianus, and Conon. There are three other authors of treatises, partly historical,
partly geographical, on the town of Heraclea and the legends associated therewith,
Promathidas, Nymphis, and Callistratus. They are not merely mentioned as agreeing
with Apollonius, but we are also directly told that Apollonius took certain statements
from the first two, who were both natives of Heraclea. From Promathidas20 he took
the story of Sthenelus (ii 911), also the legend of the foundation of the town
of Heraclea (ii 845), while the description of the akre Acherousis (ii 728) is
from Nymphis.
VII. Some of the philosophic doctrines of Empedocles find expression
in i 496 sqq., iv 676 sqq. In the account of the Idaean Dactyli (i 1129 sqq.)
Apollonius was indebted to Menander as well as to Stesimbrotus. In the fine passage,
iii 158 sqq., we are told dia touton ton stichon paragraphei ta eiremena hupo
Ibukou, and Ibycus is also imitated in iv 814.
Other authorities cited at times by the Scholiasts, though to us in
many cases they are mere names, are Nymphodorus of Amphipolis, author of Nomima
Asias, from whom Apollonius drew his account of the customs of the Colchi (iii
203), the Tibareni (ii 1012), and the Mossynoeci (ii 1020); Deilochus, or Deiochus,
of Proconnesus, who wrote a work peri Kuzikou, from which our poet got much of
his information about that town, agreeing with him also in his account of the
death of Amycus; Evanthes, probably of Samos, author of Muthika, who had told
of the death of Clite, wife of king Cyzicus (i 1063); Theolytus, an epic poet
of Methymna, author of Bakchika epe, already mentioned in connexion with Cleon;
Androetas of Tenedos, who wrote a periplous tes Propontidos (cited on ii 159);
and, lastly, Timagetus from whom Apollonius derived his version of the return
voyage of the Argonauts through the Ister. His work peri limenon is often referred
to by the Scholiasts in connexion with the flight of the Argonauts from Colchis,
though otherwise there is nothing known of him.
VIII. Apollonius had studied closely the didactic poem of Aratus,
as we see by comparing
Arg. i 30 hexeies stichoosin, Phaen. 372 hexeies stichoonta
Arg. i 555 bareiei cheiri keleuon, Phaen. 631 megalei ana cheiri keleuei
Arg. i 1141 eoikota semat' egento, Phaen. 820 eoikota semata keitai
Arg. i 1201, ii 1253, Phaen. 423 sqq. (quoted in the note on i 1201)
Arg. iv 984 hilate Mousai, ouk ethelon enepo proteron epos, Phaen. 637 Artemis hilekoi: proteron logos, hoi min ephanto k.t.l.
Arg. iv 997 phaies ken heois epi paisi ganusthai, Phaen. 196 phaies ken aniazein epi paidi.
The simile in ii 933 is derived from Phaen. 278 autar hog' eudioonti
poten ornithi eoikos. Leutsch shows that it was from Phanocles, author of elegies
under the title Erotes e kaloi, that Apollonius, in all probability, imitated
the lengthening of the second syllable in Threikios. The address to the Libyan
goddesses (iv 1309, 1322) is modelled on the epigram of Nicaenetus beginning Heroissai
Libuon oros akriton haite nemesthe. In iv 447, algea t' all' epi toisin apeirona
tetrechasin, we have a clear reminiscence of Philetas (xvi 3, Jacobs), Oud' apo
Moira telos ti kakon pherei alla menousin Empeda kai toisin alla prosauxanetai.
The number of coincidences which we can detect between the Argonautica
and the works of Callimachus is very small, as we have few fragments of the Aitia,
which had contained among its subjects the story of the Argonauts. In i 1309 we
have a verse apparently taken completely from Callimachus (fr. 212). Other resemblances
are referred to in the notes on i 129, 738, 972, 997, 1116; ii 713, 770, 1094;
iii 277, 876, 932; iv 961, 1165, 1614, 1717.
Though Theocritus took for his theme some of the subjects which Apollonius
also treats of, we cannot say that Apollonius borrowed from him, as the uncertainty
of the chronology in the case of both poets prevents any definite conclusion as
to their influence on each other. Knaack and Gercke26 assume, on quite insufficient
grounds, that Theocritus' poems on Hylas (xiii) and the Dioscuri (xxii) were composed
as the most effective form of criticism on Apollonius' defective treatment of
the same subjects at the end of the first book and the beginning of the second.
In his Thalusia Theocritus had introduced the attack on imitators of Homer, which
we have already quoted in dealing with the life of our poet, though there is no
evidence that it was directed against Apollonius in particular.
Some of the post-Homeric verbs used in the Argonautica may have been
derived from Lycophron.
The Argonautica
The writers whom we have enumerated formed part of the broad foundation
of literary lore on which Apollonius reared the structure of his poem. We have
next to consider the nature of this poem itself, and how our poet employed the
mass of materials which he had accumulated.
Apollonius chose for his theme the legend of the Argonauts, the quest
of the golden fleece. For the purposes of an epic poem such a theme was well adapted.
The voyage of the Argo, the first vessel which ploughed the lonely deep, was placed
in a remote past antecedent to the poems of Homer, to the siege of Troy, and the
wanderings of Odysseus. The origin of the legend is wrapped in the mist of antiquity.
Whether there is any historical basis for it or not we cannot say. It may have
arisen from traders sailing to the eastern boundary of the world, as Colchis was
then regarded, and bringing back wondrous tales of the countries they had visited,
and the adventures they had encountered on their perilous voyage. Strabo held
that the myth of the golden fleece was connected with the wealth of gold dust
washed down by Colchian rivers rich as the Lydian Pactolus. But, whatever the
origin may have been, we know that the legend was one ever dear to the Greeks
as a seafaring people, so that in choosing it as his subject Apollonius was assured
of the sympathetic interest of his public. The conquest of Alexander and the spread
of commerce had turned men's minds to far-off lands, and tales of romantic adventure
were becoming an established literary type.
The character of the poetry of the Alexandrian school was to a large
extent determined by the character of the age in which they wrote. Whatever the
talents of the poet might be, his work must be replete with historical and legendary
lore if it was to meet with approval from the literary circles in the days of
the Ptolemies. Apollonius, like Catullus, well deserved the title doctus. As Couat
expresses it, "La veritable difficulte pour Apollonius ne fut pas d'inventer,
mais de choisir." To have assimilated materials of such a heterogeneous nature
required ability of no mean order. His vast industry would, however, have resulted
merely in a rudis indigestaque moles, had it not been for the true poetic genius
with which he was endowed.
How far our poet possessed the gift of originality we cannot determine.
We are mainly dependent on the evidence of the scholia, and, to judge from them,
Apollonius might have truly said with Callimachus amairturon ouden aeido. But
most of the works to which they refer as agreeing or differing have not come down
to us, so that we are unable to decide for ourselves the precise nature of our
poet's obligations. However much he may have been indebted to his predecessors
for the matter, the form of the poem is his own, and everywhere we find traces
of that sense of proportion which ensures the symmetry of the whole.
His work fulfils many of the requirements of epic poetry. Great are
the achievements of his heroes--great and wonderful. The mind of the reader is
filled with amaze at the recital of their deeds. The understanding is enriched
with the tales of diverse lands and diverse peoples. The imagination is stirred
by the fabulous and the mystical, by the intercourse of gods with men. The aesthetic
sense is awed with the feeling of the sublime, the contrast between divine omnipotence
and mortal frailty. Every emotion of the human soul is faithfully reflected in
the poem, love and hatred, joy and sorrow, hope and fear. So cunningly are the
various episodes woven into the web of the story that our attention seldom flags,
our expectation is whetted with the eagerness of anticipation.
With the features of the older epic poetry are blended the graces
of the elegy in the romantic loves of Jason and Medea. At times we seem to have
a statue or picture reproduced in verse, as in the description of the youthful
Eros and Ganymede playing at dice together in the gardens of Olympus --an exquisite
passage which shows in all its fullness our poet's skill in simple word-painting.
One of the most prominent characteristics of the poem is the beauty
of the similes, a feature which seems above all others to have attracted Virgil.
Apart from their intrinsic charm, they set forth in a brighter light and with
a relevancy of detail the incidents to which they refer. There is a special appositeness
in their use which at times is not to be found in the similes of Homer. Few who
have studied the poem carefully will agree with Dr. Mahaffy's criticism that "the
poet's similes are rather introduced for their prettiness than for their aptness."
To take but one example from the wealth the poem affords, the simile of the bees,8
to which the women of Lemnos are likened as they throng about the departing heroes,
is peculiarly happy in every circumstance and every detail. In it Apollonius may
be said to have surpassed both Homer and Virgil who employ the same imagery in
a different connexion. Beautiful in its freshness is the comparison of the throbbing
of Medea's heart to the dancing beams of sunlight reflected from the eddying water:
pukna de hoi kradie stetheon entosthen ethuien
eeliou hos tis te domois enipalletai aigle
hudatos exaniousa, to de neon ee lebeti
ee pou en gauloi kechutai: he d' entha kai entha
okeiei strophalingi tinassetai aissousa:
hos de kai en stethessi kear elelizeto koures.( iii 755 sqq)
Virgil (Aen. 8. 22 sqq.) was not slow to adopt this as his own.
Another charm of the Argonautica lies in the grace and vividness of
the descriptive passages. Be it the glorious majesty of Apollo or the sufferings
of Phineus, the beauty of Jason or the deformity of Polyxo, the o'erweening pride
of Aeetes or the love-pangs of Medea, the might of the hero going forth to battle
or the weariness of the husbandman returning home at even, the resistless fury
of the raging sea or the dreary waste of the Libyan sands, all are set before
us with the same realistic power. As the scenes of action unfold themselves, we
are no longer readers, we are witnesses. We see, as if we were present, that the
rude boxing of Amycus can be of no avail against the skill of Polydeuces. The
brazen-hoofed bulls with fiery nostrils, the warriors springing from the furrow,
the sleepless dragon which guards the fleece are quickened into life by the poet's
pen. Again, in scenes of repose, the spirit of restful calm steals over us as
we read the lines depicting the unbroken peacefulness of a stilly night:
Nux men epeit' epi gaian agen knephas: hoi d' eni pontoi
nautai eis Heliken te kai asteras Orionos
edrakon ek neon: hupnoio de kai tis hodites
ede kai pulaoros eeldeto: kai tina paidon
metera tethneoton adinon peri kom' ekalupten:
oude kunon hulake et' ana ptolin, ou throos een
echeeis: sige de melainomenen echen orphnen.(iii 744 sqq)
A large part is played by the gods in all epic poetry, and the Argonautica
is no exception, though in it their intervention is strangely fitful, and their
characterization at times quite un-Homeric. Apollonius exercised a certain restraint
in introducing them. He seems to have followed the rule which Horace prescribes
for the writers of tragedy, "nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus." Thus
it is to Athene that the building of the Argo is ascribed. The mortal skill of
Argus could never unaided have fashioned a vessel to face the perils of the unknown
sea. It is Athene who brings the heroes safely through the clashing of the Cyanean
rocks. So too it is Hera who stays with her thunderstorms the pursuing forces
of the Colchians, and rescues the Argonauts from impending doom as they thread
the tortuous channel of the Rhone.
Zeus, though often mentioned with his various attributes as Xeinios,
Hikesios, Epopsios, and Phuxios, appears but seldom in the working out of the
main theme. We are told of his wrath against the sons of Aeolus, which can only
be appeased by the propitiation of Phrixus and the recovery of the fleece. His
anger is manifested against the heroes after the murder of Absyrtus, and he ordains
that Jason and Medea must be purified by Circe.
Phoebus Apollo is the divinity who inspires the whole adventure. At
the opening of the poem we have the oracle which alarms Pelias and makes him send
forth Jason on an apparently hopeless quest. Jason comforts his weeping mother
by telling her that Phoebus has vouchsafed a prosperous voyage. Before entering
on the expedition Jason had gone to consult the god at Delphi, and the god had
given him two tripods, to be dedicated in places to which they would come on their
journey. One of these tripods, Apollonius tells us, was dedicated in the land
of the Hyllaeans, the other in Libya at Lake Tritonis. To Apollo, under the titles
of Aktios and Embasios, they sacrifice ere setting out. Altars are raised to him
at many places where they land. On the isle of Thynias the god appears to them
at morn as he is returning from the Lycians to the Hyperboreans, and again they
sacrifice and make vows to him as Eoos, the god of the dawning day. When they
are nearing home again, a dense darkness envelops them on leaving Crete, but Phoebus
with his flashing bow illumines for them the island which they name the Isle of
the Appearance (Anaphe), and they dedicate an altar to him as Aigletes.
The building of the Argo by Athene is not described by Apollonius;
only incidentally is it mentioned as her handiwork. Valerius Flaccus has given
us a vivid narrative thereof. With Hera Athene watches over the passage of the
Argo near Scylla and Charybdis. With Hera too she goes to Aphrodite to implore
her aid and that of her son Eros in moving Medea's heart to succour Jason.
The goddess who takes the principal and most direct part in the story
is Hera. It is strange that she is not mentioned when our poet is describing the
first assembling of the heroes. We are not told how they were brought together.
Far more striking is the opening of the poem of Valerius Flaccus, where Jason,
hearing the ordeal imposed on him by Pelias, prays to Hera and Athene for their
help. The goddesses hear his prayer, and, while Athene builds for him the vessel,
Hera goes through Argolis and Macedonia summoning the heroes to take part in the
adventure. In the first two books of our poem Hera is passed over almost in silence
in the description of the outward voyage, but from the beginning of the third
book to the end of the poem her powers are exercised actively and frequently.
Two causes are assigned by her for her watchful care of Jason. One is her wrath
against Pelias for neglecting her in sacrifice; the other is her fondness for
Jason from the day when he had borne her over the swollen torrent Anaurus as she
roamed the earth making trial of the righteousness of men. Throughout the sojourn
in the land of Colchis and on the homeward voyage she shows in manifold ways her
lovingkindness towards the hero. Widely different is her role in the Aeneid, where,
as the vengeful jealous wife of Jove, she thwarts and baffles the stormtossed
Aeneas.
The fondness of the Greeks for representing the gods as endowed with
like forms and like passions with themselves is strikingly illustrated in the
famous passage at the beginning of the third book where Cypris is surprised at
her toilet by Hera and Athene; and the interview which follows between the goddesses
is characterized by a polished diplomacy and duplicity, which, as Couat well says,
is worthy of the court of the Ptolemies, and is far removed from the tumultuous
councils of the gods in the Iliad.
We hear but little of the other gods and goddesses. Glaucus rises
up from the sea to declare that it is the will of heaven that Heracles and Polyphemus
should not journey further with the Argonauts. Iris comes down from Olympus to
stay the sons of Boreas in their pursuit of the harpies. The sea-god Triton shows
the toil-worn mariners the outlet from Lake Tritonis to the sea.
The Argonautica cannot be described as a religious poem in the sense
in which the Iliad and Odyssey are religious poems. In the Iliad and the Odyssey
there is a continuous working out of a divine purpose, and every step in the action
is determined thereby. In the Argonautica, on the other hand, the religious motive
is present, but this motive is rather in the poem than of it; it fills the mind
neither of the poet nor his readers, and Jason, though nominally the instrument
chosen to fulfil a divine mission, in reality plays the part of a leader of adventurers.
At times we find a tinge of scepticism when the poet is recounting
some wondrous legend concerning the gods. "Withhold not your favour, O goddesses
of song," he cries, "unwillingly I tell the tale our fathers told." Such wavering
faith in venerable tradition is characteristic of the Alexandrian school.
Throughout the whole poem we detect an undercurrent of sadness, of
that pessimism which was peculiarly Greek, the realization of the inevitableness
of doom, the feeling that the cup of happiness must ever be embittered with an
admixture of sorrow.
In estimating the worth of a narrative poem a question of paramount
importance is the poet's power of delineating character (ethopoiia). Judged from
this standpoint we can only attribute to Apollonius a very partial success. Of
the multitude of figures which fill the canvas one, and one only, stands out in
bold relief; the others are sketched in vague and shadowy outline. The poet lavished
all his colours on the portraiture of the wonder-working Medea. Her varying moods
enthral us from the moment when first she beholds the godlike Jason as he enters
her father's court until their nuptials are consummated on the isle of the Phaeacians.
Her inmost feelings are laid bare to us with a psychological subtlety strangely
modern and unknown to Homer. Impulsive, passionate with the passionateness of
the East, torn at first by the conflict betwixt love and duty, gradually she yields
to the overmastering sway of Eros. Duty and honour are flung to the winds. She
steals forth at night from her father's home. For Jason alone she lives. The ties
of kin no longer bind her. Cunningly and remorselessly she plots her brother's
death. Woe unto Jason if he should prove false to her! Fickle and faithless he
proved himself in after years, and Euripides has shown us that "Hell hath no fury
like a woman scorned." In his wondrous drama the intensity of Medea's hate is
only equalled by the intensity of her love as depicted in our poem. The third
book, in which the love interest is introduced, is incomparably superior to the
other three. The passage where Medea would end the turmoil of her soul by self-destruction,
but shrinks from death as she reflects that life is sweet and that she is still
in the morning of life, is one of the great things in Greek literature, and has
been compared with the splendid scene near the opening of Goethe's Faust. As we
read of this hapless maiden, daughter of a savage sire, priestess of the weird
goddess Hecate in her lonely temple on the plain, and see her suddenly called
by fate to a new and strange destiny, made the instrument for the fulfilment of
the purposes of gods and men, smitten by a love which her young heart cannot understand,
though it obeys its impulses, we are moved in a way in which the widowed Dido
with her mad infatuation, amid the hum and bustle of rising Carthage, moves us
not.
Compared with Medea the character of Jason is tame and insipid. Endowed
with the radiant beauty of Apollo he is brave and gallant as heroes are wont to
be, and steadfastly fulfils his task of recovering the golden fleece. He is tactful,
lovable, and urbane in his dealings with his comrades, and is slow to wrath even
when provoked by the taunting words of the Colchian king. He is prone to exhibit
a soft sentimentality, seen also in the character of Aeneas which is largely modelled
on that of Jason. In his intercourse with Medea he displays a calculating and
deliberate selfishness which reappears as the dominant note in his character in
the play of Euripides. We cannot discern in him the qualities of a leader of men.
We feel that he is but one of the four-and-fifty heroes, many of them riper in
years and more famous for their doughty deeds than he. Upon the shore at Pagasae
Jason bids them choose out a leader from among their number, and with one accord
they acclaim Heracles. Heracles will not take command, and persuades the others
to acknowledge Jason as their chief. Such is the position of Jason, a leader chosen
by his comrades against their own better judgment. Nominally he is first and foremost,
in reality he is but primus inter pares. So it is throughout the poem. On the
outward voyage the only prominent part he plays is in the love-adventures with
Hypsipyle on the island of Lemnos. At the opening of the second book it is Polydeuces
who flings back the haughty challenge of Amycus, while Jason takes but little
part even in the slaughter of the Bebrycians which follows the downfall of their
champion. Again and again when a crisis arises we find him sorely perplexed. When
Idmon and Tiphys are stricken by death, Jason, like the rest, throws himself down
with muffled head on the seashore in the anguish of despair, until Ancaeus, ignoring
him, declares to Peleus his willingness to take the helmsman's post. It is Amphidamas,
not Jason, who bethinks himself how to ward off the birds of the brazen plumes
on the isle of Ares. On that same isle the shipwrecked sons of Phrixus reveal
to the heroes the implacable nature of the Colchian king and the dangers which
lie before them. It is Peleus, not Jason, who revives their drooping spirits when
dismayed at this recital. At last they reach the realms of Aeetes. Jason bears
the petulant insults of the incensed monarch with a forbearance, wise, perhaps,
but with the wisdom of a later age. The ordeal of yoking the fire-breathing bulls
and sowing the dragon's teeth is appointed. How does Jason meet it? Gladly he
has recourse to the magic drugs of Medea, and his achievements are shorn of half
their greatness. To Medea, not to his own right hand, he owes the winning of the
golden fleece. Now begins the flight from Colchis with the Colchians in close
pursuit. When the Argonauts are sorely pressed, Jason makes a treacherous truce,
and, with Medea's aid, compasses the murder of the Colchian chief, Medea's brother,
Absyrtus. Purified from this foul deed by Circe, anon they reach Phaeacia. Thither
come the Colchian forces demanding the surrender of Medea. Now at length it seems
as if a deadly contest must ensue, in which the heroes may prove their prowess
in the face of fearful odds, but Jason avoids the struggle by putting himself
and Medea under the protection of the Phaeacian king, Alcinous, and fulfilling
the conditions which he prescribes. From this to the end of the poem we hear little
of Jason save when the Libyan goddesses appear to him to deliver him and his comrades
from death, and when he sacrifices thank-offerings to Triton at Lake Tritonis
and to Apollo at the Isle of the Appearance. It is in his delineation of Jason
that Valerius Flaccus far surpasses our poet. In reading the poem of the Roman
writer we feel that Jason has a part assigned to him worthy of a leader, and that
he stands out unmistakably in the forefront of his comrades.
Among the other Argonauts only two can be said to have any distinctive
personality, Orpheus and Peleus. Orpheus, with his wondrous lyre, whose music
charmed rocks, streams, and trees, is the first to be mentioned in the catalogue
of heroes. His minstrelsy holds as with a spell the rowers of the Argo. Their
oars dip rhythmically to his melodious strains. When angry feelings would rage
tumultuously he soothes them with a lay whose burden is that Earth's fair harmony
arose from discord at the first. He cheers his comrades when downhearted, and
brings them safely past the temptings of the Sirens with a chant surpassing in
sweetness even their alluring notes. Peleus, the noble father of a nobler son,
acts the part of the wise counsellor to his fellow-Argonauts. To him, rather than
to Jason, they turn for guidance in times of doubt and difficulty. His confidence
gives confidence to them. Fatherly love dwells strong within him. One of the most
touching passages in the poem is the description of the wife of Chiron holding
up the babe Achilles in her arms in fond farewell to Peleus as the Argo passes
along the coast of Thessaly.
Heracles is left behind in Mysia early in the voyage, a version of
the legend which must have been well-pleasing to our poet, avoiding, as it does,
the difficulty of subordinating his dominant individuality to the weakness of
Jason throughout the adventure. During the brief period for which he journeyed
with the other heroes we see him as the man of mighty physical strength and restless
energy. The bench in the centre of the vessel, which required the rowers with
the stoutest thews, is given without lot to him and Ancaeus. He will have no part
in the revellings in Lemnos, and in tones of bitter irony he utters his contempt
for Jason's dalliance with Hypsipyle. His club deals out destruction to the giants
in the island of Cyzicus. The breaking of his oar beneath the strain of his sinewy
arms leads to his going on shore to replace it and to the loss of Hylas. Terrible
in its intensity is his grief for the well-beloved youth, and roaming distractedly
in search of him he passes from our view.
Of the minor characters little need be said. The brutal Amycus, the
hot-headed arrogant Idas are well depicted. In Telamon we recognize some of the
traits of his son Ajax. He is a blunt outspoken warrior, staunch to his friends,
quick to quarrel, but generous in admitting his faults.
Two famous criticisms on Apollonius have come down to us from ancient
times, the one by a Greek, the other by a Latin writer, and both when examined
are found to express practically the same view. Longinus, in his treatise peri
hupsous (33, 4), says epeitoige kai aptotos ho Apollonios en tois Argonautais
poietes ? ar' oun Omeros an mallon e Apollonios ethelois genesthai; The writer
is contrasting two classes of poets, the brilliant genius whose very brilliancy
makes him at times careless and negligent in detail, and the author possessed
of less natural talent who, by that genius which consists in the infinite capacity
for taking pains, avoids the slips to which the other is prone. Homer, who, as
Horace says, sometimes nods, is the type of the former, Apollonius of the latter.
The question which Longinus asks carries, of course, its own answer with it. It
is true that Apollonius was the greatest Greek writer of epic poetry after Homer--proximus
sed longo intervallo, but to compare him with Homer is to apply to him a test
which no ancient poet will stand, not even Virgil himself. We should bear in mind
the words of Cicero, "in poetis non Homero soli locus est, aut Archilocho, aut
Sophocli, aut Pindaro, sed horum vel secundis vel etiam infra secundos."
Quintilian's estimate harmonizes with that of the Greek critic. His
words are: "Apollonius in ordinem a grammaticis datum non venit, quia Aristarchus
atque Aristophanes poetarum iudices neminem sui temporis in numerum redigerunt;
non tamen contemnendum reddidit ['produced'] opus aequali quadam mediocritate."
Peterson, in his note ad loc., says justly: "No disparagement is implied: the
meaning is that Apollonius keeps pretty uniformly to the genus medium, neither
rising on the one hand to the genus grande nor on the other descending to the
genus subtile. So in the peri hupsous he receives the epithet aptotos." Mediocritas
thus expresses what Cicero calls the modicum or temperatum dicendi genus, and
it is to be observed that this mediocritas was according to Varro the characteristic
of Terence. Weichert argues, though I think it is possibly straining the words
of Quintilian, that in accordance with the ancient use of litotes we are justified
in translating 'non contemnendum opus' not merely as 'ein schatzbares' but even
as 'ein sehr schatzbares Werk.' In spite of the obvious meaning of Quintilian's
judgment many critics perversely hold that he is sneering at Apollonius as a poet
of respectable mediocrity. A sufficient answer to this is furnished by his explaining
why Apollonius was not admitted to the canon of Greek poets by the Alexandrian
critics, and also by his own words in introducing the list of authors whom he
discusses, 'paucos qui sunt eminentissimi excerpere in animo est.'
The one testimony to the poetic worth of Apollonius which outweighs
all others is that of Virgil. With the exception of Homer there is no Greek writer
from whom Virgil drew so largely. The fourth book of the Aeneid owes much of its
ineffable charm to the romantic loves of Jason and Medea. Conington, though he
consistently disparages Apollonius in order to exalt Virgil, has summed up some
of the principal obligations of the Latin poet to his Alexandrian predecessor:--"Not
only is the passion of Medea confessedly the counterpart of the passion of Dido,
but the instances are far from few where Virgil has conveyed an incident from
his Alexandrian predecessor, altering and adapting, but not wholly disguising
it. The departure of Jason from his father and mother resembles the departure
of Pallas from Evander; the song of Orpheus is contracted into the song of Iopas,
as it had already been expanded into the song of Silenus; the reception of the
Argonauts by Hypsipyle is like the reception of the Trojans by Dido, and the parting
of Jason from the Lemnian princess reappears, though in very different colours,
in the parting of Aeneas from the queen of Carthage; the mythical representations
in Jason's scarf answer to the historical representations which distinguish the
shield of Aeneas from that of Achilles; the combat of Pollux with Amycus is reproduced
in the combat of Entellus with Dares; the harpies of Virgil are the harpies of
Apollonius, while the deliverance of Phineus by the Argonauts may have furnished
a hint for the deliverance of Achemenides by the Trojans, an act of mercy which
has another parallel in the deliverance of the sons of Phrixus; Phineus' predictions
are like the predictions of Helenus; the cave of Acheron in Asia Minor suggests
the cave of Avernus in Italy; Evander and Pallas appear once more in Lycus and
Dascylus; Hera addresses Thetis as Juno addresses Juturna; Triton gives the same
vigorous aid in launching the Argo that he gives to the stranded vessels of Aeneas,
or that Portunus gives to the ship of Cloanthus in the Sicilian race."
These are but a few of the resemblances which strike us again and
again in reading the Aeneid. To many at the present day the work of Apollonius
is only known by the references of the commentators on Virgil. When discussing
the unfair treatment which our poet has received at the hands of the moderns,
Preston says: Even when Apollonius is remembered among the learned, he is usually
introduced in the degrading attitude of a captive, bound to the chariot and following
the triumphal pomp of Virgil, who has literally fulfilled in the person of the
poet his own prediction in the third Georgic, Aonio rediens deducam vertice Musas.
Thus is the name of Apollonius lost and absorbed in that of his conqueror. His
poetical beauties are all hung up as trophies to decorate the shrine of Virgil.
His primary and original claims on our attention, in his own right, are forgotten;
and he is honoured only with the derivative and subordinate praise of having supplied
to the Mantuan bard the crude materials and unformed elements from whence some
of his beauties have been wrought and fashioned."
The influence of Apollonius at Rome was by no means confined to Virgil.
The Argonautica was translated with some freedom into Latin by Varro, a native
of Atax in Insubrian Gaul (82-37 b.c.). This version was highly esteemed by the
ancients, and some fragments of it are still extant. Catullus, Propertius, and
especially Ovid afford evidence in their poetry of their familiarity with the
work of Apollonius. Lucan imitates him in his description of Africa and the deadly
serpents which infest it. In the days of Vespasian and Domitian Valerius Flaccus
wrote an epic poem on the Argonauts which has come down to us. It is largely borrowed
from the work of Apollonius, though there are many differences from the Greek
original. As Apollonius imitated Homer's style and language, so Valerius Flaccus
imitated Virgil. The work is incomplete, the story of the return voyage being
left untold, but the merit of the eight completed books was recognized by Quintilian,
who says of him, "multum in Valerio Flacco nuper amisimus." How favourite a theme
the legend of the Argonauts had become at Rome amongst rhetorical poets of this
age is shown by Juvenal's well-known lines in the first Satire.
The chief cause of the neglect with which the work of Apollonius has
been treated in modern times is to be found in its form. Apollonius chose the
historical form for his poem, a choice which was largely determined by his theme,
and we cannot help feeling how vastly superior is Homer's method of plunging the
reader in medias res non secus ac notas. The catalogue of the heroes with which
the work opens, after a brief preface, is apt to repel us before our sympathies
are elicited, though catalogues of this kind form a traditional part of all great
epics, as Homer, Virgil, and Milton show. The geographical minuteness with which
the outward voyage is described contrasts unfavourably with the delightfully vague
and imaginary geography of the Homeric poems, and when in narrating the return
of the heroes from the land of Colchis all geographical probability, or even possibility,
is ignored, the resulting compound is unpalatable. When we read the fourth book
we wish in vain that our poet had shaken himself loose from the coils of legendary
tradition and given free play to his inventive talent. But, in whatever way the
poet might best have treated the return voyage, it would have been difficult,
if not impossible, to remove the impression of anti-climax which the greater portion
of the last book produces on us. The second part of the story, all that follows
after the taking of the fleece, the fresh dangers faced, the fresh privations
endured, does not heighten the effect but rather diminishes it.
Another cause of the unpopularity of the Argonautica is that it is
a learned work, and those who love the direct simplicity of the earlier epic are
prone to turn aloof from such. This learning, as we have seen, was demanded from
the poet by the age in which he lived, but, with few exceptions, he makes no ostentatious
display of his learning in the way Callimachus or Propertius would have done if
treating of the same theme. In the description of men and places, in the various
incidents of the poem, there is a studied moderation. Apollonius knew how essential
to a poet is the precept meden agan. Rarely does the language of extravagant hyperbole
strike a jarring note. The versification of the poem is remarkably smooth and
harmonious, and the diction, as a rule, simple and unaffected, rare and obsolete
words occurring but seldom. The most noticeable affectation is in the use or abuse
of the pronouns.
One misses naturally the freshness and charm of the language of Homer,
the living appreciation of earlier ages being replaced by a merely literary and
imitative interest. The old order had changed. The minds of men had developed
far beyond the stage when speech is the artless childlike overflow of feeling.
A literary atmosphere had come into being. Little wonder that Apollonius, strive
as he might to relive the past, could not "set his soul to the same key Of the
remembered melody."
Such are some of the characteristics of a poem at once so Homeric
and so un-Homeric. Taken as a whole it may be justly said to be deficient in epic
unity and inspiration. The unity which it possesses is mainly that of chronological
sequence. It is a mosaic, but a mosaic fashioned and put together with artistic
skill. The tempering of the stricter epic with the charm of elegy and romance
constitutes the strength and weakness of the work. It would be manifestly unjust
to apply to Apollonius Ovid's criticism on Callimachus "quamvis ingenio non valet,
arte valet"; rather would I adopt Cicero's judgment of the work of Lucretius and
say of the Argonautica "multis luminibus ingenii, multae tamen artis."
Other works of Apollonius
The literary activity of Apollonius was not exclusively confined to
the Argonautica, as we find references to various other writings which are attributed
to him with more or less probability.
(1) The Epigrams of Apollonius are mentioned by Antonius Liberalis: historei Nikandros
kai Apollonios ho Rhodios en tois epigrammasin. The only epigram of his which
has been preserved is that on Callimachus already quoted in connexion with the
quarrel between the two poets.
(2) His Ktiseis, which are frequently cited, were poetical works describing the
history, antiquities, and characteristics, either of whole regions or of special
cities. We hear of works of this kind written by him on Alexandria, Canopus, Caunus,
Cnidus, Naucratis, and Rhodes. These were probably all separate works, and not
parts of one larger whole, as the metres vary, the fragments from the Ktisis Kanopou
being scazons, while the fragments of the other Ktiseis are all hexameters. Suidas
tells us that Callimachus also wrote Ktiseis Neson kai Poleon.
(3) As a Homeric critic Apollonius acquired a considerable reputation, though
he does not seem to have published any edition of the Iliad or Odyssey. We read
of a work of his, pros Zenodoton, in which he criticized the readings defended
by Zenodotus in his edition. The loss of this work is greatly to be deplored,
as the knowledge we possess from other sources of the views of Zenodotus on Homeric
questions is fragmentary and unreliable. Only in a few instances do we find the
full title, Apollonios ho Rhodios, given in the scholia on the Iliad, but in many
other cases where simply Apollonios is found, a comparison of the usages in the
Argonautica shows that it is our poet whose views are cited. Often, where we have
no direct evidence, we can judge indirectly of the attitude of Apollonius to Zenodotus
by a consideration of forms adopted or rejected in the Argonautica, which the
Scholiasts on Homer tell us were read by Zenodotus in the Homeric text.
Among the Zenodotean forms which Apollonius adopts are tethneios,
thelo, hedumos, molis, passudiei, dusaschetos, Gorgonos, Rheien, emelle, kakeinos
(Aristarchus kai keinos), epimartures, Mino, and chros. On the other hand, while
Zenodotus wrote in Homer the forms dendros, eupoieteisi, anchialen, eexen, anaptas,
dedaasthai, stenache, Ariedne, polupidakou, eustrophoi, Apollonius uses dendreon,
eupoieton himasthlen, anchialou aktes (Anchiale as prop. name), axen (or eaxe),
ampetasas, dedaesthai, stonache, Ariadne, polupidakos, eustrephei. Apollonius
seems to have agreed with Zenodotus' views on many points, especially in the use
of the pronouns (e.g. hou, heio, heoio: min as acc. pl.: the extended application
of hos, heos, sphoiteros, etc.), though, on the whole, he conforms rather to the
principles of Aristarchus, as Merkel shows in his Prolegomena by a minute examination
of the relations between Apollonius, Zenodotus, Aristophanes, and Aristarchus.
(4) Apollonius is also mentioned as a critic of the Hesiodic poems. The author
of Argument III to the Scutum Herculis tells us that Apollonius maintained the
genuineness of this work, the authenticity of which was disputed by Aristophanes
of Byzantium amongst others.
(5) Athenaeus refers to a work of our poet peri Archilochou, but the precise nature
of this cannot be determined. It may have formed part of a more general work comprising
hupomnemata or commentaries on the ancient poets.
(6) To a general work of this kind might also be referred the views in the scholia
on Aristophanes which are ascribed to an Apollonius who is supposed to be our
poet. It is a very much disputed point, however, whether this Apollonius is the
Rhodian, or one of the hundred other grammarians who bore the name.
(7) Lastly, there are two works of Apollonius mentioned by Athenaeus, one dealing
with the Egyptians (though Athenaeus may be referring merely to some of the Ktiseis
such as those of Alexandria or Naucratis), the other entitled Trierikos, which
probably dealt with the technical terms employed in describing a trireme.
MSS. of the Argonautica
The principal ms. of the Argonautica is the Laurentianus xxxii, 9,
in the Laurentian Library at Florence, dating from the tenth century. This famous
ms. contains also the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. It is adopted by Merkel
as his basis in constituting the text of the Argonautica. Of its importance for
the text of Sophocles, Jebb says: "With L safe, the loss of our other mss. would
have been a comparatively light misfortune."
Three centuries later than L we have three other mss. of Apollonius:
(1) Vaticanus 280, in the Palatine Library, collated by Flangini. (2) Guelferbytanus,
the ms. of Wolfenbuttel. This ms., known as G, ranks next in importance to L.
(3) Laurentianus xxxii, 16. Keil regarded this ms. as transcribed either from
L or a copy of L, but Ziegler and Merkel have shown from its frequent and striking
agreements with G that both it and G are from a common archetype.
All other mss. are of the fifteenth or sixteenth century. They are
classified by Merkel as follows:
(a) Membranacei--Ambrosianus B 98; Laurentianus xxxi, 26; Laurentianus xxxi, 11;
Laurentianus xxxii, 35.
(b) Chartacei--Ambrosianus 22, containing the first two books; Ambrosianus 37;
Ambrosianus 64, ending at iii, 1306; Laurentianus xxxi, 29; Vaticanus 150, containing
the first three books; Vaticanus 36; Vaticanus 37; Vaticanus 146; Vaticanus 1358;
Ottobonensis 306; Ricardianus 35; Parisienses 2727, 2846, 2728, 2729, 1845; Vindobonensis
and Wratislavensis, both collated by Wellauer.
There are thus twenty-six mss. in all, of which the last twenty-two,
according to Merkel, are far inferior to the first four.
The value of the Paris mss. has been much disputed. Brunck esteemed
them very highly, and mainly relied on them in his edition. Merkel, on the other
hand, seems to go to the opposite extreme in disparaging them, assigning them
to the same category as the interpolated Italian mss. of Latin poets. He says
of them: "Inest his non nihil forsitan e melioribus libris petitum, sed quo uti
non liceat aliter nisi cum carere possis." Whatever is in the text on their authority
has, in Merkel's opinion, no more weight than an ingenious conjecture. These strictures
appear far too severe in the case of mss. on which we have to rely to an appreciable
extent. There are over fifty passages in the ordinary accepted text of the Argonautica
where the reading rests on the authority of the Paris mss., and in all these passages
L and G are but broken reeds.
All the mss. of the thirteenth century are vitiated by interpolations,
and this is a prominent feature of G. As a typical instance of this defect we
may take iv 1429, dendreon, hoiai esan, toiai palin empedon autos, where for hoiai
G has rhoiai, with a gloss rhoai kai roiai kai roidea dendra eukarpa. Apart from
these interpolations, its readings in conjunction with those of L carry great
weight, and in several places where L is corrupt G has preserved the true reading.
In the first book there is a serious break in G, three hundred lines (560-861)
being wanting.
In L we find many corrections made by a later hand. These corrections,
as Keil and Merkel show, were made, not from the Laurentian archetype, but from
the archetype of G and L 16, as they agree very closely in writing, spelling,
and form with G and not with L. It is uncertain whether this second hand was the
hand of the same scribe as the first, only working at a later period, as Keil
thinks, or not, but that is of no great consequence, since in any case it affords
us fragments of a different recension. This same second hand wrote the Laurentian
scholia, which are more in accord with the readings of G than with those of L.
It is possible to trace the family of mss. to which G and L 16 are
to be referred considerably further back than the tenth century, for the Et. Mag.
often cites Apollonius, and the readings it contains, which were derived from
grammarians like Choeroboscus (c. 6 cent.), agree as a rule with the archetype
of G and L 16. From this it is clear that another recension of Apollonius distinct
from L existed in the fifth or fourth century. But this by no means detracts from
the authority of L, which by the superiority of its readings in countless doubtful
passages, and the purity and correctness of its forms, must always constitute
the basis of any critical text of the Argonautica.
A Hellenistic Bibliography: Apollonius Rhodius. This file forms part of A Hellenistic Bibliography, a bibliography on post-classical Greek poetry and its influence, accessible through the website of the department of Classics of the University of Leiden.
The file contains ca.
- 1850 publications on Apollonius Rhodius from the period 1496-2002 (including reviews from ca. 1960, work in progress, forthcoming publications), listed by author/year.
- 262 publications on Apollonius Rhodius from the period 1998-2003 (including reviews).
- Editions, Commentaries, Scholia, Translations
Compiled and maintained by Martijn Cuypers
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