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Nicander

2nd century BC Greek scientist and poet

Nicander

2nd century BC Greek scientist and poet

Nicander, ''Theriaca'', 10th century, Constantinople

Nicander of Colophon (; fl. 2nd century BC) was a Greek poet, physician, and grammarian.

The scattered biographical details in the ancient sources are so contradictory that it was sometimes assumed that there were two Hellenistic authors with the same name. He may have been born at Claros (Ahmetbeyli in modern Turkey), near Colophon, where his family is said to have held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. The chronological indications range from the middle of the 3rd century BC until the late 2nd century BC.

He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete. The longest, Theriaca, is a hexameter poem (958 lines) on the nature of venomous animals and the wounds which they inflict. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 630 hexameters treating of poisons and their antidotes. Nicander's main source for medical information was the physician Apollodorus of Egypt. Among his lost works, Heteroeumena was a mythological epic, used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and epitomized by Antoninus Liberalis; Georgica,

The works of Nicander were praised by Cicero (De oratore, i. 16), imitated by Ovid and Lucan, and frequently quoted by Pliny and other writers (e.g., Tertullian in De Scorpiace, I, 1).

List of works

Surviving poems

  • Theriaca (Of Venomous Animals)
  • Alexipharmaca
  • Epigrams

Lost poems

  • Cimmerii
  • Europia
  • Georgica ("Farming")
  • Heteroeumena ("Metamorphoses")
  • Hyacinthus
  • Hymnus ad Attalum ("Hymn to Attalus")
  • Melissourgica ("Beekeeping")
  • Oetaica
  • Ophiaca
  • Sicelia
  • Thebaica

Lost prose works

  • Aetolica ("History of Aetolia")
  • Colophoniaca ("History of Colophon")
  • De Poetis Colophoniis ("On poets from Colophon")
  • Glossae ("Difficult words")

Notes

References

Bibliography

  • Nicander ed. and tr. A. S. F. Gow, A. F. Scholfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953.
  • Earlier editions by JG Schneider (1792, 1816); O. Schneider (1856) (with the Scholia).
  • The Scholia (from the Göttingen manuscript) were edited by
  • H. Klauser, "De Dicendi Genere Nicandri" (Dissertationes Philologicae Vindobonenses, vi. 1898).
  • W. Vollgraff, Nikander und Ovid (Groningen, 1909 ff.).

References

  1. {{EB1911
  2. Dalby, Andrew. (2013). "Food in the Ancient World from A to Z". Routledge.
  3. of which considerable fragments survive, was perhaps imitated by [[Virgil]].[[Quintilian]] 10.1.56; but this may simply mean that Virgil, like Nicander, wrote a poem on farming.
  4. ''[[Anthologia Palatina]]'' 7.435, 7.526, 11.7.
  5. Nelson, Thomas J.. (December 2020). "Nicander's Hymn to Attalus: Pergamene Panegyric". The Cambridge Classical Journal.
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2nd-century-bc-greek-physicians 2nd-century-bc-greek-poets 2nd-century-bc-greek-historians ancient-greek-epic-poets ancient-colophonians ancient-greek-grammarians ancient-greek-priests historians-from-hellenistic-anatolia epigrammatists-of-the-greek-anthology kingdom-of-pergamon ancient-greek-didactic-poets
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