P R E L I M I N A R Y R E M A R K S.

A 2

...wrote. In this passage from Suidas The Suda, a massive 10th-century Byzantine encyclopedia of the Mediterranean world, Gerardus Joannes Vossius a leading 17th-century Dutch scholar replaces "Herennius Sappho" with Arrius Severus, who held the consulship in the year of the City 884 approx. 131 AD, during the 227th Olympiad under the Emperor Hadrian. Tertullian mentions the fifth book of this Hermippus’s History of Dreams in his treatise On the Soul, as noted by Vossius. Suidas also makes mention of Taurus of Berytus, a Platonic philosopher during the reign of Antoninus Pius, and Lupercus of Berytus, who lived shortly before the time of Claudius and wrote works On the Peacock and the Shrimp, and On the Cock in Plato likely a commentary on a passage in Plato’s Phaedo.

D E M O C R I T U S.

Democritus, called the Abderite after his birthplace Abdera in Thrace, was a contemporary of Hippocrates and the philosopher Socrates, living around the 80th Olympiad. He was nicknamed the "Laugher," because he laughed at the empty strivings of men. He contributed greatly to the study of Agriculture through his writings, according to the testimony of Columella in Chapter 1, Page 12, and Book 11, Chapter 3, where he praises Democritus’s book On Farming original: "Georgicon". Diogenes Laërtius, in his Life of Democritus (Book 9, Page 575), includes among his writings a work On Agriculture, or "On Geometry" original: "Geometrikon". Which title, along with the most learned Menage Gilles Ménage, a 17th-century scholar, I judge should be read as On Farming original: "Georgikon". He is also cited by Palladius in Book 1, and by Varro under the name Democritus the Naturalist, and frequently by Pliny. Regarding him, Suidas writes: Democritus, son of Hegesistratus (or as others say, of Athenocritus or Damasippus), lived at the same time as Socrates the philosopher, during the 77th Olympiad—though others say the 80th—and was a man of Abdera. And further down: ...his genuine books are two: the "Great World-Order" original: "Diacosmos" and "On the Nature of the Universe." He also wrote "Letters." That is to say: Democritus, son of Hegesistratus, or (as others record) of Athenocritus, or Damasippus: He lived at the same time as Socrates the Philosopher in the 77th Olympiad, or (as others will have it) the 80th. An Abderite. And further: His genuine books are two: the Great World-Order, and On the Nature of the World. He also wrote Epistles. Columella, in Book 11, cites Democritus’s book On Antipathies natural properties that repel one another, after the example of which Bolus of Mende often called the "Pseudo-Democritus," a Hellenistic writer of magical and medical texts—if we trust the commentator on Nicander—wrote a book On Sympathies and Antipathies. In certain libraries, however, there lie hidden the Chemical and Physical works of a certain more recent Democritus, from which I believe all those ridiculous Physical matters and Democritean Paradoxes were drawn, which occur here and there in our Geoponica. Claude Saumaise Salmasius, a famous French classical scholar mentions this later Democritus in his Plinian Exercises in these words: Democritus, although a counterfeit...