Three Books on Gold

is done by authority. For he cites Varro, a man of whose age, and a master in medical materials, Dioscorides nevertheless offered no experiments for medicine derived from gold. I said that Dioscorides lived in the age of Varro, following common opinion and the records of Suidas, and although I know there are those who prefer that Dioscorides lived in the age of Pliny on account of the mention of Lienius Bassus, I would have wished them to note that Dioscorides also lived in the time of Arrius—I speak of Arrius, not the one whom Catullus mocks regarding aspiration, nor the one who, a most bitter enemy of our religion, most stubbornly cast blasphemies against Christ the Lord, but the one who was likewise an Alexandrian and was held in great honor by Augustus Caesar after the victory won over Antony and Cleopatra. But whether Dioscorides was older than Pliny or his contemporary, it seems to matter little; Varro was certainly consumed by the triumviral proscription, and Dioscorides himself flourished under the triumvir Antony, from whom Greece and Latium subsequently received medical material; and this we grant to the former opinion—to the latter, indeed, because there is a mention of Dioscorides in Pliny, whether he was older, later, or, if you prefer, a contemporary. This Dioscorides, whatever century he may have belonged to, handed down many medicines for his own chapters on quicksilver, copper, iron, and lead, but not on gold; and he scarcely remembers it even in [the chapter on] hydrargyrum, for the reason that if it should be swallowed, and should do harm, the remedies for that ailment—