VIII

PREFACE.

at the end of the ninth book (below § 960):

Finally, when the work is finished (below § 976):

What follows in § 977 sq. the scribe himself testifies was brought in from elsewhere, when he notes at 980:

Let us see what the subscriptions of the authors mean and by what bond they are connected among themselves. Suidas, under the entry Chiron, testifies that a book on the veterinary art was circulated under the name of the most righteous of the Centaurs.Chiron, Centaur: who first discovered medicine through herbs. He made "Precepts" in verse, which he addressed to Achilles; and a "Veterinary Art"; for which reason he was called a Centaur. Cf. below p. XVI. Indeed, Columella in the preface 32, who praises "the doctrine of Chiron and Melampus in the cultivation of livestock," cannot be judged to have been thinking of a pseudepigraphical book. Apsyrtus, however, a most famous veterinary doctor who flourished in the age of Constantine the Great,Apsyrtus, of Prusa, of Nicomedia, a soldier, who served under Constantine the Emperor in Scythia by the Ister. He wrote a "Veterinary Book," and a physical one concerning the same irrational animals; and others. He himself at the beginning of the work (Hipp. 1) says: "Having served in the ranks by the river Ister, I came to know what happens to horses, etc." We know, however, that Constantine fought successfully in the land of the Sarmatians against the Goths in the years 332—334, cf. Pelagonius ed. Ihm p. 6. was of such authority that those who wrote about the veterinary art later compiled his papers above all others. This is why his biblion hippiatrikon veterinary book came down to us almost entirely in the Byzantine Hippiatricorum collection. Yet Vegetius teaches in the preface § 1 sq. of his Veterinary Art that Chiron and Apsyrtus were rightly coupled in the subscription of the ninth book. Since his words have the greatest