The Veterinary Medicine of Chiron (Mulomedicina Chironis)

that Chiron was a veterinarian and not a Centaur, they not only added the surname, but, believing the entire Mulomedicina was written by him, they wrongly inserted his name where we are permitted to show that another author was copied. However, in Suidas, due to the fault of the Hesychian epitomator, who lived in the ninth century AD, Chiron the Centaur and Chiron the veterinarian have been conflated into one.1)

In the title of the Mulomedicina, we discover—from Vegetius and from the subscription of the ninth book, as I mentioned above—that only Apsyrtus is named by the Latin compiler in addition to Chiron, although Vegetius shows that the excerpts of Sotion, Farnax, and Polycletus are contained within the same bounds, as he read those excerpts mixed with the excerpts of Chiron and Apsyrtus in the Mulomedicina in the same place where we read them today. It is no wonder that the names of the other writers are missing from the front of the Mulomedicina, since Chiron and Apsyrtus, easily the most famous veterinarians, rightly held the principal place,2) and five authors could not proceed in one inscription.

1) This is what I learned from Georgius Wentzel, a most learned man, which I acknowledge with a grateful spirit. Therefore, even the final words "and so he was also called Centaur" diò kaì Kéntauros ōnómásthē are those of the epitomator. Cf. above p. VIII, note 1. I do not know, therefore, whether that Astrampsychus, who wrote a book on the treatment of donkeys, should be distinguished from the magician of the same name who was said to have written about the interpretation of dreams. Suidas, indeed, s.v. A. [writes]: "who wrote a medical book on the treatment of donkeys; and the Oneirocriticon Dream Interpretation."

2) It will be necessary to inquire whether Chiron and Apsyrtus are joined by some link and which appears to be older. It is worthy of memory that of the mallei morbi glanders/hammer disease, which is more destructive to horses than any other and which our people call Rotzkrankheit, Apsyrtus (§ 344; the heading of Chiron there is false) distinguishes four types, while Chiron (§ 168) distinguishes seven. What is prescribed in Mulomedicina § 566 regarding healing an injured neck ("apply a thin bandage... bind it above," etc.), Apsyrtus says is perverse (Hippiatrica 81, 1: "in which some, using bandages... do nothing good"), cf. Schneider’s note on Vegetius III 41. Nor are the contradictions in the Mulomedicina less significant, such as § 460 regarding curing strangury (p. 152, 10: "insert your arm into the anus... and turn... the bladder") and Apsyrtus, Hippiatrica 111, 18 ("some do not speak the truth... saying one must correct the bladder and insert the hand through the anus, etc."), which Pelagonius copied § 146. See Schneider on Vegetius V 14, 6 and II 23. Therefore, since Apsyrtus openly attacks the opinions of Chiron, he is to be judged to have flourished after him.