On Medical Matters

lived at the beginning of our era, who were devoted to the school of Asclepiades: Jolas the Bithynian—mentioned by Galen 17 and the scholiast of Nicander 18—Bassus Tylaeus, Niceratus, and Petronius, Niger and Diodotus, who are cited here and there by Pliny, and Philonides, whom others call the Dyrrhachian, while our author calls him the Sicilian Ennaean.

Someone might hesitate regarding the age of Dioscorides when reading that Dacian plant names are frequently alleged, while thinking that Dacia only became known to the Romans under Trajan, when it was reduced to a province of the empire. But already under the Emperor Augustus, the incursions of the Dacians were curbed by two expeditions 19; nor was that warlike nation conquered then, nor under Vitellius, when it was again driven back 20. Therefore, that fact does not in the least conflict with our calculation.

IV.

Concerning his way of life.

That he was a learned physician and practiced the art himself will be clear to anyone who has read his commentaries. But nothing is known about his course of study, although it is probable that, since Tarsus was in that age a most flourishing seat of the liberal arts and most celebrated throughout all of Asia 21, our author undertook his initial training in that school. That he frequented Alexandria is highly probable, both because physicians of that and even later ages were accustomed to seek a reputation for knowledge from there if they had spent time in Alexandria for the sake of their studies 22, and because he had thorough knowledge of Egyptian plant names and the titles by which the prophets, or Egyptian priests, designated them.

17. De antidotis On Antidotes 1, p. 7.
18. On the Theriaca antidote poem v. 523, 683.
19. Suetonius, Augustus 21; Dio Cassius 51, 22.
20. Tacitus, Historiae 3, 46.
21. Strabo book 14, p. 701.
22. Ammianus Marcellinus 22, 16.