Nicander

File:Theriaca 002.jpg

Nicander, Theriaca, 10th century, Constantinople

Nicander of Colophon (Template:Langx; fl. 2nd century BC) was a Greek poet, physician, and grammarian.

The scattered biographical details in the ancient sources are so contradictory that it was sometimes assumed that there were two Hellenistic authors with the same name.Template:Sfn He may have been born at Claros (Ahmetbeyli in modern Turkey), near Colophon, where his family is said to have held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. The chronological indications range from the middle of the 3rd century BC until the late 2nd century BC.Template:Sfn

He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete. The longest, Theriaca, is a hexameter poem (958 lines) on the nature of venomous animals and the wounds which they inflict. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 630 hexameters treating of poisons and their antidotes.<ref name=EB1911>{{#if: |

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  }}{{#ifeq:  ||}}</ref> Nicander's main source for medical information was the physician Apollodorus of Egypt.Template:Efn Among his lost works, Heteroeumena was a mythological epic, used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and epitomized by Antoninus Liberalis; Georgica,<ref name=EB1911/> of which considerable fragments survive, was perhaps imitated by Virgil.<ref>Quintilian 10.1.56; but this may simply mean that Virgil, like Nicander, wrote a poem on farming.</ref>

The works of Nicander were praised by Cicero (De oratore, i. 16), imitated by Ovid and Lucan, and frequently quoted by Pliny and other writers<ref name=EB1911/> (e.g., Tertullian in De Scorpiace, I, 1).

List of works

Surviving poems

• Theriaca (Of Venomous Animals)
• Alexipharmaca
• Epigrams<ref>Anthologia Palatina 7.435, 7.526, 11.7.</ref>

Lost poems

• Cimmerii
• Europia
• Georgica ("Farming")
• Heteroeumena ("Metamorphoses")
• Hyacinthus
• Hymnus ad Attalum ("Hymn to Attalus")<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• Melissourgica ("Beekeeping")
• Oetaica
• Ophiaca
• Sicelia
• Thebaica

Lost prose works

• Aetolica ("History of Aetolia")
• Colophoniaca ("History of Colophon")
• De Poetis Colophoniis ("On poets from Colophon")
• Glossae ("Difficult words")

Bibliography

• Nicander ed. and tr. A. S. F. Gow, A. F. Scholfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953.
• Earlier editions by JG Schneider (1792, 1816); O. Schneider (1856) (with the Scholia).
• The Scholia (from the Göttingen manuscript) were edited by Template:Citation
• Template:Cite book
• H. Klauser, "De Dicendi Genere Nicandri" (Dissertationes Philologicae Vindobonenses, vi. 1898).
• Template:Citation
• W. Vollgraff, Nikander und Ovid (Groningen, 1909 ff.).

External links

• An ancient Life of Nicander, from the scholia
• Theriaca et Alexipharmaca recensuit et emendavit, fragmenta collegit, commentationes addidit Otto Schneider. Accedunt scholia in Theriaca ex recensione Henrici Keil., scholia in Alexipharmaca ex recognitione Bussemakeri et R. Bentlei emedationes, Lipsiae sumptibus et typis B. G. Teubneri, 1856.
• Poetae bucolici et didactici. Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Nicander, Oppianus, Marcellus de piscibus, poeta de herbis, C. Fr. Ameis, F. S. Lehrs (ed.), Parisiis, editore Ambrosio Firmin Didot, 1862, pp. 127-163.
• English translations of Theriaca and Alexipharmaca.

Scholia

• Template:Cite book