of Babylonian cuneiform traditions in Mandaic sources and Müller-Kessler has argued
convincingly for a Sasanian context for this reception.
F. Rochberg, “The Babylonian Origins of the Mandaean Book of the Zodiac,” Aram 11 – 12
(1999–2000) 237–247; C. Müller-Kessler, “The Mandaeans and the Question of their Origin,”
Aram 16 (2004) 47–60.
Siam Bhayro
Bothros (150 BCE – 500 CE?)
Magico-medical “Philosopher” whose letter to a Persian king details medical applications
of vultures. A fragment, surviving in two versions (CCAG 8.3), explicates sympathetic
and magical medicine: the skull heals headaches, blood mixed with Syrian cedar oil
cures skin diseases, a feather on the belly of a pregnant woman eases parturition (f.100),
vulture eyes placed in piglet hides treat ophthalmologic ailments (f.153). Dissection is
conducted ritually by invoking three messengers: Adamae ̄l (adam: man), Elkho ̄e ̄, and Abrak
(ab: Father) (f.100), or else Adamane ̄l, Elo ̄e ̄l (e ̄l: god), and Babrie ̄l (bab: gate) (f.153). These
Semitic names may suggest an eastern-Mediterranean origin. Otherwise unattested as a
proper name, Bothros, “a hole or pit dug into the ground” (and therefore contextually
relevant to magic, e.g. defixiones), may be a Hellenized version of a Semitic name or, more
likely, a pseudonym.
RE 3.1 (1897) 792, E. Riess; CCAG 8.1 (1929) 47: Paris 2180, f.100; 8.3 (1912) 126–127: Paris
2419, f.153.
GLIM
Botrus (350 – 270 BCE)
Medical writer, reviled by T as shameless (FGrHist 566 F 35 = P Book 12,
fr.13.1), cited as a foreign authority on trees (P 1.ind.12–13), on drugs obtained from
animals (1.ind.29–30), and on the properties of copper (1.ind.34–35). A P.
records his treatment for auricular hemorrhaging in G CMLoc 3.1 (12.640 K.),
compounded from blackberry juice and oak-galls, cooked in vinegar, poured into the ear.
This not altogether common name, attested from the 5th c. BCE into the imperial era, is
more frequently known in the 3rd/2nd cc. BCE (LGPN).
RE 3.1 (1897) 794 (#4), M. Wellmann.
GLIM
Bo ̄tthaios (?) (400 – 300 BCE?)
Wrote a periplous giving distances in days, cited with S K by
M H 1.2. The name seems otherwise unattested, and Pape-
Benseler emend to ΒΟYΘHP- (an epithet of L R). Better might be
ΒΟΗΘΑΙ- (which became ΒΟΘΘΑΙ-, and was “corrected” to ΒΩΤΘAI-); Boe ̄thos is
attested in the 5th/4th c. BCE (and later): LGPN 1.102–103, 2.89, 3B.87. Also possible is
the Macedonian ethnic BOΤΤIAI- (T 2.99.3).
RE 3.1 (1897) 794, H. Berger.
PTK
BOTHROS