The Encyclopedia of Ancient Natural Scientists: The Greek tradition and its many heirs

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to Rome to plead against the fee exacted on Athens for the ransacking of O ̄ro ̄pos. Of
Kritolaos’ students, we know Aristo ̄n the younger and Diodo ̄ros of Tyre. Kritolaos argued
for the eternity of the world from the eternity and immutability of the human race – both
orthodox Aristotelian doctrines – remarking that an eternal human race can only be housed
in an eternal world (fr.13 Wehrli). Another argument apparently relied on the principle of
the synonymy of cause and effect, which postulates that the cause has to possess the feature
for the emergence of which it is responsible. Accordingly, the cause of health cannot be
sickly, the cause of being awake is being awake itself, and the cause of the eternal subsist-
ence of the animal-kinds, the world, also has to be eternal itself (fr.12 Wehrli). Taking
up some loose Aristotelian suggestions, Kritolaos submitted that the divine intellect itself
(fr.16) and the souls (frr.17 and 18) are constituted from the special element of the celestial
bodies (cf. also C’s testimony about A: Acad. 1.7.26).


Ed.: Wehrli v.10 (1969), some further testimonia from papyri, mostly on Kritolaos’ teachings about
rhetoric.
István Bodnár


Krito ̄n of He ̄rakleia Salbake ̄, T. Statilius (80 – 120 CE)


Martial, in an epigram dated to December 96 CE (11.60.2–7), features a physician named
Krito ̄n, a medical professional skilled in curing ulcus tendere (saturiasis: -G Def.
Med. 19.426 K.; Adams). Martial’s Krito ̄n, with medical abilities superior to those of the
goddess Hygeia, could cure this disease, which often became full-blown priapism in men.
Two years later, Krito ̄n appears as court physician to Trajan, perhaps recommended by his
remarkable practice among the fashionable and sensual senatorial classes of Rome. Beneath
the flashy practice discerned in Martial’s acidic lines is a physician of high abilities, who
studied with the accomplished L  T. Krito ̄n was a member of a medical
dynasty (inscriptions record numerous honors for the family: Benedum), served as procur-
ator (epitropos), was a benefactor of Ephesos and his hometown, and apparently among the
fashionable physicians plying their trade ca 80 – 100 CE (Wellmann).
Krito ̄n was also a known expert on kosme ̄tika (broadly “The Art of Dress and Bodily
Ornament”) on which he had written four books, extracted by G according to topic,
with detailed table of contents; it described normal (Books 1–2) and diseased (Books 3–4)
bodily conditions, discussing first the head (Books 1 and 3) and then the rest of the body
(Books 2 and 4): Gale ̄n, CMLoc 1.3 (12.446–450 K.). The Kosme ̄tika incorporated topical
“make-ups” but also treated kommo ̄tike ̄, the “Art of Embellishment” that sought by means
of artistic arrangement of facial and body ornaments to enhance the attractiveness of
one’s natural appearance. The work was a careful collection of numerous recipes for plas-
ters, ointments, hair dyes, depilatories, and salves with known and beneficial properties, and
drew on the best written sources, including D. If Gale ̄n has accurately
excerpted, it began not simply with instructions for the “preservation of hair” (CMLoc 1.2
[12.435 K.]), but with eight recipes carefully quoted from H  T
(12.435–438 K.) and one from A (12.438–439 K.). Gale ̄n adds that the first
book included drugs to de-louse hair and scalp (12.450 K.), which he does not extract, but
instead records its depilatories (psilo ̄thra: 12.453–455 K.). One included quicklime, orpiment,
and the medicinal earth from Selinus in Sicily: Gale ̄n’s remark that “Krito ̄n advised close
attention to the treatment” suggests his awareness of the ointment’s efficacy as well as its
latent danger. Another was “The Depilatory of Paris the Dancer,” a famous contemporary


KRITO ̄N OF HE ̄RAKLEIA SALBAKE ̄, T. STATILIUS
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