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

(Ron) #1

Antiokhos which Largius translated from Greek and dedicated to his sons. The epistle offers
dietetic prescriptions for diseases of the four main parts of the body, and to be used during
the 12 months of the year. A Greek version of the epistle is reported by P  A
(1.100, CMG 9.1, pp. 68–72), for whom however the epistle was written by D 
K and addressed to Antigonos Gonatas.


RE 12.1 (1924) 836 (#2), F.E. Kind; C. Opsomer and R. Halleux, “La lettre d’Hippocrate à Mécène et la
lettre d’Hippocrate à Antiochus,” in Mazzini and Fusco (1985) 339–364; BNP 7 (2005) 250, V. Nutton.
Fabio Stok


Lasos of Magnesia (300 – 250 BCE?)


Astronomer, wrote a work on fixed stars which an anonymous life of A calls Phainomena,
but a scholion to B  C, Hexaemeron cites as “on the distance of the fixed
stars.” Lasos’ work may have contained quantitative measurements of the angular separation
of bright stars. An early Hellenistic date is suggested by the order of the astronomical authors
listed in the two sources.


RE 12.1 (1924) 888, A. Rehm; BNP 7 (2005) 260, W. Hübner.
Alexander Jones


L P ⇒ P L


Leo ̄damas of Thasos (390 – 350 BCE)


A geometrician and contemporary of P, A and T (P, On the
First Book of Euclid’s Elements, p. 66 Fr.), who is reported by Proklos (p. 211) to have made many
discoveries by the method of analysis, there defined as tracing back the desired result to an
acknowledged principle. This method is said to have been taught to him by Plato (cf. D-
 L 3.24: a suspect tradition, since it tries to credit Plato with several discoveries).


BNP 7 (2005) 395 (#3), M. Folkerts.
Harold Tarrant


Leo ̄n (385 – 345 BCE)


Chronologically intermediate between E  K and L  T,
he, and his teacher N, added to geometric knowledge, enabling Leo ̄n to compile
a book of Elements more attentive to the number of theorems and their usefulness than its
predecessors. Leo ̄n also “discovered” diorismoi, that is, conditions under which a problem is
solvable or not solvable (P, In Eucl. pp. 66.18–67.2 Fr.).


DSB 8.189–190, I. Bulmer-Thomas; Lassere (1987) 6.
Ian Mueller


Leo ̄nidas (Geog.) (300 – 150 BCE?)


Wrote a geographical work On Italy of which one fragment, on net-floats made from pine-tree
bark, is preserved by a scholiast. This Spartan name is rare outside Lako ̄nika before 300
BCE (LGPN).


FGrHist 827.
PTK


LASOS OF MAGNESIA
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