certainly a Christian (see esp. pr.3; 21.2; 23.29; 25.13); but he is unlikely to be the “illustri-
ous person in the employ of Theodosius,” from Narbonne, met by O (7.43.4) at
Bethlehem in 415 together with Jerome. It is also uncertain whether he is the Marcellus
addressed in two epistles of 399 by Symmachus (9.11, 9.23), and mentioned in a letter of
395 (2.15); this Marcellus was a politician as well and a landowner in Spain.
The title of “Empiricus” given to Marcellus is a modern one, and was suggested by the
title that was given to his work by the editio princeps by Janus Cornarius ( Johann Haynpul),
published in Basel in 1536. In fact, Marcellus’ work has no connection at all with the
Empiricist “school,” which ended around 200 CE. The title was suggested by the incipit of
the dedicatory epistle, where Marcellus defines his work as libellus de empiricis (as well as by his
frequent use of the words empiricus, expertus, experimentum, etc., especially in the phrase, recur-
ring in titles of chapters, remedia diversa physica et rationabilia de experimentis, with reference to
testing and checking the efficacy of the remedies).
Genre of De medicamentis: He does not seem to have been a professional physician:
in the dedicatory letter to his sons he states (pr.3) that he wrote his work to enable them to
heal themselves without turning to physicians (but at pr.5 he warns that drugs must be
prepared carefully and under a physician’s supervision). Thus his work enters the genre of
the eupórista or parabilia (“remedies easy to prepare”) that went back at least to the lost
Euporista by A “M,” and became a great success in late antiquity. Likewise,
Marcellus’s work takes its place in the Roman tradition of the medicine of the paterfamilias
that went back to C C and was carried on in the Imperial age by P and
by G M. The revival of this tradition is probably to be connected with
the traditionalist culture typical of the milieu of Symmachus (if Marcellus was actually
associated with him). But Marcellus also justifies his choice by appealing to Christian char-
ity: in the dedicatory letter, he says that, thanks to his advice, his sons will be able to heal
wayfarers (pr. 3 – 4).
Prefatory epistles: Besides the dedicatory letter, the treatise is introduced by seven more
letters: (1) by L D to his sons, introducing (2) by H to
Antiochus, (3) to Maecenas (another translation of epistle 2, perhaps attributable to A-
M), (4) by Plinius Secundus to his friends (it is the preface to the M P),
(5) by C C to Iulius Callistus and (6) to Pullius Natalis (the first one is
the preface to Scribonius Largus’ Compositiones; the second one is certainly apocryphal: it is
the introduction to a translation of a collection of Compositiones in two books), and (7) by
V to the emperor Valentinianus ( probably the preface to a collection of
pharmaceutical recipes). The choice of these epistles on the one hand follows the sources
used by Marcellus, on the other hand the choice has been clearly suggested by their conson-
ance with the author’s program, mainly devoted to collecting ready-to-use remedies; but the
epistle attributed to Hippokrate ̄s deals with subjects (humoral theory, etiology of the dis-
eases, influence of the seasons) that are absent from Marcellus’s work.
Sources: The main sources Marcellus demonstrably uses are Scribonius Largus’
Compositiones (two thirds of which are reproduced by Marcellus) and the Medicina Plinii.
This latter work is sometimes supplemented with Pliny’s Naturalis historia; the “two Plinies”
(uterque Plinius) mentioned among the sources listed in the prefatory epistles probably refer
to these two works. The other sources are A (that is -A, Herbarius,
which seems in fact to have been used by Marcellus), C (i.e., evidently, Scribonius
Largus, as for the preface to the Compositiones; Marcellus does not know Celsus’ De medicina),
and other authors otherwise unknown: A, Designatianus (the author of the
MARCELLUS OF BORDEAUX, “EMPIRICUS”