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

(Ron) #1

bears life and heat. There are infinite number of such juices of plants, which are distributed
in pairs: bitter/sweet, harsh/oily etc.; a plant consists of their mixture (A7). Menesto ̄r
methodically divides all plants into cold and warm and derives from their balance the most
important qualities of plans, taking into account external factors as well (climate, soil, etc.,
A4, 6). An excessive cold or heat reduces the moisture of plants, so that they either freeze
or dry out. The warm plants bear fruits, the cold do not. The warmer a plant is, the faster
it grows and the earlier it bears fruits. The evergreen plants have more inner heat than
others, which shed their leaves in winter due to the cold (A5). Plants can live only in places
with opposite climate: the warm in cold, the cold in warm.


DK 32; W. Capelle, “Menestor redivivus,” RhM 104 (1961) 47–69; C. Viano, “Théophraste, Ménestor
de Sybaris et la summetria de la chaleur,” REG 105 (1992) 584–592; Zhmud (1997).
Leonid Zhmud


Menestratos (I) (ca 400 – 250 BCE?)


C 18.5 lists H, N, the otherwise unknown Menestratos, and
D as writers of works on the oktaete ̄ris. Cf. perhaps M (II).


(*)
PTK


Menestratos (II) (325 – 90 BCE)


Authored a treatise on agriculture excerpted by C D (V, RR 1.1.9–10).
He is perhaps identical to M (I), whose oktaete ̄ris may have been a farmer’s
calendar.


RE 15.1 (1931) 856 (#9), W. Kroll.
Philip Thibodeau


Menippos (100 BCE? – 95 CE)


A P., in G Antid. 2.11 (14.172–173 K.), records his simple salve
against hudrophobia, used by Gale ̄n’s teacher P, compounded of Bruttian pine
pitch, opopanax and vinegar, heated, but not to boiling, administered to the wound with a
compress. The wound should be watched for 40 days.


RE 15.1 (1931) 894 (#12), K. Deichgräber.
GLIM


Menippos of Pergamon (ca 80 – ca 20 BCE)


Greek geographer, author of a Periplous of the Inner Sea (Mediterranean) in three books
and possibly also one of the Black Sea, relying on the work of A  E.
Menippos is known mainly through an epitome by M  H. The
extant fragments contain the prooimion and the descriptions of the Black Sea, Bithunia,
Paphlagonia, Pontos, Bosporos, Propontis and Europe. The work has a clear navigational
inclination concentrating on coasts, ports and distances between coastal points. An allusion
by the Greek Augustan epigrammatist Krinagoras of Mutile ̄ne ̄ to Menippos, as his friend
and author of a circular tour, determines Menippos’ date.


MENESTRATOS (I)
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