polygraph, he wrote comedies, tragedies, a comprehensive compilatory Universal history
(144 books) from the beginning of the time until Herod, a fundamental source for
Flauius Josephus and S, two biographies (C and Augustus), and an auto-
biography On my own Life and Education (Souda N-393). He is now chiefly known as a
philosopher and commentator of A. Besides a collection, in Peripatetic style,
of data On strange Manners and Customs of 50 nations (Paradoxo ̄n etho ̄n sunago ̄ge ̄), he wrote
many commentaries and paraphrases of Aristotle’s philosophical and natural historical
treatises. Nikolaos’ On the Philosophy of Aristotle (in many books with numerous full
extracts) is often mentioned and celebrated by later philosophers such as S or
P.
Concerning natural sciences, he wrote On Meteorology (Peri meteo ̄ro ̄n), treating, among
other things, the origin of springs and rivers, an Epitome of the Historia Animalium of
Aristotle, and On Plants (two books), which played – as did Nikolaos’ work in general – a
decisive role in Syriac and Arabic culture, since Aristotle’s On plants disappeared early
and T’ Historia Plantarum was never translated in the East. Nikolaos’ trea-
tise, probably a patchwork of extracts and commentaries based on Aristotle’s lost On
plants and Theophrastos’ broader botanic corpus, was translated into Syriac (ca 870) –
only fragments of the first book survive – then into Arabic (ca 1000), and again both into
Hebrew (ca 1280), and, independently into Latin by Alfred of Sareshel (ca 1200). This
Latin version was translated back into Greek by an unknown Byzantine scholar (ca 1300),
perhaps Maximus Planude ̄s or Manuel Holobolos, whose text was still included by
Bekker (1831) and Hett (1936) in the Aristotelian corpus, after the A C-
, P. This retroversion, less reliable than the Latin text, despite being
complete, presents an unsatisfactory text which cannot be emended by other versions.
Chaotic and full of internal contradictions (e.g. the sex of plants; the definition of plant
life), this patchwork of epitomized extracts formally describes (in seven chapters of Book
- theoretical and biological questions, and (in ten of Book 2) more heteroclite matters
(including the paradoxographical, digressions on floating stones, strange perfumes, etc.).
This opuscule, almost always attributed to Aristotle himself (in place of the lost De
Plantis), was a primary reference for Aristotelian and generalized botany in the late Middle
Ages.
DSB 10.111–112, J. Longrigg; H.J. Drossaart Lulofs and E.L.J. Poortman, Aristoteles semitico-latinus.
Nicolaus Damascenus “De plantis.” Five translations (1989); OCD3 1041 – 1042, Kl. Meister; DPA 4 (2005)
669 – 679. J.-P. Schneider; BNP 9 (2006) 725–728 (#3), Kl. Meister.
Arnaud Zucker
Nikomakhos (Pharm.) (250 BCE – 80 CE)
A’s green plaster, A in G CMGen 5.5 (13.807 K.), is alter-
natively attributed to Nikomakhos, possibly N S. Gale ̄n, Diff.
Morb. 9 (6.869 K.), mentions that a certain obese Nikomakhos of Smurna was cured by
A.
Fabricius (1726) 348.
PTK
NIKOMAKHOS (PHARM.)