Q. Serenus Sammonicus (ca 190 – 212 CE)
Preserved under the name of Quinctus (or Quintus) Serenus (or Serenius) is a Liber medicina-
lis, a poem (1,107 lines including subtitles: Vollmer) that treats various medical topics,
especially remedies prescribed for particular ailments. The MSS link this writer with a
Q. Serenus Sammonicus, known through citations as the author of a work on antiquities,
Res reconditae in five books (M, Saturnalia, 3.9.6; 3.16.6–9; Sid. Apoll., Carm.,
14.3; Arnobius, Adv. Gent., 6.7; etc.), a not unreasonable association, given the subject-matter
in the Res reconditae, an esoteric series of odd characteristics displayed by animals. A
Serenus Sammonicus appears among the thicket of bogus and quasi-fictive names in the
SHA, and even though this Serenus Sammonicus (or two of them: father and son) is said
to have donated 60,000 books to an emperor, and been murdered by Caracalla, the sum
of literary evidence suggests a role at the courts of Septimus Seuerus and Caracalla (thus
193 – 212 CE).
The Liber medicinalis derives from P, and quite significantly from the passages
extracted from the Natural History known as the M P, probably indicating
that the “abbreviated Pliny” was already in circulation. Serenus adds words and phrases
occasionally similar to the works of G M, whereas M
B and T P sometimes borrowed terms from Serenus’ poem
(“Remediorum fontes uel testes,” Vollmer pp. 53–64). Liber medicinalis probably owes its
survival to its redaction into poetry of numerous diseases and therapeutics, and “medical
poetry” in classical antiquity has a long pedigree, extending back to at least N’
The ̄riaka and Alexipharmaka.
Ed.: Fr. Vollmer, Quinti Sereni Liber medicinalis (1916) = CML 2.3; re-ed. with French trans., R. Pépin,
Quintus Serenus (Serenus Sammonicus) Liber medicinalis (Le livre de medicine) (1950).
R. Syme, Ammianus and the Historia Augusta (1968) 186; Idem, Emperors and Biography (1971) 279; Idem,
Historia Augusta Papers (1983) 23; J.H. Phillips, “The Incunable Editions of the Liber medicinalis
Quinti Sereni,” in Mazzini and Fusco (1985) 215–236; J.H. Phillips, “Liber medicinalis Quinti
Sereni, XLI.775–776 [podagrae depellendae]: seminecisue hirci reserato pectore calces insere,” in
Sabbah (1988) 157–160; Önnerfors (1993) 274–277.
John Scarborough
Serenus of Antinoeia (200 – 230 CE?)
Wrote various geometrical treatises, The section of the cylinder (SCy), The section of the cone
(SCo), both edited by Heiberg (French translation by Ver Eecke), a lost commentary on
A’ Ko ̄nika to which SCy 17 alludes, and geometrical le ̄mmata from which a small
addendum to T S’s treatise is borrowed (Heiberg ). MSS cite him as a
[Platonist] philosopher, as a geometer, or according to his birthplace, long considered
Antissa (Lesbos), now Antinoeia according to Heiberg’s plausible correction to the corrupt
subscription of MS Vat. gr. 206 (Heiberg , 116, 120). MS Par. gr. 1918 indicates that
“Sirinos the geometer” followed the views of H A, implying per-
haps that Serenus was temporally close to Harpokratio ̄n and (less plausibly) that he was
himself a Platonist (Decorps-Foulquier 2000: 19).
SCy and SCo are both dedicated to a certain Kuros, and the last four propositions of SCy
are presented in defense of his friend P’s views on parallel lines (Heiberg 96). Both
treatises, of respectable length, imitate Apollo ̄nios’ Ko ̄nika, less by the results on which they
rely (elementary properties of Apollo ̄nios’ ellipse for SCy and of right and oblique cones for
Q. SERENUS SAMMONICUS