in three sections, treats Roman liquid quantities (of wine, olive oil, and honey), including
quantities for the amphora (keramion), urn (ourna), and congium (chous). Dioskouride ̄s gives
weights of an amphora of wine, oil, and honey as 80, 72, and 70 pounds, agreeing with
O.
Ed.: MSR 1.132–133, 239–244.
RE 5.1 (1903) 974 (#122), Fr. Hultsch.
PTK and GLIM
Dioskouride ̄s Phaka ̄s (80 – 45 BCE)
He ̄rophilean physician, whose epithet means “warty-faced,” resident in Alexandria dur-
ing the first years of the joint reign of Ptolemy XIII and K VII, likely court
doctor and roving ambassador under Ptolemy XII Aule ̄te ̄s (80– 51 BCE). C (BC
3.109.3–6) is ambiguous about his fate as an emissary of Ptolemy XIII to Akhilla ̄s threaten-
ing civil war (48 BCE): “[Akhilla ̄s] ordered them [Dioskouride ̄s and Serapio ̄n] arrested and
killed, but one of them was simply wounded and was quickly rescued by his friends and
borne away as if he were dead.. .” If Dioskouride ̄s survived, he would have been an elderly
and wily court physician “associated with Kleopatra in the time of Antony” (Souda
Delta-1206). He wrote 24 books on medicine (ibid.) as well as tracts on strange Hippokratic
terminology (E, Pr., and fr.5 [pp. 5, 91 Nachm.]). In his Strange Diseases, R
E reports that (probably this) Dioskouride ̄s had composed a work on a nodular-
swelling (“bubonic”) plague of uncertain era ravaging Libya (excerpted in O Coll.
44.14.2 [CMG 6.2.1, p. 132]). P A (4.24 [CMG 9.1, p. 345]) quotes directly
from “Dioskouride ̄s of Alexandria” on skin diseases, providing a careful description:
“Dioskouride ̄s of Alexandria says that terminthoi are protuberances formed in the skin, that
are round and colored dark green, like the fruit of the terebinth-tree” (cf. pseudo-G
Commentary on the Hippocratic Humors 3.26 [16.461 K.]). This small bit of evidence, if typical,
suggests an expertise in pharmacology, rather necessary at the Ptolemaic court.
RE 5.1 (1903) 1129–1130 (#10), M. Wellmann; von Staden (1989) 519–522 (incl. 7 fragments enumer-
ated but not edited).
John Scarborough
Dioskouride ̄s of Alexandria (100 – 120 CE)
Wrote commentaries on the H C, A, E 2, 3, 6,
P, etc., and a glossary, all much used by G; only P A 4.24
(CMG 9.1, p. 345) preserves the ethnic. Gale ̄n often cites him with A C,
and says he imitated the text-critic Aristarkhos, altering or athetizing passages (In Hipp. Epid
VI [CMG 5.10.2.2, pp. 415, 464, 483]), and was accustomed to rewrite passages for clarity
(pp. 4, 232, 400); he re-attributed many Hippokratic works, to H’ grandson
(p. 55: N M), T K (p. 76: Epidemics 2 and 6), or D
(Gale ̄n, Difficulty Breathing 2.8 [7.854–855 K.]: Epidemics 5). Gale ̄n cites him extensively in his
own Hippokratic Glossary (19.63–64, 83, 88–89, 97, 105–106, 109, 140–142, 148, 152, etc. K.).
Manetti and Roselli (1994) 1617–1633; Ihm (2002) #45–46.
PTK
DIOSKOURIDE ̄S PHAKA ̄S