Ed.: MSR 1 (1864) 140–142, 259–276, 2 (1866) 100–106; J.E. Dean, Epiphanius’ Treatise on weights and
measures. The Syriac Version (1935); M.-J. van Esbroeck, Les versions géorgiennes d’Épiphane de Chypre. Traité
des poids et des mesures (1984).
BNP 4 (2004) 1119–1120 (#1), C. Markschies.
Mauro de Nardis
Erasistratos (Astrol.) (200 – 300 CE?)
CCAG 1 (1898) 81–82 prints a Greek translation from Mash’allah al-Misri (ca 760 CE), who
lists his 11 sources as: P, H, P (six books), D (11 books),
D (14 books), A (ten books), A ( A) (seven books),
(V) V (ten books), “Erasistratos” (11 books), “Stokhos” (sc. “Eustokhios”?
“Stoikos”?) (six books), and “the Persians” (44 books). Antiokhos, Do ̄rotheos, Ptolemy, and
Valens are genuine, and an otherwise unknown astrologer Erasistratos probably is too, cf.
Al-Bı ̄ru ̄nı ̄, Book of Instruction in the Elements of the Art of Astrology (1029 CE), §453 (p. 265, ed.
R.M. Wright, 1934).
(*)
PTK
Erasistratos of Ioulis on Keo ̄s (ca 260 – 240 BCE)
Erasistratos (b. ca 315 BCE) may or may not have been a “colleague” of H at the
Museion in Ptolemaic Alexandria, but ancient testimonia attest to his presence as a “younger
contemporary” and that he also performed systematic dissections (and less likely vivi-
sections) on human cadavers ca 260 – 250 BCE. Ancient sources also tell us that Erasistratos
had links with the Peripatetic School in Athens (but not a student of T:
Scarborough 1985), and that he served for a time as a court physician to one of the Seleukid
or Antigonid monarchs (Wellmann 1907: 333–334), before moving on to Alexandria. Fraser
asserts (1969, 1972: 1.347) that Erasistratos spent his entire career in Antioch, refuted
by Lloyd (1975). Biographical details are at best confused and confusing in our ancient
testimonies, and no work survives intact.
Erasistratos’ connections to the Peripatetics are well-documented in D
L 5.57 and G, Blood in the Arteries 7 (4.729 K. = Furley and Wilkie 174), and it
is likely that the mechanical and corpuscular theory espoused by Erasistratos owed much to
S L. Thereby Erasistratos differed greatly from He ̄rophilos regarding
what we would term “physiological functions”: Erasistratos employed mechanistic principles
fused with an Aristotelian notion of teleology, occasionally verifying hypotheses by means of
experiment.
From contemporary mechanics and physics, he derived a major mechanistic principle:
substances move in nature by “going toward that which is being emptied” (pros to kenoumenon
akolouthia: Gale ̄n, Natural Faculties 1.16 [2.62–63 K.] = Garofalo, fr.74; cf. frr. 93 – 96, 109, 110,
198). In General Principles (kath’holou logoi [Garofalo, frr. 74 – 152]), Erasistratos combined veins
and arteries, nerves, muscles, the function of appetite, and digestion into a unified template
of physiology. The system was: air enters the lungs via the trachea and bronchi while the
thorax expands after exhalation: some of the “breath” (pneuma [frr. 101 – 108 Garofalo]) in
the lungs then moves via the “vein-like artery” (our pulmonary vein) into the left ventricle of
the heart, when this cavity expands after contraction; meanwhile the pneuma in the left
ventricle of the heart is “refined” or “thinned” into a “vital” (zo ̄tikon) pneuma, and thence
ERASISTRATOS (ASTROL.)