Harpokratio ̄n (80 BCE – 80 CE)
A records, in G CMLoc 3.1 (12.629 K.), his remedy for purulent
ears comprising pomegranate blossom and peel, birthwort, copper, oak-gall, myrrh, frank-
incense, and alum, formed into trokhiskoi with must. A P. cites
Harpokratio ̄n’s Theodotion (cf. T) for flux and intense pain, drawing out humors,
without bloodletting: the collyrium is compounded of acacia juice, calamine, copper,
roasted and washed, antimony, aloe, saffron, myrrh, Indian buckthorn, castoreum,
opium, gum, and rainwater, administered with an egg (Gale ̄n, CMLoc 4.7 [12.754 K.]).
Martial’s physician Hermocraten ( perhaps a corruption of Harpokratio ̄n) caused death by
appearing in the hapless Andragoras’ dreams (6.53). The name, unattested before the 1st c.
CE, is rare in 2nd/3rd cc. CE. Compare the equally rare H and Harpokrate ̄s
(LGPN), all based on the Egyptian god “Harpokrate ̄s.”
RE 7.2 (1912) 2416 (#9), H. Gossen.
GLIM
Harpokratio ̄n of Alexandria (80 – 160 CE)
Wrote an occultic work in Greek compiling details of “natural properties” (viz. “powers”
of sympathies and antipathies) of birds, fish, plants, and stones. Fowden places
Harpokratio ̄n among H or quasi-Hermetic writers, and some notion of his lost
writings can be gained from traces of Harpokratio ̄n in the extant K (e.g. Cyranides,
1.pr.77 and 128 [ed. Kaimakis, pp. 25 and 28]). Cyranides claims Harpokratio ̄n discovered
and had translated an inscription “in Syrian letters” (Fowden, p. 88); the text is clearly
Hermetic, replete with pharmacology ( probably reflecting the welter of common folklore
and nomenclatures, cf. P and the Papyri Graecae Magicae). Tertullian, De corona 7.5,
quotes Harpokratio ̄n on deity-linked plants (how ivy is associated with Dionysus, whom
Harpokratio ̄n identifies with Osiris), thus providing a firm terminus ante quem. One notes the
overlapping of Harpokratio ̄n with T T (Boudreaux), but Reitzenstein
demonstrated that Harpokratio ̄n’s “Letter to Caesar Augustus” is a later production typical
of the genre in Roman Alexandria, perhaps a composite modeled on Thessalos’, a view
followed by most scholars since 1927 (Scarborough 1988: 29). West hypotheses an implaus-
ible connection to M N or even his contemporary the historian Ammianus
Marcellinus.
Ed.: P. Boudreaux in CCAG 8.3 (1912) 132–151 (vide comm. 131–132); D. Kaimakis, Die Kyraniden
(1976).
RE 7.2 (1912) 2416–2417 (#10), H. Gossen; R. Reitzenstein, Die Hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen, 3rd ed.
(1927) 127–131; RE 19.2 (1938) 1446–1456, F. Pfister [“Pflanzenaberglaube”]; West (1982);
G. Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (1986), esp. 87–91; John
Scarborough, “Hermetic and Related Texts in Classical Antiquity,” in I. Merkel and A.G. Debus,
edd., Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe (1988)
19 – 44, esp. 28–31.
John ScarboroughHARPOKRATIO ̄N OF ALEXANDRIA