K, among Egyptian doctors. P A 7.13.4 (CMG 9.2, p. 324)
records his wound-ointment composed of calamine, burnt lees, frankincense, etc. (cf.
4.40.3, CMG 9.1, p. 360). G 20.6 credits him with a book on the dietary proper-
ties of fish.
RE 14.1 (1928) 1101–1102 (#1), F.E. Kind.
PTK
Manetho ̄n of Sebennutos (ca 280 – ca 260 BCE)
Egyptian priest who, under Ptolemy II Philadelphos, wrote a history of the Egyptian king-
doms (Aiguptiaka), from their “beginning” to the end of Persian rule, employing a 30–dyn-
asty scheme still in use (the work is lost). He also wrote Phusiologika (cf. Souda M-143), a
collection of doctrines cited by D L, pr.10, and E, PE 3.2.6–
3.3.10, for Egyptian cosmological beliefs (as in D S, 1.11.1, 1.11.5–6,
1.12.1–9, 1.13.1–2). He claimed sow’s milk caused skin diseases (A, NA 10.16), and
solar eclipses afflicted the head and stomach (I “L,” Mens. 4.87 [p. 136 Wu.]);
he or a homonym described the compounding of kuphi (P, Isis and Osiris 80 [383E-
384C], cf. Souda M-142; RE 12.1 [1924] 52–57, R. Ganschinietz).
OCD3 917, A.B. Lloyd and N. Hopkinson.
PTK
M. Manilius (10 – 30 CE)
Wrote Astronomica, a didactic poem in five books of Latin hexameters on astrology. Book 1
alludes (898) to Arminius’ defeat of Varus in 9 CE, and Book 2, with its praise of Capricorn
as A’ birth sign, must have been composed before Augustus’ death in 14 CE,
whereas Book 4 obliquely refers to Tiberius as the current emperor. Whether the poem
(aside from a long gap in Book 5) is complete is controverted.
The Astronomica is the earliest extant comprehensive exposition of the fundamentals
of Greco-Roman astrology, but unlike the slightly later astrological poems in Greek by
D and M, it seems to have sought a literary rather than a professional
audience; hence both the purple passages prefacing each book and the tour-de-force versifi-
cations of technical subjects, such as the table of rising times of zodiacal signs in 3.275–300.
Manilius writes as a determinist and Stoic, intermittently combating Epicurean teachings
in language that shows the imprint of L.
The first book treats the cosmological and astronomical underpinnings of astrology,
introducing the celestial sphere, the zodiac, and the other constellations. Books 2 through
4 chiefly concern the signs and further astrologically significant subdivisions of the zodiac,
and its interaction with the local horizon. The concluding book is primarily astronomical,
listing the constellations that rise simultaneously with each part of the zodiac. Surprisingly,
Manilius says little about the Sun, Moon, and planets, and their influences, addressed pos-
sibly in the lost section of Book 5.
Ed.: G.P. Goold, Manilius: Astronomica (Loeb 1977).
DSB 9.79–80, D.E. Pingree.
Alexander Jones
MANETHO ̄N OF SEBENNUTOS