heavens and is called a theologian. He probably belonged to the Ephesian Ofellius family.
He is possibly also identical with Laetus the author of lives of philosophers, and the transla-
tor of historiographies of Phoenicia by Theodotos, H and Mo ̄khos (Tatianos ad
Graec. 37; FGrHist 784). The “opening of heaven” mentioned in IG II^2 3816 could then be an
allusion to a cosmogony attributed to Mo ̄khos by D: Prim. Princ. 3 (p. 166.11– 20
W.-C.). Ofellius Laetus may also be the same person as the physician Ofillius/Ofilius con-
sulted by P regarding the benefits of saliva against snakes (1.ind.28; 28.38).
G.W. Bowersock, “Plutarch and the Sublime Hymn of Ofellius Laetus,” GRBS 23 (1982) 275–279; DPA
4 (2005) 79, B. Puech.
Jan Opsomer
Oinopide ̄s of Khios (450 – 420 BCE)
According to E (DK 41A7), the first to identify the region of the zodiacal circle and
the cycle of the Great Year, attributed to many others and plausibly adopted from Babylonian
astronomy. However, his particular innovation may have been to distinguish geometrically the
west/east revolution of the Sun on the ecliptic circle from the daily east/west motion of the
entire kosmos, the basic model of most subsequent Greek astronomy. As to the Great Year,
this was probably a terminological innovation to name a minimum integer of years and
synodic months. His Great Year was 59 years (A VH 10.7), and more dubiously a
solar year of 365 22/59 days (C 19). P credits him with two geometrical
problems, the construction of a perpendicular, which he called “gnomonwise,” according to
Proklos from the gnomon of a sundial (In Eucl. pp. 283–283 Fr.; cf. E, Elements 1.12),
and, according to Eude ̄mos (Proklos, ibid. p. 333), the construction of an angle equal to
a given rectilinear angle on a given line at a given point (cf. Euclid, Elements 1.23), both of
which exhibit the growing contemporary interest in geometrical constructions.
Oinopide ̄s regarded fire and air as the basic principles of the physical kosmos and
considered god the soul of the kosmos. This model suggests his account of the seasons.
When the Sun is below the horizon, it generates moisture below the earth and heats it; when
above, it heats the Earth. Hence, the water below is cold in summer and hot in winter.
Oinopide ̄s explained the rise of the Nile according to this model. The Milky Way, a previ-
ous path of the Sun, moved to its present route and changed direction in disgust at
Thyestes’ feast, a view akin to one A attributes to Pythagoreans: Meteor. 1.8
(345a16–18). It may be significant here that one doxographical tradition (DK 41A7) accuses
Oinopide ̄s of appropriating the discovery of the zodiac from P.
DK 41; DSB 10.179–182, Bulmer-Thomas; DPA 4 (2005) 761–767, I. Bodnár: revised with new
collection of fragments at http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Preprints/P327.PDF
Henry Mendell
Okianos (1000 – 1400 CE?)
A manuscript of the Iviron monastery on Mount Athos (4271.151) contains a collection of
medical recipes presented as the fifth book of an otherwise unknown Okianos (not Okeanos).
However, the recipes show an Arabic influence, thus suggesting the date-range, when this
type of formulary was typical.
Diels 2 (1907) 70.
Alain Touwaide
OKIANOS