with Julian’s friend Saturninus Sallustius Secundus, he resembled Julian and I
intellectually. Saloustios treats divine attributes, myths and how to interpret them (1–4),
classes of gods, namely those living outside the world, those immanent in it, and the world
itself (5–7), the soul, providence and fate, ethics and politics (8–11), and the problem of evil,
said to come not from the gods, humans, or even daimones, but merely the absence of
goodness, as darkness is the absence of light (12). Saloustios finally discusses the soul’s fate
after death and endeavors to refute atheism (13–21), examining in particular the essence
and causes of atheism, under which heading he included also Christianity (18).
Ed.: A.D. Nock, Sallustius Concerning the Gods and the Universe (1926); G. Rochefort, Des Dieux et du Monde
(1960).
RE 1A.2 (1920) 1960–1967 (#37), K. Praechter; NP 10.1270 (#2), L. Brisson.
George Karamanolis
Salpe ̄ (of Lesbos?) (100 BCE – 77 CE)
Midwife (obstetrix), wrote on women’s diseases, listed as a foreign authority on drugs from
animals (P 1.ind.28 [with E and O T], 32). She agreed
with L in treating hudrophobia and fevers magically with wool from a black ram
(28.82), and offered other sympathetic remedies, e.g. restoring sensation to numbed limbs
(28.38), strengthening eyelids and ameliorating sunburn (28.66), an aphrodisiac (28.262).
With her tuna-based depilatory (32.135), she prepared enslaved boys for market by making
them appear less sexually mature and therefore more costly (cf. R E, On the
Sale of Slaves pp. 469–470 DR; Bain p. 267, n. 44). Athe ̄naios, Deipn. 7 (321f-322a), quotes
N S who mentions an homonymous Lesbian authoress of
Paignia, trifles or “playful tricks” of an alchemical-magical nature, perhaps the same writer
(Pliny’s obstetrix is anethnic); if so, she must predate 190 BCE, but the identification is doubt-
ful. Salpe ̄, otherwise unattested as a name (but cf. Salpis, of Rhe ̄gion, 1st c. CE: LGPN
3A.387), is a beautiful and supposedly aphrodisiac fish (K 1.18; Thompson 1947:
225; Bain p. 268).
D. Bain, “Salpe’s ΠΑΙΓΝΙΑ: Athenaeus 322A and Plin. H.N. 28.38,” CQ 48 (1998) 262–268.
GLIM
Samithra/Tanitros (?) (100 BCE – 40 CE)
A, in G CMLoc 9.6 (13.310 K.), records a hedrike ̄ (composed of lith-
arge, psimuthion, khalkitis, and misu in terebinth, olive oil, and water) under the
otherwise unattested name ΣΑΜΙΘΡΑ (LGPN, Pape-Benseler). Gale ̄n himself records that
the Askle ̄piadean ΤΑΝΙΤΡΟΣ, before D, very accurately described plants
but not the causes of their effects. Ta-nitr- might be Egyptian for “she of the god(dess)”
(Heuser 1919: 93–94, 109); another possible Egyptian parallel is the formation Psam(m)e/i-,
as in H 1.105, 2.2, etc. Perhaps emend to the typically feminine name
Psamatha/e ̄ (LGPN 2.481, 3A.481) or Saminthos (T 5.58). A Persian or Indian
connection, however, seems very unlikely.
Fabricius (1726) 390; Parker (1997) 145 (#52).
PTK
SAMITHRA/TANITROS