Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
* Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...
writer on
pharmacology
Pharmacology is a branch of medicine, biology and pharmaceutical sciences concerned with drug or medication action, where a drug may be defined as any artificial, natural, or endogenous (from within the body) molecule which exerts a biochemi ...
during the reign of
Augustus
Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian, was the first Roman emperor; he reigned from 27 BC until his death in AD 14. He is known for being the founder of the Roman Pr ...
Pedanius Dioscorides
Pedanius Dioscorides ( grc-gre, Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης, ; 40–90 AD), “the father of pharmacognosy”, was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of '' De materia medica'' (, On Medical Material) —a 5-vo ...
and
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ...
, who mention his work, we can fix his time of writing to a period after
Juba II
Juba II or Juba of Mauretania (Latin: ''Gaius Iulius Iuba''; grc, Ἰóβας, Ἰóβα or ;Roller, Duane W. (2003) ''The World of Juba II and Kleopatra Selene'' "Routledge (UK)". pp. 1–3. . c. 48 BC – AD 23) was the son of Juba I and clien ...
, the king of
Mauretania
Mauretania (; ) is the Latin name for a region in the ancient Maghreb. It stretched from central present-day Algeria westwards to the Atlantic, covering northern present-day Morocco, and southward to the Atlas Mountains. Its native inhabitants, ...
, had written his treatise on
euphorbia
''Euphorbia'' is a very large and diverse genus of flowering plants, commonly called spurge, in the family Euphorbiaceae. "Euphorbia" is sometimes used in ordinary English to collectively refer to all members of Euphorbiaceae (in deference to t ...
, which Dioscorides and Pliny knew from
Niger
)
, official_languages =
, languages_type = National languagesNatural History'', in other words from late in the first century B.C. to the first half of the first century A.D.
Caelius Aurelianus
Caelius Aurelianus of Sicca in Numidia was a Greco-Roman physician and writer on medical topics. He is best known for his translation from Greek to Latin of a work by Soranus of Ephesus, ''On Acute and Chronic Diseases''. He probably flourished ...
(''acut.'' 3, 16, 134) allows us to narrow the possible date further, by naming him as a friend of
Tullius Bassus
The gens Tullia was a family at ancient Rome, with both patrician and plebeian branches. The first of this gens to obtain the consulship was Manius Tullius Longus in 500 BC, but the most illustrious of the family was Marcus Tullius Cicero, the ...
, who is cited by
Scribonius Largus
Scribonius Largus (c. 1-c. 50) was the court physician to the Roman emperor Claudius.
About 47 AD, at the request of Gaius Julius Callistus, the emperor's freedman, he drew up a list of 271 prescriptions (''Compositiones''), most of them his own ...
(121); since Scribonius wrote in the early to mid 40s, this should narrow his period to before 40 A.D.
His pharmacological work was a '' materia medica'' written in Greek and, according to Erotianus, had the title περὶ ὕλης ("On material", "On edicalsubstances"). Dioscorides calls him a disciple of Asclepiades of Bithynia and speaks slightingly of him and others of the same school for a lack of care in investigating the remedies they recommend. Despite this disrespect, it seems clear that Niger was a major source for Dioscorides as he was for Pliny. Many of Pliny's books contain long stretches with close similarities to Dioscorides; and all these books are ones for which Pliny names Niger as one of his sources. Against the old view that Pliny was using Dioscorides, Wellmann notes that sometimes Pliny, sometimes Dioscorides provides a more detailed treatment and that the two were near contemporaries. Unlike Dioscorides, Pliny writes of Niger with great respect as "diligentissimus medicinae" ("a very diligent medical writer"); and
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus ( el, Κλαύδιος Γαληνός; September 129 – c. AD 216), often Anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Greek physician, surgeon and philosopher in the Roman Empire. Considered to be on ...
also regarded him highly. The work discussed medical effects of both plants and animals; its relation to folk beliefs can be seen in his comments on the
salamander
Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All ten ...
:
Sextius venerem accendi cibo earum, si detractis interaneis et pedibus et capite in melle serventur, tradit negatque restingui ignem ab iis.
Sextius says that sexual desire is increased by eating them, if they are preserved in honey with the guts and head and feet removed, but denies that fire can be put out by them.
From an examination of the parallel passages in Dioscorides and Pliny, Wellmann believes that his sources will have included the botanist
Theophrastus
Theophrastus (; grc-gre, Θεόφραστος ; c. 371c. 287 BC), a Greek philosopher and the successor to Aristotle in the Peripatetic school. He was a native of Eresos in Lesbos.Gavin Hardy and Laurence Totelin, ''Ancient Botany'', Routle ...
and the writer on snakes Apollodorus.
Many think that Sextius Niger is also a philosopher, the son of Quintus Sextius and his successor as the head of a school of philosophy which flourished briefly around the time of Augustus, but had died out by the time of
Seneca the Younger
Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (; 65 AD), usually known mononymously as Seneca, was a Stoicism, Stoic philosopher of Ancient Rome, a statesman, dramatist, and, in one work, satirist, from the post-Augustan age of Latin literature.
Seneca was ...
. The school had some resemblances to Stoicism, and recommended vegetarianism; although the elder Sextius wrote in Greek, the philosophy had a Roman character.On the school in general, see Lana (1953), particularly 8-9 on the son, citing Claudius Mamertinus ''de statu animae'' 2, 8 (on the incorporeal nature of the soul) "Romanos etiam, eosdemque philosophos testes citemus, apud quos Sextius pater, Sextius filius propenso in exercitium sapientiae studio apprime philosophati sunt" ("let us cite as witnesses Romans too, and those philosophers, among whom Sextius the father and Sextius the son were excellent philosophers with an enthusiasm for the exercise of wisdom"). Earlier identifications of the younger Sextius and Sextius Niger: Wellmann (1889), 546-7; Deichgräber (1931), 971.
* Deichgräber, Karl, 1931, 'Sextius Niger' '' RE'' Suppl. V 971, 34-972, 24.
* Lana, I., 1953, 'Sextiorum Nova et Romani Roboris Secta' ''
RFIC RFIC is an abbreviation of radio-frequency integrated circuit. Applications for RFICs include radar and communications, although the term RFIC might be applied to any electrical integrated circuit operating in a frequency range suitable for wireless ...