‘BEIFANG’ IM LATEINISCHEN ORIBASIOS

Oribasius, active in the second half of the fourth century A.D. and Julian the Apostate’s personal physician, has left us two abridgements of his seventy-book Medical Collections, one (called Σύνοψις) addressed to his son Eustathius, a doctor like Oribasius himself, in nine books, and another for his dear friend Eunapius, the famous orator and author of the Lives of the Sophists. Both abridgements were translated into Latin before the end of antiquity, in the sixth century if not earlier. The four books Πρὸς Εὐνάπιον, also referred to as Euporista, and the Σύνοψις contain additional material from Latin sources like Celsus and Caelius Aurelianus, or from Greek authors, either translated ad hoc or already circulating in Latin versions. Sometimes, Oribasius’ text is replaced by that of his sources, Galen in the cases I wish to discuss. I will examine three examples (βαλαύστιον, melanteria, and ἄκορον) from book 2 of the Euporista listing drugs in the order of the Greek alphabet. This will throw some light on problems related to the Greek Oribasius and his source, Galen’s De simplicium medicamentorum facultatibus, as well as the Latin Oribasius, whose manuscripts precede our Greek witnesses usually by half a millennium.