ON SCRIBONIUS LARGUS

JUDGMENTS.

JANUS CORNARIUS in the Dedicatory Epistle to Marcellus Burdegalensis, published by Aldus in the year 1547.

A decorative woodcut initial 'I' features intertwining vine and floral motifs.I have thought it necessary to point out that Scribonius Largus, who was recently published in Gaul for the first time and publicly credited by everyone as a Latin medical author, is contained entirely within the work of Marcellus, inserted in various places, from the egg to the apples original: "ab ovo... ad mala," a reference to the Roman expression for "from beginning to end.", as they say, so much so that Marcellus contains even the peroration of Scribonius in Chapter 35. This fact makes me doubt that Scribonius himself wrote in Latin. For when, in the books of Galen kata topous according to places/localized, medications are produced under the prefixed name of Scribonius, both by Andromachus and by Asclepiades, and the same medications are also read for the most part in the published Latin Scribonius, it may seem that Andromachus and Asclepiades translated these medications from the Latin author Scribonius the physician, since he lived a few years before them during the age of Tiberius and Claudius Caesar; and indeed, I see that this is generally believed by everyone. But truly, since most of those pharmaceuticals, which are read in Greek in Galen and are likewise held in Latin in Scribonius, differ both in the diversity of things and in the ratio of weights, and yet this occurs in such a way that this diversity seems to have arisen from a certain similarity of the names of the things themselves—for example, because kardamomon cress is read in the Greek of Galen as nasturtium, that is, kardamon cress, and in the Latin copy of Scribonius, and chalkanthē copper flower in Greek is held as the flower of copper, that is chalka anthos copper flower in Scribonius—I do not think it should be supposed that the Greeks Andromachus and Asclepiades translated such things poorly from the Latin work of Scribonius. But clearly, vice versa, some interpreter of later centuries translated the Greek Scribonius