Medical Compositions

rendering the Greek, whether because it was not understood or because it was corrupted by similarity, in good faith—that is, propagating error from error, as I have also declared abundantly in my medical commentaries. Moreover, the very diction itself indicates that it is a translation, as it does not reflect the most Latin usage of that age. But even if Scribonius had produced this work in Latin, it does not seem that Pliny would have neglected to mention him. For it could not have been unknown to him, who later published his volume of Natural History under the Vespasian emperors. Therefore, I judge that Scribonius wrote entirely in Greek. And although he possesses the name of the Roman race and the most noble family of the Scribonii, so that from this he might appear to have written in Latin, yet such was the age that whoever among the Romans attempted and practiced medicine turned themselves to the Greeks: and this is what Pliny said:

Only this of the Greek arts does Roman gravity not yet practice in such great profit; very few of the citizens have reached for it, and those who did immediately became deserters to the Greeks.

And indeed, I did not think my judgment on the book of Scribonius should be omitted in this place, because Marcellus transcribed the whole book and inserted it into this work of his. And yet, although in the preface he makes mention of many Latin physicians from whom he collected his material, and likewise several times in the progress of the work, he never mentions Scribonius or his interpreter, but simply has the words of that book transcribed in the same order, so that I was for some time left in doubt as to which of them had excerpted from the other. But when I saw that the same things were read in Galen under the prefixed name of Scribonius that are contained in that book, I judged that the little book of Scribonius was clearly a translation, as I have said. And I suspect this was done around the age of Emperor Valentinian, when Latin culture had already declined. Therefore, from that translation, Marcellus excerpted a good part, with the name of the author suppressed—which perhaps even the interpreter of that book himself suppressed. And since in an obscure matter we cannot act otherwise than by suspicions and conjectures, I will add this as well. Siburius, whom Marcellus mentions in his preface,