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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2024
This article suggests a new reading for Oribasius’ Libri ad Eunapium 3.13.4. Based on evidence from both Greek and Syriac sources, it argues that the variant contained in Oribasius’ Synopsis ad Eustathium should be adopted as the correct reading of the original.
I thank CQ's reader and editor for their illuminating comments, and the reader for kind assistance in checking the manuscript tradition.
1 If not otherwise indicated, the English translations are my own.
2 Although our passage in Raeder's edition is based on a single manuscript Marc. gr. 294 (late thirteenth century), the other surviving witnesses dating mostly in the sixteenth century seem to depend on the Venice manuscript and share the omission of μηλέας (e.g. Monac. gr. 72, f. 57r and Par. gr. 2177, f. 37r).
3 Gignoux, P., Un livre de pharmacopée en syriaque (Leuven, 2019), 61–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with a few corrections. The anonymous pharmacopeia contains parallels from pharmacological works of both Galen and Dioscorides: Lin, L., ‘Dioscorides and Galen in the Syriac tradition: a reconsideration of three passages about herbs in an anonymous Syriac pharmacological book’, Journal of Semitic Studies 68 (2023), 473–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 For the dependence of the Syriac pharmacology on the Greek tradition, see Kessel, G., ‘Syriac medicine’, in D. King (ed.), The Syriac World (London, 2019), 438–59Google Scholar, at 449–51.
5 The standard translation of μηλέα in Syriac is 
, as we can find in both Sergius of Rēš ͑ainā and Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq's translations; see respectively Merx, A., ‘Proben der syrischen Übersetzung von Galenus’ Schrift Über die einfachen Heilmittel’, ZDMG 39 (1885), 237–305Google Scholar, at 281 and Duval, R., Lexicon syriacum auctore Hassano bar Bahlule: voces syriacas graecasque cum glossis syriacis et arabicis complectens, 3 vols. (Paris, 1888–1901), 1071.12Google Scholar. See also Gignoux, P., Lexique des termes de la pharmacopée syriaque (Paris, 2011), 41Google Scholar; Seidel, U., ‘Studien zum Vokabular der Landwirtschaft im Syrischen II’, Altorientalistische Forschungen 16 (1989), 89–139Google Scholar, at 121; Smith, R. Payne, Thesaurus Syriacus, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1879–1901), 1238Google Scholar. For 
and its variant 
, see Gignoux (this n.), 24, 66; Seidel (this n.), 122.
6 Scribal errors occur often in the manuscripts of this Syriac pharmacopeia: Lin (n. 3).
7 Translated by Beck, L.Y. (transl.), Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarbus. De materia medica (Hildesheim, 2005), 84Google Scholar.
8 Beck (n. 7), 144.