Bolos_of_Mendes

Bolus of Mendes

Bolus of Mendes (Greek: Βῶλος ὁ Μενδήσιος, Bōlos ho Mendēsios; fl. 3rd century BC) was a philosopher, a neopythagorean writer of works of esoterica and medicine, in Ptolemaic Egypt.[1] Both the Suda,[2] and a later work mistakenly attributed to Eudokia MakrembolitissaἸωνιά; Bed of Violets,[3] probably a 16th-century forgery[4] by Constantine Paleocappa—write of a Pythagorean philosopher of Mendes in Egypt. He is described as one who wrote on marvels, potent remedies, and astronomical phenomena.[5] The Suda, however, also describes a separate Bolus who was a philosopher of the school of Democritus,[6] who wrote Inquiry, and Medical Art, containing "natural medical remedies from some resources of nature." However, from a passage of Columella,[7] it appears that Bolos of Mendes and this other Bolus, follower of Democritus, were one and the same person.[5] He seems to have lived following the time of Theophrastus, whose work Historia Plantarum ('On Plants'), Bolus appears to have known.[8]


Notes

  1. Paul Kroh, ed. Lexikon der Antiken Autoren, (Stuttgart) 1972:111; Max Wellmann in Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 3.1, (Stuttgart) 1897:676–677, s.v. "Bolos 3".
  2. Suda, Bolus, β482; cf. Eudocia
  3. Public Domain Smith, William, ed. (1870), "Eudocia Augusta Macrembolis", Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. 2, pp. 80–81 via Tufts
  4. Dorandi, Tiziano (2013). "Introduction". Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Cambridge University Press. pp. 7–9. ISBN 978-0521886819.
  5. Suda, Bolus, β481
  6. Columella, vii. 5; cf. Stobaeus, Serm. 51
  7. Stephanus of Byzantium Apsynthus; Scholium ad Nicand. Theriac. 764

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