A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Εὔφορβος), physician to Juba II., king of Mauretania, about the end of the first century B. C., and brother to Antonius Musa, the physician to Augustus. [MUSA.] Pliny says (H. N. 25.38), that Juba gave the name of Euphorbia to a plant which he found growing on Mount Atlas in honour of his physician, and Galen mentions (de Compos. Medicam. sec. Locos. 9.4. vol. xiii. p. 271) a short treatise written by the king on the virtues of the plant. Salmasius tries to prove (Prolegom. ad Homon. Hyles Iatr. p. 4), that this story of Pliny is without foundation, and that the word was in use much earlier than the time of Juba, as it is mentioned by Meleager. (Carm. 1.37.) It does not, however, seem likely that Pliny would have been ignorant of a plant that was known to a poet who lived two hundred years before him; and besides, in the passage in question, the commonly received reading in the present day is not εὐφόρβης, but ἐκ φορβῆς.

[W.A.G]