A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

2. A physician of Tarentum (hence commonly called Tarentinus), a pupil of Mantias (Galen, De Compos. Medicam. sec. Gen. 2.1, vol. xiii. p. 462), who lived probably in the third or second century B. C., somewhat later than Apollonius the Empiric and Glaucias. (Cels. De Med. i. Praef. p. 5.) He belonged to the sect of the Empirici (Cels. l.c.; Galen, De Meth. Med. 2.7, vol. x. p. 142), and wrote some works on Materia Medica, which are very frequently quoted by Galen, but of which only a few fragments remain. Galen speaks of him in high terms of praise, saying that he was an author who could be entirely depended on, as he wrote in his works only what he had himself found from his own experience to be correct. (De Compos. Medicame. sec. Gen. 4.7, vol. xiii. p. 717.) He was also one of the first persons who wrote a commentary on all the works in the Hippocratic Collection. (Galen, Comment. in Hippocr. " De Humor." i. Prooem. 24, vol. xvi. pp. 1, 196.) He is several times quoted by Caelius Aurelianus and other ancient authors. A further account of his lost works, and his medical opinions so far as they can be found out, may be found in two essays by C. G. Kühn, inserted in the second volume of his Opuscula Academica Medica et Philologica, Lips. 2 vols. 8vo. 1827, 1828.