A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

the second of that name, and in some respects the most celebrated physician of ancient or modern times; for not only have his writings (or rather those which bear his name) been always held in the highest esteem, but his personal history (so far as it is known), and the literary criticism relating to his works, furnish so much matter for the consideration both of the scholar, the philologist, the philosopher, and the man of letters, that there are few authors of antiquity about whom so much has been written. Probably the readers of this work will care more for the literary than for the medical questions connected with Hippocrates; and accordingly (as it is quite impossible to discuss the whole subject fully in these pages) the strictly scientific portion of this article occupies less space and than the critical; and this arrangement in this place the writer is inclined to adopt the more readily, because, while there are many works which contain a good account of the scientific merits of the Hippocratic writings, he is not aware of one where the many literary problems arising from them have been at once fully discussed and satisfactorily determined. This task he is far from thinking that he has himself accomplished, but it is right to give this reason for treating the scientific part of the subject much less fully than he would have done had he been writing for a professed medical work

A parallel has more than once been drawn be tween "the Father of Medicine " and " the Father of Poetry ;"and, indeed, the resemblances between the two, both in their personal and literary history, are so evident, that they could hardly fail to strike any one who was even moderately familiar with classical and medical literature. With respect to their personal history, the greatest uncertainty exists, and our real knowledge is next to nothing ; although in the case of both personages, we have professed lives written by ancient authors, which, however, only tend to show still more plainly the ignorance that prevails on the subject. Accordingly, as might be expected, fable has been busy in sup plying the deficiencies of history, and was for a time fully believed; till at length a re-action fol lowed, and an unreasoning credulity was succeeded by an equally unreasonable scepticism, which reached its climax when it was boldly asserted that neither Homer nor Hippocrates had ever existed.

(See Houdart, Études sur Hippocrate, p. 560.) The few facts respecting him that may be considered as tolerably well ascertained may be told in few words. His father was Heracleides, who was also a physician, and belonged to the family of the Asclepiadae. According to Soranus (Vita Hippocr., in Hippocr. Opera, vol. iii.), he was the nineteenth in descent from Aesculapius, but John Tzetzes, who gives the genealogy of the family, makes him the seventeenth. His mother's name was Phaenarete, who was said to be descended from Hercules. Soranus, on the authority of an old writer who had composed a life of Hippocrates, states that he was born in the island of Cos, in the first year of the eightieth Olympiad, that is. B. C. 460; and this date is generally followed, for want of any more satisfactory information on the subject, though it agrees so ill with some of the anecdotes respecting him, that some persons suppose him to have been born about thirty years sooner. The exact day of his birth was known and celebrated in Cos with sacrifices on the 26th day of the month Agrianus, but it is unknown to what date in any other calendar this month corresponds. He was instructed in medical science by his father and by Herodicus, and is also said to have been a pupil of Gorgias of Leontini. He wrote, taught, and practised his profession at home; travelled in different parts of the continent of Greece; and died at Larissa in Thessaly. His age at the time of his death is uncertain, as it is stated by different ancient authors to have been eighty-five years, ninety, one hundred and four, and one hundred and nine. Mr. Clinton places his death B. C. 357, at the age of one hundred and four. He had two sons, Thessalus and Dracon, and a son-in-law, Polybus, all of whom followed the same profession, and who are supposed to have been the authors of some of the works in the Hippocratic Collection. Such are the few and scanty facts that can be in some degree depended on respecting the personal history of this celebrated man; but though we have not the means of writing an authentic detailed biography, we possess in these few facts, and in the hints and allusions contained in various ancient authors, sufficient data to enable us to appreciate the part he played, and the place he held among his contemporaries. We find that he enjoyed their esteem as a practitioner, writer, and professor; that he conferred on the ancient and illustrious family to which he belonged more honour than he derived from it; that he rendered the medical school of Cos, to which he was attached, superior to any which had preceded it or immediately followed it; and that his works, soon after their publication, were studid and quoted by Plato. (See Littre's Hippocr. vol. i. p. 43; and a review of that work (by the writer of this article) in the Brit. and For. Med. Rev. April, 1844, p. 459.)

Upon this slight foundation of historical truth has been built a vast superstructure of fabulous error; and it is curious to observe how all these tales receive a colouring from the times and countries in which they appear to have been fabricated, whether by his own countrymen before the Christian era, or by the Latin or Arabic writers of the middle ages. One of the stories told of him by his Greek biographers. which most modern critics are disposed to regard as fabulous, relates to his being sent for, together with Euryphon [EURYPHON], by Perdiccas II., king of Macedonia, and discovering, by certain external symptoms, that his sickness was occasioned by his having fallen in love with his father's concubine. Probably the strongest reason against the truth of this story is the fact that the time of the supposed cure is quite irreconcileable with the commonly received date of the birth of Hippocrates; though M. Littre, the latest and best editor of Hippocrates, while he rejects the story as spurious, finds no difficulty in the dates (vol. i. p. 38). Soranus, who tells the anecdote, says that the occurrence took place after the death of Alexander I., the father of Perdiccas; and we may reasonably presume that one or two years would be the longest interval that would elapse. The date of the death of Alexander is not exactly known, and depends upon the length of the reign of his son Perdiccas, who died B. C. 414. The longest period assigned to his reign is fortyone years, the shortest is twenty-three. This latter date would place his accession to the throne on his father's death, at B. C. 437, at which time Hippocrates would be only twenty-three years old, almost too young an age for him to have acquired so great celebrity as to be specially sent for to attend a foreign prince. However, the date of B. C. 437 is the less probable because it would not only extend the reign of his father Alexander to more than sixty years, but would also suppose him to have lived seventy years after a period at which he was already grown up to manhood. For these reasons Mr. Clinton (F. Hell. 2.222) agrees with Dodwell in supposing the longer periods assigned to his reign to be nearer the truth; and assumes the accession of Perdiccas to have fallen within B. C. 454, at which time Hippocrates was only six years old. This celebrated story has been told, with more or less variation, of Erasistratus and Avicenna, besides being interwoven in the romance of Heliodorus (Aethiop. iv. 7. p. 171), and the love-letters of Aristaenetus (Epist. 1.13). Galen also says that a similar circumstance happened to himself. (De Praenot. ad Epig. 100.6. vol. xiv. p. 630.) The story as applied to Avicenna seems to be most probably apocryphal (see Biogr. Dict. of the Usef. Knoul. Soc. vol. iv. p. 301); and with respect to the two other claimants, Hippocrates and Erasistratus, if it be true of either, the preponderance of historical testimony is decidedly in favour of the latter. [ERASISTRATUS.] Another old Greek fable relates to his being appointed librarian at Cos, and burning the books there (or, according to another version of the story, at Cnidos,) in order to conceal the use he had made of them in his own writings. This story is also told, with but little variation, of Avicenna, and is repeated of Hippocrates, with some characteristic embellish ments, in the European Legends of the Middle Ages. [ANDREAS.]

The other fables concerning Hippocrates are to be traced to the collection of Letters, &c. which go under his name, but which are universally rejected as spurious. The most celebrated of these relates to his supposed conduct during the plague of Athens, which he is said to have stopped by burning fires throughout the city, by suspending chaplets of flowers, and by the use of an antidote, the composition of which is preserved by Joannes Actuarius (De Meth. Med. v. 6. p. 264, ed. H. Steph.) Connected with this, is the pretended letter from Artaxerxes Longimanus, king of Persia, to Hippocrates,

inviting him by great offers to come to his assistance during a time of pestilence, and the refusal of Hippocrates, on the ground of his being the enemy of his country.

Another story, perhaps equally familiar to the readers of Burton's " Anatomy of Melancholy," contains the history of the supposed madness of Democritus, and his interview with Hippocrates, who had been summoned by his countrymen to come to his relief.

If we turn to the Arabic writers, we find "Bokrát" represented as living at Hems, and studying in a garden near Damascus, the situation of which was still pointed out in the time of Abu/lfaraj in the thirteenth century. (Abú-l-faraj, Hist. Dynast. p. 56; Anon. Arab. Philosoph. Bibl. apud Casiri, Biblioth. A rabico-Hisp. Escur. vol. i. p. 235.) They also tell a story of his pupils taking his portrait to a celebrated physiognomist named Philemon, in order to try his skill; and that upon his saying that it was the portrait of a lascivious old man (which they strenuously denied), Hippocrates said that he was right, for that he was so by nature, but that he had learned to overcome his amorous propensities. The confusion of names that occurs in this last anecdote the writer has never seen explained, though the difficulty admits of an easy and satisfactory solution. It will no doubt have brought to the reader's recollection the similar story told of Socrates by Cicero (Tusc. Disp. 4.37, De Fato, 100.5), and accordingly he will be quite prepared to hear that the Arabic writers have confounded the word Sokrát, with Bokrát, and have thus applied to Hippocrates an anecdote that in reality belongs to Socrates. The name of the physiognomist in Cicero is Zopyrus, which cannot have been corrupted into Philemon ; but when we remember that the Arabians have no P, and are therefore often obliged to express this letter by an F, it will probably appear not unlikely that either the writers, or their European translators, have confounded Philemon with Polemon. This conjecture is confirmed by the fact that Philemon is said by Abú-l-faraj to have written a work on Physiognomy, which is true of Polemon, whose treatise on that subject is still extant, whereas no person of the name of Philemon (as far as the writer is aware) is mentioned as a physiognomist by any Greek author. [*](* There is at this present time among the MSS. at Leyden a little Arabic treatise on Physiognomy which bears the name of Philemon, and which (as the writer has been informed by a gentleman who has compared the two works) bears a very great resemblance to the Greek treatise by Polemon. (See Catal. Biblioth. Lugdun. p. 461.1286.))The only objection to this conjecture is the anachronism of making Polemon a contemporary of Hippocrates or Socrates ; but this difficulty will not appear very great to any one who is familiar with the extreme ignorance and carelessness displayed by the Arabic writers on all points of Greek history and chronology.

It is, however, among the European storytellers of the middle ages that the name of "Ypocras" is most celebrated. In one story he is represented as visiting Rome during the reign of Augustus, and restoring to life the emperor's nephew, who was just dead; for which service Augustus erected a statue in his honour as to a divinity. A fair lady resolved to prove that this god was a mere mortal; and, accordingly, having made an assignation with him, she let down for him a basket from her window. When she had raised him half way, she left him suspended in the air all night, till he was found by the emperor in the morning, and thus became the laughing-stock of the court. Another story makes him professor of medicine in Rome, with a nephew of wondrous talents and medical skill, whom he despatched in his own stead to the king of Hungary, who had sent for him to heal his son. The young leech, by his marvellous skill, having discovered that the prince was not the king's own son, directed him to feed on "contrarius drink, contrarius mete, beves flesch, and drink the brotht," and thereby soon restored him to health. Upon his return home laden with presents, "Ypocras" became so jealous of his fame, that he murdered him, and afterwards "he let all his bokes berne." The vengeance of Heaven overtook him, and he died in dreadful torments, confessing his crime, and vainly calling on his murdered nephew for relief. (See Ellis, Spec. of Early Enyl. Metr. Roman. vol. iii. p. 39 ; Weber, Metr. Rom. of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Cent., &c., vol. iii. p. 41; Way, Fablliaux or Tales of the 12th and 13th Cent., &c. vol. ii. p. 173; Legrand d'Aussy, Fabliaux ou Contes, Fables et Romans du 12ème et du 13ème Siècles, tome i. p. 288; Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Esai sur les Fables Ind. §., p. 154, and Roman des Sept Sages, p. 26.)

[W.A.G]