(Νίκανδρος), literary.
1. The author of two Greek poems that are still extant, and of several others that have been lost. His father's name was Damnaeus (Eudoc. Viol. ap. Villoison's Anecd. Gr. vol. i. p. 308, and an anonymous Greek life of Nicander), though Suidas (probably by some oversight) calls him Xenophanes (s. v. Νίκανδρος), and he was one of the hereditary priests of Apollo Clarius [CLARIUS], to which dignity Nicander himself succeeded (comp. Nicand. Allexiph. 5.11). He was born at the small town of Claros, near Colophon in Ionia, as he intimates himself Therer. in fine), whence he is frequently called Colophonius (Cic. de Orat. 1.16; Suid. &c.), and there is a Greek epigram (Anthol. Gr. 9.213) complimenting Colophon on being the birth-place of Homer and Nicander. He was said by some ancient authors to have been born in Aetolia, but this probably arose from his having passed some time in that country, and written a work on its natural and political history. He has been supposed to have been a contemporary of Aratus and Callimachus in the third century B. C., but it is more probable that he lived nearly a century later, in the reign of Ptolemy V. (or Epiphanes), who died B. C. 181, and that the Attalus to whom he dedicated one of his lost poems was the last king of Pergamus of that name, who began to reign B. C. 138 (Anon. Gr. Life of Nicander, and Anon. Gr. Life of Aratus). If these two dates are correct, Nicander may be supposed to have been in reputation for about fifty years cir. B. C. 185-135 (see Clinton's Fasti Hell. vol. iii.). He was a physician and grammarian. as well as a poet, and his writings seem to have been rather numerous and on various subjects.