a celebrated physician at Rome about the beginning of the Christian era. He was brother to
Euphorbus, the physician to king Juba, and was himself the physician to the emperor Augustus.
He was originally, according to Dio Cassius (53.30, p. 517). a freedman, an assertion which
some persons, who are over-jealous about the dignity of the medical profession among the
Romans, have controverted. When the emperor was seriously ill, and had been made worse by a
hot regimen and treatment, l.c. ; Schol. ad Horat.
Epist. 1.15. 3; Sneton. August. 59, 81; l.c.), but failed when he applied it to the case of M. Marcellus,
who died under his care a few months after the recovery of Augustus, l.c.) He is by some scholars supposed to be the
person to whom one of Virgil's epigrams is inscribed (Catal. 13); but it
is hardly likely, that, in a complimentary poem addressed to so eminent a physician, no
mention whatever should be made of his medical acquirements. He has also been supposed to be
the person described by Virgil in the Aeneid (12.390, &c.) under the name Iapis. (See Atterbury's Reflexions on the Character of Iapis,
&c.)
He wrote several pharmaceutical works (Galen, De Compos. Medicam. sec.
Gen. 2.1, vol. xiii. p. 463), which are frequently quoted by Galen (vol. xiii. pp. 47,
206, 263, 326, &c.), but of which nothing but a few fragments remain.
There are two short Latin medical works ascribed to Antonius Musa, but these are universally considered to be spurious. Neither of these works require any particular notice here.
Further information respecting his life and writings may be found in J. C. G. Ackermann's work,