(
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.
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 (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 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.
The longest of his poems that remains is named Biblioth. Botan.).
Nicander's de Hippocr. et
Plat. Decr. 2.8, vol. v. p. 275, de Locis Affect. 2.5, vol. viii.
p. 133, de Simpl. Aledicam. Temper. ac Facult. 9.2.10, 10.2.16, vol.
xii. pp. 204, 289, de Ther. ad Pis. cc. 9, 13, vol. xiv. pp. 239, 265,
Comment. in Hippocr. " De Artic." 3.38, vol. xviii. pt. i. p. 537),
Athenaeus (pp. 66, 312, 366, 649, &c.), and other ancient writers ; and Dioscorides,
Aetius, and other medical authors have made frequent use of his works. Plutarch, Diphilus
and others wrote commentaries on his "Theriaca" [DIPHILUS],
Marianus paraphrased it in iambic verse [MARIANUS], and Entecnius
wrote a paraphrase in prose of his two principal poems, which is still extant. On the
subject of his poetical merits the ancient writers were not well agreed; for though (as we
have seen) a writer in the Greek Anthology compliments Colophon for being the birth-place of
Homer and Nicander, and Cicero praises (de Orat. 1.16) the poetical
manner in which in his " Georgics" he treated a subject of which he was wholly ignorant,
Plutarch on the other hand (de Aud. Poet. 100.2, vol. i. p. 36, ed.
Tauchn.) says that the " Theriaca," like the poems of Empedocles, Parmenides, and Theognis,
have nothing in them of poetry but the metre. Modern critics have differed equally on this
point; but practically the judgment of posterity has been pronounced
with sufficient clearness, and his works are now scarcely ever read aspoems, but merely
constilted by those who are interested in points of zoological and medical antiquities:
--how opposite a fate to that which has befallen Virgil's Georgics ! In reference to his
style and language Bentley calls him, with great truth, "antiquarium, obsoleta et casca
verba studiose venantem, et vel sui saecnli lectoribus difficilem et obscurum." Cambridge Museum Criticumn, vol. i. p. 371.)
The following are the titles of Nicander's lost works, as collected by Fabricius Bibl. Gr. vol. iv. p. 348, Harles) :
Saturn.
5.21), Harpocration (Lex. s. v.
Metamorph. cc. 12, 35), and other writers. It was perhaps in reference to
this work that Didymus applied to Nicander the epithet " fabulosus" (Macrob. Saturn. 5.22.).
s. v.
Lex. s. v.third book, and the latter from the sixth.
Ther.).
Ther.
; comp. Suid. s. v.
The sixth book
Erot.
100.4), perhaps the same work as that quoted by the scholiast on the "Theriaca," with the
title
The
s. v.
Ther.).
Nicander's poems have generally been published together, but sometimes separately. They
were first published in Greek at the end of
Fabric. Bibl. Gr. vol. iv. p. 345, &c. ed. Harles; Haller, Biblioth, Botan. and Biblioth. Medic. Pract. ;
Sprengel, Hist. de la Méd.; Choulant, Handb. der
Bücherkunde für die Aeltere Medicin.