Nicander


Nicander of Colophon was a Greek poet, physician, and grammarian.
The scattered biographical details in the ancient sources are so contradictory that it was sometimes assumed that there were two Hellenistic authors with the same name. He may have been born at Claros, near Colophon, where his family is said to have held the hereditary priesthood of Apollo. The chronological indications range from the middle of the 3rd century BC until the late 2nd century BC.
He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete. The longest, Theriaca, is a hexameter poem on the nature of venomous animals and the wounds which they inflict. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 630 hexameters treating of poisons and their antidotes. Nicander's main source for medical information was the physician Apollodorus of Egypt. Among his lost works, Heteroeumena was a mythological epic, used by Ovid in the Metamorphoses and epitomized by Antoninus Liberalis; Georgica, of which considerable fragments survive, was perhaps imitated by Virgil.
The works of Nicander were praised by Cicero, imitated by Ovid and Lucan, and frequently quoted by Pliny and other writers.

List of works

Surviving poems

Theriaca Alexipharmaca
  • ''Epigrams''

Lost poems

CimmeriiEuropiaGeorgica Heteroeumena HyacinthusHymnus ad Attalum Melissourgica OetaicaOphiacaSicelia
  • ''Thebaica''

Lost prose works

Aetolica Colophoniaca De Poetis Colophoniis
  • ''Glossae''