Rufus of Ephesus, physician, lived in 2nd half of 1st cent. ce, studied at *Alexandria(1), visited *Caria and *Cos, and practised at *Ephesus, then a famous medical centre.From his numerous writings, mostly on *dietetics and *pathology, are preserved tracts on anatomical nomenclature, kidney diseases, satyriasis and gonorrhoea, gout, and jaundice, and possibly some of his case notes. His Medical questions is a remarkable guide to bedside *diagnosis in the Hippocratic manner (see hippocrates (2)).His Hippocratism, which earned him the respect of *Galen, was not slavish, for he was prepared to criticize and to extend the theories of Hippocrates. His pragmatism is clear in his descriptions of *anatomy, which he thought essential for good practice, and in his therapies for a variety of diseases and patients, in which he shows sympathy for often neglected groups such as slaves and the elderly. His influence was greater in the east than in the west, and many fragments of his works, e.g. On melancholy, survive only in Arabic intermediaries or paraphrases.
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Antony Spawforth
Saserna, name of the father and son whose lost work (early 1st cent. bce) on agriculture *Varro criticized for irrelevance. Saserna may be a non-Latin nomen (cf. the *Etruscan*Perperna (1)) or a cognomen, as with the Hostilii Sasernae, Caesarian senators and possible kinsmen (cf. names, personal, roman).
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Satyrus (3) (fl. c. 150
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William David Ross and V. Nutton
Scribonius Largus, Roman physician c. 1–50
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G. J. Toomer
Seleucus (5) of Seleuceia on the Red Sea, astronomer (c.150 bce), is described by *Strabo (16. 1. 6) as a Chaldaean (i.e. an adept of Babylonian *astrology). He supported the heliocentric theory of *Aristarchus (1), connecting it with his own explanation of the tides, which from his observations on the *Red Sea he perceived to be governed in part by the moon; he criticized the tidal theory of *Crates (3).
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Heinrich von Staden
Serapion (1) (or Sarapion) of *Alexandria (1) (fl. late-3rd cent. bce?), succeeded *Philinus of Cos as the leading Empiricist physician (see medicine, § 5.3). He claimed that experience is the sole viable foundation of medicine. Whether he ‘merely used’ analogical reasoning (ὁμοίου μετάβασις) or, like some Empiricists, also regarded it as a constitutive part of medicine, was a controversial issue already in antiquity. His extant drug prescriptions may belong to his best attested work, Therapeutics.
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G. J. Toomer and Alexander Jones
Serapion (2) of Antioch (1) wrote on geography (Cic. Att. 2. 6. 1), and said that the sun was 18 times the size of the earth. He has been erroneously identified with an astrologer Serapion of Alexandria, and with a much later Serapion who commented on *Ptolemy (4)'s Handy Tables.
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Serenus of Antinoeia in Egypt (4th cent.
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William David Ross and V. Nutton
Quintus Serenus (or Quinctius Serenius), author of a medical textbook in verse, Liber medicinalis, which may be dated between the end of the 2nd and 4th cents. It depends in the main on *Cornelius Celsus, the Medicina Plinii, and *Pliny (1)'s Natural History. The author may have been the poet Serenus Sammonicus (son of the other *Serenus Sammonicus), who was a friend of *Gordian I (b.
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Deborah N. Carlson
The Lake Nemi ships were two enormous, palatial houseboats built by the Roman emperor Caligula (r. 37–41
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John F. Lazenby
The Greek national epics focused on the siege of a city, but it took ten years to capture *Troy, even if, in the end, the ‘wooden horse’ was some kind of sophisticated siege device. The inability to take walled towns other than by treachery or blockade persisted into the historical period, despite a growing awareness of such techniques as the Persian siege-mound (cf. Hdt. 1. 162. 2) and undermining (Hdt. 5. 115. 2). *Pericles (1) is said to have been the first to use ‘siege-engines’ (mēchanai) at *Samos in 440/39 bce—they included ‘rams’ and ‘tortoises’ (i.e. sheds to protect undermining parties: Diod. Sic. 12. 28. 2–3). But despite the Athenian reputation for siegecraft (cf. Thuc. 1. 102. 2), they took three years to capture *Potidaea (432–429), and mainly relied on blockade, though in 430 they made some use of ‘siege-engines’, perhaps towers (Thuc. 2. 58. 1). Similarly, though the Spartans and their allies used a mound, battering-rams and even fire against *Plataea (Thuc.
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Jonathan Coulston
Early Roman besiegers employed blockade (obsidio) with methodical circumvallation, exploited surprise, and sometimes, especially after weakening the besiegers by obsidio, clinched matters by assault (oppugnatio), using ladders (scalae) and possibly ramps (aggeres) and rams (arietes). *Veii, blockaded 405–396 bce, apparently fell to assault by mine (cuniculus).From the 3rd cent. bce, the Romans assimilated and improved the machinery and techniques of Hellenistic siegecraft, and continued to use elaborate fieldworks. Accounts of the sieges of *Syracuse by M. *Claudius Marcellus (1), of *Piraeus by *Sulla, and those of the Gallic, Jewish, Sasanid, and Gothic wars are instructive, as are the surviving technical treatises. Equipment included bolt-shooting and stone-throwing *artillery, mobile towers, mechanical ladders, movable siege-sheds and rams, protective galleries, mobile screens, wall-borers, and hooks and crowbars for dislodging masonry (cf. *Vitruvius, *Vegetius).
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Frederick Norman Pryce, John Boardman, and Michael Vickers
While *gold could be easily obtained from alluvial deposits by washing, silver had to be extracted by regular mining processes. The *Phoenicians are said to have been the first to bring silver into general use; several of the silver objects mentioned in *Homer have Sidonian associations (see sidon). The main sources for classical Greece were Mt. *Pangaeus in *Thrace, *Lydia, *Colchis, *Bactria, Siphnos, and *Laurium which provided abundant supplies for *Athens. In the western Mediterranean *Spain was the most prolific source of supply, with *Sardinia, Gaul, and Britain as minor sources. The conquests of Spain and Asia made silver plentiful at Rome, where it had previously been rare.Silver was worked with a hammer into plates which were soldered or riveted together and then decorated with repoussé work (ἐμπαιστική), stamping, chasing, or engraving. Vases might be hammered or cast from a mould and were often adorned with reliefs (emblemata) let into the body of the vessel or crustae soldered upon the surface.
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Helen King
Under
*Trajan
and
*Hadrian
(
He wrote around twenty books, their subjects including a wide range of medical topics (e.g. On Hygiene, On Acute and Chronic Diseases), medical biography, commentaries and discussions of grammar and etymology. Those surviving in Greek are sections and fragments of On Signs of Fractures and On Bandages—these may both belong to the same lost work, On the Art of Surgery—and Gynaecology. The latter gives valuable information on *gynaecology and obstetrics in the Roman empire, and is divided into
Soranus shared the theoretical standpoint of the Methodists (see
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G. J. Toomer
Astronomer who advised Caesar in his reform of the Roman calendar (47
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G. J. Toomer
Sosigenes (2), *Peripatetic philosopher, teacher of *Alexander (14) of Aphrodisias, is dated to 164 ce by his observation of an annular eclipse. He wrote, besides works on *logic and *optics, on astronomy, criticizing the theory of homocentric spheres (see astronomy) and constructing an enormous period for the return of the heavenly bodies, called τέλειος ἐνιαυτός (Perfect Year).
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William David Ross
Sostratus, leading surgeon and zoologist, probably practised in *Alexandria (1) after 30 bce. His medical works dealt chiefly with *gynaecology. In zoology (see animals, knowledge about) he perhaps ranks next after *Aristotle among the Greeks.Περὶ ζῴων (‘On animals’) or Περὶ φύσεως ζῴων (‘On the nature of animals’); .
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Wilbur R. Knorr
Statics (in the phrase of *Pappus), is the branch of *mechanics dealing with the relations of weights in static equilibrium. The classic formulation of the principles is from *Archimedes (Plane Equilibria, bk. 1) in which he proves that the centre of gravity of two weights is the point dividing the line between their respective centres of gravity into segments inversely proportional to the weights (props. 6–7). This is apparently a reformulation in statical terms of the analogous principle of the lever, conceived dynamically in the Peripatetic Mechanica. Archimedes' definition of centre of gravity is not transmitted in his extant mechanical writings, but can be inferred from accounts by *Heron, Pappus, and Eutocius. In a lost work On balances (Peri zygön) Archimedes appears to have applied a version of the equilibrium principle toward the analysis of uneven-armed balances of the bismar type. In the Plane Equilibria he determines the barycentres of the parallelogram, triangle, trapezium, and parabolic segment.
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Antony Spawforth
Statilius Crito (Κρίτων), Titus, of Carian Heraclea-Salbace, doctor (archiatros) to Trajan, who designated him an *amicus Augusti, took him on one of his Dacian campaigns, the basis for his Getic History (FGrH 2. 3. 200), and made him an imperial procurator. Through Galen considerable fragments survive of his works Cosmetics and On the composition of drugs.
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Charles Joseph Singer and V. Nutton
bc In the Homeric poems (see homer) references to surgery are found mainly in the Iliad and concerned with the treatment of wounds. The wound is cleaned; blood squeezed or sucked out; edges united by bandaging; and an analgesic of dried herbs rubbed in and applied as an air-tight pad. Treatments resemble those recorded in early Egyptian medicine, although it is disputed whether this indicates a direct borrowing from Egyptian healers, whose reputation for surgery certainly had reached Asia Minor by 1000 bce. They were also known at the Persian court, where a Greek physician and surgeon, *Democedes of Croton, made a spectacular cure of King *Darius I.Surgery occupies an ambiguous place in the Hippocratic Corpus (see hippocrates(2); medicine, § 4 (c)). Not every medical practitioner wished to perform surgery, and some expressly left it to experts in military medicine, bone-setting, or cutting for the stone. Yet few ancient cities were large enough for such specializations to flourish, and most healers will have had of necessity to practise at least basic surgery. *Galen expected his average practitioner to be able to carry out at least some basic operations, and to know how to reduce the pain and post-operative complications of surgery.
