Serenus Sammonicus

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Serenus Sammonicus
Bornc. 2nd century AD
Tutor

Quintus Serenus Sammonicus (died 212) was a Roman savant and tutor to

Geta and Caracalla who became fatally involved in politics; he was also author of a didactic medical poem, Liber Medicinalis ("The Medical Book"; also known as De medicina praecepta saluberrima),[1]
probably incomplete in the extant form, as well as many lost works.

Works and influence

Serenus Sammonicus advocated the use of abracadabra as a literary amulet against fever

Serenus was "a typical man of letters in an Age of Archaism

Maurus Servius Honoratus and Arnobius[5] both employed his erudition to their own ends.[6] He possessed a library of 60,000 volumes.[7]

His most quoted work was Res reconditae, in at least five books, of which fragments only are preserved in quotations. The surviving work, De medicina praecepta, in 1115

Mithridates VI of Pontus
.

It was much used in the Middle Ages, and is of value for the ancient history of popular medicine. The syntax and metre are remarkably correct. According to the unreliable

Augustan History[8] he was a famous physician and polymath, who was put to death with other friends of Geta in December 212, at a banquet to which he had been invited by Caracalla shortly after the assassination of his brother.[9]

The first printed edition of De medicina praecepta was edited by Giovanni Sulpizio da Veroli, before 1484.[10]

See also

References

  1. ISBN 978-3-11-052712-4
  2. ^ For the antiquarianism, see R. Marache, La critique littéraire de langue latine et le développement du goût archaïsant au IIe siècle de notre ère (1951).
  3. ^ Edward Champlin, "Serenus Sammonicus" Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 85 (1981:189-212) p. 193.
  4. ^ "vir saeculo suo doctus". quoted by Edward Champlin 1981, p. 189.
  5. ^ Arnobius repeats the derivation of the placename Capitolium from an ancient tomb there of one Olus Vulcentanus, of whom the head was recovered, as Caput Oli (noted by Champlin 1981:193, who remarks, p. 194, "One other characteristic distinguishes Serenus Sammonicus: he is exceptionally silly.").
  6. ^ Champlin 1981:289.
  7. Augustan History by Ronald Syme
    , Emperors and Biography: Studies in the Historia Augusta. (Oxford, 1971:10, 184).
  8. ^ "A source which immediately engenders caution in the reader," as Champlin remarks.
  9. ^ Champlin 1981:289.
  10. ^ Further editions include that by Johann Christian Gottlieb Ackermann (Leipzig, 1786), and E. Behrens, in Poetae Latini minores, iii.

Sources

  • August Baur, Quaestiones Sammoniceae (Giessen, 1886)
  • Martin Schanz, Geschichte der römischen Literatur, iii. (1896)
  • Teuffel, History of Roman Literature (Eng. trans., 1900), 374, 4, and 383.
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