64 Greek Biology 



Translated into nearly every language from Anglo-Saxon and 

 Provencal to Persian and Hebrew, appearing both abstracted 

 and in full in innumerable beautifully illuminated manuscripts, 

 some of which are still among the fairest treasures of the great 

 national libraries, Dioscorides, the drug-monger, appealed to 

 scholasticized minds for centuries. The frequency with which 

 fragments of him are encountered in papyri shows how popular 

 his work was in Egypt in the third and fourth centuries. One 

 of the earliest datable Greek codices in existence is a glorious 

 volume of Dioscorides written in capitals, 1 thought worthy to 

 form a wedding gift for a lady who was the daughter of one 

 Roman emperor and the betrothed of a second. 2 The illustra- 

 tions of this fifth-century manuscript are a very valuable monu- 

 ment for the history of art and the chief adornment of what was 

 once the Royal Library at Vienna 3 (figs. 9-10). Illustrated 

 Latin translationsof Dioscorides were in use in the time of Cassio- 

 dorus (490-585). A work based on it, similarly illustrated, but 

 bearing the name of Apuleius, is among the most frequent of 

 mediaeval botanical documents and the earliest surviving speci- 

 men is almost contemporary with Cassiodorus himself. 4 After 



1 The manuscript in question is Med. Grace, i at what was the Royal 

 Library at Vienna. It is known as the Constantinopolitanus. After the war 

 it was taken to St. Mark's at Venice, but either has been or is about to 

 be restored to Vienna. A facsimile of this grand manuscript was published 

 by SijthofT, Ley den, 1906. 



2 The lady in question was Juliana Anicia, daughter of Anicius 

 Olybrius, Emperor of the West in 472, and his wife Placidia, daughter of 

 Valentinian III. Juliana was betrothed in 479 by the Eastern Emperor 

 Zeno to Theodoric the Ostrogoth, but was married, probably in 487 when 

 the manuscript was presented to her, to Areobindus, a high military officer 

 under the Byzantine Emperor Anastasius. 



3 The importance of this manuscript as well as the position of Dioscorides 

 as medical botanist is discussed by Charles Singer in an article ' Greek 

 Biology and the Rise of Modern Biology ', Studies in the History and 

 Method oj Science, vol. ii, Oxford, 1921. 



4 This manuscript is at the University Library at Leyden, where it is 

 numbered Voss Q 9. 



