SERAPION’S ASTER 183 
————eoOS-Sti“‘Sé;:™S 
2 AIR OR Sa OS 
XXVII. SERAPION 
Serapion the Younger,* of 1110 A. D., or after, one of the 
most important mediaeval authors to describe | Aster Atticus, was 
long our chief source for Arabic plant knowledge, and formed 
in his writings a connecting link between the Greek world of 
thought and that of the caliphate. His identity is shrouded in 
mystery, and to his date there is no clue within two centuries. 
He is not himself cited by any Arabic writer, or by any writer at 
all until the time when Simon Januensis translated him into bar- 
barous Latin, about 1292 A. D. He himself cites writers only to 
1106 A. D., and may have written shortly thereafter. His orig- 
inal text needs to be diligently searched for, and Meyer observes 
that no Arabic MS. of Serapion is known to exist in any library in 
Europe. 
This author with a Greek name but writing in Arabic and 
known to us only in Latin, has been thought from his modes of 
expression to have been a Christian residing among the Moors of 
Morocco or of Spain. He knew Dioscorides and Galen in Arabic 
translations, and united their remarks about plants with those of 
other Greeks t and of certain Arabs into one tissue. Hetreats of 
Sa Og a ee oR a ane 
*To be distinguished from Serapion the physician of Alexandria of the third cen- 
enh B. C., none of whose writings are extant ; and also (as Meyer remarks) to be dis- 
tinguished from the physician Joannes filius Serapionis, also called Janus Damascenus, 
and, in Arabic, Jah’ia Ibn Serafiun ; who is cited 785 A. D., and whose Greek writ- 
Ings were translated into Syriac not long after that time. To be distinguished also, 
and much more readily, from St, Serapion, the scholastic of the monastery of Arsinoe 
i upper Egypt, friend of St. Anthony, and who is known for his defence of Christ’s 
divinity, made at a council of 347 A. D. 
TIn the Zidser Serapionis aggregatus in medicinibus simplicibus, 26; 96; 50 
denominated in its Latin form, a translation made by imon Januensis about 1292 with 
the help of the Jew Abraham Tortuosiansis; printed first at Milan, 1473. Sprengel 
ge a Leyden edition of 1525; Meyer deemed the best edition to be that of Brunfels, 
Printed at Strasburg, 1531, together with Averroes, Rhasis, etc., by the title, ‘‘ Joan. 
Serapionis Arabis de simplicibus mediciniis opus praeclarum et ingens.”’ 
t Especially from a “‘ Liber de Agricultura’? of Qosthus, a Christian physician of 
Baalbec and of Armenia, who traveled in Greece and made translations from the Greek 
at Bagdad ; who lived perhaps 860 A. D.; whose name Qosthus is an Arabic form for 
Constantine ; and from whom Meyer gives quotations, Geschichte, 3: } 51-4, De 
Lactuca, etc. An Arabic translation of his works seems to have be 
te n translation by Sergius. | Meyer deems Serapion’s quotations from his Asceos, 
Barbios, Constantinus and Costes to have been all from this one Qosthus. 
