Adamantius

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For the early Christian theologian sometimes called Origenes Adamantius, see Origen. For others with this or similar names, see Adamantios or Adeimantus.

Adamantius (Gr. Αδαμάντιος) was an ancient physician, bearing the title of Iatrosophista (ιατρικων λόγων σοφιστής; broadly, "professor of medicine").^[1] Little is known of his personal history, except that he was Jewish by birth, and that he was one of those who fled from Alexandria at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from that city by the Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria in 415 AD. He went to Constantinople, was persuaded to embrace Christianity, apparently by Archbishop Atticus of Constantinople, and then returned to Alexandria.^[2]

He is the author of a Greek treatise on physiognomy (φυσιογνωμονικά) in two books. It is still extant, and borrows in a great measure (as Adamantius himself confesses) from Polemon's work on the same subject. It is dedicated to "Constantius", who is supposed by Fabricius to be the same Constantius who married Placidia (i.e. Constantius III), the daughter of Theodosius the Great, and who reigned for seven months in conjunction with the Emperor Honorius.^[3] It was first published in Greek in Paris in 1540.

Another of his works, Περί Ανέμων (Lat. De Ventis), is quoted by the Scholiast to Hesiod, and an extract from it is given by Aëtius Amidenus.^[4] As of the late 19th century, it was said to be still in existence in manuscript in the Royal Library at Paris. Several of his medical prescriptions are preserved by Oribasius and Aëtius.^[5]

[edit] References

^ Socrates Scholasticus, Hist. Eccles. vii. 13
^ Socrates, l.c.
^ Fabricius, Biblioth. Graeca, vol. ii. p. 171, xiii. 34, ed. vet.
^ Aëtius Amidenus. tetrab. i. serm. 3, c. 163
^ Greenhill, William Alexander (1867), “Adamantius”, in Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. 1, Boston, MA, pp. 18