Collyrium
κολλύριον
Collyrium (κολλύριον, diminutive of κολλύρα, a roll; hence):
1. In medical language, a tent, pessary or suppositary, made of medicinal substances and inserted into the orifices of the body, such as the nostrils or the anus or into an ulcer. Thus Celsus (5.28): collyrium fieri debet altera parte tenuius, altera parte plenius; idque ea parte qua tenuius est antecedente, demitti oportet in fistulam.
(Cf. Scrib. Largus, Comp. Med. 142; Col. 6.30; Cael. Aurel. Acut. 2.12; Hipp. 609, 44.)
2. A liquid eye-salve (Hor. Sat. 1.5, 30; Cels. 7.7, 4; Veget. 3.16, 248, 18, 2; Arr. Epict. 2.21, 20, 3.21, 21). Many instructions for the composition of these medicaments may be found in Marcell. Empir. viii.
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.