Zopyrus

(Ζώπυρος).

1. A surgeon at Alexandria, the tutor of Apollonius Citiensis and Posidonius (Apoll. Cit. ap. Dietz, Schol. in Hippocr. el Gal. vol. i. p. 2) about the beginning of the first century B. C. He invented an antidote, which he recommended to Mithridates, king of Pontus, and wrote a letter to that king, begging to be allowed to test its efficacy on the person of a criminal (Galen, De Antid. 2.8, vol. xiv. p. 150). Another somewhat similar composition he prepared for one of the Ptolemies. (Cels. 5.23.2. p. 94.) Some of his medical formulae are quoted and mentioned by various ancient authors, viz. Caelius Aurelianus (De Morb. Chron. 2.14, 5.10. pp. 425, 592), Oribasius (Coll. Medic. 14.45, 50, 52, 56, 58, 61, 64, pp. 478, 481, 482, 483, 485, 487), Aetius (2.4. 57, 3.1. 31, 4.2. 74, pp. 417, 476, 732), Paulus Aegineta (7.11, p. 660), Marcellus Empiricus (De Medicam. 100.22, p. 342), and Nicolas Myrepsus (1.291, p. 420): and Pliny (Plin. Nat. 24.87), and Dioscorides (3.99. vol. i. p. 446) mention that a certain pliant was called zopyron, perhaps after his name. Nicarchus satirizes in one of his epigrams (Anthol. Gr. 11.124), a physician named Zopyrus, who appears to have lived in Egypt, and who may possibly be the person mentioned by Apollonius Citiensis and Celsus: in which case Nicarchus must have lived earlier than is commonly supposed. [NICARCHUS.]