Nicander of Colophon (
Greek: Νίκανδρος ὁ Κολοφώνιος,
translit.Níkandros ho Kolophṓnios; fl. 2nd century BC),
Greekpoet,
physician and grammarian, was born at
Claros (Ahmetbeyli in modern Turkey), near
Colophon, where his family held the hereditary priesthood of
Apollo. He flourished under
Attalus III of Pergamum.[1]
He wrote a number of works both in prose and verse, of which two survive complete. The longest, Theriaca, is a
hexameter poem (958 lines) on the nature of venomous animals and the wounds which they inflict. The other, Alexipharmaca, consists of 630 hexameters treating of
poisons and their
antidotes.[1] Nicander's main source for medical information was the physician Apollodorus of Egypt.[a] Among his lost works, Heteroeumena was a mythological epic, used by
Ovid in the Metamorphoses and epitomized by
Antoninus Liberalis; Georgica,[1] of which considerable fragments survive, was perhaps imitated by
Virgil.[3]
The works of Nicander were praised by
Cicero (De oratore, i. 16), imitated by
Ovid and
Lucan, and frequently quoted by
Pliny and other writers[1] (e.g.,Tertullian in De Scorpiace, I, 1).
Theriaca et Alexipharmaca recensuit et emendavit, fragmenta collegit, commentationes addidit Otto Schneider. Accedunt scholia in Theriaca ex recensione Henrici Keil., scholia in Alexipharmaca ex recognitione Bussemakeri et R. Bentlei emedationes, Lipsiae sumptibus et typis B. G. Teubneri, 1856.
Poetae bucolici et didactici. Theocritus, Bion, Moschus, Nicander, Oppianus, Marcellus de piscibus, poeta de herbis, C. Fr. Ameis, F. S. Lehrs (ed.), Parisiis, editore Ambrosio Firmin Didot, 1862,
pp. 127-163.