“From Antyllus and Heliodorus” The problem of double quotations in the medical compendia by Oribasius and Aetius

Abstract

Numerous fragments of ancient Greek medical writings otherwise lost have been transmitted in the Byzantine medical compendia by Oribasius (4th cent. AD), Aetius (6th cent. AD) and Paul of Aegina (7th cent. AD). Sometimes, in the compendia by Oribasius and Aetius one single chapter heading does not only indicate one, but two sources, using formulae like “from Antyllus and Heliodorus”. As these double quotations have been misunderstood in the past, this paper attempts to examine their exact meaning by considering all available data, e. g. scholia with author indications (the so-called R2 scholia in Oribasius), parallel Arabic versions of Greek texts and stylistic criteria. The result attained by this process is that in the Greek medical compendia double quotation formulae always indicate that the following chapter is a cento from different passages of the authors mentioned. This does not mean that the same text occurs in both authors or that there is a textual dependency between them, as it has been claimed in the past. Since, in general, changes of authors in such compound passages are either not completely marked by scholia or are not indicated at all, they can only be traced by means of a stylistic analysis and/or parallel (e. g. Arabic) versions of the text in question. The different approaches of identification are comprehensively discussed in the present paper. A comparison between parallel passages in Oribasius’ Medical Collections, the Eclogae and Aetius suggests that the R2scholia to Oribasius’ Medical Collections must have been written prior to Aetius’ lifetime (first half of the 6th century AD).