Androcydes (physician)

Androcydes (or Androkydes, fl. 4th century BCE) was a Greek physician and writer at the time of Alexander the Great. According to Pliny,[1] he advised Alexander to moderate his drinking:

“ Androcydes, a man famous for his wisdom, wrote to Alexander the Great, with the view of putting a check on his intemperance: 'When you are about to take a drink of wine, O king!' said he, 'remember that you are about to drink the blood of the earth: hemlock is a poison to man, wine a poison to hemlock.'[2] And if Alexander had only followed this advice, he certainly would not have had to answer for slaying his friends in his drunken fits.[3] ”

Elsewhere, Androcydes is supposed to have recommended cabbage to counteract the effects of wine.[4] Some attempts have been made to identify this Androcydes with the Androcydes who wrote on Pythagoreanism,[5] as the advice regarding wine (bad) and cabbage (good)[6] may reflect Pythagorean dietary discipline.

Androcydes, if the same authority is meant, may not have confined himself to writing on medical topics. He is cited by Athenaeus[7] for an etymology of the Greek word kolax, "flatterer," which is taken by one wry prosopographer as evidence of his association with Alexander's court.[8]

References

  1. ↑ Historia naturalis 14.58.
  2. ↑ Implying that wine is an antidote to hemlock; but the meaning in context is obscure.
  3. ↑ Translation and note on hemlock by John Bostock (London 1855).
  4. ↑ Theophrastus, On Plants 4.16.6 (see Pliny, Historia naturalis 17.240 for similar advice), as cited by Waldemar Heckel, Who's Who in the Age of Alexander the Great (Blackwell, 2006), p. 289 online.
  5. ↑ Gillian Clark, Iamblichus: On the Pythagorean Life (Liverpool University Press, 1989), p. 64, note 145 online.
  6. ↑ Discussed in the course of Cato the Elder’s effusions on the virtues of cabbage, On Agriculture 157, Bill Thayer’s edition at LacusCurtius online.
  7. ↑ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 6.258b; in context, the speaker Clearchus sets out this etymology in order to contradict it.
  8. ↑ Waldemar Heckel, Who's Who in the Age of Alexander the Great (Blackwel, 2006), p. 28 online.