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Search results for alpha,1026 in Adler number:
Headword:
*)/akrwn
Adler number: alpha,1026
Translated headword: Akron, Acron
Vetting Status: high
Translation: Of
Akragas;[1] physician, son of Xenon; he taught at
Athens contemporaneously with
Empedocles;[2] so he is older than
Hippocrates. He wrote
On Medicine in the Doric dialect, and
On Nutrition of the Healthy in one book. This man is also one of those who diagnosed certain respirations.
It was against him that
Empedocles made a mocking epigram: "'the lofty physician Akron of
Akragas, son of a lofty father, the lofty crag of his most lofty fatherland hides.' But some cite the second verse thus: 'a lofty tomb of the most lofty peak holds.' Some attribute this to
Simonides.[3]
*)/akrwn: *)akraganti=nos, i)atro\s, ui(o\s *ce/nwnos, e)sofi/steusen e)n tai=s *)aqh/nais a(/ma *)empedoklei=: e)/stin ou)=n presbu/teros *(ippokra/tous. e)/graye *peri\ i)atrikh=s *dwri/di diale/ktw|, *peri\ trofh=s u(gieinw=n bibli/on a#. e)/sti de\ kai\ ou(=tos tw=n tina pneu/mata shmeiwsame/nwn. ei)s tou=ton e)poi/hsen *)empedoklh=s twqastiko\n e)pi/gramma: a)/kron i)atro\n *)/akrwn', *)akraganti=non, patro\s a)/krou, kru/ptei krhmno\s a)/kros patri/dos a)krota/ths. tine\s de\ to\n deu/teron sti/xon ou(/tw profe/rontai: a)krota/ths korufh=s tu/mbos a)/kros kate/xei. tou=to/ tines *simwni/dou fasi\n ei)=nai.
Notes:
According to
Plutarch (
On Isis and Osiris 383C-D), Akron stopped the plague at
Athens in 430 BCE by setting a great fire to purify the air. The same accomplishment is elsewhere attributed to
Hippocrates. Pinault (below) shows that the story is probably fictional. Nevertheless, the idea that epidemics had been or could be stopped by fires entered the Roman and Byzantine medical tradition (Galen,
Aetius,
Oribasius). See also
epsilon 1136. The empiricists considered Akron the founder of their school of medicine (ps.-Galen 14.638). See Pinault 44-60.
[1] In
Sicily; present-day Agrigento.
[2] Also from Acragas. See generally
epsilon 1002,
epsilon 1003.
[3]
Diogenes Laertius 8.65 (from his
Life of Empedocles).
J. R. Pinault, Hippocratic Lives and Legends, Studies in Ancient Medicine 4, Leiden 1992.
Keywords: biography; chronology; dialects, grammar, and etymology; geography; historiography; history; medicine; philosophy; poetry; science and technology
Translated by: Catharine Roth on 27 May 2000@16:45:04.
Vetted by:
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