α. ξεῖνε, τί μὰν πεύθη; β. τίνες ἐν χθονὶ τοῖσδ᾿ ὑπὸ τύμβοις;
α. οὓς γλυκεροῦ φέγγους Ζώπυρος ἐστέρισεν·
Δᾶμις, ᾿Αριστοτέλης, Δημήτριος, ᾿Αρκεσίλαος,
Σώστρατος, οἴ τ᾿ ὀπίσω μέχρι Παραιτονίου.
κηρύκιον γὰρ ἔχων ξύλινον, καὶ πλαστὰ πέδιλα,
ὡς ῾Ερμῆς, κατάγει τοὺς θεραπευομένους.
The author of this epigram, Nicarchus, is by some modern writers assumed to have flourished at the beginning of the second century a.d.; but this late date is assigned to him solely on the strength of the occurrence in another of his epigrams (Anth. Pal. xi. 73, l. 6) of the word ξέστας, the accusative plural of ξέστης, sextarius. There seems to be no doubt but that this Greek name for the measure is Latin in origin, and it is thought to have reached the Greek world by way of Sicily. It occurs in the New Testament and in various writers, chiefly medical, from the first century a.d. onward. But it is also (according to Dindorf's Stephanus s.v.) employed in the remains of Heras, a Greek physician of repute, who practised at Rome before the time of Andromachus the elder, and who in consequence may be assigned to the first century b.c. Now Nicarchus is stated by Plutarch (Symp. iii. 6) to have been contemporary with a physician of the name of Zopyrus, doubtless the Zopyrus mentioned in the epigram set forth above; and Celsus (v. 23) mentions an antidote administered by a physician, Zopyrus, to one of the Ptolemies. Seeing that in the above epigram one of the dead patients is named Paraetonius, which is evidently derived from Paraetonium, the alternative name of the town near Alexandria that is also known as Ammonia, it seems probable that the Zopyrus of the epigram also practised in Egypt. Though Zopyrus was a common Asclepiad name, there is no ground for assuming the existence of two eminent Egyptian physicians so designated, except the use by Nicarchus of ξέστας. Ptolemy XII, the last adult reigning prince of his line, died in the year 47 b.c., and his predecessor, Ptolemy XI, in 51 b.c. It seems to me that, if it was possible for Heras to use ξέστης, it was no less possible for Nicarchus to do so and at the same time to be a contemporary of a Zopyrus who administered an antidote
