Claudius Agathemerus

Tombstone, the doctor Claudius Agathemerus and his wife Myrtale, from Rome, about AD 100, Ashmolean Museum
For the geographer with this name, see Agathemerus.

Claudius Agathemerus (Ancient Greek: Κλαύδιος Ἀγαθήμερος) was an ancient Greek physician who lived in the 1st century. He was born in the Lacedaemon, and was a pupil of the philosopher Cornutus, in whose house he became acquainted with the poet Persius about 50 AD.[1] In the old editions of Suetonius he is called Agaternus, a mistake which was first corrected by Reinesius,[2] from the epitaph upon him and his wife, Myrtale, which is preserved in the Marmora Oxoniensia and the Greek Anthology.[3] The apparent anomaly of a Roman praenomen being given to a Greek may be accounted for by the fact which we learn from Suetonius,[4] that the Spartans were the hereditary clients of the gens Claudia.[5][6]

  1. ^ Pseudo-Sueton. vita Persii
  2. ^ Syntagma Inscript. Antiq. p. 610
  3. ^ vol iii. p. 381. § 224, ed. Tauclm.
  4. ^ Suetonius, Tiberius 6
  5. ^ C.G. Kühn, Additam. ad Elench. Medic. Vet. a J.A. Fabricio, in "Biblioth. Graeca" exhibit.
  6. ^ Greenhill, William Alexander (1867), "Agathemerus, Claudius", in Smith, William (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, vol. 1, Boston, p. 62, archived from the original on 2010-12-13, retrieved 2007-12-31{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)