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POLYBUS, NOT THE SON-IN-LAW OF HIPPOCRATES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2026

David Leith
David Leith*
Affiliation:
University of Exeter
*
d.b.leith@exeter.ac.uk
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Abstract

Hippocrates is traditionally believed to have had a son-in-law and pupil named Polybus, who, thanks to Aristotle’s direct attribution, is also often regarded as the author of the surviving ‘Hippocratic’ treatise On the Nature of the Human Being (Nat. Hom.), the source of the canonical theory of the four humours. This article accepts that Polybus was indeed the author of On the Nature of the Human Being, but aims to show that his status as Hippocrates’ son-in-law is a Hellenistic invention, inspired by the conflicting attribution of the treatise to Hippocrates once it had become part of the Hippocratic Corpus. This also allows a re-dating of On the Nature of the Human Being to the mid fifth century, so that both Polybus and his four-humour theory likely predate Hippocrates’ period of activity.

Keywords

HippocratesPolybusOn the Nature of the Human Beingtheory of four humoursGalenancient medicine

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , First View , pp. 1 - 17
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

INTRODUCTION

Little concrete is known about the life and career of the historical individual Hippocrates of Cos. Most of the biographical information we have about him, from ancient ‘lives’ and various kinds of epistolary and other texts, is now regarded as basically unreliable, being composed and elaborated long after his death.Footnote 1 Examples of such presumed inventions include his studies with the sophist Gorgias and the philosopher Democritus, his patriotic refusal to serve the Persian king Artaxerxes, or his diagnosis of the Macedonian king Perdiccas II as suffering from lovesickness. One detail, however, that is generally accepted as a historical fact is that he had a son-in-law named Polybus.Footnote 2 This is sometimes stated in scholarship more cautiously and obliquely (as what our sources report), but most of the time, when Polybus comes to be mentioned, he is identified straightforwardly with the label ‘Hippocrates’ son-in-law’. Polybus is also therefore sometimes assumed to be from the island of Cos, though no surviving ancient source ever gives his ethnic. Additionally, this close relationship between the two figures is often taken as important evidence for the development of a medical ‘school of Cos’, with its own succession of masters, and further historical implications are sometimes drawn.Footnote 3 There is now a general willingness among scholars to admit that Polybus, Hippocrates’ son-in-law, was the author of the surviving Hippocratic treatise On the Nature of the Human Being (Nat. Hom.), based on evidence from Aristotle, though this is not always accepted.Footnote 4

This article aims to show that Polybus was not in fact Hippocrates’ son-in-law, and that this is just another of the inventions that characterize the Hippocratic biographical material in general. The main reason for doubting it is the fact that fabrication of the son-in-law relationship is an established motif in other biographical traditions that is used in precisely parallel situations: namely where a well-known text is attributed by different sources to two distinct authors and, in the absence of any reliable knowledge that could explain the discrepancy, a son-in-law relationship is postulated in order to reconcile the competing claims. Homeric biography is the key comparison here. This conclusion has the further consequence that we have no reason to believe that Polybus, whoever he actually was, had anything to do with Hippocrates, or Cos, at all. Moreover, it also follows that the canonical theory of the four humours, which is expounded only in On the Nature of the Human Being, is not to be associated with Hippocrates either, or with any Hippocratic ‘school’ that he is supposed to have founded.

The overall unreliability of the Hippocratic biographical material should already lead us to expect precisely this sort of invention concerning Hippocrates’ family members. The fact that the report that Polybus was Hippocrates’ son-in-law has not generally been questioned in Hippocratic scholarship is itself rather surprising. Mansfeld has made a suggestion which anticipates my view, but he has not elaborated on it as far as I am aware.Footnote 5 Smith also expressed serious doubts, but his scepticism was comprehensive, doubting the attributions of On the Nature of the Human Being to Polybus as well, and taking the appearance of the name ‘Polybus’ in both Aristotle and the biographical tradition as a mere coincidence.Footnote 6 However, it is anything but a coincidence, and in fact explains why and how Polybus was woven into the later narratives about Hippocrates’ life and heroic medical career in the first place.

Although Polybus must be viewed as a more shadowy figure than has been assumed, we should nevertheless accept that he was indeed the author of On the Nature of the Human Being as Aristotle tells us. This text is the only one in the Hippocratic Corpus which we can confidently attribute to a named individual. It was a single, unified monograph that could lay claim to discrete authorship, and Aristotle knew it in the form in which we now have it.Footnote 7 These conclusions therefore open up opportunities to revisit the treatise afresh, freed from the interpretative shackles of its assumed links with Hippocrates, and I shall argue at the end of this article that it should be assigned to the mid fifth century, decades earlier than the present consensus.

I have no clear view yet concerning the ancient reports that Polybus was author of the Hippocratic treatise Eight Months’ Child as well, which is a distinct issue deserving separate study.Footnote 8

POLYBUS IN HIPPOCRATIC BIOGRAPHY

Polybus crops up in the Hippocratic biographical tradition in various places. Seven passages from Galen identify him as Hippocrates’ pupil (μαθητής), and there is no doubt that he is a doctor.Footnote 9 Besides Galen, the Brussels Life of Hippocrates lists Polybus among his pupils, as does a medical text preserved in the Codex Bambergensis L.III.8 (Med.I).Footnote 10 The other surviving Hippocratic Lives do not mention him: the Life of Hippocrates according to Soranus (VHSS), the Suda entry based on Hesychius of Miletus and the Life recorded by John Tzetzes.Footnote 11 The VHSS does observe, however, that Hippocrates had many pupils, but that his sons Thessalus and Draco were the most distinguished.Footnote 12

Two testimonia provide the detail that Polybus was Hippocrates’ son-in-law. The first, from the so-called Presbeutikos logos, is also the earliest source to mention Polybus as part of Hippocrates’ circle.Footnote 13 This text, which was grouped with the Hippocratic Corpus, purports to be an ambassadorial speech delivered by Hippocrates’ son Thessalus before the Athenian Assembly, asking the Athenians to desist from an imminent attack on his native island Cos (the dramatic date is somewhere around 411). To win them over, he relates four services that members of his family, the Coan Asclepiads, performed for Greece in general and for Athens in particular. Polybus is referred to as Hippocrates’ son-in-law and pupil, sent out along with other sons and pupils to help in saving the Greeks from a deadly pestilence (Pres. 7 [152.11–15 Jouanna], transl. Smith, n. 1 [1990]):

And (Hippocrates) sent Polybus, his son-in-law and my (sc. Thessalus’) brother-in-law (Πόλυβον δὲ τὸν τὴν θυγατέρα ἔχοντα, ἐμὴν δὲ ἀδελφεήν), along with others of his students to go travel various waterways and highways of different regions so that he could help as many as possible.

A terminus ante quem for the Presbeutikos is established by a reference to it in the preface to Erotian’s Hippocratic glossary, written under the reign of Nero (a.d. 54–68).Footnote 14 I have argued recently that it must postdate the early formation of the Hippocratic Corpus in Alexandria in the third century, and so likely belongs to the second or first century b.c.Footnote 15

We also have Galen, who describes Polybus as Hippocrates’ son-in-law on one occasion, at the end of his treatise Difficulties in Breathing (3.13 [7.960 K.]):Footnote 16

But since the (sc. books) by Thessalus his son and those by Polybus his son-in-law (τὰ Πολύβου τοῦ γαμβροῦ) belong to Hippocrates’ art, and since those that seem to be by Euryphon, though they are transmitted amongst the works of Hippocrates, are not far off these, if I ever have the time I shall add a fourth book explaining what was said on the subject of difficult breathing in the remaining books that are ascribed to Hippocrates.

So for the Presbeutikos and for Galen, which together represent almost all the ancient source material on Polybus’ life, he is clearly both a son-in-law and a pupil.Footnote 17 He has a special status among Hippocrates’ students, being the only pupil, apart from Hippocrates’ sons Thessalus and Draco, to be given a name in the main biographical tradition.Footnote 18 Hence the son-in-law detail is central to his identity, elevating him above the other pupils and giving him a prominence in the tradition in the first place. The Presbeutikos is the only surviving pre-Roman source, and it goes out of its way to record that he was married to Hippocrates’ daughter.

There is conflict in the tradition, however, in connection with Polybus’ whereabouts. The Presbeutikos has him travelling round Greece with the other sons and pupils, but Galen elsewhere insists that, unlike Hippocrates’ son Thessalus, who visited King Archelaus of Macedonia, Polybus stayed behind on Cos in a teaching capacity, as Hippocrates’ chosen successor.Footnote 19 Galen seems to be referring to a similar version of the story found in the Presbeutikos: as will be discussed further below, the Presbeutikos has Hippocrates saving Greece from the plague by sending his sons and pupils, including Polybus, to various cities, and Thessalus does indeed visit the Macedonian kings, as Galen says, and other places too. But contrary to the Presbeutikos, Galen states here that Polybus was required to stay on Cos. There are conflicting details, then, within the biographical material on Polybus and his relationship with Hippocrates’ family.

ARISTOTLE ON POLYBUS

As noted, a crucial further witness is Aristotle, who knew Polybus as the author of the ‘Hippocratic’ medical treatise we are familiar with as On the Nature of the Human Being. There are two key testimonia. The first is in Aristotle’s History of Animals Book 3, where he quotes an extensive passage on the anatomy of the blood vessels from what we know as chapter 11 of the treatise, and says that its author is Polybus: ‘This is what Syennesis (of Cyprus) and Diogenes (of Apollonia) have said, while Polybus has spoken as follows: …’.Footnote 20 The fairly extensive passage that Aristotle then quotes fills 27 Bekker lines (512b13–513a7). This corresponds to about the first three quarters of the full blood vessels description that takes up our Nat. Hom. 11 (that is, lines 6.58.1–60.9 Littré = pages 192.15–196.5 Jouanna). There are certain minor discrepancies between the texts, but they are superficial, and easily accounted for as accidents of their respective textual histories.

A slight complicating factor is that the passage that Aristotle attributes to Polybus is also found in another ‘Hippocratic’ text, namely in chapter 9 of On the Nature of Bones.Footnote 21 However, this text is clearly a later compilation of anatomical excerpts that probably did not exist in that form in Aristotle’s day.Footnote 22 In fact, chapter 8 of On the Natures of Bones contains the description of blood vessels that Aristotle attributes to the physician Syennesis of Cyprus in Hist. an. 3.3 (see above), and its chapter 10 corresponds to the account of the blood vessels found in the ‘Hippocratic’ Epidemics 2.Footnote 23 On the Nature of Bones can therefore be disregarded for present purposes.

The second Aristotelian reference to Polybus concerns a different section of On the Nature of the Human Being, namely chapters 3 and 4. We have indirect evidence for this second Aristotelian reference via the so-called Anonymus Londinensis papyrus.Footnote 24 Its content falls into three main sections, of which the second contains a doxographical survey on the causes of disease, citing more than nineteen fifth- and fourth-century medical and philosophical authorities.Footnote 25 Kenyon had observed that the doxographical source used by the Anonymus in this part of the text went back to the early Peripatos and was related to a Peripatetic medical doxography known to Galen under the titles Medical Collection and Menoneia.Footnote 26 The Anonymus himself states explicitly on several occasions that it is Aristotle who is his source for the various medical doxai.Footnote 27 The relevant entry on Polybus is as follows in Manetti’s new edition (Anon. Lond. col. xix 1–18 [pages 39–40 Manetti]):Footnote 28

Polybus says that our bodies [are not generated] from a single [element, but rather from a plurality], which have the same nature—[namely from the moist, the dry], the cold and the hot. (He says) that these [are not separate], but themselves blended [in a balanced way], and that when one overpowers another they produce [diseases]. Secondly, [he says] that our bodies’ mixture [is from blood], phlegm, [yellow bile] and black bile. From … these or one of them … change or in the same … mixing together according to nature … separated [in the] body … diseases occur. Disease is caused both in the places out of which (these constituents) are separated and in the places into which they are transferred.

Manetti’s careful supplementation has restored continuous sense to most of the passage. But it is already clear from the text that survives on the papyrus that it is a close summary of On the Nature of the Human Being chapters 3 and 4. The first part of the papyrus entry (col. xix 1–8) is based especially on Nat. Hom. 3, and the next part (col. xix 8–18), introduced by the Anonymus with ‘Secondly’, is derived from Nat. Hom. 4.Footnote 29 The fact that the gaps in the papyrus can so readily be restored based on this text is no doubt an additional corroboration of the identification of its source text as On the Nature of the Human Being, but the identification itself does not rest on the restoration.Footnote 30

These Aristotelian sources unfortunately give us no more information on the background or birthplace of Polybus. But they reveal that chapters 3, 4 and 11 of our On the Nature of the Human Being were part of a single treatise that Aristotle knew as Polybus’ work. Nevertheless, due to Galen, there has long been a belief that On the Nature of the Human Being is a chimeric amalgam of unconnected excerpts brought together from different sources. However, although Galen’s analysis has historically been influential, right up to the present day, it is a red herring, as Jouanna has shown: On the Nature of the Human Being, although it covers different topics and often with abrupt switches, is a cohesive and interconnected unit, and it has always been transmitted as such.Footnote 31 Galen’s arguments for its varied authorship are inspired by his desire to attribute some parts but not others to the great medical authority of Hippocrates. In particular, anatomical knowledge was fundamental to Galen’s conception of the medical art, and he was unwilling to countenance the idea that his hero Hippocrates might have been inexpert in this area. Hippocrates was by no means recognized as an anatomical authority in Galen’s day, however. In fact, Galen devoted a whole treatise, On Hippocrates’ Anatomy (unfortunately now lost), to exonerating him of the charge of ignorance in this field.Footnote 32 But Galen also believed that the four-humour theory set out at the beginning of On the Nature of the Human Being was ‘as it were the foundation of the whole art of Hippocrates’, and therefore obviously the work of Hippocrates himself.Footnote 33 Accordingly, the gross anatomical inaccuracies in the description of the blood vessels in Nat. Hom. 11 (the passage partially quoted by Aristotle) would have directly undermined his claims for Hippocrates’ anatomical expertise, if this chapter were also accepted as his work. This is one of the principal reasons why Galen developed the idea that the work was a composite, with different sections authored by different individuals, so that the section containing the substandard anatomical material could be expelled as a spurious addition. In his view the early chapters are by the great Hippocrates, whereas the section including the poor anatomy was a worthless accretion likely by a malicious forger.Footnote 34 Given Galen’s authority as a source for ancient medicine, this idea has been extremely influential, but there is no objective basis for it, and its basic motivation is the prejudice that the great Hippocrates could not have been wrong.Footnote 35 But whatever one makes of this, it remains the case that Aristotle’s references are to passages that fell within Galen’s authentic and spurious sections, so there is no question of Aristotle’s having engaged with a shorter version of the text. (And Aristotle’s discussion in Hist. an. 3.3 shows that the blood vessels description in Nat. Hom. 11 was fully in line with the state of anatomical knowledge in the fifth century, and similar in broad terms to the parallel descriptions of Syennesis of Cyprus and Diogenes of Apollonia.)

To sum up, then, within Aristotle’s circle in the mid fourth century, the whole treatise On the Nature of the Human Being was recognized as the work of a physician named Polybus. There is also no doubt that, when it comes to the medical authors of the fifth and early fourth centuries, Aristotle is far more reliable than any sources that date to within or after the third century, when the Hippocratic Corpus initially began to be assembled in Alexandria.Footnote 36 So we should accept this attribution ourselves, as indeed most scholars are prepared to do now: the author of On the Nature of the Human Being was Polybus. However, the treatise ended up later becoming part of the Hippocratic Corpus, that is, the group of medical texts that came to be attributed to Hippocrates of Cos. This generated a conflict of attribution, and it is just this conflict, I suggest, that motivated the fabrication of the story of Polybus as Hippocrates’ son-in-law.

THE SON-IN-LAW MOTIF

Studies on Polybus have paid insufficient attention to the fact that the son-in-law relationship was an established means of reconciling conflicting claims of authorship within ancient biographical traditions. This is most clearly exemplified by ancient approaches to epic poetry, which in many ways present comparable patterns of inconsistency, confusion and invention to those we find associated with the Hippocratic Corpus.Footnote 37

The son-in-law motif crops up repeatedly in cases where a famous poem was attributed to two distinct authors. One example is a poem from the epic cycle, the Capture of Oechalia, which was known as the work both of Homer and of Creophylus of Samos. In the biographies, Creophylus is found as a close associate of Homer, sometimes merely as a host during Homer’s travels,Footnote 38 but also specifically as his son-in-law. The Suda entry, for example, derived from Hesychius of Miletus, records the following (κ 2376, transl. West [Loeb]):Footnote 39

Creophylus son of Astycles, from Chios or Samos, epic poet. Some relate that he was Homer’s son-in-law (Ὁμήρου γαμβρόν), while others say that he was just Homer’s friend, and that after giving Homer hospitality he received from him the poem The Capture of Oechalia.

Likewise, another poem from the epic cycle, the Cypria, was attributed both to Homer and to Stasinus of Cyprus, and the story goes that Homer gave the poem to Stasinus in place of a dowry when he gave his daughter to him in marriage.Footnote 40 As Photius (Bibl. 319a 34, transl. West [Loeb]) relates:

(Proclus) also speaks of some poetry called Cypria, and of how some attribute it to Stasinus of Cyprus, while some give the author’s name as Hegesinus of Salamis, and others say that Homer wrote it and gave it to Stasinus in consideration of his daughter (δοῦναι δὲ ὑπὲρ τῆς θυγατρὸς Στασίνῳ), and that because of where he came from the work was called Cypria.

Similarly Aelian (VH 9.15 [= Pindar fr. 265 S–M], transl. West [Loeb]):Footnote 41

This too is said in addition, that when Homer had no means of giving his daughter in marriage, he gave her the epic Cypria to have as her dowry; and Pindar agrees on this.

The key point is that both cases are exactly parallel to the Polybus scenario: some sources attribute a given work to a lesser known author (Creophylus and Stasinus/Polybus), which is confronted by another tradition assigning it to a venerated master (Homer/Hippocrates). To reconcile the apparent contradiction, a close relationship is posited between the two putative authors which can allow both attributions to be true, but in different senses. The Stasinus story in particular allows us to see exactly how the son-in-law motif is intended to function in achieving this reconciliation. One of the main attractions of the scenario seems to be that it sidesteps any hint of theft or plagiarism. Thus the lesser known figure associates his name with the text, but does so with the blessing of the famous master and true author, since it is essentially a gift.Footnote 42 It will be noted too that we find the same sorts of fluctuations in different versions of these stories: just as Creophylus is according to some sources merely Homer’s host, and sometimes his son-in-law, so too Polybus is sometimes Hippocrates’ son-in-law, sometimes merely his pupil (and sometimes an itinerant doctor, sometimes staying behind on Cos). This further confirms the sense that the pupil version is just a less vivid and elaborate variation on the son-in-law motif: only the son-in-law version offers a real motivation for the gift of the text, but the transmission of medical knowledge involved also already implies a teacher-pupil relationship.Footnote 43

Other family relationships are imagined between literary figures in their ancient biographies. Thus Hesiod came to have a surprising number of famous sons who were poets, including Stesichorus and Terpander.Footnote 44 It is not just Archaic poets either: the comic poet Alexis becomes Menander’s uncle, for example.Footnote 45 Yet other familial relationships of this sort have nothing obvious to do with competing claims over authorship of individual poems or plays. Stesichorus and Menander retain their own clear-cut authorial ownership, with those relationships seeming to have more to do with explaining various sorts of influence. This difference serves to underscore how closely tied the son-in-law motif is to that specific issue of contested authorship.Footnote 46

Given the widely available evidence from Aristotle that the author of On the Nature of the Human Being was someone named Polybus, and the later inclusion of that treatise within the Hippocratic Corpus, it is clear that ancient scholars will have been presented with just the same conflict as in the case of the Cypria and the Capture of Oechalia. In light of this established use of the son-in-law motif in exactly the same context, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the story of Polybus as Hippocrates’ son-in-law is simply another piece of biographical fiction. We have scarcely more reason to believe it than that Homer married his daughters to Stasinus and Creophylus. Indeed, since the general biographical material on Hippocrates is regarded by most scholars as a Hellenistic fabrication, it should have been regarded as deeply suspect in the first place.

However, we can also infer from this that there was no important connection of any kind between Polybus and Hippocrates: it was only the fact that the treatise On the Nature of the Human Being later became associated with the Hippocratic Corpus that any connection was posited in the first place. There is no other evidence for any sort of link. Parallels and doctrinal agreements that have been identified between On the Nature of the Human Being and other treatises of the Hippocratic Corpus remain inconclusive as regards the establishment of direct lines of influence between their authors, but in any case it is only through circular reasoning that such links could be taken to establish a connection between Polybus and Hippocrates, given that we do not know which treatises were written by the latter.Footnote 47

The Anonymus Londinensis papyrus also provides clear positive evidence for the absence of any doctrinal connection between the two doctors. In Aristotle’s doxographical schema recorded on the papyrus, there are two broad categories of theory on the cause of disease, namely those which appeal to residues (περιττώματα), and those which appeal to elements.Footnote 48 But Hippocrates is placed firmly in the residues camp, while Polybus belongs to the elements camp.Footnote 49 Aristotle evidently understood that the medical theories of Polybus and of Hippocrates were fundamentally different, according to his twofold categorization of all pathological theories. Given all these considerations, it is safe to conclude that Polybus was not part of Hippocrates’ circle, nor indeed from Cos, as is sometimes imagined.

ALEXANDRIAN SCHOLARSHIP ON THE HIPPOCRATIC CORPUS

Ancient approaches to the authorship of individual treatises within the Hippocratic Corpus, then, can be usefully compared with the literary, especially Homeric, biographies which likewise grappled with the issue of multiple attributions. But the question of where and when the son-in-law motif first came to be applied to Polybus arises next. As we have seen, the earliest extant source to name Polybus as Hippocrates’ son-in-law is the Presbeutikos. If the identification of Polybus as Hippocrates’ son-in-law was an invention motivated by conflicting attributions of On the Nature of the Human Being, then, as noted above, two conditions must have been in place: (1) Hippocrates must have gained a particular kind of authority that led to false attributions to him of medical texts such as On the Nature of the Human Being; and (2) there must have been knowledge of sources such as Aristotle’s writings naming Polybus as the author of On the Nature of the Human Being (Hist. an. and the Medical Collection, and possibly other sources now lost).

Scholarship in Alexandria in particular provides a crucial link in which these strands converge. All our evidence points to third-century Alexandria as the critical context in which a significant number of old medical texts written in Ionic dialect came to be attributed falsely to Hippocrates.Footnote 50 An early version of the Hippocratic Corpus in Alexandria seems by far the most plausible context for the initial attribution of On the Nature of the Human Being to Hippocrates: as we have seen, it was certainly not so attributed within the Peripatos, as Aristotle’s Hist. an. and the Anonymus Londinensis papyrus show. Moreover, reconstructing biographical material concerning earlier authors from the surviving evidence was a key task of Alexandrian scholarship.Footnote 51 Given the level of erudition, and curiosity, that would be required to connect these various dots, it seems likeliest to have been an Alexandrian scholarly source that made the original claim that linked Polybus with Hippocrates, itself responding to the newly collected Hippocratic Corpus, but also with knowledge of Aristotle’s writings (and possibly others’). One might well think of Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257–180), who took over as head of the Alexandrian Library c. 194: he not only made an Epitome of Aristotle’s History of Animals, but his Glossary was also influential on contemporary scholarly work on the Hippocratic Corpus.Footnote 52 Aristophanes’ predecessor as head librarian, Eratosthenes of Cyrene (c. 285–194), is also said to have written on Hippocrates’ genealogy.Footnote 53 At this time, too, in Alexandria, Ptolemy IV Philopator’s court physician Andreas of Carystus, who died in 219, was claiming that Hippocrates’ reasons for leaving Cos were to do with his having set fire to the archive in Cnidus.Footnote 54 (Note, too, the personal hostilities between these two intellectuals, with Eratosthenes at one point reportedly calling Andreas a βιβλιαίγισθος, ‘a literary Aegisthus’.)Footnote 55 Hippocratic biographical speculation was evidently rife in Alexandria at exactly this time. There is no reason to think that the Presbeutikos itself was the origin of the story of Polybus’ relationship to Hippocrates; in fact, since Galen is our only other source for Polybus’ being Hippocrates’ son-in-law, yet contradicts the Presbeutikos in locating Polybus back on Cos while the other students and sons were sent round Greece, we might infer that this tradition was fairly fluid and likely existed in multiple versions during the Hellenistic period. The Presbeutikos is the earliest testimony to Polybus’ status as Hippocrates’ son-in-law, and it must have been composed sufficiently later than the earliest formation of the Corpus to draw on this scholarly work on Hippocratic texts: after the late third century at the very least, we might suppose, and likely a good deal later.

Moreover, the Presbeutikos is itself an instructive example of just this kind of biographical inference based on the texts that found their way into the Hippocratic Corpus. The speech outlines various benefactions historically performed by the Coan Asclepiads. As noted earlier, among these is Hippocrates’ protection of Greece from a plague threatening from the barbarian lands of the Illyrians and Paeonians, in response to which he sends his sons and pupils, among them Polybus, to the various Greek poleis in order to deliver the bespoke cures he has devised (Pres. 7). These cures are said to vary depending on the different environmental conditions found in different parts of Greece. The speech goes into a certain amount of detail about the different routes taken by the various pupils, especially the sons Thessalus and Draco. These routes, however, correspond directly to the place names given in Books 2 and 4–7 of the ‘Hippocratic’ Epidemics.Footnote 56 Specifically, Draco’s itinerary corresponds to the poleis named in Books 2, 4 and 6, while Thessalus’ tracks those found in books 5 and 7. It is likely, too, that the detail, unnecessary to the narrative, that Hippocrates’ cures would vary according to place was inspired by Airs, Waters, Places. So the composer of the Presbeutikos must have been responding to these works, especially the Epidemics, as a unified group that had by his time become attributed to Hippocrates, since it is certain that the seven books of the Epidemics were originally the work of multiple individuals and separated from each other by many decades. Lane Fox has recently set out strong reasons for dating Epidemics 1 and 3, which certainly belong together, to the early 460s, and this has been accepted, though for different reasons, by Harris.Footnote 57 There is a longstanding consensus, again based on internal evidence, that Books 2, 4 and 6 belong together and date to the last decade of the fifth century, and Books 5 and 7 seem to be drawing on an earlier, lost work composed between c. 360 and 350. Footnote 58 So these various texts were thought to offer clues that could be used to reconstruct Hippocrates’ life, under the (mistaken) assumption that they all reflected the activities of Hippocrates and his immediate circle. It is no accident, then, that Polybus appears as Hippocrates’ son-in-law in a text such as the Presbeutikos. All of this belongs to the same general endeavour to reconstruct Hippocrates’ biography based on the group of texts wrongly attributed to him in Alexandria in the third century, and evidently in the absence of other reliable information. At root, the re-invention of Polybus as Hippocrates’ son-in-law is a response to the formation of the Hippocratic Corpus.

ON THE NATURE OF THE HUMAN BEING

The upshot of this is that the real Polybus, known to Aristotle as the author of On the Nature of the Human Being, has no meaningful connection with Hippocrates of Cos. The only link is the accidental fact that Polybus’ treatise ended up within the early Hippocratic Corpus in Alexandria, just like so many others that Hippocrates of Cos did not write and had nothing to do with. As noted above, too, the evidence actually tells us that Aristotle saw Polybus’ medical theory as fundamentally different from Hippocrates’. According to the Aristotelian doxography preserved by the Anonymus Londinensis, there are two types of theory on the cause of disease, those that appeal to residues (περιττώματα), and those that appeal to elements: Hippocrates appealed to residues, while Polybus appealed to elements. This division doubtless relies on a fair amount of Aristotelian theory itself, but the point is that he read both authors and came to the conclusion that they were as different from each other as any of the medical theories he was engaging with were.Footnote 59 So there is no reason to believe, and good reason to disbelieve, that Hippocrates had anything to do with the canonical theory of the four humours, which is peculiar to On the Nature of the Human Being.

Nor do we have reason to believe that Polybus had ever visited Cos, and he may well never have heard of Hippocrates. This seems to me a far from negative conclusion. Polybus must be dragged from Hippocrates’ shadow, and approached as a thinker in his own right.Footnote 60 This is certainly not the place to engage in a reassessment of Polybus’ On the Nature of the Human Being, but some preliminary remarks may be made, on the basic issue of the treatise’s date. Jacques Jouanna has provided the most extensive discussion, concluding that the years 410–400 are most likely, and he is generally followed in this.Footnote 61 That would be consistent with Polybus’ having been Hippocrates’ son-in-law and pupil, given the traditional dates of Hippocrates’ life from 460 to c. 370: it would leave enough time for Polybus to be taught by Hippocrates, marry his daughter, take over the ‘school of Cos’ and write the treatise. But once we exclude the external evidence alleging Polybus’ links to a Hippocratic or Coan ‘school’, the internal evidence quite clearly points to an earlier period.

The most striking piece of internal evidence is its explicit reference to the philosopher Melissus of Samos. This comes in the first chapter of the treatise, but the allusion is brief and enigmatic, noting merely that his opponents, by pressing their conflicting material monist theses, serve only to ‘validate the argument of Melissus’.Footnote 62 Polybus expects his readers to be able to grasp the reference easily, implying that Melissus was a live authority at the time. Melissus’ treatise On Nature or On What-Is argued for a version of Parmenides’ monism,Footnote 63 and Polybus insinuates that squabbles amongst material monists risk strengthening support for an Eleatic monist position.Footnote 64 The key dateable event in Melissus’ life was his command of a Samian fleet which was victorious over Pericles’ in a battle fought in 441 (Plut. Per. 26). Stesimbrotus of Thasos, writing in the 420s, noted that Themistocles had been interested in Melissus’ teachings, which will have been during Themistocles’ exile in Magnesia in the late 460s (Plut. Them. 2). Plutarch thinks this chronology unlikely, diagnosing a confusion between Themistocles and Pericles, but this is implausible, and Melissus is generally thought to have been about the same age as Anaxagoras, who was born c. 500.Footnote 65

While Melissus is the only authority mentioned by name in On the Nature of the Human Being, its opening chapters consist of a polemic directed primarily against material monists of various sorts, both philosophers and doctors. It is clear that these are the authorities deemed most worthy of his criticism, with Melissus brought in only as part of Polybus’ polemic against them. Chapter 1 explicitly criticizes contemporary philosophers who claim that the material principle of the human being is a single element, either air, or water, or fire, or earth, while chapter 2 targets doctors who claim that the single material principle is either blood, or bile, or phlegm. Not all of these positions can be confidently linked to known authorities, but several can, as Jouanna has set out in his commentary to the treatise.Footnote 66 However, not one of these belongs to the last decades of the fifth century.

Among the philosophers, the most significant upholder of air as the material principle of the human being will have been Diogenes of Apollonia.Footnote 67 He was apparently a younger contemporary of Anaxagoras (b. 500/499): Diogenes Laertius says that he lived at the same time as Anaxagoras, while Simplicius, drawing on Theophrastus, describes him as almost the youngest who taught concerning the principle of the cosmos.Footnote 68 His views seem to be referred to in Aristophanes’ Clouds, produced in 423.Footnote 69 His floruit is normally placed around the mid fifth century.

Jouanna suggests Hippo of Croton as one of Polybus’ authorities who advocated water,Footnote 70 which is plausible, though it would involve a certain amount of distortion of Hippo’s real views, since he probably spoke deliberately of ‘the moist’; but such a distortion seems to have been introduced early, and it may well be that Polybus was also guilty of it.Footnote 71 Like Polybus, Hippo also has an entry in the Anonymus Londinensis, where he is said to have based his pathology on the changes undergone by moisture deriving from digestive processes.Footnote 72 His dates are again difficult to pin down, but his views on the nature of the sky were made fun of by the comic poet Cratinus (519–422) in his Panoptai, thought to date to the later 430s.Footnote 73 If this is a period when his ideas had filtered through to Athenian popular culture, we can be sure that his impact among philosophers and doctors had begun earlier. His floruit is again normally dated to the mid fifth century.Footnote 74

Individuals who claimed fire as the principle are not safely identifiable from this period, and Galen notes that no ancient authority could be found who had opted for earth.Footnote 75

Among the doctors, only those who claimed blood as the constituent of our bodies can be associated with a specific name. A likely candidate is Thrasymachus of Sardis, who, according to the Anonymus Londinensis again, believed that blood is the basic cause of disease and changes into bile, phlegm or putrefied matter under the influence of heat or cold, though it is not clear that he identified blood as the body’s ultimate constituent.Footnote 76 However, we know almost nothing else about him, including his dates. We have no probable candidates for the theory that the single basic constituent of humans is bile or phlegm.Footnote 77

Polybus was evidently writing in a period in which various material monists, whose identities can be only partially recovered, were prominent and live authorities. But Polybus himself was also drawing on contemporary pluralist physiologies: his mention of the four elements air, fire, earth and water, and his own theory of the constitution of the human from four humours characterized by the qualities hot, cold, wet and dry, point at least to an awareness of Empedocles, as Jouanna again affirms, though Polybus’ own pluralist humoralism is quite distinct.Footnote 78 Empedocles’ life is more securely dateable between c. 495 and c. 435.Footnote 79

These five authorities—Melissus, Diogenes, Hippo, Thrasymachus and Empedocles—represented the intellectual background against which Polybus was working, as far as we can reconstruct it. While Thrasymachus’ dates are unknown, all the others flourished in the mid fifth century, probably in the 460s and 450s in the case of Melissus and Empedocles, and at the latest the 440s and 430s with Diogenes and Hippo, but quite possibly earlier. Now Aristotle was to discuss the views of these authorities variously many decades later, well after their deaths. Unlike Aristotle, however, Polybus was engaging with them here as his principal opponents: he presented material monism as the most serious intellectual challenge that he had to overcome, and he says explicitly that material monists formed the majority of his contemporary medical rivals.Footnote 80 Moreover, Polybus talks about the philosophers as contemporaries who could actually be heard delivering speeches in public: ‘One may recognize this (sc. their ignorance) especially by observing their debates.’Footnote 81 There is no reason to doubt that Polybus was writing during their lifetimes, while they were still active.

Accordingly, based on the internal evidence alone, On the Nature of the Human Being is a product of the mid fifth century: perhaps the 430s at the latest, but at least as plausibly the 450s. This date range precedes the traditional consensus on Hippocrates’ floruit (b. 460/59, d. c. 370). Against this internal evidence, it would take a strong piece of external evidence to shift the treatise any later. The story of Polybus as Hippocrates’ son-in-law (along with other assumptions about Hippocrates’ dates) has been thought to provide just this. As I hope to have shown, however, this external evidence cannot bear any weight.

CONCLUSION

Polybus deserves an independent position in the history of Classical Greek medicine and philosophy. His treatise On the Nature of the Human Being reveals a strong authorial presence and dynamic engagement with the intellectual currents of his time. It is clear from the treatise itself that he acknowledges no intellectual debts to any authority, nor gives any hint that he regards his theory as anything but his own original contribution. This originality should receive proper recognition. His treatise has had enormous historical influence, even if he has not been given due credit for it. It is one of the main aims of this paper to encourage the disentanglement of Polybus’ thought carefully from our conception of the historical figure of Hippocrates of Cos and his impact. The canonical theory of the four humours has been wrongly attributed to Hippocrates, based only on the accidental circumstance that a copy (or copies) of On the Nature of the Human Being made its way to Alexandria, where it was artificially grouped with other medical treatises in Ionic dialect that came to be associated with his name. However, the fact that Aristotle preserved a record of the treatise’s authorship paved the way for Polybus, uniquely, to gain a new, fictionalized afterlife as part of Hippocrates’ legendary and heroic biography. Yet, in turn, it seems entirely possible that this re-invention served precisely to raise the profile of On the Nature of the Human Being within the Hippocratic Corpus. The fact that Hellenistic doctors and scholars had a kind of backstory for the treatise, and a tantalizing biographical link to the great Hippocrates, may have awarded the treatise a special status in what was imagined to be Hippocrates’ medical ‘school’ on Cos. Without the fabrication of Polybus’ status as Hippocrates’ son-in-law, the history of Western medicine may have looked very different.

Footnotes

*

Thanks to Daniela Manetti, Rebecca Flemming and Julie Laskaris for help with earlier drafts of this article; to audiences in Exeter and Oxford; and to CQ’s reader for careful reading and bibliographical assistance.

References

1 Jacques Jouanna is in general more sanguine than most about the historical reliability of the surviving sources on Hippocrates’ life: see especially J. Jouanna (transl. M.B. DeBevoise), Hippocrates (Baltimore and London, 1999), 3–71 and now J. Jouanna (ed., transl., comm.), Hippocrate. Tome I, 1 re partie (Paris, 2020). A more sceptical approach to the sources, building on the work of Ludwig Edelstein (especially L. Edelstein, Peri Aerôn und die Sammlung der hippokratischen Schriften [Berlin, 1931] and his article in RE Suppl. VI, cols. 1290–1345), has been developed in W.D. Smith, The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca and London, 20022), 215–22 and W.D. Smith (ed., transl.), Hippocrates: Pseudepigraphic Writings (Leiden and New York, 1990); J.R. Pinault, ‘How Hippocrates cured the plague’, JHM 41 (1986), 52–75 and J.R. Pinault, Hippocratic Lives and Legends (Leiden, 1992); E. Nelson, ‘Coan promotions and the authorship of the Presbeutikos’, in P.J. van der Eijk (ed.), Hippocrates in Context: Papers Read at the XIth International Hippocrates Colloquium (Leiden and Boston, 2005), 209–36. See also L. Edelstein, ‘The genuine works of Hippocrates’, BHM 7 (1939), 236–48; W.D. Smith, ‘Galen on Coans versus Cnidians’, BHM 47 (1973), 569–85; G.E.R. Lloyd, ‘The Hippocratic Question’, CQ 25 (1975), 171–92; I.M. Lonie, ‘Cos versus Cnidus and the historians’, Parts 1 and 2, HS 16 (1978), 42–75, 77–92; E. Craik, ‘The “Hippocratic Question” and the nature of the Hippocratic Corpus’, in P. Pormann (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hippocrates (Cambridge, 2018), 25–37; R. Lane Fox, The Invention of Medicine: From Homer to Hippocrates (New York, 2020).

2 On Polybus himself, see especially the studies in H. Grensemann, Der Arzt Polybos als Verfasser hippokratischer Schriften (Wiesbaden, 1968); J. Jouanna, ‘Le médecin Polybe est-il l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages de la Collection hippocratique?’, REG 82 (1969), 552–62; L.R. Angeletti, ‘Polibo e l’eredità di Ippocrate’, MedSec 1 (1989), 23–38.

3 E.g. R. Joly, ‘Hippocrates and the School of Cos’, in M. Ruse (ed.), Nature Animated (Dordrecht / Boston / London, 1983), 2.29–47; Jouanna (n. 1 [1999]), 42–55, especially 48, 52–3; Angeletti (n. 2); E. Craik, The ‘Hippocratic’ Corpus: Content and Context (London and New York, 2015), xxi.

4 As will be discussed below, J. Jouanna (ed., transl., comm.), Hippocrate: La nature de l’homme. CMG I 1.3 (Berlin, 20022), 55–8 is right that Aristotle does indeed refer to our Nat. Hom. as the treatise authored by Polybus, and that we should believe him. More sceptical is e.g. Craik (n. 3), 208–9.

5 J. Mansfeld, Prolegomena: Questions to be Settled Before the Study of an Author, or a Text (Leiden / New York / Cologne, 1994), 144–5 n. 266: ‘I believe that Polybus entered the legend, perhaps becoming Hippocrates’ son-in-law in the process, because his contribution to the corpus hippocraticum was attested by early authorities.’

6 Smith (n. 1 [2002]), 219–21.

7 Apart, that is, from the obviously spurious chapters 23–4 that were added on to the end of the text subsequently. See especially Jouanna (n. 4), 19–38, 58; on the addition of chs. 23–4, see ibid. 23 and 309–10. For issues to do with anonymity and authorship of early Hippocratic treatises, P.J. van der Eijk, ‘On “Hippocratic” and “non-Hippocratic” medical writings’, in L. Dean-Jones and R. Rosen (edd.), Ancient Concepts of the Hippocratic (Leiden and Boston, 2016), 15–47.

8 See Grensemann (n. 2); recent discussion in J. Mansfeld and D.T. Runia, Aëtiana V: An Edition of the Reconstructed Text of the Placita with a Commentary and a Collection of Related Texts. Part 1 (Leiden and Boston, 2020), 1918, 1921–2.

9 Gal. HNH 1.pref., 2.pref., 2.22 [15.11, 108–9, 171–2 K. = pages 8, 57, 87 Mewaldt CMG V 9,1]; Hipp. Aph. 1 [18/A.8 K.]; Opt. med. 3.1 [1.58 K. = page 289.2–5 Boudon-Millot]; Foet. form. 1.4 [4.653 K. = page 54 Nickel CMG V 3.3]; Hipp. Epid. II 3 [page 300 Pfaff CMG V 10,1 (on 5.118.1 L.)].

10 Anon. Brux. Vita [page 57 Schöne = page 131 Pinault]. For the Codex Bambergensis, see H. von Staden, ‘A new testimonium about Polybus’, Hermes 104 (1976), 494–6.

11 On these Lives, see Pinault (n. 1 [1992]); J. Radicke, ‘Soranos of Ephesos (1062)’, in S. Schorn (ed.), Jacoby Online. Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker Continued, Part IV (Leiden, 2011).

12 VHSS 15 [page 128 Pinault = page 38 Jouanna].

13 Text and English translation in Smith (n. 1 [1990]), 110–25; text and French translation in Jouanna (n. 1 [2020]), 140–60.

14 Erot. Voc. Hipp. pref. [page 9.20–1 Nachmanson].

15 D. Leith, ‘The Presbeutikos logos and the Hippocratic Corpus’, CPh 120 (2025), 402−15.

16 Translations are mine unless noted otherwise.

17 Jouanna (n. 4), 58–9 draws attention to this variation in the tradition as a problem, but one to which he has no satisfactory solution, and prefers to stay on the safe side in describing him only as a pupil. The problem disappears once we see that the relationship between Hippocrates and Polybus is a fiction.

18 The Brussels Life of Hippocrates gives a longer list of pupils (page 57 Schöne = page 131 Pinault), though Polybus is named first among these after Thessalus and Draco.

19 Gal. HNH 1.pref. [15.11–12 K. = page 8.22–29 Mewaldt CMG V 9,1], with similar statements at Opt. Med. 3.1 [1.58 K. = pages 288.18–289.5 Boudon-Millot]. In the first passage, note Galen’s use of the participle διαδεξαμένου, giving Polybus the status of a successor, διάδοχος, as if in a school context; also how Galen is careful to emphasize Thessalus’ similar ability, in case the story were taken to imply that Thessalus was not good enough to be his father’s successor. Cf. Jouanna (n. 4), 59 n. 1.

20 Arist. Hist. an. 3.3, 512b12–13.

21 Nat. oss. 9 [9.174.13–178.2 L. = pages 144–6 Duminil].

22 See M.-P. Duminil (ed., transl., comm.), Hippocrate. Tome VIII (Paris, 1998), 75–89 on the disunity of the text as it has been transmitted, and 101–15 on the difficult issue of its possible dates and authorship.

23 Nat. oss. 8 [9.174.4–12 L. = page 144 Duminil] is slightly longer than the passage quoted by Aristotle at Hist. an. 3.3, 511b23–30. Nat. oss. 10 [9.178.3–180.23 L. = pages 147–9 Duminil] corresponds to Epid. 2.4.1–2 [5.120.13–126.3 L.].

24 P.Lit.Lond. 165 = M–P3 2339 = LDAB 3964 = TM 62776.

25 For the doxographical character of the text in general, but especially the Peripatetic doxography in the second section, see D. Manetti, ‘“Aristotle” and the role of doxography in the Anonymus Londiniensis (PBrLibr inv. 137)’, in P.J. van der Eijk (ed.), Ancient Histories of Medicine: Essays in Medical Doxography and Historiography in Classical Antiquity (Leiden / Boston / Cologne, 1999), 95–141.

26 F. Kenyon, ‘A medical papyrus in the British Museum’, CR 6 (1892), 237–40. See Gal. HNH 1.2 [15.25–6 K. = page 15 Mewaldt CMG V 9,1].

27 See Anon. Lond. col. v 36-37, vi 42–3, and vii 37–40, 42–3. Galen (see n. 26) was also aware that the Menoneia was attributed to Aristotle, but accepted a view that was current in his day, inferring from its title that the collection was made by a pupil of Aristotle named Meno. I agree with Manetti (n. 25), 98–9 that the balance of the evidence is in favour of Aristotle as the author of the text used by the Anonymus Londinensis, whatever the relationship of that text to the Menoneia that Galen knew.

28 D. Manetti (ed.), Anonymus Londiniensis: De medicina (Berlin and New York, 20222).

29 See especially Polybus, Nat. Hom. 3.1 [6.36.17–38.5 Littré = page 170.8–14 Jouanna] and 4.1–3 [6.38.19–40.9 Littré = page 172.13–174.6 Jouanna]. The subject of Nat. Hom. 3 is generation, paradigmatically of animals (see the partial quotation just below): it argues, in correspondence with Aristotle’s summary, (a) that generation cannot occur out of a single thing, (b) that the entities which bring about generation when united must be ‘akin’ (ὁμόφυλα) and have the same ‘power’ (δύναμιν), and (c) that the hot and the cold, and the dry and the wet, must be combined ‘in a balanced way and equally’ (μετρίως … καὶ ἴσως), if generation is to be possible. In Nat. Hom. 3, this discussion is focussed strictly on the phenomenon of generation and is not presented as an explanation of disease causation, as Aristotle suggests. But the link may well have been suggested to Aristotle by an earlier comment in Nat. Hom. 2.3 [6.36.1–4 L. = page 168.6–8 Jouanna]: ‘But as it is there are many (sc. treatments). For there are many things in the body, which produce diseases when they are unnaturally heated, chilled, dried and moistened by each other.’

30 Smith (n. 1 [2002]) knew only Diels’s edition, but he was still incorrect to suggest (page 219) that the identification is based on circular reasoning.

31 Jouanna (n. 4), 19–38 for arguments for the organic unity and integrity of the text of On the Nature of the Human Being that has been transmitted to us. Cf. also J. Jouanna, ‘Galen’s reading of the Hippocratic treatise The Nature of Man: the foundations of Hippocratism in Galen’, in J. Jouanna (transl. N. Allies, ed. P.J. van der Eijk), Greek Medicine from Hippocrates to Galen: Selected Papers (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 313–33, at 323–4.

32 See especially Gal. Lib. prop. 1.9–10 [19.14 K. = page 138 Boudon-Millot]; cf. Anat. adm. 2.1 [2.280–2 K.].

33 Gal. HNH pref. [15.11 K. = page 8.19–20 Mewaldt CMG V 9,1].

34 For Galen’s analysis of the text, see especially HNH pref. [15.9–13 K. = pages 7–9 Mewaldt CMG V 9,1]. For further discussion, see e.g. V. Langholf, ‘Structure and genesis of some Hippocratic treatises’, in M. Horstmanshoff and M. Stol (edd.), Magic and Rationality in Ancient Near Eastern and Graeco-Roman Medicine (Leiden and Boston, 2004), 219–75, at 238–48; R.J. Hankinson, ‘Galen the Hippocratic: textual analysis and the practice of commentary’, in P. Pormann (ed.), Hippocratic Commentaries in the Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic Traditions: Selected Papers from the XV th Colloque Hippocratique, Manchester (Leiden and Boston, 2021), 147–66.

35 See especially P.N. Singer, ‘Beyond and behind the commentary: Galen on Hippocrates on elements’, in P. Pormann (ed.), Hippocratic Commentaries in the Greek, Latin, Syriac and Arabic Traditions: Selected Papers from the XV th Colloque Hippocratique, Manchester (Leiden and Boston, 2021), 114–46 for Galen’s tendentious and distortive reading of Nat. Hom., the ways in which this serves his own self-presentation and the powerful influence it continues to have on modern scholarship.

36 E.g. Lloyd (n. 1).

37 For Greek poetic biographical traditions, see M.R. Lefkowitz, The Lives of the Greek Poets (London, 20122); M. Kivilo, Early Greek Poets’ Lives (Leiden and Boston, 2010).

38 E.g. Strabo 14.1.18; Proclus, Vit. Hom. 5. For Creophylus and his poetry in general, see C. Tsagalis, Early Greek Epic Fragments II. Epics on Herakles: Kreophylos and Peisandros (Berlin and Boston, 2022).

39 Σ Pl. Resp. 600b also combines the two versions, with Creophylus as both Homer’s son-in-law and his host.

40 See M.L. West, The Epic Cycle: A Commentary on the Lost Troy Epics (Oxford, 2013), 32–4. On the poem in general: ibid. 55–128; B. Currie, ‘Cypria’, in M. Fantuzzi and C. Tsagalis (edd.), The Greek Epic Cycle and its Ancient Reception: A Companion (Cambridge, 2015), 281–305.

41 See too Suda ο 251 (Hesychius, Vit. Hom. 5): ‘(Homer) married in Chios Arsiphone, daughter of Gnotor the Cymaean, and had two sons and one daughter. She became the wife of Stasinus, the chief magistrate of Cyprus’, transl. West; also Tzetz. Hist. 13.631–4.

42 This is also the function of the parallel Creophylus tradition which has him merely offering Homer his hospitality, in return for which he is given the Capture of Oechalia, as explicitly stated in e.g. Eust. Il. 2.730.

43 In Greek mythical traditions, too, one may also compare the ease with which son-in-law relationships were invented to generate desired connections between distinct genealogies, integrate outsiders into communities’ histories, ensure legitimate lines of succession, etc., using conveniently obscure women (Hippocrates’ daughter is never named in our sources): see G. Hawes and R. Selth, ‘Matrilineal succession in Greek myth’, CQ 74 (2025), 1–23.

44 E.g. Philochorus, FGrHist 328 F 213; Suda τ 354 Adler; cf. Kivilo (n. 37), 10–11, 66, 212.

45 Suda α 1138 Adler; see W.G. Arnott, Alexis: The Fragments. A Commentary (Cambridge, 1996), 11–13.

46 In the Hippocratic context, the motivation to posit a family tie between Hippocrates and Polybus may also have been influenced by awareness of the Hippocratic Oath, which links transmission of medical knowledge closely with familial and quasi-familial relationships. However, the date of the Oath itself is highly controversial: see C. Tolsa, ‘On the origins of the Hippocratic Oath’, GRBS 59 (2019), 621–45, arguing that the Oath is a product of the later Hellenistic period.

47 See K. Deichgräber, Die Epidemien und das Corpus Hippocraticum (Berlin and New York, 19712), 105–12 on general associations between Nat. Hom. and Epid. 1 and 3, and Joly (n. 3) on Nat. Hom. as one of a cluster of texts he takes to represent the ‘School of Cos’.

48 Anon. Lond. col. iv 25–8, xiv 6–11.

49 Hippocrates at Anon. Lond. col. v 35–vi 43, Polybus at col. xix 1–18.

50 E.g. Smith (n. 1 [2002]), 199–204; V. Nutton, Ancient Medicine (London and New York, 20243), 49; D. Manetti, ‘Medicine and exegesis’, in F. Montanari, S. Matthaios and A. Rengakos (edd.), Brill’s Companion to Ancient Greek Scholarship (Leiden and Boston, 2015), 2.1126–215, at 1130–40.

51 Cf. the biographical material, in particular listing noted teachers, that Callimachus incorporated in his Pinakes, and the biographies of his associate Hermippus of Smyrna: R. Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship: From the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age (Oxford, 1968), 128–9; P.M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1972), 452–4; A. Momigliano, The Development of Greek Biography (Cambridge, ΜΑ, 1971), 13. E.g. Callimachus’ entry on Eudoxus of Cnidus recorded that he learnt geometry from Archytas and medicine from Philistion of Sicily (fr. 429 Pf. = Diog. Laert. 8.86). Note too Callimachus’ Epigram 6 Pf., revealing his interest in the question of Creophylus of Samos’ authorship of the Capture of Oechalia, discussed above.

52 Gal. Gloss. pref.3 [19.64–5 K. = page 144.15–18 Perilli CMG V 13,1] tells us that the early Hippocratic scholar and Herophilean doctor Bacchius of Tanagra drew extensively on the Glossary of ‘Aristarchus’, where this is generally agreed to be a slip for ‘Aristophanes’, given the required dates: see H. von Staden, Herophilus: the Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (Cambridge, 1989), 492–3, and Perilli’s note ad loc. at CMG V 13,1, page 294. In confirmation of this, a fragment of Bacchius preserved by Apollonius of Citium shows that he explicitly borrowed various citations he had found recorded ἐν ταῖς Λέξεσιν, which should refer to Aristophanes’ Attikai lexeis: see Apollon. Cit. 1 [page 28 Kollesch and Nickel CMG XI 1,1], with Erot. Voc. Hipp. α 103 [pages 23–4 Nachmanson] and W.J. Slater, Aristophanis Byzantii Fragmenta (Berlin and New York, 1986), 112–13 (fr. 337). For Aristophanes’ Epitome and its relationship to Aristotle’s original treatise, see M. Hatzimichali, ‘The early reception of Aristotle’s biology’, in S. Connell (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge, 2021), 228–45, at 235–8.

53 VHSS 1 [page 127 Pinault = page 32 Jouanna].

54 VHSS 4 [page 127 Pinault = page 34 Jouanna].

55 Etym. Magn. s.v. βιβλιαίγισθος [= An. 2 von Staden], with von Staden (n. 52), 472–3.

56 For full discussion, see Leith (n. 15).

57 Lane Fox (n. 1), 125–96; W.V. Harris, ‘The social profile of Hippocrates’ patients’, Mnemosyne 77 (2024), 42–58, at 53–5; W.V. Harris, ‘The Hippocratic Epidemics and the Formation of the Hippocratic Corpus’, in M. Baumbach (ed.), Co-authorship, Collaboration, Multiple Authorship and the Melding of Minds in Literature, Arts and Sciences (Leiden and Boston, 2026), 119–41, at 124–6.

58 Jouanna (n. 1 [1999]), 388–90; Craik (n. 3), 90–1; Lane Fox (n. 1), 118–24.

59 See Manetti (n. 25) on the Aristotelian conceptual framework that shapes the doxography.

60 As Lane Fox (n. 1) has recently shown, there is undoubtedly scope for revisiting and revising the dating and intellectual contexts of Hippocratic treatises.

61 Jouanna (n. 4), 39–61, especially 59–61. The main part of Jouanna’s case rests on the idea that the concept of black bile found in Nat. Hom. can be located, along a spectrum of growing interest in this humour within the ‘school of Cos’, between Epid. 1 and 3 and Epid. 2, 4 and 6, which he dates respectively to the 410s and 399–395. But the idea that there ever was a school of Cos with its own distinct doctrines has now been debunked (see especially the articles by Smith [1973] and Lonie cited in n. 1), it is far from established that any of these treatises were actually Coan, and in any case, as discussed above, Lane Fox has made a strong case for a much earlier dating of Epid. 1 and 3. Jouanna also claims that 420–400 is the likeliest period for the currency of the views of and antagonism between Diogenes of Apollonia and Melissus of Samos, but this is certainly too late (see below), and indeed it is in clear tension with Jouanna’s own reference to Diogenes as a target in Aristophanes’ Clouds of 423. Craik (n. 3), 212 opts for ‘the last decades of the fifth century’.

62 Polybus, Nat. Hom. 1.4 [6.34 L. = page 166.11 Jouanna CMG I 1,3].

63 See e.g. D. Sedley, ‘Parmenides and Melissus’, in A.A. Long (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy (Cambridge, 1999), 113–33.

64 See, however, B. Harriman, ‘Establishing the logos of Melissus: a note on chapter 1, Hippocrates’ De natura hominis’, Archai 31 (2021), 1–21.

65 See R. Janko, ‘Eclipse and plague: Themistocles, Pericles, Anaxagoras and the Athenians’ war on science’, JHS 140 (2020), 213–37, at 219–22, discussing Themistocles’ relationship with both Anaxagoras and Melissus in the late 460s. As mentioned above (n. 61), this makes Jouanna’s suggestion of 420–400 as the period when Melissus’ views were likeliest to have been current considerably too late.

66 Jouanna (n. 4), 39–44, 226–9, 239–42.

67 Jouanna (n. 4), 39–41, 226–7.

68 Diog. Laert. 9.57; Simpl. In Phys. page 25.1–3.

69 Especially Ar. Nub. 227–34; see e.g. P.A. Vander Waerdt, ‘Socrates in the Clouds’, in P.A. Vander Waerdt, The Socratic Movement (Ithaca and London, 1994), especially 70–5.

70 Jouanna (n. 4), 227–8.

71 See D. Manetti, ‘Hippon of Croton (or Samos) from Aristotle to the Anonymus Londiniensis: medicine and research on nature’, TiC 12 (2020), 297–311 on Hippo’s conception of ‘the moist’ and his broader intellectual context.

72 Anon. Lond. col. xi 23–43; but see Manetti (n. 71), 302–4.

73 Σ Ar. Nub. 96 = Hippo 38 A 2 DK = DRAM. T 16 Laks–Most = Cratinus fr. 167.

74 E.g. Manetti (n. 71), 298; OCD s.v. ‘Hippon’ (‘of the Periclean age’).

75 Jouanna (n. 4), 227 suggests that followers of Heraclitus from the late fifth century are likely meant, though he does not mention who they might be, or why these would belong to the late fifth century and not earlier; Jouanna also points to Philolaus of Croton (c. 470–c. 385) as a possibility (according to the Anon. Lond. col. xviii 8–10, he maintained that ‘our bodies are composed of the hot’). See Gal. HNH 1.2 [15.21–5 K. = page 13–15 Mewaldt CMG V 9,1] on the lack of an ‘earth’ monist.

76 Anon. Lond. col. xi 43–xii 8, with Jouanna (n. 4), 239–40.

77 Jouanna (n. 4), 242; see also Gal. HNH 1.2 [15.26 K. = page 16 Mewaldt CMG V 9,1].

78 Jouanna (n. 4), 43–4.

79 Recent overview in P. Thibodeau, The Chronology of the Early Greek Natural Philosophers (North Haven, CT, 2019), 177–87.

80 Nat. Hom. 2.3 [6.34 L. = page 168.3–4 Jouanna] οἱ μὲν οὖν πλεῖστοι τοιαῦτά τινα ἢ ὅτι ἐγγύτατα τούτων ἀποφαίνονται.

81 Nat. Hom. 1.3 [6.32 L. = page 166.2–3 Jouanna] γνοίη δ’ ἂν τῷδέ τις μάλιστα παραγενόμενος αὐτοῖσιν ἀντιλέγουσιν.