Serēnus Sammonĭcus
A Roman physician and author who lived in the time of Severus and Caracalla. The latter
caused him to be put to death in A.D. 212. To him, or more probably to his son Quintus
Serenus, the instructor of the second Gordianus, must be attributed a didactic poem on
medicine (
De Medicina Praecepta), in 115 wellwritten hexameters, a collection
of domestic prescriptions much used in the Middle Ages. It mostly follows Pliny. It is edited
by Bährens in his
Poetae Lat. Min. (Leipzig, 1886). On
the diction and prosody, see Baur,
Quaestiones Sammoniceae (Giessen,
1886).