Adama'ntius
（
*)Adama/ntios), an ancient physician, bearing the title of
Iatrosophista (
ἰατρικῶν λόγων σοφιστής, Socrates,
Hist. Eccles. 7.13), for the meaning of which see
Dict. of Ant. p. 507. Little is known of his personal history, except that he was by birth a Jew, and that he was one of those who fled from Alexandria, at the time of the expulsion of the Jews from that city by the Patriarch St. Cyril, A. D. 415.
He went to Constantinople, was persuaded to embrace Christianity, apparently by Atticus the Patriarch of that city, and then returned to Alexandria. (Socrates,
l.. c.）
Works
a Greek treatise on Physiognomy (Φυσιογνωμονικὰ）
Adamantius is the author of a Greek treatise on physiognomy,
Φυσιογνωμονικὰ, in two books, which is still extant, and which is borrowed in a great measure (as he himself confesses, i. Prooem. p. 314, ed. Franz.) from Polemo's work on the same subject.
It is dedicated to Constantius, who is supposed by Fabricius (
Biblioth. Graeca, vol. ii. p. 171, 13.34, ed. vet.) to be the person who married Placidia, the daughter of Theodosius the Great, and who reigned for seven months in conjunction with the Emperor Honorius.
Editions
The Treatise on Physiognomy was first published
in Greek at Paris, 1540, 8vo., then
in Greek and Latin at Basle, 1544, 8vo., and afterwards
in Greek, together with Aelian, Polemo and some other writers, at Rome, 1545, 4to.; the last and best edition is that by
J. G. Franzius, who has inserted it in his collection of the Scriptores Physiognomiae Veteres, Gr. et Lat., Altenb. 1780, 8vo.
Another of his works,
Περὶ Ἀνέμων,
De Ventis, is quoted by the Scholiast to Hesiod, and an extract from it is given by Aetius (tetrab. i. serm. 3, c. 163); it is said to be still in existence in manuscript in the Royal Library at Paris. Several of his medical prescriptions are preserved by Oribasius and Aetius.
[
W.A.G]
