Medicine

Agapius — in Arabic, Mahbub ibn Qustantin — was the Melkite bishop of Manbij in northern Syria, the city the Greeks had called Hierapolis. He was writing in the 940s and is…

Nemesius was bishop of Emesa in Syria — the city now called Homs — at the end of the fourth century. Practically nothing is known about his life beyond the one book he left…

Isidore was born about 560 in Cartagena, in southern Spain, into a family that had already been driven out of somewhere else. His parents died young. His older brother Leander…

Epiphanius was born about 315 near Eleutheropolis in Palestine, in a region where Jews, Samaritans, Christians and half a dozen sects lived on top of one another. He went to…

Sextus Julius Africanus was a man of affairs before he was a scholar. He served in the Roman army, traveled in Egypt and the East, and knew the imperial court well enough to be…