Bolus of Mendes

Bolus of Mendes (Greek: Βῶλος Bolos; fl. 3rd century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, a neo-Pythagorean writer of works of esoterica and medical works, who worked in Ptolemaic Egypt.^[1] The Suda, and Eudocia after him,^[2] mention a Pythagorean philosopher of Mendes in Egypt, who wrote on marvels, potent remedies, and astronomical phenomena. The Suda, however, also describes a Bolus who was a philosopher of the school of Democritus,^[3] who wrote Inquiry, and Medical Art, containing "natural medical remedies from some resources of nature." But, from a passage of Columella,^[4] it appears that Bolos of Mendes and the follower of Democritus were one and the same person; and he seems to have lived following the time of Theophrastus, whose work On Plants he appears to have known.^[5]

Notes

1. Paul Kroh, ed. Lexikon der Antiken Autoren, (Stuttgart) 1972:111; Max Wellmann in Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. 3.1, (Stuttgart) 1897:676–677, s.v. "Bolos 3".
2. Suda, Bolus, β482; cf. Eudocia
3. Suda, Bolus, β481
4. Columella, vii. 5; cf. Stobaeus, Serm. 51
5. Stephanus of Byzantium Apsynthus; Scholium ad Nicand. Theriac. 764

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Smith, William, ed. (1870). "^{article name needed}". Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.