Theocrates

is given as the name of a physician by Fabricius (Bibl. Gr. vol. xiii. p. 432, ed. vet.) and Haller (Bibl. Medic. Pract. vol. i. p. 299, where the reference is defective), on the authority of the Latin Version of Avicenna (5.2.2, vol. ii. p. 320, ed. Venet. 1595). The printed Arabic edition has ZZZ which is an error. The Latin translator (Gerardus Cremonensis?) appears to have read in his MS. ZZZ or ZZZ, which is not a bad conjecture, but which is also wrong. Sontheimer, in his " Zusammengesetzte Heilmittel der Araber" (p. 218), has clumsily confounded the word with and reads Hippocrates. The true reading is probably ZZZ Naucratis, as appears from Galen, De Compos. Medicam. see. Loc. 4.8, vol. xii. p. 764, from which work the passage in question (as also many other medical formulae in the same chapter of Avicenna) is taken. Galen attributes the medicine to ὁ Ναυκρατίτης, " the native of Naucratis" in Egypt; but who is the individual thus designated, the Writer is at present unable to determine. [W.A.G]