Serenus Sammonicus
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).