Bolus of Mendes ( Greek: Βῶλος ὁ Μενδήσιος, Bōlos ho Mendēsios; fl. 3rd century BC) was a philosopher, a neopythagorean writer of works of esoterica and medicine, in Ptolemaic Egypt. [1] Both the Suda, [2] and a later work mistakenly attributed to Eudokia Makrembolitissa—Ἰωνιά; Bed of Violets, [3] probably a 16th-century forgery [4] by Constantine Paleocappa—write of a Pythagorean philosopher of Mendes in Egypt. He is described as one who wrote on marvels, potent remedies, and astronomical phenomena. [5] The Suda, however, also describes a separate Bolus who was a philosopher of the school of Democritus, [6] who wrote Inquiry, and Medical Art, containing "natural medical remedies from some resources of nature." However, from a passage of Columella, [7] it appears that Bolos of Mendes and this other Bolus, follower of Democritus, were one and the same person. [5] He seems to have lived following the time of Theophrastus, whose work Historia Plantarum ('On Plants'), Bolus appears to have known. [8]
Bolus of Mendes ( Greek: Βῶλος ὁ Μενδήσιος, Bōlos ho Mendēsios; fl. 3rd century BC) was a philosopher, a neopythagorean writer of works of esoterica and medicine, in Ptolemaic Egypt. [1] Both the Suda, [2] and a later work mistakenly attributed to Eudokia Makrembolitissa—Ἰωνιά; Bed of Violets, [3] probably a 16th-century forgery [4] by Constantine Paleocappa—write of a Pythagorean philosopher of Mendes in Egypt. He is described as one who wrote on marvels, potent remedies, and astronomical phenomena. [5] The Suda, however, also describes a separate Bolus who was a philosopher of the school of Democritus, [6] who wrote Inquiry, and Medical Art, containing "natural medical remedies from some resources of nature." However, from a passage of Columella, [7] it appears that Bolos of Mendes and this other Bolus, follower of Democritus, were one and the same person. [5] He seems to have lived following the time of Theophrastus, whose work Historia Plantarum ('On Plants'), Bolus appears to have known. [8]