SERENUS SAMMONICUS

A Roman physician and author who lived in the time of Severus and Caracalla. The latter caused him to be put to death in 212 A.D. 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 Proecepta), in 1,115 well-written hexameters, a collection of domestic prescriptions much used in the Middle Ages. It mostly follows Pliny.