Abascantus

Abascantus was a physician of Lugdunum, the Roman city in Gaul now called Lyon, who probably lived in the second century AD. He is mentioned several times by the physician Galen, who also preserved an antidote devised by him against the bite of serpents. The name Abascantus appears in many Latin inscriptions in Gruter's collection, five of which refer to a freedman of Augustus, whom some scholars suppose to be the same man that Galen mentions, though that identification is uncertain. It is likewise uncertain whether Parakletios Abaskanthos, named in Galen, is the subject of this entry. Nothing more about his life, training or writings is securely known, and the entry rests on the brief account in the nineteenth century Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, which draws on Galen and on the inscriptions.