NICANDER, the author of two Greek poems on poisons and antidotes, was a native of Claros near Colophon in Ionia, and flourished in the second century B.C., in the reign of Attalus, the last king of Pergamus. He succeeded his father Damæus in the hereditary office of priest of Apollo Clarus. His poems show that he possessed a fine talent for observation, and was fully equal to the other naturalists of his own age. The other features, however, of his literary character are not so favourable. His dissertations were unmethodical and often prolix; he was ever on the outlook for obsolete and antiquated expressions, which must often have rendered his meaning obscure even to his contemporaries; and almost the only quality of the poet he evinced was a fondness for the strange and the fabulous. The longer of his two extant poems is entitled Theriaca, treats of the wounds inflicted by poisonous animals, and consists of nearly a thousand hexameter verses. Among the curious zoological passages which are found heterogeneously mingled with erroneous doctrines and absurd fables, are the first account ever given of the moths that flutter round the evening candle, and an interesting description of the resistance that the serpents make in defence of their eggs against the ichneumon. The other poem, entitled Alexipharmaca, is a treatise, as its name implies, on antidotes, and contains more than 600 hexameter lines. It seems to have been intended for a continuation of the Theriaca, and accordingly it gives an account of the effect of different poisons. A full analysis of the medical portions of these two poems is given in Dr Adams' edition of the work of Paulus Egineta. Nicander was the author of several other productions, both prose and poetical, of which little more than the titles remain. The best edition of his works, entire and fragmentary, is that of J. G. Schneider, in two volumes, published respectively at Halle in 1792, and at Leipzig in 1816.