surnamed "Sophista," or "Iatrosophiata," a Greek medical writer, flourished during some period between the third and ninth centuries. The only record of his life is, that he was the author of three Greek treatises, which are still extant. The first treatise, entitled Scholia in Librum Hippocratis "De Fracturis," was published in the twelfth volume of Chartier's Hippocrates and Galen, fol., Paris, 1679. The second treatise, entitled In Sextum (Hippocratis) "Epidemiorum." Librum Commentarius, has been inserted in the original Greek in Dietz's Scholia in Hippocratem et Galenum, in 2 vols. Svo, 1834. The third treatise, entitled De Febribus Concisa Synopsis, has been published by Ideler in his Physici et Medici Graeci Minorum, Svo, Berlin, 1841.

PALLADIUS of Helenopolis, one of the early Christian fathers, is generally supposed to have been born in Galatia about 367. An intense admiration for the practice of asceticism seems to have early become his distinguishing characteristic. Assuming the monkish garb at the age of twenty, he set out on foot to visit the cells of the most famous solitaries in the different parts of the Roman empire. The devout pilgrim trudged through Upper Egypt, Lybia, Syria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Italy, dropping in upon the ghostly fathers in the midst of their solitary devotions, marking their austerities and mortifications of the flesh, and drinking in greedily the strange stories about visions and miracles which fell from their reverend lips. All these observations and fables he began faithfully to record, after he had ultimately settled down in the see of Helenopolis in Bithynia. The book was finished about 420; and from being addressed to Lausus, a chamberlain at the imperial court, came to be known by the name of the Lausiac History. Palladius spent the latter part of his life in the discharge of the duties of the bishopric of Aspona. The date of his death is uncertain. The Lausiac History, both in the original Greek and in an old Latin version, is contained in the Bibliotheca Patrum, fol., Paris, 1644 and 1654. There is a Greek work, entitled A Dialogue about the Life of St Chrysostom, which has been ascribed to the Bishop of Helenopolis, but which is now generally attributed to another writer of the same name and the same period. (See Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.)

Rutilius Taurus Emilianus, a Roman writer on agriculture, probably flourished in the fourth century. The only record of his life and labours is a treatise, De Re Rustica, in fourteen books. The first book introduces the subject, the twelve next treat of the agricultural operations of the twelve months of the year, and the last describes in elegiac verse the art of grafting. The work rose to high repute in the middle ages. It appears to have been often transcribed; and it was nearly completely incorporated in the Speculum of Vincent of Beauvais. In modern times editions have appeared by Ernesti, in 1773; and by Schneider, in his Scriptores Rei Rusticae, 4 vols. Svo, Leipzig, 1794. Among the various translations into different languages is the English version of T. Owen, Svo, London, 1807.