Apollonides of Cos

Apollonides (Ancient Greek: Ἀπολλωνίδης) was a physician and surgeon of ancient Greece who was born at Cos, and, like many other of his countrymen, went to the court of Persia, under Artaxerxes Longimanus, 465-425 BCE.

At the court he cured Megabyzus, the king's brother-in-law, of a dangerous wound, but was afterwards engaged in a sinful and scandalous amour with his wife, Amytis, who was herself a most profligate woman. For this offense Apollonides was given up by Artaxerxes into the hands of his mother, Amestris, who tortured him for about two months, and at last, upon the death of her daughter, ordered him to be buried alive.^[1]

Notes

1. Ctesias, De Reb. Pers. §§ 30, 42, pp. 40, 50, ed. Lion

References

• Brosius, M (1998): Women in Ancient Persia, pp. 73, 74, 113, 114.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Greenhill, William Alexander (1870). "Apollonides". In Smith, William. Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology 1. p. 237.