Daremberg (1853), p. 77, held that a Vatican MS of the Ephodia was of the tenth century and therefore this Greek translation could not be the work of Constantinus Africanus in the next century, but Steinschneider (1866), p. 392, only says, “Die griechische Uebersetzung des Viaticum soll bis in die Zeit Constantins hinaufreichen.”
Another MS, Escorial &-II-9, 16th century, fol. 1-, contains a “Commeatus Peregrinantium” whose author is called “Ebrubat Zafar filio Elbazar,” which perhaps designates Abu Jafar Ahmed Ibn-al-Jezzar, whom Daremberg and Steinschneider call the author of the Arabic original of the Viaticum. The work is said to have been translated into Greek “a Constantino Primo a secretis Regis,” which suggests that Constantinus was perhaps first of the royal secretaries rather than of Reggio either in Norman Italy or near Byzantium. The translation from Greek into Latin is ascribed to Antonius Eparchus. The opening sentences of each book of this Latin version from the Greek by Eparchus differ in wording but agree in substance with those of the Viaticum of Constantinus Africanus, if we omit some transitional sentences in the latter.
[2964] Opera (1536), p. 215.
[2965] De animalibus, XXII, i, 1.
[2966] Rawlinson C, 328, fol. 3. It is accompanied by the legend, “This is Constantinus, monk of Monte Cassino, who is as it were the fount of that science of long standing from the judgment of urines, and it has exhibited a true cure in all the diseases in this book and in many other books. To whom come women with urine that he may tell them what is the cause of the disease.” The illumination shows Constantinus seated, holding a book on his knees with his left hand, while he raises his right hand and forefinger in didactic style. He wears the tonsure, has a beard but no mustache, and seems to be approached by one woman and two men carrying two jars of urine.
[2967] See Margoliouth, Avicenna, 1913, p. 49.
[2968] Only the ten books of theory are printed in the 1539 edition of Constantinus.
[2969] Chirurgia, at pp. 324-41.
[2970] Opera omnia ysaac (1515), fol. 126v, “Liber decimus practice qui antidotarium dicitur in duas divisus partes.”
Isaac Israeli is the subject of the first chapter in Husik (1916), who calls him (p. 2) “the first Jew, so far as we know, to devote himself to philosophical and scientific discussions.”