Γέσιος

During the reign of Zeno¹ he was celebrated for his medical expertise. A native of Petra↗. He returned and, after bringing his own teacher Domnus the Jew and his colleagues into his practice he became known to nearly everyone everywhere and acquired a great reputation, not only for his medical competence and his teaching skill and industriousness, but also for his all-around refinement in other areas. For since he was an honorable and diligent man he achieved in addition, in the course of time, a considerable reputation for wisdom by means of study and not by natural talent. And he established a technique of medical practices and doctrines that was more accurate than all the physicians and medical theorists of his time. He was slow at the begining to demonstrate his knowledge in public, but he quickly progressed and thrived in it, since he was stately and eloquent; delving only a little in philosophy, but in medicine to the fullest. In this way he came to possess a large fortune and was granted imperial honors that were far from ordinary. But I am convinced of the courageous integrity of his soul; for when Heraiskos¹ was being persecuted by the emperor Zeno he hid him in his own house, disregarding the danger, and even, when he got sick in his flight and left his body, he laid him out well and performed the customary services. But the imperial deputy Agapion detained the other philosophers as well and led them off to the town hall.