Crateuas

Crateuas, also spelled Cratevas, (flourished 1st century bc), classical pharmacologist, artist, and physician to Mithradates VI, king of Pontus (120–63 bc). Crateuas’ drawings are the earliest known botanical illustrations. His work on pharmacology was the first to illustrate the plants described; it also classified the plants and explained their medicinal use. The drawings that exist today and bear his name are copies, made about ad 500. Of the text of his book, only quotations by Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek physician (flourished c. ad 50), are extant. All later pharmacology and medicine were influenced by Crateuas’ work.