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The Cyranides (; also Kyranides or Kiranides) is a compilation of ancient Greek works on magic and medicine first put together in the 4th century.David Bain, "περιγίνεσθαι as a Medical Term and a Conjecture in the Cyranides," in Ethics and Rhetoric: Classical Essays for Donald Russell on His Seventy-Fifth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 283 online. Christopher A. Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic p. 121, dates the work to the 1st century. Latin and Arabic translations also exist. It has been described as a "" and a texte vivant,French language, "living text"; that is, an "open" document or text undergoing continuing revision by multiple hands and existing in no one authoritative form; see Wikipedia. owing to the complexities of its transmission: it has been abridged, rearranged, and supplemented. The resulting compilation covers the magical properties and practical uses of gemstones, plants, and animals, and is a virtual encyclopedia of ;Faraone, Ancient Greek Love Magic, pp. 11 and 121. it also contains material pertinent to the history of western alchemy,David Bain, "Μελανῖτις γῆ in the Cyranides and Related Texts: New Evidence for the Origins and Etymology of Alchemy," in Magic in the Biblical World: From the Rod of Aaron to the Ring of Solomon (T&T Clark International, 2003), pp. 209–210, especially note 64. and to New Testament studies, particularly in illuminating meanings of words and magico-religious practices.Jeffrey B. Gibson, Temptations of Jesus in Early Christianity (Continuum International Publishing, 2004), p. 246 online; used as a source by James A. Kelhoffer, The Diet of John the Baptist: "Locusts and Wild Honey" in Synoptic and Patristic Interpretation (Mohr Siebeck, 2005), passim. As a medical text, the Cyranides was held in relatively low esteem even in antiquity and the Middle Ages because of its use of vernacular language and reliance on folklore rather than Hippocratic or medical theory.Maria Mavroudi, "Occult Science and Society in Byzantium: Considerations for Future Research," University of California, Berkeley, p. 84, full text downloadable.
In the Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Thomas Browne described the Cyranides as "a collection out of Harpocration the Greek and sundry Arabick writers delivering not only the Naturall but Magicall propriety of things."As cited by Bain, "Μελανῖτις γῆ," p. 208. Although the Cyranides was considered "dangerous and disreputable" in the Middle Ages, it was translated into Latin by Pascalis Romanus, a cleric with medical expertise who was the Latin interpreter for Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. The 14th-century cleric Demetrios Chloros was put on trial because he transcribed magical texts, including what was referred to as the Coeranis.Bain, "Μελανῖτις γῆ," p. 208, note 61; Mavroudi, "Occult Science and Society in Byzantium," p. 84.
The Cyranides begins by instructing the reader to keep its contents secret, and with a fictional narrative of how the work was discovered.Bain, "Μελανῖτις γῆ," pp. 195 online, 203 and 209; "περιγίνεσθαι as a Medical Term," p. 283; "Some Textual and Lexical Notes on Cyranides 'Books Five and Six'," Classica et Mediaevalia 47 (1996), pp. 151–168 online. In one 15th-century manuscript, the author of the work is said to be Kyranos (Κοίρανος), king of Persian Empire.Mavroudi, "Occult Science and Society in Byzantium," p. 74.
Daniel Ogden, a specialist in magic and the supernatural in antiquity, has gathered several references from the Cyranides on the use of gemstones and amulets.Daniel Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook (Oxford University Press, 2002), passim, limited preview online. The collection offers spells to avert the child-harming demon Gello, who was blamed for and infant mortality, and says that aetites can be worn as an amulet against miscarriage.Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (University of California Press, 1999), pp. 166–167 online.
In the extant version, the Cyranides contains a description of the heliodromus, a phoenix-like bird from India which, upon hatching, flies to the rising sun and then goes west when the sun passes the zenith. It lives only a year, and, according to some interpretations of an unreliable text, leaves behind an androgyny progeny.R. van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions (Brill, N.D.), pp. 286–287 online.. On the sex of the phoenix, see F. Lecocq, «‘Le sexe incertain du phénix’: de la zoologie à la théologie», Le phénix et son autre: poétique d'un mythe des origines au XVIe s., ed. L. Gosserez, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2013, p. 177-199, ()
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