70-16 B.C.

Latin poet who wrote about birds and medicinal plants. He was a friend of Ovid's, with whom he traveled in Asia and Sicily, and his didactic poetry was influenced by the works of physician Nicander of Colophon. Aemilius Macer appeared as "Mopsus" in Virgil's Fifth Ecologue and, under the pseudonym Aemilius Macer, a medieval herbalist named Odo Magdunensis wrote Macer Floridus de Viribus Herbarum, a work that described in verse almost 90 different herbs.