Claudius Agathemerus was an ancient Greek physician who lived in the 1st century. He was born in the Lacedaemon, and was a pupil of the philosopher Cornutus

Lucius Annaeus Cornutus

Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, , a Stoic philosopher, flourished in the reign of Nero , when his house in Rome was a school of philosophy.-Life:He was a native of Leptis Magna in Libya, but resided for the most part in Rome...

, in whose house he became acquainted with the poet Persius about 50 AD. In the old editions of Suetonius

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius , was a Roman historian belonging to the equestrian order in the early Imperial era....

 he is called Agaternus, a mistake which was first corrected by Reinesius, from the epitaph upon him and his wife, Myrtale, which is preserved in the Marmora Oxoniensia and the Greek Anthology

Greek Anthology

The Greek Anthology is a collection of poems, mostly epigrams, that span the classical and Byzantine periods of Greek literature...

. The apparent anomaly of a Roman praenomen

Praenomen

The praenomen was a personal name chosen by the parents of a Roman child. It was first bestowed on the dies lustricus , the eighth day after the birth of a girl, or the ninth day after the birth of a boy...

 being given to a Greek may be accounted for by the fact which we learn from Suetonius, that the Sparta

Sparta

Sparta or Lacedaemon, was a prominent city-state in ancient Greece, situated on the banks of the River Eurotas in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. It emerged as a political entity around the 10th century BC, when the invading Dorians subjugated the local, non-Dorian population. From c...

ns were the hereditary clients of the gens Claudia.