He is known primarily as the agent and personal physician of the notorious Roman magistrate Gaius Verres.
[1][2] One of the crimes alleged against Verres was his serial plundering of valuable artworks from religious sanctuaries, and Artemidorus assisted in Verres's robbery of the temple of Diana at Perga, when the latter was legatus to Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella in Cilicia in 79 BCE.
Afterwards Artemidorus attended Verres in Sicily during his praetorship in 72-69 BCE, where, among other acts, he was one of the judges (recuperatores) in the case of Nympho, a farmer whom Verres prosecuted for failure to pay a tax of wheat, a case considered by some to have been a miscarriage of justice and gross abuse of power.
It is believed he was at first a slave, and afterwards, on being freed by his master -- perhaps the same Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella whom Verres had served -- took the name of "Cornelius", similar to how the 10,000 manumitted slaves of Sulla were also given their former master's name.
[5] Most scholars agree these all refer to the same person, though very rarely they have been treated as separate, as in the Index Historicus of Johann August Ernesti.