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A. Introduction
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher

Aileen R. Das

Galen of Pergamum (129–ca. 216 CE) does not seem to be a relevant model
to most aspiring doctors today. At least for those who have attended my
classroom, he elicits contempt for his theoretical and observational errors,
revulsion for his gruesome anatomical experiments, and annoyance at his
self‑aggrandizement. Even if the hyperspecialization and technification
of twenty‑first‑century medicine may render impractical—or (less chari‑
tably) obsolete—the Galenic paradigm of the philosopher‑doctor that this
volume seeks to interrogate, Galen’s medicine dominated learned discus‑
sions and practices of the field for more than 1,500 years.1 Galen had ar‑
guably the most pervasive reach of any Greco‑Roman author in terms of
the geographic and chronological spread of his reception, certainly beyond
the bounds of Europe on which narratives about the formation of the west‑
ern medical tradition often center his importance.2 Through translations,
adaptations, and other forms of critical engagement as well as biograph‑
ical legends, Galen’s writings and brand of medicine became known to
readers in premodern and early modern North Africa, the Middle East,
and South, Central, and East Asia.3 Furthermore, Galen continues to be a
presence in the medical systems of many Muslim and South Asian com‑
munities around the globe, in, for example, Unani tibb (“Greek medicine”)
and prophetic medicine (al‑ṭibb al‑nabawī), which are often marginalized as
“alternative” therapies.
Biomedicine’s universalization as the scientific method for addressing
health and illness, furthered by its discursive claims to have advanced on
prior approaches to healing, has relegated Galen to a figure of historical
rather than clinical interest.4 Nonetheless, as Steger’s contribution to this
collection will suggest, the philosophical basis on which Galen constructs

1
See p. 14–16 below.
2
Cf., e.g., L. CONRAD / M. NEVE / V. NUTTON / R. PORTER / A. WEAR, The Western Medi‑
cal Tradition: 800 BC to 1800 (Cambridge 1995) and W. BLACK, Medicine and Healing in the
Premodern West: A History in Documents (Peterborough 2020).
3
For Galen’s reception in the premodern Middle East, see Wakelnig’s paper in this vol‑
ume; on the knowledge of Galen in India, Tibet, and China, see R. YOELI‑TLALIM, “Galen
in Asia?”, in: BOURAS‑VALLIANATOS / ZIPSER 2019, 594–608.
4
On the peculiarity of biomedicine vis‑à‑vis other healing systems, see A. KLEINMAN,
Writing at the Margin: Discourse between Anthropology and Medicine (Berkeley 1995) 21–40.
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4 Aileen R. Das

his medicine has been naturalized in certain strategies and behaviors of the
biomedical practitioner. For instance, a modern doctor may not identify
clinical reasoning with the syllogistic mode of argumentation promoted by
Galen, but both involve a deductive process that utilizes collected informa‑
tion about an event or phenomenon to develop a hypothesis or diagnosis,
which can be analyzed in light of accepted natural principles.5 Galen’s
call to practice medicine philanthropically—that is, with foremost concern
for the well‑being of patients from all walks of life rather than wealth—
resonates directly with biomedicine’s ethical ideals, even if the realization
of this imperative remains questionable in the ancient as well as modern
context.6
From a presentist perspective, That the Best Doctor is also a Philosopher
(QOM) assumes importance because it encapsulates in a few pages Galen’s
“philosophy” of medicine, which appears to have shaped biomedical
thinking and conduct. Here, I mean philosophy in both the loose, mod‑
ern sense of a reflection on Galen’s beliefs about what is essential in the
discipline and the more technical understanding of a theoretical system,
which for Greco‑Roman readers must include logic, physics, and ethics.7 I
have already argued in the preface to this volume for the broader historical
significance of QOM in its demonstration of the plasticity of knowledge
categories such as medicine, whose contents and boundaries are being
reevaluated anew in the medical humanities.8 Therefore, my agenda for
this introductory chapter is to give thicker texture to QOM by placing it
at the culmination of Galen’s career, which had seen him try to improve
the intellectual profile of medicine by expanding the queries that doctors
could resolve if they modeled their training on his own. Although QOM’s
titular thesis is now a byword for Galen’s philosophization of medicine,
Rosen’s paper observes how the text itself seems to trade on clichés in‑
stead of examples that illustrate the philosophical techniques and outlooks
supposedly inherent to the discipline. When interpreted against Galen’s
educational background and corpus, however, the hermeneutical richness
of QOM, in terms of what it foregrounds and neglects in its advertisement,
or defense, of his expertise, becomes more evident, as each contribution in
this volume testifies.
The first half of this introduction provides an overview of Galen’s life
and writings for those unfamiliar with him. Galen has recently received
several good biographical treatments in English, so I will limit myself to

5
I am grateful to Ralph Rosen for mentioning this example of Galen’s naturalization in
biomedicine.
6
The papers by Steger, Rosen, Tieleman, and Petit touch on Galen’s medical “philan‑
thropy”.
7
On this ancient criterion, see Curtis below.
8
See p.VIII–IX above.
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 5

details that help to illuminate a reading of QOM.9 In particular, my focus

will be on the training that made Galen conversant in both medicine and
philosophy and how he wields it in his writings to assert their mutual de‑
pendence: it is not just doctors who require philosophy but in certain areas
of inquiry the reverse holds true as well—a point that Tieleman picks up.10
The last sections of this chapter turn to QOM, surveying the receptions that
not only underlie the text presented in Nesselrath’s edition but also frame
Wakelnig’s and Petit’s discussions. As I will explain, the scant textual his‑
tory of QOM offers a provocative counterpoint to the weight this volume
assigns to the work: it implies that the treatise’s banal argumentation did
not generate enough appeal, or controversy, to drive recurrent requests
for copying.11 I end with a preface to my translation of QOM that explains
the ideological commitments behind what may appear to be idiosyncratic
translation choices.

1. Origin Stories

Born in Pergamum (modern Bergama in northwestern Turkey), a leading

cultural center in the predominantly Greek‑speaking part of the Roman
Empire, Galen credits his father, Nicon, for shaping and perhaps more
importantly funding his long education.12 An architect by trade, Nicon
earned full Roman citizenship during Emperor Hadrian’s reign or per‑
haps earlier and passed this privilege along with the ownership of at least
one landed estate to Galen, who inherited the latter in his late teens at his
father’s untimely death in 148.13 Before this tragic turn of events, Nicon
took it upon himself to teach his son basic mathematics and geometry,
which QOM (1.2) calls a “requisite preliminary” (ἡγουμένην ἐξ ἀνάγκης)
to a Hippocratic approach to medicine, in the hope that Galen would be‑
come a philosopher. The pursuit of philosophy would compel Galen after
his father’s passing to travel down the coast of Roman Western Asia to
attend the lectures of prominent philosophers, even while he was still a
medical student. Galen’s introduction to philosophy began, however, in
Pergamum, where Nicon personally selected tutors from the major philo‑

9
See NUTTON 2020, 4–5 with further bibliography.
10
See p. 128.
11
Wakelnig raised this intriguing suggestion during the volume workshop.
12
Stretching from boyhood to his first appointment as physician to the gladiators at
Pergamum in 157, Galen’s education lasted around twenty years. See MATTERN 2013, 33;
NUTTON 2020, 10, 43.
13
NUTTON 2020, 10.
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6 Aileen R. Das

sophical sects—Platonism, Stoicism, Aristotelianism, and Epicureanism—

to train his boy before changing his mind about this career path.14
On Galen’s retelling, the divine, which he leaves the reader to identify
with the healing god Asclepius, commanded his father through dreams to
dedicate him to medicine.15 Wickkiser will show the role that this divine
account of the medical turn in Galen’s education has in enhancing his cred‑
ibility as a doctor. Nonetheless, Galen’s fluency in philosophy helped him
to further his medical career in Rome after he had relocated to the capital
on his first and subsequent stays (162–6, 169–? CE): it brought him into
contact with his first elite patrons, expatriates from the Greek East with
philosophical interests, and earned him visibility among the city’s intel‑
ligentsia, as his public disputes with eminent Peripatetics suggest.16 In
contrast, Galen cites his proficiency in medicine as the reason for his first
official appointment in Pergamum, as physician to the gladiators of the im‑
perial cult, which he alleges he won after replacing the intestines of a liv‑
ing monkey that he had disemboweled at an anatomical demonstration.17
Galen performed similar feats of technical mastery in Rome in front of the
watchful eyes of its elite—potential clients—with the overt aim of silencing
critics and theoretical adversaries (both alive and long dead). His how‑to
manual of anatomy, Anatomical Procedures, reveals an acute consciousness
of the sensory impact of these dissections and vivisections to the point that
he recommends the use of certain animals and tools to heighten the drama
of the spectacle and thus the anatomist’s reputation.18
After detouring to Cyprus, Lemnos, and other sites of pharmaceutical
interest, where he could build up his stores of precious materia medica,
Galen entered a Rome that had long hosted a vibrant medical market‑
place composed of doctors of diverse social standings and doctrinal al‑
legiances.19 His humoral medicine, which defined health as an individ‑

14
See MATTERN 2013, 34. Following his father’s death, Galen spent time in Smyrna (mod‑
ern İzmir) listening to the Platonist Albinus as well as the anatomist Pelops; see NUTTON
2020, 17.
15
See MATTERN 2013, 38, and Wickkiser below.
16
Galen counts the Aristotelian philosopher Eudemus, a compatriot of Pergamum,
among his first notable patients (see MATTERN 2013, 129–35; NUTTON 2020, 33. At Lib. prop.
3.12 [BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 143.24–144.7], Galen recounts the success his anatomical mas‑
terpiece enjoyed among Rome’s Aristotelians; in contrast, at Praen. (5.6–9), Galen relates
how he challenged Alexander of Damascus (the possible father of the famous Aristotelian
commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias) to demonstrate his anatomical expertise in re‑
sponse to the Aristotelian’s public criticism of his own knowledge of anatomy (see NUTTON
2020, 32).
17
See NUTTON 2020, 23; MATTERN 2013, 83–4.
18
On the performative aspect of Galen’s anatomical demonstrations, see GLEASON 2009,
85–114.
19
MATTERN 2013, 99–103, covers part of this pharmaceutical itinerary from Pergamum to
Rome. NUTTON 2012, 207–21, provides an overview of the medical marketplace in imperial
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 7

ualized blend (krasis) of blood, phlegm, and yellow and black bile, had to
vie with therapeutic approaches based on different physiological princi‑
ples, involving, for example, flows of particles and vaporous pneuma, and
methods that trivialized philosophical training. Although Galen polemi‑
cizes against the reduced importance certain of these physicians accorded
to philosophy as a marker of their non‑elite status, his most distinguished
patients, including the imperial family, solicited their advice as well as his
on cases of illness.20 Nonetheless, the contrast that Galen draws between
himself and contemporary doctors in QOM (1) revolves around his philo‑
sophical expertise, which allowed him to emulate Hippocrates and thus
distinguish his practice in this ruthlessly competitive social scene.21 The
text may present its argument for philosophy’s relevance to medicine as a
point of contention (QOM 4), but Galen was by no means the first doctor
to utilize the discipline to understand or treat the body.22 Furthermore,
his philosophical framing of Hippocrates might itself belong to an exeget‑
ical tradition to which he may have been exposed as a medical student
in Alexandria, where the texts of the Hippocratic corpus were originally
brought together.23
The relish with which Galen recalls the emperor Marcus Aurelius’ com‑
mendation of him as the “first of physicians” betrays the pride he takes in
his identity as a doctor.24 His medical occupation had secured him a place
in the royal household as both the preparer of Marcus Aurelius’ theriac,
a complex antidote composed of expensive ingredients from the Indian
Ocean trade, and personal physician to the prince Commodus.25 Despite
Marcus Aurelius’ silence about Galen in his own writings, Galen implies
the Emperor’s close reliance on his services through an episode that Wick‑
kiser will unpack at greater length below: summoned by imperial seal to

Rome. The length of Galen’s final stay in Rome—namely, whether he remained there until
his death in ca. 216—is uncertain. Avoiding Distress indicates that Galen was in Rome until
at least the assassination of the emperor Commodus in 192 (see NUTTON 2014, 45–6).
20
See Praen. 12.1–9, which recounts how Galen numbered among a group of doctors
asked to examine and treat the young Commodus.
21
On the competition that Galen faced in Rome, see MATTERN 2013, 126–9.
22
See R. POLITO, “Asclepiades of Bithynia and Heraclides of Pontus: Medical Platon‑
ism?”, in: M. SCHOFIELD (ed.), Aristotle, Plato, and Pythagoreanism in the First Century BC:
New Directions for Philosophy (Cambridge 2013) 118–38; S. COUGHLIN, “Athenaeus of Attalia
on the Psychological Causes of Bodily Health”, in: C. THUMIGER / P. N. SINGER (eds.), Mental
Illness in Ancient Medicine: From Celsus to Paul of Aegina (Leiden 2018) 109–42, who look re‑
spectively at the use of philosophy by Asclepiades of Bithynia (1st c. BCE) and Athenaeus
of Attalea (1st c. CE) to explain bodily phenomena.
23
For Galen’s engagement with the work of Alexandrian exegetes of Hippocrates, see
H. VON STADEN, “Staging the Past, Staging Oneself: Galen on Hellenistic Exegetical Tradi‑
tions”, in: GILL / WHITMARSH / WILKINS 2009, 132–56.
24
Praen. 11.8 (NUTTON 1979, 128.28). SINGER 2014a, 7–38, contends that Galen does not
want to be regarded as a professional philosopher.
25
On Galen’s pharmaceutical service to Marcus Aurelius, see MATTERN 2013, 218–19.
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8 Aileen R. Das

accompany Marcus Aurelius on his campaign against the Germans, Galen

is only successful in excusing himself from this duty after relaying to the
Emperor a directive he received in a dream from Asclepius for him to re‑
main behind.26 This serendipitous intervention did not come in time to
spare Galen from having to navigate an outbreak of plague (now thought
to be an epidemic of smallpox), which took the life of the co‑emperor Lu‑
cius Verus (d. 169), at the army’s Italian point of departure in Aquileia.27
As Tieleman illustrates in his contribution, QOM singles out philoso‑
phy, on the other hand, as enabling Galen to go beyond, and therefore
rewrite, the limits of medicine recognized by his peers and even Hip‑
pocrates (4.4). Persuaded by Galen’s self‑representation in works such
as Avoiding Distress, in which he adopts a Stoicizing indifference to pain
in response to the loss of books, instruments, loan documents, and other
personal possessions in the fire of 192 in Rome, contemporary and later
readers took seriously his philosophical pretensions.28 From Alexander
of Aphrodisias to Ibn Sīnā (ca. 370–428/980–1037), philosophical critics of
Galen may have accused him of lacking the philosophical competence to
contribute to controversies such as the bodily location of the ruling part of
the soul (hegemonikon), which he claims to have settled, as I mention below
(p. 10). Nonetheless, the evident care that these philosophers took over
these refutations underscore the formidable threat they saw him posing to
their own systems of thought.29

2. Galen’s Textual Edifice

Both hostile and sympathetic interpreters of Galen faced an immense body
of writings from which they could glean his positions on philosophically
charged issues, pertaining, for instance, to the basic constituents of the cos‑
mos and structure of the soul.30 The most exhaustive scholarly bibliogra‑
26
See Lib. prop. 3.1–6 (BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 141.17–142.25) and p. 86–87 below.
27
See NUTTON 2020, 37. For proposals about the identity of this “plague”, see R. J.
LITTMANN / M. LITTMANN, “Galen and the Antonine Plague”, American Journal of Philol‑
ogy 94.3 (1973), 243–55, and K. HARPER, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an
Empire (Princeton 2017) 65–118.
28
See NUTTON 2014.
29
See, e.g., S. PINES, “Omne quod movetur necesse est ab aliquo moveri: A Refutation
of Galen by Alexander of Aphrodisias and the Theory of Motion”, Isis 52.1 (1961) 21–54;
T. TIELEMAN, “Hunt for Galen’s Shadow: Alexander of Aphrodisias, De anima 94.7–100.17
Bruns Reconsidered”, in: K. ALGRA / D. T. RUNIA / P. W. VAN DER HORST (eds.), Polyhistor:
Studies in the History and Historiography of Greek Philosophy Presented to Jaap Mansfeld on his
Sixtieth Birthday (Leiden 1996), 265–83; DAS 2020, 140–97.
30
See I. KUPREEVA, “Galen’s Theory of Elements” and D. LEITH, “Galen’s Refutation of
Atomism”, in: ADAMSON / HANSBERGER / WILBERDING 2014, 153–96 and 213–34; TIELEMAN
1996.
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 9

phy of Galen, the Fichtner catalog, identifies 441 titles attributed to him.31
The number exaggerates Galen’s total output, because this list contains
pseudonymous works by both contemporary and later authors.32 Atten‑
tive to his own reception, Galen composed two bibliographies, On My Own
Books (Lib. prop.) and On the Order of My Own Books (Ord. lib. prop.), that to‑
gether work to regulate the contents of his corpus and canonize his place
in the learned medical tradition by shaping this material into a curricu‑
lum for would‑be doctors.33 The major structuring principle of the longer
Lib. prop. is the division of its bibliography into medical and philosophi‑
cal texts, which are then further subdivided by period of composition and
topic, or in the case of the latter category by philosophical branch or au‑
thority (i.e., Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, and Epicurus).34
Besides his exegeses of Plato’s Timaeus, none of Galen’s dedicated com‑
mentaries on or polemics with past philosophical authorities survive.35
This loss notwithstanding, Galen’s explanations of the Timaeus indicate
how his medical expertise helped him to assert a prominent place in the
crowded field of philosophical interpreters of philosophical traditions to
which he claimed no doctrinal allegiance.36 To give one example, in his
lemmatic commentary On the Medical Statements in Plato’s Timaeus (Plat.
Tim.), Galen applies his own theory of the natural faculties, which he de‑
veloped to elucidate physiological processes such as digestion and urina‑
tion, to the defense of Plato’s apparent endowment of plants with a sen‑
sitive ability at Tim. 76e7–77e5. On Galen’s understanding, plants show
a rudimentary form of sensation, which he calls a discriminative capacity
(γνωριστικὴν δύναμιν), in their attraction and rejection of beneficial and
harmful nutriment, an analogue to which can be seen in how the kidneys
31
G. FICHTER (Corpus Galenicum: Bibliographie der galenischen und pseudogalenischen Werke
[Berlin 2019]) was most recently updated, with the addition of new secondary literature on
the listed Galenic texts, in 2019.
32
On Galenic pseudonymous authorship, see C. PETIT / K. FISCHER / S. SWAIN (eds.),
Pseudo‑Galenica: The Formation of the Galenic Corpus from Antiquity to the Renaissance (London
2021).
33
Many of the selected texts in Ord. lib. prop. gained pedagogical prominence in late an‑
tique Alexandria, where they constituted a core medical curriculum, known collectively as
the “Sixteen Books of Galen” (actually twenty‑four titles); see A. ISKANDAR, “An Attempted
Reconstruction of the Late Alexandrian Medical Curriculum”, Medical History 20.3 (1976)
235–58.
34
See Lib. prop. 14–9 (BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 164–73).
35
The fact that Galen composed certain philosophical commentaries, such as those on
Aristotelian works (cf., e.g., Lib. prop. 14.15 [BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 166.22–167.6]), for per‑
sonal use may partially account for why they are no longer extant. Galen’s commentary
and summary of the Timaeus are respectively fragmentary and lost in Greek—the latter is
preserved in a medieval Arabic version of the text. For further details about the textual
state of these two explanations, see DAS 2020, 37.
36
On Galen’s philosophical independence, see R. HANKINSON, “Galen’s Philosophical
Eclecticism”, ANRW 2.36.5 (1992) 3505–22.
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10 Aileen R. Das

draw off the serous portion of the blood to nourish themselves and then
eliminate the excess liquid as urine.37
Aided by his medical background and the interpretive strategies he
learned as a student in Western Asia, Galen chooses to engage with con‑
troversies such as this that acquired increased prominence in the agonistic
intellectual milieu of the imperial period, the so‑called Second Sophistic,
where reputations and patronage were on the line.38 A problem of ar‑
guably higher intellectual stakes to which Galen repeatedly returned in
his writing to display the epistemic heft of his philosophically informed
medicine was the location of the ruling part of the soul (hegemonikon)—
which became an issue definitive of one’s philosophical affiliation. On the
Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato (PHP) represents Galen’s paradigmatic
treatment of the debate; there, he marshals clinical case studies, anatom‑
ical experiments, and diverse textual witnesses (from the poetic to philo‑
sophical) to validate Plato’s identification of the brain instead of the heart
with this part, against Aristotelian and Stoic opinion.39 The monumental
work, therefore, promotes Galenic medicine, even over Platonism, as the
superior way of reaching truths about issues falling within the domain of
the body: while Plato’s position may have been correct, it took Galen to
repudiate the objections to which the philosopher’s loose articulation left
it exposed.40
Galen’s double listing of PHP in Lib. prop. under categories dealing
with anatomy and Platonic philosophy further undermines the suggestion
of a sharp distinction between the two sides of his corpus, and, by exten‑
sion, dual professional interests. Even so, his other bibliographical trea‑
tise, Ord. lib. prop., does not feature this and other “philosophical” titles
in its course of medical study.41 By this omission, Galen does not seem
to imply, however, that philosophy is beyond medical students or at least
only for those who are more advanced, as he recommends readers of Ord.
lib. prop. to take up his philosophical treatments after On Demonstration,
which he situates at the head of his curriculum after the initial Sects for

37
See DAS 2020, 56–66, for Galen’s analysis of this passage. For Galen’s interpretation
of the kidney’s functions in light of the theory of attraction, see J. SCARBOROUGH, “Galen’s
Investigation of the Kidney”, Clio Medica 11.3 (1976) 171–7.
38
On Galen as a Second Sophistic author, see H. VON STADEN, “Galen and the ‘Second
Sophistic’”, in: R. SORABJI (ed.), Aristotle and After, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies,
Supplement 68 (London 1997) 33–54.
39
See TIELEMAN 1996 and below (p. 128).
40
T. TIELEMAN (“Plotinus on the Seat of the Soul: Reverberations of Galen and Alexander
in Enn. IV, 3 [27], 23”, Phronesis 43.4 [1998] 306–25) shows that, notwithstanding Galen’s
claims to have settled this controversy, later thinkers did not consider his anatomical proof
to be incontrovertible. See also DAS 2020, 148–56.
41
Cf. Lib. prop. 3.8, 5.4, 16.3 (BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 143.9–10; 155.8–10; 171.4–5).
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 11

Beginners.42 Curtis and Tieleman will examine how QOM communicates

a similar foundational role for philosophy in medicine through its retro‑
spective fashioning of Hippocrates into an exponent of logic, physics, and
ethics.
The appeal in QOM to Hippocrates as the archetype of Galen’s philo‑
sophically grounded medicine may account for why he groups it in Lib.
prop. with his Hippocratic commentaries (hypomnēmata) instead of his writ‑
ings on ethics, to which the tract gives disproportionate attention of the
three parts of philosophy listed therein.43 The bibliography assigns two
titles (sg. epigraphē) to QOM: Galen presents the standard name attached
to the work in modern editions and translations—That the Best Doctor is
also a Philosopher (ὅτι ὁ ἄριστος ἰατρὸς καὶ φιλόσοφος)—as his thesis and
leaves the reader to infer that this is an official designation in addition
to the shorter (syntomōteras) Galen’s Hippocrates (Γαληνοῦ Ἱπποκράτης).44
Referring to the short title, Rosen will propose, against conventional inter‑
pretation, that QOM is only incidentally a protreptic to aspiring doctors to
study philosophy to become good practitioners and rather functions as a
defense of Hippocrates’ standing as a philosopher.
Notwithstanding the absence of explicit citations to the Hippocratic
corpus, QOM shows Galen availing himself of so‑called genuine tracts,
namely Epidemics and Airs, Waters, and Places, and pseudepigraphic tra‑
ditions of Hippocrates’ life to substantiate his forerunner’s philosophical
competence.45 In view of the emphasis that Galen places on Hippocrates’
personal observation of the climatic, geographic, and hydraulic features of
different towns throughout Greece, which QOM (3.1–4) ties with an ethical
imperative to treat the poor, this “small work” (biblion smikron) has been
dated to the same time as his commentary on Hippocrates’ Airs, Waters, and
Places.46 Surviving in a ninth‑century Arabic translation, Galen’s exegesis
of the Hippocratic text, which argues for an environmental deterministic
understanding of health, comes from a mature period of his career, pub‑
lished during his last years in Rome.47 Until the publication of the extant
version of Galen’s commentary on Airs, Water, and Places, it remains to be

42
Ord. lib. prop. 1.12 (BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 90.23–91.4). M. HAVARDA (“The Purpose of
Galen’s Treatise On Demonstration”, Early Science and Medicine 20.3 [2015] 265–87) discusses
how the now fragmentary Dem., although logical in nature, aims to train doctors in modes
of reasoning.
43
See Lib. prop. 9.1–14 (BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 159.10–162.11), specifically at § 14 (162.7–
11). For the ethical focus of QOM, see BARIGAZZI 1992, 129.
44
See BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 239–41.
45
See p. 124 below.
46
See WENKEBACH 1932–3, 160; BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 237–9.
47
WENKEBACH 1932–3, 160. Gothard Strohmaier is currently preparing the Arabic trans‑
lation for publication.
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12 Aileen R. Das

investigated whether QOM either primes or reinforces—depending on the

compositional chronology—the longer work’s projection of Hippocrates.

3. The Text
Composed of four chapters, QOM polemicizes against contemporary doc‑
tors’ failure to model their practice of medicine on Hippocrates’ method,
which the text is concerned to define. Its major contention, as the title
signals, is that a Hippocratic approach to medicine requires training in
philosophy—logic, ethics, and physics, according to Galen’s selective in‑
terpretation of the term.48 Galen finds in the Hippocratic attention to the
differences between diseases and their courses a call to learn logic, which
enables the doctor to diagnose and prognose their patient’s ailment (1.4).
Logic also seems to entail the study of physics, for, while this part of phi‑
losophy may provide an indication (endeixis) of how the ailment should
be treated, knowledge of the nature (physis) of the body helps to locate an
application site for the remedy and ensures that its effects are understood
(3.5). The minimal space devoted to the medical advantages of training in
physics suggests that this was not a point Galen had to labor to prove; from
at least late antiquity and with roots stretching back to Aristotle, medicine,
as Wakelnig will explain, was thought to derive its theoretical principles
from this philosophical branch.49
In contrast, QOM centers ethics as essential for excellence in medicine.
Galen links Hippocrates’ legendary indifference to wealth and other crea‑
ture comforts, which he takes to epitomize ethics in action, to his acquisi‑
tion of firsthand knowledge of climate and geography’s influence on the
body (3.1–4). The text does not specify the uses to which Hippocrates put
this information, gathered on his wanderings throughout Greece, on be‑
half of his patients; this itinerary, then, is significant as an emblem of the
labor that Hippocrates expended in pursuing the art of medicine. Whereas
Hippocrates represents an unparalleled standard for most doctors, QOM’s
closing recognition that this revered figurehead can be surpassed (4.4) po‑
sitions Galen, whose own travels brought him even further afield, around
the Mediterranean, as a newer, better benchmark for medical practice.50
Curtis will delve further into the generic classification of QOM and its
rhetorical strategies. It is worth noting here that the tract’s recuperation
of Hippocrates as a philosopher has not only polemical but also apolo‑
getic purposes. Galen’s careful articulation of his philosophical opinions
48
Galen’s definition of philosophy ignores philosophical subfields such as metaphysics
and politics.
49
Cf. Wakelnig, p. 136–140 below.
50
See MATTERN 2013, 36–80, for Galen’s travels throughout the Mediterranean, which
included stops in Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus.
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 13

and their utility (chrēsimon) to medicine, especially in his autodoxography

On My Own Opinions (Prop. Plac.), signals his self‑consciousness about his
own straying from the medical field, as more narrowly defined by philoso‑
phers.51 The shadowiness of the historical Hippocrates, attested by the
lively debates (then as now) about his genuine views, provided Galen with
a malleable authority on to whom he could project and consequently per‑
sonalize his own idea of medicine.52 Moreover, the admiration of Hip‑
pocrates by doctors and eminent philosophers such as Plato (cf. Phaedrus
270c3–5) allowed Galen to institutionalize his medical vision through an
implicit appeal to this cross‑disciplinary consensus, whose own antiquity
lent it further credence.53 Together with the aforementioned Prop. Plac.,
which also dates to the final years of Galen’s life, QOM legitimates, albeit
in a differing way, his overwriting of medicine’s boundaries on philos‑
ophy’s.54 The contributions of Steger, Wakelnig, and Petit will demon‑
strate that ultimately Galen’s attempts to institutionalize his philosophi‑
cal medicine were, and continue to be, successful: it licensed later practi‑
tioners to reimagine their field in expansive directions and perhaps more
tellingly was the normative paradigm against which elite critics had to ar‑
gue to justify their more restricted notions of the discipline.55
Before shifting to the textual history of QOM, which shall serve as my
preface to the volume’s edition and translation, I want to highlight an‑
other distinctive feature of the work. Notwithstanding its argumentative
agenda(s), QOM does not call on the demonstrative techniques that Galen
employs elsewhere—for example, syllogistic reasoning and the citation of
the writings of past authorities—to support its thesis.56 Instead, it presents

51
See DAS 2020, 31–4; B. HOLMES, The Symptom and the Subject: The Emergence of the Physi‑
cal Body in Ancient Greece (Princeton 2010), who examines how philosophers in the classical
period edged out doctors from care of the soul.
52
The “Hippocratic Question”, which seeks to answer what texts in the extant Hippo‑
cratic corpus the historical Hippocrates wrote (if any), best encapsulates the enduring con‑
troversy about this figure; see E. CRAIK, “The ‘Hippocratic Question’ and the Nature of the
Hippocratic Corpus”, in: PORMANN 2018, 25–37.
53
Nearly half a millennium separates Plato’s mention of Hippocrates in the Phaedrus and
Galen. On this passage from the Phaedrus, see, e.g., H. HERTER, “The Problematic Men‑
tion of Hippocrates in Plato’s Phaedrus”, Illinois Classical Studies 1 (1976) 22–42; H. BARTOŠ,
“Hippocratic Holisms”, in: C. THUMIGER (ed.), Holism in Ancient Medicine and Its Reception
(Leiden 2020) 113–32. Tieleman (p. 128) mentions this Platonic passage.
54
Prop. Plac. defends the credibility of Galenic medicine by denying any inconsistency
in Galen’s opinions on issues whose own belonging to medicine he had had to prove. For
the dating of this tract, see V. NUTTON (ed.), Galeni De propriis placitis (Berlin 1999) 46.
55
Cf. DAS 2020.
56
Galen ranks the appeal to past authorities and received opinions (endoxa) as inferior
modes of argumentation to experimental and logical demonstration. See T. TIELEMAN,
“Methodology”, in: R. J. HANKINSON (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galen (Cambridge
2008) 49–65; R. ROSEN, “Galen on Poetic Testimony”, in: M. ASPER / A. KANTHAK (eds.),
Writing Science: Medical and Mathematical Authorship in Ancient Greece (Berlin 2013), 177–90.
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14 Aileen R. Das

its claims with apodeictic certainty. This variation in Galen’s style of ar‑
gumentation could indicate that he intended this work for a different au‑
dience than his more meticulous writings. Sociological studies of mod‑
ern science communication associate the reduction of provisional and dis‑
puted knowledge to simplified fact with popular expositions of science,
which cover articles in daily newspapers, documentaries, and at this his‑
torical moment blogs and social media postings.57 The authority that pop‑
ular discourses of science assume derive from their remove from the con‑
ditions of research, the scholarly debates and experimental failures consti‑
tutive of the production of scientific knowledge.58
While public communication may influence policy‑makers to effect
some change, such as the prioritization of certain scientific concerns for
funding, this general level of exchange also enables scientists to reach col‑
leagues without the constraints of specialist discourse.59 This frame does
not seamlessly apply to Galen’s context, for the limited literacy rates of the
imperial period and fewer modes of dissemination mean that his “gen‑
eral public” was a more restricted group of readers.60 Nonetheless, this
“public” target provides a more charitable explanation for the absence of
nuance and proof in QOM than “haste” of composition, which has been
suggested by some critics.61 Additionally, the above modern lens brings
complexity to the text’s simplicity in that it sees a way for Galen to shape
the approaches of medical rivals by influencing the expectations of elite
patrons, possibly his “general public”, who might lack the specialist famil‑
iarity with the Hippocratic corpus to challenge his retrospective remaking
of Hippocrates.

4. Receptions
Within less than a hundred years of Galen’s death, the details and date
of which are uncertain, his medicine had achieved authoritative status, as
evident from the integration of many of his writings in the medical compi‑
lations composed in the late antique period.62 Moreover, it became institu‑
57
M. CLOITRE / T. SHINN, “Expository Practice: Social, Cognitive and Epistemological
Linkages”, in: SHINN / WHITLEY 1985, 47–51; BUCCHI 2008, 61.
58
R. WHITELY, “Knowledge Producers and Knowledge Acquirers: Popularisation as a
Relation between Scientific Fields and Their Publics”, in: SHINN / WHITLEY 1985, 3–28; BUC‑
CHI 2008, 63.
59
BUCCHI 2008, 63.
60
See A. KOLB, “Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life – Problems and Results”, in: A. KOLB
(ed), Literacy in Ancient Everyday Life (Berlin 2018) [1–10] 2, with important qualifications
about interpreting ancient literacy against the dichotomy of illiteracy and literacy.
61
See n. 3 in the preface (VIII).
62
A date of death of either 216 or 217 has been reached on the evidence of medieval
Arabic biographies of Galen; see V. NUTTON, “Galen ad multos annos”, Dynamis 15 (1995)
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 15

tionalized in late antique centers of education such as Alexandria, where

a selection of his works—the “Sixteen Books of Galen” (really twenty‑
four texts)—formed the medical curriculum of students with the finan‑
cial means to attend the lectures of medical professors, or iatrosophists.63
There, Galen shaped not only which parts of his corpus were read—his
recommendations in Ord. lib. prop. were largely heeded—but also how
readers explained their contents, for his method of commenting on Hip‑
pocrates, especially his appeal to philosophical vocabularies and frame‑
works to expound his predecessor’s medical theories, provided an inter‑
pretive model.64 This concerted focus on a core of Galenic texts determined
Galen’s reception in different linguistic (e.g., Latin, Syriac, and Arabic)
and historical contexts, as Wakelnig will elaborate. The demand for copies
of this Galenic canon came at the expense of other works, such as QOM,
which survived in the premodern and early modern periods as a marginal
text with no interpretative treatment of its own.
Late antique Alexandria attracted students from primarily non‑Greek‑
speaking communities as well, some of whom later returned to their na‑
tive locales as teachers and practitioners. Their introduction of Galenic
ideas seems to have stimulated broader interest in the Galenic corpus and
Alexandrian exegetical practices, subsequently resulting in the demand for
translations of the texts representing Galenism—the medico‑philosophical
system developed by Galen and his interpreters. The near contemporane‑
ous Latin commentaries of Agnellus of Ravenna (fl. ca. 600) and Syriac
translations of Sergius of Reshʿayna (d. 536) show that Galen’s reception
did not conform to a single trajectory, which saw his works move east
of Alexandria and then westward—rather, that trajectory was diffuse and
sometimes concurrent.65
The influx of medical students did not cease with the capture of Alexan‑
dria by the Rāshidūn Caliphate in 641, after which the city became part
of the Islamicate world. Archaeological remains and anecdotes, even if
specious, from and about the famous Arabic translator of Galen Ḥunayn
ibn Isḥāq (d. 873 or 877) testify to the enduring reputation of Alexandria as

25–40. For an outline of late antique compilers’ engagement with Galen, see S. SLAVEVA‑
GRIFFIN, “Byzantine Medical Encyclopedias and Education”, in: P. T. KEYSER / J. SCARBOR‑
OUGH (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World (Oxford 2018)
965–84.
63
For how this lecture context has imprinted certain texts surviving from the period, see
J. SCARBOROUGH, “Teaching Surgery in Late Byzantine Alexandria”, in: HORSTMANSHOFF
2010, 235–60.
64
See P. E. PORMANN, “Medical Education in Late Antiquity: From Alexandria to Mont‑
pellier”, in: HORSTMANSHOFF 2010, 419–41.
65
For Agnellus and his commentaries, see DAVIES / WESTERINK 1981; on Sergius, see S.
BHAYRO, “The Reception of Galen in the Syriac Tradition”, in: BOURAS‑VALLIANATOS / ZIPSER
2019, 163–78.
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16 Aileen R. Das

a center of medical learning.66 With the ascension of the ʿAbbāsids, how‑

ever, Baghdad eclipsed this city in terms of the study of Galen. The locus
of imperial power, it housed patrons wealthy enough to fund the costly
acquisition and translation of Greek and Syriac manuscripts of Galen by
Ḥunayn and other Arabic translators. Stretching from Central Asia to the
Iberian Peninsula, the sheer expanse of the ’Abbāsid empire and the states
into which it later devolved facilitated the circulation of Galen, now in Ara‑
bic, to new networks of readers who transformed his texts while rendering
them into their own linguistic koines (e.g., Hebrew and Latin). The inter‑
change of scientific ideas and works between the Byzantine and Islami‑
cate territories also encouraged renewed attention on Galen among Greek‑
speaking scholars, who would take collections of manuscripts along with
them to Venice, the home of the Aldine Press, and other European sites of
settlement after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453.67

5. Textual Histories
The few surviving textual witnesses of QOM imply a negligible presence
in the rich reception history that I have sketched out above. The oldest
manuscript, now held in the Laurentian Library in Florence, Italy, dates
to the twelfth century and is the exemplar of the three other witnesses, lo‑
cated in libraries in the Vatican, Venice, and Paris.68 The medieval Arabic
translation of QOM (Kitāb fī anna l‑ṭabīb faylasūf ), which is preserved in a
unique twelfth‑century manuscript in Istanbul (Aya Sofya 3725), predates
this Greek tradition by three centuries.69 The incipit of the manuscript
identifies the translation (tarǧama) as by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq.70 This attribu‑
tion is no guarantee of Ḥunayn’s authorship of this Arabic version, because
66
The auditoria uncovered at the site of Kom el‑Dikka, where iatrosophists may have
lectured, continued to be in use after the conquest of Alexandria; see T. DERDA / T.
MARKIEWICZ / E. WIPSZYCKA, Alexandria: Auditoria of Kom el‑Dikka and Late Antique Educa‑
tion, Journal of Juristic Papyrology, Supplement 8 (Warsaw 2007). On Ḥunayn’s purported
connection to Alexandria, see E. VAN DALEN, “Medical Translations from Greek into Ara‑
bic and Hebrew”, in: S. SUSAM‑SARAEVA / E. SPIŠIAKOVÁ (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of
Translation and Health (London 2021) [13–26] 15.
67
For an example of this Byzantine‑Arabic exchange, see M. MAVROUDI, A Byzantine Book
on Dream Interpretation: The Oneirocriticon of Achmet and Its Arabic Sources (Leiden 2002).
68
Boudon‑Millot’s stemmatic reconstruction of the textual tradition (BOUDON‑MILLOT
2007, 252–65, 279) reveals that the Florentine manuscript—MS L in her critical apparatus—
was corrected sometime between the last decades of the fourteenth century and the six‑
teenth century. The uncorrected version served as the exemplar for the Vatican manuscript,
whereas the corrected version was the model for the Venetian and Parisian witnesses. See
also Nesselrath’s comments at p. 20.
69
For the textual tradition of the Arabic version, see M. ULLMANN, Die Medizin im Islam,
Handbuch der Orientalistik I, Erg.–Bd. 6.1 (Leiden 1970), 38; BACHMANN 1965, 6.
70
BACHMANN 1965, 7.
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 17

the high valuation of his workshop’s translations may have induced later
copyists to affix his name to the work of other translators. In the absence
of any bibliographical reports linking another translator to QOM, the as‑
cription to Ḥunayn remains probable. Even so, Ḥunayn’s own description
of his translation of this tract in his famous Epistle (Risāla) on his render‑
ing of the Galenic corpus into Arabic introduces additional complexities,
which Wakelnig will consider: he translated QOM twice into Arabic for
two different patrons.71 Ḥunayn also recounts that he translated the text
into Syriac for his son, Isḥāq ibn Ḥunayn; he does not clarify whether this
rendition, or the earlier Syriac version of Job of Edessa (d. ca. 835), which
he may have consulted as well, formed the basis of either Arabic trans‑
lation.72 While the editor of the Arabic text, Peter Bachmann, provides
glossaries that offer insight into how the Arabic translator may have han‑
dled Galen’s Greek syntax and vocabulary, it is left to a future analysis to
establish whether this version was made directly from the Greek or from
Syriac.73
In contrast to this slim textual history, QOM has been well served by
modern editors and translators: excluding the early modern editio prin‑
ceps, the Greek text has been edited six times and translated into a mod‑
ern language ten times.74 Published in classics, history of medicine, and
medical journals and monographs, QOM has reached a multidisciplinary
readership. Boudon‑Millot was the first modern editor to consider the Ara‑
bic translation when establishing the Greek text of QOM. Furthermore,
71
See p. 137–139 below.
72
On how translators’ use of Syriac informed their production of Arabic version of Greek
texts, see S. BHAYRO / S. BROCK, “The Syriac Palimpsest and the Role of Syriac in the Trans‑
mission of Greek Medicine in the Orient”, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 89.1 (2012),
25–43.
73
See BACHMANN 1965, 28–67. For how this analysis might be conducted, see U.
VAGELPOHL, Aristotle’s “Rhetoric” in the East: The Syriac and Arabic Translation and Commen‑
tary Tradition (Leiden 2008).
74
The Aldine Press printed the Greek for the first time in 1525; subsequent editors in‑
clude CORAY 1816, KÜHN 1821, MÜLLER 1875 and 1891, WENKEBACH 1932–3, and BOUDON‑
MILLOT 2007. On these editions, see BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 270–6. P. BRAIN, “Galen on
the Ideal of the Physician”, South African Medical Journal 52 (1977) 936–8, and P. SINGER,
Galen: Selected Works (Oxford 1997) 30–4, have translated the Greek text into English; C.
DAREMBERG, Oeuvres anatomiques, physiologiques et médicales de Galien (Paris 1854) 1–7, and
BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007 into French; M. CARDINI, “Galeno: Come l’ottimo medico sia anche
filosofo (Ὅτι ἄριστος ἰατρὸς καὶ φιλόσοφος)”, Riv. Crit. Clin. Med. 15.31 (1914) 481–5,
and I. GAROFALO, “Il miglior medico è anche filosofo”, in I. GAROFALO / M. VEGETTI (eds.),
Opere scelte di Galeno (Turin 1978) 91–101, into Italian; P. LÜTH / W. KNAPP, “Der beste Arzt
ist Wissenschaftler! Galen von Pergamon”, Med. Welt 33 (1965) 2185–7, into German; and
B. USOBIAGA, “El major medico también es filósofo”, Boletin del Instituto de Estudios Heleni‑
cos 10 (1976) 133–51, J. A. OCHOA / L. SANZ MINGOTE, Galeno. Ex‑ortación al aprendizaje de
las artes. Sorbre la major doctrina. El major medico es también filósofo. Sobre las escuelas, a los
que se incian (Madrid 1987) 113–22, and T. MARTÍNEZ MANZANO, Galeno: Tratados filosóficos
y autobiográficos. Introducciónes, traducción y notas (Madrid 2002) into Spanish.
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18 Aileen R. Das

whereas previous editors had relied on prior printed editions to the point
of reproducing their errors, Boudon‑Millot personally consulted all ex‑
tant manuscript witnesses.75 While there are theoretical problems with
using the Arabic translation to “recover” the Greek (all translations are
creative acts and the relation of the Arabic to the Greek is still in question),
Boudon‑Millot’s edition has justifiably been commended for its careful tex‑
tual work.76
Readers familiar with the SAPERE series know that its volumes conven‑
tionally contain an edition as well as a translation of the work interrogated
in the multiauthor contributions. The press could not obtain copyright
permissions to reprint Boudon‑Millot’s Greek. The SAPERE editors are
committed, nonetheless, to providing an edition and so asked me to re‑
assess whether I could improve on her text. The COVID pandemic and
personal circumstances made it infeasible for me to consult all the Greek
manuscripts firsthand. After examining the Vatican MS, which is available
online, and the Arabic version, I did not feel confident that I could refine
Boudon‑Millot’s edition.77 Nesselrath, one of the series’ editors, has inter‑
vened to offer what he calls plausible alternatives to Boudon‑Millot’s read‑
ing of the Greek. For the most part, my translation adheres to Nesselrath’s
edition, but where I disagree with his interpretation, I flag the departure
with a note.

6. Principles of Translation

Considering that QOM has two prior English translations, I have decided
to prioritize comprehensibility and fluidity over literalness in my own ren‑
dering of the text, even if these earlier attempts are based on the now out‑
dated edition of Kühn.78 The broad target readership of the SAPERE series
justifies, I believe, this choice. To those with knowledge of ancient Greek,
my use of the gender‑neutral “they” to convey the unexpressed subject of
third‑person singular verbs may seem idiosyncratic. This intervention ap‑
plies in particular to passages in which Galen details the essential knowl‑

75
As BOUDON‑MILLOT (2007, 275, 276) observes, KÜHN 1821 replicates the text of R.
CHARTIER (ed.), Hippocratis Coi, et Claudii Galeni Pergami archiatrôn opera (Paris 1679), and
WENKEBACH 1932–3 follows MÜLLER 1891 with the addition of many “imprudent” conjec‑
tures. On Wenkebach, she writes “Il s’est en outre montré imprudemment à un grand
nombre de conjectures” (276).
76
See the positive reviews by LORUSSO 2007; NUTTON 2008; HANKINSON 2010; M. MARIE‑
HÉLÈNE, “Galien. Tome I. Introduction générale. Sur l’ordre de ses propres livres. Sur ses propres
livres. Que l’excellent médecin est aussi philosophe by Véronique Boudon‑Millot”, L’Antiquité
classique 79.1 (2010) 419–22; and TIELEMAN 2010.
77
See https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Urb.gr.67.
78
For these translations, see n. 74 above.
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 19

edge set of the would‑be doctor (e.g., 3.1–5). I can cite historical grounds
for what I freely admit has ideological motivations.
While most of Galen’s addressees are men, his youthful composition
of The Anatomy of the Uterus at the behest of a midwife (μαίᾳ τινί) shows
that this is not exclusively the case.79 Furthermore, epigraphic evidence
richly attests to women’s participation in a variety of healthcare roles, in‑
cluding as doctors (ἰατρός, ἰατρίνη; Lat. medica) and midwife physicians
(ἰατρομαῖες), in the Roman Empire.80 I also want to leave room for the con‑
ceivable presence of genderqueer and trans individuals serving in these
capacities.81 The Greek of QOM allows as well a more capacious read‑
ing of at least the text’s focus of criticism, contemporary οἱ ἰατροί (“doc‑
tors”): the grammatical gender of this group may be masculine, but Greek
standardly employs the masculine plural to represent mixed‑sexed collec‑
tions. To dampen somewhat the more diverse picture that I have been
painting of Galen’s possible social world, the case stories in his corpus
tend to relegate women, whether lay or professional, to subordinate po‑
sitions as the unnamed wives of prominent men (counting his patrons and
friends) and incompetent practitioners.82 Despite this marginality, Galen’s
vague description of the composition of the crowds at his public lectures
and demonstrations, to which context QOM may belong, does not rule out
the attendance of women.83
I mentioned that I have ideological reasons for creating ambiguity
around gender in my translation. In line with the ambition of the SAPERE
series, my hope is that this volume will find readers beyond academia,
in medical and nonprofessional circles—although I expect that QOM will
never enjoy the same currency as the Hippocratic Oath, the most famous
document of Greco‑Roman medicine. By not overtly masculinizing my
translation, I aim to invite aspiring doctors of all genders to engage with
Galen as an interlocutor and to take inspiration from whatever of his text
resounds with them. In this respect, I am responding to the call within
translation studies for a transing of translation practices that recognize
a text’s, and its readers’, ability to move “between and beyond binary

79
See Lib. prop. 2.2–3 (BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 140.17–21). For the Greek text and an En‑
glish translation of Ut. Diss., see D. NICKEL (ed.), Galeni de Uteri Dissectione, CMG V.2, 1
(Berlin 1971); C. M. GOSS, “Galen on the Anatomy of the Uterus”, The Anatomical Record
144 (1962) 77–84.
80
See SAMAMA 2003, 15–16 and H. KING, Hippocrates’ woman: Reading the female body in
ancient Greece (London 1998) 178–179.
81
For an introduction to the array of gender identities and their representation in Greco‑
Roman “art” (broadly construed), see A. SURTEES / J. DYER (eds.), Exploring Gender Diversity
in the Ancient World (Edinburgh 2020).
82
See MATTERN 2008, 89–92.
83
MATTERN 2008, 91.
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20 Aileen R. Das

poles”.84 As proponents of this approach argue, the assumption that a

“foreign” source shares the same dichotomous formulation of gender at
the root of prevailing cis‑hetero normativities is itself a form of interpretive
domestication.85 Just as I do not wish to localize the significance of QOM
to Galen’s immediate context in imperial Rome, nor would I like to fix the
text to a single point on the gender spectrum.

7. A short note on the Greek text of Galen’s QOM

in this volume (Heinz‑Günther Nesselrath)
The Greek text of Galen’s QOM presented in this volume is based on
Véronique Boudon‑Millot’s edition of 2007, which has received deserved
praise from reviewers;86 it presents a stemma traditionis87 of QOM—the
most important components of which are the twelfth‑century Greek Codex
Laurentianus plut. LXXIV, 3 (= L, of which all the other extant Greek
manuscripts are apographa) and the older (ninth‑century) Arabic transla‑
tion (Ar.), presumably by Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq. As is, however, the case with
more or less every edition of an ancient text, there remain a number of pas‑
sages where the textual evidence may point to other conceivable editorial
solutions. Here is a list of these passages:

passage Boudon‑Millot present edition

1.1 αὑτοὺς ἐν ὁμοίοις ἐκείνῳ †αὐτοὺς ἐν ὁμοίοις ἐκείνῳ†
1.5 τὰ μέλλοντα γενήσεσθαι τῷ τὰ μέλλοντα γενήσεσθαι τῷ
κάμνοντι νοσήματα κάμνοντι
1.6 σχολῇ γὰρ ἂν ⟨* * *⟩ σχολῇ γ’ ἄν
2.1 εἰ καὶ τοῦτο παρασταίη εἰ καί τῳ τοῦτο παρασταίη

84
D. ROBINSON, Transgender, Translation, Translingual Address (London 2019) xxv. On the
differing implications of “to transgender translation”, see D. GRAMLING / A. DUTTA, “In‑
troduction”, Transgender Studies Quarterly 3.3–4 (2016) [333–54] 335. For a gender‑neutral
approach to translating a premodern text written in a gendered language (i.e., Hebrew),
see M. STRASSFELD, “Translating the Human: The androginos in Tosefta Bikurim”, Transgen‑
der Studies Quarterly 3.3–4 (2016) [587–603] 589–91. I am grateful to my colleague Rafe Neis
for this reference.
85
Cf. M. CASAGRANDA “Bridging the Genders? Transgendering Translation Theory and
Practice”, in: E. FEDERICI / V. LEONARDI (eds.), Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice
in Translation and Gender Studies (Newcastle upon Tyne 2013) 112–21.
86
LORUSSO 2007 (“un’edizione critica condotta con sapienza, dottrina ed equilibrio”);
NUTTON 2008, 144 (“she provides the first general survey for nearly a century of the tex‑
tual history of the Galenic corpus”); HANKINSON 2010, 73 (“The discussion of the textual
tradition, both in the Introduction and in the Notices prefixed to each treatise, is meticu‑
lous, detailed, formidable and fascinating”); TIELEMAN 2010, 488 (“From the viewpoint of
textual transmission this new edition represents an advance compared to the Teubner one
by Iwan von Müller [1899]”).
87
See BOUDON‑MILLOT 2007, 279.
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Introduction: The Best Doctor‑Philosopher 21

passage Boudon‑Millot present edition

2.1 εὐτυχήσειεν εὐτυχήσειαν
2.6 διὰ τὸ τὸν πλοῦτον ἀρετῆς διὰ τὸ {τὸν} πλοῦτον ἀρετῆς
εἶναι τιμιώτερον εἶναι τιμιώτερον
2.7 προηγημένας προηγμένας
3.1 ἐφέξει ἐφίξεται
3.5 ἀσκεῖν ⟨χρὴ⟩ ἀσκητέον
3.7 μανθάνειν †μὲν ἄγειν†
3.8 ἔχει ἔχοι
3.9 ἅνθρωποι ἄνθρωποι
3.11 ὅστις ἂν ἰατρὸς ᾖ πάντως, ὅστις ἂν ⟨ἄριστος⟩ ἰατρὸς ᾖ,
οὗτός ἐστι καὶ φιλόσοφος πάντως οὗτός ἐστι καὶ
φιλόσοφος

Each of these textual variants is marked by an asterisk (*) in the Greek text.
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Dies ist urheberrechtlich geschütztes Material. Bereitgestellt von: Humboldt-Universit?t, 15.02.2024