Archytas of Tarentum fits the popular conception of a Pythagorean better than anyone in the Pythagorean tradition, including Pythagoras himself. He was a distinguished mathematician; indeed we know of no other Pythagorean who even approached the mathematical prowess, which Archytas displays in his stunning solution to the problem of doubling the cube, the so-called Delian problem (A14). He also showed the typical Pythagorean interest in the mathematics of music, but again his analysis of the music of his day is by far the most sophisticated piece of harmonic theory in the early Pythagorean tradition (A16). Finally, he was elected leader of his city-state, Tarentum, seven consecutive times and his accomplishments in the political sphere are more impressive and better documented than those in the legends about Pythagoras (see “Life, writings and reception” above). Thus, we have the Pythagorean whom some have seen as the model for Plato's philosopher king (Guthrie 1962: 333). It is true, nonetheless, that Archytas has received relatively little attention from scholars of the history of ancient philosophy, let alone the educated community as a whole. He might justly be labeled “the lost Pythagorean.” Pythagoras has, of course, garnered the most attention, in large part because of his enormous importance in later antiquity (see, e.g., O'Meara 1989). The legend of Pythagoras has recently been debunked to some extent, and a more accurate appreciation of his accomplishment has been achieved (Burkert 1972a, Huffman 1999a: 66–75).

PRE-ARISTOTELIAN VIEWS ON SLEEP AND DREAMS

‘Anyone who has a correct understanding of the signs that occur in sleep, will discover that they have great significance for everything.’ This is the opening sentence of the fourth book of the Hippocratic work On Regimen, a treatise dating probably from the first half of the fourth century bce and dealing with the interpretation of dreams from a medical point of view, that is, as signs pointing to the (future) state of the body of the dreamer. The passage reflects the general opinion in ancient Greece that dreams are of great importance as ‘signs’ (sēmeia) or ‘indications’ (tekmēria), not only of the physical constitution of the dreamer and of imminent diseases or mental disturbances befalling him/her, but also of divine intentions, of things that may happen in the future, things hidden to normal human understanding. Dreams played an important part in Greek divination and religion, especially in the healing cult of Asclepius, because they were believed to contain important therapeutic indications or even to bring about healing themselves. The belief in the divine origin of dreams and in their prophetic power was widespread, even among intellectuals. As a result, dreams were mostly approached with caution because of their ambiguous nature. The Greeks realised that dreams, while often presenting many similarities with daytime experiences, may at the same time be bizarre or monstrous.

Few areas in classical scholarship have seen such rapid growth as the study of ancient medicine. Over the last three decades, the subject has gained broad appeal, not only among scholars and students of Greek and Roman antiquity but also in other disciplines such as the history of medicine and science, the history of philosophy and ideas, (bio-)archaeology and environmental history, and the study of the linguistic, literary, rhetorical and cultural aspects of intellectual ‘discourse’. The popularity of the subject even extends beyond the confines of academic communities, and ancient medicine has proved to be an effective tool in the promotion of the public understanding of medicine and its history.

The reasons for these changes are varied and complex, and to do justice to all would require a much fuller discussion than I can offer here. In this introductory chapter, I will concentrate on what I perceive to be the most important developments and in so doing set out the rationale of the present collection of papers. Evidently, ancient medicine possesses remarkable flexibility in attracting interest from a large variety of people approaching the field from a broad range of disciplines, directions and backgrounds, for a number of different reasons and with a wide variety of expectations. The purpose of publishing these papers in the present form is to make them more easily accessible to this growing audience.

INTRODUCTION

In a well-known passage from the Hippocratic Epidemics, the doctor's duties are succinctly characterised as follows:

The principle that the doctor is there to help, to refrain from anything that may be harmful, and to use his skill and knowledge and all the relevant information about the disease and the patient in order to assist the patient in his battle against the disease is an idea that frequently recurs in Greek medicine. It is succinctly summarised here in the words ‘to help, or to do no harm’ (ὠφελεĩν ἢ μἠ βλάπτειν), a formula which is often quoted or echoed both in the Hippocratic Corpus and in later Greek and Roman medical literature.

This formula is interesting in that it reflects an early awareness of the possibility that medical treatment can also cause harm. The Hippocratic Oath, which explicitly mentions the well-being of the patient as the doctor's guiding principle, understands this ‘causing harm’ in the sense of deliberately terminating a person's life or otherwise purposively causing disadvantage to his or her situation.

INTRODUCTION

It is well known that Galen, in the epistemological debate (as he saw it) between the so-called Dogmatists and the Empiricists, adopted a position which might be defined both as an attempt at maintaining his cherished ideal of intellectual independence and as an endeavour to preserve the valuable insights that the different strands of tradition provided. The latter resulted in his conviction that medical knowledge is arrived at by means of rather special conjunction of, on the one hand, reason (logos), that is, a set of theoretical and logical concepts, definitions, axioms, arguments, and ideas referring both to observable and unobservable entities, and, on the other hand, experience (peira), that is, a more or less systematic collection of data derived from sense-perception. What makes his position more complicated is that according to Galen both reason and experience should be used or applied in a correct way, in a correct order, interrelation and/or proportion. This requirement may have different consequences for different areas within medical science. Moreover, it is precisely in this respect that Galen explicitly distances himself from the other medical schools, who, as he believes, either failed to take into account empirical data which would seem to him to be inconsistent with their theoretical assumptions, deductions, inferences or analogies, or who formulated unqualified generalising claims on the exclusive basis of empirical data.

PSYCHOLOGY, BIOLOGY, AND VARIATIONS IN COGNITIVE PERFORMANCES

Although Aristotle's On the Soul (De anima) has for centuries been regarded as a ‘metaphysical’ rather than a ‘physical’, or as a ‘philosophical’ rather than a ‘scientific’, work, there seems nowadays to be a consensus among students of his psychology as to the thoroughly biological status of the theory set forth there. This may have to do with recent developments in the philosophy of mind, but it is probably also related to a reassessment of the importance of Aristotle's zoological writings (i.e. History of Animals (Hist. an.), Parts of Animals (Part. an.), Generation of Animals (Gen. an.), Progression of Animals (De incessu animalium, IA) and Movement of Animals (De motu an.)) and to a growing conviction among students of Aristotle's biology concerning the interrelatedness of what were traditionally called the ‘psychological writings’ of Aristotle (i.e. On the Soul and parts of the Parva naturalia) and the zoological works. There also seems to be a general agreement as to the basic consistency of Aristotle's psychological theory, or at least a tendency to explain apparent contradictions between On the Soul and the Parva naturalia on the one hand, and statements related to the soul in the zoological writings on the other (or between On the Soul and the Parva naturalia, or between different sections of the Parva naturalia) as the result of differences of method, approach, or argumentative strategy of particular treatises or contexts rather than in terms of a development in Aristotle's psychological ideas.

Caelius Aurelianus' Methodism is often taken for granted. Yet the question may be asked how profoundly, pervasively and consistently Methodist doctrine and methodology is applied in Caelius' work. In this chapter I will attempt to answer this question with regard to some epistemological principles of Methodism as they are known to us from Soranus and from Caelius himself; and I will consider whether the difficulties that arise here are just apparent or amount to genuine inconsistencies, and, if the latter, whether these are to be explained as the result of a development in Methodism after Soranus or as tensions inherent in Methodist medicine as such. In so doing, I will treat Caelius Aurelianus (not Soranus) as the author of Acute Affections (Acut.) and Chronic Affections (Chron.). This is not to deny Caelius' dependence on Soranus – a dependence which is probably great, but in the absence of most of Soranus' work impossible to assess – but should leave room, at least theoretically, for Caelius' own contribution, whether that merely consisted of translating and partially rearranging Soranic material or of substantial revision with additions and omissions of his own.

To be sure, there is no question about Caelius' actually belonging to the Methodist school, to which he frequently refers as ‘our sect’ and whose doctrines he often presents as the standard for his therapeutic instructions.

In Eudemian Ethics (Eth. Eud.) 8.2 Aristotle is searching for an explanation of eutuchia (εὐτυχία), which might be defined as ‘good fortune’ – sheer luck in matters in which the lucky man does not have any rational or technical competence, befalling the same man so frequently that it cannot be a matter of coincidence. Textual problems, extreme brevity and looseness of expression as well as the enormous span of the argument make it difficult to follow Aristotle's reasoning in detail. Yet there seems to be a consensus among modern interpreters concerning the conclusion of the chapter. The principal question was whether eutuchia is caused by nature or not (1247 a 2), and Aristotle's answer to this question, briefly summarised in 1248 b 3–7, is as follows. There are two forms of eutuchia, the first of which is both ‘divine’ (theia) and ‘by nature’ (phusei), and the second of which is caused by ‘chance’ (tuchē); both forms are ‘irrational’ (alogoi), but the first form is ‘continuous’ (sunechēs), whereas the latter is not. The first form is the one which Aristotle has been trying to explain from the beginning; the existence of the second form he was compelled to recognise in the course of his argument.

It appears that this first form of eutuchia is based on a kind of interaction between a principal divine movement (1248 a 25ff.) and a human natural constitution (1248 a 30–1; 39–41).