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Galen and his Environment1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

D. E. Eichholz
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Galen was born at Pergamum in a.d. 130 or, more likely, 129. His father Nicon, a man of means, was well educated and kindly, but his mother ‘was most irascible, so much so that she would sometimes bite her servants, and was always shouting and always battling with my father, even more so than Xanthippe with Socrates’ (5 K. 40). This was a difficult home, particularly for an only son, as we must suppose Galen to have been. But his father attended carefully to his upbringing. At 14 he began to study logic, and a little later the philosophy of all the chief sects. His choice of a profession he also owed to his father, who was prompted by a dream to let him study medicine. There were dangers, as Galen later saw (19 K. 59), in studying medicine and philosophy together, as he now at 17 proceeded to do. But he did not succumb, and the following hypothetical description may be taken as true of himself at this time (De nat. fac. III. x. 179, Loeb Classical Library, ed. A. J. Brock, 2 K 179): ‘A man who wishes to gain more than ordinary knowledge of his subject must at the outset be exceptional both in his natural gifts and in his early training. And when he reaches adolescence, he must have a frenzied enthusiasm for the truth, like one possessed; neither by day nor by night must he cease straining and striving to master all that has been said by the most famous of the ancients.’ His first medical instructor was Satyrus, with whom he studied for four years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 20 , Issue 59 , June 1951 , pp. 60 - 71
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1951

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References

page 60 note 2 See Ilberg, J., ‘Aus Galens Praxis’, Nene Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum, xv, 1905, p. 277Google Scholar, n. 1.

page 60 note 3 K. = Kühn's edition; the first figure refers to the volume, the second to the page.

page 61 note 1 It could not have been the Parthian War, as has been supposed. See, for instance, Ilberg, J., op. cit., p. 288Google Scholar, and Walsh, J., Annals of Medical History, 1931, pp. 195–208.Google Scholar Walsh's articles on Galen in this and other journals are full of detail, but are often unsound.

page 61 note 2 On one occasion (14 K. 627 ff.) he called his audience ‘sceptical louts’ (άγρoικoπυρρών∊ιoι) and stalked out of the room.

page 61 note 3 He was not running away from the plague, which swept Italy two years later. It is mentioned merely to indicate the date (a.d. 166).

page 62 note 1 By Platnauer, M., Septimius Severus, p. 187.Google Scholar

page 65 note 1 Meyer, T., Geschichte des römischen Aerztestandes, p. 74.Google Scholar Statute of Valentinian, Valens, and Gratian: date a.d. 370: students subsidized by the State must finish their course by 20.

page 65 note 2 This appears to be the natural order and division of studies and also the chronological order into which Galen's medical writings fall. See Ilberg, J., ‘Ueber die Schriftstellerei des Klaudios Galenos’, Rh. Mus. xliv, 1889, pp. 214–16, and xlvii, 1892, pp. 504–5.Google Scholar

page 66 note 1 ‘A hundred students called with Dr. Hill, When I was lying ill. A hundred chilly hands explored my frame; And then—my fever came.’

page 66 note 2 Walzer, R., ‘New Light on Galen's Moral Philosophy’, C.Q. xliii, 1949, pp. 8a ff.Google Scholar

page 67 note 1 See Ilberg, J., ‘Aus Galens Praxis’, p. 313.Google Scholar

page 69 note 1 Iliad xxi. 107.

page 71 note 1 For example, Brock, A. J., Greek Medicine, Introduction, p. 21.Google Scholar But I am glad to find that Brock's estimate of Galen's character is similar to mine (op. cit., P. 33), although my conclusions were reached independently and by a somewhat different approach.

page 71 note 2 The God That Failed, p. 26.