Robert Leigh’s edition of a text on theriac (an antidote) ascribed to Galen breaks much new ground. It is the first modern edition and English translation of a pharmacological tract (although its manuscript tradition brings little novelty), and the commentary deals with a wide range of different questions from the circumstances of the death of Cleopatra to stylistic features of Christian texts. The Greek is now much improved, although there are still difficult passages: at (132, 12), despite the commentary, the evidence for ‘spring’ is overwhelming, and one should then fill in the gap in the text further by emending to ‘as spring $\langle \text{is ending and summer}\rangle$ beginning’, an addition supported by a parallel the author cites. More might have been said about later citations of this tract, and I miss a comparison with the short theriac tract dedicated to Pamphilanus. Misprints are few and usually trivial, although Leigh’s calculation of Galen’s potential age should be ‘ninety three’, not ‘eighty three’ (23).

Much of this book, however, is taken up with the crucial question of whether it was written by Galen or not. It was quoted as if by Galen as early as the sixth century and circulated as his in both Latin and Arabic translation as well as in the original Greek. Its ostensible date of composition also falls within Galen’s lifetime, between 204 and 211 AD. Its author, a Greek in imperial service, who valued Hippocrates and had spent time at Alexandria before coming to Rome, shares many views of Galen, whose name is not mentioned, and the author and Galen moved in the same Roman political and intellectual circles. But there are also differences in detail, and there has been much debate as to the authenticity of the work. In 1997 I argued that, on balance, this was a work of an increasingly senile and forgetful Galen, but I am now convinced by the arguments given here and by Véronique Boudon-Millot and Nathalie Rousseau in forthcoming papers that Galen was not the author. Certain incidents must now be removed from Galen’s biography such as his friendship with Arria, the female philosopher.

Although he oscillates between alternatives, Leigh apparently favours the notion that the whole treatise was a pastiche, perhaps written a century or so after the ostensible date by someone wishing to imitate Galen. But this is unlikely for several reasons. While such ‘reconstructions’ are known for literary themes, none involves such precise detail of past (or fictitious) events, and none of the pseudonymous medical material (excluding the Hippocratic letters) bears any resemblance to this type of pastiche. Arguments from verbal parallels with later Christian material are weak, given the relative absence of surviving non-theological texts from the century after Galen, and, as Leigh points out, the author is not always as consistent as one might have expected from the composer of a pastiche. An apparent quotation in the Cestoi of Julius Africanus (around 225 AD) could have been derived from this tract or from a shared source. Such a deliberate antique invention of a medical tract would be unique and serve no real purpose.

The alternative is far more plausible. This was a treatise written in Galen’s lifetime by someone much like him, with a similar career and background, and who may even have derived some of his arguments from Galen (although the evidence is not clear cut, given Galen’s silence about those with whom he agreed). The author writes good Greek, with rather more literary flourishes and a more elegant style than Galen, and his perspective is that of a Greek long resident in Rome – his examples of Mithridates, Hannibal and Cleopatra suit a Roman readership. This is not surprising, for recent work on the other theriac tract and on the short The Properties of the Centaury has shown that they too were written by Greek doctors living in Rome at precisely the same time. Rome in 210 AD was as much a Greek as a Latin city.

Leigh’s careful commentary, often pointing out differences with Galen, serves another important purpose. It allows us to compare Galen with some contemporaries and to provide him with a context in which he can be assessed. To focus on this anonymous author, his ideas and his abilities not only brings to light an author who has been almost entirely forgotten but also serves as a reminder of the intellectual world of Rome in the early third century. Paradoxically, by freeing the author from the shackles of Galen, Leigh has also shown how much the two have in common and, at the same time, he has made this Roman doctor a much more significant figure in the history of medicine.