Acknowledgements

This book is the main output of a Wellcome Trust University Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences, a five-year grant which enabled me to undertake a research project on Galen as Principal Investigator (Reference Number: 208106/A/17/Z), first as Lecturer in Classics at the University of Glasgow and later on as Associate Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, where I am currently based. I am most grateful to the Wellcome Trust not just for choosing to fund this research from among a large pool of other highly competitive projects in the Medical Humanities from all over the UK, but also for supporting research trips, my participation in scholarly events and the organisation of an international conference attached to this project. I am also indebted to the Trust for covering the Open Access fees for this monograph, thus significantly enhancing its accessibility.

An earlier version of Chapter 4 was published as ‘Psychotherapy and Moralising Rhetoric in Galen’s Newly Discovered Avoiding Distress (Peri Alypias)’ in Medical History 58.4 (2014) pp. 585–603, while an earlier version of Chapter 5 appeared as ‘Galen’s Exhortation to the Study of Medicine: An Educational Work for Prospective Medical Students’ in the volume Greek Medical Literature and its Readers: From Hippocrates to Islam and Byzantium, London-New York: Routledge, edited by P. Bouras-Vallianatos and S. Xenophontos in 2018, pp. 67–93. In both cases the versions featuring in this book are revised and augmented and are thus to be preferred.

The final manuscript was thoroughly read and incisively commented on by Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, Jason König, Chris Pelling and Michael Trapp, from whose suggestions and criticism I have greatly benefitted. I could not have had more excellent readers. Profound thanks are also due to the two anonymous reviewers for Cambridge University Press and to the editor Hilary Gaskin.

This book was written during the most exciting period ever, when my son, Theotokis, first appeared in my life to give it a new direction and change it for ever. This book is dedicated to him.