This volume is a precious reference work for ancient Greek medicine and Hippocratic texts in particular. For each work of the so-called Hippocratic Corpus, C. presents an overview, including short textual references, a summary of the contents, a brief commentary, the context within the ancient medical world and, finally, its dating. The Hippocratic treatises are listed in an alphabetical order and, for each of them, the conventional abbreviation, Greek and Latin titles, and English title are reported.
Although the volume has a summarising and introductory character, it is not, however, a sterile collection of information taken from previous studies by other authors. For C. has provided here many interesting and well-argued observations and comments on the context and the language of the texts, observations that are clearly based on a deep and extensive knowledge of the Hippocratic Corpus.
Some critical remarks can be made regarding the textual bibliography, where one notices a few lacunae. References to main editions of some Hippocratic texts are missing: for example, D. Manetti and A. Roselli, Ippocrate. Epidemie, libro sesto. Introduzione, testo critico, commento e traduzione (1982), as well as A. Lami, ‘Ippocrate, Sui disturbi virginali. Testo, traduzione e commento’, Galenos 1 (2007), 15–59. Since C. refers on different occasions to un-published dissertations of editions of Hippocratic works, one might also expect a reference to the fundamental dissertation by C. Magdelaine, Histoire du texte et édition critique, traduite et commentée des Aphorismes d'Hippocrate (1994).
The decision by C. to not take into consideration the so-called ‘biographical’ Hippocratic works – such as Letters, Speeches and Decree – and other very late treatises attributed to Hippocrates (and often preserved only in Latin or Arabic fragments) is justifiable, according to the volume's purpose. Nevertheless, a striking omission is an ethical treatise that, even if not included in the Opera Omnia edited by E. Littré and F.Z. Ermerins, has been attributed to Hippocrates by the manuscript tradition, next to Oath and Law: the Testament, edited by K. Deichgräber in Medicus gratiosus. Untersuchungen zu einem griechischen Arztbild. Mit dem Anhang Testamentum Hippocratis und Rhazes’ De indulgentia medici (1970) and re-edited in its three different redactions by J. Jouanna, ‘Quel doit être celui qui apprend l'art médical? Ou Testament d'Hippocrate’, Officina Hippocratica (2011), 77–116.
Besides these few omissions, the book is an extremely helpful and generous volume. It offers in a relatively short and manageable space a sharp and accurate overview of the content and context of each medical work attributed to the famous Hippocrates of Cos. As C. states in the preface, the book ‘will serve as a guide through the maze of a formidably large and varied corpus’, and – I add – it should not be missing on the shelves of students and scholars dealing with the history of ancient medicine.
