GALEN ON DIVINATION

In the best discussion of Galen's attitude towards divination, R.J. Hankinson has shown that Galen accepts divination as an art (technê), with its own rules and possible efficacy, but as a realm separate from medicine. Indeed, in his treatise On prognosis he lists divination (mantikê) among the arts just after reporting that he was accused of being a magician (goês) and shortly before he reports in the same treatise the accusation of being a diviner (mantis): ‘They do not see the particular beauty of each study and they cannot stand intellectuals. Geometry and arithmetic they need only in calculating expenses and improving their mansions, astronomy and divination only in forecasting whose money they are going to inherit, and music simply for auditory titillation’ (μαντικῆς ὅσον εἰς τὸ προγνῶναι τίνων κληρονομήσουσι χρῄσουσιν).Footnote ¹² The acknowledgment of the status of technê for divination is an interesting one and not self-evident: the possibility of predicting the future had been disputed, at least since Cicero's treatise on the subjectFootnote ¹³ and the debate was still going on in Galen's day.Footnote ¹⁴ Justifications of divination as an art usually argue that it is a stochastic art: it possesses a body of knowledge and rules, but it has to proceed by conjecture given the complexity of its subject matter.Footnote ¹⁵ This is, for example, the argument of Quintus in Cicero's De divinatione, where medicine is cited as a parallel art that also relies on conjecture and hence is capable of failure.Footnote ¹⁶ As Véronique Boudon has shown, Galen defines the art of medicine also as a stochastic art, because it has to apply sound principles, which render it similar to science (epistêmê), to its object, namely individual bodies that are subject to change.Footnote ¹⁷ Especially in the act of prognostication, medicine shows itself to be a stochastic art.Footnote ¹⁸ Galen thus represents the interesting case not of a defender of divination who uses the example of the esteemed discipline of medicine to claim respectability for divination, but a doctor who explicitly accepts that divination functions in the same way as medicine does and that both are arts. As we shall see immediately, Galen even uses divination to explain the functioning of medicine.

In order to understand the full implications of this, it is useful to take a closer look at a key passage and the way it has been interpreted by R.J. Hankinson in a fundamental paper. Indeed, throughout his article, he seems to wish to shield Galen from accusations of engaging in irrational practice. Whilst he concedes that Galen as a second-century Roman is bound to believe in gods and divination, Hankinson emphasizes that Galen's practice as a doctor is rational. The last sentence of his paper is revelatory: ‘Tout cela [the seemingly miraculous treatment and healing of Eudemus as told in On prognosis] n'a rien à faire avec la divination et tout à faire avec la médicine rationelle, philosophique, scientifique’.Footnote ¹⁹ He is right inasmuch as Galen indeed sets medicine apart from divination. But because he wishes to demonstrate that Galen is a rational doctor untinged by irrational religion, his account tends to be one-sided and suggests a rejection of divination by Galen.Footnote ²⁰ A discussion of an example given by Galen himself in his commentary on the Hippocratic treatise On regimen in acute diseases will help to make clear that Galen's attitude is different.

Galen explains a remark made by Hippocrates that sometimes doctors disagree among themselves as to the right diet for a patient and that one can compare this to disputes among diviners. After an exposition of how various kinds of diviners can be grouped under the label manteis, Galen comes to the core of the argument: ‘those who take part in the divinatory arts differ among themselves no less than do doctors in many points of detail’ (οἰ τὰς μαντικὰς τέχνας μετιόντες οὐδὲν ἦττον διαφέρονται ἐν πολλοῖς τῶν κατὰ μέρος).Footnote ²¹ He illustrates this by narrating a personal encounter with two diviners, a Greek and an Arab. The latter argued that a bird coming from the right indicates a recovery for a woman, and one from the left for a man. The Greek maintained the opposite. Galen asked both if the height on which the bird flies and its distance from the observer plays a role. The Arab denied this, but the Greek, drawing on books by famous birdwatchers, insisted that the bird had to be right in the middle – if not, the sign had an opposite meaning. The story serves Galen to make two points. One is that the Greek had a higher level of technical knowledge (technikôteros, p. 130.4 Helmreich). The other is that both diviners agree on most cases: few birds will come right in the middle, so that usually the Greek and the Arab will make the same prediction. The Greek, however, has additional knowledge which allows him to be more precise. Here Galen reconnects with the overall context of the Hippocratic work he is commenting on. The author of that treatise had noted the disagreement among doctors whether one should give the patient barley water (ptisanê) or not, and in what form and composition. In fact, Galen argues, disagreement among ‘artisans’, not only diviners but also musicians and orators, is based on the error of identifying partial knowledge as full knowledge (ὅταν ἕκαστος τὸ κατὰ μέρος ἐπὶ τὸ καθόλου ἐπιφέρει).Footnote ²² Just as diviners may seem to disagree, doctors may seem to contradict each other because they have failed to think through their art.

The story has been interpreted by Hankinson to imply that divination is no part of Galen's medicine and that it has a questionable status,Footnote ²³ whilst Vivian Nutton noted that Galen ‘disputes the premisses [of the diviners], not their successes’.Footnote ²⁴ This is not what Galen meant. The story can only function on the assumption that divination is an art, with its own correct principles and premisses, which for that reason can yield success. Indeed, Galen explicitly justifies the superior knowledge of the Greek diviner with reference to his reliance on superior theoretical treatises of which he lists a number of authors.Footnote ²⁵ Only on the condition that it is a true art, can divination illuminate something about the nature of medicine, that other art. This may seem uncomfortable to us modern scholars, but it is the logical consequence of Galen's acceptance of the parallelism between divination and medicine. Even more unsettling for our view of Galen may be the fact that the story implies that he recognizes the reliability of predictions by diviners: the story clearly assumes that the diviners can say something about the life expectancy of a patient. The fact that divination does possess knowledge does not mean, however, that it is an equally good art in medical matters, nor that the predictions made by a doctor are of the same nature as those by a diviner – ‘a ridiculous thought’ according to Galen.Footnote ²⁶ Diviners predict apodictically, saying that a patient will recover on that day, without taking into account, as the doctor does, that recovery is conditional on the nature of the patient and that of the disease.Footnote ²⁷ Nor does it imply that divination is part of medicine: medicine and divination may be parallel arts, but that should not lead to a blurring of the boundaries.Footnote ²⁸ Galen's desire to set both apart can even result in the polemical claim that he has never seen a prophet make a correct prediction in Rome.Footnote ²⁹ The reason why Hankinson reads the passage from the Commentary on acute diseases as he does, is that he implicitly projects the opposition rational/irrational on to the parallelism that Galen sees between medicine and divination. In such a perspective, in order to present Galen as a rational doctor, he must be seen as rejecting divination as irrational. In fact, for Galen, divination is as ‘rational’ as medicine (in that it relies on principles and knowledge), but not as accurate and powerful in matters of health. Moreover, his acceptance of divination as an art, even in relation to medical matters, does not indicate that the boundaries between both arts were blurred in his mind: on the contrary, divination has its own principles and handbooks, just as medicine. Precisely this allows him to set both clearly apart, and argue, obviously given his own position as a doctor, for the superiority of medicine.

With this in mind, we can turn to our main source for Galen's views on medical prediction. Galen's treatise on prognosis is, in Simon Swain's words, ‘one of the most exciting texts’ written in the Second Sophistic.Footnote ³⁰ Rather than a theoretical treatise it is ‘unadulterated self-advertisement’Footnote ³¹ in truly Second Sophistic mode. It contains a series of case studies that prove Galen's great ability in predicting the development and outcome of diseases. The cause célèbre is Galen's treatment of the Peripatetic philosopher Eudemus, whose illness and recovery Galen accurately predicted against the advice of other doctors who had abandoned him. It is a true success story: not only did Galen succeed against the expectations of the patient and other doctors, Eudemus was also a well-connected man. Suddenly Galen was the star of the elite, much to the chagrin of other leading doctors, such as Antigenes and Martianus, who maintained that ‘my forecasts derived not from medicine but from divination’ (οὐκ ἐξ ἰατρικῆς τὰς προρρήσεις ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ μαντικῆς γίνεσθαι ὑπ᾿ ἐμοῦ διέβαλλε). The treatise amply documents the well-known accusations of Galen being a goês or a mantis.Footnote ³²

I wish to start by drawing attention to the preface of the work, which is very instructive for the themes under discussion. It is, in fact, a treatise that is explicitly about the status of medicine.Footnote ³³ From its first sentence, the essence of medicine is defined by its ability to predict: ‘How impossible it is, Epigenes, for the majority of doctors to foretell what is going to happen to their patients in each illness’ (ὅσον μὲν ἐπὶ τοῖς πολλοῖς τῶν ἰατρῶν, ὦ Ἐπιγένες, ἀδύνατόν ἐστι προγινώσκειν τὰ τοῖς κάμνουσιν ἐσόμενα καθ᾿ ἑκάστην νόσον).Footnote ³⁴ In the current cultural decline, Galen laments, semblance of ability is now more valued than true knowledge. ‘Whenever a doctor who has been properly trained predicts the occurrence in a patient of a delirium, rigor, depression, haemorrhages, abscesses to the ears or elsewhere, vomiting, sweating, a stomach upset, a fainting fit, or anything of the kind, he appears a strange monstrosity to the laity because of his rarity. The predicter is so far from gaining their respect that he would think himself lucky if he did not seem to be a sorcerer’ (ξένον τε καὶ τέρας τοῖς ἰδιώταις ὑπ᾿ ἀηθίας φαίνεται καὶ τοσοῦτον ἀποδεῖ τοῦ θαυμάζεσθαι παρ᾿ αὐτοῖς ὁ προειπὼν ὥστ᾿ ἀγαπήσειεν ἂν εἰ μὴ καὶ γόης τις εἶναι δόξειεν).Footnote ³⁵ The ignorance of the plebs might be excusable, but the attitude of the other doctors is worse. The predictor cannot claim that his theory is in fact the one expounded by Hippocrates (and thus nothing new), for that would reveal the ignorance of the doctors. Nor can he claim that he invented it, for then he would be lying and increase the suspicions of sorcery. General envy is the result, driving the other doctors either to kill their skilled competitor or force him into exile. As a consequence good, truly skilled doctors will leave the city and withdraw from society, enjoying a life of peace with the ‘best’ and the gods.

The preface shows what is at stake in Galen's competition with other doctors: the possession of true knowledge and the status of medicine. True medical knowledge, Galen shows, is based on tradition. All successful predictions, he suggests, are based on Hippocrates. Therefore a successful doctor does not offer new knowledge, but follows Hippocrates and the Asclepiads. The decline of contemporary medical knowledge is in his eyes caused by a lack of respect for the knowledge of old. As a consequence, trained doctors are not better than ordinary people: they fail to see when something comes about by knowledge and art. In Galen's account the accusation of divination or magic levelled against a skilled doctor betrays an ignorance of what medicine is about: it is the result of ignorance about the precise realm of knowledge that medicine actually occupies. Such lack of knowledge leads to a misunderstanding of the art of medicine and to a confusion of the two parallel arts of medicine and divination. If we look at the accusations from the other side, the same conclusion is reached. The accusation of magic levelled against Galen implies that, according to his enemies, his successful predictions overstep what is realistically possible within the limits of medicine. According to them, being so accurate is impossible without recourse to means that go beyond medicine, hence blurring boundaries that should remain strictly drawn.Footnote ³⁶

Galen's interest in mentioning the accusations is thus identical to that of his enemies in making them: to demonstrate that the other side has failed to respect the boundaries of their discipline, and hence lacks the kind of knowledge that marks out a true doctor. The emphasis on the authoritative medical tradition in the preface of On prognosis thus well prepares for the rest of the treatise, which is basically a long list of exclusively successful predictions: his insertion into a respectable tradition demonstrates why Galen is so successful without overstepping the boundaries of his art. In apparent contrast with this desire to highlight his superior craft without recourse to non-medical means, is the case that in the treatise Galen clearly enjoys the reputation of being a wonderworker and prophet.Footnote ³⁷ This is maybe less surprising than it seems at first sight: the fact that Galen can make his audience think that he is a diviner only demonstrates even more clearly that his medicine is superior to all in the light of his earlier suggestion that only a lack of knowledge causes one to mistake medicine for divination. In addition, Galen's general attitude towards other disciplines is characterized by what one might call ‘intellectual imperialism’: to raise his own status as a doctor, he likes to present himself as the ultimate philosopherFootnote ³⁸ but also claims a better understanding of the heavens than astronomers and astrologers.Footnote ³⁹

There remains one final question to ask: why could the relationship with divination acquire this key role in determining the status of medicine for Galen? The answer probably lies in Galen's assimilation of the Hippocratic tradition. The Prognostic opens by saying that to cultivate prognosis is the ‘most excellent thing’ to do for a doctor. This idea remained central in the medical tradition that placed itself in this tradition, and became a key element in defending the status of the discipline. As late as the early seventh century, for example, Stephanus the Philosopher produced a commentary on Hippocrates' Prognostic. Commenting on the preface of the work, he notes: ‘For prognosis is more important than both diagnosis and anamnesis, since only God has the power of prognosis. And it is because of this, namely prognosing, that we (doctors) resemble God and are considered godlike; for foreknowledge belongs to a higher, divine power.’Footnote ⁴⁰ Correct prognosis is, crucially, essential for maintaining the status of the art: ‘the one who prognoses keeps both himself and the art free from guilt and censure’, by curing those who can be cured and not intervening when the prognosis is death.Footnote ⁴¹ This basic Hippocratic tenet is further made explicit by parallels with other arts. This is so much more necessary given the fact that medicine has not reached the status of the art of geometry, which is infallible: dealing with unstable matter, a doctor can err. Correct prognosis thus helps to limit errors by showing that in certain cases no treatment can help any more, so that medicine does not get the blame when the patient dies.Footnote ⁴² It is interesting to note that even in this late period, medicine is still set in parallel with other arts, in particular divination. Stephanus' foremost concern is with the status of medicine: wrong prognosis, especially in cases that end in the death of the patient, dangerously impacts on the standing of the doctor and his art. In contradistinction with the methodists, who thought that prediction is the job of a prophet and not of a doctor,Footnote ⁴³ Galen also saw prognostication as the key activity for a doctor and, with characteristic modesty, could suggest that he had perfected that art.Footnote ⁴⁴ In such a view of medicine, one understands well both Galen's interest in mentioning accusations of divination and his tendency to enjoy the reputation of being a prophet or diviner. They demonstrate that he has perfected the art of prognosis and hence is the ultimate doctor.

GALEN AND ANCIENT WISDOM

It has been observed that the issue at stake in the debate staged by Cicero in On divination was not whether divination existed as such: rather, the question was to determine if it was a merely human art in which the gods had a part or not.Footnote ⁴⁵ Galen's acceptance of divination as an art parallel to that of medicine therefore does not in itself imply that he viewed it as a religious practice: indeed, the anecdote about the Greek and Arab diviner does not refer to their religious systems but to their knowledge as set down in handbooks. There are, however, some indications that Galen did attribute a religious aspect to divination: in particular the repeated polemical association of divination and sorcery suggests that the supernatural was seen as entering into it. The acceptance of divine involvement would also fit well with the often noted fact that Galen accepts the reality of many religious phenomena, such as inspirational dreams.Footnote ⁴⁶ Such openness to religious phenomena is usually explained with reference to the age Galen lived in. That is undoubtedly correct, but in this section I would like to propose a more specific context in which we can understand this. We can detect in Galen traces of a specific conception of religion that was very common in his age, especially among Stoics and Platonists – a view that G. Boys-Stones has labelled ‘ancient wisdom’.Footnote ⁴⁷

My starting point is the fragmentary Commentary on the Hippocratic Oath, attested in Arabic sources. Franz Rosenthal has divided the fragments in three sets: on the origin of medicine; on Asclepius; and on Hippocrates. The authenticity of the work is disputed:Footnote ⁴⁸ Rosenthal suggests its authenticity but ultimately leaves the question open; the treatise does not figure, in turn, in the list of Hankinson's Companion to Galen. Nutton, however, considers it authentic.Footnote ⁴⁹ The uncertainty is caused by the absence of other testimonies and by the late and indirect transmission, as they are drawn from an Arabic treatise that reports and sometimes cites Galen. Only a new study of the Arabic text can demonstrate whether Rosenthal's identification of Galenic fragments is indeed correct and, as this is beyond my competence, I accept his analysis of the text. I wish, however, to challenge one important argument against the authenticity of the fragments, namely the seemingly incongruous contents: the middle section is an allegorical interpretation of the cult, myth and statue of Asclepius, unique in Galen's oeuvre. I shall argue, first, that the fragments contain nothing incongruous when set in the context of similar texts of that time and, second, that they provide some explanations for positions on religious matters taken by Galen elsewhere in his undoubtedly authentic works. If we can indeed link the Commentary on the Hippocratic Oath with other works of Galen, we have an additional argument for its authenticity and for the fact that the views attributed to Galen in the Arabic text are indeed his.

The first question addressed by Galen seems to have been the origin of medicine. He defends an inspirational and divine origin of the craft. ‘Some say that God gave (the craft of medicine) to mankind through inspiration. The representatives of this theory follow the opinions of Galen, Hippocrates, all the Theorists and the Greek poets. Others say that man invented it (himself). They are the Empiricists, Methodists, Thessalus the Sophist and Philinus.’Footnote ⁵⁰ The statement is supported by ‘the fact that such an exalted science cannot be invented by the intellect of man’Footnote ⁵¹ and the existence of divine healing through dreams – the fragment refers to Serapis and Asclepius in Epidaurus, Cos and Pergamon, ‘the last-mentioned one being my own city.’Footnote ⁵² The divine origin of medicine is clearly part of Galen's defence of the status of medicine as he practises it: he is able to cite Hippocrates and the Greek poets in his defence and thus anchor his view firmly in authoritative Greek tradition, and, moreover, attribute a divine origin to his craft. The fact that medicine has an inspirational origin and that cures can still be revealed in dreams, should not be interpreted to indicate that it is not a rational art. Rather, as Galen makes clear, divine dreams do not offer cures that go beyond what a doctor can prescribe and do. They do not transcend the science of medicine, for the knowledge of the gods is quantitatively but not qualitatively different.Footnote ⁵³ On that model, the Commentary on the Hippocratic Oath suggests that Asclepius revealed medicine as a body of rational knowledge to mankind. That we are to understand Galen in this way, will become clear below.

The middle section, offering an allegorical interpretation of the cult, statue and myth of Asclepius, is too long to be discussed in full here. The allegory is carefully targeted to justify his own kind of medicine and to defend the status of the art. Galen points, for example, to the ‘egg’ that statues of Asclepius hold in the hand,Footnote ⁵⁴ symbolizing the earth and the universe, and indicating ‘that the whole world needs medicine’. The relationship with divination is also highlighted. ‘Galen says: [Asclepius] is said to be the son of Apollo, because physicians must possess some of the ability of the diviner, for it is not unnecessary for a good physician to have some knowledge of the things that might happen later on.’Footnote ⁵⁵ Later on, the presence of the snake is explained as a sign that, just like this sharp-sighted animal that never sleeps, a doctor must be able to look into the future and warn his patients in time.Footnote ⁵⁶ Then the laurel wreath is explained as follows: ‘Or it is because the (laurel) wreath is common to the craft of medicine as well as divination, and people, therefore, were of the opinion that the wreath used for physicians and diviners should be one and the same (kind of) wreath.’Footnote ⁵⁷ The allegory concludes on the statement that the chair on which Asclepius sits represents ‘the power through which health is gained’, again making clear that medicine is the supreme art.Footnote ⁵⁸ It is interesting to note that throughout this allegory divination and medicine are made parallel, reminding us of how Galen's views set out in the first section of this article.

It has seemed curious that the ‘rational’ Galen would engage in such complex allegories, leading to the rejections of the authenticity of the treatise noted above. Yet, when set in the context of contemporary views about the relationship between philosophy and religion, and in particular ideas about ancient wisdom, this strangeness disappears. Building on suggestions of M. Frede,Footnote ⁵⁹ G. Boys-Stones has argued that post-Hellenistic philosophy is characterized by a new conception of authority, justified by the theory of ancient wisdom.Footnote ⁶⁰ The theory, which Boys-Stones traces back to Posidonius, holds that in the Golden Age, the earliest generations of mankind possessed pure, philosophical knowledge of the world. When moral decline caused the Golden Age to come to a close and ideal life in accordance with nature became impossible, the wise ancients invented culture to help organize human life. That culture was based on their perfect insights. For example, they composed written laws based on the unwritten ones and created religion as a system that translated metaphysical knowledge into symbols. Given the moral decline of mankind, however, the presence of philosophical knowledge in culture has become obscured, for example through superstition. Moreover, as we lack the intellectual vigour of the ancients, we tend to disagree on what precisely they meant. Hence the conflicting views generated by the various Hellenistic philosophical schools. Only true philosophers, such as Plato, have succeeded in recovering the ancient wisdom in its purity: their authoritative stance in the history of philosophy is thus not only due to the fact that they have achieved fundamental insights, but also because they have retrieved original knowledge. Practising philosophy thus means recovering an original knowledge rather than discovering something new.

As is clear from this description, philosophers that subscribe to this theory tend to identify philosophical knowledge not just in the philosophical tradition, but also outside it, especially in religion.Footnote ⁶¹ Among them, allegorical interpretations of specific cults are common, as they are attempts to discover the original kernel of truth. Probably the best-known example is Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride, which interprets the cult and myth of Isis as an account of the metaphysical structure of the universe – an account that can be found in many cults and religions: ‘Therefore, this ancient opinion (δόξα) has come down from theologians and lawgivers to poets and philosophers, being of unknown origin, but awarded strong and tenacious belief, and spread not in speech alone nor in reports, but also in mystery cults and sacrifices, both of barbarians and Greeks, namely that the universe is not suspended by its own agency, without intellect and reason and guidance, nor that there is one reason that rules and directs it as it were with rudders and curbing reins, but many powers and a mixture of evil and good’.Footnote ⁶² Similar allegorical interpretations can be found in the slightly earlier philosophers Varro, Cornutus and Chaeremon.Footnote ⁶³ The presence of an allegory of Asclepius in the oeuvre of Galen may thus not only be not incongruous, but also an indication that Galen has applied the theory of ancient wisdom to medicine. The third part of the Commentary on the Hippocratic Oath will provide support for this last contention.

The third section of the treatise offers an account of the early history of medicine: ‘The family of Asclepius had in the past been bound by oaths and covenants preventing them from teaching medicine to outsiders. They had restricted (instruction in it) to their children in the medical schools on the islands of Rhodes and Cnidus and in the city of Cos, and had passed it on orally to their heirs. Eventually, however, Hippocrates feared that the craft might be lost, and he therefore fixed it permanently in writing.’Footnote ⁶⁴ Just as, in the history of philosophy, a Platonist philosopher such as Numenius identifies Plato as the authoritative figure who was the last true recipient of ancient wisdom,Footnote ⁶⁵ Galen depicts a continuous tradition running from Asclepius and the Asclepiads to Hippocrates. Slightly earlier than Plato,Footnote ⁶⁶ Hippocrates seems to have the same authoritative role as Plato has in Numenius.

At the same time, however, the decision to put medical theory down in writing did not just have positive consequences, as becomes clear in a crucial passage from De anatomicis administrationibus (2.1 p. 281–2 Kühn) – a passage that provides an important link between an authentic work of Galen and the Commentary on the Hippocratic Oath. Galen notes there that the ‘ancients’ (i.e. the Asclepiads) did not write treatises on anatomy, a fact that for him does not prove a lack of interest in the matter. Rather, all teaching happened orally, first within the family. With the progress of time, outsiders were taught too, but only on condition that they were morally perfect. In a subsequent stage, writing became necessary:

This is a story of moral decline and hence also of a decline of knowledge:Footnote ⁶⁷ indeed, when medical knowledge is written down, it becomes widely available and invites the uneducated to occupy themselves with it. Hence the pernicious variety of opinions that, according to Galen, characterizes his age. This is a feature that we encounter repeatedly in accounts of ancient wisdom: the period since the figure of authority is characterized by a variety of conflicting opinions, thanks to a moral and intellectual decline.Footnote ⁶⁸ To stick to the example of Numenius: according to him dissension and deviation from the original truth precisely characterize the history of the Academy after Plato, and in his account this is also connected with Plato's decision to write down Socrates' theories.Footnote ⁶⁹ Just as Numenius suggests that only he has succeeded in retrieving Plato's original thoughts, reconnecting with ancient wisdom, and hence transcending the quarrels of the past centuries, Galen argues that only true doctors like himself succeed in restoring some of that original knowledge.Footnote ⁷⁰

Several features of Galen's view on the history of medicine thus tie in very well with the accounts of the history of philosophy that one finds among philosophers who accept this idea of ancient wisdom: the decline of knowledge since the Asclepiads, only counteracted by a few great minds (including Galen himself); the presence of a perfect body of knowledge at the dawn of humanity; the argument of an authoritative tradition which justifies one's own position; the positive view of religion, in this case the cult of Asclepius which is a symbol system for the art of medicine as it was handed to mankind by the gods. My suggestion is that this shows Galen borrowing the framework of ancient wisdom from philosophy and applying it to medicine. If this is correct, there are two possible ways to understand this. Explicit statements that can be taken explicitly to demonstrate Galen's adherence to such a view are relatively limited in his oeuvre. One can thus understand their occurrence as evidence of Galen's punctual borrowing of a type of argument that was popular in his age.

It is also possible to attribute a wider significance to these links between Galen and contemporary philosophy. The importance of ancient wisdom that Boys-Stones ascribes to post-Hellenistic philosophy had two important effects on the self-understanding of philosophers. First, they were able to put themselves forward as authoritative interpreters of ancient wisdom or of the texts of a philosopher who had reconnected with ancient wisdom. It is precisely in the post-Hellenistic period that authoritative editions of the oeuvre of the great philosophers of the past are being produced.Footnote ⁷¹ Second, the widespread eclecticism of post-Hellenistic philosophy is implicitly justified by the assumption that ultimately all philosophical schools derive from the same ancient wisdom, though they have strayed in a greater or smaller degree from the original kernel of truth.Footnote ⁷² Both tendencies are prominent in Galen too. As is well-known, in the words of von Staden, Galen ‘tried to recuperate, interpret, corroborate and occasionally correct the thought and meaning of the historical Hippocrates, in part to present himself as a new, less obscure, more accurate, more complete Hippocrates’.Footnote ⁷³ At the same time, because Hippocrates presents the transitional stage of medicine from the pure knowledge of the Asclepiads to later written knowledge, Galen can sometimes allow himself to go beyond Hippocrates. Also, given the fact that since Hippocrates medical knowledge is available in written form and that the direct connection with the Asclepiads is gone, interpretation of his doctrines is unchecked. One therefore has to sift through the oeuvre of Hippocrates to determine which works are authentic and which not.Footnote ⁷⁴ Galen is also obviously eclectic, even if he does not always admit to it. The high status of Hippocrates leads Galen sometimes to ascribe to him concepts that actually derive from (e.g.) Aristotle.Footnote ⁷⁵ Nevertheless, in one way or another, all medical schools ultimately derive their knowledge from that original source and may thus still profess certain good principles.Footnote ⁷⁶ If there is one thing that needs to be combatted, it is excessive scepticism that rejects the possibility of acquiring true knowledge.Footnote ⁷⁷ Recently, Galen's eclectic position has been judged sufficiently original to set him apart from his contemporaries: ‘This is, I think, the true measure of Galen's originality: he refuses to have anything at all to do with the issues that divide the schools, while still insisting, against the sceptics, that useful knowledge can be won in practical fields, and that it can be based upon more than merely empirical experience. It is this which makes his eclecticism more than that of the average contemporary Middle Platonist synthesis.’Footnote ⁷⁸ The features that this quotation highlights – the transcendence of school divisions whilst maintaining the belief in knowledge that can be gained – are in fact found among many post-Hellenistic philosophers, among whom one can also find parallels for Galen's tendency to polemicize against other schools whilst drawing on their teachings. Without wishing to dispute that Galen's own synthesis is original, the way he goes about forging it and the implicit assumptions it is based upon have strong parallels with what we witness in contemporary philosophy.

In this section, I have argued that Galen understands the history of his discipline in the light of the narrative of ancient wisdom, that is, he accepts that his body of knowledge was already there at the beginning of mankind and that it was later distorted in transmission and thus in need for rediscovery and correct interpretation. As the idea of ancient wisdom implies that this knowledge was also preserved, albeit in allegorical or distorted ways, in traditional religion, the allegory of Asclepius in the Commentary on the Hippocratic Oath now appears less strange within his oeuvre. As the Asclepiads possessed, according to Galen, full knowledge of the art of medicine, it is plausible that he assumed that they had created the image of the founder of their dynasty and had done so in a symbolic fashion, with each attribute saying something about the nature of medicine. Because Galen depicts himself as the person who has succeeded in returning to the original insights of Hippocrates, the true heir to the Asclepiads as against the later deviations, it is only natural that he could consider himself also the ideal person to give the correct interpretation of the statue.