This book offers a commentary on and new English translation of the famous Hippocratic treatise On the Art of Medicine (De Arte, Peri technes). Since Emile Littré in 1849 (vol. VI, 2), this text has been the subject of several editions, among others that of J.L. Heiberg (1927) in the CMG collection, and that of L. Firpo (1972), as well as assorted editions of the translation in German by T. Gomperz in 1910, and in English by W.H.S. Jones in 1923 (repr. 1981) in his vol. II of the Loeb Classical Library. Several stand-alone translations have also been published, whether in German, like those of Fuchs (1895–1900), R. Kapferer (1934–1939) and H. Diller (1962) or in Italian, like those of M. Vegetti (1965) and A. Jori (1996). Finally, in the Collection des Universités de France (CUF), J. Jouanna completed a magisterial work, in 1988, in an edition, translation and commentary on this treatise. The valuable Bibliographie des hippokratischen und pseudohippokratischen Werke of G. Fichtner, thereafter completed by the Berlin team of the BBAW, also provides a full list of commentaries and recent publications. We can see that interest in this treatise is not weakening. For the Anglophone public, it is the work of W.H.S. Jones which M. wishes to complete. But he has chosen to devote his efforts to a philosophical commentary on the text and, in reproducing the text established by Jouanna, does not engage in work on a critical edition.
In an introduction of 49 pages, M. demonstrates that this text finds its place among the debates dedicated to technai in the course of the fifth century, notably in the philosophical context which corresponds to the perspective he adopts for his analysis. He then comes more specifically to the usage of technê to designate medical skill and records that this short treatise expresses a polemical target since it is conceived as a response to detractors of medicine. He then returns quickly to some characteristics of rational Hippocratic thought, by comparing it with the treatise On the Places in Man, and takes up again examination of the treatise as an illustration of epideictic rhetoric by setting out the analyses of previous editors (T. Gomperz, 1910; A. Jori, 1996). Indications concerning the date and composition of the work also follow previous editions. He compares the author with the sophists Antiphon of Rhamnus and Hippias of Elis, as did the first editors, even though the pages of Jouanna (pp. 179–83) seemed to have ended the debate on this point.
The Greek text adopts the readings as well as the presentation of the CUF. The translation follows, which rather complicates the task of a reader used to having two languages in view. The commentary of 168 pages, which focuses on the sophistic rhetoric, clearly constitutes the justification for this book. Paragraph after paragraph of lexicological, grammatical, stylistic and philosophical remarks are presented, in the word order of the Greek text, not of the translation. Some translations deserve an explanation: to render historiê (1.1) with ‘skill’, which has the sense of ‘ability’, is dependent on the interpretation of an expression much discussed by previous editors, and this choice ought to have been justified (p. 6). M. forces himself to find contemporary parallels for terms employed by the text's author and cites the Sophists, Plato, the tragedians and, obviously, the Hippocratic Corpus in abundance. In his conviction that the treatise was edited by a sophist, on several occasions at the beginning of the text he invokes pure logic (e.g. pp. 87ff., 103f., 120, 138ff., 142f., 160, 166), highlights some of the debates like that of being and non-being (pp. 83–90) or that between nomos and physis (p. 108) and concludes on a doctor's necessary rhetorical ability.
An appendix, devoted to a possible echo of the treatise in Hellenistic debates, notably in the Against the Professors of Sextus Empiricus, returns to the philosophical importance of the treatise On the Art. The short bibliography includes two discussions by the author, but omits J. Longrigg's book, Greek Rational Medicine, Philosophy and Medicine from Alcmaeon to the Alexandrians (1993) and the surveys from ANRW (1993). It would have been useful to separate the editions and translations from other studies. To note: the edition by E. Littré dates to 1849 not 1839; the work by M. Vegetti, Opere di Ippocrate, benefited from a second edition in 1976; and alphabetic order places Jori before Jouanna. A general index combining themes and proper names, and an index locorum grant the reader easy orientation within the volume.
A philologist will regret being referred to earlier editions for the presentation of manuscripts and the lemma, but the specialist in ancient philosophy will certainly be delighted to find numerous remarks on the sophistic construction of the treatise. The enthusiasm of M. for his discovery, in medical texts, of a theme which is very dear to him – the rhetoric of the sophists – compensates for the errors of youth and his inexperience in the complexity of the Hippocratic corpus. Several formulations seem maladroit or naïve (p. 39) and certain developments in ancient medicine are not entirely convincing, such as the schematic presentation of health as equivalent to humours (p. 6), which ought to have been nuanced. Despite these observations, M.'s book will satisfy the curiosity of readers interested in sophistics and ancient philosophy and will pay service to the Anglophone public in offering a commentary on a short but important text, which illustrates perfectly the capacity of Greek doctors to reflect on their art.
