This is a time of plenty for students of Galen. In 2007, Véronique Boudon-Millot produced the editio princeps of a recently rediscovered text of Galen, On the Avoidance of Grief, which gives invaluable information on Galen's life, his wealth, the great fire that devastated several libraries at Rome in AD 192, and the reign of the emperor Commodus. Then, in 2009, were published two important works of synthesis on the famously prolific physician of Pergamum: the first is the Cambridge Companion to Galen, edited by R.J. Hankinson; the second is the book under consideration, the product of a conference held at Exeter in 2005. The three editors and thirteen contributors to this volume aim to increase scholars' awareness of the usefulness of the Galenic corpus for any student of the second century AD – that is, a time of intellectual effervescence often referred to as the ‘Second Sophistic’. Galen had much in common with other Second Sophistic authors (such as Lucian, Plutarch or Philostratus), not least his prolixity and the diversity of his interests. Galen was much more than a physician; in addition to his medical treatises he composed works on a variety of topics, including grammar, ethics, logic and geometry. The intention of the volume is firmly to situate Galen in his intellectual context, in his ‘world of knowledge’.

The volume is loosely divided into three sections. The first four chapters stress how typical Galen was of his culture. Here are discussed Galen's library (Vivian Nutton, with references to the newly edited On the Avoidance of Grief), his prefatory methods of self-presentation and how they compare with those of Nicomachus and Quintilian (Jason König), how the configuration of power in the second century influenced Galen's conception of a demiurge or creator figure (Rebecca Flemming), and the similarity between Galen's public dissections and vivisections and other ancient forms of public display such as games (Maud W. Gleason). The next five chapters discuss the originality of the physician's medical system. This section includes studies of Galen's case histories (G.E.R. Lloyd), his exegetical practices (Heinrich von Staden) and linguistic practices (Daniela Manetti) in the context of his medical treatises, the link between his use of autobiographical anecdotes (bios) and medical method (methodos) (Véronique Boudon-Millot), and his medical advice to improve the intellectual faculties (Jacques Jouanna). The final four chapters deal with Galen's engagement with the philosophical movement of his time. Topics under consideration in this final section are Galen's views on the limitations of knowledge (R.J. Hankinson), and his engagement (or lack thereof) with Middle Platonists (Ricardo Chiaradonna), Aristotle and the Aristotelians (Philip J. van der Eijk), and Stoics (Teun Tieleman).

All contributions are of the highest level and add much to our understanding of Galen's life and thought. It should be noted that the editors did an extraordinary job – this is a very carefully edited volume (even though an index locorum would have been useful). It will no doubt become an indispensable item in the bibliography of those working on second-century literature, medicine, philosophy and, more generally, culture. I have two comments, however. First, one cannot help but note that there is much overlap between the list of contributors to Galen and the World of Knowledge and that to the Cambridge Companion to Galen: articles by Flemming, Hankinson, Lloyd, Nutton, Tieleman and Van der Eijk appear in both volumes. Of course, these authors are the experts in the field, and the other contributors to the present volume are all extremely distinguished, but one hopes that one of the outcomes of this volume will be for the field of Galenic studies to open itself to a wider circle of scholars. Time will tell. Second, most of the articles collected in this volume deal with a very abstract and rather bookish type of knowledge (epistēmē). There is relatively little about practical knowledge, knowledge acquired through experience rather than through reading (empeiria). Of course, this does not apply to all contributions (one of my favourite pieces in the volume, that by Gleason, being an obvious exception), but one may be forgiven for concluding that Galen was an armchair physician. However, this was hardly the case. In his contribution, Jacques Jouanna mentions Galen's short tract On the Exercise with the Small Ball, a text arguing that physical exercise sharpens the intellect. It is evident that for Galen, knowledge was an embodied experience; I wish this conclusion had come out more clearly in the volume.

Despite these reservations, I highly recommend Galen and the World of Knowledge to anyone with an interest in ancient medicine or philosophy. It certainly goes a long way to place Galen in his intellectual and cultural context, and it will most probably spark new interest in the life and works of the most prolific medical author of antiquity.