In the past few decades, the development of Galen studies has brought a renewed interest in his writings, with a particular focus on his physiological research on the one hand and on his philosophical enquiries on the other. Despite the number of studies dedicated to his works, little attention has been given to the language, vocabulary and style that characterise the Corpus Galenicum. In spite of the breadth of Galen's production, in fact, his work does not recur amongst those of Greek writers and poets, nor are his works included in standard Ancient Greek literature studies, leaving the literary aspects of his production almost entirely unexplored. This volume has the merit of both addressing the gap concerning those aspects of Galen's œuvre and shedding light on such a little explored domain through the wide and diverse range of perspectives presented by the contributors.
Offering a comprehensive review of a collective volume is a complex, if not impossible, task, even more so when it addresses such a prolific author as Galen, and when it covers a lot of ground from a relatively novel point of view. I will therefore try to show the main themes tackled in the volume and to highlight the innovative elements that make it an interesting tool of investigation for Galen studies.
The contributions were originally presented at the seventh Jornadas Internacionales: Estudios actuales sobre textos griegos, which took place in Madrid in 1999. The collection is organised into five sections, each of them addressing different aspects of Galen's production and offering a structured and comprehensive picture of Galen's literary contribution. Sections 1–4 respectively deal with language (A. Lillo; J. Vela Tejada; A. Roselli); literary composition (P. Boned Colera; D. Lara Nava; A. Guardasole; T. Tieleman; M. Cerezo Magán); vocabulary (F. Cortés Gabaudán; F. Skoda; V. Boudon; I. Rodríguez Alfageme; J. Jouanna; I. Garofalo; J.A. López Férez; G. Santana Henríquez; C. García Sola; L.M. Pino Campos); and style (J.M. García Ruiz; E. García Novo; S. Rubio Fernaz). Section 5 (A.M. Ieraci Bio) offers an analysis of the polemical relationship between medicine and astrology, with a specific focus on the twelfth century. Finally, the volume is enriched by a section on the Greek lexicon analysed in the different papers.
The 22 papers offer different perspectives, providing an overview of Galen's linguistic choices by examining and comparing different texts, analysing a specific treatise or comparing Galen's texts with contemporary literature (in particular poetry and theatre) and with his philosophical and medical predecessors. For example, Roselli's article (pp. 45–53), which is also particularly interesting from a philosophical perspective, focuses on Galen's views on the ambiguity of language, in comparison with the influence he received from Aristotle, and his own re-elaboration, in the specific framework of De captionibus. Through the point of view exposed in this treatise, which focuses on the ambiguity of language both oral and written, Roselli offers an overview of the linguistic ambiguities addressed by Galen in the Hippocratic commentaries. Tieleman (pp. 93–108) analyses the quotations of Galen's philosophical and medical predecessors that we encounter in De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis, ‘a mine of verbatim fragments’ (p. 93), and unveils the relationship between the literary use that Galen makes of such passages, and his medical and philosophical enquiry. Despite the interest scholars have dedicated to PHP as a source for other philosophers of the Hellenistic period, the function of such quotations is still obscure, and Tieleman offers an interpretation of their role in the framework of Galen's method, by highlighting the main questions raised in PHP and considering this literary choice in comparison with other literary and philosophical traditions.
The lexical investigation concentrates on three main aspects. First, the inheritance of Galen's medical vocabulary in modern times (Gabaudan, ‘Pervivencia actual del vocabulario médico’, pp. 129–78), and its connections with other traditions (Skoda, ‘La reflexión de Galeno sobre el léxico griego y el interés que ofrece a la lingüística moderna’, pp. 179–90). Second, the analysis of specific words and prefixes (Boudon, ‘La notion d’aeipatheia dans la pathologie de Galien’, pp. 191–202; Jouanna, ‘Histoire du mot αἱμάλωψ d'Hippocrate à Galien et à la medicine tardive’, pp. 223–38; Garofalo, ‘Variazioni dottrinali nell'anatomia di Galeno’, pp. 239–44; López Férez, ‘Algunos términos retóricos en Galeno’, pp. 245–74; Santana Henríquez, ‘Estudio semantico de los compuestot con el prefijo δυσ- en Galeno’, pp. 275–94), and finally on specific fields of Galen's medicine (Rodríguez Alfageme, ‘Patología del avoz en Galeno’, pp. 203–22; García Sola, ‘Galeno: la Odontoestomatología. Avance y retroceso’, pp. 295–314; and Pino Campos, ‘Apuntes en torno a la esfigmología galénica: la Sinopsis’, pp. 315–41).
Boudon's contribution introduces insights on Galen's physiology through the lexical analysis of the concept of aeipatheia. The term, which is not found in other Greek authors, appears six times in the Galenic Corpus and represents the opposite of Galen's concept of health (ὑγίεια). Through analysis of the occurrences of the term aeipatheia, and through a comparison with the notion of apatheia, Boudon investigates the domain of the physiology of mixtures, but also the definition of health itself, drawing attention to the parallels between the linguistic and physiological research. The origin of the concept of aeipatheia, which Galen claims to derive from the philosophers, is not clarified, but he rather concentrates on the refutation of it, on the basis of the physiology and the role of the senses and experience in the definition of the disease. The background of Galen's argumentations on pathos are mainly the Stoics, and in particular Posidonius and Chrysippus. Galen's interpretation of their notion of pathos and apatheia, suggests Boudon, might have influenced the development of that of aeipatheia, which is not to be found explicitly in the writings of the Stoics.
Another perspective on the lexical analysis is offered by Jouanna, whose contribution explores the relationship between Galen and Hippocrates, and opens the discussion not only to the literary and philosophical sources of Galen, but also to the medical ones. In particular, Jouanna concentrates on the linguistic issues deriving from the term αἱμάλωψ and its use between Hippocratic and Galenic literature: how to explain the origin and the meaning of the suffix -ωψ? And what about the complex -άλωψ? How to account for the different meanings it assumes in the different passages? But also, what can we understand from the different occurrences and meanings that the term comes to have in both authors and in other physicians from whom Galen inherits the term? Through analysis of the occurrences in Galen and in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Jouanna retraces the history and the evolution of the term αἱμάλωψ to the meaning it assumed in different authors, such as Aretaeus, Dioscorides and Archigenes, and he highlights the different meanings preferred by Aretaeus and Galen, which can be appreciated in the respective commentaries on the Hippocratic writings.
From the analysis of Galen's relationship with his contemporaries and predecessors in terms of lexical and literary influences, we move on to the characteristics of his literary style. Rubio-Fernaz focuses on the role played by irony and mockery. He ascribes these two elements, which are extremely frequent in most of the treatises, to the common weapons used by the savants of the Second Sophistic. Irony, sarcasm, mockery and belittlement of opponents represent a powerful rhetorical strategy that Galen uses to discredit his enemies and to show the unsustainability of their theories.
The volume opens the debate on the opportunities of investigation offered by Galen's Corpus in the domain of literary and lexical studies. Not only a medical and philosophical author, then, Galen also represents a valuable and fruitful resource for literary and lexical enquiry, thanks to the rich literary inheritance that influenced his thought, whose presence is confirmed and shown by the numerous quotations and references scattered throughout his œuvre.
