Christopher Gill, Tim Whitmarsh and John Wilkins (eds), Galen and the World of Knowledge

Abstract

The 13 contributions gathered in this volume are based on a conference with the same title held in Exeter in 2005. The aim of this volume, as well as that of the conference, is to study Galen as an ‘intellectual’ by examining his ‘world of knowledge’, which is broadly defined as both the sophisticated Hellenised culture Galen responded to and the body of knowledge Galen created through his intellectual activities and treatises (p. 8). The reader will find a collection of familiar and respected names in ancient medicine and Galenic studies (Boudon-Millot, Flemming, Lloyd, Manetti, Nutton, Tieleman, van der Eijk and von Staden), as well as some relatively new names added to the mix (Chiaradonna, Gleason and König). The first four chapters pertain to Galen's relationship to his intellectual culture. Nutton brings to light the similarities between Galen's erudition and that of other Greek literati in his discussion of what Galen's scattered quotations and allusions to medical, philosophical and literary works reveal about the actual contents of Galen's library. Although lacking an adequate treatment of periautologia as it relates to the rhetorical situation Galen faced in writing an auto-bibliographical work, König provides a much-needed discussion of the rhetorical conventions of Galen's self-presentation in his prefatory remarks by comparing Galen's preface in On the Order of My Own Books with those of Nicomachus' Enchiridion and Quintilian's Orator's Education. Added to these are Flemming's and Gleason's chapters which offer some interesting speculations as to the philosophical traditions and social influences that contributed to Galen's conception of the Demiurge found in many of his teleological explanations of the formation of the human body and, respectively, the socio-psychological effects of Galen's anatomical demonstrations on his audiences.