320 Lozovsky
medicine to be among the most useful arts.15 Although he did not describe the
course of medical training, he insisted that even after its completion doctors
should continue to study, turning to the comes archiatrorum as their magister,
reading books, and taking delight in ancient wisdom, for “to no one is dili-
gent reading more appropriate than to him who deals with human health”.16 In
his Institutions, a work that was completed in the post-Ostrogothic period but
included earlier materials, Cassiodorus continued this line of thought, recom-
mending that the monks of Vivarium study the Herbal of Dioscorides, as well
as Latin translations of Hippocrates and Galen and other medical works.17
A number of Greek and Latin medical texts, some now surviving in frag-
ments in palimpsests and later manuscripts, appear to have been circulating
at Ravenna in the late 5th–6th century. Among those texts were, for instance,
a Latin translation of Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, brief recommendations on
treatment of diseases and diet composed by the famous Greek physician who
lived in the 5th century BC, Latin commentaries to Galen and Hippocrates,
and other treatises on medicine and pharmacology.18 This evidence suggests
that Ostrogothic Ravenna was an important centre of medical studies, where
active copying and possibly translating and commenting of Greek texts
took place.19
15 Cassiodorus, Variae 6.19.1: “Inter utillimas artes, quas ad sustentandam humanae fragili-
tatis indigentiam diuina tribuerunt, nulla praestare uidetur aliquid simile quam potest
auxiliatrix medicina conferre”; Cracco Ruggini, “Cassiodorus and the Practical Sciences”.
16 Cassiodorus, Variae 6.19.4: “habeant itaque medici pro incolumitate omnium et post
scholas magistrum, vacent libris, delectentur antiquis: nullus iustius assidue legit quam
qui de humana salute tractaverit.”
17 Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.31.2. On its date see Vessey, “Introduction”, in Cassiodorus,
Institutions, pp. 23–6. Courcelle, Late Latin Writers, pp. 403–9, discussed the Latin trans-
lations and proposed identifications of the Vivarium manuscripts. For a more cautious
approach see Cavallo, “La cultura scritta a Ravenna”.
18 For a detailed discussion of manuscript evidence see Cavallo, “La cultura scritta a
Ravenna”, especially pp. 94–5 on medicine, and idem, “La cultura a Ravenna”; also Cracco
Ruggini, “Cassiodorus and the Practical Sciences”, p. 28.
19 The tradition continued in early medieval Ravenna, see Palmieri, “Nouvelles remarques
sur les commentaires à Galen”; Mazzini and Palmieri, “L’école médicale à Ravenne”;
Everett, The Alphabet of Galen, pp. 21–6.