This survey is necessarily brief and partial, and the bibliography is merely indicative. I
have been unable even to sketch the breadth of Gale ̄n’s other work, including hundreds of
pages of learned commentary on Hippokrate ̄s, more hundreds on pharmacology, as well as
four massive (and two shorter) works on the pulse, the theory of which as a diagnostic and
prognostic tool Gale ̄n did much to advance. His influence too was remarkable and endur-
ing. Largely as a result of the success of his synthetic achievement, the disputes between the
schools fade in the succeeding centuries, while the general outlines of his humoral physi-
ology, pathology and therapeutics were preserved and institutionalized, at first in the Arab
world and then in the Christian West, where they reigned supreme until the 16th c., and
were highly influential still as late as the 19th. They linger still in our vocabulary of moods:
sanguine, bilious, choleric, melancholic.
Ed.: Chartier (1639) for some works; Kühn (1821–1833; repr. 1986); Marquardt, Müller and
Helmreich (1884–1893); CMG 5 (1914–); Alexanderson (1967); Furley and Wilkie (1984); for other
works edited individually, see esp. Hankinson (1991) 238–247; I. Magnaldi, Claudii Galeni pergameni
Peri psyche ̄s kai hamarte ̄mato ̄n (1999); V. Boudon et al., Galien 3 vv. to date (CUF 2000 – ); Chr. Otte, Galen
de Plenitudine (2001).
Wickersheimer (1922); Brock (1929); Duckworth (1962); Fabricius (1972); K. Schubring, “Bibliogra-
phische Hinweise zu Galen,” in Kühn (1986 reprint) v. 20, pp. –; Brain (1986); Hankinson
(1991); Durling (1993); ANRW 2.37.2 (1994) 1351–2080 (over a dozen articles on Galen); Singer
(1997); DPA 3 (2000) 440–466, V. Boudon; O. Powell, Galen on the Properties of Foodstuffs (2003); BNP 5
(2004) 654–661, V. Nutton; Johnston (2006); NDSB 3.91–96, R.J. Hankinson.
R.J. Hankinson
Gale ̄n, pseudo, An Animal (260 – 320 CE?)
Preserved among the works of G, but not possibly his, is a work entitled Whether what is
in the womb is alive. The author, apparently responding to P’ Pros Gauron, argues
for ensoulment at conception, and asks the emperor to legislate against abortion. The
author’s crabbed style matches I’ (cf. E 5.1.2–4), and many turns of
phrase are paralleled only in Iamblikhos; the author is, however, more likely his student or
reader. He assumes a unitary soul, which can only be wholly present or wholly absent, and
his four-part argument deploys mainly analogies, teleology, and proof-texts without context.
Since God put soul into the kosmos from its beginning (P, Timaios 35 – 37), soul must
be in rational creatures from their beginning (assumed to be conception, §1); soul is an efflux
of the kosmic soul (§4.7), cf. Iamblikhos, In Tim., fr.82. Fetuses receive food and breath
through their mouths (§3.1), according to the H C, Nature of the Child 17
(which invokes “breath” as the efficient cause of bone-formation and of the articulation of
the large tubes and passages through the body, later in pregnancy). Fetal sense-organs prove
fetuses have sensation (§4.1); and fetal breathing proves the presence of soul (§4.5). The
author claims mere mortals cannot understand how Nature causes a fetus to become a
living being (§5.1–2), cf. Iamblikhos In Tim., fr.88. His request for legislation defines the
purpose of laws as the prohibition of evil, and the preservation and promotion of good
(§5.5), cf. Iamblikhos, Letter to Agrippa (I S, Ecl. 4.5 [223–224]). The super-
scription ΓΑΛΗΝΟΥ should perhaps be emended to ΓΑΛΛΙΗΝΩ (“to the [emperor]
Gallienus,” reigned 253–268, admirer of P, cf. Porphurios, V.Plot. 12), or the
later and thus perhaps more likely ΓΑΛΗΡIΩ (“to Galerius,” tetrarch from 293; emperor
305 – 311).
GALE ̄N, PSEUDO, AN ANIMAL