acratic contemporaries: On Good and Bad Humor 6.755–756 K.). In a late work On My Own
Books (wherein Gale ̄n catalogues his genuine works to distinguish them from widely-
circulating forgeries), he tells us that he was sent as a boy to study Stoic logic (§11, 2.119
MMH). In On the Order of My Own Books 4 (2.88 MMH) he lauds Niko ̄n for having provided
him with an excellent education in mathematics and grammar, and he appeared destined
for a career in philosophy (he also studied with Platonists, Peripatetics and Epicureans:
On the Affections of the Soul 5.41–42 K.). When Gale ̄n was 16, however, Niko ̄n had a dream
which “persuaded him to make me study medicine as well,” and after his father’s death in
148 – 9 (Good and Bad Humor 6.756 K.), Gale ̄n continued his studies in various places
(Smurna, Corinth, Alexandria) to sit at the feet of various masters of various different
persuasions. Consequently, Gale ̄n “did not declare allegiance to any school” (Affections of the
Soul 5.43) but rather resolved to take only what was best from each tradition, medical and
philosophical, to create a sound system which would meet all reasonable empirical tests.
This eclectic approach was to serve him throughout his long and active life.
He returned to Pergamon in 157, where he became physician to the gladiatorial school;
in an age when it was hard to gain practical experience of human anatomy, this gave
him a great opportunity for detailed observation, of which he took full advantage. In
162, he visited Rome for the first time, rapidly gaining a reputation as an effective and
combative physician (he records several of his more impressive, and socially advantageous,
cures in On Prognosis), eventually moving into the imperial circle itself. It was at this time
too that he gave several spectacular public demonstrations of anatomical knowledge and
surgical ability, including a demonstration of the function of the recurrent laryngeal
nerve, which he had recently discovered (On Anatomical Procedures 2.663–666 K.). Four years
later, however, he left Rome for Pergamon under somewhat obscure circumstances (he
instances the jealousies of his enemies – his On Slander is lost– but he also seems to have been
avoiding an epidemic), returning again at the behest of Marcus Aurelius to join the imperial
army at Aquileia. Invited to accompany the German expedition as physician to the army, he
politely declined, citing an admonitory dream from his patron Asclepius (On My Own Books
2: 2.97–99 MMH); he was allowed to return to Rome to supervise the emperor’s son
Commodus.
As far as we know, he remained in Rome until his death; hereafter solid facts about his life
are harder to establish. He completed his systematization of medicine, and stopped giving
public lectures and demonstrations (ibid. pp. 96, 99), an embargo he relaxed only once, after
the publication of On the Function of the Parts of the Body (his vast compendium of teleological,
functional anatomy) and Anatomical Procedures (the summation of his anatomical knowledge
enlivened by accounts of his triumphant discoveries and displays), to refute the slanders of
his enemies. Many of his writings were destroyed by fire with the Temple of Peace (which
functioned as a public depository) in 192. Some he rewrote, some survived by other means.
At the very end of his life he wrote a “philosophical testament,” On My Own Opinions, which
largely vindicates his claim that his views underwent little substantial change in the latter
50 years of his life.
In medicine, although he resisted association with any of the “schools” (in his view they
promoted uncritical acceptance of ill-founded dogma), he is himself to a large extent
responsible for the tendency to think of later Greek medicine in terms of sectarian affili-
ation; for he exploits and deploys C’ tripartite distinction between Empiricists,
Rationalists and Methodists. Although undoubtedly crude (the Rationalist category
is particularly generic in form), it is still serviceable and not wholly misleading. The
GALE ̄N OF PERGAMON