The Oxford Handbook of the Second Sophistic

by Daniel S. Richter

  Galen and Lycus: Intellectual Rivalry. It is important to note that Galen represented himself as master of the complete tradition of medicine, not only of Hippocrates or the privileged class of Hellenistic sources (the palaioi), nor, as he repeatedly insists, of the traditions of a single school, even if he often cites contemporary or recent sources mainly to target them for criticism. This is illustrated, for example, in an episode from around the year 175, after the publication of Galen’s masterpiece On the Usefulness of the Parts in seventeen books, which coincided with the arrival in Rome of a new, comprehensive work on anatomy in nineteen books by Lycus of Macedon, a student of Quintus whom Galen had never met and who had recently died. Galen insists that it was his deliberate choice not to study with Lycus, of whom he had a low opinion (De anat. admin. 4.10, 2.469–470K; 14.1, 232 Simon), and may be defensive on this point; Lycus’ anatomy was well-received in Rome and something like factional rivalry seems to have sprung up over the two new anatomical works. Galen claims that better-educated doctors, as well as Aristotelian philosophers, supported On the Usefulness of the Parts, which has a profound teleological subtext, but “certain slanderers motivated by jealousy” started the rumor that it described anatomical structures that could not be found on dissection. Galen’s friends pressured him to stage a public demonstration, which he at first refused to do, but his enemies mocked him every day at the Temple of Peace until, in exasperation, he finally relented, offering what must surely have been one of the most spectacular demonstrations of his career, over several days. The method he proposed required gathering all the volumes of all previous works on anatomy (“the books of all the anatomists”), which included those of Lycus and no doubt of Marinus, Quintus’s teacher and author of the most comprehensive work on anatomy (in twenty books) before those of Lycus and Galen, as well as all Hellenistic works on the subject, and must have run to dozens or hundreds of ancient volumes. Anyone present in the audience, he offered, might propose (proballein) a part for dissection, and he would prove that his ideas were correct against the errors of his predecessors. That is, he would locate the relevant passages among the mountain of texts before him, which collection must in itself have been an astonishing display of erudition, and would then compare their descriptions and his own to the evidence of dissection, on whatever animal carcasses he had prepared for the occasion (he does not say what animals he used). Someone chose the chest; and Galen was going to begin with the most ancient authorities, but his audience insisted he confine his discussion to the work of Lycus. Galen proceeded to demolish Lycus’s work in a series of demonstrations which he later published as the lost treatise On Lycus’s Ignorance of Anatomy.9

  24.3 PERFORMANCE AND COMPETITION

  Anatomical Demonstrations. The last story illustrates that Galen was very much a public figure and part of the culture of competition and performance so typical of the Second Sophistic and its era. His anatomical demonstrations in particular, in which he dissected or vivisected animals before an audience while lecturing on the structures he exposed, shared many of the features of sophistic performances; and he even uses the same vocabulary, calling them epideixeis, inviting problemata from the audience, and so forth. These dissections and vivisections were an important part of public life. For example, Galen won his position as physician to the gladiators of Pergamum in a public contest in which he disemboweled a live monkey—perhaps a Barbary macaque or a baboon—and challenged his competitors to replace the intestines (De opt. med. cogn. 9, 105 Iskandar). Although overtly educational, these displays were also a form of entertainment; the vivisections in particular, with their violence, blood, and demonstration of mastery over animals, recall other forms of public entertainment popular throughout the Roman Empire.

  Dissection and vivisection were highly specialized skills that, as Galen emphasized many times, had to be practiced and taught exhaustively “in private” before they could be performed publicly—that is, Galen trained constantly with his circle, partly so that he could perform flawlessly in public. He is merciless in mocking other anatomists who make mistakes in their public performances, for example the Erasistratean who, challenged before a crowd to demonstrate his school’s thesis that the arteries contain air rather than blood, proves incapable of exposing an animal’s aorta without killing it (De anat. admin. 7.16, 2.641–643K).

  Anatomical demonstrations required substantial organization and might be performed in large venues, although Galen does not specifically describe this. One of his best-known demonstrations, a series of vivisections illustrating the mechanisms of the voice, may have taken place in the house of his aristocratic friend Boethus, who sponsored them. Another episode Galen describes must also have been prearranged, as it involved textual props; “once when speaking publicly on the works of ancient physicians . . . the discussion of Erasistratus’s On the Bringing up of Blood was proposed to me, and a stylus [grapheion] was stuck in it, in the customary manner.” Like the practice of soliciting topics from the audience, this was a method of “randomly” choosing a topic for improvised speech, a problema (and Galen uses the passive participle problethentos, “proposed”).

  Debating in Public. But Galen also describes a less formal level of public engagement; intellectuals might lecture or debate before small crowds around the Temple of Peace, the Baths of Trajan, or the bookseller’s district (the vicus Sandaliarius, what Galen calls the Sandaliarion), and Galen seems to have done this frequently, debating topics in medicine, philosophy, language, health, and probably other things. The terminology of the pulse was a particularly contentious issue; a debate on this topic at the Temple of Peace might involve eight participants and end in a fight (De puls. diff. 1.1, 8.494–495K). Audiences were very active, laughing, heckling, and interrupting, so that no public speech was a “lecture” in the modern sense of the word; challenges from the audience were an expected part of the show, and Galen was good at humiliating others in this way. The atmosphere could be raucous and even violent.

  Public performances of this type were obviously high-risk, or depended on that perception for their entertainment value: the speaker did not strictly control the agenda, but was expected to improvise and meet impromptu challenges. The stakes could be raised even higher by issuing formal challenges and generating publicity ahead of a confrontation, as Galen’s rivals did in the prodrome to his showdown on the works of Lycus. Galen sometimes set debate topics for his rivals in advance, another way in which his performances could resemble those of the great rhetors: “I . . . allowed the followers of Asclepiades and Epicurus to seek out how, if they themselves stood in the place of the shaper of animals, they would have bestowed nerves on the aforementioned muscles. For I am accustomed to do this sometimes, and to concede to them not just days, but as many months as they wish for reflection” (De usu part. 7.14, 3.571K). In another episode, Galen milked publicity by dragging out the aftermath: when a rival rushed off from a debate in triumph without giving Galen the opportunity to demolish his argument, Galen composed his refutation in a book, overnight, and gave it to what he describes as the rival’s “chorus”; “and he was never afterwards so persuasive to them” (De purg. med. fac. 3, 11.332K).

  The Crowd: Friends and Enemies. Galen uses the word “chorus” in the episode just described and elsewhere to refer disparagingly to a rival’s circle of supporters. The role of the crowd in every aspect of his professional life is very prominent, whether they are the audience or participants in “public” debates or “private” demonstrations for students and invited guests, or the “friends” and “companions” who form a part of these audiences, follow him on visits to patients, and solicit and publish his written works (Galen’s rivals would no doubt call these his “chorus”). Galen draws no sharp distinction between his “friends” or “companions” and his students, nor between his amateur admirers (some of whom were prominent intellectuals or members of the Roman senate) and his preprofessional students of medicine. He seems deliberately to blur these categories,
emphasizing the social nature of his relationship with the people who learned medicine from him. At the same time, it is obvious that the competition for their esteem—for reputation and for followers—was very intense, as it was for the great rhetors. Further, the competitive features of Galen’s public debates and formal demonstrations locate him in the context of the Second Sophistic’s rhetorical displays and of agonistic culture more generally, in an era when athletic and cultural contests flourished and defined Hellenic urban life.

  Therapy as Competition. Cures of patients could also be competitive, and many of Galen’s case histories have obvious or subtle agonistic elements. Some feature a “cattle call” in which a patron invites many physicians to consult on a difficult case in his household, and from which Galen emerges victorious, like a runner in a race in which everyone has an even start. Or, Galen may compete head to head with another physician or with a cohesive group of them (often labeled “Methodists,” “Erasistrateans,” and so forth), as in a sport like wrestling that matched two combatants. A large audience of the patient’s friends, relatives, servants, and other physicians is often specified or implied. Galen also brought his own “friends” or students to the scene; sometimes the addressee of the treatise in which he tells the story is among these, and Galen may invoke him as a witness to the events. Galen also brought his own slaves, whose presence must usually be inferred from subtle hints.

  The spectators’ astonishment at Galen’s achievements, which validates his victory, may be an important part of the story. The patient’s “friends” in particular may take an active role in the story, interrogating or challenging the physician, caring for the patient and advocating for him. In addition or as an alternative, the patriarchal head of household may play the role of judge awarding a prize to Galen, as in the famous case of Boethus’s wife, in which Galen’s consular friend gave him 400 gold coins after the successful cure. Challenges, predictions, claims and counterclaims, skepticism, mocking laughter, and other features that raise the stakes in the contest are common in Galen’s agonistic case histories. Also prominent in many of these stories are verbal debate and display, in which Galen defeats rivals in argument or persuades an audience of the correctness of his views.

  The atmosphere in these stories is overwhelmingly masculine, although they take place in houses, and usually in the more private parts of houses (sleeping chambers, baths). Galen virtually never mentions women (or children) in his stories about cures, unless they are the patients; he does not mention interacting with his patients’ wives or female friends or relatives. Occasionally midwives play a minor role in the story, but not as competitors. The sickroom in Galen’s stories is a crowded, competitive, masculine social scene. Galen treated plenty of women, children, and slaves in his practice; but their role in his stories of victory is minimal.

  In reality, it is likely that Galen often co-operated and collaborated with the other physicians on a case, and a few stories, read carefully, confirm this. But when recounting the events later as case histories, he emphasizes agonistic themes and his triumphs over rivals.

  24.4 GALEN AND ROMAN IMPERIAL POWER

  It was a critical feature of the Second Sophistic that it defined the ethnic identity of a Greek elite class in a period when the entire Greek world was subject to the Roman Empire. The Hellenic or Hellenized urban aristocracy not only functioned as the ruling class of the eastern Mediterranean cities; it was the intermediary between that population and an imperial power that dominated its subjects largely by means of social networks and ties of reciprocity. But although the Greek aristocracy was a critical part of the Roman imperial project, it also sought to distinguish itself from, and portray itself as superior to, Roman power and Roman culture. This ambivalence is very obvious in Galen’s work. As with the sophists, the prestige of Greek culture—and in this case medicine in particular—among the Roman aristocracy was the foundation of his influence with that group and his power over it.

  Roman Connections. It is likely that Galen was a Roman citizen, as this was true of most of Pergamum’s elite families by his time. We do not, however, know what his Roman names were, because (unlike Quintus, for example), he never used them. He was possibly an Aelius or a Julius, if either Aelius Nicon or Julius Nicodemus/Nicon, both architects whose names survive on inscriptions from Pergamum, was his father. On the other hand, the gentile name Claudius is attested in Renaissance editions of Galen’s works from Italy, and in the fifteenth-century Greek Vlatadon manuscript codex from Thessaloniki; many Pergamenes bore that name, and it is possible or likely that the attribution is correct (Alexandru 2011).

  Even at Pergamum, Galen’s social network included early ties to Rome. Quintus, his intellectual grandfather, was a Roman citizen and practiced in Rome; Galen’s own teacher, Satyrus, probably studied in Rome with Quintus. When Galen knew him, he was living at Pergamum with L. Cuspius Pactumeius Rufinus, a Pergamene and Roman senator who was also a friend of Aelius Aristides, and is mentioned several times in the fourth book of Sacred Tales (Or. 50). Rufinus was funding the new temple of Zeus Asclepius then under construction at Pergamum (De anat. admin. 1.2, 2.224–225K). This temple was a smaller reproduction of the era’s most modern design, Hadrian’s rebuilt Pantheon at Rome. A new temple of Zeus and Trajan, whose ruins today crown Pergamum’s ancient acropolis, was also being built at the same time. Hadrian himself visited Pergamum a few years before Galen’s birth, in 123; this visit was probably the inspiration for the massive reconstruction of the precinct of Asclepius, of which the new temple was a part.

  Galen was neither the first nor the only member of his circle to move to Rome. Teuthras, a Pergamene and fellow student of Galen’s, seems already to have been there when Galen arrived, and supported him in one of his early controversies, over the treatment of a woman with suppressed menstruation. The Peripatetic philosopher Alexander of Aphrodisias, with whom Galen shared the teacher Herminos and who became a lifelong rival and enemy, may also have preceded Galen to Rome if he is identical with the Alexander of Damascus Galen mentions in On Prognosis (5, 14.627K) and On Anatomical Procedures (1.1, 217–218K). Galen especially benefited from his connection with Eudemus, a Pergamene, Peripatetic philosopher, and friend of his father’s. Eudemus was also Galen’s teacher, possibly one of his original teachers of philosophy at Pergamum. Epigenes, a friend of Eudemus and the addressee of Galen’s treatise On Prognosis, may also have been a fellow Pergamene.

  Galen and the Senatorial Aristocracy. Eudemus was Galen’s most important patient in his first year at Rome. At sixty-two he was suffering from what Galen eventually diagnosed as a combination of three quartan fevers, probably (in modern terms) malaria. Galen’s cure involved multiple confrontations with two of Rome’s most well-known physicians and brought him a great deal of publicity among the Roman senatorial class, with which Eudemus was well connected. In particular, Eudemus was among the intellectual entourage of Flavius Boethus, a senator of consular rank originally from Ptolemais in Syria Palestina. Boethus was an enthusiast of Peripatetic philosophy and of anatomical dissections, and commissioned from Galen a series of demonstrations—vivisections—on the voice. Galen dedicated a large number of anatomical treatises to Boethus, including his masterpiece On the Usefulness of the Parts, of which only one book was finished when Boethus left Rome, probably in 165 or 166, to govern his native province. Boethus never returned, but Galen sent him the remaining sixteen books of the treatise before he died.

  Galen and the Emperor. Besides Boethus, Galen mentions many other Roman senators whom he cured, or whose friends he cured, or to whom he dedicated treatises and with whom he had social relationships (and these categories overlapped). He wrote an entire autobiographical treatise, the extant On Prognosis, about his rise to prominence in Rome, culminating with his appointment as physician to the emperor’s son, Commodus, and his cure of the emperor Marcus Aurelius himself. (It is important to note that this treatise is the only one among Galen’s works in which social climbing is it
s main theme.) The cure of Marcus happened probably in 176, when the emperor visited Rome on a break from his German campaigns. Galen successfully treated him for a stomach problem that had stumped his regular physicians; and he records the exact words of Marcus’s enthusiastic praise on this occasion (De praecogn. 11, 14.659–660K). The central position of the emperor in the narrative of his professional success links Galen to other prominent figures of the Second Sophistic, such as Aelius Aristides.

  Like other Greek intellectuals of his era, then, Galen was part of the Roman imperial project. He was on the emperor’s payroll probably from 168 or 169, after he was recalled from Pergamum and allowed to remain in Italy as physician to Commodus. Galen writes that he took a break from public life at this time and from Rome, following Commodus and his entourage around Italy (De praecogn. 9, 14.650K), and seems to have developed a friendship with Commodus’s chief caregiver, Peitholaus, the imperial chamberlain. He was to remain on call at all times in case Commodus’s main caregivers needed him (De libr. propr. 2, 19.19K), and was in fact consulted on at least one occasion (De praecogn. 12, 14.661–665K).

  When the physician who normally prepared Marcus’s daily dose of theriac died, Galen was appointed to that job. He seems to have continued to serve under all subsequent emperors at least through the reign of Severus and Caracalla (though Commodus did not use theriac; Antid. 1.13, 14.65–66); On Theriac to Piso, which may or may not be genuine, is blatantly flattering of the latter emperors.10

  Galen’s attitude toward Roman power is, however, ambivalent. Although he boasts of his cure of Marcus, he deliberately avoided joining the ranks of the latter’s inner circle of “companions.” In 169 he resisted (with some ingenuity) Marcus’s demand that he accompany his projected campaign against German tribes (De libr. propr. 2, 19.18–19K), and Galen never achieved the honors bestowed by Claudius, for example, on his physician C. Sterilius Xenophon. It was only reluctantly and under duress, as he claimed, that Galen served the emperor at all: he fled Rome in 166 because he wished to avoid being drafted into the emperor’s service (De praecog. 9, 14.648K), and later complained about “the time wasted in the imperial court, which I not only did not want, but even when fate was dragging me forcefully toward it, I resisted not once or twice, but many times” (De indolentia 49). The first chapter of On Prognosis is a diatribe against the moral and intellectual degeneracy of the capital city and its ruthless social atmosphere, a theme he picks up again later in the treatise, contrasting Rome with Pergamum on these points.11