Description
This book is a collection of essays on Galen and the world of knowledge in the second century AD. It discusses how Galen presented himself as a reader and an author, and how his self-fashioning relates to the performance culture of second-century Rome.
Galen is the most important medical writer in Graeco-Roman antiquity, and also extremely valuable for understanding Graeco-Roman thought and society in the second century AD. This volume of essays locates him firmly in the intellectual life of his period, and thus aims to make better sense of the medical and philosophical 'world of knowledge' that he tries to create. How did Galen present himself as a reader and an author in comparison with other intellectuals of his day? Above all, how did he fashion himself as a medical practitioner, and how does that self-fashioning relate to the performance culture of second-century Rome? Did he see medicine as taking over some of the traditional roles of philosophy? These and other questions are freshly addressed by leading international experts on Galen and the intellectual life of the period, in a stimulating collection that combines learning with accessibility.
Review:
'[This] will no doubt become an indispensable item in the bibliography of those working on second-century literature, medicine, philosophy and, more generally, culture.' The British Journal for the History of Science
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