Is Galen, the greatest doctor of antiquity, a reliable source for ancient philosophy?
Personal physician of the emperors Marcus Aurelius, Commodus and Septimius Severus, Galen was a multi-faceted intellectual and his extensive writings constitute, by far, the largest surviving corpus of any ancient author. This immense corpus is still not fully explored and continues to surprise scholars and to offer the possibility of new discoveries. However, Galen is also well known for the harsh criticism of his rivals and, for this reason, he is often considered as a controversial and sometimes unreliable witness. Indeed, Galen’s accounts often tend to serve his own philosophical and medical agenda. He aims at presenting himself as both a follower of the theories of Hippocrates, Plato and, to some extent, Aristotle, and also as a successful and independent practitioner who is not part of any medical school. In this sense, his vicious account of atomism represents an emblematic example. Although over the past few years Galen’s role as a source has become the subject of numerous studies, only a few contributions have been specifically devoted to his refutation of atomism. In my paper I will focus on the presentation of Galen’s polemical arguments and the historiographical strategy that emerges from his recurrent assimilation of Asclepiades of Bithynia to Epicurus. The main purpose will be analyzing the main aspects of Galen’s critique, attempting to assess its reliability by comparing its content with other testimonies and Epicurean texts.
Ambra Serangeli is Researcher at the University of Tor Vergata, Rome.
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