Project information
Galen’s commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms is the oldest and most substantial surviving testimony to the interpretation of the Hippocratic Aphorisms in antiquity and was a key factor in shaping the Hippocratic legacy.
It soon gained authoritative status and had a massive influence on the reception of the Aphorisms in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, especially in the Islamicate world, for it was predominantly through Galen’s commentary (in Greek and in translations into Arabic, Syriac, Latin and Hebrew) that the Aphorisms were read for many generations.
The study of this work, in combination with Galen’s other commentaries and in comparison with philosophical, literary, theological and legal commentaries of the same time frame, will shed important new light on the forms and functions of commentary literature in ancient culture, on what Galen’s activities as a commentator had in common with his predecessors and contemporaries and on what is distinctive about Galen’s contribution to the use of the commentary genre.
The main problem this project will address is the fact that for this text, no critical edition and no translation or commentary in any modern language exist so far. What is further distinctive about the project is that the constitutio of the Greek text will take place in regular dialogue with research on the Arabic translation, which will be taken into account systematically and as a textual witness in its own right rather than on an ad hoc basis subservient to the Greek. The Arabic version itself will be critically edited as well and presented synoptically alongside the Greek, both in hard copy and in a digitally searchable format.
In addition, the project's study of Galen’s practices as a commentator will be innovative in approaching Galen’s commentaries - not so much from the viewpoint of his Hippocratism, but with a focus on the formal, literary, argumentative and strategic aspects of his use of the commentary genre. In doing so, it will adopt a comparative perspective involving similar uses of the commentary format in other areas of ancient scholarship, such as philosophical, theological, literary and legal commentary. Since Galen’s commentaries constitute one of the largest and earliest surviving bodies of commentary literature by a single author in the ancient world, the project will thus also contribute significantly to a ‘poetics of commentary’ both in Graeco-Roman times and more generally.
In this way, the project will not only transform our understanding of a key chapter in the history of ancient medicine and in the history of an influential literary genre but also, by its innovating methodology, offer promising perspectives for similar projects that combine longue durée medical history with new philological approaches.