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John of Alexandria Again: Greek Medical Philosophy in Latin Translation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Vivian Nutton
Vivian Nutton
Affiliation:
The Wellcome Institute, London
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Extract

It is a brave scholar who ventures into the murky world of Late Antique medicine in search of information on earlier theories. Not only may the opinions of a Herophilus or a Galen be distorted by their distant interpreters, but frequently the texts themselves present serious challenges to understanding. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Latin versions made from Greek philosophical and medical commentaries, which interpose an additional linguistic barrier before one can make sense of sometimes complex arguments. Yet as R. J. Hankinson has shown in his recent note on John of Alexandria, there is much to be gained from these forbidding works. But while he has succeeded in elucidating much of the technical terminology and argument that lies behind one of these translations, his lack of familiarity with the textual basis of the relevant commentary has both led him into error and prevented him from resolving still more of its difficulties. His ignorance is easily pardonable, for, as will be shown, modern editors have unwittingly conspired to block the way to the truth, and the essential secondary literature has been published in journals and theses rarely accessible to the classicist.

Type
Articles
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , December 1991 , pp. 509 - 519
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1991

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References

1 Hankinson, R. J., ‘Notes on the Text of John of Alexandria’, CQ 40 (1990), 585–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

2 Details of nine manuscripts and three editions are given by Pritchet, C. D. (ed.), Johannis Alexandrini Commentaria in Librum de Sectis Galeni (Leiden, 1982)Google Scholar, Praefatio, p. vii. He omits Paris, Académie nationale de médecine 51 (s. xv), fos. 31r–69v, and Leipzig, Universitäts-bibliothek 1136, which, according to Helmreich, G., ‘Galeni libellum Περ αρσεων τοῖς εἰσαγομνοις’, Acta seminarii philologici Erlangensis 2 (1881), 248Google Scholar, lacks the prologue and the second half of the commentary. In this paper I use John throughout to refer to the Latin translation, not to its putative Greek original, whose authorship is uncertain.

3 Classen, P., ‘Burgundio von Pisa, Richter–Gesandter–Übersetzer’, Sitzb. Heidelberg. Akad. Wiss., phil.-hist. Kl. (1974), p. 78Google Scholar, gives the relevant information on the translation of On sects. Burgundio's Greek manuscripts are discussed by Wilson, N. G., ‘Aspects of the Tradition of Galen’, in Cavallo, G. (ed.), Le strode del testo (Ban, 1987), p. 54Google Scholar; and ‘New Light on Burgundio of Pisa’, Studi italiani difilologia classica, n.s. 3, 4 (1986), 113–18.Google Scholar

4 Cf. Durling, R. J., ‘Corrigenda and Addenda to Diels' Galenica’, Traditio 23 (1967), 470.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 The Ravenna version begins: ‘Medicine artis…’, that of Burgundio: ‘Medicinalis artis…’ There are many similar discrepancies throughout the commentary.

6 The fundamental survey remains that of Temkin, O., ‘Geschichte des Hippokratismus im ausgehenden Altertum’, Kyklos 4 (1932), 51–80Google Scholar, with full citation of Greek, Latin, and oriental sources. The relationship of this John to John the Grammarian and John Philoponus is still far from settled.

7 Temkin, O., ‘Studies on Late Alexandrian Medicine. 1. Alexandrian Commentaries on Galen's De sectis ad introducendos’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine 3 (1935), 405–30Google Scholar, cited according to the reprint in Temkin, O., The Double Face of Janus and Other Essays in the History of Medicine (Baltimore, 1977), pp. 178–97Google Scholar, discusses this commentary in detail, and, p. 182, prints the reference from the plague tract in Turin, Bibl. naz. F. V 25. His emphasis on the weakness of this attribution, p. 189, was taken up by Beccaria, A., ‘Sulle tracce di un antico canone latino di Ippocrate e di Galeno. III. Quattro opere di Galeno nei commenti della scuola di Ravenna all'inizio del medioevo’, Italia medioevale e umanistica 14 (1971), 6Google Scholar. Some manuscripts include as an ending chapters 2–8 of the Gynaecia of Vindicianus, ed. Rose, V. (Leipzig, 1894), pp. 428–36Google Scholar, in a recension similar to that in Leipzig, Universitatsbibliothek 1118 ( = Sudhoff, K., ‘Zur Anatomie des Vindicianus’, Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 8 [1915], 417–20Google Scholar). This extract is printed as Appendix C by Pritchet, but wrongly identified by him as coming from the pseudo-Galenic Introduction to medicine.

8 Temkin and Beccaria, op. cit. (n. 7). Cf. also Palmieri, N., ‘Un antico commento a Galeno della scuola medica di Ravenna’, Physics 23 (1981), 197–295Google Scholar, editing the commentary on For Glaucon.

9 Agnellus of Ravenna, , Lectures on Galen's De sectis, Arethusa Monographs viii (Buffalo, 1981)Google Scholar. Unfortunately, this group did not know of the existence of the Vatican manuscript and its alternative ascription. A third manuscript, Karlsruhe, Reichenau 120, contains a selection of anonymous fragments. In this paper, I use Agnellus to refer to the text of the Buffalo edition, without implying any opinion on the question of authorship.

10 P. Berl. 11739 ( = Pack2 456), edited by Nachmanson, E., ‘Ein neuplatonischer Galenkom-mentar auf Papyrus’, Göleborgs Högskolas Årsskrift 31 (1925), 201–17Google Scholar; summarised in Marganne, M.-H., Inventaire analytique des papyrus grecs de medecine (Geneva, 1981), n. 72Google Scholar. The Bolognese fragments, from Bologna, Bibl. Universitaria, gr. 3632, are cited according to the page and line in Baffioni, G., ‘Inediti di Archelao da un codice bolognese’, Bollettino del Comitato per la preparazione delta edizione nazionale dei Classici greci e latini, n.s. 3 (1955), 57–76Google Scholar. Baffioni, p. 60, working from photographs, suggested that Nachmanson's reading of the author's name in the Berlin papyrus was far from certain, and proposed to read ‘'Aρχε〈λά〉ον’. Arabic authors knew of an Alexandrian ‘Anqilaus’ (which in Arabic differs minutely from Archelaus), who was said to have made the Alexandrian summaries of Galenic ‘set texts’, cf. Temkin, , ‘Hippokratismus’, pp. 51–2, 71–7Google Scholar; The Double Face of Janus, pp. 190, 208Google Scholar. Given that the name Agnellus is found elsewhere in Ravenna, Temkin's suggestion that it might be corruptly derived from the Greek seems unlikely.

11 Zetzel, J. E. G., Latin Textual Criticism in Antiquity (New York, 1981), p. 228Google Scholar, arguing from other similar formulae that Agnellus was Simplicius' assistant, who read out to him the text from another manuscript. If he is right, the subscription provides evidence only that a Latin translation of Alexandrian lectures on the Galenic ‘set texts’ was in circulation at Ravenna. Westerink, , Agnellus, pp. xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar, also considers (and rejects) the possibility that Agnellus was simply dictating his translation to Simplicius. Whether these lectures were actually delivered as such is, however, irrelevant to this paper. Agnellus' title implies some medical instruction at Ravenna, and it is probable that it in some way reflected that of Alexandria.

12 Op. cit. (n. 2), p. vii.

13 Temkin, op. cit. (n. 7), pp. 189–93; Beccaria, op. cit. (n. 7), 16–23. Beccaria's article was left unfinished at his death, so his full solution to the problems was never revealed.

14 A list of correspondences within the commentary is given at Agnellus, x–xi; but only the opening section of the prologue is here linked with John.

15 Line numbers in John are given by Pritchet's numbering. The Buffalo group cited John by the lines and pages of the 1515 Pavia edition, which do not correspond to those recorded in the margin by Pritchet. He, somewhat oddly, used the modern page numbering in the Wellcome Library copy of the 1490 edition, and not the original signatures, sigs aa ii–bb i.

16 In Agnellus, the section on p. 10.21–33 fits oddly; and chapters 7 and 8 are doublets, perhaps representing two different original Greek accounts. The order of the topics within them differs from that in John. John's account of the human body on pp. 9–10 should follow the definition of physiology, p. 11, and the section on temperaments, p. 10, should come between the discussion of humours and that of faculties on p. 9, for it is the temperaments, not the actions, that are nine in number, 10.3–4. The discussion of definitions of medicine, 14.1–15.26, interrupts the account of the various parts of medicine, and John's explanation of the ‘modus doctrinae’ seems to confuse debates within the medical sects with the ‘modus compositivus’ and ‘modus resolutivus’, familiar from the Art of medicine.

17 The section on the causes of voice and speech, Archelaus, p. 65, lines 20–5, which has no parallels in Agnellus and John or in the text of Galen, is thus unlikely to come from a commentary on On sects. The sections from the prologue would appear to end on p. 63, line 27, and the following sections, p. 64, lines 1–19, would then have formed part of the actual commentary.

18 Pritchet, op. cit. (n. 2), pp. vii, x. What remains of the commentary by Palladius, another late Alexandrian professor, was edited by Baffioni, G., ‘Scolii inediti di Palladio al De sectis di Galeno’, Bollettino del Comitato per la preparazione delta edizione nazionale dei Classici greci e latini, n.s. 6 (1958), 61–78Google Scholar. Palladius is quoted by page and line in this edition.

19 Agnellus, pp. x, xii, where it is clear that they relied only on the printed edition of 1515, and on a section published by Beccaria, op. cit. (n. 7), 7–8. Given the improvements in Pritchet's text over the early printed editions, they were unlucky in the timing of their edition, which is in every way far superior to Pritchet's.

20 If the texts behind John and Agnellus represent two separate transcriptions of the same set of lectures, this would explain some of the (relatively minor) omissions and alterations as well as their close verbal agreement. I have noticed exactly similar phenomena when examining the various versions, both printed and manuscript, of the Paduan medical lectures of Giambattista da Monte (fl. 1540).

21 In the Commentary on Hippocrates' Aphorisms by Stephanus, ed. Westerink, L. G., Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, xi 1.3.1 (Berlin, 1985)Google Scholar, an exactly similar omission is found on p. 34, line 20, where αἰτιολογικόν was lost from the triple division of medicine, and is restored from the later discussion at p. 36.25–8. ‘Semeiotics’ as a subdivision of theoretical medicine is found at least as early as Ps. Plutarch, , De Homero, 200–2.Google Scholar

22 Temkin, O., ‘On Galen's Pneumatology’, Gesnerus 8 (1951), 180–9Google ScholarPubMed, reprinted in The Double Face of Janus, pp. 154–61.

23 See the summary given by me in ‘Galen's Philosophical Testament: “On my own opinions”’, in Wiesner, J. (ed.), Aristoteles. Werk und Wirkung, Zweiter Band. Kommentierung, Uberlieferung, Nachleben (Berlin and New York, 1987), pp. 41–4Google Scholar. The only spirit mentioned in this text is the psychic spirit.

24 Temkin, O., ‘Byzantine Medicine: Tradition and Empiricism’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 16 (1962), 97–115CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in The Double Face of Janus, pp. 202–22 n. 54Google Scholar, drew attention to the possible significance of the sevenfold division in John.

25 Stephanus, p. 36.26 Westerink; Theophilus, , Commentary on Aphorisms, ii.247 Dietz.Google Scholar

26 He also employs the same examples that led Westerink, p. 160, to declare that Agnellus had no understanding of the meaning of the terms.

27 Stephanus, p. 36.28 Westerink; Theophilus, ii.247 Dietz; Agnellus, 26.26–7; cf. also Stephanus, , Commentary on Hippocrates' Prognosticon, ed. Duffy, J. M., Corpus Medicorum Graecorum, xi 1.2 (Berlin, 1983), pp. 1.13 and 42.10–11Google Scholar (anamnesis, diagnosis, prognosis).

28 One explanation for the corruption might be confusion with the faculty of memory, mentioned earlier on the same page, and described by Stephanus, p. 36.23 Westerink, as the μνημονευτικ δναμις.

29 If John's original Greek corresponded to that of Palladius, the absence of ‘intentio’ might be harder to explain; if, however, it corresponded to that of Archelaus, the noun ποτλεσμα translated as ‘res perfecta’ would make adequate sense by itself. Alternatively, one might assume that το σκοπο was not included in the original Greek.

30 Archelaus, p. 63.25–7. Judging from the parallels in Agnellus and John, one may wonder whether the final δι' ἄ should not also be changed to δι' .

31 Given Pritchet's frequent misunderstandings of the Latin, it is not impossible that the misreading ‘esu’ is due to him, rather than to the medieval scribes. One cannot exclude the possibility that the same (relatively simple) error (‘ifu’ → ‘efu’) was made independently in both traditions.

32 Compare the similar question about the preposition περ in the title, Agnellus, 34.33–6; John, 17.4–6. Pritchet further complicates matters by attaching the lemma ex quibus autem quis to the end of the previous paragraph.

33 For the idiom, see Renehan, R., Greek Lexicographical Notes (Göttingen, 1975), pp. 156–7.Google Scholar

34 If ‘prothes’ is not a dittography, which prima facie it is, one might also suggest: ‘hec prothesis pro DIA…’

35 These passages are not mentioned in the most recent surveys of Hippocratic commentary in the Hellenistic period, Smith, W. D., The Hippocratic Tradition (Ithaca, 1979)Google Scholar, and Kudlien, F., ‘Hippokrates-Rezeption im Hellenismus’, in Baader, G. and Winau, R. (edd.), Die hippokratischen Epidemien (Stuttgart, 1989), pp. 354–76Google Scholar. Whether Heraclides of Erythrae wrote a commentary on the Prognosticon is most uncertain.

36 Von Staden, H., Herophilus. The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 89–114, T. 42–5, 48.Google Scholar

37 See the text as edited by Kühlewein, H., ‘Die handschriftliche Grundlage des Hippokratischen Prognostikon und eine lateinische Uebersetzung desselben’, Hermes 25 (1890), 113–40, p. 123.Google Scholar

38 The almost illegible word at Agnellus, 26.31, transcribed in the apparatus as ‘ertineus’, is likely to have been ‘experiens’ (or just possibly ‘credendus’): cf. the old Latin version, ‘Praesciens enim et praedicens circa aegrotantes praesentia et praeterita et quae futura sunt et quae praetermittunt aegroti experiens creditur magis intelligere aegrotantium rationes ita ut audeant permittere se ipsos homines medico.’

39 Westerink, L. G., ‘Philosophy and Medicine in Late Antiquity’, Janus 51 (1964), 169–77Google Scholar. This was also stressed by Temkin, , ‘Alexandrian Commentaries’, and ‘Geschichte des Hippokratismus’, above, nn. 6–7.Google Scholar

40 Temkin, O., ‘Greek Medicine as Science and Craft’, Isis 44 (1953), 213–25CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, reprinted in The Double Face of Janus, pp. 137–53Google Scholar. Note his observation, p. 225 = p. 153, that ‘From now on, there is only one medical science, based on just those parts of philosophy which Galen accepted.’

41 See Duffy, J., ‘Byzantine Medicine in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries: Aspects of Teaching and Practice’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 38 (1984), 21–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Todd, R. B., ‘Philosophy and Medicine in John Philoponus' Commentary on Aristotle's De Anima’Google Scholar, ibid., 103–10; Lieber, E., ‘Galen in Hebrew: the Transmission of Galen's Works in the Mediaeval Islamic World’, in Nutton, V. (ed.), Galen: Problems and Prospects (London, 1981), pp. 167–86Google Scholar; Schmitt, C. B., ‘Aristotle among the Physicians’, in A. Wear, R. K. French and I. M. Lonie, The Medical Renaissance of the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 1–15Google Scholar, reprinted as ch. VII in his Reappraisals in Renaissance Thought (London, 1989).Google Scholar

42 In a forthcoming paper, ‘P. Berol. 11739A e i commenti tardoantichi a Galeno’, in the Acts of the 1990 Capri conference on ancient medicine, Daniela Manetti discusses, from a different standpoint, John, Agnellus, and Archelaus. Her reexamination of the Berlin papyrus (above, n. 10) confirms Nachmanson's reading of the author's name.