Parchment Codices in a New text of Galen

Extract

The Περὶ Ἀλυπίας (‘On Consolation From Grief’, henceforward PA) of Galen, recently rediscovered in a fifteenth-century manuscript in a monastery in Thessalonica, contains a wealth of information for the scholar of Roman libraries and books. The work, a treatise on the avoidance of the grief contingent upon loss and suffering, begins by listing the losses suffered by Galen himself in the fire of AD 192. The fire destroyed the Templum Pacis, a series of warehouses and storerooms, and the libraries on the Palatine hill. As Galen had spent much effort copying books from these libraries, and had then deposited his copies in the warehouses that also burned, his work was lost beyond the possibility of recovery.