Advice for autumn weather

“At times when it varies between hot and cold on the same day, one must expect the illness of autumn.”

Ἐν τῇσιν ὥρῃσιν, ὅταν τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρης ὁτὲ μὲν θάλπος, ὁτὲ δὲ ψῦχος γένηται, φθινοπωρινὰ τὰ νουσήματα προσδέχεσθαι χρή.

Hippocrates, Aphorisms III 4, IV 483 Littré

“When it comes to the weather in late autumn, one must be extremely cautious, since it is variable. Therefore, you mustn’t go walking around barefoot in the early morning and the afternoon, and you mustn’t jump into cold water naked. You also mustn’t go harvesting crops without your tunic on, even if you think the cold air is pleasant and gratifying—it is so difficult to prepare for bad weather, especially when the damage slips in with what seems pleasant. Stay away from the cool breezes coming off of rivers and lakes—they not only cool you down, but they also moisten your dispositions. And make sure to guard against rich foods, like thick and astringent new wines, crackers made from very fine flour, dates, raisins, eggs, snails, grape hyacinths, very meaty fish, sliced sausages, lamb, and mutton. Also, don’t forget to get a bit of exercise.”

τὰς δ’ ἐν τῷ μετοπώρῳ πολλῷ μᾶλλον δεῖ εὐλαβεῖσθαι· γίνονται γὰρ μετ’ ἀνωμαλίας. δεῖ τοίνυν μήτε ἀνυποδέτους περὶ τὸν ὄρθρον καὶ τὸ δείλης διάγειν μήτε ἀσκέπως εἰς ψυχρὸν ὕδωρ ἐμβαίνειν μήτε ἀχίτωνας θερίζοντας διὰ τὸ κεχαρισμένον καὶ ἡδὺ τῆς ψύξεως· τοσοῦτον γὰρ τὸ κακὸν δυσφύλακτον ὅσῳπερ καὶ τὴν ἡδονὴν ὑποδύεται τὸ βλάπτον. ἐκκλιτέον δὲ καὶ τὰς ὑπαίθρους κοίτας καὶ τὰς ἀπὸ τῶν ποταμῶν καὶ λιμνῶν ἀποπνεούσας αὔρας· οὐ γὰρ μόνον ψύχουσιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑγραίνουσι τὰς ἕξεις. φυλακτέον δὲ καὶ τὰ πολύτροφα καὶ τὰ παχυντικὰ τῶν προσφερομένων, οἷον οἶνον νέον καὶ παχὺν καὶ στυπτικόν, ἄρτον σεμιδαλίτην ἄζυμον, φοίνικας, σταφίδας, ὠά, κοχλίας, βολβούς, ἰχθύων τοὺς πολυσάρκους, ταρίχων τοὺς τεμαχιστούς, κρεῶν τὰ ἄρνεια καὶ προβάτεια. οὐκ ἀμελητέον δ’ οὐδὲ τῶν γυμνασίων.

Athenaeus of Attalia in Oribasius, Medical Collections libri incerti 41, CMG VI 2,2 148,4-16 Raeder

“Autumn is less hot than summer, but less cold than winter. Thus, it is not simply hot or cold, since it is both, and neither of them in excess. But there is a different problem with it, one Hippocrates also mentioned in the Aphorisms, when he says: “whenever it varies between hot and cold on the same day, one must expect the illnesses of autumn” (Aphorisms III 4). And surely this is what makes autumn most likely to bring about illness: the variability of the mixture. So, it is not right to call it cold and dry, since it is not observed to be cold in itself, like winter, but compared with summer it is colder. And yet it is not evenly well mixed, like the spring, but it is different from that season in that it does not have a consistent good mixture and evenness through the whole day. For it is much hotter during midday than at dawn or dusk. Also, unlike spring, it is not precisely balanced between wet and dry, but it tends towards dryness. It has less dryness than summer, but not as much as it lacks heat. Clearly, then, as autumn is not to be called simply, as those others say, cold and dry. It has neither in extreme; sure, the dry does predominate over the wet, and one might rightly call it dry. But with respect to the difference between hot and cold, it is a mixture of both and it is variable.”

Ἀλλὰ καὶ τὸ φθινόπωρον ἧττον μὲν ἢ τὸ θέρος θερμόν, ἧττον δ' ἢ ὁ χειμὼν ψυχρόν. ὥστε ταύτῃ μὲν οὔτε θερμὸν ἁπλῶς οὔτε ψυχρόν, ἀμφότερα γάρ ἐστι, καὶ οὐδέτερον ἄκρως. ἕτερον δέ τι πρόσεστιν αὐτῷ κακόν, ὅπερ ἐπεσημήνατο καὶ Ἱπποκράτης ἐν Ἀφορισμοῖς εἰπών· ‘ὁκόταν τῆς αὐτῆς ἡμέρης ὁτὲ μὲν θάλπος, ὁτὲ δὲ ψῦχος ποιέῃ, φθινοπωρινὰ τὰ νοσήματα προσδέχεσθαι χρή’. καὶ τοῦτό γ'ἐστὶ τὸ μάλιστα νοσῶδες ἐργαζόμενον τὸ φθινόπωρον, ἡ ἀνωμαλία τῆς κράσεως. οὐκ ὀρθῶς οὖν εἴρηται ψυχρὸν καὶ ξηρόν, οὐ γάρ ἐστι ψυχρὸν αὐτὸ καθ' αὑτὸ θεωρούμενον, ὥσπερ ὁ χειμών, ἀλλὰ τῷ θέρει παραβαλ|λόμενον ἐκείνου ψυχρότερον. οὐ μὴν οὐδ' ὁμαλῶς εὔκρατον, ὡς τὸ ἔαρ, ἀλλ' ἐν τούτῳ δὴ καὶ μάλιστα διενήνοχεν ἐκείνης τῆς ὥρας, ὅτι τὴν εὐκρασίαν τε καὶ τὴν ὁμαλότητα διὰ παντὸς ἴσην οὐ κέκτηται. πολὺ γὰρ θερμότερόν ἐστι κατὰ τὴν μεσημβρίαν ἢ κατὰ τὴν ἕω τε καὶ τὴν ἑσπέραν. ὑγρότητος δὲ καὶ ξηρότητος οὐκ ἀκριβῶς μέν ἐστι μέσον, ὡς τὸ ἔαρ, ἀλλ' ἐπὶ τὸ ξηρότερον ῥέπει. λείπεται δὲ κἀν τούτῳ τοῦ θέρους, οὐ μὴν τοσοῦτόν γ' ὅσον θερμότητι. δῆλον οὖν, ὡς οὐδὲ τὸ φθινόπωρον ἁπλῶς οὕτω ῥητέον, ὡς ἐκεῖνοι λέγουσι, ψυχρόν τ' εἶναι καὶ ξηρόν. ἄκρως μὲν γὰρ οὐδέτερόν ἐστιν, ἐπικρατεῖ δ' ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ ξηρὸν τοῦ ὑγροῦ καὶ δικαίως ἂν λεχθείη ταύτῃ μὲν ξηρόν, ἐν δὲ τῇ κατὰ θερμότητα καὶ ψυχρότητα διαφορᾷ μικτὸν ἐξ ἀμφοῖν καὶ ἀνώμαλον.

Galen, De temperamentis i 4, I 527-528 Kühn

Athenaeus’ Back to School Advice

A fragment from the lost works of Athenaeus of Attalia, preserved in Oribasius, libri incerti 39:

“From six and seven-years, give your children over to gentle and benevolent elementary school teachers. Educators who teach using a combination of persuasion and compassion, and who offer lots of praise as well, are successful teachers and will encourage the children more. Also, their teaching is accompanied with joy and relaxation, and when the soul is relaxed and joyful, it contributes a good deal to the body’s thriving. But those educators who are relentless with their punishments will end up making the children miserable, fearful, and hostile to education. When they thrash their students, they are forcing them to learn and memorize things at the exact same moment they are being punished—in other words, when the children are least likely to be able to think! Also, don't oppress new students for the whole day with lessons. Instead, give over a greater portion of the day to amusement. In fact, we see among children who are pretty strong and mature for their age that, when they are always working hard at their lessons, their bodies become thoroughly corrupted.

“Twelve-year old children should go to geometry teachers as well as elementary teachers, and they should start taking gym. Also, their helpers and supervisors should be sound-minded and not completely inexperienced. This way, you know they will keep track of the proper times and portions of food, exercise, baths, sleep and everything else that has to do with being healthy. I feel I need to say this because most people spend a lot of of money hiring someone to groom their horse, making sure to choose a person who is careful and experienced; but, regarding a supervisor for their children, the same people will hire someone with no experience, or who is completely useless, and who cannot help at all in matters of life.”

ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν ϛˊ καὶ ζˊ ἐτῶν τούς τε παῖδας καὶ τὰς κόρας γραμματισταῖς παραδιδόναι πραέσι καὶ φιλανθρώποις· οἱ μὲν γὰρ προσαγόμενοι τὰ παιδία καὶ πειθοῖ καὶ παρακλήσει διδάσκοντες, πολλάκις δὲ καὶ ἐπαινοῦντες, ἐπιτυγχάνουσι προτρέπονταί τε αὐτοὺς μᾶλλον καὶ μετὰ χαρᾶς καὶ ἀνέσεως διδάσκουσιν (ἡ δ’ ἄνεσις καὶ χαρὰ τῆς ψυχῆς εἰς εὐτροφίαν σώματος μεγάλα συμβάλλεται)· οἱ δ’ ἐπικείμενοι τῇ διδασκαλίᾳ καὶ πικροὶ ταῖς ἐπιπλήξεσι δουλοπρεπεῖς αὐτοὺς <καὶ> καταφόβους ποιοῦσι καὶ ἀλλοτρίους πρὸς τὰς μαθήσεις· δέροντες γὰρ μανθάνειν καὶ μνημονεύειν ἀναγκάζουσιν ἐν αὐταῖς ὄντας ταῖς πληγαῖς, ὅτε καὶ τοῦ φρονεῖν ἔξω γεγόνασιν. οὐκ ἀναγκαῖον δ’ οὐδὲ δι’ ὅλης τῆς ἡμέρας θλίβειν τοὺς ἀρτιμαθεῖς, μερίδα δὲ διδόναι παιδιᾷ αὐτῶν πλείονα· ὁρῶμεν γὰρ καὶ τῶν ἰσχυροτέρων καὶ τετελειωμένων ταῖς ἡλικίαις τοὺς ἐπιμελῶς καὶ ἀδιαλείπτως προσεδρεύοντας τοῖς μαθήμασι καταφθειρομένους τοῖς σώμασιν.

τοὺς δὲ δωδεκαετεῖς τῶν παίδων πρός τε γραμματικοὺς φοιτᾶν ἤδη καὶ γεωμέτρας καὶ τὸ σῶμα γυμνάζειν· ἀναγκαῖον δὲ νουνεχεῖς εἶναι τούς τε παιδαγωγοὺς αὐτῶν καὶ τοὺς ἐπιστάτας καὶ μὴ τελείως ἀπείρους, ὅπως τούς τε καιροὺς καὶ τὰς συμμετρίας ἴδωσι τροφῆς, γυμνασίων, λουτρῶν, ὕπνου, τῶν ἄλλων τῶν κατὰ τὴν δίαιταν· οἱ γὰρ πολλοὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἱπποκόμους μὲν πλείονος ὠνοῦνται τοὺς ἐπιμελεῖς καὶ ἐμπείρους ἐκλεγόμενοι, παιδαγωγοὺς δὲ τῶν τέκνων καθιστᾶσι τοὺς ἀπείρους καὶ ἀχρήστους ἤδη γεγονότας καὶ μηδὲν ἔτι δυναμένους ὑπηρετεῖν τῶν κατὰ τὸν βίον.

Oribasius, libri incerti 39.3-5, CMG VI 2,2 138,28-139,15 Raeder

Solids, Liquids, Gases

On the style of Epidemics 6, Wesley Smith (who translated the text for the Loeb Classical Library) writes: 

“[The Epidemics] are technical prose from a time when prose was coming into being and authors were realizing its potential: unique jottings by medical people in the process of creating the science of medicine.”

Hippocrates VII: Epidemics 2 & 4-7, Harvard University Press, 1994, p.2

The Epidemics is a text without a model, an attempt to capture in writing the experience and practice of medicine. The style, Smith thinks, manifests this naivety. He refers to it as the text’s “innocence” — innocent from later conventions and styles that would come to characterize medical and scientific writing. This innocence makes the Epidemics (like other Hippocratic writings) quite unique; it also makes it quite difficult to read.

Later medical texts look almost nothing like the Epidemics. Medical writers pretty quickly developed standards of exposition that made their writing easier to follow, and one of the effects of this standardization was that a medical text came to be recognizable as such, a distinct form of writing with its own questions, rules, vocabulary and order.

This innovation is already evident in the fourth century, in Diocles’ writings. He had structured his writing on regimen according to times of day, with each time divided into parts dealing with appropriate foods and exercises. Writers on disease, too, began to structure their works: some, according to the location of diseases from head to toe; some, by diseases according to whether they were acute or chronic; some into sections on cause and treatment. And a standard form of medical text, called Remedies  (Peri Boêthêmatôn) was developed by the Pneumatist school, which divided remedies according to the way they acted on the body.

Certainly some authors were not as clear as all this. Dioscorides’ Materia Medica (Peri Hulês) follows a notoriously obscure structure, something later authors complained about. It would have been easier, they thought, if he had ordered things alphabetically. But this just shows that doctors were thinking about the form medical writing should take, and began to adopt standards to avoid the type of obscurity we find in the Epidemics. 

Epidemics 6, however, was also canonical, at least to those sympathetic to Hippocratic medicine. The style of the text may have been obscure, but most everyone who practiced Hippocratic-style medicine would have been familiar with it. And interpreting the text became a way of debating new ideas about what medicine is and how it should be practiced.

Evidence of a tradition of interpretation exists, preserved for the most part by Galen, but also in earlier authors like Dioscorides and Athenaeus and later ones like Palladius. For these Hippocratic doctors, the Epidemics could not simply be read. It needed to be deciphered. And part of the game of interpretation seems to have been to show that, whatever new idea they were promoting, the insight was already present in the writings of Hippocrates (or by showing, especially in the case of Epidemics 6, that parts of it were not by Hippocrates at all, and so could be ignored).

Now, one passage from Epidemics 6 was generally agreed to be a kind of keystone for the whole work. It is found at Epidemics 6.8.7:

“Things from the small tablet to be observed. Regimen consists in repletion and evacuation of foods and drinks. Changes of these: what from what, how it is. Odors: pleasant, noxious, filling, tempting. Changes, from what kinds of things, how they are. The pneumata that come in or go out, [solid] bodies also. Better sounds, and those that harm. And of the tongue, what things are evoked by what. Pneuma, what is hotter to the tongue, colder, thicker, thinner, dryer, wetter, filled up, less and greater. From what come changes, what out of what kinds of things, how they are. Things that contain, impart impulse, or are contained. Speech, silence, saying what one wishes. The words, what one says, either loud or many, truthful or fraudulent. (Smith trans., modified)”

τὰ ἐκ τοῦ σμικροῦ πινακιδίου σκεπτέα. δίαιτα γίνεται πλησμονῇ, κενώσει, βρωμάτων, πομάτων· μεταβολαὶ τούτων, οἷα ἐξ οἵων, ὡς ἔχει. ὀδμαὶ τέρπουσαι, λυποῦσαι, πιμπλῶσαι, πειθόμεναι· μεταβολαὶ, ἐξ οἵων οἵως ἔχουσιν. τὰ ἐσπίπτοντα, ἢ ἐξιόντα πνεύματα, ἢ καὶ σώματα. ἀκοαὶ κρείσσονες, αἱ δὲ λυποῦσαι. καὶ γλώσσης, ἐξ οἵων οἷα προκαλεῖται. πνεῦμα, τὸ ταύτη θερμότερον, ψυχρότερον, παχύτερον, λεπτότερον, ξηρότερον, ὑγρότερον, πεπληρωμένον, μεῖόν τε καὶ τὸ πλεῖον· ἀφ' ὧν αἱ μεταβολαὶ, οἷαι ἐξ οἵων, ὡς ἔχουσιν. τὰ ἴσχοντα, ἢ ὁρμῶντα, ἢ ἐνισχόμενα. λόγοι, σιγὴ, εἰπεῖν ἃ βούλεται· λόγοι, οὓς λέγει, ἢ μέγα, ἢ πολλοὶ, ἀτρεκεῖς, ἢ πλαστοί. (V 344-6 Littré)

(I’ve adopted some of the changes suggested by Smith in the Loeb text and ignored others. Notably, I’ve left out “σώματα” after “ἐνισχόμενα”, following Littré, since as Littré pointed out, no one in antiquity mentions it being there.)

This text has puzzled interpreters for a long time. It is elliptical, confident, and somewhat mysterious. But later doctors saw in it the basis of a system: a list of observations that need to be made in order to assess the health of a patient. 

Two aspects of the list were to become especially important in later medical writers. One is the distinction of pneuma into hot, cold, thick, thin, wet or dry. This distinction has an interesting history that I hope to come back to. But here I want to focus on the distinction of things into “containing, imparting impulse, and contained (τὰ ἴσχοντα, ἢ ὁρμῶντα, ἢ ἐνισχόμενα).” 

We have been working on tracing this distinction for a paper we’re writing on the Pneumatist school. It came to be associated with a way of understanding human physiology that would have a long influence: the division of the constituents of the body into solid parts, humours, and pneuma. It is explicitly mentioned in Galen, the pseudo-Galenic Introduction, pseudo-Alexander on Fevers. It might be in Nicolaus of Damascus On Plants. And in De causis contentivis, especially in chapter 4, Galen hints that it played some role in Pneumatist physiology and causal theory. 

This left us with a bit of a puzzle. How did a distinction of the body into containing parts, parts imparting impulse, and contained parts come to be identified with solids, liquids and gases? This is far from obvious and there is nothing in the text of the Epidemics that suggests it. Why would anyone have interpreted the text this way? Why did it become widely accepted? And how is it related to other ways of describing human physiology, for example, in terms of the elements (...interesting that the distinction is absent from the Definitiones...)?

We looked through the literature, but didn’t find anything substantial. So I thought I would gather all the texts here to make them available. Some of them are still untranslated, and there are likely more texts than the ones below. I will continue to translate and add more as we find them. But hopefully it will be something of a start to sorting out how this interpretation of Epidemics 6 came about and why it became so influential.

I
The Pseudo-Galenic author of Introduction or The Physician

“Others say the human is in fact composed out of three compounds, as well, from wet things, dry things and pneumata. Hippocrates calls them things containing, things contained and things which impart impulse. Containing are whatever are solid bodies—bones, nerves, veins and arteries—out of which muscles, flesh, and every mass of the body are compounded, both internal and external structures. Contained are the wet things carried in the channels and scattered through the whole body, what Hippocrates calls the four humours previously mentioned. Things which impart impulse are the pneumata. According to the ancients, there are two pneumata: psychic and natural. The Stoics also add a third: hectic, which they call a state.”

οἱ δὲ ἐκ τῶν τριῶν καὶ συνθέτων τὸν ἤδη γενώμενον ἄνθρωπον ἐκ τῶνδέ φασι συγκεῖσθαι, ἔκ τε τῶν ὑγρῶν καὶ ξηρῶν καὶ πνευμάτων. καλεῖ δὲ αὐτὰ Ἱπποκράτης ἴσχοντα, ἰσχόμενα καὶ ἐνορμῶντα. ἴσχοντα μὲν οὖν ἐστιν ὅσα στερεὰ, ὀστᾶ καὶ νεῦρα καὶ φλέβες καὶ ἀρτηρίαι, ἐξ ὧν οἵ τε μύες καὶ αἱ σάρκες καὶ πᾶς ὁ τοῦ σώματος ὄγκος πέπλεκται, τῶν τε ἐντὸς καὶ τῶν ἐκτὸς τὰ συγκρίματα. ἰσχόμενα δέ ἐστι τὰ ὑγρὰ τὰ ἐν τοῖς ἀγγείοις ἐμφερόμενα καὶ κατὰ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα διεσπαρμένα, ἅπερ καλεῖ Ἱπποκράτης χυμοὺς τέσσαρας τοὺς προειρημένους. ἐνορμῶντα δέ ἐστι τὰ πνεύματα. πνεύματα δὲ κατὰ τοὺς παλαιοὺς δύο ἐστὶ, τό τε ψυχικὸν καὶ τὸ φυσικόν. οἱ δὲ Στωϊκοὶ καὶ τρίτον εἰσάγουσι τὸ ἑκτικὸν, ὃ καλοῦσιν ἕξιν.

[Galen] Introductio 9, 14.696.14-697.8 K

“Hippocrates, then, put forward three, saying the elements of man are things contained, containing and imparting impulse, through which he included all the elements of those who came after him, as well as elemental physiology and the aetiology of things contrary to nature. But those after him, I don't know why, divide this divine and truly Asclepian medicine into three, although it is really a unity, and they dispersed the parts that make it up. (i) Some referred only to the humours [when explaining] the composition of things according to nature and the cause of things contrary to nature, as Praxagoras and Herophilus [did]. Others posited the solid bodies as the primary and elemental things, and believed that things are composed out of these and the causes of diseases originate from them, as Erasistratus and Asclepiades [did]. And those around Athenaeus and Archigenes claim that all the natural things are created only by means of the pneuma pervading through them and that all the diseases are governed by it, because it [sc. the pneuma] is the thing affected first – for this reason they are called Pneumatists.”

Ἱπποκράτης μὲν οὖν διὰ τριῶν κεχώρηκεν, εἰπὼν στοιχεῖα ἀνθρώπου ἴσχοντα, ἰσχόμενα, ἐνορμῶντα, δι' ὧν τὰ πάντα τῶν μετ' αὐτὸν περιείληφε στοιχεῖα καὶ τὴν κατὰ στοιχείων φυσιολογίαν τε καὶ αἰτιολογίαν τῶν παρὰ φύσιν· οἱ δὲ μετ' αὐτὸν οὐκ οἶδ' ὅπως μίαν οὖσαν τὴν θείαν ταύτην καὶ ἀληθῶς Ἀσκληπιοῦ ἰατρικὴν τριχῇ διανειμάμενοι καὶ διασπάσαντες τὰ ἐν αὐτῇ συμφυῆ μέρη, οἱ μὲν μόνοις τοῖς χυμοῖς τῶν τε κατὰ φύσιν τὴν σύστασιν καὶ τῶν παρὰ φύσιν τὴν αἰτίαν ἀνέθεσαν, ὡς Πραξαγόρας καὶ Ἡρόφιλος. οἱ δὲ τὰ στερεὰ σώματα τὰ ἀρχικὰ καὶ στοιχειώδη ὑποθέμενοι, τά τε φύσει συνεστῶτα ἐκ τούτων καὶ τῶν νόσων τὰς αἰτίας ἐντεῦθεν λαμβάνουσιν, ὡς Ἐρασίστρατος καὶ Ἀσκληπιάδης· οἱ δὲ περὶ Ἀθήναιον καὶ Ἀρχιγένην μόνῳ τῷ διήκοντι δι' αὐτῶν πνεύματι καὶ τὰ φυσικὰ συνεστάναι τε καὶ διοικεῖσθαι καὶ τὰ νοσήματα πάντα, τούτου πρωτοπαθοῦντος γίνεσθαι ἀπεφήναντο, ὅθεν καὶ πνευματικοὶ χρηματίζουσι.

[Galen], Introductio 9, 698.12-699.10 K

II
Nicolaus of Damascus, Plants (distinct tradition?)

“A plant has three powers, the first derived from the element of earth, the second from that of water, the third from that of fire. From the earth the plant derives its growth, from water its cohesion, and from fire the union of the cohesion of the plant. We see much the same thing in vessels of pottery, which contain three elements—clay, which is, as it were, the material of pottery; secondly, water, which binds the pottery together; and, thirdly, fire, which draws its parts together, until it completes the process of manufacture.”

Τὸ δένδρον τρεῖς ἔχει δυνάμεις, πρώτην ἐκ τοῦ γένους τῆς γῆς, δευτέραν ἐκ τοῦ γένους τοῦ ὕδατος, τρίτην ἐκ τοῦ γένους τοῦ πυρός. ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ἔκφυσις τῆς βοτάνης, ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος ἡ σύμπηξις, ἀπὸ τοῦ πυρὸς ἡ ἕνωσις τῆς συμπήξεως τοῦ φυτοῦ. Βλέπομεν δὲ πολλὰ τούτων καὶ ἐν τοῖς ὀστρακώδεσιν. Εἰσὶ γὰρ ἐν τούτοις τρία, πηλός, ἐξ οὗ γίνεται πλίνθος ὀστρακώδης, δεύτερον ὕδωρ, ὅπερ ἐστὶ τὸ στερεοῦν τὰ ὀστρακώδη, τρίτον τὸ πῦρ τὸ συνάγον τὰ μέρη αὐτοῦ, ἔστ’ ἂν δι‘ αὐτοῦ πληρωθείη ἡ τούτου γένεσις.

[Aristotle], De Plantis 2.1

III
The Pseudo-Alexandrian author of Fevers

Φανερὸν μὲν οὖν διὰ τούτων καὶ ὡς τρία μόνα τὰ ἐν ἡμῖν, ἐν οἷς ἡ παρὰ φύσιν θερμότης, μόρια, χυμοί, πνεύματα· τὰ αὐτὰ δὲ καὶ παρ' Ἱπποκράτει ἴσχοντα, ἰσχόμενα καὶ ἐνορμῶντα καλεῖται, ἴσχοντα μὲν τὰ μόρια, ἃ καὶ στερεὰ προσαγορεύεται, ἰσχόμενα δὲ οἱ χυμοί, ἐνορμῶντα δέ γε τὰ πνεύματα, ἕκαστον ἐκ τῆς ἰδίας δυνάμεως τὴν προσηγορίαν ἁρμόζουσαν εἰληφός. 

Ἴσχει μὲν γὰρ καὶ κατέχει τὰ στερεά, ἐνίσχεται δὲ καὶ ἐμπεριέχεται ὑπὸ τούτων τὰ ὑγρά τε καὶ διαρρέοντα, ταὐτὸν δὲ εἰπεῖν οἱ χυμοί, ὁρμᾷ δὲ τὰ ἐν ἡμῖν πνεύματα, λεπτομερεστάτης οὐσίας ὄντα καὶ θερμοτάτης, καὶ ῥᾷστα διὰ πάντων χωροῦντα τῶν μορίων τοῦ σώματος.

[Alexander], De febribus 17.1-2

IV
Galen, Differences of Fevers

νῦν δὲ ἀρκεῖ τό γε τοσοῦτον γινώσκειν, ὅπερ, οἶμαι, καὶ ὁ Ἱπποκράτης ἐνδεικνύμενος ἔλεγε, τὰ ἴσχοντα καὶ τὰ ἐνισχόμενα καὶ τὰ ἐνορμῶντα· ἴσχοντα μὲν αὐτὰ τὰ στερεὰ μόρια τοῦ σώματος, ἐνισχόμενα δὲ τὰ ὑγρὰ, ἐνορμῶντα δὲ τὰ πνεύματα προσαγορεύων.

Galen, De differentiis febrium, 7.278.11 K

V
Galen, On Tremor, Palpitation, Spasm and Rigor

μέμνηται δέ πως αὐτῶν ὧδε, τὰ ἴσχοντα λέγων, καὶ τὰ ἐνισχόμενα, καὶ τὰ ἐνορμῶντα· ἴσχοντα μὲν τὰ στερεὰ καλῶν, περιέχει γὰρ καὶ ἀποστέγει τὰ ὑγρά· ἐνισχόμενα δὲ, τὰ ὑγρὰ, περιέχεται γὰρ ὑπὸ τῶν στερεῶν· ἐνορμῶντα δὲ τὰ πνεύματα, πάντῃ γὰρ ἐξικνεῖται τοῦ σώματος ἐν ἀκαρεῖ χρόνῳ ῥᾳδίως τε καὶ ἀκωλύτως.

Galen, De tremore, palpitatione, convulsione et rigore, 7.597.3-9 K

VI
Galen, Commentary on Epidemics 6
(only available in Pfaff’s German translation of the Arabic summary, online at the CMG)

(V 346, 5.6 L[ittré]) Hippocrates: Das Enthaltende und das Eindringende und das Enthaltene.

Galen: Auch diese Worte erklärt jeder von den Kommentatoren anders. Die beste Erklärung ist nach meiner Meinung die Erklärung derjenigen, welche sagen, daß er unter ‘das Enthaltende’ die festen Grundkörper [solid parts] und unter ‘das Eindringende’ oder ‘das Durchdringende’—diese Worte werden auf diese beiden Arten geschrieben—die Winde [pneumata] und unter ‘das Enthaltene’ die Feuchtigkeiten [humors], die die Körper enthalten, verstehe. Hippokrates verlange also, daß man von diesen drei Dingen aus, aus denen jeder lebende Körper bestehe, untersuche und erforsche, welches die Natur und die Kraft eines jeden von ihnen sei.

Galen, In Hippocratis Epidemiarum librum VI commentaria I-VI, CMG V 10,2,2 p.446 Wenkebach

VII
Palladius, Overview of on Fevers

Ἰστέον ὅτι τῶν πυρετῶν τρία εἰσὶ τὰ γένη· τὰ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν ἐπὶ ὑγροῖς γίνονται καὶ ἐξάπτονται, τὰ δὲ ἐπὶ στερεοῖς, τὰ δὲ ἐπὶ πνεύμασι, περὶ ὧν ὁ Ἱπποκράτης λέγει ἴσχοντα, ἰσχόμενα καὶ ἐνορμῶντα, ἴσχοντα μὲν καλῶν τὰ στερεά, ἰσχόμενα δὲ τὰ ὑγρά, ἐνορμῶντα δὲ τὰ πνεύματα. Ὁ δὲ Γαληνὸς ἀναφέρει ὅτι ἀναμέμικται ἔν τε ταῖς ἀρτηρίαις ἁπάσαις διὰ πολλῶν ὀπῶν ἅμα πνεούσαις ἡ ἀερώδης οὐσία τῷ αἵματι καὶ κατὰ τὴν καρδίαν οὐδὲν ἧττον, ὡς ἂν σύρρους ὑπάρχουσα πάσαις αὐταῖς.

Palladius, Synopsis de febribus, 4.1-2

Byzantine Silk

In this passage from his commentary on Aristotle’s Generation of Animals, Michael of Ephesus tries to explain a reference to insects generated in wool. Michael thinks Aristotle cannot mean wool, as in the material made from sheep’s hair; rather, he believes Aristotle was talking about silk, specifically the raw silk of a silkworm's cocoon.

Now, Michael is almost certainly wrong about this. The method of producing silk was unknown in the west in Aristotle’s time and would remain so until the reign of Justinian (6th century CE). But in trying to explain what Aristotle meant, Michael ends up giving an amazing description of the process of silk-making during the Byzantine middle-ages.

“[Generation] happens in the same way as [it does among caterpillars] in the case of the other [insects] that are generated in wool and not from copulation.” (Aristotle, De generatione animalium III 9, 758b21)

“By ‘wool’ he means what is now in fact called ‘silk’* by many people. For a certain kind of worm produces this silk. There is really nothing to stop [someone from] observing their generation. Certain winged animals copulate with one another (the males obviously with the females), and from their copulation something worm-like is produced, something which nevertheless does not have the ability to sense [i.e., is not yet really alive].** The women whose job is to produce the silk collect [these worm-like things] and place [them] in the folds of their robes, warming them, until the worm acquires sensation and becomes an animal. Once they become animals, the women place them into a sieve and give them leaves of mulberry to eat.*** By feeding on these leaves, the worms grow and so produce a cocoon around each of them, and it is the cocoon which the women unwind into silk. Then the worm dies. And after a time, out of the cocoons that have broken open, a certain winged creature emerges, resembling those that generated the worms. And it goes on in this way forever. For from this winged creature in turn a worm is produced; and from this worm, a woolen cocoon and a winged [creature]; and again from this winged creature a worm, and so on forever.”

758b21 «Τὸν αὐτὸν δὲ τρόπον συμβαίνει καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν μὴ ἐξ ὀχείας γινομένων ἐν ἐρίοις.»

Ἔρια λέγει νῦν καὶ τὴν καλουμένην ὑπὸ τῶν πολλῶν μέταξαν· σκώληκες [154] γάρ τινες ταύτην τὴν μέταξαν γεννῶσιν. ἴσως δὲ οὐδὲν κωλύει τὴν τούτων γένεσιν ἱστορῆσαι. ζῷά τινα πτηνὰ ὀχεύουσιν ἄλληλα, τὰ ἄρρενα δηλαδὴ τὰ θήλεα, ἐκ δὲ τῆς τούτων ὀχείας γεννᾶται σκωληκώδη τινά, ἀναίσθητα μέντοι, ἃ δὴ συλλέξασαι αἱ περὶ τὴν μέταξαν πονοῦσαι γυναῖκες καὶ ὑπὸ τὸν κόλπον ἐμβιβάσασαι θερμαίνουσιν, ἕως ἂν αἴσθησιν λάβῃ καὶ ζῷα γένηται. ζῴων δὲ γεγονότων, τίθενται αὐτὰ εἰς κόσκινα καὶ διδόασιν ἐσθίειν φύλλα συκαμίνων, ἐξ ὧν φύλλων τρεφόμενα αὔξονται καὶ οὕτως ἐργάζονται τὸ κέλυφος κύκλῳ ἕκαστον αὐτῶν, καὶ ἔστι τὸ κέλυφος ὃ ἀναλύουσιν εἰς μέταξαν· εἶτα ἀποθνήσκει. καὶ μετὰ χρόνον τινὰ τοῦ κελύφους ῥαγέντος ἐξέρχεται ζῷον πτηνὸν ὅμοιον τῷ γεννήσαντι τὸν σκώληκα, καὶ τοῦτο ἀεὶ οὕτω γίνεται. πάλιν γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ πτηνοῦ τούτου γεννᾶται σκώληξ, ἐκ δὲ τούτου ἔριον κέλυφος καὶ πτηνόν, καὶ πάλιν ἐκ τοῦ πτηνοῦ τούτου σκώληξ, καὶ οὕτως ἀεί.

Michael of Ephesus, In de generatione animalium commentaria, 153,29-154,13 Hayduck

*Silk had been produced in the Eastern Roman Empire since the time of Justinian (483-565 CE). In his History of the Wars, Procopius reports that Justinian wanted to solve the “silk question”: how to acquire silk without having to buy it from their Persian enemies (VIII.vi.1-8). Some monks who had recently returned from India came to Justinian with an answer. They had visited a land north of India called Serinda (Σηρίνδα, China), and discoverd the secret of silk production and how it might be produced by the Romans. Silk, they said, was produced by grubs. And while it was impossible to bring the grubs back from China alive, they could (and eventually did) bring back their eggs, hatched them in Byzantium, and began an industry that would last almost a thousand years.

**Michael is no doubt talking about the eggs laid by the silk moth (bombyx mori). Michael refuses to call them eggs, considering them instead imperfect worms. This is why the women who produce silk need to warm them: to finish the process of bringing the worm to life. He refuses to call them eggs, because, at least according to Aristotle, the immediate offspring of metamorphosizing insects are worms, a stage of life that precedes the egg. The egg itself for Aristotle (and Michael when he is interpreting him) is what we call a pupae or cocoon. Procopius in the passage cited above, does not hesitate to call the things laid by silk moth ‘eggs’, and it is remarkable to me that Michael would think they are anything else. But he seems to endorse Aristotle’s view that what the silk moth produces are tiny non-animals that need to be warmed into life, only to die when they become the egg of a different kind of animal.

***In researching this, I had no idea how silk was actually produced, so I went to youtube. I found this video from the “High Fashion Silk Company” in China which claims that “in ancient times, farmers tucked the [silkworm] eggs into their clothes so the larvae would grow up healthy”. And this video of a traditional silk-farm in Cambodia shows the silk-growers feeding the silkworms mulberry leaves in something that resembles a sieve, like Michael describes. I think the resemblance of these techniques and those described by Michael is just brilliant.

Galen and Palladius on Mental Exercise and the Boundaries between Medicine and Philosophy

In a fragment on diet for women, Athenaeus quotes an aphorism from the sixth book of the Epidemics. He writes:

“One must encourage exercises (gymnasia) that are suitable for women: of the soul by means of the studies proper for women and concerns about the household because ‘a soul's walk is concern for people’, as the venerable Hippocrates said; while, of the body [exercise] by means of spinning wool and the other work around the house.”

γυμνάσια δ’ ἐπιτρεπτέον τὰ γυναιξὶν ἁρμόζοντα, ψυχῆς μὲν τὰ διὰ τῶν οἰκείων αὐταῖς μαθημάτων καὶ τῶν κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν φροντίδων («ψυχῆς γὰρ περίπατος φροντὶς ἀνθρώποισι», ὡς εἶπεν ὁ παλαιὸς Ἱπποκράτης), σώματος δὲ διὰ τῆς ταλασιουργίας καὶ τῶν ἄλλων τῶν κατὰ τὴν οἰκίαν πόνων.

Athenaeus of Attalia apud Oribasius, Libri Incerti 23, CMG VI 2,2 112,19-24 Raeder

The aphorism Athenaeus quotes from is found at Epidemics 6.5.5. He seems to think it is about exercise, but the aphorism itself is pretty ambiguous. I’ll translate it literally to try to emphasize just how ambiguous it is:

“Exertion for the joints and for flesh, food, sleep for the viscera. A soul's walk is concern for people.”

Πόνος τοῖσιν ἄρθροισι καὶ σαρκὶ σῖτος ὕπνος σπλάγχνοισιν. Ψυχῆς περίπατος φροντὶς ἀνθρώποισιν.

‘Hippocrates’, Epidemics 6.5.5, V 316,9-10 Littré

The term I translate as “concern” (phrontis) usually means something more like “apprehension” or “worry”. Athenaeus, however, takes it to be a word for any kind of serious thinking, i.e., sustained intellectual activity. The term peripatos, “walk”, can just as easily mean “wandering about”. So the aphorism could be describing apprehensiveness as a kind of wandering thought.

But Athenaeus takes Hippocrates to be claiming that concerns, thoughts, studies, etc., are quite literally forms of exercise—activities that will “nourish” a woman’s (or anyone else’s) soul, just as physical exercise, ponos, nourishes the body. 

His interpretation also likely implies a kind of corporeal dualism like what we find in the Stoics and the Pneumatic physicians. It was this kind of interpretation that two later readers took issue with. They are Galen and Palladius.

The commentaries of Galen and Palladius on the Epidemics are pretty great, if for no other reason than that they give us a glimpse into the game of Hippocratic exegesis playing out in Greek-speaking parts of the Roman empire. But they also give us a sense of how doctors tried to navigate disputes between medicine and philosophy—disputes about disciplinary boundaries, and about whose responsibility it was to treat the ailing soul or mind.

Although this is something of a simplification, it is not too much of a distortion to say that around Galen’s time medicine was usually thought of as restricted to the care of the body; philosophy, on the other hand, was a discipline whose aim was the care of the soul or mind. Some doctors, however, considering that our bodies and our health are affected by our psychological states, started to think it was also important that doctors treat the soul as well. But when these considerations were discussed, they were often accompanied by discussion of the legitimacy of medical intervention in the treatment of the soul. Doctors in other words felt they had to justify the encroachment on philosophy.

Interestingly, their justification was not usually aimed at appeasing philosophers, but other doctors who felt it was not their place to treat the soul. The two passages which follow are clearly aimed at doctors, and are examples of the kind of justification one might give, if not for the medicalization of the mind, then at least for its importance in physiology and therapeutics.

1. Galen, In Hipp. Epid. 6, 17B.263.1-264.6 Kühn = CMG V 10,2,2 280,6-281,6 Wenkenbach

“All the book’s interpreters take ‘walk’ [peripatos] to mean ‘exercise’, so that the sentence would be:

‘for humankind, concerns are an exercise.’

They think [Hippocrates] used the familiar term, ‘walk’ [peripatos], because the word means a kind of exercise. Dioscorides, however, reasonably avoided this interpretation because it is affectatious [kakozêlos]*; he did not write peripatos [in his edition], but added the letter ‘n’, [so that it reads] ‘peri pantos’: 

‘concern for the soul above all belongs to humankind’.

So that what is meant by it is:

‘above all, for humankind what is to be practiced is reasoning.’ 

For after all acts of thinking [dianoêseis] are called ‘concerns’ [phrontides], which is why Socrates, too, was called ‘concerned’ and the man’s wise counsels were called ‘concerns’, as one can even find in the Clouds of Aristophanes, where he makes fun of Socrates and mocks him as an idle-talker.

But if it should seem to anyone that the phrase belongs to philosophical speculation, not medicine—first, let them consider that it applies to all the rational arts in which one needs to exercise reasoning, as it has been said by many other physicians, and not a few times by Erasistratus.** And furthermore, certain affections occur, some, for instance, which numb the soul’s rational faculty and the faculty of memory, others which are stuporific [karôdê] and soporific [kataphorika]. In these cases, one must consider thinking to be beneficial, just as in other places he [sc. Hippocrates] taught that anger is useful for good humour and regaining a state in accordance with nature.”

Τὸν περίπατον ἀντὶ τοῦ γυμνασίου πάντες ἤκουσαν οἱ ἐξηγησάμενοι τὸ βιβλίον, ἵν' ὁ λόγος ᾖ τοιόσδε· “τοῖς ἀνθρώποις αἱ φροντίδες γυμνάσιον”, <νομίσαντες αὐτὸν τῇ> προσηγορίᾳ κεχρῆσθαι τῇ τοῦ περιπάτου, δηλούσης τῆς φωνῆς ταύτης εἶδός τι γυμνασίου. κακοζήλου δὲ τῆς ἑρμηνείας οὔσης, εἰκότως αὐτὴν ὁ Διοσκουρίδης φυλαττόμενος, οὐ περίπατος ἔγραψεν, ἀλλὰ προσθεὶς τὸ ν γράμμα “περὶ παντὸς”, ὥστε γενέσθαι τὴν λέξιν τοιάνδε· ψυχῆς περὶ παντὸς φροντὶς ἀνθρώποις, ἵν' ᾖ δηλούμενον ἐξ αὐτῆς· “περὶ παντὸς τοῖς ἀνθρώποις ἀσκητέον ἐστὶ τὸν λογισμόν.” αἱ γάρ τοι διανοήσεις ὀνομάζονται φροντίδες, ὅθεν καὶ τὸν Σωκράτην φροντιστὴν ἐκάλουν καὶ φροντίδας τὰ σοφὰ βουλεύματα τἀνδρὸς ὠνό- μαζον, ὡς κἀν ταῖς Ἀριστοφάνους Νεφέλαις <ἔστιν> εὑρεῖν, ἔνθα κωμῳδεῖ καὶ σκώπτει τὸν Σωκράτην ὡς ἀδολέσχην. εἰ δέ τῳ δόξει φιλοσόφου θεωρίας, οὐκ ἰατρικῆς ὁ λόγος ἔχεσθαι, πρῶτον μὲν ἐνθυμείτω κοινὸν ἁπασῶν εἶναι τῶν λογικῶν αὐτὸν τεχνῶν, ἐν αἷς τὸν λογισμὸν χρὴ γυμνάζειν, ὡς ἄλλοις τε πολλοῖς εἴρηται τῶν ἰατρῶν Ἐρασιστράτῳ τ' οὐκ ὀλιγάκις. ἔπειτα δὲ καὶ πάθη τινὰ γίνεται τὰ μὲν οἷον ναρκοῦντα τὸ λογιστικὸν καὶ τὸ μνημονευτικὸν τῆς ψυχῆς, τὰ δὲ καρώδη καὶ καταφορικά. τούτοις οὖν ἡγητέον ὠφελίμους εἶναι τὰς φροντίδας, ὡς ἐν ἄλλοις ἐδίδαξε τὰς ὀξυθυμίας εἶναι χρησίμους εἰς εὐχυμίαν τε καὶ τῆς κατὰ φύσιν ἕξεως ἀνάκτησιν.

Galen, In Hipp. Epid. 6, 17B.263.1-264.6 Kühn

2. Palladius, Commentarii in Hippocratis librum sextum de morbis popularibus, Scholia in Hippocratem et Galenum vol. 2 Dietz, 136,11-137,5

“Having put aside medical matters, Hippocrates comes again to the soul. ‘Soul’—not as in the warmth we were speaking about earlier, but the really immaterial and immortal [soul]. There are two ways it is possible to interpret this statement: for either [it says] ‘walk’ [peripatos] or ‘above all’ [peri pantos]. And ‘above all’ in this sense:

‘that for humankind there is a concern to consider the soul above all [peri pantos]’

since a person ought to honour nothing above this. For Hippocrates says just as the body is exercised, so too the soul ought to be exercised. But the soul is exercised through more [activities], since a walk is one form of exercise. Concern is any exercise [of the soul]. ‘Concern’—not in order to seek after a profit or after a woman, but to seek the comprehension of the truth, the differentiation of true things from false things. For these are exercises. And concern, especially, is [an exercise] of the rational soul. This is why we speak about the ‘Thinkery’ (phrontistêrion) of Socrates and Plato, not because they were generally concerned, but because they dwelled on the truth.

And he [sc. Hippocrates] added, ‘for humankind’ for a reason. He knows that by nature humans are distinguished in this: the spirited [part of the soul] is [a part] in a person’s real nature, but to rule belongs to reason.*** That is why, as much as it concerns philosophers, we are also able to refer the statement to what belongs to us. For if having come to a sick person, you found him tired and drowsy at the wrong time, know that it is a great evil. For whenever the material in the head is excessive, brings heavy sleep, [and] threatens apoplexia, then you ought to command spirit with concern, in order that the boiling [caused by rousing the spirit] will make this humour thin and disperse it. And thus this statement is fitting for both physicians and philosophers.”

Ἐάσας τὰ ἰατρικὰ ὁ Ἱπποκράτης ἐπὶ τὴν ψυχὴν πάλιν ἔρχεται. ψυχὴν δὲ, οὐχ ὡς ἄνω ἐλέγομεν τὴν θερμασίαν, ἀλλὰ τὴν ὄντως ἄϋλον καὶ ἀθάνατον. διττῶς δέ ἐστιν ἐξηγήσασθαι τοῦτον τὸν λόγον. ἢ γὰρ <περίπατος>, ἢ <περὶ παντός>. καὶ περὶ παντὸς οὕτως· ὅτι φροντίς ἐστι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις τοῦ περὶ παντὸς ποιήσασθαι τὴν ψυχήν. οὐδὲν γὰρ ταύτης ὀφείλει προτιμῆσαι ὁ ἄνθρωπος. λέγει γὰρ Ἱπποκράτης, ὥσπερ γυμνάζεται τὸ σῶμα, οὕτως ὀφείλει καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ γυμνάζεσθαι. γυμνάζεται δὲ ἡ ψυχὴ διὰ πλειόνων, ἐπειδὴ ἓν εἶδος γυμνασίου ἐστὶν ὁ περίπατος. πᾶν γυμνάσιον ἡ φροντίς. φροντὶς δὲ, οὐχ ἵνα ζητῇ ἢ περὶ κέρδους, ἢ περὶ γυναικὸς, ἀλλὰ ζητεῖν τὴν κατάληψιν τῆς ἀληθείας, τὴν διάκρισιν τοῦ ἀληθοῦς καὶ ψευδοῦς. ταῦτα γὰρ γυμνάσιά εἰσιν. καὶ μάλιστα τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς ἡ φροντίς. ἔνθεν λέγομεν Σωκράτους καὶ Πλάτωνος φροντιστήριον, ὅτι οὐχ ἁπλῶς ἐφρόντιζεν, ἀλλ' ὅτι τὴν ἀλήθειαν κατεγένετο. οὐ μάτην δὲ προσέθηκε τὸ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. ἀλλ' οἶδεν ὅτι κατὰ φύσιν ἄνθρωπος ἐν τούτῳ κρίνεται, ἐν τῷ ὑπόστασιν μὲν τὸ θυμοειδὲς, ἄρχειν δὲ τῷ λόγῳ. ταῦτα οὖν ὅσα κατὰ φιλοσόφους, δυνάμεθα καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ ἡμέτερα ἀγαγεῖν τὸν λόγον. εἰσελθὼν γὰρ πρὸς τὸν κάμνοντα, εὗρες αὐτὸν καταφερόμενον ἀκαίρως καὶ ὑπνώττοντα, γίνωσκε ὅτι μέγα κακόν. ὕλη γὰρ πλεονάζουσα ἐν τῷ ἐγκεφάλῳ, ὠδίνει κάρον, ἀπειλεῖ ἀποπληξίαν, τότε ὀφείλεις φροντίδι θυμὸν ἐπιτάξαι, ἵνα τοῦτον ἡ ζέσις ἐκλεπτύνῃ καὶ διαφορήσῃ τὸν χυμὸν, ὥστε καὶ ἰατροῖς καὶ φιλοσόφοις πρέπει οὗτος ὁ λόγος.

Palladius, Commentarii in Hippocratis librum sextum de morbis popularibus, Scholia in Hippocratem et Galenum vol. 2 Dietz, 136,11-137,5

Notes

*Galen does not tell us why he and Dioscorides thought this interpretation is affectatious—why it is kakozêlos. The great stylist Hermogenes of Tarsus (roughly contemporary with Galen) says that kakozêlos describes a figure of speech that is implausible or unconvincing, either for reasons of impossibility, inconsistency, ugliness, impiety, injustice, or contrariness to nature—something that makes us think, “that does not seem do-able [οὐκ εἰκὸς τόδε πραχθῆναι]” (Herm. Inv. 4.12 Rabe). One example he uses is Od. 9.481 where Odysseus says the Cyclops, Polyphemus, “lobbed the peak of a great mountain after having snapped it off [ἧκε δ᾽ ἀπορρήξας κορυφὴν ὄρεος μεγάλοιο].” When Galen uses kakozêlos, he tends to use it in this sense (he does not use it often). The majority of Galenic examples are in the Hippocratic commentaries, where he uses it in two ways:

• (i) Sometimes he uses it to describe Hippocrates’ bad style. For example, in Aph. 7.66, Hippocrates calls food “strong for the healthy” and “disease for the sick”, a claim Galen thinks is kakozêlos since food is not itself literally either strong or disease. The sense, however, is clear enough: food is either productive of strength or disease (Hipp. Aph. XVIIIA 179 K). The problem is merely a matter of style.
• (ii) More often, he uses it as a reason for rejecting an interpretation of Hippocrates. For example, there is an aphorism in Epid. 6, which states: “weaker foods have shorter life [βιοτὴν]” (Epid. 6.5.14, V 318,20 L.). Galen thinks the natural reading is that weaker foods are used up and expelled rapidly; and he goes on to say it is kakozêlon to think Hippocrates’ meant that weaker food “continues to live” [μονὴν ζωὴν] in our body for a short time (Hipp. Epid. VI 5.21 (CMG V 10,2,2 299,20-21 Wenkebach = XVIIB 282 K).

In either case, Galen and Dioscorides think “walk” [περίπατος] is kakozêlos enough to warrant an emendation to the text. This may be because it implies thinking is literally a kind of exercise that heats you up; but this would be odd, since Galen himself admits that rational activity is important for maintaining the soul’s heat, e.g., San. Tu. 1.8 (VI 40K).

**On Erasistratus, Wenkebach gives a parallel in his edition: PHP VII 5, 602 Kühn. This is almost certainly wrong. In PHP VII 5, Galen mentions Erasistratus’ views on the anatomy of the nerves and brain. The only thing he says remotely related to the Epidemics 6.5.5 passage is that Erasistratus had time to make precise dissections ‘when he was old and had leisure to focus on the study of the art’ (440,24-25 Wenkebach). What Galen must have in mind is Erasistratus’ belief that practice of the rational arts improves their performance, a view which Galen attributes to Erasistratus at De Consuetudinibus 1, Scripta Minora II 17,1-22 Helmreich.

*** ἀλλ' οἶδεν ὅτι κατὰ φύσιν ἄνθρωπος ἐν τούτῳ κρίνεται, ἐν τῷ ὑπόστασιν μὲν τὸ θυμοειδὲς, ἄρχειν δὲ τῷ λόγῳ.  This sentence is difficult. I’ve translated “but he knows that by nature humans are distinguished in this: that the spirited part of the soul is in the hypostasis, but to rule belongs to reason.” Palladius may be reluctant to say that reason is a part of a the hupostasis, the real nature, of a person; but I’m not sure I understand the point he is making and I’ve found no parallels anywhere else.

Michael of Ephesus talks about his dreams

Michael of Ephesus uses Aristotle’s (somewhat skeptical) remarks about visions in dreams to talk about the kinds of things he and his friends dream about: the dead coming to life, finding books, white roses and scorpion-tailed melons.

“When my friend saw our most honoured ruler rise from the dead, since he was still sleeping, he thought he had had a vision that our master had risen up.”

ἰδὼν γὰρ ὁ ἐμὸς ἑταῖρος τὸν πάνσεπτον ἡμῶν καθηγεμόνα, ὅτι ἀνέστη ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, ἔτι κοιμώμενος ἐνενόει, ὅτι ὄναρ ὁρᾷ τὸν διδάσκαλον ἐγερθέντα.

Michael of Ephesus, In parva naturalia commentaria, CAG II.1 62,3-5 Wendland

“I often have visions, and when I do I will bear in mind that what I am seeing is a vision. And my friend, when he saw that he discovered a book, he thought to say ‘it is a vision, but what I am seeing is not real.’”

πολλάκις γὰρ ἐγὼ εἶδον ὄναρ, καὶ ὁρῶν διενοούμην ὅτι τοῦθ' ὅπερ ὁρῶ ὄναρ ἐστίν. καὶ ὁ ἐμὸς ἑταῖρος ἰδὼν ὅτι εὗρε βιβλίον, ἐδόκει λέγειν ὅτι ὄναρ ἐστίν, ἀλλ' οὐκ ἀληθὲς τὸ ὁρώμενον.

Michael of Ephesus, In parva naturalia commentaria, 64,10-12

“Once I had a dream that I travelled through some filthy and stinky place, and a few days later I got sick.”

ἐγὼ γὰρ ἰδὼν ἐν ὕπνῳ ὤν, ὅτι διηρχόμην ἔν τινι τόπῳ βορβορώδει καὶ δυσώδει, μετ' ὀλίγας ἡμέρας νενόσηκα·

Michael of Ephesus, In parva naturalia commentaria, 79,18

“Often when I see white roses in a dream, the next day I receive gifts from people.”

καὶ ἐγὼ δὲ πολλάκις ἐν ὕπνῳ ῥόδα λευκὰ ἰδὼν μεθ' ἡμέραν ἔλαβον παρά τινων δῶρα.

Michael of Ephesus, In parva naturalia commentaria, 80,23

“Either I happen to have dreams that are extremely clear, e.g. that a war is coming in Persia, and it turns out to be true; or [I have dreams] that are enigmatic. By ‘enigmatic’, I mean when from [having a dream about] one thing, something else turns out to be true. For example, my friend had a dream that a certain woman sent him slender, round melons that had scorpions’ tails. One day a little while later, he was hurt by this woman.”

ἀλλ' ὅμως συμβαίνει ἢ καθαρώτατα ἰδεῖν με, ὅτι γίνεται ἐν Περσίδι πόλεμος, καὶ ἀποβῆναι τοῦτο καὶ γενέσθαι, ἢ καὶ αἰνιγματωδῶς· λέγω δὲ αἰνιγματωδῶς, ὅταν ἀπ' ἄλλου ἄλλο ἀποβῇ, οἷόν τί φημι· ἐθεάσατο ὁ ἐμὸς ἑταῖρος ἐν ὕπνῳ, ὡς ἀπέστειλεν αὐτῷ γυνή τις μηλοπέπονας λεπτοὺς καὶ ἐπιμήκεις, ἔχοντας οὐρὰς σκορπίων· μετὰ δὲ ὀλίγας τινὰς ἡμέρας ἐλυπήθη ὑπ' ἐκείνης τῆς γυναικός.

Michael of Ephesus, In parva naturalia commentaria, 81,4-9

Michael of Ephesus on death and the decisions of Providence

Michael of Ephesus  (11/12 c. CE) was a Byzantine commentator and teacher of Aristotelian philosophy. He was probably one of the intellectuals who gathered around Anna Komnene after she gave up her attempt to claim her father’s throne. Komnene had asked this group to write commentaries on Aristotle’s works which had not been commented on before (see Browning, “An Unpublished Funeral Oration on Anna Comnena”, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 8, pp 1-12). Michael took up the request, and he covered a pretty amazing range of topics: the never-before-commented-on animal works (PA, IA, MA, GA), the Parva Naturalia, Metaphysics Ζ-Ν, and Colours (In PN 148.21-149.15). We also have commentaries attributed to him on the Nicomachean Ethics (books 5 & 9-10) and the Sophistical Refutations.

In this passage from his De respiratione commentary (part of the Parva Naturalia commentary), Michael interrupts a discussion about the difference between natural and violent death to talk about Providence’s decision to take away his favourite teacher and his feelings about the people he was left to work with :

[Death is] natural whenever [the origin is] internal and the condition of the part is like what it was originally. (Aristotle, De respiratione 17, 478b27-8) 

“In other words, death is also natural if the condition of the lungs [leading to death] arises from a natural origin. For when the lungs have become dry due to old age, they cannot do their work. And since this kind of  condition—i.e., a dry one—has a natural origin and cause (for it is ‘from’ old age, i.e., due to old age), then death from it is natural. But whenever the condition comes from ‘some acquired affliction’, like when there is an inflammation of the lungs [sc. peripneumonia] (in these cases, because the lungs are filled with ichor and other such things, they cannot do their work), then this kind of death is violent.

Speaking of inflammation of the lungs, even my renowned and most revered teacher—what a brilliant mind—when he had been ruined by an inflammation of the lungs, he died. He left us lamenting and mourning and totally deprived of the ability to speak to and take care of those eager to learn. I don’t mean to sound divisive and contentious, and I don’t say this with any jealousy towards my colleagues—I swear on my teacher’s soul, which I esteem and worship second only to God. But honestly, speaking from my experience with the other teachers, some of them are completely dumb. They don’t understand at all the actual words written on the page, never mind their deeper meaning. Sure, some of them are slightly more clever and have sporadic thoughts, but they are a ways off from establishing the text correctly, and others just wander at random. I don’t need to get into these things, and besides, I respect them and I am fond of them. Anyway, since Providence thought it was a good idea, my teacher flew away to heaven, while we, with Providence as our guide and helper, ought to get back to the work that lies before us.”

«Κατὰ φύσιν δ' ὅταν [ἡ ἀρχὴ] ἐν αὐτῷ [ᾖ] καὶ ἡ τοῦ μορίου σύστασις ἐξ ἀρχῆς τοιαύτη»

Τουτέστι καὶ ὅταν ἡ τοῦ πνεύμονος σύστασις γένηται ἐκ φυσικῆς ἀρχῆς· ὅταν γὰρ ξηρανθεὶς διὰ γῆρας ὁ πνεύμων οὐ δύνηται τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ἔργον ποιεῖν, ἡ τοιαύτη σύστασις καὶ ξηρότης ἐξ ἀρχῆς καὶ αἰτίας οὖσα φυσικῆς (ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ γήρως καὶ διὰ τοῦ γήρως), τότε ὁ ἐκ τούτου θάνατος φύσει ἐστίν. ὅταν δὲ «ἐπίκτητόν τι πάθος» γένηται, ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς περιπνευμονίαις (ἐν ταύταις γὰρ πληρούμενος ὑπὸ τῶν ἰχώρων καὶ ἄλλων τοιούτων ὁ πνεύμων οὐ δύναται τὸ ἑαυτοῦ ἔργον ποιεῖν), ὁ τοιοῦτος θάνατος βίαιος.

περιπνευμονίᾳ καὶ ὁ ἐμὸς κλεινότατος καὶ πανσέβαστος διδάσκαλος, αἲ αἴ, ὁ νοῦς ἐκεῖνος, νοῦς ὁ ἐνεργήσας, περιπνευμονίᾳ δὴ ἁλοὺς τὴν ζωὴν κατέλυσεν, καταλιπὼν ἡμᾶς στένοντας καὶ ὀλοφυρομένους καὶ ἐν ἐρημίᾳ παντελεῖ τῶν δυναμένων λέγειν καὶ ὠφελεῖν τοὺς φιλομαθοῦντας. ταῦτα δὲ λέγω οὐ διαφορᾷ ἢ φιλονεικίᾳ ἢ φθόνῳ τῷ πρὸς τοὺς καθ' ἡμᾶς, οὐ μὰ τὴν ἐκείνου ψυχήν, ἣν ἐγὼ μετὰ θεὸν σέβομαί τε καὶ προσκυνῶ, ἀλλ' ἀληθείᾳ καὶ πείρᾳ τῇ πρὸς τούτους μοι γεγονυίᾳ. οἱ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν παντελῶς εἰσιν ἄφωνοι μηδὲν ὅλως ἐννοοῦντες, τί ποτ' ἐστὶν ὅλως τὰ ἐν τοῖς βιβλίοις γεγραμμένα καὶ τίς ὁ τούτων νοῦς, τινὲς δὲ τῶν χαριεστέρων τῆς μὲν διανοίας ἐφάπτονται σποράδην, τοῦ δὲ τὴν λέξιν καθιστάνειν πόρρω ποι ἀποπλανῶνται, ἄλλοι δ' ἄλλως· περὶ ὧν οὐ δεῖ με λέγειν. πλὴν καὶ τούτους τιμῶ καὶ ἀσπάζομαι, ἀλλ' ἐκεῖνος μέν, ὡς ἔδοξε τῇ προνοίᾳ, ἡμῶν ἀπέπτη, ἡμεῖς δ' ὑπὸ ταύτης χειραγωγούμενοι καὶ βοηθούμενοι ἐπὶ τὸ προκείμενον ἐπανέλθωμεν.

Michael of Ephesus, In Parva Naturalia commentaria, CAG 22.1, 141,31-142,18 Wendland

(Plato on) Democritus and Aristotle (on Plato) on Art and Nature

“We know how to say many lies like the truth,
And we know how to sing the truth when we want to.”

ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

Hesiod, Theogony, 26-7

I

“We are pupils [μαθητὰς] of the animals in the most important things: the spider in spinning and mending, the swallow in building, and the songsters, swan and nightingale, in singing, by way of imitation [κατὰ μίμησιν].”

μαθητὰς ἐν τοῖς μεγίστοις γεγονότας ἡμᾶς· ἀράχνης ἐν ὑφαντικῆι καὶ ἀκεστικῆι, χελιδόνος ἐν οἰκοδομίαι, καὶ τῶν λιγυρῶν, κύκνου καὶ ἀηδόνος, ἐν ὠιδῆι κατὰ μίμησιν.

Democritus, DK 68 B154

II

“I'll put it more clearly. They say fire and water and earth and air, all exist by nature and chance [φύσει πάντα εἶναι καὶ τύχῃ], and none of them by art [τέχνῃ δὲ οὐδὲν τούτων]; and the bodies which come next—those, namely, of the earth, sun, moon and stars—have been brought into existence through those [former ones] which are entirely without soul. By chance, they are moved by each other’s forces, through which they crash into each other, somehow fitting together: hot with cold, dry with moist, soft with hard, and all such things that are blended together from necessity through the mixture of opposites by chance. In this way and by those means they have brought into being the whole heaven and all that is in the heaven, and again all animals and plants when all the seasons came to be from these things. [All this], they claim, is not due to reason, or because of some god or some art [οὐ δὲ διὰ νοῦν, φασίν, οὐδὲ διά τινα θεὸν οὐδὲ διὰ τέχνην], but, as I said, by nature and by chance. And art comes from them later, after [everything else]; itself a mortal from mortals, it begets later playthings [παιδιάς τινας] which do not share much in truth [ἀληθείας οὐ σφόδρα μετεχούσας], but are instead images [εἴδωλ’] closely related to [arts] themselves, like [the images] painting makes, and music, and whichever arts are their helpers. Those arts which in fact engender something serious [σπουδαῖον] are whichever ones share their capacity with nature—like medicine, agriculture, and gymnastic.”

Ὧδ' ἔτι σαφέστερον ἐρῶ. πῦρ καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ γῆν καὶ ἀέρα φύσει πάντα εἶναι καὶ τύχῃ φασίν, τέχνῃ δὲ οὐδὲν τούτων, καὶ τὰ μετὰ ταῦτα αὖ σώματα, γῆς τε καὶ ἡλίου καὶ σελήνης ἄστρων τε πέρι, διὰ τούτων γεγονέναι παντελῶς ὄντων ἀψύχων· τύχῃ δὲ φερόμενα τῇ τῆς δυνάμεως ἕκαστα ἑκάστων, ᾗ συμπέπτωκεν ἁρμόττοντα οἰκείως πως, θερμὰ ψυχροῖς ἢ ξηρὰ πρὸς ὑγρὰ καὶ μαλακὰ πρὸς σκληρά, καὶ πάντα ὁπόσα τῇ τῶν ἐναντίων κράσει κατὰ τύχην ἐξ ἀνάγκης συνεκεράσθη, ταύτῃ καὶ κατὰ ταῦτα οὕτως γεγεννηκέναι τόν τε οὐρανὸν ὅλον καὶ πάντα ὁπόσα κατ' οὐρανόν, καὶ ζῷα αὖ καὶ φυτὰ σύμπαντα, ὡρῶν πασῶν ἐκ τούτων γενομένων, οὐ δὲ διὰ νοῦν, φασίν, οὐδὲ διά τινα θεὸν οὐδὲ διὰ τέχνην ἀλλά, ὃ λέγομεν, φύσει καὶ τύχῃ. τέχνην δὲ ὕστερον ἐκ τούτων ὑστέραν γενομένην, αὐτὴν θνητὴν ἐκ θνητῶν ὕστερα γεγεννηκέναι παιδιάς τινας, ἀληθείας οὐ σφόδρα μετεχούσας, ἀλλὰ εἴδωλ' ἄττα συγγενῆ ἑαυτῶν, οἷ' ἡ γραφικὴ γεννᾷ καὶ μουσικὴ καὶ ὅσαι ταύταις εἰσὶν συνέριθοι τέχναι· αἳ δέ τι καὶ σπουδαῖον ἄρα γεννῶσι τῶν τεχνῶν, εἶναι ταύτας ὁπόσαι τῇ φύσει ἐκοίνωσαν τὴν αὑτῶν δύναμιν, οἷον αὖ ἰατρικὴ καὶ γεωργικὴ καὶ γυμναστική.

Plato, Laws X 889B1-D6

III

“Of things that come to be, some come to be from some kind of thought and art [ἀπό τινος διανοίας καὶ τέχνης], for example a house or a ship (for one cause of each of these is a kind of art and thought), while others come to be from no art at all, but from nature [διὰ φύσιν]. For the cause of animals and plants is nature and all such things come to be in accordance with nature. But then some things come to be from chance [διὰ τύχην] as well, for we say most things that come to be neither from art nor from nature nor of necessity come to be from chance. So then, nothing of what comes to be from chance comes to be for the sake of anything, nor do they have any end; however, in what comes to be from art there exists both the end and the for the sake of which (for one who possesses the art always will give you a reason [λόγον] because of which and for the sake of which he wrote), and this [because it] is better than what comes to be because of it. I mean the things of which art is a cause naturally in itself and not accidentally. For we should assume medicine is properly [a cause] of health rather than disease, while housebuilding is [a cause] of the house and not of its demolition. Therefore, everything that comes to be in accordance with art comes to be for the sake of something and this end is its best; yet, what is from chance does not come to be for the sake of something, for even should something good occur from chance, nevertheless surely it is not good in accordance with chance and insofar as it is from chance; instead what comes to be in accordance with it is always indeterminate. What is in accordance with nature [τὸ κατά γε φύσιν], however, comes to be for the sake of something and is always composed for the sake of a better thing than that [which comes to be] from art. For it is not the case that nature imitates art, but art nature [μιμεῖται γὰρ οὐ τὴν τέχνην ἡ φύσις ἀλλ' αὐτὴ τὴν φύσιν], and it exists to help and compensate for nature’s deficiencies.”

Τῶν γιγνομένων τὰ μὲν ἀπό τινος διανοίας καὶ τέχνης γίγνεται, οἷον οἰκία καὶ πλοῖον (ἀμφοτέρων γὰρ τούτων αἰτία τέχνη τίς ἐστι καὶ διάνοια), τὰ δὲ διὰ τέχνης μὲν οὐδεμιᾶς, ἀλλὰ διὰ φύσιν· ζῴων γὰρ καὶ φυτῶν αἰτία φύσις, καὶ κατὰ φύσιν γίγνεται πάντα τὰ τοιαῦτα. ἀλλὰ μὴν καὶ διὰ τύχην ἔνια γίγνεται τῶν πραγμάτων· ὅσα γὰρ μήτε διὰ τέχνην μήτε διὰ φύσιν μήτ' ἐξ ἀνάγκης γίγνεται, τὰ πολλὰ τούτων διὰ τύχην γίγνεσθαί φαμεν. Τῶν μὲν οὖν ἀπὸ τύχης γιγνομένων οὐδὲν ἕνεκά του γίγνεται, οὐδ' ἔστι τι τέλος αὐτοῖς· τοῖς δ' ἀπὸ τέχνης γιγνομένοις ἔνεστι καὶ τὸ τέλος καὶ τὸ οὗ ἕνεκα (ἀεὶ γὰρ ὁ τὴν τέχνην ἔχων ἀποδώσει σοι λόγον δι' ὃν ἔγραψε καὶ οὗ ἕνεκα), καὶ τοῦτο [ὅτι] βέλτιόν ἐστιν ἢ τὸ διὰ τοῦτο γιγνόμενον. λέγω δ' ὅσων καθ' αὑτὴν ἡ τέχνη πέφυκεν αἰτία καὶ μὴ κατὰ συμβεβηκός· ὑγιείας μὲν γὰρ ἰατρικὴν μᾶλλον ἢ νόσου κυρίως ἂν θείημεν, οἰκοδομικὴν δ' οἰκίας, ἀλλ' οὐ τοῦ καταβάλλειν. πᾶν ἄρα ἕνεκά του γίγνεται τὸ κατὰ τέχνην, καὶ τοῦτο τέλος αὐτῆς τὸ βέλτιστον, τὸ μέντοι διὰ τύχην οὐ γίγνεται ἕνεκά του· συμβαίη μὲν γὰρ ἂν καὶ ἀπὸ τύχης τι ἀγαθόν, οὐ μὴν ἀλλά γε κατὰ τὴν τύχην καὶ καθόσον ἀπὸ τύχης οὐκ ἀγαθόν, ἀόριστον δ' ἀεὶ τὸ γιγνόμενόν ἐστι κατ' αὐτήν. Ἀλλὰ μὴν τὸ κατά γε φύσιν ἕνεκά του γίγνεται, καὶ βελτίονος ἕνεκεν ἀεὶ συνίσταται ἢ καθάπερ τὸ διὰ τέχνης· μιμεῖται γὰρ οὐ τὴν τέχνην ἡ φύσις ἀλλ' αὐτὴ τὴν φύσιν, καὶ ἔστιν ἐπὶ τῷ βοηθεῖν καὶ τὰ παραλειπόμενα τῆς φύσεως ἀναπληροῦν.

Aristotle, Protrepticus 9, 49.3-50.2

Alexander and the Peach Tree

While I was researching the Persea tree, I often came across the claim that the peach was introduced to Europe by Alexander the Great after he had conquered Persia.

Here is one variation I found when searching Google—the top search result (on 14. July 2016) for “peach tree Alexander the Great”. It’s from the blog Kingsburg Orchards, a peach-grower in California:

“As with many stone fruits, peaches originated in China. It is in the Rosaceae, or Rose, family; genus species Prunus Persica. From China this delectable fruit spread to Persia, where it was widely cultivated. Alexander the Great furthered its spread into Europe - paintings of peaches were even found on the walls of Herculaneum, preserved despite the destruction of Vesuvius.”

View fullsize

Marion Eugene Ensminger & Audrey H. Ensminger, Foods & Nutrition Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition, CRC Press, 1993, p. 1040.

Another variation also shows up in Wikipedia’s article about the peach. Wikipedia always needs a source, and the source listed is Marion Eugene Ensminger & Audrey H. Ensminger, Foods & Nutrition Encyclopedia, 2nd Edition, CRC Press, 1993, p.1040. It, too, claims Alexander the Great introduced the peach to Europe after conquering the Persians. No ancient source for the claim is given, and none is given anywhere else in the Ensmingers’ Encyclopedia.

I’ve found that this is pretty normal. Nearly every one who mentions this story fails to mention a source. The details of the story can even be gloriously elaborate, but still without a source.

It left me wondering. Let’s say there is a delicious fruit growing in Persia, a place well-known to Greeks before Alexander’s time; and let’s assume the Persians and Greeks almost certainly traded with one another before the time of Alexander. Why wouldn’t the Greeks have known about the peach tree? Were the Persians keeping it from the Greeks out of spite? Did they have border checks to make sure no contraband was smuggled out of the Achaemenid empire? It just made no sense (unless the peach was itself a quite recent import to Persia as well, in which case it might just be a coincidence that Alexander conquered Persia around the same time the peach first shows up in the west).

There is also a pretty plausible explanation for how people might have come up with this story: a confusion of names. In his Inquiry into Plants, Theophrastus discusses a fruit he calls the “Persian apple”, which could easily be confused for a peach if we go only by the name. It seems, however, from his description that it is not a peach, but something more like a citron or lemon (the passage is at Inquiry into Plants 4.4.5). It would not be hard for later writers, however, to confuse the “Persian apple” (again) with the peach, especially if those writers had not seen one or the other of them.

Theophrastus discusses the Persian apple in part of a longer discussion (HP 4.4) about plants native to what he calls “the east and the south”: Persia, India, Arabia, and Africa. In this same discussion, he also talks about Alexander’s “expedition” east, along with many of the plants that were first recorded by Greeks during that expedition.

Someone reading this discussion might think when Theophrastus talks about “the expedition”, he is talking about the whole trip east. But the plants he discusses in relation to the expedition are (as far as I can tell) exclusively plants from India (at 4.4.1, 4.4.5, 4.4.8, 4.4.12, 4.7.8). This makes sense. India was much more remote to fourth-century Greeks than Persia was. Persia, on the other hand, must have been familiar. Persians and Greeks had already fought a few wars by this point, and all the Greek colonies in Anatolia were essentially part of the Persian empire.

It is not surprising that Theophrastus talks about plants from just one part of the expedition, the part to India. They were novel. Persian plants were not.

But if one confuses Theophrastus’ discussion of the Persian apple with what we call the peach, and if the “expedition” is thought to mean any part of Alexander’s expedition east, then the story of Alexander and the peach becomes somewhat understandable.

And in fact I’ve found one place where this confusion shows up explicitly: a paper written by Andrew Dalby called “Alexander’s Culinary Legacy”, published in Cooks and Other People (ed. Walker, Devon: Prospect Books, 1996, pp. 81-93), the proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery held in 1995.

The story is so ubiquitous, however, I keep thinking it must have an earlier source. I looked through more ancient writers: Columella (5.10.19), Pliny (15.13, 44-46), Athenaeus of Naucratis (82F-83A), and Gargilius Martialis (394-403 Mai 1828). But there is no mention of Alexander and the peach. I started to think that maybe it was a modern invention, or even a medieval confusion (I haven't looked at any medieval texts yet). 

Then, I came across a history written by a peach grower, Samperi in Italy:

“Peaches arrived in Rome in the first century B.C. as they were brought by the Greeks to the Mediterranean basin. Rutilius Taurus Emiliano Palladio, in the fourth century. A.D. said that Alexander the Great was very impressed by this tree when he saw it in the gardens of King Darius III during his campaign against Persia.”

The first part of this story is right as far as archaeologists can tell. And in the second part, about Alexander, we finally have a source. This Palladius wrote a work on farming, the Opus agriculturae. He probably lived during the late fourth or early fifth century CE, but his precise dates are uncertain. The best evidence for a terminus post quem of c. 370 CE is the honorific title given in the mss. He is called vir inlustris, which first appears in use during the second half of the fourth century (see the Introduction to John Fitch’s Palladius: The Work on Farming and Poem on Grafting, Devon: Prospect Books, 2013, p. 11). He was a knowledgeable farmer, probably a land-owner, and liked fruit-trees. Sounds like a plausible author of such a story.

Except I have not been able to find any mention of Alexander or Darius in the opus agriculturae. 

I wrote to the Samperi orchard to ask if they knew the reference. Within an hour they had written back to say they found him named in the Italian peach entry on Wikipedia, and figured it was accurate; but they took a quick look through Palladius, and could not find the reference, either. We are working on tracking it down.

In the mean time, I found this elegy by Palladius on the peach:

View fullsize

Owen’s 1807 translation of the elegy. Source: Google Books.

Ipsa suos onerat meliori germine ramos
persicus et pruno scit sociare genus
imponitque leues in stipite phyllidis umbras
et tali discit fortior esse gradu.

Palladius, Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus, Opus agriculturae, Book 14, ll. 94-98 Schmitt (Teubner, 1898).

And a reference to the curious practice of writing inscriptions on peach pits before planting them: 

“The Greeks assert that the peach will grow with writing on it, if you bury the stones and after seven-days, when they begin to open, you take out the kernels and inscribe whatever you want on them with cinnabar.”

Adfirmantibus Graecis persicus scripta nascetur, si ossa eius obruas et post septem dies, ubi patefieri coeperint, apertis his nucleos tollas et his cinnabari, quod libebit, inscribas.

Palladius, Rutilius Taurus Aemilianus, Opus agriculturae, Book 12.7. Translation largely follows Owen’s 1807 (source).

John of Alexandria on Hippocrates and the Pneumatic School

“People ask, why does Hippocrates everywhere throughout the whole book credit pneuma with the creation of the child […]? Was he a Pneumatist? We answer, no, he was not a Pneumatist…”

ζητοῦσιν ὅτι πῶς ὁ Ἱπποκράτης πανταχοῦ ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ συγγράμματι αἰτιᾶται τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς δημιουργίας τοῦ παιδὸς [...]; πότερον πνευματικὸς ὑπῆρχε; φαμέν, ὅτι οὐκ ἤν πνευματικός...

John of Alexandria, In Hippocrates De natura pueri commentarium 49, (CMG 11 1,4, 174,11-14 Bell et al. = Dietz, Scholia in Hippocratem et Galenum, vol II p. 234-5).