Chapter 6 centres on Galen’s longest moral work, the Affections and Errors of the Soul, and explores the features of Galenic practical philosophy from a number of angles. The first section provides an analysis of the work’s programmatic preface and shows that Galen exploits the dynamics of polemic, self-promotion and self-effacement to cast himself as a prominent contributor in this intellectual area. The next section discusses Galen’s emphasis on self-knowledge, which is often blocked by self-love. It claims that in order to generate feelings of revulsion with regard to the latter, Galen works on ‘class fraction’ as a tactic with moralising intent. Another strand of special importance in the essay is the figure of the moral adviser, which Galen elaborates on so as to highlight the need for welcoming and indeed enduring moral criticism. Even though the moral adviser features in other authors of the Second Sophistic, in Galen it points to the applicability of ethics to a broad range of social contexts, thus credentialing his situational ethics. A separate section of Chapter 6 focuses on the concept of free speech (parrhēsia). While Galen debates the challenges of social and political interaction, he advises frankness at all costs. A genuine friend should never be reluctant to express the truth of someone’s moral situation and this makes him strikingly different from the flatterer, a disgusting stock figure in Imperial works on moralia, particularly in Plutarch, whom Galen seems to follow here. Another shrewd device that Galen uses to good effect to achieve the moral rectification of readers is the description of the pathology of anger (its origins and results), particularly in the episode featuring Galen’s Cretan friend, which is framed, I suggest, as an ‘ethical case history’, sharing characteristics with Galen’s medical case histories.

This Chapter explains in detail how Galen endows medical science with moral probity. In broad outline, he extrapolates moral principles from his ethical programme to feed into his medical accounts and thus reveal his personal responses to what he represents as the immorality of other doctors. Assigning praise and blame or stressing social shame and fear are central moral-didactic devices here, as is reproach with a view to moral amendment or Galen’s attempts at self-deprecation in order to affect his readers’ moral activity.

The Introduction familiarises the reader with Galen, his life and work, and offers essential information on his engagement with ethical philosophical writings. It also provides a brief introduction to practical ethics in antiquity, and foregrounds the contribution of the present study and the methodology through which the study will explore the topic under investigation. Finally, the Introduction gives an overview of the main chapters of the book.

This Chapter discusses some of Galen’s technical works, especially those dealing with physiological psychology to show that Galen’s resourceful combination of popular philosophy and medicine is intended to promote mental alertness in his readers in various aspects of their personal and social lives, such as the symposium or the area of maintaining good health (hygiene). The control of emotions and the social embeddedness of ethics that Galen emphasises in these passages while at the same time describing the physical basis of character formation, make him stand out from other medical authors inasmuch as they reveal his proposed vision of a moral form of medicine.

Chapter 1 provides a systematic account of the main moral themes and types of moralism in Galen. Among these, the most general level is represented by an unparticularised moralism, in which the author pronounces ethical verdicts with universal application. Galen’s aim here is not to override moral relativism (in the modern sense of the term) nor restrain moral freedom. Rather, he seeks to delimit what he wishes to stigmatise as deviant behaviour as lucidly as possible, so as to be able to offer rudimentary directives for goodness effectively. In this model of basic moralism, even though there are instances where the author’s moral viewpoint features in a commanding fashion, reference is made to an astute reader who either embraces, upon reflection, Galen’s viewpoint or judiciously considers what is at stake when the former goes astray.

Chapter 7 sets Recognising the Best Physician at the heart of its discussion, moving the focus from popular philosophical works to tracts of social commentary that are rich in ethical references or subtexts. I suggest that, despite its content being closely related to the material discussed in The Best Doctor is Also a Philosopher, the latter contains a more generalised advocacy of how the proper doctor ought to behave, whereas Recognising the Best Physician restricts its focus to treating Galen’s individual virtues, and renders self-projection more central to the narrative. This enables Galen to provide a more pragmatic account of the connection he envisaged between medicine, ethics and society, and place the morally didactic function of medicine in particular at the forefront of his intellectual horizons. I highlight how Recognising the Best Physician offers a plethora of passages discussing moral issues, for example the emphasis on the value of truth over deception, the issue of flattery and the ethical corruption of contemporary society. I show that to better illuminate the immorality of his medical colleagues, Galen, inspired by philosophical intertexts, notably the Republic and the Gorgias, creatively likens them to wicked and dissimulating orators. By also attributing features of self-interested politicians familiar from Platonic metaphors to contemporary charlatan physicians, Galen recategorises his rivals’ abilities and undermines their moral standing to suggest that the ideal kind of medicine to combat public disorder is the moral medicine embodied by himself. To that end, Galen sketches himself as a Platonic helmsman, entrusted with a humanistic vocation and safeguarding social and political stability.

The Byzantine author of the pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Timarion, a work dated to the twelfth century, offers an arresting prosopography of Galen centred around the characteristics of his personality that seem to have endured over time. As one might expect, his formidable prowess in medicine predominates, but other aspects that single him out from the medical conclave described in the dialogue surface too, notably his thoroughness and ambition that keep him so focused and show a transcendent devotion to his endeavours.1 Popular philosophy has been one of the least known of Galen’s passionate endeavours, and one which this book has attempted to illuminate from a number of angles.

Chapter 5 turns the spotlight on the rather overlooked treatise Exhortation to the Study of Medicine. It argues that in this work Galen constructs or conjures up images of young readers, intending it to act as an educational manual in moral intensification for prospective medical students. It hence demonstrates how Galen’s concern for his reader’s acculturation might explain the appropriation of advice and the selection of relevant material from a long-established protreptic tradition. In discussing Galen’s moralising methods and the pedagogical elements of the essay, this Chapter also draws links between Galenic and Plutarchan moralism, dealt with in detail for the first time, and thereby arguing that Galen’s moral writings need to be construed in the light of Imperial-period practical ethics. That proposition receives further support from the special features of Galen’s protreptic discourse discussed in this Chapter, especially practicability and effectiveness resulting from the author’s philosophical leanings (e.g. his Platonic-Aristotelian background) and medical expertise (the mechanics of the body and his emulation of Hippocrates in the second part of the essay).

Chapter 4 examines Galen’s credentials as an ethical philosopher in the light of his recently discovered essay Avoiding Distress. It argues that his moral agenda which is expanded upon here makes him an active participant in the practical ethics of the High Roman Empire, with a more profound attentiveness to popular philosophy than is usually admitted. Galen’s dialogue with what has been termed ‘Stoic psychotherapy’ and the Platonic-Aristotelian educational model helps build up his ethical influence through an engagement with the past. On the other hand, his individual characteristics, such as the autobiographical perspective of his narrative and the intimacy established between author and addressee, render Avoiding Distress exceptional among essays (whether Greek or Latin) treating anxiety, especially when compared to the tracts on mental tranquillity written by Seneca and Plutarch. Another distinctive element of the treatise is that Galen’s self-projection as a therapist of the emotions corresponds to his role as a practising physician as regards the construction of authority and the importance of personal experience.