Imagery is an overarching feature of Maximus of Tyre’s Orations which has never been the subject of systematic investigation. This paper provides a starting point by focusing exclusively on medical imagery, one of the most pervasive and instrumental types of imagery in Maximus’ work that has gone entirely unnoticed in the literature to date. This paper shows that Maximus uses medicine (especially its scientific basis and historical development), the physician (e.g. his skill, provision and sensitivity towards the patient), the body (its physiology and workings) and notions of health and disease with considerable diversity and creativity, in ways that make his examples stand out in relation to earlier (Platonic) or contemporary applications of the medical parallel. It argues that the use of the medical imagery in the pedagogical context in which Maximus’ Orations were performed facilitated not just clarity but also concept formation and the shaping of a moral outlook as well as the familiarisation with the proper literary references and verbal and conceptual topoi for admission into the group of the educated elite. Another main thesis is that medical imagery valorises Maximus’ philosophical status and his claims to Imperial-period acculturation, thus functioning as a trademark for the rhetorical philosophy he wished to promote.

This article examines Plutarch's reception in George Pisides’ poetry. The first section argues in favour of Pisides’ familiarity with Plutarch's writings, mainly in view of verbatim quotations and other thematic connections or allusions. The second section explores Pisides’ more creative use of Plutarch by discussing his direct addresses to the Chearonean philosopher and comparing them with Pisides’ similar apostrophes to Homer and Demosthenes in The Persian Expedition and the Heraclias. By seeking to ‘rewrite’ the heroic past, Pisides presents himself as a skilled emulator of his ancient predecessors, thereby enhancing his self-fashioning as the imperial spokesman par excellence.

In this article, I examine Galen’s credentials as an ethical philosopher on the basis of his recently discovered essay Avoiding Distress (Peri alypias). As compensation for the scholarly neglect from which Galen’s ethics suffers, I argue that his moral agenda is an essential part of his philosophical discourse, one that situates him firmly within the tradition of practical ethics of the Roman period. Galen’s engagement with Stoic psychotherapy and the Platonic-Aristotelian educational model affirms his ethical authority; on the other hand, his distinctive moralising features such as the autobiographical perspective of his narrative and the intimacy between author and addressee render his Avoiding Distress exceptional among other essays, Greek or Latin, treating anxiety. Additionally, I show that Galen’s self-projection as a therapist of the emotions corresponds to his role as a practising physician, especially as regards the construction of authority, the efficacy of his therapy and the importance of personal experience as attested in his medical accounts. Finally, the diligence with which Galen retextures his moral advice in his On the Affections and Errors of the Soul – a work of different nature and intent in relation to Avoiding Distress – is a testimony to the dynamics of his ethics and more widely to his philosophical medicine.