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The Classification of the Works of Galen in his Treatise on his own Works : (Observations on Περί των ιδίων βιβλίων)

• Μαυρουδής, Αιμίλιος Δημ.

In the first part of this article, the two ways in which Galen classified his works in his treatise on his own works Περί των Ιδίων βιβλίων are identified. In chapters 1-2, Galen classifies his works on the basis of four periods of time: his apprenticeship in Pergamum and Smyrna and his first and second sojourns in Rome. In chapters 3-17, the classification is by type and these chapters the author has arranged into four units: a) units 3-5; works are classified by content, ostensibly on the basis of the parts of medicine, those which were in practice accepted by Galen, because in theory he was not bound by any formalised division of medicine into parts; b) chapters 6-10: the treatises which are recorded refer to commentaries on works by doctors or critiques of the views of doctors or schools of medicine; c) chapters 11-16: the treatises with a philosophical content are listed; and d) chapter 17: the philological treatises are enumerated. This division into four units is based mainly on the more particular contents of these chapters; it is reinforced, however, by the author's observation that it was in some such similar manner that Galen writes about the contents of his works in chapters 2-5 of his earlier work Περί της τάξεως των ιδίων βιβλίων. The second part of the article examines the contents of the problematically-transmitted 3rd chapter (Περί των κατά την άνατομικήν θεωρίαν) of Περί των Ιδίων βιβλίων, as well as the order of chapters in this treatise. It is noted that the fourth part of the 3rd chapter cannot belong thematically to that, but rather to a chapter recording the diagnostic treatises and which is missing from the work as published. On the basis, therefore, of the diagnostic content of the last part of the third chapter and the division of medicine accepted by Galen in practice, it is claimed that the 3rd chapter has been transmitted in truncated form rather than with a gap in the middle, as the editor of the text believes, while its last part, as published, constitutes the surviving part of the untitled 4th chapter concerning the diagnostic treatises.

• Languages and Literature

• Λογοτεχνία