Galeni De praecognitione

This careful edition with its lively and accurate translation of Galen's On prognosis will be welcomed by all students of the history of medicine and of ancient history as well as by philologists generally. Heretofore there has been no complete English translation of this rich source for Galen's life. The text is more than usually troublesome, a fact which Nutton begins to account for with his address to its unusual style and to the odd transmission: Galen probably was unaware that the work had survived the fire of 192 and did not revise it as he did so many of his works. We now have a dependable text with clear reports of what is in the major Greek manuscripts, and in the Latin translations where they offer considerable differences. I am surprised to see how often the Latin translations have offered the clues to textual problems, though their general quality and the degree of their corruption is not to be obtained from this apparatus, which reports them only when they contribute to truth. As editor, Nutton is properly conservative, confining many of his suggested emendations to the appratus criticus. There will now be increased discussion and improvement ofthe text, facilitated by the information this edition provides. I shall say here only that p. 132, 2021, a passage that Nuttonjudges corrupt and wishes to emend, offers a perfectly sound text: it means that Peitholaus is exceedingly punctilious, so much so that his punctiliousness (akribeia) amounts to cowardice, yet he boldly gave food to the emperor's son on Galen's advice. One might think of emending hos to hoste, but need not: see Liddell and Scott s.v. hos B III. Besides maintaining a high standard of accuracy in the translation, and in translating the text actually printed, he has given in the commentary indications of the stylistic peculiarities that the translation reflects. Still, the reader who cannot pursue the Greek will have to pursue other translations and advice to check what the English implies from time to time: for example, p. 87, "which it always does when it is trying to discharge an irritant from the body," to lypoun, here translated "an irritant", is a general word for what causes grief or trouble, and does not reflect a theory of excitability; p. 113, "I rushed in and saw her frozen stiff. Grabbing some nard ointment I began to rub her stomach." Galen's style is not hyperbolic and the Greek says only "when I saw that she had fainted I took onto my hands some nard ointment", etc. Nutton's commentary will prove most valuable for the historian as well as for the philologist, for its incidental information which illuminates the text: explanations of the materia medica, evidence about doctors' fees, divination and astrological medicine, the custom of multiple consultations, and the like, along with a wealth of material explaining Galen's allusions to his own works and career. One would wish for an index to this incidental material, besides the useful indices verborum to the text which are provided. Here in the historical commentary the occasional lapse serves to set off the general excellence and precision ofthe whole: for example, Nutton identifies Eudemus, the Peripatetic philosopher who figures so largely in this work and in Galen's career, as