Medicine and Practical Ethics in Galen

Sophia Xenophontos is Associate Professor of Ancient Greek Literature at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. She is the author of Ethical Education in Plutarch: Moralising Agents and Contexts (2016) and Georgios Pachymeres' Commentary on Aristotle's 'Nicomachean Ethics': Critical Edition with Introduction and Translation (2022).

• Introduction: Galen, the Unsuspected Moralist; Part I. Moral themes and types of moralism in Galen: 1. General Protreptic and Suggested Approaches to Life; 2. Practical Ethics in Technical Accounts; 3. Moral Medicine; Part II. Case Studies: 4. Avoiding Distress; 5. Exhortation to the Study of Medicine; 6. Affections and Errors of the Soul; 7. Recognising the Best Physician; 8. Prognosis; Conclusion.

'Xenophontos' book is an exciting addition to the scholarship on Galen. Her exploration of the practical ethics of antiquity's most voluminous writer—particularly his literary, rhetorical, and argumentative strategies—offers new ways of understanding Galen as a moralist. Medicine and Practical Ethics in Galen will be of profound interest both to readers of Galen and to students of imperial philosophy.' Anna Peterson, Pennsylvania State University