The Ancient Hippocrates: Galen and the apology of medicine in the Protrepticus

Easy as it is to consider Galen’s Protrepticus a straightforward exercise in the art of hortative rhetorics, it seems advisable to consider the ramifications and the role played by the philosophical hypotext: given the details of the argument, one may easily be reminded of certain passages of the Platonic Gorgias, as well as the importance of the actual imagery exploited in the course of exposition. In doing so, the essay seeks to reevaluate the Galenic work and put it in the wider context of philosophizing discourses of the era.