This translation is based on Hartmut Erbse’s edition of the scholia maiora to the Iliad. In the case of D-scholia indicated but not edited by Erbse, I follow Helmut van Thiel’s edition of the D-scholia, but I prioritize the text of Venetus A, reporting major discrepancies between A and the text of the d-mss. in the footnotes. The translations of P.Hawara (Appendix A) and P.Oxy. 8.1086 (Appendix B) follow the editions of Erbse and John Lundon, respectively. Aside from the text, this translation also adopts the layout and conventions of Erbse’s edition, which I outline below.

The final chapter entitled Conclusions contains a summary of the findings of the study, explaining the key motivations and claims behind the Galenic understanding of bodily unity.

Ariston.

<The dotted diple is placed here> because Zenodotus writes “the others” [ὦλλοι]. But the poet is sparing with articles. A

This chapter looks at the ways in which Galen posits the theoretical unity among the discrete physiological system, especially with a reference to tripartition. Unlike Platonic, the tripartition that is motivated by psychological conflict, Galen’s tripartition of physiological domains shows the three domains to be highly cooperative and co-dependent on each other. The respective material fluxes they control are together necessary for continued functioning. The chapter looks at Galen’s adoption of the popular philosophical idea that identity persists because of the form, and at his analysis of different causes, strongly influenced by the ideas of his contemporary Middle Platonists. While more popular analyses of causes explain that the body is unified in its design, it is the notion of cohesive cause, the chapter argues, that accounts for unified physiological functioning.

Galen employs several different taxonomies of body parts, dividing the body up in various ways. This chapter looks at some of the more prominent ones, especially those that either define parthood or shed light on Galen’s theorization of parthood in other ways. The central question guiding this discussion arises from claims about (in)expendability of various parts: why is it the case that, according to him, the loss of a bone leads to a complete loss of activity the bone supports (voluntary motion in a limb), but the loss of the stomach does not lead to the loss of the activity of nutrition. One of the key preoccupations emerging from various ways in which Galen differentiates bodily parts is the proper activity of parts, which shape his understanding of the role of parts and their significance relative to each other. The final sections of the chapter sketch out the difference between normative and functional understandings of a parthood.

This chapter opens with the discussion of vital unity, a problem at the intersection of medicine and philosophy. Broadly speaking, medicine is concerned with the preservation of a living whole, but for many ancient thinkers, like Galen, the practice of medicine was informed by a highly theoretical understanding of the relationship between the parts and the whole. The first section of the Introduction sets out the key preoccupation of the study: Galen’s understanding of the role that different body parts and systems have in maintaining the functioning of the living whole. Subsequent sections contextualise Galen’s work within the phusiologia tradition, as well the debate between empiricism and rationalism, and briefly outline key classifications to be discussed in later chapters, before turning to the content of individual chapters, situating the present study within the existing scholarship and, finally, briefly explaining how this work approaches the much-debated problem of the substance of the soul.

Scholia, broadly defined, are comments about a featured text that are inserted into the free spaces around it.1 In the specialized sense in which the term is used by modern scholars of ancient Greek literary texts, scholia are comments on ancient authorial texts excerpted from earlier works of scholarship and preserved in medieval manuscripts, typically inserted as marginal or interlinear notes around the text being commented upon.2 While scholiastic corpora exist for many works of ancient Greek literature,3 the scholia to the Iliad are by far the richest and most extensive collection of scholia extant, filling thousands of pages of the most comprehensive critical edition currently available, the edition on which the translation in this volume is based.4 These scholia offer a unique window into centuries of ancient and medieval scholarship on the Iliad, from the editorial activity of Alexandrian philologists and the literary exegesis of Imperial and Late Antique commentators to the grammatical and lexical work of Byzantine scholars.