I'm going Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast brought to you with the support of King's College London and the Leverheme Trust.

Online at W.W. College London and Delibergen Trust, online at

W.W. history of philosophy.net. Today's episode will be an interview

with Jim Hankinson who is a professor of philosophy and classics at the

University of Texas at Austin.

And today we're going to be talking about Galen.

Thanks for coming on.

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Perhaps we could just start by talking a little bit about who Galen was and his personality, which was rather

interesting.

Yes, I suppose it was.

We know quite a lot about Galen's because he wrote voluminously and wrote a great deal about himself, always in a flattering light as autobiographers typically will.

He was born in 129 AD and died sometime early in the third century at the age of probably about 85.

We don't know precisely when he died, but that's almost certainly when he did.

He had a very long and enormously productive life.

Roughly 10% of all that survives in Greek from classical and later times up to early medieval times is in fact the writings of Gaelen.

Far more of Gaelen survives than anybody else, and a

great deal has been lost.

And there are a number of reasons for both of those facts.

He was born in Asia Minor, he came from a relatively wealthy family, had a conventional upper-class education which involved in traveling to various places, and studying with leading philosophers of his time, first of all in Pögerman where he was born and then in Smyrna and then in Alexandria, which was still a major center of learning, particularly of medical learning.

He moved to Rome for the first time in his early 30s,

stayed there for three years, went back home, we're not quite sure why, although

...