4.1 Aristotelianizing Plato

One of the first things to notice, when looking at these fragments, is that even though they are supposed to be commenting on a Platonic text, two of the first three fragments are about Aristotle. In the first fragment, the author expresses his appreciation of Aristotle’s use of the so-called geometrical method in a book on vision and in the Problemata.⁹⁴ As Larrain remarks, this is not unusual. Galen is wont to make methodological remarks at the beginning of his works, and he also specifically praises Aristotle’s scientific methodology on several occasions, including another work in which he is in fact writing about Plato and the Timaeus, namely in PHP.⁹⁵ It is therefore not untypical, but still significant, that the author – in either case well-versed in Galen’s previous work – evokes Aristotle so prominently in what is likely to be an introductory passage at the very beginning of the commentary. In the second fragment, moreover, Plato’s notion of the underlying nature of things is criticized and discarded. In the third, the compositional hierarchy of homoeomerous and organic bodies is brought in. As we have seen in the previous case-studies, this is standard Galenic doctrine hailing from Aristotle, who is again explicitly referred to.

Let us have a brief look at these latter two fragments:

ὅτι διὰ τί τὸ μὲν ὕδωρ ὑγρόν τέ ἐστι καὶ ῥυτόν, ἡ δὲ γῆ βαρεῖα καὶ σκληρά, τὸ δὲ πῦρ ἄνω τε φέρεται καὶ καίει, μαλακώτατος δὲ καὶ εὐαλλοιότατος ἐστιν ὁ ἀήρ, ἐπισκεπτόμενος ὁ Πλάτων εἰς τὰς τῶν στερεωτέρων σχημάτων φύσεις ἀνήνεγκεν, ἐξ ὧν βούλεται συγκεῖσθαι ταυτὶ τὰ στοιχεῖα τὰ αἰσθητά, καὶ ἀναλύων γε ταῦτα καὶ δεικνὺς ἕτερα στοιχεῖα τούτων ὑπάρχειν, οὐδ΄ αὐτὸς ἠδυνήθη ἀνελθεῖν μέχρι παντός. τὰς γὰρ ἔτι τούτων ἀρχὰς ἄνωθεν ἔφη θεὸν εἰδέναι καὶ ἀνδρῶν, ὅς ἂν ἐκείνῳ φίλος εἴη.⁹⁶

That the reason why water is moist and fluid, earth is heavy and hard, fire is borne upwards and burns, and air is most soft and alterable, Plato, after examination, referred to the natures of the solid figures, from which he thought those perceptible elements are composed, and even though he indeed analysed them and showed that other elements underlie them, he himself was not able to go up to the whole. For he said that the principles still higher than those are known by God and by those men who are loved by God.

The structure of this fragment is reminiscent of the general philosophical method described by Galen in HNH and Hipp. Elem. and discussed in Case-Study II: to analyse the elements available to perception, that is to say, to break them down into final principles that cannot be further analysed and to determine the causal powers of these principles. We see the same terminology here as in those works – τὰ στοιχεῖα τὰ αἰστητά, which Galen uses to indicate the difference between the elements according to perception and the true elements (that in a strict sense are to be called principles, ἀρχαί). But, although Plato was right not to stop at the realm of perception and to further analyse these perceptible elements (Plato realized, at least, that there must be other principles underlying the perceivable ones), Galen does not deem his final analysis successful. Plato comes up with the geometric figures as the principles that underlie the perceptible elements, and we can safely assume that Galen considered this a mistake. This would be one of Galen’s main problems with the Timaeus: as we have seen in the previous two case-studies, it is clear enough that Galen prefers a hylomorphic model in which the elements according to perception are conceptually broken down into the two principles of form and matter.⁹⁷ From this perspective, this particular fragment fits well with Galen’s attested work.

That Plato was mistaken must be the meaning of the somewhat odd sentence ‘οὐδ΄ αὐτὸς ἠδυνήθη ἀνελθεῖν μέχρι παντός’. That is to say: Plato was not able to completely fulfil this method since his analysis did not bring him to the true principles of things.⁹⁸ This sentence might also be a play on the passage on dialectics from book VI of Plato’s Republic (which is also full of references to the ideal of the geometrical method), where Socrates speaks of going up to the ‘first principle of everything’ that requires no further hypotheses itself. There, it is said that in this highest form of science, one uses the fundamental hypotheses of the other sciences not as first principles, but rather truly as hypotheses, so that they become a kind of stepping stones, so that one ‘could go up to the unhypothetical first principle of everything’ (ἵνα μέχρι τοῦ ἀνυποθέτου ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ παντὸς ἀρχὴν ἰών).⁹⁹ The resemblance in choice of words is striking, and is reinforced by another sentence from the same passage in the Republic a few lines down, where it is said that those who study the objects of the other sciences, ‘do not go back to a genuine first principle but proceed from hypotheses’ (διὰ τὸ μὴ ἐπ΄ ἀρχὴν ἀνελθόντες σκοπεῖν ἀλλ΄ ἐξ ὑποθέσεων).¹⁰⁰ If this was indeed done intentionally, it must be a joke on Plato (which would not be untypical of Galen), saying that even though he did examine the matter, he was not able to live up to his own ideal as he portrayed it in the Republic, since he did not in fact end up at the actual principles of everything. Plato, of course, is not talking about the principles of the bodily elements in that passage in the Republic, but that is not a requirement for the author’s presumed joke to work, since Galen generally is talking about the principles underlying the mixtures when he talks about the principles of everything.¹⁰¹ Finally, this sentence may also remind us of Galen’s interpretation of the passage from Plato’s Phaedrus, discussed in Case-Study II. According to Galen, Plato suggested that a knowledge of ‘the nature of everything’ is required to arrive at knowledge of the nature of man, implying that knowledge of the mixture of elemental qualities – which Galen identified as the nature of man – is a prerequisite for knowledge of the whole of man, i.e. both body and soul. The ‘whole’ or ‘all’ that Plato was not able to uncover, despite using the right method, is the same ‘whole’ or ‘all’ that Galen analysed in his commentary on the Hippocratic On the Nature of Man; namely, a hylomorphic composite consisting of two principles, matter and the elemental qualities. This particular critique of Plato fits well with the strong presence of Aristotle in the first few fragments.

We saw how Galen in PHP brought up the need for a commentary on the Timaeus in the context of Plato’s explanation of the human body (and its congruence with Hippocrates) and his reasoning on underlying causes for the humours being such as they are.¹⁰² In PHP, Galen still refrained from criticism on Plato’s choice, declaring that ‘the question whether Plato’s opinions about these matters were correct or incorrect lies outside our present discussion’.¹⁰³ ‘These matters’ here refers to the discourse on the principles of the elements, which apparently belongs to theoretical philosophy (that is not to say that Galen does not engage with this question himself; he often does, in fact). After this remark, Galen continues to simply sum up Plato’s analysis of the elements in terms of the geometrical shapes, without criticizing it. In Larrain’s fragment 2, however, Plato’s reasoning about geometrical figures is quickly discarded. In that sense, this fragment would live up to Galen’s anticipatory remarks on his Timaeus commentary in Trem. Palp., where he states that the commentary will be critical of Plato (rather, I take it, than merely explanatory or descriptive as in PHP).¹⁰⁴ Finally, it is easy to see why Galen would have no use for Plato’s geometrical shapes. They do not have any place or role to fulfil in the hylomorphic schema of primary matter and elementary qualities that Galen usually proposes, as we have seen in the previous two case-studies. Again, this is also one of the aspects of the Timaeus that is downplayed in Galen’s Compendium. The analysis of the elements in terms of geometrical shapes is only briefly mentioned and the emphasis is then immediately turned towards the respective qualities of the elements rather than their constitution from specific geometrical structures.¹⁰⁵ Section 52b–55d from the Timaeus, which discusses the geometrical figures, is left out of consideration entirely.¹⁰⁶ As we mentioned briefly above, it is striking to note these similarities between the Compendium and the texts published by Larrain. Indeed, they could be taken as indications that the author of Larrain’s fragments must have been familiar with Galen’s Compendium, which in turn may make it more likely that the fragments are based on Galen’s actual commentary (it is one thing to assume that the original text was written by someone familiar with PHP and UP, as Nickel does, another that the author was also familiar with Galen’s summary of the Timaeus).

Thus, after what seems to be a fundamental critique of Plato’s natural philosophy, which has been anticipated in Galen’s attested works, in the next fragment Aristotle is brought up once more:

ὅτι ὁμοιομερῆ καλεῖ ὁ ᾿Αριστοτέλης τὰ κατὰ τὴν πρώτην σύστασιν ἐκ τῶν στοιχείων γεγονότα, τὴν σάρκα, τὴν πιμελήν, τὸ νεῦρον καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτα. δευτέρα δὲ ἐκ τούτων σύνθεσις ἡ τῶν ὀργανικῶν ἐστιν, ὀφθαλμοῦ καὶ γλώττης καὶ ἐγκεφάλου καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα τοιαῦτά ἐστι, καὶ τρίτη τις ἐκ τῶν ὀργανικῶν σύνθεσις ἡ ἅπαντος τοῦ σώματος.¹⁰⁷

That Aristotle calls ‘homoeomerous’ the things that have come about as the first composite from the elements, flesh, fat, sinew and all other things that are such. That from these there is a second composition, namely that of the organs, of the eye and the tongue and the brain and all other things that are such, and that from the organic parts there is some third composition, namely that of the body as a whole.

The compositional hierarchy that Galen consistently employs is also presented at the outset here, in the Peripatetic terminology he is wont to use. Galen himself, at least, is well aware that Plato does not use this terminology. In both QAM and HNH, he remarks that Plato used the name πρωτόγονα for the most basic bodies, the ‘first’ bodies that come to be from a mixture of the elemental qualities in prime matter, while Aristotle calls them ὁμοιομερῆ.¹⁰⁸ Galen seems to have been wrong about Plato’s use of the term πρωτόγονα, but it is true that the term ὁμοιομερῆ also does not occur in Plato. Hence, bringing up this terminology here, together with Galen’s identification of Plato’s πρωτόγονα with Aristotle’s ὁμοιομερῆ elsewhere, could be taken as a deliberate attempt by the author to steer the Timaeus into more Peripatic spheres, similarly to what Galen has done elsewhere. As Vito Lorusso has already pointed out, Larrain’s fragments about vision (Fr 18–23) also mix Aristotelian (and Stoic) influences into the theory of vision that we find in the Timaeus, in a manner which is paralleled in Galen’s attested writings.¹⁰⁹

In general, it is safe to conclude – given the praise for the Aristotelian method, and the rejection of Plato’s notion of the underlying nature of things (presumably in favour of the hylomorphic scheme of the mixture of elemental qualities and prime matter) – that the author at least gives a Peripatetic twist to his reading of the Timaeus, not to say that he considers it necessary to introduce some basic Peripatetic conceptual apparatus at the very outset of his commentary to make what follows more understandable. As we know and as has been pointed out above, this Peripatetically inclined reading of the Timaeus – particularly the combination of emphasis on the distinction between homoeomerous bodies and organs with the tripartition and trilocation of the soul – can be considered typically Galenic. We also find a similar use of Aristotelian terminology to ‘clarify’ the Platonic text in the longest Greek fragment preserved of Galen’s commentary in Schröder’s edition, where he comments on the passage about plants.¹¹⁰ On the other hand, while this specific way of Aristotelianizing Plato might be typically Galenic, Aristotelianizing Plato is a general tendency shared widely among earlier and contemporary Platonists. Hence, both Galen and/or the author of Larrain’s fragments might already have found themselves in a context in which Plato is an Aristotelianized Plato to some extent.¹¹¹ However, it seems that the author of Larrain’s fragments did not only Aristotelianize Plato as many so-called Middle-Platonists did, but that he Aristotelianized Plato in a distinctly Galenic manner, with his emphasis on the soundness of Aristotle’s scientific method, the disapproval of Plato’s analysis of the elements in terms of geometrical figures, the introduction of the distinction between homoeomerous and anhomoeomerous bodies or organs and the Aristotelian influences in his discussion of Plato’s theory of vision.

4.2 Somatising the Soul

Let us have a look at the next fragment in Larrain’s edition, fragment 4, which happens to feature Galen’s favourite Platonic doctrine, the tripartition of the soul:

ὅτι τὴν τοῦ κόσμου ψυχὴν δύο ἔχειν ἐν αὐτῷ περιόδους ὁ Πλάτων φησί· τήν τε ταὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν τοῦ ἑτέρου. καὶ ταύτας ἔχειν φησὶ καὶ τὴν λογικὴν τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ψυχήν, μόριόν πως οὖσαν τῆς τοῦ παντὸς οὐσίας, ἑτέρας δὲ δύο ψυχὰς ὑπὸ τῶν διαπλασσόντων ἡμᾶς ἅμα τῇ διαπλάσει συγγενηθῆναι θνητάς, ὧν τὴν μὲν ἑτέραν ὀνομάζει θυμοειδῆ, τὴν δὲ ἑτέραν ἐπιθυμητικήν, οἰκίζειν δὲ τὴν μὲν ἐν καρδίᾳ, τὴν δὲ ἐν ἥπατι.¹¹²

That Plato says that the soul of the cosmos has two cycles in it: that of the same and that of the different. And he says that the rational soul of man also has these, it being in some way a portion of the substance of the all, but along with the formation of it two other souls, mortal ones, have been created by the ones that formed us, of which the one is called ‘spirited part’, and the other ‘desiderative’, and the first dwells in the heart, the second in the liver.

As we have mentioned before, Galen appreciates the tripartition of the Timaeus better than that of the Republic and that of the Phaedrus with its horse and chariot metaphor, since in the Timaeus it is clear that there are not only three forms but also three separate parts (εἴδη τε καὶ μέρη) of soul, able to exist independently of each other to some extent (the vegetative soul exists in plants, the rational in gods or heavenly bodies) and located in three distinct organs, with all the required connections from the organ to the rest of the body.

Both the emphasis on the other two parts of the soul being mortal (without making any definitive statement on the mortality of the rational part), as well as the inclusion of their specific location, is typical for Galen.¹¹³ In that sense, this fragment too is at least very similar to Galen’s attested work.

The two cycles of the same and the different return in some of the other fragments and are given a specific somatic or elemental twist by the author, as we briefly mentioned before. They bring out an interesting difference between Plato and the author, one that also applies well to Plato and Galen. In Plato, these cycles are prior to the body that follows their movement, since, in Platonic cosmological narrative, soul has to be prior to body:

ὁ δὲ καὶ γενέσει καὶ ἀρετῇ προτέραν καὶ πρεσβυτέραν ψυχὴν σώματος ὡς δεσπότιν καὶ ἄρξουσαν ἀρξομένου …¹¹⁴

The god, however, gave priority and seniority to the soul, both in its coming to be and in the degree of its excellence, to be the body’s mistress and to rule over it as her subject.

tr. Zeyl

This applies to the world-soul as well as to our rational soul, which is fabricated out of its left-overs. However, that implies that, in a very fundamental sense, the movements of the world-soul are prior to the bodies that move in them, the bodies by which we can observe those very movements. Accordingly, Timaeus describes the movements and revolutions of the heavens before the creation of the heavenly bodies:

᾿Επεὶ δὲ κατὰ νοῦν τῷ συνιστάντι πᾶσα ἡ τῆς ψυχῆς σύστασις ἐγεγένητο, μετὰ τοῦτο πᾶν τὸ σωμαατοειδὲς ἐντὸς αὐτῆς ἐτεκταίνετο καὶ μέσον μέσῃ συναγαγὼν προσήρμοττεν …¹¹⁵

Once the soul had acquired a form that pleased him, he who formed it went on to fashion inside it all that is corporeal, and, joining center to center, he fitted the two together.

tr. Zeyl

This is a central point in Plato’s narrative, since it follows from the relation between soul and body as ruler and ruled, respectively. Soul, as ruler, has to be prior to body, as that which is ruled by soul. Galen, however, is wont to use an explanatory scheme that is quite different. For him, it is an axiom that the kind of activity a being undertakes is dependent on its specific bodily substance.¹¹⁶ This is a fundamental reversal of perspective. To Galen, the notion of movement apart from a bodily substance moving must have been completely foreign and in fact not understandable, as is the notion of soul apart from body. We can see this difficulty in Galen’s dealings with Plato and we see the subsequent manipulation of Plato’s text to fit Galenic preferences come to the fore in Larrain’s fragments in exceptional clarity. Whereas Plato would do no such thing, the author of these fragments explains the type of movement that the heavenly bodies make in terms of their specific substance, particularly, again, their relative wetness or dryness. And through the exact same reasoning, our own activities as human beings are determined by our relative dryness or wetness. This strong emphasis on the causal power of the mixtures of elemental qualities over soul has parallels in Galen’s attested work. As we have found in Case-Study I, Galen argues in QAM that the activities of our souls are dependent on the interaction of the four elemental qualities taking place in the organ from which the respective psychic functions are exercised. In the Larrain-fragments, this principle is extended to an analogy between the activities of human beings and heavenly bodies, which has its basis in an analogy between their respective bodily substances. This, too, is in line with several passages from genuine Galenic works, as we shall see below. Furthermore, it is notable that in his Compendium, Galen leaves out the remark we just quoted on the soul being prior to body, which forms a kind of apology by Timaeus for speaking of the body before the soul in his cosmogony.¹¹⁷

The author of these fragments projects this Galenic doctrine of the soul being dependent upon the mixture onto Plato’s Timaeus, taking as his point of departure the river metaphor used by Plato to describe the embodiment of soul. We have briefly discussed Galen’s reading of this metaphor above, and noticed how he, both in his Compendium and in QAM, steered the Platonic struggle of the soul with incarnation towards a struggle between elemental qualities, by taking the metaphor of the river to refer to the abundance of moisture in the substance of newborns, and adding to that the notion that dryness rather causes intelligence or understanding. In Larrain’s fragment 6, the same passage from the Timaeus is cited and interpreted in the same manner, with some additions with respect to the citation in QAM. It may be useful to quote the fragment in full:

ὅτι ὅπως μὲν ἡ ἀσώματος ψυχὴ τὴν πρὸς τὸ σῶμα κοινωνίαν (ἐδέξατο) ἐκτήσατο, καὶ καθ΄ ὅν τινα τρόπον ἐνεδέθη, καὶ πηνίκα δὲ μάλιστα τοῦτο ἔπαθε, πότερον ἅμα τῷ κυηθῆναι τὸ κυηθὲν ἢ κατὰ τὴν πρώτην σύλληψιν ἢ κατά τινα μεταξὺ χρόνον, οὐδ΄ αὐτοῖς τοῖς Πλατωνικοῖς ὁμολόγηται. οὕτω δὲ μόνον ὁ Πλάτων φησί· τὰς τὴς ἀθανάτου ψυχῆς περιόδους ἐνέδουν εἰς ἐπίρρυτον σῶμα καὶ ἀπόρρυτον, αἱ δ΄ εἰς ποταμὸν ἐνδεθεῖσαι πολὺν οὔτε ἐκράτουν οὔτε ἐκρατοῦντο, βίᾳ δ΄ ἐφέροντο καὶ ἔφερον. τοῦτο δὲ οὕτως εἶπε διὰ τὴν ὑγρότητα τῆς οὐσίας, ἐξ ἧς ἐγένετο τὸ σῶμα, τὴν μὲν πρώτην σύστασιν ἐκ καταμηνίου καὶ σπέρματος ἔχον, ἀποκυηθὲν δὲ τοῖς νεωστὶ πηγνυμένοις τυροῖς παραπλήσιον. ἐπεὶ δὲ θερμότητα σύμφυτον ἀναγκαῖον ἦν ὑπάρχειν αὐτῷ, ταύτῃ δὲ εἶπε τὸ διαφορεῖσθαι τὴν μεμειγμένην οὐσίαν ὑγρὰν αὐτοῦ, διὰ τοῦτο ἀναγκαῖον ἦν, ὅπως μὴ φθαρείῃ τὸ σώμα, προνοήσασθαι τοὺς ἐπιμειγνύντας αὐτὸ θεοὺς ἐπιρροὴν ἑτέρας οὐσίας ἀντὶ τῆς ἀπολομένης.¹¹⁸

That it is not even agreed upon among Platonists themselves how the incorporeal soul acquires the communion with the body and is bound to it in some way, and especially the exact time when this happens, either at the same time with being born or with the first conception or at some time in between. Plato speaks only in this manner: that the cycles of the immortal soul are bound to a body that is subject to influx and efflux, they are bound in a great river and they don’t rule and are not ruled over, but they produce violence and suffer it. It is like that he says due to the wetness of the substance from which the body comes about, since its initial structure consists of menstrual blood and semen, after birth nearly resembling solidified cheeses. Therefore it is necessary that it also had an innate hotness, but because of this, he says, the wet substance mixed with it was dissipated by it, and therefore it was necessary that the gods who mixed it in provided an influx of another substance to compensate what is lost, so that the body is not destroyed.

The first remarks of this fragment are again typically Galenic. The author points out that the doctrine of the incorporeal soul is so difficult to account for that even its adherents have not agreed upon how to do it, and then points towards the difference between what those Platonists hold and what Plato himself has actually said. The author emphasizes that Plato himself has not handed us anything to solve the difficulty of the communion (κοινωνία) of soul and body and the inception of a composite being, but merely introduced the metaphor of the river.¹¹⁹ This metaphor is related, through an odd literalist reading, to the substance from which the body comes about, which is relatively wet, as Galen also remarked in QAM.¹²⁰ The wetness of this substance is specified here in a way which makes perfect sense from a Galenic perspective: it is a composite of blood and semen, two fluids, while in its state after birth it is likened to a solidified cheese because, like cheese, it has undergone a drying process which makes it more solid. As we have noted above, Galen ignores the fact that in the Timaeus the river-metaphor is about the bodily elements as such. Both in his Compendium as well as in QAM, he takes it to refer only to one specific elemental quality of the four that constitute the body, namely its wetness. In this way, something else that is also an elemental quality, namely dryness or in the case of this fragment (as elsewhere in Galen’s attested work) rather innate heat, can be posed as the counteracting antagonist, taking the place of what is usually called soul.¹²¹ Thus, this fragment fits with Galen’s idiosyncratic interpretation of the metaphor of the river from the Timaeus. The innate heat, says the author, has been mixed in together with the wetness by the gods that formed us (presumably still the ‘children’ of the demiurge), to make it less moist by dissipating some of the wetness. As a consequence, there needed to be another addition, an influx of another substance to avoid complete dissipation and destruction of the body, so as to bring about a balance. It seems as if the author of this passage, completely in line with Galen’s interpretation of the Timaeus, reconstructs the struggle that results from the incarnation of the soul as a struggle between two elementary forces, here designated as wetness and innate heat, mixed together by the gods to balance each other and to render possible the generation and growth of a human being. The addition necessary after the mixing in of the hotness, is that of nourishment, or, as it is described in Plato’s Timaeus and the third book of Galen’s commentary: the gods made the plants so that human beings can regain what they lose due to the continuous dissipation of their substance.¹²² The necessity of nourishment is explained here in terms of the basic human constitution being a precarious balance between the various elemental qualities.

According to this reconstruction, the reason for children’s lack of rationality is not that the soul has just been embodied and needs some time to come to its senses, control its new vehicle and remember the knowledge it previously had, but it is rather that the body of children is exceptionally wet, whereas intelligent bodies are more dry (as we shall see below). The reason given for the wetness of the newborn is a simple reference to the stuff from which it is generated: blood and semen. Human beings are understood in these fragments as composites of two conflicting elementary forces, wetness and dryness, and at first, the one that renders us intelligent is predominated by its opposite due to the wetness of our initial substance. After we are born, our substance is still soft and malleable, like a solidified cheese. For Nickel, this cheese-analogy was one of the reasons to ascribe the text to an imitator, since he considered it to be motivated by, but not consistent with, other, similar comparisons in authentic Galenic works.¹²³ Das, however, has added several other passages in which Galen makes similar comparisons, and concludes that ‘Galen uses these metaphors to differentiate levels of moisture in the body’.¹²⁴ Here, too, Nickel’s conclusion might have been somewhat rash. One of the passages Nickel refers to for comparison is from Galen’s Mixtures. There, Galen also generalizes about the state of newborn animals that have their first composition from blood and sperm, ‘substances which are hot and wet’.¹²⁵ The context is that of blooded animals in general, although the prior discussion has been about man in particular. These two substances, blood and sperm, are said to enter into a continuous process of drying, which evolves into the construction of all the various kinds of homoeomerous bodies and organs while the child is in its mother’s womb. Even after the child has been born, it remains ‘extremely wet’, even in its driest parts, the bones. Galen proceeds now to give a concrete example of this: when you eat a young animal that has just been sacrificed, you find its flesh to be relatively moist and flabby, and you’ll find that even its bones resemble ‘solidified cheese’.¹²⁶ Because of this excess of moisture, baby animals are not pleasant to eat. Clearly, Galen is using this particular example because in this case we can actually see and taste or chew the flesh and parts of the newborn animal and in this manner empirically verify the texture. That does not mean, as Nickel seems to think, the comparison does not equally apply to human newborns. Both the immediately preceding and following context is specifically about human beings and their relative dryness and wetness in relation to their age. Neither should the comparison be restricted to the bones (which rather serve as an extreme example, being the driest parts), as becomes clear when one reads a few pages further, where it is the skin that is compared to solidified cheese.¹²⁷ Therefore, the whole passage should be read as treating of the substance of blooded animals as such. It shows how Galen’s occasional remarks in QAM, UP and elsewhere on dryness and wetness in relation to the capacities of the (rational) soul, are rooted in his basic physiological ideas on the composition, formation and growth of human beings and indeed blooded animals in general.

In the fragments following Larrain’s fragment 6, the role of relative wetness and dryness is further elaborated, particularly in its relation to our rational soul. In fragment 7, it becomes clear that the predominance of wetness does not only trouble our soul around the time when we are born:

ὅτι ἐν τῇ κυήσει μόνη ἡ ἐπιθυμητικὴ ἐναργῶς φαίνεται, ὡς ζητεῖσθαι πότερον ὡς φυτὸν ἢ ζῷον ἤδη διοικεῖται τὸ ἔμβρυον. μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἀποκύησιν θυμοῦ τι μέτεστιν αὐτῷ, λογικὸν δέ τι ἔργον οὐχ ὁρᾶται. τούτου δὲ αἰτίαν εἶναί φησιν ὁ Πλάτων τὴν ὑγρότητα τοῦ σώματος, καὶ δηλοῦσι τοῦτο τῶν μὲν ὑγιαινόντων οἱ μεθύοντες, τῶν δὲ ἀρρωστούντων οἱ τοῖς ὑγροῖς πάθεσι καταληφθέντες, ἐξ ὧν ἐστι καὶ ὁ καλούμενος λήθαργος. οὐ μόνον δὲ ἐπὶ τούτων ἐναργῶς φαίνεται ναρκώδης τε καὶ ἀργὸς ἡ λογικὴ ψυχὴ πρὸς τὰς ἰδίας ἐνεργείας, ἀλλὰ κἂν μετρίως ὑγρανθῇ, βραδυτέρα μὲν νοῆσαι, καταφερομένη δὲ εἰς ὕπνον ὁρᾶται.¹²⁸

That during pregnancy only the desiderative [soul] is clearly manifest, so that it needs to be inquired whether the embryo is governed like a plant or already like an animal. After birth something of the spirited soul is in it as well, but there is no sight of any rational activity. Plato says that the cause of this is the wetness of the body, and of the healthy people those that are drunk with wine testify to this, of the unhealthy those who are seized by wet affections, from which the so-called lethargy comes. But the rational soul clearly appears torpid and idle with regard to its proper activities not only with those people, but even when it is moderately moistened thinking becomes heavier, and it can be seen to descend into sleep.

The first few lines of this fragment depict a gradual development of the three souls starting with the embryo. This schema, including the question whether the embryo, since it is governed by the desiderative soul only, should be considered a plant or an animal, is familiar from Galen’s genuine work. We also find it in the Greek fragments of his Timaeus commentary published by Daremberg and Schröder.¹²⁹ The idea that Plato ascribed the lack of rationality in newborns to the wetness of their substance is also familiar by now and can be found, as we have noted, in QAM and Galen’s Compendium, as well as in some of the other fragments collected by Larrain (see below). Here, however, the author also takes another step, by going beyond the context of generation. First, the author claims that the lack of understanding due to predominant wetness can also be found in some extreme physical conditions, namely in the case of drunkenness or lethargy. Then, he continues to state that even a moderate increase in wetness can already hinder one’s rational capacities and induces sleep. This is an important step; whereas Galen’s Compendium merely used the river-metaphor to make relative wetness and dryness into the causes of understanding or lack thereof departing from the state of the newborn, this fragment also specifies how the strife between these elemental qualities of our substance determines our capacities for understanding throughout our life.

As we noted above, in QAM Galen also generalizes the causal role of dryness and wetness with respect to understanding, so that it has a wider application than the context of generation:

ἀλλ΄ εἴπερ ὑγρότης μὲν ἄνοιαν ἐργάζεται, ξηρότης δὲ σύνεσιν, ἡ μὲν ἄκρα ξηρότης ἄκραν ἐργάζεται σύνεσιν, ἡ δ΄ ἐπίμικτος ὑγρότητι τοσοῦτον ἀφαιρήσει τῆς τελείας συνέσεως, ὅσον ἐκοινώνησεν ὑγρότητος. τίνος οὖν θνητοῦ ζῴου τοιοῦτον σῶμα ἄμοιρον ὑγρότητος, ὥσπερ τὰ τῶν ἄστρων; οὐδενὸς οὐδ΄ ἐγγύς· ὥστ΄ οὐδὲ συνέσεως ἄκρας ἐγγύς ἐστι σῶμα θνητοῦ ζῴου, πάντα δ΄ ὥσπερ ὑγρότητος οὕτω καὶ ἀνοίας μετέχει.¹³⁰

If, then, wetness brings about mindlessness, and dryness understanding, then extreme dryness brings about extreme understanding, while a dryness mixed with wetness will take away from perfect understanding to precisely that extent to which it partakes of wetness. And indeed, which mortal animal’s body is of such a sort as to be without any share of wetness – like the bodies of the stars? There is none which is even close to this. And so too there is no body of a mortal animal which is close to extreme understanding; but all partake of mindlessness too just as they partake of wetness.

tr. Singer, slightly modified

Here, the degree to which a given body partakes of wetness is said to determine the degree to which it lacks ‘perfect understanding’. Given the fact that no mortal animal is without any share in wetness, this kind of understanding is not to be found among them, though it is present in the stars, which are apparently completely devoid of wetness. In UP, too, we find this vertical hierarchy in which wetness predominates the substances on earth, hindering the development of their intellectual capacities, while it is inferred from the dryness of the heavenly bodies that they must be supremely intelligent.¹³¹ Although it is rather long, it is useful to quote the passage in full:

ἀλλ΄ ὅμως ἐνταῦθα φαίνεται νοῦς τις ἀφικνούμενος ἐκ τῶν ἄνω σωμάτων, ἅ καὶ θεασαμένῳ τινὶ παραχρῆμα θαυμάζειν ἐπέρχεται τὸ κάλλος τῆς οὐσίας, ἡλίου πρῶτον καὶ μάλιστα, μετ΄ αὐτὸν δὲ σελήνης, εἶτα τῶν ἀστέρων, ἐν οἷς εἰκὸς, ὅσῳ πέρ ἐστι καὶ ἡ τοῦ σώματος οὐσία καθαρωτέρα, τοσούτῳ καὶ τὸν νοῦν ἐνοικεῖν πολὺ τοῦ κατὰ τὰ γήινα σώματα βελτίω τε καὶ ἀκριβέστερον. ὅπου γὰρ ἐν ἰλύї καὶ βορβόρῳ καὶ τέλμασι καὶ φυτοῖς καὶ καρποῖς σηπομένοις ὅμως ἐγγίγνεται ζῷα θαυμαστὴν ἔχοντα τὴν ἔνδειξιν τοῦ κατασκευάσαντος αὐτὰ νοῦ, τί χρὴ νομίζειν ἐπὶ τῶν ἄνω σωμάτων; ἰδεῖν δ΄ ἔστι νοῦ φύσιν καὶ κατ΄ αὐτοὺς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἐννοήσαντα Πλάτωνα καὶ ᾿Αριστοτέλη καὶ ῞Ιππαρχον καὶ ᾿Αρχιμήδην καὶ πολλοὺς ἄλλους τοιούτους. ὁπότ΄ οὖν ἐν βορβόρῳ τοσούτῳ – τί γὰρ ἂν ἄλλο τις εἴποι τὸ συγκείμενον ἐκ σαρκῶν αἵματός τε καὶ φλέγματος καὶ χολῆς ξανθῆς καὶ μελαίνης – ἐπιγίγνεται νοῦς περὶττός, πόσην τινὰ χρὴ νομίζειν αὐτοῦ τὴν ὑπεροχὴν εἶναι καθ΄ ἥλιον ἢ σελήνην ἢ τινα τῶν ἀστέρων;¹³²

But even here some intelligence appears to be reaching us from the bodies above, and the beauty of their substance forces anyone that sees them to be amazed at once, that of the sun first and foremost, that of the moon after that, and next that of the stars, and it is reasonable to suppose that the intelligence that dwells in them is exactly that much better and sharper than that in the earthly bodies as the substance of their body is purer. For when in mud and slime, in marshes, and in rotting plants and fruits animals are engendered which yet bear a marvelous indication of the intelligence constructing them, what must we think of the bodies above? But you can see the nature of the intelligence in man himself when you consider Plato, Aristotle, Hipparchus, Archimedes and many others like them. When a surpassing intelligence comes into being in such slime – for what else would one call a thing composed of fleshes, blood, phlegm, and yellow and black bile? – how great must we consider the pre-eminence of the intelligence in the sun, moon, and stars?

tr. May

Clearly, in this passage towards the end of UP, Galen points to the relative wetness of human beings as a hindrance to the development of their intellectual capacities.¹³³ Whereas in QAM he stated that a being is removed from perfect understanding to the degree that it partakes of wetness, now we read that the heavenly bodies are that much more intelligent as their substance is purer, i.e. more like fire. Given the recurrence of this idea in various works, it makes no sense to put passages such as these aside by appealing to the rhetorical context of the epode of UP or QAM in general. In these passages, Galen is re-establishing the physiological basis of the psychic over against – presumably mostly Platonist – opponents. One important difference between these passages from Galen’s attested work and Larrain’s fragment 7, however, is that in the former the wetness and dryness are always attributed to the human body, whereas in the last sentence of Larrain’s fragment it is predicated of the rational soul itself. In this sense, the author of Larrain’s fragment seems to go a step further than Galen does in his attested works (as far as I can see), attributing specific elemental qualities to soul itself. We will come back to this issue in the discussion of some of Larrain’s other fragments below.

We noticed how, in Galen’s interpretation of the Timaeus, the causal role that relative dryness and wetness plays with regard to rational capacity, is rooted in the metaphor of the river that Plato uses for the description of the incarnation of the soul, or in more Galenic terms: for the phase of generation, of the embryo and the newborn. However, both in Larrain’s fragment 7 and in some of Galen’s attested works, as we have seen, this theme is taken beyond the context of generation alone. In fragment 7, particularly, the state of the newborn is compared to a state of inebriation, the implication being that drinking wine wets the substance of the soul. Also, the predominance of wetness is said to cause sleep. Both of these points are paralleled by an important testimony found in Al-Rhāzī, supposedly pertaining to the first book of Galen’s commentary on the Timaeus and added to the commentary fragments by Schröder as an excerpt from the first book. Let us have a look at the Latin translation provided in Schröder’s edition:

Dixit Timaeus in primo libro suo: constituerunt medici et physici certam dietam hominibus qua non multiplicetur sanguis in eis, quod multiplication humiditatum in corporibus administrat defectum in intellectu. Et signum ad hoc est, quod multotiens invenimus quod illi quorum humiditas multiplicatur sunt ebetes et lenti et somni profundi et melancholici et moventur in eis egritudines quibus deficit eorum ingenium, et quoniam cerebrum humectatur, deficit eorum ingenium sicut accidit in ebrietate.¹³⁴

In his first book Timaeus says: doctors and natural philosophers have set up a certain diet for men so that the amount of blood in them is not increased, because increase of wetness in bodies causes weakness in intellect. And an indication of this is that, often we have found that those in whom wetness is increased are obtuse and sluggish and sleep immoderately and are melancholic and mental illnesses are troubling them that make their natural intellectual capacity fail, and since the brain is moistened, their natural intellectual capacity fails just as if they are inebriated.

This text is particularly important because it is considered an excerpt from the first book of Galen’s commentary and shows great resemblance to what is discussed in Larrain’s fragments, particularly fragments 7–12, as Larrain has noted himself.¹³⁵

As we see more often in the Arabic tradition, Galen’s text is simply attributed to ‘Timaeus’.¹³⁶ Interestingly, it is said here that doctors and natural philosophers have established diets to regulate the predominance of wetness in the body, since wetness decreases intellectual capacity. Of course, these particular thoughts on diet are not found in Plato’s Timaeus, but we do find them, notoriously, in Galen’s QAM,¹³⁷ so it should not surprise us to find them in his Timaeus commentary as well. Schröder thought Al-Rhāzī’s testimony pertains to Tim. 43a4–44b1, which is also where Galen’s beloved river-metaphor is introduced. This makes sense if we compare the passages from UP and QAM cited above:¹³⁸ departing from this river-metaphor Galen develops an opposition between wetness and dryness that amounts to a rewriting of the Platonic struggle between soul and body. In this passage, the traditional themes of sleep and inebriation are added. It is also noted that mental illnesses causing damage to rational capacities can result from excessive moisture and that an increase of blood implies an increase in wetness. To all of this, again, there are parallels in Galen’s work. The predominant wetness of blood is well attested throughout Galen’s work. As we have seen in Case-Study II, in HNH Galen considers blood to be the cause of ‘simplicity and artlessness’, which corresponds to the correlation between the increase of blood and decrease of intellectual capacities here due to the wetness of blood.¹³⁹ Schröder points to a passage in Galen’s commentary on the Hippocratic Aphorisms (Hipp. Aph.), where it is said that those who are drunk with wine lisp because their brain becomes soaked by an excess of wetness, and that their brain is weighed down (βαρυνομένου) because of this excess.¹⁴⁰ The idea seems to be that the same symptom of lisping can be caused both by a natural local excess of moisture and an excess caused by temporal inebriation. Besides lisping, another symptom that inebriation and excessive wetness of the brain share, is the dysfunctioning of normal rational capacities.

We find a similar comparison between inebriation and mental illness based on an excess of wetness as their common aspect in Galen’s commentary on the Hippocratic Epidemics (Hipp. Epid.), where he discusses an affliction called ‘κῶμα’, which is a kind of lethargy. Both excess of wetness and coldness are said to cause this condition:

πολλάκις μὲν γὰρ ὑγρότητι πολλῇ τοῦ πρώτου αἰσθητικοῦ μορίου, καθ΄ ὅ καὶ τὸν ὕπνον ὀρθῶς ᾿Αριστοτέλης ἔδειξε γινόμενον, ἕπεται κῶμα, καθάπερ ἐνίοις τῶν μεθυσθέντων γίνεται, πολλάκις δὲ διὰ μόνην ψύξιν, ἔστι δ΄ ὅτε καὶ δι΄ ἄμφω ταῦτα συμπίπτει βαθὺς καὶ κωματώδης ὕπνος, ἀλλὰ καὶ δι΄ ἀρρωστίαν δυνάμεως ἡ τοιαύτη γίνεται διάθεσις, οὕτως ἤδη νεκρουμένης αὐτῆς, ὡς ἐπῃρμένα τὰ βλέφαρα φυλάττειν μὴ δύνασθαι.¹⁴¹

For often coma follows upon an excess of moisture of the primary organ of perception, according to which Aristotle has correctly shown sleep also arises, just as it happens with some of those who are intoxicated, though often it comes about by coldness only; and when it is both of these, a heavy and lethargic sleep occurs, but such a state also arises because of a deficiency of power, such as when the power has already died out, so that it is not possible to keep the eyelids raised up.

Thus, the association of predominant wetness with lack of intelligence and with sleep, as well as the examples of drunkenness and lethargy, both found in Larrain’s fragment 7, are well attested in Galen’s genuine works (we will return to the notion of lethargy below, in the discussion of fragment 9). In this last quotation, ‘coldness only’ was added as an alternative cause for the same symptoms. This is paralleled by, among many others, a passage in book III of Galen’s The Affected Places (Loc. Aff.), where he goes into these matters somewhat more elaborately. There, damage in memory and the capacity for reasoning (ὁ λογισμὸς), as well as lethargy and ‘κάρος’ (an affection of deep sleep), are all associated with predominant coldness of the homoeomerous parts constituting the brain.¹⁴² In general, Galen remarks, ‘one can see that cold weakens the mental activities’. Cooling of the head causes somnolence and purging phlegm, one of the wet humours, can relieve ‘heaviness of the head’. Heating, on the other hand, leads to sleeplessness, and ‘warm and biliary diseases’ are said to cause lack of sleep and even delirium and phrenitis, the same condition mentioned in Larrain’s fragment 8. We also find the notion that infants are ‘drowsy’ due to their predominant wetness and that the older become sleepless because of the predominant dryness of the mixture of their brain. Galen concludes that in ‘rendering the soul inactive’ moisture is the second strongest cause and coldness is the first.¹⁴³ Of course, these two are related, since if heat is more predominant, the moisture will dissipate and a substance will become dry. Here we can see that the effect of wetness on the rational capacities attributed to newborns, is embedded in a larger physiological framework of which drunkenness and diseases such as lethargy are part. In Larrain’s fragment 12, the author takes the notion of the river Lethê, the river of forgetfulness from which the souls drink before their reincarnation according to Plato, as an allegorical reference to the wetness of newborns in the same vein as Galen’s reading of the river-metaphor from the Timaeus (using also the same verb αἰνίττεσθαι).¹⁴⁴ The author relates the notions of lethargy and the mythical river Lethê to one another, while both are explained in terms of predominant wetness hindering rational capacities such as memory.¹⁴⁵

All of this corresponds well to Galen’s interpretation of the Timaeus in QAM, which we have discussed above. However, it is not simply the case that dryness and heat are beneficial to intellectual capacity per se, while wetness and coldness are detrimental per se. An excess in heat can, likewise, cause serious impairment of the intellectual capacities, but more in the sense of an overload that leads to a phrenetic or delirious state, i.e. a state characterized by a kind of overload of activity. In the words of Jouanna: ‘So change to the mixtures of the brain towards an excess of either heat or cold produces contrasting effects on the intellectual faculties, either delirious excitement or the numbing of intelligence and memory’.¹⁴⁶ Jouanna has shown that Galen’s descriptions of the effects of humoural mixture on the intellectual capacities in QAM are close to those of some Hippocratic writings. In The Sacred Disease, excess of bile (a dry humour) is said to cause an agitated madness, while excess of phlegm (a wet humour) causes a calm madness. In Regimen, the relative predominance of fire or water is said to increase or decrease intelligence respectively.¹⁴⁷ Jouanna has also argued that Galen draws on an extensive tradition for the idea that the intellectual capacities of our soul can and need to be improved through dietary regime, exercise and choice of climate – i.e. through influencing one’s mixture.¹⁴⁸ I would merely add to this that Galen (as well as the author of Larrain’s fragments) through his somatising interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus, is concerned to give this tradition a firmer physiological and philosophical grounding by anchoring it in his favourite philosophical authority.

We find another interesting passage in this regard in the so-called Character Traits (extant only in Arabic). At the outset of the work, Galen states that he will ignore the questions on what it is that makes thought, anger and desire come about, and whether these things are called different souls, parts of the soul or different capacities of a single substance. Typically, Galen wants to discuss more practical matters in this work and stay away from difficult theoretical issues discussed elsewhere (he refers to PHP). Nonetheless, on the next page he proceeds to explain that, in his view, the essence of the strength of the spirited soul is identified as innate heat:

The essence of this strength, which enables someone to act patiently and steadfastly is, as far as I can see, innate heat, for the more powerful the movement of the innate heat, the more someone moves. Just as cold produces laziness, immobility and weakness, so heat produces energy, movement, and the strength to act. That is why the beginning of youth and wine arouse movement and power, while old age and chilling drugs produce laziness and weakness; they lead, in time, to the annihilation of actions and movements.¹⁴⁹

As in other works cited above, coldness and wetness (this time particularly coldness, but again, they are related) are associated with degeneration, weakness and immobility, while dryness and hotness are associated with the opposite. In all passages cited, this association clearly has a strong causal sense. Likewise, in QAM Galen states that a higher quantity of heat in the heart (the seat of the spirited soul) makes one more ‘manic and sharp-spirited’ while a higher quantity of coldness makes one ‘lethargic, heavy and slow to move’.¹⁵⁰ Thus, it seems that even in a work such as the Character Traits, which is emphatically about ethical philosophy and shuns the difficult theoretical discussion on what soul itself is, the same underlying schema that comes to the fore in QAM and Galen’s interpretation of the Timaeus is also at work. In this underlying schema, the qualities that are associated with the lower realm of the cosmos, wetness and coldness, are considered to cause passivity of the soul, while the qualities that are associated with the heavenly bodies, dryness and hotness, are considered to cause activity of the soul.

In UP we also saw the humours associated with the wetness of the lower realms.¹⁵¹ In Al-Rhāzī’s testimony, however, it was blood in particular, apparently because of its predominant wetness. Since the various elementary qualities each have their specific relations to specific psychic capacities, it would make sense if the four humours too, being composed of different mixtures of the elementary qualities, accordingly relate differently to the exercise of psychic capacities. Indeed, an important passage from HNH, which we also cited in Case-Study II, shows that Galen took this into account:

ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἕτερός τις λόγος φυσικὸς οὐ σμικρὰν ἔχων πιθανότητα, καθ΄ ὅν εἰς ἠθῶν ἐπιτηδείων γένεσιν οἱ τέσσαρες ἀποδείκνυνται χυμοὶ χρήσιμοι. προαποδεῖξαι δὲ χρὴ πάλιν ἐν αὐτῷ ταῖς τοῦ σόωματος κράσεσιν ἑπόμενα τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἤθη, περὶ οὗ καὶ ἡμῖν ἑτέρωθι γέγραπται. τούτου τοίνυν ὑποκειμένου τὸ μὲν ὀξὺ καὶ συνετὸν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ διὰ τὸν χολώδη χυμὸν ἔσται, τὸ δ΄ἑδραῖον καὶ βέβαιον διὰ τὸν μελαγχολικόν, τὸ δ΄ ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἠλιθιώτερον διὰ τὸ αἷμα …¹⁵²

There is also another physical account which has no little plausibility, according to which the four humours are proved to be effective in the generation of the dispositions which are appropriate to them. In it we first need to establish that the dispositions of the soul are consequent upon the mixtures of the body, about which we have written elsewhere. On this basis, sharpness and intelligence in the soul will exist as a result of the bilious humour, stability and firmness as a result of the melancholic, simplicity and artlessness as a result of the blood …¹⁵³

This passage clearly refers to QAM (ταῖς τοῦ σόωματος κράσεσιν ἑπόμενα τὰ τῆς ψυχῆς ἤθη, περὶ οὗ καὶ ἡμῖν ἑτέρωθι γέγραπται). The bilious humours are considered the drier two of the four humours, while blood and phlegm are the wetter ones. Hence, the ordering in which the drier humour increases the intellectual capacity, and the wetter humour reduces it, corresponds to the passages cited above on the causal relation between relative dryness or wetness and intelligence. It is also noteworthy that the examples that Galen gives here seem to particularly relate to the rational capacities.

This passage from HNH compares well to the next text-fragment in Larrain’s edition, fragment 8:

ὅτι τὸ αἷμα καὶ τὸ φλέγμα ἂν πλεονάσωσί ποτε κατὰ τὸ σῶμα, βραδεῖς καὶ νωθροὺς καὶ ὑπνώδους ἀποτελοῦσιν, ὥσπερ πάλιν αὐξηθείσης τῆς χολῆς ἄγρυπνοί τε καὶ φροντισταὶ γίνονται καὶ εἰ ἀμέτρως αὐξηθείη, φρενετικοί.¹⁵⁴

That blood and phlegm, whenever they excessively increase throughout the body, bring about slowness and sluggishness and sleepiness, just as when the bile is increased, they become wakeful and deep thinkers again, and when it is increased excessively, [they become] phrenetic.

Unfortunately, there seem to be some textual problems with this fragment. The word φρενετικός is not attested for Galen and barely attested for any other texts. However, forms of φρενιτικός, with iota instead of epsilon, are found rather regularly in Galen and the Hippocratic corpus. Besides that, the part ‘βραδεῖς καὶ νωθροὺς καὶ ὑπνώδους’ does not make sense grammatically, since the three adjectives are not congruent with each other. Unfortunately, Larrain does not go into these problems and as we mentioned before, all of Larrain’s fragments were marked with an obelus in the manuscript. Whether these issues can be explained in terms of errors or deviations by a scribe taking excerpts from Galen’s actual commentary, or whether a different explanation is needed, I do not know. In this fragment too, however, the resemblance to Galen’s attested works is obvious. Furthermore, Larrain found a translation of this fragment in Thābit Ibn Qurrah (9th century), in which it is ascribed to Galen’s commentary on Plato’s Timaeus.¹⁵⁵

From our comparison of Larrain’s fragments 4–8 with Galen’s attested work, we can at least conclude the following: the somatising interpretation of the Timaeus, through the introduction of the causal relation between relative dryness or wetness and rational capacities, corresponds both to passages from Galen’s work on humoural theory and to his notion that psychic capacities are dependent on the mixtures of elemental qualities. We find it supported by passages from works such as UP, QAM, Loc. Aff., Temp., HNH, as well as Galen’s Compendium and the testimonies on the first book of his Timaeus commentary. It is unavoidable to conclude that the author of these fragments was, at least, thoroughly familiar with Galen’s work and in strong agreement with it. Additionally, they discuss the same topics as Galen apparently discussed in the first book of his Timaeus commentary. As we have seen, the correspondences go much further than a resemblance to a few passages of major Galenic works such as PHP and UP (as it may appear from Nickel’s article). Moreover, despite some textual oddities, I have so far not found anything speaking strongly against Larrain’s conclusions, however confident they may have been in themselves.

4.3 The Soul as a Dry and Hot Substance That Exudes Light

Besides the Hippocratic tradition discussed by Jouanna and briefly referred to above, another clear precedent for these views on the relation between elemental qualities and rational capacity, is Heraclitus, who Galen also refers to in this context.¹⁵⁶

In several of the extant fragments, Heraclitus associates a dry state of the soul with intelligence and a moist state with drunkenness, stupidity and death. Kahn says, in his commentary on the fragment in which Heraclitus calls the dry soul a ray or beam of light, wisest and best (CIX in his edition, 118 DK): ‘This gives a new dimension to Heraclitus’ doctrine of the soul: just as moisture weakens the soul so that it may perish into water, so dryness strengthens and improves it to the point where it may be purified as light (not fire)’.¹⁵⁷ Heraclitus relates the good state of the soul to the light of the heavenly bodies and Kahn points to the roots of this notion in pre-Socratic cosmology, which separates the upper and lower realms of the cosmos in terms of their respective elemental qualities: ‘This conception is deeply rooted both in the language of early Greek poetry and in the theories of pre-Socratic philosophy. In poetic terms CIX defines the best condition of the psyche as a kind of aither, not fire as such but the clear and luminous upper sky, as contrasted with the murky and moist lower aer, comprising haze, mist, and cloud’.¹⁵⁸ In another fragment, Heraclitus relates a wet soul to inebriation, youth and faulty perception, all themes we have encountered in Galen’s interpretation of the Timaeus as well.¹⁵⁹ In Larrain’s fragment 9, the author also refers to Heraclitus’ notion of the dry soul being wise, as we shall see below.

The river-metaphor of the Timaeus and its connotation of the flux of becoming is easily associated with Heraclitus.¹⁶⁰ It is no coincidence that Galen refers to Heraclitus in QAM right after he has discussed it. Apparently, the idea of flux represented by the river is related by Galen to the notion of the wet soul and thereby contrasted to the soul that is dry and fiery. In a way, the contrast of flux and stability as we find it in Plato, is maintained in Larrain’s fragments with the notion of the two kinds of movements, one of which is round and continuously the same, i.e. stable, while the other is linear and goes in all directions, i.e. more chaotic and never the same. As we shall see, these two motions are determined by the relative dryness or wetness of the moving substance, which makes them either more or less like divine movements.

The characterization of the upper and lower realms in terms of different elemental qualities and the association of soul and intelligence with the qualities of the heavenly bodies, is something we have seen before in several of Galen’s works, and which we find also in the longest fragment we have of his commentary on the Timaeus. This is the second Greek fragment in Schröder’s edition, supposedly pertaining to 76e7–77c5 of Plato’s Timaeus, in which Galen divides the elements in more ‘material’ and more ‘active’ ones:

… ἴδωμεν δὲ μᾶλλον ἅ λέγει περὶ τῶν πραγμάτων αὐτῶν ἔνθα φησὶ τὴν ζωὴν ἡμῶν ἐν πυρὶ καὶ πνεύματι κατ΄ ἀνάγκην εἶναι. τεττάρων γὰρ ὄντων στοιχείων, ἐξ ὧν ἡ γένεσις τοῖς γενητοῖς ἐστι, γῆς καὶ πυρὸς ὕδατός τε καὶ ἀέρος, ὅτι τούτων τὰ μὲν ὑλικώτερα γῆ τε καὶ ὕδωρ ἐστί, τὰ δὲ δραστικώτερα καὶ μάλιστ΄ ἐν τοῖς ζῴοις πῦρ τε καὶ πνεῦμα, σχεδὸν ἅπασιν ὡμολόγηται …¹⁶¹

… we see that he speaks more of the matters at hand themselves where he says that our life necessarily consists in fire and pneuma. For there are four elements, from which the coming-to-be of generated beings comes about, namely from earth, fire, water and air, and almost everybody agrees that of those earth and water are the more material, while fire and pneuma are the more active, particularly in the living beings …

The extent to which Galen here stays true to the Platonic text is debatable. He quotes Plato with a slight variation: Plato’s Timaeus has ‘τὴν δὲ ζωὴν ἐν πυρὶ καὶ πνεύματι συνέβαινεν ἐξ ἀνάγκης ἔχειν αὐτῷ’ for Galen’s τὴν ζωὴν ἡμῶν ἐν πυρὶ καὶ πνεύματι κατ΄ ἀνάγκην εἶναι. Dependent upon translation, these could mean the same. For example, Zeyl translates Plato’s text as ‘Of necessity, however, it came about that he [i.e. the newly created human being] lived his life surrounded by fire and air’. In that case, the fire and air that are wasting the human being away are not considered innate to the human being, but rather part of its surroundings. Because of the surroundings of the human being gnawing away at it, it must acquire nourishment to add new substance to itself. This is why the gods made plants. Galen seems to read this sentence differently than Zeyl does, saying rather that our life (itself) consists in fire and air. While both readings seem possible to me, dependent also on the wider interpretation of the text, it is also clear that the way Galen quotes Plato fits his general reading of the Timaeus, which emphasizes a schema of opposition between wetness and coldness or earth and water on the one hand, and dryness and hotness or air and fire on the other hand. Thus, this opposition is also what Galen proceeds to refer to as the explanation for Plato´s words: earth and water are more material, while fire and air are more active. It is said in the Timaeus itself that fire is made up of the smallest particles and can therefore pass through the other elements.¹⁶² In that sense, as an interpreter of Plato one might be justified in calling fire less material than the other three. However, the strong opposition between active and material elements or qualities, with life belonging exclusively to one of the two opposites, is certainly Galen’s own projection, familiar from what we have seen before. Again, this is also in line with Galen’s humoural theory, in which the humour that is most like the heavenly bodies (i.e. most fiery) is also the humour that is most active or causes activity to the greatest extent. This is yellow bile, a humour that tends to move upwards and that Galen associates with intelligence.¹⁶³

These thematics from the Timaeus also recur in a passage on innate heat in Galen’s On Tremors, which we mentioned earlier. Notably, Galen also refers to Heraclitus in there. He explains the phenomenon of ‘rigor’ (τὸ ῥιγοῦν), a painful chill accompanied by irregular shock and agitation, as an affection of our ‘natural heat’ (πάθος τοῦ κατὰ φύσιν θερμοῦ).¹⁶⁴ Interestingly, Galen then says that ‘nature’ and ‘soul’, are nothing other than this natural heat (καὶ ἥ γε φύσις καὶ ἡ ψυχὴ οὐδὲν ἄλλο ἢ τοῦτ’ ἔστιν), and that we should understand this heat as a self-moving and eternally moving substance (οὐσίαν αὐτοκίνητόν τε καὶ ἀεικίνητον). Galen must have the Platonic definition of the soul from the Phaedrus in mind here, which he knew very well, as we have seen in Case-Study II. Here we have one of the elemental qualities – one that is specifically associated with the substances of the heavenly bodies – defined in the same terms as the Platonic soul. Moreover, this occurs in the context of a rather practical discussion of a specific medical condition, not in a context of tentative speculating. This corresponds to the observed tendency of a somatisation of Plato’s notion of soul that has a strong point of departure in the Timaeus. And indeed, in this passage from On Tremors, Galen brings up the same issue of the increase and decrease of heat, in terms that are reminiscent of the passage around 77a in the Timaeus (the same passage to which Galen’s commentary from our last quotation pertains). He says that, since the innate heat continuously moves, there must be both an inward as well as an outward motion of innate heat that succeed each other, if a living being is to persist. Should the heat only move inward, the living being would become immobile; should it only move outward, the heat would become dispersed and the living being would perish as well. Therefore, it rather remains constantly in motion ‘now quenched and now kindled, as Heraclitus said’.¹⁶⁵ Now we can see also how Galen reads the passage from the Timaeus and understand his commentary better:

κατὰ μὲν τὸν πρῶτον λόγον τοῦ θερμοῦ, τοῦτ’ ἔστι αὐτοκίνητον αὐτοῦ, καὶ τούτου μάλιστα δεῖται πρὸς τὰς ἐνεργείας· μεγάλην δ’ ὅμως αὐτῷ χρείαν καὶ τὸ ψυχρὸν παρέχει. πέφυκε γὰρ τὸ μὲν θερμὸν εἰς ὕψος αἴρεσθαι καὶ συμπροσάγειν αὐτῷ τὴν τροφήν· εἰ δὲ μὴ τὸ ψυχρὸν ἐμποδὼν ἐγένετο, καὶ ἐπὶ μήκιστον προῆκε. γίνεται δ’ ἐμποδὼν τὸ ψυχρὸν τῇ τοιαύτῃ τοῦ θερμοῦ κινήσει, ὡς μὴ ἀπόλοιτο ἐκτεινόμενον. κίνδυνος γὰρ ὑπὸ κουφότητος καὶ τῆς πρὸς τὸ ἄνω ὁρμῆς ἀποστῆναι τῶν σωμάτων αὐτό. ἀλλὰ τὸ ψυχρὸν ἐπέχει τε καὶ κωλύει, καὶ τῆς ἄγαν ταύτης κινήσεως ἀφαιρεῖ τὸ σφοδρόν.¹⁶⁶

By reason of its heat, it is self-moved, and very much needs this property in order to act. Yet cold too is very useful for it. For heat is accustomed to rise up and bring along its nourishment; if cold did not prevent this, it would proceed to the greatest heights. But cold does prevent heat from moving in this way, and thereby keeps it from dispersing and perishing. For there is danger that heat will leave the bodies because of its natural lightness and its tendency to move upwards. But the cold checks, hinders, and reduces the violence of this excessive motion.

tr. Sider and McVaugh

Heat naturally moves upward and our heat apparently would do so unhindered, and perhaps would add itself to the realm of the heavenly bodies, if it were not checked by the coldness that is mixed with it and that reduces it and keeps it down. Thus, the heat and air Galen mentions in his commentary on the Timaeus is our natural heat that is naturally constantly leaving us, moving upwards, and creating a constant need for replenishment. This heat, as we saw, is itself identified by Galen with our ‘nature’ and ‘soul’. Supposedly, the cold that checks it is something else then, something more ‘material’ or something that belongs more to the lower cosmic realm. In the same manner, wetness generally hinders our psychic activities while dryness makes us more intelligent. It is clear that there needs to be a balanced mixture of all four, for Galen, in order to have a properly functioning and subsisting human being. However, it is also clear that Galen rather often privileges the hot and dry by associating it with activity, intelligence and the heavens, while he often portrays the cold and wet as mere hindrances with respect to the exercise of our proper activities and associates them with passivity, lack of intelligence and the lower part of the cosmos. This is still the same paradox that we find so often in Greek philosophy: man finds his fulfilment in part of himself, while other parts hinder this same fulfilment. At the same time, man, as such, cannot be without any of these parts: were we fire like the sun, then we would move upwards and leave the earth; were we water like the river, we would not know of ourselves.

This general outlook is also displayed in Larrain’s fragment 9, which shows a lot of similarity to the various passages from Galen’s attested work discussed above.

I shall quote it in several parts, since it is a bit longer and requires some explanation:

ὅτι ταῦτα μὲν ἰατρικά τις ἂν εἶποι τεκμήρια τοῦ τὴν λογικὴν ψυχὴν ὑγρῷ σώματι κεραννυμένην εἰς τὰς οἰκείας ἐνεργείας βλάπτεσθαι, θεωρητικὸς δὲ φιλόσοφος τὴν αἰτίαν πειραθεὶς εἰπεῖν, ὁ μὲν αὐγοειδῆ τὴν τῆς ψυχῆς οὐσίαν εἶναι φάσκων, πρόχειρον τὸν τῆς αἰτίας δώσει λογισμόν, ἐναντιωτάτη γὰρ αὐγῇ ἐστιν ἡ τῆς ὑγρότητος φύσις εἰς ὅσον γὰρ ἀποχωρεῖ τῆς οἰκείας, εἰς τοσοῦτον καὶ τῶν ἐνεργειῶν ταύτης ἀφίσταται.¹⁶⁷

That someone might say these medical observations are indications that the rational soul is damaged with regard to its proper activities when it is mixed with a wet body, and that when a theoretical philosopher is challenged to state the cause of this, he would say that the substance of the soul is of the nature of light and he shall give the common account for the cause, namely that, since the nature of wetness is utterly opposed to light, it shall be distanced from its activities to the extent that it is away from its proper nature.

This fragment starts out with a challenge to philosophers, which we also find in Galen’s attested work: how do you explain the fact that the activities of the (rational) soul are hindered due to specific changes in the body?¹⁶⁸ The next part is more remarkable, because here the author comes up with a possible answer a ‘theoretical philosopher’ would give, and which the author of these fragments seems to adhere to as well. This is a somewhat more speculative move than what we usually get in Galen’s works. It is not, however, in contradiction with it. After all, the answer consists simply in attributing a specific quality to the substance of the soul that is opposed to that of the one that hinders the soul’s activity, i.e. wetness. Furthermore, this quality, being ‘of the nature of light’ (αὐγοειδῆ) is consistent with that of dryness and (innate) heat as well as with the characterization of the stars as supremely intelligent, which we have found both in Larrain’s fragments and in Galen’s attested work. Finally, it has a precedent in the Timaeus itself, where the souls were related to the stars as their original dwelling-places.¹⁶⁹ In QAM, Galen seems to have had this passage in mind as well, when he interprets wetness as the cause of mindlessness and predicates the extreme dryness that causes perfect understanding to the stars.¹⁷⁰ As we noted, he then relates Heraclitus’ aphorism, which he cites as ‘a dry ray is the wisest soul’ (αὐγὴ ξηρὴ ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη), to the extreme intelligence of the stars that are both dry and ‘of the nature of light’ (αὐγοειδεῖς).¹⁷¹ There are also passages in Galen where he states that the intelligence of the heavenly bodies is transmitted through the light they exude. Frede has offered an excellent discussion of this subject, noting that ‘Notoriously from Plato onwards down to late antiquity the αὐγή of the sun or of fire is referred to again and again in discussions of the soul and in particular of the cognitive powers of the soul’.¹⁷² As Frede observes, Galen mostly uses the term αὐγοειδές in the context of vision and uses it to describe the psychic pneuma that is produced in the ventricles of the brain and moves between the brain and the eye.¹⁷³ Katerina Ierodiakonou, in her insightful study of Galen’s theory of vision, has shown how he ‘collects elements from the Platonic, the Aristotelian, and the Stoic model, in order to form his own eclectic theory’, in which the psychic pneuma functions as a kind of extension of our eye, assimilating the air into something similar to itself with the aid of sunlight and thus gathering data about perceived objects through the observation of colour.¹⁷⁴ Galen considers this psychic pneuma to be of the same character as the light of the sun.¹⁷⁵ Furthermore, in PHP book 7, he suggests that either soul needs to be identified with this ‘light-like and ethereal pneuma’ or the light-like pneuma is the vehicle (ὄχημα) of the soul.¹⁷⁶ Typically, Galen does not reach any definite conclusion on this subject, except that the pneuma is not likely to be the substance of the soul, since the substance would rather dwell in the ‘body of the brain itself’, whereas the pneuma appears to be an instrument moving from and to the brain.¹⁷⁷ It is clear, though, that the psychic pneuma is related to the power of cognition and that both are related to the light exuded by the heavenly bodies.

The notion of a vehicle of the soul is also used in Plato’s Timaeus, in two ways. First, Timaeus states that each soul is assigned to a star as its vehicle, and later on in the text the body, or more particularly the head, becomes the vehicle for the soul.¹⁷⁸ These two Platonic characterizations of the vehicle correspond to Galen’s location of the light-like pneuma in the head, eyes and heavenly bodies. Since the sun is not to be identified with the light it exudes, it might also make sense, given Galen’s comparisons between the brain and the sun, that the psychic pneuma that is produced and distributed from the brain, is not identical to its source, which would rather be something like the sun, i.e. a body of such mixture that it exudes something light-like. Therefore, the psychic pneuma should not be considered the substance of the soul, which is seated in the brain and rather produces and exudes the pneuma, using it as its instrument to extend itself throughout the body and outside of it. In the context of his theory of vision, Galen holds that this psychic pneuma meets with the air in such a manner that the air ‘forms one body’ with it, or is ‘assimilated’ to it.¹⁷⁹ The eye uses air as an instrument, in the same manner as the nerve is an instrument of the brain – as a medium for the psychic pneuma.¹⁸⁰ In his Compendium, Galen gives the same abridged and altered version of the theory of vision from the Timaeus.¹⁸¹

In Larrain’s fragment 18, the author seems to build on this notion of psychic pneuma as a corporeal substance that is able, due to its fineness, to penetrate other bodies like fire does, but due to its mildness compared to fire, can do so without burning or damaging those bodies.¹⁸² The author cites from Timaeus 58c the passage on the different types of flames. As Larrain remarks, he also connects this passage to Timaeus 45b, where Timaeus describes the fire flowing through the eyes, which is milder, comparable to the light of day and therefore does not burn.¹⁸³ In Larrain’s fragments 19 and 20, likewise, the pneuma which flows through the eyes is called αὐγοειδές and compared to the light of the sun.

In fragment 21, the author emphasizes that, if according to Plato himself the world-soul stretched itself out through everything, it surely must have been pre-eminently present in the sun.¹⁸⁴ Since our rational soul has some likeness to the world-soul, and the world-soul is pre-eminently located in the sun, it would make sense if our rational soul is light-like as well and if its substance would show some likeness to the substance of a heavenly body like the sun.¹⁸⁵ The passage from UP that we discussed earlier, on the pre-eminent intelligence of the heavenly bodies and the intelligence coming down through the air, seems to correspond well to this fragment. The author of Larrain’s fragments connects this notion of the heavenly bodies – being supremely intelligent because of their fiery substance and communicating their intelligence through the light they exude – with the notion of the light-like pneuma that moves between the eyes and the brain and that is described as the primary instrument of soul in PHP book VII (a description repeated in Larrain’s fragment 25,3–4).¹⁸⁶ Thus, visual perception and intelligence are strongly linked, as in Plato, but with more emphasis on the physiological underpinnings of this connection in terms of the light-like substance. This corresponds to the Galenic appreciation of dryness and heat as the qualities that increase intelligence and that are found pre-eminently in the heavenly bodies.¹⁸⁷ The same idea seems to come to the fore in Larrain’s fragment 22 as well, where the interaction of the light of the sun and the light-like pneuma from the eyes explains visual perception.¹⁸⁸

If the substance of soul is of the nature of light, then it has to be dry and warm, or have a substance that is fiery, like the stars. If the substance of the soul were then combined with something that is wet by nature, this combination would impede the activities of soul to the extent that its substance would not be as it should be in its ‘natural’ state, which seems similar to that of a star or heavenly body. Therefore, according to this fragment, the ‘embodiment’ of soul as it was depicted with the river-metaphor in the Timaeus, should be understood in terms of a kind of downward movement of a substance resembling the heavenly bodies towards the earth, including the changes it necessarily falls prey to on this journey. To step out of the Platonic cosmological frame a bit further, we might say: the generation of soul and intelligence on earth is dependent on the downward movement of intelligence from the heavenly bodies in the form of light, which forms the basis for our capacity of vision, cognition and understanding.¹⁸⁹

The underlying pattern of thought here seems to be something like the following. The heavenly bodies are divine and eternal. Soul bears some resemblance to them with respect to these qualities. Light is the quality that fiery heavenly bodies emanate and through which, perhaps, they order events down below (day and night, the seasons, growth and decay of living beings). Soul, originally a fiery substance that is dry and hot, is exuded from purely dry and hot heavenly bodies. It reaches down through the air in the form of light and mixes with an earthy substance that is wet and cold. That makes it lose some of its power. At the same time, however, it burns up the wet and cold substance. Therefore, there must be additions of substance in order to acquire a precarious and ephemeral balance between those two opposed qualities, temporally united in a single substance. However, even if this ephemeral balance is acquired, the activities of soul as something that is light-like, are still impeded to the extent that it is mixed with a substance opposite to itself, as becomes clear from the end of the last quotation: ‘… since the nature of wetness is utterly opposed to light, it shall be distanced from its activities to the extent that it is away from its proper nature’.¹⁹⁰ In that sense at least, this schema seems to remain faithful to the Platonic notion of the composite of body and soul. In those last lines, we can also recognize a basic axiom of Galen’s we have referred to earlier, namely that activity is determined by substance (or nature): when the substance changes, so does the activity it causes. The phrasing is similar to the passage in UP that we referred to above, where it was said that the intelligence of the heavenly bodies is ‘that much better and sharper than that in the earthly bodies as the substance of their body is purer’.¹⁹¹

Interestingly, the author presents this account as common, or the one that is most at hand or readily available (πρόχειρον τὸν τῆς αἰτίας δώσει λογισμόν). This seems to indicate that the notions of soul as something light-like and, therefore, that of wetness as something that is opposed to it and that hinders the proper activities of soul, were more commonly held or discussed.

In the next lines of the fragment, Heraclitus is brought in again:

διὸ καὶ καλῶς ὑφ΄῾Ηρακκλείτου δοκεῖ λελέχθαι· ξηρὰ ψυχὴ σοφωτάτη. καὶ διὰ τοῦτο δὴ καὶ τὴν δίαιταν οἱ φιλόσοφοι κελεύουσιν ἡμᾶς ποιεῖσθαι διὰ ποσότητός τε καὶ ποιότητος ἐδεσμάτων τοιαύτης τε καὶ τοσαύτης.¹⁹²

And therefore it seems to have been stated also by Heraclitus rightfully: the dry soul is wisest. And for this reason also, the philosophers urge us to make a diet based on quantity and quality of foods that are such and so much.

The way Heraclitus is quoted here is slightly different than in QAM, but the meaning attributed to it is the same: the dry soul is wiser since the rational soul is naturally dry.¹⁹³ We also find the notion of a specific diet that is conducive to changing one’s substance for the better in order to improve intelligence. Al-Rhāzī also reports this in the passage we quoted earlier, which Schröder and Larrain considered to be on the first book of Galen’s commentary. We also know it from QAM, where Galen claims to be able to prescribe diets that increase intelligence and memory.¹⁹⁴ To take a concrete and practical example: in Loc. Aff., Galen suggests that loss of memory is due to cold and wet affections of the head, and should be treated by prescribing substances that warm and dry the head.¹⁹⁵ Under the assumption that the relative dryness of the substance of the rational soul determines its intellectual capacities, it seems reasonable for philosophers to try and change their substance to become drier. This would involve, as we have seen, the soul becoming more active, closer to its original nature, hot and dry, exuding light and intelligence like the heavenly bodies do. That is to say, once the idea is established that the activities of the rational soul are dependent upon its substance, and that its substance is something that can be analysed as some kind of mixture of the elemental qualities, while at the same time we know that these mixtures are subject to change and that we can influence them via the qualities we bring them in contact with, it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that specific diets could be more or less conducive to the pursuit of wisdom because of the changes they bring about to the substance of the rational soul, especially considering the assumption that there is a hierarchy of mixtures corresponding to the vertical cosmic hierarchy. After all, the very fact that the soul, or the stuff of soul, moves from its primary source, i.e. the heavenly realm, to the realm of the earth – this Platonic background seems to be still in place to some extent – with the corresponding change in elemental qualities that are found in these respective regions, apparently prompts a change in its substance that is so intense, that it loses the rationality that defined its nature, as Galen (and the author of Larrain’s fragments) seems to interpret Plato. Thus, the struggle of soul with its newly acquired body is explained in terms of a struggle between elemental qualities predominantly found among the heavenly bodies and those predominating the lower realm.

Let us look at the next part of Larrain’s fragment 9:

ἂν δ΄ ἀσώματόν τις τὴν ψυχὴν εἶναι λέγῃ καθάπερ ὁ Πλάτων, ἀλλ΄ ὄχημά τι διδωσιν αὐτῇ αὐγοειδές. διὰ τούτου τοίνυν τῆς κοινωνίας αὐτῇ πρὸς τὰ τῶν νεογενῶν σώματα γινομένης, διὰ τούτου καὶ τὰ τῆς βλάβης ἕπεται, κινήσεις γὰρ ἐχούσης τῆς λογικῆς τεταγμένας. ὅταν δὲ ὑγρότης ἀτάκτως κινουμένη παραποδίζηταί πως αὐτάς ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστι εἰς ταραχὴν καὶ στάσιν ἀφικέσθαι τὸ διοικούμενον ὑπ΄ ἀμφοῖν σῶμα, ποτὲ μὲν τῆς ψυχῆς κρατούσης, ποτὲ δὲ τῆς ὑγρότητος.¹⁹⁶

Someone might say, like Plato, that the soul is something incorporeal, but he gave some kind of vehicle to her that is of the nature of light. This is why, accordingly, when the communion of her with the bodies of newborns comes to be, therefore also the indications of damage follow, for the rational has ordered movements. But when the soul is wet and is moved in a disorderly fashion, those are somehow hindered, and it is necessary that the body arranged by both comes to be in disorder and discord, where sometimes the soul wins, and sometimes the wetness.

The author emphasizes that Plato gave a luminous vehicle to the soul. As we have seen, this may go back to the star assigned to each soul, or the head as the soul’s abode. This remark seems to imply that even Plato himself did not strictly deny the soul all bodily qualities, or at least that he considered it necessary to give it a proper vehicle. Since the qualities of this vehicle, then, clash with the wetness of the body, the soul’s movements are perturbed. In the fragment, however, the opposition in the end is simply between soul and wetness, not between two different kinds of bodies of which the soul naturally inhabits one (which would also, obviously, amount to further problems). The phrase ‘τὰ τῆς βλάβης’ must refer back to the medical observations (ταῦτα ἰατρικά) at the beginning of the fragment, that were called indications (τεκμήρια) for the rational soul being damaged when mixed with a wet body. Thus, it seems as if the author here is trying to bring Plato closer to the notion of soul being a hot and dry substance originating from higher realms, by emphasizing that Plato thought it necessary to give soul a luminous vehicle. Next, the distinction between the soul itself and its vehicle is simply dropped again, and the struggle between body and soul is depicted as a struggle between soul and wetness. The harm that follows is not harm for a vehicle or a body, but for the rational soul itself, which becomes hindered in its proper movements. The author simply calls the soul itself wet. This clearly implies that he assumes that the soul itself can be described in terms of the elemental qualities. Again, the struggle is that of a continuous fight between the elemental qualities, rather than a fight between an incorporeal and corporeal substance. The only way to make sense of this text seems to be to assume that ‘soul’ here is equivalent to a substance that is relatively dry. In fact that is also what the fragment started out with when calling the substance of the soul αὐγοειδῆ, that is to say, something that is of such nature that it exudes light, i.e. fiery, warm and dry, opposed to wetness. The last part of fragment 9 is as follows:

εἰ μὲν οὖν ἡ ψυχὴ τελέως ἐνικήσει, τεταγμένας ἴσχει τὰς κινήσεις, ἐὰν δὲ ἡ ὑγρότης, ἀτάκτους ἁπάσας, ὁποῖαι κατὰ σπασμοὺς καὶ παλμοὺς γίνονται. κἂν ἐπὶ πλέον δὲ κρατήσῃ, λήθαργοί τε καὶ ἀποπληξίαι καταλαμβάνουσι τὸ ζῷον.¹⁹⁷

Thus, if the soul wins completely, it holds ordered movements, but when the wetness wins, all movements are disordered, such as those that happen with spasms and quivers. And if it wins for the most part, lethargy and apoplexies take hold of the living being.

Here we see clearly, once more, that the relative predominance of the elemental qualities of a substance determines the quality of its movements: if wetness wins, the movements are of the disordered, irrational kind; if ‘soul’ wins, the movements are of the ordered kind. This struggle between the qualities, which determines the relative intelligence of a substance, can also cause disease if wetness wins for the most part. The disorder caused by predominant wetness can cause extreme conditions such as lethargy. As we have seen, this relation of lethargy and predominant wetness (sometimes coldness), is found in attested Galenic works as well. The conception of soul as something that is luminous, or dry and hot, fits well with the explanation of psychic ailments, such as lethargy, in terms of mixture.

4.4 Substance, Activity and Soul in Plato’s and Galen’s Timaeus

The author of Larrain’s fragments takes over the dualism of ordered and disordered movements from the Timaeus. However, its explanation in terms of the elemental qualities is dependent upon the assumption that substance determines activity and the accompanying assumption that the substance of any given thing, including the soul, must consist of a specific mixture of elemental qualities. In Larrain’s fragment 10, these two kinds of movement are differentiated according to a hierarchy in which the circular motion is said to be the best. The other movements are considered inferior to it because they differ according to ‘the more and less’ (κατὰ τὸ μᾶλλον τε καὶ ἧττον).¹⁹⁸ As Larrain observed, this fragment relates to Timaeus 34a1–5 and 43b1-e8, where the two kinds of movement are described respectively.¹⁹⁹ Opposed to the unordered and non-recurring movements, the circular motion is said to be the most ordered movement, which is possessed by the wisest body (φρονιμώτατον σῶμα).²⁰⁰ The author here uses the word κυκλοφορικὴ, which is mostly found in Byzantine authors, but also in early Christian ones such as Eusebius and Basilius, and in Neoplatonists such as Olympiodorus, Philoponus and Syrianus. The word seems to have been used in this form from somewhere around the 4th century only, although Aristotle uses κυκλοφορία, which is also frequently found in Peripatetic and Neoplatonist authors after Aristotle. This could be taken as an indication that the text we are dealing with was not (strictly) based on Galen’s own commentary. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to find exceptional forms of existing words in Galen that we hardly find anywhere else before his writings. Moreover, it would not be odd if an excerptor of Galen’s actual commentary would use terminology from his own day to summarize its content. We also know that Neoplatonist scholars such as those just mentioned knew and discussed Galen’s work, particularly QAM.²⁰¹

In Plato’s Timaeus, the other movements, apart from the circular and wise one, are six in number and are essentially distinct from the circular one because their movement is characterized by the different. This second kind of motion is quite opposed to the circular motion of the same. It is not motion in one place, not uniform or regular, not systematic, and does not relate to the same things. This is irrational motion, and the six rectilinear motions fall under this qualification. Specifically, this is the motion attributed by Timaeus to the primary bodies, when they are governed by necessity, ‘before’ or separated from the persuasion of reason. Everything within the cosmos is governed through some mix of these various kinds of motions, while those things that move more regularly and rationally have a larger share in the movement of the same. The circular movement that is always the same is the movement of the universe as such, which has no share in the other six, irrational movements.²⁰² In Laws book X, the Athenian elaborates on this idea and distinguishes two basic kinds of motion.²⁰³ The first is motion that takes place in one place, and therefore round some centre, regularly and uniformly, in relation to the same things. This is the motion that is described there as most akin to ‘the revolution of reason’ (τῇ τοῦ νοῦ περίοδῳ), while in the Timaeus the motion of the same is attributed primarily to the universe as such (which is the most rational movement) and then also to the motion of the heavenly bodies, which, however, partake of the movement of the different as well. It is this motion that we need to adapt our own motion to, if we are to partake of the divine.²⁰⁴

The author of Larrain’s fragments seems to transform this idea of becoming like the gods by adapting our movements to one of becoming like the gods through altering our mixture into a substance that is more luminous and dry. This idea comes to the fore clearly in Larrain’s fragment 11, where the author states once more that the activities of the rational soul are damaged by wetness (‘ὅτι μὲν ὑπὸ τῆς ὑγρότητος αἱ τῆς λογικῆς ψυχῆς ἐνέργειαι βλάπτονται’).²⁰⁵ Then, however, the distinction between the two ‘revolutions’ (περίοδοι) is said to be difficult to understand, unless these revolutions are understood as substances rather than movements, to which the movements can be attributed (‘πλὴν εἰ περιόδους ἀξιώσει τις λέγειν αὐτὸν οὐ τὰς κινήσεις ἀλλὰ τὰς οὐσίας, αἷς αἱ περίοδοι συμβεβήκασιν’).²⁰⁶ The author grounds the resemblance of our soul to the heavens in a similarity of substance, rather than one of movement (‘οὕτω γὰρ μόνως ἐπινοῆσαι δυνατὸν εἶναί τινας κατὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν ψυχὴν οὐσίας, ὁμοίας ταῖς κατὰ τὸν οὐρανον’).²⁰⁷ This corresponds to Galen’s views on substance and intelligence in UP and QAM, as we have seen, as well as to his general views on the relation between substance and activity (i.e. the former is cause of the latter). Moreover, in his Compendium, he speaks of the ‘natures’ of the same and the different rather than the ‘movements’. As Das and Koetschet indicate, ‘nature’ may be a vague term in this context, but it could be that this is ‘an interpretative reworking of Plato’s doctrine of soul rotations’ by putting emphasis on a difference in nature rather than movement.²⁰⁸ I think that, indeed, especially given Galen’s common equation of nature and substance, it is quite plausible that we have another parallel between the Compendium and Larrain’s fragments here. Moreover, this interpretation of Galen’s Compendium would also be in line with his general reading of the causal role of mixture with regard to intelligence. That is to say, one’s movements would be more in accordance with the movements of the same if one’s substance or nature would be more in accordance with the nature of things that display this movement, i.e. the heavenly bodies. The emphasis on substance as a cause of movement – as opposed to the distinction of different kinds of movement that are defined as the soul which is prior to body as in the Timaeus – corresponds to Galen’s general appreciation of the causal role of the body with regard to the activities of the soul. The lack of rationality of newborns due to the wetness of their substance also recurs again in Larrain’s fragment 12, and is particularly related again, as we also have seen in Galen, to the abundance of blood, which is required in greater amount in newborns because they need it for their growth.²⁰⁹

In QAM Galen does something similar to what the author of Larrain’s fragments does, when he argues that our psychic capacities are dependent upon our mixture and that there are diets (in the broad sense of regimens) that could change mixture for the better, improving our capacity for memory and understanding by increasing the predominance of dryness, supposedly.²¹⁰ In QAM, Plato’s ὁμοίωσις θεῷ becomes a kind of ὁμοίωσις οὐσίᾳ τῶν ἄστρων, an adaptation of the mixture to liken it more to the substance of the stars.

The important differences with Plato are (1) that the change that needs to be made is a change primarily in substance, rather than in motion, upon which a change in motion follows since substance determines activity, and (2) that this change of substance consists in a change in the elemental qualities of the substance of the rational soul. According to Galen, at least, such a change is not only effected by diet. Besides the fact that for Galen one’s mixture is affected by many other factors besides food and drink,²¹¹ it is not only the case that mixture determines activity, but also that activity determines mixture, as we can see, e.g., in the following passage from Temp.:

πολλοὺς γὰρ καὶ τῶν φύσει λεπτῶν ἐθεασάμην παχυνθέντας καὶ τῶν παχέων λεπτυνθέντας τοὺς μὲν ἀργίᾳ τε καὶ τῷ ἁβροδιαίτῳ τὴν ὅλην κρᾶσιν ὑπαλλάξαντας ἐπὶ τὸ ὑγρότερον, τοὺς δ΄ἐν ταλαιπωρίαις πλείοσι καὶ φροντίσι καὶ διαίτᾳ λεπτῇ καταξηρανθέντας.²¹²

I have observed many naturally thin people become thickened, and naturally thick people thinned, the former as a result of changing their entire mixture for the wetter through idleness and self-indulgence, the latter as a result of a drying-out process arising from excessive labour, worry and a thin[ning] daily regime.

tr. Singer and van der Eijk

Here, it is activity or a lack thereof that changes mixture: by being idle and self-indulgent, one’s mixture becomes wetter, while through labour and worry it becomes drier. This corresponds to the specific way the causality functions when conceived the other way around: wetness makes the soul inactive and dryness or heat stimulates the activity of the (rational) soul. Here we must also remember, however, that activity for Galen is always already activity of a specific substance and thus dependent on the condition of the substance prior to the activity that then alters that same substance.

We do find in Plato’s Timaeus the notion that certain bodies are proper to certain movements,²¹³ but in no way should the substances of these bodies be taken to determine their movement, particularly not in case of the heavenly bodies. The reasoning in the Timaeus is rather the other way around: these substances were put there because they suit the movements that were already put there.²¹⁴ Therefore, in Plato, it is essentially the movement or the mover (i.e. soul) that is wise, and not the body partaking of the wise movement, which is, rather, a hindrance. In the reading of Galen and the author of Larrain’s fragments, however, a specific quality of bodies becomes the hindrance, while another specific quality of bodies becomes the cause for the movement.