Time for the Ancients

“Time for the Ancients” deals with time awareness, time assessment, and time management by focusing on the work of Galen, which Singer (henceforth S.) knows in depth.[1] The volume consists of five chapters thematically organized, followed by an extensive bibliography and two indices; it is enriched by fifteen illustrations and seven tables, which prove to be particularly helpful to visualize technological matters as well as typologies and periodizations. Each chapter begins by considering a broader socio-historical and/or philosophical perspective and progressively narrows it down to a medical one, mostly (but not exclusively) focusing on Galen’s thought.

Chapter One is dedicated to Graeco-Roman techniques of time measurement, the most prominent of which were sundials and water-clocks. Sundials, which had a symbolic, ornamental, but also practical use, reveal the Roman attitudes towards both daily and hourly organization of time, especially if we consider the difference between seasonal and equinoctial hours (horai). Just like the sundial also the water-clock (clepsydra), which was important in the context of law courts, posits the problem of accuracy from the perspective of both the constructer and the “user”. The use of time-telling devices, their accessibility and context of use are crucial to understand how time was perceived and organized within the day; in medical texts, the reference to specific times of the day is important for the prescription of daily regimes to be respected also in the so-called “festive times”.

Chapter Two deals with the life cycle and the yearly cycle of the seasons. The latter is important from the medical perspective, since both fevers and diet, which should follow allopathic principles, depend on it. As S. shows when dealing with the four-age structure child–youth–adult man–old man and with the seven-year periods (hebdomades) “the attempt to arrive at precise numbers for the successive life phases is […] a recurrent preoccupation” [p.40]. By suggesting different pattern and training appropriate to each model of life, Galen is said to enrich the traditional connection medical authors established between the four stages of life and (the pairing of) the four basic qualities (i.e. hot/cold/wet/dry).

Chapter Three explores the conception which authors had both of periods of the previous history and of the period to which they belonged; it also considers how the authors periodized their own life or work by connecting it to particular dates. The chapter starts from a broader perspective that encompasses the astrological preoccupation to fix the hour of birth for the sake of horoscope-casting and the Stoic lesson to value the present moment. In line with the backward-looking, classicizing culture of his time, Galen is presented as elevating, and constantly engaging with, the sound argumentative and ethical practices of the named palaioi, especially Hippocrates and Plato – also Diocles and Praxagoras as well as Aristotle and Theophrastus constitute Galen’s authorities – and despising the mostly unnamed, decadent, ill-educated, competitive neôteroi. Galen’s cultural isolation in Rome is said to pair with “his temporal self-insulation” [p.81]. His reverence for the ancients is nevertheless linked to a notion of perfection of the ancient body of knowledge, which, as the case of anatomy paradigmatically shows, relates to a more recent tradition. In his “auto-bibliography” [p.91], which is contrasted at the end of the chapter with the hagiographical project of Porphyry’s Life of Plotinus, Galen himself identifies crucial turning-points in his own life with ends of hebdomads.

Chapter Four deals with the monthly cycle and its significance for the diagnosis and treatment of fevers. After considering the key concepts kairos, krisis, and peira – all contained in the first Hippocratic aphorism, S. turns to fever, whose episodes “were understood as taking place according to certain clearly defined period cycles or patterns (periodoi, tupoi)” [p.106] and underlies the importance of the prognôsis to gain the patient’s trust. Galen accuses his rivals of departing from Hippocratic clarity either by oversimplifying or by over-complicating matters. In discussing the conversion table of Galen’s Periods and Galen’s medical month, S. shows that Galen’s own scheme implies the arrogation to himself of the expertise required for the correct interpretation of a rather polysemic scheme.

Chapter Five considers time as well as its perception and measurability by focusing on motion and rhythm. After offering a broader picture of the philosophical treatment of time and its relationship to motion by touching upon Plato, Plotinus, and Aristotle’s Physics, S. focuses on Galen by considering (i) statements attributed to him by Themistius and Simplicius and (ii) Galen’s own treatises on the pulse. (i) With all the caveats involved in reconstructing an author’s original view when reported by hostile witnesses, Galen is attributed the view “that time can only be defined in its own terms and that it is not true that our perception of it is inextricable from that of motion” [p.129] and the conceptual independence of time and motion. (ii) In dealing with the question as to how measurement of the speed (not of the frequency) of the pulse was performed, S. highlights Galen’s focus on the perceptual and analytical skills of the measurer, whose senses can and should be highly trained. Perception is a key aspect, since Galen also argues that we perceive minimal units of time. Other than Damascius, who takes time to be naturally divided into parts, yet conceptually infinitely divisible, Galen thinks of time as “a continuum in nature which our human perception translates into an atomic structure” [p.152]. The theory of “primary perceptible units” is further explored by considering not only metrics and rhythm, but also the contributions of Aristoxenus, whose protoi chronoi are not features of reality, but rather conceptual constructs we use to measure time, and those of Herophilus of Chalcedon, who did defend a quantificatory approach in measuring the pulse Galen would have never aimed for.

A. P.

[1] See the articles and translations from his pen listed in the Bibliography [p.178].