Galen and the fortune of the Attic Comedy

This article provides an overview of references and uses of the Old Attic Comedy in the Galenic corpus. It is known that Galen had a huge interest in linguistics, notably concerning the interpretation of Hippocrates. Most of his references to Old comic playwrights are indeed related to linguistic matter, as their language was considered representative of the classical period. This use of Old Comedy as an interpretative tool can be widely observed in Galen’s exegetical works on Hippocratic texts, such as his Glossary, and the commentaries, and clearly go back to an earlier lexicographical tradition. In other cases, instead, Galen refers to the Old Comedy for other purposes and because of more personal reasons: on one side the comic genre was a necessary part of his literary education, on the other side, as a physician he had an interest in health and pathology of theatre professionals. His attitude shows a closeness to the scoptic element in Comedy – especially in medical controversies – as well as to the competitive dimension of the theatrical performances.