Galen’s De Indolentia and The Fire of 192 CE: Through the Eyes of Book History

Abstract

Sometime in the spring of the year 192 CE,2 a fire–all too frequent in the jerry-built Rome of the time–raged through the Temple of Peace in the Forum, the centre of official Rome. Like several other monumental buildings on the nearby Palatine Hill, the temple possessed a library, where intellectuals often met for discussion.3 A cluster of other buildings on the nearby Via Sacra included two high-status warehouses for rare spices and valuable merchandise, the Horrea Piperateria and the Horrea Vespasiani. They also stored the valuables of wealthy Romans and others who were temporarily absent from the city. Pier Luigi Tucci imagines the situation as a north wind blew flames from the burning roofs of houses in the near-by Subura towards the temple, the warehouses, and onward south-west,4 but we need only recall the fire at Notre Dame on April 15, 2019, with heavy wooden roof-beams crashing down onto the cathedral’s vaulted ceiling, to reconstruct it for ourselves. The “fire of Commodus” swept away not only the temple, the libraries, and the warehouses, but almost all the personal possessions of one of the empire’s notables: Claudius Galenus, (129-ca. 200/16?), the most famous physician of his time.5 Among his losses were the rare medicaments he needed for clinical work, the unique bronze surgical instruments he had designed, and the bookrolls constituting most of his personal library: not