Galen’s Pergamene Identity

Abstract Although the physician Galen of Pergamon lived in Rome for most of his adult life, he distanced himself from Roman culture and identified as Asian or Pergamene. His father, whom he revered, chose Pergamene teachers, and Galen modelled his career on a Pergamene physician, Quintus, who practised in Rome. Although we do not know whether he visited Pergamon after 168 ce, he continued to own his ancestral property and to correspond with friends there. At Rome, his circle of friends included several other Pergamenes, some of whom he knew before moving there. He wrote about local plants and drug lore, and transmitted recipes of King Attalus III, whom he refers to in neutral terms, although Attalus was notorious in Roman sources. He frequently comments on Asian Greek dialect and considers it the purest descendant of the language used by Hippocrates. He called Asclepius his ‘ancestral god’.