Leonid Zhmud The Origin of the History of Science in Classical Antiquity

FGrHist 264 F 25); Ps.-Galen. Intr. seu medicus, 14, 674. See above,
298 n. 99. In Clement (
Strom. I, 16, 75) medicine is invented in Egypt and then de-
veloped by Asclepius.
107
Aristobul. fr. 2 Denis; Goulet, R. Aristoboulos,
DPhA I (1994) 379–380.
108
Ps.-Eupolemus (
FGrHist 724 F 1–2); Artapan (FGrHist 726 F 1).
109
Clem. Alex.
Strom. I,15.72–16.77; Euseb. Praep. Ev. X,1.1–7; X,4.17, etc.; Theodor.
Graec. affect. cur. I, 12ff.; Pythagoras and Plato studied under the Egyptians and the
Jews (ibid. II, 23–26). In Roman and medieval Latin authors, the perspective was
slightly different (Worstbrock,
op. cit., 9ff.).
110
Tat.
Adv. Graec., I,1.9: Ôqen paúsasqe tà~ mim2sei~ eûrései~ @pokaloñnte~.
111
See e.g.
Comm. in Aratum reliquiae, 318.20f.; Mich. Psell. Oratoria minora,
18.72f., 21.33ff; Eustath.
Comm. in Dionys. perieg., 907.1–10; Comm. ad Hom. Il. I,
733.3–11.

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Chapter 8: Historiography of science after Eudemus: a brief outline
300
(13
th
century) begin with Hermes and his son Asclepius.
112
Hermes is also men-
tioned among the Greek scientists in the bio-bibliographical encyclopaedia
Fihrist, which also lists his astronomical works.
113
Having borrowed not only
Greek science, but also the historico-scientific tradition of late Antiquity, Mus-
lim culture successfully integrated the scheme of
inventio (translatio) artium
into the general perspective of scientific progress, whereby the legendary
names and events gradually gave place to historical ones. At the turn of the 10
th
century, the eminent translator of Greek scientific texts Ishaq ibn Hunayn de-
scribed a scholarly dispute in which one of the participants maintained that
Hippocrates was the first physician and all the others derived their knowledge
from him, while the other insisted that Hippocrates derived his knowledge from
the ancients and his name became prominent only because he discovered many
things and wrote them down systematically.
114
On the order of the vizier, who
was attending the dispute, Ishaq compiled the outline of the chronology of doc-
tors from the beginning of medicine to the present date (902); he thereby made
use of the text ascribed to Yahya an-Nahwi (i.e., Joannes Philoponus).
115
This
text divided the history of Greek medicine into eight periods, from Asclepius to
Galen and his followers. While everything that preceded Hippocrates was sheer
legend, the period from Galen to the sixth century AD was represented by his-
torical names and texts.
116
In a much more interesting historical perspective,
translatio artium appears
in
An Epistle to Saladin on the Revival of the Art of Healing by ibn-G˘umay‘
(ibn-Jami‘, d. 1198), the Jewish physician of sultan Saladin.
117
I mean here the
‘Alexandria to Baghdad’ complex of narratives – an account, popular in the
Muslim world, of the origin, development, and decline of Greek philosophy
and science and their subsequent passage to the Arabs.
118
Like Ishaq ibn Hu-
112
Meyerhof. Sultan Saladin’s physician, 176; Ullmann, M.
Die Medizin im Islam,
Leiden 1970, 229f.
113
Fihrist, 634. Idris and Hermes as the inventors of astronomy: Wiedemann. Über Er-
finder, 194–195.
114
Rosenthal. Ishaq b. Hunayn’s Ta’rih al-attiba’, 72ff.
115
There is a confusion of people known in Arabic as Yahya al-Nahwi: Meyerhof, M.
Johannes Grammatikos (Philoponos) von Alexandrien und die arabische Medizin,