122 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 89: 1 (1998)
xxii + 357 pp., illus., index. 1994. London/New
York: Routledge, 1996. (Paper.)
Roger French,who is well known for a rangeof
studies in the historyof medicine especially, has
had the initiative to found a new series, entitled
"TheSciences of Antiquity,"of which this book
is the firstvolume. Two more books, by Tamsyn
Barton and by Rosemary Wright, have subse-
quently been published.The generalaims of the
series are set out in an introductionthatcontains
a clarion call for a new type of historicalstudy.
We must rid ourselves of the idea that what the
ancient Greeks and Romans were doing was
practicingscience. Nevertheless, there did exist
what French is preparedto call the "sciences,"
generally representednow in scare quotations.
These "sciences" include medicine and mathe-
matics and the subject of this volume, natural
history.
Much of the programFrenchhas set out is to
be applauded.Althoughhis tone is, on occasion,
polemical, few historiansnowadays would wish
to endorse the type of anachronisticand teleo-
logical historythathe condemns.If anything,his
prospectus is, in places, not radical enough.
There may be as many problems in our use of
terms for which the Greeks appearto have had
an equivalent-such as "mathematics"-as in
our use of those for which they did not-such as
"science"itself. To write that naturalhistory is
a categoryrecognizableequally to Romansas to
modems seems unguardedwhen one of the chief
themes of the book is the variety of studies this
rubriccovered in the ancient world.
Everything depends, of course, on how well
the proposedaims of the series areimplemented
in practice. This volume takes historia in the
sense of the inquiry into what is remarkable,
thereby tending to push the subject toward the
study of mirabilia. Frenchhas devoted chapters
to Aristotle, to Theophrastus, to geography
(chiefly Strabo),to "Greeceand Rome" (a set of
unsatisfactorily brief comments on Lucretius,
Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch,and Galen), to Pliny,
and to "Animals and Parables"(ranging from
Philo JudaeusthroughAelian to the Physiologus
and Saint Basil). The lion's shareof space, how-
ever, goes to Aristotle,especially to the Historia
animalium, though Pliny too is covered very
fully, in an anecdotalstyle that mirrorshis Nat-
ural History.AlthoughFrenchincludes some re-
marks on Galen, he says very little about the
Hippocraticwriters(it appearsthathe takes doc-
tor and naturalhistorianas more or less exclu-
sive categories). Again no mention is made of
historia as a key concept in the methodology of
empiricistmedicine.
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Among the excellent featuresof French's ap-
proach are, first, his insistence on the close re-
lations between the history of animals and his-
tory in our usual sense of the record of events,
and, second, the emphasis on the varied moral
interestsof his ancientwriters.But at points one
detects signs that some comers were cut in the
writing and perhaps also in the underlyingthe-
ses. When Aristotlejustifies dissection, it is not
(as Frenchclaims here)becausedissectionyields
certainty(which it does not) so much as because
it yields resourcesfor understanding.In a bid to
set up contrasts between Aristotle and Theo-
phrastus,French tends to underestimatethe lat-
ter's interest in causes; and when he claims the
two differ in that, for Aristotle, final causes are
everywhere,he discounts the fact that Aristotle
explicitly denies that some things have final
causes. Nor is it clear thatFrenchis rightto take
"nature"in Aristotle to be the natures-of-things,
ratherthan naturein general.
Inevitably, in a book that covers as much
ground as this one, some of French's positions
are contestable.But the ambitionto producehis-
torical studies that focus resolutely on how the
ancients themselves saw their subjects is to be
wholeheartedlywelcomed.
GEOFFREY LLOYD
Peter Kingsley. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery,
and Magic: Empedoclesand Pythagorean Tra-
dition. x + 422 pp., figs., bibl., index. Oxford/
New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1995. $62.
The title of this book covers the main points in
the plot: Empedocles was not only, or even pri-
marily, a philosopher,but rathera magician and
a mystic, heavily indebtedto assortedPythago-
rean beliefs and practices currentamong Greek
colonists in southernItaly and Sicily in the fifth
centuryB.C.and earlier.Similar beliefs underlie
the myth of Plato's Phaedo and will be found
again in Greekmagical papyrifrom Egypt, up to
the fourthand fifth centuriesA.D.,and in Arabic
alchemicaltexts of the ninthand tenthcenturies.
To supportthis thesis Peter Kingsley divides
his book into three sections: "Philosophy,"
"Mystery,""Magic."The section entitled "Phi-
losophy"is an attemptto solve the puzzle of how
to correlatethe four divine names of frag. 6 with
Empedocles' four elements (earth, air, fire, and
water). Kingsley seeks to revive the nineteenth-
centurythesis thatAidoneus, an alternativename
for Hades, god of the underworld,is fire, that
Zeus (the rival candidatefor fire) is air, and that
Hera (the rival candidatefor air) is earth.
 BOOKREVIEWS-ISIS,89 : 1 (1998)
To maintainthe distinctionbetween Zeus (air)
and Hera (earth),Kingsley argues at length that
air, and specifically the air we breathe,is never
described in the fragmentsas aer (an anagram,
in Greek, of Hera), but only as aither. So rig-
orous a distinctionleads to variousanomalies.In
frag. 149 Plutarch attaches the traditionalde-
scription of Zeus as "cloud-gatherer"not to
aither but to aer. Kingsley has to suppose that
Plutarch(authorof a multivolumework on Em-
pedocles) is mistaken.In frag. 100 Empedocles
compares breathingin and out with the move-
ment of air and water in and out of a clepsydra.
Kingsley has to emend the unanimous reading
of the manuscripts(verse 13) from aer to aither.
He does so, withouthavingunderstoodthe work-
ings of an ancientclepsydra.When the clepsydra
is immersed in water and the upper spout is
blocked, the air in the vessel (aer in the manu-
scripts) is not "hermeticallysealed off from the
surroundingwater,"as Kingsley claims it is (p.
27). On the contrary,air and waterare in contact
throughperforationsat the base of the vessel.
"Mystery"is an accountof Philolaus's theory
of a central fire, with earth and counterearthin
differentorbitsaroundit, the counterearthcloser
to the center. Kingsley has an intriguingand in-
terestingexplanationof the origins of this theory
as a literalinterpretationof Homer'sTartarus"as
far below Hades as heaven is from the earth"
(Iliad 8.13-16). "Tartarus"becomes the central
fire, "Hades" becomes the counterearth,and
"heaven"is the sphere of the fixed stars.
Kingsley finds inspirationfor this interpreta-
tion in an intermediarytheory,which he ascribes
to Empedocles, of a central fire in a geocentric
universe. Confusingly,Aidoneus now has to be-
come an alias, not of Hades, but of Tartarus.
Worse still, the attributionto Empedocles of a
central fire falsifies the evidence. For despite
Kingsley's repeated assurancesto the contrary,
Empedocles (frag. 52) and the ancient authors
who quote him (Seneca, pseudo-Plutarch,Pro-
clus) write exclusively of firesburningbelow the
surfaceof the earth,not of fire at the earth'scen-
ter. The one exception is the ninth-centuryAra-
bic authorof a work translatedinto Latin under
the title Turbaphilosophorum.In a passage now
extant only in Latin, the author writes of Em-
pedocles' earthas an egg, with the solis punctus
at the center of the yolk. But the solis punctus,
as Kingsley recognizes (pp. 57-58), is here an
alchemical motif. It would be hazardousin the
extreme to suppose that at this point the author
of the Turbahas preservedan authenticdetail of
Empedocles' philosophy otherwise unattested
by any ancient author.
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123
ThomasAquinas,with his customarylucidity,
draws a clear distinction between a position at
the center of the universe and a position below
the surface of the earthwhen writing of the Py-
thagoreans in his Summa theologica (pt. 3,
supp., qu. 97, art. 7, in answer to the question
"Utrum ignis inferni sit sub terra").Kingsley
quotes this passage (p. 204) but seemingly does
not appreciatethat Thomas's simple distinction
underminesthe thesis Kingsley has been at such
pains to elucidate in the preceding one hundred
pages. Even in a geocentricsystem, firesburning
below the surface of the earth (as ascribed to
Empedocles by Seneca and others) are not nec-
essarily fires at the center of the universe.
"Magic"is a long and interestingaccount of
the story of Empedocles' leap into Etna and the
subsequentdiscovery of a single bronze sandal
as originally the tale of a purificatoryjourney to
the fiery underworld.But Kingsley's thesis is
flawed because of his misplacedconfidencethat
the originalbackgroundto the legend goes back
to Empedocles himself. Without further evi-
dence, Diogenes' tale remains only what it has
always been thoughtto be: a tale told aboutEm-
pedocles, and not necessarily a faithful account
of somethingthat Empedocles said or did.
The infernalgeographyof the myth of Plato's
Phaedo, Kingsley argues, was taken from a
younger contemporaryof Empedocles, Zopyrus
of Heraclea,authorof a work, now lost, ascribed
to Orpheus and entitled Krater. Kingsley's ar-
gument,however, is inconsistent.He claims that
Zopyrus's Krater was paraphrasedby Plato in
the myth of the Phaedo. But he also arguespas-
sionately (and with caustic criticism of other
scholars) that, in the myth of the Phaedo, Plato
drew on an exclusively oral Orphictraditionand
that he was the first to pass from "orality"to
"literacy"(Ch. 9). Kingsley seems not to realize
that the texts he has quoted to prove this point
(pp. 109-110) serve equally to underminehis
own thesis, in the chaptersfollowing (Chs. 10-
14), on Plato's use of Zopyrus.The Krater was
undoubtedlya writtentext.
Was Empedocles a magician and a mystic?
Kingsley claims to revolutionize Empedoclean
studies by answering in the affirmative.But he
is pushing at an open door. The answers are to
be found in the extant fragments. Empedocles
was plainly a magician if by magician we mean
someone who claims, as Empedocles did (frag.
111), to bringpeople back fromthe dead.He was
no less plainly a mystic if by mystic we mean
someone who claims, as Empedocles also did
(frag. 112), to be a god. (By the same two criteria
the founder of Christianitywould likewise be a
124 BOOKREVIEWS-ISIS,89: 1 (1998)

mystic and a magician.) But the reader who folk culture;since the 1970s, especially, Hilde-
wantsto know whatEmpedoclesthe philosopher gardian studies have flourished. Widespread
thought of immortality and divinization will scholarly acquaintancewith her work has, how-
have to turnsomewhereotherthanto Kingsley's ever, been hamperedby the difficulty of obtain-
serriedfootnotes and elusive arguments. ing texts in English-for example, there are no
The bibliographydoes not aim to list all the complete, accurate translationsof her medical
many modem works that Kingsley has quoted and scientific writing.
from or referredto. There is no index locorum. In Secrets of God, Sabina Flanagan has put
DENISO'BRIEN together substantial, translated passages from
most of Hildegard's works, including those on
theology and medicine, her saints' lives, and her
letters. More than half the book is given to the
Armelle Debru. Le corps respirant:La pensee
theological writings, which were based on the
physiologique chez Galien. (Studies in Ancient complex visions that Hildegard spontaneously
Medicine, 13.) viii + 302 pp., bibl., index. Lei-
den/New York: E. J. Brill, 1996. experienced. She was able to remember and
compose remarkableillustrations of these im-
Armelle Debru's book is a very detailed study ages, and four colored reproductionsof the ex-
of Galen's teaching and researchon the physi- tant illuminations have been included in the
ology of respiration.Respirationoccupies an im- book.
portantplace in Galen's work, not only in the Of greatestinterestto historiansof science are
treatises specifically devoted to the topic, but the twenty-ninepages of excerpts from the texts
also in passages concerningthe heart,lungs, ar- on naturalhistory and medicine. From the Phys-
teries, "innateheat," and "pneuma."Debru has ica, Flanagan has selected chapters on hemp,
left no importantworks, secondary or original, spelt, yarrow, and the ostrich, sturgeon, night-
unmentionedor unused. He clearly has a very ingale, unicorn, and dog, among others; from
real admirationfor Galen's achievements:"like Causae et curae, chapterson the elements, sex-
the great figures who precededhim, [Galen]has ual desire, conception, dreams, migraines, in-
occasionally attained a richness and a quality somnia, childbirth,and bathing. The selections
which make of his writings an intellectual and are judiciously chosen and well translated,ex-
literarywork of primaryimportancein western emplifying Hildegard's characteristicmelange
history" (p. 271). Galen's extraordinaryceuvre of personal observation, folk empiricism, and
offers the historian,the philosopher,and the phi- traditionalmyth.
lologist abundant material for the history of The final third of the book includes sections
medical thought. from her music, saints' lives, and letters. Flana-
This book should, without fail, be added to gan's choice of letters is particularlygood, dem-
every medico-historicallibrary. onstratingthe complexity of Hildegard'sperson-
RICHARD J. DURLING ality, as her tone rangesfrom unctuousdeference
(toward Saint Bernard) to snobbish arrogance
(towardTengswich) to anger,hurt, and betrayal
(towardRichardis).
* Middle Ages & Renaissance It is difficult to know to whom, exactly, to
recommendthis book. Flanaganwantsreadersto
"form their own impression of Hildegard, the
Hildegard of Bingen. Secrets of God: Writings
of Hildegard of Bingen. Selected and translated
woman" (p. 5), and, thus, does not "overloadthe
from the Latin by Sabina Flanagan. xii + 186 text with critical apparatus"(p. xii); indeed, she
gives only the shortestbiographyand the most
pp., illus., bibl., index. Boston/London: Sham- minimalintroductionsto the texts. Althoughher
bala, 1996. (Paper.)
translationsdo transmitHildegard'sodd mixture
The extant work of Hildegardof Bingen (1098- of linguistic simplicity and metaphoricalcom-
1179), German abbess, mystic, musician, and plexity, and her selections do demonstratethe
medical writer, furnisheshistorianswith one of enormous range of Hildegard's subjects, tones,
the earliest and most extensive bodies of work and styles, it is hard to imagine how the naive
by a woman.Well known to her contemporaries, readerwill make sense of much of the text. For
she was all but forgottenuntil the middle of the example, when Hildegardarguespassionatelyon
last century, when rising German nationalism behalf of the virtuesof the secularlife, for infant
and the birthof feminism led to her rediscovery baptism,or on the need for an organizedChurch,
by historiansinterestedin women andin German it would seem crucial for readers to know that

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