A Discovery Made in Mount Athos in 2024: Fragments from a Mid-14th Byzantine Manuscript Containing the Lost Treatise of Galen “De moribus” or Περὶ ἠθικῶν

During our visit to the Karakallou Monastery in Mount Athos in September 2024, we found five parchment fragments from a mid-14th century Byzantine manuscript, containing ancient Greek text of an unknown author. The fragments are written with a beautiful late Byzantine script which could be dated to the period from 1330 to 1370. Our conjecture that the text was probably written by Galen is based on thе phrase: ἐδείχθη γὰρ ἡμῖν, ὡς καὶ πρόσθεν ἔφην, ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ πραγματείᾳ καθ’ ἣν περὶ τῶν Ἱπποκράτους καὶ Πλάτωνος διηρχόμεθα δογμάτων (this was indicated by me, as I said before, in that treatise in which I dealt with the doctrines (concepts) of Hippocrates and Plato). In fact, this passage contains a self-citation of a text from the well-known work of Galen "Περὶ τῶν Ἱπποκρατους καὶ Πλάτωνος δογμάτων“ (De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis). However, the final identification of the text as written by Galen was made possible by a badly damaged title preserved in fragment no. 4: Τέλος τοῦ πρώτου βιβλίου περὶ ἠθικῶν. Κεφάλαια τῶν ἐν τῷ δευτέρῳ βιβλίῳ: Περὶ τοῦ ἰδίου ἐκ τῆς ψυχῆς. Περὶ ἀκολασίας καὶ ἐγκρατείας, σωφροσύνης καὶ τοῦ ἐπιθυμητικοῦ ψυχῆς. Γαληνοῦ περὶ ἠθῶν βιβλίον δεύτερον (end of the first book of De moribus. Chapters in the second book: on the soul itself, on lust and temperance, sobriety and the desires of the soul. Beginning of Galen's second book of the treatise De moribus). Thus, it became clear that Karakallou fragments contain the end of first and the beginning of the second book of Galen's treatise "De moribus" or, more precisely, on human characters, in Greek Περὶ ἠθῶν or Περὶ ἠθικῶν. The Greek text of this treatise is lost and its contents are partially known only from an abbreviated epitome of its lost Arabic translation.