THE FIRE

Avoiding Grief

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In 192 CE, a great fire broke out in Rome that consumed a huge stretch of the city. According to the ancient historian Cassius Dio (ca. 155 CE–ca. 235 CE), the fire first “began at night in some dwelling [and then] leaped to the Temple of Peace and spread to the storehouses of Egyptian and Arabian wares.” It was only the beginning: the flames soon expanded to the area surrounding the Temple of Peace, reached the Palatine, and burned the libraries and archives there. This was likely one of the largest collections of books in the world—rivaling even the famous library at Alexandria—and the cultural loss on top of the humanitarian catastrophe was incalculable. Near the Temple of Peace, along the Sacred Way, were storage rooms that had been designed to withstand flames; located at a distance from fire-prone residences and built with minimal wood, these elaborate safekeeping areas were guarded by the military since the imperial archives were housed there. But the doors were made of wood, and despite the promise that constructions were fireproof, the storage rooms and their contents burned too.

The fire of Galen’s day was not the first to cause extensive damage in Rome. This painting depicts an earlier fire in 64 CE, which likely broke out in the merchant district before destroying two-thirds of the city.

Hubert Robert (French, 1733–1808). The Fire of Rome. Ca. 1771. Oil on canvas. H. 75.5 cm; W. 93 cm. Musée d’art moderne André Malraux, Le Havre: 226. Photo: Florian Kleinefenn. © MuMa Le Havre.

Galen rented space in these expensive rooms and kept many of his most valued possessions there. He was away from Rome at the time of the fire, on a trip to Campania to visit his estate, and had moved even more of his treasured valuables from his home to the storeroom for extra protection while he was gone. Galen lost a great deal in the fire: gold, silver plates, contracts, promissory notes for debts owed to him, medical instruments, wax prototypes of instruments he had invented, an extensive pharmaceutical collection (ingredients and compounds), royal theriac medicine, and books.

Melted surgical instruments. Roman, mid-3rd century CE. Bronze and other copper-based alloys. House of the Surgeon, Rimini, Italy. Museo della Città, Rimini. Photo: Paperoastro / Wikimedia. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.

It was the loss of his personal library—volumes collected over time that were written by others, and books that he had written himself, as well as duplicate copies for circulation—that stung the most.

We know of these losses and the emotional stress that it caused Galen from his treatise Avoidance of Grief. Long thought to be lost—its existence was only known from references and Arabic fragments— the text was rediscovered fifteen years ago by a French student conducting research at a monastery in Thessaloniki, Greece. Avoidance of Grief was written in direct response to the fire, but it is not strictly an inventory of the storage room’s contents, though it includes such a catalogue. Rather it is a philosophical letter in a form similar to the “consolation” genre of Greek philosophy: addressed to an unnamed friend, Galen describes how he avoided succumbing to grief in the face of this soul-shattering loss. It is an anti-lament lament, “The fact that I was not troubled, although all of these things of such value burned, seemed to you to be very amazing.” Galen nonetheless acknowledges that the fire tested him—he is clear that the destruction of his books in the fire was a greater challenge than the losses he had experienced during the plague—and he was able to meet the moment through his philosophical-psychological training. He advocates a kind of defensive pessimism:

“The wise man reminds himself continually of those things it is possible for him to suffer.”

Imagine the worst as preparation for unfortunate events, for when the unthinkable transpires, one is prepared and thus unmoved. And pray for health.