I have had an email back from Veronique Boudon-Millot today, giving the story of how the lost text by Galen, Peri Alupias (On consolation for grief) was found. It’s very interesting, and I have asked for permission to translate it and place it here.
She also mentions that Vlatadon 14, the manuscript that contained the new work, also contains the first complete copies of Galen’s On my own books and On the order of my own books, the two works most interesting to non-medical specialists, as evidence for the transmission of texts in the 2nd century AD. The only previously known copy of the Greek was the Ambrosianus Q 3 sup. in Milan, which has many gaps in the text. Those gaps previously had, perforce, to be filled from Hunain ibn Ishaq’s Arabic translation, itself extant only in a single forgotten manuscript in the obscure library of Mashhad in Iran.
A key factor in the discovery is that the Vlatadon collection catalogue is itself very obscure and little known. It was published by S. Eustratiades in 1918. There is no copy in the United Kingdom, but there is a copy in the French National Library in Paris. It’s about 136 pages, but ms. 14 is the only medical text. The remainder are patristic. And that is exciting! For if the collection is that little known, who knows what it might contain?!