Aelius Nicon was a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

architect An architect is a person who plans, designs, and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...

and builder in 2nd century AD

Pergamon Pergamon or Pergamum ( or ; ), also referred to by its modern Greek form Pergamos (), was a rich and powerful ancient Greece, ancient Greek city in Aeolis. It is located from the modern coastline of the Aegean Sea on a promontory on the north s ...

. Nicon is known as the father of the ancient

anatomist Anatomy () is the branch of morphology concerned with the study of the internal structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is a branch of natural science that deals with the structural organization of living things. It is an old scien ...

and philosopher,

Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...

. Nicon was a mathematician, architect, astronomer, philosopher, and devotee of Greek literature. Nicon closely supervised Galen's education and tutored him at home, intending his son to study philosophy or politics. However, according to Galen, Nicon was visited in a dream by

Asclepius Asclepius (; ''Asklēpiós'' ; ) is a hero and god of medicine in ancient Religion in ancient Greece, Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology. He is the son of Apollo and Coronis (lover of Apollo), Coronis, or Arsinoe (Greek myth), Ars ...

Greek god In ancient Greece, deities were regarded as immortal, anthropomorphic, and powerful. They were conceived of as individual persons, rather than abstract concepts or notions, and were described as being similar to humans in appearance, albeit larg ...

of healing, who told him to allow his son to study medicine. Galen soon began his studies at the major sanctuary of Asclepius located in Pergamon. In his book, ''On the Passions and Errors of the Soul'', Galen says that his "father's training lay chiefly in the sciences of geometry, arithmetic, architecture, and astronomy". He also describes his temperament: :::

"But I did enjoy the good fortune of having the least irascible, the most just, the most devoted, and kindest of fathers. My mother, however, was so very prone to anger that sometimes she bit her handmaids; she constantly shrieked at my father and fought with him — more than Xanthippe did with Socrates. When I compared my father’s noble deeds with the disgraceful passions of my mother, I decided to embrace and love his deeds and to flee and hate her passions. Just as in these respects I saw the utter difference between my parents, so also did I see it in the fact that my father (seemed) never to be grieved over any loss, whereas my mother was vexed over the smallest things."

Sources

Galen: a Biographical Sketch

Notes

Ancient Greek architects 2nd-century Greek people 2nd-century Romans 2nd-century births 140s deaths Nicon People from Pergamon 2nd-century architects {{Greece-architect-stub