| Summary: | This article examines the short treatise De elementis of Galen from the perspective of rhetorical analysis: what are the strategies of persuasion involved in this important (albeit brief) work, and for what purpose? How does the implementation of Galen’s excellent rhetorical training affect the physician’s argumentation? As a pedagogical work, the De elementis was primarily intended for a particular, privileged reader, then reworked to reach a wider audience; according to Galen himself, the treatise then became a fundamental propaedeutic text in his medical oeuvre. A concise, effective and brilliant piece, it is perhaps also, as suggested here, one of the works that helped establish the reputation of the physician of Pergamum in Rome around 170 AD, at the beginning of his career in the capital.
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