Aeulius Nicon
Encyclopedia
Aelius Nicon was a Greek architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 and builder in 2nd century CE Pergamon
Pergamon
Pergamon , or Pergamum, was an ancient Greek city in modern-day Turkey, in Mysia, today located from the Aegean Sea on a promontory on the north side of the river Caicus , that became the capital of the Kingdom of Pergamon during the Hellenistic period, under the Attalid dynasty, 281–133 BC...

. Nicon is known chiefly as the father of the ancient anatomist and philosopher, Galen
Galen
Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus , better known as Galen of Pergamon , was a prominent Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher...

.

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
Asclepius is the God of Medicine and Healing in ancient Greek religion. Asclepius represents the healing aspect of the medical arts; his daughters are Hygieia , Iaso , Aceso , Aglæa/Ægle , and Panacea...

, Greek god of healing, who told to 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

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