During my stay at Princeton as Fellow at the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies in June-August 2024, I conducted research for one of my ongoing book projects dealing with Aretaeus of Cappadocia, an important physician of the 1st/2nd cent. AD. Aretaeus combines clinical precision with an extremely well-crafted diction and style, advocating a hybrid kind of writing that verges between medicine and literature. During my Fellowship, I had the time to focus on several angles that help us unlock and appreciate this unique author, including: Aretaeus’ story-telling techniques; his emotional involvement and investment in the world of pain created by illness and death; the aesthetics of illness and its sublimation into a wondrous force of nature; the intertextual partners that give shape and meaning to Aretaeus’ artistic prose; and, finally, the author’s magnificent vignettes of illness as represented by his chapters on mania and melancholy. The book that will emerge from this project will offer a comprehensive introduction to a writer whose significance, medical and otherwise, has for a long time been overlooked but who, nonetheless, deserves the close attention of classicists, literary critics, and historians of medicine alike.