The theme of the book is the Hellenistic epistolary novel which describes a fictional meeting between Democritus and Hippocrates. The author traces the later history of this story as part of the legend of the laughing philosopher on the one hand and of the history of melancholy on the other and demonstrates the interdependence of all three traditions in text editions, translations, paraphrases, commentaries, verse and painting from ancient times through to the Renaissance. He shows how the Stoic-Cynical tradition of 'Philosophus ridens' and the medical concept of 'Typus melancholicus...