A series of documents that became parts of the Hippocratic Corpus, relates the life and legends of Hippocrates. This collection has been called the Pseudepigrapha, consisted of twenty-four letters (these letters are divided into two groups, Persian letters and Democritus letters), two speeches, and one official Athenian decree. The contents of the Pseudepigrapha are closely related with a short biography written by Soranus (Vita Hippocratis Secundum Soranum: VHSS).
In this paper, I attempt a narrative and synthetic account of these legendary stories about Hippocrates. The stories of plague and Persian king Artaxerxes are explained analyzing Persian letters, and meeting with Democritus is explained analyzing Democritus letters. The other stories of the Pseudepigrapha, the fate of Cos and good deeds of Hippocrates to the Greek world, are analyzed in the context of political history of the Hellenistic age.
I conclude this paper by rethinking on the Hippocratic tradition. This tradition has included not only medical theories and practical remedies, which could be proved false in the progress of medicine, but the image and legends of Hippocrates. So we could read the legends in the Pseudepigrapha as interpretations of the history of Greek medicine. Hippocratic legends are important parts of the Hippocratic tradition.