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Drunken satyr, found at Herculaneum, National Archaeological Museum of Naples. |
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A caricature drawing, Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii. |
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Drunken satyr, found at Herculaneum, National Archaeological Museum of Naples. |
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A caricature drawing, Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii. |
Ancient Romans held a wide range of often contradictory views about physicians. Medical writers tended to praise the knowledge and skills of physicians, while other sources often described physicians as dishonest, incompetent and deadly charlatans. I will describe some of the most common beliefs about physicians in non-medical Roman sources such as Pliny the Elder, Martial, inscriptions and graffiti. But first, a few words about the ancient medical art as background to these popular beliefs.
Medical art in ancient Rome
Traditional Roman medicine – before the introduction of Greek medical theories – was based on natural treatments administered by family members, not by professional physicians. The head of the family, paterfamilias, was responsible for the wellbeing of his family and servants. Greek doctors started to move to Rome during the first centuries BC and brought with them new theories, which were slowly incorporated into Roman medicine. Many Romans were skeptical of the Greek influence, but Greek doctors were eventually accepted, especially among the aristocracy.
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Aeneas treated by a surgeon. (National Archaeological Museum of Naples, photo: Joonas Vanhala) |
There were several competing theories on the human physiology and how ailments should be treated. One of the most well-known theories is that of the bodily fluids, but other aspects such as diet, heat and climate were thought to affect one’s health as well. The physician’s job was to make a diagnosis and suggest a course of treatments. Some of the most common treatments included diets, cold and hot baths, bloodletting and vomiting to balance the bodily fluids, medicines, herbs, magical cures, surgery and so on. Many of these treatments were, of course, ineffective and sometimes even dangerous to the patient. Healing was also sought in the sanctuaries of the gods of healing such as Aesculapius or through magical aids such as potions and amulets. A great number of votive gifts, offered as thanks to the gods for healing, have been found.
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Roman votive gifts depicting healed parts of the body. (Archaeological Museum of Bologna, photo: Joonas Vanhala) |
There were various medical practitioners. Most of the physicians in Rome were Greek and usually from the lower classes. Greek doctors were the ones with the greatest theoretical knowledge, but there were others whose learning was based on a more practical take on medicine such as surgeons, midwives and herbalists. Most of these could be called medici in Latin, although in many instances this term refers specifically to the Greek learned physicians.
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A relief depicting a midwife. (Isola Sacra, photo: Joonas Vanhala) |
There was no standardized education, and no qualifications were needed to be able to call oneself a physician. This was naturally reflected in the quality of treatment. On the other hand, we know of doctors specialized in the treatment of eyes, ears, teeth and fistulae, for instance, which indicates a dedication to a particular field of medicine.
Roman medical instruments also show that the ancient doctors could perform a number of practical treatments such as placing a catheter to aid urination, cauterize unhealthy tissue, remove teeth, and perform some basic surgical operations such as removing cataracts from the eye.
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Roman medical instruments found in Pompeii. (National Archaeological Museum of Naples, photo: Joonas Vanhala) |
They [Greeks] are a quite worthless people, and an intractable one, and you must consider my words prophetic. When that race gives us its literature it will corrupt all things, and even all the more if it sends hither its physicians. They have conspired together to murder all foreigners with their physic, but this very thing they do for a fee, to gain credit and to destroy us easily. (Pliny the Elder, Natural history 29.7)
Physicians acquire their knowledge from our dangers, making experiments at the cost of our lives. Only a physician can commit homicide with complete impunity. (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 29.8)
For what has been a more fertile source of poisonings? Whence more conspiracies against wills? Yes, and through it too adulteries occur even in our imperial homes… (Pliny, NH 29.8)
Let me not even bring charges against their avarice, their greedy bargains made with those whose fate lies in the balance, the prices charged for anodynes, the earnest-money paid for death… (Pliny, NH 29.8)
It is plainly a showy parade of the art, and a colossal boast of science. And not even the physicians know their facts… (Pliny, NH 29.8)
I was out of sorts; but at once you visited me, Symmachus, accompanied by a hundred pupils. A hundred hands chilled by the north wind touched me. I did not have a fever, Symmachus. Now I do. (Mart. 5.9)
Many of the physicians in Martial’s epigrams end up killing their patients. An extreme case is this one where the mere sight of a doctor is enough to kill a man:
Andragoras bathed with us, ate a cheerful dinner; the same man was found dead in the morning. Do you enquire the cause of so sudden a demise, Faustinus? In his dreams he had seen Doctor Hermocrates. (Mart. 6.53)
The doctors in Martial's poems almost always have Greek names, which may simply reflect the fact that most physicians of his time were still of Greek descent, but there may be a hint of prejudice embedded in there too. The focus is not so much on the physicians being Greek but on their general lack of competence and their questionable morals.
The fact that this kind of abuse against physicians was not solely a matter of prejudice against Greeks is especially evident when we compare the poems of Martial with Greek epigrams, where many of the same themes appear. An incompetent doctor ends up killing his patient in this ridiculously exaggerated account:
Socles, promising to set Diodorus’ crooked back straight, piled three solid stones, each four feet square, on the hunchback’s spine. He was crushed and died, but he has become straighter than a ruler. (Greek Anthology 11.120)
Just like the patient in Martial’s poem who was killed after seeing a doctor in his dream, here remembering the doctor’s name is enough to kill a man:
Phidon did not purge me with a clyster or even feel me, but feeling feverish I remembered his name and died. (Greek Anthology 11.118)
And here is an example of the recurring topic of greed and avarice of the physicians:
Rhodo removes leprosy and scrofula by drugs, but he removes everything else [i.e. steals] even without drugs. (Greek Anthology 11.333)
Invective against physicians had clearly become a literary topos that was expressed in both Greek and Latin writings and over a span of centuries. The Greek epigrams cited above were roughly contemporary with Pliny and Martial, that is from the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The collection of Greek epigrams, however, contains similar material even from previous centuries.
What a misfortune about Alexio! – – It is his love for me, his kindness and charming manner that I miss. There is another thing, too. What have we not to fear, when so temperate a person and so skillful a physician can be overcome suddenly by such a disease? (Cicero, Letters to Atticus 15.1.1)
Or when Cicero recommends a physician to a friend:
To you I most earnestly recommend Glyco, the physician of Pansa, who has the sister of our man Achilles for his wife. – – Besides, he is steady and a worthy fellow who, you would think, could not even be driven to crime by the prospect of gain. (Cicero, Letters to Brutus 1.6.2)
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CIL VI 19 (Photo: Catalogo dei Musei Vaticani) |
Dedicated to Aesculapius and Hygia – Marcus Ulpius Honoratus, cavalry officer, for his health and of his family, and that of Lucius Julius Helix, the physician who diligently took care of me according to the gods, has fulfilled his vow willingly and happily. (CIL VI 19, Rome, 131–179 AD)
Another inscription, written in the first person, portrays a physician praising himself, which is not unusual in funerary inscriptions. Judging by his name, Claudius was most likely a freed slave. The inscription may have been commissioned by Claudius himself before his death or by someone else.
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IGUR III 1247 (Photo: Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford) |
I, physician Claudius Agathemeros, who swiftly learned a remedy against all kinds of illness, rest here. This memorial is common to me and my wife Myrtale. We are in Elysium with the pious ones. (IGUR III 1247, Rome, ca. 50–100 AD)
Praise of a doctor is not unexpected in a votive inscription dedicated to the gods of healing and is quite formulaic in a physicians own funerary inscription. Still, such complimentary remarks show that physicians were not always the target of disparaging invective, but could be remembered fondly, just as in Cicero’s remarks about his doctors.
There are, however, many examples of more negative opinions expressed even in inscriptions. In a few inscriptions physicians are remembered for their inefficient treatments such as here:
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CIL VI 68 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) |
Felix Asinianus, public slave of the priests, fulfilled his vow to Bona Dea Agrestis Felicula willingly after his eyesight was restored. Abandoned by doctors he was cured after ten months through medicine by the aid of his Mistress… (CIL VI 68, Rome, ca. 1–30 AD)
In this second one the doctors killed the patient:
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CIL VI 37337 (Photo: Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum, Archiv) |
To the spirits of the dead; Euhelpistus, a freed slave, who is also a Manes, lived 27 years, 4 months and 11 days. A sudden death took away his joyous years, a most innocent soul whom doctors cut up and killed. Publius Aelius Peculiaris, a freed slave of the emperor, [made this] to his fellow slave. (CIL VI 37337, Rome, ca. 101–150 AD)
Inscriptions such as these follow certain traditional forms and are not necessarily a good reflection of popular attitudes, although their content could be varied according to individual tastes and requests. We should look for further evidence in Roman graffiti which tended to be more spontaneous in both their content and how they were produced. The problem is, there are very few graffiti that mention physicians at all, and the ones that do, usually do so in passing.
Graffiti: few mentions of physicians
From Herculaneum we have this famous graffito:
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CIL IV 10619 (Photo: Wikimedia Commons) |
Apollinaris, doctor, slave of emperor Titus, pooped well here. (CIL IV 10619)
This description of Apollinaris is quite neutral. And even if we want to detect an aspect of insult, it has more to do with the fact that he was defecating, not that he was a doctor.
– – Shit well and fuck the doctors in the mouth. (AE 1941,8)
This is clearly a hostile take on doctors, but we know nothing about the context or the motives of the writer of this graffito.
Among the Pompeian graffiti I have only found this mention of a man treating another man:
Pierus Celadus, priest of the cult of Augustus, treated Amandus, Papirius' slave. (CIL IV 8810)
The fact that illness was a common occurrence is reflected in a number of graffiti from Pompeii, such as this one making fun of a person suffering from hemorrhoids, which were believed to be the result of anal sex:
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CIL IV 1820 (Photo: Varone 2012) |
Chios, I hope your piles become sore again, so that they smart more than they smarted before. (CIL IV 1820)
In a few Pompeian graffiti the writer wishes disease for someone else, resembling a curse:
I hope you will fall ill. (CIL IV 2960)
Greetings Asbestus, you should get ill. (CIL IV 762)
Insults against doctors are almost completely absent from Roman graffiti. It is difficult to say why this is when abuse against them is so prominent in Roman literature. There were physicians even in small towns like Pompeii. The most likely explanation for the absence of invective against physicians from the graffiti is that doctors simply did not warrant much attention in people’s lives. A visit to a doctor may have been a rare occurrence. And if the doctors were mostly itinerant ones, writing about them on the walls wouldn’t have made much sense. The prejudice against physicians expressed in Roman literary sources probably was familiar even to the non-elite, but this was simply not expressed in wall inscriptions.
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On my way from Rome to Paris. |
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The train rode along the lake Geneva. |
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My new favorite item at the Louvre, an owl dressed up in military equipment. |
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The modern conference resembles the pilgrimage... |
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Presenting my poster. (Photo: Alessandra Tafaro). |
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Cologne Cathedral. |
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Waiting for the museum to open. |
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The ferry arriving in Turku. |
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The last leg of my journey: the city ferry Föri took me across the Aura River. |
In early August I attended a cultural history conference in Verona. This was my first big international conference and I enjoyed it immensely. The papers given at the conference were interesting, the city is beautiful, the weather was nice (although a bit too hot) and the company I had was excellent. Here are a few highlights from my week in Verona.
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Verona |
I arrived in Verona from Finland, where I'd been on summer holiday, on August 1st. With a few other Finnish attendees we had booked lodging for the whole week at a local student residence. The residence was close to the university of Verona and was comfortable, clean and relatively cheap. The conference started on Tuesday and lasted until Friday so we had time for some sightseeing too.
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The best panel of the conference: me, Saara, Juha and Jasmin. |
I had prepared a panel together with Juha Isotalo, Saara Kauppinen and Jasmin Lukkari. We gave papers on ancient beliefs about barbarians, Roman politicians, doctors and practitioners of magic (conference programme, abstracts). Our panel gave rise to a lot of questions and discussion. At the end we had to cut the questions short because we were running out of time and drinks were being served in the lobby. My own paper was about popular beliefs about Roman physicians (here are the slides). I enjoyed presenting my paper and thought it went well. I got good feedback and some great tips on how to proceed with my research. I will write more thoroughly about Roman doctors in another blog post later.
Ote esitelmästäni (kuva: Juha Isotalo) |
We held our panel in the first session of the conference on Tuesday so for the rest of the week we could just enjoy other participants' papers. I listened to talks about pestilence, medieval theology, public administration in classical Athens and mysteries in late antiquity among other topics. During the conference I got to meet scholars from many countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Germany, Romania and, of course, Finland. About a quarter of the papers given at the conference and of the attendees were from Finland. All in all there were about 70–80 scholars in attendance and many more online. The contribution of the Finnish contingent was thus quite significant.
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Conference dinner |
Besides the conference programme we had time to explore Verona. We tried the local restaurants and bars and saw some of the most important sights. (We did avoid the balcony of Juliet, though.) A major highlight was the opera Aida which I saw at the Arena of Verona, a Roman amphitheater which is exceptionally well preserved and still in use. I was impressed by both the opera and the venue. We had bought cheap tickets so we sat on the original stone benches. It was extraordinary to think that we were sitting in the same seats as the Romans when they came to see entertainment at the arena. Lucky for us the entertainment was opera rather than public executions and gladiatorial fights.
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Aida at the Arena of Verona |
I also had time to visit a couple of archaeological museums. The first one was at the Roman theater of Verona which is also in use in the summer. Unfortunately this means that much of the theater can't be seen because of the modern seating and the scene.
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Veronan roomalainen teatteri on yhä käytössä kesäisin. |
The museum's collection consists of local finds that illustrate the history of Verona, and a great number of inscriptions which I was very interested in. One of the most curious ones was a warning not to defecate among the tombs or otherwise violate them. The one doing so was threatened with blindness.
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Stercus intra cippos qui fecerit aut violarit nei luminibus fruatur. |
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Me and the inscriptions :) (photo: Saara Kauppinen) |
We got to see even more inscriptions at the Museo Lapidario Maffeiano, which was founded around a collection gathered by Scipion Maffei who lived between 1675 and 1755 in Verona. The collection consists of inscriptions from all around the ancient Greek and Roman world and from different time periods. In addition to the typical honorary and funerary inscriptions there was even an epitaph for a horse from the 2nd century CE.
Museo Lapidario Maffeiano (photo: Jasmin Lukkari) |
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"you, who outran the wandering birds and beat the winds, graze no longer in the Tuscan and Sicula woods, but in this tomb" (CIL V 4512) |
We visited several churches such as the Duomo, San Fermo and Sant'Anastasia. There was plenty of beautiful art and architecture, but what caught my eye were the scribblings on the walls of some of the churches. I'm no expert in these periods but based on the handwriting and the content I believe many of them to be from the middle ages or from the early modern period and not the product of tourists. For example in Sant'Anastasia there is a fresco depicting Virgin Mary and Jesus with all kinds of texts and drawings scratched in the plaster. I found some dates from the 15th century and the phrase Ave Maria. So at least some of the writings seem to be prayers to Virgin Mary, which makes sense considering the theme of the fresco.
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Fresco depicting Virgin Mary and Jesus, church of Saint'Anastasia |
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Detail: writings carved in the plaster of the fresco |
There would be so much more to tell about our time in Verona but I think this is enough. I'll leave you with some more photos from the trip.
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University of Verona |
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Arena of Verona |
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A funicular |
The bridge of Castelvecchio (photo: Jasmin Lukkari) |
Arco dei Gavi (photo: Jasmin Lukkari) |
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Piazza delle Erbe |
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A selfie with an inscription |
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Duomo of Verona |
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Sant'Anastasia |