Transmitting (and Hiding) Knowledge in Ancient Greek Pharmaceutical Poetry (original) (raw)
Related papers
2019
poems deviate in several respects from the earlier tradition (most notably with regard to length and metre), they do seem to be indebted to the Nicandrean tradition. As such, they represent an ongoing practice that shows that Nicander's approach was not an isolated one-off extravagance. Their similarities to Nicander's poetry, their literary peculiarities, and their place within the tradition of Greek didactic verse, are the focus of this chapter. Elegiac pharmacology? The poems pertinent to this chapter are all of a medical nature. More specifically these poems are concerned with the preparation of remedies for certain ailments. Although such poems originate from the minds and practices of medical experts, they should be considered pharmacological rather than medical, as they contain very little instruction, if any, about the treatment of the ailing body itself. 5 These assorted poems comprise several short pieces, all of which are much shorter than Nicander's Theriaca (958 lines) and Alexipharmaca (630 lines). 6 They consist of two elegiac recipes concerned with the preparation of improved theriaca, prophylactic medicines for (snake) poisoning: a relatively long poem by Andromachus the Elder (GDRK 62 = Heitsch's Griechischen Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit; 174 lines), and a short poem by Eudemus (SH 412A = Lloyd Jones & Parsons' Supplementum Hellenisticum; 16 lines). 7 Next there are two short elegiac poems by Aglaias (SH 18; 28 lines) 8 and Philo of Tarsus (SH 690; 26 lines). 9 The first is a prescription for the treatment of cataracts, the second a cure for colic. Two more poems dealing with the relation between botany and pharmacology should be mentioned here. They are, in hexameters, the anonymous Carmen de viribus herbarum (GDRK 64; 216 lines), which gives details of seventeen plants, and a papyrus (P.Oxy. 15.1796; 22 lines) which preserves a fragment on the cyclamen and the persea-tree from a rather abstruse poem dealing with Egyptian plants or trees. 10 Each of these prescriptions (apart from the last, which is from the second century CE) is from the first century CE. These elegiac poems all show some of the characteristics of didactic poetry. Whereas they deviate from the 'Hesiodic model' on various points, their attention to authoritative voice, technical subject matter, address to a student who will profit from the lessons learned, and the fact that learning is essential to the poem (at least on the surface) and not merely circumstantial, lead me to consider them as a branch of late Hellenistic didactic. They appear to be indebted to Nicander, and as such they are more remote from their Hesiodic roots than e.g. Aratus, whose Phaenomena is on several points closer to the Works and Days than Nicander is in his Theriaca. 11 It should be Floris Overduin 98 98662_Didactic.qxp_Layout 1 17/09/2019 11:37 Page 98 mentioned here that this corpus of shorter pieces can be augmented by the medical poetry of Servilius Damocrates. His remedies, exclusively known to us through the transmission of Galen (who cites 48 of them), amount to a full 1,650 lines in iambics. The size of this corpus, as well as his choice of metre, makes him a useful comparand, as briefly below, for the texts which fall within the scope of this chapter. 12 The prescriptions by Andromachus, Eudemus, Aglaias, and Philo have several elements in common. They are all from the first century CE, which suggests that presenting short recipes in (literary) verse was not uncommon in this age. One can surmise a minor tradition here, with one composer following the other. In addition, they are connected through their authors' choice to write in verse rather than in prose. Moreover, their composition in elegiacs is striking, for several reasons. First, there is no real precedent for pharmacological elegy, as opposed to pharmacological verse in hexameters, as practised by Nicander, and presumably by Numenius (SH 589-94). It is only when one views these poems in a wider context of 'didactic elegy' that they could be said to be part of the elegiac tradition. 'Didactic elegy', however, whether one thinks of the paraenetic elegy of Theognis or of Callimachus' Aetia, may be of an ethical (Theognis) or informative (Callimachus) type; purely 'instructive' elegy was not known previously. 13 Second, there is no real attestation of Greek elegy in this period. The use of elegiac distichs was never a rare feature in earlier Greek poetry, but virtually no Greek elegy is attested after the mid-Hellenistic period; for the first century CE, the medical poets are essentially the only ones. 14 It is striking that these pharmacological authors chose to write elegiacs in an age in which no Greek poet used this metre any longer, apart from its traditional use in epigram. Greek epigram was of course flexible to a certain extent, harbouring different traditions, but the genre cannot be confused with these longer elegiac poems. 15 One explanation for the origination of pharmacological elegy could be found in the tradition of elegiac catalogue poetry. After the classical period, elegy primarily became the medium for catalogue poetry of mythological narrative. Antimachus' Lydē, Hermesianax's Leontion, Philitas' Bittis, and Phanocles' Erōtes ē kaloi all appear to share the same characteristics, in imitation of Hesiod's Catalogue of Women (which, however, was in hexameters). 16 The genre was thoroughly innovated by Callimachus, whose Aitia incorporated such diverse genres as epic, encomium, epigram, and sympotic poetry into its all-encompassing form. It can, however, be considered an elegiac catalogue poem. If elegy kept its use for catalogue poetry of a less than epic scale, this would explain its appearance for pharmacological recipes in the first century CE.
Pharmacological Literature in Late Antiquity: Local Prescriptions, Global Poetics
This is the text of a paper given at Oxford in July 2015, at the ISLALS conference (theme: 'Local Connections in the Literature of Late Antiquity'). It focuses on the late antique pharmacological treatise of Marcellus Empiricus. It surveys the content of that work; demonstrates Marcellus' allusions to Latin poets and interest in the Latin literary tradition; and argues that Marcellus aims to shift medicine away from local authority to more elite modes of knowledge.
Ancient Pharmacology - Theophrastus' Historia Plantarum and Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis
The focus of the following study was to examine the state of pharmacology in the ancient world through the texts of Theophrastus and Pliny the Elder to give a better understanding of Classical Greek and Roman pharmacology. Both men authored vital works to the preservation and transmission of pharmacological data. This study will look further into each man's works to evaluate their 'scientific' qualities; how did they conduct their research, how did they write their works, and how each work is vital for the interdisciplinarity of history and science. Each work will also be evaluated for its scientific value today, relating the information each man wrote and how it can be used for current research. Ultimately, this study has the goal of showing that ancient texts have a vital role to play in a larger capacity than just the humanities, but also the sciences. Science is an evolving being that requires progress and with the inclusion of historic texts, which have been underutilized, there is a whole new body of research to be discovered. Before examining Theophrastus' Enquiry into Plants or Historia Plantarum and Pliny the Elder's Natural History or Historia Naturalis, it is useful to examine the history of pharmacology up to their works and briefly examining the impact of their works after ancient times. Pharmacology begins prehistorically with some evidence of early modern humans and the use of plants. The beginning of written history is where the beginnings of pharmacology start to take shape. To better understand the tradition each man was continuing and their impacts on future progress, the brief history of pharmacology will be examined in ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, Classical Greece, Empirical Rome, The Golden Age of Islam, and the European Renaissance. There is of course a large tradition of pharmacology in Chinese and Indian medicine, but for the study of Theophrastus and Pliny, the pharmacology of the Mediterranean is all that needs to be encompassed.
Drugs and Drug Lore in the Time of Theophrastus
is famous for his pioneering manual of botany, the Inquiry into Plants (usually cited by its Latin title, Historia plantarum), set down about 300 B.C. This is the first fundamental ordering of botany (pot-herbs, wild species, some trees, vines, many other 'classes' of plants) by means of morphology, as well as a description of those plants considered foods, drugs, and other species which had special powers or properties that were portions of a very ancient folklore. A brilliant student of Aristotle of Stagira in Chalcidice, Theophrastus had been a participant in his teacher's early dissections and vivisections of animals, and one discerns distinctive zoological and medical interests by both student and mentor as they collected "facts" to make up the various books of "inquiries" (Grk. historiai). Book IX of the Inquiry into Plants is especially rich in the details of folkloristic information provided to the Peripatetics by a professional class of rhizotomoi ("rootcutters") who searched out medicinal plants, sorted them, and sold them in the agorai of the various poleis in Greece, and elsewhere in the Greek-speaking world of the 4 th century B.C. The rootcutters were the "professionals" who knew drugs as derived from plants and plant parts, so that a rough classification of plant parts as drugs (pharmaka) entered formal levels of Greek pharmacology through the writings of Theophrastus, who succeeded to the Headship of the Lyceum when Aristotle died in 322 B.C.
The 'literary' analysis of works of Hippocrates in antiquity, notably by Galen, on the basis of the so-called 'philological paradigm': the notion derived from the study of Homer that great authority goes hand in hand with literary and stylistic excellence.
Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World, 2019
This chapter surveys examples of two types of literary therapy in Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi: a) the ‘rhetorical remedies’, b) the ‘poetic prescriptions’. It engages closely with the discourse of medical paradoxography in the Hieroi Logoi and the ways these remedies were received in the blooming Aristides-related scholarship of the last decade or so, and finishes with some general thoughts on declaiming, writing and narrating as a basic modality of therapy in the second sophistic. The aim is twofold: to demonstrate that Aristides is in fact far more mainstream in using rhetoric, literature and music to cure bodily ailments than we have previously thought, while simultaneously showcasing how exceptional Aristides’ use of these particular remedies really is. Although Aristides works with previously well-attested healing practises (e.g. in Plutarch, Galen, Antyllus) and commemorative discourses, he elevates them to a whole new level of efficacy and embeds them firmly into his rhetorical oeuvre. Keywords: books, poetry, reading, writing, song(s), hymn(s), sacred medicine, secular medicine, medical paradoxography, Asclepieion, Aelius Aristides, Galen, Asclepius, illness, literary therapy, patient(s), doctor(s), temple of Asclepius, Pergamum, Epidaurus.