This volume is the first complete critical edition of the Greek medical work of the 1st century A.D. on acute and chronic diseases, by an anonymous writer commonly known as Anonymus Parisinus Darembergii sive Fuchsii. The work includes an introduction, a critical text with apparatus and an English translation accompanied by a commentary on textual, linguistic and factual problems. There is an index of Greek words and an index of drugs and foods. This edition is important both because it is the first complete edition (the former, by Fuchs, being confined to the first half of the work), and because it is based on all four manuscripts that preserve the work (Fuchs employed two of them).
"In recent years, anonymity has rocked the political and social landscape. The examples are many: an anonymous whistleblower revealed a quid-pro-quo verbal promise made by Donald Trump to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the hacker group Anonymous compromised more than 100 million Sony accounts, and the bestselling author Elena Ferrante insistently refused to reveal her real name and identity. In Anonymous, Thomas DeGloma sets out to provide a sociological theory that accounts for the many faces of anonymity, describing the social forces that give anonymity its unique power in our society. He asks a number of pressing questions about the social conditions and effects of anonymity: What is anonymity, and why, under various circumstances, do individuals act anonymously? How do individuals accomplish anonymity? How do they use it, and, in some situations, how is it imposed on them? What are the implications of anonymous actions, for various relationships, and for society in general, for better or for worse? To answer these questions, DeGloma tackles anonymity thematically, dedicating each chapter to a distinct type of anonymous action. These span what DeGloma calls protective anonymity (when anonymity allows people to take action that would be impossible or unsafe if their identity were known), subversive anonymity (when actors use anonymity to escape scrutiny or punishment, whether for liberatory or nefarious purposes), or ascribed anonymity (when people become effectively anonymous because their individual attributes are subsumed in a generic category such as racial typification). Ultimately, he uncovers how meanings are made and conveyed in anonymous interactions and situations, explores the ways that anonymity can be imposed on individuals in some relationships, and helps us better understand the consequences of anonymous performances and ascriptions of anonymity for all those involved"--
This is a new edition, with translation, introduction and commentary, of the Hippocratic treatise "On Glands." Through a close analysis of both content and expression, the text is interpreted and situated in the wider context of ancient medical writing.
This collection of essays focuses on the ways in which Greek and Latin authors viewed and wrote about the history of medicine in the ancient world. Special attention is given to medical doxography, i.e. the description of the characteristic doctrines of the great medical authorities of the past. The volume examines the various attitudes to the history of medicine adopted by a wide range of ancient writers (e.g. Aristotle, Galen, Celsus, Herophilus, Soranus, Oribasius, Caelius Aurelianus). It discusses the historical sense of ancient medicine, the variety of versions of the medical past that were created and the wide range of purposes and strategies which medico-historical writing served. It also deals with the question of the sources, the role of historiographical traditions and the variety of literary genres of ancient medico-historical writing.
With The Tools of Asclepius Lawrence Bliquez offers the first comprehensive treatment in English of the instruments and paraphernalia employed by Greco-Roman surgeons since John St. Milne’s Surgical Instruments in Greek and Roman Times (1907). Introductory sections cover topics ranging from literary and archaeological sources to the design, materials and production of instruments and the training and practice of the doctors-surgeons who used them. Summaries of Hippocratic and Hellenistic surgery lead to the meat of the book: tools used during the Roman Empire. These are presented by category (e.g. Cutting Instruments) broken into subcategories (Scalpel, Lithotome, etc.). A substantial appendix deals with biodegradable items, such as suppositories. Much new material is featured and the book is richly illustrated.
The historians, classicists and psychiatrists who have come together to produce Mental Disorders in the Classical World aim to explain how the Greeks and their Roman successors conceptualized, diagnosed and treated mental disorders. The Greeks initiated the secular understanding of mental illness, and have left us a large body of penetrating and thought-provoking writing on the subject, ranging in time from Homer to the sixth century AD. With the conceptual basis of modern psychiatry once again under intense debate, we need to learn from other rational approaches even when they lack modern scientific underpinnings. Meanwhile this volume adds a rich chapter to the cultural and medical history of antiquity. The contributors include a high proportion of the best-regarded scholars in this field, together with papers by some of its rising stars.
If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles’s birth—and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments that highlight the weasel’s many attributes. We learn of its legendary sexual and childbearing habits and symbolic association with witchcraft and midwifery, its role as a domestic pet favored by women, and its ability to slip in and out of tight spaces. The weasel, Bettini reveals, is present at many unexpected moments in human history, assisting women in labor and thwarting enemies who might plot their ruin. With a parade of symbolic associations between weasels and women—witches, prostitutes, midwives, sisters-in-law, brides, mothers, and heroes—Bettini brings to life one of the most venerable and enduring myths of Western culture.
This volume aims to provide an interdisciplinary examination of various facets of being alone in Greco-Roman antiquity. Its focus is on solitude, social isolation and misanthropy, and the differing perceptions and experiences of and varying meanings and connotations attributed to them in the ancient world. Individual chapters examine a range of ancient contexts in which problems of solitude, loneliness, isolation and seclusion arose and were discussed, and in doing so shed light on some of humankind’s fundamental needs, fears and values.
Peter Bolt explores the impact of Mark's Gospel on its early readers in the first-century Graeco-Roman world. His book focuses upon the thirteen characters in Mark who come to Jesus for healing or exorcism and, using analytical tools of narrative and reader-response criticism, explores their crucial role in the communication of the Gospel. Bolt suggests that early readers of Mark would be persuaded that Jesus' dealings with the suppliants show him casting back the shadow of death and that this in itself is preparatory for Jesus' final defeat of death in resurrection. Enlisting a variety of ancient literary and non-literary sources in an attempt to illuminate this first-century world, this book gives special attention to illness, magic and the Roman imperial system. This is a different approach to Mark, which attempts to break the impasse between narrative and historical studies and will appeal to scholars and students alike.
A new reconstruction and text of the Placita of Aëtius (ca. 50 CE), accompanied by a full commentary and an extensive collection of related texts. This compendium, arguably the most important doxographical text to survive from antiquity, is known through the intensive use made of it by authors in later antiquity and beyond. Covering the entire field of natural philosophy, it has long been mined as a source of information about ancient philosophers and their views. It now receives a thorough analysis as a remarkable work in its own right. This volume is the culmination of a five-volume set of studies on Aëtius (1996–2020): Aëtiana I (ISBN: 9789004105805, 1996), II (Parts 1&2; set ISBN 9789004172067; 2008), III (ISBN 9789004180413; 2009), IV (ISBN: 9789004361454, 2018), and V (Parts 1-4). It uses an innovative methodology to replace the seminal edition of Hermann Diels (1879).
