The interview with Michele Salzman, a renowned scholar of Late Antiquity at the University of California, Riverside, focuses on issues of reinterpreting the methods of the historian of anti-quity in ...the face of new research developments. Here Salzman outlines the importance and possibilities of interdisciplinary studies and the global dimension of Late Antiquity, outlining the possible research horizons of the coming decades. Referring to the case of the decline of the Roman Empire, the conversation deals with the ways in which the interpretation of the past can be understood as a reflection of the current desires or fears of societies in times of crisis. Special attention in the conversation was given to the issues of resilience and the role of women in the period of Late Antiquity.
This paper looks at tensions arising in the educational thought of late antiquity from the conflict between assumptions regarding the low worth of practical knowledge and the contribution practical ...education can make to the wider purposes educational thinkers assigned to learning. Drawing on the educational writings of Augustine, Martianus Cappella and Boethius, I argue that there are vagaries and contradictions in their depreciation of the practical and a fuller, more hopeful, appreciation of the potential of practical education emerges. This assertion has contemporary significance due to the ancient binary's foundational and contemporary status as a tool of legitimation to reinforce the lower status of the practical and justify societal and economic determinants at the base of educational stratifications.
Throughout antiquity patients sought relief and healing from their afflictions in the sanctuaries of Asclepius, the God of healing. The Asclepian healing cult included sacrifices, ablutions and ...incubation. In their dreams, the patients received therapeutic instructions. But not only miraculous cures occurred in the Asclepieia, nor were these sacred sites the last refuge of the seriously ill. Using selected examples from the Roman Imperial Period, Florian Steger outlines the healthcare provided in the prominent Asclepian sanctuaries – Epidaurus and Pergamum in particular – and demonstrates that this healthcare was on a par with the contemporary medical culture. Ancient epigraphic healing reports and the patient journal of the celebrated orator Publius Aelius Aristides paint a vivid picture of the daily treatments. The medicine of Asclepius clearly formed an integral part of the Roman Empire's multifaceted healthcare market.
The aim of this book is to approach the manifestation and evolution of the idea of Rome as an expression of Roman patriotism and as an (urban) archetype of utopia in late Roman thought in a period ...extending from AD 357 to 417. Within this period of about a human lifetime, the concepts of Rome and Romanitas were reshaped and used for various ideological causes. This monograph is unfolding through a selection of sources that represent the patterns and diversity of this ideological process. The theme of Rome as a personified and anthropomorphic figure and as an epitomized notion ‘applied’ on the urban landscape of the city would become part of the identity of the Romans of Rome highlighting a sense of cultural uniqueness in comparison to the inhabitants of other cities. Towards the end of the chronological limits set in this thesis various versions of Romanitas would emerge indicating new physical and spiritual potentials.
The article firstly outlines attitudes toward abortion in the Greek pagan world. Against this background, a unique passage from Callirhoe, a Greek novel from the first century AD, is presented. It is ...the longest ancient text on the subject and the only one that presents the opinions of women (and perhaps is also authored by a woman). These women are Callirhoe, who was sold into slavery, and Plangon, another slave. The article includes a translation of Callirhoe 2.8–11 and discusses its message. The novel cites some justifications for abortion (the unfortunate fate of the prospective slave and his mother; avoiding an unwanted marriage), but speaks of a child, not a fetus. In the end, the protagonist describes abortion as unlawful and ungodly infanticide and states that both the child and its father would have voted for life. The life of the child is more important than the personal virtue of sophrosyne.
Murdoch examines the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and the futility of the denial of death as a literary theme in world poetry from antiquity to contemporary times. The story of Orpheus and Eurydice ...has memorable narrative elements: his exceptional skills as a singer, the conditional chance he is given, and his descent into the infernal regions. There is also an implicit tension, even though the audience of the retold myth knows that Orpheus will in fact turn and look back. At the base of the myth is the fact that no human effort, not even the skills of a singer who can otherwise charm nature itself, can bring someone back from the dead. The quite literal turning point is the breaking of the prohibition. Turning to look at Eurydice means that Orpheus must face the fact that his wife is dead. The moment of perception makes clear that what had gone before was a hopeless state of denial on his part. The myth is not a memento mori; that the death of every individual is inevitable hardly needs reinforcing. Rather it contextualizes that inevitability, pointing to the necessity for those still living in the world to come to terms with the loss of someone close, so that the theme is the acceptance of loss.
Seasickness and its triggers, symptoms, and preventive measures were well known in antiquity. This chapter is based on an analysis of descriptions of motion sickness, in particular seasickness, in ...ancient Greek, Roman, and Chinese literature. A systematic search was made from the Greek period beginning with Homer in 800 BC to the late Roman period and ending with Aetios Amidenos in 600 AD, as well as in the Chinese medical classics dating from around 300 AD. Major aspects are the following: body movements caused by waves were identified in all cultures as the critical stimuli. The ancient Greeks and Romans knew that other illnesses and the mental state could precipitate seasickness and that experienced sailors were highly resistant to it (habituation). The Chinese observed that children were particularly susceptible to motion sickness; they first described the type of motion sickness induced by traveling in carts (cart-sickness) or being transported on a litter or in a sedan chair (litter-sickness). The western classics recommended therapeutic measures like fasting or specific diets, pleasant fragrancies, medicinal plants like white hellebore (containing various alkaloids), or a mixture of wine and wormwood. The East knew more unusual measures, such as drinking the urine of young boys, swallowing white sand-syrup, collecting water drops from a bamboo stick, or hiding earth from the kitchen hearth under the hair. The Greek view of the pathophysiology of seasickness was based on the humoral theory of Empedokles and Aristoteles and differed from the Chinese medicine of correspondences, which attributed malfunctions to certain body substances and the life force Qi. Many sources emphasized the impact of seasickness on military actions and famous naval battles such as the Battle of the Red Cliff, which marked the end of the Han dynasty in China, or the defeat of the Spanish Armada by the English in 1588. A peculiar form of motion sickness is associated with Napoleon's camel corps during the Egyptian campaign of 1798/1799, a sickness induced by riding on a camel. Thus, motion sickness in antiquity was known as a physiological response to unadapted body motions during passive transportation as well as a plague at sea.
The case for an unprecedented penetration of life mechanisms into the politics of Western modernity has been a cornerstone of 20th-century social theory. Working with and beyond Foucault, this ...article challenges established views about the history of biopower by focusing on ancient medical writings and practices of corporeal permeability. Through an analysis of three Roman institutions: a) bathing; b) urban architecture; and c) the military, it shows that technologies aimed at fostering and regulating life did exist in classical antiquity at the population scale. The article highlights zones of indistinction between natural and political processes, zoē and bíos, that are not captured by a view of destructive incorporation of or over life by sovereign power. In conclusion, the article discusses the theoretical potential of this historical evidence for contemporary debates on ‘affirmative biopolitics’ and ‘environmental biopower’.
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