Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in Fifth-Century Greece

Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in Fifth-Century Greece PDF Author: Bronwen L. Wickkiser
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801889782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
Delving deeply into ancient medical history, Bronwen L. Wickkiser explores the early development and later spread of the cult of Asklepios, one of the most popular healing gods in the ancient Mediterranean. Though Asklepios had been known as a healer since the time of Homer, evidence suggests that large numbers of people began to flock to the cult during the fifth century BCE, just as practitioners of Hippocratic medicine were gaining dominance. Drawing on close readings of period medical texts, literary sources, archaeological evidence, and earlier studies, Wickkiser finds two primary causes for the cult’s ascendance: it filled a gap in the market created by the refusal of Hippocratic physicians to treat difficult chronic ailments and it abetted Athenian political needs. Wickkiser supports these challenging theories with side-by-side examinations of the medical practices at Asklepios' sanctuaries and those espoused in Hippocratic medical treatises. She also explores how Athens' aspirations to empire influenced its decision to open the city to the healer-god's cult. In focusing on the fifth century and by considering the medical, political, and religious dimensions of the cult of Asklepios, Wickkiser presents a complex, nuanced picture of Asklepios' rise in popularity, Athenian society, and ancient Mediterranean culture. The intriguing and sometimes surprising information she presents will be valued by historians of medicine and classicists alike.

Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in Fifth-Century Greece

Asklepios, Medicine, and the Politics of Healing in Fifth-Century Greece PDF Author: Bronwen L. Wickkiser
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801889782
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 193

Get Book Here

Book Description
Delving deeply into ancient medical history, Bronwen L. Wickkiser explores the early development and later spread of the cult of Asklepios, one of the most popular healing gods in the ancient Mediterranean. Though Asklepios had been known as a healer since the time of Homer, evidence suggests that large numbers of people began to flock to the cult during the fifth century BCE, just as practitioners of Hippocratic medicine were gaining dominance. Drawing on close readings of period medical texts, literary sources, archaeological evidence, and earlier studies, Wickkiser finds two primary causes for the cult’s ascendance: it filled a gap in the market created by the refusal of Hippocratic physicians to treat difficult chronic ailments and it abetted Athenian political needs. Wickkiser supports these challenging theories with side-by-side examinations of the medical practices at Asklepios' sanctuaries and those espoused in Hippocratic medical treatises. She also explores how Athens' aspirations to empire influenced its decision to open the city to the healer-god's cult. In focusing on the fifth century and by considering the medical, political, and religious dimensions of the cult of Asklepios, Wickkiser presents a complex, nuanced picture of Asklepios' rise in popularity, Athenian society, and ancient Mediterranean culture. The intriguing and sometimes surprising information she presents will be valued by historians of medicine and classicists alike.

Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion

Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion PDF Author: Jessica Hughes
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108146163
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
This book examines a type of object that was widespread and very popular in classical antiquity - votive offerings in the shape of parts of the human body. It collects examples from four principal areas and time periods: Classical Greece, pre-Roman Italy, Roman Gaul and Roman Asia Minor. It uses a compare-and-contrast methodology to highlight differences between these sets of votives, exploring the implications for our understandings of how beliefs about the body changed across classical antiquity. The book also looks at how far these ancient beliefs overlap with, or differ from, modern ideas about the body and its physical and conceptual boundaries. Central themes of the book include illness and healing, bodily fragmentation, human-animal hybridity, transmission and reception of traditions, and the mechanics of personal transformation in religious rituals.

Dire Remedies: A Social History of Healthcare in Classical Antiquity

Dire Remedies: A Social History of Healthcare in Classical Antiquity PDF Author: William V. Harris
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3111507998
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 622

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Book Description
Dire Remedies: a Social History of Healthcare in Classical Antiquity is the first wide-ranging social history of ancient healthcare. Greek medicine is at the origin of modern medicine, but it was very often ineffective. What did people actually do when faced with pain and illness? Starting with a review of ancient health conditions and a survey of what doctors had to offer, W.V. Harris describes the multifarious practices and diverse kinds of people to whom Greeks and Romans turned for help. Topics include the possible development of analgesics, ancient ideas about contagion, the history of the god Asclepius and more generally the role of religion and magic, opinions about abortion, ancient responses to mental illness, and the invention of the hospital. Taking into account the fill range of textual sources and archaeological material, this book attempts to provide an unprecedentedly realistic – and readable – depiction of the Greek and Roman responses to ill health.

Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake

Hippocrates' Oath and Asclepius' Snake PDF Author: T. A. Cavanaugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190673672
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
This book articulates the Hippocratic Oath as establishing the medical profession by a promise to uphold an internal medical ethic that particularly prohibits doctors from killing. In its most basic and least controvertible form, this ethic mandates that physicians help and not harm the sick.

A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity

A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity PDF Author: Paul Erdkamp
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350995355
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
From Archaic Greece until the Late Roman Empire (c. 800 BCE to c. 500 CE), food was more than a physical necessity; it was a critical factor in politics, economics and culture. On the one hand, the Mediterranean landscape and climate encouraged particular crops – notably cereals, vines and olives – but, with the risks of crop failure ever-present, control of food resources was vital to economic and political power. On the other hand, diet and dining reflected complex social hierarchies and relationships. What was eaten, with whom and when was a fundamental part of the expression of one's role and place in society. In addition, symbolism and ritual suffused foodstuffs, their preparation and consumption. A Cultural History of Food in Antiquity presents an overview of the period with essays on food production, food systems, food security, safety and crises, food and politics, eating out, professional cooking, kitchens and service work, family and domesticity, body and soul, representations of food, and developments in food production and consumption globally.

Aspects of Ancient Greek Cult

Aspects of Ancient Greek Cult PDF Author: George Hinge
Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag
ISBN: 8779346642
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
The papers in this volume illustrate the interplay between the studies of classical archaeology, religion, history, and musicology. The eight papers by the young scholars and their Nestor, Richard Hamilton, offer a fresh look at various aspects of ancient cult, including the use of the word cult in the academic disciplines of Archaeology and the History of Religion; the introduction of Asklepios to Athens, and a detailed study of the same god's sanctuary on the south slope of Akropolis, where it will be demonstrated that the layout of the early sanctuary on the east terrace was carefully designed after one central monument. The book also contains an innovative study of the Philippeion at Olympia, where it is argued that the tholos with its sculpture was a proto-type for the use of divine images and royal ideology by Hellenistic rulers. Other papers include a statistical approach to the illustration of baskets on Classical votive reliefs, a theoretical study of the role of music in ancient Greek cult, and analysis of the use of the chorus as one of the most important expressions of ancient cult in Sparta.

Architecture and Ideology

Architecture and Ideology PDF Author: Mirjana Roter Blagojević
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443860824
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Architecture and Ideology consists of twenty-two essays arranged in four thematic units: Ideological Context of Architecture, City and Power, Morphology and Ideological Patterns, and Designers and Ideology. The subjects that are investigated and elaborated are connected with the influences of different 20th century political and social ideologies on urban development and the architecture of various European cities, from the east and the west. The authors are professors and scientific researchers from various European universities and institutions and theoreticians of architecture, architectural historians and aestheticians, and architecture practitioners. The majority are from Serbia and other countries from the former Yugoslav Republic, namely Croatia, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, though countries such as Hungary, Russia, Italy, Austria, Germany, Netherlands and the UK are also represented. The essays will be of interest to university professors and students, researchers in the history and theory of architecture and city, and professionals in art and architecture, as well as sociologists, historians, and philosophers.

The Ancient Emotion of Disgust

The Ancient Emotion of Disgust PDF Author: Donald Lateiner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190604115
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
The study of emotions and emotional displays has achieved a deserved prominence in recent classical scholarship. The emotions of the classical world can be plumbed to provide a valuable heuristic tool. Emotions can help us understand key issues of ancient ethics, ideological assumptions, and normative behaviors, but, more frequently than not, classical scholars have turned their attention to "social emotions" requiring practical decisions and ethical judgments in public and private gatherings. The emotion of disgust has been unwarrantedly neglected, even though it figures saliently in many literary genres, such as iambic poetry and comedy, historiography, and even tragedy and philosophy. This collection of seventeen essays by fifteen authors features the emotion of disgust as one cutting edge of the study of Greek and Roman antiquity. Individual contributions explore a wide range of topics. These include the semantics of the emotion both in Greek and Latin literature, its social uses as a means of marginalizing individuals or groups of individuals, such as politicians judged deviant or witches, its role in determining aesthetic judgments, and its potentialities as an elicitor of aesthetic pleasure. The papers also discuss the vocabulary and uses of disgust in life (Galli, actors, witches, homosexuals) and in many literary genres: ancient theater, oratory, satire, poetry, medicine, historiography, Hellenistic didactic and fable, and the Roman novel. The Introduction addresses key methodological issues concerning the nature of the emotion, its cognitive structure, and modern approaches to it. It also outlines the differences between ancient and modern disgust and emphasizes the appropriateness of "projective or second-level disgust" (vilification) as a means of marginalizing unwanted types of behavior and stigmatizing morally condemnable categories of individuals. The volume is addressed first to scholars who work in the field of classics, but, since texts involving disgust also exhibit significant cultural variation, the essays will attract the attention of scholars who work in a wide spectrum of disciplines, including history, social psychology, philosophy, anthropology, comparative literature, and cross-cultural studies.

A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity

A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity PDF Author: Josef Lössl
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118968107
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 711

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Book Description
A comprehensive review of the development, geographic spread, and cultural influence of religion in Late Antiquity A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity offers an authoritative and comprehensive survey of religion in Late Antiquity. This historical era spanned from the second century to the eighth century of the Common Era. With contributions from leading scholars in the field, the Companion explores the evolution and development of religion and the role various religions played in the cultural, political, and social transformations of the late antique period. The authors examine the theories and methods used in the study of religion during this period, consider the most notable historical developments, and reveal how religions spread geographically. The authors also review the major religious traditions that emerged in Late Antiquity and include reflections on the interaction of these religions within their particular societies and cultures. This important Companion: Brings together in one volume the work of a notable team of international scholars Explores the principal geographical divisions of the late antique world Offers a deep examination of the predominant religions of Late Antiquity Examines established views in the scholarly assessment of the religions of Late Antiquity Includes information on the current trends in late-antique scholarship on religion Written for scholars and students of religion, A Companion to Religion in Late Antiquity offers a comprehensive survey of religion and the influence religion played in the culture, politics, and social change during the late antique period.

"The Poor, the Crippled, the Blind, and the Lame"

Author: Louise A. Gosbell
Publisher: Mohr Siebeck
ISBN: 316155132X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 427

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Book Description
The New Testament gospels feature numerous social exchanges between Jesus and people with various physical and sensory disabilities. Despite this, traditional biblical scholarship has not seen these people as agents in their own right but existing only to highlight the actions of Jesus as a miracle worker. In this study, Louise A. Gosbell uses disability as a lens through which to explore a number of these passages anew. Using the cultural model of disability as the theoretical basis, she explores the way that the gospel writers, as with other writers of the ancient world, used the language of disability as a means of understanding, organising, and interpreting the experiences of humanity. Her investigation highlights the ways in which the gospel writers reinforce and reflect, as well as subvert, culturally-driven constructions of disability in the ancient world.