Dissection In Classical Antiquity

Comprehensive study of the social and medical history of dissection in classical antiquity and the parallel development of anatomical texts.

Dissection is a practice with a long history stretching back to antiquity and has played a crucial role in the development of anatomical knowledge. This absorbing book takes the story back to classical antiquity, employing a wide range of textual and material evidence. Claire Bubb reveals how dissection was practised from the Hippocratic authors of the fifth century BC through Aristotle and the Hellenistic doctors Herophilus and Erasistratus to Galen in the second century AD. She focuses on its material concerns and social contexts, from the anatomical subjects (animal or human) and how they were acquired, to the motivations and audiences of dissection, to its place in the web of social contexts that informed its reception, including butchery, sacrifice, and spectacle. The book concludes with a thorough examination of the relationship of dissection to the development of anatomical literature into Late Antiquity.

This innovative and wide-ranging volume is the first systematic exploration of the multifaceted relationship between human bodies and machines in classical antiquity. It examines the conception of the body and bodily processes in mechanical terms in ancient medical writings, and looks into how artificial bodies and automata were equally configured in human terms; it also investigates how this knowledge applied to the treatment of the disabled and the diseased in the ancient world. The volume examines the pre-history of what develops, at a later stage, and more specifically during the early modern period, into the full science of iatromechanics in the context of which the human body was treated as a machine and medical treatments were devised accordingly. The volume facilitates future dialogue between scholars working on different areas, from classics, history and archaeology to history of science, philosophy and technology.

Distinguished international scholars examine the neglected issue of the body and its status in classical antiquity

Combining archaeological evidence with the witness of written texts, Vivian Nutton offers a detailed history of medicine & medical knowledge in the ancient world.

With a focus on science in the ancient societies of Greece and Rome, including glimpses into Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China, 'The Oxford Handbook of Science and Medicine in the Classical World' offers an in depth synthesis of science and medicine circa 650 BCE to 650 CE. 0The Handbook comprises five sections, each with a specific focus on ancient science and medicine. The Handbook provides through each of its approximately four dozen essays, a synthesis and synopsis of the concepts and models of the various ancient natural sciences, covering the early Greek era through the fall of the Roman Republic, including essays that explore topics such as music theory, ancient philosophers, astrology, and alchemy.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Best Books of 2023: New Yorker, The Economist, Smithsonian Most Anticipated Books of Fall: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TODAY, Literary Hub, and Publishers Weekly "A vivid way to re-examine what we know, and don’t, about life at the top.... Emperor of Rome is a masterly group portrait, an invitation to think skeptically but not contemptuously of a familiar civilization." —Kyle Harper, Wall Street Journal A sweeping account of the social and political world of the Roman emperors by “the world’s most famous classicist” (Guardian). In her international bestseller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome, from its slightly shabby Iron Age origins to its reign as the undisputed hegemon of the Mediterranean. Now, drawing on more than thirty years of teaching and writing about Roman history, Beard turns to the emperors who ruled the Roman Empire, beginning with Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) and taking us through the nearly three centuries—and some thirty emperors—that separate him from the boy-king Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE). Yet Emperor of Rome is not your typical chronological account of Roman rulers, one emperor after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Instead, Beard asks different, often larger and more probing questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained? What kind of jokes did Augustus tell? And for that matter, what really happened, for example, between the emperor Hadrian and his beloved Antinous? Effortlessly combining the epic with the quotidian, Beard tracks the emperor down at home, at the races, on his travels, even on his way to heaven. Along the way, Beard explores Roman fictions of imperial power, overturning many of the assumptions that we hold as gospel, not the least of them the perception that emperors one and all were orchestrators of extreme brutality and cruelty. Here Beard introduces us to the emperor’s wives and lovers, rivals and slaves, court jesters and soldiers, and the ordinary people who pressed begging letters into his hand—whose chamber pot disputes were adjudicated by Augustus, and whose budgets were approved by Vespasian, himself the son of a tax collector. With its finely nuanced portrayal of sex, class, and politics, Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman fantasies (and our own) about what it was to be Roman at its richest, most luxurious, most extreme, most powerful, and most deadly, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.

The Oxford Handbook of Galen provides a comprehensive overview of the life, work, and legacy of Galen (129--c. 216 CE), arguably the most important medical figure of the Graeco-Roman world. It contains essays by thirty leading experts on Galen's life and background, his medical theories, his therapeutic and clinical practices, and his philosophical contributions in the areas of logic, epistemology, causation, scientific method, and ethics. The authors also discuss the most important pathways of the transmission of his texts and his intellectual legacy, from late antiquity to early modern times and from western Europe to Tibet and China.